A dead silence came.

"What can be the good of a common creature like me going to visit people?" she said to herself. "I have nothing to say—feel nothing in me—but a dull love that would bless if it could! And what would words be if I had them?"

For a few moments she sat thus silent, growing more and more uncomfortable. But just ere the silent became unendurable, a thought appeared in the void.

"What a fool I am!" she said again to herself. "I am like little Mark when he cried because he had only a shilling and saw a boy spend a penny on a lovely spotted horse! Here have I been all my life wanting to give my fellow-creatures a large share of my big cake, and the first time I have an opportunity, I forget all about it! Here it lies locked in my chest, like a dead bird in its cage!"

A few more moments she sat silent but no longer embarrassed thinking how to begin. The baby woke and began to whimper. The mother, who rarely let him off her arm, because then she was not able to take him till help came, drew him to her, and began to nurse him; and the heart of the young, strong woman was pierced to the quick at sight of how ill fitted was the mother for what she had to do. "Can God be love?" she said to herself. "If I could help her! It will go on like this for weeks and months, I suppose!"

She had yet to learn that the love of God is so deep he can be satisfied with nothing less than getting as near as it is possible for the Father to draw nigh to his children—and that is into absolute contact of heart with heart, love with love, being with being. And as that must be wrought out from the deepest inside, divine law working itself up through our nature into our consciousness and will, and claiming us as divine, who can tell by what slow certainties of approach God is drawing nigh to the most suffering of his creatures? Only, if we so comfort ourselves with such thoughts as to do nothing, we, when God and they meet, shall find ourselves out in the cold—cold infinitely worse than any trouble this world has to show. The baby made no complaint against the slow fountain of his life, but made the best he could of it, while his mother every now and then peered down on him as lovingly as ever happy mother on her first-born. The same God is at the heart of all mothers, and all sins against children are against the one Father of children, against the Life itself.

A few moments only, and Hester began to sing—low and soft. Having no song sought out for the occasion, she took a common hymn, sung in all churches and chapels, with little thought or feeling in it, the only one she could think of. I need not say she put into it as much of sweetness and smoothing strength as she could make the sounds hold, and so perhaps made up a little for its lack. It is a curious question why sacred song should so often be dull and commonplace. With a trembling voice she sang, and with more anxiety and shyness than she remembered having ever felt. It was neither a well-instructed nor critically disposed audience she had, but the reason was that never before had she been so anxious for some measure of success. Not daring to look up, she sat like one rebuked, with the music flowing over her lips like the slow water from the urn of some naiad of stone fountain. She had her reward; for when the hymn was done, and she at length ventured to raise her eyes, she saw both mother and babe fast asleep. Her heart ascended on a wave of thanks to the giver of song. She rose softly, crept from the house, and hastened home to tell her mother what she had heard and seen. The same afternoon a basket of nice things arrived at the shop for the poor lodger in the top-room.

The care of the Raymounts did not relax till she was fairly on her feet again; neither till then did a day pass on which Hester did not see her, and scarcely one on which she did not sing to her and her baby. Several times she dressed the child, singing to him all the time. It was generally in the morning she went, because then she was almost sure to find them alone. Of the father she had seen next to nothing. On the few occasions when he happened to be at home, the moment she entered he crept out, with a shy, humble salutation, as if ashamed of himself. All she had ever had time to see was that he was a man of middle height, with a strong face and frame, dressed like a workman. The moment he rose to go, his three boys rose also, and following him from the room seemed to imitate his salutation as they passed her—all but the youngest, who made her a profound bow accompanied by a wonderful smile. The eldest was about the age of twelve, the youngest about seven. They were rather sickly looking, but had intelligent faces and inoffensive expressions.

Mrs. Baldwin continued to bear the family good witness. She confessed they never seemed to have much to eat, but said they paid their lodgings regularly, and she had nothing to complain of. The place had indeed been untidy, not to say dirty, at first, but as soon as the mother was about again, it began to amend, and now, really, for people in their position, it was wonderfully well.



CHAPTER XIII.

A PRIVATE EXHIBITION.

Hester had not been near them for two or three days. It was getting dusk, but she would just run across the square and down the street, and look in upon them for a moment. She had not been brought up to fear putting her foot out of doors unaccompanied. It was but a few steps, and she knew almost every house she had to pass. To-morrow was Sunday, and she felt as if she could not go to church without having once more seen the little flock committed in a measure to her humble charge. Not that she imagined anything sole in her relation towards them; for she had already begun to see that we have to take care of parts of each other, those parts, namely, which we can best help. From the ambition both of men and women to lord it over individuals have arisen worse evils perhaps than from a wider love of empery. When a man desires personal influence or power over any one, he is of the thieves and robbers who enter not in by the door. But the right and privilege of ministering belongs to every one who has the grace to claim it and be a fellow-worker with God.

Hester found Mrs. Baldwin busy in the shop, and with a nod passed her, and went up the stair. But when she opened the door, she stood for a moment hesitating whether to enter, or close it again with an apology and return, for it seemed as if preparations for a party had been made. The bed was pushed to the back of the room, and the floor was empty, except for a cushion or two, like those of an easy chair, lying in the middle of it. The father and the three boys were standing together near the fire, like gentlemen on the hearth-rug expecting visitors. She glanced round in search of the mother. Some one was bending over the bed in the farther corner; the place was lighted with but a single candle, and she thought it was she, stooping over her baby; but a moment's gaze made it plain that the back was that of a man: could it be the doctor again? Was the poor woman worse? She entered and approached the father, who then first seeing who it was that had knocked and looked in, pulled off the cap he invariably wore, and came forward with a bashful yet eager courtesy.

"I hope your wife is not worse," said Hester.

"No', miss, I hope not. She's took a bit bad. We can't always avoid it in our profession, miss."

"I don't understand you," she answered, feeling a little uneasy.—Were there horrors to be revealed of which she had surmised nothing?

"If you will do us the honor to take a seat, miss, we shall be only too happy to show you as much as you may please to look upon with favor."

Hester shuddered involuntarily, but mastered herself. The man saw her hesitate, and resumed.

"You see, miss, this is how it was. Dr. Christopher—that's the gentleman there, a lookin' after mother—he's been that kind to her an' me an' all on us in our trouble, an' never a crown-piece to offer him—which I'm sure no lady in the land could ha' been better attended to than she've been—twixt him an' you, miss—so we thought as how we'd do our best for him, an' try an' see whether amongst us we couldn't give him a pleasant evenin' as it were, just to show as we was grateful. So we axed him to tea, an' he come, like the gen'leman he be, an' so we shoved the bed aside an' was showin' him a bit on our craft, just a trick or two, miss—me an' the boys here—stan' forward, Robert an' the rest of you an' make your bows to the distinguished company as honors you with their presence to cast an eye on you an' see what you can show yourselves capable of."

Here Mr. Christopher—Hester had not now heard his name for the first time, though she had never seen him before—turned, and approached them.

"She'll be all right in a minute or two, Franks," he said.

"You told her, doctor, the boy ain't got the smallest hurt? It 'ud break my heart nigh as soon as hers to see the Sarpint come to grief."

"She knows that well enough; only, you see, we can't always help letting the looks of things get a hold of us in spite of the facts. That's how so many people come to go out of their wits. But I think for the present it will be better to drop it."

Franks turned to Hester to explain.

"One of the boys, miss—that's him—not much of him—the young Sarpint of the Prairie, we call him in the trade—he don't seem to ha' much amiss with him, do he now, miss?—he had a bit of a fall—only on them pads—a few minutes ago, the more shame to the Sarpint, the rascal!" Here he pretended to hit the Sarpint, who never moved a coil in consequence, only smiled. "But he ain't the worse, never a hair—or a scale I should rather say, to be kensistent. Bless you, we all knows how to fall equally as well's how to get up again! Only it's the most remarkable thing, an' you would hardly believe it of any woman, miss, though she's been married fourteen years come next Candlemas, an' use they say's a second natur', it's never proved no second nor no third natur' with her, for she's got no more used to seein' the children, if it's nothin' but standin' on their heads, than if it was the first time she'd ever heard o' sich a thing. An' for standin' on my head—I don't mean me standin' on my own head, that she don't mind no more'n if it was a pin standin' on its head, which it's less the natur' of a pin to do, as that's the way she first made acquaintance with me, seein' me for the first time in her life upside down, which I think sometimes it would be the better way for women to choose their husbands in general, miss, for it's a bad lot we are! But as to seein' of her own flesh an' blood, that's them boys, all on 'em, miss, a standin' on my head, or it might be one on my head an' the other two on my shoulders, that she never come to look at fair. She can't abide it, miss. By some strange okylar delusion she takes me somehow for somewheres about the height of St. Paul's, which if you was to fall off the ball, or even the dome of the same, you might break your neck an' a few bones besides, miss. But bless you, there ain't no danger, an' she knows too, there ain't, only, as the doctor says, she can't abide the look o' the thing. You see, miss, we're all too much taken wi' the appearance o' things—the doctor's right there!—an' if it warn't for that, there's never a juggler could get on with his tricks, for it's when you're so taken up with what he wants you to see, that he does the thing he wants you not to see. But as the doctor thinks it better to drop it, it's drop it we will, an' wait till a more convenient time—that is, when mother'll be a bit stronger. For I hope neither you, miss, nor the doctor, won't give us up quite, seem' as how we have a kind of a claim upon you—an' no offense, miss, to you, or Mr. Christopher, sir!"

Hester, from whose presence the man had hitherto always hastened to disappear, was astonished at this outpouring; but Franks was emboldened by the presence of the doctor. The moment, however, that his wife heard him give up thus their little private exhibition in honor of the doctor, she raised herself on her elbow.

"Now, you'll do no such a thing, John Franks!" she said with effort." It's ill it would become me, for my whims, as I can't help, no more nor the child there, to prewent you from showin' sich a small attention to the gentleman as helped me through my trouble—God bless him, for it can't be no pleasure! So I'm not agoin' to put on no airs as if I was a fine lady. I've got to get used to't—that's the short an' the long of it!—Only I'm slow at it!" she added with a sigh, "Up you go, Moxy!"

Franks looked at the doctor. The doctor nodded his head as much as to say, "You had better do as she wishes;" but Hester saw that the eyes of the young man were all the time more watchful of the woman than of the performance.

Immediately Franks, with a stage-bow, offered Hester a chair. She hesitated a moment, for she felt shy of Mr. Christopher: but as she had more fear of not behaving as she ought to the people she was visiting, she sat down, and became for the first time in her life a spectator of the feats of a family of acrobats.

There might have seemed little remarkable in the display to one in the occasional habit of seeing such things, and no doubt to Mr. Christopher it had not much that was new; but to Hester what each and all of them were capable of was astonishing—more astonishing than pleasant, for she was haunted for some time after with a vague idea of prevailing distortion and dislocation. It was satisfactory nevertheless to know that much labor of a very thorough and persevering sort must have been expended upon their training before they could have come within sight of the proficiency they had gained. She believed this proficiency bore strong witness to some kind of moral excellence in them, and that theirs might well be a nobler way of life than many in which money is made more rapidly, and which are regarded as more respectable. There were but two things in the performance she found really painful: one, that the youngest seemed hardly equal to the physical effort required in those tricks, especially which he had as yet mastered but imperfectly: and it was very plain this was the chief source of trial to the nerves of the mother. He was a sweet-looking boy, with a pale interesting face, bent on learning his part, but finding it difficult. The other thing that pained Hester, was, that the moment they began to perform, the manner of the father toward his children changed; his appearance also, and the very quality of his voice changed, so that he seemed hardly the same man. Just as some men alter their tone and speak roughly when they address a horse, so the moment Franks assumed the teacher, he assumed the tyrant, and spoke in a voice between the bark of a dog and the growl of a brown bear. But the roughness had in it nothing cruel, coming in part of his having had to teach other boys than his own, whom he found this mode of utterance assist him in compelling to give heed to his commands; in part from his idea of the natural embodiment of authority. He ordered his boys about with sternness, sometimes even fiercely, swore at them indeed occasionally, and made Hester feel very uncomfortable.

"Come, come, Franks!" said Mr. Christopher, on one of these outbreaks.

The man stood silent for a moment "like one forbid," then turning to Miss Raymount first, and next to his wife, said, taking of his cap,

"I humbly beg your pardon, ladies. I forgot what company I was in. But bless you, I mean nothing by it! It's only my way. Ain't it now, mates—you as knows the old man?"

"Yes, father; 'tain't nothin' more'n a way you've got," responded the boys all, the little one loudest.

"You don't mind it, do you—knowin' as it's only to make you mind what you're about?"

"No, father, we don't mind it. Go ahead, father," said the eldest.

"But," said Franks, and here interjected an imprecation, vulgarly called an oath, "if ever I hear one o' you a usin' of sich improper words, I'll break every bone in his carcase."

"Yes, father," answered the boys with one accord,

"It's all very well for fathers," he went on; "an' when you're fathers yourselves, an' able to thrash me—not as I think you'd want to, kids—I sha'nt ha' no call to meddle with you. So here goes!"

Casting a timid glance at Hester, in the assurance that he had set himself thoroughly right with her, showing himself as regardful of his boys' manners as could justly be expected of any parent, he proceeded with his lesson from the point where he had left off.

As to breaking the boys' bones, there hardly seemed any bones in them to break; gelatine at best seemed to be what was inside their muscles, so wonderful were their feats, and their pranks so strange. But their evident anxiety to please, their glances full of question as to their success in making their offering acceptable, their unconscious efforts to supply the lacking excitement of the public gaze, and, more than all, the occasional appearance amidst the marvels of their performance, in which their bodies seemed mere india-rubber in response to their wills, of a strangely mingled touch of pathos, prevailed chiefly to interest Hester in their endeavor. This last would appear in the occasional suffering it caused Moxy, the youngest, to do as his father required, but oftener in the incongruity between the lovely expression of the boy's face, and the oddity of it when it became the field of certain comicalities required of him—especially when, stuck through between his feet, it had to grin like a demon carved on the folding seat of a choir-stall. Its sweet innocence, and the veil of suffering cast over its best grin, suggesting one of Raphael's cherubs attempting to play the imp, Hester found almost discordantly pathetic. She could have caught the child to her bosom, but alas! she had no right. She was already beginning to become aware of the difficulty of the question as to when or how much you may interfere with the outward conditions of men, or help them save through the channels of the circumstance in which you find them. The gentle suffering face seemed far from its own sphere, that of a stray boy-angel come to give her a lesson in the heavenly patience. His mother, whose yellow hair and clear gray eyes were just like his, covered her eyes with her hand, though she could not well see him from where she lay, every time he had to do anything by himself.

All at once the master of the ceremonies drew 'himself up, and wiping his forehead, gave a deep sigh, as much as to say, "I have done my best, and if I have not pleased you, the more is my loss, for I have tried hard," and the performance was over.

The doctor rose, and in a manly voice, whose tones were more pleasing to Hester than the look of the man, which she did not find attractive, proceeded to point out to Franks one or two precautions which his knowledge of anatomy enabled him to suggest, with regard to the training especially of the little Moxy. At the same time he expressed himself greatly pleased with what his host had been so kind as to show him, remarking that the power to do such things implied labor more continuous and severe than would have sufficed to the learning of two or three trades. In reply, Franks, mistaking the drift of the remark, and supposing it a gentle remonstrance with what the doctor counted a waste of labor, said, in a tone that sounded sad in the ears of Hester,

"What's a fellow to do, sir, when he 'ain't got no dinner? He must take to the work as takes to him. There was no other trade handy for me. My father he was a poor laborer, an' died early, o' hard work an' many mouths. My mother lived but a year after him an' I had to do for the kids whatever came first to hand. There was two on 'em dead 'atwixt me an' the next alive, so I was a long way ahead o' the rest, an' I couldn't ha' seen them goin' to the dogs for want o' bread while I was learnin' a trade, even if I had had one in my mind more than another, which I never had. I always was a lively lad, an' for want of anything better to do, for my father wouldn't have us go to work till we was strong enough, he said—an' for that matter it turned out well when the hard time came—I used to amuse myself an' the rest by standin' on my head an' twistin' of my body into all sorts o' shapes—more'n it could well ha' been meant for to take. An' when the circus come round, I would make friends wi' the men, helpin' of 'em to look after their horses, an' they would sometimes, jest to amuse theirselves, teach me tricks I was glad enough to learn; an' they did say for a clod-hopper I got on very well. But that, you see, sir, set my monkey up, an' I took a hoath to myself I would do what none o' them could do afore I died—an' some thinks, sir," he added modestly, "as how I've done it—but that's neither here nor there. The p'int is, that, when my mother followed my father, an' the rest come upon my hands, I was able at once, goin' about an' showin' off, to gather a few coppers for 'em. But I soon found it was precious little I could get, no matter what I could do so long as my clothes warn't the right thing. So long as I didn't look my trade, they regarded my best as nothing but a clumsy imitation of my betters, an' laughed at what circus Joe said he couldn't do no better hisself. So I plucks up heart an' goes to Longstreet, as was the next market-town, an' into a draper's shop, an' tells 'em what I wanted, an' what it was for, promisin' to pay part out o' the first money I got, an' the rest as soon after as I could. The chaps in the shop, all but one on em', larfed at me; there's always one, or two p'raps, leastways sech as has been my expearence, sir an' miss, as is better'n most o' the rest, though it's a good thing everybody's not so soft-hearted as my wife there, or the world would soon be turned topsy turvey, an' the rogues have all the money out o' the good folk's pockets, an' them turned beggars in their turn, an' then the rogues wouldn't give them nothink, an' so the good ones would die out, an' the world be full o' nothing but damned rascals—I beg your pard'n, miss. But as I was sayin', though I fared no better at the next shop nor the next, there was one good woman I come to in a little shop in a back street, an' she was a resemblin' of yourself, miss, an' she took an' set me up in my trade, a givin' of me a few remnants o' colored calico, God bless her! I set to with my needle, an' I dressed myself as like a proper clown as I could, an' painted my face beautiful, an' from that time till they was able to do some'at for theirselves, I managed to keep the kids in life. It wasn't much more, you see, but life's life though it bean't tip-top style. An' if they're none o' them doin' jest so well as they might, there's none o' them been in pris'n yet, an' that's a comfort as long as it lasts. An' when folk tells me I'm a doin' o' nothink o' no good, an' my trade's o' no use to nobody, I says to them, says I, 'Beggin' your pardon, sir, or ma'am, but do you call it nothink to fill—leastways to nigh fill four hungry little bellies at home afore I wur fifteen?' An' after that, they ain't in general said nothink; an' one gen'leman he give me 'alf-a-crown."

"The best possible answer you could have given, Franks," rejoined Mr. Christopher. "But I think perhaps you hardly understood what such objectors meant to say. They might have gone on to explain, only they hadn't the heart after what you told them, that most trades did something on both sides—not only fed the little ones at home, but did good to the persons for whom the work was done; that the man, for instance, who cobbled shoes, gave a pair of dry feet to some old man at the same time that he filled his own child's hungry little stomach."

Franks was silent for a moment, thinking.

"I understand you, sir," he said. "But I think I knows trades as makes a deal o' money, an' them they makes it out on's the worse an' not the better. It's better to stand on a fellow's own head than to sell gin; an' I 'most think it's as good as the fire-work trade."

"You are quite right: there's not a doubt of it," answered Mr. Christopher. "But mind you," he went on, "I don't for a moment agree with those who tell you your trade is of no use. I was only explaining to you what they meant; for it's always best to know what people mean, even where they are wrong."

"Surely, sir, and I thank you kindly. Everybody's not so fair."

Here he broke into a quiet laugh, so pleased was he to have the doctor take his part.

"I think," Mr. Christopher went on, "to amuse people innocently is often the only good you can do them. When done lovingly and honestly, it is a Christian service."

This rather shocked Hester:—acrobatics a Christian service. With her grand dawning idea mingled yet some foolish notional remnants. She still felt as if going to church and there fixing your thoughts on the prayers and the lessons and the hymns and the sermon was the serving of God. She turned rather sharply towards the doctor, with a feeling that honesty called on her to speak; but not a word came to her lips, for the best of reasons—that not a thought had arisen in answer to his bold assertion. She was one of the few who know when they have nothing to say. But Christopher had observed the movement of dissent.

"Suppose," he went on, but without addressing her more than before, still turning himself almost exclusively to Franks—"Suppose somebody walking along Oxford Street, brooding over an injury, and thinking how to serve the man out that had done it to him. All the numberless persons and things pass him on both sides and he sees none of them—takes no notice of anything. But he spies a man in Berners Street, in the middle of a small crowd, showing them some tricks—we won't say so good as yours, Mr. Franks, but he stops, and stares, and forgets for a moment or two that there is one brother-man he hates and would kill if he could."

Here Hester found words, and said, though all but inaudibly,

"He would only go away as soon as he had had enough of it, and hate him all the same!"

"I know very well," answered Christopher, turning now to her, "it would not make a good man of him: but, except the ways of the world, its best ways and all, are to go for nothing in God's plans, it must be something to have the bad mood in a man stopped for a moment, just as it is something to a life to check a fever. It gives the godlike in the man, feeble, perhaps nearly exhausted, a fresh opportunity of revival. For the moment at least, the man is open to influences from another source than his hate. If the devil may catch a man at unawares when he is in an evil or unthinking mood, why should not the good Power take his opportunity when the evil spirit is asleep through the harping of a David or the feats of a Franks? I sometimes find, as I come from a theatre where I have been occupied with the interests of a stirring play, that, with a sudden rush of intelligence, I understand the things best worth understanding better than before."

The illustration would have pleased Hester much had he said "coming out of a concert-room," for she was not able to think of God being in a theatre: perhaps that had some relation to her inability to tell Saffy why God made the animals: she could have found her a reason why he made the dogs, but not why he made the monkeys. We are surrounded with things difficult to understand, and the way most people take is not to look at them lest they should find out they have to understand them. Hester suspected scepticism under the remarks of the doctor: most doctors, she believed, had more than a leaning in that direction. But she had herself begun to have a true notion of serving man at least; therefore there was no fear of her not coming to see by and by what serving God meant. She did serve him, therefore she could not fail of finding out the word that belonged to the act: no one who does not serve him ever can find out what serving him means. Some people are constantly rubbing at their skylights, but if they do not keep their other windows clean also, there will not be much light in the house: God, like his body, the light, is all about us, and prefers to shine in upon us sideways: we could not endure the power of his vertical glory; no mortal man can see God and live; and he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, shall not love his God whom he hath not seen. He will come to us in the morning through the eyes of a child, when we have been gazing all night at the stars in vain.

Hester rose. She was a little frightened at the very peculiar man and his talk. She had made several attempts in the dull light, but without much success, to see him as he watched the contortions of the acrobats, which apparently he enjoyed more than to her seemed reasonable. But, as with herself, it was the boy Moxy that chiefly attracted him, though the show of physical prowess was far from uninteresting to him; and although what she saw through the smoky illumination of the dip was not attractive to her, the question remains whether it was really the man himself she saw, or only an appearance made up of candle gleam and gloom, complemented by her imagination. I will write what she saw, or thought she saw.

A rather thick-set man about thirty, in a rough shooting-coat of a brownish gray with many pockets, a striped shirt, and a black necktie—if tie it could be called that had so little tie in it; a big head, with rather thick and long straggling hair; a large forehead, and large gray eyes; the remaining features well-formed—but rather fat, like the rest of his not elegant person; and a complexion rather pale. She thought he had quite a careless, if not a slightly rakish look; but I believe a man, even in that light, would have seen in him something manly and far from unattractive. He had a rather gruff but not unmusical voice, with what some might have thought a thread of pathos in it. He always reminded certain of his friends of the portrait of Jean Paul in the Paris edition of his works. He was hardly above the middle height, and, I am sorry to say, wore his hat on the back of his head, which would have given Solon or Socrates himself a foolish look. Hester, however, as she declined his offer to see her home, did not then become aware of this peculiarity, which, to say the least, would have made her like him no better.

The next time she went to see the Frankses, which was not for four or five days, she found they were gone. They had told Mrs. Baldwin that they were sorry to leave, but they must look for a cheaper lodging—a better they could not hope to find; and as the Baldwins had just had an application for the rooms, they felt they must let them go.

Hester was disappointed not to have seen them once more, and made them a little present as she had intended; and in after times the memory of them was naturally the more interesting that on Mrs. Franks she had first made experiment in the hope of her calling, and in virtue of her special gift had not once nor twice given sleep and rest to her and her babe. And if it is a fine thing to thrill with delight the audience of a concert-room—well-dined, well-dressed people, surely it was not a little thing to hand God's gift of sleep to a poor woman weary with the lot of women, and having so little, as Hester thought, to make life a pleasure to her!

Mrs. Franks would doubtless have differed from Hester in this judgment of her worldly condition, on the ground that she had a good husband, and good children. Some are always thinking others better off than themselves: others feel as if the lot of many about them must be absolutely unbearable, because they themselves could never bear it, they think. But things are unbearable just until we have them to bear; their possibility comes with them. For we are not the roots of our own being.



CHAPTER XIV.

VAVASOR AND HESTER.

The visits of Vavasor, in reality to Hester, continued. For a time they were more frequent, and he stayed longer. Hester's more immediate friends, namely her mother and Miss Dasomma, noted also, and with some increase of anxiety, that he began to appear at the church they attended, a dull enough place, without any possible attraction of its own for a man like Vavasor: they could but believe he went thither for the sake of seeing Hester. Two or three Sundays and he began to join them as they came out, and walk part of the way home with them. Next he went all the way, was asked to go in, and invited to stay to lunch.

It may well seem strange that Mrs. Raymount, anxious as to the result, should allow things to go on thus; but, in the first place, she had such thorough confidence in Hester as not to think it possible she should fall in love with such a man as Vavasor; and, in the second place, it is wonderful what weakness may co-exist with what strength, what worldliness stand side by side with what spirituality—for a time, that is, till the one, for one must, overcome the other; Mrs. Raymount was pleased with the idea of a possible marriage of such distinction for her daughter, which would give her just the position she counted her fit for. These mutually destructive considerations were, with whatever logical inconsistency, both certainly operative in her. Then again, they knew nothing against the young man! He made himself agreeable to every one in the house. In Addison Square he showed scarce the faintest shadow of the manner which made him at the bank almost hated. In the square not only was he on his good behavior as in a private house, but his heart, and his self-respect, as he would have called his self-admiration, were equally concerned in his looking his best—which always means looking better than one's best. Then in Hester's company his best was always uppermost, and humility being no part of this best, he not merely felt comfortable and kindly disposed—which he was—but good in himself and considerate of others—which he was not. There was that in Hester and his feeling towards her which had upon him what elevating influence he was yet capable of receiving, and this fact said more for him than anything else. She seemed gaining a power over him that could not be for other than good with any man who submitted to it. It had begun to bring out and cherish what was best in a disposition far from unamiable, although nearly ruined by evil influences on all sides. Both glad and proud to see her daughter thus potent, how, thought Mrs. Raymount, could she interfere? It was plain he was improving. Not once now did they ever hear him jest on anything belonging to church!—As to anything belonging to religion, he scarcely knew enough in that province to have any material for jesting.—If Vavasor was falling in love with Hester, the danger was for him—lest she, who to her mother appeared colder than any lady she knew, should not respond with like affection.

Miss Dasomma was more awake. She knew better than Mrs. Raymount the kind of soil in which this human plant had been reared, and saw more danger ahead. She feared the young man was but amusing himself, or at best enjoying Hester's company as some wary winged thing enjoys the flame, courting a few singes, not quite avoiding even a slight plumous conflagration, but careful not to turn a delightful imagination into a consuming reality, beyond retreat and self-recovery. She could not believe him as careless of himself as of her, but judged he was what he would to himself call flirting with her—which had the more danger for Hester that there was not in her mind the idea corresponding to the phrase. I believe he declined asking himself whither the enjoyment of the hour was leading; and I fancy he found it more easy to set aside the question because of the difference between his social position and that of the lady. Possibly he regarded himself as honoring the low neighborhood of Addison Square by the frequency of his shining presence; but I think he was at the same time feeling the good influences of which I have spoken more than he knew, or would have liked to acknowledge to himself; for he had never turned his mind in the direction of good; and it was far more from circumstance than refusal that he was not yet the more hurtful member of society which his no-principles were surely working to make him.

Hester was of course greatly interested in him. She had been but little in society, had not in the least studied men, and could not help being pleased with the power she plainly had over him, and which as plainly went on increasing. Even Corney, not very observant or penetrating, remarked on the gentleness of his behavior in their house. He followed every word of Hester's about his singing, and showed himself even anxious to win her approbation by the pains he took and the amount of practice he went through to approach her idea of song. He had not only ceased to bring forward his heathenish notions as to human helplessness and fate, but allowed what at first she let fall as mere hints concerning the individual mission of every human being to blossom in little outbursts concerning duty without show of opposition, listening with a manner almost humble, and seeming on the way to allow there might be some reality in such things. Whether any desire of betterment was now awake in him through the power of her spiritual presence, I cannot tell; but had Mrs. Raymount seen as much of him as Hester, she would have been yet better justified in her hope of him. For Hester, she thought first, and for some time, only of doing him good, nor until she imagined some success, did the danger to her begin.

After that, with every fresh encouragement the danger grew—for just so much grew the danger of selfcoming in and getting the upper-hand.

I do not suppose that Vavasor once consciously laid himself out to deceive her, or make her think him better than he thought himself. With a woman of Hester's instincts, there might have been less danger if he had; she also would then perhaps have been aware of the present untruth, and have recoiled. But if he had any he had but the most rudimentary notion of truth in the inward parts, and could deceive the better that he did not know he was deceiving. As little notion had he of the nature of the person he was dealing with, or the reality to her of the things of which she spoke;—belief was to him at most the mere difference between decided and undecided opinion. Nay, she spoke the language of a world whose existence he was incapable at present of recognizing, for he had never obeyed one of its demands, which language therefore meant to him nothing like what it meant to her. His natural inborn proclivities to the light had, through his so seldom doing the deeds of the light, become so weak, that he hardly knew such a thing as reform was required of, possible to, or desirable in him. Nothing seemed to him to matter except "good form." To see and hear him for a few minutes after leaving her and entering his club, would have been safety to Hester. I do not mean that he was of the baser sort there, but whatever came up there, he would meet on its own grounds, and respond to in its own kind.

He was certainly falling more and more into what most people call love. How little regard there may be in that for the other apart from the self I will not now inquire, but what I may call the passionate side of the spiritual was more affected in him than ever previously. As to what he meant he did not himself know. When intoxicated with the idea of her, that is when thinking what a sensation she would make in his grand little circle, he felt it impossible to live without her: some way must be found! it could not be his fate to see another triumph in her!—He called his world a circle rightly enough: it was no globe, nothing but surface.—Whether or not she Would accept him he never asked himself; almost awed in her presence, he never when alone doubted she would. Had he had anything worthy the name of property coming with the title, he would have proposed to her at once, he said to himself. But who with only the most beautiful wife in the world, would encounter a naked earldom! The thing would be raging madness—as unjust to Hester as to himself! How just, how love-careful he was not to ask her—considerate for her more than himself! But perhaps she might have expectations! That could hardly be: no one with anything would slave as her governor did, morning, noon and night! True his own governor was her uncle—there was money in the family; but people never left their money to their poor relations! To marry her would be to live on his salary, in a small house in St. John's wood, or Park Village—perhaps even in Camden Town, ride home in the omnibus every night like one of a tin of sardines, wear half-crown gloves, cotton socks, and ten-and-six-penny hats: the prospect was too hideous to be ludicrous even! Would the sweetness of the hand that darned the socks make his over-filled shoe comfortable? And when the awful family began to come on, she would begin to go off! A woman like her, living in ease and able to dress well—by Jove, she might keep her best points till she was fifty! If there was such a providence as Hester so dutifully referred to, it certainly did not make the best things the easiest to get! How could it care for a fellow's happiness, or even for his leading a correct life! Would he not be a much better man if allowed to have Hester!—whereas in all probability she would fall to the lot of some quill-driver like her father—a man that made a livelihood by drumming his notions into the ears of people that did not care a brass farthing about them!—Thus would Vavasor's love-fits work themselves off—declining from cold noon to a drizzly mephitic twilight.

It was not soon that he risked an attempt to please her with a song of his own. There was just enough unconscious truth in him to make him a little afraid of Hester. Commonplace as were in the most thorough sense the channels in which his thoughts ran, he would not for less than a fortune have risked encountering her scorn. For he believed, and therein he was right, that she was capable of scorn, and that of no ordinarily withering quality: Hester had not yet gathered the sweet gentleness that comes of long breathing the air of the high countries. It is generally many years before a strong character learns to think of itself as it ought to think. While there is left in us the possibility of scorn we know not quite the spirit we are of—still less if we imagine we may keep this or that little shadow of a fault. But Hester was far less ready to scorn on her own account than on the part of another. And if she had fairly seen into the mind interesting her so much, seen how poverty-stricken it was, and with how little motion towards the better, she would indeed have felt a great rush of scorn, but chiefly against herself for being taken in after such a fool's-fashion.

But he had come to understand Hester's taste so far as to know certain qualities she would not like in a song; he could even be sure she would like this one or that; and although of many he could not be certain, having never reached the grounds of her judgment, he had not yet offended her with any he brought her—and so by degrees he had generated the resolve to venture something himself in the hope of pleasing her: he flattered himself he knew her style! He was very fond of the word, and had an idea that all writers, to be of any account, must fashion their style after that of this or the other master. How the master got it, or whether it might not be well to go back to the seed and propagate no more by cutting, it never occurred to him to ask. In the prospect of one day reaching the bloom of humanity in the conservatory of the upper house, he already at odd moments cultivated his style by reading aloud the speeches of parliamentary orators; but the thought never came to him that there was no such thing per se as speaking well, that there was no cause of its existence except thinking well, were the grandfather, and something to say the father of if—something so well worth saying that it gave natural utterance to its own shape. If you had told him this, and he had, as he thought, perceived the truth of it, he would immediately have desired some fine thing to say, in order that he might say it well! He could not have been persuaded that, if one has nothing worth saying, the best possible style for him is just the most halting utterance that ever issued from empty skull. To make a good speech was the grand thing! what side it was on, the right or the wrong, was a point unthinkable with him. Even whether the speaker believed what he said was of no consequence—except that, if he did not, his speech would be the more admirable, as the greater tour de force, and himself the more admirable as the cleverer fellow.

Knowing that Hester was fond of a good ballad, he thought at first to try his hand on one: it could not be difficult, he thought! But he found that, like everything else, a ballad was easy enough if you could do it, and more than difficult enough if you could not: after several attempts he wisely yielded the ambition; his gift did not lie in that direction! He had, however, been so long in the habit of writing drawing-room verses that he had better ground for hoping he might produce something in that kind which the too severe taste of Hester could yet admire! It would be a great stroke towards placing him in a right position towards her—one, namely, in which his intellectual faculty would be more manifest! It should be a love song, and he would present it as one he had written long ago: as such it would say the more for him while it would not commit him.

So one evening as he stood by her piano, he said all at once:

"By the bye, Miss Raymount, last night, as I was turning over some songs I wrote many years ago, I came upon one I thought I should like you just to look at—not the music—that is worth nothing, though I was proud enough of it then and thought it an achievement; but the words I still think are not so bad—considering. They are so far from me now that I am able to speak of them as if they were not mine at all!"

"Do let me see them!" said Hester, hiding none of the interest she felt, though fearing a little she might not have to praise them so much as she would like.

He took the song from his pocket, and smoothed it out before her on the piano.

"Read it to me, please," said Hester.

"No; excuse me," he answered with a little shyness, the rarest of phenomena in his spiritual atmosphere; "I could not read it aloud. But do not let it bore you if—"

He did not finish his sentence, and Hester was already busy with his manuscript.

Here is the song:

If thou lov'st I dare not ask thee, Lest thou say, "Not thee;" Prythee, then, in coldness mask thee, That it may be me.

If thou lov'st me do not tell me, Joy would make me rave, And the bells of gladness knell me To the silent grave.

If thou lovest not thy lover, Neither veil thine eyes, Nor to his poor heart discover What behind them lies.

Be not cruel, be not tender; Grant me twilight hope; Neither would I die of splendor, Nor in darkness mope.

I entreat thee for no favor, Smallest nothingness; I will hoard thy dropt glove's savor, Wafture of thy dress.

So my love shall daring linger! Moth-like round thy flame; Move not, pray, forbidden finger— Death to me thy blame.

Vavasor had gone half-way towards Mrs. Raymount, then turned, and now stood watching Hester. So long was her head bent over his paper that he grew uncomfortably anxious. At length, without lifting her eyes, she placed it on the stand before her, and began to try its music. Then Vavasor went to her hurriedly, for he felt convinced that if she was not quite pleased with the verses, it would fare worse with the music, and begged she would not trouble herself with anything so childish. Even now he knew less about music than poetry, he said.

"I wanted you to see the verses, and the manuscript being almost illegible I had to copy it; so, in a mechanical mood, I copied the music also. Please let me have them again. I feared they were not worth your notice! I know it now."

Hester, however, would not yield the paper, but began again to read it: Vavasor's writing, out of the bank, was one of those irritating hands that wrong not only with the absence of legibility but with the show of its presence, and she had not yet got so clear a notion of his verses as a mere glance of them in print would have given her. Why she did not quite like them she did not yet know, and was anxious not to be unfair. That they were clever she did not doubt; they had for one thing his own air of unassumed ease, and she could not but feel they had some claim to literary art. This added a little to her hesitation, not in pronouncing on them—she was far from that yet—but in recognizing what she felt about them. Had she had a suspicion of the lie he had told her, and that they were the work of yesterday, it would at once have put leagues between them, and made the verses hateful to her. As it was, the more she read and thought, the farther she seemed from a conclusion, and the time Vavasor stood there waiting, appeared to both of them three times as long as it really was. At last he felt he was pounded and must try back.

"You have discovered," he said, "that the song is an imitation of Sir John Suckling!"

He had never thought of the man while writing it.

"I don't know anything of him," answered Hester, looking up.

Vavasor knew nothing was more unlikely than that she should know anything of him.

"When did he write?" she asked.

"In the reign of Charles I., I believe," he answered.

"But tell me," said Hester, "where is the good of imitating anyone—even the best of writers. Our own original, however poor, must be the thing for us! To imitate is to repudiate our own being."

"That I admit," answered Vavasor, who never did anything original except when he followed his instincts; "but for a mere trial of skill an imitation is admissible—don't you think?"

"Oh, surely," replied Hester; "only it seems to me a waste of time—especially with such a gift as you have of your own!"

"At all events," said Vavasor, hiding his gratification with false humility, "there was no great presumption in a shy at Suckling!"

"There may have been the more waste," returned Hester. "I would sooner imitate Bach or even Handel than Verdi."

Vavasor could stand a good deal of censure if mingled with some praise—which he called appreciation. Of this Hester had given him enough to restore his spirits, and had also suggested a subject on which he found he could talk.

"But," he said, "how can it be worse for me to imitate this or that writer, than for you to play over and over music you could easily excel."

"I never practice music," answered Hester, "not infinitely better than I could write myself. But playing is a different thing altogether from writing. I play as I eat my dinner—because I am hungry. My hunger I could never satisfy with any amount of composition or extemporization of my own. My land would not grow corn enough, or good enough for my necessity. My playing merely corresponds to your reading of your favorite poets—especially if you have the habit of reading aloud like my father."

"They do not seem to me quite parallel," rejoined Vavasor, who had learned that he lost nothing with Hester by opposing her—so long as no moral difference was involved. In questions of right and wrong he always agreed with her so far as he dared expression where he understood so little, and for that very reason, in dread of seeming to have no opinion of his own, made a point of differing from her where he had a safe chance. "One may read both poetry and music at sight, but you would never count such reading of music a reproduction of it. That requires study and labor, as well as genius and an art like those which produce it."

"I am equally sure you can never read anything worth reading," returned Hester, "as it ought to be read, until you understand it at least as well as the poet himself. To do a poem justice, the reader must so have pondered phrase and word as to reproduce meaning and music in all the inextricable play of their lights and shades. I never came near doing the kind of thing I mean with any music till I had first learned it thoroughly by heart. And that too is the only way in which I can get to understand some poetry!"

"But is it not one of the excellences of poetry to be easy?"

"Yes, surely, when what the poet has to say is easy. But what if the thoughts themselves be of a kind hard to put into shape? There's Browning!"

Of Browning Vavasor knew only that in his circle he was laughed at—for in it a man who had made a feeble attempt or two to understand him, and had failed as he deserved, was the sole representative of his readers. That he was hard to understand Hester knew, for she understood enough of him to believe that where she did not understand him he was perhaps only the better worth understanding. She knew how, lover of music as she was, she did not at first care for Bach; and how in the process of learning to play what he wrote she came to understand him.

To her reference to Browning then, Vavasor did not venture a reply. None of the poetry indeed by him cultivated was of any sort requiring study. The difficulty Hester found in his song came of her trying to see more than was there; her eyes made holes in it, and saw the less. Vavasor's mental condition was much like that of one living in a vacuum or sphere of nothing, in which the sole objects must be such as he was creator enough to project from himself. He had no feeling that he was in the heart of a crowded universe, between all whose great verities moved countless small and smaller truths. Little notion had he that to learn these after the measure of their importance, was his business, with eternity to do it in! He made of himself but a cock, set for a while on the world's heap to scratch and pick.

When he was gone, leaving his manuscript behind him, Hester set to it again, and trying the music over, was by it so far enlightened that she despaired of finding anything in it, and felt a good deal disappointed.

For she was continuing to gather interest in Vavasor, though slowly, as was natural with a girl of her character. But she had no suspicion how empty he was, for it was scarcely possible for her to imagine a person indifferent to the truth of things, or without interest in his own character and its growth. Being all of a piece herself, she had no conception of a nature all in pieces—with no unity but that of selfishness. Her nature did now and then receive from his a jar and shock, but she generally succeeded in accounting for such as arising from his lack of development—a development which her influence over him would favor. If she felt some special pleasure in the possession of that influence, who will blame her for the weakness?

Women are being constantly misled by the fancy and hope of being the saviours of men! It is natural to goodness and innocence, but not the less is the error a disastrous one. There ought surely at least to be of success some probability as well founded as rare, to justify the sacrifices involved. Is it well that a life of supreme suffering should be gone through for nothing but an increase of guilt? It will be said that patience reaps its reward; but I fear too many patiences fail, and the number of resultant saints is small. The thing once done, the step no longer retrievable, fresh duty is born, and divine good will result from what suffering may arise in the fulfillment of the same. The conceit or ambition itself which led to the fault, may have to be cured by its consequences. But it may well be that a woman does more to redeem a man by declining than by encouraging his attentions. I dare not say how much a woman is not to do for the redemption of a man; but I think one who obeys God will scarcely imagine herself free to lay her person in the arms, and her happiness in the bosom of a man whose being is a denial of him. Good Christians not Christians enough to understand this, may have to be taught by the change of what they took for love into what they know to be disgust. It is very hard for the woman to know whether her influence has any real power over the man. It is very hard for the man himself to know; for the passion having in itself a betterment, may deceive him as well as her. It might be well that a woman asked herself whether moral laxity or genuine self-devotion was the more persuasive in her to the sacrifice. If her best hope be to restrain the man within certain bounds, she is not one to imagine capable of any noble anxiety. God cares nothing about keeping a man respectable; he will give his very self to make of him a true man. But that needs God; a woman is not enough for it. This cannot be God's way of saving bad men.



CHAPTER XV.

A SMALL FAILURE.

Vavasor at length found he must not continue to visit Hester so often, while not ready to go further; and that, much as he was in love—proportionately, that is, to his faculty for loving—he dare not do. But for the unconventionality of the Raymounts he would have reached the point long before. He began, therefore, to lessen the number, and shorten the length of his appearances in Addison Square.

But so doing he became the more aware of the influence she had been exercising upon him—found that he had come to feel differently about certain things—that her opinion was a power on his consciousness. He had nowise begun to change his way; he had but been inoculated, and was therefore a little infected, with her goodness. In his ignorance he took the alteration for one of great moral significance, and was wonderfully pleased with himself. His natural kindness, for instance, towards the poor and suffering—such at least as were not offensive—was quickened. He took no additional jot of trouble about them, only gave a more frequent penny to such as begged of him, and had more than a pennorth of relief in return. It was a good thing, and rooted in a better, that his heart should require such relief, but it did not indicate any advanced stage of goodness, or one inconsistent with profoundest unselfishness. He prided himself on one occasion that he had walked home to give his last shilling to a poor woman, whereas in truth he walked home because he found he had given her his last. Yet there was a little more movement of the sap of his nature, as even his behavior in the bank would have testified, had there been any one interested in observing him.

Hester was annoyed to find herself disappointed when he did not appear, and betook herself to a yet more diligent exercise of her growing vocation. The question suggested itself whether it might not further her plans to be associated with a sisterhood, but her family relations made it undesirable, and she felt that the angle of her calling could ill consent to be under foreign rule. She began, however, to widen her sphere a little by going about with a friend belonging to a sisterhood—not in her own quarter, for she did not wish her special work to be crossed by any prejudices. There she always went alone, and seldom entered a house without singing in several of its rooms before she came away—often having to sing some old song before her audience would listen to anything new, and finding the old song generally counted the best thing in her visit—except by the children, to whom she would frequently tell a fairy tale, singing the little rhymes she made come into it. She had of course to encounter rudeness, but she set herself to get used to it, and learn not to resent it but let it pass. One coming upon her surrounded by a child audience, might have concluded her insensible of what was owing to herself; but the feeling of what was owing to her fellows, who had to go such a long unknown way to get back to the image of God, made her strive to forget herself. It is well that so many who lightly try this kind of work meet with so little encouragement; if it had the result they desire, they would be ruined themselves by it, whatever became of their poor.

Hester's chief difficulty was in getting the kind of song fit for her purpose; and from it she gained the advantage of reading, or at least looking into, with more or less of reading as many of the religious poets recognized in our history as she could lay her hands upon; where she failed in finding the thing she wanted, she yet often found what was welcome. She would stop at nearly every book-stall she passed, and book-stalls were plentiful in her neighborhood, searching for old hymn-books and collections of poetry, every one of which is sure to have something the searcher never saw before.

About this time, in connection with a fresh and noble endeavor after bettering the homes of the poor originated, I had almost said of course, by a woman, the experiment was in several places made of gathering small assemblies of the poor in the neighborhood of their own dwellings, that the ladies in charge of the houses in which they lived might, with the help of friends, give them an unambitious but honestly attempted concert. At one of these concerts Hester was invited to assist, and went gladly, prepared to do her best. It had, however, been arranged that any of the audience who would like to sing, should be allowed to make their contributions also to the enjoyment of the evening; and it soon became evident that the company cared for no singing but that of their own acquaintance; and they, for their part, were so bent on singing, and so supported and called for each other, that it seemed at length the better way to abandon the platform to them. There was nothing very objectionable in the character of any of the songs sung—their substance in the main was flaunting sentiment—but the singing was for the most part atrociously bad, and the resulting influence hardly what the projectors of the entertainment had had in view. It might be well that they should enjoy themselves so; it might be well that they should have provided for them something better than they could produce; but, to judge from the experiment, it seemed useless to attempt the combination of the two. Hester, having listened through a half-hour of their singing, was not a little relieved to learn that she would not be called upon to fulfil her engagement, and the company of benefactors went home foiled but not too much disappointed for a good laugh over their fiasco before they parted. The affair set Hester thinking; and before morning she was ready with a scheme to which she begged her mother to gain her father's consent.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE CONCERT ROOM.

The house in which they lived, and which was their own, was a somewhat remarkable one—I do not mean because it retained almost all the old-fashionedness of a hundred and fifty years, but for other reasons. Beside the ordinary accommodation of a good-sized London house with three drawing-rooms on the first floor it had a quite unusual provision for the receiving of guests. At the top of the first landing, rather more than half-way up the stair, that is, there was a door through the original wall of the house to a long gallery, which led to a large and lofty room, apparently, from the little orchestra half-way up one of the walls, intended for dancing. Since they had owned the house it had been used only as a playroom for the children; Mr. Raymount always intended to furnish it, but had not yet done so. The house itself was indeed a larger one than they required, but he had a great love of room. It had been in the market for some time when, hearing it was to be had at a low price, he stretched more than a point to secure it. Beneath the concert-room was another of the same area, but so low, being but the height of the first landing of the stairs, that it was difficult to discover any use that could be made of it, and it continued even more neglected than the other. Below this again were cellars of alarming extent and obscurity, reached by a long vaulted passage. What they could have been intended for beyond ministering to the dryness of the rooms above, I cannot imagine; they would have held coal and wood and wine, everything natural to a cellar, enough for one generation at least. The history of the house was unknown. There was a nailed-up door in the second of the rooms I have mentioned which was said to lead into the next house; but as the widow who lived there took every opportunity of making herself disagreeable, they had not ventured to propose an investigation. There was no garden, for the whole of the space corresponding to the gardens on each side was occupied with this addition to the original house. The great room was now haunting Hester's brain and heart; if only her father would allow her to give in it a concert to her lowly friends and acquaintance!

Questions concerning the condition of the poor in our large towns had, from the distance of speculation and the press, been of late occupying a good deal of Mr. Raymount's attention, and he believed that he was enlightening the world on those most important perhaps of all the social questions of our day, their wrongs and their rights. He little suspected that his daughter was doing more for the poor, almost without knowing it, than he with all his conscious wisdom. She could not, however, have made her request at a more auspicious moment, for he was just then feeling specially benignant towards them, an article in which he had, as he believed, uttered himself with power on their behalf, having come forth to the light of eyes that very day. Besides, though far from unprejudiced, he had a horror of prejudice, and the moment he suspected a prejudice, hunted it almost as uncompromisingly in himself as in another: most people surmising a fault in themselves rouse every individual bristle of their nature to defend and retain the thing that degrades them! He therefore speedily overcame his first reluctance, and agreed to his daughter's strange proposal. He was willing to make as much of an attempt towards the establishment of relations with the class he befriended. It was an approach which, if not quite clear of condescension, was not therefore less than kindly meant; and had his guests behaved as well as he, they would from that day have found him a friend as progressive as steady. Hester was greatly delighted with his ready compliance with her request.

From that day for nearly a fortnight there were busy doings in the house. At once a couple of charwomen were turned loose in the great room for a thorough cleaning, but they had made little progress with what might have been done, ere Mr. Raymount perceived that no amount of their cleaning could take away its dirty look, and countermanding and postponing their proceedings, committed the dingy place to painters and paperhangers, under whose hands it was wonderful to see how gradually it put on a gracious look fit to welcome the human race withal. Although no white was left about it except in the ceiling for the sake of the light, scarce in that atmosphere, it looked as if twice the number of windows had been opened in its walls. The place also looked larger, for in its new harmonies of color, one part led to another, introducing it, and by division the eye was enabled to measure and appreciate the space. To Saffy and Mark their playroom seemed transformed into a temple; they were almost afraid to enter it. Every noise in it sounded twice as loud as before, and every muddy shoe made a print.

The day for the concert was at length fixed a week off, and Hester began to invite her poorer friends and neighbors to spend its evening at her father's house, when her mother would give them tea, and she would sing to them. The married women were to bring their husbands if they would come, and each young woman might bring a friend. Most of the men, as a matter of course, turned up their noses at the invitation, but were nevertheless from curiosity inclined to go. Some declared it impossible any house in that square should hold the number invited. Some spoke doubtfully; they might be able to go! they were not sure! and seemed to regard consent as a favor, if not a condescension. Of these, however, two or three were hampered by the uncertainty as to the redemption of their best clothes from the pawnbroker.

In requesting the presence of some of the small tradespeople, Hester asked it as a favor: she begged their assistance to entertain their poorer neighbors; and so put, the invitation was heartily accepted. In one case at least, however, she forgot this precaution; and the consequence was that the wife of a certain small furniture-broker began to fume on recognition of some in her presence. While she was drinking her second cup of tea her eyes kept roving. As she set it down, she caught sight of Long Tim, but a fortnight out of prison, rose at once, made her way out fanning herself vigorously, and hurried home boiling over with wrath—severely scalding her poor husband who had staid from his burial-club that she might leave the shop. The woman was not at all of a bad sort, only her dignity was hurt.

The hall and gallery were brilliantly lighted, and the room itself looked charming—at least in the eyes of those who had been so long watching the process of its resurrection. Tea was ready before the company began to arrive—in great cans with taps, and was handed round by ladies and gentlemen. The meal went off well, with a good buzz of conversation. The only unpleasant thing was, that several of the guests, mindful like other dams of their cubs at home, slipped large pieces of cake into their pockets for their behoof; but this must not be judged without a just regard to their ways of thinking, and was not a tenth part so bad as many of the ways in which well-bred persons appropriate slices of other people's cakes without once suspecting the category in which they are doomed to find themselves.

When the huge urns and the remnants of food were at length removed, and the windows had been opened for a minute to change the air, a curtain rose suddenly at the end of the room, and revealed a small stage decorated with green branches and artificial flowers, in the center of it a piano, on the piano music, and at the piano Hester, now first seen, having reserved her strength for her special duty.

When the assembly caught sight of her turning over the leaves of her music, a great silence fell. The moment she began to play, all began to talk. With the first tone of her voice, every other ceased. She had chosen a ballad with a sudden and powerfully dramatic opening, and, a little anxious, a little irritated also with their talking while she played, began in a style that would have compelled attention from a herd of cattle. But the ballad was a little too long for them, and by the time it was half sung they had begun to talk again, and exchange opinions concerning it. All agreed that Miss Raymount had a splendid voice, but several of those who were there by second-hand invitation could find a woman to beat her easily! Their criticisms were, nevertheless, not unfriendly—in general condescending and patronizing. I believe most of this class regarded their presence as a favor granted her. Had they not come that she might show off to them, and receive their approbation! Amongst the poor the most refined and the coarsest-grained natures are to be met side by side—egg-china and drain-tubing in the same shop—just as in respectable circles. The rudeness of the cream of society is more like that of the unwashed than that of any intermediate class; while often the manners of the well-behaved poor are equalled by those only of the best bred in the country.



CHAPTER XVII.

AN UNINVITED GUEST.

Vavasor had not heard of the gathering. In part from doubt of his sympathy, in part from dislike of talking about doing, Hester had not mentioned it. When she lifted her eyes at the close of her ballad, not a little depressed at having failed to secure the interest of her audience, it was with a great gush of pleasure that she saw near the door the face of her friend. She concluded that he had heard of her purpose and had come to help her. Even at that distance she could see that he was looking very uncomfortable, annoyed, she did not doubt, by the behavior of her guests. A rush of new strength and courage went from heart to brain. She rose and advancing to the front of the little stage, called out, in a clear voice that rang across the buzz and stilled it.

"Mr. Vavasor, will you come and help me?"

Now Vavasor was in reality not a little disgusted at what he beheld. He had called without a notion of what was going on, and seeing the row of lights along the gallery as he was making for the drawing-room, had changed his direction and followed it, knowing nothing of the room to which it led. Blinded by the glare, and a little bewildered by the unexpectedness of the sight, he did not at first discern the kind of company he had entered; but the state of the atmosphere was unaccountable, and for a moment it seemed as if, thinking to enter Paradise, he had mistaken and opened the left-hand door. Presently his eyes coming to themselves, confirmed the fact that he was in the midst of a notable number of the unwashed. He had often talked with Hester about the poor, and could not help knowing that she had great sympathy with them. He was ready indeed as they were now a not unfashionable subject in some of the minor circles of the world's elect, to talk about them with any one he might meet. But in the poor themselves he could hardly be said to have the most rudimentary interest; and that a lady should degrade herself by sending her voice into such ears, and coming into actual contact with such persons and their attendant disgusts—except indeed it were for electioneering purposes—exposing both voice and person to their abominable remarks, was to him a thing simply incomprehensible. The admission of such people to a respectable house, and the entertainment of them as at a music hall, could have its origin only in some wild semi-political scheme of the old fellow, who had more crotchets in his head than brain could well hold! It was a proceeding as disgraceful as extraordinary! Puh! Could the tenth part of the air present be oxygen? To think of the woman he worshipped being in such a hell!

The woman he could honor little by any worship he gave her, was far more secure from evil eyes and evil thoughts in that company than she would have been in any drawing-room of his world. Her angel would rather see her where she was.

But the glorious tones ceased, the ballad was at an end, and the next moment, to his dismay, the voice which in its poetry he had delighted to imagine thrilling the listeners in a great Belgravian drawing-room came to him in prose across the fumes of that Bloomsbury music hall, clear and brave and quiet, asking him, the future earl of Gartley, to come and help the singer! Was she in trouble? Had her father forced her into the false position in which she found herself? And did she seek refuge with him the moment he made his appearance? Certainly such was not the tone of her appeal! But these reflections flashing through his brain, caused not a moment's delay in Vavasor's response. With the perfect command of that portion of his being turned towards the public on which every man like him prides himself, and with no shadow of expression on his countenance beyond that of a perfect equanimity, he was instantly on his way to her, shouldering a path in the gentlest manner through the malodorous air.

"This comes," he said to himself as he went, "of her foolish parents' receiving so little company that for the free exercise of her great talent she is driven to such as this! For song must have audience, however unfit! There was Orpheus with his! Genius was always eccentric! If he could but be her protection against that political father, that Puritan mother, and that idiotic brother of hers, and put an end to this sort of thing before it came to be talked about!"

He grew bitter as with smiling face but shrinking soul he made his way through that crowd of his fellow-creatures whose contact was defilement. He would have lost them all rather than a song of Hester's—and yet that he would on occasion have lost for a good rubber of whist with certain players!

He sprang on the stage, and made her a rather low bow.

"Come and sing a duet with me," she said, and indicated one on the piano before her which they had several times sung together.

He smiled what he meant to look his sweetest smile, and almost immediately their duet began. They sang well, and the assembly, from whatever reason—I fancy simply because there were two singing instead of one, was a little more of an audience than hitherto. But it was plain that, had there been another rondo of the duet, most would have been talking again.

Hester next requested Vavasor to sing a certain ballad which she knew was a great favorite with him. Inwardly protesting and that with vehemence against the profanation, he obeyed, rendering it so as could not have failed to please any one with a true notion of song. His singing was, I confess, a little wooden, as was everything Vavasor did: being such himself, how could he help his work being wooden? but it was true, his mode good, his expression in the right direction. They were nevertheless all talking before he had ended.

After a brief pause, Hester invited a gentleman prepared for the occasion to sing them something patriotic. He responded with Campbell's magnificent song, "Ye Mariners of England!" which was received with hearty cheers.

He was followed by another who, well acquainted with the predilections of his audience, gave them a specially sentimental song about a chair, which was not only heard in silence but followed by tremendous cheering. Possibly it was a luxury to some who had no longer any grandfather to kick, to cry over his chair; but, like the most part of their brethren, the poor greatly enjoy having their feelings gently troubled.

Thus the muse of the occasion was gradually sinking to the intellectual level of the company—with a consequence unforeseen, therefore not provided against.



CHAPTER XVIII.

CATASTROPHE.

For the tail of the music-kite—the car of the music-balloon rather, having thus descended near enough to the earth to be a temptation to some of the walkers afoot, they must catch at it! The moment the last-mentioned song was ended, almost before its death-note had left the lips of the singer, one of the friends' friends was on his feet. Without a word of apology, without the shadow of a request for permission, he called out in a loud voice, knocking with his chair on the floor,

"Ladies an' gen'lemen, Mr. William Blaney will now favor the company with a song."

Thereupon immediately a pale pock-marked man, of diminutive height, with high retreating forehead, and long thin hair, rose, and at once proceeded to make his way through the crowd: he would sing from the stage, of course! Hester and Vavasor looked at each other, and one whisper passed between them, after which they waited the result in silence. The countenance approaching, kindled by conscious power and anticipated triumph, showed a white glow through its unblushing paleness. After the singing one sometimes hears in drawing-rooms, there is little space for surprise that some of less education should think themselves more capable of fine things than they are.

Scrambling with knee and hand upon the stage, for the poor fellow was feeble, the moment he got himself erect with his face to the audience, he plunged into his song, if song it could be called, executed in a cracked and strained falsetto. The result, enhanced by the nature of the song, which was extremely pathetic and dubiously moral, must have been excruciation to every good ear and every sensitive nature. Long before the relief of its close arrived Hester had made up her mind that it was her part to protect her guests from such. It was compensation no doubt to some present to watch the grotesque contortions of the singer squeezing out of him the precious pathos of his song—in which he screwed his eyes together like the man in Browning's "Christmas Eve," and opened his mouth in a long ellipse in the middle of one cheek; but neither was that the kind of entertainment she had purposed. She sat ready, against the moment when he should end, to let loose the most thunderous music in her mental repertoire, annoyed that she had but her small piano on the stage. Vanity, however, is as suspicious of vanity as hate is of hate, and Mr. Blaney, stopping abruptly in the middle of the long last note, and in doing so changing the word, with ludicrous result, from a song to a spoken one, screeched aloud, ere she could strike the first chord,

"I will now favor the company with a song of my own composure."

But ere he had got his mouth into its singing place in his left cheek, Hester had risen and begun to speak: when she knew what had to be done, she never hesitated. Mr. Blaney started, and his mouth, after a moment of elliptic suspense, slowly closed, and returned, as he listened, to a more symmetrical position in his face.

"I am sorry to have to interfere," said Hester, "but my friends are in my house, and I am accountable for their entertainment. Mr. Blaney must excuse me if I insist on keeping the management of the evening in my own hands."

The vanity of the would-be singer was sorely hurt. As he was too selfish for the briefest comparison of himself with others, it had outgrown all ordinary human proportion, and was the more unendurable that no social consideration had ever suggested its concealment. Equal arrogance is rarely met save in a mad-house: there conceit reigns universal and rampant.

"The friends as knows me, and what I can do," returned Mr. Blaney with calmness, the moment Hester had ended, "will back me up. I have no right to be treated as if I didn't know what I was about. I can warrant the song home-made, and of the best quality. So here goes!"

Vavasor made a stride towards him, but scarcely was the ugly mouth half screwed into singing-place, when Mr. Raymount spoke from somewhere near the door.

"Come out of that," he shouted, and made his way through the company as fast as he could.

Vavasor drew back, and stood like a sentinel on guard. Hester resumed her seat at the piano. Blaney, fancying he had gained his point, and that, if he began before Mr. Raymount reached him, he would be allowed to end in peace, again got his mouth into position, and began to howl. But his host jumping on the stage from behind, reached him at his third note, took him by the back of the neck, shoved him down, and walked him through the crowd and out of the room before him like a naughty boy. Propelling him thus to the door of the house, he pushed him out, closed it behind him, and re-entering the concert-room, was greeted by a great clapping of hands, as if he had performed a deed of valor. But, notwithstanding the miserable vanity and impudence of the man, it had gone to Hester's heart to see him, with his low visage and puny form, in the mighty clutch of her father. That which would have made most despise the poor creature the more, his physical inferiority, made her pity him, even to pain!

The moment silence was restored, up rose a burly, honest-looking bricklayer, and said,

"I beg your pardon, miss, but will you allow me to make one remark!"

"Certainly, Mr. Jones," answered Hester.

"It seems to me, miss," said Jones, "as it's only fair play on my part as brought Blaney here, as I'm sorry to find behave himself so improper, to say for him that I know he never would ha' done it, if he hadn't have had a drop as we come along to this 'ere tea-party. That was the cause, miss, an' I hope as it'll be taken into account, an' considered a lucidation of his conduct. It takes but very little, I'm sorry to say, miss, to upset his behavior—not more'n a pint at the outside.—But it don't last! bless you, it don't last!" he added, in a tone of extreme deprecation; "there's not a morsel of harm in him, poor fellow—though I says it as shouldn't! Not as the guv'nor do anything more'n his duty in puttin' of him out—nowise! I know him well, bein' my wife's brother—leastways half-brother—for I don't want to take more o' the blame nor by rights belong to me. When he've got a drop in his nob, it's always for singin' he is—an' that's the worst of him. Thank you kindly, miss."

"Thank you, Mr. Jones," returned Hester. "We'll think no more of it."

Loud applause followed, and Jones sat down, well satisfied: he had done what he ought in acknowledging the culprit for his wife's sake, and the act had been appreciated.

The order of the evening was resumed, but the harmony of the assembly once disturbed, all hope of quiet was gone. They had now something to talk about! Everyone that knew Blaney felt himself of importance: had he not a superior right of opinion upon his behavior? Nor was he without a few sympathizers. Was he not the same flesh and blood? they said. After the swells had had it all their own way so long, why shouldn't poor Blaney have his turn? But those who knew Hester, especially the women of them, were indignant with him.

Hester sang again and again, but no song would go quite to her mind. Vavasor also sung several times—as often, that is, as Hester asked him; but inwardly he was disgusted with the whole affair—as was natural, for could any fish have found itself more out of the water than he? Everything annoyed him—most of all that the lady of his thoughts should have addressed herself to such an assembly. Why did she not leave it to him or her father! If it was not degrading enough to appear before such a canaille, surely to sing to them was! How could a woman of refinement, justifiable as was her desire for appreciation, seek it from such a repulsive assemblage! But Vavasor would have been better able to understand Hester, and would have met the distastes of the evening with far less discomposure, if he had never been in worse company. One main test of our dealings in the world is whether the men and women we associate with are the better or the worse for it: Vavasor had often been where at least he was the worse, and no one the better for his presence. For days a cloud hung over the fair image of Hester in his mind.

He called on the first possible opportunity to inquire how she was after her exertions, but avoided farther allusion to the events of the evening. She thanked him for the help he had given her, but was so far from satisfied with her experiment, that she too let the subject rest.

Mr. Raymount was so disgusted, that he said nothing of the kind should ever again take place in his house: he had not bought it to make a music-hall of it!

If any change was about to appear in Vavasor a change in the fortunes of the Raymounts prevented it.

What the common judgment calls luck seems to have odd predilections and prejudices with regard to families as well as individuals. Some seem invariably successful, whatever they take in hand; others go on, generation after generation, struggling without a ray of success; while on the surface appears no reason for the inequality. But there is one thing in which pre-eminently I do not believe—that same luck, namely, or chance, or fortune. The Father of families looks after his families—and his children too.



CHAPTER XIX.

LIGHT AND SHADE.

Light and shade, sunshine and shadow pursue each other over the moral as over the material world. Every soul has a landscape that changes with the wind that sweeps its sky, with the clouds that return after its rain.

It was now the month of March. The middle day of it had been dreary all over England, dreariest of all, perhaps, in London. Great blasts had gone careering under a sky whose miles-thick vault of clouds they never touched, but instead hunted and drove and dashed earth-clouds of dust into all unwelcoming places, throats and eyes included. Now and then a few drops would fall on the stones as if the day's fierce misery were about to yield to sadness; but it did not so yield; up rose again a great blundering gust, and repentance was lost in rage. The sun went down on its wrath, and its night was tempestuous.

But the next morning rose bright and glad, looking as if it would make up for its father's wildness by a gentler treatment of the world. The wind was still high, but the hate seemed to have gone out of it, and given place to a laborious jollity. It swept huge clouds over the sky, granting never a pause, never a respite of motion; but the sky was blue and the clouds were white, and the dungeon-vault of the world was broken up and being carted away.