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Title: The Revolution in Tanner's Lane

Author: Mark Rutherford

Release Date: October, 2004  [EBook #6690]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on January 12, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE REVOLUTION IN TANNER'S LANE ***




Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




THE REVOLUTION IN TANNER'S LANE




"Per various casus, per tot discrimina rerum,
Tendimus in Latium; sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt.  Illic fas regna resurgere Trojae.
Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis."
- Virgil.

"By diuers casis, sere parrellis and sufferance
Unto Itaill we ettill (aim) quhare destanye
Has schap (shaped) for vs ane rest and quiet harbrye
Predestinatis thare Troye sall ryse agane.
Be stout on prosper fortoun to remane."
- Gwain Douglas's translation.



CHAPTER I--THE WORLD OUTSIDE



The 20th April 1814, an almost cloudless, perfectly sunny day, saw
all London astir.  On that day Lewis the Eighteenth was to come from
Hartwell in triumph, summoned by France to the throne of his
ancestors.  London had not enjoyed too much gaiety that year.  It was
the year of the great frost.  Nothing like it had been known in the
memory of man.  In the West of England, where snow is rare, roads
were impassable and mails could not be delivered.  Four dead men were
dug out of a deep drift about ten miles west of Exeter.  Even at
Plymouth, close to the soft south-western ocean, the average depth of
the fall was twenty inches, and there was no other way of getting
eastwards than by pack-horses.  The Great North Road was completely
blocked, and there was a barricade over it near Godmanchester of from
six to ten feet high.  The Oxford coach was buried.  Some passengers
inside were rescued with great difficulty, and their lives were
barely saved.  The Solway Firth at Workington resembled the Arctic
Sea, and the Thames was so completely frozen over between Blackfriars
and London Bridges that people were able, not only to walk across,
but to erect booths on the ice.  Coals, of course, rose to famine
prices in London, as it was then dependent solely upon water-carriage
for its supply.  The Father of his people, the Prince Regent, was
much moved by the general distress of "a large and meritorious class
of industrious persons," as he called them, and issued a circular to
all Lords Lieutenant ordering them to provide all practicable means
of removing obstructions from the highways.

However, on this 20th April the London mob forgot the frost, forgot
the quartern loaf and the national debt, and prepared for a holiday,
inspired thereto, not so much by Lewis the Eighteenth as by the
warmth and brilliant sky.  There are two factors in all human bliss--
an object and the subject.  The object may be a trifle, but the
condition of the subject is most important.  Turn a man out with his
digestion in perfect order, with the spring in the air and in his
veins, and he will cheer anything, any Lewis, Lord Liverpool, dog,
cat, or rat who may cross his path.  Not that this is intended as a
sufficient explanation of the Bourbon reception.  Far from it; but it
does mitigate it a trifle.  At eleven o'clock in the forenoon two
troops of the Oxford Blues drew up at Kilburn turnpike to await the
sacred arrival.  The Prince Regent himself went as far as Stanmore to
meet his August Brother.  When the August Brother reached the
village, the excited inhabitants thereof took the horses out of the
carriage and drew him through the street.  The Prince, standing at
the door of the principal inn, was in readiness to salute him, and
this he did by embracing him!  There have been some remarkable
embraces in history.  Joseph fell on Israel's neck, and Israel said
unto Joseph, "Now let me die, since I have seen thy face:" Paul,
after preaching at Ephesus, calling the elders of the Church to
witness that, for the space of three years, he ceased not to warn
every one night and day with tears, kneeled down and prayed, so that
they all wept sore and fell on his neck:  Romeo took a last embrace
of Juliet in the vault, and sealed the doors of breath with a
righteous kiss:  Penelope embraced Ulysses, who was welcome to her as
land is welcome to shipwrecked swimmers escaping from the grey
seawater--there have, we say, been some remarkable embraces on this
earth since time began, but none more remarkable than that on the
steps of the Abercorn Arms.  The Divine couple then drove in solemn
procession to town.  From the park corner for three-quarters of a
mile or so was a line of private carriages, filled with most
fashionable people, the ladies all standing on the seats.  The French
Royalist flag waved everywhere.  All along the Kilburn Road, then
thinly lined with houses, it was triumphant, and even the trees were
decorated with it.  Arriving by way of Cumberland Gate at Piccadilly,
Lewis was escorted, amidst uproarious rejoicing, to Grillon's Hotel
in Albemarle Street.  There, in reply to an address from the Prince,
he "ascribed, under Providence," to his Royal Highness and the
British people his present blissful condition; and soon afterwards,
being extremely tired, went to bed.  This was on a Wednesday.  The
next day, Thursday, His Sacred Majesty, or Most Christian Majesty, as
he was then called, was solemnly made a Knight of the Garter, the
Bishops of Salisbury and Winchester assisting.  On Friday he received
the corporation of London, and on Saturday the 23rd he prepared to
take his departure.  There was a great crowd in the street when he
came out of the hotel and immense applause; the mob crying out, "God
bless your Majesty!" as if they owed him all they had, and even their
lives.  It was very touching, people thought at the time, and so it
was.  Is there anything more touching than the waste of human loyalty
and love?  As we read the history of the Highlands or a story of
Jacobite loyalty such as that of Cooper's Admiral Bluewater, dear to
boys, we sadden that destiny should decree that in a world in which
piety is not too plentiful it should run so pitifully to waste, and
that men and women should weep hot tears and break their hearts over
bran-stuffing and wax.

Amidst the hooraying multitude that Saturday April morning was one
man at least, Zachariah Coleman by name, who did not hooray, and did
not lift his hat even when the Sacred Majesty appeared on the hotel
steps.  He was a smallish, thin-faced, lean creature in workman's
clothes; his complexion was white, blanched by office air, and his
hands were black with printer's ink.

"Off with your tile, you b---y Corsican!" exclaimed a roaring voice
behind him.  Zachariah turned round, and found the request came from
a drayman weighing about eighteen stone; but the tile was not
removed.  In an instant it was sent flying to the other side of the
road, where it was trodden on, picked up, and passed forward in the
air amidst laughter and jeers, till it was finally lost.

Zachariah was not pugnacious, and could not very well be so in the
presence of his huge antagonist; but he was no coward, and not seeing
for the moment that his hat had hopelessly gone, he turned round
savagely, and laying hold of the drayman, said:

"You ruffian, give it me back; if I am a Corsican, are you an
Englishman?"

"Take that for your b---y beaver," said the other, and dealt him a
blow with the fist right in his face, which staggered and stupefied
him, covering him with blood.

The bystanders, observing the disparity between the two men,
instantly took Zachariah's side, and called out "Shame, shame!"  Nor
did they confine themselves to ejaculations, for a young fellow of
about eight and twenty, well dressed, with a bottle-green coat of
broadcloth, buttoned close, stepped up to the drayman.

"Knock my tile off, beer-barrel."

The drayman instantly responded by a clutch at it, but before he
could touch it he had an awful cut across the lips, delivered with
such scientific accuracy from the left shoulder that it was clear it
came from a disciple of Jackson or Tom Cribb.  The crowd now became
intensely delighted and excited, and a cry of "A ring, a ring!" was
raised.  The drayman, blind with rage, let out with his right arm
with force enough to fell an ox, but the stroke was most artistically
parried, and the response was another fearful gash over the right
eye.  By this time the patriot had had enough, and declined to
continue the contest.  His foe, too, seemed to have no desire for any
further display of his powers, and retired smilingly, edging his way
to the pavement, where he found poor Zachariah almost helpless.

"Holloa, my republican friend, d---n it, that's a nasty lick you've
got, and from one of the people too; that makes it harder to bear,
eh?  Never mind, he's worse off than you are."

Zachariah thanked him as well as he could for defending him.

"Not a word; haven't got a scratch myself.  Come along with me;" and
he dragged him along Piccadilly into a public-house in Swallow
Street, where apparently he was well known.  Water was called for;
Zachariah was sponged, the wound strapped up, some brandy given him,
and the stranger, ordering a hackney coach, told the driver to take
the gentleman home.

"Wait a bit," he called, as the coach drove off.  "You may feel
faint; I'll go home with you," and in a moment he was by Zachariah's
side.  The coach found its way slowly through the streets to some
lodgings in Clerkenwell.  It was well the stranger did go, for his
companion on arrival was hardly able to crawl upstairs to give a
coherent account to his wife of what had happened.

Zachariah Coleman, working man, printer, was in April 1814 about
thirty years old.  He was employed in a jobbing office in the city,
where he was compositor and pressman as well.  He had been married in
January 1814 to a woman a year younger than himself, who attended the
meeting-house at Hackney, whither he went on the Sunday.  He was a
Dissenter in religion, and a fierce Radical in politics, as many of
the Dissenters in that day were.  He was not a ranter or revivalist,
but what was called a moderate Calvinist; that is to say, he held to
Calvinism as his undoubted creed, but when it came to the push in
actual practice he modified it.  In this respect he was inconsistent;
but who is there who is not?  His theology probably had no more gaps
in it than that of the latest and most enlightened preacher who
denies miracles and affirms the Universal Benevolence.  His present
biographer, from intimate acquaintance with the class to which
Zachariah belonged, takes this opportunity to protest against the
general assumption that the Calvinists of that day, or of any day,
arrived at their belief by putting out their eyes and accepting
blindly the authority of St. Paul or anybody else.  It may be
questioned, indeed, whether any religious body has ever stood so
distinctly upon the understanding and has used its intellect with
such rigorous activity, as the Puritans, from whom Zachariah was a
genuine descendant.  Even if Calvinism had been carved on tables of
stone and handed down from heaven by the Almighty Hand, it would not
have lived if it had not have found to agree more or less with the
facts, and it was because it was a deduction from what nobody can
help seeing that it was so vital, the Epistle to the Romans serving
as the inspired confirmation of an experience.  Zachariah was a great
reader of all kinds of books--a lover especially of Bunyan and
Milton; as logical in his politics as in his religion; and he
defended the execution of Charles the First on the ground that the
people had just as much right to put a king to death as a judge had
to order the execution of any other criminal.

The courtship between Zachariah and the lady who became his wife had
been short, for there could be no mistake, as they had known one
another so long.  She was black-haired, with a perfectly oval face,
always dressed with the most scrupulous neatness, and with a certain
plain tightness which Zachariah admired.  She had exquisitely white
and perfect teeth, a pale, clear complexion, and the reputation of
being a most sensible woman.  She was not a beauty, but she was good-
looking; the weak points in her face being her eyes, which were mere
inexpressive optic organs, and her mouth, which, when shut, seemed
too much shut, just as if it were compressed by an effort of the will
or by a spring.  These, however, Zachariah thought minor matters, if,
indeed, he ever noticed them.  "The great thing was, that she was"--
sometimes this and sometimes that--and so it was settled.
Unfortunately in marriage it is so difficult to be sure of what the
great thing is, and what the little thing is, the little thing
becoming so frightfully big afterwards!  Theologically, Mrs.
Zachariah was as strict as her husband, and more so, as far as
outward observance went, for her strictness was not tempered by those
secular interests which to him were so dear.  She read little or
nothing--nothing, indeed, on week-days, and even the Morning
Chronicle, which Zachariah occasionally borrowed, was folded up when
he had done with it and put under the tea-caddy till it was returned.
On Sundays she took up a book in the afternoon, but she carefully
prepared herself for the operation as though it were a sacramental
service.  When the dinner-things were washed up, when the hearth was
swept and the kettle on the fire, having put on her best Sunday
dress, it was her custom to go to the window, always to the window,
never to the fire--where she would open Boston's Fourfold State and
hold it up in front of her with both hands.  This, however, did not
last long, for on the arrival of the milkman the volume was replaced,
and it was necessary to make preparations for tea.

The hackney coach drove up to the house in Rosoman Street where
Zachariah dwelt on the first floor.  He was too weak to go upstairs
by himself, and he and his friend therefore walked into the front
room together.  It was in complete order, although it was so early in
the morning.  Everything was dusted; even the lower fire-bar had not
a speck of ashes on it, and on the hob already was a saucepan in
which Mrs. Coleman proposed to cook the one o'clock dinner.  On the
walls were portraits of Sir Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, and
the mezzotint engraving of Sadler's Bunyan.  Two black silhouettes--
one of Zachariah and the other of his wife--were suspended on each
side of the mantelpiece.

Mrs. Coleman was busily engaged in the bedroom, but hearing the
footsteps, she immediately entered.  She was slightly taken aback at
seeing Zachariah in such a plight, and uttered a little scream, but
the bottle-green stranger, making her a profound bow, arrested her.

"Pardon me, my dear madam, there is nothing seriously the matter.
Your husband has had the misfortune to be the victim of a most
blackguardly assault; but I am sure that, under your care, he will be
all right in a day or two; and, with your permission, I take my
leave."

Mrs. Coleman was irritated.  The first emotion was not sympathy.
Absolutely the first was annoyance at being seen without proper
notice by such a fine-looking gentleman.  She had, however, no real
cause for vexation under this head.  She had tied a white
handkerchief over her hair, fastening it under her chin, as her
manner was when doing her morning's work, and she had on her white
apron; but she was trim and faultless, and the white handkerchief did
but set off her black hair and marble complexion.  Her second
emotion, too, was not sympathy.  Zachariah was at home at the wrong
time.  Her ordinary household arrangements were upset.  He might
possibly be ill, and then there would be a mess and confusion.  The
thought of sickness was intolerable to her, because it "put
everything out."  Rising up at the back of these two emotions came,
haltingly, a third when she looked her husband in the face.  She
could not help it, and she did really pity him.

"I am sure it is very kind of you," she replied.

Zachariah had as yet spoken no word, nor had she moved towards him.
The stranger was departing.

"Stop!" cried Zachariah, "you have not told me your name.  I am too
faint to say how much I owe you for your protection and kindness."

"Nonsense.  My name is Maitland--Major Maitland, 1A Albany.  Good-
bye."

He was at the top of the stairs, when he turned round, and looking at
Mrs. Coleman, observed musingly, "I think I'll send my doctor, and,
if you will permit me, will call in a day or two."

She thanked him; he took her hand, politely pressed it to his lips,
and rode off in the coach which had been waiting for him.

"What has happened, my dear?  Tell me all about it," she inquired as
she went back into the parlour, with just the least colour on her
cheek, and perceptibly a little happier than she was five minutes
before.  She did nothing more than put her hand on his shoulder, but
he brightened immediately.  He told her the tale, and when it was
over desired to lie down and to have some tea.

Emotion number two returned to Mrs. Coleman immediately.  Tea at that
time, the things having been all cleared away and washed up!  She did
not, however, like openly to object, but she did go so far as to
suggest that perhaps cold water would be better, as there might be
inflammation.  Zachariah, although he was accustomed to give way,
begged for tea; and it was made ready, but not with water boiled
there.  She would not again put the copper kettle on the fire, as it
was just cleaned, but she asked to be allowed to use that which
belonged to the neighbour downstairs who kept the shop.  The tea-
things were replaced when Zachariah had finished, and his wife
returned to her duties, leaving him sitting in the straight-backed
Windsor-chair, looking into the grate and feeling very miserable.

In the afternoon Rosoman Street was startled to see a grand carriage
stop at Zachariah's door, and out stepped the grand doctor, who,
after some little hesitation and inquiry, made his way upstairs.
Having examined our friend, he pronounced him free from all mortal or
even serious injury--it was a case of contusion and shaken nerves,
which required a little alterative medicine, and on the day after to-
morrow the patient, although bruised and sore in the mouth, might go
back to work.

The next morning he was better, but nevertheless he was depressed.
It was now three months since his wedding-day, and the pomp and
beauty of the sunrise, gold and scarlet bars with intermediate lakes
of softest blue, had been obscured by leaden clouds, which showed no
break and let loose a cold drizzling rain.  How was it?  He often
asked himself that question, but could obtain no satisfactory answer.
Had anything changed?  Was his wife anything which he did not know
her to be three months ago?  Certainly not.  He could not accuse her
of passing herself off upon him with false pretences.  What she had
always represented herself to be she was now.  There she stood
precisely as she stood twelve months ago, when he asked her to become
his wife, and he thought when she said "yes" that no man was more
blessed than he.  It was, he feared, true he did not love her, nor
she him; but why could not they have found that out before?  What a
cruel destiny was this which drew a veil before his eyes and led him
blindfold over the precipice!  He at first thought, when his joy
began to ebb in February or March, that it would rise again, and that
he would see matters in a different light; but the spring was here,
and the tide had not turned.  It never would turn now, and he became
at last aware of the sad truth--the saddest a man can know--that he
had missed the great delight of existence.  His chance had come, and
had gone.  Henceforth all that was said and sung about love and home
would find no echo in him.  He was paralysed, dead in half of his
soul, and would have to exist with the other half as well he could.
He had done no wrong:  he had done his best; he had not sold himself
to the flesh or the devil, and, Calvinist as he was, he was tempted
at times to question the justice of such a punishment.  If he put his
finger in the fire and got burnt, he was able to bow to the wisdom
which taught him in that plain way that he was not to put his finger
in the fire.  But wherein lay the beneficence of visiting a simple
mistake--one which he could not avoid--with a curse worse than the
Jewish curse of excommunication--"the anathema wherewith Joshua
cursed Jericho; the curse which Elisha laid upon the children; all
the curses which are written in the law.  Cursed be he by day, and
cursed be he by night:  cursed be he in sleeping, and cursed be he in
waking:  cursed in going out, and cursed in coming in."  Neither the
wretched victim nor the world at large was any better for such a
visitation, for it was neither remedial nor monitory.  Ah, so it is!
The murderer is hung at Newgate, and if he himself is not improved by
the process, perhaps a few wicked people are frightened; but men and
women are put to a worse death every day by slow strangulation which
endures for a lifetime, and, as far as we can see, no lesson is
learned by anybody, and no good is done.

Zachariah, however, did not give way to despair, for he was not a man
to despair.  His religion was a part of himself.  He had immortality
before him, in which he thanked God there was no marrying nor giving
in marriage.  This doctrine, however, did not live in him as the
other dogmas of his creed, for it was not one in which his intellect
had such a share.  On the other hand, predestination was dear to him.
God knew him as closely as He knew the angel next His throne, and had
marked out his course with as much concern as that of the seraph.
What God's purposes were he did not know.  He took a sort of sullen
pride in not knowing, and he marched along, footsore and wounded, in
obedience to the orders of his great Chief.  Only thirty years old,
and only three months a husband, he had already learned renunciation.
There was to be no joy in life?  Then he would be satisfied if it
were tolerable, and he strove to dismiss all his dreams and do his
best with what lay before him.  Oh my hero!  Perhaps somewhere or
other--let us hope it is true--a book is kept in which human worth is
duly appraised, and in that book, if such a volume there be, we shall
find that the divinest heroism is not that of the man who, holding
life cheap, puts his back against a wall, and is shot by Government
soldiers, assured that he will live ever afterwards as a martyr and
saint:  a diviner heroism is that of the poor printer, who, in dingy,
smoky Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell, with forty years before him,
determined to live through them, as far as he could, without a
murmur, although there was to be no pleasure in them.  A diviner
heroism is this, but divinest of all, is that of him who can in these
days do what Zachariah did, and without Zachariah's faith.

The next evening, just as Zachariah and his wife were sitting down to
tea, there was a tap at the door, and in walked Major Maitland.  He
was now in full afternoon costume, and, if not dandyish, was
undeniably well dressed.  Making a profound bow to Mrs. Coleman, he
advanced to the fireplace and instantly shook hands with Zachariah.

"Well, my republican, you are better, although the beery loyalist has
left his mark upon you."

"Certainly, much better; but where I should have been, sir, if it had
not been for you, I don't know."

"Ah, well; it was an absolute pleasure to me to teach the blackguard
that cheering a Bourbon costs something.  My God, though, a man must
be a fool who has to be taught that!  I wonder what it HAS cost us.
Why, I see you've got my friend, Major Cartwright, up there."

Zachariah and his wife started a moment at what they considered the
profane introduction of God's name; but it was not exactly swearing,
and Major Maitland's relationship to them was remarkable.  They were
therefore silent.

"A true friend of the people," continued Maitland, "is Major
Cartwright; but he does not go quite far enough to please me."

"As for the people so-called," quoth Zachariah, "I doubt whether they
are worth saving.  Look at the mob we saw the day before yesterday.
I think not of the people.  But there is a people, even in these days
of Ahab, whose feet may yet be on the necks of their enemies."

"Why, you are an aristocrat," said Maitland, smiling; "only you want
to abolish the present aristocracy and give us another.  You must not
judge us by what you saw in Piccadilly, and while you are still
smarting from that smasher on your eye.  London, I grant you, is not,
and never was, a fair specimen.  But, even in London, you must not be
deceived.  You don't know its real temper; and then, as to not being
worth saving--why, the worse men are the more they want saving.
However, we are both agreed about this--crew, Liverpool, the Prince
Regent, and his friends."  A strong word was about to escape before
"crew," but the Major saw that he was in a house where it would be
out of place.  "I wish you'd join our Friends of the People.  We want
two or three determined fellows like you.  We are all safe."

"What are the 'Friends of the People'?"

"Oh, it's a club of--a--good fellows who meet twice a week for a
little talk about affairs.  Come with me next Friday and see."

Zachariah hesitated a moment, and then consented.

"All right; I'll fetch you."  He was going away, and picked up from
the table a book he had brought with him.

"By the way, you will not be at work till to-morrow.  I'll leave you
this to amuse you.  It has not been out long.  Thirteen thousand
copies were sold the first day.  It is the Corsair--Byron's Corsair.
My God, it IS poetry and no mistake!  Not exactly, perhaps, in your
line; but you are a man of sense, and if that doesn't make your heart
leap in you I'm much mistaken.  Lord Byron is a neighbour of mine in
the Albany.  I know him by sight.  I've waited a whole livelong
morning at my window to see him go out.  So much the more fool you,
you'll say.  Ah, well, wait till you have read the Corsair."

The Major shook hands.  Mrs. Coleman, who had been totally silent
during the interview, excepting when she asked him if he would join
in a cup of tea--an offer most gracefully declined--followed him to
the top of the stairs.  As before, he kissed her hand, made her a
profound bow, and was off.  When she came back into the room the
faint flush on the cheek was repeated, and there was the same unusual
little rippling overflow of kindness to her husband.

In the evening Zachariah took up the book.  Byron was not, indeed, in
his line.  He took no interest in him, although, like every other
Englishman, he had heard much about him.  He had passed on his way to
Albemarle Street the entrance to the Albany.  Byron was lying there
asleep, but Zachariah, although he knew he was within fifty yards of
him, felt no emotion whatever.  This was remarkable, for Byron's
influence, even in 1814, was singular, beyond that of all
predecessors and successors, in the wideness of its range.  He was
read by everybody.  Men and women who were accessible to no other
poetry were accessible to his, and old sea-captains, merchants,
tradesmen, clerks, tailors, milliners, as well as the best judges in
the land repeated his verses by the page.

Mrs. Coleman, having cleared away the tea-things, sat knitting till
half-past six.  It was prayer-meeting night, and she never missed
going.  Zachariah generally accompanied her, but he was not quite
presentable, and stayed at home.  He went on with the Corsair, and as
he read his heart warmed, and he unconsciously found himself
declaiming several of the most glowing and eloquent lines aloud.  He
was by nature a poet; essentially so, for he loved everything which
lifted him above what is commonplace.  Isaiah, Milton, a storm, a
revolution, a great passion--with these he was at home; and his
education, mainly on the Old Testament, contributed greatly to the
development both of the strength and weakness of his character.  For
such as he are weak as well as strong; weak in the absence of the
innumerable little sympathies and worldlinesses which make life
delightful, and but too apt to despise and tread upon those gentle
flowers which are as really here as the sun and the stars, and are
nearer to us.  Zachariah found in the Corsair exactly what answered
to his own inmost self, down to its very depths.  The lofty style,
the scorn of what is mean and base, the courage--root of all virtue--
that dares and evermore dares in the very last extremity, the love of
the illimitable, of freedom, and the cadences like the fall of waves
on a sea-shore were attractive to him beyond measure.  More than
this, there was Love.  His own love was a failure, and yet it was
impossible for him to indulge for a moment his imagination elsewhere.
The difference between him and his wife might have risen to absolute
aversion, and yet no wandering fancy would ever have been encouraged
towards any woman living.  But when he came to Medora's song:


"Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
   Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
   Then trembles into silence as before."


and more particularly the second verse:


"There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp
   Burns the slow flame, eternal--but unseen;
Which not the darkness of despair can damp,
   Though vain its ray as it had never been."


love again asserted itself.  It was not love for a person; perhaps it
was hardly love so much as the capacity for love.  Whatever it may
be, henceforth this is what love will be in him, and it will be fully
maintained, though it knows no actual object.  It will manifest
itself in suppressed force, seeking for exit in a thousand
directions; sometimes grotesque perhaps, but always force.  It will
give energy to expression, vitality to his admiration of the
beautiful, devotion to his worship, enthusiasm to his zeal for
freedom.  More than this, it will NOT make his private life
unbearable by contrast; rather the reverse.  The vision of Medora
will not intensify the shadow over Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell, but
will soften it.



CHAPTER II--OUTSIDE PIKE STREET



On the Friday evening the Major called for Zachariah.  He had not yet
returned, but his wife was at home.  The tea-things were ready, the
kettle was on the hob, and she sat knitting at the window.  Her
visitor knocked at the door; she rose, and he entered.  This time he
was a little less formal, for after making his bow he shook her hand.
She, too, was not quite so stiff, and begged him to be seated.

"Upon my word, madam," he began, "if I were as well looked after as
Mr. Coleman, I doubt if I should be so anxious as he is to change the
existing order of things.  You would think there is some excuse for
me if you were to see the misery and privation of my lodgings.
Nobody cares a straw, and as for dust and dirt, they would drive you
distracted."

Mrs. Zachariah smiled, and shifted one of her little white-stockinged
feet over the other.  She had on the neatest of sandals, with black
ribbons, which crossed over the instep.  It was one of Zachariah's
weak points, she considered, that he did not seem to care
sufficiently for cleanliness, and when he came in he would sometimes
put his black hand, before he had washed, on the white tea-cloth, or
on the back of a chair, and leave behind him a patch of printer's
ink.  It was bad enough to be obliged always to wipe the door-
handles.

"I do my best; but as for dirt, you cannot be so badly off in the
Albany as we are in Clerkenwell.  Clerkenwell is very disagreeable,
but we are obliged to live here."

"If Clerkenwell is so bad, all the more honour to you for your
triumph."

"Oh, I don't know about honour; my husband says it is simply my
nature."

"Nature!  All the better.  I could never live with anybody who was
always trying and trying and struggling.  I believe in Nature.  Don't
you?"

This was an abstract inquiry beyond Mrs. Zachariah's scope.  "It is
some people's nature to like to be tidy," she contented herself with
observing; "and others do not care for it."

"Oh, perhaps it is because I am a soldier, and accustomed to order,
that I care for it above everything."

Mrs. Zachariah started for a moment.  She reflected.  She had
forgotten it--that she was talking to an officer in His Majesty's
service.

"Have you seen much fighting, sir?"

"Oh, well, for the matter of that, have had my share.  I was at
Talavera, and suffer a good deal now in damp weather, from having
slept so much in the open air."

"Dear me, that is very hard!  My husband is rheumatic, and finds
Tarver's embrocation do him more good than anything.  Will you try it
if I give you some?"

"With profound gratitude."  Mrs. Coleman filled an empty bottle, took
a piece of folded brown paper out of the fireplace cupboard, untied a
coil of twine, made up a compact little parcel, and gave it to the
Major.

"A thousand thanks.  If faith now can really cure, I shall be well in
a week."

Mrs. Zachariah smiled again.

"Are you Dissenters?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes.  Independents."

"I am not surprised.  Ever since Cromwell's days you have always been
on the side of liberty; but are you strict--I don't know exactly what
to call it--go to the prayer-meetings--and so on?"

"We are both members of the church, and Mr. Coleman is a deacon,"
replied Mrs. Zachariah, with a gravity not hitherto observable.

She looked out of the window, and saw him coming down the street.
She placed the kettle nearer the fire, put the tea in the teapot, and
sat down again.  He came upstairs, went straight into his bedroom,
cleaned himself as much as possible, changed his coat, and entered.
The Major, being pressed, consented to take tea, and Mrs. Zachariah
was a cheerful and even talkative hostess, to the surprise of at
least one member of the company.  She sat next to her husband, and
the Major sat opposite.  Three silver spoons and silver sugar-tongs
had been put on the table.  Ordinarily the spoons were pewter.
Zachariah, fond of sugar, was in the habit of taking it with his
fingers--a practice to which Mrs. Zachariah strongly objected, and
with some reason.  It was dirty, and as his hands were none of the
whitest, the neighbouring lumps became soiled, and acquired a flavour
which did not add to their sweetness.  She had told him of it a score
of times; but he did not amend, and seemed to think her particularity
rather a vice than a virtue.  So it is that, as love gilds all
defects, lack of love sees nothing but defect in what is truly
estimable.  Notwithstanding the sugar-tongs, Zachariah--excusable,
perhaps, this time, considering the warmth of the speech he was
making against the late war--pushed them aside, and helped himself
after the usual fashion.  A cloud came over Mrs. Zachariah's face;
she compressed her lips in downright anger, pushed the tongs towards
him with a rattle, and trod on his foot at the same time.  His
oration came to an end; he looked round, became confused, and was
suddenly silent; but the Major gallantly came to the rescue by
jumping up to prevent Mrs. Zachariah from moving in order to put more
water on the tea.

"Excuse me, pray;" but as he had risen somewhat suddenly to reach the
kettle, he caught the table-cloth on his knee, and in a moment his
cup and saucer and the plate were on the floor in twenty pieces, and
the tea running all over the carpet.  Zachariah looked at his wife,
and expected to see her half frantic.  But no; though it was her best
china, she stopped the Major's apologies, and assured him, with
something almost like laughter, that it was not of the slightest
consequence.  "Tea doesn't stain; I hope it has not gone on your
coat;" and producing a duster from the cupboard, the evil, save the
loss of the crockery, was remedied in a couple of minutes.

At half-past seven o'clock the Major and Zachariah departed.  They
walked across the top of Hatton Garden, and so onwards till they came
to Red Lion Street.  Entering a low passage at the side of a small
public-house, they went up some stairs, and found themselves opposite
a door which was locked.  The Major gave three taps and then paused.
A moment afterwards he tapped again twice; the lock was turned, and
he was admitted.  Zachariah found himself in a spacious kind of loft.
There was a table running down the middle, and round it were seated
about a dozen men, most of whom were smoking and drinking beer.  They
welcomed the Major with rappings, and he moved towards the empty
chair at the head of the board.

"You're late, chairman," said one.

"Been to fetch a new comrade."

"Is that the cove?  He looks all right.  Here's your health, guv'nor,
and d---n all tyrants."  With that he took a pull at the beer.

"Swear him," said the Major.

A disagreeable-looking man with a big round nose, small red eyes,
unshaven face, and slightly unsteady voice, rose, laid down his pipe,
and beckoned to Zachariah, who advanced towards him.

The Secretary--for he it was--produced a memorandum-book, and began
with a stutter:

"In the sacred name of--"

"Stop!" cried Zachariah, "I don't swear."

"That will do," shouted the Major across a hubbub which arose--
"religious.  I'll answer for him:  let him sign; that's enough."

"You ARE answerable," growled the Secretary "if he's a d---d spy
we'll have his blood, that's all, and yours too, Major."  The Major
took no notice, and Zachariah put his name in the book, the roll of
the Red Lion Friends of the People.

"Business, Mr. Secretary--the last minutes."

The minutes were read, and an adjourned debate was then renewed on a
motion to organise public meetings to petition in favour of
Parliamentary Reform.  The reader must understand that politics in
those days were somewhat different from the politics of fifty or
sixty years later.  Bread was thirteenpence a quartern loaf; the
national debt, with a much smaller population, was what it is now;
everything was taxed, and wages were very low.  But what was most
galling was the fact that the misery, the taxes, and the debt had
been accumulated, not by the will of the people, but by a corrupt
House of Commons, the property of borough-mongers, for the sake of
supporting the Bourbons directly, but indirectly and chiefly the
House of Hanover and the hated aristocracy.  There was also a
scandalous list of jobs and pensions.  Years afterwards, when the
Government was forced to look into abuses, the Reverend Thomas
Thurlow, to take one example amongst others, was awarded, as
compensation for the loss of his two offices, Patentee of Bankrupts
and Keeper of Hanaper, the modest allowance annually until his death
of 11,380 pounds 14s. 6d.  The men and women of that time, although
there were scarcely any newspapers, were not fools, and there was not
a Nottingham weaver who put a morsel of bread in his hungry belly who
did not know that two morsels might have gone there if there were no
impost on foreign corn to maintain rents, and if there were no
interest to pay on money borrowed to keep these sacred kings and
lords safe in their palaces and parks.  Opinion at the Red Lion
Friends of the People Club was much divided.  Some were for
demonstrations and agitation, whilst others were for physical force.
The discussion went on irregularly amidst much tumult.

"How long would they have waited over the water if they had done
nothing but jaw?  They met together and tore down the Bastile, and
that's what we must do."

"That may be true," said a small white-faced man who neither smoked
nor drank, "but what followed?  You don't do anything really till
you've reasoned it out."

"It's my belief, parson," retorted the other, "that you are in a d---
d funk.  This is not the place for Methodists."

"Order, order!" shouted the chairman.

"I am not a Methodist," quietly replied the other; "unless you mean
by Methodist a man who fears God and loves his Saviour.  I am not
ashamed to own that, and I am none the worse for it as far as I know.
As for being a coward, we shall see."

The Secretary meanwhile had gone on with his beer.  Despite his
notorious failing, he had been chosen for the post because in his
sober moments he was quick with his pen.  He was not a working man;
nay, it was said he had been at Oxford.  His present profession was
that of attorney's clerk.  He got up and began a harangue about
Brutus.

"There's one way of dealing with tyrants--the old way, Mr. Chairman.
Death to them all, say I; the short cut; none of your palaver; what's
the use of palavering?"

He was a little shaky, took hold of the rail of his chair, and as he
sat down broke his pipe.

Some slight applause followed; but the majority were either against
him, or thought it better to be silent.

The discussion continued irregularly, and Zachariah noticed that
about half-a-dozen of those present took no part in it.  At about ten
o'clock the chairman declared the meeting at an end; and it was quite
time he did so, for the smoke and the drink had done their work.

As Zachariah came out, a man stood by his side whom he had scarcely
noticed during the evening.  He was evidently a shoemaker.  There was
a smell of leather about him, and his hands and face were grimy.  He
had a slightly turned-up nose, smallish eyes, half hidden under very
black eyebrows, and his lips were thin and straight.  His voice was
exceedingly high-pitched, and had something creaking in it like the
sound of an ill-greased axle.  He spoke with emphasis, but not quite
like an Englishman, was fond of alliteration, and often, in the
middle of a sentence, paused to search for a word which pleased him.
Having found it, the remainder of the sentence was poised and cast
from him like a dart.  His style was a curious mixture of foreign
imperfection and rhetoric--a rhetoric, however, by no means affected.
It might have been so in another person, but it was not so in him.

"Going east?" said he.

"Yes."

"If you want company, I'll walk with you.  What do you think of the
Friends?"

Zachariah, it will be borne in mind, although he was a Democrat, had
never really seen the world.  He belonged to a religious sect.  He
believed in the people, it is true, but it was a people of
Cromwellian Independents.  He purposely avoided the company of men
who used profane language, and never in his life entered a tavern.
He did not know what the masses really were; for although he worked
with his hands, printers were rather a superior set of fellows, and
his was an old-established shop which took the best of its class.
When brought actually into contact with swearers and drunkards as
patriots and reformers he was more than a little shocked.

"Not much," quoth he.

"Not worse than our virtuous substitute for a sovereign?"

"No, certainly."

"You object to giving them votes, but is not the opinion of the
silliest as good as that of Lord Sidmouth?"

"That's no reason for giving them votes."

"I should like to behold the experiment of a new form of
misgovernment.  If we are to be eternally enslaved to fools and
swindlers, why not a change?  We have had regal misrule and
aristocratic swindling long enough."

"Seriously, my friend," he continued, "study that immortal charter,
the Declaration of the Rights of Man."

He stopped in the street, and with an oratorical air repeated the
well-known lines, "Men are born and always continue free, and equal
in respect of their rights. . . .  Every citizen has a right, either
by himself or by his representative, to a free voice in determining
the necessity of public contributions, the appropriation of them, and
their amount, mode of assessment, and duration."  He knew them by
heart.  "It is the truth," he continued:  "you must come to that,
unless you believe in the Divine appointment of dynasties.  There is
no logical repose between Lord Liverpool and the Declaration.  What
is the real difference between him and you?  None but a question of
degree.  He does not believe in absolute monarchy, and stays at this
point.  You go a little lower.  You are both alike.  How dare you
say, 'My brother, I am more honest and more religious than you; pay
me half-a-crown and I will spend it for your welfare'?  You cannot
tell me that.  You know I should have a RIGHT to reject you.  I
refuse to be coerced.  I prefer freedom to--felicity."

Zachariah was puzzled.  He was not one of those persons who can see
no escape from an argument and yet are not convinced; one of those
happy creatures to whom the operations of the intellect are a joke--
who, if they are shown that the three angles of a triangle are equal
to two right angles, decline to disprove it, but act as if they were
but one.  To Zachariah the appeal "Where will you stop?" was
generally successful.  If his understanding told him he could not
stop, he went on.  And yet it so often happens that if we do go on we
are dissatisfied; we cannot doubt each successive step, but we doubt
the conclusion.  We arrive serenely at the end, and lo! it is an
absurdity which common sense, as we call it, demolishes with scoffs
and laughter.

They had walked down to Holborn in order to avoid the rather
dangerous quarter of Gray's Inn Lane.  Presently they were overtaken
by the Secretary, staggering under more liquor.  He did not recognise
them, and rolled on.  The shoemaker instantly detached himself from
Zachariah and followed the drunken official.  He was about to turn
into a public-house, when his friend came up to him softly,
abstracted a book which was sticking out of his pocket, laid hold of
him by the arm, and marched off with him across the street and
through Great Turnstile.

Sunday came, and Zachariah and his wife attended the services at Pike
Street Meeting-house, conducted by that worthy servant of God, the
Reverend Thomas Bradshaw.  He was at that time preaching a series of
sermons on the Gospel Covenant, and he enlarged upon the distinction
between those with whom the covenant was made and those with whom
there was none, save of judgment.  The poorest and the weakest, if
they were sons of God, were more blessed than the strongest who were
not.  These were nothing:  "they should go out like the smoke of a
candle with an ill favour; whereas the weak and simple ones are
upholden, and go from strength to strength, and increase with the
increasings of God."  Zachariah was rather confused by what had
happened during the week, and his mind, especially during the long
prayer, wandered a good deal much to his discomfort.



CHAPTER III--THE THEATRE



Major Maitland was very fond of the theatre, and as he had grown fond
of Zachariah, and frequently called at his house, sometimes on
business and sometimes for pleasure, he often asked his friend to
accompany him.  But for a long time he held out.  The theatre and
dancing in 1814 were an abomination to the Independents.  Since 1814
they have advanced, and consequently they not only go to plays and
dance like other Christians, but the freer, less prejudiced, and more
enlightened encourage the ballet, spend their holidays in Paris, and
study French character there.  Zachariah, however, had a side open to
literature, and though he had never seen a play acted, he read plays.
He read Shakespeare, and had often thought how wonderful one of his
dramas must be on the stage.  So it fell out that at last he yielded,
and it was arranged that Mrs. and Mr. Coleman should go with the
Major to Drury Lane to see the great Edmund Kean in "Othello."  The
day was fixed, and Mrs. Coleman was busy for a long time beforehand
in furbishing up and altering her wedding-dress, so that she might
make a decent figure.  She was all excitement, and as happy as she
could well be.  For months Zachariah had not known her to be so
communicative.  She seemed to take an interest in politics; she
discussed with him the report that Bonaparte was mad, and Zachariah,
on his part, told her what had happened to him during the day, and
what he had read in the newspapers.  The Prince Regent had been to
Oxford, and verses had been composed in his honour.  Mr. Bosanquet
had recited to the Prince an ode, or something of the kind, and had
ventured, after dilating on the enormous services rendered by kings
in general to the community during the last twenty years, to warn
them:


"But ye yourselves must bow:  your praise be given
To Him, the Lord of lords, your King in heaven."


And Mrs. Zachariah, with a smile and unwonted wit, wondered whether
Mr. Bosanquet would not be prosecuted for such treasonable
sentiments.  Zachariah hardly knew what to make of his wife's gaiety,
but he was glad.  He thought that perhaps he was answerable for her
silence and coldness, and he determined at all costs to try and
amend, and, however weary he might be when he came home at night,
that he would speak and get her to speak too.

The eventful evening arrived.  Zachariah was to get away as early as
he could; the Major was to call at about six.  After Zachariah had
washed and dressed, they were to take a hackney coach together.  At
the appointed hour the Major appeared, and found Mrs. Zachariah
already in her best clothes and tea ready.  She was charming--
finished from the uttermost hair on her head to the sole of her
slipper--and the dove-coloured, somewhat Quakerish tint of her
wedding-gown suited her admirably.  Quarter-past six came, but there
was no Zachariah, and she thought she would make the tea, as he was
never long over his meals.  Half-past six, and he was not there.  The
two now sat down, and began to listen to every sound.  The coach was
ordered at a quarter to seven.

"What shall we do?" said the Major.  "I cannot send you on and wait
for him."

"No.  How vexing it is!  It is just like--" and she stopped.

"We must stay where we are, I suppose; it is rather a pity to miss
being there when Kean first comes on."

She was in a fretful agony of impatience.  She rose and looked out of
the window, thought she heard somebody on the stairs, went outside on
the landing, returned, walked up and down, and mentally cursed her
husband, not profanely--she dared not do that--but with curses none
the less intense.  Poor man! he had been kept by a job he had to
finish.  She might have thought this possible, and, in fact, did
think it possible; but it made no difference in the hatred which she
permitted to rise against him.  At last her animosity relaxed, and
she began to regard him with more composure, and even with pleasure.

"Had you not better go and leave me here, so that we may follow?  I
do not know what has happened, and I am sure he would be so sorry if
you were to be disappointed."

She turned her eyes anxiously towards the Major.

"That will never do.  You know nothing about the theatre.  No! no!"

She paused and stamped her little foot, and looked again out of the
window.

The coachman knocked at the door, and when she went down asked her
how long he had to wait.

She came back, and throwing herself on a chair, fairly gave way to
her mortification, and cried out, "It is too bad--too bad!--it is,
really."

"I'll tell you what," replied the Major.  "Do you mind coming with
me?  We will leave one of the tickets which I have bought, and we can
add a message that he is to follow, and that we will keep his place
for him.  Put on your bonnet at once, and I will scribble a line to
him."

Mrs. Zachariah did not see any other course open; her wrath once more
disappeared, and in another moment she was busy before the looking-
glass.  The note was written, and pinned to the ticket, both being
stuck on the mantelpiece in a conspicuous place, so that Zachariah
might see them directly he arrived.  In exuberant spirits she added
in her own hand, "Make as much haste as you can, my dear," and
subscribed her initials.  It was a tremendously hot afternoon and,
what with the fire and the weather and the tea, the air was very
oppressive.  She threw the bottom sash open a little wider therefore,
and the two rolled off to Drury Lane.  As the door slammed behind
them, the draught caught the ticket and note, and in a moment they
were in the flames and consumed.

Ten minutes afterwards in came Zachariah.  He had run all the way,
and was dripping with perspiration.  He rushed upstairs, but there
was nobody.  He stared round him, looked at the plates, saw that two
had been there, rushed down again, and asked the woman in the shop:

"Has Mrs. Coleman left any message?"

"No.  She went off with that gentleman that comes here now and then;
but she never said nothing to me," and Zachariah thought he saw
something like a grin on her face.

It may be as well to say that he never dreamed of any real injury
done to him by his wife, and, in truth, the Major was incapable of
doing him any.  He was gay, unorthodox, a man who went about in the
world, romantic, republican, but he never would have condescended to
seduce a woman, and least of all a woman belonging to a friend.  He
paid women whom he admired all kinds of attentions, but they were
nothing more than the gallantry of the age.  Although they were
nothing, however, to him, they were a good deal more than nothing to
Mrs. Zachariah.  The symbolism of an act varies much, and what may be
mere sport to one is sin in another.  The Major's easy manners and
very free courtesy were innocent so far as he was concerned; but when
his rigid, religious companion in the hackney coach felt them sweet,
and was better pleased with them than she had ever been with her
husband's caresses, she sinned, and she knew that she sinned.

What curiously composite creatures we are!  Zachariah for a moment
was half pleased, for she had now clearly wronged him.  The next
moment, however, he was wretched.  He took up the teapot; it was
empty; the tea-caddy was locked up.  It was a mere trifle, but, as he
said to himself, the merest trifles are important if they are
significant.  He brooded, therefore, over the empty teapot and locked
tea-caddy for fully five minutes.  She had not only gone without him,
but had forgotten him.  At the end of the five minutes teapot and
tea-caddy had swollen to enormous dimensions and had become the basis
of large generalisations.  "I would rather," he exclaimed, "be
condemned to be led out and hung if I knew one human soul would love
me for a week beforehand and honour me afterwards, than live half a
century and be nothing to any living creature."  Presently, however,
it occurred to him that, although in the abstract this might be true
yet at that particular moment he was a fool; and he made the best of
his way to Drury Lane.  He managed to find his way into the gallery
just as Kean came on the stage in the second scene of the first act.
Far down below him, through the misty air, he thought he could see
his wife and the Major; but he was in an instant arrested by the
play.  It was all new to him; the huge building, the thousands of
excited, eager faces, the lights, and the scenery.  He had not
listened, moreover, to a dozen sentences from the great actor before
he had forgotten himself and was in Venice, absorbed in the fortunes
of the Moor.  What a blessing is this for which we have to thank the
playwright and his interpreters, to be able to step out of the dingy,
dreary London streets, with all their wretched corrosive cares, and
at least for three hours to be swayed by nobler passions.  For three
hours the little petty self, with all its mean surroundings,
withdraws:  we breathe a different atmosphere, we are jealous, glad,
weep, laugh with Shakespeare's jealousy, gladness, tears, and
laughter!  What priggishness, too, is that which objects to
Shakespeare on a stage because no acting can realise the ideal formed
by solitary reading!  Are we really sure of it?  Are we really sure
that Garrick or Kean or Siddons, with all their genius and study,
fall short of a lazy dream in an arm-chair!  Kean had not only a
thousand things to tell Zachariah--meanings in innumerable passages
which had before been overlooked--but he gave the character of
Othello such vivid distinctness that it might almost be called a
creation.  He was exactly the kind of actor, moreover, to impress
him.  He was great, grand, passionate, overwhelming with a like
emotion the apprentice and the critic.  Everybody after listening to
a play or reading a book uses it when he comes to himself again to
fill his own pitcher, and the Cyprus tragedy lent itself to Zachariah
as an illustration of his own Clerkenwell sorrows and as a gospel for
them, although his were so different from those of the Moor.  Why did
he so easily suspect Desdemona?  Is it not improbable that a man with
any faith in woman, and such a woman, should proceed to murder on
such evidence?  If Othello had reflected for a moment, he would have
seen that everything might have been explained.  Why did he not
question, sift, examine, before taking such tremendous revenge?--and
for the moment the story seemed unnatural.  But then he considered
again that men and women, if they do not murder one another, do
actually, in everyday life, for no reason whatever, come to wrong
conclusions about each other; utterly and to the end of their lines
misconstrue and lose each other.  Nay, it seems to be a kind of
luxury to them to believe that those who could and would love them
are false to them.  We make haste to doubt the divinest fidelity; we
drive the dagger into each other, and we smother the Desdemona who
would have been the light of life to us, not because of any deadly
difference or grievous injury, but because we idly and wilfully
reject.

The tale, evermore is:


      "Of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe."


So said Zachariah to himself as he came out into Drury Lane and
walked eastwards.  His wife and the Major were back before him.  The
Major did not wait but returned at once to Albany Street, leaving
Mrs. Coleman to sit up for her husband.  He was not hurrying himself,
and could not free himself from the crowd so easily as those who left
from below.  The consequence was that he was a full half-hour behind
her, and she was not particularly pleased at having been kept so long
out of her bed.  When she let him in all that she said was, "Oh, here
you are at last," and immediately retired.  Strange to say, she
forgot all about family worship--never before omitted, however late
it might be.  If she had taken the trouble to ask him whether he had
seen her message and the ticket so much might have been cleared up.
Of course he, too, ought to have spoken to her; it was the natural
thing to do, and it was extraordinary that he did not.  But he let
her go; she knelt down by her bed, prayed her prayer to her God, and
in five minutes was asleep.  Zachariah ten minutes afterwards prayed
his prayer to HIS God, and lay down, but not to sleep.  No sooner was
his head on his pillow than the play was before his eyes, and
Othello, Desdemona, and Iago moved and spoke again for hours.  Then
came the thoughts with which he had left the theatre and the
revulsion on reaching home.  Burning with excitement at what was a
discovery to him, he had entered his house with even an enthusiasm
for his wife, and an impatient desire to try upon her the experiment
which he thought would reveal so much to him and make him wealthy for
ever.  But when she met him he was struck dumb.  He was shut up again
in his old prison, and what was so hopeful three hours before was all
vanity.  So he struggled through the short night, and, as soon as he
could, rose and went out.  This was a frequent practice, and his wife
was not surprised when she woke to find he had gone.  She was in the
best of spirits again, and when he returned, after offering him the
usual morning greeting, she inquired at once in what part of the
theatre he was, and why he had not used the ticket.

"We waited for you till the last moment; we should have been too late
if we had stayed an instant longer, and I made sure you would come
directly."

"Ticket--what ticket?  I saw no ticket?"

"We left it on the mantelpiece, and there was a message with it."

His face brightened, but he said nothing.  A rush of blood rose to
his head; he moved towards her and kissed her.

"What a wretch you must have thought me!" she said half laughingly,
as she instantly smoothed her hair again, which he had ruffled.  "But
what has become of the ticket?"

"Fell in the fire most likely; the window was open when I came in,
and the draught blew the picture over the mantelpiece nearly off its
hook."

The breakfast was the happiest meal they had had for months.
Zachariah did his best to overcome his natural indisposition to talk.
Except when he was very much excited, he always found conversation
with his wife too difficult on any save the most commonplace topics,
although he was eloquent enough in company which suited him.  She
listened to him, recalling with great pleasure the events of the
preceding evening.  She was even affectionate--affectionate for her--
and playfully patted his shoulder as he went out, warning him not to
be so late again.  What was the cause of her gaiety?  Was she
thinking improperly of the Major?  No.  If she had gone with
Zachariah alone to the theatre would she have been so cheerful?  No.
Did she really think she loved her husband better?  Yes.  The human
heart, even the heart of Mrs. Coleman, is beyond our analysis.



CHAPTER IV--A FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE



The Friends of the People continued their meetings, and Zachariah
attended regularly, although, after about three months' experience,
he began to doubt whether any advance was being made.  The immediate
subject of discussion now was a projected meeting in Spitalfields,
and each branch of the Society was to organise its own contingent.
All this was perfectly harmless.  There was a good deal of wild talk
occasionally; but it mostly came from Mr. Secretary, especially when
he had had his beer.  One evening he had taken more than enough, and
was decidedly staggering as he walked down Lamb's Conduit Street
homewards.  Zachariah was at some distance, and in front of him, in
close converse, were his shoemaking friend, the Major, and a third
man whom he could not recognise.  The Secretary swayed himself across
Holborn and into Chancery Lane, the others following.  Presently they
came up to him, passed him, and turned off to the left, leaving him
to continue his troubled voyage southwards.  The night air, however,
was a little too much for him, and when he got to Fleet Street he was
under the necessity of supporting himself against a wall.  He became
more and more seditious as he became more and more muddled, so that
at last he attracted the attention of a constable who laid hold of
him and locked him up for the night.  In the morning he was very much
surprised to find himself in a cell, feeling very miserable, charged
with being drunk and disorderly, and, what was ten times worse, with
uttering blasphemy against the Prince Regent.  It may as well be
mentioned here that the greatest precautions had been taken to
prevent any knowledge by the authorities of the proceedings of the
Friends of the People.  The Habeas Corpus Act was not yet suspended,
but the times were exceedingly dangerous.  The Friends, therefore,
never left in a body nor by the same door.  Watch was always kept
with the utmost strictness, not only on the stairs, but from a window
which commanded the street.  No written summons was ever sent to
attend any meeting, ordinary or extraordinary.  Mr. Secretary,
therefore, was much disconcerted when he found that his pockets were
emptied of all his official documents.  He languished in his cell
till about twelve o'clock, very sick and very anxious, when he was
put into a cab, and, to his great surprise, instead of being taken to
a police court, was carried to Whitehall.  There he was introduced to
an elderly gentleman, who sat at the head of a long table covered
with green cloth.  A younger man, apparently a clerk, sat at a
smaller table by the fire and wrote, seeming to take no notice
whatever of what was going on.  Mr. Secretary expected to hear
something about transportation, and to be denounced as an enemy of
the human race; but he was pleasantly disappointed.

"Sorry to see a respectable person like you in such a position."

Mr. Secretary wondered how the gentleman knew he was respectable; but
was silent.  He was not now in an eloquent or seditious humour.

"You may imagine that we know you, or we should not have taken the
trouble to bring you here.  We should merely have had you committed
for trial."

The Secretary thought of his empty pockets.  In truth it was the
Major who had emptied them before he crossed Holborn; but of course
he suspected the constable.

"You must be aware that you have exposed yourself to heavy penalties.
I prefer, however, to think of you as a well-meaning but misguided
person.  What good do you think you can do?  I can assure you that
the Government are fully aware of the distress which prevails, and
will do all they can to alleviate it.  If you have any grievances,
why not seek their redress by legitimate and constitutional means?"

The Secretary was flattered.  He had never been brought face to face
with one of the governing classes before.  He looked round;
everything was so quiet, so pacific; there were no fetters nor
thumbscrews; the sun was lighting up the park; children were playing
in it, and the necessity for a revolution was not on that particular
spot quite apparent.

A messenger now entered carrying some sandwiches and a little
decanter of wine on a tray, covered with the whitest of cloths.

"It struck me," continued the official, taking a sandwich and pouring
out a glass of wine, "when I heard of your arrest, that I should like
myself to have a talk with you.  We really are most loth to proceed
to extremities. and you have, I understand, a wife and children.  I
need not tell you what we could do with you if we liked.  Now, just
consider, my friend.  I don't want you to give up one single
principle; but is it worth your while to be sent to jail and to have
your home broken up merely because you want to achieve your object in
the wrong way, and in a foolish way?  Keep your principles; we do not
object; but don't go out into the road with them.  And you, as an
intelligent man, must see that you will not get what you desire by
violence as soon as you will by lawful methods.  Is the difference
between us worth such a price as you will have to pay?"

The Secretary hesitated; he could not speak; he was very faint and
nervous.

"Ah, you've had nothing to eat, I dare say."

The bell was rung, and was answered immediately.

"Bring some bread and cheese and beer."

The bread and cheese and beer were brought.

"Sit down there and have something; I will go on with my work, and we
will finish our talk afterwards."

The Secretary could not eat much bread and cheese, but he drank the
beer greedily.

When he had finished the clerk left the room.  The Commissioner--for
he was one of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury--followed
him to the door, closed it, not without satisfying himself that the
constable was at his post outside, returned to his seat, opened his
drawer, saw that a pistol and five guineas were there, and then
began:

"Now, look here, my dear sir, let me speak plainly with you and come
to an understanding.  We have made inquiries about you; we believe
you to be a good sort of fellow, and we are not going to prosecute
you.  We do hope, however, that, should you hear anything which is--
well--really treasonable, you will let us know.  Treason, I am sure,
is as dreadful to you as it is to me.  The Government, as I said
before, are most desirous of helping those who really deserve it; and
to prove this, as I understand you are out of work, just accept that
little trifle."

The guineas were handed to Mr. Secretary, who looked at them
doubtfully.  With the beer his conscience had returned, and he broke
out:

"If you want me to be a d---d spy, d---d if I do!"  The Commissioner
was not in the least disconcerted.  "Spy, my man!--who mentioned the
word?  The money was offered because you haven't got a sixpence.
Haven't I told you you are not required to give up a single
principle?  Have I asked you to denounce a single companion?  All I
have requested you to do, as an honest citizen, is to give me a hint
if you hear of anything which would be as perilous to you as to me."

The Secretary after his brief explosion felt flaccid.  He was subject
to violent oscillations, and he looked at the five guineas again.  He
was very weak--weak naturally, and weaker through a long course of
alcohol.  He was, therefore, prone to obscure, crooked, silly
devices, at any rate when he was sober.  Half drunk he was very bold;
but when he had no liquor inside him he could NOT do what was
straight.  He had not strength sufficient, if two courses were open,
to cast aside the one for which there were the fewer and less
conclusive reasons, and to take the proper path, as if no other were
before him.  A sane, strong person is not the prey of reasons:  a
person like Mr. Secretary can never free himself from them, and after
he has arrived at some kind of determination is still uncertain and
harks back.  With the roar of the flames of the Cities of the Plain
in his ears, he stops, and is half afraid that it was his duty after
all to stay and try and put them out.  The Secretary, therefore,
pondered again.  The money was given on no condition that was worth
anything.  For aught he knew, the Commissioner had his books and
papers already.  He could take the guineas and be just as free as he
was before.  He could even give a part of it to the funds of the
Friends.  There obtruded, moreover, visions of Newgate, and his hands
slowly crept to the coins.

"I am a Radical, sir, and I don't mind who knows it."

"Nothing penal in that.  Every man has a right to his own political
creed."

The fingers crept closer and touched the gold.

"If I thought you wanted to bribe me, I'd rot before I had anything
to do with you."

The Commissioner smiled.  There was no necessity to say anything
more, for the guineas were disappearing and finally, though slowly,
chinked down into Mr. Secretary's pocket.

The Commissioner held out his hand.

The Secretary before he took it looked loftier than ever.

"I hope you understand me, sir, clearly."

"I DO understand you clearly."

The Secretary shook the hand; the Commissioner went with him to the
door.

"Show this gentleman downstairs."

The constable, without a look of surprise, went downstairs, and Mr.
Secretary found himself in the street.

Mr. Commissioner drank another glass of wine, and then pencilled
something in a little memorandum book, which he put under the pistol.
The drawer had two locks, and he carefully locked both with two
little keys attached to a ribbon which he wore round his neck.



CHAPTER V--THE HORIZON WIDENS



Jean Caillaud, shoemaker, whom we have met before, commonly called
John Kaylow, friend of the Major and member of the Society of the
Friends of the People, was by birth a Frenchman.  He had originally
come to this country in 1795, bringing with him a daughter, Pauline,
about four or five years old.  Why he came nobody knew, nor did
anybody know who was the mother of the child.  He soon obtained
plenty of employment, for he was an admirable workman, and learned to
speak English well.  Pauline naturally spoke both English and French.
Her education was accomplished with some difficulty, though it was
not such a task as it might have been, because Jean's occupation kept
him at home; his house being in one of the streets in that
complication of little alleys and thoroughfares to most Londoners
utterly unknown; within the sound of St. Bride's nevertheless, and
lying about a hundred yards north of Fleet Street.  If the explorer
goes up a court nearly opposite Bouverie Street, he will emerge from
a covered ditch into one that is opened, about six feet wide.
Presently the ditch ends in another and wider ditch running east and
west.  The western one turns northward, and then westward again,
roofs itself over, squeezes itself till it becomes little less than a
rectangular pipe, and finally discharges itself under an oil and
colourman's house in Fetter Lane.  The eastern arm, strange to say,
suddenly expands, and one side of it, for no earthly reason, is set
back with an open space in front of it, partitioned by low palings.
Immediately beyond, as if in a fit of sudden contrition for such
extravagance, the passage or gutter contracts itself to its very
narrowest and, diving under a printing-office shows itself in Shoe
Lane.  The houses in these trenches were not by any means of the
worst kind.  In the aforesaid expansion they were even genteel, or at
any rate aspired to be so, and each had its own brass knocker and
kept its front-door shut with decent sobriety and reticence.  On the
top floor of one of these tenements lodged Jean Caillaud and Pauline.
They had three rooms between them; one was Jean's bedchamber, one
Pauline's, and one was workroom and living-room, where Jean made
ball-slippers and light goods--this being his branch of the trade--
and Pauline helped him.  The workroom faced the north, and was
exactly on a level with an innumerable multitude of red chimney-pots
pouring forth stinking smoke which, for the six winter months,
generally darkened the air during the whole day.  But occasionally
Nature resumed her rights, and it was possible to feel that sky,
stars, sun, and moon still existed, and were not blotted out by the
obscurations of what is called civilised life.  There came,
occasionally, wild nights in October or November, with a gale from
the south-west and then, when almost everybody had gone to bed and
the fires were out, the clouds, illuminated by the moon, rushed
across the heavens, and the Great Bear hung over the dismal waste of
smutty tiles with the same solemnity with which it hangs over the
mountains, the sea, or the desert.  Early in the morning, too, in
summer, between three and four o'clock in June, there were sights to
be seen worth seeing.  The distance was clear for miles, and the
heights of Highgate were visible, proclaiming the gospel of a beyond
and beyond even to Kent's Court, and that its immediate surroundings
were mercifully not infinite.  The light made even the nearest bit of
soot-grimed, twisted, rotten brickwork beautiful, and occasionally,
but at very rare intervals, the odour of London was vanquished, and a
genuine breath from the Brixton fields was able to find its way
uncontaminated across the river.  Jean and Pauline were, on the
whole, fond of the court.  They often thought they would prefer the
country, and talked about it; but it is very much to be doubted, if
they had been placed in Devonshire, whether they would not have
turned back uneasily after a time to their garret.  They both liked
the excitement of the city, and the feeling that they were so near to
everything that was stirring in men's minds.  The long stretch of
lonely sea-shore is all very well, very beautiful, and, maybe, very
instructive to many people; but to most persons half-an-hour's
rational conversation is much more profitable.  Pauline was not a
particularly beautiful girl.  Her hair was black, and, although there
was a great deal of it, it was coarse and untidy.  Her complexion was
sallow--not as clear as it might be--and underneath the cheek-bones
there were slight depressions.  She had grown up without an
attachment, so far as her father knew, and indeed so far as she knew.
She had one redeeming virtue--redeeming especially to Jean, who was
with her alone so much.  She had an intellect, and it was one which
sought for constant expression; consequently she was never dull.  If
she was dull, she was ill.  She had none of that horrible mental
constriction which makes some English women so insupportably tedious.
The last thing she read, the last thing she thought, came out with
vivacity and force, and she did not need the stimulus of a great
excitement to reveal what was in her.  Living as she did at work side
by side with her father all day, she knew all his thoughts and read
all his books.  Neither of them ever went to church.  They were not
atheists, nor had they entirely pushed aside the religious questions
which torment men's minds.  They believed in what they called a
Supreme Being, whom they thought to be just and good; but they went
no further.  They were revolutionary, and when Jean joined the
Friends of the People, he and the Major and one other man became a
kind of interior secret committee, which really directed the affairs
of the branch.  Companions they had none, except the Major and one or
two compatriots; but they were drawn to Zachariah, and Zachariah was
drawn to them, very soon after he became a member of the Society.
The first time he went to Kent's Court with Jean was one night after
a meeting.  The two walked home together, and Zachariah turned in for
an hour, as it was but ten o'clock.  There had been a grand
thanksgiving at St. Paul's that day.  The Prince Regent had returned
thanks to Almighty God for the restoration of peace.  The Houses of
Parliament were there, with the Foreign Ambassadors, the City
Corporation, the Duke of Wellington, Field-Marshal Blucher,
peeresses, and society generally.  The Royal Dukes, Sussex, Kent,
York, and Gloucester, were each drawn by six horses and escorted by a
separate party of the Guards.  It took eight horses to drag the
Prince himself to divine service, and he, too, was encompassed by
soldiers.  Arrived at the cathedral, he was marshalled to a kind of
pew surmounted by a lofty crimson-and-gold canopy.  There he sat
alone, worshipped his Creator, and listened to a sermon by the Bishop
of Chester.  Neither Jean nor Pauline troubled themselves to go out,
and indeed it would not have been of much use if they had tried; for
it was by no means certain that Almighty God, who had been so kind as
to get rid of Napoleon, would not permit a row in the streets.
Consequently, every avenue which led to the line of the procession
was strictly blocked.  They heard the music from a distance, and
although they both hated Bonaparte, it had not a pleasant sound in
their ears.  It was the sound of triumph over Frenchmen, and,
furthermore, with all their dislike to the tyrant, they were proud of
his genius.

Walking towards Clerkenwell that evening, the streets being clear,
save for a number of drunken men and women, who were testifying to
the orthodoxy of their religious and political faith by rolling about
the kennel in various stages of intoxication, Jean pressed Zachariah
to go upstairs with him.  Pauline had prepared supper for herself and
her father, and a very frugal meal it was, for neither of them could
drink beer nor spirits, and they could not afford wine.  Pauline and
Zachariah were duly introduced, and Zachariah looked around him.  The
room was not dirty, but it was extremely unlike his own.  Shoe-making
implements and unfinished jobs lay here and there without being "put
away."  An old sofa served as a seat, and on it were a pair of lasts,
a bit of a French newspaper, and a plateful of small onions and
lettuce, which could not find a place on the little table.
Zachariah, upstairs in Rosoman Street, had often felt just as if he
were in his Sunday clothes and new boots.  He never could make out
what was the reason for it.  There are some houses in which we are
always uncomfortable.  Our freedom is fettered, and we can no more
take our ease in them than in a glass and china shop.  We breathe
with a sense of oppression, and the surroundings are like repellant
chevaux de frise.  Zachariah had no such feelings here.  There was
disorder, it is true; but, on the other hand, there was no polished
tea-caddy to stare at him and claim equal rights against him, defying
him to disturb it.  He was asked to sit upon the sofa, and in so
doing upset the plateful of salad upon the floor.  Pauline smiled,
was down upon her knees in an instant, before he could prevent her,
picked up the vegetables and put them back again.  To tell the truth,
they were rather dirty; and she, therefore, washed them in a hand-
basin.  Zachariah asked her if she had been out that day.

"I?--to go with the Lord Mayor and bless the good God for giving us
back Louis Bourbon?  No Mr. Coleman; if the good God did give us
Louis back again, I wouldn't bless Him for it, and I don't think He
had much to do with it.  So there were two reasons why I didn't go."

Zachariah was a little puzzled, a little shocked, and a little out of
his element.

"I thought you might have gone to see the procession and hear the
music."

"I hate processions.  Whenever I see one, and am squeezed and
trampled on just because those fine people may ride by, I am
humiliated and miserable.  As for the music, I hate that too.  It is
all alike, and might as well be done by machinery.  Come, you are
eating nothing.  What conspiracy have you and my father hatched to-
night?"

"Conspiracy!" said Jean.  "Who are the conspirators?  Not we.  The
conspirators are those thieves who have been to St. Paul's."

"To give thanks," said Pauline.  "If I were up there in the sky,
shouldn't I laugh at them.  How comical it is!  Did they give thanks
for Austerlitz or Jena?"

"That's about the worst of it," replied Jean.  "It is one vast plot
to make the people believe lies.  I shouldn't so much mind their
robbing the country of its money to keep themselves comfortable, but
what is the meaning of their Te Deums?  I tell you again,"--and he
repeated the words with much emphasis--"it is a vast plot to make men
believe a lie.  I abhor them for that ten times more than for taking
my money to replace Louis."

"Oh," resumed Pauline, "IF I were only up in the sky for an hour, I
would have thundered and lightened on them just as they got to the
top of Ludgate Hill, and scattered a score or so of them.  I wonder
if they would have thanked Providence for their escape?  O father,
such a joke!  The Major told me the other day of an old gentleman he
knew who was riding along in his carriage.  A fireball fell and
killed the coachman.  The old gentleman, talking about it afterwards,
said that "PROVIDENTIALLY it struck the box-seat."

Zachariah, although a firm believer in his faith, and not a coward,
was tempted to be silent.  He was heavy and slow in action, and this
kind of company was strange to him.  Furthermore, Pauline was not an
open enemy, and notwithstanding her little blasphemies, she was
attractive.  But then he remembered with shame that he was ordered to
testify to the truth wherever he might be, and unable to find
anything of his own by which he could express himself, a text of the
Bible came into his mind, and, half to himself, he repeated it aloud:

"I form the light and create darkness:  I make peace and create evil;
I the Lord do all these things."

"What is that?" said Jean.  "Repeat it."

Zachariah slowly repeated it.  He had intended to add to it something
which might satisfy his conscience and rebuke Pauline, but he could
not.

"Whence is that?" said Jean.

"From the Bible; give me one and I will show it to you."

There was no English Bible in the house.  It was a book not much
used; but Pauline presently produced a French version, and Jean read
the passage--"Qui forme la lumiere, et qui cree les tenebres; qui
fait la paix, et qui cree l'adversite; c'est moi, l'Eternel, qui fais
toutes les choses la."

Pauline bent over her father and read it again.

"Qui cree l'adversite," she said.  "Do you believe that?"

"If it is there I do," said Zachariah.

"Well, I don't."

"What's adversity to hell fire?  If He made hell-fire, why not
adversity?  Besides, if He did not, who did?"

"Don't know a bit, and don't mean to bother myself about it."

"Right!" broke in Jean--"right, my child; bother--that is a good
word.  Don't bother yourself about anything when--bothering will not
benefit.  There is so much in the world which will--bear a
botheration out of which some profit will arise.  Now, then, clear
the room, and let Zachariah see your art."

The plates and dishes were all put in a heap and the table pushed
aside.  Pauline retired for a few moments, and presently came back in
a short dress of black velvet, which reached about half-way down from
the knee to the ankle.  It was trimmed with red; she had stuck a red
artificial flower in her hair, and had on a pair of red stockings
with dancing slippers, probably of her own make.  Over her shoulders
was a light gauzy shawl.  Her father took his station in a corner,
and motioned to Zachariah to compress himself into another.  By dint
of some little management and piling up the chairs an unoccupied
space of about twelve feet square was obtained.  Pauline began
dancing, her father accompanying her with an oboe.  It was a very
curious performance.  It was nothing like ordinary opera-dancing, and
equally unlike any movement ever seen at a ball.  It was a series of
graceful evolutions with the shawl which was flung, now on one
shoulder and now on the other, each movement exquisitely resolving
itself, with the most perfect ease, into the one following, and
designed apparently to show the capacity of a beautiful figure for
poetic expression.  Wave fell into wave along every line of her body,
and occasionally a posture was arrested, to pass away in an instant
into some new combination.  There was no definite character in the
dance beyond mere beauty.  It was melody for melody's sake.  A
remarkable change, too, came over the face of the performer.  She
looked serious; but it was not a seriousness produced by any strain.
It was rather the calm which is found on the face of the statue of a
goddess.  In none of her attitudes was there a trace of
coquettishness, although some were most attractive.  One in
particular was so.  She held a corner of the shawl high above her
with her right hand, and her right foot was advanced so as to show
her whole frame extended excepting the neck; the head being bent
downward and sideways.

Suddenly Jean ceased; Pauline threw the shawl over both her
shoulders, made a profound curtsey, and retired; but in five minutes
she was back again in her ordinary clothes.  Zachariah was in sore
confusion.  He had never seen anything of the kind before.

He had been brought up in a school which would have considered such
an exhibition as the work of the devil.  He was distressed too to
find that the old Adam was still so strong within him that he
detected a secret pleasure in what he had seen.  He would have liked
to have got up and denounced Jean and Pauline, but somehow he could
not.  His great great grandfather would have done it, beyond a doubt,
but Zachariah sat still.

"Did you ever perform in public?" he asked.

"No.  I was taught when I was very young; but I have never danced
except to please father and his friends."

This was a relief, and some kind of an excuse.  He felt not quite
such a reprobate; but again he reflected that when he was looking at
her he did not know that she was not in a theatre every night in the
week.  He expected that Jean would offer some further explanation of
the unusual accomplishment which his daughter had acquired; but he
was silent, and Zachariah rose to depart, for it was eleven o'clock.
Jean apparently was a little restless at the absence of approval on
Zachariah's part, and at last he said abruptly:

"What do you think of her?"

Zachariah hesitated, and Pauline came to the rescue.  "Father, what a
shame!  Don't put him in such an awkward position."

"It was very wonderful," stammered Zachariah, "but we are not used to
that kind of thing."

"Who are the 'we'?" said Pauline.  "Ah, of course you are Puritans.
I am a--what do you call it?--a daughter, no, that isn't it--a child
of the devil.  I won't have that though.  My father isn't the devil.
Even YOU wouldn't say that, Mr. Coleman.  Ah, I have no business to
joke, you look so solemn; you think my tricks are satanic; but what
was it in your book, 'C'est moi, l'Eternel, qui fais toutes les
choses la'?" and as Zachariah advanced to the doors he made him a bow
with a grace which no lady of quality could have surpassed.

He walked home with many unusual thoughts.  It was the first time he
had ever been in the company of a woman of any liveliness of
temperament, and with an intellect which was on equal terms with that
of a man.  In his own Calvinistic Dissenting society the pious women
who were members of the church took little or no interest in the
mental life of their husband.  They read no books, knew nothing of
politics, were astonishingly ignorant, and lived in their household
duties.  To be with a woman who could stand up against him was a new
experience.  Here was a girl to whom every thought her father
possessed was familiar!

But there was another experience.  From his youth upwards he had been
trained with every weapon in the chapel armoury, and yet he now found
himself as powerless as the merest novice to prevent the very sinful
occupation of dwelling upon every attitude of Pauline, and outlining
every one of her limbs.  Do what he might, her image was for ever
before his eyes, and reconstructed itself after every attempt to
abolish it, just as a reflected image in a pool slowly but inevitably
gathers itself together again after each disturbance of the water.
When he got home, he found, to his surprise, that his wife was still
sitting up.  She had been to the weekly prayer-meeting, and was not
in a very pleasant temper.  She was not spiteful, but unusually
frigid.  She felt herself to be better than her husband, and she
asked him if he could not arrange in future that his political
meetings might not interfere with his religious duties.

"Your absence, too, was noticed, and Mrs. Carver asked me how it was
that Mr. Coleman could let me go home alone.  She offered to tell Mr.
Carver to come home with me; but I refused."

Delightfully generous of Mrs. Carver!  That was the sort of kindness
for which she and many of her Pike Street friends were so
distinguished; and Mrs. Coleman not only felt it deeply, but was glad
of the opportunity of letting Mr. Coleman know how good the Carvers
were.

It was late, but Mrs. Coleman produced the Bible.  Zachariah opened
it rather mechanically.  They were going regularly through it at
family worship, and had got into Numbers.  The portion for that
evening was part of the 26th chapter:  "And these are they that were
numbered of the Levites after their families:  of Gershon, the family
of the Gershonites:  of Kohath, the family of the Kohathites:  of
Merari, the family of the Merarites," &c., &c.  Zachariah, having
read about a dozen verses, knelt down and prayed; but, alas, even in
his prayer he saw Pauline's red stockings.

The next morning his wife was more pleasant, and even talkative--
talkative, that is to say, for her.  Something had struck her.

"My dear," quoth she, as they sat at breakfast, "what a pity it is
that the Major is not a converted character!"

Zachariah could not but think so too.

"I have been wondering if we could get him to attend our chapel.  Who
knows?--some word might go to his heart which might be as the seed
sown on good ground."

"Have you tried to convert him yourself?"

"Oh no, Zachariah!  I don't think that would be quite proper."

She screwed up her lips a little, and then, looking down at her knees
very demurely, smoothed her apron.

"Why not, my dear?  Surely it is our duty to testify to the belief
that is in us.  Poor Christiana, left alone, says, as you will
remember, 'O neighbour, knew you but as much as I do, I doubt not but
that you would go with me.'"

"Ah, yes, that was all very well then."  She again smoothed her
apron.  "Besides, you know," she added suddenly, "there were no
public means of grace in the City of Destruction.  Have YOU said
anything to the Major?"

"No."

She did not push her advantage, and the unpleasant fact again stood
before Zachariah's eyes, as it had stood a hundred times before them
lately, that when he had been with sinners he had been just what they
were, barring the use of profane language.  What had he done for his
master with the Major, with Jean, and with Pauline?--and the awful
figure of the Crucified seemed to rise before him and rebuke him.  He
was wretched:  he had resolved over and over again to break out
against those who belonged to the world, to abjure them and all their
works.  Somehow or other, though, he had not done it.

"Suppose," said Mrs. Zachariah, "we were to ask the Major here on
Sunday afternoon to tea, and to chapel afterwards."

"Certainly."  He was rather pleased with the proposition.  He would
be able to bear witness in this way at any rate to the truth.

"Perhaps we might at the same time ask Jean Caillaud, his friend.
Would to God"--his wife started--"would to God," he exclaimed
fervently, "that these men could be brought into the Church of
Christ!"

"To be sure.  Ask Mr. Caillaud, then, too."

"If we do, we must ask his daughter also; he would not go out without
her."

"I was not aware he had a daughter.  You never told me anything about
her."

"I never saw her till the other evening."

"I don't know anything of her.  She is a foreigner too.  I hope she
is a respectable young person."

"I know very little; but she is more English than foreign.  Jean has
been here a good many years, and she came over when she was quite
young.  I think she must come."

"Very well."  And so it was settled.

Zachariah that night vowed to his Redeemer that, come what might, he
would never again give Him occasion to look at him with averted face
and ask if he was ashamed of Him.  The text ran in his ears:
"Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of My words in this
adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be
ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy
angels."



CHAPTER VI--TEA A LA MODE



Sunday afternoon came.  It was the strangest party.  Pauline, on
being introduced to Mrs. Coleman, made a profound curtsey, which Mrs.
Coleman returned by an inclination of her head, as if she consented
to recognise Pauline, but to go no further.  Tea was served early, as
chapel began at half-past six.  Mrs. Coleman, although it was Sunday,
was very busy.  She had made hot buttered toast, and she had bought
some muffins, but had appeased her conscience by telling the boy that
she would not pay for them till Monday.  The milk was always obtained
on the same terms.  She also purchased some water-cresses; but the
water-cress man demanded prompt cash settlement, and she was in a
strait.  At last the desire for the water-cresses prevailed, and she
said:

"How much?"

"Three-halfpence."

"Now, mind I give you twopence for yourself--mind I give it you.  I
do not approve of buying and selling on Sunday.  We will settle about
the other ha'porth another time."

"All right, ma'am; if you like it that way, it's no odds to me;" and
Mrs. Coleman went her way upstairs really believing that she had
prevented the commission of a crime.

Let those of us cast the stone who can take oath that in their own
morality there is no casuistry.  Probably ours is worse than hers,
because hers was traditional and ours is self-manufactured.

Everything being at last in order, Mrs. Coleman, looking rather warm,
but still very neat and very charming, sat at the head of the table,
with her back to the fireplace; the Major was on her right, Jean on
her left, Pauline next to him, and opposite to her Zachariah.
Zachariah and his wife believed in asking a blessing on their food;
but, curiously enough, in 1814, even amongst the strictest sort, it
had come to be the custom not to ask it at breakfast or tea, but only
at dinner; although breakfast and tea in those days certainly needed
a blessing as much as dinner, for they were substantial meals.  An
exception was made in favour of public tea-meetings.  At a public
tea-meeting a blessing was always asked and a hymn was always sung.

For some time nothing remarkable was said.  The weather was very hot,
and Mrs. Coleman complained.  It had been necessary to keep up a fire
for the sake of the kettle.  The Major promptly responded to her
confession of faintness by opening the window wider, by getting a
shawl to put over the back of her chair; and these little attentions
she rewarded by smiles and particular watchfulness over his plate and
cup.  At last he and Jean fell to talking about the jubilee which was
to take place on the first of the next month to celebrate the
centenary of the "accession of the illustrious family of Brunswick to
the throne"--so ran the public notice.  There was to be a grand
display in the parks, a sham naval action on the Serpentine, and a
balloon ascent.

"Are you going, Caillaud?" said the Major.  "It will be a holiday."

"We," cried Pauline--"we!  I should think not.  WE go to rejoice over
your House of Brunswick; and it is to be the anniversary of your
battle of the Nile too!  WE go!  No, no."

"What's your objection to the House of Brunswick?  And as for the
battle of the Nile, you are no friend to Napoleon."  So replied the
Major, who always took a pleasure in exciting Pauline.

"The House of Brunswick!  Why should we thank God for them; thank God
for the stupidest race that ever sat upon a throne; thank God for
stupidity--and in a king, Major?  God, the Maker of the sun and
stars--to call upon the nation to bless Him for your Prince Regent.
As for the Nile, I am, as you say, no friend to Napoleon, but I am
French.  It is horrible to me to think--I saw him the other day--that
your Brunswick Prince is in London and Napoleon is in Elba."

"God, after all," said the Major, laughing, "is not so hostile to
stupidity, then; as you suppose."

"Ah! don't plague me, Major; that's what you are always trying to do.
I'm not going to thank the Supreme for the Brunswicks.  I don't
believe He wanted them here."

Pauline's religion was full of the most lamentable inconsistencies,
which the Major was very fond of exposing, but without much effect,
and her faith was restored after every assault with wonderful
celerity.  By way of excuse for her we may be permitted to say that a
perfectly consistent, unassailable creed, in which conclusion follows
from premiss in unimpeachable order, is impossible.  We cannot
construct such a creed about any man or woman we know, and least of
all about the universe.  We acknowledge opposites which we have no
power to bring together; and Pauline, although she knew nothing of
philosophy, may not have been completely wrong with her Supreme who
hated the Brunswicks and nevertheless sanctioned Carlton House.

Pauline surprised Mrs. Zachariah considerably.  A woman, and more
particularly a young woman, even supposing her to be quite orthodox,
who behaved in that style amongst the members of Pike Street, would
have been like a wild seagull in a farmyard of peaceful, clucking,
brown-speckled fowls.  All the chapel maidens and matrons, of course,
were serious; but their seriousness was decent and in order.  Mrs.
Coleman was therefore scandalised, nervous, and dumb.  Jean, as his
manner was when his daughter expressed herself strongly, was also
silent.  His love for her was a consuming, hungry fire.  It utterly
extinguished all trace, not merely of selfishness, but of self, in
him, and he was perfectly content, when Pauline spoke well, to remain
quiet, and not allow a word of his to disturb the effect which he
thought she ought to produce.

The Major, as a man of the world, thought the conversation was
becoming a little too metaphysical, and asked Mrs. Coleman gaily if
she would like to see the fete.

"Really, I hardly know what to say.  I suppose"--and this was said
with a peculiar acidity--"there is nothing wrong in it?  Zachariah,
my dear, would you like to go?"

Zachariah did not reply.  His thoughts were elsewhere.  But at last
the spirit moved in him:

"Miss Pauline, your Supreme Being won't help you very far.  There is
no light save in God's Holy Word.  God hath concluded them all in
unbelief that He might have mercy upon all.  As by one man's
disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall
many be made righteous.  That is the explanation; that is the gospel.
God allows all this wickedness that His own glory may be manifested
thereby, and His own love in sending Jesus Christ to save us:  that,
as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.  Do you ask
me why does God wink at the crimes of kings and murderers?  What if
God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured
with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction,
and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels
of mercy which He had afore prepared unto glory, even us whom He had
called?  Miss Pauline, the mere light of human reason will never save
you or give you peace.  Unless you believe God's Word you are lost;
lost here and hereafter; lost HERE even, for until you believe it you
wander in a fog of ever deepening confusion.  All is dark and
inexplicable."

Being very much excited, he used largely the words of St. Paul, and
not his own.  How clear it all seemed to him, how indisputable!
Childish association and years of unquestioning repetition gave an
absolute certainty to what was almost unmeaning to other people.

Mrs. Zachariah, although she had expressed a strong desire for the
Major's conversion, and was the only other representative of the
chapel present, was very fidgety and uncomfortable during this
speech.  She had an exquisite art, which she sometimes practised, of
dropping her husband, or rather bringing him down.  So, when there
was a pause, everybody being moved at least by his earnestness, she
said:

"My dear, will you take any more tea?"

He was looking on the table-cloth, with his head on his hands, and
did not answer.

"Major Maitland, may I give you some more tea?"

"No, thank you."  The Major too was impressed--more impressed than
the lady who sat next to him, and she felt rebuffed and annoyed.  To
Pauline, Zachariah had spoken Hebrew; but his passion was human, and
her heart leapt out to meet him, although she knew not what answer to
make.  Her father was in the same position; but the Major's case was
a little different.  He had certainly at some time or other read the
Epistle to the Romans, and some expressions were not entirely
unfamiliar to him.

"'Vessels of wrath fitted to destruction!'--a strong and noble
phrase.  Who are your vessels of wrath, Coleman?"

Caillaud and Pauline saw a little light, but it was speedily eclipsed
again.

"The unregenerate."

"Who are they?"

"Those whom God has not called."

"Castlereagh, Liverpool, Sidmouth, and the rest of the gang, for
example?"

Zachariah felt that the moment had come.

"Yes, yes; but not only they.  More than they.  God help me if I deny
the Cross of Christ--all of us into whose hearts God's grace has not
been poured--we, you, all of us, if we have not been born of the
Spirit and redeemed by the sacrifice of His Son."

Zachariah put in the "us" and the "we," it will be observed.  It was
a concession to blunt the sharpness of that dreadful dividing-line.

"We?  Not yourself, Caillaud, and Pauline?"

He could not face the question.  Something within him said that he
ought to have gone further; that he ought to have singled out the
Major, Caillaud, and Pauline; held them fast, looked straight into
their eyes, and told them each one there and then that they were in
the bonds of iniquity, sold unto Satan, and in danger of hell-fire.
But, alas! he was at least a century and a half too late.  He
struggled, wrestled, self against self, and failed, not through want
of courage, but because he wanted a deeper conviction.  The system
was still the same, even to its smallest details, but the application
had become difficult.  The application, indeed, was a good deal left
to the sinner himself.  That was the difference.  Phrases had been
invented or discovered which served to express modern hesitation to
bring the accepted doctrine into actual, direct, week-day practice.
It was in that way that it was gradually bled into impotence.  One of
these phrases came into his mind.  It was from his favourite author:

"'Who art thou that judgest?'  It is not for me, Major Maitland."

Ah, but, Zachariah, do you not remember that Paul is not speaking of
those who deny the Lord, but of the weak in faith; of differences in
eating and drinking, and the observation of days?  Whether he
remembered it or not, he could say no more.  Caillaud, the Major,
Pauline, condemned to the everlasting consequences of the wrath of
the Almighty!  He could not pronounce such a sentence, and yet his
conscience whispered that just for want of the last nail in a sure
place what he had built would come tumbling to the ground.  During
the conversation the time had stolen away, and, to their horror,
Zachariah and his wife discovered that it was a quarter-past six.  He
hastily informed his guests that he had hoped they would attend him
to his chapel.  Would they go?  The Major consented.  He had nothing
particular on hand, but Caillaud and Pauline refused.  Zachariah was
particularly urgent that these two should accompany him, but they
were steadfast, for all set religious performances were hateful to
them.

"No, Coleman, no more; I know what it all means."

"And I," added Pauline, "cannot sit still with so many respectable
people; I never could.  I have been to church, and always felt
impelled to do something peculiar in it which would have made them
turn me out.  I cannot, too, endure preaching.  I cannot tolerate
that man up in the pulpit looking down over all the people--so wise
and so self-satisfied.  I want to pull him out and say.  'Here, you,
sir, come here and let me see if you can tell me two or three things
I want to know.'  Then, Mr. Coleman, I am never well in a great
building, especially in a church; I have such a weight upon my head
as if the roof were resting on it."

He looked mournfully at her, but there was no time to remonstrate.
Mrs. Zachariah was ready, in her Sunday best of sober bluish cloud-
colour.  Although it was her Sunday best, there was not a single
thread of finery on it, and there was not a single crease nor spot.
She bade Caillaud and Pauline good-bye with much cheerfulness, and
tripped downstairs.  The Major had preceded her, but Zachariah
lingered for a moment with the other two.

"Come, my dear, make haste, we shall be so late."

"Go on with the Major; I shall catch you in a moment; I walk faster
than you.  I must close the window a trifle, and take two or three of
the coals off the fire."

Caillaud and Pauline lingered too.  The three were infinitely nearer
to one another than they knew.  Zachariah thought he was so far, and
yet he was so close.  The man rose up behind the Calvinist, and
reached out arms to touch and embrace his friends.

"Good-bye, Caillaud; good-bye, Pauline!  May God in His mercy bless
and save you.  God bless you!"

Caillaud looked steadfastly at him for a moment. and then, in his
half-forgotten French fashion, threw his arms round his neck, and the
two remained for a moment locked together, Pauline standing by
herself apart.  She came forward, took Zachariah's hand, when it was
free, in both her own, held her head back a little, as if for
clearness of survey, and said slowly, "God bless you, Mr. Coleman."
She then went downstairs.  Her father followed her, and Zachariah
went after his wife and the Major, whom, however, he did not overtake
till he reached the chapel door, where they were both waiting for
him.



CHAPTER VII--JEPHTHAH



The Reverend Thomas Bradshaw, of Pike Street Meeting-House, was not a
descendant from Bradshaw the regicide, but claimed that he belonged
to the same family.  He was in 1814 about fifty years old, and
minister of one of the most important churches in the eastern part of
London.  He was tall and spare, and showed his height in the pulpit,
for he always spoke without a note, and used a small Bible, which he
held close to his eyes.  He was a good classical scholar, and he
understood Hebrew, too, as well as few men in that day understood it.
He had a commanding figure, ruled his church like a despot; had a
crowded congregation, of which the larger portion was masculine; and
believed in predestination and the final perseverance of the saints.
He was rather unequal in his discourses, for he had a tendency to
moodiness, and, at times, even to hypochondria.  When this temper was
upon him he was combative or melancholy; and sometimes, to the
disgust of many who came from all parts of London to listen to him,
he did not preach in the proper sense of the word, but read a
chapter, made a comment or two upon it, caused a hymn to be sung, and
then dismissed his congregation with the briefest of prayers.
Although he took no active part in politics, he was republican
through and through, and never hesitated for a moment in those
degenerate days to say what he thought about any scandal.  In this
respect he differed from his fellow-ministers, who, under the
pretence of increasing zeal for religion, had daily fewer and fewer
points of contact with the world outside.  Mr. Bradshaw had been
married when he was about thirty; but his wife died in giving birth
to a daughter, who also died,--and for twenty years he had been a
widower, with no thought of changing his condition.  He was
understood to have peculiar opinions about second marriages, although
he kept them very much to himself.  One thing, however, was known,
that for a twelvemonth after the death of his wife he was away from
England, and that he came back an altered man to his people in
Bedfordshire, where at that time he was settled.  His discourses were
remarkably strong, and of a kind seldom, or indeed never, heard now.
They taxed the whole mental powers of his audience, and were utterly
unlike the simple stuff which became fashionable with the
Evangelistic movement.  Many of them, taken down by some of his
hearers, survive in manuscript to the present day.  They will not, as
a rule, bear printing, because the assumption on which they rest is
not now assumed; but if it be granted, they are unanswerable; and it
is curious that even now and then, although they are never for a
moment anything else than a strict deduction from what we in the
latter half of the century consider unproven or even false, they
express themselves in the same terms as the newest philosophy.
Occasionally too, more particularly when he sets himself the task of
getting into the interior of a Bible character, he is intensely
dramatic, and what are shadows to the careless reader become living
human beings, with the reddest of blood visible under their skin.

On this particular evening Mr. Bradshaw took the story of Jephthah's
daughter: --"The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah."  Here is an
abstract of his discourse.  "It WAS the Spirit of the Lord,
notwithstanding what happened.  I beg you also to note that there is
a mistranslation in our version.  The Hebrew has it, 'Then it shall
be, that WHOSOEVER'--not WHATSOEVER--'cometh forth of the doors of my
house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon,
shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer HIM'--not IT--'up for a
burnt-offering.'  Nevertheless I believe my text--it WAS the Spirit
of the Lord.  This Hebrew soldier was the son of a harlot.  He was
driven by his brethren out of his father's house.  Ammon made war
upon Israel, and in their distress the elders of Israel went to fetch
Jephthah.  Mark, my friends, God's election.  The children of the
lawful wife are passed by, and the child of the harlot is chosen.
Jephthah forgets his grievances and becomes captain of the host.
Ammon is over against them.  Jephthah's rash vow--this is sometimes
called.  I say it is not a rash vow.  It may be rash to those who
have never been brought to extremity by the children of Ammon--to
those who have not cared whether Ammon or Christ wins.  Men and women
sitting here in comfortable pews"--this was said with a kind of
snarl--"may talk of Jephthah's rash vow.  God be with them, what do
they know of the struggles of such a soul?  It does not say so
directly in the Bible, but we are led to infer it, that Jephthah was
successful because of his vow.  'The Lord delivered them into his
hands.'  He would not have done it if He had been displeased with the
'rash vow'" (another snarl).  "He smote them from Aroer even till
thou come to Minnith.  Ah, but what follows?  The Omnipotent and
Omniscient might have ordered it, surely, that a slave might have met
Jephthah.  Why, in His mercy, did He not do it?  Who are we that we
should question what He did?  But if we may not inquire too closely
into His designs, it is permitted us, my friends, when His reason
accords with ours, to try and show it.  Jephthah had played for a
great stake.  Ought the Almighty--let us speak it with reverence--to
have let him off with an ox, or even with a serf?  I say that if we
are to conquer Ammon we must pay for it, and we ought to pay for it.
Yes, and perhaps God wanted the girl--who can tell?  Jephthah comes
back in triumph.  Let me read the passage to you: --'Behold his
daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances:  AND SHE
WAS HIS ONLY CHILD:  BESIDE HER HE HAD NEITHER SON NOR DAUGHTER.  And
it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said,
Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of
them that trouble me:  for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and
I cannot go back.'  Now, you read poetry, I dare say--what you call
poetry.  I say in all of it--all, at least, I have seen--nothing
comes up to that.  'SHE WAS HIS ONLY CHILD:  BESIDE HER HE HAD
NEITHER SON NOR DAUGHTER.'"--(Mr. Bradshaw's voice broke a little as
he went over the words again with great deliberation and infinite
pathos.)--"The inspired writer leaves the fact just as it stands, and
is content.  Inspiration itself can do nothing to make it more
touching than it is in its own bare nakedness.  There is no thought
in Jephthah of recantation, nor in the maiden of revolt, but
nevertheless he has his own sorrow.  HE IS BROUGHT VERY LOW.  God
does not rebuke him for his grief.  He knows well enough, my dear
friends, the nature which He took upon Himself--nay, are we not the
breath of His nostrils, created in His image?  He does not anywhere,
therefore, I say, forbid that we should even break our hearts over
those we love and lose.  She asks for two months by herself upon the
mountains before her death.  What a time for him!  At the end of the
two months God held him still to his vow; he did not shrink; she
submitted, and was slain.  But you will want me to tell you in
conclusion where the gospel is in all this.  Gospel!  I say that the
blessed gospel is in the Old Testament as well as in the New.  I say
that the Word of God is one, and that His message is here this night
for you and me, as distinctly as it is at the end of the sacred
volume.  Observe, as I have told you before, that Jephthah is the son
of the harlot.  He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy.  He calls
them His people who are not His people; and He calls her beloved
which was not beloved.  God at any rate is no stickler for hereditary
rights.  Moreover, it does not follow because you, my hearers, have
God-fearing parents, that God has elected you.  He may have chosen,
instead of you, instead of me, the wretchedest creature outside,
whose rags we will not touch.  But to what did God elect Jephthah?
To a respectable, easy, decent existence, with money at interest,
regular meals, sleep after them, and unbroken rest at night?  He
elected him to that tremendous oath and that tremendous penalty.  He
elected him to the agony he endured while she was away upon the
hills!  That is God's election; an election to the cross and to the
cry, 'Eli, Eli, lama Sabachthani.'  'Yes,' you will say, 'but He
elected him to the victory over Ammon.'  Doubtless He did; but what
cared Jephthah for his victory over Ammon when she came to meet him,
or, indeed, for the rest of his life?  What is a victory, what are
triumphal arches and the praise of all creation to a lonely man?  Be
sure, if God elects you, He elects you to suffering.  Whom He loveth
He chasteneth, and His stripes are not play-work.  Ammon will not be
conquered unless your heart be well nigh broken.  I tell you, too, as
Christ's minister, that you are not to direct your course according
to your own desires.  You are not to say, -'I will give up this and
that so that I may be saved.'  Did not St. Paul wish himself accursed
from Christ for his brethren?  If God should command you to go down
to the bottomless pit in fulfilment of His blessed designs, it is
your place to go.  Out with self--I was about to say this damned
self; and if Israel calls, if Christ calls, take not a sheep or ox--
that is easy enough--but take your choicest possession, take your own
heart, your own blood, your very self, to the altar."

During the sermon the Major was much excited.  Apart altogether from
the effect of the actual words spoken, Mr:  Bradshaw had a singular
and contagious power over men.  The three, Mrs. Coleman, the Major,
and Zachariah, came out together.  Mrs. Zachariah stayed behind in
the lobby for some female friend to whom she wished to speak about a
Sunday-school tea-meeting which was to take place that week.  The
other two stood aside, ill at ease, amongst the crowd pressing out
into the street.  Presently Mrs. Coleman found her friend, whom she
at once informed that Major Maitland and her husband were waiting for
her, and that therefore she had not a moment to spare.  That little
triumph accomplished, she had nothing of importance to say about the
tea-meeting, and rejoined her party with great good-humour.  She
walked between the Major and Zachariah, and at once asked the Major
how he "enjoyed the service."  The phrase was very unpleasant to
Zachariah, but he was silent.

"Well, ma'am," said the Major, "Mr. Bradshaw is a very remarkable
man.  It is a long time since any speaker stirred me as he did.  He
is a born orator, if ever there was one."

"I could have wished," said Zachariah, "as you are not often in
chapel, that his sermon had been founded on some passage in the New
Testament which would have given him the opportunity of more simply
expounding the gospel of Christ."

"He could not have been better, I should think.  He went to my heart,
though it is rather a difficult passage in the case of a man about
town like me; and I tell you what, Coleman, he made me determine I
would read the Bible again.  What a story that is!"

"Major, I thank God if you will read it; and not for the stories in
it, save as all are part of one story--the story of God's redeeming
mercy."

The Major made no reply, for the word was unwinged.

Mrs. Zachariah was silent, but when they came to their door both she
and her husband pressed him to come in.  He refused, however; he
would stroll homeward, he said, and have a smoke as he went.

"He touched me, Coleman, he did.  I thought, between you and me"--and
he spoke softly--"I had not now got such a tender place; I thought it
was all healed over long ago.  I cannot come in.  You'll excuse me.
Yes, I'll just wander back to Piccadilly.  I could not talk."

They parted, and Zachariah and his wife went upstairs.  Their supper
was soon ready.

"Jane," he said slowly, "I did not receive much assistance from you
in my endeavours to bring our friends to a knowledge of the truth.  I
thought that, as you desired the attempt, you would have helped me a
little."

"There is a reason for everything; and, what is more, I do not
consider it right to take upon myself what belongs to a minister.  It
may do more harm than good."

"Take upon yourself what belongs to a minister!  My dear Jane, is
nobody but a minister to bear witness for the Master?"

"Of course I did not mean to say that; you know I did not.  Why do
you catch at my words?  Perhaps, if you had not been quite so
forward, Mr. Caillaud and his daughter might have gone to chapel."

After supper, and when he was alone, Zachariah sat for some time
without moving.  He presently rose and opened the Bible again, which
lay on the table--the Bible which belonged to his father--and turned
to the fly-leaf on which was written the family history.  There was
the record of his father's marriage, dated on the day of the event.
There was the record of his own birth.  There was the record of his
mother's death, still in his father's writing, but in an altered
hand, the letters not so distinct, and the strokes crooked and formed
with difficulty.  There was the record of Zachariah's own marriage.
A cloud of shapeless, inarticulate sentiment obscured the man's eyes
and brain.  He could not define what he felt, but he did feel.  He
could not bear it, and he shut the book, opening it again at the
twenty-second Psalm--the one which the disciples of Jesus called to
mind on the night of the crucifixion.  It was one which Mr. Bradshaw
often read, and Zachariah had noted in it a few corrections made in
the translation:

"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?  Our fathers trusted in
Thee; they trusted, and Thou didst deliver them. . . .  Be not far
from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. . . .  Be
Thou not far from me, O Lord:  O my strength, haste Thee to help me.
. . .  Save me from the lion's mouth:  and from the horns of the wild
oxen Thou hast answered me."

"From the horns of the wild oxen"--that correction had often been
precious to Zachariah.  When at the point of being pinned to the
ground--so he understood it--help had arisen; risen up from the
earth, and might again arise.  It was upon the first part of the text
he dwelt now.  It came upon him with fearful distinctness that he was
alone--that he could never hope for sympathy from his wife as long as
he lived.  Mr. Bradshaw's words that evening recurred to him.  God's
purpose in choosing to smite Jephthah in that way was partly
intelligible, and, after all, Jephthah was elected to redeem his
country too.  But what could be God's purpose in electing one of his
servants to indifference and absence of affection where he had a
right to expect it?  Could anybody be better for not being loved?
Even Zachariah could not think it possible.  But Mr. Bradshaw's words
again recurred.  Who was he that he should question God's designs?
It might be part of the Divine design that he, Zachariah Coleman,
should not be made better by anything.  It might be part of that
design, part of a fulfilment of a plan devised by the Infinite One,
that he should be broken, nay, perhaps not saved.  Mr. Bradshaw's
doctrine that night was nothing new.  Zachariah had believed from his
childhood, or had thought he believed, that the potter had power over
the clay--of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another
unto dishonour; and that the thing formed unto dishonour could not
reply and say to him that formed it:  'Why hast thou made me thus?'
Nevertheless, to believe it generally was one thing; to believe it as
a truth for him was another.  Darkness, the darkness as of the
crucifixion night, seemed over and around him.  Poor wretch! he
thought he was struggling with his weakness; but he was in reality
struggling against his own strength.  WHY had God so decreed?  Do
what he could, that fatal WHY, the protest of his reason, asserted
itself; and yet he cursed himself for permitting it, believing it to
be a sin.  He walked about his room for some relief.  He looked out
of the window.  It was getting late; the sky was clearing, as it does
in London at that hour, and he saw the stars.  There was nothing to
help him there.  They mocked him rather with their imperturbable,
obstinate stillness.  At last he turned round, fell upon his knees,
and poured out himself before his Maker, entreating Him for light.
He rose from the ground, looked again out of the window, and the
first flush of the morning was just visible.  Light was coming to the
world in obedience to the Divine command, but not to him.  He was
exhausted, and crept into his bedroom, undressing without candle, and
without a sound.  For a few minutes he thought he should never sleep
again, save in his grave; but an unseen Hand presently touched him,
and he knew nothing till he was awakened by the broad day streaming
over him.



CHAPTER VIII--UNCONVENTIONAL JUSTICE



In December, 1814, a steamboat was set in motion on the Limehouse
Canal, the Lord Mayor and other distinguished persons being on board.
In the same month Joanna Southcott died.  She had announced that on
the 19th October she was to be delivered of the Prince of Peace,
although she was then sixty years old.  Thousands of persons believed
her, and a cradle was made.  The Prince of Peace did not arrive, and
in a little more than two months poor Joanna had departed, the cause
of her departure having being certified as dropsy.  Death did not
diminish the number of her disciples, for they took refuge in the
hope of her resurrection.  "The arm of the Lord is not shortened,"
they truly affirmed; and even to this day there are people who are
waiting for the fulfilment of Joanna's prophecies and the appearance
of the "second Shiloh."  Zachariah had been frequently twitted in
joke by his profane companions in the printing-office upon his
supposed belief in the delusion.  It was their delight to assume that
all the "pious ones," as they called them, were alike; and on the
morning of the 30th of December, the day after Joanna expired, they
were more than usually tormenting.  Zachariah did not remonstrate.
In his conscientious eagerness to bear witness for his Master, he had
often tried his hand upon his mates; but he had never had the
smallest success, and had now desisted.  Moreover, his thoughts were
that morning with his comrades, the Friends of the People.  He hummed
to himself the lines from Lara:


"Within that land was many a malcontent,
Who cursed the tyranny to which he bent;
That soil full many a wringing despot saw,
Who worked his wantonness in form of law:
Long war without and frequent broil within
Had made a path for blood and giant sin."


The last meeting had been unusually exciting.  Differences of opinion
had arisen as to future procedure, many of the members, the Secretary
included, advocating action; but what they understood by it is very
difficult to say.  A special call had been made for that night, and
Zachariah was in a difficulty.  His native sternness and detestation
of kings and their ministers would have led him almost to any length;
but he had a sober head on his shoulders.  So had the Major, and so
had Caillaud.  Consequently they held back, and insisted, before
stirring a step towards actual revolution, that there should be some
fair chance of support and success.  The Major in particular warned
them of the necessity of drill; and plainly told them also that, not
only were the middle classes all against them, but their own class
was hostile.  This was perfectly true, although it was a truth so
unpleasant that he had to endure some very strong language, and even
hints of treason.  No wonder:  for it is undoubtedly very bitter to
be obliged to believe that the men whom we want to help do not
themselves wish to be helped.  To work hard for those who will thank
us, to head a majority against oppressors, is a brave thing; but far
more honour is due to the Maitlands, Caillauds, Colemans, and others
of that stamp who strove for thirty years from the outbreak of the
French revolution onwards, not merely to rend the chains of the
prisoners, but had to achieve the more difficult task of convincing
them that they would be happier if they were free.  These heroes are
forgotten, or nearly so.  Who remembers the poor creatures who met in
the early mornings on the Lancashire moors or were shot by the
yeomanry?  They sleep in graves over which stands no tombstone, or
probably their bodies have been carted away to make room for a
railway which has been driven through their resting-place.  They saw
the truth before those whom the world delights to honour as its
political redeemers; but they have perished utterly from our
recollection, and will never be mentioned in history.  Will there
ever be a great Day of Assize when a just judgment shall be
pronounced; when all the impostors who have been crowned for what
they did not deserve will be stripped, and the Divine word will be
heard calling upon the faithful to inherit the kingdom,--who, when "I
was an hungered gave me meat, when I was thirsty gave me drink; when
I was a stranger took me in; when I was naked visited me; when I was
in prison came unto me?"  Never!  It was a dream of an enthusiastic
Galilean youth, and let us not desire that it may ever come true.
Let us rather gladly consent to be crushed into indistinguishable
dust, with no hope of record:  rejoicing only if some infinitesimal
portion of the good work may be achieved by our obliteration, and
content to be remembered only in that anthem which in the future it
will be ordained shall be sung in our religious services in honour of
all holy apostles and martyrs who have left no name.

The night before the special meeting a gentleman in a blue cloak, and
with a cigar in his mouth, sauntered past the entrance to Carter's
Rents, where Mr. Secretary lived.  It was getting late, but he was
evidently not in a hurry, and seemed to enjoy the coolness of the
air, for presently he turned and walked past the entrance again.  He
took out his watch--it was a quarter to eleven o'clock--and he cursed
Mr. Secretary and the beer-shops which had probably detained him.  A
constable came by, but never showed himself in the least degree
inquisitive; although it was odd that anybody should select Carter's
Rents for a stroll.  Presently Mr. Secretary came in sight, a trifle,
but not much, the worse for liquor.  It was odd, also, that he took
no notice of the blue cloak and cigar, but went straight to his own
lodging.  The other, after a few moments followed; and it was a third
time odd that he should find the door unbolted and go upstairs.  All
this, we say, would have been strange to a spectator, but it was not
so to these three persons.  Presently the one first named found
himself in Mr. Secretary's somewhat squalid room.  He then stood
disclosed as the assistant whom the Secretary had first seen at
Whitehall sitting in the Commissioner's Office.  This was not the
second nor third interview which had taken place since then.

"Well, Mr. Hardy, what do you want here to-night?"

"Well, my friend, you know, I suppose.  How goes the game?"

"D---m me if I DO know.  If you think I am going to split, you are
very much mistaken."

"Split!  Who wants you to split?  Why, there's nothing to split
about.  I can tell you just as much as you can tell me."

"Why do you come here then?"

"For the pleasure of seeing you, and to--" Mr. Hardy put his hand
carelessly in his pocket, a movement which was followed by a metallic
jingle--"and just to--to--explain one or two little matters."

The Secretary observed that he was very tired.

"Are you?  I believe I am tired too."

Mr. Hardy took out a little case-bottle with brandy in it, and the
Secretary, without saying a word, produced two mugs and a jug of
water.  The brandy was mixed by Mr. Hardy; but his share of the
spirit differed from that assigned to his friend.

"Split!" he continued; "no, I should think not.  But we want you to
help us.  The Major and one or two more had better be kept out of
harm's way for a little while; and we propose not to hurt them, but
to take care of them a bit, you understand?  And if, the next time,
he and the others will be there--we have been looking for the Major
for three or four days, but he is not to be found in his old
quarters--we will just give them a call.  When will you have your
next meeting?  They will be all handy then."

"You can find that out without my help.  It's to-morrow."

"Ah!  I suppose you've had a stormy discussion.  I hope your moderate
counsels prevailed."

Mr. Secretary winked and gave his head a twist on one side, as if he
meant thereby to say:  "You don't catch me."

"It's a pity," continued Mr. Hardy, taking no notice, "that some men
are always for rushing into extremities.  Why don't they try and
redress their grievances, if they have any, in the legitimate way
which you yourself propose--by petition?"

It so happened that a couple of hours before, Mr. Secretary having
been somewhat noisy and insubordinate, the Major had been obliged to
rule him out of order and request his silence.  The insult--for so he
considered it--was rankling in him.

"Because," he replied, "we have amongst us two or three d---d
conceited, stuck-up fools, who think they are going to ride over us.
By God, they are mistaken though!  They are the chaps who do all the
mischief.  Not that I'd say anything against them--no,
notwithstanding I stand up against them."

"Do all the mischief--yes, you've just hit it.  I do believe that if
it were not for these fellows the others would be quiet enough."

The Secretary took a little more brandy and water.  The sense of
wrong within him was like an open wound, and the brandy inflamed it.
He also began to think that it would not be a bad thing for him if he
could seclude the Major, Caillaud, and Zachariah for a season.
Zachariah in particular he mortally hated.

"What some of these fine folks would like to do, you see, Mr. Hardy,
is to persuade us poor devils to get up the row, while they DIRECT
it.  DIRECT it, that's their word; but we're not going to be
humbugged."

"Too wide awake, I should say."

"I should say so too.  We are to be told off for the Bank of England,
and they are to show it to us at the other end of Cheapside."

"Bank of England," said Mr. Hardy, laughing; "that's a joke.  You
might run your heads a long while against that before you get in.
You don't drink your brandy and water."

The Secretary took another gulp.  "And he's a military man--a
military man--a military man."  He was getting rather stupid now, and
repeated the phrase each of the three times with increasing
unsteadiness, but also with increasing contempt.

Mr. Hardy took our his watch.  It was getting on towards midnight.
"Good-bye; glad to see you all right," and he turned to leave.  There
was a jingling of coin again, and when he had left Mr. Secretary took
up the five sovereigns which had found their way to the table and put
them in his pocket.  His visitor picked his way downstairs.  The
constable was still pacing up and down Carter's Rents, but again did
not seem to observe him, and he walked meditatively to Jermyn Street.
He was at his office by half-past nine, and his chief was only half-
an-hour later.

The Major had thought it prudent to change his address; and,
furthermore, it was the object of the Government to make his arrest,
with that of his colleagues, at the place of meeting, not only to
save trouble, but because it would look better.  Mr. Hardy had found
out, therefore, all he wanted to know, and was enabled to confirm his
opinion that the Major was the head of the conspiracy.

But underneath Mr. Secretary's mine was a deeper mine; for as the
Major sat at breakfast the next morning a note came for him, the
messenger leaving directly he delivered it to the servant.  It was
very brief:- "No meeting to-night.  Warn all except the Secretary,
who has already been acquainted."  There was no signature, and he did
not know the handwriting.  He reflected for a little while, and then
determined to consult Caillaud and Coleman, who were his informal
Cabinet.  He had no difficulty in finding Coleman, but the Caillauds
were not at home, and it was agreed that postponement could do no
harm.  A message was therefore left at Caillaud's house, and one was
sent to every one of the members, but two or three could not be
discovered.

Meanwhile Mr. Secretary, who, strange to say, had NOT been
acquainted, had been a little overcome by Mr. Hardy's brandy on the
top of the beer he had taken beforehand, and woke in the morning very
miserable.  Finding the five guineas in his pocket, he was tempted to
a public-house hard by, in order that he might cool his stomach and
raise his spirits with a draught or two of ale.  He remained there a
little too long, and on reaching home was obliged to go to bed again.
He awoke about six, and then it came into his still somewhat confused
brain that he had to attend the meeting.  At half-past seven he
accordingly took his departure.  Meanwhile the Major and Zachariah
had determined to post themselves in Red Lion Street, to intercept
those of their comrades with whom they had not been able to
communicate, and also to see what was going to happen.  At a quarter
to eight the Secretary turned out of Holborn, and when he came a
little nearer, Zachariah saw that at a distance of fifty yards there
was a constable following him.  He came on slowly until he was
abreast of a narrow court, when suddenly there was a pistol-shot, and
he was dead on the pavement.  Zachariah's first impulse was to rush
forward, but he saw the constable running, followed by others, and he
discerned in an instant that to attempt to assist would lead to his
own arrest and do no good.  He managed, however, to reach the Major,
and for two or three moments they stood stock-still on the edge of
the pavement struck with amazement.  Presently a woman passed them
with a thick veil over her face.

"Home," she said; "don't stay here like fools.  Pack up your things
and be off.  You'll be in prison to-morrow morning."

"Be off!" gasped Zachariah; "be off!--where?"

"Anywhere!" and she had gone.

The constables, after putting the corpse in a hackney coach,
proceeded to the room; but it was dark and empty.  They had no
directions to do anything more that night, and returned to Bow
Street.  The next morning, however, as soon as it was light, a
Secretary of State's warrant, backed by sufficient force, was
presented at the lodgings of Caillaud and Zachariah.  The birds had
flown, and not a soul could tell what had become of them.  In
Zachariah's street, which was rather a Radical quarter, the official
inquiries were not answered politely, and one of the constables
received on the top of his head an old pail with slops in it.  The
minutest investigation failed to discover to whom the pail belonged.



CHAPTER IX--A STRAIN ON THE CABLE



Bow Street was completely at fault, and never discovered the secret
of that assassination.  It was clear that neither the Major nor
Coleman were the murderers, as they had been noticed at some distance
from the spot where the Secretary fell by several persons who
described them accurately.  Nor was Caillaud suspected, as the
constable testified that he passed him on the opposite side of the
street, as he followed the Secretary.  The only conclusion, according
to Bow Street, which was free from all doubt was, that whoever did
the deed was a committee consisting of a single member.  A reward of
500 pounds did not bring forward anybody who knew anything about the
business.  As for Caillaud, his daughter and the Major, the next
morning saw them far on the way to Dover, and eventually they arrived
at Paris in safety.  Zachariah, when he reached home, found his wife
gone.  A note lay for him there, probably from the same hand which
warned the Major, telling him not to lose an instant, but to join in
Islington one of the mails to Manchester.  His wife would start that
night from St. Martin's le Grand by a coach which went by another
road.  He was always prompt, and in five minutes he was out of the
house.  The fare was carefully folded by his unknown friend in the
letter.  He just managed as directed, to secure a place, not by the
regular Manchester mail, but by one which went through Barnet and
stopped to take up passengers at the "Angel."  He climbed upon the
roof, and presently was travelling rapidly through Holloway and
Highgate.  He found, to his relief, that nobody had heard of the
murder, and he was left pretty much to his own reflections.  His
first thoughts were an attempt to unravel the mystery.  Why was it so
sudden?  Why had no word not hint of what was intended reached him?
He could not guess.  In those days the clubs were so beset with spies
that frequently the most important resolutions were taken by one man,
who confided in nobody.  It was winter, but fortunately Zachariah was
well wrapped up.  He journeyed on, hour after hour, in a state of
mazed bewilderment, one thought tumbling over another, and when
morning broke over the flats he had not advanced a single step in the
determination of his future path.  Nothing is more painful to a man
of any energy than the inability to put things in order in himself--
to place before himself what he has to do, and arrange the means for
doing it.  To be the passive victim of a rushing stream of
disconnected impressions is torture, especially if the emergency be
urgent.  So when the sun came up Zachariah began to be ashamed of
himself that the night had passed in these idiotic moonings, which
had left him just where he was, and he tried to settle what he was to
do when he reached Manchester.  He did not know a soul; but he could
conjecture why he was advised to go thither.  It was a disaffected
town, and Friends of the People were very strong there.  His first
duty was to get a lodging, his second to get work, and his third to
find out a minister of God under whom he could worship.  He put this
last, not because it was the least important, but because he had the
most time to decide upon it.  At about ten o'clock at night he came
to his journey's end, and to his joy saw his wife waiting for him.
They went at once to a small inn hard by, and Mrs. Coleman began to
overwhelm him with interrogation; but he quietly suggested that not a
syllable should be spoken till they had had some rest, and that they
should swallow their supper and go to bed.  In the morning Zachariah
rose and looked out of the window.  He saw nothing but a small
backyard in which some miserable, scraggy fowls were crouching under
a cart to protect themselves from the rain, which was falling heavily
through the dim, smoky air.  His spirits sank.  He had no fear of
apprehension or prosecution, but the prospect before him was
depressing.  Although he was a poor man, he had not been accustomed
to oscillations of fortune, and he was in an utterly strange place,
with five pounds in his pocket, and nothing to do.

He was, however, resolved not to yield, and thought it best to begin
with his wife before she could begin with him.

"Now, my dear, tell me what has happened, who sent you here, and what
kind of a journey you have had?"

"Mr. Bradshaw came about seven o'clock, and told me the Government
was about to suppress the Friends of the People; that you did not
know it; that I must go to Manchester; that you would come after me;
and that a message would be left for you.  He took me to the coach,
and paid for me."

"Mr. Bradshaw!  Did he tell you anything more?"

"No; except that he did not think we should be pursued, and that he
would send our things after us when he knew where we were."

"You have not heard anything more, then?"

"No."

"You haven't heard that the Secretary was shot?"

"Shot!  Oh dear!  Zachariah, what will become of us?"

Her husband then told her what he knew, she listening with great
eagerness and in silence.

"Oh, Zachariah, what will become of us?" she broke out again.

"There is no reason to worry yourself, Jane; it is perfectly easy for
me to prove my innocence.  It is better for us, however, to stay here
for a time.  The Government won't go any further with us; they will
search for the murderer--that's all."

"Why, then, are we sent here and the others are let alone?  I suppose
the Major is not here?"

"I cannot say."

"To think I should ever come to this!  I haven't got a rag with me
beyond what I have on.  I haven't got any clean things; a nice sort
of creature I am to go out of doors.  And it all had nothing to do
with us."

"Nothing to do with us!  My dear Jane, do you mean that we are not to
help other people, but sit at home and enjoy ourselves?  Besides, if
you thought it wrong, why did you not say so before?"

"How was I to know what you were doing?  You never told me anything;
you never do.  One thing I do know is that we shall starve and I
suppose I shall have to go about and beg.  I haven't even another
pair of shoes or stockings to my feet."

Zachariah pondered for a moment.  His first impulse was something
very different; but at last he rose, went up to his wife, kissed her
softly on the forehead, and said:

"Never mind, my dear; courage, you will have your clothes next week.
Come with me and look out for a lodging."

Mrs. Zachariah, however, shook herself free--not violently, but still
decidedly--from his caresses.

"Most likely seized by the Government.  Look for a lodging!  That's
just like you!  How can I go out in this pouring rain?"

Zachariah lately, at any rate, had ceased to expect much affection in
his wife for him; but he thought she was sensible, and equal to any
complexity of circumstances, or even to disaster.  He thought this,
not on any positive evidence; but he concluded, somewhat absurdly,
that her coldness meant common sense and capacity for facing trouble
courageously and with deliberation.  He had now to find out his
mistake, and to learn that the absence of emotion neither proves, nor
is even a ground for suspecting, any good whatever of a person; that,
on the contrary, it is a ground for suspecting weakness, and possibly
imbecility.

Mrs. Coleman refused to go out, and after breakfast Zachariah went by
himself, having first inquired what was a likely quarter.  As he
wandered along much that had been before him again and again once
more recurred to him.  He had been overtaken by calamity, and he had
not heard from his wife one single expression of sympathy, nor had he
received one single idea which could help him.  She had thought of
nothing but herself, and even of herself not reasonably.  She was not
the helpmeet which he felt he had a right to expect.  He could have
endured any defect, so it seemed, if only he could have had love; he
could have endured the want of love if only he could have had a
counsellor.  But he had neither, and he rebelled, questioning the
justice of his lot.  Then he fell into the old familiar controversy
with himself, and it was curiously characteristic of him, that, as he
paced those dismal Manchester pavements, all their gloom disappeared
as he re-argued the universal problem of which his case was an
example.  He admitted the unquestionable right of the Almighty to
damn three parts of creation to eternal hell if so He willed; why
not, then, one sinner like Zachariah Coleman to a weary pilgrimage
for thirty or forty years?  He rebuked himself when he found that he
had all his life assented so easily to the doctrine of God's absolute
authority in the election and disposal of the creatures He had made,
and yet that he revolted when God touched him, and awarded him a
punishment which, in comparison with the eternal loss of His
presence, was as nothing.  At last--and here, through his religion,
he came down to the only consolation possible for him--he said to
himself, "Thus hath He decreed; it is foolish to struggle against His
ordinances; we can but submit."  "A poor gospel," says his critic.
Poor!--yes, it may be; but it is the gospel according to Job, and any
other is a mere mirage.  "Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom and stretch
her wings towards the south?"  Confess ignorance and the folly of
insurrection, and there is a chance that even the irremediable will
be somewhat mitigated.  Poor!--yes; but it is genuine; and this at
least must be said for Puritanism, that of all the theologies and
philosophies it is the most honest in its recognition of the facts;
the most real, if we penetrate to the heart of it, in the remedy
which it offers.

He found two small furnished rooms which would answer his purpose
till his own furniture should arrive, and he and his wife took
possession that same morning.  He then wrote to his landlord in
London--a man whom he knew he could trust--and directed him to send
his goods.  For the present, although he had no fear whatever of any
prosecution, he thought fit to adopt a feigned name, with which we
need not trouble ourselves.  In the afternoon he sallied out to seek
employment.  The weather had cleared, but Mrs. Coleman still refused
to accompany him, and she occupied herself moodily with setting the
place to rights, as she called it, although, as it happened, it was
particularly neat and clean.  There was not so much printing done in
Manchester then as now, and Zachariah had no success.  He came home
about seven o'clock, weary and disheartened.  His wife was one of
those women who under misfortune show all that is worst in them, as
many women in misfortune show all that is best.

"You might have been sure you would get nothing to do here.  If, as
you say, there is no danger, why did you not stay in London?"

"You know all about it, my dear; we were warned to come."

"Yes, but why in such a hurry?  Why didn't you stop to think?"

"It is all very well to say so now, but there were only a few minutes
in which to decide.  Besides, when I got home I found you gone."

Mrs. Zachariah conveniently took no notice of the last part of this
remark, which, of course, settled the whole question, but continued:

"Ah, well, I suppose it's all right; but I'm sure we shall starve--I
am convinced we shall.  Oh! I wish my poor dear mother were alive!  I
have no home to go to.  What WILL become of us?"

He lost his patience a little.

"Jane," he said, "what is our religion worth if it does not support
us in times like these?  Does it not teach us to bow to God's will?
Surely we, who have had such advantages, ought to behave under our
trials better than those who have been brought up like heathens.  God
will not leave us.  Don't you remember Mr. Bradshaw's sermon upon the
passage through the Red Sea.  When the Israelites were brought down
to the very shore with nothing but destruction before them, a way was
opened.  What did Mr. Bradshaw bid us observe?  The Egyptians were
close behind--so close that the Israelites saw them; the sea was in
front.  The road was not made till the enemy was upon them, and then
the waters were divided and became a wall unto them on their right
hand and on their left; the very waters, Mr. Bradshaw remarked, which
before were their terror.  God, too, might have sent them a different
way; no doubt He might, but He chose THAT way."

"Zachariah, I heard Mr. Bradshaw as well as yourself; I am a member
of the church just as much as you are, and I don't think it becoming
of you to preach to me as if you were a minister."  Her voice rose
and became shriller as she went on.  "I will not stand it.  Who are
you that you should talk to me so?--bad enough to bring me down here
to die, without treating me as if I were an unconverted character.
Oh! if I had but a home to go to!" and she covered her face with her
apron and became hysterical.

What a revelation!  By this time he had looked often into the soul of
the woman whom he had chosen--the woman with whom he was to be for
ever in this world--and had discovered that there was nothing,
nothing, absolutely nothing which answered anything in himself with a
smile of recognition; but he now looked again, and found something
worse than emptiness.  He found lurking in the obscure darkness a
reptile with cruel fangs which at any moment might turn upon him when
he was at his weakest and least able to defend himself.  He had that
in him by nature which would have prompted him to desperate deeds.
He could have flung himself from her with a curse, or even have
killed himself in order to escape from his difficulty.  But whatever
there was in him originally had been changed.  Upon the wild stem had
been grafted a nobler slip, which drew all its sap from the old root,
but had civilised and sweetened its acrid juices.  He leaned over his
wife, caressed her, gave her water, and restored her.

"God knows," he said, "I did not mean to preach to you.  God in
heaven knows I need that somebody should preach to me."  He knelt
down before her as she remained leaning back in the chair, and he
repeated the Lord's Prayer:  "Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against
us."  But will it be believed that as he rose from his knees, before
he had actually straightened his limbs, two lines from the "Corsair"
flashed into his mind, not particularly apposite, but there they
were:


"She rose--she sprung--she clung to his embrace
Till his heart heaved beneath her hidden face?"


Whence had they descended?  He was troubled at their sudden
intrusion, and he went silently to the window, moodily gazing into
the street.  His wife, left to herself, recovered, and prepared
supper.  There was no reconciliation, at least on her side.  She was
not capable of reconciliation.  Her temper exhausted itself
gradually.  With her the storm never broke up nobly and with
magnificent forgetfulness into clear spaces of azure, with the
singing of birds and with hot sunshine turning into diamonds every
remaining drop of the deluge which had threatened ruin; the change
was always rather to a uniformly obscured sky and a cold drizzle
which lasted all day.

The next morning he renewed his quest.  He was away all day long, but
he had no success.  He was now getting very anxious.  He was
expecting his furniture, which he had directed to be sent to the inn
where they had first stayed, and he would have to pay for the
carriage.  His landlord had insisted on a week's rent beforehand, so
that, putting aside the sum for the carrier, he had now two pounds
left.  He thought of appealing to his friends; but he had a great
horror of asking for charity, and could not bring himself to do it.

The third, fourth, and fifth day passed, with no result.  On the
seventh day he found that his goods had come; but he decided not to
move, as it meant expense.  He took away a chest of clothes, and
remained where he was.  By way of recoil from the older doctrine that
suffering does men good, it has been said that it does no good.  Both
statements are true, and both untrue.  Many it merely brutalises.
Half the crime of the world is caused by suffering, and half its
virtues are due to happiness.  Nevertheless suffering, actual
personal suffering, is the mother of innumerable beneficial
experiences, and unless we are so weak that we yield and break, it
extracts from us genuine answers to many questions which, without it,
we either do not put to ourselves, or, if they are asked, are turned
aside with traditional replies.  A man who is strong and survives can
hardly pace the pavements of a city for days searching for
employment, his pocket every day becoming lighter, without feeling in
after life that he is richer by something which all the universities
in the world could not have given him.  The most dramatic of poets
cannot imagine, even afar off, what such a man feels and thinks,
especially if his temperament be nervous and foreboding.  How
foreign, hard, repellent, are the streets in which he is a stranger,
alone amidst a crowd of people all intent upon their own occupation,
whilst he has none!  At noon, when business is at its height, he,
with nothing to do, sits down on a seat in an open place, or, may be,
on the doorstep of an empty house, unties the little parcel he has
brought with him, and eats his dry bread.  He casts up in his mind
the shops he has visited; he reflects that he has taken all the more
promising first, and that not more than two or three are left.  He
thinks of the vast waste of the city all round him; its miles of
houses; and he has a more vivid sense of abandonment than if he were
on a plank in the middle of the Atlantic.  Towards the end of the
afternoon the pressure in the offices and banks increases; the clerks
hurry hither and thither; he has no share whatever in the excitement;
he is an intrusion.  He lingers about aimlessly, and presently the
great tide turns outwards and flows towards the suburbs.  Every
vehicle which passes him is crowded with happy folk who have earned
their living and are going home.  He has earned nothing.  Let anybody
who wants to test the strength of the stalk of carle hemp in him try
it by the wringing strain of a day thus spent!  How humiliating are
the repulses he encounters!  Most employers to whom a request is made
for something to do prefer to treat it as a petition for aims, and
answer accordingly.  They understand what is wanted before a word is
spoken, and bawl out "No!  Shut the door after you."  One man to whom
Zachariah applied was opening his letters.  For a moment he did not
pay the slightest attention, but as Zachariah continued waiting, he
shouted with an oath, "What do you stand staring there for?  Be off!"
There was once a time when Zachariah would have stood up against the
wretch; but he could not do it now, and he retreated in silence.
Nevertheless, when he got out into the Street he felt as if he could
have rushed back and gripped the brute's throat till he had squeezed
the soul out of his carcass.  Those of us who have craved
unsuccessfully for permission to do what the Maker of us all has
fitted us to do alone understand how revolutions are generated.  Talk
about the atrocities of the Revolution!  All the atrocities of the
democracy heaped together ever since the world began would not equal,
if we had any gauge by which to measure them, the atrocities
perpetrated in a week upon the poor, simply because they are poor;
and the marvel rather is, not that there is every now and then a
September massacre at which all the world shrieks, but that such
horrors are so infrequent.  Again, I say, let no man judge communist
or anarchist TILL HE HAS ASKED FOR LEAVE TO WORK, and a "Damn your
eyes!" has rung in his ears.

Zachariah had some self-respect; he was cared for by God, and in
God's Book was a registered decree concerning him.  These men treated
him as if he were not a person, an individual soul, but as an atom of
a mass to be swept out anywhere, into the gutter--into the river.  He
was staggered for a time.  Hundreds and thousands of human beings
swarmed past him, and he could not help saying to himself as he
looked up to the grey sky, "Is it true, then?  Does God really know
anything about me?  Are we not born by the million every week, like
spawn, and crushed out of existence like spawn?  Is not humanity the
commonest and cheapest thing in the world?"  But as yet his faith was
unshaken, and he repelled the doubt as a temptation of Satan.
Blessed is the man who can assign promptly everything which is not in
harmony with himself to a devil, and so get rid of it.  The pitiful
case is that of the distracted mortal who knows not what is the
degree of authority which his thoughts and impulses possess; who is
constantly bewildered by contrary messages, and has no evidence as to
their authenticity.  Zachariah had his rule still; the suggestion in
the street was tried by it; found to be false; was labelled
accordingly, and he was relieved.

The dread of the real, obvious danger was not so horrible as a vague,
shapeless fear which haunted him.  It was a coward enemy, for it
seized him when he was most tired and most depressed.  What is that
nameless terror?  Is it a momentary revelation of the infinite abyss
which surrounds us; from the sight of which we are mercifully
protected by a painted vapour, by an illusion that unspeakable
darkness which we all of us know to exist, but which we
hypocritically deny, and determine never to confess to one another?
Here again, however, Zachariah had his advantage over others.  He had
his precedent.  He remembered that quagmire in the immortal Progress
into which, if even a good man falls, he can find no bottom; he
remembered that gloom so profound "that ofttimes, when he lifted up
his foot to set forward, he knew not where or upon what he should set
it next;" he remembered the flame and smoke, the sparks and hideous
noises, the things that cared not for Christian's sword, so that he
was forced to betake himself to another weapon called All-prayer; he
remembered how that Christian "was so confounded that he did not know
his own voice;" he remembered the voice of a man as going before,
saying, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I
will fear none ill, for Thou art with me."  Lastly, he remembered
that by-and-by the day broke, and Christian cried, "He hath turned
the shadow of death into the morning."  He remembered all this; he
could connect his trouble with the trouble of others; he could give
it a place in the dispensation of things, and could therefore lift
himself above it.

He had now been in Manchester a fortnight, and his little store had
dwindled down to five shillings.  It was Saturday night.  On the
Sunday, as his last chance, he meant to write to Mr. Bradshaw.  He
went out on the Sunday morning, and had persuaded his wife to
accompany him.  They entered the first place of worship they saw.  It
was a Methodist chapel, and the preacher was Arminian in the extreme.
It was the first time Zachariah had ever been present at a Methodist
service.  The congregation sang with much fervour, and during the
prayer, which was very long, they broke in upon it with ejaculations
of their own, such as "Hear him, O Lord!"--"Lord have mercy on us!"

The preacher spoke a broad Lancashire dialect, and was very dramatic.
He pictured God's efforts to save a soul.  Under the pulpit ledge was
the imaginary bottomless pit of this world--not of the next.  He
leaned over and pretended to be drawing the soul up with a cord.  "He
comes, he comes!" he cried; "God be praised he is safe!" and he
landed him on the Bible.  The congregation gave a great groan of
relief.  "There he is on the Rock of Ages!  No, no, he slips; the
Devil has him!"  The preacher tried to rescue him:  "He is gone--
gone!" and he bent over the pulpit in agony.  The people almost
shrieked.  "Gone--gone!" he said again with most moving pathos, and
was still for a moment.  Then gathering himself up, he solemnly
repeated the terrible verses:  "For it is impossible for those who
were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were
made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of
God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to
renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves
the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame."  Zachariah knew
that text well.  Round it had raged the polemics of ages.  Mr.
Bradshaw had never referred to it but once, and all the elder members
of his congregation were eager in the extreme to hear what he had to
say about it.  He boldly declared that it had nothing to do with the
elect.  He was compelled to do so.  Following his master Calvin, he
made it apply to outsiders.  The elect, says Calvin, are beyond the
risk of fatal fall.  But "I deny," he goes on to say, that "there is
any reason why God may not bestow even on the reprobate a taste of
His favour; may irradiate their minds with some scintillations of His
light; may touch them with some sense of His goodness; may somehow
engrave His word on their minds."  Horrible, most horrible, we
scream, that the Almighty should thus play with those whom He means
to destroy; but let us once more remember that these men did not idly
believe in such cruelty.  They were forced into their belief by the
demands of their understanding, and their assent was more meritorious
than the weak protests of so-called enlightenment.  Zachariah,
pondering absently on what he had heard, was passing out of the
chapel when a hand was gently laid on his shoulder.

"Ah, friend, what are you doing here?"

He turned round and recognised William Ogden, who had been sent by
the Hampden Club in Manchester some six months before as a delegate
to the Friends of the People in London.  The two walked some distance
together, and Zachariah gave him the history of the last three weeks.
With the murder he was, of course, acquainted.  Ogden was a
letterpress printer, and when he heard that Zachariah was in such
straits, he said that he thought he might perhaps find him a job for
the present, and told him to come to his office on the following
morning.  Zachariah's heart rejoiced that his bread would not fail,
but he characteristically rejoiced even more at this signal proof
that his trust in his God was justified.  When he reached home he
proposed to his wife that they should at once kneel down and thank
God for His mercy.

"Of course, Zachariah; but you are not yet sure you will get
anything.  I will take off my things directly."

"Need you wait to take off your things, my dear?"

"Really, Zachariah, you do make such strange remarks sometimes.  I
need not wait; but I am sure it will be more becoming, and it will
give you an opportunity to think over what you are going to say."

Accordingly Mrs. Coleman retired for about five minutes.  On her
return she observed that it was the time for regular family prayer,
and she produced the Bible.  Zachariah had indeed had the opportunity
to think, and he had thought very rapidly.  The mere opening of the
sacred Book, however, always acted as a spell, and when its heavy
lids fell down on either side the room cleared itself of all
haunting, intrusive evil spirits.  He read the seventeenth chapter of
Exodus, the story of the water brought out of the rock; and he
thanked the Almighty with great earnestness for the favour shown him,
never once expressing a doubt that he would not be successful.  He
was not mistaken, for Ogden had a place for him, just as good and
just as permanent as the one he had left in London.



CHAPTER X--DISINTEGRATION BY DEGREES



We must now advance a little more rapidly.  It was in the beginning
of 1815 that Zachariah found himself settled in Manchester.  That
eventful year passed without any external change, so far as he was
concerned.  He became a member of the Hampden Club, to which Ogden
and Bamford belonged; but he heard nothing of Maitland nor of
Caillaud.  He had a letter now and then from Mr. Bradshaw and it was
a sore trial to him that nobody could be found in Manchester to take
the place of that worthy man of God.  He could not attach himself
definitely to any church in the town, and the habit grew upon him of
wandering into this or the other chapel as his fancy led him.  His
comrades often met on Sunday evenings.  At first he would not go; but
he was afterwards persuaded to do so.  The reasons which induced him
to alter his mind were, in the first place, the piety, methodistic
most of it, which was then mixed up with politics; and secondly, a
growing fierceness of temper, which made the cause of the people a
religion.  From 1816 downwards it may be questioned whether he would
not have felt himself more akin with any of his democratic friends,
who were really in earnest over the great struggle, than with a sleek
half Tory professor of the gospel, however orthodox he might have
been.  In 1816 the situation of the working classes had become almost
intolerable.  Towards the end of the year wheat rose to a quarter,
and incendiarism was common all over England.  A sense of insecurity
and terror took possession of everybody.  Secret outrages, especially
fires by night, chill the courage of the bravest, as those know well
enough who have lived in an agricultural county, when, just before
going to bed, great lights are seen on the horizon; when men and
women collect on bridges or on hill tops, asking "Where is it?" and
when fire-engines tearing through the streets arrive useless at their
journey's end because the hose has been cut.  One evening in November
1816, Zachariah was walking home to his lodgings.  A special meeting
of the club had been called for the following Sunday to consider a
proposal made for a march of the unemployed upon London.  Three
persons passed him--two men and a woman--who turned round and looked
at him and then went on.  He did not recognise them, but he noticed
that they stopped opposite a window, and as he came up they looked at
him again.  He could not be mistaken; they were the Major, Caillaud,
and his daughter.  The most joyous recognition followed, and
Zachariah insisted on their going home with him.  It often happens
that we become increasingly intimate with one another even when we
are shut out from all intercourse.  Zachariah had not seen the Major
nor Caillaud nor Pauline for two years, and not a single thought had
been interchanged.  Nevertheless he was much nearer and dearer to
them than he was before.  He had unconsciously moved on a line
rapidly sweeping round into parallelism with theirs.  The
relationship between himself and his wife during those two years had
become, not openly hostile, it is true, but it was neutral.  Long ago
he had given up the habit of talking to her about politics, the thing
which lay nearest to his heart just then.  The pumping effort of
bringing out a single sentence in her presence on any abstract topic
was incredible, and so he learned at last to come home, though his
heart and mind were full to bursting, and say nothing more to her
than that he had seen her friend Mrs. Sykes, or bought his tea at a
different shop.  On the other hand, the revolutionary literature of
the time, and more particularly Byron, increasingly interested him.
The very wildness and remoteness of Byron's romance was just what
suited him.  It is all very well for the happy and well-to-do to talk
scornfully of poetic sentimentality.  Those to whom a natural outlet
for their affection is denied know better.  They instinctively turn
to books which are the farthest removed from commonplace and are in a
sense unreal.  Not to the prosperous man, a dweller in beautiful
scenery, well married to an intelligent wife, is Byron precious, but
to the poor wretch, say some City clerk, with an aspiration beyond
his desk, who has two rooms in Camberwell and who before he knew what
he was doing made a marriage--well--which was a mistake, but who is
able to turn to that island in the summer sea, where dwells Kaled,
his mistress--Kaled, the Dark Page disguised as a man, who watches
her beloved dying:


"Who nothing fears, nor feels, nor heeds, nor sees,
Save that damp brow which rests upon his knees;
Save that pale aspect, where the eye, though dim,
Held all the light that shone on earth for him."


When they came indoors, and Mrs. Zachariah heard on the stairs the
tramp of other feet besides those of her husband, she prepared
herself to be put out of temper.  Not that she could ever be really
surprised.  She was not one of those persons who keep a house orderly
for the sake of appearances.  She would have been just the same if
she had been living alone, shipwrecked on a solitary island in the
Pacific.  She was the born natural enemy of dirt, dust, untidiness,
and of every kind of irregularity, as the cat is the born natural
enemy of the mouse.  The sight of dirt, in fact, gave her a quiet
kind of delight, because she foresaw the pleasure of annihilating it.
Irregularity was just as hateful to her.  She could not sit still if
one ornament on the mantelpiece looked one way and the other another
way, and she would have risen from her deathbed, if she could have
done so, to put a chair straight.  She was not, therefore, aggrieved
in expectancy because she was not fit to be seen.  It was rather
because she resented any interruption of domestic order of which she
had not been previously forewarned.  As it happened, however the
Major came first, and striding into the room, he shook her hand with
considerable fervour and kissed it gallantly.  Her gathering ill-
temper disappeared with the promptitude of a flash.  It was a muddy
night; the Major had not carefully wiped his boots, and the footmarks
were all over the floor.  She saw them, but they were nothing.

"My dear Mrs. Coleman, how are you?  What a blessing to be here again
in your comfortable quarters."

"Really, Major Maitland, it is very good of you to say so.  I am very
glad to see you again.  Where have you been?  I thought we had lost
you for ever."

Caillaud and his daughter had followed.  They bowed to her formally,
and she begged them to be seated.

"Then, my dear madam," continued the Major, laughing, "you must have
thought me dead.  You might have known that if I had not been dead I
must have come back."

She coloured just a trifle, but made no reply further than to invite
all the company to have supper.

Zachariah was somewhat surprised.  He did not know what sort of a
supper it could be; but he was silent.  She asked Pauline to take off
her bonnet, and then proceeded to lay the cloth.  For five minutes,
or perhaps ten minutes, she disappeared, and then there came, not
only bread and cheese, but cold ham, a plentiful supply of beer, and,
more wonderful still, a small cold beefsteak pie.  Everything was
produced as easily as if it had been the ordinary fare, and Zachariah
was astonished at his wife's equality to the emergency.  Whence she
obtained the ham and beefsteak pie he could not conjecture.  She
apologised for having nothing hot; would have had something better if
she had known, etc., etc., and then sat down at the head of the
table.  The Major sat on her right, Pauline next to him, and opposite
to Pauline, Caillaud and Zachariah.  Their hostess immediately began
to ask questions about the events of that fatal night when they all
left London.

The Major, however, interposed, and said that it would perhaps be
better if nothing was said upon that subject.

"A dismal topic," he observed; "talking about it can do no good, and
I for one don't want to be upset by thinking about it just before I
go to bed."

"At least," said Zachariah, "you can tell us why you are in
Manchester?"

"Certainly," replied the Major.  "In the first place, Paris is not
quite so pleasant as it used to be; London, too, is not attractive;
and we thought that, on the whole, Manchester was to be preferred.
Moreover, a good deal will have to be done during the next
twelvemonth, and Manchester will do it.  You will hear all about it
when your club meets next time."

"You've been in Paris?" said Mrs. Zachariah.  "Isn't it very wicked?"

"Well, that depends on what you call wicked."

"Surely there cannot be two opinions on that point."

"It does seem so; and yet when you live abroad you find that things
which are made a great deal of here are not thought so much of there;
and, what is very curious, they think other things very wrong there
of which we take no account here."

"Is that because they are not Christians?"

"Oh dear no; I am speaking of good Christian people; at least so I
take them to be.  And really, when you come to consider it, we all of
us make a great fuss about our own little bit of virtue, and
undervalue the rest--I cannot tell upon whose authority."

"But are they not, Major, dreadfully immoral in France?"

Pauline leaned over her plate and looked Mrs. Coleman straight in the
face.

"Mrs. Coleman, you are English; you--"

Her father put up his hand; he foresaw what was coming, and that upon
this subject Pauline would have defied all the rules of hospitality.
So he replied calmly, but with the calm of suppressed force:

"Mrs. Coleman, as my daughter says, you are English; you are
excusable.  I will not dispute with you, but I will tell you a little
story."

"Will you not take some more beer, Mr. Caillaud, before you begin?"

"No, thank you, madam, I have finished."

Caillaud pushed away his plate, on which three parts of what was
given him, including all the ham, remained untouched, and began--his
Gallicisms and broken English have been corrected in the version now
before the reader:

"In 1790 a young man named Dupin was living in Paris, in the house of
his father, who was a banker there.  The Dupins were rich, and the
son kept a mistress, a girl named Victorine.  Dupin the younger had
developed into one of the worst of men.  He was strictly correct in
all his dealings, sober, guilty of none of the riotous excesses which
often distinguish youth at that age, and most attentive to business;
but he was utterly self-regarding, hard, and emotionless.  What could
have induced Victorine to love him I do not know; but love him she
did, and her love instead of being a folly, was her glory.  If love
were always to be in proportion to desert, measured out in strictest
and justest huckstering conformity therewith, what a poor thing it
would be!  The love at least of a woman is as the love of the Supreme
Himself, and just as magnificent.  Victorine was faithful to Dupin;
and poor and handsome as she was, never wronged him by a loose look.
Well, Dupin's father said his son must marry, and the son saw how
reasonable and how necessary the proposal was.  He did marry, and he
cut himself adrift from Victorine without the least compunction,
allowing her a small sum weekly, insufficient to keep her.  There was
no scene when they parted, for his determination was communicated to
her by letter.  Three months afterwards she had a child of whom he
was the father.  Did she quietly take the money and say nothing?  Did
she tear up the letter in a frenzy and return him the fragments?  She
did neither.  She wrote to him and told him that she would not touch
his gold.  She would never forget him, but she could not be beholden
to him now for a crust of bread.  She had done no wrong hitherto--so
she said, Mrs. Coleman; I only repeat her words--they are not mine.
But to live on him after he had left her would be a mortal crime.  So
they separated, a victim she--both victims, I may say--to this cursed
thing we call Society.  One of the conditions on which the money was
to have been given was, that she should never again recognise him in
any way whatever.  This half of the bargain she faithfully observed.
For some months she was alone, trying to keep herself and her child,
but at last she was taken up by a working stone-mason named Legouve.
In 1793 came the Terror, and the Dupins were denounced and thrown
into the Luxembourg.  Legouve was one of the Committee of Public
Safety.  It came to the recollection of the younger Dupin as he lay
expecting death that he had heard that the girl Victorine had gone to
live with Legouve, and a ray of light dawned on him in his dungeon.
He commissioned his wife to call on Victorine and implore her to help
them.  She did so.  Ah, that was a wonderful sight--so like the
Revolution!  Madame Dupin, in her silks and satins, had often passed
the ragged Victorine in the streets, and, of course, had never taken
the slightest notice of her.  Now Madame was kneeling to her!
Respectability was in the dust before that which was not by any means
respectable; the legitimate before the illegitimate!  Oh, it was, I
say, a wonderful sight in Victorine's wretched garret!  She was
touched with pity, and, furthermore, the memory of her old days with
Dupin and her love for him revived.  Legouve was frightfully jealous,
and she knew that if she pleaded Dupin's cause before him she would
make matters worse.  A sudden thought struck her.  She went to
Couthon and demanded an audience.

"'Couthon,' she said, 'are the Dupins to die?'

"'Yes, to-morrow.'

"'Dupin the younger is the father of my child.'

"'And he has deserted you, and you hate him.  He shall die.'

"'Pardon me, I do not hate him.'

"'Ah, you love him still; but that is no reason why he should be
spared, my pretty one.  We must do our duty.  They are plotters
against the Republic, and must go.'

"'Couthon, they must live.  Consider; shall that man ascend the
scaffold with the thought in his heart that I could have rescued him,
and that I did not; that I have had my revenge?  Besides, what will
be said?--that the Republic uses justice to satisfy private
vengeance.  All the women in my quarter know who I am.'

"'That is a fancy.'

"'Fancy!  Is it a fancy to murder Dupin's wife--murder all that is
good in her--murder the belief in her for ever that there is such a
thing as generosity?  You do not wish to kill the soul?  That is the
way with tyrants, but not with the Republic.'

"Thus Victorine strove with Couthon, and he at last yielded.  Dupin
and his father were released that night, and before daybreak they
were all out of Paris and safe.  In the morning Legouve found that
they were liberated, and on asking Couthon the reason, was answered
with a smile that they had an eloquent advocate.  Victorine had
warned Couthon not to mention her name, and he kept his promise; but
Legouve conjectured but too truly.  He went home, and in a furious
rage taxed Victorine with infidelity to him, in favour of the man who
had abandoned her.  He would not listen to her, and thrust her from
him with curses.  I say nothing more about her history.  I will only
say this, that Pauline is that child who was born to her after Dupin
left her.  I say it because I am so proud that Pauline has had such a
mother!"

"Pauline her daughter!" said Zachariah.  "I thought she was your
daughter."

"She is my daughter:  I became her father."

Everybody was silent.

"Ah, you say nothing," said Caillaud; "I am not surprised.  You are
astonished.  Well may you be so that such a creature should ever have
lived.  What would Jesus Christ have said to her?"

The company soon afterwards rose to go.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Coleman," said the Major in his careless way; "I am
glad to find Manchester does not disagree with you.  At least, I
should think it does not."

"Oh no, Major Maitland, I like it quite as well as London.  Mind, you
promise to come again SOON--very soon."

The Major had gone downstairs first.  She had followed him to the
first landing, and then returned to bid Pauline and Caillaud good-
bye.  She stood like a statue while Pauline put on her hat.

"Good-night, madam," said Caillaud, slightly bowing.

"Good-night, madam," said Pauline, not bowing in the least.

"Good-night," she replied, without relaxing her rigidity.

As soon as they were in the street Pauline said, "Father, I abhor
that woman.  If she lives she will kill her husband."

Mrs. Coleman, on the other hand, at the same moment said, "Zachariah,
Pauline and Caillaud cannot come to this house again."

"Why not?"

"Why not, Zachariah?  I am astonished at you!  The child of a woman
who lived in open sin!"

He made no reply.  Years ago not a doubt would have crossed his mind.
That a member of Mr. Bradshaw's church could receive such people as
Caillaud and Pauline would have seemed impossible.  Nevertheless,
neither Caillaud nor Pauline were now repugnant to him; nor did he
feel that any soundless gulf separated them from him, although, so
far as he knew his opinions had undergone no change.

Mrs. Coleman forbore to pursue the subject, for her thoughts went off
upon another theme, and she was inwardly wondering whether the Major
would ever invite her to the theatre again.  Just as she was going to
sleep, the figure of the Major hovering before her eyes, she suddenly
bethought herself that Pauline, if not handsome, was attractive.  She
started, and lay awake for an hour.  When she rose in the morning the
same thought again presented itself, to dwell with her hence
forwards, and to gnaw her continually like vitriol.



CHAPTER XI--POLITICS AND PAULINE



Soon after this visit debates arose in Zachariah's club which
afterwards ended in the famous march of the Blanketeers, as they were
called.  Matters were becoming very serious, and the Government was
thoroughly alarmed, as well it might be, at the discontent which was
manifest all over the country.  The Prince Regent was insulted as he
went to open Parliament, and the windows of his carriage were broken.
It was thought, and with some reason, that the army could not be
trusted.  One thing is certain, that the reformers found their way
into the barracks at Knightsbridge and had lunch there at the expense
of the soldiers, who discussed Hone's pamphlets and roared with
laughter over the Political Litany.  The Prince Regent communicated
to both Houses certain papers, and recommended that they should at
once be taken into consideration.  They contained evidence, so the
royal message asserted, of treasonable combinations "to alienate the
affections of His Majesty's subjects from His Majesty's person and
Government," &c.  Secret committees were appointed to consider them
both by Lords and Commons, and in about a fortnight they made their
reports.  The text was the Spitalfields meeting of the preceding 2nd
of December.  A mob had made it an excuse to march through the city
and plunder some shops.  Some of the charges brought against the
clubs by the Lords' Committee do not now seem so very appalling.  One
was, that they were agitating for universal suffrage and annual
Parliaments--"projects," say the Committee, "which evidently involve,
not any qualified or partial change but a total subversion of the
British constitution."  Another charge was the advocacy of "parochial
partnership in land, on the principle that the landholders are not
proprietors in chief; that they are but stewards of the public; that
the land is the people's farm; that landed monopoly is contrary to
the spirit of Christianity and destructive of the independence and
morality of mankind."  The Reform party in Parliament endeavoured to
prove that the country was in no real danger, and that the singularly
harsh measures proposed were altogether unnecessary.  That was true.
There was nothing to be feared, because there was no organisation;
but nevertheless, especially in the manufacturing towns, the
suffering was fearful and the hatred of the Government most bitter.
What is so lamentable in the history of those times is the
undisciplined wildness and feebleness of the attempts made by the
people to better themselves.  Nothing is more saddening than the
spectacle of a huge mass of humanity goaded, writhing, starving, and
yet so ignorant that it cannot choose capable leaders, cannot obey
them if perchance it gets them, and does not even know how to name
its wrongs.  The governing classes are apt to mistake the absurdity
of the manner in which a popular demand expresses itself for
absurdity of the demand itself; but in truth the absurdity of the
expression makes the demand more noteworthy and terrible.  Bamford,
when he came to London in the beginning of 1817, records the
impression which the clubs made upon him.  He went to several and
found them all alike; "each man with his porter-pot before him and a
pipe in his mouth; many speaking at once, more talkers than thinkers;
more speakers than listeners.  Presently 'Order' would be called, and
comparative silence would ensue; a speaker, stranger or citizen,
would be announced with much courtesy and compliment.  'Hear, hear,
hear' would follow, with clapping of hands and knocking of knuckles
on the tables, till the half-pints danced; then a speech, with
compliments to some brother orator or popular statesman; next a
resolution in favour of Parliamentary Reform, and a speech to second
it; an amendment on some minor point would follow; a seconding of
that; a breach of order by some individual of warm temperament; half
a dozen would rise to set him right; a dozen to put them down; and
the vociferation and gesticulation would become loud and
confounding."

The Manchester clubs had set their hearts upon an expedition to
London--thousands strong; each man with a blanket to protect him and
a petition in his hand.  The discussion on this project was long and
eager.  The Major, Caillaud and Zachariah steadfastly opposed it; not
because of its hardihood, but because of its folly.  They were
outvoted; but they conceived themselves loyally bound to make it a
success.  Zachariah and Caillaud were not of much use in
organisation, and the whole burden fell upon the Major.  Externally
gay, and to most persons justifying the charge of frivolity, he was
really nothing of the kind when he had once settled down to the work
he was born to do.  His levity was the mere idle sport of a mind
unattached and seeking its own proper object.  He was like a cat,
which will play with a ball or its own tail in the sunshine, but if a
mouse or a bird crosses its path will fasten on it with sudden
ferocity.  He wrought like a slave during the two months before the
eventful 10th March 1817, and well nigh broke his heart over the
business.  Everything had to be done subterraneously; for though the
Habeas Corpus Act was not yet suspended, preparations for what looked
like war were perilous.  But this was not the greatest difficulty.
He pleaded for dictatorial powers, and at once found he had made
himself suspected thereby.  He was told bluntly that working men did
not mean to exchange one despot for another, and that they were just
as good as he was.  Any other man would have thrown up his commission
in disgust, but not so Major Maitland.  He persevered unflaggingly,
although a sub-committee had been appointed to act with him and check
his proceedings.  The secretary of this very sub-committee, who was
also treasurer, was one of the causes of the failure of the
enterprise, for when the march began neither he nor the funds with
which he had been entrusted could be found.  After the club meetings
in the evening there was often an adjournment to Caillaud's lodgings,
where the Major, Zachariah, Caillaud, and Pauline sat up till close
upon midnight.  One evening there was an informal conference of this
kind prior to the club meeting on the following night.  The Major was
not present, for he was engaged in making some arrangements for the
commissariat on the march.  He had always insisted on it that they
were indispensable, and he had been bitterly opposed the week before
by some of his brethren, who were in favour of extempore foraging
which looked very much like plunder.  He carried his point,
notwithstanding some sarcastic abuse and insinuations of half-
heartedness, which had touched also Caillaud and Zachariah, who
supported him.  Zachariah was much depressed.

"Mr. Coleman, you are dull," said Pauline.  "What is the matter?"

"Dull!--that's not exactly the word.  I was thinking of to-morrow."

"Ah!  I thought so.  Well?"

Zachariah hesitated a little.  "Is it worth all the trouble?" at last
he said, an old familiar doubt recurring to him--"Is it worth all the
trouble to save them?  What are they?--and, after all, what can we do
for them?  Suppose we succeed, and a hundred thousand creatures like
those who blackguarded us last week get votes, and get their taxes
reduced, and get all they want, what then?"

Pauline broke in with all the eagerness of a woman who is struck with
an idea--"Stop, stop, Mr. Coleman.  Here is the mistake you make.
Grant it all--grant your achievement is ridiculously small--is it not
worth the sacrifice of two or three like you and me to accomplish it?
That is our error.  We think ourselves of such mighty importance.
The question is, whether we are of such importance, and whether the
progress of the world one inch will not be cheaply purchased by the
annihilation of a score of us.  You believe in what you call
salvation.  You would struggle and die to save a soul; but in reality
you can never save a man; you must be content to struggle and die to
save a little bit of him--to prevent one habit from descending to his
children.  You won't save him wholly, but you may arrest the
propagation of an evil trick, and so improve a trifle--just a trifle-
-whole generations to come.  Besides, I don't believe what you will
do is nothing.  'Give a hundred thousand blackguard creatures votes'-
-well, that is something.  You are disappointed they do not at once
become converted and all go to chapel.  That is not the way of the
Supreme.  Your hundred thousand get votes, and perhaps are none the
better, and die as they were before they had votes.  But the Supreme
has a million, or millions, of years before Him."

Zachariah was silent.  Fond of dialectic, he generally strove to
present the other side; but he felt no disposition to do so now, and
he tried rather to connect what she had said with something which he
already believed.

"True," he said at last; "true, or true in part.  What are we?--what
are we?" and so Pauline's philosophy seemed to reconcile itself with
one of his favourite dogmas, but it had not quite the same meaning
which it had for him ten years ago.

"Besides," said Caillaud, "we hate Liverpool and all his crew.  When
I think of that speech at the opening of Parliament I become violent.
There it is; I have stuck it up over the mantelpiece:


"Deeply as I lament the pressure of these evils upon the country, I
am sensible that they are of a nature not to admit of an immediate
remedy.  But whilst I observe with peculiar satisfaction the
fortitude with which so many privations have been borne, and the
active benevolence which has been employed to mitigate them, I am
persuaded that the great sources of our national prosperity are
essentially unimpaired; and I entertain a confident expectation that
the native energy of the country will at no distant period surmount
all the difficulties in which we are involved."


"My God," continued Caillaud, "I could drive a knife into the heart
of the man who thus talks!"

"No murder, Caillaud," said Zachariah.

"Well, no.  What is it but a word?  Let us say sacrifice.  Do you
call the death of your Charles a murder?  No; and the reason why you
do not is what?  Not that it was decreed by a Court.  There have been
many murders decreed by Courts according to law.  Was not the death
of your Jesus Christ a murder?  Murder means death for base, selfish
ends.  What said Jesus--that He came to send a sword?  Of course He
did.  Every idea is a sword.  What a God He was!  He was the first
who ever cared for the people--for the real people, the poor, the
ignorant, the fools, the weak-minded, the slaves.  The Greeks and
Romans thought nothing of these.  I salute thee, O Thou Son of the
People!" and Caillaud took down a little crucifix which, strange to
say, always hung in his room, and reverently inclined himself to it.
"A child of the people," he continued, "in everything, simple,
foolish, wise, ragged, Divine, martyred Hero."

Zachariah was not astonished at this melodramatic display, for he
knew Caillaud well; and although this was a little more theatrical
than anything he had ever seen before, it was not out of keeping with
his friend's character.  Nor was it insincere, for Caillaud was not
an Englishman.  Moreover, there is often more insincerity in
purposely lowering the expression beneath the thought, and denying
the thought thereby, than in a little exaggeration.  Zachariah,
although he was a Briton, had no liking for that hypocrisy which
takes a pride in reducing the extraordinary to the commonplace, and
in forcing an ignoble form upon that which is highest.  The
conversation went no further.  At last Caillaud said:

"Come, Pauline, a tune; we have not had one for a long time."

Pauline smiled, and went into her little room.  Meanwhile her father
removed chairs and table, piling them one on another so as to leave a
clear space.  He and Zachariah crouched into the recess by the
fireplace.  Pauline entered in the self same short black dress
trimmed with red, with the red artificial flower, wearing the same
red stockings and dancing-slippers, but without the shawl.  The
performance this time was not quite what it was when Zachariah had
seen it in London.  Between herself and the corner where Zachariah
and her father were seated she now had an imaginary partner, before
whom she advanced, receded, bowed, displayed herself in the most
exquisitely graceful attitudes, never once overstepping the mark, and
yet showing every limb and line to the utmost advantage.  Zachariah,
as before, followed every movement with eager--shall we say with
hungry eyes?  He was so unused to exhibitions of this kind that their
grace was not, as it should have been, their only charm; for, as we
before observed, in his chapel circle even ordinary dancing was a
thing prohibited.  The severity of manners to which he had been
accustomed tended to produce an effect the very opposite to that
which was designed; for it can hardly be doubted that if it were the
custom in England for women to conceal the face, a glimpse of an eye
or a nose would excite unpleasant thoughts.

The dance came to an end, and as it was getting late Zachariah rose.

"Stop," said Caillaud.  "It is agreed that if they persist on this
march, one or the other of us goes too.  The Major will be sure to
go.  Which shall it be, you or me?"

"We will draw lots."

"Good."  And Zachariah departed, Pauline laughingly making him one of
her costume curtseys.  He was very awkward.  He never knew how to
conduct himself becomingly, or with even good manners, on commonplace
occasions.  When he was excited in argument he was completely equal
to the best company, and he would have held his own on level terms at
a Duke's dinner-party, provided only the conversation were
interesting.  But when he was not intellectually excited he was
lubberly.  He did not know what response to make to Pauline's
graceful adieu, and retreated sheepishly.  When he got home he found
his wife waiting for him.  The supper was cleared away, and, as
usual, she was reading, or pretending to be reading, the Bible.

"You have had supper, of course?"  There was a peculiar tone in the
"of course," as if she meant to imply not merely that it was late,
but that he had preferred to have it with somebody else.

"I do not want any."

"Then we had better have prayers."



CHAPTER XII--ONE BODY AND ONE SPIRIT



Next week Zachariah found it necessary to consult with Caillaud
again.  The Major was to be there.  The intended meeting was
announced to Mrs. Coleman by her husband at breakfast on the day
before, and he informed her that he should probably be late, and that
no supper need be kept for him.

"Why do you never meet here, Zachariah?  Why must it always be at
Caillaud's?"

"Did you not say that they should not come to this house again?"

"Yes; but I meant I did not want to see them as friends.  On business
there is no reason why Caillaud should not come."

"I cannot draw the line."

"Zachariah, do you mean to call unconverted infidels your friends?"

They were his friends--he felt they were--and they were dear to him;
but he was hardly able as yet to confess it, even to himself.

"It will not do," he said.  "Besides, Caillaud will be sure to bring
his daughter."

"She will not be so bold as to come if she is not asked.  Do _I_ go
with you anywhere except when I am asked?"

"She has always been used to go out with her father wherever he goes.
She knows all his affairs, and is very useful to him."

"So it seems.  She must be VERY useful.  Well, if it must be so, and
it is on business, invite her too."

"I think still it will be better at Caillaud's; there more room.
There would be five of us."

"How do you make five?"

"There is the Major.  And why, by the way, do you object to Caillaud
and Pauline more than the Major?  He is not converted."

"There is plenty of room here.  I didn't say I didn't object to the
Major.  Besides, there is a difference between French infidels and
English people, even if they are not church members.  But I see how
it is.  You want to go there, and you will go.  I am of no use to
you.  You care nothing for me.  You can talk to such dreadful
creatures as Caillaud and that woman who lives with him, and you
never talk to me.  Oh, I wish Mr. Bradshaw were here, or I were back
again at home!  What would Mr. Bradshaw say?"

Mrs. Coleman covered her face in her hands.  Zachariah felt no pity.
His anger was roused.  He was able to say hard things at times, and
there was even a touch of brutality in him.

"Whose fault is it that I do not talk to you?  When did I ever get
any help from you?  What do you understand about what concerns me,
and when have you ever tried to understand anything?  Your home is no
home to me.  My life is blasted, and it might have been different.
The meeting shall not be here, and I will do as I please."

He went out of the room in a rage, and downstairs into the street,
going straight to his work.  It is a terrible moment when the first
bitter quarrel takes place, and when hatred, even if it be hatred for
the moment only first finds expression.  That moment can never be
recalled!  Is it ever really forgotten, or really forgiven?  Some of
us can call to mind a word, just one word, spoken, twenty, thirty,
forty, fifty years ago, which rings in our ears even to-day as
distinctly as when it was uttered, and forces the blood into the head
as it did then.  When Zachariah returned that night he and his wife
spoke to each other as if nothing had happened, but they spoke only
about indifferent things.  The next day Mrs. Coleman wondered
whether, after all, he would repent; but the evening came and she
waited and waited in vain.  The poor woman for hours and hours had
thought one thought and one thought only, until at last she could
bear it no longer.  At about eight o'clock she rose, put on her
cloak, and went out of doors.  She made straight for Caillaud's
house.  It was cold, and the sky was clear at intervals, with masses
of clouds sweeping over the nearly full moon.  What she was to do
when she got to Caillaud's had not entered her head.  She came to the
door and stopped.  It had just begun to rain heavily.  The sitting-
room was on the ground-floor, abutting on the pavement.  The blind
was drawn down, but not closely, and she could see inside.  Caillaud
Pauline, and Zachariah were there, but not the Major.  Caillaud was
sitting by the fireside; her husband and Pauline were talking
earnestly across the table.  Apparently both of them were much
interested, and his face was lighted up as she never saw it when he
was with her.  She was fascinated, and could not move.  It was a dull
lonely street and nobody was to be seen that wet night.  She had no
protection from the weather but her cloak, and in ten minutes, as the
rain came down more heavily, she was wet through and shivering from
head to foot--she who was usually so careful, so precise, so
singularly averse from anything like disorder.  Still she watched--
watched every movement of those two--every smile, every gesture; and
when Caillaud went out of the room, perhaps to fetch something, she
watched with increasing and self-forgetting intensity.  She had not
heard footsteps approaching.  The wind had risen; the storm was ever
fiercer and fiercer, and the feverish energy which poured itself into
her eyes had drained and deadened every other sense.

"Well, my good woman, what do you want?"

She turned with a start, and it was the Major!

"Mrs. Coleman!  Good God! what are you doing here?  You are soaked.
Why don't you come in?"

"Oh no, Major Maitland indeed I cannot.  I--I had been out, and I had
just stopped a moment.  I didn't know it was going to rain."

"But I say you are dripping.  Come in and see you husband; he will go
with you."

"Oh no, Major, please don't; please don't mention it to him; oh no,
please don't; he would be very vexed.  I shall be all right; I will
go on at once and dry myself."

"You cannot go alone.  I will see you as far as your house.  Here,
take my coat and put it over your shoulders."

The Major took off a heavy cloak with capes, wrapped it round her,
drew her arm through his, and they went to her lodgings.  She forgot
Zachariah, Caillaud, and Pauline.  When they arrived she returned the
cloak and thanked him.  She dared not ask him upstairs and he made no
offer to stay.

"Please say nothing to my husband; promise you will not.  He would be
in such a way if he thought I had been out; but I could not help it."

"Oh, certainly not, Mrs. Coleman, if you wish it; though I am sure he
wouldn't, he couldn't be angry with you."

She lingered as he took the coat.

"Come inside and put it on, Major Maitland; why, it is you who are
dripping now.  You will not wear that over your sopped clothes.
Cannot I lend you something?  Won't you have something hot to drink?"

"No, thank you.  I think not; it is not so bad as all that."

He shook hands with her and had gone.

She went upstairs into her dark room.  The fire was out.  She lighted
no candle, but sat down just as she was, put her head on the table,
and sobbed as if her heart would break.  She was very seldom overcome
by emotion of this kind, and used to be proud that she had never once
in her life fainted, and was not given to hysterics.  Checked at last
by a deadly shivering which came over her, she took off her wet
garments, threw them over a chair, and crept into bed, revolving in
her mind the explanation which she could give to her husband.  When
she saw him, and he inquired about her clothes, she offered some
trifling excuse, which seemed very readily to satisfy him, for he
made scarcely any reply, and was soon asleep.  This time it was her
turn to lie awake, and the morning found her restless, and with every
symptom of a serious illness approaching.



CHAPTER XIII--TO THE GREEKS FOOLISHNESS



Neither Mrs. Coleman nor her husband thought it anything worse than a
feverish cold, and he went to his work.  It was a club night, the
night on which the final arrangements for the march were to be made,
and he did not like to be away.  His wife was to lie in bed; but a
woman in the house offered to wait upon her and bring what little
food she wanted.  It was settled at the club that the Major should
accompany the expedition and Zachariah and Caillaud having drawn
lots, the lot fell upon Caillaud.  A last attempt was made to
dissuade the majority from the undertaking; but it had been made
before, not only by our three friends, but by other Lancashire
societies, and had failed.  The only effect its renewal had now was a
disagreeable and groundless insinuation which was unendurable.  On
his return from the meeting Zachariah was alarmed.  His wife was in
great pain, and had taken next to nothing all day.  Late as it was,
he went for a doctor, who would give no opinion as to the nature of
the disease then, but merely ordered her some kind of sedative
mixture, which happily gave her a little sleep.  Zachariah was a
working man and a poor man.  Occasionally it does happen that a
working man and a poor man has nerves, and never does his poverty
appear so hateful to him as when he has sickness in his house.

The mere discomforts of poverty are bad enough--the hunger and cold
of it--but worse than all is the impossibility of being decently ill,
or decently dying, or of paying any attention to those who take it
into their heads to be ill or to die.  A man tolerably well off can
at least get his wife some help when she is laid up, and when she is
near her end can remain with her to take her last kiss and blessing.
Not so the bricklayer's labourer.  If his wife is in bed, he must
depend upon charity for medicine and attendance.  And although he
knows he will never see her again, he is forced away to the job on
which he is employed; for if he does not go he will lose it, and must
apply to the parish for a funeral.  Happily the poor are not slow to
help one another.  The present writer has known women who have to
toil hard all day long, sit up night after night with their
neighbours, and watch them with the most tender care.  Zachariah
found it so in his case.  A fellow-lodger, the mother of half-a-dozen
children, a woman against whom the Colemans had conceived a
prejudice, and whom they had avoided, came forward and modestly asked
Zachariah if she might "look after" Mrs. Coleman while he was away.
He thought for a moment of sundry harsh things which he had said
about her, and then a well-known parable came into his mind about a
certain Samaritan, and he could have hugged her with joy at her
offer.

Mrs. Carter was one of those healthy, somewhat red-faced, gay
creatures whom nothing represses.  She was never melancholy with
those who were suffering; not because she had no sympathy for she was
profoundly sympathetic--but because she was subduable.  Her pulse was
quick, and her heart so sound that her blood, rich and strong--blood
with never a taint in it--renewed every moment every fibre of her
brain.  Her very presence to those who were desponding was a magnetic
charm and she could put to flight legions of hypochondriacal fancies
with a cheery word.  Critics said she ruled her husband; but what
husband would not rejoice in being so ruled?  He came home weary and
he did not want to rule.  He wanted to be directed, and he gladly saw
the reins in the hands of his "missus," of whom he was justly proud.
She conducted all the conversation; she spent his money, and even
bought him his own clothes; and although she said a sharp thing or
two now and then, she never really quarrelled with him.  The eldest
of her six children was only twelve years old, and she was not over
methodical, so that her apartments were rather confused and
disorderly.  She was not, however, dirty, and would not tolerate dirt
even in her boys, to whom, by the way, she administered very short
and sharp corrections sometimes.  If they came to the table with
grimy paws, the first intimation they had that their mother noticed
it was a rap on the knuckles with the handle of a knife which sent
the bread and butter flying out of their fingers.  She read no books,
and, what was odd in those days, did not go to chapel or church; but
she had her "opinions," as she called them, upon everything which was
stirring in the world, and never was behindhand in the news.  She was
really happier when she found that she had to look after Mrs.
Coleman.  She bustled about, taking directions from the doctor--not
without some scepticism, for she had notions of her own on the
subject of disease--and going up and down stairs continually to see
how her patient was getting on.  It was curious that although she was
a heavy woman she was so active.  She was always on her legs from
morning to night, and never seemed fatigued.  Indeed, when she sat
still she was rather uncomfortable; and this was her weak point, for
her restlessness interfered with sewing and mending, which she
abominated.

The time for the march was close at hand.  The Habeas Corpus Act had
meanwhile been suspended and every reformer had to walk very warily.
Ogden, in whose office it will be remembered that Zachariah was
engaged, had issued a handbill informing all the inhabitants of
Manchester and its neighbourhood that on the 10th March a meeting
would be held near St. Peter's Church of those persons who had
determined to carry their petitions to London.  Zachariah, going to
his shop, as usual, on the morning of the 10th--a Monday--was
astonished to find that Ogden was arrested and in prison.

We must, however, for a time, follow the fortunes of Caillaud and the
Major on that day.  They were both astir at five o'clock, and joined
one another at the club.  All the members were to assemble there at
seven.  Never was the Major more despondent.  As for organisation,
there was none, and every proposal he had made had been thwarted.  He
saw well enough, as a soldier, that ten times the enthusiasm at his
command would never carry a hundred men to London in that cold
weather, and that if twenty thousand started, the number would be the
difficulty.  The Yeomanry cavalry were under orders to oppose them,
and what could an undisciplined mob do against a semi-military force?
The end of it would be the prompt dispersion of the pilgrims and the
discredit of the cause.  Nevertheless, both he and Caillaud had
determined not to desert it.  The absence of all preparations on the
part of these poor Blanketeers was, in truth, very touching, as it
showed the innocent confidence which they had in the justice of their
contention.  Their avowed object was to present a petition personally
to the Prince Regent, that they might "undeceive" him; as if such a
thing were possible, or, being possible, would be of the slightest
service.  The whole country would rise and help them; their journey
would be a triumphal procession; they were not a hostile army; the
women would come to the doors and offer them bread and milk; they
would reach London; Lord Liverpool would resign; and they would come
back to Manchester with banners flying, having saved their country.
At nine o'clock the club was in St. Peter's fields, and a kind of
platform had been erected, from which an address was to be given.
Caillaud and the Major were down below.  Both of them were aghast at
what they saw.  Thousands of men were present with whom they were
unacquainted, who had been attracted by Ogden's proclamation; some
with coats; others without coats; some with sticks; some with
petitions; but most of them with blankets, which they had rolled up
like knapsacks.  The Major's heart sank within him.  What on earth
could he do?  Nothing except accompany them and try to prevent
collision with the troops.  The magistrates were distracted by no
doubts whatever.  They read the Riot Act, although there was no riot,
nor the semblance of one, and forthwith surrounded the platform and
carried off everyone on it to prison.  The crowd was then chased by
the soldiers and special constables, till all power of combination
was at an end.  About three hundred however, were collected, and
found their way to Ardwick Green.  They had been joined by others on
the route, and the Major informally reviewed his men.  Never, surely,
was there such a regiment! never, surely, did any regiment go on such
an errand!  Ragged many of them; ignorant all, fanatical, penniless,
they determined, in spite of all arguments, to proceed.  He pointed
out that if they could be so easily scattered when they were
thousands strong, every one of them would be cut down or captured
before they were twenty miles on the road.  He was answered as before
with contempt and suspicions of cowardice.  A Methodist, half-
starved, grey-haired, with black rings round his eyes and a yellow
face, harangued them.

"My friends," he said, "we have been told to go back; that we are too
few to accomplish the task to which we have set ourselves.  What said
the Lord unto Gideon, Judges vii.:  'The people that are with thee
are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands lest
Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved
me.  Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying,
Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from
Gilead.'  Well, twenty-two thousand went back and at last Gideon had
only the three hundred who lapped the water.  By those three hundred
Israel was saved from the Midianites.  Our thousands have left us;
but we shall triumph.  It may be the Lord's will that more should
depart.  It may be that there are yet too many.  I say, then, in the
words of Gideon, 'Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return.'
Is there anybody?"  (Loud shouts answered "None.")  "The Lord is with
us," continued the speaker--"the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!"
Every one shouted again.

Respectable Manchester was frightened when the Blanketeers met, and
laughed them to scorn when they were dispersed.  No wonder at the
laughter.  What could be more absurd?  And yet, when we call to mind
the THING then on the throne; the THING that gave 180 pounds for an
evening coat, and incurred enormous debts, while his people were
perishing; the THING that drank and lied and whored; the THING that
never did nor said nor thought anything that was not utterly brutish
and contemptible--when we think that the THING was a monarch, Heaven-
ordained, so it was said, on which side does the absurdity really
lie?  Of a truth, not only is the wisdom of this world foolishness,
as it ever was, but that which to this world is foolishness is
adjudged wisdom by the Eternal Arbiter.  The Blanketeers shivering on
Ardwick Green, the weavers who afterwards drilled on the Lancashire
moors, and were hung according to law, or killed at Peterloo, are
less ridiculous than those who hung or sabred them, less ridiculous
than the Crimean war and numberless dignified events in human
history, the united achievements of the sovereigns and ministries of
Europe.

The route of the three hundred was towards Stockport; but when they
reached the bridge they found it occupied by the Yeomanry and a troop
of the Life Guards.  To attempt to force a passage was impossible;
but numbers threw themselves into the river, and so crossed.  The
soldiers then withdrew into Stockport town, and the bridge was left
open to the main body.  When they got into the street on the other
side the soldiers and police dashed at them, and arrested everybody
whom they could catch.  The Major was foremost in the crowd,
endeavouring to preserve some sort of discipline, and one of the
Yeomanry, suspecting him to be a leader, rode up to him, and, leaning
from his horse, collared him.  He was unarmed; but he was a powerful
man, and wrenched himself free.  The soldier drew his sword, and
although Caillaud was close by, and attempted to parry the blow with
a stick, the Major lay a dead man on the ground.  The next moment,
however, the soldier himself was dead--dead from a pistol-shot fired
by Caillaud, who was instantly seized, handed over to a guard, and
marched off with a score of others to Manchester jail.  A remnant
only of the Blanketeers escaped from Stockport, and a smaller remnant
got to Macclesfield.  There there was no shelter for them, and many
of them lay in the streets all night.  When the morning dawned only
twenty went on into Staffordshire, and these shortly afterwards
separated, and wandered back to Manchester.  The sword of Gideon was,
alas! not the sword of the Lord, and aching hearts in that bitter
March weather felt that there was something worse than the cold to be
borne at they struggled homewards.  Others, amongst whom was our
Methodist orator, were not discouraged.  It is a poor religion which
makes no provision for disaster, and even for apparently final
failure.  The test of faith is its power under defeat, and these
silly God-fearing souls argued to themselves that their Master's time
was not their time; that perhaps they were being punished for their
sins, and that when it pleased Him they would triumph.  Essentially
right they were, right in every particular, excepting, perhaps, that
it was not for their own sins that this sore visitation came upon
them.  Visitation for sin it was certainly, but a visitation for the
sins of others--such is the way of Providence, and has been ever
since the world began, much to the amazement of many reflective
persons.  Thou hast laid on Him the iniquity of us all, and Jesus is
crucified rather than the Scribes and Pharisees!  Yet could we really
wish it otherwise?  Would it have been better in the end that
Caiaphas and the elders should have been nailed upon Calvary, and
Jesus die at a good old age, crowned with honour?  It was not yet
God's time in 1817, but God's time was helped forward, as it
generally is, by this anticipation of it.  It is a commonplace that a
premature outbreak puts back the hands of the clock and is a blunder.
Nine times out of ten this is untrue, and a revolt instantaneously
quenched in blood is not merely the precursor, but the direct
progenitor of success.

We will spend no time over the death of Major Maitland.  The tragic
interest, as one of our greatest masters has said, lies not with the
corpse but with the mourners, and we turn back to Zachariah.  Ogden's
office was shut.  On the night after the breakdown at Stockport a
note in pencil was left at Zachariah's house, in Pauline's
handwriting.  It was very short: --"Fly for your life--they will have
you to-night--P."

Fly for his life!  But how could he fly, with his wife in bed and
with no work before him?  Would it not be base to leave her?  Then it
occurred to him that if he were taken and imprisoned, he would be
altogether incapable of helping her.  He determined to speak to Mrs.
Carter.  He showed her the note, and she was troubled with no
hesitation of any kind.

"My good man," she said, "you be off this minute.  That's what you've
got to do.  Never mind your wife; I'll see after her.  Expense?
Lord, Mr. Coleman what's that?  She don't eat much.  Besides, we'll
settle all about that afterwards."

Zachariah hesitated.

"Now don't stand shilly-shallying and a-thinking and a-thinking,--
that never did anybody any good.  I can't a-bear a man as thinks and
thinks when there's anything to be done as plain as the nose in his
face.  Where's your bag?"

Mrs. Carter was out of the room in an instant, and in ten minutes
came back with a change of clothes.

"Now, let us know where you are; but don't send your letters here.
You write to my sister; there's her address.  You needn't go up
there; your wife's asleep.  I'll bid her good-bye for you.  Take my
advice--get out of this county somewhere, and get out of Manchester
to-night."

"I must go upstairs to get some money," and Zachariah stole into his
bedroom to take half a little hoard which was in a desk there.  His
wife, as Mrs. Carter had said, was asleep.  He went to her bedside
and looked at her.  She was pale and worn.  Lying there unconscious,
all the defects which had separated him from her vanished.  In sleep
and death the divine element of which we are compounded reappears,
and we cease to hate or criticise; we can only weep or pray.  He
looked and looked again.  The hours of first love and courtship
passed before him; he remembered what she was to him then, and he
thought that perhaps the fault, after all, might have been on his
side, and that he had perhaps not tried to understand her.  He
thought of her loneliness--taken away by him into a land of
strangers--and now he was about to desert her; he thought, too, that
she also was one of God's children just as much as he was; perhaps
more so.  The tears filled his eyes, although he was a hard, strong
man not used to tears, and something rose in his throat and almost
choked him.  He was about to embrace her; but he dared not disturb
her.  He knelt down at the foot of the bed, and in an agony besought
his God to have mercy on him.  "God have mercy on me!  God have mercy
on her!"  That was all he could say--nothing else, although he had
been used to praying habitually.  His face was upon her feet, as she
lay stretched out there, and he softly uncovered one of them, so
gently that she could not perceive it.  Spotlessly white it was, and
once upon a time she was so attractive to him because she was so
exquisitely scrupulous!  He bent his lips over it, kissed it--she
stirred, but did not wake; a great cry almost broke from him, but he
stifled it and rose.  There was a knock at the door, and he started.
It was Mrs. Carter.

"Come," she said as he went out, "you have been here long enough.
Poor dear man!--there, there--of course it's hard to bear--poor dear
man!"--and the good creature put her hand affectionately on his
shoulder.

"I don't know how it is," she continued, wiping her eyes with her
apron, "I can't a-bear to see a man cry.  It always upsets me.  My
husband ain't done it above once or twice in his life, and, Lord, I'd
sooner a cried myself all night long.  Good-bye, my dear, good-bye,
good-bye; God bless you!  It will all come right."

In another minute Zachariah was out of doors.  It was dark, and
getting late.  The cold air revived him but he could not for some
time come to any determination as to what he ought to do next.  He
was not well acquainted with the country round Manchester, and he
could not decide to what point of the compass it would be safest to
bend his steps.  At last he remembered that at any rate he must
escape from the town boundaries, and get a night's lodging somewhere
outside them.  With the morning some light would possibly dawn upon
him.

Pauline's warning was well-timed, for the constables made a descent
upon Caillaud's lodgings as soon as they got him into jail, and
thence proceeded to Coleman's.  They insisted on a search, and Mrs.
Carter gave them a bit of her mind, for they went into every room of
the house, and even into Mrs. Coleman's bedroom.

"I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Nadin," she said, turning towards the
notorious chief constable, "if God A'mighty had to settle who was to
be hung in Manchester, it wouldn't be any of them poor Blanketeers.
Wouldn't you like to strip the clothes off the bed?  That would be
just in your line."

"Hold your damned tongue!" quoth Mr. Nadin; but, nevertheless, seeing
his men grinning and a little ashamed of themselves, he ordered them
back.

Meanwhile Zachariah pursued his way north-westward unchallenged, and
at last came to a roadside inn, which he thought looked safe.  He
walked in, and found half a dozen decent-looking men sitting round a
fire and smoking.  One of them was a parson, and another was one of
the parish overseers.  It was about half-past ten, and they were not
merry, but a trifle boozy and stupid.  Zachariah called for a pint of
beer and some bread and cheese, and asked if he could have a bed.
The man who served him didn't know; but would go and see.  Presently
the overseer was beckoned out of the room, and the man came back
again and informed Zachariah that there was no bed for him, and that
he had better make haste with his supper, as the house would close at
eleven.  In a minute or two the door opened again, and a poor,
emaciated weaver entered and asked the overseer for some help.  His
wife, he said, was down with the fever; he had no work; he had had no
victuals all day, and he and his family were starving.  He was
evidently known to the company.

"Ah," said the overseer, "no work, and the fever and starving; that's
what they always say.  I'll bet a sovereign you've been after them
Blanketeers."

"It's a judgment on you," observed the parson.  "You and your like go
setting class against class; you never come near the church, and then
you wonder God Almighty punishes you."

"You can come on your knees to us when it suits you, and you'd burn
my rick to-morrow," said a third.

"There's a lot of fever amongst 'em down my way," said another, whose
voice was rather thick, "and a damned lot of expense they are, too,
for physic and funerals.  It's my belief that they catch it out of
spite."

"Aren't you going to give me nothing?" said the man.  "There isn't a
mouthful of food in the place, and the wife may be dead before the
morning."

"Well, what do you say, parson?" said the overseer.

"I say we've got quite enough to do to help those who deserve help,"
he replied, "and that it's flying in the face of Providence to
interfere with its judgment."  With that he knocked the ashes out of
his pipe, and took a great gulp of his brandy-and-water.

There was an echo of assent.

"God have mercy on me!" said the man, as he sat down on the form by
the table.  Zachariah touched him gently, and pushed the plate and
jug to him.  He looked at Zachariah, and without saying a word,
devoured it greedily.  He just had time to finish, for the landlord,
entering the room, roughly ordered them to turn out.  Out they went
accordingly.

"The Lord in heaven curse them!" exclaimed Zachariah's companion when
they were in the road.  "I could have ripped 'em up, every one of
'em.  My wife is in bed with her wits a-wandering, and there a'nt a
lump of coal, nor a crumb of bread, nor a farthing in the house."

"Hush, my friend, cursing is of no use."

"Ah! it's all very well to talk; you've got money maybe."

"Not much.  I too have no work, no lodging, and I'm driven away from
home.  Here's half of what's left."

"What a sinner I am!" said the other.  "You wouldn't think it, to
hear me go on as I did, but I am a Methodist.  The last two or three
days, though, I've been like a raving madman.  That's the worst of
it.  Starvation has brought the devil into me.  I'm not a-going to
take all that though, master; I'll take some of it; and if ever I
prayed to the Throne of Grace in my life, I'll pray for you.  Who are
you?  Where are you going?"

Zachariah felt that he could safely trust him, and told him what had
happened.

"I haven't got a bit of straw myself on which to put you; but you
come along with me."

They walked together for about half a mile, till they came to a barn.
There was a haystack close by, and they dragged some of the dry hay
into it.

"You'd better be away from these parts afore it's light, and, if you
take my advice, Liverpool is the best place for you."

He was right.  Liverpool was a large town, and, what was of more
consequence, it was not so revolutionary as Manchester, and the
search there for the suspected was not so strict.  The road was
explained, so far as Zachariah's friend knew it, and they parted.

Zachariah slept but little, and at four o'clock, with a bright moon,
he started.  He met with no particular adventure, and in the evening
found himself once more in a wilderness of strange streets, with no
outlook, face to face with the Red Sea.  Happy is the man who, if he
is to have an experience of this kind, is trained to it when young,
and is not suddenly brought to it after a life of security.
Zachariah, although he was desponding, could now say he had been in
the same straits before, and had survived.  That is the consolation
of all consolations to us.  We have actually touched and handled the
skeleton, and after all we have not been struck dead. {132}


"O socii, neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum,
O passi graviora, dabit Deus his quoque finem.
Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantes
Accestis scopulos; vos et Cyclopia saxa
Experti.  Revocate animos, moestumque timorem
Mittite; forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit."


He wandered down to the water and saw a ship cleared for some port
across the Atlantic.  A longing seized him to go with her.  Over the
sea,--he thought there he would be at rest.  So we all think, and as
we watch the vessels dropping below the horizon in the sunset cloud,
we imagine them bound with a happy crew to islands of the blest, the
truth being that the cloud is a storm, and the destined port is as
commonplace and full of misery as the one they have left.  Zachariah,
however, did not suffer himself to dream.  He went diligently and
systematically to work; but this time all his efforts were fruitless.
He called on every printing-office he could find, and there was not
one which wanted a hand, or saw any prospect of wanting one.  He
thought of trying the river-side; but he stood no chance there, as he
had never been accustomed to carry heavy weights.  His money was
running short, and at last, when evening came on the third day, and
he was faint with fatigue, his heart sank.  He was ill, too, and
sickness began to cloud his brain.  As the power of internal
resistance diminishes, the circumstance of the external world presses
on us like the air upon an exhausted glass ball, and finally crushes
us.  It saddened him, too, to think, as it has saddened thousands
before him, that the fight which he fought, and the death which,
perhaps, was in front of him, were so mean.  Ophelia dies; Juliet
dies, and we fancy that their fate, although terrible, is more
enviable than that of a pauper who drops undramatically on London
stones.  He came to his lodging at the close of the third day, wet,
tired, hungry, and with a headache.  There was nobody to suggest
anything to him or offer him anything.  He went to bed, and a
thousand images, uncontrolled, rushed backwards and forwards before
him.  He became excited, so that he could not rest, and after walking
about his room till nearly daylight, turned into bed again.  When
morning had fairly arrived he tried to rise, but he was beaten.  He
lay still till about eleven, and then the woman who kept the lodging-
house appeared and asked him if he was going to stay all day where he
was.  He told her he was very bad; but she went away without a word,
and he saw nothing more of her.  Towards night he became worse and
finally delirious.



CHAPTER XIV--THE SCHOOL OF ADVERSITY THE SIXTH FORM THEREOF



When Zachariah came to himself he was in a large, long, whitewashed
room, with twenty beds or more in it.  A woman in a greyish check
dress was standing near him.

"Where am I?" he said.

"Where are yer?" she said; "why, in the workus infirmary, to be sure,
with me a-looking after yer.  Where would yer be?"

Zachariah relapsed and was still.  The next time he opened his eyes
the woman had left him.  It was true he was in the workhouse, and a
workhouse then was not what it is now.  Who can possibly describe
what it was?  Who can possibly convey to anybody who has not known
what it was by actual imprisonment in it any adequate sense of its
gloom; of the utter, callous, brutal indifference of the so-called
nurses; of the neglect of the poor patients by those who were paid to
attend to them; of the absence of even common decency; of the
desperate persistent attempts made by everybody concerned to impress
upon the wretched mortals who were brought there that they were
chargeable to the parish and put there for form's sake, prior to
being shovelled into a hole in the adjoining churchyard?  The
infirmary nurses were taken from the other side of the building--
sometimes for very strange reasons.  The master appointed them, and
was not bound to account to anybody for his preferences.  One woman
had given him much trouble.  She was a stout, lazy brute, who had no
business in the House, and who went in and out just as she liked.
One day something displeased her, and she attacked him with such fury
and suddenness that he would have been a dead man in a few minutes if
she had not been pulled off.  But he dared not report her.  She knew
too much about him, and she was moved a few days afterwards to look
after the sick.  She it was who spoke to Zachariah.  She, however,
was not by any means the worst.  Worse than her were the old,
degraded, sodden, gin-drinking hags, who had all their lives breathed
pauper air and pauper contamination; women with not one single
vestige of their Maker's hand left upon them, and incapable, even
under the greatest provocation, of any human emotion; who would see a
dying mother call upon Christ, or cry for her husband and children,
and would swear at her and try to smother her into silence.  As for
the doctor, he was hired at the lowest possible rate, and was allowed
a certain sum for drugs.  It was utterly insufficient to provide
anything except the very commonest physic; and what could he do in
the midst of such a system, even if he had been inclined to do
anything?  He accordingly did next to nothing; walked through the
wards, and left his patients pretty much to Providence.  They were
robbed even of their food.  They were not much to be pitied for being
robbed of the stimulants, for every drop, including the "port wine,"
was obtained by the directors from those of their number or from
their friends who were in the trade, and it was mostly poisonous.
Death is always terrible--terrible on the battlefield; terrible in a
sinking ship; terrible to the exile--but the present writer, who has
seen Death in the "House" of years gone by, cannot imagine that he
can ever be so distinctively the King of Terrors as he was there.
The thought that thousands and thousands of human beings, some of
them tender-hearted, have had to face him there is more horrifying
than the thought of French soldiers freezing in their blood on the
Borodino, or of Inquisitional tortures.  It is one of those thoughts
which ought not to be thought--a thought to be suppressed, for it
leads to atheism, or even something worse than mere denial of a God.
Thank Heaven that the present generation of the poor has been
relieved at least of one argument in favour of the creed that the
world is governed by the Devil!  Thank Heaven that the modern
hospital, with its sisters gently nurtured, devoted to their duty
with that pious earnestness which is a true religion, has supplied
some evidence of a Theocracy.

Zachariah looked round again.  There was an old male attendant near
him.  He had on a brown rough coat with brass buttons, and shoes
which were much too big for him.  They were supplied in sizes, and
never fitted.  The old men always took those that were too large.
They had as their place of exercise a paved courtyard surrounded by
high brick walls, and they all collected on the sunny side, and
walked up and down there, making a clapping noise with their feet as
the shoes slipped off their heels.  This sound was characteristic of
the whole building.  It was to be heard everywhere.

"You've been very bad," said the old man, "but you'll get better now;
it a'nt many as get better here."

He was a poor-looking, half-fed creature, with a cadaverous face.  He
had the special, workhouse, bloodless aspect--just as if he had lived
on nothing stronger than gruel and had never smelt fresh air.  The
air, by the way, of those wards was something peculiar.  It had no
distinctive odour--that is to say, no odour which was specially this
or that; but it had one that bore the same relation to ordinary
odours which well-ground London mud bears to ordinary colours.  The
old man's face, too, had nothing distinctive in it.  The only thing
certainly predicable of him was, that nothing could be predicated of
him.  He was neither selfish nor generous; neither a liar nor
truthful; neither believed anything, nor disbelieved anything; was
neither good nor bad; had no hope hereafter, nor any doubt.

"Who are you?" said Zachariah.

"Well, that ain't easy to say.  I does odd jobs here as the nurses
don't do, and I gets a little extra ration."

"How long have I been here?"

"About a fortnight."

Zachariah was too weak to say anything more, and fell asleep again.
Next day he was better, and he then thought of his wife; he thought
of Caillaud, the Major, and Pauline; but he had no power to reflect
connectedly.  He was in that miserable condition in which objects
present themselves in a tumbling crowd, one following the other with
inconceivable rapidity, the brain possessing no power to disentangle
the chaos.  He could not detach the condition of his wife, for
example, and determine what ought to be done; he could not even bring
himself to decide if it would be best to let her know where he was.
No sooner did he try to turn his attention to her, even for a moment,
than the Major came before him, and then his other friends, and then
the workhouse and the dread of death there.  Mercifully he went to
sleep again, and after another long night's rest he was much
stronger.  He was able now--first sign of restored power--to settle
that he ought before everything to communicate with Mrs. Carter, and
he inquired of the old man if he could write.

"Oh, yes, I can write," said he, and something like a gleam of light
passed over his countenance at being asked to practise an art almost
forgotten in those walls.

A letter was accordingly written to Mrs. Carter, at her sister's
address, telling her briefly what had happened, but that she was not
to be alarmed, as the writer was rapidly recovering.  He was able to
sign his name; but when the letter was finished, he reflected that he
had not got a coin in his pocket with which to pay the postage.  One
of the institutions of the workhouse was, however, a kind of pawnshop
kept by one of the under-masters, as they were called, and Zachariah
got a shilling advanced on a pocket-knife.  The letter, therefore,
was duly despatched, and he gave his secretary a penny for his
trouble.  This led to a little further intimacy, and Zachariah asked
him how he came there.

"I don't know," he replied.  "I was born in the country, and when I
was fourteen, my father apprenticed me to the watchmaking.  He was
well off--my father was--and when I was out of my time he set me up
in business in Liverpool.  It was a business as had been established
some time--a fairish business it was.  But when I came to Liverpool I
felt dull."

"What do you mean by dull?  Stupid?"

"No, not exactly that.  You know what dull means, don't you?--low-
spirited like--got nothing to talk about.  Well, I can't tell how it
come about, but I was always dull, and have been so ever since.  I
got married soon after I was settled.  My wife was a good sort of
woman, but she wasn't cheerful, and she wasn't very strong.  Somehow
the business fell off.  Customers as used to come didn't come, and I
got no new ones.  I did my work pretty well; but still, for all that,
things went down and down by degrees.  I never could make out why,
except that people liked to be talked to, and I had nothing
particular to say to any of them when they came in.  The shop, too,
ought to have been painted more often, and I ought to have had
something in the window, but, as I say, I was always dull, and my
wife wasn't strong.  At last I was obliged to give up and go to
journey-work; but when I got old I couldn't see, and was put in
here."

"But," said Zachariah, "is that all?  Why, you are nearly seventy
years old.  You must have something more to tell me."

"No.  I don't know as I have; that seems about all."

"But what became of your father?  He was well off.  What became of
his money when he died?"

"I'd had my share."

"Had you no brothers nor sisters to help you?"

"Yes, I had some."

"Did they let you come here?"

"Why, you see, as I've told you before, I was dull, and my wife
wasn't strong.  They never came much to see me.  It was my fault; I
never had nothing to say to them."

"Had you no children?"

"Yes, I had a son and daughter."

"Are they alive now?"

"Yes--both of them; at least I haven't heard as they are dead."

"And able to keep themselves?"

"They used to be."

"And do you mean that your son and daughter let you go to the
workhouse?"

The old man was a little disturbed, and for a moment some slight sign
of nervous excitement revealed itself in his lustreless eyes.

"I haven't see anything of 'em for years."

"Did you quarrel?"

"No, we didn't quarrel; but they left off visiting us.  They both of
them married, and went out a good bit, and were gayer than we were.
We used to ask them, and then they'd look in sometimes:  but never
except when they were asked, and always seemed to wish to get away.
We never had nothing to show anybody, nor nothing to give anybody;
for we didn't drink and I never smoked.  They went away too, both of
them, from Liverpool, somewhere towards London."

"But when you broke down didn't you inform them?"

"No.  I hadn't heard anything of them for so long.  I thought I might
as well get into the House.  It will do very well."

"Didn't you know anybody belonging to your church or chapel?"

"Well, we went to church; but when the business dropped we left off
going, for nothing much seemed to come of it, and nobody ever spoke
to us."

"Wouldn't you like to get out of this place?"

"No--I don't know as I should now; I shouldn't know what to do, and
it won't last long."

"How old are you?"

"Sixty-five."

It puzzled Zachariah that the man's story of his life was so short--
all told in five minutes.

"But did you never have any adventures?  Did you never hear about
anything, or see anybody worth remembering?  Tell me all about
yourself.  We've got nothing to do."

"I don't recollect anything particular after I came to Liverpool.
Things seemed to go on pretty much in the same way."

"But you got married, and your wife died?"

"Yes--I got married, and she died."

"What was your wife's name?"

"Her name was Jenkins; she was the daughter of the saddler that lived
next door."

"Couldn't her friends have helped you?"

"After she died they had nothing more to do with me."

"And you really cannot tell me any more?"

"No--how can I?  What more is there to tell?  It's all alike."

The old pauper was called away, and went shuffling along to the door,
leaving Zachariah to his meditations.

Another day passed, and he was lying half asleep when a visitor was
announced, and close upon the announcement stood before him--who
should it be?--no other than Mrs. Carter, out of breath, radiant,
healthy, impetuous.

"God bless the poor dear man!" she burst out; "to think of finding
you here, and not to have told us before.  But I suppose you
couldn't.  Directly as I got your letter off I came, and here I am,
you see."

Her presence was like the south-west wind and sunlight after long
north-easterly gloom and frost.  Astonishing is that happy power
which some people possess which enables them at once to dispel
depression and even disease.  A woman like Mrs. Carter comes into a
house where there is misery and darkness; where the sufferer is
possessed by demons; unnameable apprehensions, which thicken his
blood and make him cry for death, and they retreat precipitately, as
their brethren were fabled to retreat at the sign of the cross.  No
man who is so blessed as to have a friend with that magnetic force in
him need disbelieve in much of what is recorded as miraculous.
Zachariah felt as if a draught of good wine had been poured down his
throat.  But he instantly asked:

"How is my wife?"

"She is all right; but you mustn't bother about her.  You must come
out at once.  You mustn't go back to Manchester just yet--not as
they'd care much about you now; Nadin's got plenty of work to do, and
wouldn't concern himself about you--but you aren't well enough and
are better away.  Now, look here--I'll tell you what I've been and
done.  I've got a cousin living here in Liverpool, as good a soul as
ever lived.  I goes to her and tells her you must stay there."

"But how can I?  Just think of the trouble and expense.  I don't know
her."

"Lord a mercy, there you are again--trouble and expense!  What
trouble will you be?  And as for expense, one would think you'd been
living like a Lord Mayor to hear you talk.  What are we made for if
not to help one another?"

"I can't walk; and shouldn't I be obliged to get the doctor's
permission?"

"Walk!  Of course you can't.  And what did my husband say to me
before I started?  Says he, 'You'll have to get a conveyance to take
him.'  'Leave me alone for that,' says I; 'although right you are.'
And I says to my cousin's husband, who drives a hackney coach, 'Just
you drop down and carry him home.  It won't be ten minutes out of
your time.'  So he'll be here in about a quarter of an hour.  As for
the doctor, I understand as much about you as he does, and, doctor or
no doctor, you won't sleep in this bed to-night.  I'll go and tell
the head nurse or master, or somebody or the other, that you are off.
You just put on your clothes."

In a short time she returned, found Zachariah dressed, wrapped him
round in shawls and rugs, helped him downstairs, put him into the
coach, and brought him to her cousin's.  It was a little house, in a
long uniform street; but a good deal of pains had been taken with it
to make it something special.  There were two bedroom windows in
front, on the upper storey, and each one had flowers outside.  The
flower-pots were prevented from falling off the ledge by a lattice-
work wrought in the centre into a little gate--an actual little gate.
What purpose it was intended to answer is a mystery; but being there
the owner of the flower-pots unfastened it every morning when the
sill was dusted, and removed them through it, although lifting them
would have been a much simpler operation.  There were flowers in the
sitting-room downstairs too; but they were inside, as the window was
flush with the pavement.  This sitting-room was never used except on
Sundays.  It was about nine feet square, and it had in it a cupboard
on either side of the fireplace, a black horse-hair sofa alongside
the wall on the right-hand side of the door, red curtains, a black
horse-hair arm-chair, three other chairs to match, a little round
table, two large shells, a framed sampler on the wall representing
first the letters of the alphabet, then the figures 1, 2, 3, &c.,
and, finally, a very blue Jesus talking to a very red woman of
Samaria on a very yellow well--underneath, the inscription and date,
"Margaret Curtin, 10th March 1785."  The only other decorations--for
pictures were dear in those days--were two silhouettes, male, and
female, one at each corner of the mantelpiece, and two earthenware
dogs which sat eternally looking at one another on the top of one of
the cupboards.  On the cupboard farthest away from the window was a
large Bible with pictures in it and notes, and, strange to say, a
copy of Ferguson's Astronomy and a handsome quarto edition in three
volumes of Cook's First Voyage.  Everything was as neat and clean as
it could possibly be; but Mr. and Mrs. Hocking had no children, and
had saved a little money.

Into this apartment Zachariah was brought.  There was a fire burning,
though it was not cold, and on the table, covered with a perfectly
white cloth, stood a basin of broth, with some toast, a little brandy
in a wine-glass, a jug of water, and a tumbler.  The books, including
the Bible, had apparently not been read much, and were probably an
heirloom.  As Zachariah began to recover strength he read the
Ferguson.  It was the first time he had ever thought seriously of
Astronomy, and it opened a new world to him.  His religion had
centred all his thoughts upon the earth as the theatre of the history
of the universe, and although he knew theoretically that it was but a
subordinate planet, he had not realised that it was so.  For him,
practically, this little globe had been the principal object of the
Creator's attention.  Ferguson told him also, to his amazement, that
the earth moved in a resisting medium, and that one day it would
surely fall into the sun.  That day would be the end of the world,
and of everything in it.  He learned something about the magnitude of
the planets and the distances of the fixed stars, and noted that his
author, pious as he is, cannot admit that planets or stars were
created for the sake of man.  He dwelt upon these facts, more
especially upon the first till the ground seemed to disappear under
his feet, and he fell into that strange condition in which people in
earthquake countries are said to be when their houses begin to
tremble.  We may laugh, and call him a fool to be disturbed by a
forecast of what is not going to happen for millions of years; but he
was not a fool.  He was one of those unhappy creatures whom an idea
has power to shake, and almost to overmaster.  Ferguson was a
Christian, and the thought of the destruction of our present
dwelling-place, with every particle of life on it, did not trouble
him.  He had his refuge in Revelation.  Zachariah too was a
Christian, but the muscles of his Christianity were--now at any rate,
whatever they may once have been--not firm enough to strangle this
new terror.  His supernatural heaven had receded into shadow; he was
giddy, and did not know where he was.  He did not feel to their full
extent the tremendous consequences of this new doctrine, and the
shock which it has given to so much philosophy and so many theories,
but he felt quite enough, and wished he had never opened the volume.
There are many truths, no doubt, which we are not robust enough to
bear.  In the main it is correct that the only way to conquer is
boldly to face every fact, however horrible it may seem to be, and
think, and think, till we pass it and come to a higher fact; but
often we are too weak, and perish in the attempt.  As we lie
prostrate, we curse the day on which our eyes were opened, and we cry
in despair that it would have been better for us to have been born
oxen or swine than men.  It is an experience, I suppose, not new that
in certain diseased conditions some single fear may fasten on the
wretched victim so that he is almost beside himself.  He is unaware
that this fear in itself is of no importance, for it is nothing but
an index of ill-health, which might find expression in a hundred
other ways.  He is unconscious of the ill-health except through his
fancy, and regards it as an intellectual result.  It is an affliction
worse ten thousand times than any direct physical pain which ends in
pain.  Zachariah could not but admit that he was still physically
weak; he had every reason, therefore, for supposing that his mental
agony was connected with his sickness, but he could not bring himself
to believe that it was so, and he wrestled with his nightmares and
argued with them as though they were mere logical inferences.
However, he began to get better, and forthwith other matters occupied
his mind.  His difficulty was not fairly slain, pierced through the
midst by some heaven-directed arrow, but it was evaded and forgotten.
Health, sweet blood, unimpeded action of the heart, are the divine
narcotics which put to sleep these enemies to our peace and enable us
to pass happily through life.  Without these blessings a man need not
stir three steps without finding a foe able to give him his death-
stroke.

Zachariah longed to see his wife again; but he could not bring her to
Liverpool until he had some work to do.  At last the day came when he
was able to say that he was once more earning his living, and one
evening when he reached home she was there too.  Mrs. Carter had
herself brought her to Liverpool, but had gone back again to
Manchester at once, as she could not stay the night.  When he first
set eyes on his wife he was astonished at the change in her.  She was
whiter, if possible, than ever, thin in the face, dark-ringed about
the eyes, and very weak.  But otherwise she was what she had always
been.  The hair was just as smooth, everything about her just as
spotlessly clean and unruffled, and she sat as she always did, rather
upright and straight, as if she preferred the discomfort of a
somewhat rigid position to the greater discomfort of disarranging her
gown.

Zachariah had much to say.  During the whole of the four hours before
bedtime he did not once feel that drying-up of conversation which
used to be so painful to him.  It is true she herself said little or
nothing, but that was of no moment.  She was strengthless, and he did
not expect her to talk.  So long as he could speak he was happy.  The
next morning came, and with it came Hope, as it usually came to him
in the morning, and he kissed her with passionate fervour as he went
out, rejoicing to think that, although she was so feeble, she was
recovering; that he could once more look forward as in earlier days,
to the evening, and forgetting every cloud which had ever come
between them.  Alas, when the night of that very day came he found
his little store exhausted, and he and the companion of his life sat
together for a quarter of an hour or more without speaking a word.
He proposed reading a book, and took up the Ferguson, thinking he
could extract from it something which might interest her; but she was
so irresponsive, and evidently cared so little for it, that he
ceased.  It was but eight o'clock, and how to fill up the time he did
not know.  At last he said he would just take a turn outside and look
at the weather.  He went out and stood under the stars of which he
had been reading.  The meeting, after such a separation, was scarcely
twenty-four hours old, and yet he felt once more the old weariness
and the old inability to profit by her society or care for it.  He
wished, or half wished, that there might have existed such
differences between them that they could have totally disregarded or
even hated one another.  The futility, however, of any raving was
soon perfectly clear to him.  He might as well have strained at a
chain which held him fast by the leg, and he therefore strove to
quiet himself.  He came back, after being absent longer than he
intended and found she was upstairs.  He sat down and meditated
again, but came to no conclusion, for no conclusion was possible.
The next evening, after they had sat dumb for some moments, he said,
"My dear; you don't seem well."

"I am not well, as you know.  You yourself don't seem well."

He felt suddenly as if he would have liked to throw himself on his
knees before her, and to have it all out with her; to say to her all
he had said to himself; to expose all his misery to her; to try to
find out whether she still loved him; to break or thaw the shell of
ice which seemed to have frozen round her.  But he could not do it.
He was on the point of doing it, when he looked at her face, and
there was something in it which stopped him.  No such confidence was
possible, and he went back into himself again.

"Shall I read to you?"

"Yes, if you like."

"What shall I read?

"I don't care; anything you please."

"Shall it be Cook's Voyages?"

"I have just said I really do not care."

He took down the Cook's Voyages; but after about ten minutes he could
not go on and he put it back in its place.

"Caillaud's trial is to take place next week," he observed after a
long pause.

"Horrible man!" she exclaimed, with a sudden increase of energy.  "I
understand that it was in defending him Major Maitland lost his
life."

"My dear, you are quite wrong.  He was defending Major Maitland, and
shot the soldier who killed him."

"Quite wrong, am I?  Of course I am quite wrong!"

"I was at head-quarters, you remember."

"Yes, you were; but you were not near Major Maitland."

Zachariah raised his eyes; he thought he detected, he was sure he
detected, in the tone of this sentence a distinct sneer.

"I was not with Major Maitland; my duties called me elsewhere; but I
am more likely to know what happened than any gossiping outsider."

"I don't believe in your foreign infidels."

"MY foreign infidels!  You have no right to call them my infidels, if
you mean that, I am one.  But let me tell you again you are mistaken.
Besides, supposing you are right, I don't see why he should be a
horrible man.  He will probably be executed for what he did."

"It was he and that daughter of his who dragged you and the Major
into all this trouble."

"On the contrary, Caillaud, as well as myself and the Major, did all
we could to prevent the march.  You must admit I understand what I am
talking about.  I was at every meeting."

"As usual, nothing I say is right.  It was to be expected that you
would take the part of the Caillauds."

Zachariah did not reply.  It was supper-time; the chapter from the
Bible was duly read, the prayer duly prayed, and husband and wife
afterwards once more, each in turn, silently at the bedside, with
more or less of sincerity or pathos, sought Him who was the Maker of
both.  It struck Zachariah during his devotions--a rather unwelcome
interruption--that his wife as well as himself was in close
communication with the Almighty.



CHAPTER XV--END OF THE BEGINNING



The trial took place at Lancaster.  Zachariah was sorely tempted to
go; but, in the first place, he had no money, and, in the second
place, he feared arrest.  Not that he would have cared two pins if he
had been put into jail; but he could not abandon his wife.  He was
perfectly certain what the result would be, but nevertheless, on the
day when the news was due, he could not rest.  There was a mail coach
which ran from Lancaster to Liverpool, starting from Lancaster in the
afternoon and reaching Liverpool between eleven and twelve at night.
He went out about that time and loitered about the coach-office as if
he were waiting for a friend.  Presently he heard the wheels and the
rapid trot of the horses.  His heart failed him, and he could almost
have fainted.

"What's the news?" said the clerk to the coachman.  "All the whole d-
--d lot convicted, and one of 'em going to be hung."

"One of them hung!  Which one is that?"

"Why, him as killed the soldier, of course--the Frenchman."

"A d---d good job too," replied the clerk.  "I should like to serve
every --- Frenchman in the country the same way."

Zachariah could not listen any longer, but went home, and all night
long a continuous series of fearful images passed before his eyes--
condemned cells, ropes, gallows and the actual fall of the victim,
down to the contortion of his muscles.  He made up his mind on the
following day that he would see Caillaud before he died, and he told
his wife he was going.  She was silent for a moment, and then she
said:

"You will do as you like, I suppose:  but I cannot see what is the
use of it.  You can do no good; you will lose your place here; it
will cost you something; and when you get there you may have to stop
there."

Zachariah could not restrain himself.

"Good God!" he cried, "you hear that one of my best friends is about
to be hung, and you sit there like a statue--not a single word of
sympathy or horror--you care no more than a stone.  USE of going!  I
tell you I will go if I starve, or have to rot in jail all my
lifetime.  Furthermore, I will go this instant."

He went out of the room in a rage, rammed a few things into a bag,
and was out of the house in ten minutes.  He was excusably unjust to
his wife--excusably, because he could not help thinking that she was
hard, and even cruel.  Yet really she was not so, or if she was, she
was not necessarily so, for injustice, not only to others, but to
ourselves, is always begotten by a false relationship.  There were
multitudes of men in the world, worse than Zachariah, with whom she
would have been, not only happier, but better.  He, poor man, with
all his virtues, stimulated and developed all that was disagreeable
in her.

He was in no mood to rest, and walked on all that night.  Amidst all
his troubles he could not help being struck with the solemn, silent
procession overhead.  It was perfectly clear--so clear that the
heavens were not a surface, but a depth, and the stars of a lesser
magnitude were so numerous and brilliant that they obscured the forms
of the greater constellations.  Presently the first hint of day
appeared in the east.  We must remember that this was the year 1817,
before, so it is commonly supposed, men knew what it was properly to
admire a cloud or a rock.  Zachariah was not, therefore, on a level
with the most ordinary subscriber to a modern circulating library.
Nevertheless he could not help noticing--we will say he did no more--
the wonderful, the sacredly beautiful, drama which noiselessly
displayed itself before him.  Over in the east the intense deep blue
of the sky softened a little.  Then the trees in that quarter began
to contrast themselves against the background and reveal their
distinguishing shapes.  Swiftly, and yet with such even velocity that
in no one minute did there seem to be any progress compared with the
minute preceding, the darkness was thinned, and resolved itself
overhead into pure sapphire, shaded into yellow below and in front of
him, while in the west it was still almost black.  The grassy floor
of the meadows now showed its colour, grey green, with the dew lying
on it, and in the glimmer under the hedge might be discerned a hare
or two stirring.  Star by star disappeared, until none were left,
save Venus, shining like a lamp till the very moment almost when the
sun's disc touched the horizon.  Half a dozen larks mounted and
poured forth that ecstasy which no bird but the lark can translate.
More amazing than the loveliness of scene, sound, and scent around
him was the sense of irrestisible movement.  He stopped to watch it,
for it grew so rapid that he could almost detect definite pulsations.
Throb followed throb every second with increasing force, and in a
moment more a burning speck of gold was visible, and behold it was
day!  He slowly turned his eyes away and walked onwards.

Lancaster was reached on the second evening after he left Liverpool.
He could not travel fast nor long together, for he was not yet
completely strong.  He secured a bed in a low part of the town, at a
public-house, and on the morning of the third day presented himself
at the prison door.  After some formalities he was admitted, and
taken by a warder along a corridor with whitewashed walls to the
condemned cell where Caillaud lay.  The warder looked through a
grating, and said to Zachariah that a visitor was already there.  Two
were not allowed at a time, but he would tell the prisoner that
somebody was waiting for him.

"Let's see, what's your name?" said the warder.  Then it suddenly
struck him that he had been fool enough, in the excitement of
entering the prison, to sign his real name in the book.  There was no
help for it now, and he repeated that it was Coleman.

"Ah yes, Coleman," echoed the man, in a manner which was significant.

"Who is the other visitor?" said Zachariah.

"It is his daughter."

His first thought was to ask to be let in, but his next was, that it
would be profanity to disturb the intercourse of father and child,
and he was silent.  However, he had been announced, and Caillaud
appeared at the grating begging permission for his friend to enter.
It was at first refused; but presently something seemed to strike the
jailer, for he relented with a smile.

"You won't want to come again?" he observed interrogatively.

"No; that is to say, I think not."

"No; that is to say, I think not," he repeated slowly, word for word,
adding, "I shall have to stay with you while you are together."

Zachariah entered, the warder locking the door behind him, and
seating himself on the edge of the bedstead, where he remained during
the whole of the interview, jingling his keys and perfectly unmoved.

The three friends spoke not a word for nearly five minutes.
Zachariah was never suddenly equal to any occasion which made any
great demands upon him.  It often made him miserable that it was so.
Here he was, in the presence of one whom he had so much loved, and
who was about to leave him for ever, and he had nothing to say.  That
could have been endured could he but have FELT and showed his
feeling, could he but have cast himself upon his neck and wept over
him, but he was numbed and apparently immovable.  It was Caillaud who
first broke the silence.

"It appears I shall have to console you rather than you me; believe
me, I care no more about dying, as mere dying, than I do about
walking across this room.  There are two things which disturb me--the
apprehension of some pain, and bidding good-bye to Pauline and you,
and two or three more."

There was, after all, but just a touch needed to break up Zachariah
and melt him.

"You are happier than I," he cried.  "Your work is at an end.  No
more care for things done or undone; you are discharged, and nobly
discharged, with honour.  But as for me!"

"With honour!" and Caillaud smiled.  "To be hung like a forger of
bank-notes--not even to be shot--and then to be forgotten.  Forgotten
utterly!  This does not happen to be one of those revolutions which
men remember."

"No! men will not remember," said Pauline, with an elevation of voice
and manner almost oratorical.  "Men will not remember, but there is a
memory in the world which forgets nothing."

"Do you know," said Caillaud, "I have always loved adventure, and at
times I look forward to death with curiosity and interest, just as if
I were going to a foreign country."

"Tell me," said Zachariah, "if there is anything I can do."

"Nothing.  I would ask you to see that Pauline comes to no harm, but
she can take care of herself.  I have nothing to give you in parting.
They have taken everything from me."

"What a brute I am!  I shall never see you again, and I cannot
speak," sobbed Zachariah.

"Speak!  What need is there of speaking?  What is there which can be
said at such a time?  To tell you the truth, Coleman, I hardly cared
about having you here.  I did not want to imperil the calm which is
now happily upon me; we all of us have something unaccountable and
uncontrollable in us, and I do not know how soon it may wake in me.
But I did wish to see you, in order that your mind might be at peace
about me.  Come, good-bye!"

Caillaud put his hand on Zachariah's shoulder.

"This will not do," he said.  "For my sake forbear.  I can face what
I have to go through next Monday if am not shaken.  Come, Pauline,
you too, my child, must leave me for a bit."

Zachariah looked at Pauline, who rose and threw her shawl over her
shoulders.  Her lips were tightly shut, but she was herself.  The
warder opened the door.  Zachariah took his friend's hand, held it
for a moment, and then threw his arms round his neck.  There is a
pathos in parting which the mere loss through absence does not
explain.  We all of us feel it, even if there is to be a meeting
again in a few months, and we are overcome by incomprehensible
emotion when we turn back down the pier, unable any longer to discern
the waving of the handkerchief, or when the railway train turns the
curve in the cutting and leaves us standing on the platform.
Infinitely pathetic, therefore, is the moment when we separate for
ever.

Caillaud was unsettled for an instant, and then, slowly untwining the
embrace, he made a sign to Pauline, who took Zachariah's hand and led
him outside; the heavy well-oiled bolt of the lock shooting back
under the key with a smooth strong thud between them.  She walked
down the corridor alone, not noticing that he had not followed her,
and had just passed out of sight when an officer stepped up to him
and said:

"Your name is Coleman?"

"Yes."

"Sorry to hear it.  My name is Nadin.  You know me, I think.  You
must consider yourself my prisoner."

Zachariah was in prison for two years.  He had not been there three
months when his wife died.

* * * *

Let us now look forward to 1821; let us walk down one of the new
streets just beginning to stretch northwards from Pentonville; let us
stop opposite a little house, with a little palisade in front,
enclosing a little garden five and twenty feet long and fifteen feet
broad; let us peep through the chink between the blind and the
window.  We see Zachariah and Pauline.  Another year passes; we peep
through the same chink again.  A cradle is there, in which lies Marie
Pauline Coleman; but where is the mother?  She is not there, and the
father alone sits watching the child.



CHAPTER XVI--COWFOLD



Cowfold, half village, half town, lies about three miles to the west
of the great North Road from London to York.  As you go from London,
about fifty miles from the Post-Office in St. Martin's le Grand--the
fiftieth milestone is just beyond the turning--you will see a hand-
post with three arms on it; on one is written in large letters, "To
LONDON;" on the second, in equally large letters, "To YORK;" and on
the third, in small italic letters, "To Cowfold."  Two or three years
before the events narrated in the following chapters took place--that
is to say, about twenty years after the death of Zachariah's second
wife--a hundred coaches a day rolled past that hand-post, and about
two miles beyond it was a huge inn, with stables like cavalry
barracks, where horses were changed.  No coach went through Cowfold.
When the inhabitants wished to go northwards or southwards they
walked or drove to the junction, and waited on the little grassy
triangle till a coach came by which had room for them.  When they
returned they were deposited at the same spot, and the passengers who
were going through from London to York or Scotland, or who were
coming up to London, always seemed to despise people who were taken
up or who were left by the roadside there.

There was, perhaps, some reason for this contempt.  The North Road
was at that time one of the finest roads in the world, broad, hard-
metalled, and sound in the wettest weather.  That which led to
Cowfold was under the control of the parish, and in winter-time was
very bad indeed.  When you looked down it it seemed as if it led
nowhere, and indeed the inhabitants of the town were completely shut
off from any close communication with the outer world.  How strange
it was to emerge from the end of the lane and to see those wonderful
words, "To LONDON," "To YORK!"  What an opening into infinity!  Boys
of a slightly imaginative turn of mind--for there were boys with
imagination even in Cowfold--would, on a holiday trudge the three
miles eastward merely to get to the post and enjoy the romance of
those mysterious fingers.  No wonder; for the excitement begotten by
the long stretch of the road--London at one end, York at the other--
by the sight of the Star, Rover, Eclipse, or Times racing along at
twelve miles an hour, and by the inscriptions on them, was worth a
whole afternoon's cricket or wandering in the fields.  Cowfold itself
supplied no such stimulus.  The only thing like it was the mail-cart,
which every evening took the letters from the post-office,
disappeared into the dark, nobody could tell whither, and brought
letters in the morning, nobody could tell whence, before the
inhabitants were out of bed.  There was a vague belief that it went
about fifteen miles and "caught" something somewhere; but nobody knew
for certain, except the postmistress and the mail-cart driver, who
were always remarkably reticent on the point.  The driver was dressed
in red, carried a long horn slung at the side of the cart, and was
popularly believed also to have pistols with him.  He never accosted
anybody; sat on a solitary perch just big enough for him; swayed
always backwards and forwards a little in a melancholy fashion as he
rode; was never seen during the day-time, and was not, in any proper
sense, a Cowfold person.

Cowfold had four streets, or, more correctly, only two, which crossed
one another at right angles in the middle of the town, and formed
there a kind of square or open place, in which, on Saturdays, a
market was held.

The "Angel" was in this square, and the shops grouped themselves
round it.  In the centre was a large pump with a great leaden spout
that had a hole bored in it at the side.  By stopping up the mouth of
the spout with the hand it was possible through this hole to get a
good drink, if a friend was willing to work the handle; and as the
square was a public playground, the pump did good service, especially
amongst the boys, all of whom preferred it greatly to a commonplace
mug.  On Sundays it was invariably chained up; for although it was no
breach of the Sabbath to use the pump in the backyard, the line was
drawn there, and it would have been voted by nine-tenths of Cowfold
as decidedly immoral to get water from the one outside.  The shops
were a draper's, a grocer's, an ironmonger's, a butcher's and a
baker's.  All these were regular shops, with shop-windows, and were
within sight of one another.

There were also other houses where things were sold; but these were
mere dwelling-houses, and were at the poorer and more remote ends of
Cowfold.  None of the regular shops aforesaid were strictly what they
professed to be.  Each of them diverged towards "the general."  The
draper sold boots and shoes; the grocer sold drugs, stationery, horse
and cow medicines, and sheep ointment; and the ironmonger dealt in
crockery.  Even the butcher was more than a butcher, for he was never
to be seen at his chopping block, and his wife did all the retail
work.  He himself was in the "jobbing" line, and was always jogging
about in a cart, in the hind part of which, covered with a net, was a
calf or a couple of pigs.  Three out of the four streets ran out in
cottages; but one was more aristocratic.  This was Church Street,
which contained the church and the parsonage.  It also had in it four
red brick houses, each surrounded with large gardens.  In one lived a
brewer who had a brewery in Cowfold, and owned a dozen beer-shops in
the neighbourhood; another was a seminary for young ladies; in the
third lived the doctor; and in the fourth old Mr. and Mrs. Muston,
who had no children, had been there for fifty years; and this, so far
as Cowfold was aware, was all their history.  Mr. and Mrs. Muston and
the seminary were the main strength of the church.  To be sure the
doctor and the landlord of the "Angel" professed devotion to the
Establishment, but they were never inside the church, except just now
and then, and were charitably excused because of their peculiar
calling.  The rest of Cowfold was Dissenting or "went nowhere."
There were three chapels; one the chapel, orthodox, Independent,
holding about seven hundred persons, and more particularly to be
described presently; the second Wesleyan, new, stuccoed, with grained
doors and cast-iron railing; the third, strict Baptist, ultra-
Calvinistic, Antinomian according to the other sects, dark, down an
alley, mean, surrounded by a small long-grassed graveyard, and named
ZOAR in large letters over the long window in front.  The "went
nowhere" class was apparently not very considerable.  On Sunday
morning at twelve o'clock Cowfold looked as if it had been swept
clean.  It was only by comparison between the total number of church-
goers and chapel-goers and the total population that it could be
believed that there was anybody absent from the means of grace; but
if a view could have been taken of the back premises an explanation
would have been discovered.  Men and women "did up their gardens," or
found, for a variety of reasons, that they were forced to stay at
home.  In the evening they grew bolder, and strolled through the
meadows.  It is, however, only fair to respectable Cowfold to say
that it knew nothing of these creatures, except by employing them on
week-days.

With regard to the Wesleyan Chapel, nothing much need be said.  Its
creed was imported, and it had no roots in the town.  The Church
disliked it because it was Dissenting, and the Dissenters disliked it
because it was half-Church, and, above all, Tory.  It was supported
mainly by the brewer, who was drawn thither for many reasons, one of
which was political.  Another was, that he was not in trade, and
although he objected to be confounded with his neighbours who stood
behind counters, the Church did not altogether suit him, because
there Mr. and Mrs. Muston and the seminary stood in his way.  Lastly,
as he owned beer-shops, supplied liquor which was a proverb
throughout the county, and did a somewhat doubtful business according
to the more pious of the Cowfold Christians, he preferred to be
accredited as a religious person by Methodism than by any other sect,
the stamp of Methodism standing out in somewhat higher relief.

As for Zoar, it was a place apart.  Its minister was a big, large-
jawed, heavy-eyed man, who lived in a little cottage hard by.  His
wife was a very plain-looking person, who wore even on Sundays a
cotton gown without any ornament, and who took her husband's arm as
they walked down the lane to the chapel.  The Independent minister,
the Wesleyan minister, and, of course, the rector had nothing to do
with the minister of Zoar.  This was not because of any heresy or
difference of doctrine, but because he was a poor man and poor
persons sat under him.  Nevertheless he was not in any way a
characteristic Calvinist.  The Calvinistic creed was stuck in him as
in a lump of fat, and had no organising influence upon him whatever.
He had no weight in Cowfold, took part in none of its affairs, and
his ministrations were confined to about fifty sullen, half stupid,
wholly ignorant people who found in the Zoar services something
sleepier and requiring less mental exertion than they needed
elsewhere; although it must be said that the demands made upon the
intellect in none of the places of worship were very extensive.
There was a small endowment attached to Zoar, and on this, with the
garden and house rent free, the minister lived.  Once now and then--
perhaps once in every three or four years--there was a baptism in
Zoar, and at such times it was crowded.  The children of the
congregation, as a rule fell away from it as they grew up; but
occasionally a girl remained faithful and was formally admitted to
its communion.  In front of the pulpit was an open space usually
covered; but the boards could be taken up, and then a large kind of
tank was disclosed, which was filled with water when the ceremony was
performed.  After hymns had been sung the minister went down into the
water, and the candidate appeared dressed in a long white robe very
much like a night-gown.  The dear sister, during a short address,
stood on the brink of the tank for a few moments, and then descended
into it beside the minister, who, taking her by the neck and round
the waist, ducked her fairly and completely.  She emerged, and walked
dripping into the vestry, where it was always said that hot brandy
and water was ready.

Many of us have felt that we would give all our books if we could but
see with our own eyes how a single day was passed by a single ancient
Jewish, Greek, or Roman family; how the house was opened in the
morning; how the meals were prepared; what was said; how the husband,
wife, and children went about their work; what clothes they wore, and
what were their amusements.  Would that the present historian could
do as much for Cowfold!  Would that he could bring back one blue
summer morning, one afternoon and evening, and reproduce exactly what
happened in Cowfold Square, in one of the Cowfold shops, in one of
the Cowfold parlours, and in one Cowfold brain and heart.  Could this
be done with strictest accuracy, a book would be written, although
Cowfold was not Athens, Rome, nor Jerusalem, which would live for
many many years longer than much of the literature of this century.
But alas! the preliminary image in the mind of the writer is faint
enough, and when he comes to trace it, the pencil swerves and goes
off into something utterly unlike it.  An attempt, however, to show
what the waking hours in Cowfold Square were like may not be out of
place.  The shopkeeper came into his shop at half-past seven, about
half an hour after the shutters had been taken down by his
apprentice.  At eight o'clock breakfast was ready; but before
breakfast there was family worship, and a chapter was read from the
Bible, followed by an extempore prayer from the head of the
household.  If the master happened to be absent, it was not
considered proper that the mistress should pray extempore, and she
used a book of "Family Devotions."  A very solid breakfast followed,
and business began.  It was very slow, but it was very human--much
more so than business at the present day in the City.  Every customer
had something to say beyond his own immediate errand, and the shop
was the place where everything touching Cowfold interests was
abundantly discussed.  Cowfold too, did much trade in the country
round it.  Most of the inhabitants kept a gig, and two or three
times, perhaps, in a week a journey somewhere or other was necessary
which was not in the least like a journey in a railway train.  Debts
in the villages were collected by the creditor in person, who called
and invited his debtors to a most substantial dinner at the inn.  At
one o'clock Cowfold dined.  Between one and two nobody was to be seen
in the streets, and the doors were either fastened or a bell was put
upon them.  After dinner the same duties returned in the shop; but
inside the house dinner was the turning-point of the day.  When the
"things were washed, up," servant and mistress began to smarten
themselves, and disappearing into their bedrooms, emerged at four, to
make preparations for tea, the meal most enjoyed in all Cowfold.  If
any spark of wit slept in any Cowfoldian male or female, it appeared
then.  No invitations to dinner were ever heard of; but tea was the
opportunity for hospitality, especially amongst women.  The minister,
when he visited, invariably came to tea.  The news circulated at tea,
and, in fact, at tea between five and six, Cowfold, if its intellect
could have been measured by a properly constructed gauge, would have
been found many degrees higher in the scale than at any other hour.
Granted that the conversation was personal, trivial, and even
scandalous, it was in a measure philosophical.  Cowfold, though it
knew nothing, or next to nothing of abstractions, took immense
interest in the creatures in which they were embodied.  It would have
turned a deaf ear to any debate on the nature of ethical obligation;
but it was very keen indeed in apportioning blame to its neighbours
who had sinned, and in deciding how far they had gone wrong.  Cowfold
in other words believed that flesh and blood, and not ideas, are the
school and the religion for most of us, and that we learn a language
by the examples rather than by the rules.  The young scholar fresh
from his study is impatient at what he considers the unprofitable
gossip about the people round the corner; but when he gets older he
sees that often it is much better than his books, and that
distinctions are expressed by a washerwoman, if the objects to be
distinguished eat and drink and sleep, which he would find it
difficult to make with his symbols.  Moreover, the little Cowfold
clubs and parties understood what they were saying, and so far had an
advantage over the clubs and parties which, since the days of penny
newspapers, now discuss in Cowfold the designs of Russia, the
graduation of the Income Tax, or the merits and demerits of the
administration.  The Cowfold horizon has now been widened, to use the
phrase of an enlightened gentleman who came down and lectured there
on the criminality of the advertisement duty; but unfortunately the
eyes remain the same.  Cowfold now looks abroad, and is very eloquent
upon the fog in the distance, and the objects it thinks it sees
therein; but, alas! what it has gained in inclusive breadth it has
lost in definition.  Politics, however, were not unknown in Cowfold;
for before 1832 it was a borough, and after 1832 it was one of the
principal polling-places for the county.  Nevertheless it was only on
the eve of an election that anybody dabbled in them, and even then
they were very rudimentary.  The science to most of the voters meant
nothing more than a preference of blue to yellow, or yellow to blue;
and women had nothing whatever to do with it, excepting that wives
always, of course, took their husbands' colours.  Politics, too, as a
rule, were not mentioned in private houses.  They were mostly
reserved for the "Angel," and for the brandies and water and pipes
which collected there in the evening.

To return.  After tea the master went back once more to his counter,
and the shutters were put up at eight.  From eight to nine was an
hour of which no account can be given:  The lights were left burning
in the shops, and the neighbour across the way looked in and remained
talking till his supper was ready.  Supper at nine, generally hot,
was an institution never omitted, and, like tea, was convivial; but
the conviviality was of a distinctly lower order.  Everybody had
whisky, gin, or brandy afterwards, and every male person who was of
age smoked.  There was, as a rule, no excess, but the remarks were
apt to be disconnected and woolly; and the wife, who never had grog
for herself, but always sipped her husband's went to sleep.  Eleven
o'clock saw all Cowfold in bed, and disturbed only by such dreams as
were begotten of the previous liver and bacon and alcohol.

There were no villains amongst that portion of the inhabitants with
which this history principally concerns itself, nor was a single
adventure of any kind ever known to happen beyond the adventures of
being born, getting married, falling sick, and dying, with now and
then an accident from a gig.  Consequently it might be though that
there was no romance in Cowfold.  There could not be a greater
mistake.  The history of every boy or girl of ordinary make is one of
robbery, murder, imprisonment, death sentence, filing of chains,
scaling of prison walls, recapture, scaffold, reprieve, poison, and
pistols; the difference between such a history and that in the
authorised versions being merely circumstantial.  The garden of Eden,
the murder of Cain, the deluge, the salvation of Noah, the exodus
from Egypt, David and Bathsheba, with the murder of Uriah, the
Assyrian invasion, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the
Resurrection from the Dead; to say nothing of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, the tragedy of Count Cenci, the execution of Mary
Queen of Scots, the Inquisition in Spain, and Revolt of the
Netherlands, all happened in Cowfold, as well as elsewhere, and were
perhaps more interesting there because they could be studied in
detail and the records were authentic.

Church Street, Cowfold--that is to say, the street in which the
church stood--was tolerably broad going east and west, so that the
sun shone full on the white window-frames and red brick of Mr.
Muston's house, in which everything seemed to sleep in eternal calm.
On the opposite side was the seminary, also red brick and white
paint, facing the north; but, to make amends, the garden had a
southern aspect, and the back of the house was covered with a huge
magnolia whose edges curled round to the western side, so that it
could be seen by wayfarers.  It was a sight not to be forgotten--the
red brick, the white paint, the July sun the magnolia leaves, the
flanking elms on the east high above the chimneys, the glimpse of the
acre of lawn through the great gates when they happened to be open,
the peace, so profound, of summer noon!  How lovely it looks as it
hovers unsteadily before the eye, seen through the transfiguring haze
of so many years!  It was really, there is no doubt about it,
handsomer than the stuccoed villa which stares at us over the way;
but yet, if Cowfold Church Street, red brick, white paint, elms,
lawn, and midsummer repose could be restored at the present moment,
would it be exactly what the vision of it is?  What is this magic
gift which even for the humblest of us paints and frames these
enchanting pictures?  It is nothing less than the genius which is
common to humanity.  If we are not able to draw or model, we possess
the power to select, group, and clothe with an ideal grace, which is
the very soul of art, and every man and woman, every bush, nay, every
cabbage, cup, and saucer, provided only it be not actually before us,
becomes part of a divine picture.  Would that we could do with the
present what we do with the past!  We CAN do something if we try.

At the end of Church Street came the vicarage, and then the
churchyard, with the church.  Beyond was the park, which half
embraced Cowfold, for it was possible to enter it not only from
Church Street, but from North Street, which ran at right angles to
it.  The Hall was not much.  It was a large plain stone mansion,
built in the earlier part of the eighteenth century; but in front of
the main entrance was a double row of limes stretching for a quarter
of a mile, and the whole of the park was broken up into soft swelling
hills, from whose tops, owing to the flatness of the country round,
an almost immeasurable distance could be seen, gradually losing
itself in deepening mist of tenderest blue.  The park, too, was not
rigidly circumscribed.  Public roads led through it.  It melted on
two or three sides into cultivated fields, and even the private
garden of the Hall seemed a part of it, for there was nothing between
them but a kind of grassy ditch and an almost invisible fence.  The
domain of Cowfold Hall was the glory of Cowfold and the pride of its
inhabitants.  The modern love of scenery was not known in Cowfold,
and still less was that worship of landscape and nature known which,
as before observed, is peculiar to the generation born under the
influence of Wordsworth.  We have learnt, however, from Zachariah
that even before Wordsworth's days people were sometimes touched by
dawn or sunset.  The morning cheered, the moon lent pathos and
sentiment, and the stars awoke unanswerable interrogations in
Cowfold, although it knew no poetry, save Dr. Watts, Pollok's Course
of Time, and here and there a little of Cowper.  Under the avenue,
too, whose slender columns, in triple rows on either side, rose to an
immense height, and met in a roof overhead with all the grace of
cathedral stone, and without its superincumbent weight and
imprisonment--a roof that was not impervious to the sunlight, but let
it pass and fall in quivering flakes on the ground--Cowfold generally
took off its hat, partly, no doubt, because the place was cool, but
also as an act of homage.  Here and in the woods adjoining youths and
maidens for three hundred years had walked and made love, for, though
the existing house was new, it stood on the site of a far older
building.  Dead men and women, lord and churl, gone to
indistinguishable dust, or even beyond that--gone perhaps, into
vapour and gas, which had been blown to New Zealand, and become men
and women again--had burned with passion here, and vowed a union
which was to last beyond the Judgment Day.  They wept here,
quarrelled here, rushed again into one another's arms here, swore to
one another here, when Henry the Eighth was king; and they wept here,
quarrelled here, embraced here, swore here, in exactly the same mad
fashion, when William the Fourth sat upon the throne.  Half-way up
the avenue was a stone pillar commanding a gentle descent, one way to
the Hall, and the other way to the lodge.  It set forth the anguish
of a former lord of the time of Queen Anne, who had lost his wife
when she was twenty-six years old.  She was beneath him in rank, but
very beautiful, and his affection for her had fought with and
triumphed over the cruel opposition of father, mother, and relations,
who had other designs.  He had made enemies of them all; but he won
his wife, and, casting her in the scale, father, mother, and friends
were as gossamer.  She died two years after the wedding--to the very
day.  Rich in her love, he had never taken a thought to propitiate
anybody, nor to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, and
when she suddenly departed, he turned round and found himself alone.
So far from knocking at men's doors, he more fiercely hated those who
now, touched with pity, would gladly have welcomed him.  He broke
from them all, lived his own life, was reputed to be a freethinker,
and when he came to his estate, a long while afterwards, he put up
the obelisk, and recorded in Latin how Death, the foul adulterer, had
ravished his sweet bride--the coward Death whom no man could
challenge--and that the inconsolable bridegroom had erected this
monument in memory of her matchless virtues.  That was all:  no
blessed resurrection nor trust in the Saviour.  The Reverend John
Broad, minister of Tanner's Lane Chapel, when he brought visitors
here regularly translated the epitaph.  He was not very good at
Latin, but he had somehow found out its meaning.  He always observed
that it was not classic, and consequently not easy to render.  He
pointed out, too, as a further curiosity, which somewhat increased
the difficulty to any ordinary person, that V was used for U, and I
for J.  He never, as might be expected, omitted to enlarge upon the
omission of any reference to the Atoning Blood and the Life to Come,
and remarked how the poor man's sufferings would have been entirely
"assuaged"--a favourite word with Mr. Broad--if he had believed in
those "remedies."  At the same time Mr. Broad dwelt upon the
"associations" of the avenue, which, he thought, added much to its
natural "attractiveness."  Cowfold thought so too, and welcomed the
words as exactly expressing what it felt.  John Broad and Cowfold
were right, and more right, perhaps, than they knew.  The draper's
young man, who walked through the park with his arm round his young
woman's waist, looked up at the obelisk, repeated its story, and
became more serious.  Thus it came to pass that the old lord's love
lived again somewhat in the apprentice, and that which to the
apprentice seemed most particularly himself was a little bit of the
self of the Queen Anne's earl long since asleep in the vault under
Cowfold Church.



CHAPTER XVII--WHEN WILT THOU ARISE OUT OF THY SLEEP?  YET A LITTLE
SLEEP



The Reverend John Broad was minister of Tanner's Lane Chapel, or,
more properly, Meeting-house, a three gabled building, with the date
1688 upon it, which stood in a short street leading out of North
Street.  Why it was called Tanner's Lane nobody knew; for not in the
memory of man had any tanner carried on his trade there.  There was
nothing of any consequence in it but the meeting-house, and when
people said Tanner's Lane this was what they meant.  There were about
seven hundred and fifty sittings in it, and on Sundays it was
tolerably full, for it was attended by large numbers of people from
the surrounding villages, who came in gigs and carts, and brought
their dinners with them, which they ate in the vestry.  It was, in
fact, the centre of the Dissenting activity for a whole district.  It
had small affiliated meeting-houses in places like Sheepgate,
Hackston Green, and Bull's Cross, in which service was held on Sunday
evening by the deacons of Tanner's Lane, or by some of the young men
whom Mr. Broad prepared to be missionaries.  For a great many years
the congregation had apparently undergone no change in character; but
the uniformity was only apparent.  The fervid piety of Cowper's time
and of the Evangelical revival was a thing almost of the past.  The
Reverend John Broad was certainly not of the Revival type.  He was a
big, gross-feeding, heavy person, with heavy ox-face and large mouth,
who might have been bad enough for anything if nature had ordained
that he should have been born in a hovel at Sheepgate or in the Black
Country.  As it happened, his father was a woollen draper, and John
was brought up to the trade as a youth; got tired of it, thought he
might do something more respectable; went to a Dissenting College;
took charge of a little chapel in Buckinghamshire; married early; was
removed to Tanner's Lane, and became a preacher of the Gospel.  He
was moderate in all of what he called his "views;" neither ultra-
Calvinist nor Arminian not rigid upon Baptism, and certainly much
unlike his lean and fervid predecessor, the Reverend James Harden,
M.A., who was educated at Cambridge; threw up all his chances there
when he became convinced of sin; cast in his lot with the
Independents, and wrestled even unto blood with the world, the flesh,
and the devil in Cowfold for thirty years, till he was gathered to
his rest.  A fiery, ardent, untamable soul was Harden's, bold and
uncompromising.  He never scrupled to tell anybody what he thought,
and would send an arrow sharp and swift through any iniquity, no
matter where it might couch.  He absolutely ruled Cowfold, hated by
many, beloved by many, feared by all--a genuine soldier of the Cross.
Mr. Broad very much preferred the indirect mode of doing good, and if
he thought a brother had done wrong, contented himself with praying
in private for him.  He was, however, not a hypocrite, that is to
say, not an ordinary novel or stage hypocrite.  There is no such
thing as a human being simply hypocritical or simply sincere.  We are
all hypocrites, more or less, in every word and every action, and,
what is more, in every thought.  It is a question simply of degree.
Furthermore, there are degrees of natural capacity for sincerity, and
Mr. Broad was probably as sincere as his build of soul and body
allowed him to be.  Certainly no doubt as to the truth of what he
preached ever crossed his mind.  He could not doubt, for there was no
doubt in the air; and yet he could not believe as Harden believed,
for neither was Harden's belief now in the air.  Nor was Mr. Broad a
criminal in any sense.  He was upright, on the whole, in all his
transactions, although a little greedy and hard, people thought, when
the trustees proposed to remit to Widow Oakfield, on her husband's
death, half the rent of a small field belonging to the meeting-house,
and contributing a modest sum to Mr. Broad's revenue.  He objected.
Widow Oakfield was poor; but then she did not belong to Tanner's
Lane, and was said to have relations who could help her.  Mr. Broad
loved his wife decently, brought up his children decently, and not
the slightest breath of scandal ever tarnished his well-polished
reputation.  On some points he was most particular, and no young
woman who came to him with her experience before she was admitted
into the church was ever seen by him alone.  Always was a deacon
present, and all Cowfold admitted that the minister was most
discreet.  Another recommendation, too, was that he was temperate in
his drink.  He was not so in his meat.  Supper was his great meal,
and he would then consume beef, ham, or sausages, hot potatoes, mixed
pickles, fruit pies, bread, cheese, and celery in quantities which
were remarkable even in those days; but he never drank anything but
beer--a pint at dinner and a pint at supper.

On one Monday afternoon in July, 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Broad sat at tea
in the study.  This was Mr. Broad's habit on Monday afternoon.  On
that day, after the three sermons on the Sunday, he always professed
himself "Mondayish."  The morning was given over to calling in the
town; when he had dined he slept in his large leathern chair; and at
five husband and wife had tea by themselves.  Thomas, the eldest son,
and his two younger sisters, Priscilla and Tryphosa, aged seventeen
and fifteen, were sent to the dining-room.  Mr. Broad never omitted
this custom of spending an hour and a half on Monday with Mrs. Broad.
It gave them an opportunity of talking over the affairs of the
congregation, and it added to Mr. Broad's importance with the
missionary students, because they saw how great were the weight and
fatigue of the pastoral office.

A flock like that which was shepherded by Mr. Broad required some
management.  Mrs. Broad took the women, and Mr. Broad the men; but
Mrs. Broad was not a very able tactician.  She was a Flavel by birth,
and came from a distant part of the country.  Her father was a
Dissenting minister; but he was Dr. Flavel, with a great chapel in a
great town.  Consequently she gave herself airs, and occasionally let
fall, to the great displeasure of the Cowfold ladies, words which
implied some disparagement of Cowfold.  She was a shortish, stout,
upright little woman, who used a large fan and spoke with an accent
strange to the Midlands.  She was not a great help to the minister,
because she was not sufficiently flexible and insinuating for her
position; but nevertheless they always worked together, and she
followed as well as she could the directions of her astuter husband,
who, considering his bovine cast, was endowed with quite a
preternatural sagacity in the secular business of his profession.

On this particular afternoon, however, the subject of the
conversation was not the congregation, but young Thomas Broad, aged
eighteen, the exact, and almost ridiculously exact, counterpart of
his father.  He had never been allowed to go to school, but had been
taught at home.  There was only one day-school in Cowfold, and his
mother objected to the "mixture."  She had been heard to say as much,
and Cowfold resented this too, and the Cowfold youths resented it by
holding Tommy Broad in extreme contempt.  He had never been properly
a boy, for he could play at no boyish games; had a tallowy,
unpleasant complexion, went for formal walks, and carried gloves.
But though in a sense incompletely developed, he was not incompletely
developed in another direction.  He was at what is called an awkward
age, and both father and mother had detected in him an alarming
tendency to enjoy the society of young women--a tendency much
stimulated by his unnatural mode of life.  Thomas was already a
member of the church and was a teacher in the Sunday-school; but his
mother was uneasy, for a serious attachment between Thomas and
anybody in the town would have been very distasteful to her.  The tea
having been poured out, and Mr. Broad having fairly settled down upon
the buttered toast and radishes, Mrs. Broad began:

"Have you thought anything more about Thomas, my dear?"

Being a minister's son, he was never called Tom by either papa or
mamma.

"Yes, my love; but it is very difficult to know how to proceed
judiciously in such a case."

"Mrs. Allen asked me, last Wednesday, when he was going to leave
home, and I told her we had not made up our minds.  She said that her
brother in Birmingham wanted a youth in his office, but my answer was
directly that we had quite determined that Thomas should not enter
into any trade."

"What did she say?"

"That she was not surprised, for she hardly thought Thomas was fitted
for it."

The minister looked grave and perplexed, for Mr. Allen was in trade,
and was a deacon.  Mrs. Broad proceeded:

"I am quite sure Thomas ought to be a minister; and I am quite sure,
too, he ought to leave Cowfold and go to college."

"Don't you think this event might be procrastinated; the expense
would be considerable."

"Well, my dear, Fanny Allen came here to tea the day before
yesterday.  When she went away she could not find her clogs.  I was
on the landing, and saw what happened, though they did not think it.
Fanny's brother was waiting outside.  Priscilla had gone somewhere
far the moment--I don't know where--and Tryphosa was upstairs.
Thomas said he would look for the clogs, and presently I saw him
fastening them for her.  Then he walked with her down the garden.  I
just went into the front bedroom and looked.  It was not very dark,
and,--well, I may be mistaken, but I do believe--"  The rest of the
sentence was wanting.  Mrs. Broad stopped at this point.  She felt it
was more becoming to do so.  She shifted on her chair with a fidgety
motion, threw her head back a little, looked up at the portrait of
Dr. Flavel in gown and bands which hung over the fireplace,
straightened her gown upon her knees, and pushed it forward over her
feet so as to cover them altogether--a mute protest against the
impropriety of the scene she had partly described.  Mr. Broad
inwardly would have liked her to go on; but he always wore his white
neckerchief, except when he was in bed, and he was still the Reverend
John Broad, although nobody but his wife was with him.  He therefore
refrained, but after a while slowly observed:

"Thomas has not made much progress in systematic theology."

"They do not require much on admission, do they?  He knows the
outlines, and I am sure the committee will recollect my father and be
glad to get Thomas.  I have heard that the social position of the
candidates is not what it used to be, and that they wish to obtain
some of a superior stamp, who ultimately may be found adapted to
metropolitan churches."

"One of the questions last year, my dear, was upon the office of the
Comforter, and you remember Josiah Collins was remanded.  I hardly
think Thomas is sufficiently instructed on that subject at present;
and there are others.  On the whole, it is preferable that he should
not go till September twelvemonths."

"His personal piety would have weight."

"Undoubtedly."

There was a pause, and Mrs. Broad then continued:

"Well, my dear, you know best; but what about Fanny?  I shall not ask
her again.  How very forward, and indeed altogether"--Another
stoppage, another twitch at her gown, with another fidget on the
chair, the eyes going up to Dr. Flavel's bands as before.  "In OUR
house too--to put herself in Thomas's way!"

Ah!  Mrs. Broad, are you sure Thomas did not go out of his way--even
in your house, that eminently respectable, eminently orthodox
residence--even Thomas, your Samuel, who had been granted to the
Lord, and who, to use his own words when his written religious
autobiography was read at the church-meeting, being the child of
pious parents, and of many prayers, had never been exposed to those
assaults of the enemy of souls which beset ordinary young men, and
consequently had not undergone a sudden conversion?

"But," observed Mr. Broad, leaning back in his easy-chair, and half
covering his face with his great broad, fat hand, "we shall offend
the Allens if Fanny does not come, and we shall injure the cause."

"Has George Allen, Fanny's brother, prayed at the prayer-meeting yet?
He was admitted two months ago."

"No."

"Then ask his father to let him pray; and we need not invite Fanny
till Thomas has left."

The papa objected that perhaps Thomas might go to the Allen's, but
the mamma, with Dr. Flavel's bands before her, assured him that
Thomas would do nothing of the kind.  So it was settled that Mr.
Broad should call at the Allen's to-morrow, and suggest that George
should "engage" on the following Thursday.  This, it was confidently
hoped, would prevent any suspicion on their part that Fanny had been
put aside.  Of course, once having begun, George would be regularly
on the list.



CHAPTER XVIII--A RELIGIOUS PICNIC



Occasionally, in the summer months, Tanner's Lane indulged in a
picnic; that is to say, the principal members of the congregation,
with their wives and children, had an early dinner, and went in gigs
and four-wheel chaises to Shott Woods, taking hampers of bread, cake,
jam, butter, ham, and other eatables with them.  At Shott Woods, in a
small green space under an immense oak, a fire was lighted and tea
was prepared.  Mr. Broad and his family always joined the party.
These were the days when Dissenters had no set amusements, and the
entertainment at Shott mainly consisted in getting the sticks for the
fire, fetching the water, and waiting on one another; the waiting
being particularly pleasant to the younger people.  Dancing, of
course, was not thought of.  In 1840 it may safely be said that there
were not twenty Independent families in Great Britain in which it
would have been tolerated, and, moreover, none but the rich learned
to dance.

No dancing-master ever came into Cowfold; there was no music-master
there; no concert was ever given; and Cowfold, in fact, never "saw
nor heard anything;" to use a modern phrase, save a travelling
menagerie with a brass band.  What an existence!  How DID they live?
It's certain, however, that they did live, and, on the whole, enjoyed
their life.

The picnics were generally on a Monday, as a kind of compliment to
Mr. Broad, who was supposed to need rest and change on Monday, and
who was also supposed not to be able to spare the time on any other
day.  About a month after the conversation recorded in the previous
chapter Tanner's Lane was jogging along to Shott on one of its
excursions.  It was a brilliant, blazing afternoon towards the end of
August.  The corn stood in shocks, and a week with that sun would see
it all stacked.  There was no dreary suburb round Cowfold, neither
town nor country, to shut out country influences.  The fields came up
to the gardens and orchards at the back of half the houses, and
flowed irregularly, like an inundation, into the angles of the
streets.  As you walked past the great gate of the "Angel" yard you
could see the meadow at the bottom belonging to Hundred Acres.
Consequently all Cowfold took an interest in agriculture, and knew a
good deal about it.  Every shopkeeper was half a farmer, and
understood the points of a pig or a horse.  Cowfold was not a town
properly speaking, but the country a little thickened and congested.
The conversation turned upon the crops, and more particularly upon
turnips and drainage, both of them a new importation.  Hitherto all
the parishes round had no drainage whatever, excepting along the
bottoms of the ridges, and the now familiar red pipes had just made
their appearance on a farm belonging to a stranger to those parts--a
young fellow from Norfolk.  Everybody was sceptical, and called him a
fool.  Everybody wanted to know how water was going to get through
fifteen inches of heavy land when it would lie for two days where a
horse trod.  However, the pipes went in, and it so happened that the
first wet day after they were laid was a Sunday.  The congregation in
Shott Church was very restless, although the sermon was unusually
short.  One by one they crept out, and presently they were followed
by the parson.  All of them had collected in the pouring rain and
were watching the outfall in the ditches.  To their unspeakable
amazement the pipes were all running!  Shott scratched its head and
was utterly bewildered.  A new idea in a brain not accustomed to the
invasion of ideas produces a disturbance like a revolution.  It
causes giddiness almost as bad as that of a fit, and an extremely
unpleasant sensation of having been whirled round and turned head
over heels.  It was the beginning of new things in Shott, the
beginning of a breakdown in its traditions; a belief in something
outside the ordinary parochial uniformities was forced into the skull
of every man, woman, and child by the evidence of the senses; and
when other beliefs asked, in the course of time, for admittance they
found the entrance easier than it would have been otherwise.

The elderly occupants of the Tanner's Lane gigs and chaises talked
exclusively upon these and other cognate topics.  The sons and
daughters talked about other things utterly unworthy of any record in
a serious history.  Delightful their chatter was to them.  What does
it signify to eighteen years what is said on such an afternoon by
seventeen years, when seventeen years is in a charming white muslin
dress, with the prettiest hat?  Words are of importance between me
and you, who care little or nothing for one another.  But there is a
thrice blessed time when words are nothing.  The real word is that
which is not uttered.  We may be silent, or we may be eloquent with
nonsense or sense--it is all one.  So it was between George Allen and
Miss Priscilla Broad, who at the present moment were sitting next to
one another.  George was a broad, hearty, sandy-haired, sanguine-
faced young fellow of one and twenty, eldest son of the ironmonger.
His education had been that of the middle classes of those days.
Leaving school at fourteen, he had been apprenticed to his father for
seven years, and had worked at the forge down the backyard before
coming into the front shop.  On week-days he generally wore a
waistcoat with sleeves and a black apron.  He was never dirty; in
fact, he was rather particular as to neatness and cleanliness; but he
was always a little dingy and iron-coloured, as retail ironmongers
are apt to be.  He was now in charge of the business under his
father; stood behind the counter; weighed nails; examined locks
brought for repair; went to the different houses in Cowfold with a
man under him to look at boiler-pipes, the man wearing a cap and
George a tall hat.  He had a hard, healthy, honest life, was up at
six o'clock in the morning, ate well, and slept well.  He was always
permitted by his father to go on these excursions, and, in fact, they
could not have been a success without him.  If anything went wrong he
was always the man to set it right.  If a horse became restive,
George was invariably the one to jump out, and nobody else thought of
stirring.  He had good expectations.  The house in which the Allens
lived was their own.  Mr. Allen did a thriving trade, not only in
Cowfold, but in all the country round, and particularly among the
village blacksmiths, to whom he sold iron.  He had steadily saved
money, and had enlarged the original little back parlour into a room
which would hold comfortably a tea-party of ten or a dozen.

Miss Priscilla Broad was framed after a different model.  Her face
was not much unlike that of one of those women of the Restoration so
familiar to us in half a hundred pictures.  Not that Restoration
levity and Restoration manners were chargeable to Miss Priscilla.
She never forgot her parentage; but there were the same kind of
prettiness, the same sideways look, the same simper about the lips,
and there were the same flat unilluminated eyes.  She had darkish
brown hair, which fell in rather formal curls on her shoulder, and
she was commonly thought to be "delicate."  Like her sister and
brother, she had never been to school, on account of the "mixture,"
but had been taught by her mother.  Her accomplishments included
Scripture and English history, arithmetic, geography, the use of the
globes, and dates.  She had a very difficult part to play in Cowfold,
for she was obliged to visit freely all Tanner's Lane, but at the
same time to hold herself above it and not to form any exclusive
friendships.  These would have been most injudicious, because, in the
first place, they would have excited jealousy, and, in the next
place, the minister's daughter could not be expected to be very
intimate with anybody belonging to the congregation.  She was not
particularly popular with the majority, and was even thought to be
just a bit of a fool.  But what could she have been with such
surroundings?  The time had passed when religion could be talked on
week-days, and the present time, when ministers' children learn
French, German, and Latin, and read selected plays of Shakespeare,
had not come.  Miss Priscilla Broad found it very difficult, also, to
steer her course properly amongst the young men in Cowfold.  Mrs.
Broad would not have permitted any one of them for a moment to dream
of an alliance with her family.  As soon might a Princess of the
Blood Royal unite herself with an ordinary knight.  Miss Broad,
however, as her resources within herself were not particularly
strong, thought about little or nothing else than ensnaring the
hearts of the younger Cowfold males--that is to say, the hearts which
were converted, and yet she encouraged none of them, save by a
general acceptance of little attentions, by little mincing smiles,
and little mincing speeches.

"Such a beautiful day," said George, "and such pleasant company!"

"Really, Mr. Allen, don't you think it would have been pleasanter for
you in front?"

"What did you say, my dear?" came immediately from her mother, the
ever-watchful dragon just before them.  She forthwith turned a little
round, for the sun was on her left hand, and with her right eye kept
Priscilla well in view for the rest of the journey.

In the chaise behind pretty much the same story was told, but with a
difference.  In the back part were Mr. Thomas Broad and Miss Fanny
Allen.  The arrangement which brought these two together was most
objectionable to Mrs. Broad; but unfortunately she was a little late
in starting, and it was made before she arrived.  She could not,
without insulting the Allens, have it altered; but she consoled
herself by vowing that it should not stand on the return journey in
the dusk.  Miss Fanny was flattered that the minister's son should be
by her side, and the minister's son was not in the least deterred
from playing with Miss Fanny by the weight of responsibility which
oppressed and checked his sister.  He did not laugh much; he had not
a nature for wholesome laughter, but he chuckled, lengthened his
lips, half shut his eyes; asked his companion whether the rail did
not hurt her, put his arm on the top, so that she might lean against
it, and talked in a manner which even she would have considered a
little silly and a little odd, if his position, that of a student for
the ministry, had not surrounded him with such a halo of glory.

Presently Shott Woods were reached; the parcels and hampers were
unpacked, the fire was lit, the tea prepared, and the pastor asked a
blessing.  Everybody sat on the grass, save the reverend gentleman
and his wife, who had chairs which had been brought on purpose.  It
would not have been considered proper that Mr. or Mrs. Broad should
sit upon the grass, and indeed physically it would have been
inconvenient to Mr. Broad to do so.  He ate his ham in considerable
quantities, adding thereto much plumcake, and excusing himself on the
ground that the ride had given him an appetite.  The meal being over,
grace was said, and the victuals that were left were repacked.  About
an hour remained before the return journey began.  This was usually
passed in sauntering about or in walking to the springs, a mile away,
down one of the grass drives.  Mrs. Broad never for a moment lost
sight of Thomas, and pressed him as much as possible into her
service; but when Mrs. Allen announced that the young people had all
determined to go to the springs, Mrs. Broad could not hold out.
Accordingly off they started, under strict orders to be back by
eight.  They mixed themselves up pretty indiscriminately as they left
their seniors; but after a while certain affinities displayed
themselves, George being found with Priscilla, for example, and
Thomas with Fanny.  The party kept together; but Thomas and Fanny
lagged somewhat till they came to a little opening in the underwood,
which Thomas said was a short cut, and he pressed her to try it with
him.  She agreed, and they slipped out of sight nearly, but not,
quite, unobserved.  Thomas professed himself afraid Fanny might be
tired, and offered his arm.  She again consented, not without a
flutter, and so they reached a clearing with three or four paths
branching from it.  Thomas was puzzled, and as for Fanny, she knew
nothing.  To add to their perplexity some drops of rain were felt.
She was a little frightened, and was anxious to try one of the most
likely tracks which looked, she thought, as if it went to the
springs, where they could take shelter in the cottage with the
others.  Thomas, however, was doubtful, and proposed that they should
stand up in a shed which had been used for faggot-making.  The rain,
which now came down heavily, enforced his arguments, and she felt
obliged to stay till the shower had ceased.

"Only think, Fanny," he said, "to be here alone with you!"

He called her Fanny now; he had always called her Miss Allen before.

"Yes," said she, not knowing what answer to make.

"You are cold," he added, with a little trembling in his voice and a
little more light than usual in his eyes.

"Oh no, I am not cold."

"I know you are," and he took her hand; "why, it is quite cold."

"Oh dear no, Mr. Thomas, it is really not cold," and she made a
movement to withdraw it, but it remained.

The touch of the hand caused his voice to shake a little more than
before.

"I say you are cold; come a little closer to me.  What will your
mamma say if you catch a chill?" and he drew Fanny a little nearer to
him.  The thick blood now drove through him with increasing speed:
everything seemed in a mist, and a little perspiration was on his
forehead.  His arm found its way round Fanny's waist, and he pressed
her closer and closer to him till his hot lips were upon her cheek.
She made two or three futile attempts to release herself; but she
might as well have striven with that brazen, red-hot idol who was
made to clasp his victims to death.  She was frightened and screamed,
when suddenly a strong man's voice was heard calling "Fanny, Fanny."
It was her brother.  Knowing that she and Thomas had no umbrellas, he
had brought them a couple.

"But, Fanny," he cried, "did I not hear you scream?  What was the
matter?"

"Nothing," hastily interposed Thomas; "she thought she saw it
lighten."  Fanny looked at Thomas for a moment; but she was scared
and bewildered, and held her peace.

The three went down to the rendezvous together, where the rest of the
party had already assembled.  Mrs. Broad had been very uneasy when
she found that Thomas and Fanny were the only absentees, and she had
urged George the moment she saw him to look for his sister without a
moment's delay.  The excuse of the rain was given and accepted; but
Mrs. Broad felt convinced from Fanny's forward look that she had once
more thrown herself in the way of her beloved child, her delicate
Samuel.  She was increasingly anxious that he should go to college,
and his papa promised at once to transmit the application.
Meanwhile, in the few days left before the examination, he undertook
to improve Thomas where he was weakest, that is to say, in Systematic
Theology, and more particularly in the doctrine of the Comforter.



CHAPTER XIX--"THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS LIKE UNTO LEAVEN"



Mr. Isaac Allen, Fanny's father, was an ardent Whig in politics--what
in later years would have been called a Radical.  He had been
apprenticed in London, and had attended Mr. Bradshaw's ministrations
there.  He was the chosen friend of Zachariah Coleman; but although
he loved Zachariah, he had held but little intercourse with him
during his first marriage.  There were family reasons for the
estrangement, due principally to a quarrel between Mrs. Isaac and the
first Mrs. Zachariah.  But after Mrs. Zachariah had died and her
husband suffered so much Isaac was drawn to him again.  He was proud
of him as a martyr for a good cause, and he often saw him when he
went to London on business.

It was in consequence of these London visits that books appeared on
the little book-shelf in Cowfold Square which were to be found
nowhere else in the town, at any rate not in the Dissenting portion
of it.  It was a little bookcase, it is true, for people in country
places were not great readers in those days; but Sir Walter Scott was
there, and upstairs in Mr. Allen's room there was Byron--not an uncut
copy, but one well used both by husband and wife.  Mrs. Allen was not
a particularly robust woman, although she was energetic.  Often
without warning, she would not make her appearance till twelve or one
o'clock in the day, and would have her fire alight in her bedroom and
take her breakfast in bed.  It was well understood when she was not
at the table with the others that the house was to be kept quiet.
After a cup of tea--nothing more--she rose and sat reading for a good
two hours.  It was not that she was particularly unwell--she simply
needed rest.  Every now and then retreat from the world and perfect
isolation were a necessity to her.  If she forced herself to come
downstairs when she ought to be by herself she became really ill.
Occasionally the fire was alight in the evening, too, and she would
be off the moment tea was over, Isaac frequently joining her then,
although he never remained with her in the morning.  She was almost
sure to escape on the day following any excitement or undue worry
about household affairs.  She knew Sir Walter Scott from end to end,
and as few people knew him.  He had been to her, and to her husband
too, what he can only be to people leading a dull life far from the
world.  He had broken up its monotony and created a new universe!  He
had introduced them into a royal society of noble friends.  He had
added to the ordinary motives which prompted Cowfold action a
thousand higher motives.  Then there was the charm of the magician,
so sanative, so blessed, felt directly any volume of that glorious
number was opened.  Kenilworth or Redgauntlet was taken down, and the
reader was at once in another country and in another age, transported
as if by some Arabian charm away from Cowfold cares.  If anywhere in
another world the blessings which men have conferred here are taken
into account in distributing reward, surely the choicest in the store
of the Most High will be reserved for His servant Scott!  It may be
said of others that they have made the world wise or rich, but of him
it must be said that HE, MORE THAN ALL, HAS MADE THE WORLD HAPPIER--
wiser too, wiser through its happiness.

Of the influence of Byron nothing more need be said here, because so
much has been said before.  It may seem strange that the deacon of a
Dissenting chapel and his wife could read him, and could continue to
wait upon the ministrations of the Reverend John Broad; but I am only
stating a fact.  Mrs. Allen could repeat page after page of Childe
Harold, and yet she went diligently to Tanner's Lane.  Part of what
was read exhaled in the almost republican politics of the Allen
household; but it had also its effect in another direction, and it
was always felt by the Broads that the Allens were questionable
members of the flock.  They were gathered into the fold on Sunday,
and had the genuine J. B. on their wool, but there was a cross in
them.  There was nothing which could be urged against them.  No word
of heresy ever escaped them, no symptom of disbelief was ever seen
and yet Mr. Broad often desired exceedingly that they were different,
was never at ease with them, and in his heart of hearts bitterly
hated them.  After all that can be said by way of explanation, there
was much in this concealed animosity of Mr. Broad which was
unaccountable.  It was concealed because he was far too worldly-wise
to show it openly; but it was none the less intense.  Indeed, it was
so intense as to be almost inconsistent with Mr. Broad's cast of
character, and his biographer is at a loss to find the precise point
where it naturally connects itself with the main stem from which
branch off the rest of his virtues and vices.  However, there it was,
and perhaps some shrewder psychologist may be able to explain how
such a passion could be begotten in a nature otherwise so somnolent.

For this literary leaven in the Allen's household, as we have said,
Zachariah was answerable.  Mrs. Allen loved him as she loved her
father, and he wrote to her long letters, through which travelled
into Cowfold Square all the thought of the Revolution.  He never went
to Cowfold himself, nor could he ever be persuaded to let little
Pauline go.  She had been frequently invited, but he always declined
the invitation courteously on the ground that he could not spare her.
The fame of her beauty and abilities had, however, reached Cowfold,
and so it came to pass that when Mr. Thomas Broad, junior, being duly
instructed in the doctrine of the Comforter, entered the Dissenting
College in London, he determined that at the first opportunity he
would call and see her.  He had been privately warned both by his
father and mother that he was on no account to visit this particular
friend of the Allens, firstly, because Zachariah was reputed to be,
"inclined towards infidelity," and secondly, because, summing up the
whole argument, he was not "considered respectable."

"Of course, my dear, you know his history," quoth Mrs. Broad, "and it
would very much interfere with your usefulness if you were to be
intimate with him."

Little Pauline had by this time grown to be a woman, or very nearly
one.  She had, as in nine times, perhaps, out of ten is the case,
inherited her temperament from her mother.  She had also inherited
something more, for she was like her in face.  She had the same
luxuriantly dark hair--a wonder to behold when it was let down over
her shoulders--the same grey eyes, the same singularly erect
attitude, and lips which, although they were not tight and screwed
up, were always set with decision.  But her distinguishing
peculiarity was her inherited vivacity, which was perfectly natural,
but frequently exposed her--just as it did her mother--to the charge
of being theatrical.  The criticism was as unjust in her case as in
that of her mother, if by being theatrical we mean being unreal.  The
unreal person is the half-alive languid person.  Pauline felt what
she said, and acted it in every gesture.  Her precious promptitude of
expression made her invaluable as a companion to her father.  He was
English all over and all through; hypochondriacal, with a strong
tendency to self-involution and self-absorption.  She was only half
English, or rather altogether French, and when he came home in the
evening he often felt as if some heavy obstruction in his brain and
about his heart were suddenly dissolved.  She and her mother were
like Hercules in the house of Admetus.  Before Hercules has promised
to rescue Alcestis we feel that the darkness has disappeared.
Pauline was loved by her father with intense passion.  When she was a
little child, and he was left alone with a bitter sense of wrong, a
feeling that he had more than his proper share of life's misery, his
heart was closed, and he cared for no friendship.  But the man's
nature could not be thus thwarted, and gradually it poured itself out
in full flood--denied exit elsewhere--at this one small point.  He
rejoiced to find that he had not stiffened into death, and he often
went up to her bedside as she lay asleep, and the tears came, and he
thanked God, not only for her but for his tears.  He could not afford
to bring her up like a lady, but he did his best to give her a good
education.  He was very anxious that she should learn French, and as
she was wonderfully quick at languages, she managed in a very short
time to speak it fluently.



CHAPTER XX--THE REVEREND THOMAS BROAD'S EXPOSITION OF ROMANS VIII. 7



Such was the Coleman household when Mr. Thomas Broad called one fine
Monday afternoon about three months after he had been at college.  He
had preached his first sermon on the Sunday before, in a village
about twelve miles from London in a north-easterly direction,
somewhere in the flat regions of Essex.  Mr. Thomas was in unusually
good humour, for he had not broken down, and thought he had crowned
himself with glory.  The trial, to be sure, was not very severe.  The
so-called chapel was the downstairs living-room of a cottage holding
at a squeeze about five-and-twenty people.  Nevertheless, there was a
desk at one corner, with two candles on either side, and Mr. Thomas
was actually, for the first time, elevated above an audience.  It
consisted of the wheelwright and his wife, both very old, half a
dozen labourers, with their wives, and two or three children.  The
old wheelwright, as he was in business, was called the "principal
support of the cause."  The "cause," however, was not particularly
prosperous, nor its supporters enthusiastic.  It was "supplied"
always by a succession of first-year's students, who made their
experiments on the corpus vile here.  Spiritual teaching, spiritual
guidance, these poor peasants had none, and when the Monday came they
went to their work in the marshes and elsewhere, and lived their
blind lives under grey skies, with nothing left in them of the
Sunday, save the recollection of a certain routine performed which
might one day save them from some disaster with which flames and
brimstone had something to do.  It was not, however, a reality to
them.  Neither the future nor the past was real to them; no spiritual
existence was real; nothing, in fact, save the most stimulant
sensation.  Once upon a time, a man, looking towards the celestial
city, saw "The reflection of the sun upon the city (for the city was
of pure gold), so exceeding glorious that he could not as yet with
open face behold it, save through an instrument made for that
purpose;" but Mr. Thomas Broad and his hearers needed no smoked glass
now to prevent injury to their eyes.  Mr. Thomas had put on a white
neckerchief, had mounted the desk, and had spoken for three-quarters
of an hour from the text, "The carnal mind is at enmity with God."
He had received during the last three weeks his first lectures on the
"Scheme of Salvation," and his discourse was a reproduction of his
notes thereon.  The wheelwright and his wife, and the six labourers
with their wives, listened as oxen might listen, wandered home along
the lanes heavy-footed like oxen, with heads towards the ground, and
went heavily to bed.  The elder student who had accompanied Mr.
Thomas informed him that, on the whole, he had acquitted himself very
well, but that it would be better, perhaps, in future to be a little
simpler, and avoid what "may be called the metaphysics of
Redemption."

"No doubt," said he, "they are very attractive, and of enormous
importance.  There is no objection to expound them before a
cultivated congregation in London; but in the villages we cannot be
too plain--that, at least, is my experience.  Simply tell them we are
all sinners, and deserve damnation.  God sent His Son into the world.
If we believe in Him we shall be saved; if not, we shall be lost.
There is no mystery in that; everybody can understand it; and people
are never weary of hearing the old old gospel."

Mr. Thomas was well contented with himself, as we have said, when he
knocked at Zachariah's door.  It was opened by Pauline.  He took off
his hat and smiled.

"My name is Broad.  I come from Cowfold, and know the Allens very
well.  I am now living in London, and having heard of you so often, I
thought I should like to call."

"Pray come in," she said; "I am very glad to see you.  I wish my
father were here."

He was shown into the little front room, and after some inquiries
about his relations Pauline asked him where was his abode in London.

"At the Independent College.  I am studying for the ministry."

Pauline was not quite sure what "the ministry" meant; but as Mr.
Thomas had yesterday's white tie round his neck--he always "dirtied
out" the Sunday's neckerchief on Monday, and wore a black one on the
other week-days--she guessed his occupation.

"Dear me! you must be tired with walking so far."

"Oh no, not tired with walking; but the fact is I am a little
Mondayish."

"A little what?"

Mr. Thomas giggled a little.  "Ah, you young ladies, of course, don't
know what that means.  I had to conduct a service in the country
yesterday, and am rather fatigued.  I am generally so on Mondays, and
I always relax on that day."  This, it is to be remembered, was his
first Monday.

Pauline regretted very much that she had no wine in the house;
neither had they any beer.  They were not total abstainers, but
nothing of the kind was kept in their small store-closet.

"Oh, thank you; never mind."  He took a bottle of smelling-salts from
the mantelpiece and smelt it.  The conversation flagged a little.
Pauline sat at the window, and Mr. Thomas at the table.  At last he
observed.

"Are you alone all day?"

"Generally, except on Sunday.  Father does not get home till late."

"Dear me!  And you are not dull nor afraid?"

"Dull or afraid!  Why?"

"Oh, well," he sniggered, "dull--why, young ladies, you know, usually
like society.  At least," and he laughed a little greasy laugh at his
wit, "we like theirs.  And then--afraid--well, if my sister were so
attractive"--he looked to see if this pretty compliment was
effective--"I should not like her to be without anybody in the
house."

Pauline became impatient.  She rose.  "When you come again," she
said, "I hope my father will be here."

Mr. Thomas rose too.  He had begun to feel awkward.  For want of
something better to say, he asked whose was the portrait over the
mantelpiece.

"Major Cartwright."

"Major Cartwright!  Dear me, is that Major Cartwright?"  He had never
heard of him before, but he did not like to profess ignorance of a
Major.

"And this likeness of this young gentleman?" he inquired, looking at
Pauline sideways, with an odious simper on his lips.  "Nobody I know,
I suppose?"

"My father when he was one-and-twenty."  She moved towards the door.
Mr. Thomas closed his fat eyes till they became almost slits,
simpered still more effectively, as he thought, trusted he might have
the pleasure of calling again, and departed.

Pauline returned, opened the window and door for ten minutes, and
went upstairs.  When she saw her father she told him briefly that she
had entertained a visitor, and expressed her utter loathing of him in
terms so strong that he was obliged to check her.  He did not want a
quarrel with any of Isaac's friends.

Mr. Thomas, having returned to the college, did not delay to
communicate by mysterious hints to his colleagues that he was on
visiting terms with a most delightfully charming person, and sunned
himself deliciously in their bantering congratulations.  About three
weeks afterwards he thought he might safely repeat his visit; but he
was in a difficulty.  He was not quite so stupid as not to see that,
the next time he went, it ought to be when her father was present,
and yet he preferred his absence.  At last he determined he would go
about tea-time.  He was quite sure that Mr. Coleman would not have
returned then; but he could assume that he had, and would propose to
wait for him.  He therefore duly presented himself at half-past five.

"Good-evening, Miss Coleman.  Is your father at home?"

"No, not yet," replied Pauline, holding the door doubtingly.

"Oh, I am so sorry;" and, to Pauline's surprise, he entered without
any further ceremony.  She hardly knew what to do; but she followed
him as he walked into the room, where she had just laid the tea-
things and put the bread and butter on the table.

"Oh, tea!" he cried.  "Dear me, it would be very rude of me to ask
myself to tea, and yet, do you know, Miss Coleman, I can hardly help
it."

"I am afraid my father will not be here till eight."  He sat down.

"That is very unfortunate.  You will tell him I came on purpose to
see him."

Pauline hesitated whether she should or should not inform Mr. Thomas
that his presence was disagreeable, but her father's caution recurred
to her, and she poured out a cup for her visitor.

It was one of his peculiarities that tea, of which he took enormous
quantities, made him garrulous, and he expatiated much upon his
college.  By degrees, however, he became silent, and as he was
sitting with his face to the window, he shifted his chair to the
opposite side, under the pretence that the light dazzled his eyes.
Pauline shifted too, apparently to make room for him, but really to
get farther from him.

"Do people generally say that you take after your mother?" he said.

"I believe I am like my mother in many things."

Another pause.  He became fidgety; the half smile, half grin which he
almost perpetually wore passed altogether from his face, and he
looked uncomfortable and dangerous.  Pauline felt him to be so, and
resolved that, come what might, he should never set foot in the house
again.

"You have such black hair," he observed.

She rose to take away the tea-things.

"I am afraid," said she, "that I must go out; I have one or two
commissions to execute."

He remained seated, and observed that surely she would not go alone.

"Why not?" and having collected the tea-things, she was on the point
of leaving.  He then rose, and she bade him good-bye.  He held out
his hand, and she took it in hers, but he did not let it go, and
having pulled it upwards with much force, kissed it.  He still held
it, and before the astonished Pauline knew what he was doing his arm
was round her waist.  At that moment the little front gate swung
back.  Nobody was there; but the Reverend Thomas was alarmed, and in
an instant she had freed herself, and had placed the table between
them.

"What do you mean, you Gadarene pig, you scoundrel, by insulting a
stranger in this way?" she cried.  "Away!  My father will know what
to do with you."

"Oh, if you please, Miss Coleman, pray say nothing about it, pray do
not mention it to your father; I do not know what the consequences
will be; I really meant nothing; I really did not"--which was
entirely true.

"You who propose to teach religion to people!  I ought to stop you;
but no, I will not be dragged into the mud."

A sudden thought struck her.  He was shaky, and was holding on by the
table.  "I will be silent," she cried--what a relief it was to him to
hear her say that! "but I will mark you," and before he could
comprehend what she was doing she had seized a little pair of
scissors which lay near her, had caught his wrist, and had scored a
deep cross on the back of the hand.  The blood burst out and she
threw him a handkerchief.

"Take that and be gone!"

He was so amazed and terrified, not only at the sight of the blood,
but at her extraordinary behaviour, that he turned ghastly white.
The pain, however, recalled him to his senses; he rolled the
handkerchief over the wound, twisted his own round it too, for the
red stain came through Pauline's cambric, and departed.  The account
current in the college was, that he had torn himself against a nail
in a fence.  The accident was a little inconvenient on the following
Sunday, when he had to preach at Hogsbridge Corner; but as he
reproduced the sermon on the carnal mind, which he knew pretty well
by heart, he was not nervous.  He had made it much simpler, in
accordance with the advice given on a former occasion.  He had struck
out the metaphysics and had put in a new head--"Neither indeed CAN
be."  "The apostle did not merely state a fact that the carnal mind
was not subject to the law of God; he said, 'Neither indeed CAN be.'
Mark, my brethren, the force of the neither can."



CHAPTER XXI--THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT



George Allen meanwhile, at Cowfold, languished in love with Priscilla
Broad, who was now a comely girl of eighteen.  Mrs. Broad had, of
course, discovered what was in the wind, and her pride suffered a
severe shock.  She had destined Priscilla, as the daughter of a
Flavel, for a London minister, and that she should marry a tradesman
was intolerable.  Worse still, a tradesman in Cowfold!  What would
become of their influence in the town, she continually argued with
Mr. Broad, if they became connected with a member of their
congregation?  She thought it would be a serious hindrance to their
usefulness.  But Mr. Broad was not so sure, although he hated the
Allens; and Priscilla, somehow or other, was not so sure, for,
despite her mother's constant hints about their vulgarity, she not
infrequently discovered that something was wanted from the shop, and
bought it herself.

One Monday afternoon, Mr. Broad having thrown the silk handkerchief
off his face and bestirred himself at the sight of the radishes,
water-cresses, tea, and hot buttered toast, thus addressed his wife:

"My love, I am not altogether inclined to discountenance the
attentions which George pays to Priscilla.  There are so many
circumstances to be taken into account."

"It is a great trouble to me, John, and I really think if anything of
the kind were to happen, at least you would have to seek another
cause.  Just consider the position in which I should stand towards
Mrs. Allen.  Besides, I am sure it will interfere with your duties
here if we are obliged to take notice of the Allens more than of
other people in the town."

"To seek for another cause, my love?  That is a very grave matter at
my time of life.  You remember too, that there is an endowment here."

"Quite so; and that is the more reason why we should not permit the
attachment."

"But, my love, as I observed, there are so many circumstances to be
taken into account.  You know as well as I do in what aspect I view
the Allens, and what my sentiments with regard to them are--
personally that is to say, and not as minister of the gospel.
Perhaps Providence, my dear, intends this opportunity as a means
whereby the emotions of my poor sinful nature--emotions which may
have been uncharitable--may be converted into brotherly love.  Then
we must recollect that Isaac is a prominent member of the church and
a deacon.  Thirdly, in all probability, if we do not permit Priscilla
to marry George, offence will be taken and they may withdraw their
subscription, which, I believe, comes altogether to twenty pounds per
annum.  Fourthly, the Allens have been blessed with an unusual share
of worldly prosperity, and George is about to become a partner.
Fifthly and lastly"--Mr. Broad had acquired a habit of dividing his
most ordinary conversation into heads--"it is by no means improbable
that I may need a co-pastor before long, and we shall secure the
Allens' powerful influence in favour of Thomas."

Mrs. Broad felt the full force of these arguments.

"I should think," she added, "that George, after marriage, cannot
live at the shop."

"No, that will not be possible; they must take a private house."

So it was agreed, without any reference to the question whether
Priscilla and George cared for one another, that no opposition should
be offered.  The Allens themselves, father and mother, were by no
means so eager for the honour of the match as Mrs. Broad supposed
them to be, for Mrs. Isaac, particularly proud of her husband, and a
little proud of their comfortable business and their comfortable
property, was not dazzled by the Flavel ancestry.

When George formally asked permission of Mr. Broad to sanction his
addresses, a meeting between the parents became necessary, and Mrs.
Broad called on Mrs. Allen.  She was asked into the dining-room at
the back of the shop.  At that time, at any rate in Cowfold, the
drawing-room, which was upstairs, was an inaccessible sanctuary, save
on Sunday and on high tea-party days.  Mrs. Broad looked round at the
solid mahogany furniture; cast her eyes on the port and sherry
standing on the sideboard, in accordance with Cowfold custom;
observed that not a single thing in the room was worn or shabby; that
everything was dusted with absolute nicety, for the Allen's kept two
servants; and became a little reconciled to her lot.

Mrs. Allen presently appeared in her black silk dress, with her gold
watch hanging in front, and saluted the minister's wife with the
usual good-humoured, slightly democratic freedom which always annoyed
Mrs. Broad.

"My dear Mrs. Allen," began Mrs. Broad, "I have called to announce to
you a surprising piece of intelligence, although I dare say you know
it all.  Your son George has asked Mr. Broad to be allowed to
consider himself as Priscilla's suitor.  We have discussed the matter
together, and I have come to know what your views are.  I may say
that we had destined--hoped--that--er--Priscilla would find her
sphere as a minister's wife in the metropolis; but it is best,
perhaps, to follow the leadings of Providence."

"Well, Mrs. Broad, I must say I was a little bit disappointed myself-
-to tell you the plain truth; but it is of no use to contradict young
people in love with one another."

Mrs. Broad was astonished.  Disappointed!  But she remembered her
husband's admonitions.  So she contented herself with an insinuation.

"What I meant, my dear Mrs. Allen, was that, as the Flavels have been
a ministerial family for so long, it would have been gratifying to
me, of course, if Priscilla had bestowed herself upon--upon somebody
occupying the same position."

"That is just what my mother used to say.  I was a Burton, you
remember.  They were large tanners in Northamptonshire, and she did
not like my going to a shop.  But you know, Mrs. Broad, you had
better be in a shop and have plenty of everything, and not have to
pinch and screw, than have a brass knocker on your door, and not be
able to pay for the clothes you wear.  That's my belief, at any
rate."

The dart entered Mrs. Broad's soul.  She remembered some
"procrastination"--to use her husband's favourite word--in settling a
draper's bill, even when it was diminished by the pew rent, and she
wondered if Mrs. Allen knew the facts.  Of course she did; all
Cowfold knew every fact connected with everybody in the town.  She
discerned it was best to retreat.

"I wished to tell you, Mrs. Allen, that we do not intend to offer the
least objection"--she thought that perhaps a little professional
unction might reduce her antagonist--"and I am sure I pray that God
will bless their union."

"As I said before, Mrs. Broad, neither shall we object.  We shall let
George do as he likes.  He is a real good boy, worth a princess, and
if he chooses to have Miss Broad, we shan't hinder him.  She will
always be welcome here, and it will be a consolation to you to know
she will never want anything."  Mrs. Allen shook her silk dress out a
little, and offered Mrs. Broad a glass of wine.  Her feelings were a
little flustered, and she needed support, but she refused.

"No thank you, Mrs. Allen.  I must be going."



CHAPTER XXII--THE ORACLE WARNS--AFTER THE EVENT



It is no part of my business to tell the story of the love-making
between George and Priscilla.  Such stories have been told too often.
Every weakness in her was translated by George into some particularly
attractive virtue.  He saw nothing, heard nothing, which was not to
her advantage.  Once, indeed, when he was writing the letter that was
for ever to decide his destiny, it crossed his mind that this was an
epoch--a parting of the ways--and he hesitated as he folded it up.
But no warning voice was heard; nothing smote him; he was doing what
he believed to be the best; he was allowed to go on without a single
remonstrant sign.  The messenger was despatched, and his fate was
sealed.  His mother and father had held anxious debate.  They
believed Priscilla to be silly, and the question was whether they
should tell George so.  The more they reflected on the affair the
less they liked it; but it was agreed that they could do nothing, and
that to dissuade their son would only embitter him against them.

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Allen, "when she has a family she will be
better."

Mrs. Allen had a belief that children cured a woman of many follies.

Nevertheless the mother could not refrain, when she had to talk to
George about his engagement, from "letting out" just a word.

"I hope you will be happy, my dear boy.  The great thing is not to
have a fool for a wife.  There has never, to my knowledge, been a
woman amongst the Burtons or the Allens who was a fool.

George felt nothing at the time, for he suspected nothing; but the
words somehow remained with him, and reappeared later on in black
intensity like invisible writing under heat.

So they were married, and went to live in a cottage, small, but very
respectable, in the Shott Road.  For the first six months both were
in bliss.  Priscilla was constantly backwards and forwards to her
mother, who took upon herself at once the whole direction of her
affairs; but there was no rupture with the Allens, for, whatever her
other faults might be, Priscilla was not given to making quarrels,
and there was little or no bitterness or evil temper in her.  George
came home after his work was over at the shop, and sometimes went out
to supper with his wife, or read to her the newspaper, which came
once a week.  Like his father, he was an ardent politician, and, from
the very beginning of the struggle, an enthusiastic Free Trader.  The
Free Trade creed was, indeed, the cause of serious embarrassment, for
not only were the customers agricultural and Protectionist, but the
deacons at Tanner's Lane, being nearly all either farmers or
connected with the land, were also Protectionist, and Mr. Broad had a
hard time of it.  For himself, he expressed no opinion; but once, at
a deacons' meeting, when it looked as if some controversy would
arise, he begged Brother Allen to remember that, though we might be
wise as serpents, we were also commanded to be harmless as doves.
There was a small charity connected with the chapel, which was
distributed, not in money, but in bread, and Brother Allen, not being
able to contain himself, had let fall a word or two about the price
of bread which would have raised a storm if Mr. Broad had not poured
on the troubled waters that oil of which he was a perfect reservoir.

George did his best to instruct his wife in the merits of the
controversy, and when he found anything in his newspaper read it
aloud to her.

"You see, Priscilla," he said one evening, "it stands to reason that
if foreign corn pays a duty, the price of every quarter grown here is
raised, and this increased price goes into the farmer's or landlord's
pocket:  Why should I, or why should my men, pay twopence more for
every loaf to buy Miss Wootton a piano?"

"Really, George, do you mean to say that they are going to buy Miss
Wootton a piano?"

"My dear, I said that when they buy a loaf of bread twopence out of
it goes to buy Miss Wootton's piano!" repeated George, laying an
emphasis on every word.  "I did not mean, of course, that they put
their twopences in her pocket.  The point is, that the duty enables
Wootton to get more for his corn."

"Well," said Priscilla triumphantly, "I can tell you she is NOT going
to have a piano.  She's going to have a little organ instead, because
she can play tunes better on an organ, and it's more suitable for
her; so there's an end of that."

"It doesn't matter whether it is an organ or piano," said George,
"the principle is the same."

"Well, but you said a piano; I don't think the principle is the same.
If I were she I would sooner have the piano."

A shade of perplexed trouble crossed George's face, and some creases
appeared in his forehead; but he smoothed them away and laid down his
paper.

"Priscilla, put away your work for a moment and just listen."

Priscilla was making something in the shape of netting by means of
pins and a long loop which was fastened under her foot.

"I can listen, George; there is no occasion to put it away."

"Well then," he answered, placing both his elbows on the table, and
resting his face upon them, "all corn which comes into this country
pays a duty--that you understand.  Consequently it cannot be sold
here for less than sixty shillings a quarter.  Of course, if that is
the case, English wheat is kept up to a higher price than it would
fetch it there was no duty.  Therefore bread is, as I calculate,
about twopence a loaf dearer than it ought to be.  And why should it
be?  That's what I want to know."

"I believe," said Priscilla, "we might save a good bit by baking at
home."

"Yes, yes; but never mind that now.  You know that foreign corn pays
a duty.  You do know that?"

"Yes," said Priscilla, because there was nothing else to be said.

"Well, then, you must see that, if that be so, farmers can obtain a
higher price for English corn."

Poor Priscilla really did her best to comprehend.  She stopped her
knitting for a moment, put her knitting-pin to her lips, and answered
very slowly and solemnly "Ye-es."

"Ah; but I know when you say 'Ye-es' like that you do not
understand."

"I do understand," she retorted, with a little asperity.

"Well then, repeat it, and let us see."

"No, I shall not."

"Dear Priscilla, I am not vexed:  but I only wanted to make it quite
plain to you.  The duty on foreign corn is a tax in favour of the
farmer, or perhaps the landlord, just as distinctly as if the tax-
collector carried the coin from our till and gave it them."

"Of course it is quite plain," she responded, making a bold stroke
for her life.  "Of course it is quite plain we are taxed"--George's
face grew bright, for he thought the truth had dawned upon her--
"because the farmers have to pay the duty on foreign corn."

He took up his newspaper, held it open so as to cover his face, was
silent for a few minutes, and then, pulling out his watch, declared
it was time to go to bed.  She gathered up her netting, looked at him
doubtfully as she passed, and went upstairs.

The roof of George's house had a kind of depression or well in the
middle of it, whence ran a rainwater pipe, which passed down inside,
and so, under the floor, to the soft-water cistern.  A bad piece of
construction, thought he, and he wished, if he could have done so, to
improve it; but there was no way of altering it without pulling the
whole place to pieces.  One day, a very short time after the talk
about Free Trade, a fearful storm of rain broke over Cowfold, and he
was startled by Ellen, his servant, running into the shop and telling
him that the staircase was flooded, and missis wanted him at once.
He put on his coat and was off in a moment.  When he got there
Priscilla met him at the door crying, and in a great fright.  The
well up aloft was full of water, and it was pouring in torrents
through the little window.  It had gone through the floor of the
bedroom and into the dining-room, pulling down with it about half the
ceiling, which lay in a horrid mess upon the dining table and the
carpet, George saw in an instant what was the matter.  He ran up the
steps to the well, pulled out a quantity of straw and dirt which
blocked up the entrance to the pipe; the water disappeared in two
minutes, and all further danger was arrested.

"Why on earth," he cried in half a passion, "did not you think to
clear away the rubbish, instead of wasting your time in sending for
me?  It ought to have entered into anybody's head to do such a simple
thing as that."

"How was I to know?" replied Mrs. George.  "I am not an ironmonger.
What have I to do with pipes?  You shouldn't have had such a thing."

Ellen stood looking at the wreck.

"We don't want you;" said George savagely; "go into the kitchen," and
he shut the dining-room door.  There the husband and wife stood face
to face with one another, with the drip, drip, drip still proceeding,
the ruined plaster, and the spoilt furniture.

"I don't care," he broke out, "one brass farthing for it all; but
what I do care for is that you should not have had the sense to
unstop that pipe."

She said nothing, but cried bitterly.  At last she sat down and
sobbed out:  "O George, George, you are in a rage with me; you are
tired of me; you are disappointed with me.  Oh! what shall I do, what
SHALL I do?"  Poor child! her pretty curls fell over her face as she
covered it with her long white hands.  George was touched with pity
in an instant, and his arms were round her neck.  He kissed her
fervently, and besought her not to think anything of what he had
said.  He took out his handkerchief, wiped her eyes tenderly, lifted
one of her arms and put it round his neck as he pulled a chair
towards him and sat down beside her.  Nothing she loved like
caresses!  She knew what THEIR import was, though she could not
follow his economical logic, and she clung to him, and buried her
face on his shoulder.  At that moment, as he drew her heavy brown
tresses over him, smothered his eyes and mouth in them, and then
looked down through them on the white, sweet beauty they shadowed, he
forgot or overlooked everything, and was once more completely happy.

Suddenly she released herself.  "What shall we do to-night, George,
the bedroom will be so damp?"

He recovered himself, and admitted that they could not sleep there.
There was the spare bedroom; but the wet had come in there too.

"I will sleep at father's, and you sleep at home too.  We will have
fires alight, and we shall be dry enough to-morrow.  You be off now,
my dear; I will see about it all."

So George had the fires alight, got in a man to help him, and they
swept and scoured and aired till it was dark.  In a day or two the
plasterer could mend the ceiling.

Priscilla had left, and, excepting the servant, who was upstairs,
George was alone.  He looked round, walked about--what was it?  Was
he tired?  It could not be that; he was never tired.  He left as soon
as he could and went back to the shop.  After telling the tale of the
calamity which had befallen him he announced--it was now supper-time-
-that he was going to stay all night.  Mother, father, and sister
were delighted to have him--"It looked like old times again;" but
George was not in much of a mood for talking, and at ten o'clock went
upstairs; his early departure being, of course, set down to the worry
he had gone through.  He turned into bed.  Generally speaking he
thought no more of sleep than he did of breathing; it came as
naturally as the air into his lungs; but what was this new
experience?  Half an hour, an hour, after he had laid down he was
still awake, and worse than awake; for his thoughts were of a
different cast from his waking thoughts; fearful forebodings; a
horror of great darkness.  He rose and bathed his head in cold water,
and lay down again; but it was of no use, and he walked about his
room.  What an epoch is the first sleepless night--the night when the
first wrench has been given us by the Destinies to loosen us from the
love of life; when we have first said to ourselves that there are
worse things than death!

George's father always slept well, but the mother stirred at the
slightest sound.  She heard her boy on the other side of the wall
pacing to and fro, and she slipped out of bed, put on her dressing-
gown, and went to listen.  Presently she knocked gently.

"George, my dear, aren't you well?"

"Yes, mother; nothing the matter."

"Let me in."

He let her in, and sat down.  The moon shone brightly, and there was
no need for any other light.

The mother came and sat beside her child.

"George, my dear, there is something on you mind?  What is it?--tell
me."

"Nothing, mother; nothing indeed."

She answered by taking his cold hand in both her own and putting it
on her lap.  Presently he disengaged himself and went to the window.
She sat still for a moment, and followed him.  She looked up in his
face; the moonlight was full upon it; there was no moisture in his
eyes, but his lips quivered.  She led him away, and got him to sit
down again, taking his hand as before, but speaking no word.
Suddenly, without warning, his head was on his mother's bosom, and he
was weeping as if his heart would break.  Another first experience to
him and to her; the first time he had ever wept since he was a child
and cried over a fall or because it was dark.  She supported that
heavy head with the arm which had carried him before he could walk
alone; she kissed him, and her tears flowed with his; but still she
was silent.  There was no reason why she should make further inquiry;
she knew it all.  By themselves there they remained till he became a
little calmer, and then he begged her to leave him.  She wished to
stay, but he would not permit it, and she withdrew.  When she reached
her bedroom her husband was still asleep, and although she feared to
wake him, she could no longer contain herself, and falling on her
knees with her face in the bedclothes, so that she might not be
heard, she cried to her Maker to have mercy on her child.  She was
not a woman much given to religious exercises, but she prayed that
night such a prayer as had not been prayed in Tanner's Lane since its
foundation was laid.  For this cause shall a man leave father and
mother and cleave to his wife?  Ah, yes! he does leave them; but in
his heart does he never go back?  And if he never does, does his
mother ever leave him?

In the morning Mrs. Allen was a little pale, and was asked by her
husband if she was unwell, but she held her peace.  George, too,
rose, went about his work, and in the afternoon walked up to the
cottage to meet his wife there.  She was bright and smiling, and had
a thousand things to tell him about what her mamma said, and how
mamma hoped that the nasty pipe would be altered and never ought to
have been there; and how she was coming after tea to talk to him, and
how she herself, Priscilla, had got a plan.

"What is it?" said George.

"Why, I would put a grating, or something, over the pipe, so that it
shouldn't get stopped up."

"But if the grating got stopped up that would be just as bad."

"Well then, I wouldn't have a well there at all.  Why don't you cover
it over?"

'"But what are you to do with the window?  You cannot block out the
light."

So Priscilla's "plans," as she called them, were nothing.  And though
George had a plan which he thought might answer, he did not consult
her about it.



CHAPTER XXIII--FURTHER DEVELOPMENT



Six months afterwards Priscilla was about to give birth to her first-
born.  At Mrs. Allen's earnest request old nurse Barton had been
engaged, who nursed Mrs. Allen when George came into the world, and
loved him like her own child.  As a counterpoise, Mrs. Broad, who had
desired a nurse from a distance, whom she knew, installed herself
with Priscilla.  Nurse Barton had a great dislike to Mrs. Broad,
although she attended Mr. Broad's ministrations at Tanner's Lane.
She was not a member of the church, and never could be got to propose
herself for membership.  There was, in fact, a slight flavour of
Paganism about her.  She was considered to belong to the "world," and
it was only her age and undoubted skill which saved her practice
amongst the Tanner's Lane ladies.  There was a rival in the town; but
she was a younger woman, and never went out to any of the respectable
houses, save when Mrs. Barton was not available.

The child was safely born, and as soon as nurse Barton could be
spared for an hour or two she went to Mrs. Allen, whom she found
alone.  The good woman then gave Mrs. Allen her opinions, which, by
the way, she always gave with prefect frankness.

"Thank the Lord-i-mercy this 'ere job, Mrs. Allen, is near at an end.
If it 'adn't been my dear boy George's wife, never would I have set
foot in that 'ouse."

"Why not?"

"Why not?  Now, Mrs. Allen, you know as well as I do.  To see that
there Mrs. Broad!  She might 'ave ordered me about; that wouldn't a
been nothin'; but to see 'er a orderin' 'IM, and a ridin' on 'im like
a wooden rockin'-'orse, and with no more feelin'!  A nasty, prancin',
'igh-'eaded creatur'.  Thinks I to myself, often and often, if things
was different I'd let yer know, that I would; but I 'eld my tong.  It
'ud a been wuss for us all, p'r'aps, if I 'adn't."

"I should think so," said Mrs. Allen; "remember she is the minister's
wife."

"Minister's wife!" repeated Mrs. Barton, and with much scorn.  "And
then them children of hern.  Lord be praised I never brought such
things as them into the world.  That was her fine nuss as she must
get down from London; and pretty creaturs they are!"

"Hush, hush; George has one of them, and she is mine."

"I can't 'elp it, ma'am, I must speak out.  I say as he ought to 'ave
married somebody better nor 'er; though I don't mind a tellin' of yer
she's the best of the lot.  Why did the Lord in heaven, as sent Jesus
Christ to die for our souls, let my George 'ave such a woman as that?
What poor silly creaturs we all are!" and the old woman, bending her
head down, shook it mournfully and rubbed her knees with her hand.
She was thinking of him as he lay in her lap years and years ago, and
pondering, in her disconnected, incoherent way, over the mysteries
which are mysteries to us as much as to her.

Mrs. Broad, who was in constant attendance upon Priscilla, at the
very earliest moment pronounced the baby a Flavel, and made haste to
tell father and mother so.  There was no mistaking a refinement, so
to say, in the features and an expression in the eye.  George, of
course, was nearly banished for a time, and was much with his father
and mother.  At length, however, the hour arrived when the nurse took
her departure, and, Mrs. Broad having also somewhat retired, he began
to see a little more of his wife; but it was very little.  She was
altogether shut up in maternal cares--closed round, apparently, from
the whole world.  He was not altogether displeased, but he did at
times think that she might give him a moment now and then, especially
as he was greatly interested in the coming county election.  It was
rather too early in the day for a Free Trader to stand as a
candidate, but two Whigs, of whom they had great hopes, had been put
up, and both George and his father were most energetic in canvassing
and on committees.

Mr. Broad had decided not to vote.  He did not deny that his
sympathies were not with the Tories, but as a minister of religion it
would be better for him to remain neutral.  This annoyed the Allens
and damaged their cause.  At a meeting held by the Tories one of the
speakers called upon the audience to observe that all the respectable
people, with very few exceptions, were on their side.  "Why," cried
he, "I'll bet you, my friends, all Lombard Street to a china orange
that they don't get even the Dissenting parson to vote for the
Radicals.  Of course he won't, and why?  Just because he's a cut
above his congregation, and knows a little more than they do, and
belongs to the intelligent classes."

George bethought himself that perhaps he might do something through
Priscilla to influence her mother, and he determined to speak to her
about it.  He came home one evening after attending a committee, and
found supper ready.  Priscilla was downstairs, sitting with the door
open.

"Hadn't we better shut the door?" said George; "it is rather cold."

"No, no, George; I shouldn't hear the baby."

"But Ellen is upstairs."

"Yes; but then she might go to sleep."

"My dear," began George, "I wish your father could be got to vote
straight.  You see that by not doing so he goes against all the
principles of the Independents.  Ever since they have been in
existence they have always stood up for freedom, and we are having
the large yellow flag worked with the words, Civil and Religious
Liberty.  It will be a bad thing for us if he holds aloof.  I cannot
understand," he continued, getting eloquent, "how a Dissenting
minister can make up his mind not to vote against a party which has
been answerable for all the oppression and all the wrongs in English
history, and for all our useless wars, and actually persecuted his
predecessors in this very meeting-house in which he now preaches.
Besides, to say nothing about the past, just look at what we have
before us now.  The Tories are the most bitter opponents of Free
Trade.  I can't tell you how I feel about it, and I do think that if
you were to speak to your mother she would perhaps induce him to
change his mind."

It was a long time since he had said so much all at once to his wife.

"George, George, I am sure he's awake!" and she was off out of the
room in an instant.  Presently she returned.

"Mamma came here this afternoon and brought his hood--a new one--such
a lovely hood!--and she says he looks more than ever like a Flavel in
it."

"I don't believe you listened to a word of what I was saying."

"Oh yes, I did; you always think I don't listen; but I can listen to
you and watch for him too."

"What did I say?"

"Never mind, I know."

"I cannot understand," he said sullenly, and diverted for a moment
from his subject, "why mamma should be always telling YOU he is a
Flavel."

"Well, really, George, why shouldn't she?  Tryphosa said the other
day that if you were to take away grandpapa Flavel's wig and bands
from the picture in the Evangelical Magazine he would be just like
him."

"It seems to me," replied George, "that if there's any nonsense going
about the town, it always comes to you.  People don't talk such
rubbish to me."

What the effect of this speech might have been cannot be told, for at
this moment the baby did really cry, and Priscilla departed hastily
for the night.  She never spoke to her mother about the election,
for, as George suspected, she had not paid the slightest attention to
him; and as to exchanging with her mother a single word upon such a
subject as politics, or upon any other subject which was in any way
impersonal,--she never did such a thing in her life.

It was the uniform practice of the Reverend John Broad to walk down
the main Street of Cowfold on Monday morning, and to interchange a
few words with any of his congregation whom he might happen to meet.
This pastoral perambulation not only added importance to him, and
made him a figure in Cowfold, but, coming always on Monday, served to
give people some notion of a preoccupation during the other days of
the week which was forbidden, for mental reasons, on the day after
Sunday.  On this particular Monday Mr. Broad was passing Mr. Allen's
shop, and seeing father and son there, went in.  Mr. Allen himself
was at a desk which stood near the window, and George was at the
counter, in a black apron, weighing nails.

After an unimportant remark or two about the weather, Mr. Allen began
in a cheery tone, so as to prevent offence:

"Mr. Broad, we are sorry we cannot persuade you to vote for the good
cause."

Mr. Broad's large mouth lengthened itself, and his little eyes had an
unpleasant light in them.

"Brother Allen, I have made this matter the subject of much
meditation, and I may even say of prayer, and I have come to the
conclusion it will be better for me to occupy a neutral position."

"Why, Mr. Broad?  You cannot doubt on which side the right lies."

"No; but then there are so many things to be considered, so many
responsibilities, and my first care, you see, must be the ministerial
office and the church which Providence has placed in my charge."

"But, Mr. Broad, there are only two or three of them who are Tory."

"Only old Bushel and another farmer or two," interrupted George.

Mr. Broad looked severely at George, but did not condescend to answer
him.

"Those two or three, Brother Allen, require consideration as much as
ourselves.  Brother Bushel is, I may say, a pillar of the cause, a
most faithful follower of the Lord; and what are political questions
compared with that?  How could I justify myself if my liberty were to
become a stumbling-block to my brother.  The house of God without
Brother Bushel to give out the hymns on Sunday would, I am sure, not
be the same house of God to any of us."

"But, Mr. Broad, do you think he will be so silly as to be offended
because you exercise the same right which he claims for himself?"

"Ah, Brother Allen--offended!  You remember, no doubt, the text,
'Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh
while the world standeth.'"

It is a very good thing to have at one's elbow a Bible of rules for
our guidance; but unfortunately we relieve ourselves very often of
the most necessary inquiry whether the rule applies to the particular
case in hand.  Mr. Allen had the greatest possible respect for St.
Paul, but he felt sure the apostle was where he had no business to be
just at that particular moment.  George also saw the irrelevance of
the quotation, and discerned exactly where it did not fit.

"Mr. Broad, I am sure I don't pretend to know what St. Paul thought
as well as you do--of course not--but do you think that voting is
like eating meat?  Is it not a duty to express our convictions on
such questions as those now before the country?  It didn't much
matter whether a man ate meat which had been offered to an idol or
not, but it does matter how we are governed."

Mr. Broad turned round on George, and smiled with a smile which was
certainly not a sign of affection, but otherwise did not notice him.

"Well, Mr. Broad," continued Mr. Allen, "all I can say is, I regret
it; and I am sure you will excuse me if I also say that we too
deserve some consideration.  You forget that your refusal to declare
yourself may be stumbling-block to US."

"I hope not, I hope not.  George, how is Priscilla, and how is her
child?  Are they both quite well?" and with a pontifical benediction
the minister moved away.  When he got home he consulted the oracle;
not on his knees, but sitting in his arm-chair; that is to say, Mrs.
Broad at the Monday afternoon tea, and she relieved his anxiety.
There was no fear of any secession on the part of the Allens,
connected as they were with them through Priscilla.  On the other
hand, Brother Bushel, although he gave out the hymns, had already had
a quarrel with the singing pew because they would not more frequently
perform a tune with a solo for the double bass, which he always
accompanied with his own bass voice, and Mr. Broad had found it
difficult to restore peace; the flute and clarionet justly urging
that they never had solos, and why the double bass, who only played
from ear, and not half as many notes as they played, should be
allowed to show off they didn't know.  Mr. Bushel, too, contributed
ten pounds a year to the cause, and Piddingfold Green Chapel was but
a mile farther off from him than Cowfold.  There were allies of the
Allens in Tanner's Lane, no doubt; but none of them would be likely
to desert so long as the Allens themselves remained.  Therefore
Providence seemed to point out to Mr. and Mrs. Broad that their
course was clear.



CHAPTER XXIV--"I CAME NOT TO SEND PEACE, BUT A SWORD"



Mr. Allen, having business in London, determined to go on Saturday,
and spend the next day with Zachariah.  Although he always called on
his old friend whenever he could do so, he was not often away from
home on a Sunday.  He also resolved to take George with him.
Accordingly on Saturday morning they were up early and caught a coach
on the North Road.  The coaches by this time had fallen off
considerably, for the Birmingham railway was open, and there was even
some talk of a branch through Cowfold; but there were still perhaps a
dozen which ran to places a good way east of the line.  Father and
son dismounted at the "George and Blue Boar," where they were to
sleep.  Sunday was to be spent with the Colemans, whom George had
seen before but very seldom; never, indeed, since he was a boy.

Zachariah still went to Pike Street Chapel, but only in the morning
to hear Mr. Bradshaw, who was now an old man, and could not preach
twice.  On that particular Sunday on which Zachariah, Pauline, Mr.
Allen, and George heard him he took for his text the thirteenth verse
of the twelfth chapter of Deuteronomy:  "Take heed to thyself that
thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place thou seest."  He
put down his spectacles after he had read these words, for he never
used a note, and said:  "If your religion doesn't help you, it is no
religion for you; you had better be without it.  I don't mean if it
doesn't help you to a knowledge of a future life or of the way to
heaven.  Everybody will say his religion does that.  What I do mean
is, that the sign of a true religion--true for YOU, is this--Does it
assist you to bear your own private difficulties?--does it really?--
not the difficulties of the schools and theology, but those of the
parlour and countinghouse; ay, difficulties most difficult, those
with persons nearest to you? . . .  Everybody ought to have his OWN
religion.  In one sense we are all disciples of Christ, but
nevertheless each man has troubles peculiar to himself, and it is
absurd to expect that any book system will be sufficient for each one
of us at all points.  You must make your own religion, and it is only
what you make yourself which will be of any use to you.  Don't be
disturbed if you find it is not of much use to other persons.  Stick
to it yourself if it is really your own, a bit of yourself.  There
are, however, in the Book of God universal truths, and the wonderful
thing about them is, that they are at the same time more particularly
adapted to you and me and all our innermost wants than anything we
can discover for ourselves.  That is the miracle of inspiration.  For
thousands and thousands of years some of the sayings here have
comforted those who have well nigh despaired in the desert of the
world.  The wisdom of millions of apostles, of heroes, of martyrs, of
poor field labourers, of solitary widows, of orphans of the
destitute, of men driven to their last extremity has been the wisdom
of this volume--not their own, and yet most truly theirs. . . .  Here
is a word for us this morning:  'Take heed to thyself that thou offer
not thy burnt offerings in every place thou seest.'  Ah, what a word
it is!  You and I are not idolaters, and there is no danger of our
being so.  For you and me this is not a warning against idolatry.
What is it for us then?  Reserve yourself; discriminate in your
worship.  Reserve yourself, I say; but what is the implication?  What
says the next verse?  'In the place which the Lord shall choose;'
that is to say, keep your worship for the Highest.  Do not squander
yourself, but, on the other hand, before the shrine of the Lord offer
all your love and adoration.  What a practical application this has!
. . I desire to come a little closer to you.  What are the
consequences of not obeying this Divine law?  You will not be struck
dead nor excommunicated, you will be simply DISAPPOINTED.  Your burnt
offering will receive no answer; you will not be blessed through it;
you will come to see that you have been pouring forth your treasure,
and something worse, your heart's blood--not the blood of cattle--
before that which is no God--a nothing, in fact.  'Vanity of
vanities,' you will cry, 'all is vanity.'  My young friends, young
men and young women, you are particularly prone to go wrong in this
matter.  You not only lay your possessions but yourselves on altars
by the roadside."

It was the first time George had ever heard anything from any public
speaker which came home to him, and he wondered if Mr. Bradshaw knew
his history.  He interpreted the discourse after his own way, and
Priscilla was ever before him.

They came back to the little house, and sat down to dinner in the
little front room.  There were portraits on the walls--nothing else
but portraits--and the collection at first sight was inconsistent.
Major Cartwright was still there; there were also Byron, Bunyan,
Scott, Paine, Burns, Mr. Bradshaw, and Rousseau.  It was closely
expressive of its owners.  Zachariah and Pauline were private
persons; they were, happily for them, committed to nothing, and were
not subsidised by their reputations to defend a system.  They were
consequently free to think at large, and if they admired both Bunyan
and Rousseau, they were at liberty to do so.  Zachariah, in a
measure, and a very large measure, had remained faithful to his
earliest beliefs--who is there that does not?--and although they had
been modified, they were still there; and he listened to Mr. Bradshaw
with the faith of thirty years ago.  He also believed in a good many
things he had learned without him, and perhaps the old and the new
were not so discordant as at first sight they might have seemed to
be.  He was not, in fact, despite all his love of logic, the "yes OR
no" from which most people cannot escape, but a "yes AND no"; not
immorally and through lack of resolution, but by reason of an
original receptivity and the circumstances of his training.  If he
had been merely a student the case would have been different but he
was not a student.  He was a journeyman printer; and hard work has a
tendency to demolish the distinctions of dialectics.  He had also
been to school outside his shop, and had learned many lessons, often
confusing and apparently contradictory.  Blanketeer marches; his
first wife; the workhouse imprisonment; his second wife; the little
Pauline had each come to him with its own special message, and the
net result was a character, but a character disappointing to persons
who prefer men and women of linear magnitude to those of three
dimensions.

After dinner the conversation turned upon politics and Mr. Allen
described his interview with Mr. Broad, regretting that the movement
in the district round Cowfold would receive no countenance from the
minister of the very sect which ought to be its chief support.

"A sad falling off," said Zachariah, "from the days, even in my time,
when the Dissenters were the insurrectionary class.  Mr. Bradshaw,
last Sunday, after his sermon, shut his Bible, and told the people
that he did not now interfere much in political matters; but he felt
he should not be doing his duty if he did not tell those whom he
taught which way they ought to vote, and that what he had preached to
them for so many years would be poor stuff if it did not compel them
into a protest against taxing the poor for the sake of the rich."

"Yes," replied Mr. Allen; "but then Broad never has taught what
Bradshaw teaches; he never seems to me to see anything clearly; at
least he never makes me see anything clearly; the whole world is in a
fog to him."

"From what I have heard of Mr. Broad," said Pauline, "I should think
the explanation of him is very simple; he is a hypocrite--an ordinary
hypocrite.  What is the use of going out of the way to seek for
explanations of such commonplace persons?"

"Pauline, Pauline," cried Zachariah, "you surely forget, my child, in
whose company you are!"

"Oh, as for that," said George, "Miss Coleman needn't mind me.  I
haven't married Mr. Broad, and my father is quite right.  For that
matter, I believe Miss Coleman is right too."

"Well," said Mr. Allen, "it is rather strong to say a man is an
ordinary hypocrite, and it is not easy to prove it."

"Not easy to prove it," said Pauline, shifting a little her chair and
looking straight at Mr. Allen, with great earnestness; "hypocrisy is
the one thing easiest to prove.  I can tell whether a man is a
hypocrite before I know anything else about him.  I may not for a
long time be able to say what else he may be, but before he speaks,
almost, I can detect whether he is sincere."

"You women," said Zachariah, with a smile, "or you girls rather, are
so positive.  Just as though the world were divided like the goats
and the sheep in the gospel.  That is a passage that I never could
quite understand.  I never, hardly, see a pure breed either of goat
or sheep.  I never see anybody who deserves go straight to heaven or
who deserves to go straight to hell.  When the judgment day comes it
will be a difficult task.  Why, Pauline, my dear, I am a humbug
myself."

"Ah well, I have heard all that before; but, nevertheless, what I say
is true.  Some men, using speech as God meant men to use it, are
liars, and some are not.  Of course not entirely so, nor at all
times.  We cannot speak mere truth; we are not made to speak it.  For
all that you are not a liar."

"Anyhow, I shall go on," said Mr. Allen.  "We shall have a desperate
fight, and shall most likely lose; but no Tory shall sit for our
county if I can help it."

"Of course you will go on," said Zachariah.  "So shall I go on.  We
are to have a meeting in Clerkenwell to-morrow night, although, to
tell you the truth, I don't feel exactly the interest in the struggle
which I did in those of five-and-twenty years ago, when we had to
whisper our treasons to one another in locked rooms and put sentries
at the doors.  You know nothing about those times, George."

"I wish I had," said George, with an unusual passion, which surprised
his father and caused Pauline to lift her eyes from the table and
look at him.  "I only wish I had.  I can't speak as father can, and I
often say to myself I should like to take myself off to some foreign
country where men get shot for what they call conspiracy.  If I knew
such a country I half believe I would go to-morrow."

"Which means," said Pauline, "that there would be an end of you and
your services.  If you care anything for a cause, you can do
something better than get shot for it; and if you want martyrdom,
there is a nobler martyrdom than death.  The Christians who were
trundled in barrels with spikes in them deserve higher honour than
those who died in a moment, before they could recant.  The highest
form of martyrdom, though, is not even living for the sake of a
cause, but living without one, merely because it is your duty to
live.  If you are called upon to testify to a great truth, it is easy
to sing in flames.  Yes, yes, Mr. George, the saints whom I would
canonise are not martyrs for a cause, but those who have none."

George thought that what Pauline said--just as he had thought of Mr.
Bradshaw's sermon--seemed to be said for him; and yet what did she
know about him?  Nothing.  He was silent.  All were silent, for it is
difficult to follow anybody who pitches the conversation at so high a
level; and Zachariah, who alone could have maintained it, was
dreaming over his lost Pauline and gazing on the sacred pictures
which were hung in the chamber of his heart.  Just at that moment he
was looking at the one of his wife as a girl; the room in which he
was sitting had gone; he was in the court near Fleet Street; she had
cleared the space for the dance; she had begun, and he was watching
her with all the passion of his youth.  The conversation gradually
turned to something more indifferent, and the company broke up.

On the Monday George and his father went home.  It is very
depressing, after being with people who have been at their best, and
with whom we have been at our best, to descend upon ordinary
existence.  George felt it particularly as he stood in the shop on
Tuesday morning and reflected that for the whole of that day--for his
father was out--he should probably not say nor hear a word for which
he cared a single straw.  But there was to be an election meeting
that evening, and Mr. Allen was to speak, and George, of course, must
be there.  The evening came, and the room at the Mechanics'
Institute, which had just been established in Cowfold, was crowded.
Admission was not by ticket, so that, though the Whigs had convened
it, there was a strong muster of the enemy.  Mr. Allen moved the
first resolution in a stirring speech, which was constitutionally
interrupted with appeals to him to go home and questions about a grey
mare--"How about old Pinfold's grey mare?"--which seemed conclusive
and humorous to the last degree.  Old Pinfold was a well-known
character in Cowfold, horse-dealer, pig-jobber, attendant at races,
with no definite occupation, and the grey mare was an animal which he
managed to impose upon Mr. Allen, who sued him and lost.

When Mr. Allen's resolution had been duly seconded, one Rogers, a
publican, got up and said he had something to say.  There was
indescribable confusion, some crying, "Turn him out;" others "Pitch
into 'em, Bill."  Bill Rogers was well known as the funny man in
Cowfold, a half-drunken buffoon, whose wit, such as it was, was
retailed all over the place; a man who was specially pleased if he
could be present in any assembly collected for any serious purpose
and turn it into ridicule.  He got upon a chair, not far from where
George sat, but refused to go upon the platform.  "No, thank yer my
friends, I'm best down here; up there's the place for the gentlefolk,
the clever uns, them as buy grey mares!"--(roars of laughter)--"but,
Mr. Chairman, with your permission"--and here Bill put his had upon
his chest and made a most profound bow to the chair, which caused
more laughter--"there is just one question I should like to ask--not
about the grey mare, sir"--(roars of laughter again)--"but I see a
young gentleman here beknown to us all"--(points to George)--"and I
should just like to ask him, does his mother-in-law--not his mother,
you observe, sir--does his mother-in-law know he's out?"  Once more
there was an explosion, for Mr. Broad's refusal to take part in the
contest was generally ascribed to Mrs. Broad.  George sat still for a
moment, hardly realising his position, and then the blood rose to his
head; up crashed across the forms, and before the grin had settled
into smoothness on Bill's half-intoxicated features there was a grip
like that of a giant on his greasy coat collar; he was dragged amidst
shouts and blows to the door, George nothing heeding, and dismissed
with such energy that he fell prostrate on the pavement.  His friends
had in vain attempted to stop George's wrathful progress; but they
were in a minority.

Next Saturday a report of the scene appeared in the county newspaper,
giving full particulars, considerably exaggerated; and Mr. Broad read
all about it to Mrs. Broad on Saturday afternoon, in the interval
between the preparation of his two sermons.  He had heard the story
on the following day; but here was an authentic account in print.
Mrs. Broad was of opinion that it was shocking; so vulgar, so low;
her poor dear Priscilla, and so forth.  Mr. Broad's sullen animosity
was so much stimulated that it had overcome his customary
circumspection, and on the Sunday evening he preached from the text,
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
himself unspotted from the world."  Mr. Broad remarked that the
Apostle James made no mention here of the scheme of redemption; not
because that was not the chief part of religion, but because he was
considering religion in the aspect--he was very fond of this word
"aspect"--which it presented to those outside the Church.  He called
upon his hearers to reflect with him for a few moments, in the first
place, upon what religion was not; secondly, upon what it was; and
thirdly, he would invite their attention to a few practical
conclusions.  He observed that religion did not consist in vain
strife upon earthly matters, which only tended towards divisions in
the Body of Christ.  "At such a time as this, my brethren, it is
important for us to remember that these disputes, especially if they
are conducted with unseemly heat, are detrimental to the interests of
the soul and give occasion to the enemy to blaspheme."  When Mr.
Broad came to the secondly. and to that sub-division of it which
dealt with freedom from worldly spots, he repeated the words with
some emphasis, "'Unspotted from the world.'  Think, my friends, of
what this involves.  Spots!  The world spots and stains!  We are not
called upon to withdraw ourselves from the world--the apostle does
not say that--but to keep ourselves unspotted, uncontaminated he
appears to mean, by worldly influence.  The word unspotted in the
original bears that interpretation--uncontaminated.  Therefore,
though we must be in the world, we are not to be OF the world, but to
set an example to it.  In the world!  Yes, my brethren, we must
necessarily be in the world; that is the condition imposed upon us by
the Divine Providence, because we are in a state of probation; we are
so constituted, with a body, and with fleshly appetites, that we must
be in the world; but we must be separate from it and its
controversies, which are so unimportant compared with our eternal
welfare."

Mr. Bushel sat on high at his desk, where he gave out the hymns, and
coughed every now and then, and looked straight at the pew where the
Allens and George sat.  Mr. Bushel knew well enough that, although he
was just as ardent on the other side, the sermon was not meant for
him, and not one of Mr. Broad's remarks touched him.  He thought only
of the Allens, and rejoiced inwardly.  George walked home with
Priscilla in silence.  At supper-time he suddenly said:

"I think your father might have found something better to do than
preach at me."

Priscilla was shocked.  She had never heard a criticism on her father
before.

"Really, George, what are you thinking of to talk in that way about a
sermon, and on a Sunday night too?"

"He did preach at me; and if he has anything to say against me, why
doesn't he come and say it here or at the shop?"

"O George, this is dreadful!  Besides, mamma DID come and talk to
me."

"What has that got to do with it?  Well, what did your mother say?"

"Why, she told me all about thus meeting, and how you fought a man
and nearly killed him, and you a member at Tanner's Lane, and how you
oughtn't to have been there at all, and what Mr. Bushel was going to
do."

"Oughtn't to have been there at all?  Why not?  I don't believe you
know any more than this table why I was there."

"Oh yes, I do.  You never tell me anything, but Mrs. Bushel told me.
You want to get them all turned out of their farms."

"Bosh!  There you are again!--the pains I took the other night again
to make you comprehend what Free Trade meant.  I knew you didn't
understand a word about it; and if you did understand, you wouldn't
believe me.  You never take any notice of anything I say; but if Mrs.
Bushel or any other blockhead tells you anything, you believe that
directly."

Priscilla's eyes filled; she took out her handkerchief, and went
upstairs.  George sat still for a while, and then followed her.  He
found her sitting by the baby's cradle, her head on her hands and
sobbing.  It touched him beyond measure to see how she retreated to
her child; he went to her; his anger was once more forgotten, and
once more he was reconciled with kisses and self-humiliation.  The
next morning, however, as he went to the square, the conversation of
the night before returned to him.  "What does it all mean?" he cried
to himself.  "Would to God it were either one thing or another!  I
could be happy if I really cared for her, and if I hated her
downright I could endure it like any other calamity which cannot be
altered; but this is more than I can bear!"

The Allens, father and mother, held anxious debate whether they
should take any notice of the attack by their pastor, and in the end
determined to do nothing.  They considered, and rightly considered,
that any action on their part would only make George's position more
difficult, and he was the first person to be considered.

Next Saturday there was some business to be done in London, and
George went, this time by himself.  On the Sunday morning he called
on the Colemans, and found Zachariah at home, but Pauline away.  Mr.
Bradshaw, too, was not to preach that day.  It was wet, and Zachariah
and George sat and talked, first about the election, and then about
other indifferent subjects.  Conversation--even of the best, and
between two friends--is poor work when one of the two suffers from
some secret sorrow which he cannot reveal, and George grew weary.
Zachariah knew what was the matter with him, and had known it for a
long while, but was too tender to hint his knowledge.  Nevertheless,
remembering his own history, he pitied the poor boy exceedingly.  He
loved him as his own child, for his father's sake, and loved him all
the more for an experience so nearly resembling another which he
recollected too well.

"How is it Mr. Bradshaw is not preaching to-day?" said George.

"He is ill; I am afraid he is breaking up; and latterly he has been
worried by the small attacks made upon him by people who are afraid
to say anything distinctly."

"What kind of attacks?"

"Well, they insinuate that he is Arian."

"What is that?"

Zachariah explained the case as well as he could, and George was much
interested.

"Arian or not, I tell you one thing, Mr. Coleman, that Mr. Bradshaw,
whenever I have heard him, seems to help me as Mr. Broad never does.
I never think about what Mr. Broad says except when I am in chapel,
and sometimes not then."

"Bradshaw speaks from himself.  He said a thing last Sunday which
stuck by me, and would have pleased a country lad like you more than
it did three parts of his congregation, who are not so familiar with
country life as he is.  He told us he was out for a holiday, and saw
some men hoeing in a field--'Hoeing the charlock,' he said to
himself; but when he came nearer he found they were hoeing turnips--
hoeing up the poor plants themselves, which lay dying all around;
hoeing them up to let the other plants have room to grow.

"I have known men," added Zachariah after a pause, "from whose life
so much--all love, for example--has been cut out; and the effect has
been, not ruin, but growth in other directions which we should never
have seen without it."

Zachariah took down a little book from his shelf, and wrote George's
name in it.

"There, my boy, it is not much to look at, but I know nothing better,
and keep it always in your pocket.  It is the Imitation of Christ.
You will find a good deal in it which will suit you, and you will
say, as I have said a thousand times over it, that other people may
write of science or philosophy, but this man writes about me."

He put it on the table, and George opened it at the sentence, "He
that can best tell how to suffer will best keep himself in peace.
That man is conqueror of himself, and lord of the world, the friend
of Christ, and the heir of heaven."  He turned over the leaves again-
-"He to whom the Eternal Word speaketh is delivered from a world of
unnecessary conceptions."  Zachariah bent his head near him and
gently expounded the texts.  As the exposition grew George's heart
dilated, and he was carried beyond his troubles.  It was the birth in
him--even in him, a Cowfold ironmonger, not a scholar by any means--
of what philosophers call the IDEA, that Incarnation which has ever
been our Redemption.  He said nothing to Zachariah about his own
affairs, nor did Zachariah, as before observed, say anything to him;
but the two knew one another, and felt that they knew one another as
intimately as if George had imparted to his friend the minutest
details of his unhappiness with his wife.

Towards the end of the afternoon Pauline returned, and inquired how
the battle went in Cowfold.

"I am afraid we shall be beaten.  Sometimes I don't seem to care much
about it."

"Don't care!  Why not?"

"Oh, we talk and talk, father and I, and somehow people's minds are
made up without talking, and nobody ever changes.  When we have our
meetings, who is it who comes?  Does Bushel come?  Not a bit of it.
We only get our own set."

"Well," said Zachariah, the old man's republican revolutionary ardour
returning, "this is about the only struggle in which I have felt much
interest of late years.  I should like to have cheap bread, and what
is more, I should like to deprive the landlords of that bit of the
price which makes the bread dear.  I agree with you, my boy.  Endless
discussion is all very well--forms 'public opinion,' they say; but I
wish a could be put to it when it has come round to where it began;
that one side could say to the other, 'You have heard all our logic,
and we have heard all yours;' now then, let us settle it.  'Who is
the strongest and best drilled?'  I believe in insurrection.
Everlasting debate--and it is not genuine debate, for nobody really
ranges himself alongside his enemy's strongest points--demoralises us
all.  It encourages all sorts of sophistry, becomes mere manoeuvring,
and saps people's faith in the truth.  In half an hour, if two
persons were to sit opposite one another, they could muster every
single reason for and against Free Trade.  What is the use of going
on after that?  Moreover, insurrection strengthens the belief of men
in the right.  A man who voluntarily incurs the risk of being shot
believes ever afterwards, if he escapes, a little more earnestly than
he did before.  'Who is on the Lord's side, let him come unto me,'
says the flag.  Insurrection strengthens, too, the faith of others.
When a company of poor men meet together and declare that things have
got to such a pass that they will either kill their enemies or die
themselves, the world then thinks there must, after all, be SOME
difference between right and wrong."

"Father, that is all past now.  We must settle our quarrels in the
appointed way.  Don't say anything to discourage Mr. Allen.  Besides,
people are not so immovable as you think.  How they alter I don't
know; but they do alter.  There is a much larger minority in favour
of Free Trade than there was ten years ago."

"All past now, is it?  You will see one of these days."

It was time for tea, and Pauline left to get the tea-things.  In the
evening they strolled out for a walk through Barnsbury and up Maiden
Lane, then a real and pretty lane stretching north-westwards through
hedges to Highgate.  After they had gone a few hundred yards
Zachariah went back; he had forgotten something, and George and
Pauline walked on slowly together.  The street was crowded, for it
was just about church time, but on the opposite side of the road
George saw somebody whom he knew, but who took no notice of him.

"How odd!" he said to Pauline; "that is Tom Broad!  What is he doing
here, I wonder?"

Pauline made no answer, and at that moment Zachariah rejoined them.

The reason for Mr. Thomas Broad's appearance in that quarter will be
best explained by the following letter, which he had received the day
before from his father:-


"My Dear Thomas,--I was very glad to hear of your success at Mr.
Martin's chapel, at Hackney, on Sunday afternoon.  Although it was
nothing more than an afternoon service, you must remember that it is
the first invitation to a metropolitan pulpit which you have
received.  It would be as well if you were to call on Mr. Martin at
your earliest convenience, and also on Mr. Chandler, in Leather Lane,
whom you mentioned to me, and who, I believe, is a prominent deacon.
The choice of your subject was judicious, although it is not so easy
to fix the character of a discourse for the afternoon as for the
morning or evening.  'I will give him a white stone' is a text I have
used myself with great profit.  A young minister, I need hardly say,
my dear Thomas, ought to confine himself to what is generally
accepted, and not to particularise.  For this reason he should avoid
not only all disputed topics, but, as far as possible, all reference
to particular offences.  I always myself doubted the wisdom, for
example, of sermons against covetousness, or worldliness, or
hypocrisy.  Let us follow our Lord and Master, and warn our hearers
against sin, and leave the application to the Holy Spirit.  I only
mention this matter now because I have found two or three young
students err in this direction, and the error, I am sure, militates
against their usefulness.

"Your dear mamma and Tryphosa are both quite well.  Not so Priscilla.
I grieve to say she is NOT well.  George's conduct lately has been
very strange.  I am afraid that he will be a trouble not only to us,
but to the Church of Christ.  Both he and his father have kindled
strife amongst us in this unhappy election contest, for which, as a
minister of God's Word, I have held aloof.  For one or two Sundays
the Allens have absented themselves from Divine service in the
evening, and we know that there has been no sickness in the house.  I
feel certain that before long they will withdraw their subscription.
I have good reason to believe that their friend, Mr. Coleman,
exercises a very baleful influence upon them.  However, God's will be
done!  These are the trials which His servants who minister to His
flock must expect.  Good-bye, my dear Thomas.  Mamma and Tryphosa
send their love.  Give diligence to make your calling and election
sure.--Your affectionate father,

"JOHN BROAD.

"P.S.--It will be as well, perhaps, if you can ascertain whether the
Allens visit the Colemans, and more particularly if George goes
there.  The Coleman household consists, I believe, of a father and
daughter.  You will remember that Coleman has been a convict, and, I
have heard, has tendencies towards infidelity.  Priscilla informs me
that Mr. Allen and George will be in London to-morrow; but she does
not know what they are going to do there.  You will doubtless be able
to obtain the information I desire, and on future occasions I will
also advise you when either George or his father is in the
metropolis."


Mr. Thomas Broad had his own reasons for complying with his father's
request.  He hated the Colemans and George with as much active
malignity as was possible to his heavy unctuous nature.  Why he
should hate the Colemans is intelligible, and his hatred to George
can also be explained, partly through sympathy between father and
son, and partly because the hatred of a person like Thomas Broad to a
person like George Allen needs no explanation.



CHAPTER XXV--"AND A MAN'S FOES SHALL BE THEY OF HIS OWN HOUSEHOLD"



The county polling day meanwhile drew near, and with its approach
party spirit rose and the mutual exasperation of both sides
increased.  George and his father were out every evening at the
Institute or canvassing, and George's first attempts at public
speaking were a success.  At length the day dawned which was to
decide their fate.  Cowfold was the polling station for a large
district, and both sides fully recognised its importance.  The
Democratic colour was orange, and the Tory was purple.  Everybody
wore rosettes, and bands of music went about the town, carrying flags
and banners, which had such an effect upon the Cowfold population,
more particularly upon that portion of it which knew nothing whatever
of the questions at issue, that the mere sound of the instruments or
sight of a bit of bunting tied to a pole was sufficient to enable
them to dare a broken head, or even death.  Beer may have been partly
the cause of this peculiar mental condition, but not entirely, for
sober persons felt the contagion.  We may laugh at it if we please,
and no doubt it is evidence of the weakness of human nature; but,
like much more evidence of the same order, it is double-voiced, and
testifies also to our strength.

Priscilla was staying that night with her mother.  Mr. Broad's house,
at the end of the town, was very quiet, and George did not care to
leave her alone with the servant.  Those were the days when the state
of the poll was published every hour, and as Cowfold lay near the
centre of the county a very fair opinion could be formed of the
progress of the voting.  By three o'clock it was known that up to
eleven parties were neck and neck, and the excitement grew more and
more intense.  Every public-house in Cowfold was free, and soon after
dinner-time there was not a single person in the place who was ever
drunk before who had not found it necessary to get drunk then in
order to support the strain on his nerves.  Four o'clock came, and
the polling-booth was shut; the numbers were made up, and the two
committees now anxiously awaited the news from the outlying
districts.  The general impression seemed to be that the popular
candidate would win by about a dozen, and by eight o'clock a crowd
had assembled before the "Cross Keys" to give due welcome to the
desired announcement.  Ten o'clock came, and the mob began to get
impatient and unruly.  Then there was a stir and a roar, and the
whole assemblage rushed off to the "Angel," in the square.  On the
balcony was a huge placard, with the purple hero at the top--1837--
and below was the orange favourite, in small and ignominious figures-
-1831.  Bushel stood at the open window waving his hat, apparently
half frantic.  Just underneath him was a smaller crowd of the purple
faction, who were cheering and bawling with all their might as the
enemy came in sight.  In an instant the conflict had begun.  The
purple banners were the first objects of attack, and disappeared
every one of them, in less than five minutes, underfoot.  Seen from
one of the upper storeys of the houses, the square looked like a
great pot full of boiling confusion.  By degrees the wearers of
purple were driven hard against the "Angel" yard-gates, which opened
to receive them; some who were not successful in securing admittance
escaping, with bloody heads, down the side lane, and so out across
the fields.  There was great difficulty in shutting the gates again;
but the "Angel" hostlers appeared on the scene with pitchforks and
other weapons, which caused an ebb of the tide for a moment.  They
managed in the nick of time to swing the gates together, and the
heavy wooden bar was thrown across them.  The orange party was now
triumphant, but very unhappy, because it was able to do no further
mischief.  Suddenly Bushel was seen again at the window, and, as it
was afterwards averred, made some insulting gesture.  A stone was the
prompt response, and in five minutes there was not a whole pane of
glass left in the front of the building.  "Have old Bushel out!
Smoke 'em out!" was shouted, and a rush followed towards the door.
But the insurgents had no siege train for such a fortress, and the
sight of two or three fowling-pieces somewhat damped their courage.
They therefore turned off, wrecked the brewer's house, and forced the
"Angel" tap, which was separated from the main building.  The spirit-
casks were broached, and men turned the gin and brandy taps into
their mouths without waiting for glasses.  Many of them, especially
those who first entered, were at once overcome and dropped, lying
about in the room and in the gutter perfectly insensible.  The
remainder, who could only drink what was left, became more and more
riotous, and a general sack of all purple property was imminent.  Mr.
Allen was at the "Cross Keys," but George was at home, and as he
watched the scene he saw the mob take a kind of lurch and sway along
the street which led to Mr. Broad's.  He thought he heard Mr. Broad's
name, and in an instant he had buttoned-up his coat, taken the
heaviest stick he could find, and was off.  He had the greatest
difficulty in forcing his way, and he did not reach the front of the
crowd till it was opposite Mr. Broad's and the destruction of the
windows had begun.  He leaped over the iron railing, and presented
himself at the gate with the orange rosette on his coat and the stick
in his right hand.  He was just in time, for yells of "Psalm-singing
old hypocrite!" were already in the air, and the fence was being
stormed.  George administered to the foremost ruffian a blow on the
shoulder which felled him on the path outside, and then, standing on
the low brick wall on which the railings rested, showed his rosette,
brandished his club, and made some kind of inarticulate
expostulation, which, happily for him and Mr. Broad, was received
with cheers.  Whether taken by itself it would have been effectual or
not cannot be said, for just at that moment a more powerful auxiliary
appeared.  When the "Angel" was abandoned the imprisoned garrison,
amongst whom were one or two county magistrates, held a brief
consultation.  They organised their force and marched out, the well-
to-do folk in front and abreast, armed with bludgeons, the "Angel"
dependents--and about fifty more of the refugees coming in the rear,
every garden and stable weapon of offence being distributed amongst
them.  They had the advantage, of course, of being sober.  They
advanced at a run, and their tramp was heard just as George was
beginning to try the effect of his eloquence.  Panic and scattering
flight at once followed, not, however, before some dozen or so of the
fugitives had recovered what little sense they ever had by virtue of
sundry hard knocks on their skulls, and a dozen more or so had been
captured.  By twelve o'clock Cowfold was quiet and peaceable.

Citizens were left to wonder how their town, lying usually so
sleepily still, like a farmyard on a summer Sunday afternoon, could
ever transform itself after this fashion.  Men unknown and never
before seen seemed suddenly to spring out of the earth, and as
suddenly to disappear.  Who were they?  Respectable Cowfold, which
thought it knew everybody in the place, could not tell.  There was no
sign of their existence on the next day.  People gathered together
and looked at the mischief wrought the night before, and talked
everlastingly about it; but the doers of it vanished, rapt away
apparently into an invisible world.  On Sunday next, at one o'clock,
Cowfold Square, save for a few windows not yet mended, looked just as
it always looked; that is to say, not a soul was visible in it, and
the pump was, as usual, chained.

The band of rescuers had passed George as he stood in the garden, and
when they had gone he knocked at the door.  It was a long time before
anybody came, but at last it was partly opened, just as far as the
chain would permit, and the Reverend John Broad, looking very white
and with a candle in his hand appeared.

"It is I, George, Mr. Broad.  Please tell me how Priscilla is, and--
how you all are after your fright.  I will not come in if you are all
well."

"No, Mr. George, you will not come in.  I little thought that a
member of Tanner's Lane Church, and my daughter's husband, would
associate himself with such disgraceful proceedings as those we have
witnessed this evening."

"But, Mr. Broad, you are quite mistaken.  I was not with the mob.  I
came here as soon as I could to protect you."

Mr. Broad, terrified and wrathful, had, however, disappeared, and
George heard the bolts drawn.  He was beside himself with passion,
and knocked again and again, but there was no answer.  He was
inclined to try and break open the door at first, or seek an entrance
through a window, but he thought of Priscilla, and desisted.

He was turning homewards, when he reflected that it would be useless
to attempt to go to sleep, and he wandered out into the country
towards Piddingfold, pondering over many things.  The reaction of
that night had been too severe.  His ardour was again almost entirely
quenched when he saw the men for whom he had worked, and who
professed themselves his supporters, filthily drunk.  A noble
sentence, however, from the Idler came into his mind--his mother had
a copy of the Idler in her bedroom, and read and re-read it, and
oftentimes quoted it to her husband and her son--"He that has
improved the virtue or advanced the happiness of one fellow-creature
. . may be contented with his own performance; and, with respect to
mortals like himself, may demand, like Augustus, to be dismissed at
his departure with applause."  He reflected that he, an ironmonger's
son, was not born to save the world, and if the great Dr. Johnson
could say what he did, with how little ought not a humble Cowfold
tradesman to be satisfied!  We all of us have too vast a conception
of the duty which Providence has imposed upon us; and one great
service which modern geology and astronomy have rendered is the
abatement of the fever by which earnest people are so often consumed.
But George's meditations all through that night were in the main
about his wife, and as soon as he reached his shop in the morning,
the first thing he did was to write a note to her telling her to come
home.  This she did, although her mother and father objected, and
George found her there at dinner-time.  She looked pale and careworn,
but this, of course, was set down to fright.  She was unusually
quiet, and George forbore to say anything about her father's
behaviour.  He dreaded rather to open the subject; he could not tell
to what it might lead.  Priscilla knew all about George's repulse
from her father's door, and George could tell she knew it.

His father and he had determined that Cowfold would not be a pleasant
place for them on the following Sunday, and that business, moreover,
demanded their presence in London.  Thither, accordingly, they went
on the Saturday, as usual; and Priscilla naturally communicating
their intention to her mother, Mr. Thomas Broad received an epistle
from his father something like one we have already read, but still
more imperative in its orders that the dutiful son should see whether
the Allens made Zachariah's house their head-quarters.  That they did
not sleep there was well-known, but it was believed they had constant
intercourse with that unregenerate person, a disciple of Voltaire, as
the Reverend John Broad firmly believed, and it would be
"advantageous to possess accumulated evidence of the fact."
Priscilla knew that they lodged always at the "George and Blue Boar";
but how they spent their time on Sunday she did not know.  There was
also a postscript, this time with a new import:


"It has been reported that Coleman's daughter is a young female not
without a certain degree of attractiveness.  It may perhaps, my dear
Thomas, be some day of service to me and to the church if you were to
inform me whether you have observed any tendencies towards
familiarity between George and this person.  I need not at the
present moment give you my reasons for this inquiry.  It will be
sufficient to say that I have nothing more in view than the welfare
of the flock which Divine Providence has committed to my charge."


Mr. Thomas did his duty, and a letter was received by his father on
the following Tuesday, which was carefully locked up in the drawer in
which the sermons were preserved.

The next day--that is to say, on Wednesday--George was at work, as
usual, when his little maid came to say that her mistress was very
bad, and would he go home directly?  She had been unwell for some
days, but it was not thought that there was anything serious the
matter with her.  George followed the girl at once, and found
Priscilla in bed with a violent headache and very feverish.  The
doctor came, and pronounced it a case of "low fever," a disease well
enough known in Cowfold.  Let us make the dismal story as brief as
possible.  Nurse Barton, hearing of her "dear boy's" trouble,
presented herself uninvited that evening at ten o'clock, and insisted
that George should not sit up.  She remained in the house,
notwithstanding Mrs. Broad's assurances that she really was not
wanted, and watched over Priscilla till the end came.

About a week afterwards, just when Priscilla seemed to be getting a
little better--she had been delirious, but her senses had returned--
and Mrs. Allen, who had been in the house all day, had departed, a
change for the worse took place, and the doctor was summoned.
George, sitting in the parlour alone, heard Nurse Barton come
downstairs.

"My dear boy," she said as she entered, "God in His mercy strengthen
you in this trial as He has laid upon you, but I thought I'd just
come and tell you myself.  The doctor wor a-comm', but I said 'No; my
boy shall hear it from me.'  I don't think as your wife will get
better; she don't seem to pull herself up a bit.  She a'nt got no
strength no more than a fly.  You'd better see her, I think."

"Who is there?"

"Her mother and the doctor."

"Can't you get rid of them?"

"All right, my dear.  I must stay with you both, but you won't mind
me--God bless you!" and the woman put her arms round George's neck
and kissed him tenderly.

She returned, and presently she redeemed her promise, for she
actually got Mrs. Broad away.  At first she was obstinate, but
Priscilla whispered that she wished to see her husband alone, and the
doctor took upon him to warn Mrs. Broad that resistance on her part
might be dangerous.  She then retreated with him, and George found
himself by the bedside.  His wife was so prostrate that she was
hardly able to make herself heard, but she lifted up her finger and
made a sign that he should bend his head down to her.  He bent it
down, and her damp brown hair--the beautiful brown hair he had loved
so--lay on his forehead, and its scent was all about him once more.

"George, my dear," she just breathed out, "I am a poor silly girl,
but I always loved you."

He stopped her instantly with his kisses, but Death had stopped her
too.  He recoiled for a moment, and with a sudden scream.  "O God,
she's gone!" he fell into the arms of his nurse, who stood behind
him.



CHAPTER XXVI--A PROFESSIONAL CONSULTATION



Three months passed, during which the Allens' pew was vacant at
Tanner's Lane.  George remained at home with his only child, or was
at his mother's, or, shocking to relate, was in the fields, but not
at chapel; nor were any of his family there.  During the whole of
these three months one image was for ever before his eyes.  What
self-accusations!  Of what injustice had he not been guilty?  Little
things, at the time unnoticed, turns of her head, smiles, the fall of
her hair--oh, that sweet sweet brown hair!--all came back to him, and
were as real before him as the garden wall.  He thought of her lying
in her grave--she whom he had caressed--of what was going on down
there, under the turf, and he feared he should go mad.  Where was
she?  Gone, for ever gone--gone before he had been able to make her
understand how much he really loved her, and so send her to sleep in
peace.  But was she not in heaven?  Would he not see her again?  He
did not know.  Strange to say, but true, he, a member of Tanner's
Lane Church, who had never read a sceptical book in his life, was
obliged to confess, perhaps not consciously, but none the less
actually, he did not know.

In those dark three months the gospel according to Tanner's Lane did
nothing for him, and he was cast forth to wrestle with his sufferings
alone.  It is surely a terrible charge to bring against a religious
system, that in the conflict which has to be waged by every son of
Adam with disease, misfortune, death, the believers in it are
provided with neither armour nor weapons.  Surely a real religion,
handed down from century to century, ought to have accumulated a
store of consolatory truths which will be of some help to us in time
of need.  If it can tell us nothing, if we cannot face a single
disaster any the better for it, and if we never dream of turning to
it when we are in distress, of what value is it?  There is one
religious teacher, however, which seldom fails those who are in
health, and, at last, did not fail him.  He was helped by no priest
and by no philosophy; but Nature helped him, the beneficent Power
which heals the burn or scar and covers it with new skin.

At the end of the three months the Reverend John Broad received a
brief note from Mr. Allen announcing that their pew at the chapel
could be considered vacant, and that the subscription would be
discontinued.  Within a week Mr. Broad invited Brother Bushel,
Brother Wainwright the cart-builder and blacksmith, and Brother
Scotton the auctioneer, to a private meeting at his own house.  In a
short speech Mr. Broad said that he had sought a preliminary
conference with them to lay before them the relationship in which the
Allens stood to the church in Tanner's Lane.  They had formally
ceased to attend his ministrations, but of course, as yet, they
remained on the church books.  It was a matter which he, as the
minister of the flock, felt could not any longer be overlooked.  He
would say nothing of the part which the Allens had taken in the late
unhappy controversies which had distracted the town, excepting that
he considered they had displayed a heat and animosity inconsistent
with their professions and detrimental to the best interests of the
cause.

"I agree with that, Mr. Broad," interrupted Mr. Bushel; "and I may
say that, as you know, if you had done nothing, _I_ SHOULD; for how
any member of the--gospel--could live in--and go on--peace harmony
with all men in the Church of Christ, I, at, least--that's my
opinion."  Mr. Bushel was shortnecked, and shook his head always
while he was talking, apparently in order to disengage his meaning,
which consequently issued in broken fragments.

Mr. Broad resumed--"I may, however, observe that George Allen was in
company with the intoxicated mob which devastated Cowfold; and
although he has asserted that he merely endeavoured to control its
excesses--and such appears to be the view taken by the civil
authorities who have prosecuted the perpetrators of the outrages--we,
as members, my dear brethren, of Christ's Body, have to be guided by
other considerations.  While upon this subject of George Allen, I may
say, with as much delicacy as is permissible to a faithful minister
of God's holy Word, that I fear George has been--a--h'm--what shall I
say?--at least led astray by an unhappy intimacy with a female
residing in the metropolis who is an infidel.  I have no doubt in my
own mind that the knowledge of this fact accelerated the departure of
my dear daughter, whose sorrow was of a twofold character--sorrow, in
the first place, with regard to her husband's unfaithfulness, causing
her thereby much personal affliction, which, however, endureth but
for a moment, for she now inherits a far more exceeding weight of
glory"--Mr. Broad's week-day and extempore quotations from the Bible
were always rather muddled--"and, in the second place, sorrow for her
husband's soul.  I think we have distinct evidence of this intimacy,
which I shall be able to produce at the proper moment.  We have all
observed, too, that whilst the Allens have not latterly attended
Divine Service at Tanner's Lane, they have not seceded to another
place of worship.  Finally, and by way of conclusion, let me remark
that I have wrestled long with the Lord to know what was my duty
towards these apostates and towards the Church of Christ.  I
considered at first I ought to remonstrate privately with Mr. Allen;
but, alas! he has shown a recalcitrant disposition whenever I have
attempted to approach him.  I have consulted Brother Bushel on the
subject; indeed, I may say that Brother Bushel had previously
intimated to me the necessity of taking some steps in the matter, and
had assured me that he could not any longer occupy the prominent
position which he now occupies in the church--so much, I may say, to
our own edification and advantage--if something were not done.  We
think, therefore, that the church should be privately convoked for
deliberation.  Brother Wainwright, what counsel have you to give?"

Brother Wainwright always had a heavy account with Brother Bushel.
He was a little man, with a little round head covered with straggling
hair, which came over his forehead.  He sat with his hat between his
knees, looked into it, scratched his head, and said with a jerk, "Oi
agree with Brother Bushel."

"Brother Scotton, what do you say?"

Brother Scotton was a Cowfold man, tall and thin, superintendent of
the Sunday-school, and to a considerable extent independent of
village custom.  He was not only an auctioneer, but a land surveyor;
he also valued furniture, and when there were any houses to be let,
drew up agreements, made inventories, and had even been known to
prepare leases.  There was always, therefore, a legal flavour about
him, and he prided himself on his distant professional relationship
to full-blown attorneyhood.  It was tacitly understood in Cowfold
that his opinion in certain cases was at least equal to that of
Mortimer, Wake, Collins & Mortimer who acted as solicitors for half
the county.  Mr. Scotton, too, represented Cowfold urban intelligence
as against agricultural rusticity; and another point in his favour
was, that he had an office--no shop--with a wire blind in the window
with the words, "Scotton, Land Agent, Auctioneer, and Appraiser,"
painted on it.  On Mr. Broad's present appeal for his verdict put
himself in a meditative attitude, stretched out his legs to their
full length, threw his head back, took his lower lip in his left
hand, pulled up his legs again, bent forward, put his hands on his
knees, and looked sideways at Mr. Broad.

"I suppose that Mr. Allen and his son will have the charges
communicated to them, Mr. Broad, and be summoned to attend the
meeting?"

"What do you say, Brother Bushel?"

"Don't see no use in it.  All very well them lawyers"--a snap at
Scotton--"come and argyfy--I hate argyfying, I do myself--never seed
no good on it.  Get rid of a man--I do.  'Sickly sheep infects the
flock and pisons all the rest.'"  These last words formed part of a
hymn of which Brother Bushel was fond.

"What do you say, Brother Wainwright?"

Brother Wainwright, although he could do nothing but agree with
Brother Bushel, and never did anything but agree with him, preferred
to make a show of reflection.  He again looked in his hat, shut his
mouth fast; again scratched his head; again shook it a little, and
with another jerk, as if announcing a conclusion at which he had
arrived with great certainty, but after a severe mental effort, he
said:

"Oi go with Brother Bushel, Oi do."

"Well," said Scotton, extending his legs again and gazing at the
ceiling, "I must nevertheless be permitted to adhere--"

"Adhere," interrupted Bushel.  "What's the use of talking like that?
You always adhere--what for, I should like to know?"

Scotton went on with dignity, not noticing the attack.

"Adhere, I was about to say, Mr. Broad, to my previously expressed
opinion.  I am not at all sure that the Allens have not a legal
status, and that an action would not lie if we proceeded without due
formalities.  Tanner's Lane, you must recollect, is in a peculiar
position, and there is an endowment."

Mr. Scotton had this advantage over Cowfold generally, that if he
knew nothing about the law himself, excepting so far as bids at a
sale were concerned, Cowfold knew less, and the mention of the
endowment somewhat disturbed Mr. Broad's mind.

"Brother Bushel is no doubt quite justified in his anxiety to avoid
discussion, which will in all probability lead to no useful result;
but, on the other hand, it will be as well, perhaps, to proceed with
caution."

"Well," ejaculated Bushel, "do as yer like; you'll see you'll get in
an argyfication and a mess, you take my word on it."

"Suppose," said Mr. Broad, his face shining as he spoke, "we hit upon
a third course, the via media, you know, Brother Scotton"--Brother
Scotton nodded approvingly, as much as to say, "_I_ know; but how
about Bushel?"--"the via media, and have a friendly meeting of the
most influential members of the church--a majority--and determine
upon a course of action, which we can afterwards ratify at the formal
meeting, at which the Allens will be present.  We shall in this way,
it seems to me, prevent much debate, and practically arrive at a
conclusion beforehand."

"Yes," said Scotton--very slowly.  "I don't see, at the present
moment, any particular objection; but I should not like to commit
myself."

"How does it strike you, Brother Bushel?"

"Arter that, I suppose Scotton ull want some sort of a dockyment
sent.  I'm agin all deckyments.  Why, what'll Allen do?  Take it over
to Collins--Mortimer--stamp it, ten-and-sixpenny stamp.  What will
yer do then?"

"No, Brother Bushel; I apprehend that it will be my duty as pastor to
write to the Allens a simple letter--a simple pastoral letter--
announcing that a church meeting will be convened at a certain hour
in the vestry, to consider some statements--charges--naming them--not
going into unnecessary detail, and requesting their attendance."

"That's better; that wouldn't be a dockyment, I s'pose; and yet praps
he might stamp that.  Resolution arterwards.  Time they were out of
it.  Come on, Wainwright, gettin' dark."

"Well then, we agree," said Mr. Broad--"happily agree; and I trust
that the Lord will yet prosper His Zion, and heal the breaches
thereof.  Will any of you take any refreshments before you go?  Will
you, Brother Bushel?"

Brother Bushel did not believe in Mr. Broad's refreshments, save
those which were spiritual, and declined them with some abruptness,
preferring much a glass of hot brown brandy and water at the inn
where his horse was.  Brother Wainwright would have taken anything,
but was bound to follow Brother Bushel, who was about to give him a
lift homewards; and Brother Scotton was a teetotaller, one of the
first who was converted to total abstinence in Cowfold, and just a
trifle suspected at Tanner's Lane, and by Bushel in particular, on
that account.  Water-drinking was not a heresy to which any definite
objection could be raised; but Tanner's Lane always felt that if once
a man differed so far from his fellows as not to drink beer and
spirits, there was no knowing where the division might end.  "It was
the thin end of the wedge," Mr. Broad observed confidentially to
Bushel once when the subject was mentioned.

The preliminary meeting, therefore, was held, and Mr. Broad having
communicated the charges against the Allens--absenting themselves
from public worship, disturbance of the peace of the church,
intercourse with infidel associates, and finally so far as George was
concerned, "questionable behaviour," as Mr. Broad delicately put it,
"with an infidel female"--it was determined to call them to account.
There was some difference of opinion, however.  It was thought by
some that all reference to the election, direct or indirect, should
be avoided, for the majority in Tanner's Lane was certainly not Tory.
But Brother Bushel seemed to consider this the head and front of the
offence, and declared that if this were not part of the indictment he
would resign.  He also was opposed to giving the Allens any
information beforehand, and, if he had been allowed to have his own
way, would not have permitted them to attend.  He would have them
"cut off," he said, "there and then, summararlilly."  He got into
great difficulties with this last word, and before he could get rid
of it had to shake his head several times.  Others thought it would
be dangerous to act in this style; and there seemed no chance of any
agreement, until Mr. Broad once more "healed the incipient division"
by proposing another via media, which was carried.  It was determined
that there should be only an allusion to the political charge.  It
was to be subsidiary.  In fact, it was not to be a political charge
at all, but a moral charge, although, as Mr. Broad privately
explained to Brother Bushel, it would come to the same thing in the
end.  Then Mr. Broad, as he had suggested at an earlier stage, was
himself to write a letter to the Allens, stating in "general terms"
the dissatisfaction felt by the church and its minister with them,
and requesting their appearance in the vestry on the day named.
Brother Scotton was still malcontent, but as he was in a minority he
held his peace.  He resolved, however, on his own account, to
acquaint the Allens with what had happened, and prepare them.  They
were no particular friends of his, but Bushel also was no particular
friend, and his auctioneering trade had at least educated him, in the
disputes amongst buyers, to hold the scales of justice a little more
evenly than they were held by Bushel's hands.

Neither George nor his father were much disturbed by any of the items
in Scotton's information nor by Mr. Broad's letter, save the
reference to Pauline.  It is true it was very remote, but the
meaning, especially after Scotton's explanation, was obvious, and
George was in a fury which his father found it very difficult to
repress.  For himself George did not care, but he did care that
Pauline's name should not be dragged into the wretched squabble.
Father and son both agreed that the case should be laid before
Zachariah; but when Mr. Allen came back from London he merely said,
in answer to George's inquiries, that Zachariah and himself were in
perfect accord, and that at the meeting George was not to interfere.



CHAPTER XXVII--MR. BROAD'S LAST CHURCH MEETING--LATIMER CHAPEL



The eventful evening at last arrived.  It had been announced from the
pulpit on the Sunday before that a special meeting of the church
would be held on the following Wednesday to consider certain
questions of discipline--nothing more--as it was not thought proper
before the general congregation to introduce matters with which the
church alone was qualified to deal.  Everybody, however, knew what
was intended, and when Wednesday night came the vestry was crowded.
Mr. Broad sat in a seat slightly elevated at the end of the room,
with a desk before him.  On his right hand was Brother Bushel, on the
left was Brother Scotton, and on the front bench were Brother
Wainwright and a few of the more important members, amongst whom was
Thomas Broad, who, although it was a week-day, was in full
ministerial costume; that is to say, he wore his black--not pepper-
and-salt--trousers and a white neckerchief.  Mr. Allen and George
were at the back of the room.  There were no women there, for
although women were members as well as men, it was always an
understood thing at Tanner's Lane that they were to take no part in
the business of the community.  Seven o'clock having struck, Mr.
Broad rose and said, "Let us pray."  He prayed for about ten minutes,
and besought the Almighty to shed abroad His Holy Spirit upon them
for their guidance.  As the chosen people had been brought through
the wilderness and delivered from the manifold perils therein, so
God, he hoped, would lead His flock then assembled, through the
dangers which encompassed them.  Oh that they might be wise as
serpents and harmless as doves!  Might they for ever cleave to the
faith once delivered to the saints!  Might they never be led astray
to doubt the efficacy of the Blood of the Atonement once offered by
the Son of God!  Might they, through their Saviour's merits, secure
at last an entrance into those mansions where all the saints of God,
those faithful souls whom He had elected as His own, of His own
eternal foreknowledge, would abide for ever, in full fruition of the
joys promised in His Word.

The prayer over, Mr. Broad rose and said that he was there that night
to discharge a most painful duty--one which, if he had taken counsel
with flesh and blood, he would most gladly have avoided.  But he was
a humble servant of their common Lord and Master.  It behoved him to
cease not to warn every one night and day; to remember that the Holy
Ghost had made him an overseer to feed the church of God which He had
purchased with His precious blood.  He had done nothing in this
matter without constant recurrence to the footstool of grace, and he
had also consulted with some of his dear brethren in Christ whom he
saw near him.  They would have observed that Brother Allen and his
family had for some time absented themselves from the means of grace.
He should have said nothing upon this point if they had joined any
other Christian community.  If even they had attended the Established
Church, he would have been silent, for he was free to confess that in
other religious bodies besides their own God had faithful servants
who held fast to the fundamental doctrines of His book.  But it was
notorious, alas! that his dear brother had gone NOWHERE!  In the face
of the apostolic command not to forsake the assembling of themselves
together, what could they do but suspect that his dear brother's
belief had been undermined--sapped, he would say?  But to that point
he would return presently.  Then, again, they were all familiar with
the circumstances attending the late political contest in the county.
He knew that many of his dear brethren differed one from another
concerning matters relating to this world, although they were all,
blessed be God, one in Christ, members of His body.  He himself had
thought it better to follow as far as he could, the example of his
Lord and Master to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and to lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
He would not for a moment, however, condemn any who differed from him
in carnal policy.  But his dear Brother Allen and his son had
overstepped the line; and, considering this was a mixed church, he
was of opinion that they should have acted--what should he say?--with
more Christian consideration.  More than this, Mr. George Allen was
known to have abetted an unruly mob, a position highly unbecoming, he
might say, to one occupying the position of member at Tanner's Lane.
But he might, perhaps, be permitted to dwell for a moment on another
point.  His dear Brother Allen and his son had--there was no doubt of
it--consorted with infidels, one of whom had been convicted by the
laws of his country--a convict--and it was through their
instrumentality that his brethren had been led to wander from the
fold.  This was the secret of the calamity which had overtaken the
church.  Wolves, he would say--yes, wolves, grievous wolves--had
entered in, not sparing the flock.  Let them consider what an Infidel
was!  It meant a man who denied his Maker, Revelation, a life beyond
the grave, and who made awful jests upon the Holy Scriptures!  He had
evidence that in this miserable household there was a portrait of
that dreadful blasphemer Voltaire, who on his deathbed cried out in
vain for that salvation which he had so impiously refused, and amidst
shrieks of--despair, which chilled with terror those who stood by
him, was carried off by the Enemy of Souls to the lake that burneth
with brimstone, where their worm dieth not and the fire is not
quenched.--(Sensation.)  (This was a famous paragraph in one of Mr.
Broad's sermons preached on great occasions, and particularly when he
supplied a metropolitan pulpit.  The story had been contradicted
twice in the county paper by a Frenchman, a retired teacher of his
native language, who had somehow heard of the insult offered to his
great countryman, and a copy of the contradiction had been sent to
Mr. Broad.  He was content with observing that its author was a
Frenchman, and therefore probably an atheist, "with no consciousness
of moral obligation."  Voltaire's diabolic disappearance continued,
therefore, to be one of Mr. Broad's most striking effects.)--This was
a subject of great delicacy.  They knew how closely related he was to
Brother Allen through that dear saint now in glory.  He did not--he
could not--(Mr. Broad seemed to be affected)--allude in any detail to
what had happened; but still it was his duty to point out that Mr.
George Allen had been in constant intercourse with a female in an
infidel family--yes, before his wife's death he had been seen with
her ALONE!  ALONE with an infidel female!  He only hoped that the
knowledge of this fact did not accelerate the departure of his
blessed daughter--daughter in the flesh and daughter in Christ.  He
could not measure the extent of that intercourse; the Searcher of
hearts alone could do that, save the parties concerned; but, of
course, as she was an unbeliever, they must fear the worst.  For
himself, he had felt that this was the root of everything.  They
would judge for themselves how fervently he must have appealed to the
Mercy-seat, considering his position and relationship with his dear
brother, before he had seen his way to take the present course; but
at last God had revealed Himself to him, and he now committed the
case to them.  Might God have mercy on them, and His Spirit lead
them.

Mr. Allen and George had scarcely restrained themselves, and George,
notwithstanding his father's injunction, leapt up before the
concluding sentences were out of Mr. Broad's mouth.  Mr. Scotton,
however, rose, and Mr. Allen pulled George down.  Mr. Scotton wished
to say just one word.  They could not, he was sure, overestimate the
gravity of the situation.  They were called together upon a most
solemn occasion.  Their worthy pastor had spoken as a minister of the
gospel.  He, Mr. Scotton, as a layman, wished just to remind them
that they were exercising judicial functions--(Brother Bushel
fidgeted and got very red)--and that it was necessary they should
proceed in proper order.  With regard to two of the charges, the
evidence was fully before them; that is to say, absence from public
worship and what might perhaps be thought want of consideration for
the peace of the church.--("Praps," grunted Bushel--"praps indeed.")-
-But with regard to the third charge, the evidence was NOT before
them, and as this was the most important of the three he would
suggest before going any farther that they should hear what Mr. Broad
could produce.

Brother Bushel objected.  It was very seldom indeed that he offered
any remarks in public; but this time he could not refrain, and
introduced himself as follows:

"Brother Scotton says 'praps.'  I don't say 'praps,' when people go
settin' class agin class.  Praps nobody's windows was broke!
Evidence!  Hasn't our minister told us George Allen has been to
London?  He wouldn't tell us an untruth.  Due respec', Brother
Scotton--no lawyering--none of that--of them functions--'specially
when it's infidels and ricks may be afire--aught I know."

Mr. Broad interposed.  He quite understood Brother Bushel's ardour
for the truth, but he was prepared to produce some simple
corroboration of what he had affirmed, which would, he thought,
satisfy Brother Scotton and the brethren generally.  "Thomas," quoth
Mr. Broad, "will you please step forward and say what you know?"

Mr. Thomas thereupon advanced to the table, and said it would ill
become him to expatiate on the present occasion.  He would confine
himself to obeying the mandate of his father.  He then reported that
he had been led to visit the Colemans at first as friends of the
Allens, and not knowing their devilish tendencies.  God had, however,
he hoped, mercifully protected him.  If it had not been for God's
grace, where might he not have been that day?  It was true that they
were disciples of the French sceptic; his likeness was on the walls;
his books were on the bookshelves!  Mr. George Allen had been in the
habit of associating not only with Mr. Coleman, but with the
daughter, and with the daughter ALONE! as has already been stated.
She was also an infidel--more so, perhaps, than her father; and Satan
had a way, as they all knew, of instilling the deadly poison so
seductively that unwary souls were often lost, lost, lost beyond
recall, before they could truly be said to be aware of it.  He
wished, therefore, that evening to confess again, as, indeed, he had
just confessed before, that by grace he had been saved.  It is not of
him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth
mercy.  He trembled to think how near he himself had been to the pit
of destruction, lured by the devices of the great Enemy of Souls; but
praise be to God he had been saved, not through own merits, but
through the merits of his Redeemer.

Mr. Broad purred with pleasure during this oration, and looked round
on the audience for their approval.  Mr. Allen was now completely
quieted.  The speech had acted like a charm.  He rose immediately.

"Mr. Broad," he said deliberately, but with much emphasis--you might
have heard a pin drop--"the value of the testimony just given depends
upon character of the witness.  May I ask him to explain HOW HE CAME
BY THAT SCAR ON THE BACK OF HIS HAND?"

Mr. Allen remained standing.  There was no sign of an answer.  He sat
down for a moment but still there was no movement.  He rose again.

"Mr. Broad, as there is no reply, will you permit me to give the
explanation?"

Mr. Thomas Broad then slowly erected himself near the table at which
his father was sitting.  He held on by it hard, and gulped down half
a glass of water which was there.  His tallowy face looked more
tallowy than ever, and his voice shook most unpleasantly as he was
just heard to say that he did not know with what object the question
was put--that it--that it--seemed--seemed irrel--irrelev--and these
were the last syllables ever heard from the lips of Mr. Thomas in
Tanner's Lane, for he dropped into his seat and apparently fainted.
There was great confusion while his recovery was attempted.  He was
conveyed into the chapel, more water was given him, smelling-salts
applied, and in due time he regained his senses; but his father, on
his return to the vestry, announced that after what had happened the
meeting had perhaps better be adjourned.  He felt it impossible to go
any further just then.  Tanner's Lane Church, therefore, departed,
much musing, and was never again summoned on that business.  Mr.
Allen had some thoughts of demanding another meeting and a formal
acquittal, but the pastor was suddenly struck with paralysis, and
although he lingered for nearly two years, he preached no more.  So
it came to pass that George and his father are on the church books
till this day.  There was, of course, endless gossip as to the
meaning of Mr. Allen's appeal.  Whether George ever knew what it was
is more than I can say, but it is certain that Cowfold never knew.
Mr. Allen always resolutely repelled all questions, saying that it
would be time enough to go further when he was next attacked.  The
Broads, mother and daughter, asserted that no doubt Thomas had a mark
upon the back of his hand, but that it had been caused by a nail in a
fence, and that he had fainted through indisposition.  This theory,
however, was obviously ridiculous, for Mr. Allen's reference had no
meaning if Thomas had met with a simple accident.  Mrs. Broad saw
that her son's explanation, greatly as she trusted him, was weak, and
at last Thomas, with Christian compunction, admitted that the fence
was the palings of the College garden, over which he had once
clambered when he was too late for admittance at the College gates.
This was true.  Mr. Thomas on the very evening of his interview with
Pauline, had obtained admission over the palings, had been detected,
and there had been an inquiry by the authorities; but the scar, as we
know, had another origin.  Mrs. Broad was compelled to circulate this
story, and accompanied it with many apologies and much regret.  It
was the sorrow of her life, she said; but, at the same time, she must
add that her son was delayed by no fault of his.  The President had
investigated the matter, and had contended himself with a reprimand.
Her friends would understand that Thomas would prefer, under the
circumstances, not to visit Cowfold again, and considering her dear
husband's sickness, she could not advise that prosecution of the
Allens should be pressed.

Cowfold, however, was not satisfied.  Mr. Allen would not, as a man
of the world, have thought so much of such an indiscretion.  Why was
Mr. Thomas late?  Cowfold could not endure simple suspense of
judgment.  Any theory, however wild, is more tolerable than a
confession that the facts are not sufficient for a decision, and the
common opinion, corroborated, it was declared, by surest testimony,
was that Mr. Thomas had been to the theatre.  There was not a tittle
of evidence to support this story, but everybody was certain it was
true.  Everybody repeated it, and constant repetition will harden the
loosest hearsay into a creed far more unshakable than faith in the
law of gravity.

Just before Mr. Broad's last illness, the secession of the Allens was
imitated by about twenty of the younger members of the congregation,
who met together on Sunday, under Mr. Allen's guidance, and
worshipped by themselves, each of them in turn making some attempt at
an exposition of the Bible and a short address.  By the time Mr.
Broad died Tanner's Lane had sunk very low; but when his successor
was chosen the seceders exercised their rights, and were strong
enough to elect a student fresh from college, who had taken an M.A.
degree at the University of London.  He preached his first sermon
from the text, "I am crucified with Christ," and told his hearers,
with fluent self-confidence, that salvation meant perfect sympathy
with Christ--"Not I, but Christ liveth in me;" that the office of
Christ was not to reconcile God to man, but man to God; and this is
effected in proportion as Christ dwells in us, bringing us more and
more into harmony with the Divine.  The Atonement is indeed the
central doctrine, the pivot of Christianity, but it is an atONEment,
a making of one mind.  To which Tanner's Lane listened with much
wonderment and not without uncomfortable mental disturbance, the
elder members complaining particularly that this was not the simple
gospel, and that the trumpet gave an uncertain sound.  But opposition
gradually died out; the meeting-house was rebuilt, and called Latimer
Chapel.  The afternoon service was dropped and turned into a service
for the Sunday-school children; an organ was bought and a choir
trained; the minister gave week-day lectures on secular subjects, and
became a trustee of the Cowfold charity schools, recently enlarged
under a new scheme.  He brought home a wife one day who could read
German; joined the County Archaeological Society, and wrote a paper
on the discoveries made when the railway station was built on what
was supposed to be an ancient British encampment.  For Cowfold was to
become an important junction on the new line to the north, and Mr.
Bushel's death had been accelerated by vexation through seeing a
survey carried across his own fields.

As for Mrs. Broad and Tryphosa, they left Cowfold and went into
Lancashire, to be near uncle Flavel.  George, notwithstanding the new
doctrine in Latimer Chapel and the improvement in the Cowfold
atmosphere, was restless, and before the revolution just described
was completed, had been entirely overcome with a desire to emigrate
with his child.  His father and mother not only did not oppose, but
decided to accompany.  Mr. Allen had saved money, and though he and
his wife were getting on in years, there was nothing in either of
them of that subsidence into indifferent sloth which is the great
mistake of advancing age.  Both were keen in their desire to know the
last new thing, eager to recognise the last new truth, forgetful of
the past, dwelling in the present, and, consequently, they remained
young.  They were younger, at any rate, just now than George; and it
was his, not exactly melancholy, but lack of zest for life, which
mainly induced them so readily to assent to his plans.  One bright
June morning, therefore, saw them, with their children, on the deck
of the Liverpool vessel which was to take them to America.  Oh day of
days, when after years of limitation, monotony, and embarrassment, we
see it all behind us, and face a new future with an illimitable
prospect!  George once more felt his bosom's lord sit lightly on his
throne; once more felt that the sunlight and blue sky were able to
cheer him.  So they went away to the West, and we take leave of them.

What became of Zachariah and Pauline?  At present I do not know.



Footnotes:

{132}  "O ze (ye) my feris (companions) and deir freyndis, quod he,
Of bywent perillis not ignorant ben we,
Ze have sustenit gretir dangeris unkend,
Like as hereof God sall make sone ane end:
The rage of Silla, that huge sweste (whirlpool) in the se
Ze have eschapit and passit eik (each) have ze:
The euer (pot) routand (roaring) Caribdis rokkis fell
The craggis quhare monstruous Cyclopes dwell:
Ze are expert:  pluk up zour harts, I zou pray,
This dolorous drede expell and do away.
Sum tyme thereon to think may help perchance."
--Gawin Douglas.

"Endure and conquer!  Jove will soon dispose,
To future good, our past and present woes.
With me, the rocks of Scylla you have tried;
Th' inhuman Cyclops, and his den defied.
What greater ills hereafter can you bear!
Resume your courage, and dismiss your care.
An hour will come, with pleasure to relate
Your sorrows past, as benefits of fate."
- Dryden.




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