CHAPTER VII.
THE next Saturday Susan was busy preparing two rooms for Mr. Eden—a homely but bright bedroom looking eastward, and a snug room where he could be quiet downstairs. Snowy sheets and curtains and toilet-cover showed the good housewife. The windows were open, and a beautiful nosegay of Susan's flowers on the table. Mr. Eden's eye brightened at the comfort and neatness and freshness of the whole thing; and Susan, who watched him furtively, felt pleased to see him pleased.
On Sunday he preached in the parish church. The sermon was opposite to what the good people here had been subject to; instead of the vague and cold generalities of an English sermon, he drove home-truths home in business-like English. He used a good many illustrations, and these were drawn from matters with which this particular congregation were conversant. He was as full of similes here as he was sparing of them when he preached before the University of Oxford. Any one who had read this sermon in a book of sermons would have divined what sort of congregation it was preached to—a primrose of a sermon. Mr. Eden preached from notes and to the people—not the air. Like every born orator, he felt his way with his audience, whereas the preacher who is not an orator throws out his fine things, hit or miss, and does not know and feel and care whether he is hitting or missing. “Open your hand, shut your eyes, and fling out the good seed so much per foot—that is enough.” No. This man preached to the faces and hearts that happened to be round him. He established between himself and them a pulse, every throb of which he felt and followed. If he could not get hold of them one way, he tried another; he would have them—he was not there to fail. His discourse was human; it was man speaking to man on the most vital and interesting topic in the world or out of it; it was more, it was brother speaking to brother. Hence some singular phenomena. First, when he gave the blessing (which is a great piece of eloquence commonly reduced to a very small one by monotonous or feeble delivery), and uttered it, like his discourse, with solemnity, warmth, tenderness and all his soul, the people lingered some moments in the church and seemed unwilling to go at all. Second, nobody mistook their pew for their four-poster during the sermon. This was the more remarkable as many of the congregation had formed a steady habit of coming to this place once a week with the single view of snatching an hour's repose from earthly and heavenly cares.
The next morning Mr. Eden visited some of the poorest people in the parish. Susan accompanied him, all eyes and ears. She observed that his line was not to begin by dictating his own topic, but lie in wait for them; let them first choose their favorite theme, and so meet them on this ground, and bring religion to bear on it. “Oh, how wise he is!” thought Susan, “and how he knows the heart!”
One Sunday evening three weeks after his first official visit he had been by himself to see some of the poor people, and on his return found Susan alone. He sat down and gave an account of his visits.
“How many ounces of tea and tobacco did you give away, sir?” asked Susan, with an arch smile.
“Four tea, two tobacco,” replied the reverend gentleman.
“I do notice, sir, you never carry gingerbread or the like for the children.”
“No; the young don't want lollypops, for they have youth. Old age wants everything, so the old are my children, and I tea and tobacco them.”
After this there was a pause.
“Miss Merton, you have shown me many persons who need consolation, but there is one you say nothing about.”
“Have I, sir? Who? Oh, I think I know. Old Dame Clayton?”
“No, it is a young demoiselle.”
“Then I don't know who it can be.”
“Guess.”
“No, sir,” said Susan, looking down.
“It is yourself, Miss Merton.”
“Me, sir! Why, what is the matter with me?”
“That you shall tell me, if you think me worthy of your confidence.”
“Oh, thank you, sir. I have my little crosses, no doubt, like all the world; but I have health and strength. I have my father.”
“My child, you are in trouble. You were crying when I came in.
“Indeed I was not, sir!—how did you know I was crying?”
“When I came in you turned your back to me, instead of facing me, which is more natural when any one enters a room; and soon after you made an excuse for leaving the room, and when you came back there was a drop of water in your right eyelash.”
“It need not have been a tear, sir!”
“It was not; it was water. You had been removing the traces of tears.”
“Girls are mostly always crying, sir; often they don't know for why, but they don't care to have it noticed always.”
“Nor would it be polite or generous; but this of yours is a deep grief, and alarms me for you. Shall I tell you how I know? You often yawn and often sigh; when these two things come together at your age they are signs of a heavy grief; then it comes out that you have lost your relish for things that once pleased you. The first day I came here you told me your garden had been neglected of late, and you blushed in saying so. Old Giles and others asked you before me why you had given up visiting them; you colored and looked down. I could almost have told them, but that would have made you uncomfortable. You are in grief, and no common grief.”
“Nothing worth speaking to you about, sir; nothing I will ever complain of to any one.”
“There I think you are wrong; religion has consoled many griefs; great griefs admit of no other consolation. The sweetest exercise of my office is to comfort the heavy hearted. Your heart is heavy, my poor lamb—tell me—what is it?”
“It is nothing, sir, that you would understand; you are very skilled and notice-taking, as well as good, but you are not a woman, and you must excuse me, sir, if I beg you not to question me further on what would not interest you.”
Mr. Eden looked at her compassionately, and merely said to her again, “What is it?” in a low tone of ineffable tenderness.
At this Susan looked in a scared manner this way and that. “Sir, do not ask me, pray do not ask me so;” then she suddenly lifted her hands, “My George is gone across the sea! What shall I do! what shall I do!!” and she buried her face in her apron.
This burst of pure Nature—this simple cry of a suffering heart—was very touching, and Mr. Eden, spite of his many experiences, was not a little moved. He sat silent, looking on her as an angel might be supposed to look upon human griefs, and as he looked on her various expressions chased one another across that eloquent face. Sweet and tender memories and regrets were not wanting among them. After a long pause he spoke in a tone soft and gentle as a woman's, and at first in a voice so faltering that Susan, though her face was hidden, felt there was no common sympathy there, and silently put out her hand toward it.
He murmured consolation. He said many gentle, soothing things. He told her that it was very sad the immense ocean should roll between two loving hearts, “but,” said he, “there are barriers more impassable than the sea. Better so than that he should be here and jealousy, mistrust, caprice, or even temper come between you. I hope he will come back; I think he will come back.”
She blessed him for saying so. She was learning to believe everything this man uttered.
From consolation he passed to advice.
“You must do the exact opposite of what you have been doing.”
“Must I?”
“You must visit those poor people; ay, more than ever you did; hear patiently their griefs; do not expect much in return, neither sympathy nor a great deal of gratitude; vulgar sorrow is selfish. Do it for God's sake and your own single-heartedly. Go to the school, return to your flowers, and never shun innocent society, however dull. Milk and water is a poor thing, but it is a diluent, and all we can do just now is to dilute your grief.”
He made her promise: “Next time I come tell me all about you and George. 'Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.'”
“Oh! that is a true word,” sobbed Susan, “that is very true. Why a little of the lead seems to have dropped off my heart now I have spoken to you, sir.”
All the next week Susan bore up as bravely as she could, and did what Mr. Eden had bade her, and profited by his example. She learned to draw from others the full history of their woes; and she found that many a grief bitter as her own had passed over the dwellers in those small cottages; it did her some little good to discover kindred woes, and much good to go out of herself a while and pity them.
This drooping flower recovered her head a little, but still the sweetest hour in all the working days of the week was that which brought John Meadows to talk to her of Australia.
CHAPTER VIII.
SUSAN MERTON had two unfavored lovers; it is well to observe how differently these two behaved. William Fielding stayed at home, threw his whole soul into his farm, and seldom went near the woman he loved but had no right to love. Meadows dangled about the flame; ashamed and afraid to own his love, he fed it to a prodigious height by encouraging it and not expressing it. William Fielding was moody and cross and sad enough at times; but at others a little spark ignited inside his heart, and a warm glow diffused itself from that small point over all his being. I think this spark igniting was an approving conscience commencing its uphill work of making a disappointed lover, but honest man, content.
Meadows, on his part, began to feel content and a certain complacency take the place of his stormy feelings. Twice a week he passed two hours with Susan. She always greeted him with a smile, and naturally showed an innocent satisfaction in these visits, managed as they were with so much art and self-restraint. On Sunday, too, he had always a word or two with her.
Meadows, though an observer of religious forms, had the character of a very worldly man, and Susan thought it highly to his credit that he came six miles to hear Mr. Eden.
“But, Mr. Meadows, your poor horse,” said she, one day. “I doubt it is no Sabbath to him now.”
“No more it is,” said Meadows, as if a new light came to him from Susan. The next Sunday he appeared in dusty shoes, instead of top-boots.
Susan looked down at them, and saw, and said nothing; but she smiled. Her love of goodness and her vanity were both gratified a little.
Meadows did not stop there; wherever Susan went he followed modestly in her steps. Nor was this mere cunning. He loved her quite well enough to imitate her, and try and feel with her; and he began to be kinder to the poor, and to feel good all over, and comfortable. He felt as if he had not an enemy in the world. One day in Farnborough he saw William Fielding on the other side of the street. Susan Merton did not love William, therefore Meadows had no cause to hate him. He remembered William had asked a loan of him and he had declined. He crossed over to him.
“Good-day, Mr. William.”
“Good-day, Mr. Meadows.”
“You were speaking to me one day about a trifling loan. I could not manage it just then, but now—” Here Meadows paused. He had been on the point of offering the money, but suddenly, by one of those instincts of foresight these able men have, he turned it off thus: “but I know who will. You go to Lawyer Crawley; he lends money to people of credit.”
“I know he does; but he won't lend it me.”
“Why not?”
“He does not like us. He is a poor sneaking creature, and my brother George he caught Crawley selling up some poor fellow or other, and they had words; leastways it went beyond words, I fancy. I don't know the rights of it, but George was a little rough with him by all accounts.”
“And what has that to do with this?” said the man of business coolly.
“Why, I am George's brother.”
“And if you were George himself and he saw his way to make a shilling out of you he would do it, wouldn't he? There, you go to Crawley and ask him to lend you one hundred pounds, and he will lend it you, only he will make you pay heavy interest, heavier than I should, you know, if I could manage it myself.”
“Oh, I don't care,” said simple William; “thank you kindly, Mr. Meadows,” and off he went to Crawley.
He found that worthy in his office. Crawley, who instantly guessed his errand, and had no instructions from Meadows, promised himself the satisfaction of refusing the young man. He asked, with a cringing manner and a treacherous smile, “What security, sir?”
Poor William higgled and hammered, and offered first one thing, which was blandly declined for this reason; then another, which was blandly declined for that, Crawley drinking deep draughts of mean vengeance all the while from the young man's shame and mortification, when the door opened, a man walked in, and gave Crawley a note and vanished. Crawley opened the note; it contained a check drawn by Meadows, and these words: “Lend W. F. the money at ten per cent on his acceptance of your draft at two months.”
Crawley put the note and check in his pocket.
“Well, sir,” said he to William, “you stay here, and I will see if I have got a loose hundred in the bank to spare.” He went over to the bank, cashed the check, drew a bill of exchange at two months' date, deducted the interest and stamp, and William accepted it, and Crawley bowed him out cringing, smiling, and secretly shooting poisoned arrows out of his venomous eye in the direction of William's heels.
William thanked him warmly.
This loan made him feel happy.
He had paid his brother's debt to the landlord by sacrificing a large portion of his grain at a time the price was low; and now he was so cramped he had much ado to pay his labor when this loan came. The very next day he bought several hogs—hogs, as George had sarcastically observed, were William Fielding's hobby; he had I confidence in that animal. Potatoes and pigs versus sheep and turnips was the theory of William Fielding.
Now the good understanding between William and Meadows was not to last long. William, though he was too wise to visit Grassmere Farm much, was mindful of his promise to George, and used to make occasional inquiries after Susan. He heard that Meadows called at the farm twice a week, and he thought it a little odd. He pondered on it, but did not quite go the length of suspecting anything, still less of suspecting Susan. Still, he thought it odd; but he thought it odder, when, one market-day, old Isaac Levi said to him:
“Do you remember the promise you made to the lion-hearted young man, your brother?”
“Do you ask that to affront me?”
“You never visit her; and others are not so neglectful.”
“Who?”
“Go this evening and you will see.”
“Yes, I will go, and I will soon see if there is anything in it,” said William, not stopping even to inquire why the old Jew took all this interest in the affair.
That evening, as Meadows was in the middle of a description of the town of Sydney, Susan started up. “Why, here is William Fielding!” and she ran out and welcomed him in with much cordiality, perhaps with some excess of cordiality.
William came in and saluted the farmer and Meadows in his dogged way. Meadows was not best pleased, but kept his temper admirably, and, leaving Australia, engaged both the farmers in a conversation on home topics. Susan looked disappointed. Meadows was content with that, and the party separated half an hour sooner than usual.
The next market evening in strolls William. Meadows again plays the same game. This time Susan could hardly restrain her temper. She did not want to hear about the Grassmere acres, and “The Grove,” and oxen and hogs, but about something that mattered to George.
But when the next market evening William arrived before Mr. Meadows, she was downright provoked and gave him short answers, which raised his suspicions and made him think he had done wisely in coming. This evening Susan excused herself and went to bed early.
She was in Farnborough the next market-day, and William met her and said:
“I'll take a cup of tea with you to-night, Susan, if you are agreeable.”
“William,” said Susan sharply, “what makes you always come to us on market-day?”
“I don't know. What makes Mr. Meadows come that day?”
“Because he passes our house to go to his own, I suppose; but you live but two miles off; you can come any day that you are minded.”
“Should I be welcome, Susan?”
“What do you think, Will? Speak your mind; I don't understand you.”
“Seems to me I was not very welcome last time.”
“If I thought that I wouldn't come again,” replied Susan, as sharp as a needle. Then instantly repenting a little, she explained: “You are welcome to me, Will, and you know that as well as I do, but I want you to come some other evening, if it is all the same to you.”
“Why?”
“Why? because I am dull other evenings, and it would be nice to have a chat with you.”
“Would it, Susan?”
“Of course it would; but that evening I have company—and he talks to me of Australia.”
“Nothing else?” sneered the unlucky William.
Susan gave him such a look.
“And that interests me more than anything you can say to me—if you won't be offended,” snapped Susan.
William bit his lip.
“Well, then, I won't come this evening, eh! Susan?”
“No, don't, that is a good soul.”
“Les femmes sont impitoyables pour ceux qu'elles n'aiment pas.” This is a harsh saying, and of course not pure truth; but there is a deal of truth in it.
William was proud, and the consciousness of his own love for her made him less able to persist, for he knew she might be so ungenerous as to retort if he angered her too far. So he altered the direction of his battery. He planted himself at the gate of Grassmere Farm, and as Meadows got off his horse requested a few words with him. Meadows ran him over with one lightning glance, and then the whole man was on the defensive. William bluntly opened the affair.
“You heard me promise to look on Susan as my sister, and keep her as she is for my brother that is far away.”
“I heard you, Mr. William,” said Meadows with a smile that provoked William as the artful one intended it should.
“You come here too often, sir.”
“Too often for who?”
“Too often for me, too often for George, too often for the girl herself. I won't have George's sweetheart talked about.”
“You are the first to talk about her; if there's scandal it is of your making.”
“I won't have it—at a word.”
Meadows called out, “Miss Merton, will you step here.”
William was astonished at his audacity; he did not know his man.
Susan opened the parlor window.
“What is it, Mr. Meadows?”
“Will you step here, if you please?” Susan came. :Here is a young man tells me I must not call on your father or you.”
“I say you must not do it often enough to make her talked of.”
“Who dares to talk of me?” cried Susan, scarlet.
“Nobody, Miss Merton. Nobody but the young man himself; and so I told him. Is your father within? Then I'll step in and speak with him anyway.” And the sly Meadows vanished to give Susan an opportunity of quarreling with William while she was hot.
“I don't know how you came to take such liberties with me,” began Susan, quite pale now with anger.
“It is for George's sake,” said William doggedly.
“Did George bid you insult my friends and me? I would not put up with it from George himself, much less from you. I shall write to George and ask him whether he wishes me to be your slave.”
“Don't ye do so. Don't set my brother against me,” remonstrated William ruefully.
“The best thing you can do is to go home and mind your farm, and get a sweetheart for yourself, and then you won't trouble your head about me more than you have any business to do.”
This last cut wounded William to the quick.
“Good-evening, Susan.”
“Good-evening.”
“Won't you shake hands?”
“It would serve you right if I said no! But I won't make you of so much importance as you want to be. There! And come again as soon as ever you can treat my friends with respect.”
“I shan't trouble you again for a while,” said William sadly. “Good-by. God bless you, Susan dear.”
When he was gone the tears came into Susan's eyes, but she was bitterly indignant with him for making a scene about her, which a really modest girl hates. On her reaching the parlor Mr. Meadows was gone, too, and that incensed her still more against William. “Mr. Meadows is affronted, no doubt,” said she, “and of course he would not come here to be talked of; he would not like that any more than I. A man that comes here to us out of pure good nature and nothing else.”
The next market-day the deep Meadows did not come. Susan missed him and his talk. She had few pleasures, and this was one of them. But the next after he came as usual, and Susan did not conceal her satisfaction. She was too shy and he too wise to allude to William's interference. They both ignored the poor fellow and his honest, clumsy attempt.
William, discomfited but not convinced, determined to keep his eye upon them both. “I swore it and I'll do it,” said this honest fellow. “But I can't face her tongue; it goes through me like a pitchfork; but as for him”—and he clinched his fist most significantly; then he revolved one or two plans in his head, and rejected them each in turn. At last a thought struck him. “Mr. Levi! he 'twas that put me on my guard. I'll tell him.” Accordingly he recounted the whole affair and his failure to Mr. Levi. The old man smiled. “You are no match for either of these. You have given the maiden offense, just offense.”
“Just offence! Mr. Levi. Now don't ye say so; why, how?”
“By your unskillfulness, my son.”
“It is all very well for you to say that, sir, but I can tell you women are kittle folk—manage them who can? I don't know what to do, I'm sure.”
“Stay at home and till the land,” replied Isaac, somewhat dryly. “I will go to Grassmere Farm.”
CHAPTER IX.
“You going to leave us, Mr. Eden, and going to live in a jail? Oh! Mr. Eden, I can't bear to think of it. You to be cooped up there among thieves and rogues, and perhaps murderers?”
“They have the more need of me.”
“And you, who love the air of heaven so; why, sir, I see you take off your very hat at times to enjoy it as you are walking along; you would be choked in a prison. Besides, sir, it is only little parsons that go there.”
“What are little parsons?”
“Those that are not clever enough or good enough to be bishops and vicars, and so forth; not such ones as you.”
“How odd! This is exactly what the Devil whispered in my ear when the question was first raised, but I did not expect to find you on his side.”
“Didn't you, sir? Ah! well, if 'tis your duty I know I may as well hold my tongue. And then, such as you are not like other folk; you come like sunshine to some dark place, and when you have warmed it and lighted it a bit, Heaven, that sent you, will have you go and shine elsewhere. You came here, sir, you waked up the impenitent folk in this village and comforted the distressed and relieved the poor, and you have saved one poor broken-hearted girl from despair, from madness, belike; and now we are not to be selfish, we must not hold you back, but let you run the race that is set before you, and remember your words and your deeds, and your dear face and voice to the last hour of our lives.”
“And give me the benefit of your prayers, little sister, do not deny me them; your prayers, that I may persevere to the end. Ay! it is too true, Susan; in this world there is nothing but meeting and parting; it is sad. We have need to be stout-hearted—stouter-hearted than you are. But it will not always be so. A few short years and we who have fought the good fight shall meet to part no more—to part no more—to part no more!”
As he repeated these words, half mechanically, Susan could see that he had suddenly become scarce conscious of her presence. The light of other days was in his eye and his lips moved inarticulately. Delicate-minded Susan left him, and with the aid of the servant brought out the tea-things and set the little table on the grass square in her garden, where you could see the western sun. And then she came for Mr. Eden.
“Come, sir, there is not a breath of wind this evening, so the tea-things are set in the air. I know you like that.”
The little party sat down in the open air. The butter, churned by Susan, was solidified cream. The bread not very white, but home-made, juicy and sweet as milk. The tea seemed to diffuse a more flowery fragrance out of doors than it does in, and to mix fraternally with the hundred odors of Susan's flowers that now perfumed the air, and the whole innocent meal, unlike coarse dinner or supper, mingled harmoniously with the scene, with the balmy air, the blue sky and the bright emerald grass sprinkled with gold by the descending sun. Farmer Merton soon left them, and then Susan went in and brought out pen and ink and a large sheet of paper.
Susan sat apart working with her needle, Mr. Eden sketched a sermon and sipped his tea, and now and then purred three words to Susan, who purred as many in reply. And yet over this pleasant scene there hung a gentle sadness, felt most by Susan, as with head bent down she plied her needle in silence. “He will not sit in my garden many times more, nor write many more notes of sermons under my eye, nor preach to us all many more sermons; and then he is going to a nasty jail, where he won't have his health, I'm doubtful. And then I'm fearful he won't be comfortable in his house, with nobody to take care of him that really cares for him; servants soon find out where there is no woman to scold them as should be, and he is not the man to take his own part against them.” And Susan sighed at the domestic prospects of her friend, and her needle went slower and slower.
These reflections were interrupted by the servant, who announced a visitor. Susan laid down her work and went into the parlor, and there found Isaac Levi. She greeted him with open arms and heightened color, and never for a moment suspected that he was come there full of suspicions of her.
After the first greeting a few things of little importance were said on either side. Isaac watching to see whether Mr. Meadows had succeeded in supplanting George, and too cunning to lead the conversation that way himself, lay patiently in wait like a sly old fox. However, he soon found he was playing the politician superfluously, for Susan laid bare her whole heart to the simplest capacity. Instead of waiting for the skillful, subtle, almost invisible cross-examination which the descendant of Maimonides was preparing for her, she answered all his questions before they were asked. It came out that her thought by day and night was George, that she had been very dull, and very unhappy. “But I am better now, Mr. Levi, thank God. He has been very good to me: he has sent me a friend, a clergyman, or an angel in the dress of one, I sometimes think. He knows all about me and George, sir; so that makes me feel quite at home with him, and I can—and now Mr. Meadows stops an hour on market-days, and he is so kind as to tell me all about Australia, and you may guess I like to hear about—Mr. Levi, come and see us some market evening. Mr. Meadows is capital company; to hear him you would think he had passed half his life in Australia. Were you ever in Australia, sir, if you please?”
“Never, but I shall.”
“Shall you, sir?”
“Yes; the old Jew is not to die till he has drifted to every part in the globe. In my old days I shall go back toward the East, and there methinks I shall lay these wandering bones.”
“Oh, sir, inquire after George and show him some kindness, and don't see him wronged, he is very simple. No! no! no! you are too old; you must not cross the seas at your age; don't think of it; stay quiet at home till you leave us for a better world.”
“At home!” said the old man sorrowfully; “I have no home. I had a home, but the man Meadows has driven me out of it.”
“Mr. Meadows! La, sir, as how?”
“He bought the house I live in, and next Lady-day, as the woman-worshiper calls it, he turns me to the door.”
“But he won't if you ask him. He is a very good-natured man. You go and ask him to be so good as let you stay; he won't gainsay you, you take my word.”
“Susannah!” replied Isaac, “you are good and innocent; you cannot fathom the hearts of the wicked. This Meadows is a man of Belial. I did beseech him; I bowed these gray hairs to him to let me stay in the house where I lived so happily with my Leah twenty years, where my children were born to me and died from me, where my Leah consoled me for their loss a while, but took no comfort herself and left me, too.”
“Poor old man! and what did he say?”
“He refused me with harsh words. To make the refusal more bitter he insulted my religion and my much-enduring tribe, and at the day appointed he turns me, at threescore years and ten, adrift upon the earth.”
“Eh, dear! how hard the world is!” cried Susan; “I had a great respect for Mr. Meadows, but now if he comes here I know I shall shut the door in his face.”
Isaac reflected. This would not have suited a certain subtle Eastern plan of vengeance he had formed. “No!” said he, “that is folly. Take not another man's quarrel on your shoulders. A Jew knows how to revenge himself without your aid.”
So then her inquisitor was satisfied; Australia really was the topic that made Meadows welcome. He departed, revolving Oriental vengeance.
Smooth Meadows, at his next visit, removed the impression excited against him, and easily persuaded Susan that Levi was more in the wrong than he, in which opinion she stood firm till Levi's next visit.
At last she gave up all hope of dijudicating, and determined to end the matter by bringing them together and making them friends.
And now approached the day of Mr. Eden's departure. The last sermon—the last quiet tea in the garden. On Monday afternoon he was to go to Oxford, and the following week to his new sphere of duties, which he had selected to the astonishment of some hundred persons who knew him superficially—knew him by his face, by his pretensions as a scholar, a divine and a gentleman of descent and independent means, but had not sounded his depths.
All Sunday Susan sought every opportunity of conversing with him even on indifferent matters. She was garnering up his words, his very syllables, and twenty times in the day he saw her eyes fill with tears apropos of such observations as this:
“We shall have a nice warm afternoon, Susan.”
“It is to be hoped so, sir; the blackbirds are giving a chirrup or two.”
All Monday forenoon Susan was very busy. There was bread to be baked and butter to be made. Mr. Eden must take some of each to Oxford. They would keep Grassmere in his mind a day or two longer; and besides they were wholesome and he was fond of them. Then there was his linen to be looked over, and buttons sewed on for the last time. Then he must eat a good dinner before he went, so then he would want nothing but his tea when he got to Oxford; and the bread would be fit to eat by tea-time, especially a small crusty cake she had made for that purpose. So with all this Susan was energetic, almost lively; and even when it was all done and they were at dinner, her principal anxiety seemed to be that he should eat more than usual because he was going a journey. But when all bustle of every kind was over and the actual hour of parting came, she suddenly burst out crying before her father and the servant, who bade her not take on and instantly burst out crying too from vague sympathy.
The old farmer ordered the girl out of the room directly, and without the least emotion proceeded to make excuses to Mr. Eden for Susan.
“A young maid's eyes soon flow over,” etc.
Mr. Eden interrupted him.
“Such tears as these do not scald the heart. I feel this separation from my dear kind friend as much as she feels it. But I am more than twice her age and have passed through—I should feel it bitterly if I thought our friendship and Christian love were to end because our path of duty lies separate. But no, Susan, still look on me as your adviser, your elder brother, and in some measure your pastor. I shall write to you and watch over you, though it some distance—and not so great a distance. I am always well horsed, and I know you will give me a bed at Grassmere once a quarter.”
“That we will,” cried the farmer, warmly, “and proud and happy to see you cross the threshold, sir.”
“And, Mr. Merton, my new house is large. I shall be alone in it. Whenever you and Miss Merton have nothing better to do, pray come and visit me. I will make you as uncomfortable as you have made me comfortable, but as welcome as you have made me welcome.”
“We will come, sir! we will come some one of these days, and thank you for the honor.”
So Mr. Eden went from Grassmere village and Grassmere farmhouse—but he left neither as he found them; fifty years hence an old man and woman or two will speak to their grandchildren of the “Sower,” and Susan Merton (if she is on earth then) of “the good Physician.” She may well do so, for it was no vulgar service he rendered her, no vulgar malady he checked.
Not every good man could have penetrated so quickly a coy woman's grief, nor, the wound found, have soothed her fever and deadened her smart with a hand as firm as gentle, as gentle as firm.
Such men are human suns! They brighten and warm wherever they pass. Fools count them mad, till death wrenches open foolish eyes; they are not often called “my Lord,” * nor sung by poets when they die; but the hearts they heal, and their own are their rich reward on earth—and their place is high in heaven.
CHAPTER X.
MR. MEADOWS lived in a house that he had conquered three years ago by lending money on it at fair interest in his own name. Mr. David Hall, the proprietor, paid neither principal nor interest. Mr. Meadows expected this contingency, and therefore lent his money. He threatened to foreclose and sell the house under the hammer; to avoid this Mr. Hall said, “Pay yourself the interest by living rent free in the house till such time as my old aunt dies, drat her, and then I'll pay your money. I wish I had never borrowed it.” Meadows acquiesced with feigned reluctance. “Well, if I must, I must; but let me have my money as soon as you can—” (aside) “I will end my days in this house.”
It had many conveniences; among the rest a very long though narrow garden inclosed within high walls. At the end of the garden was a door which anybody could open from the inside, but from the outside only by a Bramah key.
The access to this part of the premises was by a short, narrow lane, very dirty and very little used, because, whatever might have been in old times, it led now from nowhere to nowhere. Meadows received by this entrance one or two persons whom he never allowed to desecrate his knocker. At the head of these furtive visitors was Peter Crawley, attorney-at-law, a gentleman who every New Year's Eve used to say to himself with a look of gratified amazement—“Another year gone, and I not struck off the Rolls!!!”
Peter had a Bramah key intrusted to him.
His visits to Mr. Meadows were conducted thus: he opened the garden-gate and looked up at the window in a certain passage. This passage was not accessible to the servants, and the window with its blinds was a signal-book.
Blinds up, Mr. Meadows out.
White blind down, Mr. Meadows in.
Blue blind down, Mr. Meadows in, but not alone.
The same key that opened the garden-door opened a door at the back of the house which led direct to the passage above-mentioned. On the window-seat lay a peculiar whistle constructed to imitate the whining of a dog. Then Meadows would go to his book-shelves, which lined one side of the room, and pressing a hidden spring open a door that nobody ever suspected, for the books came along with it. To provide for every contingency, there was a small secret opening in another part of the shelves by which Meadows could shoot unobserved a note or the like into the passage, and so give Crawley instructions without dismissing a visitor, if he had one.
Meadows provided against surprise and discovery. His study had double doors. Neither of them could be opened from the outside. His visitors or servants must rap with an iron knocker; and while Meadows went to open, the secret visitor stepped into the passage and shut the books behind him.
It was a room that looked business. One side was almost papered with ordnance maps of this and an adjoining county. Pigeon-holes abounded, too, and there was a desk six feet long, chock full of little drawers—contents indicated outside in letters of which the proprietor knew the meaning, not I.
Between the door and the fireplace was a screen, on which, in place of idle pictures, might be seen his plans and calculations as a land surveyor, especially those that happened to be at present in operation or under consideration. So he kept his business before his eye, on the chance of a good idea striking him at a leisure moment.
“Will Fielding's acceptance falls due to-morrow, Crawley.”
“Yes, sir, what shall I do?”
“Present it; he is not ready for it, I know.
“Well, sir; what next?”
“Serve him with a writ.”
“He will be preciously put about.”
“He will. Seem sorry; say you are a little short, but won't trouble him for a month, if it is inconvenient; but he must make you safe by signing a judgment.”
“Ay! ay! Sir, may I make bold to ask what is the game with this young Fielding?”
“You ought to know the game—to get him in my power.”
“And a very good game it is, sir! Nobody plays it better than you. He won't be the only one that is in your power in these parts—he! he!” And Crawley chuckled without merriment. “Excuse my curiosity, sir, but when about is the blow to fall?”
“What is that to you?”
“Nothing, sir, only the sooner the better. I have a grudge against the family.”
“Have you? then don't act upon it. I don't employ you to do your business, but mine.
“Certainly, Mr. Meadows. You don't think I'd be so ungrateful as to spoil your admirable plans by acting upon any little feeling of my own.”
“I don't think you would be so silly. For if you did, we should part.”
“Don't mention such an event, sir.”
“You have been drinking, Crawley!”
“Not a drop, sir, this two days.”
“You are a liar! The smell of it comes through your skin. I won't have it. Do you hear what I say? I won't have it. No man that drinks can do business—especially mine.”
“I'll never touch a drop again. They called me into the public-house—they wouldn't take a denial.”
“Hold your prate and listen to me. The next time you look at a public-house say to yourself, Peter Crawley, that is not a public-house to you—it is a hospital, a workhouse, for a dunghill—for if you go in there John Meadows, that is your friend, will be your enemy.”
“Heaven forbid, Mr. Meadows.”
“Drink this basinful of coffee.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. It is very bitter.”
“Is your head clear now?”
“As a bell.”
“Then go and do my work, and don't do an atom more or an atom less than your task.”
“No, sir. Oh, Mr. Meadows! it is a pleasure to serve you. You are as deep as the sea, sir, and as firm as the rock. You never drink, nor anything else, that I can find. A man out of a thousand! No little weakness, like the rest of us, sir. You are a great man, sir. You are a model of a man of bus—”
“Good-morning,” growled Meadows roughly, and turned his back.
“Good-morning, sir,” said Peter mellifluously. And opening the back door about ten inches, he wriggled out like a weasel going through a chink in a wall.
William Fielding fell like a child into the trap. “Give me time, and it will be all right,” is the debtor's delusion. William thanked Crawley for not pressing him, and so compelling him to force a sale of all his hogs, fat or lean. Crawley received his thanks with a leer, returned in four days, got the judgment signed, and wriggled away with it to Meadows' back door.
“You take out an arrest”—Meadows gave him a pocketbook—“put it in this, and keep it ready in your pocket night and day.”
“I dare say it will come into use before the year is out, sir.”
“I hope not.”
George Fielding gone to Australia to make a thousand pounds by farming and cattle-feeding, that so he may claim old Merton's promised consent to marry Susan. Susan observing Mr. Eden's precepts even more religiously than when he was with her; active, full of charitable deeds, often pensive, always anxious, but not despondent now, thanks to the good physician. Meadows falling deeper and deeper in love, but keeping it more jealously secret than ever; on his guard against Isaac, on his guard against William, on his guard against John Meadows; hoping everything from time and accidents, from the distance between the lovers, from George's incapacity, of which he had a great opinion—“He will never make a thousand pence”—but not trusting to the things he hoped. On the contrary, watching with keen eye, and working with subtle threads to draw everybody into his power who could assist or thwart him in the object his deep heart and iron will were set on. William Fielding going down the hill Meadows was mounting; getting the better of his passion, and substituting, by degrees, a brother-in-law's regard.
Flowers and weeds have one thing in common—while they live they grow. Natural growth is a slow process, to describe it day by day a slower. For the next four months matters glided so quietly on the slopes I have just indicated that an intelligent calculation by the reader may very well take the place of a tedious chronicle by the writer. Moreover, the same monotony did not hang over every part of our story. These very four months were eventful enough to one of our characters; and through him, by subtle and positive links, to every man and every woman who fills any considerable position in this matter-of-fact romance. Therefore our story drags us from the meadows round Grassmere to a massive, castellated building, glaring red brick with white stone corners. These colors and their contrast relieve the stately mass of some of that grimness which characterizes the castles of antiquity; but enough remains to strike some awe into the beholder.
Two round towers flank the principal entrance. On one side of the right-hand tower is a small house constructed in the same style as the grand pile. The castle is massive and grand. This, its satellite, is massive and tiny, like the frog doing his little bit of bull—like Signor Hervio Nano, a tremendous thick dwarf now no more. There is one dimple to all this gloomy grandeur—a rich little flower-garden, whose frame of emerald turf goes smiling up to the very ankle of the frowning fortress, as some few happy lakes in the world wash the very foot of the mountains that hem them. From this green spot a few flowers look up with bright and wondering wide-opened eyes at the great bullying masonry over their heads; and to the spectator of both, these sparks of color at the castle-foot are dazzling and charming; they are like rubies, sapphires and pink topaz in some uncouth angular ancient setting.
Between the central towers is a sharp arch, filled by a huge oak door of the same shape and size, which, for further security or ornament, is closely studded with large diamond-headed nails. A man with keys at his girdle like the ancient housewives opens the huge door to you with slight effort, so well oiled is it. You slip under a porch into an inclosed yard, the great door shuts almost of itself, and now it depends upon the housewifely man whether you ever see the vain, idle and every-way objectionable world again.
Passing into the interior of the vast building, you find yourself in an extensive aisle traversed at right angles by another of similar dimensions, the whole in form of a cross. In the center of each aisle is an iron staircase, so narrow that two people cannot pass, and so light and open that it merely ornaments, not obstructs, the view of the aisle. These staircases make two springs; the first takes them to the level of two corridors on the first floor. Here there is a horizontal space of about a yard, whence the continuation staircase rises to the second and highest floor. This gives three corridors, all studded with doors opening on small separate apartments, whereof anon.
Nearly all the inmates of this grim palace wear a peculiar costume and disguise, one feature of which is a cap of coarse materials, with a vizor to it, which conceals the features all but the chin and the eyes, which last peep, in a very droll way, through two holes cut for that purpose.
They are distinguished by a courteous manner to strangers, whom they never fail to salute in passing, with great apparent cordiality; indeed, we fear we shall never meet in the busy world with such uniform urbanity as in this and similar retreats. It arises from two causes. One is that here strangers are welcome from their rarity; another, that politeness is a part of the education of the place, which, besides its other uses, is an adult school of manners, morals, religion, grammar, writing and cobbling.
With the exception of its halls and corridors, the building is almost entirely divided into an immense number of the small apartments noticed above. These are homely inside, but exquisitely clean. The furniture, movable and fixed, none of which is superfluous, can be briefly described. A bedstead, consisting of the side walls of the apartment; polished steel staples are fixed in these walls, two on each side the apartment at an elevation of about two feet and a half. The occupant's mattress (made of cocoa bark) has two stout steel hooks at each end; these are hooked into the staples, and so he lies across his abode. A deal table the size of a pocket-handkerchief; also a deal tripod. A waterspout so ingeniously contrived that, turned to the right it sends a small stream into a copper basin, and to the left into a bottomless close stool at some distance. A small gas-pipe tipped with polished brass. In one angle of the wall a sort of commode, or open cupboard; on whose shelves a bright pewter plate, a knife and fork and a wooden spoon. In a drawer of this commode yellow soap and a comb and brush. A grating down low for hot air to come in, if it likes, and another up high for foul air to go out, if it chooses. On the wall a large placard containing rules for the tenant's direction, and smaller placards containing texts from Scripture, the propriety of returning thanks after food, etc.; a slate and a couple of leathern kneeguards used in polishing the room. And that is all. But the deal furniture is so clean you might eat off it. The walls are snow, the copper basin and the brass gaspipe glitter like red gold and pale gold, and the bed-hooks like silver hot from the furnace. Altogether it is inviting at first sight.
To one of these snowy snug retreats was now ushered an acquaintance of ours, Tom Robinson. A brief retrospect must dispose of his intermediate history.
When he left us he went to the county bridewell, where he remained until the assizes, an interval of about a month. He was tried; direct evidence was strong against him, and he defended himself with so much ingenuity and sleight of intellect that the jury could not doubt his sleight of hand and morals, too. He was found guilty, identified as a notorious thief, and condemned to twelve months' imprisonment and ten years' transportation. He returned to the county bridewell for a few days, and then was shifted to the castellated building.
Tom Robinson had not been in jail this four years, and, since his last visit great changes had begun to take place in the internal economy of these skeleton palaces and in the treatment of their prisoners.
Prisons might be said to be in a transition state. In some, as in the county bridewell Robinson had just left, the old system prevailed in full force. The two systems vary in their aims. Under the old, the jail was a finishing school of felony and petty larceny. Under the new, it is intended to be a penal hospital for diseased and contagious souls.
The treatment of prisoners is not at present invariable. Within certain limits the law unwisely allows a discretionary power to the magistrates of the county where the jail is; and the jailer, or, as he is now called, the governor, is their agent in these particulars.
Hence, in some new jails you may now see the non-separate system; in others, the separate system without silence; in others, the separate and silent system; in others, a mixture of these, i. e., the hardened offenders kept separate, the improving ones allowed to mix; and these varieties are at the discretion of the magistrates, who settle within the legal limits each jail's system.
The magistrates, in this part of their business, are represented by certain of their own body, who are called “the visiting justices;” and these visiting justices can even order and authorize a jailer to flog a prisoner for offenses committed in jail.
Now, a year or two before our tale, one Captain O'Connor was governor of this jail. Captain O'Connor was a man of great public merit. He had been one of the first dissatisfied with the old system, and had written very intelligent books on crime and punishment, which are supposed to have done their share in opening the nation's eyes to the necessity of regenerating its prisons. But after a while the visiting justices of this particular county became dissatisfied with him; he did not go far enough nor fast enough with the stone he had helped to roll. Books and reports came out which convinced the magistrates that severe punishment of mind and body was the essential object of a jail, and that it was wrong and chimerical to attempt any cures by any other means.
Captain O'Connor had been very successful by other means, and could not quite come to this opinion; but he had a deputy governor who did. System, when it takes a hold of the mind, takes a strong hold, and the men of system became very impatient of opposition, and grateful for thorough acquiescence.
Hence it came to pass that in the course of a few months Captain O'Connor found himself in an uncomfortable position. His deputy-governor, Mr. Hawes, enjoyed the confidence of the visiting justices; he did not. His suggestions were negatived; Hawes's accepted. And, to tell the truth, he became at last useless as well as uncomfortable; for these gentlemen were determined to carry out their system, and had a willing agent in the prison. O'Connor was little more than a drag on the wheel he could not hinder from gliding down the hill. At last, it happened that he had overdrawn his account, without clearly stating at the time that the sum, which amounted nearly to one hundred pounds, was taken by him as an accommodation, or advance of salary. This, which though by no means unprecedented, was an unbusiness-like though innocent omission, justified censure.
The magistrates went farther than censure; they had long been looking for an excuse to get rid of him and avail themselves of the zeal and energy of Hawes. They therefore removed O'Connor, stating publicly as their reason that he was old; and their interest put Hawes into his place. There was something melancholy in such a close to O'Connor's public career. Fortune used him hardly. He had been one of the first to improve prisons, yet he was dismissed on this or that pretense, but really because he could not keep pace with the soi-disant improvements of three inexperienced persons. Honorable mention of his name, his doings and his words is scattered about various respectable works by respectable men on this subject, yet he ended in something very like discredit.
However, the public gained this by the injustice done him—that an important experiment was tried under an active and a willing agent.
With Governor Hawes the separate and silent system flourished in —— Jail.
The justices and the new governor were of one mind. They had been working together about two years when Robinson came into the jail.
During this period three justices had periodically visited the jail, perused the reports, examined, as in duty bound, the surgeon, the officers and prisoners, and were proud of the system and its practical working here.
With respect to Hawes the governor, their opinion of him was best shown in the reports they had to make to the Home Office from time to time. In these they invariably spoke of him as an active, zealous and deserving officer.
Robinson had heard much of the changes in jail treatment, but they had not yet come home to him. When, therefore, instead of being turned adrift among seventy other spirits as bad as himself, and greeted with their boisterous acclamations and the friendly pressure of seven or eight felonious hands, he was ushered into a cell white as driven snow, and his housewifely duties explained to him, under a heavy penalty if a speck of dirt should ever be discovered on his little wall, his little floor, his little table, or if his cocoa-bark mattress should not be neatly rolled up after use, and the strap tight, and the steel hook polished like glass, and his little brass gas-pipe glittering like gold, etc., Thomas looked blank and had a misgiving.
“I say, guv'nor,” said he to the under-turnkey, “how long am I to be here before I go into the yard?”
“Talking not allowed out of hours,” was the only reply.
Robinson whistled. The turnkey, whose name was Evans, looked at him with a doubtful air, as much as to say, “Shall I let that pass unpunished or not?”
However, he went out without any further observation, leaving the door open; but the next moment he returned and put his head in: “Prisoners shut their own doors,” said he.
“Well!” drawled Robinson, looking coolly and insolently into the man's face, “I don't see what I shall gain by that.” And Mr. Robinson seated himself, and turning his back a little rudely, immersed himself ostentatiously in his own thoughts.
“You will gain as you won't be put in the black hole for refractory conduct, No. 19,” replied Evans, quietly and sternly.
Robinson made a wry face and pushed the door peevishly; it shut with a spring, and no mortal power or ingenuity could now open it from the inside.
“Well I'm blest,” said the self-immured, “every man his own turnkey now; save the queen's pocket, whatever you do. Times are so hard. Box at the opera costs no end. What have we got here? A Bible! my eye! invisible print! Oh! I see; 'tisn't for us to read, 'tis for the visitors to admire—like the new sheet over the dirty blankets! What's this hung up?