The Catholic World, Vol. 19, April 1874‐September 1874

by Various

Sonnet: Good Friday.

Behold the highest Good! there on the cross

'Tis pictured on a canvas so sublime

That God's own thought, conceived before all time,

Is fitly told; the universe at loss

To fathom it, its mighty forces toss

In darkened struggles that do wildly chime

In thund'rous mutt'rings with the monstrous crime

That man conceives; yet all the varied dross

Of nature's agitations but compose

The adjuncts to that central Form, where God,

Enthroned in pain, all suffering doth enclose

In one brief day, that never might be trod

A path more hard than that did interpose

'Twixt Pilate's hall and Calvary's blood-stained sod.

Grapes And Thorns. Chapter X. The Descent of Avernus.

By The Author Of “The House of Yorke.”

It was Annette who told Miss Pembroke the result of the trial, taking it on herself as a sort of mission. Without saying a word on the subject to each other, perhaps without defining it clearly in their own minds, they had yet acted on an impression that she was to be treated with peculiar delicacy and tenderness in the matter.

As young Mrs. Gerald came down the street toward her mother-in-law's home, she saw Miss Pembroke approaching her slowly from the opposite direction, a child at either side. She was just coming from her school, and these two little ones lived in the neighborhood, and were privileged to walk home with their teacher, each holding in its little hands, for warmth, a fold of her large sable cloak.

It was a still, frosty day, with a sparkling depth of cloudless blue overhead, and a spotless carpet of newly-fallen snow, white as swan's-down, underneath. But the mid-air, rosy now with sunset, imparted a tinge of violet to the sky and a soft blush to the earth. Sleighs, with their gay bells, flew to and fro, the drivers muffled to the eyes from the stinging cold; and the planks of the sidewalk crackled under the steps that trod them.

“What a motherly look she has!” Annette Gerald said to herself, as she stood waiting at the gate, and watching her friend.

Honora had quite a matronly appearance, indeed, in the thick furs she always wore in winter. She was fond of warmth, and scarcely quick enough in her motions to resist the cold of a northern climate by means of exercise alone, and the cap, muff, boa, and mantle made her look like a Juno exiled to the court of Odin. The cold melancholy of her expression, the face as untouched with color as a white camellia, was in keeping with the fancy.

She did not hasten when she saw a visitor waiting for her, nor give any smile or word of welcome. If there was a sign of emotion, it was in the slight gesture with which she detached herself from her two little attendants, who, for the first time, missed the leave-taking they prized so much. They had been wont to be stroked on the cheeks, with a gentle “Good-by”; and, running, hand in hand, down the street, to turn at the first corner, and see their teacher wave her hand to them as she stood on the piazza.

“My dear Annette, why did you not go in, instead of freezing here in the snow?” she said, and seemed too much occupied in opening the gate to be able to look in her friend's face, though her disengaged hand held that of her visitor closely.

“Oh! I never feel the cold in this still weather,” Annette said lightly. “Besides, I do not like to enter alone a deserted house. There is no one here but the servant. Mamma Gerald is with us, and we persuaded her to stay to dinner. I wish you would go up too.”

They had entered the house. Miss Pembroke paused a moment at the foot of the stairs, then led the way up to her chamber. Evidently she knew that there were tidings for her, and suspected that they were not good. “I shall not dine at home to-day,” she said, catching sight of the servant.

But she did not, apparently, mean to go out, for she deliberately removed her wrappings, and put them away; then seated herself beside her friend, and looked at her with an expression that bade her speak out her errand, whatever it might be.

“It has gone as badly as it could,” Annette said quickly.

“He is, then, found guilty?” Miss Pembroke asked, without the slightest sign of emotion.

Annette nodded. “He is convicted on circumstantial evidence. It is as plain as such evidence can be, but not plain enough to shake my hope, at least, of his innocence. Lawrence is utterly disgusted and indignant with the whole affair. He says he would at any time head a party to rescue Mr. Schöninger. He felt so angry that he wouldn't stay at home after coming up to tell us, but started off again somewhere.”

“Is he sentenced?” Miss Pembroke asked, speaking with some difficulty.

“Yes!” And since the eyes fixed on her still waited for more, Mrs. Gerald added: “There is a year solitary.”

Honora's eyes opened a little wider. “A year solitary?” she repeated.

“Why, yes, dear. You know it is the custom to give a year of solitary imprisonment before....”

Miss Pembroke put her hand up, and seemed to clear some mist from before her eyes. “Before what?” she asked in a confused way.

“Dear Honora!” exclaimed her friend, “need I say what?” And then started up with a little cry; for Miss Pembroke, without a word or sign of warning, had slipped out of her chair, and fallen heavily to the floor.

It is not necessary to make an outcry because a lady has fainted, unless there is no person of sense present. Annette Gerald did what was needful without calling for help, and her efforts were soon rewarded. The cold hand she held suddenly became warm and moist as the recoiling wave of life rushed back, and in a few minutes Miss Pembroke was able to rise from the floor, and go to the sofa. Annette sat by her in silence, now and then touching her hand or her hair with caressing fingers, and waited for her to speak.

If she had to wait some time, it was not because her friend had not returned to full consciousness. Miss Pembroke was too strong and healthy to creep back to life, even after so violent and unaccustomed an attack. It was, perhaps, the first time she had ever fainted, and she was left almost ignorant of what had happened to her; but of the cause she was not a moment in doubt. It came back clearly on the first wave of returning consciousness. She lay with her eyes closed, and strove to set her mind in order again, and set it so firmly that this terrible and entirely unexpected fact should not again derange its action. She had not once anticipated such a conclusion. Her thoughts had occupied themselves with the horrors of the accusation, and the worst result she had looked for was that, though the prisoner would doubtless be acquitted, [pg 070] he would not be able to shake off the disgrace of having been suspected, and would go out into life branded with an ineffaceable mark—a mark which his name would bear even in her own mind. She had said to herself that, pity him as she might, she desired never to see him again, not because she believed him capable of any great crime, but because his image would always be associated with painful recollections, and because his dignity had been soiled by such circumstances and associations. Now, however, he was presented to her mind in quite a new light, more pitiful, yet with a pity far more shrinking and remote from its object. In this woman, confidence in, and obedience to, authority was an instinct; and as she contemplated the decision of the law against Mr. Schöninger, she began to look on him somewhat as a Catholic looks upon those whom the anathema of the church has separated from the fellowship of the faithful, “so that they are not so much as to say to them, God speed you.” A silent and awful distance grew up between them.

After a while, she sat up, and began calmly to put her hair and dress in order.

“It is very terrible, Annette, and we may as well try to put it quite out of our minds,” she said. “We can do nothing, that I see, but pray for his conversion. I thank you for coming alone to tell me of this, for I would not have had any other person see me so much affected by the news. People imagine things and tell them as facts, and there are many who are capable of believing that I had loved Mr. Schöninger. I never did.”

There were times when Honora Pembroke's soft eyes could give a look that was almost dazzling in its firm and open clearness; and as she pronounced these last words, she looked into her companion's face with such a glance.

Mrs. Gerald rose and walked somewhat impatiently to the window. She had hoped and expected to startle Honora into some generous expression of interest in Mr. Schöninger, and to win from her some word of pity and kindness which, repeated to him, would be like a drop of cooling water in his fiery trial.

“I am sure I should never imagine you capable of having an affection for any one whom the whole world does not approve,” she said rather pointedly, having snatched the curtain up and looked out, then dropped it again. “If you can put the subject out of your mind, and remember Mr. Schöninger only when you are praying for the heathen, so much the better for your tranquillity. I am not so happily constituted. I cannot dismiss the thought of friends because it troubles me, nor because some person, or many persons, may believe something against them.”

“What would you have me do?” Miss Pembroke asked rather loftily, yet with signs of trouble in her face.

“Nothing, my dear, except that you put on your bonnet and come home to dinner with me,” Annette replied, assuming a careless tone.

Miss Pembroke hesitated, then refused. It would be certainly more sensible to go if she could, but she felt herself a little weak and trembling yet, and disinclined to talk. The best distraction for her would be such as she could find in reading or in prayer, if distraction were needed. She felt, moreover, the coldness that had come over her [pg 071] friend's manner more than Annette was aware, and for a moment, perhaps, wrung by a cruel distrust of herself, envied her that independence of mind and ardor of feeling which could at need strengthen her to face any difficulty, and which rendered her capable of holding firmly her own opinions and belief in spite of opposition. Miss Pembroke seemed to herself in that instant weak and puny, not because she did nothing for Mr. Schöninger, but because, had she seen the possibility or propriety of her doing anything, she would have lacked the courage. It was a relief to her, therefore, to find herself alone, though, at the same time, she would gladly have had the support and strength which her friend's presence could so well impart to one in trouble.

The door closed, and she looked from the window and saw her visitor walk briskly away without glancing back.

“I wish I had some one,” she murmured, dropping the curtain from her hand, and looking about the room as if to find some suggestion of help. “I am certainly very much alone in the world. Mother Chevreuse is gone; I cannot go to F. Chevreuse about this; and the others jar a little with me.”

And then, like a ray of soft and tender light coming unexpectedly to show the path through a dark place, came the thought of Sister Cecilia and her gentle companions. They had asked her to come to them, if they could ever be of any use to her, and Sister Cecilia particularly had spoken to her with an affectionate earnestness which was now joyfully remembered. “I cannot hope to be to you what Mother Chevreuse was, but I would be glad if I could in a little, even, supply her loss to you. Come to me, if you ever wish to, quite freely. You will never find me wanting in sympathy or affection.”

And she had scarcely been to them at all!

She dressed herself hastily, and called a carriage. It was too late to walk there, for already the sun was down; and it was nearly two miles to the convent.

The sharp air and brisk motion were restorative. They brought a color to her face, and sent new life through her weakened frame. Besides, when one feels helpless and distressed, rapid motion gives a relieving impression that one is doing and accomplishing something, while, at the same time, it saves the necessity of effort.

Sister Cecilia was in her own room, writing letters, her little desk drawn close to the window for the light. She looked out when she heard the carriage, and beckoned Miss Pembroke to come up-stairs then hurried to meet her half way. She had guessed her visitor's motive in coming, and it needed but a glance into her face to confirm the thought.

“Come into my chamber, dear,” she said. “It is the pleasantest room in the house at this hour. See what a view I have of the city and the western sky. I sit here to write my letters, and every moment have to leave off to admire the beautiful world outside. It is a sort of dissipation with me, this hour of sunset. This arm-chair is for you. It is my visitor's chair. I should feel quite like a sybarite if I were to sit in it.”

She seated Honora by the window, drew up her own chair opposite her, and went on talking cheerfully.

“I sometimes think that all the [pg 072] earth needs to make it heaven is the visible presence of our Lord and his saints. It would require no physical change. Of course I include the absence of sin. There is so much beauty here, so much that we never notice, so much that is everyday, yet miraculous for all that. Look at that sky! Did you ever see such a rich air? It needs the cold purity of the snow to keep it from seeming excessive.”

A long, narrow cloud had stretched itself across the west, and, drawing to its bosom the light of the sun, now hidden behind the hills, reflected it in a crimson flood over the earth. Through this warm effulgence fell, delicately penetrating, the golden beams of the full moon, changing the crimson of the air to a deep-opal color, and putting faint splashes of gilding here and there beside the rosy reflections.

“How the earth draws it in!” said the nun dreamily. “It never wastes the beauties of the sky. It hoards them up, and gives them out long after in marbles and precious stones. Did it ever occur to you to wonder how those bright things could grow in the dark underground? I used to think of it in Italy, where I first saw what marbles can be. I remember my eyes and my mind wandering to that as I knelt before the Confession of S. Matthew the Evangelist, in Santa Maria Maggiore, where the walls of the atrium glow with marbles; and the lesson I learned from it was this: that even though pains and sorrows of every kind should intervene between us and the joy of life as thickly as the clay, and rock, and turf had intervened between the sunshine of heaven and the dark place where those marbles took form and color, we could yet, if we had real faith, be conscious of all the glory and joy taking place overhead, and reproduce them for ourselves down in the dark, and make that beauty more enduring because we were in the dark. At the sunny surface, the brightness slips off and shadows succeed; but that solid jewel in the depths is indestructible. My dear”—she turned to her companion with a soft suddenness which warmed but did not startle—“do you remember S. Paul's recommendation, ‘always rejoice’? It is possible. And now tell me why you do not.”

Her eyes, beaming with religious enthusiasm and tenderest human affection, searched frankly the pale face before her, and her hand was laid lightly on Miss Pembroke's arm. No reserve nor timidity could stand before her. They melted like snowflakes beneath the heavenly summer of her glances. Honora told freely and simply what had distressed her.

How sweet is the friendship of one true woman for another!—sweeter than love, for it is untroubled, and has something of the calmness of heaven; deeper than love, for it is the sympathy of true natures which reflect each the entire being of the other; less selfish than love, for it asks no merging of another into itself; nobler than love, for it allows its object to have other sources of happiness than those it can furnish; more enduring than love, for it is a life, and not a flame.

“But can you not see, my dear,” the nun said presently, “that it would have been better if you had not had any friendly intercourse with him, even though this terrible thing had never happened? The injunction not to be unequally yoked with one another refers, I [pg 073] think, to all ties as well as to marriage. The gulf is too wide between the Christian and the Jew to be bridged over for familiar friendship. It is too wide for anything but prayers to cross. Once admit any intercourse with unbelievers, and you peril your faith; and, besides, you cannot set a barrier firmly anywhere when the first one is down. I have heard it said that this Jew loved you, and even fancied it possible that you would marry him.”

“People ought not to say such things!” exclaimed Miss Pembroke, blushing deeply.

“People ought not to have the chance to say such things, my dear girl,” replied the nun. “It was offering you an insult when he offered you his hand.”

“O dear Sister! is not that too severe?” expostulated Honora. “Setting aside what has happened since, should I not recollect, when a man makes me such an offer, what his intention is, and how the subject looks to him? And cannot I refuse him, and see that it is impossible for me to do otherwise, yet feel kindly toward him, and wish him well, and believe that he has meant to show me both affection and respect?”

“Honora,” said the Sister, “if any man had struck your mother, then turned to offer you his hand, would you not have recoiled from him in disgust and indignation?”

“Surely I would!”

“And is your God and Saviour less dear and sacred to you than your mother?” the other pursued. “Can you allow your thoughts to dwell with kindness and complacency on one who blasphemes the crucified Redeemer, and calls him an impostor? Because you have not heard this man talk against your faith, you forget what he must think of it. I tell you they mock at him, these Jews, and they call us idolaters. And what could he think of you, when, knowing that you adore Christ as God, he asked you to be the wife of one who would laugh, if he did not rave, when he saw you making the sign of the cross? He must have thought your faith so weak that he could in time make you renounce it. And the reason why he thought so was because he saw you receiving him in a friendly way, as if friendship were possible between you. I speak of what he was. What he is, we have nothing to do with.”

Miss Pembroke's eyes were down-cast. “When you place the subject in that light, I am forced to think myself all in the wrong,” she said. “But most people do not think in that clear, positive way. They act on an inherited motive, and their beliefs are moss grown, as it were.”

“They have no faith,” was the quick reply.

Honora was silent a moment, then said, with some hesitation: “I am always afraid of being uncharitable and illiberal, and perhaps I err the other way.”

“My dear, it is easy to make a mistake there, and very dangerous too,” the Sister replied with decision. “What is charity? You must first love God with all your heart; and if you do that, you will be very shy of the enemies of God. You cannot serve two masters. As to liberality, there is no greater snare. It is not liberal to squander the bounty and honor of God; it is not ours to spend. It is not liberal to praise those whom he condemns, and bless those whom he curses. It is not liberal to love those who refuse to acknowledge and obey [pg 074] him, and to contradict what he has clearly said. Or if these things are liberal, then liberality is one of the worst of vices, and one of the most futile too. Why, if I were to desire the reputation of being generous, and, having nothing of my own, should take what is not mine and give it away, I have stolen, it is true, and I have obtained a reputation that I do not deserve, but, also, I have enriched some one; whereas, if I put my hand into the treasury of God, and try to bestow on another what he has denied, the hand comes out empty. I have insulted the Almighty, and have not benefited any one. Do not suffer yourself to be deceived by sounding phrases. What are these people who talk so much of liberality? Are they liberal of what is theirs to give? Far from it. Do they give away all they have to the poor? Do they forgive their enemies? Do they give up their pride and vanity, and spend their lives in laboring for the needy? Quite the contrary. They are lavish only of what is not theirs to give. It has been reserved for those whom they call bigots to show an ardent and unsparing liberality in sacrificing their private feelings, their wealth, their comfort, their reputation, their lives even, for the glory of God and the saving of souls. There is the true liberality, my dear, and all other is a snare.”

“I wish I could shut myself up with God, and get into the right path again. I am all wrong.”

“Why not come here and make a retreat?” the Sister asked.

It was so precisely and unexpectedly what she needed that Honora clasped her hands, with an exclamation of delight. “The very thing! Yet I had not thought of it. When may I come? Very soon? It was surely an inspiration, my coming here to-night.”

Immediately her troubles began to lift themselves away, as fogs begin to rise from the earth even before the sun is above the horizon. The certainty of approaching peace conferred a peace in the present. She was going to place herself in the hands of Him who can perform the impossible.

Sister Cecilia had supplied her need perfectly. Hers was not one of those impassioned natures which need to be, soothed and caressed into quiet. A certain vein of gentle self-sufficiency, and a habit of contentment with life as she found it, prevented this. She wanted light more than warmth.

It was already dark when they went down-stairs, and since, from economy, the nuns did not have their entries lighted, the two had to go hand-in-hand, groping their way carefully, till they came to a turn in the lower passage; and there, from the open door of the chapel at the further end, a soft ray of light shone out from the single lamp that burned before the altar. By daylight both chapel and altar showed poor enough; but in the evening, and seen alone by this small golden flame, the imperfections were either transformed or hidden. Dimly seen, the long folds of drapery all about gave a sense of seclusion and tenderness; one seemed to be hiding under the mantle of the Lord; and the beautiful mystery of the burning lamp made wonders seem possible. Kneeling there alone, one could fancy all the beautiful legends being acted over again.

Sister Cecilia and Honora, still hand-in-hand, knelt in the entry the moment they saw that light.

“You remember the chalice of the bees?” whispered the nun.

“I never come here in the evening, and see that bright little place in the darkness, but I think of that sweetest of stories. And I would not be surprised to hear a buzzing of bees all about the sanctuary, and see the busy little creatures building up a chalice of fine wax, as clear as an alabaster vase with a light inside.”

They walked slowly and noiselessly by the door, and, as they passed it, saw beside the altar what looked almost like another lamp, or like that illuminated vase the Sister had fancied. It was the face of Anita, which reflected the light, her dark dress rendering her form almost invisible. That face and the two folded hands shone softly, with a fixed lustre, out of the shadows. No breath nor motion seemed to stir them. The eyes fixed on the tabernacle, the lips slightly parted where the last vocal prayer had escaped, she knelt there in a trance of adoration. But one could see, even through that brightening halo and sustaining peace, that a great change had taken place in the girl during the last few weeks. Her face was worn quite thin; and the large eyes, that had been like dewy violets bending ever toward the earth, burned now with a lustre that never comes from aught but pain.

“How the innocent have to suffer for the sins of the guilty!” sighed the nun, as she led her visitor away. “That child has received a blow from which I am afraid she will never recover. She is like a broken flower that lives a little while when it is put in water. Her conscience is at rest; she does not say now that she is sorry for having had anything to do with that trial; she does not complain in any way. She seems simply broken. And here she comes now! She has heard our steps, and is afraid she has stayed too long in the chapel.”

The young girl came swiftly along the passage, and held out her hands to Miss Pembroke. “I knew you were here,” she said, “and I was waiting to hear you come down. Mother told me I might come and say good-by to you.”

“But you have not yet said a word of welcome,” Miss Pembroke replied, trying to speak cheerfully.

“Oh! yes, when I saw you come, I welcomed you in my own mind,” she replied, without smiling.

Honora waited an instant, but Anita seemed to have nothing to say except the good-by she had come for. “Our whispering did not disturb your prayers?” she asked, wishing to detain her a little longer.

“Oh! no.” She glanced up at Sister Cecilia, as a child, when doubtful and lost, looks into its mother's face, then dropped her eyes dreamily. “I do not say any prayer but ‘amen.’ Nothing else comes. I kneel down, thinking to repeat, perhaps, the rosary, and I am only silent a while, and then I say amen. It is as well, I suppose.”

Honora kissed the child's thin cheek tenderly. “Good-by, dear,” she whispered softly. “Say one amen for me to-night.”

She went out into the still and sparkling night, and was driven rapidly homeward. On her way, she passed the prison, and, looking up, saw over the high wall a light shining redly through the long row of grated windows. It was a painful sight, but no longer unendurable. “No prayer but amen,” she repeated. “What does it matter by what road we go, so long as we reach heaven at last; whether it be in peaceful ways, or through sin and suffering?”

Another carriage drew up at the gate as she reached home, and Mrs. Gerald descended from it, having just returned from Mrs. Ferrier's.

“Upon my word, young woman!” Annette's voice called out from a pile of furs in the carriage. “We have been saying our good-nights in whispers, and hushing the very sleigh-bells, so as not to disturb your slumbers; and here you are out driving.”

Her bright and cheerful voice broke strangely into Honora's mood. Was there, then, anything in the world to laugh about, anything that could possibly excite a jest?

“Good-night, Mother Gerald!” the young woman added. “Don't stand there taking cold. And if you do not see Honora in the house to-night, make up your mind that I have carried her off with me, as I shall try to. Come here, my dear, and give an account of yourself. Where have you been?”

As Honora reached the carriage door, young Mrs. Gerald leaned out and caught both her hands. “Come with me to find Lawrence,” she whispered hurriedly. “He has not been home yet, but he will go for you.”

Though recoiling from the errand, Miss Pembroke would not refuse it. She stepped into the carriage, and suffered herself to be driven away. It was the first time such a service had ever been demanded of her. “Where is he? Do you know?” she asked.

“Oh! yes. He is only playing billiards,” the young wife answered, and a sharp sigh seemed to cut the sentences apart. “It is the first time for a long while, and I want to break it up in the beginning. John went down and told him that his mother was dining with us, but Lawrence paid no attention.”

She leaned back a little while without saying a word as they sped over the smooth snow. “It seems a shame to drag you into such an affair, Honora,” she said presently; “and I had not thought of it till I saw you, and then it came like a flash that you could help me. What I want of you is to write on a card that you and I are waiting for him. John will carry it in to him, and he will recognize your writing.”

The horses were drawn up before a large marble hotel, lighted from basement to attic. The shops underneath were all closed; but from three broad lower windows a bright light shone around the heavy lowered curtains, and in the stillness they could hear the faint click of billiard-balls. There was no sound of voices from inside, and it was impossible to know if the players were few or many.

Honora wrote hastily, by the moonlight, as she was bid, “Annette and I are waiting for you,” and John took the card.

“Why doesn't he go to this door?” she asked, seeing the man disappear around a corner of the house.

“You child!” said her friend compassionately; “are you so innocent as to suppose that any one can walk into one of those places when he pleases? These charming réunions are held with locked doors, and one has to have the password to go in.”

Honora was silent with indignation. To her mind, Lawrence could not do his wife a greater injury than in allowing her to become acquainted with such places, and she was half disposed to be vexed with Annette for not leaving him to himself, and refusing to be drawn into any objectionable scenes and associations.

Annette divined the last thought, and replied to it.

“It is impossible for a wife to be scrupulous as to the means by which she shall withdraw her husband from danger,” she said with quiet coldness. “They are one. If he is soiled, she cannot be quite clean, except in intention, unless she is very selfish; and then her intention is not good, which is worse yet. Of course she should be careful not to draw others into her affairs.”

“You must know far better than I, Annette,” her friend said quickly, feeling as though she must have spoken her thought. “At all events, you cannot be called selfish. And, indeed, if the angels of heaven were over-scrupulous with regard to their associations, we should lack their guardianship.”

Here John appeared, walking briskly round the corner of the hotel, and immediately after Lawrence Gerald came to the carriage-door.

“You here, Honora!” he exclaimed. “What could have induced you?”

“We had better not ask each other questions,” she replied coldly. “It is late. Will you come home with us?”

She drew back into a corner, and made room for him, with an air almost of disgust; for the moonlight showed his face flushed with drinking, and, as he spoke, a strong odor of brandy had been wafted into her face.

He was too much confused for anything but simple obedience, and in rather a stumbling way took the seat assigned him.

“Honora has been driving this evening, and is sleepy and chilly,” his wife made haste to say in explanation, inwardly resenting her friend's hauteur, and regretting having brought her. “She is going home to stay all night with us. I am sure you did not know how late it is.”

She furtively picked up his hat, that had fallen off, went on talking lightly, to cover his silence or prevent his saying anything senseless, and tried in every way to screen him from the scorn that she had exposed him to. He leaned back in the carriage, and took no notice of her. The presence of Honora Pembroke had confounded him, and he had just sense enough left to know that he could not keep too quiet. What had stirred her to interfere in his affairs he could not guess, for Annette had always so screened him that it never occurred to him she could have asked her friend to come. Had he known, it would have fared hard with his wife. He had, however, prudence and temper enough to keep him from making any disagreeable demonstration. John was at hand when they reached home, and, as the ladies went hastily up the steps and into the house, they were not supposed to be aware that it was his arm which enabled Mr. Gerald to go in without falling. Then Mrs. Ferrier stood in the open drawing-room door, and, under cover of her welcome to Honora, he managed to get up stairs unnoticed, fortunately for all.

For the truce between Annette's husband and her mother was over, and their intercourse was assuming a more unpleasant character than ever. Now, it was nearly always Lawrence who was the aggressor. Even when Mrs. Ferrier showed a disposition to conciliate, he found something irritating in her very good-nature. Partial [pg 078] as his mother was, she was moved to expostulate with him after witnessing two or three of these scenes.

“You ought to recollect her good intention, Lawrence, and try to overlook her manner,” she said. “I know well she does not show very good taste always; but you cannot criticise a woman in her own house.”

“I am seldom allowed to forget that it is her house,” returned the son rather sulkily.

“At least, my dear, do not provoke her into reminding you of that,” Mrs. Gerald urged.

Lawrence wished to stand well with his mother, and had, indeed, improved in his behavior toward her in proportion as he had grown more impatient with Mrs. Ferrier. He seemed now to regret having answered her unpleasantly. “If you knew, mother, all the little annoyances I have to bear from her, you wouldn't blame me so much,” he said coaxingly. “With other frets, she has a habit of asking any of us who may be going out where we are going, and when we are coming back; and Annette has humored her in that till she thinks she has a right to know. Teddy always tells her, too; but then he tells lies. That makes no difference, though, to her. Well, I have broken her of asking me when I am alone; but if Annette is with me, she asks her. Can't you imagine, mother, that it would get to be irritating after a while? It makes me so nervous sometimes that I have really skulked out of the house slyly, as if I had no right to go. And then, when I come in, she will say, ‘Why, where have you been, Lawrence? I didn't hear you go out.’ If a door opens anywhere, she goes to see who is about. I believe if I should get up in the middle of the night, and try to creep out of the house without being heard, I should see her head poked out of the chamber-door before I'd got half-way down-stairs. Then she peers and finds out everything. Annette and I had a bottle of champagne the other night in our room, and the next morning she spied out the bottle, and spoke of it. I suppose she heard the cork pop when I drew it. You never looked after me half so closely when I was a little boy, always in mischief, as she does now I am a man. She knows what my clothes cost, every rag of them, and how many clean collars and handkerchiefs I have in the week.”

“I am sure she need not trouble herself about how much your clothes cost, since you pay for them yourself,” Mrs. Gerald said, her face very red. “And if she grudges you clean collars, send your linen home, and I will have it washed there.”

“Oh! she has no such thought,” Lawrence made haste to say. “She doesn't mean to be cross about any of these things, but only prying. She wants to overlook everybody and everything in the house, and it annoys me. I only tell you so that you may not wonder if I do speak out now and then about some small thing. Then what do you think she has proposed about my going into business?”

“Well?” Mrs. Gerald said uneasily.

“She has selected a partner for me.”

His mother waited for an explanation.

“And who should it be but John!”

“John who?” asked Mrs. Gerald wonderingly, trying to recollect [pg 079] some notable person of that name among her youthful acquaintances.

“Why, I do not know that he has any other name. The big English fellow who lets you in here, and waits at dinner, and opens and shuts the carriage-door.”

“What! you do not mean the footman?” Mrs. Gerald cried.

Her son laughed bitterly. “I asked her if he was to open the shop-door, and carry parcels, and if he would have the same sort of cockade on his hat, and she got quite angry about it. She says he has saved a good deal of money, and means to go into business, and she thinks I couldn't have a better partner. What do you think of it, mother?”

Mrs. Gerald leaned back in her chair, and put her hand up to her face, half hiding a blush of vexation.

She was not willing to tell Lawrence all she thought of the matter. “What does Annette say?” she asked.

“Annette vetoed the proposal up and down. I've heard nothing of it for a week or more. I only told you because you seem to think me too difficult.”

Mrs. Gerald sighed. She had hoped to see her son busy and contented after his marriage, and she found him only more idle and dissatisfied than before. With the partiality of a mother, she tried still to find him unfortunate instead of blameworthy, and, rather than see any fault in him, looked only at his difficulties, refusing to recollect how easily he could now overcome them all. She fancied erroneously that to suggest to him that his trials had a good deal of brightness to relieve them, would be to show a lack of sympathy and tenderness, and that the best way to comfort him was to let him see that his annoyances showed in her eyes as misfortunes. It was a mistake which, in her over-sensitive affection, she had always made with him.

His wife acted otherwise. “There is no use in anticipating evil, Lawrence,” she said. “Perhaps that may be the means of bringing it about. Fortune loves a smiling countenance. As to mamma's plans and wishes with regard to John, the best way for us is to assume that it is impossible she should ever regard him as anything but a servant. And, indeed,” she concluded with dignity, “I think she never can do otherwise.”

But this assumption did not prevent young Mr. Gerald from going privately to F. Chevreuse, and begging him to interfere and try to bring her mother to reason; and perhaps Mrs. Ferrier was never so near being in open revolt against her pastor as when he undertook to show her that there were certain social distinctions which it was her duty to recognize and respect.

“I think, F. Chevreuse,” she said stiffly, “that a priest might do better than encourage pride and haughtiness.”

“He could scarcely do worse than encourage them,” he replied calmly; “and it is precisely against these sins that I would put you on your guard. Persons are never more in danger of falling into them than when they are complaining of the pride of others, and trying to reform what they conceive to be the abuses of society and the world. The only reformer whom I respect, and who is in a thoroughly safe way, is that one who strives to reform and perfect himself. When he is perfect, then he can begin to correct the faults of others. Moreover, the established customs and distinctions of society have often a [pg 080] good foundation, and are not lightly to be set aside. What would you say if your chambermaid should insist on sitting down to dinner with you and driving out with you?”

Mrs. Ferrier found herself unprepared to answer. Indeed, no lady could be more peremptory and exacting than she was with all her servants except John. She was not yet ready to explain that her generalities all had reference to one exceptional case.

“But John is not at all a common servant,” she ventured to say. “He never lived out but once before, and then it was with a very grand family in England; and he wouldn't have come here with us, only that he wanted to look round a while before setting up business. I had to coax him to come, and give him the very highest wages. And Annette did all she could to persuade him.”

“John is an excellent man, I am sure,” F. Chevreuse replied. “I hope he will succeed in whatever good work he attempts. But we were speaking of your daughter's husband. My advice is that he return to the office where he was before, and remain there till something better presents itself. I do not approve of any large and showy enterprise for him. It would not suit him. In that office his salary would be enough to render him quite independent, and leave him a little to lay up.”

“Lay up!” repeated Mrs. Ferrier, with an incredulous circumflex.

“He will put one-half his income into his wife's hands, and she can do as she will with it,” F. Chevreuse replied. “Annette has spoken to me about it, and it is his own proposal. She will put the money in bank every month. What he keeps will be his own affair, and what she takes will be a small fund for the future, and will relieve a little that painful feeling he must have in living here without paying anything. It is decidedly the best that can be done at present. Besides,” he added, seeing objection gathering in her face, “it may save you something. The young man is not to blame that he is not rich, and he is quite ready to take his wife home to his own mother, and Annette is quite willing to go, if necessary. They might live there very happily and pleasantly; but as, in that case, Lawrence would be the one on whom all the expense would fall, I presume you would make your daughter an allowance which would place her on an equality with him.”

Mrs. Ferrier was forced to consent. Nothing was further from her wish than to be separated from her daughter, not only because she was more than usually solicitous for Annette's happiness, and wished to assure herself constantly that her husband did not neglect her, but because she had an almost insane desire to watch Lawrence in every way. Nothing so piques the curiosity of a meddlesome person as to see any manifestation of a desire to baffle their searching. The annoyance naturally felt and often shown by one who finds himself suspiciously observed is always taken by such persons as a proof that there is something wrong which he is desirous to conceal. Moreover, John had let fall a word of advice which she was not disposed to disregard.

She had been complaining of her son-in-law.

“You had better let him pretty much alone, ma'am,” the man replied. “You'll never drive him to being a sober fellow, nor industrious. Scolding doesn't mend [pg 081] broken china. I have a plan in my mind for them which I will tell you after a while, when the right time comes. He wouldn't thank me for it now; but by-and-by, if he doesn't drink himself to death first, he may think my advice is worth listening to.”

John had a quiet, laconic way which sometimes impressed others besides his mistress, and she did not venture to oppose him openly, nor even to insist on hearing what his mysterious plan might be.

It was, altogether, a miserable state of affairs, one of those situations almost more unbearable than circumstances of affliction, for the cares were mean, the annoyances and mortifications petty; and the mind, which is ennobled by great trials, was cramped and lowered by the constant presence of small troubles which it would fain disregard, but could not. For, after all, these small troubles were the signs of a great one threatening. It was plain that Lawrence Gerald, if not stopped, was going to kill himself with drinking. His frame was too delicately organized to bear the alternate fierce heats and wretched depressions to which he was subjecting it, and more than one sharp attack of illness had given warning that he was exhausting his vitality.

F. Chevreuse came upon him suddenly one day when he was suffering from one of these attacks. The priest had called at Mrs. Ferrier's, and, learning that Lawrence was in his room, too unwell to go out, went up-stairs to him somewhat against Annette's wish.

“I will take the responsibility,” he said laughingly. “The boy wants me to wake him up; you women are too gentle. You are petting him to death. No, my lady, I do not want your company. I can find my own way.”

And accordingly Lawrence opened his eyes a few minutes later to see F. Chevreuse standing by the sofa where he lay in all the misery of a complete physical and mental prostration.

The priest drew a chair close to him, taking no notice of the evident disinclination of the young man to his society. “Now, my boy,” he said, laying a hand on the invalid's shrinking arm, “are you dosing yourself up to go through the same bad business again? What has come over you? Come! come! Wake up, and be a man. You are too good to throw away in this fashion.”

The young man turned his face away with a faint moan of utter discouragement. “I am not worth bothering about. I've played my stake in life, and lost, and what is left is good for nothing. Besides, if I tried, I shouldn't succeed. Why do you trouble yourself about me? I tell you that what there is left of me isn't worth saving.”

He spoke with bitter impatience, and made a gesture as if he would have sent his visitor away.

F. Chevreuse was not so easily to be dismissed.

“The devil thinks differently,” he remarked, without stirring. “He is fighting hard for you. Rouse yourself, and join with those who are fighting against him! You have an idea that, because you have made mistakes and committed sins, you must lay down your arms. Nonsense! There are all the lives of the saints against you. Some of them never began to try till they found themselves on the brink of destruction. You fancy, too, that because you and your family have had misfortunes, and because you [pg 082] have not been very successful in trying to become a rich man, you must stand humbly aside for cleverer men, and ask no favors. You're all wrong. God made you, and put you into the world, just as he has the rest of us, and you have a right to the light and air, and to repair your mistakes and repent of your sins, without troubling yourself too much about what people say and think, and to do the best you can in worldly affairs without being humbled or ashamed if you can't fill your pocket with money quite as readily as some can. Let the money go, but don't let your manliness go, and don't throw away your soul. You are talking nonsense when you say that you are worthless. Respect yourself, and compel others to respect you, Lawrence. Nerve yourself, call up your good resolutions, and ask God to help you. Despair is a crime!”

The young man put his arm up, and covered his face with it, as though to hide an emotion he was ashamed of; or, perhaps, because the light hurt his eyes. “If I could forget everything, and sleep for a month without waking, I don't know but I could begin again and try to do better,” he said faintly. “But there is no life in me now for anything.”

F. Chevreuse rose immediately. “Rest, then, if that is what you need,” he said kindly. “Rest, and forget everything painful. If any tormenting thought comes, say a little prayer, and tell it to begone. Don't drink any liquor to quiet your mind. Let Annette get you some gentle sedative. I'll tell her to keep everybody away from you, and let you lie here six months, if you want to. But when you are better, come to see me.”

He was standing, ready to go, but waited for an answer. There was none. He spoke more earnestly.

“You know well it is for the best, Lawrence; and I want you to promise to come to me when you are able to go out, before you go to see any one else.”

“Well, I will. I promise you.”

But the promise was given, apparently, only to get rid of the subject, and F. Chevreuse went away feeling that he had accomplished nothing.

Annette went directly to her husband, somewhat timid as to the reception she might meet with; but if he was displeased at having had a visitor, he did not seem to hold her responsible. He took the glass containing the opiate from her hand, and set it down beside him. “After a while,” he said. “And now I am going to lock every one out of the room, and try to go to sleep. If I want anything, I will ring.”

She began to make some little arrangements for his comfort, but, perceiving that they irritated him, desisted, and left him to himself. As she went along the passage, she heard the lock click behind her. Oddly enough, this little rudeness gave her a feeling of pleasure, for it showed that he felt at home there, and claimed a right to all that was hers.

“If only he will sleep!” she thought.

He did not sleep. His first act was to throw away the opiate she had brought. “Some such dose as they give to teething babies, I suppose,” he muttered. Then he seated himself on the sofa, and, clasping his hands over his head, as if to still the bursting pain there, remained buried in thought. One [pg 083] could see that he was trying to study out some problem in his mind, but that difficulties presented themselves. More than once his eyes wandered to a little writing-desk opposite him, and fixed themselves there. “It would remove the only obstacle,” he said; “and yet how can I? That would be going over it all again. Now I am not to blame, but only unfortunate; but if I do that....”

It was pitiable to see a young face so distorted by pain of mind and body, and to see also that the pain was stinging him into still more angry revolt.

He began pacing up and down the room, and, in his doubt and distress, seized upon one of those strange modes of solving the question in his mind which, trivial as they are, most persons have at some time in their lives had recourse to.

“If there is an odd number of squares in the carpet from corner to corner of the room, I will do it,” he said, and began to count them. The number was odd. But, apparently, he wished to make assurance doubly sure, for he next counted the stucco ornaments on the ceiling. “Odd again! Now for the third trial.” He glanced about in search of the object which was to decide his fate, and spied a large patriarchal fly that had crawled out of its winter hiding-place, and was clumsily trying its wings.

“If he can fly over that cord, I will go,” he said; and since this was the last trial, and the poor insect seemed to him something like himself at that moment, he watched with breathless interest its efforts to surmount the great obstacle of the curtain-cord that lay in its path. The little creature attempted to crawl over, but, losing its balance, tumbled off and lay helplessly on its back. The young man set it carefully and tenderly on its feet once more. “Now do your best,” he said. “You and I have made a failure, but we will try once again.”

Inspired, it would seem, by this encouragement, the fly put out its wings, gathered all its energies, and flew over the cord, tumbling ignominiously on its back again at the other side.

Lawrence Gerald did not give himself the trouble to assist again his fallen friend, but went promptly to pull the bell-tassel. He had thrown off all responsibility, and, choosing to see in these trivial chances the will and guidance of some intelligence wiser than his own, resolved instantly on following where they pointed.

“I dare say I shall stumble like that clumsy fly, but I shall succeed in the end. At all events, I will try. I can't and won't stay here any longer. It is torment for me, and I don't do any one else any good.” He seemed to be arguing with some invisible companion. “They will be better without me. Besides, it was not I who decided. I left it to chance. If it was....”

His wife entering interrupted the soliloquy. She found him lying down, as she had left him, but with a color in his face that would have looked like returning health, if it had not been a little too deep.

He stretched his hand out, and drew her to the footstool by his side. “Now, Ninon,” he said coaxingly, “I want you to be a good girl, and arrange something for me so that I shall not be annoyed by questions nor opposition. It's nothing but a whim; but no matter for that. I want to go to New York for a day or two, by myself, you know, and I must start to-night. [pg 084] I'm not going to do any harm, I promise you. I feel a good deal better, and I believe the little journey will cure me. The train starts at eight o'clock, and it is now five. It won't take me half an hour to get ready. Will you manage it for me, and keep the others off my shoulders?”

She consented promptly and quietly, asking no questions. If he should choose to tell her anything, it was well; if not, it was the same. She knew the meaning of this coaxing tenderness too well to presume upon it. It meant simply that she could be useful to him.

“What is he going to New York for?” demanded Mrs. Ferrier, when Annette made the announcement down-stairs.

“Mamma, you must not expect me to tell all my husband's business,” the young woman answered rather loftily.

Poor Annette did not wish to acknowledge that she knew no more of her husband's affairs or motives than her mother did.

“Then he will want his dinner earlier?” was the next question, Mrs. Ferrier having, by an effort, restrained her inclination to make any further complaints.

No; all he wanted was luncheon, and his wife had ordered that to be carried up-stairs.

“I suppose I am not allowed to ask how long he will be gone?” remarked the mother.

“Oh! certainly, mamma; but that is not quite settled,” Annette said pleasantly. “It depends on circumstances. A few days, probably, will be the most.”

When Annette went up-stairs again, her husband was dressed for his journey. A valise, locked and strapped, lay on the sofa at his elbow, and his wrappings were strewn about. She observed that the oak writing-desk, that had not been opened for months, to her knowledge, had been opened now. The key was in the lock, and the lid was slightly raised. She noticed, too, that a little inner cover had been torn out, and lay on the carpet, broken in two.

“The carriage will be round in a few minutes,” she said. “I thought you would want plenty of time to buy your ticket and get a good seat.”

He merely nodded in reply, but looked at her wistfully, as if touched by her ready compliance with his wishes, and desirous to see if any pain or displeasure were hidden under her quietness.

But he detected no sign of any such feelings. She was merely examining his fur gloves, to make sure that the buttons were on, looking narrowly to the strap of his cloak, busying herself in the most commonplace manner with his preparations.

“Shall I go to the station with you?” she asked carelessly.

“I wish you would.” His tone was quite earnest.

Annette had arranged it so that they went down-stairs while her mother was at dinner; and though the dining-room door had been left ajar, before Mrs. Ferrier had time to leave her seat or call out, the two had left the house, and were driving through the clear starlight.

“Annette,” her husband said suddenly, “I've been thinking that if I had a boy, I would bring him up very strictly. No matter how much I might wish to indulge him, I would resist the wish. He should be taught to control himself from fear, if he had no other motive. He should be made hardy, and healthy, and active. I wouldn't [pg 085] allow him much time to dream and think of himself; he should be kept busy; and I would never let him depend on any one, or sit still and fancy that some great fortune were going to drop into his hands without any effort on his part.”

Mrs. Gerald was silent, astonished by this unexpected lecture, of which she quite well understood the meaning. He would have no child of his brought up as he had been. But why should he speak of it now?

“There's too much liberty and recklessness among young men,” he went on. “They have too much their own way. Parents ought to see what misery it will lead to. If they don't care for what the child may make them suffer, they ought to recollect what the child has got to suffer when at last it wakes up to life as it is, and finds itself with ruinous tastes and habits, and not one right idea of anything. I am inclined to believe that it would be better for half the children in the world if they were brought up and trained by the state instead of by their own parents.”

They had reached the station, and he stepped slowly out of the carriage. His wife ventured to ask how long he would stay away.

“Oh! I've nothing to do in New York,” he said carelessly. “I shall not stay there more than two or three days.”

He leaned into the carriage, and took her hands. In the darkness she could not see his face, though the light from outside shone in her own; but his voice was tender and regretful, even solemn. “Good-by, dear,” he said. “You have been only too good to me. May God reward you!”

He bent to kiss the hands he held, then hurried away before she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak.

“What a good-by it was!” she thought with a startled heart. “One would think he were never coming back again.”

He did come back, though, and sooner than he was expected. He appeared at the door the next evening, nearly falling in, indeed, so that John had to steady him. Annette had run out of the drawing-room on hearing the servant's exclamation, but, at sight of her husband in such a state, was about to turn back in disgust.

“It isn't liquor, ma'am,” John said. “Something's the matter with him. I told you yesterday that he wasn't fit to go away. Just push that chair this way for him to sit down in, and bring him a glass of wine.”

“I had to come back,” the young man said. “I was sicker than I thought, and not able to go on. I don't know how I reached Crichton; and just now, walking up from the station, the cold wind on my forehead made me dizzy. I thought I should feel better to walk. Don't be frightened, Annette. I can go up-stairs now.”

He had every symptom of fever, and before morning had grown so much worse that a doctor was sent for, though much against his will.

“I don't believe in doctors,” he protested. “My mother always cured me when I was sick without sending for a doctor. It's all guess-work. They only know what you tell them, and they sit and stare at you, and ask you questions when you don't want to speak a word. I hate to have a doctor look at me.”

Mr. Gerald was indeed a very difficult patient for both doctor and nurse, irritable beyond expression, and nervous to the verge of delirium. [pg 086] At first no one was allowed near him but his mother. Then he found her tender sadness depressing, and insisted on having his wife in her place. Finally he begged John to take care of him.

“Keep the women away, if you don't want me to lose my senses,” he said to the man. “They start and turn pale or red every time I cough or speak in my sleep; and even when they pretend not to notice, I know they are watching me all the time. I don't dare to groan, or sigh, or rave, though it would sometimes do me good. I want somebody by me who doesn't care whether I live or die, but who just does what I ask him to. Let Louis open the door and sit up in the dicky. It's what he was made for. He's far more of a footman than you.”

“I wouldn't give either of you your salt as footman,” John retorted, smiling grimly. But he did not refuse to assume the post of nurse, and, having undertaken it, rendered himself so useful and unobtrusive that the others all gave way to him, and the sick man had no disposition to change again. He seemed a rather hard, dry man, but he was patient, and showed none of that obtrusive attention which is sometimes more troublesome to an invalid than neglect. If Lawrence groaned and tossed about, the attendant took no notice of him; if he said, “John, don't leave me alone a minute,” the man would sit by his side all night, as untired, apparently, as a man of wood.

So three nights passed, and still the invalid grew worse.

“Wouldn't you like to have me read some prayers to you, sir?” the watcher asked one night. “They might quiet you.”

Lawrence broke out impatiently:

“Do you think I am going to die? I am not. That is what the women are all crying about. Mrs. Ferrier came in to-day, and told me she was having Masses said for me, and sprinkled me with holy water till I was drenched. And Bettie, when she sat here to-day while you were away, rattled her beads and cried all the time, till I told her to get out of the room. That's the way with some people. The minute a fellow is sick, they try their best to scare him to death. Why don't you offer to read the paper to me, or tell me an amusing story? Give me the opiate now.”

“The doctor said you were not to take another till twelve o'clock,” the attendant said.

“I don't care for the doctor's orders. Give it to me now. I know best what I need.”

“I believe you do,” John said quietly, and gave him the opiate.

But in spite of care, and of a determination to recover, the illness grew upon him, till finally the physicians intimated that if he had any religious preparations to make, they had better not be delayed any longer, for his strength was rapidly wasting, and they could not promise that the result would not be fatal.

Mrs. Ferrier went in great distress to F. Chevreuse.

“What shall we do?” she asked. “After having refused to see a priest, and flown into a rage whenever we mentioned the subject, at last he is willing to have one. But he will see no one but F. O'Donovan; and F. O'Donovan is laid up with gout, so that he cannot move hand or foot. I went out to him to-day, and I thought that if he could possibly be wrapped up and brought in in a carriage, I would ask him; but, father, I couldn't have the face to [pg 087] speak of it. The doctor doesn't allow him to stir out of his room. Even Mrs. Gerald sees that it can't be done. I've begged Lawrence to listen to reason, but he is so set that if he had asked to have the Pope himself, he'd be mad if we didn't send a messenger to Rome. I could send to L—— for a priest, but that might be too late. He is failing very much. I do wish you'd go once again, father.”

F. Chevreuse had already been twice, and had been denied admittance in terms anything but respectful.

“Certainly I will go,” he said. “I should have come up this evening, if I had not been sent for. Poor Lawrence! I cannot understand why he should have such a prejudice against me.”

It was early twilight when they reached the house, and, as they entered, the lamps burned with a faint ray, as if they, like all sounds and sights in that place, had been muffled.

“You go right up and tell him there's no one to be got but me,” F. Chevreuse said.

But Mrs. Ferrier shrank back. “He never will consent if I ask him.”

“Annette, then.”

“He won't allow Annette near him,” the mother sighed.

“John,” said the priest, “will you go up and tell Mr. Gerald that I am here to see him?”

“I wouldn't venture to, sir,” John answered. “I don't believe it's of any use; and if you'd take my advice, sir....”

Even Mrs. Ferrier was scandalized by the man's presumption, and faltered out an “O John!”

“I will go myself,” F. Chevreuse interrupted. “Stay down here, all you people, and say the rosary for my success. Say it with all your hearts. And don't come up-stairs till you are called.”

As he went up, a door near the landing softly opened, and in it stood the young wife with a face so woful and deathlike that tears would have seemed joyful in comparison. She said not a word, but stood and looked at the priest in a kind of terror.

“My poor child!” he said pityingly, “why do you stay here alone, killing yourself with grief? Go and stay with your mother and Honora till I come down.”

She made that painful effort to speak which shows that the mouth and throat are dry, and, when words came, they were but a whisper. “O father!” she said, “don't go in there if you have any human weakness left in you! You have to be an angel and not a man to hear my husband's confession. Find some one else for him. He will not speak to you.”

“Never fear, child!” he answered firmly. “I may have human weakness, but I have the strength of God to help me resist it.”

She watched him as he softly opened the door of the chamber where her husband lay, heard the faint cry that greeted him: “Not you! not you!” then the door closed, and she was alone again.

The priest approached the bed, and spoke with gentleness, yet with authority: “F. O'Donovan is too sick to come; and if you wait for another to be sent for, it will be too late. Think of your soul, and let everything else go. In a few hours you may be in the presence of God, listening to your eternal doom. What will you care then, my poor boy, who helped you to loosen from your conscience the sins you have committed in this [pg 088] miserable world? It cannot be because you hate me so much, this unwillingness. Is it because your sins have been so great? There is no sin that I have not heard confessed, I think; and the greater it was, the greater was my comfort and thankfulness that at last it was forgiven. Come, now, I am putting on my stole. Ask the help of God and of our Blessed Mother, and forget who I am. Remember only what I am—the minister of the merciful God—and that I have no feeling, no thought, no wish, but to save you.”

The bed-curtains made a still deeper shade in that shadowed room, and out from the dimness the face of the sick man gleamed white and wild.

“I cannot!” he said. “You would not want to hear me if you knew. You would never give me absolution. You do not know what my sins are.”

The priest seated himself by the bedside, and took in his strong, magnetic hand the thin and shaking hand of the penitent. “No matter what you may tell me, you cannot surprise me,” he said. “Though you should have committed sacrilege and every crime, I cannot, if I would, refuse you absolution. And I would not wish to. I have only pity and love for you. Tell me all now, as if you were telling your own soul. Have no fear.”

“No priest ever before heard such a confession!” The words came faintly. “You do not know.”

“Confess, in the name of God!” repeated the priest. “The flames of hell are harder to bear than any anger of mine can be. God has sent me hither, and I have only to obey him, and listen to your confession, whatever it may be. It is not my choice nor yours. We are both commanded.”

“Promise me that I shall have absolution! Promise me that you will forgive me!” prayed the young man, clinging to the hand that he had at first shrunk from. “I didn't mean to do what I have done, and I have suffered the torments of the damned for it.”

“I have no right to refuse absolution when you are penitent,” was the answer. “The person who repents and confesses has a right to absolution.”

“You will give it to me, no matter what I may tell you?”

“No matter what you may tell me,” repeated the priest. “The mercy of God is mighty. Though you should hem yourself in with sins as with a wall of mountains, he can overlook them. Though you should sink in the lowest depths of sin, his hand can reach you. A sinner cannot be moved to call on the name of the Lord, unless the Lord should move him and have the merciful answer ready. I have blessed you. How long is it since your last confession?”

The sick man half raised himself, and pointed across the room.

“There is a crucifix on the table,” he said. “Go and kneel before that, and ask God to strengthen you for a hard trial. Then, if you come back to me, I will confess.”

F. Chevreuse started up, and stood one instant erect and rigid, with his face upraised. Then he crossed the room, knelt before the crucifix, and held it to his breast during a moment of wordless prayer. As a sigh reached him through the stillness of the chamber, he laid the crucifix down, and returned to the bedside.

“In the name of God, confess, [pg 089] and have no fear,” he said gently. “Have no fear!”

The penitent lay with his face half turned to the pillow, and the bed was trembling under him; but he no longer refused to speak.

To the company down-stairs it seemed a very long interview. Mrs. Ferrier, Mrs. Gerald, and Miss Pembroke, kneeling together in the little sitting-room near the foot of the stairs, with the door open, had said the rosary, trying not to let their thoughts wander; then, sitting silent, had listened for a descending step, breathing each her own prayer now and then. Their greatest trouble was over. Evidently F. Chevreuse had overcome Lawrence Gerald's unwillingness to confess to him; and the three women, so different in all else, united in the one ardent belief that the prayer of faith would save the sick man, and that, when his conscience should be quite disburdened, and his soul enlightened by the comforts and exhortations which such a man as F. Chevreuse could offer, his body would feel the effects of that inward healing, and throw off its burden too.

In an adjoining room sat Louis Ferrier, biting his nails, having been forbidden by his mother to seek distraction in more cheerful scenes. He watched the women while they knelt, and even drew a little nearer to listen to their low-voiced prayer, but lacked the piety to join them. He was both annoyed and frightened by the gloomy circumstances in which he found himself, and, like most men of slack religious belief and practice, felt more safe to have pious women by him in times of danger.

John had taken his place on a low stool underneath the stairs, and had an almost grotesque appearance of being at the same time hiding and alert. With his head advanced, and his neck twisted, he stared steadfastly up the stairway at the door within which the priest had disappeared.

For nearly an hour there was no sound but the small ticking of a clock and the occasional dropping of a coal in the grate. Then all the waiting ones started and looked out eagerly; for the chamber-door opened, and F. Chevreuse came out.

One only did not lift her face to read what tidings might be written in the face of him who came forth from the sick-chamber. Kneeling, almost prostrate on the floor, Annette Gerald still remained where F. Chevreuse had left her. She did not look up even when he paused by her side, and she felt that he was blessing her, but only bowed still lower before him.

“Take comfort, my child,” he said. “You have no reason to despair.”

She looked up quickly into his face, with an almost incredulous hope in her eyes.

He was pale, but some illumination not of earth floated about him, so that she could easily have believed she saw him upborne in air with the buoyancy of a spirit. The heavenly calm of his expression could not be described; yet it was the calm of one who, reposing on the bosom of God, is yet aware of infinite sin and suffering in the world. It was such a look as one might imagine an angel guardian to wear—heavenly peace shorn of heavenly delight.

He motioned her to rise, and she obeyed him. She would not then have hesitated, whatever he had bade her do. His imposing calm pressed her fears and doubts to a perfect quiet. There was nothing possible but obedience.

“Go to your husband, and see if he wants anything,” he said. “Let him be very quiet, and he may sleep. To-morrow morning I shall bring him the Viaticum; but I think he will recover.”

She went toward the chamber, and he descended the stairs. John, bending forward eagerly, caught sight of his face, and drew quickly back again, blessing himself. “The man is a saint!” he muttered, and took good care to keep himself out of sight.

F. Chevreuse was met in the sitting-room door by Mrs. Gerald, and the other two pressed close behind her; and when they saw him, it was as though a soft and gentle light had shone into their troubled faces.

“You are afraid that so long an interview has exhausted him,” he said. “It has not. The body is seldom any worse for attending to the affairs of the soul, and a tranquil mind is the best rest. Annette is with him now, and, if left undisturbed, I think he will sleep. Pray for him, and do not lose courage. God bless you! Good-night.”

Not one of them uttered a word. The questions they would have asked, and the invitation they would have given the priest to remain with them, died on their lips. Evidently he did not mean to enter the room, and they felt that his doing so was a favor for him to offer, not for them to ask.

They glanced at each other as he went away, and Honora Pembroke smiled. “He looks as though he were gazing at heaven through the gate of martyrdom,” she said.

But the next morning, after seeing Gerald, he stopped a few minutes to talk with the family, and still they found that indefinable air of loftiness lingering about him, imposing a certain distance, at the same time that it increased their reverence and affection for him. The familiar, frequently jesting, sometimes peremptory F. Chevreuse seemed to have gone away for ever; but how beautiful was the substitute he had left, and how like him in all that was loftiest!

Lawrence was better that morning, and gained steadily day by day. Nothing could exceed the care and tenderness with which F. Chevreuse watched over his recovery. He came every morning and evening, he treated him with the affection of a father, and seemed to have charged himself with the young man's future.

“I think you should let him and Annette go to Europe for a year,” he said to Mrs. Ferrier. “It would be better for him to break off entirely from old associations, and have an entire change for a while. His health has not been good for some time, and his nerves are worn. The journey would restore him, and afterward we will see what can be done. I am not sure that it is well for him to live here. When a person is going to change his life very much, it is often wiser to change his place of abode also. The obstacles to improvement are fewer among strangers.”

The young man received this proposal to go abroad rather doubtfully. He would not go away till spring, and was not sure that he would go then. As he grew better in health, indeed, he withdrew himself more and more from the priest, and showed an uneasiness in his society which not all F. Chevreuse's kindness could overcome.

“You must not shun me, Lawrence,” the priest said to him one day when they were alone. “You have done that too long, and it is not well. Try to look on me as [pg 091] very firmly your friend. Let me advise you sometimes, and be sure that I shall always have your good in view.”

Lawrence had been very nervous and irritable that day, and was in no mood to bear expostulation. “You can't be my friend,” he replied with suppressed vehemence. “You can only be my master. You can only own me body and soul.”

“That is a mistake,” was the quiet answer. “I do not own you any more than I do others.”

But he patiently forbore to press the question then.

“Encourage him to come to me whenever you think I can benefit him,” he said to Annette. “You can tell best. He has not quite recovered his spirits yet, and it will do no good for me to urge him. Make everything as cheerful as you can for him. It sometimes happens that people get up from sickness in this depressed state of mind.”

“Yes!” she replied, looking down.

She also had grown shy of F. Chevreuse, and seemed willing to keep out of his sight.

But to others she was perhaps rather more gay than they had known her for some time. Her mother found her at once kinder and more exacting, and complained that they seemed now to have become strangers.

“And how nervous you have grown, Annette!” she said. “You crush everything you take hold of.”

“What have I crushed, mamma?” asked the daughter, with a light laugh. “Have I made havoc among your bonnets or wine-glasses?”

“It isn't that,” Mrs. Ferrier said fretfully. “You squeeze people's hands, instead of touching them. Look at that baby's arm!” They were entertaining a baby visitor.

Annette Gerald looked as she was bid and saw the prints of her fingers on the soft little arm she had held unconsciously, and caught an only half-subsided quiver of the baby lip as the little one looked at her, all ready to cry with pain.

Every woman knows at once how she atoned for her fault, by what caresses, and petting, and protestations of sorrow, and how those faint red marks were bemoaned as if they had been the stripes of a martyr.

“If you touch any one's arm, you pinch it,” the elder lady went on. “And you take hold of your shawl and your gloves and your handkerchief as if somebody were going to pull them away from you. I've seen your nails white when you held the evening paper to read, you gripped it so; and as to taking glasses and cups at the table, I always expect to see them fly to pieces in your hands.”

“Isn't she an awful woman?” says Mrs. Annette to the baby, holding it high and looking up into its rosy, smiling face. “Isn't Annette a frightfully muscular and dangerous person, you pink of perfection? What shall we do with her? She pinches little swan's-down arms, and makes angelic babies pucker up their lips with grief, and sets tears swimming in their blue violets of eyes. We must do something dreadful to her. We must forgive her; and that is very terrible. There is nothing so crushing, baby, as to be forgiven very much.”

And then, after one more toss, the infant was let suddenly and softly down, like a lapful of roses, over the face of its friend, and for an instant Annette Gerald's eyes were hidden in its neck.

“Come and have a game of chess, Annette,” her husband called out across the room.

“Yes, dear!” she responded brightly; and, setting the child down, went to him at once, a red color in her cheeks.

“Why do some people always notice such little things,” he said frowningly, “and, instead of attending to themselves, watch how people take hold of cups and saucers, and all that nonsense, and fancy that some wonderful chance hangs on your eating butter with your bread, or preferring cheese?”

Annette was engaged in placing the men, and did not look in her husband's face as she answered in a gentle, soothing voice:

“It is rather annoying sometimes, but I find the best way is to treat the whole jestingly. If one shows vexation, it looks serious. But you can ridicule a person out of hanging mountains by threads.”

He was going to answer, when something made him notice her face. The color was still bright there, but the cheeks were hollow, and dark circles had sunk beneath her eyes.

“Why, you are not looking well,” he said, only just aware of the fact. “Are you sick? Did you get worn out taking care of me?”

She waited an instant till the others, who were leaving the room, should be out of sight, then leaned across the table, careless that her sleeve swept away the two armies she had just placed, and took her husband's hand in hers, and bowed her cheek to it with a sob.

“O Lawrence! Lawrence!” she whispered.

He made a motion to draw his hand away, but let it remain. “My God! what is the matter with you?” he exclaimed.

She leaned back instantly, and made an effort to control herself. “It must be that I am not well. Don't mind me. And now, you will have to place your own men, and give me the first move.”

He placed the men, and appeared to be thinking pitifully of his wife as he glanced now and then into her face. “It seems selfish of me not to have taken better care of you, Annette,” he said.

“Oh! you needed care yourself,” she replied lightly. “Don't imagine that I am sick, though. It is nothing. You didn't marry me to take care of me, you know, and I am not very exacting.”

She would have caught back the last words, if she could, before it was too late. They escaped her unawares, and were a remembered, rather than a present, bitterness.

He blushed faintly. “Whatever I married you for, I have no desire to exchange you now for any one else,” he said, moving a pawn sideways instead of forward. “If you were ever so poor, I wouldn't want a rich girl in your place. But then, you know, I'm not sentimental. I never was much so, and it's all over now. I'm thirty years old, and I feel a hundred. I can't remember being young. I can't remember being twenty years of age. I wish to God I could!” he burst forth.

His wife made a careful move, and said, “I have a presentiment that I shall give you check in three moves more. Look out for your queen.”

“My only romance,” he went on, “was about Honora. I thought that I could do and be anything, if she would only care about me. What a stately, floating creature she always was! I used to think she looked as if she could walk on clouds and not fall through. Yes,” [pg 093] he sighed, “that is where she belongs—among the clouds. I never blamed her for not having me; she was too good. I never was worthy of such a woman.”

Slowly, while he spoke, the bright blood had deepened in his wife's face, and swept over her forehead. Had he been less preoccupied, he would have seen the slight, haughty movement with which she drew herself up. It was only when he had waited a moment for her to move that he glanced up and met her eyes fixed on him with an expression very like indignant scorn.

“By what strange contradiction is it, I wonder,” she said coldly, “that the woman who does most for a man, and is most merciful and charitable toward him, is never too good for him, while the one who scorns him, and will not come a step off her pedestal to save him, is always the ideal woman in his eyes?”

Bitter tears of utter grief and mortification welled up and wet her eyelashes. “In another world,” she said, “when the faults and mistakes of this are set right, you may think yourself worthy of the companionship of Honora Pembroke, and of any union and closeness of affection which that life may know. And then she may be given to you. And, Lawrence, if she would and could consent to take you now, I would not refuse to give you up. At this moment, if, without any wrong, I could see her enter the room, and hold out her hand to you, and tell you that she was ready to take what she had refused, and be to you all that you could wish—if it could be right that it should happen so, I would not utter one word of objection. I would leave you to her without a moment's hesitation.”

While she spoke, his hand had played tremblingly with the chessmen before him. “So you give me up too,” he said in a low voice.

Her proud face softened. She looked at him, and recollected herself and him, and pity sprang up again and effaced indignation. “I do not give you up, Lawrence,” she said gently. “I cannot and have no wish to; I only spoke of what I would do in circumstances which cannot take place. You had insulted me, without intending to, I know, and it was but natural that I should retort. You know that I would not leave you, nor give you up on any provocation. If you should leave me, I should follow you, because I should feel sure that you would sooner or later need me. We are one. You are mine; and I always stand by my own.”

He looked at her with an expression at once penetrating and shrinking. “You would stand by me, Annette, whatever should happen?” he asked.

“Certainly!” she replied, but did not meet his eyes. “There is no imaginable circumstance which could make me desert you. And now, what of this game? To your queen!”

He made a motion to save his queen, then pushed the board aside. “I cannot play,” he said; “I cannot confine my mind to it. Sing me something. It is long since I have heard you sing.”

He threw himself into a deeply-cushioned chair, and leaned his head on his hands while she sang to him—knowing, how well! that a cheerful song would not cheer him nor a pious song soothe—of

“Waters that flow

With a lullaby sound,

From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground—

From a spring that is not very

Far under ground.”

She was a magical singer, surely; and the still, cold melancholy of her tones was the very spirit and essence of death; and, like death, it pierced to the heart. She sang:

“And, oh! let it never

Be foolishly said

That my room it is gloomy,

And narrow my bed.

For man never slept

In a different bed;

And to sleep, you must slumber

In just such a bed.”

She turned quickly at a sound behind her, and saw that her husband had buried his face in the cushions of the chair, and was trembling violently. She went to him, but there was no comfort to give nor to receive. Death alone could bring release for him and for her. She could only surround him with her arms while he sobbed with the terrible hysterical sobbing of a man utterly broken down, and let him feel that he was not alone and unpitied.

“I don't know what ails me,” he said at length, trying to control himself. “Don't mind me, Annette. My nerves seem to be all unstrung. It must be that fever.”

“Oh! don't, Lawrence; please don't!” she said faintly.

He became silent all at once, and it seemed as though a chill had passed over him. She sighed drearily, and smoothed his hair with her hand. “Trust your wife,” she said. “I am by you always.”

“You are not afraid of me?” He seemed to ask the question with a kind of terror.

“My poor Lawrence! no. I do not fear you as much as you do me. Don't have such fancies.”

She did not explain in what confessional she had learned his secret; in what troubled sleep wherein the unwary tongue speaks; in what more troubled waking, when the eyes and actions speak; or in what sudden suspicion and enlightenment, coming she knew not whence. She told nothing, and he asked nothing, only leaned on her bosom, and wept again as though all his manhood had departed.

“O Annette!” he said, “I dreamed last night that I was a little boy, and that I stood by my mother while she brushed my hair into curls round her finger. I thought I had been away a long distance, and come back again, and I stood quite still, and remembered another childhood before I took that journey. I was so glad to be back—as glad as I should be now if I could go back. Some way I could see that my hair was golden, and that my mother smiled as she brushed it, though I did not look at her. Such dreams are always coming to me now. As soon as I go to sleep, I am a child that has been away and is solemnly glad to be back again. And then I wake, and am in hell!”

She went on smoothing his hair steadily.

“Some time soon the dream will come true,” she said. “Do the best you can. Do justice to the wronged. Come away with me, and we will hide ourselves somewhere in the world, and try to find peace for the days that are left. And by-and-by, Lawrence, will come the day when we shall both be as little children again, and all our terrible burdens will slip off. You must do justice to the wronged.”

“In some way, yes!” he said. “I have tried to think. He must be saved. But I cannot go away. Do you remember ever having been afraid to go up-stairs in the dark, of having felt sure that there was some one behind just ready to grasp you, till you screamed out in [pg 095] terror? It would be like that with me. If once I turn my back on this place, my life will become a crazy flight.”

“The world is wide,” she urged, “and there are safe places enough in it. Besides, money can buy anything; and he has forgiven you. He will screen you.”

“My mother!” he exclaimed. “Who will screen and save her? I will not destroy her, Annette. No, everybody in the world may perish first. I never will destroy my mother. I have done harm enough.”

“He will die in prison,” she whispered. “He has sent to Germany for help, and it did him no good. He has demanded a new trial, and there was not enough to justify them in granting it. He is in a net from which there seems to be no escape. They say that he will die.”

“You want to make me crazy!” her husband cried out, pushing her fiercely from him. “Go away! You are worse than the rest.”

There was no way but to yield to him. “Well, well, Lawrence! I will try to think of some other means.”

The season had reached early spring, and one tempestuous evening in March, as F. Chevreuse sat at home, making up some church accounts, feeling quite sure that he should not be interrupted, he heard the street-door softly open and shut, then a tap at the door of the room.

“Strange that Jane should leave that street-door unlocked!” he thought, and at the same moment heard the servant coming up-stairs from the kitchen. Her quick ear had caught the sound, and she, too, was wondering how she could have omitted to fasten the house up.

The door of F. Chevreuse's sitting-room was quickly opened, and shut again in Jane's face, and a woman stood inside. It was Annette Gerald, wrapped in a large waterproof cape, with the hood over her head.

“Send Jane away!” she said hurriedly. “Don't let her in here! Don't let her see me!”

Here Jane opened the door and put her head in, eyeing curiously the visitor, whose back was turned to her. “I'm sure I shut the door and bolted it, father,” she began, and took a step into the room. “I....”

“No matter! I'll see to it,” the priest said, waving her away.

“Oh! well, only I'm sure I locked it. And perhaps you'd like to have this lamp....”

“Jane!” he exclaimed, standing up, “when I dismiss you, you are to go.”

Jane retired, grumbling.

“She will listen at the door,” his visitor said.

F. Chevreuse flung the door open, and discovered his domestic lingering about the head of the stairs, affecting to examine an imaginary hole in the carpet.

“Once for all, Jane,” he said, “if you wish to remain in my house, you must not presume, nor show any curiosity about my affairs, nor the affairs of those who come to me. Go down into the kitchen, and shut the door, and stay there.”

Jane, albeit not very subordinate, was completely awed by a display of authority such as she had never seen before. She did not venture to resist nor complain, but returned without delay to her own place.

F. Chevreuse waited till he heard the kitchen-door close with somewhat unnecessary force, then returned to his visitor.

“What has brought you out to-night?” he asked in a low voice.

“Let me get my breath!” She was almost gasping. “Jane gave me such a fright that my heart is in my mouth.”

He set a chair for her, and seated himself near, waiting till she should be able to speak. “You had better shake the snow off your cloak,” he said.

She made a gesture of impatient refusal.

The rude mantle had slipped aside, and revealed a strangely contrasting toilet beneath. There was a shining of lustrous pale-green silk with delicately-wrought laces, a glimmer of emeralds and diamonds, and glimpses of pink roses set in bunches of green grass.

“I have been to the prison,” she whispered.

F. Chevreuse frowned, and dropped his eyes.

“The man is a fool!” she exclaimed. “He will not be saved. I had bought one of the guard. It was the hour for supper, and the man let me in, and promised that for ten minutes I might do as I pleased, and he would see and know nothing. I went into the corridor, and found the cell-door unlocked. Everything was ready, was perfect; for the storm would prevent any loungers from coming about the prison or the guard-room, and would give an excuse to any one who wanted to muffle up and cover their face. I had a large cloak all ready. But he would not go. He will not fly as though he were guilty, he said.”

“What did you say to him?” the priest inquired, without looking up.

“I told him that he could save himself, and prove his innocence afterward. I said that may be the real criminal would some day confess, and then he could come out before the world more than justified. I said that we loved and pitied him, and were unhappy at the thought of him there, and would do anything for him. He was to be secreted in our house till a way could be got for him to escape. I had left the carriage just round the corner, and John would have thought that it was Lawrence who got in with me. Mamma and Louis have gone to the President's dinner, and Gerald was to watch and let us in, and afterward come out again with me. But, no; the stubborn simpleton would not be saved. I went on my knees to him, and he was like a rock. Then the watchman knocked at the door, and I had to run. The other guard were coming in from their supper, and, if I hadn't hid behind a door, they would have seen me face to face. Oh! why did he not consent?”

She wrung her hands slowly till the jewels on them twinkled in the lamp-light.

F. Chevreuse still sat with his eyes downcast. “My poor child!” he said, “your pity for this man has led you into an almost fatal error. Never attempt such a thing again. It is not for you to cast yourself under the wheels of Juggernaut. I command you to try no such experiment again. Pray to God. That is all that you can do.”

“Yes, I know that now,” she answered despairingly. “I am utterly helpless. It is your turn. You must save him.”

“What can I do?” he asked wonderingly. “I have tried all I could, but in vain, as you know. I have left no stone unturned, and the only good result I can see is a probability that the sentence will not be executed to the utmost, and that in time something may happen to bring his innocence to light.”

“In time!” she repeated. “Have you seen the man? Why, I did not know him till he spoke. He will not live. No, there must be no delay. What you must do is this: You must go to the authorities, and say that you know who the true criminal is, but cannot tell, at least not now, and that Mr. Schöninger is innocent.”

The priest looked in her face with a gaze of calm surprise. “You mistake,” he said. “I do not know who the criminal is. If I did know, I should immediately go to the authorities, and denounce him.”

She looked him steadfastly in the face, but his calmness baffled her. He showed only a cool and dignified surprise.

“Oh! these men,” she muttered. “I feel as if I were being ground between stones.”

She stood, and the shining folds of her dress, that had been gathered up in her arms, dropped about her, and lay on the floor.

“Have you been walking through the snow in a ball-dress?” the priest asked. “Have you anything to protect your feet?”

“Oh! I have fur shoes, and my carriage is near by,” she said absently, and seemed to be considering what to do next.

“Go home now, my child, and try to put all this wild work out of your mind,” F. Chevreuse said with emotion. “Perform your own duty simply and in the fear of God, and do not try to take the burden of others on those shoulders of yours. Go home and warm yourself well, or you will be sick.”

“Oh! I am not going home,” she said, her glance caught by the sparkling of a bracelet on her arm. “To-night is a dinner and ball given to the President, you know; and since he is going away to-morrow it couldn't be put off. It must be time I was there, and I have to go home after Lawrence.”

“What! you will go to a dinner and ball to-night?” exclaimed the priest. “You feel yourself fit for company?”

She smiled faintly. “I shall doubtless be the gayest of the gay. There is not much danger of my feeling sleepy.”

“Well, women are wonderful beings,” remarked F. Chevreuse to himself.

The young woman drew her wrappings about her, and gathered up again her flowing skirts, looking to see that no stain had fallen on them; and, in arranging her toilet for a new scene, she appeared to arrange her mind also. A gentle tranquillity settled upon her face, and her head was slightly lifted, as though she were already the centre of observation to a brilliant throng.

“But you are looking very pale,” the priest objected.

“That always mends itself,” she answered carelessly. “When I have need of color, it usually comes.”

Some way, in this firm self-control, he found her more pitiful than in any abandonment of sorrow. She accepted the situation uncomplainingly, since she could do no more, and steeled herself to bear what she must.

“God bless you!” he said, when she was ready to go.

Her face stirred a little at the words. It seemed that she would rather not listen to anything of serious kindness then. Yet at the door she hesitated, and turned back. For once it was necessary that she should speak.

“I have no difficulty about company or anything but silence and darkness,” she said hurriedly, looking [pg 098] down. “I like a crowd, though I am always on the lookout for something to be said I will not wish to hear. When he and I are alone, I turn cold and creeping, for fear he should speak; and I keep close and cling to him, lest, if I should get a little way off, I should grow afraid of him. If we were to be separated for one week, I think we would never again dare to approach each other. But recollect”—she lifted her eyes for one quick glance—“I have told you nothing.”

“Certainly not,” he replied gravely.

In a moment she had gone out, and was running through the flying snow to find her carriage, left in the next street to baffle some possible watcher.

Young Mrs. Gerald was quite right in saying that she should probably be the gayest of the gay that night; and if any other person appeared to enjoy the scene more than herself, it was, perhaps, her husband.

“A very happy couple,” remarked a sympathizing friend to Mrs. Ferrier.

“Oh! yes,” the mother sighed, nodding her head. “He is always gay when he is doing no good, and as glum as a spade when he is behaving himself. I was in hopes that his sickness would sober him, but he is wilder than ever. You should see him drive my horses!”

Her son-in-law, passing by at that moment, caught the last words, and immediately joined the two ladies. “I know that Mrs. Ferrier is complaining of me,” he said gaily. “She will never forgive me for putting her precious bays out of breath. But the truth is, I am trying to save their lives; for they are so fat now that you could drive them to death at six miles an hour.”

“O Lawrence!” Annette said at his elbow—she was always hovering near when he spoke with her mother—“they say that Strauss, the composer, you know, is really coming to America next year, and will lead his own waltzes at the concerts.”

“And, by the way, Ninon,” said her husband, “is that the Strauss who always was? I have had a waltz-writing, violin-playing Strauss in my mind ever since I was born, and he had lived ages before, and was something like Mephistopheles, to my fancy. Perhaps he is the Wandering Jew.”

“Speaking of Jews—” began Mrs. Ferrier's companion.

And here Annette drew her husband away, hanging on his arm, smiling and whispering to him, the brightest, prettiest woman in the room.

“And yet last night he was off somewhere, and she sat up for him till a quarter before two o'clock,” Mrs. Ferrier said, looking after them. “I looked to see what time it was when I heard him come in. It is wearing her out. I shall not allow her to do it again.”

It was easier for Mrs. Ferrier to say what should not be than to find herself obeyed, for the next night her daughter again kept vigil. “All I ask of you, mamma, is to let me attend to my own business,” she said decidedly.

So “mamma” toiled up-stairs to bed, and the daughter lowered the lights, took out her rosary, and began her nightly task of fighting away thought, and trying to fix her mind on the future.

After an hour or two, John, the footman, put his head in at the door. “You'd a great deal better go to bed, ma'am, and leave me to let Mr. Gerald in,” he said. “I've something that will keep me up to-night, [pg 099] and it's a pity two should lose their rest. It is past twelve now.”

She felt faint and weary, and sleep was beginning to steal over her. “I believe I will go, then,” she said. “I have not slept for three nights.”

She went, with a dragging step, over the bright carpet roses. “What would become of him if I were to break up?” she thought.

When she had gone, the man put out the hall gas, opened the doors of the vestibule, and set himself to wait. He meant to have speech of Mr. Gerald that night without Mr. Gerald's wife for a witness or any likelihood of other interruption.

About one o'clock he heard unsteady steps on the sidewalk, and, as he went to the door, Lawrence Gerald came reeling up the steps, and almost fell into his arms.

“Come into the sitting-room, sir, and lie down on the sofa. It will be easier than going up-stairs,” he said.

When he had been drinking, the young man was easy to lead, and he now submitted readily, and was in a few minutes in a deep sleep.

John locked the street-door, shut the door of the sitting-room behind him, and, seating himself, waited for the sleeper to wake.

A nervous man might have grown uneasy during that watch. There is something not always pleasant in hearing one's own breathing, and the faint occasional sounds in floor and wall, and at one's elbow, even, which, in the stillness of night, seem like the movements of unseen beings drawing near. Besides, there is a terror in the thought that we are going to terrify another.

But this man was not nervous. He was made of wholesome though rough material, and he had a strong will. He had been waiting for others to act, and had waited in vain, and now he had made up his mind that it was for him to act. Justice was strong in him, where he had the ability to perceive what was just, and he would no longer see the innocent suffer for the guilty. Besides, he reflected, there was no one else who could speak. Self-defence, or the defence of one dearly loved, or a yet more sacred motive, sealed the lips of all who knew. His lips were not sealed, and justice commanded him to speak.

Three o'clock came and went, and still the young man slept. The other sat and studied him, noting how slight and elegant was his form, how fine the hands and feet, how daintily he was dressed and cared for.

John was stout and heavy, a man of delf, and the size of his boots had once provoked from Lawrence a very provoking quotation:

“What dread hand formed thy dread feet?”

and more than once the young man had mockingly pushed his two white hands into one of John's gloves.

This sleeper's hair was glossy, scented, as soft as floss, and curled in many a wilful ring; John's was coarse and straight, and he wisely wore it closely cropped. Lawrence Gerald's face was delicately smooth; the lines melted harmoniously into each other; his brows were finely drawn; the teeth, that showed through his parted lips, were pearly white; and as he lay with closed eyes, the lashes made two exquisitely curved shadows on his cheeks. John's face was plain, he had no eyebrows nor eyelashes to speak of, his eyes were more for use than ornament, and his nose went about its business straight from end to end, stopping [pg 100] rather bluntly, and utterly ignoring that delicate curve which made this man's profile so perfect.

This man? This drunkard, rather, John thought; this spendthrift, and gambler, and robber. This murderer!

The nerves of the serving-man stiffened; and if he had felt any relenting, it was over. The insolent daintiness before him stirred all his bitterness. It was for such men as this that humbler honest folks were to bow and serve, and women's hearts to break!

It must be nearly four o'clock, he thought, and glanced round at the clock. Looking back again, he met Lawrence Gerald's eyes fixed on him steadily, and he returned the look with as immovable a stare. In that instant the meaning of each leaped out of his face as clearly as lightning from a cloud. Young Gerald's eyes began to shrink in their depths, and still the other held them; he drew slowly back on the sofa, cowering, but unable to turn away.

And here John's eyes released him, for another object drew them up to the mirror that hung over the sofa. Reflected there he saw that the door was partly open, and Annette Gerald's white face looking in. She came swiftly gliding toward them, silent as a ghost, and melted, rather than fell, on to her knees before her husband, between him and the other. Her arms and bosom hid him from that relentless gaze which told that all was known, and her own face turned and received it instead, firmly and almost defiantly.

“Well, John?” she said. “Speak out what you have to say.”

“This can't go on any longer, ma'am,” he whispered; “and I should think you would have the sense to see that. If you're willing to let an innocent man suffer for him, even that won't serve you long, for he will betray himself yet. You must go.”

“Yes, yes, we will go!” she replied hurriedly. “It is the only thing to do. We will go right away.”

“I will give you three weeks to get out of danger,” he went on; “or, if that isn't enough, a month. But you mustn't lose a day. I won't see that man down in the prison die for nothing. After the four weeks from to-morrow morning are up, I shall go to F. Chevreuse with a paper that your husband will write. He may tell his own story, and make what excuses he can for himself, and it shall be for everybody to read. F. Chevreuse will carry the paper to the judges, and take that man out of prison. That is all I've got to say,” he concluded. “Four weeks from to-morrow morning!”

Annette made no further reply, only watched the man out of the room, and locked the door after him. Then she returned to her husband, and, for the first time since she had entered the room, looked in his face. He was lying back with his eyes closed, as though from faintness. She brought him a glass of wine, knelt by his side while he drank it, then took his hand in hers.

“There is no other way, Lawrence,” she said.

He was sitting up now, but kept his eyes closed, as if he could not meet her glance, or could not endure to look upon the light. He answered her quietly, “Yes, it is the only way.”

“And now,” she continued, “since there is no time to lose, you will tell me the whole, and I will [pg 101] write it down. You can sign it afterward.”

He nodded, but did not speak. The blow had fallen, and its first effect was crushing.

She brought a writing-table close to the sofa, and seated herself before it. As she arranged the paper, pens, and ink, heavy tears rolled down her face, and sigh after sigh struggled up from her heart; but she did not suffer them to impede her work—scarcely seemed, indeed, conscious of them. Everything was arranged carefully and rapidly. “Now, Lawrence!” she said, and seemed to catch her breath with the words.

He started, and opened his eyes; and when he saw her, with eyes uplifted, making the sign of the cross on her forehead and bosom, he knelt by her side, and, bowing his head, blessed himself also with the sacred sign.

Then he began his confession, and she wrote it as it fell from his lips. If now and then a tear, not quickly enough brushed away, fell on the paper, it only left its record of a wife's grief and love, but did not blot out a word of the clear writing.

When the last word had been written, and the name signed, a long ray of white morning light had pierced through a chink in the shutter, and lay across the red lamp-light.

Annette Gerald took the pen from her husband's hand. “My poor Lawrence!” she said, “you and I have got to be saints now. There is no medium for us. Pleasure, ease, all hope of earthly peace—they are far behind us. We must go out into the world and do penance, and wait for death.”

“Annette,” he exclaimed, “let me go alone! Give me up now, and live your own life here. I will never come near you again.”

She shook her head. “That is impossible. The only consolation I can have is to stay with you and give you what little help I can. You could not live without me, Lawrence. Don't speak of it. I shall stand by you.”

She opened the shutters and the window, and let the fresh morning light into the close room and over their feverish faces.

The town was waking up to a bright sunshiny day, its many smokes curling upward into the blue, its beautiful vesture of snow still clinging here and there, all its busy life beginning to stir joyfully again. They stood before the window a minute looking out, the same thought in both their minds. Then the wife leaned forward. “Good-by, Crichton!” she said, and took her husband's hand. “Come, Lawrence! we have no time to lose. The sword has been set over the gate.”

To Be Continued.

[pg 102]

A Looker-Back. III. The Temple.

“Those bricky towers,

The which on Themme's brode aged back do ride,

Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers:

There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide.”

Perhaps there is no place in London that appeals to so many instincts of the soul as the Temple. Religion, valor, romance, and literature have all lent enchantment to the place. Built and inhabited by the Knights Templars, the resort of kings and nobles of highest lineage, the home of generations of law-students and literary men like Burke, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Lamb, and associated with Shakespeare and many a romance, who could enter its quiet alleys, and ramble about its courts and gardens, without being stirred to the depths of his soul? Fact and fiction are here so mingled together that one is unable to disentangle them, and the visitor says, as he roams about: Here was the place of Lamb's “kindly engendure”; yonder Eldon lived; up in that third story was Arthur Pendennis' sick-chamber, where his mother and Laura went to nurse him; in that court were Goldsmith's chambers, where he loved to sit and watch the rooks; and in those gardens walked Sir Roger de Coverley, discussing the belles, with patches and hoops, strolling across the green once used by the Red-Cross Knights for martial exercises; and yonder is the ancient church, patterned after that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

The church must be visited first, for it is the most beautiful and perfect in existence that belonged to the Knights Templars, and stood next in rank to their temple in the Holy City. Within half a century it has been restored to something of its ancient glory, and is substantially the same as when consecrated by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the year 1185. The entrance is a beautiful Norman arch, deeply recessed, with elaborately wrought mouldings, and columns between which are figures of saintly forms, some with rolls in their hands, and some in the attitude of prayer. These stone faces at the entrance of churches are a wonderful check to worldly thoughts. They communicate something of their own solemnity and ineffable calmness. Through this door-way used to pass the valiant knights of the cross who came here with their banner—the glorious Beau-seant—to have their swords blessed on the altar before departing for

“Those holy fields

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

Which, fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd

For our advantage on the bitter cross.”

This is the entrance to the Round Church. A circular tower rests on six clustered columns of marble, each composed of four shafts, which run into each other at base and capital so as to form but one. And around [pg 103] these is a circular aisle. Six pointed arches spring from these beautiful pillars, above which is an arcade of Norman arches so interlaced as to form a combination of round and pointed arches—a fine example of the transition to the Gothic style of architecture. Parker says this Round Church is one of the best authenticated instances of the earliest use of the pointed arch in England, though the choir of Canterbury Cathedral is usually considered so. Over this arcade are six clerestory windows, between which rise slender shafts that support the groined ribs of the roof.

At the sides of the circular aisle are sedilia formed of masonry projecting from the wall, with slightly arched recesses, in the spandrels of which are grotesque faces in alto-relievo, carven in stone, each of which has an extraordinary character of its own, and is well worth studying. Some are distorted with pain; some look up appealingly; here the tongue protrudes and the eyeballs are glaring; there is a look of unutterable horror; one sets his teeth hard as an unclean animal bites his ear; another shows two fang-like teeth, while a vicious-looking creature is gnawing the corner of his mouth, and the furrowed brow expresses awful agony; here is one with his long tongue run out sideways; there is another bellowing with his mouth wide open, the nostrils dilated and the forehead all puckered up; some have ultra-Roman noses, some sharp, and others flat and broad, as if reflected from a convex surface. One grins and shows all his teeth broad and uniform. The sexton says these faces are supposed to depict the tortures of the suffering souls in purgatory. Grotesque as most of them are, there is a certain awful solemnity, even in the most hideous, that is impressive. Thank God! a few are calm and serene, with their crown of sorrow on their heads. An arcade, similarly decorated, has been found in the ruined Temple Church at Acre, and at the famous Castel Pellegrino, erected by the early Templars to command the shore-road from Acre to Jerusalem.

The first thing that strikes the attention on entering this solemn church is the group of old Crusaders lying on the pavement with their legs crossed, in token that they had served in the Holy Land.

“The knights are dust,

And their good swords are rust,

Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”

These are not effigies of the Knights Templars—for they do not wear the mantle of that order—but knights associated with them in defence of the Holy Land. One of them represents William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, and Protector of England during the minority of Henry III., one of the greatest warriors and statesmen of the middle ages. Matthew Paris describes his burial here in 1219. Here he lies, carven in stone, clad from head to foot in armor of chain-mail, in the act of sheathing his sword. His legs are crossed, for he had borne the cross of Prince Henry, eldest son of Henry II., to Jerusalem. On his feet are spurs, and at his side a shield with the lion rampant of the Marshalls. This stout-hearted supporter of the Plantagenets was one of the council appointed by Richard Cœur de Lion to govern the kingdom during his absence. It was he, together with Americ, Master of the Temple, who at last induced King John to sign the Magna Charta, and he accompanied the king to Runnymede.

He it was, too, that, while protector in the next reign, offered pardon to the disaffected barons, and confirmed the Magna Charta. He also extended its benefits to Ireland, and commanded the sheriffs to read it publicly at the county courts, and enforce its exact observance.

It was this same Earl of Pembroke whom Shakespeare represents pleading so eloquently for the enfranchisement of the unfortunate Prince Arthur:

“If what in rest you have, in right you hold,

Why then your fears (which, as they say, attend

The steps of wrong), should move you to mew up

Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days

With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth

The rich advantage of good exercise?

That the time's enemies may not have this

To grace occasions, let it be our suit

That you have bid us ask his liberty:

Which for our goods we do no further ask,

Than whereupon our weal, on you depending,

Counts it your weal, he have his liberty.”

This great statesman was a benefactor to the Templars, and, when he died, his body was borne here in state and buried with great pomp on Ascension Day, 1219.

Here, too, are the monumental effigies of his sons—William Marshall, the younger, one of the bold barons of Runnymede, to whom we are indebted for the Magna Charta; and Gilbert Marshall, “the flower of the chivalry of that time,” who married a Scotch princess, and went to the defence of the sacred tomb.

Although the elder Marshall was just enough to extend the benefits of the Magna Charta to Ireland, we are told that, during his campaign in that country, he seized the lands of the Bishop of Fernes, and kept them, in spite of a sentence of excommunication. After the earl's death, the bishop came to London, and laid the case before the king, who, alarmed for the weal of his old guardian's soul, accompanied the bishop to his tomb.

Matthew Paris says that, as they stood by it, the bishop solemnly apostrophized the departed earl: “O William! who lyest here interred and held fast by the chain of excommunication, if those lands which thou hast unjustly taken from my church be rendered back to me by the king, or by your heir, or by any of your family, and if due satisfaction be made for the loss and injury I have sustained, I grant you absolution; but if not, I confirm my previous sentence, so that, enveloped in your sins, you stand for evermore condemned to hell!”

However alarmed the king might have appeared about his guardian's soul, restitution was not made, and the stout old bishop, who seems to have been soundly orthodox as to the temporal rights of the church, denounced the earl and his race in right Scriptural phrase: “His name shall be rooted out in one generation; and his sons shall be deprived of the blessing, Increase and multiply. Some of them shall die a miserable death; their inheritance shall be scattered; and this thou, O king! shalt behold in thy life-time; yea, in the days of thy flourishing youth.”

This fearful prophecy was fulfilled in a remarkable manner. The five sons of the protector died one after another without issue in the reign of Henry III., and the family became extinct.

There are eight of these monumental effigies lying in the centre of the Round Church. It is to them Butler refers in his Hudibras, speaking of the profanation of the place by the lawyers of his time and their clients—

“That ply in the Temple under trees,

Or walk the Round with knights of the posts

About the crossed-legged knights, their hosts.”

In the round walk of this church there is on one side a coped tombstone, in the style of the XIIth century, of a prismatic, coffin-like shape. On the other side

“You see a warrior carven in stone

Lying in yon dim aisle alone,

A warrior with his shield of pride

Cleaving humbly to his side,

And hands in resignation prest

Palm to palm on his tranquil breast.”

This is Lord Robert de Ros, another of the bold barons of Runnymede—a knight whose career was one long romance. Beautiful in person, the successful wooer of the Princess Isabella of Scotland, and “one of those military enthusiasts whose exploits form the connecting link between fact and fiction, between history and the fairy tale,” one cannot look at his figure here without interest and emotion.

“O death! made proud with pure and princely beauty.”

In fact, there is a wonderful air of mystery and romance about the whole of this solemn church. Here the young aspirant to knighthood used to come to keep his long vigil before the altar, and here gathered the Crusaders before setting off for the tomb of Christ. And chief among them the valiant Templars, in their long, flowing mantles, “whose stainless white their hearts belied not,” with the mystic cross upon their breasts, which Pope Eugenius had authorized them to wear.

“And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore,

The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,

For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he bore,

And dead (as living) ever him adored.

Upon his shield the like was also scor'd,

For sovereign hope which in his helpe he had;

Right faithful true he was in deed and word;

But of his cheer did seem too solemn sad,

Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.”

We can never believe that, as a body, the early Templars were not worthy of their white garments. A bishop of Acre, who frequently accompanied them on their military expeditions, said of them: “Lions they are in war, gentle in the convent, fierce soldiers in the field, hermits and monks in religion; to the enemies of Christ ferocious and inexorable, but to Christians kind and gracious. They carry before them to battle a banner, half black and white, which they call Beau-seant—that is to say, in the Gallic tongue, Bien-seant, because they are fair and favorable to the friends of Christ, but black and terrible to his enemies.”

While this vision of the past was crossing the inward eye, a strain of music, as of some holy chant, came floating softly out from some inner recess, sweetly adding to the enchantment. It was only the choir practising in the vestry, but it was just far enough away to give a certain mystery and softness to their psalmody that was delightful at that vesper hour. One needs a service for such memories, and alone in this rotunda of the Templars, where

“Watching and fast, and prayer, and penance,

And sternly nursed affections,”

once heavenward soared, the pilgrim knelt awhile in the dim round aisle to say a Requiescant for those that once worshipped here according to God's appointed ordinances, and then went his way—in pace.

The next day brought him back to complete his survey. Churches like this, in imitation of that of the Holy Sepulchre, were frequently built in the time of the Crusades. The Milanese built one in their city after returning from the holy war. Peter Adornes made three journeys from Flanders to Jerusalem to obtain an exact copy of the Holy Sepulchre for the church at Bruges; and at Abbeville, the beautiful Church of the Holy Sepulchre [pg 106] was built on the very spot where Godfrey of Bouillon and the Crusaders assembled before going to Palestine. In it was built a tomb before which the solemn Office of the Holy Sepulchre was celebrated annually. Sometimes the Crusaders brought back with them some of the dust of the Holy City. At Pisa, and in Sicily, there were cemeteries filled with that sacred soil. It seemed less repulsive to lie for ever down in dust perhaps the Saviour's feet had trod.

The London temple has therefore something of the sacred character of the Orient about it; that is, the Rotunda. And it was dedicated to that holy Oriental maiden whom all nations unite in calling Blessed. The following inscription is over the door of entrance:

“On the 10th of February, in the year from the Incarnation of our Lord 1185, this church was consecrated in honor of the Blessed Mary, by the Lord Heraclius, by the grace of God Patriarch of the Church of the Resurrection, who hath granted an indulgence of fifty days to those yearly seeking it.”

Heraclius had come to Europe to preach the Third Crusade. In Paris he was the first to officiate at Notre Dame. His special mission to England was to induce Henry II. to fulfil his vow of going to the succor of the Holy Land by way of penance for the murder of Thomas à Becket. Finding his efforts in vain, the patriarch at last said to the king: “Hitherto thou hast reigned gloriously, but hereafter thou shalt be forsaken of Him whom thou at this time forsakest. Think on him, what he hath given to thee, and what thou hast yielded to him again; how first thou wert false to the King of France, and, after, slew that holy man, Thomas of Canterbury, and, lastly, thou forsakest the protection of Christ's faith.” The king, vexed at such frankness, said: “Though all the men of my land were one body, and spake with one mouth, they durst not speak to me such words.”

“No wonder,” replied the patriarch, “for they love thine and not thee; that is to mean, they love thy goods temporal, and fear thee for loss of promotion, but they love not thy soul.” And so saying, he bowed his head before the king, and continued: “Do by me right as thou didst by that holy man, Thomas of Canterbury; for I had rather be slain of thee than of the Saracens, for thou art worse than any Saracen.”

The king, restraining himself, said: “I may not wend out of my land, for mine own sons will rise up against me when I were absent.”

“No wonder,” responded the patriarch, “for of the devil they come, and to the devil they shall go;” and so departed, as Abbot Brompton records, “in great ire.”

In the wall of the Round Church is a winding staircase of stone leading to the triforium. Part way up it opens into what is called “the penitential cell”—a recess in the thick wall four feet and a half long, and two and a half wide, with two squints to admit air and light, and enable the penitent to witness the divine service. It would seem, however much an active knight might chafe in such restricted quarters, as if he had much to console and support him in looking down into such a church. In the triforium are gathered together monuments that were formerly scattered about the church. Among them is a tablet to Edmundus Gibbon, an ancestor of the historian, who died in 1679.

The Round Church opens by three lofty arches into the rectangular church, consisting of a nave and two aisles, formed by clustered pillars of marble, supporting a groined vault covered with rich arabesques. This church is a beautiful specimen of the early English style. The lawyers of Cromwell's time whitewashed the pillars, and did all they could to obscure the beauty of the building; but now it is restored to somewhat of its former richness. It is paved with tiles bearing the arms of the Outer and Inner Temple, and on its triple lancet windows are emblazoned the arms of the Templars—the lamb and flag and the ruby cross. That red cross, in the very church where it gleamed seven hundred years ago, says volumes to the heart. Where are the Knights Templars now to assume it again, and go to the rescue of the Holy City, bereft of its sovereign lord? Do we not need a new S. Bernard to preach a new crusade in behalf of the captive daughter of Zion, that she may be delivered from the ungodly oppressor, and her anointed one set free?

It was an old English prelate—S. Anselm—who said: “God loves nothing in the world better than the liberty of his church.... He does not wish a servant for his spouse.”

This rectangular church was consecrated in 1240, in presence of the king and a vast number of nobles. In one corner is a beautiful old marble piscina, lately brought to light, where the priest, before the holy oblation, purified the hands that were to touch the Body of the Lord.

On a terrace to the north of the church is Goldsmith's grave, marked by a coped stone. On one side is graven: “Here lies Oliver Goldsmith”; and on the other: “Born 10 Nov., 1728. Died 4 April, 1774.” The row of houses close by is marked “Goldsmith's Buildings.” Perhaps on this very terrace he walked up and down in his bloom-colored coat, dreading to have the bill sent in. There are Johnson's buildings also. And in Inner Temple Lane, Lamb lived at No. 4, which “looks out on Hare Court, with three trees and a pump,” where he used to drink when he was “a young Rechabite of six years” of age. As he says, “it is worth something to have been born in such a place.” It was here the spirit of the past was infused into his mind, moulding it in antique fashion, and planting the germs of the quaint conceits and humorous fancies that so delight us all, and giving him a love for the old dramatists which we have all learned to share in.

Of course every one goes to drink at the fountain which Lamb, when a boy, used to make rise and fall, to the astonishment of the other urchins, “who, nothing able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail its wondrous work as magic.” Miss Landon thus celebrates it:

“The fountain's low singing is heard on the wind,

Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind,

Some to grieve, some to gladden; around them they cast

The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.

Away in the distance is heard the vast sound.

From the streets of the city that compass it round,

Like the echo of fountains, or ocean's deep call;

Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.”

And yonder are the sun-dials, on which Lamb so sweetly moralizes—the inscriptions no longer half effaced, but bright with the gilding of 1872. “Pereunt et imputantur”; “Discite justitiam moniti”; “Vestigia [pg 108]nulla retrorsum”; and “Time and tide tarry for no man,” are some of the mottoes on them. It is rather a disappointment to find them looking so new and fresh, as if no longer “coeval with the time they measure.” There is something wonderfully poetical about a sun-dial, which derives its revelations of time's flight “immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light.” It has a kind of relationship to nature, and is, therefore, the very thing to have in gardens and groves and green fields “for sweet plants and flowers to spring up by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by.” It has a “heart-language” not heard from a clock, with “its solemn dulness of communication.” When we give up modern artificial life, and return to our primitive relationship with nature, we shall only measure the flight of time by a sun-dial, or an hour-glass, or the opening and shutting of flowers.

It is delightful wandering around the Temple gardens, with their shrubbery and flowers and fountains, and especially along the terrace overlooking the Thames. Here one naturally looks around for the old benchers of Lamb's time, half expecting to be greeted by the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt, or the quadrate person of Thomas Coventry, coming along with “step massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping,” the terror of children, who flee before him as from an “Elisha bear.” One can also “fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator, with his short face, pacing up and down the road, or dear Oliver Goldsmith in the summer-house, perhaps meditating about the next Citizen of the World, or the new suit that Mr. Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or the dunning letter that Mr. Newbury has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff-colored suit and a wig that sadly wants the barber's powder and irons, one sees the great doctor, with Boswell behind him, a little the worse for the port-wine they have been taking at the Mitre, to ask Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Mrs. Williams.”

It is in the Temple gardens that Shakespeare makes York and Lancaster pluck the red and white roses which became the badges of their rival houses. It is here Plantagenet says:

“Let him that is a true-born gentleman,

And stands upon the honor of his birth,

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.”

Somerset.—“Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,

But dare maintain the party of the truth,

Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.”

Warwick.—“And here I prophesy—this brawl to-day.

Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,

Shall send, between the red rose and the white,

A thousand souls to death and deadly night.”

There are no red or white roses blooming here now, but quantities of chrysanthemums grow along the paths under the elms and lime-trees. An enormous basket, overrun with ivy, handle and all, stands near the old Elizabethan Hall where Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was performed during the author's lifetime, and where the benchers of the Middle Temple now dine off long oaken tables in the light of emblazoned windows, and beneath the eyes of kings depicted by Vandyck and other great painters.

A company of volunteers are drilling on the green, perhaps in the same place where the Knights [pg 109] Templars had their military exercises; children are playing in the gravelled walks; and groups of gentlemen and ladies, and here a lone pilgrim, are sauntering about, enjoying the calm bright evening and the view of the Thames, with little steamers rushing up and down among all sorts of craft; and beyond, the great city with its countless spires, the bells of which seem to be all ringing. Perhaps the cheerful notes of that psalm come from S. Clement's in the Strand, which Dr. Johnson used to frequent—notes that will sound as cheerfully when we are no more as they do now over the tombs of past generations who likewise have paced up and down this terrace listening to them.

“The boat, and the barge, and the wave have grown red,

And the sunset has crimsoned the boughs overhead;

But the lamps are now shining, the colors are gone,

And the garden lies shadowy, silent, and lone.”