The triumph over Midian

by A. L. O. E.

ISA’S ARRIVAL AT WILDWASTE.

Disheartened and chilled felt Isa as her conveyance passed through the wretched hamlet, where groups of untidy women and barefooted children stood staring at the unwonted apparition of anything in the shape of a carriage. She scarcely liked to look again at the house, as the lame horse stopped at the dark green door. Gaspar did not come forth to welcome her; he dared not face the cutting wind which had chilled his sister to the heart. Cold and numbed after her journey, Isa—when a deaf elderly woman had answered the knock—descended from the conveyance; herself saw her boxes carried into the narrow hall by the driver, paid the man and dismissed him, and then hastened into the parlour, where she found her brother. His reception, though not uncourteous, was by no means calculated to dispel the chill which had fallen on the spirits of Isa. Gaspar was so full of his own complaints that he had scarcely leisure to observe that his sister was tired and cold. After conversing with him for a while, Isa arose to explore the other apartments of the house. She suppressed a little sigh of disappointment as she ascended the uncarpeted stair.

The interior of Wildwaste Lodge was, if possible, more unattractive than its outward appearance. Gaspar had reserved the ground-floor for himself, and no one had a right to complain if in his own peculiar domain he preferred simplicity to ornament, and neglected the little elegancies which Isa deemed almost essential to comfort. But Isa was deeply mortified when she entered her own apartments, which were immediately over those of her brother, and found them furnished with a regard to economy which amounted to actual penuriousness. A few chairs, not one of which matched another, and which seemed to have been chosen at haphazard out of some broker’s shop; a table of painted wood, one of the legs of which did not touch the uncarpeted floor; and a shelf to serve as a bookcase: these formed the entire furniture of the young lady’s boudoir. There was not so much as a curtain to the window. Isa, weary and chilled after her journey, felt inclined to sit down and cry from mortification and disappointment. Little joy could she anticipate from a life to be passed with one who from the first showed such disregard for her pleasure and comfort.

Isa’s misgivings were painfully realized. There are some persons who are pleasing in society, agreeable when only met on casual occasions, with whom it is very annoying to be brought into closer contact. It is trying to the temper to transact business with them, still more trying to dwell under the same roof. The character of such persons seems to be made up of angles, that on every side chafe and annoy. A graphic writer[1] has humorously described them as unpruned trees. “Little odd habits, the rudiments of worse habits, need every now and then to be cut off and corrected. We should all grow very singular, ridiculous, and unamiable creatures, but for the pruning we have got from hands kind and unkind, from our earliest days.... Perhaps you have known a man who has lived for forty years alone; and you know what odd shoots he had sent out; what strange traits and habits he had acquired; what singular little ways he had got into. There had been no one at home to prune him, and the little shoots of eccentricity, of vanity, of vain self-estimation, that might have easily been cut off when they were green and soft, have now grown into rigidity.”

Mr. Gritton, from living much alone, had become a man of this kind. The most unsightly branch on the unpruned tree was that of penuriousness. Isa had had little opportunity of knowing her brother’s infirmity until, when she became a resident in his house, it affected her daily, her hourly, comfort. Herself generous and open-handed, fond of having the conveniences and elegancies of life around her, yet esteeming as the greatest of luxuries the power of giving freely to others, Isa could not understand, far less sympathize with, the love of money for money’s sake, which was the leading characteristic of Gaspar. It seemed to her so grovelling, so mean, that Isa had to struggle against emotions not only of irritation but of contempt. She was also deeply wounded to find that Gaspar’s affection for his only sister was so subordinate to his avarice. The young lady, accustomed to luxury and refinement, had the utmost difficulty in persuading her brother even to allow her to find an assistant to the ill-tempered elderly woman whom he had engaged as a general servant. Though Isa succeeded in gaining her point, Mr. Gritton would only give such wages as would be accepted by none but an inexperienced girl like Lottie Stone. The efforts which it cost Isa to carry out even this small domestic arrangement made her aware of another unpleasant fact—that Gaspar had a peevish, irritable temper, more trying to one residing constantly with him than a passionate one would have been. The dying charge of her father lay now like an oppressive weight upon the heart of poor Isa: her new insight into the character of Gaspar gave to their parent’s words a more forcible meaning, and she dreaded more and more the idea of being compelled by a sense of duty to open the subject to her brother.

The first weeks of Isa’s residence at her dreary home would have been weeks of positive misery, but for the cheering prospect of the speedy return of her uncle and cousin, and the comfort which she derived from the visits of the pastor of Axe, whose fatherly interest in her young servant had first led his steps to her dwelling. Smiling April came at last; and with it—more welcome to Isa than the nightingale’s song—Edith Lestrange returned to the Castle. It was now arranged that Isa should pass with her cousin a portion of each of those days on which an evening lecture should be held at the steward’s cottage, and return to Wildwaste in the baronet’s carriage at night. It was something to Isa to be thus sure of at least two pleasant days in the week; though the contrast between the refined elegance of Edith’s home and the dreary discomfort of her own, increased the sense of bitterness in the soul of Isa.

But that sense of bitterness seemed for a time to pass away, and domestic trials to be forgotten, when the cousins entered together the flower-covered porch of the dwelling of Holdich, to unite with their poorer brethren in the simple cottage service. Edith’s heart was overflowing with thankful delight at being permitted again to worship in that place where some of her earliest impressions of religion had been received. Isa felt that here at least the carking cares of life might be shut out: she might lift up her soul, as in happier days, unto her Father in heaven.

The subject chosen by Mr. Eardley was the history of the triumph of Gideon, the hero and saint, over the hosts of Midian. It was his object in this, as in former courses of lectures,[2] to draw simple practical lessons from the narratives contained in the Word of God; and as such lessons are required by us all, I shall weave the brief addresses of the clergyman, though in separate chapters, into the web of my story.

[1] Vide “Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson.”