Even more, in the fight with Giant Pride we seem to see her hardest tussle of all, and the mode in which victory came to her. Giant Pride’s assumed name of ‘High Spirit,’ his hatred of Meanness, Gluttony, Cowardice, and Untruth, are all an echo of parts of herself. The polishing of the darkened gold of her Will she had long known in the small unavoidable frictions of everyday life; and the plunging of that Will into furnace-heat, and the straightening of its crookedness by means of heavy successive blows, she had begun to know in the death of her dear Father, and would soon know more fully through other sorrows coming after. But many more than three blows were needed for the shapening of Charlotte Tucker’s Will. She may have dreamt when she wrote the book that three would be enough, and that the King’s call to Fides might in her case be soon repeated. She little knew the long years of toil and patience which stretched far ahead.
A tiny glimpse of the daily fighting, which she like all others had to go through, may be seen in the succeeding letter, written to her sister, Laura, a year or two before the death of old Mr. Tucker:—
‘I obeyed you in putting your note into the fire, after twice perusing it; but it seemed a shame so to destroy what was so sweet. How little you and I have been with each other lately, yet I do not think that we love one another one particle the less,—I think that I can answer for myself at least. May God prosper your humble efforts, my sweet Laura. I enter into all your feelings....
‘I do not like to overload dear Bella with advice. It appears almost presumptuous from a younger sister; but I threw in my word now and then. But what am I?... I fear that I have been peevish with —— to-day. I feel discontented with myself, and need your prayers.’
CHAPTER VIII
A.D. 1854-1857
CRIMEA, AND THE INDIAN MUTINY
In the year 1854 Mr. St. George Tucker again came home from India; and in the autumn he took his Mother and sisters for three months to The Mote, an old country house about six miles north of Tonbridge, hoping that the change would do good to Mrs. Tucker’s health and spirits. Those were the terrible days of the Crimean War; and in that autumn the battles of Balaclava and Inkerman were fought. Several letters of interest belong to about this period.
TO MISS BELLA F. TUCKER. 1853.
‘I have found out a much better hero for you than your friend Lord Marmion,—who, by-the-bye, had he lived in these days, would have run a great chance of being transported for fourteen years, or imprisoned for one with hard labour, for forgery. Mere courage does not make a hero.... When I was about as old as you are now, I had—besides Montrose, for whom I have a great regard still—a great hero, a pirate! About as respectable a man perhaps as Lord Marmion, and I was so fond of him, that I remember jumping out of bed one night, when one of my sisters laughed at him.