Before Gertrude's letter had been disposed of, Norman and Charley came in, and it was therefore discussed in full conclave. Alaric's path in the land of his banishment had not been over roses. The upward struggle of men, who have fallen from a high place once gained, that second mounting of the ladder of life, seldom is an easy path. He, and with him Gertrude and his children, had been called on to pay the full price of his backsliding. His history had gone with him to the Antipodes; and, though the knowledge of what he had done was not there so absolute a clog upon his efforts, so overpowering a burden, as it would have been in London, still it was a burden and a heavy one.
It had been well for Gertrude that she had prepared herself to give up all her luxuries by her six months' residence in that Millbank Paradise of luxuries: for some time she had little enough in the 'good and happy land,' to which she had taught herself and her children to look forward. That land of promise had not flowed with milk and honey when first she put her foot upon its soil; its produce for her had been gall and bitter herbs for many a weary month after she first landed. But her heart had never sunk within her. She had never forgotten that he, if he were to work well, should have at least one cheerful companion by his side. She had been true to him, then as ever. And yet it is so hard to be true to high principles in little things. The heroism of the Roman, who, for his country's sake, leapt his horse into a bottomless gulf, was as nothing to that of a woman who can keep her temper through poverty, and be cheerful in adversity.
Through poverty, scorn, and bad repute, under the privations of a hard life, separated from so many that she had loved, and from everything that she had liked, Gertrude had still been true to her ideas of her marriage vow; true, also, to her pure and single love. She had entwined herself with him in sunny weather; and when the storm came she did her best to shelter the battered stem to which she had trusted herself.
By degrees things mended with them; and in this letter, which is now passing from eager hand to hand in Katie's drawing-room, Gertrude spoke with better hope of their future prospects.
'Thank God, we are once more all well,' she said; 'and Alaric's spirits are higher than they were. He has, indeed, had much to try them. They think, I believe, in England, that any kind of work here is sure to command a high price; of this I am quite sure, that in no employment in England are people so tasked as they are here. Alaric was four months in these men's counting-house, and I am sure another four months would have seen him in his grave. Though I knew not then what other provision might be made for us, I implored him, almost on my knees, to give up that. He was expected to be there for ten, sometimes twelve, hours a day; and they thought he should always be kept going like a steam-engine. You know Alaric never was afraid of work; but that would have killed him. And what was it for? What did they give him for that—for all his talent, all his experience, all his skill? And he did give them all. His salary was two pounds ten a week! And then, when he told them of all he was doing for them, they had the baseness to remind him of——. Dearest mother, is not the world hard? It was that that made me insist that he should leave them.'
Alaric's present path was by no means over roses. This certainly was a change from those days on which he had sat, one of a mighty trio, at the Civil Service Examination Board, striking terror into candidates by a scratch of his pen, and making happy the desponding heart by his approving nod. His ambition now was not to sit among the magnates of Great Britain, and make his voice thunder through the columns of the Times; it ranged somewhat lower at this period, and was confined for the present to a strong desire to see his wife and bairns sufficiently fed, and not left absolutely without clothing. He inquired little as to the feeling of the electors of Strathbogy.
And had he utterly forgotten the stirring motto of his early days? Did he ever mutter 'Excelsior' to himself, as, with weary steps, he dragged himself home from that hated counting-house? Ah! he had fatally mistaken the meaning of the word which he had so often used. There had been the error of his life. 'Excelsior!' When he took such a watchword for his use, he should surely have taught himself the meaning of it.
He had now learnt that lesson in a school somewhat of the sternest; but, as time wore kindly over him, he did teach himself to accept the lesson with humility. His spirit had been wellnigh broken as he was carried from that court-house in the Old Bailey to his prison on the river-side; and a broken spirit, like a broken goblet, can never again become whole. But Nature was a kind mother to him, and did not permit him to be wholly crushed. She still left within the plant the germ of life, which enabled it again to spring up and vivify, though sorely bruised by the heels of those who had ridden over it. He still repeated to himself the old watchword, though now in humbler tone and more bated breath; and it may be presumed that he had now a clearer meaning of its import.
'But his present place,' continued Gertrude, 'is much—very much more suited to him. He is corresponding clerk in the first bank here, and though his pay is nearly double what it was at the other place, his hours of work are not so oppressive. He goes at nine and gets away at five—that is, except on the arrival or dispatch of the English mails.' Here was a place of bliss for a man who had been a commissioner, attending at the office at such hours as best suited himself, and having clerks at his beck to do all that he listed. And yet, as Gertrude said, this was a place of bliss to him. It was a heaven as compared with that other hell.
'Alley is such a noble boy,' said Gertrude, becoming almost joyous as she spoke of her own immediate cares. 'He is most like Katie, I think, of us all; and yet he is very like his papa. He goes to a day-school now, with his books slung over his back in a bag. You never saw such a proud little fellow as he is, and so manly. Charley is just like you—oh! so like. It makes me so happy that he is. He did not talk so early as Alley, but, nevertheless, he is more forward than the other children I see here. The little monkeys! they are neither of them the least like me. But one can always see oneself, and it don't matter if one does not.'