The wind blew keen across the snow as Laura began her reluctant pilgrimage. Her summer attire, to which her finances could afford no addition, ill defended her from the blast. Through the streets of London she was to explore her way unattended. Accustomed to find both beauty and pleasure in the solitude of her walks, she was to mix in the throngs of a rude rabble, without protection from insult. But no outward circumstances could add to the feelings of comfortless dismay with which she looked forward to the moment, when, ushered through stately apartments into the presence of self-important greatness, she should announce herself a beggar. Her courage failed—she paused, and made one step back towards her home. But she recalled her former thoughts. 'I have need to be humbled,' said she; and again proceeded on her way.
As she left the little garden that surrounded her lodgings, she perceived an old man who had taken shelter by one of the pillars of the gate. He shivered in the cold, which found easy entrance through the rags that covered him, and famine glared from his hollow eye. His gray hair streamed on the wind, as he held out the tattered remains of a hat, and said, 'Please to help me, Lady.—I am very poor.' He spoke in the dialect of her native land, and the accents went to Laura's heart;—for Laura was in the land of strangers. She had never been deaf to the petitions of the poor; for all the poor of Glenalbert were known to her; and she knew that what she spared from her own comforts, was not made the minister of vice. Her purse was already in her hand, ere she remembered that to give was become a crime.
As the thought crossed her, she started like one who had escaped from sudden danger. 'No, I must not give you money,' said she, and returned the purse into her pocket, with a pang that taught her the true bitterness of poverty. 'I am cold and hungry,' said the man still pleading, and taking encouragement from Laura's relenting eye. 'Hungry!' repeated Laura, 'then come with me, and I will give you bread;' and she returned to the house to bestow on the old man the humble fare which she had before destined to supply her own wants for the day, glad to purchase by a longer fast the right to feed the hungry.
'In what respect am I better than this poor creature,' said she to herself, as she returned with the beggar to the gate, 'that I should offer to him with ease, and even with pleasure, what I myself cannot ask without pain. Surely I do not rightly believe that we are of the same dust! The same frail, sinful, perishable, dust!'
But it was in vain that Laura continued to argue with herself. In this instance she could only do her duty; she could not love it. Her heart filled, and the tears rose to her eyes. She dashed them away—but they rose again.
When she found herself in Grosvenor Street, she paused for a moment. 'What if Lady Pelham should deny my request? dismiss me as a bold intruder? Why, then,' said Laura, raising her head, and again advancing with a firmer step, 'I shall owe no obligation to a stranger.'
She approached the house—she ascended the steps. Almost breathless she laid her hand upon the knocker. At that moment she imagined her entrance through files of insolent domestics into a room filled with gay company. She anticipated the inquisitive glances—shrunk in fancy from the supercilious examination; and she again drew back her hand. 'I shall never have courage to face all this,' thought she. While we hesitate, a trifle turns the scale. Laura perceived that she had drawn the attention of a young man on the pavement, who stood gazing on her with familiar curiosity; and she knocked, almost before she was sensible that she intended it.
The time appeared immeasurable till the door was opened by a maid-servant. 'Is Lady Pelham at home?' inquired Laura, taking encouragement from the sight of one of her own sex. 'No, Ma'am,' answered the maid, 'my lady is gone to keep Christmas in ——shire, and will not return for a fortnight.' Laura drew a long breath, as if a weight had been lifted from her breast; and, suppressing an ejaculation of 'thank Heaven,' sprung in the lightness of her heart at one skip from the door to the pavement.