Two Years Ago, Volume II

CHAPTER XXVI.

TOO LATE

And how was poor Grace Harvey prospering the while? While comfortable folks were praising her, at their leisure, as a heroine, Grace Harvey was learning, so she opined, by fearful lessons, how much of the unheroic element was still left in her. The first lesson had come just a week after the yacht sailed for Port Madoc, when the cholera had all but subsided; and it came in this wise. Before breakfast one morning she had to go up to Heale's shop for some cordial. Her mother had passed, so she said, a sleepless night, and come downstairs nervous and without appetite, oppressed with melancholy, both in the spiritual and the physical sense of the word. It was not often so with her now. She had escaped the cholera. The remoteness of her house; her care never to enter the town; the purity of the water, which trickled always fresh from the cliff close by; and last, but not least, the scrupulous cleanliness which (to do her justice) she had always observed, and in which she had trained up Grace,—all these had kept her safe.

But Grace could see that her dread of the cholera was intense. She even tried at first to prevent Grace from entering an infected house; but that proposal was answered by a look of horror which shamed her into silence, and she contented herself with all but tabooing Grace; making her change her clothes whenever she came in; refusing to sit with her, almost to eat with her. But, over and above all this, she had grown moody, peevish, subject to violent bursts of crying, fits of superstitious depression; spent, sometimes, whole days in reading experimental books, arguing with the preachers, gadding to and fro to every sermon, Arminian or Calvinist; and at last even to Church—walking in dry places, poor soul; seeking rest, and finding none.

All this betokened some malady of the mind, rather than of the body; but what that malady was, Grace dare not even try to guess. Perhaps it was one of the fits of religious melancholy so common in the West country— like her own, in fact: perhaps it was all "nerves." Her mother was growing old, and had a great deal of business to worry her; and so Grace thrust away the horrible suspicion by little self-deceptions.

She went into the shop. Tom was busy upon his knees behind the counter.

She made her request.

"Ah, Miss Harvey!" and he sprang up. "It will be a pleasure to serve you once more in one's life. I am just going."

"Going where?"

"To Turkey. I find this place too pleasant and too poor. Not work enough, and certainly not pay enough. So I have got an appointment as surgeon in the Turkish contingent, and shall be off in an hour."

"To Turkey! to the war?"

"Yes. It's a long time since I have seen any fighting. I am quite out of practice in gunshot wounds. There is the medicine. Good-bye! You will shake hands once, for the sake of our late cholera work together."

Grace held out her hand mechanically across the counter, and he took it.

But she did not look into his face. Only she said, half to herself,—

"Well, better so. I have no doubt you will be very useful among them."

"Confound the icicle!" thought Tom. "I really believe that she wants to get rid of me." And he would have withdrawn his hand in a pet: but she held it still.

Quaint it was; those two strong natures, each loving the other better than anything else on earth, and yet parted by the thinnest pane of ice, which a single look would have melted. She longing to follow that man over the wide world, slave for him, die for him; he longing for the least excuse for making a fool of himself, and crying, "Take me, as I take you, without a penny, for better, for worse!" If their eyes had but met! But they did not meet; and the pane of ice kept them asunder as surely as a wall of iron.

Was it that Tom was piqued at her seeming coldness: or did he expect, before he made any advances, that she should show that she wished at least for his respect, by saying something to clear up the ugly question which lay between them? Or was he, as I suspect, so ready to melt, and make a fool of himself, that he must needs harden his own heart by help of the devil himself? And yet there are excuses for him. It would have been a sore trial to any man's temper to quit Aberalva in the belief that he left fifteen hundred pounds behind him. Be that as it may, he said carelessly, after a moment's pause,—

"Well, farewell! And, by the bye, about that little money matter. The month of which you spoke once was up yesterday. I suppose I am not worthy yet; so I shall be humble, and wait patiently. Don't hurry yourself, I beg of you, on my account."

She snatched her hand from his without a word, and rushed out of the shop.

He returned to his packing, whistling away as shrill as any blackbird.

Little did he think that Grace's heart was bursting, as she hurried down the street, covering her face in her veil, as if every one would espy her dark secret in her countenance.

But she did not go home to hysterics and vain tears. An awful purpose had arisen in her mind, under the pressure of that great agony. Heavens, how she loved that man! To be suspected by him was torture. But she could bear that. It was her cross; she could carry it, lie down on it, and endure: but wrong him she could not—would not! It was sinful enough while he was there; but doubly, unbearably sinful, when he was going to a foreign country, when he would need every farthing he had. So not for her own sake, but for his, she spoke to her mother when she went home, and found her sitting over her Bible in the little parlour, vainly trying to find a text which suited her distemper.

"Mother, you have the Bible before you there."

"Yes, child! Why? What?" asked she, looking up uneasily.

Grace fixed her eyes on the ground. She could not look her mother in the face.

"Do you ever read the thirty-second Psalm, mother?"

"Which? Why not, child?"

"Let us read it together then, now."

And Grace, taking up her own Bible, sat quietly down and read, as none in that parish save she could read:

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered.

"Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

"When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my groaning all the day long.

"For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture is turned to the drought of summer.

"I acknowledge my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.

"I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin."

Grace stopped, choked with tears which the pathos of her own voice had called up. She looked at her mother. There were no tears in her eyes: only a dull thwart look of terror and suspicion. The shaft, however bravely and cunningly sped, had missed its mark.

Poor Grace! Her usual eloquence utterly failed her, as most things do in which one is wont to trust, before the pressure of a real and horrible evil. She had no heart to make fine sentences, to preach a brilliant sermon of commonplaces. What could she say that her mother had not known long before she was born? And throwing herself on her knees at her mother's feet, she grasped both her hands and looked into her face imploringly,—"Mother! mother! mother!" was all that she could say: but their tone meant more than all words.—Reproof, counsel, comfort, utter tenderness, and under-current of clear deep trust, bubbling up from beneath all passing suspicions, however dark and foul, were in it: but they were vain.

Baser terror, the parent of baser suspicion, had hardened that woman's heart for the while; and all she answered was,—

"Get up! what is this foolery?"

"I will not! I will not rise till you have told me."

"What?"

"Whether"—and she forced the words slowly out in a low whisper, "whether you know—anything of—of—Mr. Thurnall's money—his belt?"

"Is the girl mad! Belt! Money? Do you take me for a thief, wench!"

"No! no! no! Only say you—you know nothing of it!"

"Psha! girl! Go to your school:" and the old woman tried to rise.

"Only say that! only let me know that it is a dream—a hideous dream which the devil put into my wicked, wicked heart—and let me know that I am the basest, meanest of daughters for harbouring such a thought a moment! It will be comfort, bliss, to what I endure! Only say that, and I will crawl to your feet, and beg for your forgiveness,—ask you to beat me, like a child, as I shall deserve! Drive me out, if you will, and let me die, as I shall deserve! Only say the word, and take this fire from before my eyes, which burns day and night,—till my brain is dried up with misery and shame! Mother, mother, speak!"

But then burst out the horrible suspicion, which falsehood, suspecting all others of being false as itself, had engendered in that mother's heart.

"Yes, viper! I see your plan! Do you think I do not know that you are in love with that fellow?"

Grace started as if she had been shot, and covered her face with her hands.

"Yes! and want me to betray myself—to tell a lie about myself, that you may curry favour with him—a penniless, unbelieving—"

"Mother!" almost shrieked Grace, "I can bear no more! Say that it is a lie, and then kill me if you will!"

"It is a lie, from beginning to end! What else should it be?" And the woman, in the hurry of her passion, confirmed the equivocation with an oath; and then ran on, as if to turn her own thoughts, as well as Grace's, into commonplaces about "a poor old mother, who cares for nothing but you; who has worked her fingers to the bone for years to leave you a little money when she is gone! I wish I were gone! I wish I were out of this wretched ungrateful world, I do! To have my own child turn against me in my old age!"

Grace lifted her hands from her face, and looked steadfastly at her mother. And behold, she knew not how or why, she felt that her mother had forsworn herself. A strong shudder passed through her; she rose and was leaving the room in silence.

"Where are you going, hussy? Stop!" screamed her mother between her teeth, her rage and cruelty rising, as it will with weak natures, in the very act of triumph,—"to your young man?"

"To pray," said Grace, quietly; and locking herself into the empty schoolroom, gave vent to all her feelings, but not in tears.

How she upbraided herself!—She had not used her strength; she had not told her mother all her heart. And yet how could she tell her heart? How face her mother with such vague suspicions, hardly supported by a single fact? How argue it out against her like a lawyer, and convict her to her face? What daughter could do that, who had human love and reverence left in her? No! to touch her inward witness, as the Quakers well and truly term it, was the only method: and it had failed. "God help me!" was her only cry: but the help did not come yet; there came over her instead a feeling of utter loneliness. Willis dead; Thurnall gone; her mother estranged; and, like a child lost upon a great moor, she looked round all heaven and earth, and there was none to counsel, none to guide— perhaps not even God. For would He help her as long as she lived in sin? And was she not living in sin, deadly sin, as long as she knew what she was sure she knew, and left the wrong unrighted?

It is sometimes true, the popular saying, that sunshine comes after storm. Sometimes true, or who could live? but not always: not even often. Equally true is the popular antithet, that misfortunes never come single; that in most human lives there are periods of trouble, blow following blow, wave following wave, from opposite and unexpected quarters, with no natural or logical sequence, till all God's billows have gone over the soul.

How paltry and helpless, in such dark times, are all theories of mere self-education; all proud attempts, like that of Göthe's Wilhelm Meister, to hang self-poised in the centre of the abyss, and there organise for oneself a character by means of circumstances! Easy enough, and graceful enough does that dream look, while all the circumstances themselves—all which stands around—are easy and graceful, obliging and commonplace, like the sphere of petty experiences with which Göthe surrounds his insipid hero. Easy enough it seems for a man to educate himself without God, as long as he lies comfortably on a sofa, with a cup of coffee and a review: but what if that "daemonic element of the universe," which Göthe confessed, and yet in his luxuriousness tried to ignore, because he could not explain—what if that broke forth over the graceful and prosperous student, as it may any moment! What if some thing, or some person, or many things, or many persons, one after the other (questions which he must get answered then, or die), took him up and dashed him down, again, and again, and again, till he was ready to cry, "I reckoned till morning that like a lion he will break all my bones; from morning till evening he will make an end of me"? What if he thus found himself hurled perforce amid the real universal experiences of humanity; and made free, in spite of himself, by doubt and fear and horror of great darkness, of the brotherhood of woe, common alike to the simplest peasant-woman, and to every great soul perhaps, who has left his impress and sign manual upon the hearts of after generations? Jew, Heathen, or Christian; men of the most opposite creeds and aims; whether it be Moses or Socrates, Isaiah or Epictetus, Augustine or Mohammed, Dante or Bernard, Shakspeare or Bacon, or Göthe's self, no doubt, though in his tremendous pride he would not confess it even to himself,—each and all of them have this one fact in common—that once in their lives, at least, they have gone down into the bottomless pit, and "stato all' inferno"—as the children used truly to say of Dante; and there, out of the utter darkness, have asked the question of all questions—"Is there a God? And if there be, what is he doing with me?"

What refuge then in self-education; when a man feels himself powerless in the gripe of some unseen and inevitable power, and knows not whether it be chance, or necessity, or a devouring fiend? To wrap himself sternly in himself, and cry, "I will endure, though all the universe be against me;"—how fine it sounds!—But who has done it? Could a man do it perfectly but for one moment,—could he absolutely and utterly for one moment isolate himself, and accept his own isolation as a fact, he were then and there a madman or a suicide. As it is, his nature, happily too weak for that desperate self-assertion, falls back recklessly on some form, more or less graceful according to the temperament, of the ancient panacea, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Why should a man educate self, when he knows not whither he goes, what will befall him to-night? No. There is but one escape, one chink through which we may see light; one rock on which our feet may find standing-place, even in the abyss: and that is the belief, intuitive, inspired, due neither to reasoning nor to study, that the billows are God's billows; and that though we go down to hell, He is there also;– the belief that not we, but He, is educating us; that these seemingly fantastic and incoherent miseries, storm following earthquake, and earthquake fire, as if the caprice of all the demons were let loose against us, have in His Mind a spiritual coherence, an organic unity and purpose (though we see it not); that sorrows do not come singly, only because He is making short work with our spirits; and because the more effect He sees produced by one blow, the more swiftly He follows it up by another; till, in one great and varied crisis, seemingly long to us, but short enough compared with immortality, our spirits may be—

And thus, perhaps, it was with poor Grace Harvey. At least, happily for her, she began after a while to think that it was so. Only after a while, though. There was at first a phase of repining, of doubt, almost of indignation against high heaven. Who shall judge her? What blame if the crucified one writhe when the first nail is driven? What blame if the stoutest turn sick and giddy at the first home-thrust of that sword which pierces the joints and marrow, and lays bare to self the secrets of the heart? God gives poor souls time to recover their breaths, ere He strikes again; and if He be not angry, why should we condemn?

Poor Grace! Her sorrows had been thickening fast during the last few months. She was schoolmistress again, true; but where were her children? Those of them whom she loved best, were swept away by the cholera; and could she face the remnant, each in mourning for a parent or a brother? That alone was grief enough for her; and yet that was the lightest of all her griefs. She loved Tom Thurnall—how much, she dared not tell herself; she longed to "save" him. She had thought, and not untruly, during the past cholera weeks, that he was softened, opened to new impressions: but he had avoided her more than ever—perhaps suspected her again more than ever—and now he was gone, gone for ever. That, too, was grief enough alone. But darkest and deepest of all, darker and deeper than the past shame of being suspected by him she loved, was the shame of suspecting her own mother—of believing herself, as she did, privy to that shameful theft, and yet unable to make restitution. There was the horror of all horrors, the close prison which seemed to stifle her whole soul. The only chink through which a breath of air seemed to come, and keep her heart alive, was the hope that somehow, somewhere, she might find that belt, and restore it without her mother's knowledge.

But more—the first of September was come and gone; the bill for five-and-twenty pounds was due, and was not met. Grace, choking down her honest pride, went off to the grocer, and, with tears which he could not resist, persuaded him to renew the bill for one month more; and now that month was all but past, and yet there was no money. Eight or ten people who owed Mrs. Harvey money had died of the cholera. Some, of course, had left no effects; and all hope of their working out their debts was gone. Some had left money behind them: but it was still in the lawyer's hands, some of it at sea, some on mortgage, some in houses which must be sold; till their affairs were wound up—(a sadly slow affair when a country attorney has a poor man's unprofitable business to transact)—nothing could come in to Mrs. Harvey. To and fro she went with knitted brow and heavy heart; and brought home again only promises, as she had done a hundred times before. One day she went up to Mrs. Heale. Old Heale owed her thirteen pounds and more: but that was not the least reason for paying. His cholera patients had not paid him; and whether Heale had the money by him or not, he was not going to pay his debts till other people paid theirs. Mrs. Harvey stormed; Mrs. Heale gave her as good as she brought; and Mrs. Harvey threatened to County Court her husband; whereon Mrs. Heale, en revanche dragged out the books, and displayed to the poor widow's horror-struck eyes an account for medicine and attendance, on her and Grace, which nearly swallowed up the debt. Poor Grace was overwhelmed when her mother came home and upbraided her, in her despair, with being a burden. Was she not a burden? Must she not be one henceforth? No, she would take in needlework, labour in the fields, heave ballast among the coarse pauper-girls on the quay-pool, anything rather: but how to meet the present difficulty?