Deerbrook Part 53

"And the labouring cla.s.ses," observed Margaret--"that prodigious mult.i.tude of toiling, thinking, loving, trusting beings! How many of them see further than the week which is coming round? And who spends life to more purpose than some of them? They toil, they think, they love, they obey, they trust; and who will say that the most secure in worldly fortune are making a better start for eternity than they? They see duty around them and G.o.d above them; and what more need they see?"

"You are right," said Hester. "What I said was cowardly. I wish I had your faith."

"You have it," said her husband. "There was faith in your voice, and nothing faithless in what you said. It is a simple truth, that we cannot see our way before us. We must be satisfied to discern the duty of the day, and for the future to do what we ought always to be doing--'to walk by faith and not by sight.' Now, as to this present duty, it seems to me very clear. It is my duty to offer moral resistance to oppression, and to make a stand for my reputation. When it pleases G.o.d that men should be overwhelmed by calumny, it is a dreadful evil which must be borne as well as it may; but not without a struggle. We must not too hastily conclude that this is to be the issue in our case. We must stay and struggle for right and justice--struggle for it, by living on with firm, patient, and gentle minds. This is surely what we ought to do, rather than go away for the sake of ease, leaving the prejudices of our neighbours in all their virulence, because we have not strength to combat them, and letting the right succ.u.mb to the wrong, for want of faith and constancy to vindicate it."

"Oh, we will stay!" cried Hester. "I will try to bear everything, and be thankful to have to bear, for such reasons. It is all easy, love, when you lay open your views of our life--when you give us your insight into the providence of it. I believe I should have looked at it in this way before, if you had been suffering in any great cause--any cause manifestly great, because the welfare of many others was involved in it.

I see now that the principle of endurance and the duty of steadfastness are the same, though--." And yet she paused, and bit her lip.

"Though the occasion looks insignificant enough," said her husband.

"True. Some might laugh at our having to appeal to our faith because we have been mobbed on pretences which make us blush to think what nonsense they are, and because a rival has come to supplant me in my profession.

But with all this we have nothing to do. The truth to us is, that we are living in the midst of malice and hatred, and that poverty stares us in the face. If these things are quite enough for our strength (and I imagine we shall find they are so), we have no business to quarrel with our trial because it is not of a grander kind. Well! wife and sister, we stay. Is it not so? Then I will go and write to Mr Rowland."

The sisters were silent for some moments after he had left them.

Margaret was refres.h.i.+ng her flowers--the flowers which Philip had brought in from the garden the day before. How precious were they now, even above other flowers brought by the same hand--for not another blossom was left in the desolate garden! Margaret was resolving silently that she would keep these alive as long as she could, and then dry them in memory of the place they came from, in its wedding trim.

Hester presently showed the direction her thoughts had taken, by saying--

"I should think that it must be always possible for able and industrious people, in health, to obtain bread."

"Almost always possible, provided they can cast pride behind them."

"Ah! I suspect that pride is the real evil of poverty--of gentlefolks'

poverty. I could not promise for my own part, to cast pride behind me: but then, you know, it has pleased G.o.d to give me something to be proud of, far different from rank and money. I could go to jail or the workhouse with my husband without a blush. The agony of it would not be from pride."

"Happily, we are sure of bread, mere bread," said Margaret, "for the present, and for what we call certainty. What you and I have is enough for bread."

"What I have can hardly be called sufficient for even that," said Hester: "and you--I must speak my thankfulness for that--you will soon be out of the reach of such considerations."

"Not soon: and I cannot separate my life from yours--I cannot fancy it.

Do not let us fancy it just now."

"Well, we will not. I am glad Susan has warning from me to go. It is well that we began retrenching so soon. We must come to some full explanation with Morris, that we may see what can best be done for her."

"She will never leave you while you will let her stay."

"It may be necessary to dismiss Charles. But we will wait to talk that over with my husband. He will tell us what we ought to do. Was that a knock at the door?"

"I rather think it was a feeble knock."

It was Mrs Grey, accompanied by Sydney. Mrs Grey's countenance wore an expression of solemn misery, with a little of the complacency of excitement under it. The occasion was too great for winks: mute grief was the mood of the hour. Sydney was evidently full of awe. He seemed hardly to like to come into the parlour. Margaret had to go to the door, and laugh at him for his shyness. His mother's ideas were as much deranged as his own, by the gaiety with which Hester received them, boasting of the thorough ventilation of the room, and asking whether Sophia did not think their bonfire surpa.s.sed the famous one at the last election but one. Sophia had not seen anything of the fire of last night. She had been so much agitated, that the whole family, Mr Grey and all, had been obliged to exert themselves to compose her spirits.

Much as she had wished to come this morning, to make her inquiries in person, she had been unable to summon courage to appear in the streets; and indeed her parents could not press it--she had been so extremely agitated! She was now left in Alice's charge.

Hester and Margaret hoped that when Sophia found there was nothing more to fear, and that her cousins were perfectly well, she would be able to spare Alice for some hours, to wait upon Miss Young. Maria's hostess was with her now, and Margaret would spend the night with her again, if a nurse could not be procured before that time. Mrs Grey had not neglected Maria in her anxiety for her cousins. She was just going to propose that Alice should be the nurse to-night, and had left word at Miss Young's door that she herself would visit her for the hour and half that people were in church. Her time this morning was therefore short.

She was rejoiced to see her young friends look so much like themselves-- so differently from what she had dared to expect. And Mr Hope--it was not fair perhaps to ask where he was;--he had probably rather not have it known where he might be found: (and here the countenance relaxed into a winking frame). Not afraid to show himself abroad! Had been out twice! and without any bad consequences! It would be a cordial to Sophia to hear this, and a great relief to Mr Grey. But what courage!

It was a fine lesson for Sydney. If Mr Hope was really only writing, and could spare a minute, it would be a comfort to see him. Hester went for him. He had just finished his letter. She read and approved it, and sat down to take a copy of it while her husband occupied her seat beside Mrs Grey.

The wife let fall a few tears--tears of gentle sorrow and proud love, not on her husband's letter (for not for the world would she have had that letter bear a trace of tears), but on the paper on which she wrote.

The letter appeared to her very touching; but others might not think so: there was so much in it which she alone could see! It took her only a few minutes to copy it; but the copying gave her strength for all the day. The letter was as follows:--

"My Dear Sir--Your letter expresses, both in its matter and phrase, the personal regard which I have always believed you to entertain towards me and mine. I cannot agree with you, however, in thinking that the proceeding you propose involves real good to any of the parties concerned in it. The peace of society in Deerbrook is not likely to be permanently secured by such deference to ignorant prejudice as would be expressed by the act of my departure; nor would my wrongs be repaired by my merely leaving them behind me. I cannot take money from your hands as the price of your tranquillity, and as a commutation for my good name, and the just rewards of my professional labours. My wife and I will not remove from Deerbrook. We shall stay, and endeavour to discharge our duty, and to bear our wrongs, till our neighbours learn to understand us better than they do.

"You will permit to say, with the respect which I feel, that we sympathise fully in the distress of mind which you must be experiencing. If you should find comfort in doing us manful justice, we shall congratulate you yet more than ourselves: if not, we shall grieve for you only the more deeply.

"My wife joins me in what I have said, and in kindly regards.

"Yours sincerely,

"Edward Hope."

Edward had left his seal with Hester. She sealed the letter, rang for Charles, and charged him to deliver it into Mr Rowland's own hands, placed the copy in her bosom to show to Margaret, and returned to the parlour. Mrs Grey, who was alone with Hope, stopped short in what she was saying.

"Go on," said Hope. "We have no secrets here, and no fears of being frightened--for one another any more than for ourselves. Mrs Grey was saying, my dear, that Mr Walcot is very popular here already; and that everybody is going to church to see him."

Mrs Grey had half-a-dozen faults or oddities of Mr Walcot's to tell of already; but she was quietly checked in the middle of her list by Mr Hope, who observed that he was bound to exercise the same justice towards Mr Walcot that he hoped to receive from him--to listen to no evil of him which could not be substantiated: and it was certainly too early yet for anything to be known about him by strangers, beyond what he looked like.

"To go no deeper than his looks, then," continued Mrs Grey, "n.o.body can pretend to admire them. He is extremely short. Have you heard how short he is?"

"Yes; that inspired me with some respect for him, to begin with. I have heard so much of my being too tall, all my life, that I am apt to feel a profound veneration for men who have made the furthest escape from that evil. By the way, my dear, I should not wonder if Enderby is disposed in Walcot's favour by this, for he is even taller than I."

"I am surprised that you can joke on such a subject, Mr Hope. I a.s.sure you, you are not the only sufferers by this extraordinary circ.u.mstance of Mr Walcot's arrival. It is very hard upon us, that we are to have him for an opposite neighbour--in Mrs Enderby's house, you know.

Sophia and I have been in the habit of observing that house, for the old lady's sake, many times in a day. We scarcely ever looked out, but we saw her cap over the blind, or some one or another was at the door, about one little affair or another. It has been a great blank since she was removed--the shutters shut, and the bills up, and n.o.body going and coming. But now we can never look that way."

"I am afraid you will have to get Paxton to put up a weatherc.o.c.k for you on his barn, so that you may look in the opposite direction for the wind."

"Nay, Edward, it is really an evil," said Hester, "to have an unwelcome stranger settled in an opposite house, where an old friend has long lived. I can sympathise with Mrs Grey."

"So can I, my dear. It is an evil: but I should, under any circ.u.mstances, hold myself free to look out of my window in any direction--that is all. Do, Mrs Grey, indulge yourself so far."

"We cannot possibly notice him, you know. It must be distinctly understood, that we can have nothing to say to an interloper like Mr Walcot. Mr Grey is quite of my opinion. You will have our support in every way, my dear sir; for it is perfectly plain to our minds, that all this would not have happened but for your having married into our connection so decidedly. But this intruder has been thought, and talked about, by us more than he is worth. I want to hear all you can tell me about the riot, Hester, love. Your husband has been giving me some idea of it, but... Bless me! there is the first bell for church; and I ought to have been at Miss Young's by this time. We must have the whole story, some day soon; and, indeed, Sophia would quarrel with me for hearing it when she is not by. Where is Sydney?"

Sydney and Margaret were in the garden, consulting about its restoration. Sydney declared he would come and work at it every day till it was cleared and planted. He would begin to-morrow with the cairn for the rock-plants.

"I am glad the Levitts are to call after church," observed Mrs Grey.

"They always do what is proper, I must say; and not less towards dissenters than their own people. I suppose Dr Levitt will consult with you about the damages."

"Sooner or later, I have no doubt."

"Come, Sydney, we must be gone. You hear the bell. Sophia will be quite revived by what I shall tell her, my dears. No--do not come out to the door--I will not allow it, on my account. There is no knowing what I might have to answer for, if you let yourself be seen at the door on my account. I am sorry you will not come in this evening. Are you quite determined? Well, perhaps Mr Grey will say you are right not to leave your premises in the evening, at present. No; you must not say anything about _our_ coming just now. We have not courage, really, for that. Now hold your tongue, Sydney. It is out of the question--your being out of our sight after dark. Good morning, my love."

As soon as Charles returned home, after having delivered the letter into Mr Rowland's own hands, Mr Hope gathered his family together, for their Sunday wors.h.i.+p. The servants entered the room with countenances full of the melancholy which they concluded, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, that their master and mistress must be experiencing: but, when service was over, they retired with the feeling that the family-wors.h.i.+p had never been more gladsome.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

KEEPING SUNDAY.

Mr Enderby was in the churchyard when the congregation poured out from the porch. Group after group walked away, and he saw no signs of the party he was waiting for. Mrs Rowland lingered in the aisle, with the intention of allowing all Deerbrook time to look at Mr Walcot. When none but the Levitts remained, the lady issued forth from the porch, leaning on Mr Walcot's arm, and followed by four of her children, who were walking two and two, holding up their heads, and glancing round to see how many people were observing the new gentleman they had brought with them from Cheltenham. Mr Enderby approached the family party, and said--

"Sister, will you introduce me to Mr Walcot?"