inspired by the disappearance of the fairy masque with which Ariel had entertained the lovers : We are such stuff As dreams are made of; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep! CHAPTER XVIII. 66 AND OUR LITTLE LIFE IS ROUNDED WITH A SLEEP." I SOMETIMES Wish I had left my story untold. Many a better man has been buried with his history. I make but a poor business of the narrative. I say narrative for want of a better word, seeing that I have only set down the reflections which Memory scatters upon my pages. Sometimes Memory ignores details in her pictures. Now and then she is profuse in trifles. I sit at my desk in the firelight, and the days that are gone pass before me. It is still autumn in the Valley, and my memories to-night are of autumn days. Our summer by the Thames is over. We told Desprey that we intended to spend a short time in the autumn at Wulstan. Ruth reminded him, when he looked eighteen months ahead, that he counted somewhat confidently on the future. We were open to similar criticism when we talked of the autumn. That instinctive recognition of trouble which warned me that the battle was beginning, soon brought the blare of the trumpets within hearing. It was an unequal combat. Heaven had decreed what should come to pass. Philosophy says happiness is evenly and equally divided upon earth. I deny this before God and man. It is the future which strikes the balance. Happiness equal! why, this life below to half the world would be a mockery of existence, a degradation, a cruel wrong, were it not accepted as the introduction to another world. He is a wise man who regards the whole system of present life as subordinate and preparatory to another. An ingenious author of a book of "Maxims" condenses the thought thus into a few almost flippant sentences, which, nevertheless, interpret my own feelings, and that with admirable brevity, "Man has sufficient enjoyment to make life desirable, but not enough to render it happy. His circumstances are adapted to the ends of probation, not to those of reward. His hope is intermingled with fear, his joy with sorrow, his best efforts with imperfection. The paucity of his days, unless attended with special openings, or rapidly improved, affords opportunity for few distinguished achievements; while the longest and most prosperous career is also vanity and a shadow." But this lower life is more pregnant with happiness for some men than it is for others. Health and wealth attend many a man from his first start in life to its close, while sickness and poverty are the twin gaolers which attend others from birth to death. No, my brethren, there is not an equality of happiness below, but the account is balanced in that glorious world where life is real, where happiness is perfected, where the noblest hopes and ambitions which agitate the great and good, the gentle and humble, the true-hearted and patient, the faithful followers of the Master, are perfected and made complete. We did spend some time during that long past autumn in the city of our early love; and the picture which comes up for note in the firelight, as I sit at my desk telling over the shadows of the past shows me Ruth and myself on our knees in that old parish church where my father and mother were married, where I read my first sermon; shows me Ruth and myself on our knees faintly re-echoing the responses of the clerk, and praying God to teach us to number our days that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom. I see the solemn procession move into the church-yard where my mother had lain alone for many years with a blank by her side, left for him who had ever been her faithful partner and mourner. I hear the wellknown words of the parson declare, on that calm autumn morning, that in the midst of life we are in death. I see my wife leaning upon my arm and looking into the vault where my father and mother now lie side by side. I see the flowers that fell in upon the coffin which contained the remains of one of Nature's noblemen. I smell the mould now, after these many years, and hear the wailing of the bell. I have re-enacted that scene many times since then, when doing priestly duty in the Valley. I learn to look on death calmly, and my heart and soul respond in blessed sympathy to the grandeur and pathos of that last service of our Church. I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me, Write, from henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours. My father had fallen calmly in the battle. He passed away in his sleep with those he loved about him. Canon Molineau consoled his last hours with comforting words from the Book of Books. Ruth behaved with a firmness and wisdom and self-possession far in advance of her years. More than once she had noticed that my father seemed desirous of entering upon a statement of his affairs to me, but I always put him off. I refused to believe that he was dying, and saw no difference between "Death and his brother Sleep" at the last. But at night, when the house was silent, I realised all the terrible truth. My poor, pale-faced darling nestled by my side in the dear old studio when the autumn wind was sighing through the naked branches of the weird fruit trees in the garden. Oh, that last of Memory's pictures of the dear old studio! The wooden logs crackled upon the hearth, and threw flickering shadows upon the armours, the vases, and the pictures. There was a halffinished picture on the easel which stood, ghost-like, in the centre of the room. She nestled by my side, my poor, trembling wife, thinking of her own father and mother lying in the Cathedral shadow. We said but few words, for we knew that the same thoughts were passing through our minds. As plainly as if we had spoken we knew that our hearts were bleeding in the same place. The anguish of the time seemed to bring us still nearer to each other; for now we were both orphans. The chief of the citadel fallen, the house was cruelly sacked. My poor father had indeed left something unsaid. During those hardest days of financial difficulty at the Deanery, the tender-hearted painter had rendered himself liable for sundry large sums to help the Dean in his need. Pensax was in possession of the bonds, and Old Sidbree House and its contents were sold by auction under the authority of the Dean's executors. I concealed this from Ruth, and was careful to guard every portal through which the knowledge could reach her. The misery of that incident, which Memory now traces upon my tablets, was therefore only half shared by her. It would, I feel sure, have broken her heart had she known all the circumstances attending that dispersion of the Sidbree gods. I commissioned my old friend the bookseller in High Street to purchase for me a few mementos of my dear old home. He told me afterwards how it had grieved him to look upon the depravity of human nature as it was exemplified at the sack of my father's house. He said the principal buyers at the sale were the Triggs. They never left the place except to relieve each other at meal times. Mrs. Trigg, bursting with impatience, and oozing at every pore, gloated over the ornamental furniture. She had retired from the position of housekeeper to Pensax, and was at that time furnishing a new house; so that the sacking of Old Sidbree House was a rare opportunity for Pensax's ally. Trigg had risen to the dignity of Pensax's steward, with the right to exist outside Pensax's castle; and Mrs. Trigg was the philanthropist's adviser-in-chief. My bookselling friend of High Street told me that this sweltering syren with warts pried into every corner and cupboard of the house, professing at the same time a personal knowledge of every corner, although she had never entered the Sidbree precincts during my father's lifetime. She talked aloud of "poor Himbleton," and spoke of my wife familiarly as Ruth. Her miserable husband, with his everlasting parrot cry of "Mr. Pensax is a kind man," held his head up with an air of authority, and shuffled in and out of the crowd, and spoke of his "friend, George Himbleton," as if he and I had been on familiar terms; and he overhauled my father's treasures, the halberds, bills and partisans, the swords and spears, and other relics, with a familiarity that was nothing less than sacrilege. The men and women who had stood at their doors and gossiped of Mrs. Pensax in the days of the Dean's great trouble, swarmed over Sidbree House like vultures on a battle-field. No spot in all the place was sacred to the dead or to history. They overran the dear old rooms, and made coarse jokes on their bargains. Peter Trigg had the audacity to read aloud, for the benefit of the company, the verse which my father had written upon the first sketch of the picture which held a place in my most cherished memories, and the finished design of which was in my studio on the Thames : Up then came that lady fair, With torches burning bright; She thought to give Sir Gyles a drink, "The brute," said my friend of High Street, “ gave the lines altogether wrong emphasis, said hup for up, and miscalled the words; and worse than that, he bid a pound for the picture. 'Five pounds, sir,' I said at once. (I could not help shaking the fellow's hand and thanking him.) 'Five pounds,' I said, with the remark that some people valued art no higher than their reputations. Trigg, who has the soul of a skunk, did not understand the rebuke, but it was applauded by some of the bystanders. Ten pound, sir, was bid by a dealer from London. I said twenty, and the picture is yours, sir, at five pound less than your commission." This man and Canon Molineau seemed to be the only friends I had in Wulstan. It is likely I may have done the city an injustice. We are all of us apt to associate the wrong-doing of one or two individuals in a town with all the inhabitants of the city. Wulstan, in its heart, despised Pensax and hated his grovelling allies the Triggs, but Pensax's money overawed it. The man's wonderful distributions of gold among the charities of the city, and his vast promises of future benefactions, forced Wulstan to hold him in some regard. Pensax had good impulses, and in good hands might have been a useful and a happy man. Poor Old House of Sidbree! In losing thee, I seemed to part with two fathers. To be shut out from thy arms was a bitter blow. To see the more familiar and cherished parts of thee scattered to the winds was a tearing up of my dearest ties and associations. Canon Molineau had been very kind to us. He insisted upon our staying at his house, even after we had both expressed a wish to go home. We should mope, he said, at home and make each other miserable. It was mistaken kindness. He had better have left us to our own resources. One afternoon after we had been confined to his house and garden for several weeks, I ventured forth into the city to see my poor father's solicitor concerning his affairs, which were strangely mixed up with those of the Dean and Pensax. Going down the High Street I passed two shops where furniture bought at Sidbree House was exposed for sale. In another window was hung one of Ruth's paintings. How the sight maddened me! Returning, I met two porters carrying the sofa on which I had lain after my illness. It seemed to me as if all Wulstan had been engaged in sacking my home. My brain reeled at the thought. I felt as if a demon were taking possession of me. I longed to wreak some terrible vengeance upon the place. Happily the Cathedral was close at hand. The sound of the organ and the fresh heavenly voices of the choristers came out into the autumn air, like a message of peace from the other world. I entered the well-known church and found myself presently with my face buried in the cushions of Canon Molineau's pew. It was a blessed relief from the streets of Wulstan. But O the sense of desolation that came over me, not for my own sake, when the new Dean left the Oswald stall to read one of the lessons! My mind went back to the days when Ruth and Mary Oswald used to come up through the nave and take their seats in the well remembered stall, to the days when the grand white-haired Dean, their father, brought up the Cathedral procession from the vestry in the cloisters; to the days when I watched from the College window for the appearance of that dream of beauty on the Deanery lawn ; to the day when she, my beloved, first spoke to me, when she took a glass of water from my own hand; to the days when she stood before her easel in my father's studio; and then when my soul began to lament over the ruins of Sidbree House, it seemed as if some angel rebuked me with the thought that Ruth was mine, demanding from me if that were not compensation enough for all VOL. VII., N.S. 1871. M M |