Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 52

"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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sed 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. "G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 suns.h.i.+ne comes after storm. Sometimes true, or who could live? but not always: not even often. Equally true is the popular ant.i.thet, 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 G.o.d'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 Gothe's Wilhelm Meister, to hang self-poised in the centre of the abyss, and there organise for oneself a character by means of circ.u.mstances! Easy enough, and graceful enough does that dream look, while all the circ.u.mstances themselves--all which stands around--are easy and graceful, obliging and commonplace, like the sphere of petty experiences with which Gothe surrounds his insipid hero. Easy enough it seems for a man to educate himself without G.o.d, 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 Gothe 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 Gothe'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 G.o.d? 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-a.s.sertion, 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 G.o.d's billows; and that though we go down to h.e.l.l, 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--

"Heated hot with burning fears, And bathed in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the strokes of doom, To shape and use."

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? G.o.d 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 rest.i.tution. There was the horror of all horrors, the close prison which seemed to stifle her whole soul. The only c.h.i.n.k 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 coa.r.s.e pauper-girls on the quay-pool, anything rather: but how to meet the present difficulty?

"We must sell our furniture, mother!"

"For a quarter of what it's worth? Never, girl! No! The Lord will provide," said she, between her clenched teeth, with a sort of hysteric chuckle. "The Lord will provide!"

"I believe it; I believe it," said poor Grace; "but faith is weak, and the day is very dark, mother."

"Dark, ay? And may be darker, yet; but the Lord will provide. He prepares a table in the wilderness for his saints that the world don't think of."

"Oh, mother! and do you think there is any door of hope?"

"Go to bed, girl; go to bed, and leave me to see to that. Find my spectacles. Wherever have you laid them to, now? I'll look over the books awhile."

"Do let me go over them for you."

"No, you sha'n't! I suppose you'll be wanting to make out your poor old mother's been cheating somebody. Why not, if I'm a thief, Miss, eh?"

"Oh, mother! mother! don't say that again."

And Grace glided out meekly to her own chamber, which was on the ground-floor adjoining the parlour, and there spent more than one hour in prayer, from which no present comfort seemed to come; yet who shall say that it was all unanswered?

At last her mother came upstairs, and put her head in angrily:--"Why ben't you in bed, girl? sitting up this way?"

"I was praying, mother," says Grace, looking up as she knelt.

"Praying! What's the use of praying? and who'll hear you if you pray?

What you want's a husband, to keep you out of the workhouse; and you won't get that by kneeling here. Get to bed, I say, or I'll pull you up?"

Grace obeyed uncomplaining, but utterly shocked; though she was not unacquainted with those frightful fits of morose unbelief, even of fierce blasphemy, to which the excitable West-country mind is liable, after having been over-strained by superst.i.tious self-inspection, and by the desperate attempt to prove itself right and safe from frames and feelings, while fact and conscience proclaim it wrong.

The West-country people are apt to attribute these paroxysms to the possession of a devil; and so did Grace that night.

Trembling with terror and loving pity, she lay down, and began to pray afresh for that poor wild mother.

At last the fear crossed her that her mother might make away with herself. But a few years before, another cla.s.s-leader in Aberalva had attempted to do so, and had all but succeeded. The thought was intolerable. She must go to her; face reproaches, blows, anything. She rose from her bed, and went to the door. It was fastened on the outside.

A cold perspiration stood on her forehead. She opened her lips to shriek to her mother: but checked herself when she heard her stirring gently in the outer room. Her pulses throbbed too loudly at first for her to hear distinctly: but she felt that it was no moment for giving way to emotion; by a strong effort of will, she conquered herself; and then, with that preternatural acuteness of sense which some women possess, she could hear everything her mother was doing. She heard her put on her shawl, her bonnet; she heard her open the front door gently. It was now long past midnight. Whither could she be going at that hour?

She heard her go gently to the left, past the window; and yet her footfall was all but inaudible. No rain had fallen, and her shoes ought to have sounded on the hard earth. She must have taken them off. There, she was stopping, just by the school-door. Now she moved again. She must have stopped to put on her shoes; for now Grace could hear her steps distinctly, down the earth bank, and over the rattling s.h.i.+ngle of the beach. Where was she going? Grace must follow!

The door was fast: but in a moment she had removed the table, opened the shutter and the window.

"Thank G.o.d that I stayed here on the ground floor, instead of going back to my own room when Major Campbell left. It is a providence! The Lord has not forsaken me yet!" said the sweet saint, as, catching up her shawl, she wrapped it round her, and slipping through the window, crouched under the shadow of the house, and looked for her mother.

She was hurrying over the rocks, a hundred yards off. Whither? To drown herself in the sea? No; she held on along the mid-beach, right across the cove, toward Arthur's Nose. But why? Grace must know.

She felt, she knew not why, that this strange journey, that wild "The Lord will provide," had to do with the subject of her suspicion. Perhaps this was the crisis; perhaps all will he cleared up to-night, for joy or for utter shame.

The tide was low; the beach was bright in the western moonlight: only along the cliff foot lay a strip of shadow a quarter of a mile long, till the Nose, like a great black wall, buried the corner of the cove in darkness.