Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers Part 3

"Nothing;" and Miriam said it in such a manner, that the most hardened sceptic must have believed her.

"The fire broke out at a quarter to eight. Had you seen Cutts about that time?"

"I had met him in the street that evening as I came home."

"Where had you been?"

"Practising in the church."

"What time was it when you met him? Be careful."

Miriam now realised the importance of her answer.

The exact truth was that she had reached home at half-past seven, and had seen Cutts going into his house then. It must be remembered that although, as before observed, she was naturally truthful, she was so because she was fearless, and had the instinctive tendency to directness possessed by all forceful characters. Her veracity rested on no principle. She was not like Jeanie Deans, that triumph of culture, in whom a generalisation had so far prevailed that it was able to overcome the strongest of pa.s.sions and prevent a lie even to save a sister's life. Miriam had been brought up in no such divine school.

She had heard that lying was wrong, but she had no religion, although she listened to a sermon once every Sunday, and consequently the relation in which the several duties and impulses stood to one another was totally different from that which was established in Sir Walter's heroine. By some strange chance, too, tradition, which often takes the place of religion, had no power over her; and although hatred of oppression and of harsh dealing is a very estimable quality, and one which will go a long way towards constructing an ethical system for us, it will not do everything.

She began to reflect. She had no watch with her. She had noticed the clocks when she returned, and she remembered that they showed half-past seven. She could not at the moment deliberately say a quarter to eight, although really it did not much matter. Who would be the worse if she declared it was a quarter to eight? n.o.body, and she knew that Cutts would be the better. She had not specially observed the clocks; how could she, for she had no notion that anything important depended upon accuracy. She was short-sighted, and she had not seen the regulator. Nothing was actually before her eyes but a great Dutch kitchen clock, which showed half-past seven, and might have been wrong.

Something struck when she left the church, and the strokes chimed again in her ears as she was shaping her reply to Mr. Mortimer. They sounded like half-past, and in that case it must have been a quarter to eight when she stood on her doorstep. Finally, there was the reason of reasons which superseded the necessity of any further attempt to persuade herself by any casuistry--she must save Cutts.

"A quarter to eight," she said decisively,

"Odd that you should have seen him just at that time. In less than five minutes the place was in a blaze. He could hardly have lit it up himself. Would you swear before the Court it was a quarter to eight?"

If she had been asked this at first she would have hesitated, but she now boldly said "Yes."

"Very well; I do not see what more I can do now. I will think over the matter," and Miriam departed.

The lawyer had his suspicions, and determined, after some inquiries in Cowfold, that Miss Miriam should not be called. He told the story to his partner, who laughed, and said he did not see anything extraordinary in it. It was a common case of perjury. Mr. Mortimer was not sure that it was common perjury. Externally it might be so, and yet there seemed to be a difference. Moreover, he could not find out anything in Cowfold to make him believe that there was any motive for it.

"Perfectly motiveless," he replied. "A noteworthy instance," for he was a bit of a philosopher, "of an action performed without any motive whatever. I have always maintained the possibility of such actions."

As to Miriam, she went back to Cowfold without any self-accusation or self-applause. She did not know that there was anything criminal or generous in her attempt on behalf of Cutts. We may say in parting that he was acquitted, to her great delight; and Mr. Cattle, with the pride of a British citizen who has served on a jury and knows the law, did not cease to preach to his wife, whenever the opportunity offered, that you should never p.r.o.nounce the verdict till you've heard the evidence.

Soon after Mr. Cutts's return to Cowfold Mr. Tacchi one day surprised his household by telling them he meant to take another wife. Andrew was silent, but Miriam at once flew into a violent pa.s.sion, and thereby greatly incensed her father. There was no cause for her anger. Mrs.

Brooks, whom Giacomo had chosen, was, as the second choice often is, just the woman who was necessary to him. She was about forty, a good manager, with an equable temper, a widow, with no children, not in the least degree rigid, but, on the contrary, affectionate. She had seen some trouble with her first husband, who was a little farmer and drank, and consequently, although she was a churchwoman, had been driven to the Bible, and had found much comfort therein. "Although she was a churchwoman" may sound rather strange, but still it is a fact that in those days in Cowfold the church people, and for that matter the Dissenters too, did not read their Bibles; but amongst the Dissenters there was here and there a remnant of the ancient type to whom the Bible was everything. Amongst the church people there were very few or none.

Why Miriam should be so wrathful with her father it is extremely difficult to say. It is certain she did not object to her deposition as housekeeper. She never cared for her duties as mistress. Perhaps one reason was that she chose to resent the apparent displacement of her own mother. She never knew her, and owed her nothing except her birth; but she was _her_ mother, and she took sides with her, and considered her insulted, and became her partisan with perfect fury.

Perhaps, too, Miriam was slightly jealous that her father, who was now nearing his half century, should show himself not altogether dead to love. She would have liked to find him insensible, leaving all love affairs to his children, and she once even went so far as to use the word "disgusting" in conversing with Andrew on the subject.

Giacomo, however, was very determined, notwithstanding his affection for his daughter, and disagreeable scenes took place between them. She showed her displeasure in a thousand ways, and was positively rude to Mrs. Brooks when she invited Miriam to her house.

Giacomo had a sister, a Mrs. Dabb, who lived in London. She had married a provision dealer in the Borough, and he employed not only a staff of a.s.sistants, but a couple of clerks. Mrs. Dabb, oddly enough, was a fair-haired woman, with blue eyes and a rosy complexion. She had rather a wide, plump face, and wore her hair in ringlets. She lived at the shop, but she had a drawing-room over it with a circular table in the middle, and round it lay the "Keepsake" and "Friends.h.i.+p's Offering," in red silk, with Mrs. Hemans' and Mr. Montgomery's poetry.

Into these she occasionally looked, and refreshed herself by comparing her intellect with that of the female kind generally. She desired above everything not to be considered commonplace, believed in love at first sight, was not altogether unfavourable to elopements, carefully repressed any tendency to unnecessary order, wore a loose dressing-gown all the morning, had her breakfast in bed, let her hair stray a little over her face, cultivated a habit of shaking it off and pus.h.i.+ng it back with her fingers, and generally went as far to be thought a little "wild" as was possible for the wife of a respectable, solid, eminently British, close-fisted Borough tradesman. Nevertheless she had a huge appet.i.te, and always had ham or sausages for tea. Giacomo she despised, on the ground that his occupation was so limited, that it contracted the imagination, and that he did not "live in the metropolis, but vegetated in a country town." She consequently very seldom visited Cowfold, and very seldom wrote to her brother. Giacomo, however, thought it his duty to tell his sister of his approaching marriage; and Mrs. Dabb, who was endowed with great curiosity, replied that, if it was quite agreeable, she would come to Cowfold for two or three days to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Brooks and obtain a change of air, as she had suffered somewhat from feelings of languor of late and a little fever on the nerves. Accordingly she came, and in a short time saw what was the state of affairs between Miriam and her father.

She rather liked Miriam, chiefly for her defects; and as Giacomo had been a little freer than usual with his sister one evening, and had expressed his fears that Miriam and Mrs. Brooks would not agree, Mrs.

Dabb gave him some advice.

"Miriam, my dear Giacomo, is a bit of a genius, untamed and irregular, reminding me something of myself."

Giacomo did not much believe in untamed irregular genius. It was certainly of no use in clockmaking.

"Well, what then?"

"I should say that she suffers through limitation of her sphere. No suffering like that, Giacomo. Ah me!"

Mrs. Dabb shook back her hair, and put both her hands to her forehead.

"Does your head ache?"

"No; at least not more than usual. I always have a weight there; I believe it is merely ideas. I asked a very eminent young man who lives not far from us--he occupies a high position in the hospital--a dresser, I think, they call him; and he said it was due to overstrung--dear me, what was it! I remember putting it down, it seemed so exactly to coincide with my own views."

Mrs. Dabb looked in her pocket-book.

"Overstrung cerebration, that was it; overstrung cerebration."

"What were you going to say about Miriam?"

"A little proposal. My husband wants a clerk. Why not let Andrew take the place, and Miriam be his housekeeper? We have no room for them, but apartments are to be procured at a low rate."

This was in reality Miriam's scheme. She had heard of the vacancy in Mr. Dabb's establishment, and had implored her aunt to use her influence with Giacomo to gain his a.s.sent to Andrew's removal. Mrs.

Dabb was not an unkind woman; she really thought she liked Miriam, and she consented. She had even gone so far as to encourage her in the belief that she "vegetated," and the word opened up to her a new world.

"Vegetate"--it stuck to her, and became a motive power. Great is the power of a thought, but greater still is the power of a phrase, and it may be questioned whether phrase is not more directly responsible than thought for our religion, our politics, our philosophy, our love, our hatred, our hopes and fears.

"I do not think," said Giacomo, "they could live on a clerk's salary.

Andrew would not be worth much as a beginner."

"It is astonis.h.i.+ng, my dear Giacomo, upon how little people can live, if their wants are simple, like my own, for example; and then Andrew would have the opportunity of acquiring animal food at a cheap rate."

"I do not like the thought of parting with the children, and I fear the dangers of London, especially for a girl like Miriam."

"I would take them, Giacomo, under my wing. Besides, as a dear friend once observed to me, evil has no power over the pure soul. I feel it myself; it cannot come near me; it dissolves, it departs. What is the Borough to me with all its snares? I am in a different world."

Giacomo for some time refused; but Miriam was alternately so unpleasant and so coaxing, that at last he consented. Poor Andrew had really no will of his own in the affair. He was a gentle, docile creature whom clockmaking suited, but he was pleased at the thought of the change, and who could tell? he might rise to a position at his uncle's far beyond anything which he could attain in Cowfold.

After some negotiation, therefore, Miriam and Andrew departed for London, the salary being fixed at thirty-eight s.h.i.+llings a week. To this Giacomo added twelve s.h.i.+llings a week--two pounds ten s.h.i.+llings altogether. It was a happy day for both of them when they journeyed to the end of Cowfold Lane, and waited for the coach; they were happier still when they were mounted on the top, and were at last on the great London road, and already on the line which, was in direct communication with the great city. It was different altogether from the Cowfold roads, and there was a metropolitan air about it. They continually met coaches going away to York, Newcastle, and even to Edinburgh, and the drivers mutely saluted by lifting their whips as they pa.s.sed. Two drivers had thus met for forty years, and had never spoken a single word to one another. At last one died, and the other took his death so much to heart that he sickened and died too. The inns were nothing like the Cowfold inns. They were huge places, with stables like barracks, and outside each of them were relays of beautiful horses standing ready for the change. The scenery from Huntingdon to London is not particularly attractive, but to Miriam and Andrew the Alps could not have been more fascinating. They wondered that others did not share their excitement, and Andrew thought that a coachman must be the happiest of men.

At last they reached Barnet, the last stage, and immediately afterwards they saw the line of the smoke-cloud which lay over the goal of all their aspirations, the promised land in which nothing but golden romance awaited them. Presently a waypost was pa.s.sed, with the words _To the West End_ upon it, so that they might now be fairly said to be at least in a suburb. Ten minutes more brought them to Highgate Archway, and there, with its dome just emerging above the fog, was St.

Paul's! They could hardly restrain themselves, and Miriam squeezed Andrew's hand in ecstasy. They rattled on through Islington, and made their first halt at the "Angel," astonished and speechless at the crowds of people, at the shops, and most of all at the infinity of streets branching off in all directions. Dingy Clerkenwell and Aldersgate Street were gilded with a plentiful and radiant deposit of that precious metal of which healthy youth has such an infinite store--actual metal, not the "delusive ray" by any means, for it is the most real thing in existence, more real than the bullion forks and spoons which we buy later on, when we feel we can afford them, and far more real than the silver tea-service with which, still later, we are presented amidst cheers by our admiring friends in the ward which we represent in the Common Council, for our increasing efforts to uphold their interests.

At the Bull and Mouth they saw that marvel, the General Post Office, but they had not much time to look at it, for here they were met by a young man from Mr. Dabb. They were disappointed that Mrs. Dabb had not come, but a verbal excuse was offered that she was in bed with a headache. Mr. Dabb, of course, was too busy to leave. The messenger was commissioned to take them to their uncle's, where they were to have tea; and after tea they were to go to the lodgings which Mrs. Dabb had provisionally selected for them. In a few minutes they had crossed London Bridge, and drew up in front of Mr. Dabb's house. There was no private entrance, and they encountered their uncle on the pavement. He was short and thick, with a very florid complexion, and wore a brown jersey, and a white ap.r.o.n fastened at the back with a curious bra.s.s contrivance. There were two or three people with him, and he had a knife in his hand. The doors were wide open; there seemed to be no windows, and in fact Mr. Dabb's establishment was a portion of the street just a little recessed. He was in and out continually, now on the pathway talking to a customer there, and then pa.s.sing inside to the ladies who were a little more genteel, and preferred to state their wants under cover. At the back of the shop was a desk perched up aloft, just big enough for one person, and with a gaslight over it.

Andrew noticed it, and thought of winter, and wondered how anybody could sit there during a January day with the snow on the ground, or during a cold thaw.

Mr. Dabb put down his knife and shook hands with them.

"Well, Mr. Andrew, so you've come to make your fortune--long hours, hard work, stick at nothing; cutting place the Borough. Better go inside. Put your traps up in that corner; you'll want 'em again directly. Aunt's abed upstairs; can't see you to-night."

They went into a little greasy back parlour, lighted by a skylight, if indeed a window could be so called whose connection with the sky was so far from being immediate.

Mr. Dabb looked in. "You'll have some tea in a minute. I myself can't leave--shorthanded."