From The Sunday Magazine. Sedgwick. To another of his correspond- I have found your lost glove and now return it. Call therefore all your lady friends together, and tell them to rejoice with you. But it was cruel of you to ask for it, as it was the only glove of the kind in my old College den; and indeed I had watched it and fostered it, with as much care as if it had been the big Punjaub diamond. Now that you have it, pray take care of it. Gloves have done much mischief sometimes they have been symbols of love sometimes of deadly hate and furious fight-sometimes they may have symbolized both love and hate-for purring and scratching are often close together. But these are mysteries I have long outlived. All I have to say is—take care of your glove, ONCE MORE AND YET AGAIN. FROM that hour I set myself to look after my uncle's affairs. It was the only way to endure his absence. Working for him, thinking what he would like, trying to carry it out, referring every perplexity to him and imagining his answer, he grew so much dearer to me, that his absence was filled with hope. My heart being in it, I had soon learned enough of the management to perceive where, in more than one quarter, improvement, generally in the way of saving, was possible; I do not mean by any lowering of wages; my uncle would have conned me small thanks for such improvement as that! Neither was it long before I began to delight in the feeling that I was in partnership with the powers of life; that I had to do with the operation and government and preservation of things created; that I was doing a work to which I was set by the Highest; that I was at least a floor-sweeper in the house of God, a servant for the good of his world. Existence had grown fuller and richer; I had come, like a toad out of a rock, into a larger, therefore truer uniBeing such as this biography truly ex-verse; I had something to do in the world. hibits him, it is no wonder that Adam How otherwise should I have patiently waited while hearing nothing from my Sedgwick was the pride of his college, uncle ! and the idol of his large circle of friends down to the end of his prolonged life. If It was not long before John began to it was not given him to lay posterity under press me to let my uncle have his way; a lasting obligation, by bequeathing to it where was the good any longer, he said, in some epoch-making work which should be our not being married! But I could not a possession forever, the least that can be endure the thought of being married withsaid is that in his own generation he filled out my uncle; it would hardly seem like his place nobly, and left many to mourn husband. And when John came to see marriage without his giving me to my him whose lives had been brightened by that I was not to be prevailed with, I his affectionate and playful solicitude, and found that he thought the more of me their hearts strengthened in goodness by his wise lessons and fair example. Well both because of my resolve, and because would it be for the world if there were my persistency in holding by it. For many more of whom it could be as truly John was always reasonable, and that is recorded, as it is of him in the cathedral more than can be said of most men, espe which knew him so well, that in him met cially such as have a woman to deal with. - not that it would together an imperial love of truth, an illus- If women should at last trious simplicity of character, and an un- the management of affairs- it will be beplease me one tiniest atom - have to take shaken constancy in the faith. cause men have made it necessary by carelessness and arrogance combined. Then when they have been kept down a while, just long enough to learn that they of are not the lords of creation one bit more | horse. Could the rider I was too far John lived in his own house with his mother, but they never met. She managed John's affairs, to whose advantage I need hardly say; and John helped me to manage my uncle's, to the advantage of all concerned. Every day he came to see me, and every night rode back to his worse than dreary home. At my earnest request he had had a strong bolt put on his bedroom door, which he promised me never to forget to shoot. He let it be known about the house that he had always a brace of loaded pistols within his reach, and showed himself well practised in the use of them. After I no longer only believed, but knew that the bailiff was trustworthy, and had got some few points in his management bettered, I ceased giving so much attention to detail, and allowed myself a little more time to go about with John, to whom I owed every consolation I could give him, seeing he had none at home. It was a little wearing to him too that he could never tell what his mother might not be plotting against him. He had had a very strong box made for Leander, in which he always locked him up when he went home at night, and which he locked also when he brought him to our place in the morning where he had all the grooming and tendance his master could wish. John could not forget what had befallen Leander once before; and I could not forget the great black horse down in the bog! I feared much for John. I knew that where a woman would, she could more than a man. One lovely, cold day in the month of March, with ice on some of the pools of the heath, and the wind blowing from the north, I mounted Zoe to meet John midway on the moor, and had gone about two. thirds of the distance, when I saw him, as I thought, a good way to my right, and concluded he had not expected me so soon, and had gone exploring. I turned aside therefore to join him; but had ridden only a few yards when, from some change in his position, I saw that the horse was not John's; it was a grey, or rather, a white The incident would not have been worth mentioning, for grey horses are not so uncommon but there might be one upon the heath at any moment; and although it was natural enough that the sight of one should make me think of my uncle, I should not long have thought of the occurrence, but for something more that I saw the same night. It was one of bright moonlight. I had taken down a curtain of my window to mend, and the moon shone in so that I could not sleep. My thoughts were all with my uncle wondering what he was about; whether he was very dull; whether he wanted me much; whether he was going about Paris, or haunting the moor that stretched far out into the distance from where I lay-out in that moonlight, perhaps, in the cold, wide, lonely night while I slept! The thought made me feel lonely; one is apt to feel lonely when sleepless; and as the moon was having a night of it, or rather making a day of it, all alone with herself, I thought we might keep each other a little company. I rose, drew the other curtain of my window aside, and looked out. I have said that the house lay on the slope of one side of a hollow, so that, from whichever window of it you might glance, you saw the line of your private horizon close to you; for any outlook, you must climb, and then you were on the moor. From my window I could see the more distant edge of the hollow; happening to look thitherward, I saw against the sky the shape of a man on horseback. I could not for a moment doubt it was my uncle. The figure was plainly his. My heart seemed to stand still with awe, and the delight of having him so near me, perhaps every night-a heavenly sentinel patrolling the house while I slept the visible one of a whole camp unseen, of horses of fire and chariots of fire. So entrancing was the notion, that I stood there a little child, a mere incarnate love, the tears run ning down my cheeks at the thought of | darted off to scout the moor. When first I saw him he was standing By the time I had my shoes on, and went again to the window, he had passed out of its range. I ran to one on the stair that looked at right angles to mine. He had not yet come within its field of vision. I stood and waited. Presently he appeared, crawling along, a grey mounted ghost, in the light that so strangely befits lovers wandering in the May of hope, and the wasted spectre whose imagination of the past reveals him to the eyes of men. For an instant I almost wished him dead and at rest; the next I was out of the house, up on the moor, looking eagerly this way and that, poised on the swift feet of love, ready to spring to his bosom. How I longed to lead him to his own warm bed, and watch by him as he slept, while the great father kept universal watch, out on the moor in the moonlight, and within every house and its darkness. I gazed and gazed, but nowhere could I see the death-jaded horseman. I bounded down the hill, through the wilderness and the dark alleys, and hurried to the stable. Trembling with haste I led Zoe out, sprang on her bare back, and Not a man or a horse or a live thing was to be seen in any direction! Almost I concluded I had beheld an apparition. Might it not be that my uncle was dead, come back thus to let me know, and now was gone home indeed? Weary and cold and dis appointed, I returned to bed, full of the conviction that I had seen my uncle, but whether in the body or out of the body, I could not tell. When John came the notion of my being out alone on the moor in the middle of the night did not please him, and he would have had me promise that I would not, for any vision or apparition whatever, leave the house again without his company. But he could not persuade me. He asked what I would have done, if I had overtaken the horseman, and found neither my uncle nor Death. I told him I would have given Zoe the use of her heels, when that horse at least would soon have seen the last of her. At the same time, John was inclined to believe with me, that I had seen my uncle. His proximity would ac count, he said, for his making no arrangement to hear from me. But if he continued to haunt the moor in such fashion, we could not fail to encounter him before long. In the mean time he thought it well to show no sign of suspecting his neighborhood. That I had seen my uncle John was for a moment convinced, when, the very next day, having gone to Wittenage, he saw his horse carrying Dr. Southwell, my uncle's friend. But then Death looked quite spry, and in lovely condition. The doctor would not confess to knowing anything about my uncle, and expressed his wonder that he had not yet returned, but said he did not mind how long he had the loan of such a horse. Things went on as before for a while. Then John began again to press me to marry him. I think it was mainly, I am sure it was in part, that I might never again ride the midnight moor "like a witch out on her own mischievous hook;" I use John's phrase in regard to what he seemed to count quite an escapade; he knew that, if I caught sight of my uncle anywhere, John or no John, I would go after him. But there was of course another good reason for not marrying before John was of legal age; who could tell what truth might not lurk in his mother's threat! Who could tell what such a woman might not have prevailed on her husband to set down in his will? I was ready enough to marry a poor man, but I was not ready to let my lover run the risk of becoming a poor man by marrying me a few months or even years sooner. Were we not happy enough in all conscience, seeing each other every day, and mostly all day long? No doubt people talked, but why not let them talk! The mind of the many is not the mind of God. John confessed that society itself was the merest oyster of a divinity. He argued, however, that most likely my uncle was keeping close until he saw us married. I answered that he would be as unwilling to expose us to the revenge of our mother through him, after we were married as before; anyhow I would not consent to be happier than we were, without my uncle to share in the happiness. CHAPTER XXXI. MY UNCLE COMES HOME. TIME went on, and it was now the depth of a cold, miserable winter. I remember the day so well! It was a black day. There was such a thickness of snow in the air that what light got through looked astray as if lost in a London fog; it was not like an honest darkness of the atmosphere, bred in its own bounds. But while the light lasted, the snow did not fall. I went about the house doing what had to be done, and what I could find to do wondering that John did not come. His horse had again fallen lame-this time through an accident which made it necessary to stay with the poor animal long after his usual time for starting to come to me. When he did start, it was on foot, with the short winter afternoon closing in. But John knew the moor by this time as well as I did, and that is saying a good deal. It was quite dark when he drew near the house, which he generally entered through the wilderness and the garden. The snow had begun at last, and was coming down in deliberate earnest. It would lie feet deep over the moor before the morning. He was just thinking what a dreary tramp home it would be by the road, for the wind was threatening to wake, and in a snow-wind the moor was a place to be avoided - when he struck his foot against something soft in the path his own feet had worn to the wilderness, and fell over it. A groan followed. John rose with the miserable feeling of having hurt some creature. Dropping again on his knees to discover what it was, he found a man almost covered with snow, and nearly insensible. He swept the snow off him, contrived to get him on his back, | and brought him round to the door, for the fence would have been awkward to cross with him. It was rather difficult indeed to carry him to the door, not because of his weight, but because of his length, and the roughness of the ground. Just as I began to be really uneasy at his prolonged absence, there he was, with a man on his back, apparently lifeless! I did not stop to stare or question, but made haste to help him. His burden was slipping sideways from his back, so we lowered it on a hall chair, and then carried the man in between us, I holding his legs. The moment a ray of light fell upon his face, I saw it was my uncle. I just saved myself from a scream. My heart stopped, then bumped as if it would break through. I turned sick and then cold. John laid his part of the burden on the sofa, but I held on to the legs half unconsciously. In a moment, however, I came to myself, and could help Martha. She said never a word, but was all there, looking in the face of her cousin with doglike devotion, but never stopping an instant to gaze. We got him some brandy first, then some hot milk, and then some soup. He refused nothing we offered him. We did not ask him a single question, but the moment he revived, carried him up and laid him in bed. Once he cast his eyes about, and gave a sigh, as if of relief to find himself in his own room, then went off into a light doze, which, broken with starts and half-wakings, lasted until next day about noon. Either John jor Martha or I was by his bedside all the time, so that he should not wake without seeing one of us by him. But the sad thing was, that, when he did wake, he did not seem to come to himself. He uttered not a word, but just lay and looked out of his eyes, if, indeed it was more than his eyes themselves that looked, if indeed he looked out of them at all! "He has overdone his strength," we said to each other. "He has not been taking care of himself! And then to lie perhaps hours in the snow! It's a wonder he's alive!" "He's nothing but skin and bone," said Martha. "It will take weeks to get him up again! And just look at his clothes! How ever did he come nigh such! They're fit only for a beggar! They must have knocked him down and stripped him! Look at his boots!" she said, and stroked them with her hands. "He'll never recover it!" "He will," I said. "Here are three of "You are right,” said John. "And we won't ask him anything, or even refer to anything, till he seems to want to hear about things." Days went and came, and still he did not appear to know quite where he was; or, if he knew, he seemed so content with knowing it, that he did not want to know anything more in heaven or earth. We grew very anxious about him. He did not heed a word his old friend Dr. Southwell said. His mind seemed utterly exhausted. The doctor justified John's more mature resolve, saying he must not be troubled with questions, or the least attempt to rouse his memory. He must be left to himself like a baby. John was now almost constantly with us. One day I asked him whether his mother took any notice of his being now so seldom at home at night. He answered she did not; and but for knowing her ways, he would imagine she knew nothing at all about him; he hardly doubted, however, that she made sure every day of where he was. "What does she do all day long?" I asked. "Goes over her books, I imagine," he answered. "She knows the hour is at hand when she must give account of her stewardship, and she is getting ready to meet it. That is what I suppose, at least ; but she gives me no trouble now, and I have no wish to trouble her." "Have you no hope of ever being on filial terms with her again? I said. There are few things more unlikely," he replied. I was a little troubled, notwithstanding my knowledge of her, and the way in which I felt toward her, that he should regard a total alienation from his mother with such indifference. I could not, however, balance the account between them. If much was owing to her merely because she was his mother, how much was she not in debt to her child, who had done him the terrible wrong of not being lovable? In my heart I blessed the heavenly Father, that he was just what he was. But oh, what a damping oppression it was that my uncle had returned so different! We were glad to have him, but how gladly would we not have let him go again to be restored to himself, even should we never more rest our eyes upon him in this world! Dearly as I loved John, it seemed to me nothing could make me happy while my uncle remained as he was. It was as the gripe of a cold hand on my heart to see him such impassable miles from me. I could not get near him. It was like what it would be to lose God out of my world. I went about all day with a sense - not merely of loss, but of a loss that gnawed at me with a sickening pain. He never said little one to me now! he never looked in my eyes as if he loved me! He was very gentle, never complained, but lay there with a dead question in his eyes. We all feared his mind was utterly gone. By degrees his health returned, but neither his memory, nor his interest in life, seemed to come back. Yet he had ever a far-away look in his eyes, and would start and turn at every opening of the door. He took to wandering about the yard and the stable, and the cow-house; would look for an hour at some one animal in its stall; would watch the men thrashing the corn, or twisting straw ropes; but he never cared to ride. When Dr. Southwell sent home his horse, it was in great hope that the sight of Death would wake him up; that he would recognize his old companion, jump on his back, and be well again; but my uncle only looked at him with some faint admiration, went round him and examined him as if he were a horse he thought of buying, then turned away, and took no more notice of him. Death was troubled at his treatment of him. He showed him all the old attention, used every equine blandishment he knew, but meeting with no response, turned slowly away, and walked to his stable. Dr. Southwell would gladly have bought him, but neither John nor I would hear of parting with him; he was almost a portion of his master. Then my uncle might come to himself any moment, and how could we look him in the face, if Death was gone from us! Besides, we loved the horse for his own sake as well as my uncle's, and John would be but too glad to ride him. My uncle would wander over the house, up and down, but seemed to prefer the little drawing-room to any other; I made it my special business to keep a good fire there. He never went up to the study; never opened the door in the chimney. |