the tulip tree on the lawn, I saw Madeline Barnard in earnest conversation with Harry Raymond. The flower beds, blazing with scarlet geraniums and yellow calceolarias, the long shadows cast by the deodaras and the rose-bushes, the bright sunlight between the shadows revealing every blade of grass and every trespassing daisy with the distinctness of pre-Raphaelite art, all combined to make a very pretty picture, and I paused by the iron gate that opened from the shrubbery on the lawn to enjoy it. these things touched me more nearly than did the loves of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. I had never had a love-affair of my own, nor had Grace or Madeline Barnard; indeed, the only young men of our acquaintance were Harry Raymond and George Henderson, the Barnards' cousin. The former we looked upon as a brother, the latter was the favourite butt of our satire. Strange, therefore, even to incredibility as it may appear, love had so little place in my mind that on this evening, when I saw Harry Raymond and Madeline talking on I suppose that most people, seeing the lawn, it never even crossed my mind Harry Raymond and Madeline Bernard that I had surprised them in a flirtation. talking together under the tulip tree on I merely remarked to myself that they this lovely summer evening, would have were deep in philosophy again. For concluded at once that they had stumbled Harry Raymond was a great philosopher, on a love-scene. But I had not graduated and Madeline his apt disciple. Harry. in Mrs. Grundy's school, and I did not read French books and aired new theoknow that whenever a man and a woman ries, despised conventionalities, and never are seen talking together without either went to church. Madeline borrowed his of them appearing to be bored, it is a books and made extracts from them, legitimate inference that they are flirting. went to church and meditated upon the Indeed, the whole subject of flirtation lay new theories all through my father's servery much outside my sphere of thought mons, and was altogether too warmat that time. Love and courtship, which, hearted and simple-minded to think if one may judge by modern fiction, about conventionalities at all. We all enters so largely into the lives of most liked Harry Raymond in spite of his hetgirls, were unknown to me, except in connection with the heroines of the Waverly novels and of Shakespeare's plays. It is true that the girls in the village were from time to time given in marriage to young shepherds and gardeners, and it had once happened that a young housemaid in my father's house had given warning, on the occasion of her engagement to the under-footman, who was leaving the Raymonds to better himself in London; but the marriages of village girls and housemaids are prosaic affairs to all but idyllic poets, and we learn noth- I do not think that I fully appreciated ing through them of the more romantic Harry Raymond in those days-not till aspects of the tender sentiment. I be- long afterwards, when, as I came to know lieved also that long years ago my father more of the world, I learned how rare it had passionately loved the young girl of is to find young men with brains who recseventeen whose portrait in faded cray- ognize a possible higher use for them ons hung on his bedroom wall, whom he than that of making money; believers in had proudly brought to his parsonage as social regeneration by other means than a bride one bright June morning, and the election of themselves to Parliament who had died in the first days of the fol- or to lucrative offices in the State; advolowing spring, leaving me a wailing, cates of social equality who are less conmotherless infant. And it was further cerned to throw ridicule on ranks and on record that Sir Thomas Raymond had titles above their own heads, than to show not been always greyhaired and gouty, courtesy to labourers and consideration and that Lady Raymond had not been to household servants; how rare to find a born with caps and spectacles; but that political reformer willing to reform himthey had both been young at some re- self; how rare to see perfect manliness mote historic period, and had had their and perfect tenderness combined. All day of billing and cooing. But none of this I have learned since, and, learning erodoxies. Even Miss Spence, the most correct old lady in the parish, called him a sweet young man, and would never hear a word said against him. In her desire to justify his irregularities, she even went so far as to construct the advanced theory that ways and opinions which might be as indispensable to the salvation of elderly maiden ladies as kerchiefs and pattens were to their decency and cleanliness, might not be more suitable to rising young barristers than those articles of clothing would be. it, I have thanked Harry Raymond in my heart for having shown me early that these things, though rare, are not impossible. The power and opportunity of comparison may be an important condition of thorough knowledge and discriminating appreciation; nevertheless we cannot think that the peasant, born and bred among the Oberland Alps, is insensible to the pure beauty of the Jungfrau, because he has not the advantage of seeing its snowy heights against a remembered background of factory chimneys and city smoke. Rather may we believe that, knowing Nature first in her fairer and nobler aspects, he acquires for her a love and reverence that save him from generalizing cynically from the blots and flaws he finds in her in after life. I was right in my surmise. As I lingered by the gate, the voices of the talkers reached me. Madeline's low vehement tones, and Harry's slow voice, with the odd drawl in it that seemed always out of character with the eager kindling of his eyes. I remember George Henderson once venturing to compare Harry's voice to the lagging gait of a footsore soldier, and Madeline indignantly retorting that it was more like one who voluntarily hangs back to help along a tired comrade. "I will tell you what I like in your philosophy," Madeline was saying, "you have no faith in the power of selfishness and laisser-faire to put the world straight, but you look for a solution of all these terrible problems that haunt our lives to the development of our better natures." 66 Certainly we do." "But so many do not," continued Madeline. "For instance, there is George Henderson, who is forever coming down to us from Saturday to Monday, and making our lives a burden to us with his political economy. The last time he was here he almost made me hate him." "Henderson is a good fellow," said Harry, but a little short-sighted and pragmatical. What did he say?" still with my hands folded and believe that ends will be attained without means, as you seem to think they will." Oh, but you are caricaturing us now?" "I know I am. I am in a fanatical mood, and I see things in a distorted way. Do you know, I'm afraid I am rather intolerant." "Because you are young and very much in earnest. I doubt whether, while one is very young, one is ever truly tolerant. One may be indifferent, but that is a good deal worse than being intolerant. Wider views come with experience of life; they bring wider sympathies, and sympathy alone can beget the tolerance that is good for anything.' "A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,'" suggested Madeline. "A line that is much truer when taken simply than in its cynical intention." "It is very hard not to be cynical," said Madeline gloomily. "Is it?" "Nevertheless, I expect you have come here now in the character of dragon," said Madeline. "Confess that this is a domiciliary visit, and that your object is to arrest the citoyenne Madeline Barnard on a charge of wilful neglect of parochial duty, to the great injury and detriment of the republic of Endle Down.” am here now with no more sinister intention than that of compelling you to take a walk with me in the woods." "I confess nothing of the kind. They told me at the cottage why you had staid away, upon which I magnanimously for"Oh, he preached the modern gospel. gave you, after having hated you all the If only every man would mind his own afternoon. I have drowned all unkindbusiness and leave other men to mindness in your Wedgwood tea-pot, and I theirs, the world would set itself right soon enough." And Madeline mimicked her cousin's dogmatical tone. They laughed, and she went on. "And now I will tell you what I don't like about you. You are so very sure of being right, and so provokingly patient. When I see so much that is sad and wrong all round me, I long to rush into action. I cannot sit "I shall like it of all things." "Are you going to carry off Madeline?" asked Lady Raymond, as she joined our group. "I thought she was going to dine with us." "Not to-night, thank you," said Made line. "I ought to be home by half-past eight, and you dine late." "Not so late but that you could get away by that time." much as I can manage at a time. Is there no other way?" "What do you say to fostering the incipient cynicism to which you pleaded guilty just now? By-the-bye, Janet, have you noticed how cynical Madeline has grown of late? I have been lecturing her on the subject. She is everlastingly sneering." I said I had not noticed it, but promto be on the look out; and then we wished Harry good-night and turned into the woods. "By running away as I swallowed my last mouthful of pudding. I should spoil my digestion, and be doing what seems to me rather animal and unsociable into the bargain. Besides, I should be sorry to lose the sunset in the woods, and I want Janet to tell me about the clothing-ised club debate I expect it was stormy." "Ah, she has been quite unhappy at leaving you to fight the old women all by yourself," said Lady Raymond, turning to me."But it was not her fault; she was captured by another old woman, and made to serve as secretary." Then I inquired about the sprained wrist; and after a few more words we said good-night and came away, Harry Raymond walking with us to the garden gate. "When Janet interrupted us just now," said Madeline, "I was telling you what I didn't like about you." "You were," returned Harry, "and I was very grateful to Janet for sparing me the enumeration of my shortcomings." "Very likely; but I am not going to let you off. And, first, I cannot stand being told that I am young and in earnest," said Madeline. "Ever since I can remember, my youth and earnestness have been cast in my teeth as the final cause of all my defects. How long will you give me to grow old and frivolous?" "I'm afraid it will take you a long time. You see, the rate at which one grows old depends on so many things." CHAPTER II. A mind might ponder its thought for ages and not gain so much self knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.- EMERSON. I THINK that most men and women who have ever attained to that sense of responsible individuality which alone deserves to be called life in the higher meaning of the word that consciousness of a ceaseless conflict between noble aspirations and ignoble impulses, which St. Paul knew and described in words of passionate eloquence, that have since been adopted by thousands of agonizing souls, a conflict in which we may well glory, when we bear in mind that through it we are partakers in the warfare waging through the ages between the abiding instincts of humanity and the wayward impulses of individual man, and of which, on the other hand, we need not be ashamed when we are reminded by a great living biologist that it has a common character with the strife that has place in the bosom of the late-breeding mother-bird, when the retreating voices of the summer lure her to a southward flight while yet the maternal instinct binds her to her young-I say that it is probable that all who have attained to this higher, if more painful, life, can, as they look back, point almost to the day and hour from which the more intense existence dates. To the experience of that hour many different names are given; "But I am not at all sure that his ar- some call it a conversion or a new birth, an guments would be good in your case. awakening, a call, a revelation, the name His position was that he had lived one chosen depending mainly on the manner life till he was fifteen, two lives from fif-in which the experience has come; while teen to twenty, and three from twenty to thirty. Accepting these statements as facts, a very simple process of multiplication and addition will show you that he had lived fifty-five years." "For instance?"" "The number of lives one lives has a good deal to do with it, I believe. I met a man the other day whom I had reason to think not more than thirty, and he gravely assured me that he was fifty-five. And he certainly made out his case." "Pray tell me how, and I will set to work at once to convince the world that I am fifty-five." Madeline smiled. "Very ingenious; but I am afraid, as you say, that method would not suit me. One life is quite as others, scorning all such phrases as unmeaning cant, talk about the development of the moral sense, or the ripening of the intellectual faculties. The name matters little, the experience is a vital fact; it is the experience of Abraham, called to come out from his father's home and dwell in a land that God shall show him; of Moses hearing the voice of Jehovah | depths of a human heart were revealed to calling to him from the burning bush: me, and in its throes I learnt what the of Saul of Tarsus when, journeying from life-struggle is. As soon as we were alone together, I began my tale of parish troubles. Madeline was in general an attentive as well as a sympathizing listener; she was not like so many of us, who allow our minds to wander far away while our friends are talking, and give ourselves no more trouble about them or their affairs, than goes to echoing their own last words when they pause, supplementing the echo with some phrase of easy vagueness and infinite applicability, and accompanying the whole with the ghost of an absent smile. Neither did she interrupt you in the middle of your story to relate kindred experiences of her own, nor thrust upon you irrelevant advice before she had learned the circumstances under which you needed counsel; but, all the while you were talking, you felt that her mind was patiently following your exposition, and you knew that when you ended, though she might not be able to help you at once to a solution of your difficulty, she would have something to say of less unpleasant sound than a triumphant I told you so, or gloomy commonplace about the unsatisfactory character of things in gen Jerusalem to Damascus, breathing out Harry Raymond wished us good-night threatenings and slaughter against the dis-at the gate, and we turned into the woods. ciples of Jesus of Nazareth-his soul ardent with religious zeal, and, in its ardour, luminoushe sees by the red glow of fanaticism the truth that the colder light of reason has failed to reveal, and recognises in the leader, in whom he has till now seen only a blasphemer of Jehovah, a reckless innovator, seeking to change the customs delivered by Moses the very incarnation of divine love and divine wrath; it is the experience of the peasant girl of Domrémy, who hears in the whispering branches of the trees angels calling her to save her country; of the midnight student communing with the mighty dead or mighty living in their written works, who strikes on a thought that is pregnant for him with the truth that shall ennoble a generation; it is the experience of myriads of young souls, who, in the earthquake shock of changing outward circumstances, have found all the principles and prejudices in which they have been reared, put suddenly to the test by an imperious call to action, or who, in some moment of strong emotion, have felt themselves borne, they know not how, to heights unreached before, as stormdriven waves rise above the old water-eral. If it be true that every one is born marks, tearing up trees and houses that have stood for generations, and making a new tradition for the dwellers on the coast. Whether the crisis be destined, like the call of Moses or the conversion of St. Paul, to become an epoch in the world's history, or whether it remain a matter of obscure personal experience, it is, to each to whom it comes, a solemn confirmation hour, in which the matured conscience is called upon to ratify The deep consecrating oath our sponsor Fate Made through our infant breath, when we were born The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, to some special calling-too often missed through that unhappy topsy-turviness of our social arrangements, for which we all have our explanation, more or less adequate and more or less originalthen I have no doubt that Madeline Barnard was intended to be a confessor; but whether she ought to have been born of the other sex, and bred in the faith and to the priesthood of Rome, and have so carried out the intention according to old form and rule, or whether she should have overcome the difficulties with which destiny had clogged her design, and set herself up as a female lay confessor, to Where we must dig and sow and reap with whom any weak sister, cumbered about brothers. many things, might come and pour out crets, or more diffident in offering advice? no sound but the hum of insects on its surface. As Madeline had said, it was like a temple-a holy of holies filled with a solemn presence. which we stood, and it seemed as if its water had been enriched by a sudden inBut on this night Madeline was not flux of crimson wine. It was very still in herself. Was it Harry Raymond's phil- the wood; the birds, the butterflies, and osophy or his mother's correspondence, the rabbits had gone to bed; there was household cares or Latin conjugations, no movement but the ripple of the water; that absorbed her? I did not know, and I must own, I did not much care. Does it ever occur to the penitent, as she kneels at the confessional and eases her own heart of its own load of sin and trouble, that in the dim recess, on the other side of the grating, there may be another human heart groaning beneath a burden, compared to which her own is as a feather, and yearning for a return of the relief and sympathy it gives in daily dole to others? No; on the other side of the grating we recognize only an ear to listen, a voice to counsel and absolve. But though I was indifferent to the cause of Madeline's abstraction, I could not be insensible of the fact. By that subtle instinct through which we know how our speech is affecting those near to us, I felt, as I went through the dreary details of the afternoon's meeting, that my words were falling on deaf ears, and, impatient of her unsympathetic attitude, I stopped short in my narrative and began to reproach her. "I know," she said, "I was not listening. It was unkind, but I could not help it." She paused and blushed confusedly. (Certainly Madeline was not like herself that night.) "Who could help it," she suddenly exclaimed, "in the midst of all this beauty? Oh Janet, look round; it is like a temple-a holy place in which it is sacrilege to talk." I looked round at her bidding and felt that she was right. Parish gossip was incongruous in such a scene. While we had lingered on the lawn, the afternoon had changed to evening. The shafts of yellow sunlight had merged into a broad golden glare, the golden glare had turned to orange, and the orange had deepened into crimson. Level lines of purple streaked the western horizon, soft rose tints diffusing themselves in ever-widening waves spread at last to the low eastern hill-line, and the whole sky became one glory. The sunset glow touched the brown stems of the firs, and they flashed into scarlet; it kissed the silver bark of the birches, till they blushed like tender rose-petals; it fell upon the carpet of moss and lichens, and among the dead and dying leaves, and revealed an unsuspected variety of glorious hues; it sank into the lake, on the brink of "Let us wait here and be still till it is over," she said, and we leant against a tree and waited. - that sick As we watched the glory of the sunset grow gradually more and more intense, until trees and sky and hills could take no deeper tints and there was nothing left for them but to sink silently into darkness through a succession of paling mauves and pinks, I felt that mysterious sadness creeping over me that great beauty often stirs within us yearning for we know not what, mingled with emotions that we cannot define because in their intensity all special character and meaning are for the moment swallowed up and lost, and we seem as an instrument on which some mighty hand is playing an unknown strain, rousing all the strings at once into a harmony so vast that to unskilled ears the effect is one of painful discord. I had sometimes wondered whether this feeling was peculiar to myself whether it indicated the existence in me of some jarring element condemning me to be for ever out of harmony with nature in her grander moods a kind of æsthetic insanity, shutting me out from all tender and beautiful sympathies. This doubt came over me to-night so strongly that I spoke of it to Madeline. "I know the feeling," she said; "it "But not to-night?" I asked. "What do you feel to-night?" "To-night? Oh, I cannot say what I feel to-night. The world seems brimming over with love and beauty, and my heart feels large enough to receive it all. Oh, Janet, I am so happy!" · |