the pen, and wrote on the blank fly-leaf, of Mrs. Black's pathetic wish "that Mr. in large, bold characters, "From Peter Sandison to his mother." Then he turned the book, and held it towards the invalid. She could easily read what was written there, and when she had done so she raised her pitiful eyes, and they met his. No word could pass between them now. But she fumbled with her numb hands, and grasped his, and drew it upon her pillow, and kissed it once, twice. Peter Sandison bent down and kissed her cheek. There was a moisture on it. That was all. He summoned Kirsty to resume her watch. And he went away, only waving back his hand before he closed the door. "Thank God!" he said to himself. "And who knows but this might have come to pass long ago, if I had been wiser? Thank God that he will reveal our sins to us, though he will also blot them out! The truth at any cost! Love can strike root in nothing else." CHAPTER XVIII. TWO ON THE CLIFFS. LATE in the following summer, Tom Ollison paid another visit to Clegga. He had been longing very much to do so, but the suggestion finally came from Mr. Sandison. (Had he noticed how much more often those Kirkwall letters had arrived since Tom's last visit to the north?) "I wish you would bring your father back to spend the winter with us, Tom," he said; "don't you think you could persuade him? You know there are plenty of spare rooms now. I never thought how they were wasted, while they were shut up, but now it seems a terrible waste to think of them open and empty." Mr. Sandison did not go very much into those deserted rooms. His life had grown into his parlor and his shop. Still he went into them, determined to lay forever the ghost of the old shrinking. With his own hands he finished hanging the engraving, which he had laid down in his moment of despair nearly a quarter of a century before. With his own hands he threw away the ashen plants which had withered in loneliness, and planted fresh ones whose sweet smell stole through the quiet rooms. He chose none but those with a sweet smell. Mrs. Black sent him roots from Stockley. He even broke his old habits so far as to accompany Tom on a Saturday visit to the mill perhaps in duced to do so by the constant repetitions | Ollison's great friend should for once see the old place as it always had been since nobody knew what changes might be coming." For the old squire of Stock. ley was at last gathered to his fathers, and the distant heir, the Branders' friend, Captain Carson, reigned in his stead. And so Tom went off to the far north. But he had first written to his father to ask whether he should not stop at Kirkwall and try to induce Mrs. Sinclair and Olive to accompany him to Shetland and be their guests at Clegga, and take an other look at the old places and the old faces which once they had known so well. Did Tom know to what he was steering? In after days he never could be quite sure at what precise point a thought turned into a hope. He sent his invitation beforehand to Mrs. Sinclair and her daughter, and they had many debates over it in the wide old attics which had grown a dear home to them. They had prospered so far that they had ventured to take another room, and Olive had grown used to her unremitting toil, and so accustomed to her constant cares and economies, that she could find interest and excitement in the fluctuations of her earnings. There had been no further encroachment on the little fund realized by her father's life insurance, and Olive was even accumulating tiny savings of her own, made on the sound and sure plan of settling her maximum expenditure by her minimum earnings. Very tiny savings indeed they were, savings which would little avail against disaster if it fairly came, but which might go very far to avert disaster. They would not have supported her in a long illness, but wisely laid out, from time to time, they might do much to preserve health. Olive began to think, hopefully, that however long she might live, and however little she might be able to save, she might continue so useful to the last that she might eat the bread of independence to the end. Only she must be quite sure to outlive her dear mother. Every night and morning she offered that one prayer. Everything else she could cover with the great petition, "Thy will be done," but she could not quite give up this special plea. "And that is only because God's will is not done!" she said to herself. "For if it was, I could surely feel that I might safely leave dear mother to her only son, not only to his support, but to the tenderness of his love and the warmth of his hearth.” When Tom Ollison's invitation came, Olive went to her little store and counted it over, and made many minute calculations. She made up her mind that she and her mother could dare to afford this treat. Under no other circumstances could they get so much pleasure at so low a price. This would cost nothing but their fares in the boat they would need to make no preparations to enjoy the bountiful hospitality of Clegga. Not that she could bear to go quite empty-handed among the poor old wives and fatherless children who had once been her parent's pensioners; but if she sat up through only one night, her busy fingers would manufacture sundry little gifts for such without cost of money or of working hours. Yes, they would go! Mrs. Sinclair heard her daughter's determination a little wistfully. She had hoped for an invitation to visit her son after his marriage, and she had made up her mind that if one came, why even that sacred "insurance money" must be taken that it might be accepted. It would not be robbing Olive; no, no, once Robert saw his mother, he would be sure to make it up to her; it was not the money that he would grudge, it was only that he didn't quite realize how things were ! her recognition of points and places which stirred old memories. They had a happy time in dear old Clegga. And in the long, quiet walks which Tom and Olive took together along the roads which waved up and down the low, green hills looking down on the wide blue sea, they opened their hearts and spoke to each other, as hitherto each had only silently thought. And if, as that pleasant sojourn drew to a close, there came long silences in those walks, it was not because they had nothing more to say, but because there was so much to say, which they felt they could trust to each other's thoughts, almost better than to any words. a loneliness haunted by memories of deprivation and wrong; a very different loneliness from that of his own father, with his wholesome memories, his large local influence, and the cheerful coming to and fro of his prosperous married children. Tom did not feel as if the seed of one's own happiness must be planted in the pain of others, and watered by their tears. But Tom had the masculine right of action and enterprise. Where Olive must have silently taken up what she felt to be her duty, he could seek to elicit her opinion on such matters, and could lead her on from generalities to their own particular cases. She was right that it was not the money he grudged in this matter. He would have paid the cost of the journey many times over, so long as she did not take it. (On the same principle or rather no-principle he would probably have liberally aided any impecunious relatives who had known how to thrust their poverty upon him at inconvenient times.) Poor little lady, with her worn black dress, and the patient pain in her beautiful eyes, what a discord her appearance would have struck in his garish, rapid life! "Mother is happiest where she is," he said to himself. And there was not only heartlessness in And so it came to pass that the first the reflection, it ended in a sigh. He felt breathings of the great love of life bethere was something about him and his tween those two, were mingled with tenwife and his home which would trouble der thoughts of others and careful conMrs. Sinclair. "Mother would not un-sideration concerning them. It came to derstand," he said, and sighed again. them as the cornerstone placed solemnly on the edifice of affection and duty as the missile of a battering-ram rudely hurled against it. They could measure what it must be, by knowing how much these were, and by finding this was supreme above them. So once more the two women went down to the dock and met Tom, and this time they went on board with him. The young, strong man and the high-spirited maiden were very tender and watchful over the little mother. They said aside that this going back would try her a little, and they wondered, in their inexperience, to notice that while her tears would start fast and faster, her smiles also grew brighter, and she became quite eager in not And Mrs. Sinclair, with the keen vision of one who had been through these experiences, foresaw what was coming, and so sitting alone on the bench outside Clegga, overlooking the sunny bay, she strove to brace her heart for this sacrifice, and to | And then they fell to still homelier dis win strength to say that if it was to be well with her child, then it should be weli with her. Yet at the thought of the vanishing of the days of quiet love and labor in which her wrung heart had found all the rest it could ever find in this world, she could scarcely repress the last cry of patient anguish, "How long, O Lord, how long!" cussions of ways and means, which even a listening angel might have almost envied, because of the divine alchemy with which their human hands could transmute filthy lucre into pure love. That night Tom Ollison told Mrs. Sinclair that he would never take her daughter from her, but that Olive had well nigh promised in her mother's name that he should be accepted by her as a son. And Mrs. Sinclair put her hands on his shoulders and drew down his face and kissed him with the fond, motherly kiss which he had not known for years. And she longed to ask him and Olive to forgive her for the doubt and pain she had felt that afternoon, but she kept silence because she thought it would hurt them even to hear of it. And then she went away and wept a little, because she had never seen her Robert's wife, and because she could not help believing that her own son would fain be as kind and good as Tom, but had somehow failed to seem so. EPILOGUE. AFTER all, Tom Ollison and Olive Sinclair were married sooner than they had dared to hope on that summer day when they had stood hand in hand among the wild flowers on the road over the cliffs. Life's path broadened before their feet, as it ever does before the true heart and the resolute will. And while Mrs. Sinclair sat thus, Tom and Olive strolled slowly down the road where she and Robert had travelled on that wild December morning when our story commenced, but which was now rich with wild flowers, bright in the summer sunshine. And Tom said to Olive that he would never have dared to ask her to love him, if he had meant such love to disturb the sacred duties already in her life that he thought the love of life should mean two gladly bearing together the double duty that had been divided between them. And then they said to each other that they could not at once very clearly see how their future was to work itself out, but that surely their love would be strong enough to grapple with all details, and not a sickly sentiment on which no cross wind must blow, lest it slay it altogether. And they said, too, that their duty was owed to good people, who were not likely now to prove themselves inconsiderate and selfish for the first time in their lives; though of course they must expect to find them human, And now they live in the old house in with all the little human moods and weak- Penman Row, and Olive has brightened nesses, which, after all, seem but a cem- the shady rooms with the pretty tastes ent to bind together human virtues. And and fancies which love and happiness have Tom said to Olive that he thought those developed in her, as the warmth of spring must have a very poor idea of all that brings out the crocuses and snowdrops. is involved in twain being made one, who As Tom sits at the head of the table in feel that such unity is endangered if not the dining-room (for Mr. Sandison has nursed in solitude; and that he thought said that he is only too delighted to abdithere is little fear of any household, how-cate the post of carver and sit aside at ever constituted, not falling in the main leisure to criticise his successor), Tom into right relations around any married wonders if it can be the same dreary room pair who love, honor, and respect each into which he was ushered on his first other. And then Olive said softly, that arrival in London, for everything seems Isaiah had made it one of the signs of different except the quaint mirrors and national prosperity that "old men and old the comfortable cat, who has exchanged women should dwell in the streets of Je the old coat on which he then lay for a rusalem, and every man with his staff in soft red cushion. The upper rooms are his hand for very age." Then they had Olive's more especial domain; but more come nearer to particulars, and Tom said and more often, as she sits in the twilight that he feared Mrs. Sinclair might shrink playing on the piano and crooning old from life in London, and Olive answered songs, Peter Sandison steals up-stairs and that she was sure her mother would be sits listening in the shadows. Mrs. Sinhappy anywhere with those she loved. clair found the gloom and excitement of And then they said how, in London, she London life rather too much for her at would not be far from Stockley, and might, first, and made long visits to her old perhaps, have a double home if she wished. | friends the Blacks at Stockley; but as time passed on she seemed able to store up the cheerfulness and calm she gathered there, and to bring them back with her, along with the big nosegays and stuffed hampers which Mrs. Black never failed to send. By her own choice her special apartment was the wide, low attic which had formerly been Tom's room; and her son-in-law gave her an exquisite surprise by bringing her familiar household gods from the far north to furnish it. Better goods" could have been bought near at hand for less than the cost of the transit of the old chests and clumsy chairs, but he wanted to give her "a gift," and she seemed already to live so wholly in the spirit, that one need give her naught but what also had its value wholly in the spirit, consecrated by tender emotion, by memory, and by hope. hold ways and holy aspirations, are what do make life worth living, and that these are in the forfeit when we will “get on " "at any cost." twain represent its active life and its material progress, its very existence is rooted in the martyred life of him who, taking nothing for his own, bore all and forgave all, and in the loving heart of her who is still waiting for the return of that prodigal son of modern life, who has mistaken gold for food, success for satisfaction, and worldly power for the peace which passeth understanding. Tom and Olive know well that the son whom she sees so seldom is in the mother's heart when she goes away and sits for hours in the quiet attic, where no sound penetrates save Kirsty Mail's gentle footfall as she goes to and fro in the chamber where Grace Allan still lies, cut off from speech and hearing, but with a plead ing look softening her hard eyes, and a habit of kindly clasping bending her stiff fingers. Tom and Olive are so happy together that they do not resent the shadows of sin and sorrow amid which they carry sunshine; and their home is not less sacred to them because they often say to each other that it seems to be a miniature It was hard to find the point of view copy of the workings of God's providence from which Robert and Etta Brander re-in its widest ranges, and that while they garded the new arrangements in Penman Row. They came there once or twice: but the West End of London is very far away from its other quarters, and a lady who, like Etta, never travels except in her own brougham, and is very fearful of its panels being scratched, cannot venture often into the City. Besides, Etta's constitution is steadily growing less adapted to London, except during the few weeks of "the season.' She is always trying the climate of some new watering-place, or the effects of some fashionable " cure for those vague maladies which occupy those who have nothing else to do. Robert has his fine house very much to him. self, and though it is not very far from Ormolu Square, he does not see much of his wife's parents, he and Mr. Brander having separated their business interests. The younger man considered that the elder was getting "slow" and subsiding into grooves, where he himself would never have made the fortune he had made, and with which, therefore, Robert was not going to be content. The wheel of life goes fast with Robert Sinclair, and his face has a wan, hunted look, not like those who live by hardest daily labor, but more like that of the needy adventurers who hang on the very outskirts of honesty. He is rich and likely to be richer, though none know so well as himself what sharp corners he still turns sometimes, and how near ruin may be, after all. Sometimes he asks querulously, if life is worth the living. But it has never yet dawned on him that perhaps he has made a bad bargain, and that love, and friendship, and duty, high thoughts, and pleasant house From Temple Bar. THE HOME LIFE OF A COURT LADY. WE generally think of "the beautiful Molly Lepell" as one of that gay group of maids of honor, more merry than wise, so prominent in the memoirs of their time, who attended Caroline of Anspach when the "young court" of the Prince and Princess of Wales drew all the wits and beauties from the "old court" of George I. The town career of these young women was one unbroken round of gaiety. A drawing-room at Leicester House every morning, an evening assembly there twice a week; balls, masquerades, ridottos,* operas, and plays; growing magnificence in dress, growing extravagance in play, an increasing value set on showy accomplishments and a witty tongue, combined to make the " young court brilliant, at "A most entertaining sort of assembly," says Mrs. Delany;" you are at liberty to wander about as much as you please, and there is dancing, tea, coffee, chocolate, and all sorts of sweetmeats." (Autobiography and Correspondence, vol. i., p. 253.) knowledged charms. But not one of rumor's thousand tongues breathed a whisper against her fair fame, or associated her with the intrigues which appear then to have been as much a matter of course to a fine lady as her toilet. Though in the court, she was not of it, yet all the courtiers, male and female, were her friends, and she carried into retirement a strong interest in her old companions, whose follies neither involved nor alienated her. Gay might well call her "youth's young to eat Westphalia ham in a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a redest daughter sweet Lepell," for she bemark on the forehead from an uneasy hat. came a maid of honor at fourteen! Yet to simper an hour and catch cold in the Prin- even this precocious preferment was less cess's apartment; from thence to dinner "with incongruous than that which, according to what appetite they may,"- and after that till the Duchess of Marlborough, made her midnight walk, work, or think which they" a cornet in her father's regiment as soon please.* No wonder he exclaims, his sympathy rising even to solemnity, "The life of a maid of honor is of all things the most miserable!" But not without alleviations! The wits and beaux of the day followed them to their riverside retreats, and fluttered round them in open adoration. Swift growled out compliments veiled in roughly playful abuse; Pope and Gay sang their praises in more polished verse; Lord Chesterfield the courtly, Lord Peterborough the romantic, "Hervey, fair of face" and bitter of tongue, worshipped at their shrine. The flattery which had only been "polite" in town, grew tender in the country. "Mrs. Lepell walked with me three or four hours by the moonlight," says Pope, "and we met no creature of any quality but the king giving audience to the vicechancellor all alone under the garden wall." Yet with all the high-flown lovemaking to which they were subjected, the maids of honor had hearty animal spirits, rode on the garden rollers, shook the windows (and the nerves) of solitary students at midnight, jumped down-stairs singing "Over the hills and far away," and rejoiced in practical jokes like a set of boisterous schoolgirls. Mary, daughter of Brigadier-General Lepell, was the favorite of all the giddy party. Others might be as beautiful, but she had in perfection that art of pleasing which disarms envy itself. Others might be as witty, but their wit was poisoned by coarseness. When others were as much admired they paid the penalty of detraction, which, in that age of unbridled license and scandal, nearly always attended ac Carruthers' Life of Pope, p. 135. as she was born." Her birthplace was Sark, of which island the Lepells were called "lords-proprietors," and she may have owed to a certain extent the soft and spirituelle vivacity of her manners, and her love for France and all things French, to the force of early association. Pope, her devoted admirer, was proud of wearing her chains; he tells Broome, in March, 1720: "I am now constantly engaged at home in attending a lady I have a true friendship for, who is here at Twickenham in hopes of a recovery by our air from a dangerous illness - Mrs. Lepell."* Pope, no doubt, like all the rest of the world, would have been "surprised to hear" that his lively invalid was then married to one of the most noticeable figures of even that dazzling and depraved time-John Hervey, second son of the first Earl of Bristol. Hervey's personal distinction and grace, his polished manners and cultivated mind, united so strangely to ghastly disease, a cold heart, a calculating brain, and a complete negation of religion and morality, have been immortalized in the withering couplet which concludes Pope's picture of "Sporus:" Beauty that shocks you, parts that none can trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. Yet Hervey had the power of attracting and retaining regard; for against the pitiless malignity of such foes as Pulteney and Pope, and the doubtful support of such allies as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, we may set, for so much as it was worth, the unwavering attachment of Elwin's Pope, Letters, vol. iii., p. 45. |