"With all my heart," answered Mrs. Armstrong.

"You forget," said the colonel, "that Adela is not well enough to go out yet."

Adela looked as if she thought that was a mistake, and glanced towards the doctor. I think Percy caught sight of the glance as it pa.s.sed him.

"If I may be allowed to give a professional opinion," said Harry, "I think she could go without the smallest danger, if she were well wrapped up."

"You can have the carriage, of course, my love," said her father, "if you would like to go."

"I should very much like to go," said Adela.

And so it was settled to the evident contentment of all except the mother and son, who, I suppose, felt that Adela was slipping through their fingers, in this strengthening of adverse influences. I was sure myself, that nothing could be better for her, in either view of the case. Harry did not stay behind to ask her any questions this evening, but left with the rest.

The next day, the bright frosty weather still continuing, I took Adela out for a walk.

"You are much better, I think, my dear," I said.

"Very much," she answered. "I think Mr. Armstrong's prescription is doing me a great deal of good. It seems like magic. I sleep very well indeed now. And somehow life seems a much more possible thing than it looked a week or two ago. And the whole world appears more like the work of G.o.d."

"I am very glad, my dear. If all your new curate tries to teach us be true, the world need not look very dreary to any of us."

"But do you believe it all, uncle?"

"Yes I do, my dear. I believe that the grand n.o.ble way of thinking of G.o.d and his will must be the true way, though it never can be grand or n.o.ble enough; and that belief in beauty and truth, notwithstanding so many things that are neither beautiful nor true, is essential to a right understanding of the world. Whatever is not good and beautiful, is doomed by the very death that is in it; and when we find such things in ourselves or in other people, we may take comfort that these must be destroyed one day, even if it be by that form of divine love which appears as a consuming fire."

"But that is very dreadful too, is it not, uncle?"

"Yes, me dear. But there is a refuge from it; and then the fear proves a friend."

"What refuge?"

"G.o.d himself. If you go close up to him, his spirit will become your spirit, and you will need no fire then. You will find that that which is fire to them that are afar off, is a mighty graciousness to them that are nigh. They are both the same thing."

Adela made me no answer. Perhaps I tried to give her more than she was ready to receive. Perhaps she needed more leading, before she would be able to walk in that road. If so, then Providence was leading her; and I need not seek to hasten a divine process.

But at least she enjoyed her walk that bright winter day, and came home without being wearied, or the cold getting any victory over her.

As we pa.s.sed some cottages on our way home, Adela said--

"There is a poor woman who lives in one of these cottages, who used to be a servant of ours. She is in bad health, and I dare say is not very well off in this frost, for her husband is only a labourer. I should like to go and see her."

"With all my heart, my dear," I answered.

"This is the house," said Adela; and she lifted the latch and went in gently, I following.

No one had heard our entrance, and when Adela knocked at the inner door, there was no reply. Whereupon she opened the door, and then we saw the woman seated on one side of the fire, and the man on the other side with his pipe in his mouth; while between them sat the curate with his hands in his pockets, and his pipe likewise in his mouth. But they were blowing but a small cloud between them, and were evidently very deep in an earnest conversation.

I overheard a part of what the cottager was saying, and could not help listening to the rest.

"And the man was telling them, sir, that G.o.d had picked out so many men, women, and children, to go right away to glory, and left the rest to be d.a.m.ned for ever and ever in h.e.l.l. And I up and spoke to him; and 'sir,'

says I, 'if I was tould as how I was to pick out so many out o' my childeren, and take 'em with me to a fine house, and leave the rest to be burnt up i' the old one, which o' them would I choose?' 'How can I tell?' says he. 'No doubt,' says I; 'they aint your sons and darters.

But I can. I wouldn't move a foot, sir, but I'd take my chance wi' the poor things. And, sir,' says I, 'we're all G.o.d's childeren; and which o'

us is he to choose, and which is he to leave out? I don't believe he'd know a bit better how to choose one and leave another than I should, sir--that is, his heart wouldn't let him lose e'er a one o' us, or he'd be miserable for ever, as I should be, if I left one o' mine i' the fire.'"

Here Adela had the good sense to close the door again, yet more softly than she had opened it; and we retired.

"That's the right sort of man," said I, "to get a hold of the poor. He understands them, being himself as poor in spirit as they are in pocket--or, indeed, I might have said, as he is in pocket himself. But depend upon it he comes out both ways poorer than he went in."

"It should not be required of a curate to give money," said Adela.

"Do you grudge him the blessedness of giving, Adela?"

"Oh, no. I only think it is too hard on him."

"It is as necessary for a poor man to give away, as for a rich man. Many poor men are more devoted worshippers of Mammon than some rich men."

And then I took her home.

CHAPTER IV.

THE EVENING AT THE CURATE'S.

As I led Adela, well wrapped in furs, down the steps to put her into the carriage, I felt by the wind, and saw by the sky, that a snowstorm was at hand. This set my heart beating with delight, for after all I am only what my friends call me--an old boy; and so I am still very fond of snow and wind. Of course this pleasure is often modified by the recollection that it is to most people no pleasure, and to some a source of great suffering. But then I recover myself by thinking, that I did not send for the snow, and that my enjoyment of it will neither increase their pains nor lessen my sympathies. And so I enjoy it again with all my heart. It is partly the sense of being lapt in a mysterious fluctuating depth of exquisite shapes of evanescent matter, falling like a cataract from an unknown airy gulf, where they grow into being and form out of the invisible--well-named by the prophet Job--for a prophet he was in the truest sense, all-seated in his ashes and armed with his potsherd--the womb of the snow; partly the sense of motion and the goings of the wind through the etherial ma.s.s; partly the delight that always comes from contest with nature, a contest in which no vile pa.s.sions are aroused, and no weak enemy goes helpless to the ground. I presume that in a right condition of our nervous nature, instead of our being, as some would tell us, less exposed to the influences of nature, we should in fact be altogether open to them. Our nerves would be a thorough-fare for Nature in all and each of her moods and feelings, stormy or peaceful, sunshiny or sad. The true refuge from the slavery to which this would expose us, the subjection of man to circ.u.mstance, is to be found, not in the deadening of the nervous const.i.tution, or in a struggle with the influences themselves, but in the strengthening of the moral and refining of the spiritual nature; so that, as the storms rave through the vault of heaven without breaking its strong arches with their winds, or staining its etherial blue with their rain-clouds, the soul of man should keep clear and steady and great, holding within it its own feelings and even pa.s.sions, knowing that, let them moan or rave as they will, they cannot touch the nearest verge of the empyrean dome, in whose region they have their birth and being.

For me, I felt myself now, just an expectant human snow-storm; and as I sat on the box by the coachman, I rejoiced to greet the first flake, which alighted on the tip of my nose even before we had cleared our own grounds. Before we had got _up street_, the wind had risen, and the snow thickened, till the horses seemed inclined to turn their tails to the hill and the storm together, for the storm came down the hill in their faces. It was soon impossible to see one's hand before one's eyes; and the carriage lamps served only to reveal a chaotic fury of snow-flakes, crossing each other's path at all angles, in the eddies of the wind amongst the houses. The coachman had to keep encouraging his horses to get them to face it at all. The ground was very slippery; and so fast fell the snow, that it had actually begun to ball in the horses'

feet before we reached our destination. When we were all safe in Mrs.

Armstrong's drawing-room, we sat for a while listening to the wind roaring in the chimney, before any of us spoke. And then I did not join in the conversation, but pleased myself with looking at the room; for next to human faces, I delight in human abodes, which will always, more or less, according to the amount of choice vouchsafed in the occupancy, be like the creatures who dwell in them. Even the soldier-crab must have some likeness to the snail of whose house he takes possession, else he could not live in it at all.

The first thing to be done by one who would read a room is, to clear it as soon as possible of the air of the marvellous, the air of the storybook, which pervades every place at the first sight of it. But I am not now going to write a treatise upon this art, for which I have not time to invent a name; but only to give as much of a description of this room as will enable my readers to feel quite at home with us in it, during our evening there. It was a large low room, with two beams across the ceiling at unequal distances. There was only a drugget on the floor, and the window curtains were scanty. But there was a glorious fire on the hearth, and the tea-board was filled with splendid china, as old as the potteries. The chairs, I believe, had been brought from old Mr.

Armstrong's lumber-room, and so they all looked as if they could tell stories themselves. At all events they were just the proper chairs to tell stories in, and I could not help regretting that we were not to have any to-night. The rest of the company had arrived before us. A warm corner in an old-fashioned sofa had been prepared for Adela, and as soon as she was settled in it, our hostess proceeded to pour out the tea with a simplicity and grace which showed that she had been just as much a lady when carrying parcels for the dressmaker, and would have been a lady if she had been a housemaid. Such a women are rare in every circle, the best of every kind being rare. It is very disappointing to the imaginative youth when, coming up to London and going into society, he finds that so few of the men and women he meets, come within the charmed circle of his ideal refinement.

I said to myself: "I am sure she could write a story if she would. I must have a try for one from her."

When tea was over, she looked at her husband, and then went to the piano, and sang the following ballad:

"'Traveller, what lies over the hill?

Traveller, tell to me: I am only a child--from the window-sill Over I cannot see.'

"'Child, there's a valley over there, Pretty and woody and shy; And a little brook that says--'take care, Or I'll drown you by and by.'

"'And what comes next?' 'A little town; And a towering hill again; More hills and valleys, up and down, And a river now and then.'

"'And what comes next?' 'A lonely moor, Without a beaten way; And grey clouds sailing slow, before A wind that will not stay.'

"'And then?' 'Dark rocks and yellow sand, And a moaning sea beside.'