"Because I like serving the customers. They were my father's customers; and I have learned so much from having to wait on them!"

"Well, now," said Hesper, with a rush for the goal, "if you will come to me, I will make you comfortable; and you shall do just as much or as little as you please."

"What will your maid think?" suggested Mary. "If I am to do what I please, she will soon find me trespa.s.sing on her domain."

"I never trouble myself about what my servants think," said Hesper.

"But it might hurt her, you know--to be paid to do a thing and then not allowed to do it."

"She may take herself away, then. I had not thought of parting with her, but I should not be at all sorry if she went. She would be no loss to me."

"Why should you keep her, then?"

"Because one is just as good--and as bad as another. She knows my ways, and I prefer not having to break in a new one. It is a bore to have to say how you like everything done."

"But you are speaking now as if you meant it," said Mary, waking up to the fact that Hesper's tone was of business, and she no longer seemed half playing with the proposal. "_Do_ you mean you want me to come and live with you?"

"Indeed, I do," answered Hesper, emphatically. "You shall have a room close to my bedroom, and there you shall do as you like all day long; and, when I want you, I dare say you will come."

"Fast enough," said Mary, cheerily, as if all was settled. In contrast with her present surroundings, the prospect was more than attractive.

"--But would you let me have my piano?" she asked, with sudden apprehension.

"You shall have my grand piano always when I am out, which will be every night in the season, I dare say. That will give you plenty of practice; and you will be able to have the best of lessons. And think of the concerts and oratorios you will go to!"

As she spoke, the carriage drew up at the door of the shop, and Mary took her leave. Hesper accepted her acknowledgments in the proper style of a benefactress, and returned her good-by kindly. But not yet did she shake hands with her.

Some of my readers may wonder that Mary should for a moment dream of giving up what they would call her independence; for was she not on her own ground in the shop of which she was a proprietor? and was the change proposed, by whatever name it might be called, anything other than _service_? But they are outside it, and Mary was in it, and knew how little such an independence was worth the name. Almost everything about the shop had altered in its aspect to her. The very air she breathed in it seemed slavish. Nor was the change in her. The whole thing was growing more and more sordid, for now--save for her part--the one spirit ruled it entirely.

The work had therefore more or less grown a drudgery to her. The spirit of gain was in full blast, and whoever did not trim his sails to it was in danger of finding it rough weather. No longer could she, without offense, and consequent disturbance of spirit, arrange her attendance as she pleased, or have the same time for reading as before. She could encounter black looks, but she could not well live with them; and how was she to continue the servant of such ends as were now exclusively acknowledged in the place? The proposal of Mrs. Redmain stood in advantageous contrast to this treadmill-work. In her house she would be called only to the ministrations of love, and would have plenty of time for books and music, with a thousand means of growth unapproachable in Testbridge. All the slavery lay in the shop, all the freedom in the personal service. But she strove hard to suppress anxiety, for she saw that, of all poverty-stricken contradictions, a Christian with little faith is the worst.

The chief attraction to her, however, was simply Hesper herself. She had fallen in love with her--I hardly know how otherwise to describe the current with which her being set toward her. Few hearts are capable of loving as she loved. It was not merely that she saw in Hesper a grand creature, and lovely to look upon, or that one so much her superior in position showed such a liking for herself; she saw in her one she could help, one at least who sorely needed help, for she seemed to know nothing of what made life worth having--one who had done, and must yet be capable of doing, things degrading to the humanity of womanhood. Without the hope of helping in the highest sense, Mary could not have taken up her abode in such a house as Mrs. Redmain's. No outward service of any kind, even to the sick, was to her service enough to _choose_; were it laid upon her, she would hasten to it; for necessity is the push, gentle or strong, as the man is more or less obedient, by which G.o.d sends him into the path he would have him take.

But to help to the birth of a beautiful Psyche, enveloped all in the gummy cerecloths of its chrysalis, not yet aware, even, that it must get out of them, and spread great wings to the sunny wind of G.o.d--that was a thing for which the holiest of saints might well take a servant's place--the thing for which the Lord of life had done it before him. To help out such a lovely sister--how Hesper would have drawn herself up at the word! it is mine, not Mary's--as she would be when no longer holden of death, but her real self, the self G.o.d meant her to be when he began making her, would indeed be a thing worth having lived for!

Between the ordinarily benevolent woman and Mary Marston, there was about as great a difference as between the fashionable church-goer and Catherine of Siena. She would be Hesper's servant that she might gain Hesper. I would not have her therefore wondered at as a marvel of humility. She was simply a young woman who believed that the man called Jesus Christ is a real person, such as those represent him who profess to have known him; and she therefore believed the man himself--believed that, when he said a thing, he entirely meant it, knowing it to be true; believed, therefore, that she had no choice but do as he told her. That man was the servant of all; therefore, to regard any honest service as degrading would be, she saw, to deny Christ, to call the life of creation's hero a disgrace. Nor was he the first servant; he did not of himself choose his life; the Father gave it him to live--sent him to be a servant, because he, the Father, is the first and greatest servant of all. He gives it to one to serve as the rich can, to another as the poor must. The only disgrace, whether of the counting-house, the shop, or the family, is to think the service degrading. If it be such, why not sit down and starve rather than do it? No man has a right to disgrace himself. Starve, I say; the world will lose nothing in you, for you are its disgrace, who count service degrading. You are much too grand people for what your Maker requires of you, and does himself, and yet you do it after a fashion, because you like to eat and go warm. You would take rank in the kingdom of h.e.l.l, not the kingdom of heaven. But obedient love, learned by the meanest Abigail, will make of her an angel of ministration, such a one as he who came to Peter in the prison, at whose touch the fetters fell from the limbs of the apostle.

"What forced, overdriven, Utopian stuff! A kingdom always coming, and never come! I hold by what _is._ This solid, plowable earth will serve my turn. My business is what I can find in the oyster."

I hear you, friend. Your answer will come whence you do not look for it. For some, their only answer will be the coming of that which they deny; and the _Presence_ will be a very different thing to those who desire it and those who do not. In the mean time, if we are not yet able to serve like G.o.d from pure love, let us do it because it is his way; so shall we come to do it from pure love also.

The very next morning, as she called it--that is, at four o'clock in the afternoon--Hesper again entered the shop, and, to the surprise and annoyance of the master of it, was taken by Mary through the counter and into the house. "What a false impression," thought the great man, "will it give of the way _we_ live, to see the Marstons' shabby parlor in a warehouse!" But he would have been more astonished and more annoyed still, had the deafening ma.s.ses of soft goods that filled the house permitted him to hear through them what pa.s.sed between the two.

Before they came down, Mary had accepted a position in Mrs. Redmain's house, if that may be called a position which was so undefined; and Hesper had promised that she would not mention the matter. For Mary judged Mr. Turnbull would be too glad to get rid of her to mind how brief the notice she gave him, and she would rather not undergo the remarks that were sure to be made in contempt of her scheme. She counted it only fair, however, to let him know that she intended giving up her place behind the counter, hinting that, as she meant to leave when it suited her without further warning, it would be well to look out at once for one to take her place.

As to her money in the business, she scarcely thought of it, and said nothing about it, believing it as safe as in the bank. It was in the power of a dishonest man who prided himself on his honesty--the worst kind of rogue in the creation; but she had not yet learned to think of him as a dishonest man--only as a greedy one--and the money had been there ever since she had heard of money. Mr. Turnbull was so astonished by her communication that, not seeing at once how the change was likely to affect him, he held his peace--with the cunning pretense that his silence arose from anger. His first feeling was of pleasure, but the man of business must take care how he shows himself pleased. On reflection, he continued pleased; for, as they did not seem likely to succeed in securing Mary in the way they had wished, the next best thing certainly would be to get rid of her. Perhaps, indeed, it was the very best thing; for it would be easy to get George a wife more suitable to the position of his family than a little canting dissenter, and her money would be in their hands all the same; while, once clear of her haunting cat-eyes, ready to pounce upon whatever her soft-headed father had taught her was wicked, he could do twice the business. But, while he continued pleased, he continued careful not to show his satisfaction, for she would then go smelling about for the cause!

During three whole days, therefore, he never spoke to her. On the fourth, he spoke as if nothing had ever been amiss between them, and showed some interest in her further intentions. But Mary, in the straightforward manner peculiar to herself, told him she preferred not speaking of them at present; whereupon the cunning man concluded that she wanted a place in another shop, and was on the outlook--prepared to leave the moment one should turn up.

She asked him one day whether he had yet found a person to take her place.

"Time enough for that," he answered. "You're not gone yet."

"As you please, Mr. Turnbull," said Mary. "It was merely that I should be sorry to leave you without sufficient help in the shop."

"And _I_ should be sorry," rejoined Turnbull, "that Miss Marston should fancy herself indispensable to the business she turned her back upon."

From that moment, the restraint he had for the last week or two laid upon himself thus broken through, he never spoke to her except with such rudeness that she no longer ventured to address him even on shop-business; and all the people in the place, George included, following the example so plainly set them, she felt, when, at last, in the month of November, a letter from Hesper heralded the hour of her deliverance, that to take any formal leave would be but to expose herself to indignity. She therefore merely told Turnbull, one evening as he left the shop, that she would not be there in the morning, and was gone from Testbridge before it was opened the next day.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MRS. REDMAIN'S DRAWING-ROOM.

A few years ago, a London drawing-room was seldom beautiful; but size is always something, and, if Mrs. Redmain's had not harmony, it had gilding--a regular upholsterer's drawing-room it was, on which about as much taste had been expended as on the fattening of a prize-pig.

Happily there is as little need as temptation to give any description of it, with its sheets of gla.s.s and steel, its lace curtains, crude-colored walls and floor and couches, and glittering chandeliers of a thousand prisms. Everybody knows the kind of room--a huddle of the chimera ambition wallowing in the chaos of the commonplace--no miniature world of harmonious abiding. The only interesting thing in it was, that on all sides were doors, which must lead out of it, and might lead to a better place.

It was about eleven o'clock of a November morning--more like one in March. There might be a thick fog before the evening, but now the sun was shining like a brilliant lump of ice--so inimical to heat, apparently, that a servant had just dropped the venetian blind of one of the windows to shut his basilisk-gaze from the sickening fire, which was now rapidly recovering. Betwixt the cold sun and the hard earth, a dust-befogged wind, plainly borrowed from March, was sweeping the street.

Mr. and Mrs. Redmain had returned to town thus early because their country-place was in Cornwall, and there Mr. Redmain was too far from his physician. He was now considerably better, however, and had begun to go about again, for the weather did not yet affect him much. He was now in his study, as it was called, where he generally had his breakfast alone. Mrs. Redmain always had hers in bed, as often with a new novel as she could, of which her maid cut the leaves, and skimmed the cream. But now she was descending the stair, straight as a Greek G.o.ddess, and about as cold as the marble she is made of--mentally rigid, morally imperturbable, and vacant of countenance to a degree hardly equaled by the most ordinary of G.o.ddesses. She entered the drawing-room with a slow, careless, yet stately step, which belonged to her, I can not say by nature, for it was not natural, but by ancestry.

She walked to the chimney, seated herself in a low, soft, shiny chair almost on the hearth-rug, and gazed listlessly into the fire. In a minute she rose and rang the bell.

"Send my maid, and shut the door," she said.

The woman came.

"Has Miss Yolland left her room yet?" she asked.

"No, ma'am."

"Let her know I am in the drawing-room."

This said, she resumed her fire-gazing.

There was not much to see in the fire, for the fire is but a reflector, and there was not much behind the eyes that looked into it for that fire to reflect. Hesper was no dreamer--the more was the pity, for dreams are often the stuff out of which actions are made. Had she been a truer woman, she might have been a dreamer, but where was the s.p.a.ce for dreaming in a life like hers, without heaven, therefore without horizon, with so much room for desiring, and so little room for hope?

The buz that greeted her entrance of a drawing-room, was the chief joy she knew; to inhabit her well-dressed body in the presence of other well-dressed bodies, her highest notion of existence. And even upon these hung ever as an abating fog the consciousness of having a husband. I can not say she was tired of marriage, for she had loathed her marriage from the first, and had not found it at all better than her expectation: she had been too ignorant to forebode half its horrors.

Education she had had but little that was worth the name, for she had never been set growing; and now, although well endowed by nature, she was gradually becoming stupid. People who have plenty of money, and neither hope nor aspiration, must become stupid, except indeed they hate, and then for a time the devil in them will make them a sort of clever.

Miss Yolland came undulating. No kiss, no greeting whatever pa.s.sed between the ladies. Sepia began at once to rearrange a few hot-house flowers on the mantel-piece, looking herself much like some dark flower painted in an old missal.

"This day twelve months!" said Hesper.

"I know," returned Sepia.

"If one could die without pain, and there was nothing to come after!"

said Hesper. "What a tiresome dream it is!"

"Dream, or nightmare, or what you will, you had better get all you can out of it before you break it," said Sepia.

"You seem to think it worth keeping!" yawned Hesper.