He saw he must be careful, and would fence a little.

"Don't you think," he said slowly, and measuring his words, "that in the body politic there is something a.n.a.logous to the waste in matter?"

"Certainly," she answered, "only we might differ as to the persons who were to be cla.s.sed in it. I think we should be careful of our judgment as to when that state has been reached. I fancy that is just the one thing the human faculty is least able to cope with. None but G.o.d can read in a man what he really is. It can't be a safe thing to call human beings, our own kith and kin, born into the same world with us, and under the same laws of existence, _rubbish_."

"I see what you mean," said Vavasor to Hester. But to himself said, "Good heavens!"

"You see," Hester went on--they were walking in the dark dusk, she before him in a narrow path among the trees, whence she was able both to think and speak more freely than if they had been looking in each other's face in the broad daylight--"you see, rubbish with life in it is an awkward thing to deal with. Rubbish proper is that out of which the life, so far at least as we can see, is gone; and this loss of life has rendered it useless, so that it cannot even help the growth of life in other things. But suppose, on the one hand, this rubbish, say that which lies about the mouth of a coal-pit, could be by some process made to produce the most lovely flowers, or that, on the other hand, if neglected, it would bring out the most horrible weeds of poison; infecting the air, or say horrible creeping things, then the word _rubbish_ would mean either too much or too little; for it means what can be put to no use, and what is noxious by its mere presence, its ugliness and immediate defilement. You see, Mr. Vavasor, I have been thinking a great deal about all this kind of thing. It is my business in a way."

"But would you not allow that the time comes when nothing can be done with them?"

"I will not allow it of any I have to do with, at least before I can say with confidence I have done all I can. After that another may be able to do more. And who shall say when G.o.d can do no more--G.o.d who takes no care of himself, and is laboriously working to get his children home."

"I confess," said Vavasor, "the condition of our poor in our large towns is the great question of the day."

"--which every one is waking up to _talk_ about," said Hester, and said no more.

For, as one who tried to do something, she did not like to go on and say that if all who found the question interesting, would instead of talking about it do what they could, not to its solution but to its removal, they would at least make their mark on the _rubbish_-heap, of which not all the wind of words would in ten thousand years blow away a spadeful. And yet is talk a less evil than the mischief of mere experimenters. It is well there is the talk to keep many from doing positive harm. It is not those who, regarding the horrors around them as a nuisance, are bent upon their destruction, who will work any salvation in the earth, but those who see the wrongs of the poor, and strive to give them their own. Not those who desire a good report among men, nor those who seek an antidote against the tedium of a selfish existence, but those who, loving their own flesh and blood, and willing not merely to spend but to be spent for them, draw nigh them, being to being, will cause the light to rise upon such as now sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Love, and love alone, as from the first it is the source of all life, love alone, wise at once and foolish as a child, can work redemption. It is life drawing nigh to life, person to person, the human to human, that conquers death. This--therefore urges people to combine, seeking the strength of men, not the strength of G.o.d. The result is as he would have it--inevitable quarreling. The unfit brought in for strength are weakness and destruction. They want their own poor way, and destroy the work of their hands by the sound of their tongues.

Combinations should be for pa.s.sing necessities, and only between those who can each do good work alone, and will do it with or without combination. Whoever depends on combinations is a weakness to any a.s.sociation, society or church to which he may imagine himself to belong. The more easily any such can be dissolved the better. It is always by single individual communication that the truth has pa.s.sed in power from soul to soul. Love alone, and the obligation thereto between the members of Christ's body, is the one eternal unbreakable bond. It is only where love is not that law must go. Law is indeed necessary, but woe to the community where love does not cast out--where at least love is not casting out law. Not all the laws in the universe can save a man from poverty, not to say from sin, not to say from conscious misery.

Work on, ye who cannot see this. Do your best. You will be rewarded according to your honesty. You will be saved by the fire that will destroy your work, and will one day come to see that Christ's way, and no other whatever, can either redeem your own life, or render the condition of the poorest or the richest wretch such as would justify his creation. If by the pa.s.sing of this or that more or less wise law, you could, in the person of his descendant of the third or fourth generation, make a _well-to-do_ man of him, he would probably be a good deal farther from the kingdom of heaven than the beggar or the thief over whom you now lament. The criminal cla.s.ses, to use your phrase, are not made up of quite the same persons in the eyes of the Supreme as in yours.

Vavasor began to think that if ever the day came when he might approach Hester "as a suitor for her hand," he must be very careful over what he called her philanthropic craze. But if ever he should in earnest set about winning her, he had full confidence in the artillery he could bring to the siege: he had not yet made any real effort to gain her affections.

Neither had he a doubt that, having succeeded, all would be easy, and he could do with her much as he pleased. He had no anxiety concerning the philanthropic craze thereafter. His wife, once introduced to such society as would then be her right, would speedily be cured of any such extravagance or enthusiasm as gave it the character of folly.

Under the influence of the lovely place, of the lovely weather, and of his admiration for Hester, the latent poetry of his nature awoke with increasing rapidity; and, this reacting on its partial occasion, he was growing more and more in love with Hester. He was now, to use the phrase with which he confessed the fact to himself, "over head and ears in love with her," and notwithstanding the difficulties in his way, it was a pleasant experience to him: like most who have gone through the same, he was at this time nearer knowing what bliss may be than he had ever been before. Most men have the gates once thus opened to them a little way, that they may have what poor suggestion may be given them, by their closing again, of how far off they are from them. Very hard! Is it? Then why in the name of G.o.d, will you not go up to them and enter? You do not like the conditions? But the conditions are the only natural possibilities of entrance. Enter as you are and you would but see the desert you think to leave behind you, not a glimpse of a promised land.

The false cannot inherit the true nor the unclean the lovely.

And it began to grow plain to him that now his aunt could no longer look upon the idea of such an alliance, as she must _naturally_ have regarded it before. It was a very different thing to see her in the midst of such grounds and in such a house, with all the old-fashioned comforts and luxuries of an ancient and prosperous family around her, and in that of a toiling _litterateur_ in the dingy region of Bloomsbury, where everything was--of course respectable in a way, but that way a very inferior and--well, snuffy kind of way--where indeed you could not dissociate the idea of smoke and brokers' shops from the newest bonnet on Hester's queenly head! If he could get his aunt to see her in the midst of these surroundings, then her beauty would have a chance of working its natural effect upon her, tuned here to "its right praise and true perfection." She was not a jealous woman, and was ready to admire where she could, but not the less would keep even beauty at arm's length when prudence recommended: here, thought Vavasor, prudence would hold her peace. He would at least himself stand amid no small amount of justification.

By degrees, and without any transition marked of Hester, emboldened mainly by the influences of the soft dusky twilight, he came to speak with more warmth and nearer approach. His heart was tuned above its ordinary pitch, and he was borne a captive slave in the triumph of Nature's hour.

"How strangely this loveliness seems to sink into the soul," he said one evening, when the bats were coming and going like thoughts that refuse to take shape and be shared, and when with intensest listening you could not be sure whether it was a general murmur of nature you heard, low in her sleep, or only the strained nerves of your own being imitating that which was not.

"For the moment," he went on, "you seem to be the soul of that which is around you, yet oppressed with the weight of its vastness, and unable to account for what is going on in it."

"I think I understand you," returned Hester. "It is strange to feel at once so large and so small; but I presume that is how all true feeling seems to itself."

"You are right," responded Vavasor; "for when one loves, how it exalts his whole being, yet in the presence of the woman he worships, how small he feels, and how unworthy!"

In the human being humility and greatness are not only correlative, but are one and the same condition. But this was beyond Vavasor.

For the first time in her life Hester felt, nor knew what it was, a vague pang of jealousy. Whatever certain others may think, there are women who, having had their minds constantly filled with true and earnest things, have come for years to woman's full dignity, without having even speculated on what it may be to be in love. Such therefore are somewhat in the dark when first it begins to show itself within themselves: that it should be within them, they having never invited its presence, adds to their perplexity. She was silent, and Vavasor, whose experience was scarcely so valuable as her ignorance, judged he might venture a little farther. But with all his experience in the manufacture of compliments and in high-flown poetry, he was now at a loss; he had no fine theories of love to talk from! Love was with him, _at its best_, the something that preceded marriage--after which, whatever boys and girls might think, and although, of course, to a beautiful wife like Hester he could never imagine himself false, it must take its chance. But as he sat beside G.o.d's loveliest idea, exposed to the mightiest enchantment of life, little imagining it an essential heavenly decree for the redemption of the souls of men, he saw, for broken moments, and with half-dazed glimpses, into the eternal, and spoke as one in a gracious dream:

"If one might sit forever thus!" he said, almost in a whisper,--"forever and ever, needing nothing, desiring nothing! lost in perfect, in absolute bliss! so peacefully glad that you do not want to know what other joy lies behind! so content, that, if you were told there was no other bliss, you would but say, 'I am the more glad; I want no other! I refuse all else! let the universe hear, and trouble me with none! This and nought else ought ever to be--on and on! to the far-away end. The very soul of me is music, and needs not the softest sound of earth to keep it alive.'"

At that moment came a sigh of the night-wind, and bore to their ears the whispered moan of the stream away in the hollow, as it broke its being into voice over the pebbly troubles of its course. It came with a swell, and a faint sigh through the pines, and they woke and answered it with yet more ethereal voice.

"Still! still!" said Vavasor, apostrophizing the river as if it were a live thing and understood him; "do not speak to me. I cannot attend even to your watery murmur. A sweeter music, born of the motions of my own spirit, fills my whole hearing. Be content with thy flowing, as I am content with my being. Would that G.o.d in the mercy of a G.o.d would make this moment eternal!"

He ceased, and was silent.

Hester could not help being thrilled by the rhythm, moved by the poetic phrase, and penetrated by the air of poetic thought that pervaded the utterance--which would doubtless indeed have entranced many a smaller woman than herself, yet was not altogether pleased. Never yet had she reached anything like a moment concerning which even in transient mood she could pray, "Let it last forever!" Nor was the present within sight of any reason why she should not wish it to make way for a better behind it. But the show of such feeling in Vavasor, was at least the unveiling of a soul of song in him, of such a nature, such a relation to upper things that he must one day come to feel the highest, and know a bliss beyond all feeble delights of the mere human imagination. She must not be captious and contrary with the poor fellow, she thought--that would be as bad as to throw aside her poor people: he was afflicted with the same poverty that gave all the sting to theirs. To be a true woman she must help all she could help--rich or poor, nor show favor. "Thou shalt not countenance a poor man in his cause."

"I do not _quite_ understand you," she said. "I can scarcely imagine the time should ever come when I should wish it, or even be content that it should last for ever."

"Have you had so little happiness?" he asked sympathetically.

"I do not mean that," she replied. "Indeed I have had a great deal--more than all but a very few, I should imagine. But I do not think much of happiness. Perhaps that is a sign--I daresay it is--that I have not had much of what is not happiness. But no amount of happiness that I have known yet would make me wish the time to stand still. I want to be always growing--and while one is growing Time cannot stand if he would: you drag him on with you! I want, if you would like it better put in that way, to be always becoming more and more capable of happiness.

Whether I have it or not, I must be and ought to be capable of it."

"Ah!" returned Vavasor, "you are as usual out of sight beyond me. You must take pity on me and carry me with you, else you will leave me miles behind, and I shall never look on you again; and what eternity would be to me without your face to look at, G.o.d only knows. There will be no punishment necessary for me but to know that there is a gulf I cannot pa.s.s between us."

"But why should it be so!" answered Hester almost tenderly. "Our fate is in our own hands. It is ours to determine the direction in which we shall go. I don't want to preach to you, dear Mr. Vavasor, but so much surely one friend may say to another! Why should not every one be reasonable enough to seek the one best thing, and then there would be no parting; whereas all the love and friendship in the world would not suffice to keep people together if they were inwardly parted by such difference as you imply."

Vavasor's heart was touched in two ways by this simple speech--first, in the best way in which it was at the moment capable of being touched; for he could not help thinking for a moment what a blessed thing it must be to feel good and have no weight upon you--as this lovely girl plainly did, and live like her in perfect fearlessness of whatever might be going to happen to you. Religion would be better than endurable in the company of such an embodiment of it! He might even qualify for some distinction in it with such a teacher!--Second, in the way of self-satisfaction; for clearly she was not disinclined to be on terms of closer intimacy with him. And as she made the advance why should he not accept, if not the help, yet the offer of the help she had _almost_ made? That would and could bind him to nothing. He understood her well enough to have no slightest suspicion of any coquetry such as a fool like Cornelius would have imagined. He was nevertheless a fool, also, only of another and deeper sort. It needs brains to be a real fool!

From that night he placed himself more than ever in the position of a pupil towards her, hoping in the natural effect of the intimacy. To keep up and deepen the relation, he would go on imagining himself in this and that difficulty, such as he was never really in, or even quite knew that he was not in. He was no conscious hypocrite in the matter--only his intellect alone was concerned where he talked as if his being was. No answer he could have had would have had the smallest effect on the man--Vavasor only determined what he would say next. Hester kept trying to meet him as simply and directly as she could, although to meet these supposed difficulties she was unconsciously compelled to transform them, in order to get a hold of them at all, into something the nearest like them that she understood--still something very different from anything in Vavasor's thoughts. But what she said made no difference to him, so long as she would talk to him. And talk she did, sometimes with an affectionate fervor of whose very possibility he had had no idea. So long as she would talk, he cared not a straw whether she understood what he had said; and with all her misconception, she understood it better than he did himself. Thus her growing desire to wake in him the better life, brought herself into relations with him which had an earthly side, as everything heavenly of necessity has; for this life also is G.o.d's, and the hairs of our heads are numbered.

CHAPTER XXVII.

MAJOR H.G. MARVEL.

One afternoon when Vavasor was in his room, writing a letter to his aunt, in which he described in not too glowing terms, for he knew exaggeration would only give her a handle, the loveliness of the retreat among the hills where he was spending his holiday--when her father was in his study, her mother in her own room, and the children out of doors, a gentleman was shown in upon her as she sat alone in the drawing-room at her piano, not playing but looking over some books of old music she had found in the house. The servant apologized, saying he thought she was out. The visitor being already in the room, the glance she threw on the card the man had given her had had time to teach her little or nothing with regard to him when she advanced to receive him. The name on the card was _Major H.G. Marvel_. She vaguely thought she had heard it, but in the suddenness of the meeting was unable to recall a single idea concerning the owner of it. She saw before her a man whose decidedly podgy figure yet bore a military air, and was not without a certain grace of confidence. For his bearing was even _marked_ by the total absence of any embarra.s.sment, anxiety, or any even of that air of apology which one individual seems almost to owe to another. At the same time there was not a suspicion of truculence or even repulse in his carriage. There was self-a.s.sertion, but not of the antagonistic--solely of the inviting sort. His person beamed with friendship. Notably above the middle height, the impression of his stature was reduced by a too great development of valor in the front of his person, which must always have met the enemy considerably in advance of the rest of him. On the top of rather asthmatic-looking shoulders was perched a head that looked small for the base from which it rose, and the smaller that it was an evident proof of the derivation of the word _bald_, by Chaucer spelled _balled_; it was round and smooth and shining like ivory, and the face upon it was brought by the help of the razor into as close a resemblance with the rest of the ball as possible. The said face was a pleasant one to look at--of features altogether irregular--a retreating and narrow forehead over keen gray eyes that sparkled with intelligence and fun, prominent cheek-bones, a nose thick in the base and considerably elevated at the point, a large mouth always ready to show a set of white, regular, serviceable teeth--the only regular arrangement in the whole facial economy--and a chin whose original character was rendered doubtful by its _duplicity_--physical, I mean, with no hint at the moral.

"Cousin Hester!" he said, advancing, and holding out his hand.

Mechanically she gave him hers. The voice that addressed her was at once a little husky, and very cheery; the hand that took hers was small and soft and kind and firm. A merry, friendly smile lighted up eyes and face as he spoke. Hester could not help liking him at first sight--yet felt a little shy of him. She thought she had heard her mother speak of a cousin somewhere abroad: this must be he--if indeed she did remember any such!

"You don't remember me," he said, "seeing you were not in this world, wherever else you may have been, for a year or two after I left the country: and, to tell the truth, had I been asked, I should have objected to your appearance on any terms."

As this speech did not seem to carry much enlightenment with it, he went on to explain. "The fact is, my dear young lady, that I left the country because your mother and I were too much of one mind."

"Of one mind?" said Hester, bewildered.

"Ah, you don't understand!" said the major, who was all the time standing before her with the most polite though confident bearing. "The thing you see, was this: I liked your mother better than myself, and so did she; and without any jealousy of one another, it was not an arrangement for my happiness. I had the choice between two things, stopping at home and breaking my heart by seeing her the wife of another man, and going away and getting over it the best way I could. So you see I must by nature be your sworn enemy, only it's of no use, for I've fallen in love with you at first sight. So now, if you will ask me to sit down, I will swear to let bygones be bygones, and be your true knight and devoted servant as long as I live. How you do remind me of your mother, only by Jove, you're twice as handsome."

"Do pray sit down, Mr. Marley----"

"Marvel, if you please," interrupted the major; "and I'm sure it's a great marvel if not a great man I am, after what I've come through! But don't you marvel at me too much, for I'm a very good sort of fellow when you know me. And if you could let me have a gla.s.s of water, with a little sherry just to take the taste off it, I should be greatly obliged to you. I have had to walk farther for the sight of you than on such a day as this I find altogether refreshing: it's as hot as the tropics, by George! But I am well repaid--even without the sherry."

As he spoke he was wiping his round head all over with a red silk handkerchief.

"I will get it at once, and let my mother know you are here," said Hester, turning to the door.