THE WORKS OF
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD 
 
 FOR THE 
 ENGLISH READING ROOM
 
 ENGLISH FOX HUNTING 
 
 From the Painting by C. Loraine Smith 
 
 "The hounds caught sight of the fox, burst 
 into one frantic shriek of joy and then a 
 sudden and ghastly stillness, as, mute and 
 breathless, they toiled up the hillside, gaining 
 on their victim at every stride. The patter of 
 the horse-hoofs and the rattle of rolling flints 
 died away above. Lancelot looked up, startled 
 at the silence ; laughed aloud, he knew not 
 why, and sat, regardless of his pawing and 
 straining horse, still staring at the chapel and 
 the graves." 
 
 " Yeast," 
 P- '5
 
 oZZZZ^" 
 
 THE BIDEFORD EDITION 
 
 w 
 
 
 NOVELS, POEMS &* LETTERS 
 
 
 
 OF CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 
 
 YEAST 
 
 
 
 BY CHARLES ^INGSLEY 
 
 
 
 WITH THE PREFACES TO THE 
 
 
 
 FIRST AND FOURTH 
 
 
 
 EDITIONS 
 
 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 
 
 THE CO-OPERATIVE 
 
 
 
 PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
 
 
 
 
 l'^v*J 
 
 ll 
 
 
 
 
 M 

 
 Copyright, 1899 
 BY J. F. TAYLOR & COMPANY
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FOURTH EDITION 
 
 THIS book was written nearly twelve years 
 ago; and so many things have changed 
 since then, that it is hardly fair to send it into the 
 world afresh, without some notice of the improve- 
 ment if such there be which has taken place 
 meanwhile in those southern counties of England, 
 with which alone this book deals. 
 
 I believe that things are improved. Twelve 
 years more of the new poor law have taught 
 the laboring men greater self-help and indepen- 
 dence; I hope that those virtues may not be 
 destroyed in them once more, by the boundless 
 and indiscriminate almsgiving which has become 
 the fashion of the day, in most parishes where 
 there are resident gentry. If half the money which 
 is now given away in different forms to the agricul- 
 tural poor could be spent in making their dwell- 
 ings fit for honest men to live in, then life, morals, 
 and poor-rates would be saved to an immense 
 amount. But as I do not see how to carry out 
 such a plan, I have no right to complain of others 
 for not seeing, 
 
 A Vol. V
 
 viii Preface to the Fourth Edition 
 
 Meanwhile cottage improvement, and sanitary 
 reform, throughout the country districts, are going 
 on at a fearfully slow rate. Here and there high- 
 hearted landlords, like the Duke of Bedford, are 
 doing their duty like men; but in general, the 
 apathy of the educated classes is most disgraceful. 
 
 But the laborers, during the last ten years, are 
 altogether better off. Free trade has increased 
 their food, without lesser ing their employment. 
 The politician who wishes to know the effect on 
 agricultural life of that wise and just measure, may 
 find it in Mr. Grey of Dilston's answers to the 
 queries of the French Government. The country 
 parson will not need to seek so far. He will see 
 it (if he be an observant man^, in the faces and 
 figures of his school-children. He will see a rosier, 
 fatter, bigger-boned race growing up, which bids 
 fair to surpass in bulk the puny and ill-fed genera- 
 tion of 1815-45, and equal, perhaps, in thew and 
 sinew, to the men who saved Europe in the old 
 French war. 
 
 If it should be so (as God grant it may), there 
 is little fear but that the laboring men of England 
 will find their aristocracy able to lead them in the 
 battle-field, and to develop the agriculture of the 
 land at home, even better than did their grand- 
 fathers of the old war time. 
 
 To a thoughtful man, no point of the social 
 horizon is more full of light than the altered 
 temper of the young gentlemen. They have their 
 faults and follies still for when will young blood 
 be other than hot blood? But when one finds,
 
 Preface to the Fourth Edition ix 
 
 more and more, swearing banished from the hunt- 
 ing-field, foul songs from the universities, drunken- 
 ness and gambling from the barracks; when one 
 finds everywhere, whether at- college, in camp, or 
 by the cover-side, more and more, young men 
 desirous to learn their duty as Englishmen, and if 
 possible to do it; when one hears their altered 
 tone toward the middle classes, and that word 
 ' snob ' (thanks very much to Mr. Thackeray) used 
 by them in its true sense, without regard of rank ; 
 when one watches, as at Aldershot, the care and 
 kindness of officers toward their men ; and over 
 and above all this, when one finds in every pro- 
 fession (in that of the soldier as much as any) 
 young men who are not only ' in the world/ but 
 (in religious phraseology) 'of the world,' living 
 God-fearing, virtuous, and useful lives, as Christian 
 men should : then indeed one looks forward with 
 hope and confidence to the day when these men 
 shall settle down in life, and become, as holders of 
 the land, the leaders of agricultural progress, and 
 the guides and guardians of the laboring man. 
 
 I am bound to speak of the farmer, as I know 
 him in the South of England. In the North he 
 is a man of altogether higher education and 
 breeding: but he is, even in the South, a much 
 better man than it is the fashion to believe him. 
 No doubt, he has given heavy cause of complaint. 
 He was demoralized, as surely, if not as deeply, 
 as his own laborers, by the old Poor Law. He 
 was bewildered to use the mildest term by 
 promises of Protection from men who knew better.
 
 x Preface to the Fourth Edition 
 
 But his worst fault after all has been, that, young 
 or old, he has copied his landlord too closely, 
 and acted on his maxims and example. And 
 now that his landlord is growing wiser, he is 
 growing wiser too. Experience of the new poor 
 law, and experience of free-trade, are helping 
 him to show himself what he always was at heart, 
 an honest Englishman. All his brave persistence 
 and industry, his sturdy independence and self- 
 help, and last, but not least, his strong sense of 
 justice, and his vast good-nature, are coming out 
 more and more, and working better and better 
 upon the land and the laborer; while among his 
 sons I see many growing up brave, manly, prudent 
 young men, with a steadily increasing knowledge 
 of what is required of them, both as manufacturers 
 of food, and employers of human labor. 
 
 The country clergy, again, are steadily improv- 
 ing. I do not mean merely in morality for 
 public opinion now demands that as a sine quct, 
 non but in actual efficiency. Every fresh 
 appointment seems to me, on the whole, a better 
 one than the last. They are gaining more and 
 more the love and respect of their flocks; they 
 are becoming more and more centers of civiliza- 
 tion and morality to their parishes; they are 
 working, for the most part, very hard, each in his 
 own way ; indeed their great danger is, that they 
 should trust too much in that outward " business " 
 work which they do so heartily; that they should 
 fancy that the administration of schools and 
 charities is their chief business, and literally
 
 Preface to the Fourth Edition xi 
 
 leave the Word of God to serve tables. Would 
 that we clergymen could learn (some of us are 
 learning already) that influence over our people 
 is not to be gained by perpetual interference in 
 their private affairs, too often inquisitorial, irri- 
 tating, and degrading to both parties, but by 
 showing ourselves their personal friends, of like 
 passions with them. Let a priest do that. Let 
 us make our people feel that we speak to them, 
 and feel to them, as men to men, and then the 
 more cottages we enter the better. If we go into 
 our neighbors' houses only as judges, inquisitors, 
 or at best gossips, we are best as too many are 
 at home in our studies. Would, too, that we 
 would recollect this that our duty is, among 
 other things, to preach the Gospel ; and consider 
 firstly whether what we commonly preach be any 
 Gospel or good news at all, and not rather the 
 worst possible news; and secondly, whether we 
 preach at all ; whether our sermons are not utterly 
 unintelligible (being delivered in an unknown 
 tongue), and also of a dulness not to be surpassed ; 
 and whether, therefore, it might not be worth 
 our while to spend a little time in studying the 
 English tongue, and the art of touching human 
 hearts and minds. 
 
 But to return : this improved tone (if the truth 
 must be told) is owing, far more than people 
 themselves are aware, to the triumphs of those 
 liberal principles, for which the Whigs have 
 fought for the last forty years, and of that sounder 
 natural philosophy of which they have been the
 
 xii Preface to the Fourth Edition 
 
 consistent patrons. England has become Whig; 
 and the death of the Whig party is the best proof 
 of its victory. It has ceased to exist because it 
 has done its work; because its principles are 
 accepted by its ancient enemies; because the 
 political economy and the physical science, which 
 grew up under its patronage, are leavening the 
 thoughts and acts of Anglican and of Evangelical 
 alike, and supplying them with methods for 
 carrying out their own schemes. Lord Shaftes- 
 bury's truly noble speech on sanitary reform at 
 Liverpool is a striking proof of the extent to 
 which the Evangelical leaders have given in their 
 adherence to those scientific laws, the original 
 preachers of which have been called by his Lord- 
 ship's party heretics and infidels, materialists 
 and rationalists. Be it so. Provided truth be 
 preached, what matter who preaches it? Pro- 
 vided the leaven of sound inductive science 
 leaven the whole lump, what matter who sets it 
 working? Better, perhaps, because more likely 
 to produce practical success, that these novel 
 truths should be instilled into the minds of the 
 educated classes by men who share somewhat in 
 their prejudices and superstitions, and doled out 
 to them in such measure as will not terrify or 
 disgust them. The child will take its medicine 
 from the nurse's hand trustfully enough, when it 
 would scream itself into convulsions at the sight 
 of the doctor, and so do itself more harm than 
 the medicine would do it good. The doctor 
 meanwhile (unless he be one of Hesiod's "fools,
 
 Preface to the Fourth Edition xiii 
 
 who know not how much more half is than the 
 whole") is content enough to see any part of his 
 prescription got down, by any hands whatsoever. 
 
 But there is another cause for the improved 
 tone of the landlord class, and of the young men 
 of what is commonly called the aristocracy ; and 
 that is, a growing moral earnestness; which is in 
 great part owing (that justice may be done on all 
 sides) to the Anglican movement. How much 
 soever Neo-Anglicanism may have failed as an 
 ecclesiastical or theological system; how much 
 soever it may have proved itself, both by the 
 national dislike of it, and by the defection of all 
 its master-minds, to be radically un-English, it 
 has at least awakened hundreds, perhaps thou- 
 sands, of cultivated men and women to ask them- 
 selves whether God sent them into the world 
 merely to eat, drink, and be merry, and to have 
 "their souls saved" upon the Spurgeon method, 
 after they die; and has taught them an answer to 
 that question not unworthy of English Christians. 
 
 The Anglican movement, when it dies out, 
 will leave behind at least a legacy of grand old 
 authors disinterred, of art, of music; of churches 
 too, schools, cottages, and charitable institutions, 
 which will form so many centers of future civili- 
 zation, and will entitle it to the respect, if not to 
 the allegiance, of the future generation. And 
 more than this; it has sown in the hearts of 
 young gentlemen and young ladies seed which 
 will not perish; which, though it may develop 
 into forms little expected by those who sowed it,
 
 xiv Preface to the Fourth Edition 
 
 will develop at least into a virtue more stately 
 and reverent, more chivalrous and self-sacrificing, 
 more genial and human, than can be learnt from 
 that religion of the Stock Exchange, which 
 reigned triumphant for a year and a day in 
 the popular pulpits. 
 
 I have said that Neo-Anglicanism has proved 
 a failure, as seventeenth-century Anglicanism 
 did. The causes of that failure this book has 
 tried to point out: and not one word which is 
 spoken of it therein, but has been drawn from 
 personal and too intimate experience. But now 
 peace to its ashes. Is it so great a sin, to have 
 been dazzled by the splendor of an impossible 
 ideal ? Is it so great a sin, to have had courage 
 and conduct enough to attempt the enforcing of 
 that ideal, in the face of the prejudices of a 
 whole nation ? And if that ideal was too narrow 
 for the English nation, and for the modern needs 
 of mankind, is that either so great a sin? Are 
 other extant ideals, then, so very comprehensive ? 
 Does Mr. Spurgeon, then, take so much broader 
 or nobler views of the capacities and destinies of 
 his race, than that great genius, John Henry 
 Newman ? If the world cannot answer that ques- 
 tion now, it will answer it promptly enough in 
 another five-and-twenty years. And meanwhile 
 let not the party and the system which has con- 
 quered boast itself too loudly. Let it take warn- 
 ing by the Whigs; and suspect (as many a 
 looker-on more than suspects) that its triumph 
 may be, as with the Whigs, its ruin; and that,
 
 Preface to the Fourth Edition xv 
 
 having done the work for which it was sent into 
 the world, there may only remain for it, to decay 
 and die. 
 
 And die it surely will, if (as seems too prob- 
 able) there succeeds to this late thirty years of 
 peace a thirty years of storm. 
 
 For it has lost all hold upon the young, the 
 active, the daring. It has sunk into a compro- 
 mise between originally opposite dogmas. It has 
 become a religion for Jacob the smooth man; 
 adapted to the maxims of the market, and leaving 
 him full liberty to supplant his brother by all 
 methods lawful in that market. No longer can 
 it embrace and explain all known facts of God 
 and man, in heaven and earth, and satisfy utterly 
 such minds and hearts as those of Cromwell's 
 Ironsides, or the Scotch Covenanters, or even of 
 a Newton and a Colonel Gardiner. Let it make 
 the most of its Hedley Vicars and its Havelock, 
 and sound its own trumpet as loudly as it can, in 
 sounding theirs; for they are the last specimens 
 of heroism which it is likely to beget if indeed 
 it did in any true sense beget them, and if their 
 gallantry was really owing to their creed, and not 
 to the simple fact of their being like others 
 English gentlemen. Well may Jacob's chaplains 
 cackle in delighted surprise over their noble 
 memories, like geese who have unwittingly 
 hatched a swan! 
 
 But on Esau in general on poor rough Esau, 
 who sails Jacob's ships, digs Jacob's mines, 
 founds Jacob's colonies, pours out his blood for
 
 xvi Preface to the Fourth Edition 
 
 him in those wars which Jacob himself has stirred 
 up, while his sleek brother sits at home in his 
 counting-house, enjoying at once " the means of 
 grace" and the produce of Esau's labor on him 
 Jacob's chaplains have less and less influence; 
 for him they have less and less good news. He 
 is afraid of them, and they of him; the two do 
 not comprehend one another, sympathize with 
 one another; they do not even understand one 
 another's speech. The same social and moral 
 gulf has opened between them, as parted the 
 cultivated and wealthy Pharisee of Jerusalem 
 from the rough fishers of the Galilean Lake; and 
 yet the Galilean fishers (if we are to trust 
 Josephus and the Gospels) were trusty, generous, 
 affectionate and it was not from among the 
 Pharisees, it is said, that the Apostles were 
 chosen. 
 
 Be that as it may, Esau has a birthright; and 
 this book, like all books which I have ever 
 written, is written to tell him so; and, I trust, 
 has not been written in vain. But it is not this 
 book, or any man's book, or any man at all, who 
 can tell Esau the whole truth about himself, his 
 powers, his duty, and his God. Woman must do 
 it, and not man. His mother, his sister, the 
 maid whom he may love; and failing all these 
 (as they often will fail him, in the wild wandering 
 life which he must live), those human angels of 
 whom it is written " The barren hath many more 
 children than she who has an husband." And 
 such will not be wanting. As long as England
 
 Preface to the Fourth Edition xvii 
 
 can produce at once two such women as Florence 
 Nightingale and Catherine Marsh, there is good 
 hope that Esau will not be defrauded of his birth- 
 right; and that by the time that Jacob comes 
 crouching to him, to defend him against the 
 enemies who are near at hand, Esau, instead of 
 borrowing Jacob's religion, may be able to teach 
 Jacob his ; and the two brothers face together the 
 superstition and anarchy of Europe, in the strength 
 of a lofty and enlightened Christianity, which 
 shall be thoroughly human, and therefore thor- 
 oughly divine. 
 
 C. K. 
 
 February ijtfi, 1859.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 THIS little tale was written between two and 
 three years ago, in the hope that it might 
 help to call the attention of wiser and better men 
 than I am, to the questions which are now agitat- 
 ing the minds of the rising generation, and to the 
 absolute necessity of solving them at once and 
 earnestly, unless we would see the faith of our 
 forefathers crumble away beneath the combined 
 influence of new truths which are fancied to be 
 incompatible with it, and new mistakes as to its 
 real essence. That this can be done I believe 
 and know : if I had not believed it, I would never 
 have put pen to paper on the subject. 
 
 I believe that the ancient Creed, the Eternal 
 Gospel, will stand, and conquer, and prove its 
 might in this age, as it has in every other for 
 eighteen hundred years, by claiming, and sub- 
 duing, and organizing those young anarchic forces, 
 which now, unconscious of their parentage, rebel 
 against Him to whom they owe their being. 
 
 But for the time being, the young men and 
 women of our day are fast parting from their
 
 Preface to the First Edition 
 
 parents and each other ; the more thoughtful are 
 wandering either towards Rome, towards sheer 
 materialism, or towards an unchristian and un- 
 philosophic spiritualism. Epicurism which, in my 
 eyes, is the worst evil spirit of the three, precisely 
 because it looks at first sight most like an angel of 
 light. The mass, again, are fancying that they 
 are still adhering to the old creeds, the old church, 
 to the honored patriarchs of English Protestantism. 
 I wish I could agree with them in their belief about 
 themselves. To me they seem with a small 
 sprinkling of those noble and cheering exceptions 
 to popular error which are to be found in every 
 age of Christ's church to be losing most fear- 
 fully and rapidly the living spirit of Christianity, 
 and to be, for that very reason, clinging all the 
 more convulsively and who can blame them? 
 to the outward letter of it, whether High Church 
 or Evangelical; unconscious, all the while, that 
 they are sinking out of real living belief, into 
 that dead self-deceiving belief-in-believing, which 
 has been always heretofore, and is becoming in 
 England now, the parent of the most blind, dis- 
 honest, and pitiless bigotry. 
 
 In the following pages I have attempted to show 
 what some at least of the young in these days are 
 really thinking and feeling. I know well that my 
 sketch is inadequate and partial: I have every 
 reason to believe, from the criticisms which I have 
 received since its first publication, that it is, as far 
 as it goes, correct. I put it as a problem. It 
 would be the height of arrogance in me to do
 
 Preface to the First Edition 
 
 more than indicate the direction in which I think 
 a solution may be found. I fear that my elder 
 readers may complain that I have no right to start 
 doubts without answering them. I can only 
 answer, Would that I had started them ! would 
 that I was not seeing them daily around me, under 
 some form or other, in just the very hearts for 
 whom one would most wish the peace and 
 strength of a fixed and healthy faith. To the 
 young, this book can do no harm ; for it will put 
 into their minds little but what is there already. 
 To the elder, it may do good; for it may teach 
 some of them, as I earnestly hope, something of 
 the real, but too often utterly unsuspected, state 
 of their own children's minds ; something of the 
 reasons of that calamitous estrangement between 
 themselves and those who will succeed them, 
 which is often too painful and oppressive to be 
 confessed to their own hearts ! Whatever amount 
 of obloquy this book may bring upon me, I shall 
 think that a light price to pay, if by it I shall have 
 helped, even in a single case, to " turn the hearts 
 of the parents to the children, and the hearts of 
 the children to the parents, before the great and 
 terrible day of the Lord come," as come it 
 surely will, if we persist much longer in substitut- 
 ing denunciation for sympathy, instruction for edu- 
 cation, and Pharisaism for the Good News of the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 1851.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING I 
 
 II. SPRING YEARNINGS . 19 
 
 III. NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE 37 
 
 ; IV. AN " INGLORIOUS MILTON " 69 
 
 V. A SHAM is WORSE THAN NOTHING 79 
 
 VI. VOGUE LA GALERE 89 
 
 VII. THE DRIVE HOME, AND WHAT CAME OF IT . . no 
 
 VIII. WHITHER? 122 
 
 IX. HARRY VERNEY HEARS HIS LAST SHOT FIRED . 141 
 
 X. "MURDER WILL OUT," AND LOVE TOO .... 154 
 
 XI. THUNDERSTORM THE FIRST 181 
 
 XII. THUNDERSTORM THE SECOND 195 
 
 XIII. THE VILLAGE REVEL 209 
 
 XIV. WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 244 
 
 XV. DEUS EX MACHINA 265 
 
 XVI. ONCE IN A. WAY 294 
 
 XVII. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH . . . 307 
 
 EPILOGUE 335
 
 '* The days will come to ben yi shall desire to see 
 oni of tbt days of tbt Son of man, and ye shall not 
 suit."
 
 YEAST : A PROBLEM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING 
 
 AS this my story will probably run counter to 
 more than one fashion of the day, literary 
 and other, it is prudent to bow to those fashions 
 wherever I honestly can; and therefore to begin 
 with a scrap of description. 
 
 The edge of a great fox-cover; a flat wilderness 
 of low leafless oaks fortified by a long, dreary, 
 thorn-capped clay ditch, with sour red water ooz- 
 ing out at every yard; a broken gate leading into 
 a straight wood-ride, ragged with dead grasses 
 and black with fallen leaves, the centre mashed 
 into a quagmire by innumerable horse-hoofs; 
 some forty red coats and some four black; a 
 sprinkling of young farmers, resplendent in gold 
 buttons and green; a pair of sleek drab stable- 
 keepers, showing off horses for sale; the surgeon 
 of the union, in Mackintosh and antigropelos; 
 two holiday schoolboys with trousers strapped 
 down to bursting point, like a penny steamer's 
 safety-valve; a midshipman, the only merry one 
 in the field, bumping about on a fretting, sweat- 
 ing hack, with its nose a foot above its ears ; and 
 Lancelot Smith, who then kept two good horses,
 
 2 Yeast 
 
 and " rode forward " as a fine young fellow of 
 three-and-twenty who can afford it, and "has 
 nothing else to do," has a very good right to ride. 
 
 But what is a description, without a sketch of 
 the weather? In these Pantheist days especially, 
 when a hero or heroine's moral state must entirely 
 depend on the barometer, and authors talk as if 
 Christians were cabbages, and a man's soul as 
 well as his lungs might be saved by sea-breezes 
 and sunshine; or his character developed by wear- 
 ing guano in his shoes, and training himself 
 against a south wall we must have a weather 
 description, though, as I shall presently show, 
 one in flat contradiction of the popular theory. 
 Luckily for our information, Lancelot was very 
 much given to watch both the weather and him- 
 self, and had indeed, while in his teens, combined 
 the two in a sort of a soul-almanack on the prin- 
 ciples just mentioned somewhat in this style: 
 
 "Monday, 2\st. Wind S.W., bright sun, 
 mercury at 30^ inches. Felt my heart expanded 
 towards the universe. Organs of veneration and 
 benevolence pleasingly excited ; and gave a shil- 
 ling to a tramp. An inexpressible joy bounded 
 through every vein, and the soft air breathed 
 purity and self-sacrifice through my soul. As I 
 watched the beetles, those children of the sun, 
 who, as divine Shelley says, ' laden with light 
 and odor, pass over the gleam of the living grass, ' 
 I gained an Eden-glimpse of the pleasures of 
 virtue. 
 
 " N. B. Found the tramp drunk in a ditch. 
 I could not have degraded myself on such a day 
 ah 1 how could he ? 
 
 " Tuesday, 22d. Barometer rapidly falling.
 
 The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting 3 
 
 Heavy clouds in the south-east. My heart sank 
 into gloomy forebodings. Read ' Manfred ' and 
 doubted whether I should live long. The leaden 
 weight of destiny seemed to crush down my ach- 
 ing forehead, till the thunderstorm burst, and 
 peace was restored to my troubled soul." 
 
 This was very bad ; but to do justice to Lance- 
 lot, he had grown out of it at the time when my 
 story begins. He was now in the fifth act of his 
 "Wertherean" stage; that sentimental measles, 
 which all clever men must catch once in their 
 lives, and which, generally, like the physical 
 measles, if taken early, settles their constitution 
 for good or evil; if taken late, goes far towards 
 killing them. Lancelot had found Byron and 
 Shelley pall on his taste and commenced devour- 
 ing Bulwer and worshipping " Ernest Maltravers. " 
 He had left Bulwer for old ballads and romances, 
 and Mr. Carlyle's reviews; was next alternately 
 chivalry-mad and Germany-mad; was now read- 
 ing hard at physical science; and on the whole, 
 trying to become a great man, without any very 
 clear notion of what a great man ought to be. 
 Real education he never had had. Bred up at 
 home under his father, a rich merchant, he had 
 gone to college with a large stock of general 
 information, and a particular mania for dried 
 plants, fossils, butterflies, and sketching, and 
 some such creed as this: 
 
 That he was very clever. 
 
 That he ought to make his fortune. 
 
 That a great many things were very pleasant 
 beautiful things among the rest. 
 
 That it was a fine thing to be "superior," 
 gentleman-like, generous, and courageous.
 
 4 Yeast 
 
 That a man ought to be religious. 
 
 And left college with a good smattering of 
 classics and mathematics, picked up in the inter- 
 vals of boat-racing and hunting, and much the 
 same creed as he brought with him, except in 
 regard to the last article. The scenery-and- 
 natural-history mania was now somewhat at a 
 discount. He had discovered a new natural 
 object, including in itself all more than all 
 yet found beauties and wonders woman 1 
 
 Draw, draw the veil and weep, guardian angel 1 
 if such there be. What was to be expected? 
 Pleasant things were pleasant there was no 
 doubt of that, whatever else might be doubtful. 
 He had read Byron by stealth; he had been 
 flogged into reading Ovid and Tibullus; and 
 commanded by his private tutor to read Martial 
 and Juvenal "for the improvement of his style." 
 All conversation on the subject of love had been 
 prudishly avoided, as usual, by his parents and 
 teacher. The parts of the Bible which spoke of 
 it had been always kept out of his sight. Love 
 had been to him, practically, ground tabooed and 
 " carnal. " What was to be expected ? Just what 
 happened if woman's beauty had nothing holy 
 in it, why should his fondness for it ? Just what 
 happens every day that he had to sow his wild 
 oats for himself, and eat the fruit thereof, and 
 the dirt thereof also. 
 
 O fathers ! fathers ! and you, clergymen, who 
 monopolize education ! either tell boys the truth 
 about love, or do not put into their hands, with- 
 out note or comment, the foul devil's lies about 
 it, which make up the mass of the Latin poets 
 and then go, fresh from teaching Juvenal and
 
 The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting 5 
 
 Ovid, to declaim at Exeter Hall against poor 
 Peter Dens's well-meaning prurience ! Had we 
 not better take the beam out of our own eye 
 before we meddle with the mote in the Jesuit's? 
 
 But where is my description of the weather 
 all this time? 
 
 I cannot, I am sorry to say, give any very 
 cheerful account of the weather that day. But 
 what matter ? Are Englishmen hedge-gnats, who 
 only take their sport when the sun shines ? Is it 
 not, on the contrary, symbolical of our national 
 character, that almost all our field amusements 
 are wintry ones? Our fowling, our hunting, our 
 punt-shooting (pastime for Hymir himself and 
 the frost giants) our golf and skating, our 
 very cricket, and boat-racing, and jack and gray- 
 ling fishing, carried on till we are fairly frozen 
 out. We are a stern people, and winter suits us. 
 Nature then retires modestly into the background, 
 and spares us the obtrusive glitter of summer, 
 leaving us to think and work; and therefore 
 it happens that in England it may be taken as 
 a general rule, that whenever all the rest of 
 the world is in-doors, we are out and busy, and 
 on the whole, the worse the day, the better the 
 deed. 
 
 The weather that day, the first day Lancelot 
 ever saw his beloved, was truly national. A 
 silent, dim, distanceless, steaming, rotting day 
 in March. The last brown oak-leaf which had 
 stood out the winter's frost, spun and quivered 
 plump down, and then lay, as if ashamed to have 
 broken for a moment the ghastly stillness, like 
 an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner-party. 
 A cold suck of wind just proved its existence, by
 
 6 Yeast 
 
 toothaches on the north side of all faces. The 
 spiders having been weather-bewitched the night 
 before, had unanimously agreed to cover every 
 brake and brier with gossamer-cradles, and never 
 a fly to be caught in them; like Manchester 
 cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the 
 teeth of "no demand." The steam crawled out 
 of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and 
 nostrils of the shivering horses, and clung with 
 clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs. 
 A soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if that 
 bustling dowager, old mother Earth what with 
 match-making in spring, and fetes champetres in 
 summer, and dinner-giving in autumn was fairly 
 worn out, and put to bed with the influenza, 
 under wet blankets and the cold-water cure. 
 
 There sat Lancelot by the cover-side, his knees 
 aching with cold and wet, thanking his stars that 
 he was not one of the whippers-in who were 
 lashing about in the dripping cover, laying up for 
 themselves, in catering for the amusement of 
 their betters, a probable old age of bed-ridden 
 torture, in the form of rheumatic gout. Not that 
 he was at all happy indeed, he had no reason to 
 be so; for, first, the hounds would not find; next, 
 he had left half-finished at home a review article 
 on the Silurian System, which he had solemnly 
 promised an abject and beseeching editor to 
 send to post that night; next, he was on the 
 windward side of the cover, and dare not light a 
 cigar; and lastly, his mucous membrane in gen- 
 eral was not in the happiest condition, seeing 
 that he had been dining the evening before with 
 Mr. Vaurien of Rottenpalings, a young gentle- 
 man of a convivial and melodious turn of mind,
 
 The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting 7 
 
 who sang and played also as singing men are 
 wont in more senses than one, and had " ladies 
 and gentlemen" down from town to stay with 
 him ; and they sang and played too; and so some- 
 how between vingt-un and champagne-punch, 
 Lancelot had not arrived at home till seven 
 o'clock that morning, and was in a fit state to 
 appreciate the feelings of our grandfathers, when, 
 after the third bottle of port, they used to put 
 the black silk tights into their pockets, slip on 
 the leathers and boots, and ride the crop-tailed 
 hack thirty miles on a winter's night, to meet 
 the hounds in the next county by ten in the morn- 
 ing. They are " gone down to Hades, even many 
 stalwart souls of heroes," with John Warde of 
 Squerries at their head the fathers of the men 
 who conquered at Waterloo; and we their degen- 
 erate grandsons are left instead, with puny arms, 
 and polished leather boots, and a considerable 
 taint of hereditary diseas.,, to sit in club-houses, 
 and celebrate the pr^gre-s of the species. 
 
 Whether Lancelot or his horse, under these 
 depressing circumstances, fell asleep; or whether 
 thoughts pertaining to such a life, and its fitness 
 for a clever and ardent young fellow in the nine- 
 teenth century, became gradually too painful, 
 and had to be peremptorily shaken off, this 
 deponent sayeth not; but certainly, after five- 
 and-thirty minutes of idleness and shivering, 
 Lancelot opened his eyes with a sudden start, 
 and struck spurs into his hunter without due 
 cause shown; whereat Shiver-the-timbers, who 
 was no Griselda in temper (Lancelot had 
 bought him out of the Pytchley for half his value, 
 as unridably vicious, when he had killed a
 
 8 Yeast 
 
 groom, and fallen backwards on a rough-rider, 
 the first season after he came up from Horncastle) 
 responded by a furious kick or two, threw his 
 head up, put his foot into a drain, and sprawled 
 down all but on his nose, pitching Lancelot un- 
 awares shamefully on the pommel of his saddle. 
 A certain fatality, by the by, had lately attended 
 all Lancelot's efforts to shine; he never bought 
 a new coat without tearing it mysteriously next 
 day, or tried to make a joke without bursting out 
 coughing in the middle . . . and now the whole 
 field were looking on at his mishap; between 
 disgust and the start he turned almost sick, and 
 felt the blood rush into his cheeks and forehead 
 as he heard a shout of coarse jovial laughter burst 
 out close to him, and the old master of the 
 hounds, Squire Lavington, roared aloud: 
 
 "A pretty sportsman you are, Mr. Smith, to 
 fall asleep by the cover-side and let your horse 
 down and your pockets, too ! What 's that book 
 on the ground ? Sapping and studying still ? I 
 let nobody come out with my hounds with their 
 pocket full of learning. Hand it up here, Tom; 
 we '11 see what it is. French, as I am no scholar ! 
 Translate for us, Colonel Bracebridge ! " 
 
 And, amid shouts of laughter, the gay Guards- 
 man read out : 
 
 " St. Francis de Sales : ' Introduction to a 
 Devout Life. ' " 
 
 Poor Lancelot ! Wishing himself fathoms under- 
 ground, ashamed of his book, still more ashamed 
 of himself for his shame, he had to sit there ten 
 physical seconds, or spiritual years, while the 
 colonel solemnly returned him the book, compli- 
 menting him on the proofs of its purifying influ-
 
 The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting 9 
 
 ence which he had given the night before, in 
 helping to throw the turnpike-gate into the 
 river. 
 
 But "all things do end," and so did this; and 
 the silence of the hounds also ; and a faint but 
 knowing whimper drove St. Francis out of all 
 heads, and Lancelot began to stalk slowly with a 
 dozen horsemen up the wood-ride, to a fitful 
 accompaniment of wandering hound-music, where 
 the choristers were as invisible as nightingales 
 among the thick cover. And hark! just as the 
 book was returned to his pocket, the sweet hub- 
 bub suddenly crashed out into one jubilant shriek, 
 and then swept away fainter and fainter among 
 the trees. The walk became a trot the trot a 
 canter. Then a faint melancholy shout at a dis- 
 tance, answered by a "Stole away!" from the 
 fields; a doleful "toot!" of the horn; the dull 
 thunder of many horse-hoofs rolling along the 
 farther woodside. Then red coats, flashing like 
 sparks of fire across the gray gap of mist at the 
 ride's-mouth, then a whipper-in, bringing up a 
 belated hound, burst into the pathway, smashing 
 and plunging, with shut eyes, through ash-saplings 
 and hassock-grass; then a fat farmer, sedulously 
 pounding through the mud, was overtaken and 
 bespattered in spite of all his struggles; until 
 the line streamed out into the wide rushy pasture, 
 startling up pewits and curlews, as horsemen 
 poured in from every side, and cunning old farmers 
 rode off at inexplicable angles to some well- 
 known haunts of pug: and right ahead, chiming 
 and jangling sweet madness, the dappled pack 
 glanced and wavered through the veil of soft gray 
 mist. 
 
 B vol. v
 
 I o Yeast 
 
 "What's the use of this hurry?" growled 
 Lancelot. "They will all be back again. I 
 never have the luck to see a run." 
 
 But no; on and on down the wind and down 
 the vale; and the canter became a gallop, and the 
 gallop a long straining stride; and a hundred 
 horse-hoofs crackled like flame among the stub- 
 bles, and thundered fetlock-deep along the heavy 
 meadows; and every fence thinned the cavalcade, 
 till the madness began to stir all bloods, and with 
 grim earnest silent faces, the initiated few settled 
 themselves to their work, and with the colonel 
 and Lancelot at their head, " took their pleasure 
 sadly, after the manner of their nation," as old 
 Froissart has it. 
 
 " Thorough bush, through brier, 
 Thorough park, through pale ; " 
 
 till the rolling grass-lands spread out into flat 
 black open fallows, crossed with grassy baulks, 
 and here and there a long melancholy line of tall 
 elms, while before them the high chalk ranges 
 gleamed above the mist like a vast wall of emerald 
 enamelled with snow, and the winding river 
 glittering at their feet. 
 
 " A polite fox ! " observed the colonel. " He 's 
 leading the squire straight home to Whitford, 
 just in time for dinner." 
 
 They were in the last meadow, with the stream 
 before them. A line of struggling heads in the 
 swollen and milky current showed the hounds' 
 opinion of Reynard's course. The sportsmen 
 galloped off towards the nearest bridge. Brace-
 
 The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting 1 1 
 
 bridge looked back at Lancelot, who had been 
 keeping by his side in sulky rivalry, following 
 him successfully through all manner of desperate 
 places, and more and more angry with himself 
 and the guiltless colonel, because he only fol- 
 lowed, while the colonel's quicker and unembar- 
 rassed wit, which lived wholly in the present 
 moment, saw long before Lancelot, "how to cut 
 out his work," in every field. 
 
 "I sha'n't go round," quietly observed the 
 colonel. 
 
 " Do you fancy I shall ? " growled Lancelot, 
 who took for granted poor thin-skinned soul ! 
 that the words were meant as a hit at himself. 
 
 "You're a brace of geese," politely observed 
 the old squire; "and you'll find it out in rheu- 
 matic fever. There ' one fool makes many ! ' 
 You'll kill Smith before you're done, colonel!" 
 and the old man wheeled away up the meadow, 
 as Bracebridge shouted after him : 
 
 " Oh, he '11 make a fine rider in time ! " 
 
 " In time ! " Lancelot could have knocked the 
 unsuspecting colonel down for the word. It just 
 expressed the contrast, which had fretted him 
 ever since he began to hunt with the Whitford 
 Priors hounds. The colonel's long practice and 
 consummate skill in all he took in hand, his 
 experience of all society, from the prairie Indian 
 to Crockford's, from the prize-ring to the conti- 
 nental courts, his varied and ready store of 
 information and anecdote, the harmony and 
 completeness of the man, his consistency with 
 his own small ideal, and his consequent apparent 
 superiority everywhere and in everything to the 
 huge awkward Titan-cub, who, though immeasur-
 
 1 2 Yeast 
 
 ably beyond Bracebridge in intellect and heart, 
 was still in a state of convulsive dyspepsia, 
 "swallowing formulae," and daily well-nigh 
 choked; diseased throughout with that morbid 
 self-consciousness and lust of praise, for which 
 God prepares, with His elect, a bitter cure. 
 Alas ! poor Lancelot ! an unlicked bear, " with all 
 his sorrows before him ! " 
 
 "Come along," quoth Bracebridge, between 
 snatches of a tune, his coolness maddening 
 Lancelot. "Old Lavington will find us dry 
 clothes, a bottle of port, and a brace of charming 
 daughters, at the Priory. In with you, little 
 Mustang of the prairie! Neck or nothing!" 
 
 And in an instant the small wiry American, 
 and the huge Horncastle-bred hunter, were wal- 
 lowing and staggering in the yeasty stream, till 
 they floated into a deep reach, and swam steadily 
 down to a low place in the bank. They crossed 
 the stream, passed the Priory shrubberies, leapt 
 the gate into the park, and then on and upward, 
 called by the unseen Ariel's music before them. 
 Up, into the hills ; past white crumbling chalk- 
 pits, fringed with feathered juniper and tottering 
 ashes, their floors strewed with knolls of fallen 
 soil and vegetation, like wooded islets in a sea of 
 milk. Up, between steep ridges of tuft crested 
 with black fir-woods and silver beech, and here 
 and there a huge yew standing out alone, the 
 advanced sentry of the forest, with its luscious 
 fretwork of green velvet, like a mountain of 
 Gothic spires and pinnacles, all glittering and 
 steaming as the sun drank up the dew-drops. 
 The lark sprang upward into song, and called 
 merrily to the new-opened sunbeams, while the
 
 The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting 1 3 
 
 wreaths and flakes of mist lingered reluctantly 
 about the hollows, and clung with dewy fingers 
 to every knoll and belt of pine. Up into the 
 labyrinthine bosom of the hills, but who can 
 describe them? Is not all nature indescribable? 
 every leaf infinite and transcendental? How 
 much more those mighty downs, with their enor- 
 mous sheets of spotless turf, where the dizzy eye 
 loses all standard of size and distance before the 
 awful simplicity, the delicate vastness, of those 
 grand curves and swells, soft as the outlines of a 
 Greek Venus, as if the great goddess-mother 
 Hertha had laid herself down among the hills 
 to sleep, her Titan limbs wrapt in a thin veil of 
 silvery green. 
 
 Up, into a vast amphitheatre of sward, whose 
 walls banked out the narrow sky above. And 
 here, in the focus of the huge ring, an object 
 appeared which stirred strange melancholy in 
 Lancelot, a little chapel, ivy-grown, girded 
 with a few yews, and elders, and grassy graves. 
 A climbing rose over the porch, and iron railings 
 round the churchyard, told of human care; and 
 from the graveyard itself burst up one of those 
 noble springs known as winter-bournes in the 
 chalk ranges, which, awakened in autumn from 
 the abysses to which it had shrunk during the 
 summer's drought, was hurrying down upon its 
 six months' course, a broad sheet of oily silver 
 over a temporary channel of smooth greensward. 
 
 The hounds had checked in the woods behind ; 
 now they poured down the hillside, so close 
 together " that you might have covered them with 
 a sheet," straight for the little chapel. 
 
 A saddened tvne of feeling spread itself through
 
 1 4 Yeast 
 
 Lancelot's heart. There were the everlasting 
 hills around, even as they had grown and grown 
 for countless ages, beneath the still depths of the 
 primeval chalk ocean, in the milky youth of this 
 great English land. And here was he, the insect 
 of a day, fox-hunting upon them! He felt ashamed, 
 and more ashamed when the inner voice whis- 
 pered, " Fox-hunting is not the shame thou 
 art the shame. If thou art the insect of a day, it 
 is thy sin that thou art one. " 
 
 And his sadness, foolish as it may seem, grew 
 as he watched a brown speck fleet rapidly up the 
 opposite hill, and heard a gay view-halloo burst 
 from the colonel at his side. The chase lost its 
 charm for him the moment the game was seen. 
 Then vanished that mysterious delight of pursu- 
 ing an invisible object, which gives to hunting 
 and fishing their unutterable and almost spiritual 
 charm ; which made Shakespeare a nightly poacher ; 
 Davy and Chantrey the patriarchs of fly-fishing; 
 by which the twelve-foot rod is transfigured into 
 an enchanter's wand, potent over the unseen 
 wonders of the water-world, to "call up spirits 
 from the vasty deep," which will really "come 
 if you do call for them " at least if the conjura- 
 tion be orthodox and they there. That spell 
 was broken by the sight of poor wearied pug, his 
 once gracefully-floating brush all draggled and 
 drooping, as he toiled up the sheep-paths towards 
 the open down above. 
 
 But Lancelot's sadness reached its crisis, as 
 he met the hounds just outside the churchyard. 
 Another moment they had leaped the rails; 
 and there they swept round under the gray wall, 
 leaping and yelling, like Berserk fiends among
 
 The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting 1 5 
 
 the frowning tombstones, over the cradles of the 
 quiet dead. 
 
 Lancelot shuddered the thing was not wrong 
 "it was no one's fault," but there was a 
 ghastly discord in it. Peace and strife, time 
 and eternity the mad noisy flesh, and the silent 
 immortal spirit, the frivolous game of life's 
 outside show, and the terrible earnest of its 
 inward abysses, jarred together without and 
 within him. He pulled his horse up violently, 
 and stood as if rooted to the place, gazing at he 
 knew not what. 
 
 The hounds caught sight of the fox, burst into 
 one frantic shriek of joy and then a sudden and 
 ghastly stillness, as, mute and breathless, they 
 toiled up the hillside, gaining on their victim at 
 every stride. The patter of the horse-hoofs and 
 the rattle of rolling flints died away above. 
 Lancelot looked up, startled at the silence; 
 laughed aloud, he knew not why, and sat, regard- 
 less of his pawing and straining horse, still star- 
 ing at the chapel and the graves. 
 
 On a sudden the chapel-door opened, and a 
 figure timidly yet loftily stepped out without 
 observing himi and suddenly turning round, met 
 him full, face to face, and stood fixed with sur- 
 prise as completely as Lancelot himself. 
 
 That face and figure, and the spirit which spoke 
 through them, entered his heart at once, never 
 again to leave it. Her features were aquiline 
 and grand, without a shade of harshness ; her eyes 
 shone out like twain lakes of still azure, beneath 
 a broad marble cliff of polished forehead; her 
 rich chestnut hair rippled downward round the 
 towering neck. With her perfect masque and
 
 1 6 Yeast 
 
 queenly figure, and earnest, upward gaze, she 
 might have been the very model from which 
 Raphael conceived his glorious St. Catherine 
 the ideal of the highest womanly genius, softened 
 into self-forgetfulness by girlish devotion. She 
 was simply, almost coarsely dressed; but a 
 glance told him that she was a lady, by the 
 courtesy of man as well as by the will of God. 
 
 They gazed one moment more at each other 
 but what is time to spirits ? With them, as with 
 their Father, "one day is as a thousand years.'* 
 But that eye-wedlock was cut short the next 
 instant by the decided interference of the horse, 
 who, thoroughly disgusted at his master's whole 
 conduct, gave a significant shake of his head, and 
 shamming frightened (as both women and horses 
 will do when only cross), commenced a war- 
 dance, which drove Argemone Lavington into 
 the porch, and gave the bewildered Lancelot an 
 excuse for dashing madly up the hill after his 
 companions. 
 
 " What a horrible ugly face ! " said Argemone 
 to herself, " but so clever, and so unhappy ! " 
 
 Blest pity ! true mother of that graceless scamp, 
 young Love, who is ashamed of his real pedigree, 
 and swears to this day that he is the child of 
 Venus ! the coxcomb ! 
 
 [Here, for the sake of the reader, we omit, or 
 rather postpone a long dissertation on the famous 
 Erototheogonic chorus of Aristophanes 's Birds, 
 with illustrations taken from all earth and heaven, 
 from the Vedas and Proclus to Jacob Behmen 
 and Saint Theresa.] 
 
 " The dichotomy of Lancelot's personality," as
 
 The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting 17 
 
 the Germans would call it, returned as he dashed 
 on. His understanding was trying to ride, while 
 his spirit was left behind with Argemone. Hence 
 loose reins and a looser seat. He rolled about 
 like a tipsy man, holding on, in fact, far more by 
 his spurs than by his knees, to the utter infuria- 
 tion of Shiver-the-timbers, who kicked and snorted 
 over the down like one of Mephistopheles's 
 Demon-steeds. They had mounted the hill 
 the deer fled before them in terror' they neared 
 the park palings. In the road beyond them the 
 hounds were just killing their fox, struggling 
 and growling in fierce groups for the red gobbets 
 of fur, a panting, steaming ring of horses round 
 them. Half a dozen voices hailed him as he 
 came up. 
 
 " Where have you been ? " " He '11 tumble off ! " 
 " He 's had a fall ! " " No, he has n't ! " " 'Ware 
 hounds, man alive ! " " He '11 break his neck ! " 
 
 "He has broken it, at last!" shouted the 
 colonel, as Shiver-the-timbers rushed at the high 
 pales, out of breath, and blind with rage. Lance- 
 lot saw and heard nothing till he was awakened 
 from his dream by the long heave of the huge 
 brute's shoulder, and the maddening sensation of 
 sweeping through the air over the fence. He 
 started, checked the curb, the horse threw up his 
 head, fulfilling his name by driving his knees 
 like a battering-ram against the pales the top- 
 bar bent like a withe, flew out into a hundred 
 splinters, and man and horse rolled over headlong 
 into the hard flint-road. 
 
 For one long sickening second Lancelot watched 
 the blue sky between his own knees. Then a 
 crash as if a shell had burst in his face a
 
 1 8 Yeast 
 
 horrible grind a sheet of flame and the black- 
 ness of night. Did you ever feel it, reader? 
 
 When he awoke, he found himself lying in 
 bed, with Squire Lavington sitting by him. 
 There was real sorrow in the old man's face. 
 "Come to himself!" and a great joyful oath 
 rolled out. " The boldest rider of them all ! I 
 wouldn't have lost him for a dozen ready-made 
 spick and span Colonel Bracebridges ! " 
 
 "Quite right, squire!" answered a laughing 
 voice from behind the curtain. " Smith has a 
 clear two thousand a year, and I live by my 
 wits!"
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SPRING YEARNINGS 
 
 1 HEARD a story the other day of our most 
 earnest and genial humorist, who is just now 
 proving himself also our most earnest and genial 
 novelist. " I like your novel exceedingly," said a 
 lady; "the characters are so natural all but the 
 baronet, and he surely is overdrawn: it is impos- 
 sible to find such coarseness in his rank of life ! " 
 
 The artist laughed. " And that character," said 
 he, " is almost the only exact portrait in the whole 
 book." 
 
 So it is. People do not see the strange things 
 which pass them every day. " The romance of 
 real life " is only one to the romantic spirit. And 
 then they set up for critics, instead of pupils ; as 
 if the artist's business was not just to see what they 
 cannot see to open their eyes to the harmonies 
 and the discords, the miracles and the absurdities, 
 which seem to them one uniform gray fog of 
 commonplaces. 
 
 Then let the reader believe, that whatsoever is 
 commonplace in my story is my own invention. 
 Whatsoever may seem extravagant or startling is 
 most likely to be historic fact, else I should not 
 have dared to write it down, finding God's actual 
 dealings here much too wonderful to dare to 
 invent many fresh ones for myself.
 
 2O Yeast 
 
 Lancelot, who had had a severe concussion of 
 the brain and a broken leg, kept his bed for a few 
 weeks, and his room for a few more. Colonel 
 Bracebridge installed himself at the Priory, and 
 nursed him with indefatigable good-humor and 
 few thanks. He brought Lancelot his breakfast 
 before hunting, described the run to him when he 
 returned, read him to sleep, told him stories of 
 grizzly bear and buffalo hunts, made him laugh in 
 spite of himself at extempore comic medleys, kept 
 his tables covered with flowers from the conserva- 
 tory, warmed his chocolate and even his bed. 
 Nothing came amiss to him, and he to nothing. 
 Lancelot longed at first every hour to be rid of 
 him, and eyed him about the room as a bulldog 
 does the monkey who rides him. In his dreams 
 he was Sinbad the Sailor, and Bracebridge the Old 
 Man of the Sea ; but he could not hold out against 
 the colonel's merry bustling kindliness, and the 
 almost womanish tenderness of his nursing. The 
 ice thawed rapidly; and one evening it split up 
 altogether, when Bracebridge, who was sitting 
 drawing by Lancelot's sofa, instead of amusing 
 himself with the ladies below, suddenly threw his 
 pencil into the fire, and broke out, Apropos de rien : 
 
 "What a strange pair we are, Smith! I think 
 you just the best fellow I ever met, and you hate 
 me like poison you can't deny it." 
 
 There was something in the colonel's tone so 
 utterly different from his usual courtly and 
 measured speech, that Lancelot was taken com- 
 pletely by surprise, and stammered out: 
 
 "I I I no no. I know I am very fool- 
 ish ungrateful. But I do hate you," he said, 
 with a sudden impulse, " and I '11 tell you why."
 
 Spring Yearnings 21 
 
 " Give me your hand," quoth the colonel : " I like 
 that Now we shall see our way with each other, 
 at least." 
 
 " Because," said Lancelot, slowly, " because you 
 are cleverer than I, readier than I, superior to me 
 in every point." 
 
 The colonel laughed, not quite merrily. Lance- 
 lot went on, holding down his shaggy brows. 
 
 " I am a brute and an ass ! And yet I do not 
 like to tell you so. For if I am an ass, what are 
 you ? " 
 
 "Heyday!" 
 
 "Look here. I am wasting my time and brains 
 on ribaldry, but I am worth nothing better at 
 least, I think so at times; but you, who can do 
 anything you put your hand to, what business 
 have you, in the devil's name, to be throwing your- 
 self away on gimcracks and fox-hunting foolery? 
 Heavens ! If I had your talents, I 'd be I 'd 
 make a name for myself before I died, if I died to 
 make it" 
 
 The colonel griped his hand hard, rose, and 
 looked out of the window for a few minutes. 
 There was a dead, brooding silence, till he turned 
 to Lancelot: 
 
 " Mr. Smith, I thank you for your honesty, but 
 good advice may come too late. I am no saint, 
 and God only knows how much less of one I may 
 become; but mark my words, if you are ever 
 tempted by passion, and vanity, and fine ladies, 
 to form liaisons, as the Jezebels call them, snares, 
 and nets, and labyrinths of blind ditches, to keep 
 you down through life, stumbling and grovelling, 
 hating yourself and hating the chain to which you 
 cling in that hour pray pray as if the devil
 
 22 Yeast 
 
 had you by the throat to Almighty God, to 
 help you out of that cursed slough ! There is 
 nothing else for it ! pray, I tell you ! " 
 
 There was a terrible earnestness about the 
 guardsman's face which could not be mistaken. 
 Lancelot looked at him for a moment, and then 
 dropped his eyes ashamed, as if he had intruded 
 on the speaker's confidence by witnessing his 
 emotion. 
 
 In a moment the colonel had returned to his 
 smile and his polish. 
 
 "And now, my dear invalid, I must beg your 
 pardon for sermonizing. What do you say to a 
 game of tcarti ' ? We must play for love, or we 
 shall excite ourselves, and scandalize Mrs. Laving- 
 ton's piety." And the colonel pulled a pack of 
 cards out of his pocket, and seeing that Lancelot 
 was too thoughtful for play, commenced all man- 
 ner of juggler's tricks, and chuckled over them 
 like any schoolboy. 
 
 " Happy man ! " thought Lancelot, " to have 
 the strength of will which can thrust its thoughts 
 away once and for all." 
 
 No, Lancelot ! more happy are they whom God 
 will not allow to thrust their thoughts from them 
 till the bitter draught has done its work. 
 
 From that day, however, there was a cordial 
 understanding between the two. They never al- 
 luded to the subject; but they had known the 
 bottom of each other's heart. Lancelot's sick- 
 room was now pleasant enough, and he drank in 
 daily his new friend's perpetual stream of anec- 
 dote, till March and hunting were past, and April 
 was half over. The old squire came up after 
 dinner regularly (during March he had hunted
 
 Spring Yearnings 23 
 
 every day, and slept every evening) ; and the trio 
 chatted along merrily enough, by the help of whist 
 and backgammon, upon the surface of this little 
 island of life, which is, like Sinbad's, after all 
 only the back of a floating whale, ready to dive at 
 any moment. And then ? 
 
 But what was Argemone doing all this time? 
 Argemone was busy in her boudoir (too often a 
 true boudoir to her) among books and statuettes, 
 and dried flowers, fancying herself, and not un- 
 fairly, very intellectual. She had four new manias 
 every year; her last winter's one had been that 
 bottle-and-squirt mania, miscalled chemistry; her 
 spring madness was for the Greek drama. She 
 had devoured Schlegel's lectures, and thought 
 them divine; and now she was hard at work on 
 Sophocles, with a little help from translations, and 
 thought she understood him every word. Then 
 she was somewhat High-Church in her notions, 
 and used to go up every Wednesday and Friday 
 to the chapel in the hills, where Lancelot had met 
 her, for an hour's mystic devotion, set off by a 
 little graceful asceticism. As for Lancelot, she 
 never thought of him but as an empty-headed fox- 
 hunter who had met with his deserts; and the 
 brilliant accounts which the all-smoothing colonel 
 gave at dinner of Lancelot's physical well-doing 
 and agreeable conversation only made her set him 
 down the sooner as a twin clever-do-nothing to 
 the despised Bracebridge, whom she hated for 
 keeping her father in a roar of laughter. 
 
 But her sister, little Honoria, had all the while 
 been busy messing and cooking with her own 
 hands for the invalid, and almost fell in love with 
 the colonel for his watchful kindness. And here a
 
 24 Yeast 
 
 word about Honoria, to whom Nature, according 
 to her wont with sisters, had given almost every- 
 thing which Argemone wanted, and denied almost 
 everything which Argemone had, except beauty. 
 And even in that, the many-sided mother had 
 made her a perfect contrast to her sister, tiny 
 and luscious, dark-eyed and dark-haired ; as full 
 of wild simple passion as an Italian, thinking little, 
 except where she felt much which was indeed 
 everywhere; for she lived in a perpetual April- 
 shower of exaggerated sympathy for all suffering, 
 whether in novels or in life ; and daily gave the lie 
 to that shallow old calumny that "fictitious sor- 
 rows harden the heart to real ones." 
 
 Argemone was almost angry with her some- 
 times, when she trotted whole days about the 
 village from school to sick-room: perhaps con- 
 science hinted to her that her duty, too, lay rather 
 there than among her luxurious day-dreams. But, 
 alas ! though she would have indignantly repelled 
 the accusation of selfishness, yet in self and for 
 self alone she lived; and while she had force of 
 will for any so-called " self-denial," and would fast 
 herself cross and stupefied, and quite enjoy kneel- 
 ing thinly clad and barefoot on the freezing 
 chapel-floor on a winter's morning, yet her fas- 
 tidious delicacy revolted at sitting, like Honoria, 
 beside the bed of the ploughman's consumptive 
 daughter, in a reeking, stifling, lean-to garret, in 
 which had slept the night before, the father, mother, 
 and two grown-up boys, not to mention a new- 
 married couple, the sick girl, and, alas ! her baby. 
 And of such bedchambers there were too many in 
 Whitford Priors. 
 
 The first evening that Lancelot came downstairs,
 
 Spring Yearnings 25 
 
 Honoria clapped her hands outright for joy as he 
 entered, and ran up and down for ten minutes, 
 fetching and carrying endless unnecessary cushions 
 and footstools ; while Argemone greeted him with 
 a cold distant bow, aiid a fine-lady drawl of care- 
 fully commonplace congratulations. Her heart 
 smote her, though, as she saw the wan face and 
 the wild, melancholy, moon-struck eyes once more 
 glaring through and through her; she found a 
 comfort in thinking his stare impertinent, drew 
 herself up, and turned away; once, indeed, she 
 could not help listening, as Lancelot thanked Mrs. 
 Lavington for all the pious and edifying books 
 with which the good lady had kept his room 
 rather than his brain furnished for the last six 
 weeks ; he was going to say more, but he saw the 
 colonel's quaint foxy eye peering at him, remem- 
 bered St. Francis de Sales, and held his tongue. 
 
 But, as her destiny was, Argemone found her- 
 self, in the course of the evening, alone with Lance- 
 lot, at the open window. It was a still, hot, heavy 
 night, after long easterly drought; sheet-lightning 
 glimmered on the far horizon over the dark wood- 
 lands ; the coming shower had sent forward as his 
 herald a whispering draught of fragrant air. 
 
 " What a delicious shiver is creeping over those 
 limes ! " said Lancelot, half to himself. 
 
 The expression struck Argemone: it was the 
 right one, and it seemed to open vistas of feeling 
 and observation in the speaker which she had not 
 suspected. There was a rich melancholy in the 
 voice ; she turned to look at him. 
 
 " Ay," he went on ; " and the same heat which 
 crisps those thirsty leaves must breed the thunder- 
 shower which cools them? But so it is through-
 
 26 Yeast 
 
 out the universe : every yearning proves the 
 existence of an object meant to satisfy it; the 
 same law creates both the giver and the receiver, 
 the longing and its home." 
 
 " If one could but know sometimes what it is 
 for which one is longing ! " said Argemone, with- 
 out knowing that she was speaking from her 
 inmost heart : but thus does the soul involuntarily 
 lay bare its most unspoken depths in the presence 
 of its yet unknown mate, and then shudders at its 
 own abandon as it first tries on the wedding-garment 
 of Paradise. 
 
 Lancelot was not yet past the era at which young 
 geniuses are apt to " talk book " at little. 
 
 "For what?" he answered, flashing up accord- 
 ing to his fashion. " To be ; to be great ; to 
 have done one mighty work before we die, and 
 live, unloved or loved, upon the lips of men. For 
 this all long who are not mere apes and wall-flies." 
 
 " So longed the founders of Babel," answered 
 Argemone, carelessly, to this tirade. She had 
 risen a strange fish, the cunning beauty, and now 
 she was trying her fancy flies over him one by 
 one. 
 
 "And were they so far wrong? " answered he. 
 " From the Babel society sprung our architecture, 
 our astronomy, politics, and colonization. No 
 doubt the old Hebrew sheiks thought them im- 
 pious enough, for daring to build brick walls 
 instead of keeping to the good old-fashioned tents, 
 and gathering themselves into a nation instead of 
 remaining a mere family horde ; and gave their 
 own account of the myth, just as the antediluvian 
 savages gave theirs of that strange Eden scene, by 
 the common interpretation of which the devil is
 
 Spring Yearnings 27 
 
 made the first inventor of modesty. Men are all 
 conservatives; everything new is impious, till we 
 get accustomed to it; and if it fails, the mob 
 piously discover a divine vengeance in the mis- 
 chance, from Babel to Catholic Emancipation." 
 
 Lancelot had stuttered horribly during the latter 
 part of this most heterodox outburst, for he had be- 
 gun to think about himself, and try to say a fine thing, 
 suspecting all the while that it might not be true. 
 But Argemone did not remark the stammering: 
 the new thoughts startled and pained her; but 
 there was a daring grace about them. She tried, as 
 women will, to answer him with arguments, and 
 failed, as women will fail. She was accustomed 
 to lay down the law a la Madame de Stael, to 
 savants and non-savants and be heard with rev- 
 erence, as a woman should be. But poor truth- 
 seeking Lancelot did not see what sex had to do 
 with logic ; he flew at her as if she had been a 
 very barrister, and hunted her mercilessly up and 
 down through all sorts of charming sophisms, 
 as she begged the question, and shifted her ground, 
 as thoroughly right in her conclusion as she was 
 wrong in her reasoning, till she grew quite con- 
 fused and pettish. And then Lancelot suddenly 
 shrank into his shell, claws and all, like an affrighted 
 soldier-crab, hung down his head, and stammered 
 out some incoherencies, " N-n-not accustomed 
 to talk to women ladies, I mean. F-forgot 
 myself. Pray forgive me ! " And he looked up, 
 and her eyes, half-amused, met his, and she saw 
 that they were filled with tears. 
 
 " What have I to forgive ? " she said, more gently, 
 wondering on what sort of strange sportsman she 
 had fallen. " You treat me like an equal ; you will
 
 28 Yeast 
 
 deign to argue with me. But men in general 
 oh, they hide their contempt for us, if not their 
 own ignorance, under that mask of chivalrous 
 deference ! " and then in the nasal fine ladies' key, 
 which was her shell, as bitter brusquerie was his, 
 she added, with an Amazon queen's toss of the 
 head, " You must come and see us often. We 
 shall suit each other, I see, better than most whom 
 we see here." 
 
 A sneer and a blush passed together over 
 Lancelot's ugliness. 
 
 " What, better than the glib Colonel Bracebridge 
 yonder?" 
 
 " Oh, he is witty enough, but he lives on the 
 surface of everything! He is altogether shallow 
 and blase. His good-nature is the fruit of want of 
 feeling; between his gracefulness and his sneer- 
 ing persiflage he is a perfect Mephistopheles- 
 Apollo." 
 
 What a snare a decently good nickname is ! 
 Out it must come, though it carry a lie on its back. 
 But the truth was, Argemone thought herself in- 
 finitely superior to the colonel, for which simple 
 reason she could not in the least understand 
 him. 
 
 [By the by, how subtly Mr. Tennyson has 
 embodied all this in " The Princess." How he shows 
 us the woman, when she takes her stand on the 
 false masculine ground of intellect, working out 
 her own moral punishment, by destroying in her- 
 self the tender heart of flesh, which is either 
 woman's highest blessing or her bitterest curse; 
 how she loses all feminine sensibility to the under- 
 current of feeling in us poor world-worn, case- 
 hardened men, and falls from pride to sternness,
 
 Spring Yearnings 29 
 
 from sternness to sheer inhumanity. I should 
 have honored myself by pleading guilty to stealing 
 much of Argemone's character from " The Princess," 
 had not the idea been conceived, and fairly worked 
 out, long before the appearance of that noble 
 poem.] 
 
 They said no more to each other that evening. 
 Argemone was called to the piano ; and Lancelot 
 took up the " Sporting Magazine," and read himself 
 to sleep till the party separated for the night. 
 
 Argemone went up thoughtfully to her own 
 room. The shower had fallen, and the moon was 
 shining bright, while every budding leaf and knot 
 of mould steamed up cool perfume, borrowed from 
 the treasures of the thundercloud. All around 
 was working the infinite mystery of birth and 
 growth, of giving and taking, of beauty and use. 
 All things were harmonious all things reciprocal 
 without. Argemone felt herself needless, lonely, 
 and out of tune with herself and nature. 
 
 She sat in the window, and listlessly read over 
 to herself a fragment of her own poetry : 
 
 SAPPHO 
 
 She lay among the myrtles on the cliff; 
 Above her glared the moon ; beneath, the sea. 
 Upon the white horizon Athos' peak 
 Weltered in burning haze ; all airs were dead ; 
 The sicale slept among the tamarisk's hair ; 
 The birds sat dumb and drooping. Far below 
 The lazy sea-weed glistened in the sun : 
 The lazy sea-fowl dried their steaming wings ; 
 The lazy swell crept whispering up the ledge, 
 And sank again. Great Pan was laid to rest; 
 And mother Earth watched by him as he slept, 
 And hushed her myriad children for awhile.
 
 30 Yeast 
 
 She lay among the myrtles on the cliff; 
 And sighed for sleep, for sleep that would not hear, 
 But left her tossing still : for night and day 
 A mighty hunger yearned within her heart, 
 Till all her veins ran fever, and her cheek, 
 Her long thin hands, and ivory-channell'd feet, 
 Were wasted with the wasting of her soul. 
 Then peevishly she flung her on her face, 
 And hid her eyeballs from the blinding glare, 
 And fingered at the grass, and tried to cool 
 Her crisp hot lips against the crisp hot sward : 
 And then she raised her head, and upward cast 
 Wild looks from homeless eyes, whose liquid light 
 Gleamed out between- deep f Ids of blue-black hair, 
 As gleam twin lakes between the purple peaks 
 Of deep Parnassus, at the mournful moon. 
 Beside her lay a lyre. She snatched the shell, 
 And waked wild music from its silver strings ; 
 Then tossed it sadly by, " Ah, hush ! " she cries. 
 " Dead offspring of the tortoise and the mine ! 
 Why mock my discords with thine harmonies? 
 Although a thrice-Olympian lot be thine, 
 Only to echo back in every tone, 
 The moods of nobler natures than thine own." 
 
 " No ! " she said. " That soft and rounded rhyme 
 suits ill with Sappho's fitful and wayward agonies. 
 She should burst out at once into wild passionate 
 life-weariness, and disgust at that universe, with 
 whose beauty she has filled her eyes in vain, to 
 find it always a dead picture, unsatisfying, unlov- 
 ing as I have found it." 
 
 Sweet self-deceiver ! had you no other reason 
 for choosing as your heroine Sappho, the victim 
 of the idolatry of intellect -trying in vain to fill 
 her heart with the friendship of her own sex, and 
 then sinking into mere passion for a handsome 
 boy, and so down into self-contempt and suicide? 
 
 She was conscious, I do believe, of no other
 
 Spring Yearnings 31 
 
 reason than that she gave ; but consciousness is a 
 dim candle over a deep mine. 
 
 " After all," she said pettishly, " people will call it 
 a mere imitation of Shelley's ' Alastor.' And what 
 harm if it is? Is there to be no female Alastor? 
 Has not the woman as good a right as the man to 
 long after ideal beauty to pine and die if she 
 cannot find it; and regenerate herself in its 
 light?" 
 
 " Yo-hoo-oo-oo ! Youp, youp ! Oh-hooo ! " 
 arose doleful through the echoing shrubbery. 
 
 Argemone started and looked out. It was not 
 a banshee, but a forgotten fox-hound puppy, sit- 
 ting mournfully on the gravel-walk beneath, star- 
 ing at the clear ghastly moon. 
 
 She laughed and blushed there was a rebuke 
 in it. She turned to go to rest ; and as she knelt 
 and prayed at her velvet faldstool, among all the 
 nicknacks which nowadays make a luxury of de- 
 votion, was it strange if, after she had prayed for 
 the fate of nations and churches, and for those 
 who, as she thought, were fighting at Oxford the 
 cause of universal truth and reverent antiquity, 
 she remembered in her petitions the poor godless 
 youth, with his troubled and troubling eloquence? 
 But it was strange that she blushed when she 
 mentioned his name why should she not pray 
 for him as she prayed for others? 
 
 Perhaps she felt that she did not pray for him 
 as she prayed for others. 
 
 She left the ^Eolian harp in the window, as a 
 luxury if she should wake, and coiled herself up 
 among lace pillows and eider blemos; and the 
 hound coiled himself up on the gravel-walk, after 
 a solemn vesper ceremony of three turns round in
 
 3 2 Yeast 
 
 his own length, looking vainly for a " soft stone." 
 The finest of us are animals after all, and live by- 
 eating and sleeping; and, taken as animals, not so 
 badly off either unless we happen to be Dorset- 
 shire laborers or Spitalfields weavers or col- 
 liery children or marching soldiers or, I am 
 afraid, one half of English souls this day. 
 
 And Argemone dreamed ; that she was a fox, 
 flying for her life through a churchyard and 
 Lancelot was a hound, yelling and leaping, in a 
 red coat and white buckskins, close upon her 
 and she felt his hot breath, and saw his white teeth 
 glare. . . . And then her father was there: and 
 he was an Italian boy, and played the organ 
 and Lancelot was a dancing dog, and stood up and 
 danced to the tune of " Cest I'amour, I' amour, 
 I' amour" pitifully enough, in his red coat and 
 she stood up and danced too ; but she found her 
 fox-fur dress insufficient, and begged hard for a 
 paper frill which was denied her: whereat she 
 cried bitterly and woke ; and saw the Night peep- 
 ing in with her bright diamond eyes, and blushed, 
 and hid her beautiful face in the pillows, and fell 
 asleep again. 
 
 What the little imp, who managed this puppet- 
 show on Argemone's brain-stage, may have in- 
 tended to symbolize thereby, and whence he stole 
 his actors and stage-properties, and whether he 
 got up the interlude for his own private fun, or 
 for that of a choir of brother Eulenspiegels, or, 
 finally, for the edification of Argemone as to her 
 own history, past, present, or future, are questions 
 which we must leave unanswered, till physicians 
 have become a little more of metaphysicians, and 
 have given up their present plan of ignoring for
 
 Spring Yearnings 33 
 
 nine hundred and ninety-nine pages that most 
 awful and significant custom of dreaming, and 
 then in the thousandth page talking the boldest 
 materialist twaddle about it. 
 
 In the meantime, Lancelot, contrary to the 
 colonel's express commands, was sitting up to 
 indite the following letter to his cousin, the 
 Tractarian curate: 
 
 " You complain that I waste my time in field-sports : 
 how do you know that I waste my time ? I find within 
 myself certain appetites ; and I suppose that the God 
 whom you say made me, made those appetites as a part 
 of me. Why are they to be crushed any more than any 
 other part of me ? I am the whole of what I find in 
 myself am I to pick and choose myself out of myself? 
 And besides, I feel that the exercise of freedom, activity, 
 foresight, daring, independent self-determination, even 
 in a few minutes' burst across country, strengthens me 
 in mind as well as in body. It might not do so to you ; 
 but you are of a different constitution, and, from all I 
 see, the power of a man's muscles, the excitability of his 
 nerves, the shape and balance of his brain, make him 
 what he is. Else what is the meaning of physiognomy? 
 Every man's destiny, as the Turks say, stands written 
 on his forehead. One does not need two glances at 
 your face to know that you would not enjoy fox-hunting, 
 that you would enjoy book-learning and ' refined repose,' 
 as they are pleased to call it. Every man carries his 
 character in his brain. You all know that, and act 
 upon it when you have to deal with a man for sixpence ; 
 but your religious dogmas, which make out that every 
 man comes into the world equally brutish and fiendish, 
 make you afraid to confess it. I don't quarrel with a 
 ' douce ' man like you, with a large organ of veneration, 
 for following your bent. But if I am fiery, with a huge 
 C Vol. V
 
 34 Yeast 
 
 cerebellum, why am I not to follow mine ? For that 
 is what you do, after all what you like best. It is all 
 very easy for a man to talk of conquering his appetites, 
 when he has none to conquer. Try and conquer your 
 organ of veneration, or of benevolence, or of calculation 
 then I will call you an ascetic. Why not ! The 
 same Power which made the front of one's head made 
 the back, I suppose? 
 
 " And, I tell you, hunting does me good. It awakens 
 me out of my dreary mill-round of metaphysics. It 
 sweeps away that infernal web of self-consciousness, and 
 absorbs me in outward objects ; and my red-hot Peril- 
 lus's bull cools in proportion as my horse warms. I tell 
 you, I never saw a man who could cut out his way across 
 country who could not cut his way through better things 
 when his turn came. The cleverest and noblest fellows 
 are sure to be the best riders in the long run. And 
 as for bad company and ' the world,' when you take to 
 going in the first-class carriages for fear of meeting a 
 swearing sailor in the second-class when those who 
 have ' renounced the world ' give up buying and selling 
 in the funds when my uncle, the pious banker, who 
 will only ' associate ' with the truly religious, gives up 
 dealing with any scoundrel or heathen who can 'do 
 business ' with him then you may quote pious people's 
 opinions to me. In God's name, if the Stock Exchange, 
 and railway stagging, and the advertisements in the 
 Protestant Hue-and-Cry, and the frantic Mammon- 
 hunting which has been for the last fifty years the 
 peculiar pursuit of the majority of Quakers, Dissenters, 
 and Religious Churchmen, are not The World, what is? 
 I don't complain of them, though ; Puritanism has inter- 
 dicted to them all art, all excitement, all amusement 
 except money-making. It is their dernier ressort, poor 
 souls ! 
 
 "But you must explain to us naughty fox-hunters
 
 Spring Yearnings 35 
 
 how all this agrees with the good book. We see plainly 
 enough, in the meantime, how it agrees with 'poor 
 human nature.' We see that the ' religious world,' like 
 the * great world,' and the 'sporting world,' and the 
 ' literary world,' 
 
 ' Compounds for sins she is inclined to, 
 By damning those she has no mind to ; ' 
 
 and that because England is a money-making country, 
 and money-making is an effeminate pursuit, therefore 
 all sedentary and spoony sins, like covetousness, slander, 
 bigotry, and self-conceit, are to be cockered and plas- 
 tered over, while the more masculine vices, and no-vices 
 also, are mercilessly hunted down by your cold-blooded, 
 soft-handed religionists. 
 
 " This is a more quiet letter than usual from me, my 
 dear coz, for many of your reproofs cut me home : they 
 angered me at the time; but I deserve them. I am 
 miserable, self- disgusted, self-helpless, craving for free- 
 dom, and yet crying aloud for some one to come and 
 guide me, and teach me ; and who is there in these days 
 who could teach a fast man, even if he would try? Be 
 sure, that as long as you and yours make piety a syno- 
 nym for unmanliness, you will never convert either me 
 or any other good sportsman. 
 
 " By the by, my dear fellow, was I asleep or awake 
 when I seemed to read in the postscript of your last 
 letter, something about 'being driven to Rome after 
 all ' ? . . . Why thither, of all places in heaven or earth ? 
 You know, I have no party interest in the question. 
 All creeds are very much alike to me just now. But 
 allow me to ask, in a spirit of the most tolerant curi- 
 osity, what possible celestial bait, either of the useful 
 or the agreeable kind, can the present excellent Pope, 
 or his adherents, hold out to you in compensation for 
 the solid earthly pudding which you would have to
 
 36 Yeast 
 
 desert? ... I dare say, though, that I shall not com- 
 prehend your answer when it comes. I am, you know, 
 utterly deficient in that sixth sense of the angelic or 
 supralunar beautiful, which fills your soul with ecstasy. 
 You, I know, expect and long to become an angel after 
 death; I am under the strange hallucination that my 
 body is part of me, and in spite of old Plotinus, look 
 with horror at a disembodiment till the giving of that 
 new body, the great perfection of which, in your eyes, 
 and those of every one else, seems to be, that it will be 
 
 less, and not more of a body, than our present one 
 
 Is this hope, to me at once inconceivable and contra- 
 dictory, palpable and valuable enough to you to send 
 you to that Italian Avernus, to get it made a little more 
 certain ? If so, I despair of your making your meaning 
 intelligible to a poor fellow wallowing, like me, in the 
 Hylic Borboros or whatever else you may choose to 
 call the unfortunate fact of being flesh and blood. . . . 
 Still, write."
 
 CHAPTER IH 
 
 SEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE 
 
 WHEN Argemone rose in the morning, her 
 first thought was of Lancelot. His face 
 haunted her. The wild brilliance of his intellect 
 struggling through foul smoke-clouds, had haunted 
 her still more. She had heard of his profligacy, 
 his bursts of fierce Berserk-madness; and yet 
 now these very faults, instead of repelling, 
 seemed to attract her, and intensify her longing 
 to save him. She would convert him; purify 
 him; harmonize his discords. And that very 
 wish gave her a peace she had never felt before. 
 She had formed her idea ; she had now a purpose 
 for which to live, and she determined to concen- 
 trate herself for the work, and longed for the 
 moment when she should meet Lancelot, and 
 begin how, she did not very clearly see. 
 
 It is an old jest the fair devotee trying to 
 convert the young rake. Men of the world laugh 
 heartily at it; and so does the devil, no doubt. 
 If any readers wish to be fellow-jesters with that 
 personage, they may; but, as sure as old Saxon 
 women-worship remains forever a blessed and 
 healing law of life, the devotee may yet convert 
 the rake and, perhaps, herself into the bargain. 
 
 Argemone looked almost angrily round at her 
 beloved books and drawings; for they spoke a
 
 38 Yeast 
 
 message to her which they had never spoken 
 before, of self-centred ambition. "Yes," she 
 said aloud to herself, "I have been selfish, 
 utterly! Art, poetry, science I believe, after 
 all, that I have only loved them for my own 
 sake, not for theirs, because they would make 
 me something, feed my conceit of my own talents. 
 How infinitely more glorious to find my work- 
 field and my prize, not in dead forms and colors, 
 or ink-and-paper theories, but in a living, immor- 
 tal, human spirit ! I will study no more, except 
 the human heart, and only that to purify and 
 ennoble it." 
 
 True, Argemone ; and yet, like all resolutions, 
 somewhat less than the truth. That morning, 
 indeed, her purpose was simple as God's own 
 light. She never dreamed of exciting Lancelot's 
 admiration, even his friendship for herself. She 
 would have started as from a snake, from the 
 issue which the reader very clearly foresees, that 
 Lancelot would fall in love, not with Young Eng- 
 landism, but with Argemone Lavington. But 
 yet self is not eradicated even from a woman's 
 heart in one morning before breakfast. Besides, 
 it is not "benevolence," but love the real 
 Cupid of flesh and blood, who can first 
 
 " Touch the chord of self which, trembling, 
 Passes in music out of sight." 
 
 But a time for all things; and it is now time 
 for Argemone > to go down to breakfast, having 
 prepared some dozen imaginary dialogues between 
 herself and Lancelot, in which, of course, her 
 eloquence always had the victory. She had yet 
 to learn, that it is better sometimes not to settle
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 39 
 
 in one's heart what we shall speak, for the Ever- 
 lasting Will has good works ready prepared for 
 us to walk in, by what we call fortunate accident; 
 and it shall be given us in that day and that hour 
 what we shall speak. 
 
 Lancelot, in the meantime, shrank from meet- 
 ing Argemone; and was quite glad of the weak- 
 ness which kept him upstairs. Whether he was 
 afraid of her whether he was ashamed of him- 
 self or of his crutches, I cannot tell, but I dare 
 say, reader, you are getting tired of all this 
 soul-dissecting. So we will have a bit of action 
 again, for the sake of variety, if for nothing 
 better. 
 
 Of all the species of lovely scenery which 
 England holds, none, perhaps, is more exquisite 
 than the banks of the chalk-rivers the perfect 
 limpidity of the water, the gay and luxuriant 
 vegetation of the banks and ditches, the masses 
 of noble wood embosoming the villages, the 
 unique beauty of the water-meadows, living sheets 
 of emerald and silver, tinkling and sparkling, 
 cool under the fiercest sun, brilliant under the 
 blackest clouds. There, if anywhere, one would 
 have expected to find Arcadia among fertility, 
 loveliness, industry, and wealth. But, alas for 
 the sad reality ! the cool breath of those glitter- 
 ing water-meadows too often floats laden with 
 poisonous miasma. Those picturesque villages 
 are generally the perennial hotbeds of fever and 
 ague, of squalid penury, sottish profligacy, dull 
 discontent too stale for words. There is luxury 
 in the park, wealth in the huge farm -stead ings, 
 knowledge in the parsonage: but the poor? those 
 by whose dull labor all that luxury and wealth,
 
 40 Yeast 
 
 ay, even that knowledge, is made possible what 
 are they? We shall see, please God, ere the 
 story's end. 
 
 But of all this Lancelot as yet thought noth- 
 ing. He, too, had to be emancipated, as much 
 as Argemone, from selfish dreams; to learn to 
 work trustfully in the living Present, not to gloat 
 sentimentally over the unreturning Past. But 
 his time was not yet come; and little he thought 
 of all the work which lay ready for him within a 
 mile of the Priory, as he watched the ladies go 
 out for the afternoon, and slipped down to the 
 Nun's-pool on his crutches to smoke and fish, and 
 build castles in the air. 
 
 The Priory, with its rambling courts and 
 gardens, stood on an island in the river. The 
 upper stream flowed in a straight artificial channel 
 through the garden, still and broad, towards the 
 Priory mill; while just above the Priory wall 
 half the river fell over a high weir, with all its 
 appendages of bucks and hatchways, and eel- 
 baskets, into the Nun's-pool, and then swept 
 round under the ivied walls, with their fantastic 
 turrets and gables, and little loopholed windows, 
 peering out over the stream, as it hurried down 
 over the shallows to join the race below the 
 mill. A postern door in the walls opened on an 
 ornamental wooden bridge across the weir-head 
 a favorite haunt of all fishers and sketchers 
 who were admitted to the dragon -guarded Elysium 
 of Whitford Priors. Thither Lancelot went, con- 
 gratulating himself, strange to say, in having 
 escaped the only human being whom he loved on 
 earth. 
 
 He found on the weir-bridge two of the keepers.
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 41 
 
 The younger one, Tregarva, was a stately, 
 thoughtful-looking Cornishman, some six feet 
 three in height, with thews and sinews in pro- 
 portion. He was sitting on the bridge looking 
 over a basket of eel-lines, and listening silently 
 to the chat of his companion. 
 
 Old Harry Verney, the other keeper, was a 
 character in his way, and a very bad character 
 too, though he was a patriarch among all the 
 gamekeepers of the vale. He was a short, wiry, 
 bandy-legged, ferret-visaged old man, with grizzled 
 hair, and a wizened face tanned brown and purple 
 by constant exposure. Between rheumatism and 
 constant handling the rod and gun, his fingers 
 were crooked like a hawk's claws. He kept his 
 left eye always shut, apparently to save trouble 
 in shooting ; and squinted, and sniffed, and peered, 
 with a stooping back and protruded chin, as if he 
 were perpetually on the watch for fish, flesh, and 
 fowl, vermin and Christian. The friendship 
 between himself and the Scotch terrier at his 
 heels would have been easily explained by Les- 
 sing, for in the transmigration of souls the spirit 
 of Harry Verney had evidently once animated a 
 dog of that breed. He was dressed in a huge 
 thick fustian jacket, scratched, stained, and 
 patched, with bulging, greasy pockets ; a cast of 
 flies round a battered hat, riddled with shot- 
 holes, a dog- whistle at his button-hole, and an 
 old gun cut short over his arm, bespoke his 
 business. 
 
 "I seed that 'ere Crawy against Ashy Down 
 Plantations last night, I'll be sworn," said he, 
 in a squeaking, sneaking tone. 
 
 " Well, what harm was the man doing ? "
 
 42 Yeast 
 
 " Oh, ay, that 's the way you young 'uns talk. 
 If he warn't doing mischief, he 'd 'a' been glad 
 to have been doing it, I '11 warrant. If I 'd been 
 as young as you, I 'd have picked a quarrel with 
 him soon enough, and found a cause for tackling 
 him. It 's worth a brace of sovereigns with the 
 squire to haul him up. Eh? eh? Ain't old 
 Harry right now ? " 
 
 " Humph ! " growled the younger man. 
 
 " There, then, you get me a snare and a hare 
 by to-morrow night," went on old Harry, "and 
 see if I don't nab him. It won't lay long under 
 the plantation afore he picks it up. You mind 
 to snare me a hare to-night, now!" 
 
 " I '11 do no such thing, nor help to bring false 
 accusations against any man ! " 
 
 "False accusations!" answered Harry, in his 
 cringing way. " Look at that now, for a keeper 
 to say ! Why, if he don't happen to have a snare 
 just there, he has somewhere else, you know. 
 Eh ? Ain't old Harry right now, eh ? " 
 
 "Maybe." 
 
 "There, don't say I don't know nothing then. 
 Eh? What matter who put the snare down, or 
 the hare in, perwided he takes it up, man? If 
 'twas his'n he'd be all the better pleased. The 
 most notoriousest poacher as walks unhung!" 
 And old Harry lifted up his crooked hands in 
 pious indignation. 
 
 "I '11 have no more gamekeeping, Harry. What 
 with hunting down Christians as if they were 
 vermin, all night, and being cursed by the squire 
 all day, I 'd sooner be a sheriff's runner, or a 
 negro slave." 
 
 "Ay, ay ! that 's the way the young dogs always
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 43 
 
 bark afore they 're broke in, and gets to like it, 
 as the eels does skinning. Haven't I bounced 
 pretty near out of my skin many a time afore now, 
 on this here very bridge, with ' Harry, jump in, 
 you stupid hound ! ' and ' Harry, get out, you 
 one-eyed tailor ! ' And then, if one of the gentle- 
 men lost a fish with their clumsiness Oh, 
 Father! to hear 'em let out at me and my land- 
 ing-net, and curse fit to fright the devil ! Dash 
 their sarcy tongues ! Eh ! Don't old Harry 
 know their ways? Don't he know 'em, now?" 
 
 "Ay," said the young man, bitterly. "We 
 break the dogs, and we load the guns, and we 
 find the game, and mark the game, and then 
 they call themselves sportsmen; we choose the 
 flies, and we bait the spinning-hooks, and we 
 show them where the fish lie, and then when 
 they 've hooked them, they can't get them out 
 without us and the spoon-net ; and then they go 
 home to the ladies and boast of the lot of fish 
 they killed and who thinks of the keeper?" 
 
 "Oh! ah! Then don't say old Harry knows 
 nothing, then. How nicely, now, you and I 
 might get a living off this 'ere manor, if the 
 landlords was served like the French ones was. 
 Eh, Paul?" chuckled old Harry. "Wouldn't 
 we pay our taxes with pheasants and grayling, 
 that's all, eh? Ain't old Harry right now, 
 eh?" 
 
 The old fox was fishing for an assent, not for 
 its own sake, for he was a fierce Tory, and would 
 have stood up to be shot at any day, not only for 
 his master's sake, but for the sake of a single 
 pheasant of his master's; but he hated Tregarva 
 for many reasons, and was daily on the watch to
 
 44 Yeast 
 
 entrap him on some of his peculiar points, where- 
 of he had, as we shall find, a good many. 
 
 What would have been Tregarva's answer, I 
 cannot tell; but Lancelot, who had unintention- 
 ally overheard the greater part of the conversation, 
 disliked being any longer a listener, and came 
 close to them. 
 
 "Here's your gudgeons and minnows, sir, as 
 you bespoke," quoth Harry; "and here's that 
 paternoster as you gave me to rig up. Beautiful 
 minnows, sir, white as a silver spoon. They 're 
 the ones now, ain't they, sir, eh ? " 
 
 "They '11 do!" 
 
 "Well, then, don't say old Harry don't know 
 nothing, that's all, eh?" and the old fellow 
 toddled off, peering and twisting his head about 
 like a starling. 
 
 "An odd old fellow that, Tregarva," said 
 Lancelot. 
 
 "Very, sir, considering who made him," 
 answered the Cornishman, touching his hat, and 
 then thrusting his nose deeper than ever into the 
 eel-basket. 
 
 "Beautiful stream this," said Lancelot, who 
 had a continual longing right or wrong to 
 chat with his inferiors ; and was proportionately 
 sulky and reserved to his superiors. 
 
 "Beautiful enough, sir," said the keeper, with 
 an emphasis on the first word. 
 
 " Why, has it any other fault ? " 
 
 "Not so wholesome as pretty, sir." 
 
 " What harm does it do ? " 
 
 "Fever, and ague, and rheumatism, sir." 
 
 "Where?" asked Lancelot, a little amused by 
 the man's laconic answers.
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 45 
 
 "Wherever the white fog spreads, sir." 
 
 "Where's that?" 
 
 "Everywhere, sir." 
 
 "And when?" 
 
 "Always, sir." 
 
 Lancelot burst out laughing. The man looked 
 up at him slowly and seriously. 
 
 "You wouldn't laugh, sir, if you 'd seen much 
 of the inside of these cottages round." 
 
 "Really," said Lancelot, "I was only laugh- 
 ing at our making such very short work of such a 
 long and serious story. Do you mean that the 
 unhealthiness of this country is wholly caused 
 by the river?" 
 
 "No, sir. The river-damps are God's sending; 
 and so they are not too bad to bear. But there 's 
 more of man's sending, that is too bad to bear." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 "Are men likely to be healthy when they are 
 worse housed than a pig? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " And worse fed than a hound ? " 
 
 " Good heavens ! No ! " 
 
 " Or packed together to sleep, like pilchards 
 in a barrel ? " 
 
 "But, my good fellow, do you mean that the 
 laborers here are in that state ? " 
 
 "It isn't far to walk, sir. Perhaps some day, 
 when the May-fly is gone off, and the fish won't 
 rise awhile, you could walk down and see. I beg 
 your pardon, sir, though, for thinking of such a 
 thing. They are not places fit for gentlemen, 
 that's certain." There was a staid irony in his 
 tone, which Lancelot felt. 
 
 " But the clergyman goes ? "
 
 46 Yeast 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " And Miss Honoria goes ? " 
 
 "Yes, God Almighty bless her!" 
 
 "And do not they see that all goes right? " 
 
 The giant twisted his huge limbs, as if trying 
 to avoid an answer, and yet not daring to do so. 
 
 " Do clergymen go about among the poor much, 
 sir, at college, before they are ordained ? " 
 
 Lancelot smiled, and shook his head. 
 
 " I thought so, sir. Our good vicar is like the 
 rest hereabouts. God knows, he stints neither 
 time nor money the souls of the poor are well 
 looked after, and their bodies too as far as his 
 purse will go; but that 's not far." 
 
 "Is he ill off, then?" 
 
 "The living 's worth some forty pounds a year. 
 The great tithes, they say, are worth better than 
 twelve hundred ; but Squire Lavington has them." 
 
 " Oh, I see ! " said Lancelot. 
 
 "I'm glad you do, sir, for I don't," meekly 
 answered Tregarva. " But the vicar, sir, he is a 
 kind man, and a good; but the poor don't under- 
 stand him, nor he them. He is too learned, sir, 
 and, saving your presence, too fond of his Prayer- 
 book." 
 
 "One can't be too fond of a good thing." 
 
 "Not unless you make an idol of it, sir, and 
 fancy that men's souls were made for the Prayer- 
 book, and not the Prayer-book for them. " 
 
 " But cannot he expose and redress these evils, 
 if they exist ? " 
 
 Tregarva twisted about again. 
 
 "I do not say that I think it, sir; but this I 
 know, that every poor man in the vale thinks 
 it that the parsons are afraid of the landlords.
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 47 
 
 They must see these things, for they are not 
 blind; and they try to plaster them up out of 
 their own pockets." 
 
 "But why, in God's name, don't they strike 
 at the root of the matter, and go straight to 
 the landlords and tell them the truth ? " asked 
 Lancelot. 
 
 "So people say, sir. I see no reason for it 
 except the one which I gave you. Besides, sir, 
 you must remember that a man can't quarrel 
 with his own kin ; and so many of them are their 
 squire's brothers, or sons, or nephews." 
 
 "Or good friends with him, at least." 
 
 "Ay, sir, and, to do them justice, they had 
 need, for the poor's sake, to keep good friends 
 with the squire. How else are they to get a 
 farthing for schools, or coal-subscriptions, or 
 lying-in societies, or lending libraries, or penny 
 clubs? If they spoke their minds to the great 
 ones, sir, how could they keep the parish to- 
 gether?" 
 
 " You seem to see both sides of a question, cer- 
 tainly. But what a miserable state of things, 
 that the laboring man should require all these 
 societies, and charities, and helps from the rich ! 
 that an industrious freeman cannot live with- 
 out alms!" 
 
 "So I have thought this long time," quietly 
 answered Tregarva. 
 
 " But Miss Honoria, she is not afraid to tell 
 her father the truth ? " 
 
 "Suppose, sir, when Adam and Eve were in 
 the garden, that all the devils had come up and 
 played their fiends' tricks before them, do you 
 think they'd have seen any shame in it?"
 
 48 Yeast 
 
 "I really cannot tell," said Lancelot, smiling, 
 
 "Then I can, sir. They'd have seen no more 
 harm in it than there was harm already in them- 
 selves; and that was none. A man's eyes can 
 only see what they've learnt to see." 
 
 Lancelot started: it was a favorite dictum of 
 his in Carlyle's works. 
 
 "Where did you get that thought, my friend?" 
 
 " By seeing, sir. " 
 
 "But what has that to do with Miss Honoria?" 
 
 "She is an angel of holiness herself, sir; and, 
 therefore, she goes on without blushing or sus- 
 pecting, where our blood would boil again. She 
 sees people in want, and thinks it must be so, 
 and pities them and relieves them. But she 
 don't know want herself; and, therefore, she 
 don't know that it makes men beasts and devils. 
 She's as pure as God's light herself; and, there- 
 fore, she fancies every one is as spotless as she 
 is. And there's another mistake in your chari- 
 table great people, sir. When they see poor folk 
 sick or hungry before their eyes, they pull out 
 their purses fast enough, God bless them; for 
 they would'n't like to be so themselves. But the 
 oppression that goes on all the year round, and 
 the want that goes on all the year round, and the 
 filth, and the lying, and the swearing, and the 
 profligacy, that go on all the year round, and 
 the sickening weight of debt, and the miserable 
 grinding anxiety from rent-day to rent-day, and 
 Saturday night to Saturday night, that crushes a 
 man's soul down, and drives every thought out 
 of his head but how he is to fill his stomach and 
 warm his back, and keep a house over his head, 
 till he dare n't for his life take his thoughts one
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 49 
 
 moment off the meat that perisheth oh, sir, 
 they never felt this; and, therefore, they never 
 dream that there are thousands who pass them in 
 their daily walks who feel this, and feel nothing 
 else!" 
 
 This outburst was uttered with an earnestness 
 and majesty which astonished Lancelot. He for- 
 got the subject in the speaker. 
 
 "You are a very extraordinary gamekeeper!" 
 said he. 
 
 " When the Lord shows a man a thing, he can't 
 well help seeing it," answered Tregarva, in his 
 usual staid tone. 
 
 There was a pause. The keeper looked at 
 him with a glance, before which Lancelot's eyes 
 fell. 
 
 "Hell is paved with hearsays, sir, and as all 
 this talk of mine is hearsay, if you are in earnest, 
 sir, go and see for yourself. I know you have a 
 kind heart, and they tell me that you are a great 
 scholar, which would to God I was! so you ought 
 not to condescend to take my word for anything 
 which you can look into yourself;" with which 
 sound piece of common-sense Tregarva returned 
 busily to his eel-lines. 
 
 " Hand me the rod and can, and help me out 
 along the buck-stage," said Lancelot; "I must 
 have some more talk with you, my fine fellow." 
 
 "Amen," answered Tregarva, as he assisted 
 our lame hero along a huge beam which stretched 
 out into the pool ; and having settled him there, 
 returned mechanically to his work, humming a 
 Wesleyan hymn-tune. 
 
 Lancelot sat and tried to catch perch, but 
 Tregarva' s words haunted him. He lighted his
 
 50 Yeast 
 
 cigar, and tried to think earnestly over the matter, 
 but he had got into the wrong place for thinking. 
 All his thoughts, all his sympathies, were drowned 
 in the rush and whirl of the water. He forgot 
 everything else in the mere animal enjoyment of 
 sight and sound. Like many young men at his 
 crisis of life, he had given himself up to the mere 
 contemplation of Nature till he had become her 
 slave; and now a luscious scene, a singing bird, 
 were enough to allure his mind away from the 
 most earnest and awful thoughts. He tried to 
 think, but the river would not let him. It thun- 
 dered and spouted out behind him from the 
 hatches, and leapt madly past him, and caught 
 his eyes in spite of him, and swept them away 
 down its dancing waves, and let them go again 
 only to sweep them down again and again, till 
 his brain felt a delicious dizziness from the ever- 
 lasting rush and the everlasting roar. And then 
 below, how it spread, and writhed, and whirled 
 into transparent fans, hissing and twining snakes, 
 polished glass-wreaths, huge crystal bells, which 
 boiled up from the bottom, and dived again 
 beneath long threads of creamy foam, and swung 
 round posts and roots, and rushed blackening 
 under dark weed-fringed boughs, and gnawed at 
 the marly banks, and shook the ever-restless 
 bulrushes, till it was swept away and down over 
 the white pebbles and olive weeds, in one broad 
 rippling sheet of molten silver, towards the dis- 
 tant sea. Downwards it fleeted ever, and bore 
 his thoughts floating on its oily stream; and the 
 great trout, with their yellow sides and peacock 
 backs, lounged among the eddies, and the silver 
 grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows,
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 51 
 
 and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him 
 like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; 
 the coot clanked musically among the reeds ; the 
 frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone; 
 the kingfisher darted from his hole in the bank 
 like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' 
 bills snapped as they twined and hawked above 
 the pool ; the swift's wings whirred like musket- 
 balls, as they rushed screaming past his head; 
 and ever the river fleeted by, bearing his eyes 
 away down the current, till its wild eddies began 
 to glow with crimson beneath the setting sun. 
 The complex harmony of sights and sounds slid 
 softly over his soul, and he sank away into a still 
 day-dream, too passive for imagination, too deep 
 for meditation, and 
 
 " Beauty born of murmuring sound, 
 Did pass into his face." 
 
 Blame him not. There are more things in a 
 man's heart than ever get in through his 
 thoughts. 
 
 On a sudden, a soft voice behind him startled 
 him. 
 
 "Can a poor cockney artist venture himself 
 along this timber without falling in? " 
 
 Lancelot turned. 
 
 u Come out to me, and if you stumble, the 
 naiads will rise out of their depths, and ' hold up 
 their pearled wrists ' to save their favorite. " 
 
 The artist walked timidly out along the beams, 
 and sat down beside Lancelot, who shook him 
 warmly by the hand. 
 
 "Welcome, Claude Mellot, and all lovely en- 
 thusiasms and symbolisms ! Expound to me, now,
 
 52 Yeast 
 
 the meaning of that water-lily leaf and its grand 
 simple curve, as it lies sleeping there in the back 
 eddy." 
 
 "Oh, I am too amused to philosophize. The 
 fair Argemone has just been treating me to her 
 three hundred and sixty-fifth philippic against my 
 unoffending beard." 
 
 "Why, what fault can she find with such a 
 graceful and natural ornament ? " 
 
 "Just this, my dear fellow, that it is natural. 
 As it is, she considers me only ' intelligent- 
 looking. ' If the beard were away, my face, she 
 says, would be ' so refined ! ' And, I suppose, if 
 I was just a little more effeminate and pale, with 
 a nice retreating under-jaw and a drooping lip, 
 and a meek, peaking simper, like your starved 
 Romish saints, I should be ' so spiritual ! ' And 
 if, again, to complete the climax, I did but shave 
 my head like a Chinese, I should be a model for 
 St. Francis himself ! " 
 
 "But really, after all, why make yourself so 
 singular by this said beard ? " 
 
 " I wear it for a testimony and a sign that a 
 man has no right to be ashamed of the mark of 
 manhood. Oh, that one or two of your Protestant 
 clergymen, who ought to be perfect ideal men, 
 would have the courage to get up into the pulpit 
 in a long beard, and testify that the very essen- 
 tial idea of Protestantism is the dignity and 
 divinity of man as God made him ! Our fore- 
 fathers were not ashamed of their beards; but 
 now even the soldier is only allowed to keep his 
 mustache, while our quill-driving masses shave 
 themselves as close as they can; and in propor- 
 tion to a man's piety he wears less hair, from the
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 53 
 
 young curate who shaves off his whiskers, to the 
 Popish priest who shaves his crown ! " 
 
 "What do you say, then, to cutting off nuns' 
 hair?" 
 
 " I say, that extremes meet, and prudish Mani- 
 chasism always ends in sheer indecency. Those 
 Papists have forgotten what woman was made 
 for, and therefore they have forgotten that a 
 woman's hair is her glory, for it was given to her 
 for a covering: as says your friend, Paul the 
 Hebrew, who, by the by, had as fine theories of 
 art as he had of society, if he had only lived fif- 
 teen hundred years later, and had a chance of 
 working them out." 
 
 "How remarkably orthodox you are!" said 
 Lancelot, smiling. 
 
 " How do you know that I am not ? You never 
 heard me deny the old creed. But what if an 
 artist ought to be of all creeds at once? My 
 business is to represent the beautiful, and there- 
 fore to accept it wherever I find it. Yours is to 
 be a philosopher, and find the true." 
 
 " But the beautiful must be truly beautiful to 
 be worth anything ; and so you, too, must search 
 for the true. " 
 
 " Yes ; truth of form, color, chiaroscuro. They 
 are worthy to occupy me a life; for they are 
 eternal or at least that which they express : and 
 if I am to get at the symbolized unseen, it must 
 be through the beauty of the symbolizing phe- 
 nomenon. If I, who live by art, for art, in art, 
 or you either, who seem as much a born artist as 
 myself, am to have a religion, it must be a wor- 
 ship of the fountain of art of the 
 
 ' Spirit of beauty, who doth consecrate 
 With his own hues whate'er he shines upon.' "
 
 54 Yeast 
 
 "As poor Shelley has it; and much peace of 
 mind it gave him ! " answered Lancelot. " I 
 have grown sick lately of such dreary tinsel 
 abstractions. When you look through the glit- 
 ter of the words, your ' spirit of beauty ' sim- 
 ply means certain shapes and colors which 
 please you in beautiful things and in beautiful 
 people. " 
 
 "Vile nominalist ! renegade from the ideal and 
 all its glories ! " said Claude, laughing. 
 
 "I don't care sixpence now for the ideal! I 
 want not beauty, but some beautiful thing a 
 woman perhaps, " and he sighed. " But at least 
 a person a living, loving person all lovely 
 itself, and giving loveliness to all things! If I 
 must have an ideal, let it be, for mercy's sake, 
 a realized one." 
 
 Claude opened his sketch-book. 
 
 "We shall get swamped in these metaphysical 
 oceans, my dear dreamer. But lo, here come a 
 couple, as near ideals as any in these degenerate 
 days the two poles of beauty: the milieu of 
 which would be Venus with us Pagans, or the 
 Virgin Mary with the Catholics. Look at them ! 
 Honoria the dark symbolic of passionate depth ; 
 Argemone the fair, type of intellectual light! 
 Oh, that I were a Zeuxis to unite them instead of; 
 having to paint them in two separate pictures, 
 and split perfection in half, as everything is split 
 in this piecemeal world ! " 
 
 " You will have the honor of a sitting this after- 
 noon, I suppose, from both beauties ? " 
 
 "I hope so, for my own sake. There is no 
 path left to immortality, or bread either, now for 
 us poor artists but portrait-painting. "
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 55 
 
 " I envy you your path, when it leads through 
 such Elysiums," said Lancelot. 
 
 " Come here, gentlemen both ! " cried Argemone 
 from the bridge. 
 
 " Fairly caught ! " grumbled Lancelot. " You 
 must go, at least; my lameness will excuse me, 
 I hope." 
 
 The two ladies were accompanied by Brace- 
 bridge, a gazelle which he had given Argemone, 
 and a certain miserable cur of Honoria's adopt- 
 ing, who plays an important part in this story, 
 and, therefore, deserves a little notice. Honoria 
 had rescued him from a watery death in the vil- 
 lage pond, by means of the colonel, who had 
 revenged himself for a pair of wet feet by utterly 
 corrupting the dog's morals, and teaching him every 
 week to answer to some fresh scandalous name. 
 
 But Lancelot was not to escape. Instead of 
 moving on, as he had hoped, the party stood 
 looking over the bridge, and talking he took 
 for granted, poor thin-skinned fellow of him. 
 And for once his suspicions were right; for he 
 overheard Argemone say 
 
 " I wonder how Mr. Smith can be so rude as to 
 sit there in my presence over his stupid perch ! 
 Smoking those horrid cigars, too ! How selfish 
 those field-sports do make men ! " 
 
 "Thank you!" said the colonel, with a low 
 bow. Lancelot rose. 
 
 "If a country girl, now, had spoken in that 
 tone," said he to himself, "it would have been 
 
 called at least ' saucy' but Mammon's elect 
 
 ones may do anything. Well here I come, 
 limping to my new tyrant's feet, like Goethe's 
 bear to Lili's."
 
 56 Yeast 
 
 She drew him away, as women only know how, 
 from the rest of the party, who were chatting 
 and laughing with Claude. She had shown off 
 her fancied indifference to Lancelot before them, 
 and now began in a softer voice 
 
 "Why will you be so shy and lonely, Mr. 
 Smith?" 
 
 " Because I am not fit for your society. " 
 
 " Who tells you so ? Why will you not become 
 so?" 
 
 Lancelot hung down his head. 
 
 " As long as fish and game are your only society, 
 you will become more and more morne and self- 
 absorbed." 
 
 "Really fish were the last things of which I 
 was thinking when you came. My whole heart was 
 filled with the beauty of nature, and nothing else." 
 
 There was an opening for one of Argemone's 
 preconcerted orations. 
 
 "Had you no better occupation," she said 
 gently, "than nature, the first day of returning 
 to the open air after so frightful and dangerous 
 an accident ? Were there no thanks due to One 
 above?" 
 
 Lancelot understood her. 
 
 " How do you know that I was not even then 
 showing my thankfulness ? " 
 
 " What ! with a cigar and a fishing-rod ? " 
 
 "Certainly. Why not?" 
 
 Argemone really could not tell at the moment. 
 The answer upset her scheme entirely. 
 
 " Might not that very admiration of nature have 
 been an act of worship ? " continued our hero. 
 " How can we better glorify the worker than by 
 delighting in his work ? "
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 57 
 
 " Ah ! " sighed the lady, " why trust to these 
 self-willed methods, and neglect the noble and 
 exquisite forms which the Church has prepared 
 for us as embodiments for every feeling of our 
 hearts ? " 
 
 "Every feeling, Miss Lavington?" 
 
 Argemone hesitated. She had made the good 
 old stock assertion, as in duty bound; but she 
 could not help recollecting that there were several 
 Popish books of devotion at that moment on her 
 table, which seemed to her to patch a gap or two 
 in the Prayer-book. 
 
 "My temple as yet," said Lancelot, "is only 
 the heaven and the earth; my church-music I 
 can hear all day long, whenever I have the sense 
 to be silent, and 'hear my mother sing;' my 
 priests and preachers are every bird and bee, 
 every flower and cloud. Am I not well enough 
 furnished? Do you want to reduce my circular 
 infinite chapel to an oblong hundred-foot one? 
 My sphere harmonies to the Gregorian tones in 
 four parts ? My world-wide priesthood, with their 
 endless variety of costume, to one not over-edu- 
 cated gentleman in a white sheet? And my 
 dreams of naiads and flower-fairies, and the blue- 
 bells ringing God's praises, as they do in ' The 
 Story without an End,' for the gross reality of 
 naughty charity children, with their pockets full 
 of apples, bawling out Hebrew psalms of which 
 they neither feel nor understand a word ? " 
 
 Argemone tried to look very much shocked at 
 this piece of bombast. Lancelot evidently meant 
 it as such, but he eyed her all the while as if 
 there was solemn earnest under the surface. 
 - "Oh, Mr. Smith 1" she said, "how can you 
 r> Vol. v
 
 58 Yeast 
 
 dare talk so of a liturgy compiled by the wisest 
 and holiest of all countries and ages! You revile 
 that of whose beauty you are not qualified to 
 judge!" 
 
 " There must be a beauty in it all, or such as 
 you are would not love it. " 
 
 "Oh," she said hopefully, "that you would but 
 try the Church system ! How you would find it 
 harmonize and methodize every day, every thought 
 for you ! But I cannot explain myself. Why 
 not go to our vicar and open your doubts to 
 him?" 
 
 "Pardon, but you must excuse me." 
 "Why? He is one of the saintliest of men!" 
 "To tell the truth, I have been to him already." 
 " You do not mean it ! And what did he tell 
 you?" 
 
 " What the rest of the world does hearsays. " 
 
 " But did you not find him most kind ? " 
 
 "I went to him to be comforted and guided. 
 
 He received me as a criminal. He told me that 
 
 my first duty was penitence; that as long as I 
 
 lived the life I did, he could not dare to cast his 
 
 pearls before swine by answering my doubts; 
 
 that I was in a state incapable of appreciating 
 
 spiritual truths; and, therefore, he had no right 
 
 to tell me any." 
 
 " And what did he tell you ? " 
 " Several spiritual lies instead, I thought. He 
 told me, hearing me quote Schiller, to beware of 
 the Germans, for they were all Pantheists at 
 heart. I asked him whether he included Lange 
 and Bunsen, and it appeared that he had never 
 read a German book in his life. He then flew 
 furiously at Mr. Carlyle, and I found that all he
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 59 
 
 knew of him was from a certain review in the 
 ' Quarterly. ' He called Boehme a theosophic 
 Atheist. I should have burst out at that, had I 
 not read the very words in a High Church review 
 the day before, and hoped that he was not aware 
 of the impudent falsehood which he was retail- 
 ing. Whenever I feebly interposed an objection 
 to anything he said (for, after all, he talked on), 
 he told me to hear the Catholic Church. I asked 
 him which Catholic Church ? He said the Eng- 
 lish. I asked him whether it was to be the 
 Church of the sixth century, or the thirteenth, 
 or the seventeenth, or the eighteenth ? He told 
 me the one and eternal Church, which belonged 
 as much to the nineteenth century as to the first. 
 I begged to know whether, then, I was to hear 
 the Church according to Simeon, or according to 
 Newman, or according to St. Paul; for they 
 seemed to me a little at variance ? He told me, 
 austerely enough, that the mind of the Church 
 was embodied in her Liturgy and Articles. To 
 which I answered, that the mind of the episcopal 
 clergy might, perhaps, be; but, then, how hap- 
 pened it that they were always quarrelling and 
 calling hard names about the sense of those very 
 documents? And so I left him, assuring him 
 that, living in the nineteenth century, I wanted 
 to hear the Church of the nineteenth century, 
 and no other; and should be most happy to listen 
 to her, as soon as she had made up her mind 
 what to say." 
 
 Argemone was angry and disappointed. She 
 felt she could not cope with Lancelot's quaint 
 logic, which, however unsound, cut deeper into 
 questions than she had yet looked for herself.
 
 60 Yeast 
 
 Somehow, too, she was tongue-tied before him 
 just when she wanted to be most eloquent in 
 behalf of her principles; and that fretted her 
 still more. But his manner puzzled her most of 
 all. First he would run on with his face turned 
 away, as if soliloquizing out into the air, and 
 then suddenly look round at her with most fasci- 
 nating humility; and, then, in a moment, a dark 
 shade would pass over his countenance, and he 
 would look like one possessed, and his lips 
 wreathe in a sinister artificial smile, and his 
 wild eyes glare through and through her with 
 such cunning understanding of himself and her, 
 that, for the first time in her life, she quailed and 
 felt frightened, as if in the power of a madman. 
 She turned hastily away to shake off the spell. 
 
 He sprang after her, almost on his knees, and 
 looked up into her beautiful face with an implor- 
 ing cry. 
 
 "What, do you, too, throw me off? Will you, 
 too, treat the poor wild uneducated sportsman as 
 a Pariah and an outcast, because he is not ashamed 
 to be a man? because he cannot stuff his soul's 
 hunger with cut-and-dried hearsays, but dares to 
 think for himself? because he wants to believe 
 things, and dare not be satisfied with only believ- 
 ing that he ought to believe them?" 
 
 She paused, astonished. 
 
 "Ah, yes," he went on, "I hoped too much! 
 What right had I to expect that you would under- 
 stand me? What right, still more, to expect that 
 you would stoop, any more than the rest of the 
 world, to speak to me, as if I could become any- 
 thing better than the wild hog I seem ? Oh yes ! 
 the chrysalis has no butterfly in it, of course!
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 61 
 
 Stamp on the ugly motionless thing! And yet 
 you look so beautiful and good! are all my 
 dreams to perish, about the Alrunen and prophet- 
 maidens, how they charmed our old fighting, hunt- 
 ing forefathers into purity and sweet obedience 
 among their Saxon forests ? Has woman forgot- 
 ten her mission to look at the heart and have 
 mercy, while cold man looks at the act and con- 
 demns? Do you, too, like the rest of mankind, 
 think no-belief better than mis-belief; and smile 
 on hypocrisy, lip-assent, practical Atheism, sooner 
 than on the unpardonable sin of making a mis- 
 take? Will you, like the rest of this wise world, 
 let a man's spirit rot asleep into the pit, if he 
 will only lie quiet and not disturb your smooth 
 respectabilities; but if he dares, in waking, to 
 yawn in an unorthodox manner, knock him on 
 the head at once, and 'break the bruised reed,' 
 and ' quench the smoking flax ' ? And yet you 
 churchgoers have ' renounced the world ' ! " 
 
 "What do you want, in Heaven's name?" 
 asked Argemone, half terrified. 
 
 "I wantj0# to tell me that. Here I am, with 
 youth, health, strength, money, every blessing of 
 life but one ; and I am utterly miserable, I want 
 some one to tell me what I want." 
 
 " Is it not that you want religion ? " 
 
 "I see hundreds who have what you call 
 religion, with whom I should scorn to change 
 my irreligion." 
 
 "But, Mr. Smith, are you not are you not 
 wicked ? They tell me so," said Argemone, with 
 an effort. "And is that not the cause of your 
 disease ? " 
 
 Lancelot laughed.
 
 62 Yeast 
 
 " No, fairest prophetess, it is the disease itself. 
 ( Why am I what I am, when I know more and 
 more daily what I could be ? ' That is the 
 mystery; and my sins are the fruit, and not the 
 root of it. Who will explain that?" 
 
 Argemone began, 
 
 "The Church * 
 
 "Oh, Miss Lavington," cried he, impatiently, 
 "will you, too, send me back to that cold abstrac- 
 tion ? I came to you, however presumptuous, for 
 living, human advice to a living, human heart; 
 and will you pass off on me that Proteus-dream 
 the Church, which in every man's mouth has 
 a different meaning? In one book, meaning a 
 method of education, only it has never been 
 carried out; in another, a system of polity, 
 only it has never been realized; now a set of 
 words written in books, on whose meaning all 
 are divided; now a body of men who are daily 
 excommunicating each other as heretics and apos- 
 tates; now a universal idea; now the narrowest 
 and most exclusive of all parties. Really, before 
 you ask me to hear the Church, I have a right to 
 ask you to define what the Church is." 
 
 "Our Articles define it," said Argemone, drily. 
 
 "The 'Visible Church,' at least, it defines as 
 ' a company of faithful men, in which, ' etc. But 
 how does it define the 'Invisible' one? And 
 what does ' faithful ' mean ? What if I thought 
 Cromwell and Pierre Leroux infinitely more faith- 
 ful men in their way, and better members of 
 the 'Invisible Church,' than the torturer-pedant 
 Laud, or the facing bothways Protestant-Manichee 
 Taylor?" 
 
 It was lucky for the life of young Love that the
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 63 
 
 discussion went no further: Argemone was be- 
 coming scandalized beyond all measure. But, 
 happily, the colonel interposed, 
 
 "Look here; tell me if you know for whom 
 this sketch is meant ? " 
 
 "Tregarva, the keeper: who can doubt?" an- 
 swered they both at once. 
 
 " Has not Mellot succeeded perfectly ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Lancelot. " But what wonder, with 
 such a noble subject ? What a grand benevolence 
 is enthroned on that lofty forehead ! " 
 
 "Oh, you would say so, indeed," interposed 
 Honoria, " if you knew him ! The stories that I 
 could tell you about him ! How he would go 
 into cottages, read to sick people by the hour, 
 dress the children, cook the food for them, as 
 tenderly as any woman ! I found out, last winter, 
 if you will believe it, that he lived on bread and 
 water, to give out of his own wages which are 
 barely twelve shillings a week five shillings a 
 week for more than two months to a poor laboring 
 man, to prevent his going to the workhouse, and 
 being parted from his wife and children." 
 
 " Noble, indeed ! " said Lancelot. " I do not 
 wonder now at the effect his conversation just 
 now had on me." 
 
 " Has he been talking to you ? " said Honoria, 
 eagerly. " He seldom speaks to any one." 
 
 "He has to me; and so well, that were I sure 
 that the poor were as ill off as he says, and that 
 I had the power of altering the system a hair, I 
 could find it in my heart to excuse all political 
 grievance-mongers, and turn one myself." 
 
 Claude Mellot clapped his white woman-like 
 hands.
 
 64 Yeast 
 
 " Bravo ! Bravo ! O wonderful conversion I 
 Lancelot has at last discovered that, besides the 
 ' glorious Past,' there is a Present worthy of his 
 sublime notice ! We may now hope, in time, 
 that he will discover the existence of a Future ! " 
 
 "But, Mr. Mellot," said Honoria, "why have 
 you been so unfaithful to your original? why 
 have you, like all artists, been trying to soften 
 and refine on your model?" 
 
 "Because, my dear lady, we are bound to see 
 everything in its ideal not as it is, but as it 
 ought to be, and will be, when the vices of this 
 pitiful civilized world are exploded, and sanitary 
 reform, and a variety of occupation, and harmo- 
 nious education, let each man fulfil in body 
 and soul the ideal which God embodied in 
 him." 
 
 " Fourierist ! " cried Lancelot, laughing. " But 
 surely you never saw a face which had lost by 
 wear less of the divine image? How thoroughly 
 it exemplifies your great law of Protestant art, 
 that ' the Ideal is best manifested in the Peculiar. ' 
 How classic, how independent of clime or race, 
 is its bland, majestic self-possession ! how thor- 
 oughly Norse its massive squareness ! " 
 
 "And yet, as a Cornishman, he should be no 
 Norseman. " 
 
 "I beg your pardon ! Like all noble races, the 
 Cornish owe their nobleness to the impurity of 
 their blood to its perpetual loans from foreign 
 veins. See how the serpentine curve of his nose, 
 his long nostril, and protruding, sharp-cut lips, 
 mark his share of Phoenician or Jewish blood ! 
 how Norse, again, that dome-shaped forehead! 
 how Celtic those dark curls, that restless gray
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 65 
 
 eye, with its swinden blicken, like Von Troneg 
 Hagen's in the ' Nibelungen Lied ' ! " 
 
 He turned : Honoria was devouring his words. 
 He saw it, for he was in love, and young love 
 makes man's senses as keen as woman's. 
 
 " Look ! look at him now ! " said Claude, in a 
 low voice. V How he sits, with his hands on his 
 knees, the enormous size of his limbs quite con- 
 cealed by the careless grace, with his Egyptian 
 face, like some dumb granite Memnon!" 
 
 "Only waiting," said Lancelot, "for the day- 
 star to arise on him and awake him into 
 voice." 
 
 He looked at Honoria as he spoke. She blushed 
 angrily; and yet a sort of sympathy arose from 
 that moment between Lancelot and herself. 
 
 Our hero feared he had gone too far, and tried 
 to turn the subject off. 
 
 The smooth mill-head was alive with rising 
 trout. 
 
 " What a huge fish leapt then ! " said Lancelot, 
 carelessly; "and close to the bridge, too!" 
 
 Honoria looked round, and uttered a piercing 
 scream. 
 
 " Oh, my dog ! my dog ! Mops is in the river ! 
 That horrid gazelle has butted him in, and he'll 
 be drowned ! " 
 
 Alas ! it was too true. There, a yard above 
 the one open hatchway, through which the whole 
 force of the stream was rushing, was the unhappy 
 Mops, alias Scratch, alias Dirty Dick, alias Jack 
 Sheppard, paddling, and sneezing, and winking, 
 his little bald muzzle turned piteously upward to 
 the sky. 
 
 " He will be drowned ! " quoth the colonel.
 
 66 Yeast 
 
 There was no doubt of it ; and so Mops thought, 
 as, shivering and whining, he plied every leg, 
 while the glassy current dragged him back and 
 back, and Honoria sobbed like a child. 
 
 The colonel lay down on the bridge, and caught 
 at him : his arm was a foot too short. In a 
 moment the huge form of Tregarva plunged 
 solemnly into the water, with a splash like seven 
 salmon, and Mops was jerked out over the 
 colonel's head high and dry on to the bridge. 
 
 "Yo^i'll be drowned, at least!" shouted the 
 colonel, with an oath of Uncle Toby's own. 
 
 Tregarva saw his danger, made one desperate 
 bound upward, and missed the bridge. The 
 colonel caught at him, tore off a piece of his 
 collar the calm, solemn face of the keeper 
 flashed past beneath him, and disappeared through 
 the roaring gate. 
 
 They rushed to the other side of the bridge 
 caught one glimpse of a dark body fleeting and 
 roaring down the foam-way. The colonel leapt 
 the bridge-rail like a deer, rushed out along the 
 buck-stage, tore off his coat, and sprung head- 
 long into the boiling pool, "rejoicing in his 
 might," as old Homer would say. 
 
 Lancelot, forgetting his crutches, was dashing 
 after him, when he felt a soft hand clutching at 
 his arm. 
 
 "Lancelot! Mr. Smith!" cried Argemone. 
 " You shall not go ! You are too ill weak " 
 
 "A fellow-creature's life ! " 
 
 " What is his life to yours ? " she cried, in a 
 tone of deep passion. And then, imperiously, 
 " Stay here, I command you ! " 
 
 The magnetic touch of her hand thrilled through
 
 New Actors, and a New Stage 67 
 
 his whole frame. She had called him Lancelot ! 
 He shrank down, and stood spell-bound. 
 
 "Good heavens!" she cried; "look at my 
 sister ! " 
 
 Out on the extremity of the buck-stage (how 
 she got there neither they nor she ever knew) 
 crouched Honoria, her face idiotic with terror, 
 while she stared with bursting eyes into the foam. 
 A shriek of disappointment rose from her lips, as 
 in a moment the colonel's weather-worn head 
 reappeared above, looking for all the world like 
 an old gray shiny-painted seal. 
 
 " Poof ! tally-ho ! Poof ! poof ! Heave me a 
 piece of wood, Lancelot, my boy ! " And he dis- 
 appeared again. 
 
 They looked round, there was not a loose bit 
 near. Claude ran off towards the house. Lance- 
 lot, desperate, seized the bridge-rail, tore it off 
 by sheer strength, and hurled it far into the 
 pool. Argemone saw it, and remembered it, like 
 a true woman. Ay, be as Manichaean-sentimental 
 as you will, fair ladies, physical prowess, that 
 Eden-right of manhood, is sure to tell upon your 
 hearts ! 
 
 Again the colonel's grizzled head reappeared, 
 and, oh joy! beneath it a draggled knot of 
 black curls. In another instant he had hold of 
 the rail, and quietly floating down to the shallow, 
 dragged the lifeless giant high and dry on a patch 
 of gravel. 
 
 Honoria never spoke. She rose, walked quietly 
 back along the beam, passed Argemone and 
 Lancelot without seeing them, and firmly but 
 hurriedly led the way round the pool-side. 
 
 Before they arrived at the bank, the colonel
 
 68 Yeast 
 
 had carried Tregarva to it. Lancelot and two or 
 three workmen, whom his cries had attracted, 
 lifted the body on to the meadow. 
 
 Honoria knelt quietly down on the grass, and 
 watched, silent and motionless, the dead face, 
 with her wide, awe-struck eyes. 
 
 " God bless her for a kind soul ! " whispered 
 the wan weather-beaten field drudges, as they 
 crowded round the body. 
 
 "Get out of the way, my men!" quoth the 
 colonel. "Too many cooks spoil the broth." 
 And he packed off one here and another there for 
 necessaries, and commenced trying every restora- 
 tive means with the ready coolness of a practised 
 surgeon ; while Lancelot, whom he ordered about 
 like a baby, gulped down a great choking lump 
 of envy, and then tasted the rich delight of for- 
 getting himself in admiring obedience to a real 
 superior. 
 
 But there Tregarva lay lifeless, with folded 
 hands, and a quiet satisfied smile, while Honoria 
 watched and watched with parted lips, uncon- 
 scious of the presence of every one. 
 
 Five minutes ! ten ! 
 
 " Carry him to the house, " said the colonel, in 
 a despairing tone, after another attempt. 
 
 "He moves!" "No!" "He does!" "He 
 breathes ! " " Look at his eyelids ! " 
 
 Slowly his eyes opened. 
 
 "Where am I? All gone? Sweet dreams 
 blessed dreams ! " 
 
 His eye met Honoria's. One big deep sigh 
 swelled to his lips and burst. She seemed to 
 recollect herself, rose, passed her arm through 
 Argemone's, and walked slowly away.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 AN "INGLORIOUS MILTON" 
 
 ARGEMONE, sweet prude, thought herself 
 bound to read Honoria a lecture that 
 night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but 
 it profited little. The most consummate cunning 
 could not have baffled Argemone's suspicions 
 more completely than her sister's utter simplicity. 
 She cried just as bitterly about Mops's danger as 
 about the keeper's, and then laughed heartily at 
 Argemone's solemnity ; till at last, when pushed a 
 little too hard, she broke out into something very 
 like a passion, and told her sister, bitterly enough, 
 that " she was not accustomed to see men drowned 
 every day, and begged to hear no more about the 
 subject." Whereat Argemone prudently held her 
 tongue, knowing that under all Honoria's tender- 
 ness lay a volcano of passionate determination, 
 which was generally kept down by her affections, 
 but was just as likely to be maddened by them. 
 And so this conversation only went to increase the 
 unconscious estrangement between them, though 
 they continued, as sisters will do, to lavish upon 
 each other the most extravagant protestations of 
 affection vowing to live and die only for each other 
 and believing honestly, sweet souls, that they 
 felt all they said ; till real imperious Love came in, 
 in one case of the two at least, shouldering all
 
 jo Yeast 
 
 other affections right and left; and then the two 
 beauties discovered, as others do, that it is not so 
 possible or reasonable as they thought for a 
 woman to sacrifice herself and her lover for the 
 sake of her sister or her friend. 
 
 Next morning Lancelot and the colonel started 
 out to Tregarva's cottage, on a mission of inquiry. 
 They found the giant propped up in bed with 
 pillows, his magnificent features looking in their 
 paleness more than ever like a granite Memnon. 
 Before him lay an open Pilgrim's Progress, and a 
 drawer filled with feathers and furs, which he was 
 busily manufacturing into trout flies, reading as he 
 worked. The room was filled with nets, guns, and 
 keepers' tackle, while a well-filled shelf of books 
 hung by the wall. 
 
 " Excuse my rising, gentlemen," he said, in his 
 slow, staid voice, " but I am very weak, in spite of 
 the Lord's goodness to me. You are very kind to 
 think of coming to my poor cottage." 
 
 " Well, my man," said the colonel, " and how are 
 you after your cold bath? You are the heaviest 
 fish I ever landed ! " 
 
 " Pretty well, thank God, and you, sir. I am in 
 your debt, sir, for the dear life. How shall I ever 
 repay you?" 
 
 "Repay, my good fellow? You would have 
 done as much for me." 
 
 " May be ; but you did not think of that when 
 you jumped in; and no more must I in thanking 
 you. God knows how a poor miner's son will 
 ever reward you ; but the mouse repaid the lion, 
 says the story, and, at all events, I can pray for 
 you. By the by, gentlemen, I hope you have 
 brought up some trolling-tackle?"
 
 An "Inglorious Milton " 71 
 
 " We came up to see you, and not to fish," said 
 Lancelot, charmed with the stately courtesy of the 
 man. 
 
 " Many thanks, gentlemen ; but old Harry Verney 
 was in here just now, and had seen a great jack 
 strike, at the tail of the lower reeds. With this 
 fresh wind he will run till noon ; and you are sure 
 of him with a dace. After that, he will not be up 
 again on the shallows till sunset. He works the 
 works of darkness, and comes not to the light, 
 because his deeds are evil." 
 
 Lancelot laughed. " He does but follow his 
 kind, poor fellow." 
 
 " No doubt, sir, no doubt ; all the Lord's works 
 are good : but it is a wonder why He should have 
 made wasps, now, and blights, and vermin, and 
 jack, and such evil-featured things, that carry spite 
 and cruelty in their very faces a great wonder. 
 Do you think, sir, all those creatures were in the 
 Garden of Eden?" 
 
 " You are getting too deep for me," said Lance- 
 lot. "But why trouble your head about fishing?" 
 
 " I beg your pardon for preaching to you, sir. 
 I 'm sure I forgot myself. If you will let me, I '11 
 get up and get you a couple of bait from the stew. 
 You '11 do us keepers a kindness, and prevent sin, 
 sir, if you '11 catch him. The squire will swear 
 sadly the Lord forgive him if he hears of a 
 pike in the trout-runs. I '11 get up, if I may 
 trouble you to go into the next room a minute." 
 
 " Lie still, for Heaven's sake. Why bother your 
 head about pike now? " 
 
 " It is my business, sir, and I am paid for it, and 
 I must do it thoroughly ; and abide in the call- 
 ing wherein I am called," he added, in a sadder tone.
 
 72 Yeast 
 
 " You seem to be fond enough of it, and to 
 know enough about it, at all events," said the 
 colonel, " tying flies here on a sick-bed." 
 
 "As for being fond of it, sir those creatures 
 of the water teach a man many lessons ; and when 
 I tie flies, I earn books." 
 
 "How then?" 
 
 " I send my flies all over the country, sir, to 
 Salisbury and Hungerford, and up to Winchester, 
 even ; and the money buys me many a wise book 
 all my delight is in reading; perhaps so much 
 the worse for me." 
 
 "So much the better, say," answered Lancelot, 
 warmly. " I '11 give you an order for a couple of 
 pounds' worth of flies at once." 
 
 "The Lord reward you, sir," answered the 
 giant. 
 
 " And you shall make me the same quantity," 
 said the colonel. "You can make salmon-flies?" 
 
 " I made a lot by pattern for an Irish gent, sir." 
 
 " Well, then, we '11 send you some Norway 
 patterns, and some golden pheasant and parrot 
 feathers. We 're going to Norway this summer, 
 you know, Lancelot " 
 
 Tregarva looked up with a quaint, solemn 
 hesitation. 
 
 " If you please, gentlemen, you '11 forgive a 
 man's conscience." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " But I 'd not like to be a party to the making 
 of Norway flies." 
 
 " Here 's a Protectionist, with a vengeance ! w 
 laughed the colonel. " Do you want to keep all 
 us fishermen in England? eh? to fee English 
 keepers ? "
 
 An "Inglorious Milton" 73 
 
 " No, sir. There 's pretty fishing in Norway, I 
 hear, and poor folk that want money more than we 
 keepers. God knows we get too much we that 
 hang about great houses and serve great folks' 
 pleasure you toss the money down our throats, 
 without our deserving it; and we spend it as we 
 get it a deal too fast while hard-working 
 laborers are starving." 
 
 " And yet you would keep us in England ? " 
 
 " Would God I could ! " 
 
 "Why then, my good fellow?" asked Lancelot, 
 who was getting intensely interested with the calm, 
 self-possessed earnestness of the man, and longed 
 to draw him out. 
 
 The colonel yawned. 
 
 " Well, I '11 go and get myself a couple of bait. 
 Don't you stir, my good parson-keeper. Down 
 charge, I say ! Odd if I don't find a bait-net, and 
 a rod for myself, under the verandah." 
 
 "You will, colonel. I remember, now, I set it 
 there last morning; but the water washed many 
 things out of my brains, and some things into 
 them and I forgot it like a goose." 
 
 " Well, good-bye, and lie still. I know what a 
 drowning is, and more than one. A day and a 
 night have I been in the deep, like the man in the 
 good book ; and bed is the best of medicine for a 
 ducking ; " and the colonel shook him kindly by 
 the hand and disappeared. 
 - ^Lancelot sat down by the keeper's bed. 
 
 " You '11 get those fish-hooks into your trousers, 
 sir ; and this is a poor place to sit down in." 
 
 " I want you to say your say out, friend, fish- 
 hooks or none." 
 
 The keeper looked warily at the door, and when
 
 74 Yeast 
 
 the colonel had passed the window, balancing the 
 trolling-rod on his chin, and whistling merrily, he 
 began, 
 
 " ' A day and a night have I been in the deep ! ' 
 and brought back no more from it ! And yet 
 the Psalms say how they that go down to the sea 
 in ships see the works of the Lord ! If the Lord 
 has opened their eyes to see them, that must 
 
 mean " 
 
 Lancelot waited. 
 
 " What a gallant gentleman that is, and a valiant 
 man of war, I '11 warrant, and to have seen all 
 the wonders he has, and yet to be wasting his spaa 
 of life like that!" 
 
 Lancelot's heart smote him. 
 
 " One would think, sir You '11 pardon me 
 
 for speaking out." And the noble face worked, as 
 he murmured to himself, " When ye are brought 
 before kings and princes for my name's sake. I 
 dare not hold my tongue, sir. I am as one risen 
 from the dead," and his face flashed up into 
 sudden enthusiasm, " and woe to me if I speak 
 not. Oh, why, why are you gentlemen running 
 off to Norway, and foreign parts, whither God has 
 not called you ! Are there no graves in Egypt, 
 that you must go out to die in the wilderness ? " 
 
 Lancelot, quite unaccustomed to the language 
 of the Dissenting poor, felt keenly the bad taste of 
 the allusion. 
 
 " What can you mean? " he asked. 
 " Pardon me, sir, if I cannot speak plainly ; but 
 are there not temptations enough here in England 
 that you must go to waste all your gifts, your 
 scholarship, and your rank, far away there out of 
 the sound of a church-going bell ? I don't deny
 
 An " Inglorious Milton " 75 
 
 it's a great temptation. I have read of Norway 
 wonders in a book of one Miss Martineau, with a 
 strange name." 
 
 " Feats on the Fiord ? " 
 
 " That 's it, sir. Her books are grand books to 
 set one a-thinking ; but she don't seem to see the 
 Lord in all things, does she, sir?" 
 
 Lancelot parried the question. 
 
 " You are wandering a little from the point." 
 
 "So I am, and thank you for the rebuke. 
 There's where I find you scholars have the ad- 
 vantage of us poor fellows, who pick up knowl- 
 edge as we can. Your book-learning makes you 
 stick to the point so much better. You are taught 
 how to think. After all God forgive me if I'm 
 wrong ! but I sometimes think that there must be 
 more good in that human wisdom, and philosophy 
 falsely so called, than we Wesleyans hold. Oh, 
 sir, what a blessing is a good education ! What 
 you gentlemen might do with it, if you did but see 
 your own power ! Are there no fish in England, 
 sir, to be caught? precious fish, with immortal 
 souls? And is there not One who has said, 
 * Come with me, and I will make you fishers of 
 men'?' 1 
 
 ''Would you have us all turn parsons?" 
 
 " Is no one to do God's work except the parson, 
 sir? Oh, the game that you rich folks have in your 
 hands, if you would but play it! Such a man as 
 Colonel Bracebridge now, with the tongue of the 
 serpent, who can charm any living soul he likes 
 to his will, as a stoat charms a rabbit. Or you, 
 sir, with your tongue: you have charmed one 
 precious creature already. I can see it: though 
 neither of you know it, yet I know it"
 
 7 6 Yeast 
 
 Lancelot started, and blushed crimson. 
 
 " Oh, that I had your tongue, sir ! " And 
 the keeper blushed crimson, too, and went on 
 hastily, 
 
 " But why could you not charm all alike ? Do 
 not the poor want you as well as the rich?" 
 
 " What can I do for the poor, my good fellow? 
 And what do they want? Have they not houses, 
 work, a church, and schools, and poor-rates to 
 fall back on?" 
 
 The keeper smiled sadly. 
 
 " To fall back on, indeed ! and down on, too. 
 At all events, you rich might help to make Chris- 
 tians of them, and men of them. For I 'm begin- 
 ning to fancy strangely, in spite of all the preachers 
 say, that, before ever you can make them Chris- 
 tians, you must make them men and women." 
 
 "Are they not so already? " 
 
 " Oh, sir, go and see ! How can a man be a 
 man in those crowded styes, sleeping packed 
 together like Irish pigs in a steamer, never out of 
 the fear of want, never knowing any higher amuse- 
 ment than the beershop ? Those old Greeks and 
 Romans, as I read, were more like men than half 
 our English laborers. Go and see! Ask that 
 sweet heavenly angel, Miss Honoria," and the 
 keeper again blushed, "and she, too, will tell 
 you. I think sometimes if she had been born and 
 bred like her father's tenants' daughters, to sleep 
 where they sleep, and hear the talk they hear, and 
 see the things they see, what would she have been 
 now? We mustn't think of it." And the keeper 
 turned his head away, and fairly burst into tears. 
 
 Lancelot was moved. 
 
 " Are the poor very immoral, then?"
 
 An "Inglorious Milton'* 77 
 
 "You ask the rector, sir, how many children 
 hereabouts are born within six months of the wed- 
 ding-day. None of them marry, sir, till the devil 
 forces them. There's no sadder sight than a 
 laborer's wedding nowadays. You never see the 
 parents come with them. They just get another 
 couple, that are keeping company, like themselves, 
 and come sneaking into church, looking all over 
 as if they were ashamed of it and well they 
 may be ! " 
 
 "Is it possible?" 
 
 " I say, sir, that God makes you gentlemen, 
 gentlemen, that you may see into these things. 
 You give away your charities kindly enough, but 
 you don't know the folks you give to. If a few 
 of you would but be like the blessed Lord, and 
 stoop to go out of the road, just behind the hedge, 
 for once, among the publicans and harlots ! Were 
 you ever at a country fair, sir? Though I suppose 
 I am rude for fancying that you could demean 
 yourself to such company." 
 
 " I should not think it demeaning myself," said 
 Lancelot, smiling ; " but I never was at one, and I 
 should like for once to see the real manners of the 
 poor." 
 
 " I 'm no haunter of such places myself, God 
 knows ; but I see you 're in earnest now will 
 you come with me, sir, for once ? for God's sake 
 and the poor's sake ? " 
 
 " I shall be delighted." 
 
 " Not after you 've been there, I am afraid." 
 
 " Well, it 's a bargain when you are recovered. 
 And, in the meantime, the squire's orders are, that 
 you lie by for a few days to rest ; and Miss Hono- 
 ria's, too ; and she has sent you down some wine."
 
 78 Yeast 
 
 " She thought of me, did she ? " and the still sad 
 face blazed out radiant with pleasure, and then 
 collapsed as suddenly into deep melancholy. 
 
 Lancelot saw it, but said nothing ; and shaking 
 him heartily by the hand, had his shake returned 
 by an iron grasp, and slipped silently out of the 
 cottage. 
 
 The keeper lay still, gazing on vacancy. Once 
 he murmured to himself: 
 
 " Through strange ways strange ways and 
 though he let them wander out of the road in the 
 wilderness ; we know how that goes on " 
 
 And then he fell into a mixed meditation- 
 perhaps into a prayer.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING 
 
 AT last, after Lancelot had waited long in vain f 
 came his cousin's answer to the letter which 
 I gave in my second chapter. 
 
 " You are not fair to me, good cousin , . . but I have 
 given up expecting fairness from Protestants. I do not. 
 say that the front and the back of my head have different 
 makers, any more than that doves and vipers have . . . 
 and yet I kill the viper when I meet him . . . and so do 
 you. . . . And yet, are we not taught that our animal 
 nature is throughout equally viperous ? . . . The Catho- 
 lic Church, at least, so teaches. . . . She believes in 
 the corruption of human nature. She believes in the 
 literal meaning of Scripture. She has no wish to para- 
 phrase away St. Paul's awful words, that "in his flesh 
 dwelleth no good thing," by the unscientific euphemisms 
 of " fallen nature " or " corrupt humanity." The boasted 
 discovery of phrenologists, that thought, feeling, and pas- 
 sion reside in this material brain and nerves of ours, has 
 ages ago been anticipated by her simple faith in the letter 
 of Scripture ; a faith which puts to shame the irreverent 
 vagueness and fantastic private interpretations of those 
 who make an idol of that very letter which they dare 
 not take literally, because it makes against their self- 
 willed theories. . . . 
 
 "And so you call me douce and meek? . . . You 
 should remember what I once was, Lancelot . . . I,at
 
 8o Yeast 
 
 least, have not forgotten ... I have not forgotten how 
 that very animal nature, on the possession of which you 
 seem to pride yourself, was in me only the parent of 
 remorse. ... I know it too well not to hate and fear it. 
 Why do you reproach me, if I try to abjure it, and cast 
 away the burden which I am too weak to bear? I am 
 weak Would you have me say that I am strong? 
 Would you have me try to be a Prometheus, while I am 
 longing to be once more an infant on a mother's breast? 
 Let me alone . . . I am a weary child, who knows 
 nothing, can do nothing, except lose its way in arguings 
 and reasonings, and ' find no end, in wandering mazes 
 lost.' Will you reproach me, because when I see a 
 soft cradle lying open for me . . > with a Virgin Mother's 
 face smiling down all woman's love about it ... I long 
 to crawl into it, and sleep awhile? I want loving, in- 
 dulgent sympathy ... I want detailed, explicit guid- 
 ance . . . Have you, then, found so much of them in 
 our former creed, that you forbid me to go to seek them 
 elsewhere, in the Church which not only professes them 
 as an organized system, but practises them ... as you 
 would find in your first half-hour's talk with one of her 
 priests . . . true priests . . . who know the heart of 
 man, and pity, and console, and bear for their flock the 
 burdens which they cannot bear themselves ? You ask 
 me who will teach a fast young man ? . . . I answer, the 
 Jesuit. Ay, start and sneer, at that delicate woman-like 
 tenderness, that subtle instinctive sympathy, which you 
 have never felt . . which is as new to me, alas, as it 
 would be to you ! For if there be none nowadays to 
 teach such as you, who is there who will teach such as 
 me ? Do not fancy that I have not craved and searched 
 for teachers ... I went to one party long ago, and 
 they commanded me, as the price of their sympathy, 
 even of anything but their denunciations, to ignore, if 
 not to abjure, all the very points on which I came for
 
 A Sham is Worse than Nothing 81 
 
 light my love for the beautiful and the symbolic 
 my desire to consecrate and Christianize it my longing 
 for a human voice to tell me with authority that I was 
 forgiven my desire to find some practical and palpable 
 communion between myself and the saints of old. They 
 told me to cast away, as an accursed chaos, a thousand 
 years of Christian history, and, believe that the devil had 
 been for ages . . . just the ages I thought noblest, most 
 faithful, most interpenetrated with the thought of God 
 . . . triumphant over that church with which He had 
 promised to be till the end of the world. No ... by 
 the by, they made two exceptions of their own 
 choosing. One in favor of the Albigenses . . . who 
 seemed to me, from the original documents, to have been 
 very profligate Infidels, of whom the world was well rid 
 . . . and the Piedmontese . . . poor, simple, ill-used 
 folk enough, but who certainly cannot be said to have 
 exercised much influence on the destinies of mankind 
 . . . and all the rest was chaos and the pit. There 
 never had been, never would be, a kingdom of God on 
 earth, but only a few scattered individuals, each selfishly 
 intent on the salvation of his own soul without organ- 
 ization, without unity, without common purpose, without 
 even a masonic sign whereby to know one another when 
 they chanced to meet . . . except Shibboleths which 
 the hypocrite could ape, and virtues which the heathen 
 have performed . . . Would you have had me accept 
 such a " Philosophy of History " ? 
 
 " And then I went to another school ... or rather 
 wandered up and down between those whom I have just 
 described, and those who boast on their side prescriptive 
 right, and apostolic succession . . . and I found that 
 their ancient charter went back just three hundred 
 years . . . and there derived its transmitted virtue, it 
 seemed to me, by something very like obtaining goods 
 on false pretences, from the very church which it now 
 E Vol. V
 
 82 Yeast 
 
 anathematizes. . Disheartened, but not hopeless, I asked 
 how it was that the priesthood, whose hands bestowed 
 the grace of ordination, could not withdraw it ... 
 whether, at least, the schismatic did not forfeit it by the 
 very act of schism . . . and instead of any real answer to 
 that fearful spiritual dilemma, they set me down to folios 
 of Nag's head controversies . . . and myths of an inde- 
 pendent British Church, now represented, strangely 
 enough, by those Saxons who, after its wicked refusal to 
 communicate with them, exterminated it with fire and 
 sword, and derived its own order from St. Gregory . . . 
 and decisions of mythical old councils (held by bishops 
 of a different faith and practice from their own), from 
 which I was to pick the one point which made for them, 
 and omit the nine which made against them, while I was 
 to believe, by a stretch of imagination ... or common 
 honesty . . . which I leave you to conceive, that the 
 Church of Syria in the fourth century was, in doctrine, 
 practice, and constitution, like that of England in the 
 nineteenth? . . . And what was I to gain by all this? 
 . . . For the sake of what was I to strain logic and con- 
 science ? To believe myself a member of the same body 
 with all the Christian nations of the earth ? to be able 
 to hail the Frenchman, the Italian, the Spaniard, as a 
 brother to have hopes even of the German and the 
 Swede ... if not in this life, still in the life to come ? 
 No ... to be able to sit apart from all Christendom in 
 the exclusive pride of insular Pharisaism; to claim for 
 the modern littleness of England the infallibility which I 
 denied to the primeval mother of Christendom, not to 
 enlarge my communion to the Catholic, but excommuni- 
 cate, to all practical purposes, over and above the 
 Catholics, all other Protestants except my own sect . . . 
 or rather, in practice, except my own party in my own 
 sect. . . . And this was believing in one Catholic and 
 Apostolic church ! . . . this was to be my share of the
 
 A Sham is Worse than Nothing 83 
 
 communion of saints ! And these were the theories 
 which were to satisfy a soul which longed for a kingdom 
 of God on earth, which felt that unless the highest of 
 His promises are a mythic dream, there must be some 
 system on the earth commissioned to fulfil those 
 promises j some authority divinely appointed to regen- 
 erate, and rule, and ( guide the lives of men, and the 
 destinies of nations ; who must go mad, unless he finds 
 that history is not a dreary aimless procession of lost 
 spirits descending into the pit, or that the salvation of 
 millions does not depend on an obscure and contro- 
 verted hair's breadth of ecclesiastic law. 
 
 " I have tried them both, Lancelot, and found them 
 wanting; and now but one road remains. . . . Home, 
 to the fountain-head ; to the mother of all the churches 
 whose fancied cruelty to her children can no more 
 destroy her motherhood, than their confest rebellion can. 
 . . . Shall I not hear her voice, when she, and she alone 
 cries to me, ' I have authority and commission from the 
 King of kings to regenerate the world. History is a 
 chaos, only because mankind has been ever rebelling 
 against me, its lawful ruler . . . and yet not a chaos . . . 
 for I still stand, and grow rooted on the rock of ages, 
 and under my boughs are fowl of every wing. I alone 
 have been and am consistent, progressive, expansive, 
 welcoming every race and intellect and character into 
 its proper place in my great organism . . . meeting 
 alike the wants of the king and the beggar, the artist and 
 the devotee . . . there is free room for all within my 
 heaven-wide bosom. Infallibility is not the exclusive 
 heritage of one proud and ignorant Island, but of a 
 system which knows no distinction of language, race, or 
 clime. The communion of saints is not a bygone tale, 
 for my saints, redeemed from every age and every 
 nation under heaven, still live, and love, and help and 
 intercede. The union of heaven and earth is not a
 
 84 Yeast 
 
 barbaric myth ; for I have still my miracles, my Host, 
 my exorcism, my absolution. The present rule of God 
 is still, as ever, a living reality; for I rule in His name, 
 and fulfil all His will.' 
 
 " How can I turn away from such a voice ? What if 
 some of her doctrines may startle my untutored and 
 ignorant understanding? ... If she is the appointed 
 teacher, she will know best what 'truths to teach. . . . 
 The disciple is not above his master ... or wise in re- 
 quiring him to demonstrate the abstrusest problems . . . 
 spiritual problems, too . . . before he allows his right to 
 teach the elements. Humbly I must enter the temple 
 porch ; gradually and trustfully proceed with my initia- 
 tion. . . . When that is past, and not before . . . shall 
 I be a fit judge of the mysteries of the inner shrine. 
 
 " There ... I have written a long letter . . . with 
 my own heart's blood. . . . Think over it well, before 
 you despise it. ... And if you can refute it for me, 
 and sweep the whole away like a wild dream when one 
 awakes, none will be more thankful paradoxical as it 
 may seem than your unhappy Cousin." 
 
 And Lancelot did consider that letter, and 
 answered it as follows: 
 
 " It is a relief to me at least, dear Luke, that you are 
 going to Rome in search of a great idea, and not merely 
 from selfish superstitious terror (as I should call it) 
 about the ' salvation of your soul.' And it is a new 
 and very important thought to me, that Rome's scheme 
 of this world, rather than of the next, forms her chief 
 allurement. But as for that flesh and spirit question, or 
 fhe apostolic succession one either ; all you seem to me, 
 as a looker on, to have logically proved, is that Protes- 
 tants, orthodox and unorthodox, must be a little more 
 scientific and careful in their use of the terms. But as
 
 A Sham is Worse than Nothing 85 
 
 for adopting your use of them, and the consequences 
 thereof you must pardon me, and, I suspect, them too. 
 Not that. Anything but that. Whatever is right, that 
 is wrong. Better to be inconsistent in truth, than con- 
 sistent in a mistake. And your Romish idea of man is a 
 mistake utterly wrong and absurd except in the 
 one requirement of righteousness and godliness, which 
 Protestants and heathen philosophers have required and 
 do require just as much as you. My dear Luke, your 
 ideal men and women won't do for they are not men 
 and women at all, but what you call ' saints.' . . . Your 
 Calendar, your historic list of the earth's worthies, won't 
 do not they, but others, are the people who have 
 brought Humanity thus far. I don't deny that there are 
 great souls among them; Beckets, and Hugh Gros- 
 tetes, and Elizabeths of Hungary. But you are the last 
 people to praise them, for you don't understand them. 
 Thierry honors Thomas a Becket more than all Canon- 
 izations and worshippers do, because he does see where 
 the man's true greatness lay, and you don't. Why, you 
 may hunt all Surius for such a biography of a mediaeval 
 worthy as Carlyle has given of your Abbot Samson. 1 
 have read, or tried to read your Surius, and Alban 
 Butler, and so forth and they seemed to me. bats and 
 asses One really pitied the poor saints and martyrs 
 for having such blind biographers such dunghill cocks, 
 who overlooked the pearl of real human love and noble- 
 ness in them, in their greediness to snatch up and 
 parade the rotten chaff of superstition, and self-torture, 
 and spiritual dyspepsia, which had overlaid it. My dear 
 fellow, that Calendar ruins your cause you are sacres 
 aristocrates kings and queens, bishops and virgins by 
 the hundred at one end ; a beggar or two at the other ; 
 and but one real human lay St. Homobonus to fill up 
 the great gulf between A pretty list to allure the Eng- 
 lish middle classes, or the Lancashire working-men !
 
 86 Yeast 
 
 Almost as charmingly suited to England as the present 
 free, industrious, enlightened, and moral state of that 
 Eternal City, which has been blest with the visible 
 presence and peculiar rule, temporal as well as spiritual, 
 too, of your Dalai Lama. His pills do not seem to have 
 had much practical effect there. . . . My good Luke, 
 till he can show us a little better specimen of the king- 
 dom of Heaven organized and realized on earth, in the 
 country which does belong to him, soil and people, body 
 and soul, we must decline his assistance in realizing that 
 kingdom in countries which don't belong to him. If 
 the state of Rome don't show his idea of man and 
 society to be a rotten lie, what proof would you have ? 
 . . . perhaps the charming results of a century of Jes- 
 uitocracy, as they were represented on a French stage 
 in the year 1793? I can't answer his arguments, you 
 see, or yours either ; I am an Englishman, and not a 
 controversialist. The only answer I give is John Bull's 
 old dumb instinctive ' Everlasting No ! ' which he will 
 stand by, if need be, with sharp shot and cold steel 
 ' Not that ; anything but that. No kingdom of Heaven 
 at all for us, if the kingdom of Heaven is like that. No 
 heroes at all for us, if their heroism is to consist in their 
 being not-men. Better no society at all, but only a 
 competitive wild -beast's den, than a sham society. Bet- 
 ter no faith, no hope, no love, no God, than shams 
 thereof.' I take my stand on fact and nature ; you may 
 call them idols and phantoms ; I say they need be so no 
 longer to any man, since Bacon has taught us to dis- 
 cover the Eternal Laws under the outward phenomena. 
 Here on blank materialism will I stand, and testify 
 against all Religions and Gods whatsoever, if they must 
 needs be like that Roman religion, that Roman God. I 
 don't believe they need not I. But if they need, they 
 must go. We cannot have a Deus quidam deceptor. If 
 there be a God, these trees and stones, these beasts and
 
 A Sham is Worse than Nothing 87 
 
 birds must be His will, whatever else is not. My body, 
 and brain, and faculties, and appetites must be His will, 
 whatever else is not. Whatsoever I can do with them 
 in accordance with the constitution of them and nature 
 must be His will, whatever else is not. Those laws of 
 Nature must reveal Him, and be revealed by Him, what- 
 ever else is not. Man's scientific conquest of nature 
 must be one phase of His Kingdom on Earth, whatever 
 else is not. I don't deny that there are spiritual laws 
 which man is meant to obey How can I, who feel in 
 my own daily and inexplicable unhappiness the fruits of 
 having broken them? But I do say, that those spiritual 
 laws must be in perfect harmony with every fresh physi- 
 cal law which we discover : that they cannot be intended 
 to compete self-destructively with each other ; that the 
 spiritual cannot be intended to be perfected by ignoring 
 or crushing the physical, unless God is a deceiver, and 
 His universe a self-contradiction. And by this test 
 alone will I try all theories, and dogmas, and spiritu- 
 alities whatsoever Are they in accordance with the 
 laws of nature? And therefore when your party com- 
 pare sneeringly Romish sanctity and English civiliza- 
 tion, I say, 'Take you the sanctity, and give me the 
 civilization ! ' The one may be a dream, for it is un- 
 natural ; the other cannot be, for it is natural ; and not 
 an evil in it at which you sneer but is discovered, day by 
 day, to be owing to some infringement of the laws of 
 nature. When we 'draw bills on nature,' as Carlyle 
 says, ' she honors them,' our ships do sail ; our mills 
 do work; our doctors do cure; our soldiers do fight. 
 And she does not honor yours ; for your Jesuits have, 
 by their own confession, to lie, to swindle, to get even 
 man to accept theirs for them. So give me the political 
 economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and 
 take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The 
 spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the
 
 88 Yeast 
 
 electric telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that we 
 are, on some points at least, in harmony with the uni- 
 verse ; that there is a mighty spirit working among us, 
 who cannot be your anarchic and destroying devil, and 
 therefore may be the ordering and creating God." 
 
 Which of them do you think, reader, had most 
 right on his side?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 VOGUE LA GALERE 
 
 LANCELOT was now so far improved in 
 health as to return to his little cottage 
 ornee. He gave himself up freely to his new pas- 
 sion. With his comfortable fortune and good 
 connections, the future seemed bright and pos- 
 sible enough as to circumstances. He knew that 
 Argemone felt for him; how much it seemed 
 presumptuous even to speculate, and as yet no 
 golden-visaged meteor had arisen portentous in 
 his amatory zodiac. No rich man had stepped 
 in to snatch, in spite of all his own flocks and 
 herds, at the poor man's own ewe-lamb, and set 
 him barking at all the world, as many a poor 
 lover has to do in defence of his morsel of enjoy- 
 ment, now turned into a mere bone of contention 
 and loadstone for all hungry kites and crows. 
 
 All that had to be done was to render himself 
 worthy of her, and in doing so, to win her. And 
 now he began to feel more painfully his ignorance 
 of society, of practical life, and the outward 
 present. He blamed himself angrily for having, 
 as he now thought, wasted his time on ancient 
 histories and foreign travels, while he neglected 
 the living wonderful present, which weltered 
 daily round him, every face embodying a living 
 soul. For now he began to feel that those faces
 
 90 Yeast 
 
 did hide living souls; formerly he had half be- 
 lieved he had tried, but from laziness, to make 
 himself wholly believe that they were all empty 
 masks, phantasies, without interest or significance 
 for him. But, somehow, in the light of his new 
 love for Argemone, the whole human race seemed 
 glorified, brought nearer, endeared to him. So 
 it must be. He had spoken of a law wider than 
 he thought in his fancy, that the angels might 
 learn love for all by love for an individual. Do 
 we not all learn love so ? Is it not the first touch 
 of the mother's bosom which awakens in the 
 infant's heart that spark of affection which is 
 hereafter to spread itself out towards every human 
 being, and to lose none of its devotion for its 
 first object, as it expands itself to innumerable 
 new ones ? Is it not by love, too, by looking 
 into loving human eyes, by feeling the care of 
 loving hands, that the infant first learns that 
 there exist other beings beside itself? that 
 every body which it sees expresses a heart and 
 will like its own ? Be sure of it. Be sure that 
 to have found the key to one heart is to have 
 found the key to all; that truly to love is truly 
 to know; and truly to love one, is the first step 
 towards truly loving all who bear the same flesh 
 and blood with the beloved. Like children, we 
 must dress up even our unseen future in stage 
 properties borrowed from the tried and palpable 
 present, ere we can look at it without horror. 
 We fear and hate the utterly unknown, and it 
 only. Even pain we hate only when we cannot 
 know it; when we can only feel it, without 
 explaining it, and making it harmonize with our 
 notions of our own deserts and destiny. And as
 
 Vogue la Galere 91 
 
 for human beings, there surely it stands true, 
 wherever else it may not, that all knowledge is 
 love, and all love knowledge; that even with 
 the meanest, we cannot gain a glimpse into their 
 inward trials and struggles', without an increase 
 of sympathy and affection. 
 
 Whether he reasoned thus or not, Lancelot 
 found that his new interest in the working classes 
 was strangely quickened by his passion. It 
 seemed the shortest and clearest way toward a 
 practical knowledge of the present. "Here," he 
 said to himself, "in the investigation of existing 
 relations between poor and rich, I shall gain 
 more real acquaintance with English society, than 
 by dawdling centuries in exclusive drawing- 
 rooms. " 
 
 The inquiry had not yet presented itself to 
 him as a duty; perhaps so much the better, that 
 it might be the more thoroughly a free-will offer- 
 ing of love. At least it opened a new field of 
 amusement and knowledge; it promised him new 
 studies of human life ; and as he lay on his sofa 
 and let his thoughts flow, Tregarva's dark revela- 
 tions began to mix themselves with dreams about 
 the regeneration of the Whitford poor, and those 
 again with dreams about the heiress of Whitford ; 
 and many a luscious scene and noble plan rose 
 brightly detailed in his exuberant imagination. 
 For Lancelot, like all born artists, could only 
 think in a concrete form. He never worked out 
 a subject without embodying it in some set ora- 
 tion, dialogue, or dramatic castle in the air. 
 
 But the more he dreamt, the more he felt that 
 a material beauty of flesh and blood required a 
 material house, baths, and boudoirs, conserva-
 
 92 Yeast 
 
 tories, and carriages; a safe material purse, and 
 fixed material society; law and order, and the 
 established framework of society, gained an im- 
 portance in his eyes which they had never had 
 before. 
 
 "Well," he said to himself, "I am turning 
 quite practical and auld-warld. Those old Greeks 
 were not so far wrong when they said that what 
 made men citizens, patriots, heroes, was the love 
 of wedded wife and child." 
 
 " Wedded wife and child ! " He shrank in 
 from the daring of the delicious thought, as if he 
 had intruded without invitation into a hidden 
 sanctuary, and looked round for a book to drive 
 away the dazzling picture. But even there his 
 thoughts were haunted by Argemone's face, and 
 
 " When his regard 
 
 Was raised by intense pensiveness, two eyes, 
 Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 
 And seemed, with their serene and azure smiles, 
 To beckon him." 
 
 He took up, with a new interest, "Chartism," 
 which alone of all Mr. Carlyle's works he had 
 hitherto disliked, because his own luxurious day- 
 dreams had always flowed in such sad discord 
 with the terrible warnings of the modern seer, 
 and his dark vistas of starvation, crime, neglect, 
 and discontent. 
 
 "Well," he said to himself, as he closed the 
 book, " I suppose it is good for us easy-going 
 ones now and then to face the possibility of a 
 change. Gold has grown on my back as feathers 
 do on geese, without my own will or deed; but 
 considering that gold, like feathers, is equally
 
 Vogue la Gal ere 93 
 
 useful to those who have and those who have not, 
 why, it is worth while for the goose to remember 
 that he may possibly one day be plucked. And 
 what remains ? ' lo, ' as Medea says. . . . But 
 Argemone ? " . . . And Lancelot felt, for the 
 moment, as conservative as the tutelary genius 
 of all special constables. 
 
 As the last thought passed through his brain, 
 Bracebridge's little mustang slouched past the 
 window, ridden (without a saddle) by a horseman 
 whom there was no mistaking, for no one but the 
 immaculate colonel, the chevalier sans peur et 
 sans reproche, dared to go about the country " such 
 a figure." A minute afterwards he walked in, in 
 a student's felt hat, a ragged heather-colored 
 coatee, and old white "regulation drills," shrunk 
 half-way up his legs, a pair of embroidered Indian 
 moccasins, and an enormous meerschaum at his 
 button-hole. 
 
 " Where have you been this last week ? " 
 
 " Over head and ears in Young England, till I 
 fled to you for a week's common sense. A glass 
 of cider, for mercy's sake, ' to take the taste of it 
 out of my mouth,' as Bill Sykes has it." 
 
 " Where have you been staying ? " 
 
 " With young Lord Vieuxbois, among high art 
 and painted glass, spade farms, and model smell- 
 traps, rubricalities and sanitary reforms, and all 
 other inventions, possible and impossible, for 
 1 stretching the old formulate meet the new fact,' 
 as your favorite prophet says. " 
 
 " Till the old formula cracks under the tension. " 
 
 " And cracks its devotees, too, I think. Here 
 comes the cider ! " 
 
 "But, my dear fellow, you must not laugh at
 
 94 Yeast 
 
 all this. Young England or Peelite, this is all 
 right and noble. What a yet unspoken poetry 
 there is in that very sanitary reform ! It is the 
 great fact of the age. We shall have men arise 
 and write epics on it, when they have learnt that 
 * to the pure all things are pure,' and that science 
 and usefulness contain a divine element, even in 
 their lowest appliances." 
 
 " Write one yourself, and call it the ' Chad- 
 wickiad. ' " 
 
 "Why not? 
 
 ' Smells and the Man I sing.' 
 
 There 's a beginning at once. Why don't you 
 rather, with your practical power, turn sanitary 
 reformer the only true soldier and con- 
 quer those real devils and ' natural enemies' of 
 Englishmen, carbonic acid and sulphuretted 
 hydrogen ? " 
 
 " Ce n'est pas mon m/tier, my dear fellow. I 
 am miserably behind the age. People are getting 
 so cursedly in earnest nowadays, that I shall have 
 to bolt to the backwoods to amuse myself in 
 peace ; or else sham dumb as the monkeys do, lest 
 folks should find out that I 'm rational, and set 
 me to work." 
 
 Lancelot laughed and sighed. 
 
 " But how on earth do you contrive to get on so 
 well with men with whom you have not an idea 
 in common !" 
 
 " Savoir faire, O infant Hercules ! own daddy 
 to savoir vivre. I am a good listener; and, there- 
 fore, the most perfect, because the most silent, of 
 flatterers. When they talk Puginesquery, I stick 
 my head on one side attentively, and ' think the
 
 Vogue la Galere 95 
 
 more,' like the lady's parrot. I have been all 
 the morning looking over a set of drawings for 
 my lord's new chapel; and every soul in the party 
 fancies me a great antiquary, just because I have 
 been retailing to B as my own everything that 
 A told me the moment before." 
 
 "I envy you your tact, at all events." 
 
 "Why the deuce should you? You may rise 
 in time to something better than tact; to what 
 the good book, I suppose, means by ' wisdom. ' 
 Young geniuses like you, who have been green 
 enough to sell your souls to ' truth, ' must not 
 meddle with tact, unless you wish to fare as the 
 donkey did when he tried to play lap-dog. " 
 
 "At all events, I would sooner remain cub till 
 they run me down and eat me, than give up 
 speaking my mind," said Lancelot. "Fool I 
 may be, but the devil himself sha'n't make me 
 knave. " 
 
 " Quite proper. On two thousand a year a 
 man can afford to be honest. Kick out lustily 
 right and left ! After all, the world is like a 
 spaniel ; the more you beat it, the better it likes 
 you if you have money. Only don't kick too 
 hard ; for, after all, it has a hundred million pair 
 of shins to your one. " 
 
 "Don't fear that I shall run a-muck against 
 society just now. I am too thoroughly out of my 
 own good books. I have been for years laughing 
 at Young England, and yet its little ringer is 
 thicker than my whole body, for it is trying to 
 do something; and I, alas, am doing utterly 
 nothing. I should be really glad to take a 
 lesson of these men and their plans for social 
 improvement. "
 
 96 Yeast 
 
 "You will have a fine opportunity this evening. 
 Don't you dine at Minchampstead? " 
 
 " Yes. Do you ? " 
 
 "Mr. Jingle dines everywhere, except at home. 
 Will you take me over in your trap? " 
 
 "Done. But whom shall we meet there? " 
 
 " The Lavingtons, and Vieuxbois, and Vaurien, 
 and a parson or two, I suppose. But between 
 Saint Venus and Vieuxbois you may soon learn 
 enough to make you a sadder man, if not a wiser 
 one." 
 
 "Why not a wiser one? Sadder than now I 
 cannot be; or less wise, God knows." 
 
 The colonel looked at Lancelot with one of 
 those kindly thoughtful smiles, which came over 
 him whenever his better child's heart could bubble 
 up through the thick crust of worldliness. 
 
 "My young friend, you have been a little too 
 much on the stilts heretofore. Take care that, 
 now you are off them, you don't lie down and 
 sleep, instead of walking honestly on your legs. 
 Have faith in yourself; pick these men's brains, 
 and all men's. You can do it. Say to yourself 
 boldly, as the false prophet in India said to the 
 missionary, ' I have fire enough in my stomach to 
 burn up' a dozen stucco and filigree reformers 
 and * assimilate their ashes into the bargain, like 
 one of Liebig's cabbages.' ' 
 
 " How can I have faith in myself, when I am 
 playing traitor to myself every hour in the day? 
 And yet faith in something I must have: in 
 woman, perhaps. " 
 
 " Never ! " said the colonel, energetically. " In 
 anything but woman! She must be led, not 
 leader. If you love a woman, make her have
 
 Vogue la Galere 97 
 
 faith in you. If you lean on her, you will ruin 
 yourself, and her as well." 
 
 Lancelot shook his head. There was a pause. 
 
 "After all, colonel, I think there must be a 
 meaning in those old words our mothers used to 
 teach us about ' having faith in God. ' " 
 
 The colonel shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Quien sabe? said the Spanish girl, when they 
 asked her who was her child's father. But here 
 comes my kit on a clod's back, and it is time to 
 dress for dinner." 
 
 So to the dinner-party they went. 
 
 Lord Minchampstead was one of the few noble- 
 men Lancelot had ever met who had aroused in 
 him a thorough feeling of respect. He was 
 always and in all things a strong man. Naturally 
 keen, ready, business-like, daring, he had carved 
 out his own way through life, and opened his 
 oyster the world, neither with sword nor pen, 
 but with steam and cotton. His father was Mr. 
 Obadiah Newbroom, of the well-known manu- 
 facturing firm of Newbroom, Stag, and Playforall. 
 A stanch Dissenter himself, he saw with a slight 
 pang his son Thomas turn Churchman as soon as 
 the young man had worked his way up to be the 
 real head of the firm. But this was the only 
 sorrow which Thomas Newbroom, now Lord 
 Minchampstead, had ever given his father. "I 
 stood behind a loom myself, my boy, when I 
 began life; and you must do with great means 
 what I did with little ones. I have made a 
 gentleman of you, you must make a nobleman of 
 yourself." Those were almost the last words of 
 the stern, thrifty, old Puritan craftsman, and his 
 son never forgot them. From a mill-owner he
 
 98 Yeast 
 
 grew to coal-owner, ship-owner, banker, railway 
 director, money-lender to kings and princes ; and 
 last of all, as the summit of his Own and his 
 compeer's ambition, to land-owner. He had half 
 a dozen estates in as many different counties. 
 He had added house to house, and field to field ; 
 and at last bought Minchampstead Park and ten 
 thousand acres, for two-thirds its real value, from 
 that enthusiastic sportsman Lord Peu de Cervelle, 
 whose family had come in with the Conqueror, 
 and gone out with George IV. So, at least, they 
 always said; but it was remarkable that their 
 name could never be traced farther back than the 
 dissolution of the monasteries : and calumnious 
 Dryasdusts would sometimes insolently father 
 their title on James I. and one of his batches of 
 bought peerages. But let the dead bury their 
 dead. There was now a new lord in Minchamp- 
 stead ; and every country Caliban was finding, to 
 his disgust, that he had "got a new master," and 
 must perforce "be a new man." Oh! how the 
 squires swore and the farmers chuckled, when the 
 "Parvenu" sold the Minchampstead hounds, and 
 celebrated his ist of September by exterminating 
 every hare and pheasant on the estate ! How the 
 farmers swore and the laborers chuckled when he 
 took all the cottages into his own hands and 
 rebuilt them, set up a first-rate industrial school, 
 gave every man a pig and a garden, and broke up 
 all the commons " to thin the labor-market. " Oh, 
 how the laborers swore and the farmers chuckled, 
 when he put up steam-engines on all his farms, 
 refused to give away a farthing in alms, and 
 enforced the new Poor-law to the very letter. 
 How the country tradesmen swore, when he called
 
 Vogue la Galere 99 
 
 them "a pack of dilatory jobbers," and announced 
 his intention of employing only London workmen 
 for his improvements. Oh ! how they all swore 
 together (behind his back, of course, for his 
 dinners were worth eating), and the very ladies 
 said naughty words, when the stern political 
 economist proclaimed at his own table that "he 
 had bought Minchampstead for merely commer- 
 cial purposes, as a profitable investment of capital, 
 and he would see that, whatever else it did, it 
 should pay" 
 
 But the new lord heard of all the hard words 
 with a quiet self-possessed smile. He had formed 
 his narrow theory of the universe, and he was 
 methodically and conscientiously carrying it out. 
 True, too often, like poor Keats 's merchant 
 brothers, 
 
 " Half-ignorant, he turned an easy wheel, 
 Which set sharp racks at work to pinch and peel." 
 
 But of the harm which he did he was uncon- 
 scious; in the good which he did he was consis- 
 tent and indefatigable; infinitely superior, with 
 all his defects, to the ignorant, extravagant do- 
 nothing Squire Lavingtons around him. At 
 heart, however Mammoth-blinded, he was kindly 
 and upright. A man of a stately presence; a 
 broad, honest north-country face; a high square 
 forehead, bland and unwrinkled. I sketch him 
 here once for all, because I have no part for him 
 after this scene in my corps de ballet. 
 
 Lord Minchampstead had many reasons for 
 patronizing Lancelot. In the first place, he had 
 a true eye for a strong man wherever he met him ; 
 in the next place, Lancelot's uncle, the banker,
 
 ioo Yeast 
 
 was a stanch Whig ally of his in the House. " In 
 the rotten-borough times, Mr. Smith," he once 
 said to Lancelot, " we could have made a senator 
 of you at once; but, for the sake of finality, we 
 were forced to relinquish that organ of influence. 
 The Tories had abused it, really, a little too far; 
 and now we can only make a commissioner of you 
 which, after all, is a more useful post, and a 
 more lucrative one." But Lancelot had not as 
 yet "Galliolized," as the Irish schoolmaster used 
 to call it, and cared very little to play a political 
 ninth fiddle. 
 
 The first thing which caught his eyes as he 
 entered the drawing-room before dinner was 
 Argemone listening in absorbed reverence to her 
 favorite vicar, a stern, prim, close-shaven, dys- 
 peptic man, with a meek, cold smile, which might 
 have become a cruel one. He watched and 
 watched in vain, hoping to catch her eye; but 
 no there she stood, and talked and listened 
 
 "Ah," said Bracebridge, smiling, "it is in 
 vain, Smith ! When did you know a woman 
 leave the Church for one of us poor laymen?" 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said Lancelot, impatiently, 
 "why will they make such fools of themselves with 
 clergymen?" 
 
 "They are quite right. They always like the 
 strong men the fighters and the workers. In 
 Voltaire's time they all ran after the philosophers. 
 In the middle ages, books tell us, they worshipped 
 the knights errant. They are always on the win- 
 ning side, the cunning little beauties. In the war- 
 time, when the soldiers had to play the world's 
 game, the ladies all caught the red-coat fever; 
 now, in these talking and thinking days (and be
 
 Vogue la Galere 101 
 
 hanged to them for bores), they have the black- 
 coat fever for the same reason. The parsons are 
 the workers nowadays or rather, all the world 
 expects them to be so. They have the game in 
 their own hands, If they did but know how to 
 play it." 
 
 Lancelot stood still, sulking over many thoughts. 
 The colonel lounged across the room towards Lord 
 Vieuxbois, a quiet, truly high-bred young man, 
 with a sweet open countenance, and an ample 
 forehead, whose size would have vouched for great 
 talents, had not the promise been contradicted by 
 the weakness of the over-delicate mouth and chin. 
 
 " Who is that with whom you came into the 
 room, Bracebridge ? " asked Lord Vieuxbois. " I 
 am sure I know his face." 
 
 "Lancelot Smith, the man who has taken the 
 shooting-box at Lower Whitford." 
 
 " Oh, I remember him well enough at Cam- 
 bridge ! He was one of a set who tried to look 
 like blackguards, and really succeeded tolerably. 
 They used to eschew gloves, and drink nothing 
 but beer, and smoke disgusting short pipes ; and 
 when we established the Coverley Club in Trinity, 
 they set up an opposition, and called themselves 
 the Navvies. And they used to make piratical ex- 
 peditions down to Lynn in eight oars, to attack 
 bargemen, and fen girls, and shoot ducks, and 
 sleep under turf-stacks, and come home when they 
 had drank all the public-house taps dry. I re- 
 member the man perfectly." 
 
 " Navvy or none," said the colonel, " he has just 
 the longest head and the noblest heart of any man 
 I ever met. If he does not distinguish himself be- 
 fore he dies, I know nothing of human nature."
 
 IO2 Yeast 
 
 u Ah yes, I believe he is clever enough ! took 
 a good degree, a better one than I did but hor- 
 ribly eclectic; full of mesmerism, and German 
 metaphysics, and all that sort of thing. I heard 
 of him one night last spring, on which he had been 
 seen, if you will believe it, going successively into 
 a Swedenborgian chapel, the Garrick's Head, and 
 one of Elliotson's magnetic soirees. What can you 
 expect after that? " 
 
 " A great deal," said Bracebridge, drily. " With 
 such a head as he carries on his shoulders the man 
 might be another Mirabeau, if he held the right 
 cards in the right rubber. And he really ought to 
 suit you, for he raves about the middle ages, and 
 chivalry, and has edited a book full of old ballads." 
 
 "Oh, all the eclectics do that sort of thing; 
 and small thanks to them. However, I will speak 
 to him after dinner, and see what there is in 
 him." 
 
 And Lord Vieuxbois turned away, and, alas 
 for Lancelot! sat next to Argemone at dinner. 
 Lancelot, who was cross with everybody for what 
 was nobody's fault, revenged himself all dinner- 
 time by never speaking a word to his next neigh- 
 bor, Miss Newbroom, who was longing with all 
 her heart to talk sentiment to him about the Exhi- 
 bition; and when Argemone, in the midst of a 
 brilliant word-skirmish with Lord Vieuxbois, stole 
 a glance at him, he chose to fancy that they were 
 both talking of him, and looked more cross than 
 ever. 
 
 After the ladies retired, Lancelot, in his sulky 
 way, made up his mind that the conversation was 
 going to be ineffably stupid ; and set to to dream, 
 sip claret, and count the minutes till he found
 
 Vogue la Gal ere 103 
 
 himself in the drawing-room with Argemone. But 
 he soon discovered, as I suppose we all have, that 
 " it never rains but it pours," and that one cannot 
 fall in with a new fact or a new acquaintance but 
 next day twenty fresh things shall spring up as if 
 by magic, throwing unexpected light on one's new 
 phenomenon. Lancelot's head was full of the 
 condition-of-the-poor question, and lo ! everybody 
 seemed destined to talk about it. 
 
 " Well, Lord Vieuxbois," said the host, casually, 
 " my girls are raving about your new school. 
 They say it is a perfect antiquarian gem." 
 
 "Yes, tolerable, I believe. But Wales has 
 disappointed me a little. That vile modernist 
 naturalism is creeping back even into our painted 
 glass. I could have wished that the artist's designs 
 for the windows had been a little more Catholic." 
 
 "How then?" asked the host, with a puzzled 
 face. 
 
 "Oh, he means," said Bracebridge, "that the 
 figures' wrists and ankles were not sufficiently dis- 
 located, and the patron saint did not look quite 
 like a starved rabbit with its neck wrung. Some 
 of the faces, I am sorry to say, were positively like 
 good-looking men and women." 
 
 " Oh, I understand," said Lord Minchampstead ; 
 " Bracebridge's tongue is privileged, you know, 
 Lord Vieuxbois, so you must not be angry." 
 
 " I don't see my way into all this," said Squire 
 Lavington ( which was very likely to be true, con- 
 sidering that he never looked for his way). "I 
 don't see how all these painted windows, and 
 crosses, and chanting, and the deuce and the Pope 
 only know what else, are to make boys any 
 better."
 
 1 04 Yeast 
 
 "We have it on the highest authority," said 
 Vieuxbois, " that pictures and music are the books 
 of the unlearned. I do not think that we have any 
 right in the nineteenth century to contest an 
 opinion which the fathers of the Church gave in 
 the fourth." 
 
 " At all events," said Lancelot, " it is by pictures 
 and music, by art and song, and symbolic repre- 
 sentations, that all nations have been educated in 
 their adolescence ! and as the youth of the individ- 
 ual is exactly analogous to the youth of the col- 
 lective race, we should employ the same means of 
 instruction with our children which succeeded in 
 the early ages with the whole world." 
 
 Lancelot might as well have held his tongue 
 nobody understood him but Vieuxbois, and he 
 had been taught to scent German neology in 
 everything, as some folks are taught to scent 
 Jesuitry, especially when it involved an inductive 
 law, and not a mere red-tape precedent, and, 
 therefore, could not see that Lancelot was arguing 
 for him. 
 
 "All very fine, Smith," said the Squire; " it's a 
 pity you won't leave off puzzling your head with 
 books, and stick to fox-hunting. All you young 
 gentlemen will do is to turn the heads of the poor 
 with your cursed education." The national oath 
 followed, of course. "Pictures and chanting! 
 Why, when I was a boy, a good honest laboring 
 man wanted to see nothing better than a half-penny 
 ballad, with a wood-cut at the top, and they worked 
 very well then, and wanted for nothing." 
 
 " Oh, we shall give them the half-penny ballads 
 in time ! " said Vieuxbois, smiling. 
 
 "You will do a very good deed, then," said mine
 
 Vogue la Galere 105 
 
 host. "But I am sorry to say that, as far as I can 
 find from my agents, when the upper classes write 
 cheap publications, the lower classes will not read 
 them." 
 
 " Too true," said Vieuxbois. 
 
 "Is not the cause," asked Lancelot, "just that 
 the upper classes do write them? " 
 
 " The writings of working men, certainly," said 
 Lord Minchampstead, "have an enormous sale 
 among their own class." 
 
 "Just because they express the feelings of that 
 class, of which I am beginning to fear that we 
 know very little. Look again, what a noble liter- 
 ature of people's songs and hymns Germany has. 
 Some of Lord Vieuxbois's friends, I know, are busy 
 translating many of them." 
 
 " As many of them, that is to say," said Vieux- 
 bois, " as are compatible with a real Church spirit." 
 
 "Be it so; but who wrote them? Not the Ger- 
 man aristocracy for the people, but the German 
 people for themselves. There is the secret of their 
 power. Why not educate the people up to such 
 a standard that they should be able to write their 
 own literature ? " 
 
 "What," said Mr. Chalklands, of Chalklands, 
 who sat opposite, " would you have working men 
 turn ballad writers? There would be an end of 
 work, then, I think." 
 
 "I have not heard," said Lancelot, "that the 
 young women ladies, I ought to say, if the word 
 mean anything who wrote the ' Lowell Offering^' 
 spun less or worse cotton than their neighbors." 
 
 " On the contrary," said Lord Minchampstead, 
 "we have the most noble accounts of heroic 
 industry and self-sacrifice in girls whose education, 
 F Vol. V
 
 1 06 Yeast 
 
 to judge by its fruits, might shame that of most 
 English young ladies." 
 
 Mr. Chalklands expressed certain confused 
 notions that, in America, factory girls carried 
 green silk parasols, put the legs of pianos into 
 trousers, and were too prudish to make a shirt, or 
 to call it a shirt after it was made, he did not quite 
 remember which. 
 
 " It is a great pity," said Lord Minchampstead, 
 " that our factory girls are not in the same state of 
 civilization. But it is socially impossible. America 
 is in an abnormal state. In a young country the 
 laws of political economy do not make themselves 
 fully felt. Here, where we have no uncleared world 
 to drain the labor-market, we may pity and allevi- 
 ate the condition of the working-classes, but we can 
 do nothing more. All the modern schemes for 
 the amelioration which ignore the laws of competi- 
 tion must end either in pauperization " (with a 
 glance at Lord Vieuxbois), " or in the destruc- 
 tion of property." 
 
 Lancelot said nothing, but thought the more. It 
 did strike him at the moment that the few might, 
 possibly, be made for the many, and not the many 
 for the few ; and that property was made for man, 
 not man for property. But he contented himself 
 with asking : 
 
 " You think, then, my lord, that in the present 
 state of society, no dead-lift can be given to the 
 condition in plain English, the wages of work- 
 ing men, without the destruction of property?" 
 
 Lord Minchampstead smiled, and parried the 
 question. ' 
 
 " There may be other dead-lift ameliorations, my 
 young friend, besides a dead-lift of wages."
 
 Vogue la Galere 107 
 
 So Lancelot thought, also; but Lord Min- 
 champstead would have been a little startled could 
 he have seen Lancelot's notion of a dead-lift. 
 Lord Minchampstead was thinking of cheap bread 
 and sugar. Do you think that I will tell you of 
 what Lancelot was thinking? 
 i But here Vieuxbois spurred in to break a last 
 lance. He had been very much disgusted with 
 the turn the conversation was taking, for he con- 
 sidered nothing more heterodox than the notion 
 that the poor were to educate themselves. In his 
 scheme, of course the clergy and the gentry were 
 to educate the poor, who were to take down thank- 
 fully as much as it was thought proper to give 
 them : and all beyond was " self-will " and " private 
 judgment," the fathers of Dissent and Chartism, 
 Trades'-union strikes, and French Revolutions, 
 et si qua alia. 
 
 " And pray, Mr. Smith, may I ask what limit 
 you would put to education ? " 
 
 " The capacities of each man," said Lancelot 
 " If man living in civilized society has one right 
 which he can demand it is this, that the State 
 which exists by his labor shall enable him to 
 develop, or, at least, not hinder his developing, 
 his whole faculties to their very utmost, however 
 lofty that may be. While a man who might be an 
 author remains a spade-drudge, or a journeyman 
 while he has capacities for a master; while any 
 man able to rise in life remains by social circum- 
 stances lower than he is willing to place himself, 
 that man has a right to complain of the State's 
 injustice and neglect." 
 
 " Really, I do not see," said Vieuxbois, " why 
 people should wish to rise in life. They had no
 
 io8 Yeast 
 
 such self-willed fancy in the good old times. The 
 whole notion is a product of these modern 
 
 days " 
 
 He would have said more, but he luckily remem- 
 bered at whose table he was sitting. 
 
 " I think, honestly," said Lancelot, whose blood 
 was up, " that we gentlemen all run into the same 
 fallacy. We fancy ourselves the fixed and neces- 
 sary element in society, to which all others are to 
 accommodate themselves. ' Given the rights of the 
 few rich, to find the condition of the many poor.' 
 It seems to me that other postulate is quite as 
 fair : ' Given the rights of the many poor, to find 
 the condition of the few rich.' " 
 
 Lord Minchampstead laughed. 
 
 " If you hit us so hard, Mr. Smith, I must really 
 denounce you as a Communist. Lord Vieuxbois, 
 shall we join the ladies? " 
 
 In the drawing-room, poor Lancelot, after 
 rejecting overtures of fraternity from several 
 young ladies, set himself steadily again against 
 the wall to sulk and watch Argemone. But this 
 time she spied in a few minutes his melancholy, 
 moonstruck face, swam up to him, and said some- 
 thing kind and commonplace. She spoke in the 
 simplicity of her heart, but he chose to think she 
 was patronizing him she had not talked com- 
 monplaces to the vicar. He tried to say some- 
 thing smart and cutting, stuttered, broke down, 
 blushed, and shrank back again to the wall, 
 fancying that every eye in the room was on him ; 
 and for one moment a flash of sheer hatred to 
 Argemone swept through him. 
 
 Was Argemone patronizing him? Of course 
 she was. True, she was but three-and -twenty,
 
 Vogue la Galere 109 
 
 and he was of the same age ; but, spiritually and 
 socially, the girl develops ten years earlier than 
 the boy. She was flattered and worshipped by 
 gray-headed men, and in her simplicity she 
 thought it a noble self-sacrifice to stoop to notice 
 the poor awkward youth. And yet if he could 
 have seen the pure moonlight of sisterly pity 
 which filled all her heart as she retreated, with 
 something of a blush and something of a sigh, 
 and her heart fluttered and fell, would he have 
 been content? Not he. It was her love he 
 wanted, and not her pity; it was to conquer her 
 and possess her, and inform himself with her 
 image, and her with his own; though as yet he 
 did not know it; though the moment that she 
 turned away he cursed himself for selfish vanity, 
 and moroseness and conceit. 
 
 " Who am I to demand her all to myself ? Her, 
 the glorious, the saintly, the unfallen ! Is not a 
 look, a word, infinitely more than I deserve? 
 And yet, I pretend to admire tales of chivalry! 
 Old knightly hearts would have fought and wan- 
 dered for years to earn a tithe of the favors which 
 have been bestowed on me unasked. " 
 
 Peace ! poor Lancelot ! Thy egg is by no 
 means addle ; but the chick is breaking the shell 
 in somewhat a cross-grained fashion.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DRIVE HOME, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 
 
 NOW it was not extraordinary that Squire 
 Lavington had "assimilated" a couple of 
 bottles of Carbonel's best port; for however 
 abstemious the new lord himself might be, he 
 felt for the habits, and for the vote of an old- 
 fashioned Whig squire. Nor was it extraordi- 
 nary that he fell fast asleep the moment he got 
 into the carriage; nor, again, that his wife and 
 daughters were not solicitous about waking him ; 
 nor, on the other hand, that the coachman and 
 footman, who were like all the squire's servants, 
 of the good old sort, honest, faithful, boozing, 
 extravagant, happy-go-lucky souls, who had " been 
 about the place these forty years," were somewhat 
 owlish and unsteady on the box. Nor was it 
 extraordinary that there was a heavy storm of 
 lightning, for that happened three times a-week 
 in the chalk hills the summer through ; nor, 
 again, that under these circumstances the horses, 
 who were of the squire's own breeding, and never 
 thoroughly broke (nothing was done thoroughly 
 at Whitford), went rather wildly home, and that 
 the carriage swung alarmingly down the steep 
 hills, and the boughs brushed the windows rather 
 too often. But it was extraordinary that Mrs.
 
 The Drive Home in 
 
 Lavington had cast off her usual primness, and 
 seemed to-night, for the first time in her life, in 
 an exuberant good humor, which she evinced by 
 snubbing her usual favorite Honoria, and lavish- 
 ing caresses on Argemone, whose vagaries she 
 usually regarded with a sort of puzzled terror, 
 like a hen who has hatched a duckling. 
 
 " Honoria, take your feet off my dress. Arge- 
 mone, my child, I hope you spent a pleasant 
 evening ? " 
 
 Argemone answered by some tossy common- 
 place. 
 
 A pause and then Mrs. Lavington recom- 
 menced : 
 
 "How very pleasing that poor young Lord 
 Vieuxbois is, after all ! " 
 
 "I thought you disliked him so much." 
 
 "His opinions, my child; but we must hope 
 for the best. He seems moral and well in- 
 clined, and really desirous of doing good in his 
 way; and so successful in the House, too, I 
 hear." 
 
 "To me," said Argemone, "he seems to want 
 life, originality, depth, everything that makes a 
 great man. He knows nothing but what he has 
 picked up ready-made from books. After all, 
 his opinions are the one redeeming point in 
 him." 
 
 "Ah, my dear, when it pleases Heaven to open 
 your eyes, you will see as I do ! " 
 
 Poor Mrs. Lavington ! Unconscious spokes- 
 woman for the ninety-nine hundredths of the 
 human race ! What are we all doing from morn- 
 ing to night, but setting up our own fancies 
 as the measure of all heaven and earth, and say-
 
 112 Yeast 
 
 ing, each in his own dialect, Whig, Radical, or 
 Tory, Papist or Protestant, "When it pleases 
 Heaven to open your eyes you will see as I 
 do"? 
 
 "It is a great pity," went oi\ Mrs. Lavington, 
 meditatively, " to see a young man so benighted 
 and thrown away. With his vast fortune, too 
 such a means of good ! Really we ought to have 
 seen a little more of him. I think Mr. O' Blare- 
 away 's conversation might be a blessing to 
 him. I think of asking him over to stay a 
 week at Whitford, to meet that sainted young 
 man." 
 
 Now Argemone did not think the Reverend 
 Panurgus O'Blareaway, incumbent of Lower 
 Whitford, at all a sainted young man, but, on 
 the contrary, a very vulgar, slippery Irishman; 
 and she had, somehow, tired of her late favor- 
 ite, Lord Vieuxbois; so she answered tossily 
 enough : 
 
 "Really, mamma, a week of Lord Vieuxbois 
 will be too much. We shall be bored to death 
 with the Cambridge Camden Society, and ballads 
 for the people." 
 
 "I think, my dear," said Mrs. Lavington (who 
 had, half unconsciously to herself, more reasons 
 than one for bringing the young lord to Whitford), 
 " I think, my dear, that his conversation, with all 
 its faults, will be a very improving change for 
 your father. I hope he's asleep." 
 
 The squire's nose answered for itself. 
 
 " Really, what between Mr. Smith, and Colonel 
 Bracebridge, and their very ineligible friend, 
 Mr. Mellot, whom I should never have allowed 
 to enter my house if I had suspected his religious
 
 The Drive Home 113 
 
 views, the place has become a hot-bed of false 
 doctrine and heresy. I have been quite fright- 
 ened when I have heard their conversation at 
 dinner, lest the footmen should turn infidels ! " 
 
 "Perhaps, mamma," said Honoria, slyly, "Lord 
 Vieuxbois might convert them to something quite 
 as bad. How shocking if old Giles, the butler, 
 should turn Papist ! " 
 
 " Honoria, you are very silly. Lord Vieuxbois, 
 at least, can be trusted. He has no liking for low 
 companions. He is above joking with grooms, 
 and taking country walks with gamekeepers." 
 
 It was lucky that it was dark, for Honoria and 
 Argemone both blushed crimson. 
 
 "Your poor father's mind has been quite un- 
 settled by all their ribaldry. They have kept 
 him so continually amused, that all my efforts 
 to bring him to a sense of his awful state have 
 been more unavailing than ever." 
 
 Poor Mrs. Lavington ! She had married, at 
 eighteen, a man far her inferior in intellect ; and 
 had become as often happens in such cases a 
 prude and a devotee. The squire, who really 
 admired and respected her, confined his disgust 
 to sly curses at the Methodists (under which 
 name he used to include every species of religious 
 earnestness, from Quakerism to that of Mr. 
 Newman). Mrs. Lavington used at first to dig- 
 nify these disagreeables by the name of persecu- 
 tion, and now she was trying to convert the old 
 man by coldness, severity, and long curtain- 
 lectures, utterly unintelligible to their victim, 
 because couched in the peculiar conventional 
 phraseology of a certain school. She forgot, 
 poor earnest soul, that the same form of religion
 
 ii4 Yeast 
 
 which had captivated a disappointed girl of 
 twenty, might not be the most attractive one for 
 a jovial old man of sixty. 
 
 Argemone, who a fortnight before would have 
 chimed in with all her mother's lamentations, 
 now felt a little nettled and jealous. She could 
 not bear to hear Lancelot classed with the 
 colonel. 
 
 "Indeed," she said, "if amusement is bad for 
 my father, he is not likely to get much of it dur- 
 ing Lord Vieuxbois's stay. But, of course, 
 mamma, you will do as you please." 
 
 "Of course I shall, my dear," answered the 
 good lady, in a tragedy-queen tone. "I shall 
 only take the liberty of adding, that it is very 
 painful to me to find you adding to the anxiety 
 which your unfortunate opinions give me, by 
 throwing every possible obstacle in the way of 
 my plans for your good." 
 
 Argemone burst into proud tears (she often did 
 so after a conversation with her mother). " Plans 
 for my good I " And an unworthy suspicion 
 about her mother crossed her mind, and was 
 peremptorily expelled again. What turn the 
 conversation would have taken next, I know not, 
 but at that moment Honoria and her mother 
 uttered a fearful shriek, as their side of the car- 
 riage jolted half-way up the bank, and stuck still 
 in that pleasant position. 
 
 The squire awoke, and the ladies simultaneously 
 clapped their hands to their ears, knowing what 
 was coming. He thrust his head out of the 
 window, and discharged a broadside of at least 
 ten pounds' worth of oaths (Bow Street valua- 
 tion) at the servants, who were examining the
 
 The Drive Home 115 
 
 broken wheel, with a side volley or two at Mrs. 
 Lavington for being frightened. He often treated 
 her and Honoria to that style of oratory. At 
 Argemone he had never sworn but once since she 
 left the nursery, and was so frightened at the 
 consequences, that he took care never to do it 
 again. 
 
 But there they were fast, with a broken wheel, 
 plunging horses, and a drunken coachman. Luckily 
 for them, the colonel and Lancelot were follow- 
 ing close behind, and came to their assistance. 
 
 The colonel, as usual, solved the problem. 
 
 "Your dog-cart will carry four, Smith?" 
 
 "It will." 
 
 " Then let the ladies get in, and Mr. Lavington 
 drive them home. " 
 
 "What?" said the squire, "with both my 
 hands red-hot with the gout? You must drive 
 three of us, colonel, and one of us must walk." 
 
 "I will walk," said Argemone, in her deter- 
 mined way. 
 
 Mrs. Lavington began something about pro- 
 priety, but was stopped with another pound's 
 worth of oaths by the squire, who, however, had 
 tolerably recovered his good humor, and hurried 
 Mrs. Lavington and Honoria, laughingly, into 
 the dog-cart, saying: 
 
 " Argemone 's safe enough with Smith; the 
 servants will lead the horses behind them. It 's 
 only three miles home, and I should like to see 
 any one speak to her twice while Smith's fists 
 are in the way." 
 
 Lancelot thought so too. 
 
 "You can trust yourself to me, Miss Lav- 
 ington ? " -
 
 1 1 6 Yeast 
 
 "By all means. I shall enjoy the walk 
 
 after " and she stopped. In a moment the 
 
 dog-cart had rattled off, with a parting curse from 
 the squire to the servants, who were unharnessing 
 the horses. 
 
 Argemone took Lancelot's arm; the soft touch 
 thrilled through and through him ; and Argemone 
 felt, she knew not why, a new sensation run 
 through her frame. She shuddered not with 
 pain. 
 
 "You are cold, Miss Lavington? " 
 
 "Oh, not in the least." Cold! when every 
 vein was boiling so strangely ! A soft luscious 
 melancholy crept over her. She had always had 
 a terror of darkness ; but now she felt quite safe 
 in his strength. The thought of her own unpro- 
 tected girlhood drew her heart closer to him. 
 She remembered with pleasure the stories of his 
 personal prowess, which had once made her think 
 him coarse and brutal. For the first time in her 
 life she knew the delight of dependence the 
 holy charm of weakness. And as they paced on 
 silently together, through the black awful night, 
 while the servants lingered, far out of sight, 
 about the horses, she found out how utterly she 
 trusted to him. 
 
 " Listen ! " she said. A nightingale was close 
 to them, pouring out his whole soul in song. 
 
 " Is it not very late in the year for a nightin- 
 gale?" 
 
 "He is waiting for his mate. She is rearing 
 a late brood, I suppose." 
 
 " What do you think it is which can stir him 
 up to such an ecstasy of joy, and transfigure his 
 whole heart into melody ? "
 
 The Drive Home 117 
 
 "What but love, the fulness of all joy, the 
 evoker of all song ? " 
 
 "All song? The angels sing in heaven." 
 
 " So they say : but the angels must love if they 
 sing." 
 
 "They love God!" 
 
 " And no one else ? " 
 
 " Oh yes : but that is universal, spiritual love ; 
 not earthly love a narrow passion for an 
 individual. " 
 
 "How do we know that they do not learn to 
 love all by first loving one ? " 
 
 " Oh, the angelic life is single ! " 
 
 "Who told you so, Miss Lavington?" 
 
 She quoted the stock text, of course : " ' In 
 heaven they neither marry nor are given in mar- 
 riage, but are as the angels. ' ' 
 
 " ' As the tree falls, so it lies. ' And God for- 
 bid that those who have been true lovers on earth 
 should contract new marriages in the next world. 
 Love is eternal. Death may part lovers, but not 
 love. And how do we know that these angels, 
 as they call them, if they be really persons, may 
 not be united in pairs by some marriage bond, 
 infinitely more perfect than any we can dream of 
 on earth ? " 
 
 "That is a very wild view, Mr. Smith, and 
 not sanctioned by the Church," said Argemone, 
 severely. (Curious and significant it is, how 
 severe ladies are apt to be whenever they talk of 
 the Church.) 
 
 "In plain historic fact, the early fathers and 
 the middle-age monks did not sanction it: and 
 are not they the very last persons to whom one 
 would go to be taught about marriage? Strange 1
 
 1 1 8 Yeast 
 
 that people should take their notions of love from 
 the very men who prided themselves on being 
 bound, by their own vows, to know nothing about 
 it!" 
 
 " They were very holy men. " 
 
 " But still men, as I take it. And do you not 
 see that Love is, like all spiritual things, only to 
 be understood by experience by loving ? " 
 
 " But is love spiritual ? " 
 
 " Pardon me, but what a question for one who 
 believes that * God is love ' ! " 
 
 " But the divines tell us that the love of human 
 beings is earthly." 
 
 " How did they know ? They had never tried. 
 Oh, Miss Lavington ! cannot you see that in 
 those barbarous and profligate ages of the later 
 empire, it was impossible for men to discern the 
 spiritual beauty of marriage, degraded as it had 
 been by heathen brutality? Do you not see that 
 there must have been a continual tendency in the 
 minds of a celibate clergy to look with contempt, 
 almost with spite, on pleasures which were for- 
 bidden to them?" 
 
 Another pause. 
 
 "It must be very delicious," said Argemone, 
 thoughtfully, "for any one who believes it, to 
 think that marriage can last through eternity. 
 But, then, what becomes of entire love to God? 
 How can we part our hearts between him and his 
 creatures ? " 
 
 "It is a sin, then, to love your sister? or your 
 friend? What a low, material view of love, to 
 fancy that you can cut it up into so many pieces, 
 like a cake, and give to one person one tit-bit, 
 and another to another, as the Popish books would
 
 The Drive Home 119 
 
 have you believe! Love is like flame light as 
 many fresh flames at it as you will, it grows, 
 instead of diminishing, by the dispersion." 
 
 "It is a beautiful imagination." 
 
 "But, oh, how miserable and tantalizing a 
 thought, Miss Lavington, to those who know 
 that a priceless spirit is near them, which might 
 be one with theirs through all eternity, like twin 
 stars in one common atmosphere, forever giving 
 and receiving wisdom and might, beauty and 
 bliss, and yet are barred from their bliss by some 
 invisible adamantine wall, against which they 
 must beat themselves to death, like butterflies 
 against the window-pane, gazing, and longing, 
 and unable to guess why they are forbidden to 
 enjoy ! " 
 
 Why did Argemone withdraw her arm from 
 his ? He knew, and he felt that she was entrusted 
 to him. He turned away from the subject. 
 
 " I wonder whether they are safe home by this 
 time?" 
 
 " I hope my father will not catch cold. How 
 sad, Mr. Smith, that he will swear so. I do not 
 like to say it; and yet you must have heard him 
 too often yourself. " 
 
 " It is hardly a sin with him now, I think. He 
 has become so habituated to it, that he attaches 
 no meaning or notion whatsoever to his own 
 oaths. I have heard him do it with a smiling 
 face to the very beggar to whom he was giving 
 half-a-crown. We must not judge a man of his 
 school by the standard of our own day." 
 
 "Let us hope so," said Argemone, sadly. 
 
 There was another pause. At a turn of the 
 hill road the black masses of beech-wood opened,
 
 120 Yeast 
 
 and showed the Priory lights twinkling right 
 below. Strange that Argemone felt sorry to find 
 herself so near home. 
 
 "We shall go to town next week," said she; 
 
 "and then You are going to Norway this 
 
 summer, are you not ? " 
 
 "No. I have learnt that my duty lies nearer 
 home." 
 
 "What are you going to do? " 
 
 "I wish this summer, for the first time in my 
 life, to try and do some good to examine a little 
 into the real condition of English working men." 
 
 "I am afraid, Mr. Smith, that I did not teach 
 you that duty." 
 
 "Oh, you have taught me priceless things! 
 You have taught me beauty is the sacrament of 
 heaven, and love its gate; that that which is the 
 most luscious is also the most pure." 
 
 "But I never spoke a word to you on such 
 subjects." 
 
 "There are those, Miss Lavington, to whom a 
 human face can speak truths too deep for books. " 
 
 Argemone was silent; but she understood him. 
 Why did she not withdraw her arm a second time? 
 
 In a moment more the colonel hailed them 
 from the dog-cart and behind him came the 
 britschka with a relay of servants. 
 
 They parted with a long, lingering pressure of 
 the hand, which haunted her young palm all 
 night in dreams. Argemone got into the car- 
 riage, Lancelot jumped into the dog-cart, took 
 the reins, and relieved his heart by galloping 
 Sandy up the hill, and frightening the returning 
 coachman down one bank and his led horses up 
 the other.
 
 The Drive Home 121 
 
 " Vogue la Galtre, Lancelot ? I hope you have 
 made good use of your time ? " 
 
 But Lancelot spoke no word all the way home, 
 and wandered till dawn in the woods around his 
 cottage, kissing the hand which Argemone's 
 palm had pressed.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WHITHER ? 
 
 SOME three months slipped away right 
 dreary months for Lancelot, for the Lav- 
 ingtons went to Baden-Baden for the summer. 
 "The waters were necessary for their health." 
 . . . How wonderful it is, by the by, that those 
 German Brunnen are never necessary for poor 
 people's health! . . . and they did not return 
 till the end of August. So Lancelot buried him- 
 self up to the eyes in the Condition-of-the-Poor 
 question that is, in blue books, red books, sani- 
 tary reports, mine reports, factory reports; and 
 came to the conclusion, which is now pretty 
 generally entertained, that something was the 
 matter but what, no man knew, or, if they 
 knew, thought proper to declare. Hopeless and 
 bewildered, he left the books, and wandered day 
 after day from farm to hamlet, and from field to 
 tramper's tent, in hopes of finding out the secret 
 for himself. What he saw, of course I must not 
 say; for if I did the reviewers would declare, as 
 usual, one and all, that I copied out of the Morn- 
 ing Chronicle; and the fact that these pages, 
 ninety-nine hundredths of them at least, were 
 written two years before the Morning Chronicle 
 began its invaluable investigations, would be 
 contemptuously put aside as at once impossible
 
 Whither ? 123 
 
 and arrogant. I shall therefore only say, that he 
 saw what every one else has seen, at least heard 
 of, and got tired of hearing though, alas ! they 
 have not got tired of seeing it; and so proceed 
 with my story, only mentioning therein certain 
 particulars which folks seem, to me, somewhat 
 strangely, to have generally overlooked. 
 
 But whatever Lancelot saw, or thought he saw, 
 I cannot say that it brought him any nearer to a 
 solution of the question; and he at last ended by 
 a sulky acquiescence in Sam Weller's memorable 
 dictum: "Who it is I can't say; but all I can 
 say is that somebody ought to be wopped for 
 this ! " 
 
 But one day, turning over, as hopelessly as he 
 was beginning to turn over everything else, a 
 new work of Mr. Carlyle's, he fell on some such 
 words as these : 
 
 "The beginning and the end of what is the 
 matter with us in these days is that we /iave 
 forgotten God" 
 
 Forgotten God ? That was at least a defect of 
 which blue books had taken no note. And it 
 was one which, on the whole granting, for the 
 sake of argument, any real, living, or practical 
 existence to That Being, might be a radical one 
 it brought him many hours of thought, that 
 saying ; and when they were over, he rose up and 
 went to find Tregarva. 
 
 "Yes, he is the man. He is the only man 
 with whom I have ever met, of whom I could be 
 sure that, independent of his own interest, with- 
 out the allurements of respectability and decency, 
 of habit and custom, he believes in God. And 
 he too is a poor man ; he has known the struggles,
 
 1 24 Yeast 
 
 temptations, sorrows of the poor. I will go to 
 him." 
 
 But as Lancelot rose to find him, there was 
 put into his hand a letter, which kept him at 
 home awhile longer none other, in fact, than 
 the long-expected answer from Luke. 
 
 " Well my dear Cousin, you may possibly have some 
 logical ground from which to deny Popery, if you 
 deny all other religions with it ; but how those who hold 
 any received form of Christianity whatsoever can fairly 
 side with you against Rome, I cannot see. I am sure I 
 have been sent to Rome by them, not drawn thither by 
 Jesuits. Not merely by their defects and inconsistencies ; 
 not merely because they go on taunting us, and shrieking 
 at us with the cry that we ought to go to Rome, till we 
 at last, wearied out, take them at their word, and do at 
 their bidding the thing we used to shrink from with terror 
 not this merely, but the very doctrines we hold in com- 
 mon with them, have sent me to Rome. For would 
 these men have known of them if Rome had not been? 
 The Trinity the Atonement the Inspiration of 
 Scripture a future state that point on which the 
 present generation, without a smattering of psychologi- 
 cal science, without even the old belief in apparitions, 
 dogmatizes so narrowly and arrogantly what would 
 they have known of them but for Rome ? And she says 
 there are three realms in the future state . . . heaven, 
 hell, and purgatory . . . What right have they to throw 
 away the latter, and arbitrarily retain the two former? 
 I am told that Scripture gives no warrant for a third 
 state. She says that it does that it teaches that im- 
 plicitly, as it teaches other, the very highest doctrines ; 
 some hold, the Trinity itself. ... It may be proved 
 from Scripture ; for it may be proved from the love and 
 justice of God revealed in Scripture. The Protestants
 
 Whither ? 125 
 
 divide in theory, that is mankind into two classes, 
 the righteous, who are destined to infinite bliss; the 
 wicked, who are doomed to infinite torment; in which 
 latter class, to make their arbitrary division exhaustive, 
 they put of course nine hundred and ninety-nine out of 
 the thousand, and doom to everlasting companionship 
 with Borgias and Cagliostros, the gentle, frivolous girl, 
 or the peevish boy, who would have shrunk, in life, with 
 horror from the contact. . . . Well, at least, their hell is 
 hellish enough ... if it were but just. . . . But I, 
 Lancelot, I cannot believe it ! I will not believe it ! 
 I had a brother once affectionate, simple, generous, 
 full of noble aspirations but without, alas ! a thought 
 of God ; yielding in a hundred little points, and some 
 great ones, to the infernal temptations of a public school. 
 . . . He died at seventeen. Where is he now? Lance- 
 lot ! where is he now? Never for a day has that thought 
 left my mind for years. Not hi heaven for he has no 
 right there ; Protestants would say that as well as I. ... 
 Where, then ? Lancelot ! not in that other place. I 
 cannot, I will not believe it. For the sake of God's 
 honor, as well as of my own sanity, I will not believe it ! 
 There must be some third place some intermediate 
 chance, some door of hope some purifying and re- 
 deeming process beyond the grave. . . . Why not a 
 purifying fire? Ages of that are surely punishment 
 enough and if there be a fire of hell, why not a fire of 
 purgatory ? . . . After all, the idea of purgatory as a fire 
 is only an opinion, not a dogma of the Church. . . . 
 But if the gross flesh which has sinned is to be punished 
 by the matter which it has abused, why may it not be 
 purified by it? 
 
 "You may laugh, if you will, at both, and say again, 
 as I have heard you say ere now, that the popular Chris- 
 tian paradise and hell are but a Pagan Olympus and 
 Tartarus, as grossly material as Mahomet's, without the
 
 126 Yeast 
 
 honest thorough-going sexuality, which you thought made 
 his notion logical and consistent. . . . Well, you may 
 say that, but Protestants cannot ; for their idea of heaven 
 and ours is the same with this exception, that theirs 
 will contain but a thin band of saved ones, while ours 
 will fill and grow to all eternity. ... I tell you, Lance- 
 lot, it is just the very doctrines for which England most 
 curses Rome, and this very purgatory at the head of 
 them, which constitute her strength and her allurement ; 
 which appeal to the reason, the conscience, the heart of 
 men, like me, who have revolted from the novel supersti- 
 tion which looks pitilessly on at the fond memories of 
 the brother, the prayers of the orphan, the doubled 
 desolation of the widow, with its cold terrible assurance, 
 'There is no hope for thy loved and lost ones no 
 hope, but hell for evermore ! ' 
 
 " I do not expect to convert you. You have your 
 metempsychosis, and your theories of progressive in- 
 carnation, and your monads, and your spirits of the stars 
 and flowers. I have not forgotten a certain talk of ours 
 over Falk Von Muller's ' Recollections of Goethe,' and 
 how you materialists are often the most fantastic of 
 theorists. ... I do not expect, I say, to convert you. 
 I only want to show you there is no use trying to show 
 the self-satisfied Pharisees of the popular sect why, in 
 spite of all their curses, men still go back to Rome." 
 
 Lancelot read this, and re-read it; and smiled, 
 but sadly and the more he read, the stronger 
 its arguments seemed to him, and he rejoiced 
 thereat. For there is a bad pleasure happy he 
 who has not felt it in a pitiless reductio ad 
 absurdum, which asks tauntingly, "Why do you 
 not follow out your own conclusions ? " instead 
 of thanking God that people do not follow them 
 out, and that their hearts are sounder than their
 
 Whither ? 127 
 
 heads. Was it with this feeling that the fancy 
 took possession of him, to show the letter to 
 Tregarva? I hope not perhaps he did not alto- 
 gether wish to lead him into temptation, any 
 more than I wish to lead my readers, but only to 
 make him, just as I wish to make them, face 
 manfully a real awful question now racking the 
 hearts of hundreds, and see how they will be able 
 to answer the sophist fiend for honestly, such 
 he is when their time comes, as come it will. 
 At least he wanted to test at once Tregarva' s 
 knowledge and his logic. As for his "faith," 
 alas ! he had not so much reverence for it as to 
 care what effect Luke's arguments might have 
 there. "The whole man," quoth Lancelot to 
 himself, " is a novel phenomenon ; and all phe- 
 nomena, however magnificent, are surely fair sub- 
 jects for experiment. Magendie may have gone 
 too far, certainly, in dissecting a live dog but 
 what harm in my pulling the mane of a dead 
 lion?" 
 
 So he showed the letter to Tregarva as they 
 were fishing together one day for Lancelot had 
 been installed duly in the Whitford trout pre- 
 serves Tregarva read it slowly ; asked, shrewdly 
 enough, the meaning of a word or two as he went 
 on; at last folded it up deliberately, and returned 
 it to its owner with a deep sigh. Lancelot said 
 nothing for a few minutes ; but the giant seemed 
 so little inclined to open the conversation, that 
 he was forced at last to ask him what he thought 
 of it. 
 
 "It isn't a matter for thinking, sir, to my 
 mind There 's a nice fish on the feed there, just 
 over-right that alder. "
 
 128 Yeast 
 
 " Hang the fish ! Why not a matter for think- 
 ing?" 
 
 "To my mind, sir, a man may think a deal too 
 much about many matters that come in his 
 way. " 
 
 " What should he do with them, then ? " 
 
 "Mind his own business." 
 
 "Pleasant for those whom they concern! 
 That 's rather a cold-blooded speech for you, 
 Tregarva ! " 
 
 The Cornishman looked up at him earnestly. 
 His eyes were glittering was it with tears? 
 
 "Don't fancy I don't feel for the poor young 
 gentleman God help him ! I *ve been through 
 it all or not through it, that 's to say. I had a 
 brother once, as fine a young fellow as ever 
 handled pick, as kind-hearted as a woman, and as 
 honest as the sun in heaven. But he would 
 drink, sir; that one temptation, he never could 
 stand it. And one day at the shaft's mouth, 
 reaching after the kibble-chain maybe he was 
 in liquor, maybe not the Lord knows; but 
 
 "I didn't know him again, sir, when we picked 
 
 him up, any more than " and the strong man 
 
 shuddered from head to foot, and beat impatiently 
 on the ground with his heavy heel, as if to crush 
 down the rising horror. 
 
 "Where is he, sir?" 
 
 A long pause. 
 
 "Do you think I didn't ask that, sir, for years 
 and years after, of God, and my own soul, and 
 heaven and earth, and the things under the earth, 
 too? For many a night did I go down that mine 
 out of my turn, and sat for hours in thac level, 
 watching and watching, if perhaps the spirit of
 
 Whither ? 1 29 
 
 him might haunt about, and tell his poor brother 
 one word of news one way or the other any- 
 thing would have been a comfort but the doubt 
 I couldn't bear. And yet at last I learnt to bear 
 it and what 's more, I learnt not to care for it. 
 It 's a bold word there 's one who knows whether 
 or not it is a true one." 
 
 " Good heavens ! and what then did you say 
 to yourself?" 
 
 " I said this, sir or rather, one came as I 
 was on my knees, and said it to me What 's 
 done you can't mend. What's left, you can. 
 Whatever has happened is God's concern now, 
 and none but His. Do you see that as far as you 
 can no such thing ever happen again, on the face 
 of His earth. And from that day, sir, I gave 
 myself up to that one thing, and will until I die, 
 to save the poor young fellows like myself, who 
 are left nowadays to the devil, body and soul, 
 just when they are in the prime of their power to 
 work for God." 
 
 "Ah!" said Lancelot "if poor Luke's spirit 
 were but as strong as yours ! " 
 
 "I strong?" answered he, with a sad smile; 
 " and so you think, sir. But it 's written, and it 's 
 true ' The heart knoweth its own bitterness. ' " 
 
 "Then you absolutely refuse to try to fancy 
 your his present state ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir, because if I did fancy it, that would 
 be a certain sign I did n't know it. If we can't 
 conceive what God has prepared for those that 
 we know loved Him, how much less can we for 
 them of whom we don't know whether they loved 
 Him or not? " 
 
 "Well," thought Lancelot to himself, "I did 
 G Vol. V
 
 130 Yeast 
 
 not do so very wrong in trusting your intellect to 
 cut through a sophism. " 
 
 " But what do you believe, Tregarva ? " 
 
 "I believe this, sir and your cousin will 
 believe the same, if he will only give up, as I am 
 sore afraid he will need to some day, sticking to 
 arguments and doctrines about the Lord, and 
 love and trust the Lord himself. I believe, sir, 
 that the judge of all the earth will do right and 
 what 's right can't be wrong, nor cruel either, 
 else it would not be like Him who loved us to 
 the death, that's all I know; and that's enough 
 for me. To whom little is given, of him is little 
 required. He that didn't know his Master's 
 will, will be beaten with few stripes, and he that 
 did know it, as I do, will be beaten with many, 
 if he neglects it and that latter, not the former, 
 is my concern." 
 
 "Well," thought Lancelot to himself, "this 
 great heart has gone down to the root of the 
 matter the right and wrong of it. He, at least, 
 has not forgotten God. Well, I would give up 
 all the teleologies and cosmogonies that I ever 
 dreamt or read, just to believe what he believes 
 Heigho and well-a-day! Paul! hist? I'll 
 swear that was an otter!" 
 
 "I hope not, sir, I'm sure. I haven't seen 
 the spraint of one here this two years." 
 
 "There again don't you see something move 
 under that marl bank ? " 
 
 Tregarva watched a moment, and then ran up 
 to the spot, and throwing himself on his face on 
 the edge, leant over, grappled something and 
 was instantly, to Lancelot's astonishment, grap- 
 pled in his turn by a rough, lank, white dog, 

 
 Whither ? 131 
 
 whose teeth, however, could not get through the 
 velveteen sleeve. 
 
 "I'll give in, keeper! I'll give in. Doan't 
 ye harm the dog! he's deaf as a post, you 
 knows. " 
 
 "I won't harm him if you take him off, and 
 come up quietly." 
 
 This mysterious conversation was carried on 
 with a human head, which peeped above the 
 water, its arms supporting from beneath the 
 growling cur such a visage as only worn-out 
 poachers, or trampling drovers, or London chif- 
 fonniers carry; pear-shaped and retreating to a 
 narrow peak above, while below, the bleared 
 cheeks, and drooping lips, and peering purblind 
 eyes, perplexed, hopeless, defiant, and yet sneak- 
 ing, bespeak their share in the "inheritance of 
 the kingdom of heaven." Savages without the 
 resources of a savage slaves without the protec- 
 tion of a master to whom the cart-whip and the 
 rice-swamp would be a change for the better 
 for there, at least, is food and shelter. 
 
 Slowly and distrustfully a dripping scarecrow 
 of rags and bones rose from his hiding-place in 
 the water, and then stopped suddenly, and seemed 
 inclined to dash through the river; but Tregarva 
 held him fast. 
 
 "There's two on ye! That's a shame! I'll 
 surrender to no man but you, Paul. Hold off, or 
 I '11 set the dog on ye ! " 
 
 "It's a gentleman fishing. He won't tell 
 will you, sir?" And he turned to Lancelot. 
 " Have pity on the poor creature, sir, for God's 
 sake it isn't often he gets it." 
 
 "I won't tell, my man. I've not seen you
 
 132 Yeast 
 
 doing any harm. Come out like a man, and let's 
 have a look at you. " 
 
 The creature crawled up the bank, and stood, 
 abject and shivering, with the dog growling from 
 between his legs. 
 
 "I was only looking for a kingfisher's nest: 
 indeed now, I was, Paul Tregarva." 
 
 "Don't lie, you were setting night-lines. I 
 saw a minnow lie on the bank as I came up. 
 Don't lie; I hate liars." 
 
 "Well indeed, then a man must live some- 
 how." 
 
 "You don't seem to live by this trade, my 
 friend," quoth Lancelot; "I cannot say it seems 
 a prosperous business, by the look of your coat 
 and trousers." 
 
 "That Tim Goddard stole all my clothes, and 
 no good may they do him ; last time as I went to 
 gaol I gave them him to kep, and he went off for 
 a navvy meantime; so there I am." 
 
 "If you will play with the dogs," quoth 
 Tregarva, "you know what you will be bit by. 
 Haven't I warned you? Of course you won't 
 prosper : as you make your bed, so you must lie 
 in it. The Lord can't be expected to let those 
 prosper that forget Him. What mercy would it 
 be to you if He did let you prosper by setting 
 snares all church-time, as you were last Sunday, 
 instead of going to church ? " 
 
 "I say, Paul Tregarva, I 've told you my mind 
 about that afore. If I don't do what I knows to 
 be right and good already, there ain't no use in 
 me a damning myself all the deeper by going to 
 church to hear more." 
 
 " God help you ! " quoth poor Paul.
 
 Whither? 133 
 
 "Now, I say," quoth Crawy, with the air of a 
 man who took the whole thing as a matter of 
 course, no more to be repined at than the rain 
 and wind "what be you a going to do with me 
 this time? I do hope you won't have me up to 
 bench. 'T ain't a month now as I'm out o' 
 prizzum along o' they fir-toppings, and I should, 
 
 you see " with a look up and down and round 
 
 at the gay hay -meadows, and the fleet water, and 
 the soft gleaming clouds, which to Lancelot 
 seemed most pathetic, "I should like to ha' a 
 spell o' fresh air, like, afore I goes in again." 
 
 Tregarva stood over him and looked down at 
 him, like some huge stately bloodhound on a 
 trembling mangy cur. " Good heavens ! " thought 
 Lancelot, as his eye wandered from the sad stead- 
 fast dignity of the one to the dogged helpless 
 misery of the other " can those two be really 
 fellow-citizens ? fellow-Christians ? even animals 
 of the same species ? Hard to believe ! " 
 
 True, Lancelot ; but to quote you against your- 
 self, Bacon, or rather the instinct which taught 
 Bacon, teaches you to discern the invisible com- 
 mon law under the deceitful phenomena of 
 sense. 
 
 "I must have those night-lines, Crawy,*' quoth 
 Tregarva, at length. 
 
 "Then I must starve. You might ever so well 
 take away the dog. They 're the life of me." 
 
 "They're the death of you. Why don't you 
 go and work, instead of idling about, stealing 
 trout ? " 
 
 "Be you a laughing at a poor fellow in his 
 trouble? Who'd gie me a day's work, I'd like 
 to know ? It 's twenty year too late for that ! "
 
 134 Yeast 
 
 Lancelot stood listening. Yes, that wretch, 
 too, was a man and a brother at least so books 
 used to say. Time was, when he had looked on 
 a poacher as a Pariah " hostem hutnani generis" 
 and only deplored that the law forbade him to 
 shoot them down, like cats and otters; but he 
 had begun to change his mind. 
 
 He had learnt, and learnt rightly, the self- 
 indulgence, the danger, the cruelty, of indiscrimi- 
 nate alms. It looked well enough in theory, on 
 paper. "But but but," thought Lancelot, 
 "in practice, one can't help feeling a little of 
 that un-economic feeling called pity. No doubt 
 the fellow has committed an unpardonable sin in 
 daring to come into the world when there was no 
 call for him; one used to think, certainly, that 
 children's opinions were not consulted on such 
 points before they were born, and that therefore 
 it might be hard to visit the sins of the fathers 
 on the children, even though the labor-market 
 were a little overstocked ' mais nous avons 
 changt tout cela,' like M. Jourdain's doctors. 
 No doubt, too, the fellow might have got work if 
 he had chosen in Kamschatka or the Cannibal 
 Islands; for the political economists have proved, 
 beyond a doubt, that there is work somewhere or 
 other for every one who chooses to work. But 
 as, unfortunately, society has neglected to inform 
 him of the state of the Cannibal Island labor- 
 market, or to pay his passage thither when 
 informed thereof, he has had to choose in the 
 somewhat limited labor-field of the Whitford 
 Priors' union, whose workhouse is already every 
 winter filled with abler-bodied men than he, 
 between starvation and this Well, as for
 
 Whither? 135 
 
 employing him, one would have thought that 
 
 there was a little work waiting to be done in 
 
 those five miles of heather and snipe-bog, which 
 
 I used to tramp over last winter but those, it 
 
 seems, are still on the 'margin of cultivation,' 
 
 and not a remunerative investment that is, to 
 
 capitalists. I wonder if any one had made Crawy 
 
 a present of ten acres of them when he came of 
 
 age, and commanded him to till that or be hanged, 
 
 whether he would not have found it a profitable 
 
 investment ? But bygones are bygones, and there 
 
 he is, and the moors, thanks to the rights of 
 
 property in this case the rights of the dog in 
 
 the manger belong to poor old Lavington that 
 
 is, the game and timber on them; and neither 
 
 Crawy nor any one else can touch them. What 
 
 can I do for him ? Convert him ? to what ? For 
 
 the next life, even Tregarva's talisman seems to 
 
 fail. And for this life perhaps if he had had a 
 
 few more practical proofs of a divine justice and 
 
 government that ' kingdom of heaven ' of which 
 
 Luke talks, in the sensible bodily matters which 
 
 he does appreciate, he might not be so unwilling 
 
 to trust to it for the invisible spiritual matters 
 
 which he does not appreciate. At all events, one 
 
 has but one chance of winning him, and that is, 
 
 through those five senses which he has left. 
 
 What if he does spend the money in gross animal 
 
 enjoyment ? What will the amount of it be, 
 
 compared with the animal enjoyments which my 
 
 station allows me daily without reproach! A 
 
 little more bacon a little more beer a little 
 
 more tobacco; at all events they will be more 
 
 important to him than a pair of new boots or an 
 
 extra box of cigars to me. " And Lancelot put
 
 136 Yeast 
 
 his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a sovereign. 
 No doubt he was a great goose; but if you can 
 answer his arguments, reader, I cannot. 
 
 " Look here what are your night-lines worth ? " 
 
 "A matter of seven shilling; ain't they now, 
 Paul Tregarva ? " 
 
 "I should suppose they are." 
 
 "Then do you give me the lines, one and all, 
 and there 's a sovereign for you. No, I can't 
 trust you with it all at once. I '11 give it to 
 Tregarva, and he shall allow you four shillings a 
 week as long as it lasts, if you '11 promise to keep 
 off Squire Lavington's river." 
 
 It was pathetic, and yet disgusting, to see the 
 abject joy of the poor creature. "Well," thought 
 Lancelot, " if he deserves to be wretched, so do 
 I why, therefore, if we are one as bad as the 
 other, should I not make his wretchedness a little 
 less for the time being? " 
 
 "I wain't come a-near the water. You trust 
 me I minds them as is kind to me " and a 
 thought seemed suddenly to lighten up his dull 
 intelligence. 
 
 " I say, Paul, hark you here. I see that Bantam 
 into D t'other day." 
 
 "What! is he down already?" 
 
 "With a dog-cart; he and another of his pals; 
 and I see 'em take out a silk flue, I did. So, 
 says I, you maun't be trying that ere along o' the 
 Whitford trout; they kepers is out o' nights so 
 sure as the moon." 
 
 " You did n't know that. Lying again ! " 
 
 "No, but I sayed it in course. I didn't want 
 they a-robbing here; so I think they worked 
 mainly up Squire Vaurien's water."
 
 Whither? 137 
 
 " I wish I 'd caught them here," quoth Tregarva, 
 grimly enough; "though I don't think they 
 came, or I should have seen the track on the 
 banks." 
 
 "But he sayed like, as how he should be down 
 here again about pheasant shooting." 
 
 " Trust him for it. Let us know, now, if you 
 see him." 
 
 "And that I will, too. I wouldn't save a 
 feather for that 'ere old rascal, Harry. If the 
 devil don't have he, I don't see no use in keep- 
 ing no devil. But I minds them as has mercy on 
 me, though my name is Crawy. Ay," he added 
 bitterly, " 't ain't so many kind turns as I gets in 
 this life, that I can afford to forget e'er a one." 
 And he sneaked off, with the deaf dog at his 
 heels. 
 
 "How did that fellow get his name, Tre- 
 garva ? " 
 
 " Oh, most of them have nicknames round here. 
 Some of them hardly know their own real names, 
 sir." ("A sure sign of low civilization," thought 
 Lancelot.) "But he got his a foolish way; and 
 yet it was the ruin of him. When he was a boy 
 of fifteen, he got miching away in church-time, 
 as boys will, and took off his clothes to get in 
 somewhere here in this very river, groping in the 
 banks after craw-fish ; and as the devil for I 
 can think no less would have it, a big one 
 catches hold of him by the fingers with one claw, 
 and a root with the other, and holds him there 
 till Squire Lavington comes out to take his walk 
 after church, and there he caught the boy, and 
 gave him a thrashing there and then, naked as he 
 stood. And the story got wind, and all the
 
 138 Yeast 
 
 chaps round called him Crawy ever afterwards, 
 and the poor fellow got quite reckless from that 
 day, and never looked any one in the face again ; 
 and being ashamed of himself, you see, sir, was 
 never ashamed of anything else and there he is. 
 That dog 's his only friend, and gets a livelihood 
 for them both. It 's growing old now; and when 
 it dies, he '11 starve." 
 
 "Well the world has no right to blame him 
 for not doing his duty, till it has done its own by 
 him a little better." 
 
 "But the world will, sir, because it hates its 
 duty, and cries all day long, like Cain, ' Am I 
 my brother's keeper?'" 
 
 "Do you think it knows its duty? I have 
 found it easy enough to see that something is 
 diseased, Tregarva; but to find the medicine 
 first, and to administer it afterwards, is a very 
 different matter." 
 
 "Well I suppose the world will never be 
 mended till the day of judgment." 
 
 "In plain English, not mended till it is de- 
 stroyed. Hopeful for the poor world ! I should 
 fancy, if I believed that, that the devil in the 
 old history which you believe had had the 
 best of it with a vengeance, when he brought 
 sin into the world, and ruined it. I dare 
 not believe, that. How dare you, who say that 
 God sent His Son into the world to defeat the 
 devil?" 
 
 Tregarva was silent awhile. 
 
 "Learning and the Gospel together ought to 
 do something, sir, towards mending it. One 
 would think so. But the prophecies are against 
 that."
 
 Whither? 139 
 
 "As folks happen to read them just now. A 
 hundred years hence they may be finding the very 
 opposite meaning in them. Come, Tregarva, 
 suppose I teach you a little of the learning, and 
 you teach me a little of the Gospel do you 
 think we two could mend the world between us, 
 or even mend Whitf ord Priors ? " 
 
 "God knows, sir," said Tregarva. 
 
 "Tregarva," said Lancelot, as they were land- 
 ing the next trout, "where will that Crawy go 
 when he dies ? " 
 
 "God knows, sir," said Tregarva. 
 
 Lancelot went thoughtful home, and sat down 
 
 not to answer Luke's letter for he knew no 
 answer but Tregarva's, and that, alas! he could 
 not give, for he did not believe it, but only 
 longed to believe it. So he turned off the sub- 
 ject by a question 
 
 " You speak of yourself as being already a member 
 of the Romish communion. How is this? Have you 
 given up your curacy? Have you told your father? I 
 fancy that if you had done so I must have heard of it 
 ere now. I entreat you to tell me the state of the case, 
 for, heathen as I am, I am still an Englishman; and 
 there are certain old superstitions still lingering among 
 us whencesoever we may have got them first about 
 truth and common honesty you understand me. 
 
 " Do not be angry. But there is a prejudice against 
 the truthfulness of Romish priests and Romish converts. 
 
 It's no affair of mine. I see quite enough Protestant 
 rogues and liars, to prevent my having any pleasure in 
 proving Romanists, or any other persons, rogues and
 
 140 Yeast 
 
 liars also. But I am if not fond of you at least 
 sufficiently fond to be anxious for your good name. You 
 used to be an open-hearted fellow enough. Do prove 
 to the world that cesium, non animum mutant, qui trans 
 mare currunt"
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HARRY VERNEY HEARS HIS LAST SHOT FIRED 
 
 day after the Lavingtons' return, when 
 
 J. Lancelot walked up to the Priory with a 
 fluttering heart to inquire after all parties, and 
 see one, he found the squire in a great state of 
 excitement. 
 
 A large gang of poachers, who had come down 
 from London by rail, had been devastating all 
 the covers round, to stock the London markets by 
 the first of October, and intended, as Tregarva 
 had discovered, to pay Mr. Lavington's preserves 
 a visit that night. They didn't care for country 
 justices, not they. Weren't all their fines paid 
 by highly respectable game-dealers at the West 
 End ? They owned three dog-carts among them ; 
 a parcel by railway would bring them down bail 
 to any amount ; they tossed their money away at 
 the public-houses, like gentlemen; thanks to the 
 game laws, their profits ran high, and when 
 they had swept the country pretty clean of game, 
 why, they would just finish off the season by a 
 stray highway robbery or two, and vanish into 
 Babylon and their native night. 
 
 Such was Harry Verney's information as he 
 strutted about the courtyard waiting for the 
 squire's orders. 
 
 "But they 've put their nose into a furze-bush, 
 Muster Smith, they have. We 've got our posse-
 
 142 Yeast 
 
 commontaturs, fourteen men, sir, as '11 play the 
 whole vale to cricket, and whap them ; and every 
 one '11 fight, for they 're half poachers themselves, 
 you see " (and Harry winked and chuckled) ; "and 
 they can't abide no interlopers to come down and 
 take the sport out of their mouths. " 
 
 "But are you sure they'll come to-night?" 
 
 " That 'ere Paul says so. Wonder how he found 
 out some of his underhand, colloguing, Meth- 
 odist ways, I '11 warrant. I seed him preaching 
 to that 'ere Crawy, three or four times when he 
 ought to have hauled him up. He consorts with 
 them poachers, sir, uncommon. I hope he ben't 
 one himself, that's all." 
 
 " Nonsense, Harry ! " 
 
 "Oh? Eh? Don't say old Harry don't know 
 nothing, that 's all. I 've fixed his flint, anyhow." 
 
 " Ah ! Smith ! " shouted the squire out of his 
 study window, with a cheerful and appropriate 
 oath. " The very man I wanted to see ! You 
 must lead these keepers for me to-night. They 
 always fight better with a gentleman among them. 
 Breeding tells, you know breeding tells." 
 
 Lancelot felt a strong disgust at the occupation, 
 but he was under too many obligations to the 
 squire to refuse. 
 
 " Ay, I knew you were game," said the old man. 
 " And you '11 find it capital fun. I used to think it 
 so, I know, when I was young. Many a shindy 
 have I had here in my uncle's time, under the 
 very windows, before the chase was disparked, 
 when the fellows used to come down after the 
 deer." 
 
 Just then Lancelot turned and saw Argemone 
 standing close to him. He almost sprang towards
 
 Verney Hears His Last Shot Fired 143 
 
 her and retreated, for he saw that she had over- 
 heard the conversation between him and her father. 
 
 " What ! Mr. Smith ! " said she, in a tone in 
 which tenderness and contempt, pity and affected 
 carelessness, were strangely mingled. " So ! you 
 are going to turn gamekeeper to-night?" 
 
 Lancelot was blundering out something, when 
 the squire interposed. 
 
 " Let her alone, Smith. Women will be tender- 
 hearted, you know. Quite right but they don't 
 understand these things. They fight with their 
 tongues, and we with our fists; and then they 
 fancy their weapons don't hurt Ha ! ha ! ha ! " 
 
 " Mr. Smith," said Argemone, in a low, deter- 
 mined voice, " if you have promised my father 
 to go on this horrid business go. But promise 
 me, too, that you will only look on, or I will 
 never " 
 
 Argemone had not time to finish her sentence 
 before Lancelot had promised seven times over, 
 and meant to keep his promise, as we all do. 
 
 About ten o'clock that evening Lancelot and 
 Tregarva were walking stealthily up a ride in 
 one of the home-covers, at the head of some 
 fifteen fine young fellows, keepers, grooms, and 
 not extempore " watchers, " whom old Harry was 
 marshalling and tutoring, with exhortations as 
 many and as animated as if their ambition was 
 Mourir pour la patrie. 
 
 " How does this sort of work suit you, Tregarva, 
 for I don't like it at all ! The fighting 's all very 
 well, but it's a poor cause." 
 
 " Oh, sir, I have no mercy on these Londoners. 
 If it was these poor half-starved laborers, that 
 snare the same hares that have been eating up
 
 144 Yeast 
 
 their garden-stuff all the week, I can't touch 
 
 them, sir, and that 's truth ; but these ruffians 
 
 And yet, sir, would n't it be better for the parsons 
 to preach to them, than for the keepers to break 
 their heads?" 
 
 " Oh ! " said Lancelot, " the parsons say all to 
 them that they can." 
 
 Tregarva shook his head. 
 
 " I doubt that, sir. But, no doubt, there 's 
 a great change for the better in the parsons. 
 I remember the time, sir, that there was n't an 
 earnest clergyman in the vale; and now every 
 other man you meet is trying to do his best. 
 But those London parsons, sir, what 's the matter 
 with them ? For all their societies and their schools, 
 the devil seems to keep ahead of them sadly. I 
 doubt they have n't found the right fly yet for 
 publicans and sinners to rise at. " 
 
 A distant shot in the cover. 
 
 "There they are, sir. I thought that Crawy 
 would n't lead me false when I let him off." 
 
 " Well, fight away, then, and win. I have prom- 
 ised Miss Lavington not to lift a hand in the 
 business." 
 
 " Then you 're a lucky man, sir. But the 
 squire's game is his own, and we must do our 
 duty by our master." 
 
 There was a rustle in the bushes, and a tramp 
 of feet on the turf. 
 
 " There they are, sir, sure enough. The Lord 
 keep us from murder this night ! " And Tregarva 
 pulled off his neckcloth, and shook his huge limbs, 
 as if to feel that they were all in their places, in a 
 way that augured ill for the man who came across 
 him.
 
 Verney Hears His Last Shot Fired 145 
 
 They turned the corner of a ride, and, in an in- 
 stant, found themselves face to face with five or six 
 armed men, with blackened faces, who, without 
 speaking a word, dashed at them, and the fight 
 began ; reinforcements came up on each side, and 
 the engagement became general. 
 
 " The forest-laws were sharp and stern, 
 
 The forest blood was keen, 
 They lashed together for life and death 
 Beneath the hollies green. 
 
 " The metal good and the walnut-wood 
 
 Did soon in splinters flee ; 
 They tossed the orts to south and north, 
 And grappled knee to knee. 
 
 u They wrestled up, they wrestled down, 
 
 They wrestled still and sore ; 
 The herbage sweet beneath their feet 
 Was stamped to mud and gore." 
 
 And all the while the broad still moon stared 
 down on them grim and cold, as if with a saturnine 
 sneer at the whole humbug; and the silly birds 
 about whom all this butchery went on, slept 
 quietly over their heads, every one with his head 
 under his wing. Oh ! if pheasants had but under- 
 standing, how they would split their sides with 
 chuckling and crowing at the follies which civilized 
 Christian men perpetrate for their precious sake ! 
 
 Had I the pen of Homer (though they say he 
 never used one), or even that of the worthy who 
 wasted precious years in writing a " Homer Bur- 
 lesqued," what heroic exploits might not I immor- 
 talize ! In every stupid serf and cunning ruffian 
 there, there was a heart as brave as Ajax's own ; 
 but then they fought with sticks instead of lances,
 
 1 46 Yeast 
 
 and hammered away on fustian jackets instead of 
 brazen shields; and, therefore, poor fellows, they 
 were beneath "the dignity of poetry," whatever 
 that may mean. If one of your squeamish " dig- 
 nity-of-poetry " critics had just had his head 
 among the gun-stocks for five minutes that night, 
 he would have found it grim tragic earnest enough ; 
 not without a touch of fun, though, here and there. 
 Lancelot leant against a tree and watched the 
 riot with folded arms, mindful of his promise to 
 Argemone, and envied Tregarva as he hurled his 
 assailants right and left with immense strength, 
 and led the van of battle royally. Little would 
 Argemone have valued the real proof of love 
 which he was giving her as he looked on sulkily, 
 while his fingers tingled with longing to be up and 
 doing. Strange that mere lust of fighting, com- 
 mon to man and animals, whose traces even the 
 lamb and the civilized child evince in their mock- 
 fights, the earliest and most natural form of play. 
 Is it, after all, the one human propensity which is 
 utterly evil, incapable of being turned to any 
 righteous use? Gross and animal no doubt it is, 
 but not the less really pleasant, as every Irishman 
 and many an Englishman knows well enough. A 
 curious instance of this, by the by, occurred in 
 Paris during the February Revolution. A fat 
 English coachman went out, from mere curiosity, 
 to see the fighting. As he stood and watched, a 
 new passion crept over him ; he grew madder and 
 madder as the bullets whistled past him ; at last, 
 when men began to drop by his side, he could 
 stand it no longer, seized a musket, and rushed in, 
 careless which side he took, 
 
 " To drink delight of battle with his peers."
 
 Verney Hears His Last Shot Fired 147 
 
 He was not heard of for a day or two, and then 
 they found him stiff and cold, lying on his face 
 across a barricade, with a bullet through his heart. 
 Sedentary persons may call him a sinful fool. Be 
 it so. Homo sum: humani nihil d me alienum 
 puto. 
 
 Lancelot, I verily believe, would have kept his 
 promise, though he saw that the keepers gave 
 ground, finding Cockney skill too much for their 
 clumsy strength; but at last Harry Verney, who 
 had been righting as venomously as a wild cat, and 
 had been once before saved from a broken skull 
 by Tregarva, rolled over at his very feet with a 
 couple of poachers on him. 
 
 " You won't see an old man murdered, Mr. 
 Smith?" cried he, imploringly. 
 
 Lancelot tore the ruffians off the old man right 
 and left. One of them struck him; he returned 
 the blow; and, in an instant, promises and 
 Argemone, philosophy and anti-game-law preju- 
 dices, were swept out of his head, and " he went " 
 as the old romances say, " hurling into the midst 
 of the press," as mere a wild animal for the 
 moment as angry bull or boar. An instant after- 
 wards, though, he burst out laughing, in spite 
 of himself, as " The Battersea Bantam, " who had 
 been ineffectually dancing round Tregarva like a 
 gamecock spurring at a bull, turned off with a 
 voice of ineffable disgust: 
 
 " That big cove 's a yokel ; ta'nt creditable to 
 waste science on him. You 're my man, if you 
 please, sir," and the little wiry lump of courage 
 and conceit, rascality and good humor, flew at 
 Lancelot, who was twice his size, " with a heroism 
 worthy of a better cause," as respectable papers,
 
 148 Yeast 
 
 when they are not too frightened, say of the 
 French. 
 
 " Do you want any more ? " asked Lancelot. 
 
 " Quite a pleasure, sir, to meet a scientific genT- 
 man. Beg your pardon, sir ; stay a moment while 
 I wipes my face. Now, sir, time, if you please." 
 
 Alas for the little man ! in another moment he 
 tumbled over and lay senseless Lancelot thought 
 he had killed him. The gang saw their champion 
 fall, gave ground, and limped off, leaving three 
 of their party groaning on the ground, beside 
 as many Whitford men. 
 
 As it was in the beginning, so is it to be to the 
 end, my foolish brothers ! From the poacher 
 to the prime minister wearying yourselves for 
 very vanity ! The soldier is not the only man in 
 England who is fool enough to be shot at for a 
 shilling a day. 
 
 But while all the rest were busy picking up the 
 wounded men and securing the prisoners, Harry 
 Verney alone held on, and as the poachers retreated 
 slowly up the ride, he followed them, peering into 
 the gloom, as if in hopes of recognizing some old 
 enemy. 
 
 " Stand back, Harry Verney ; we know you, and 
 we 'd be loath to harm an old man, " cried a voice 
 out of the darkness. 
 
 "Eh? Do you think old Harry 'd turn back 
 when he was once on the track of ye? You 
 soft-fisted, gin-drinking, counter-skipping Cockney 
 rascals, that fancy you 're to carry the county 
 before you, because you get your fines paid by 
 London-tradesmen! Eh? What do you take old 
 Harry for?"
 
 Verney Hears His Last Shot Fired 149 
 
 " Go back, you old fool ! " and a volley of oaths 
 followed. " If you follow us, we '11 fire at you, as 
 sure as the moon's in heaven ! " 
 
 " Fire away, then ! I '11 follow you to ! " 
 
 and the old man paced stealthily but firmly up 
 to them. 
 
 Tregarva saw his danger and sprang forward, 
 but it was too late. 
 
 " What, you will have it, then? " 
 
 A sharp crack followed, a bright flash in the 
 darkness every white birch-stem and jagged 
 oak-leaf shone out for a moment as bright as day 
 and in front of the glare Lancelot saw the old 
 man throw his arms wildly upward, fall forward, 
 and disappear on the dark ground. 
 
 " You Ve done it ! off with you ! " And the 
 rascals rushed off up the ride. 
 
 In a moment Tregarva was by the old man's 
 side, and lifted him tenderly up. 
 
 " They 've done for me, Paul. Old Harry 's got 
 his gruel. He's heard his last shot fired. I knowed 
 it 'ud come to this, and I said it. Eh? Did n't I, 
 now, Paul?" And as the old man spoke, the 
 workings of his lungs pumped great jets of blood 
 out over the still heather-flowers as they slept in 
 the moonshine, and dabbled them with smoking 
 gore. 
 
 " Here, men," shouted the colonel, " up with 
 him at once, and home ! Here, put a brace of 
 your guns together, muzzle and lock. Help him 
 to sit on them, Lancelot. There, Harry, put your 
 arms round their necks. Tregarva, hold him up 
 behind. Now then, men, left legs foremost keep 
 step march ! " And they moved off towards 
 the Priory.
 
 150 Yeast 
 
 "You seem to know everything, colonel," said 
 Lancelot. 
 
 The colonel did not answer for a moment. 
 
 "Lancelot, I learnt this dodge from the only 
 friend I ever had in the world, or ever shall have ; 
 and a week after I marched him home to his 
 deathbed in this very way." 
 
 "Paul Paul Tregarva," whispered old Harry, 
 "put your head down here: wipe my mouth, 
 there's a man; it's wet, uncommon wet" It 
 was his own life-blood. " I 've been a beast to 
 you, Paul. I 've hated you, and envied you, and 
 tried to ruin you. And now you 've saved my 
 life once this night; and here you be a-nursing 
 of me as my own son might do, if he was here, 
 poor fellow! I've ruined you, Paul; the Lord 
 forgive me!" 
 
 "Pray! pray!" said Paul, "and He will for- 
 give you. He is all mercy. He pardoned the 
 thief on the cross " 
 
 " No, Paul, no thief, not so bad as that, I 
 hope, anyhow ; never touched a feather of the 
 squire's. But you dropped a song, Paul, a bit of 
 writing." 
 
 Paul turned pale. 
 
 " And the Lord forgive me ! I put it in the 
 squire's fly-book." 
 
 "The Lord forgive you! Amen!" said Paul, 
 solemnly. 
 
 Wearily and slowly they stepped on towards 
 the old man's cottage. A messenger had gone 
 on before, and in a few minutes the squire, Mrs. 
 Lavington, and the girls were round the bed of 
 their old retainer. 
 
 They sent off right and left for the doctor and
 
 Verney Hears His Last Shot Fired 151 
 
 the vicar; the squire was in a frenzy of rage and 
 grief. 
 
 "Don't take on, master, don't take on," said 
 old Harry, as he lay; while the colonel and 
 Honoria in vain endeavored to stanch the wound. 
 "I knowed it would be so, sooner or later; 'tis 
 all in the way of business. They have n't carried 
 off a bird, squire, not a bird; we was too many 
 for 'em eh, Paul, eh?" 
 
 "Where is that cursed doctor?" said the 
 squire. "Save him, colonel, save him; and I'll 
 give you " 
 
 Alas ! the charge of shot at a few feet distance 
 had entered like a bullet, tearing a great ragged 
 hole. There was no hope, and the colonel knew 
 it; but he said nothing. 
 
 "The second keeper," sighed Argemone, "who 
 has been killed here ! Oh, Mr. Smith, must this 
 be? Is God's blessing on all this? " 
 
 Lancelot said nothing. The old man lighted 
 up at Argemone's voice. 
 
 "There's the beauty, there's the pride of 
 Whitford. And sweet Miss Honor, too, so 
 kind to nurse a poor old man ! But she never 
 would let him teach her to catch perch, would 
 she? She was always too tender-hearted. Ah, 
 squire, when we 're dead and gone, dead and 
 gone, squire, they '11 be the pride of Whitford 
 still ! And they '11 keep up the old place won't 
 you, my darlings ? And the old name, too ! For, 
 you know, there must always be a Lavington in 
 Whitford Priors, till the Nun's pool runs up to 
 Ashy Down." 
 
 "And a curse upon the Lavingtons," sighed 
 Argemone to herself in an undertone.
 
 152 Yeast 
 
 Lancelot heard what she said. 
 
 The vicar entered, but he was too late. The 
 old man's strength was failing, and his mind 
 began to wander. 
 
 "Windy," he murmured to himself, "windy, 
 dark and windy birds won't lie not old 
 Harry's fault. How black it grows! We must 
 be gone by nightfall, squire. Where's that 
 young dog gone? Arter the larks, the brute." 
 
 Old Squire Lavington sobbed like a child. 
 
 "You will soon be home, my man," said the 
 vicar. " Remember that you have a Saviour in 
 heaven. Cast yourself on His mercy." 
 
 Harry shook his head. 
 
 "Very good words, very kind, very heavy 
 gamebag, though. Never get home, never any 
 more at all. Where 's my boy Tom to carry it ? 
 Send for my boy Tom. He was always a good 
 boy till he got along with them poachers. " 
 
 "Listen," he said, "listen! There's bells 
 a-ringing ringing in my head. Come you here, 
 Paul Tregarva. " 
 
 He pulled Tregarva's face down to his own, 
 and whispered : 
 
 "Them 's the bells a-ringing for Miss Honor's 
 wedding." 
 
 Paul started and drew back. Harry chuckled 
 and grinned for a moment in his old foxy, peer- 
 ing way, and then wandered off again. 
 
 " What 's that thumping and roaring ? " Alas ! 
 it was the failing pulsation of his own heart. 
 "It's the weir, the weir a-washing me away 
 
 thundering over me. Squire, I 'm drowning, 
 
 drowning and choking! Oh, Lord, how deepl
 
 Verney Hears His Last Shot Fired 153 
 
 Now it's running quieter now I can breathe 
 again swift and oily running on, running on, 
 down to the sea. See how the grayling sparkle! 
 There's a pike! 'T ain't my fault, squire, so 
 
 help me Don't swear, now, squire ; old men 
 
 and dying maun't swear, squire. How steady 
 the river runs down ! Lower and slower lower 
 
 and slower: now it's quite still still 
 
 still 
 
 His voice sank away he was dead ! 
 
 No! once more the light flashed up in the 
 socket. He sprang upright in the bed, and held 
 out his withered paw with a kind of wild majesty, 
 as he shouted : 
 
 "There ain't such a head of hares on any 
 manor in the county. And them's the last words 
 of Harry Verney ! " 
 
 He fell back shuddered a rattle in his 
 ^throat another and all was over. 
 
 H Voi.Y
 
 CHAPTER X 
 "MURDER WILL OUT," AND LOVE TOO 
 
 A RGEMONE need never have known of 
 \. Lancelot's share in the poaching affray; 
 but he dared not conceal anything from her. 
 And so he boldly went up the next day to the 
 Priory, not to beg pardon, but to justify himself, 
 and succeeded. And, before long, he found him- 
 self fairly installed as her pupil, nominally in 
 spiritual matters, but really in subjects of which 
 she little dreamed. 
 
 Every day he came to read and talk with her, 
 and whatever objections Mrs. Lavington expressed 
 were silenced by Argemone. She would have it 
 so, and her mother neither dared nor knew how 
 to control her. The daughter had utterly out- 
 read and out-thought her less educated parent, 
 who was clinging in honest bigotry to the old 
 forms, while Argemone was wandering forth over 
 the chaos of the strange new age, a poor home- 
 less Noah's dove, seeking rest for the sole of her 
 foot and finding none. And now all motherly 
 influence and sympathy had vanished, and Mrs. 
 Lavington, in fear and wonder, let her daughter 
 go her own way. She could not have done 
 better, perhaps; for Providence had found for 
 Argemone a better guide than her mother could 
 have done, and her new pupil was rapidly becom- 
 ing her teacher. She was matched, for the first
 
 "Murder will out,'* and Love too 155 
 
 time, with a man who was her own equal in intel- 
 lect and knowledge; and she felt how real was 
 that sexual difference which she had been accus- 
 tomed to consider as an insolent calumny against 
 woman. Proudly and indignantly she struggled 
 against the conviction, but in vain. Again and 
 again she argued with him, and was vanquished, 
 or, at least, what is far better, made to see 
 how many different sides there are to every 
 question. All appeals to authority he answered 
 with a contemptuous smile. "The best authori- 
 ties?" he used to say. "On what question do 
 not the best authorities flatly contradict each 
 other? And why? Because every man believes 
 just what it suits him to believe. Don't fancy 
 that men reason themselves into convictions; the 
 prejudices and feelings of their hearts give them 
 some idea or theory, and then they find facts at 
 their leisure to prove their theory true. Every 
 man sees facts through narrow spectacles, red, or 
 green, or blue, as his nation or his temperament 
 colors them : and he is quite right, only he must 
 allow us the liberty of having our spectacles too. 
 Authority is only good for proving facts. We 
 must draw our own conclusions." And Argemone 
 began to suspect that he was right, at least to 
 see that her opinions were mere hearsays, picked 
 up at her own will and fancy; while his were 
 living, daily-growing ideas. Her mind was 
 beside his as the vase of cut flowers by the side 
 of the rugged tree, whose roots are feeding deep 
 in the mother earth. In him she first learnt how 
 one great truth received into the depths of the 
 soul germinates there, and bears fruit a thousand- 
 fold; explaining, and connecting, and glorifying
 
 156 Yeast 
 
 innumerable things, apparently the most unlike 
 and insignificant; and daily she became a more 
 reverent listener, and gave herself up, half against 
 her will and conscience, to the guidance of a man 
 whom she knew to be her inferior in morals and 
 in orthodoxy. She had worshipped intellect, 
 and now it had become her tyrant ; and she was 
 ready to give up every belief which she once had 
 prized, to flutter like a moth round its fascinating 
 brilliance. 
 
 Who can blame her, poor girl? For Lance- 
 lot's humility was even more irresistible than his 
 eloquence. He assumed no superiority. He 
 demanded her assent to truths, not because they 
 were his opinions, but simply for the truth's 
 sake ; and on all points which touched the heart 
 he looked up to her as infallible and inspired. 
 In questions of morality, of taste, of feeling, he 
 listened not as a lover to his mistress, but rather 
 as a baby to its mother; and thus, half uncon- 
 sciously to himself, he taught her where her true 
 kingdom lay, that the heart, and not the brain, 
 enshrines the priceless pearl of womanhood, the 
 oracular jewel, the "Urim and Thummim," before 
 which gross man can only inquire and adore. 
 
 And, in the meantime, a change was passing 
 upon Lancelot. His morbid vanity that brawl- 
 begotten child of struggling self-conceit and self- 
 disgust was vanishing away ; and as Mr. Tenny- 
 son says in one of those priceless idyls of his, 
 before which the shade of Theocritus must hide 
 his diminished head, 
 
 "He was altered, and began 
 
 To move about the house with joy, 
 And with the certain step of man."
 
 "Murder will out/' and Love too 157 
 
 He had, at last, found one person who could 
 appreciate him. And in deliberate confidence 
 he set to work to conquer her, and make her his 
 own. It was a traitorous return, but a very 
 natural one. And she, sweet creature! walked 
 straight into the pleasant snare, utterly blind, 
 because she fancied that she saw clearly. In the 
 pride of her mysticism, she had fancied herself 
 above so commonplace a passion as love. It was 
 a curious feature of lower humanity, which she 
 might investigate and analyze harmlessly as a 
 cold scientific spectator; and, in her mingled 
 pride and purity, she used to indulge Lancelot 
 in metaphysical disquisitions about love and 
 beauty, like that first one in their walk home 
 from Minchampstead, from which a less celestially 
 innocent soul would have shrunk. She thought, 
 forsooth, as the old proverb says, that she could 
 deal in honey, without putting her hand to her 
 mouth. But Lancelot knew better, and marked 
 her for his own. And daily his self-confidence 
 and sense of rightful power developed, and with 
 them, paradoxical as it may seem, the bitterest 
 self-abasement. The contact of her stainless in- 
 nocence, the growing certainty that the destiny 
 of that innocence was irrevocably bound up with 
 his own, made him shrink from her whenever he 
 remembered his own guilty career. To remem- 
 ber that there were passages in it which she must 
 never know that she would cast him from her 
 with abhorrence if she once really understood 
 their vileness! To think that, amid all the 
 closest bonds of love, there must forever be an 
 awful, silent gulf in the past, of which they must 
 never speak ! That she would bring to him what
 
 1 5 8 Yeast 
 
 he could never, never bring to her ! The 
 thought was unbearable. And as hideous recol- 
 lections used to rise before him, devilish carica- 
 tures of his former self, mopping and mowing at 
 him in his dreams, he would start from his lonely 
 bed, and pace the room for hours, or saddle his 
 horse, and ride all night long aimlessly through 
 the awful woods, vainly trying to escape himself. 
 How gladly, at those moments, he would have 
 welcomed centuries of a material hell, to escape 
 from the more awful spiritual hell within him, 
 to buy back that pearl of innocence which he had 
 cast recklessly to be trampled under the feet of 
 his own swinish passions ! But, no; that which 
 was done could never be undone, never, to 
 all eternity. And more than once, as he wandered 
 restlessly from one room to another, the barrels 
 of his pistols seemed to glitter with a cold, 
 devilish smile, and call to him: 
 
 "Come to us! and with one touch of your 
 finger, send that bursting spirit which throbs 
 against your brow to flit forth free, and never- 
 more to defile her purity by your presence!" 
 
 But no, again : a voice within seemed to com- 
 mand him to go on, and claim her, and win her, 
 spite of his own vileness. And in after years, 
 slowly, and in fear and trembling, he knew it for 
 the voice of God, who had been leading him to 
 become worthy of her through that bitter shame 
 of his own unworthiness. 
 
 As One higher than they would have it, she 
 took a fancy to read Homer in the original, and 
 Lancelot could do no less than offer his services 
 as translator. She would prepare for him portions 
 of the Odyssey, and every day that he came up to
 
 "Murder will out," and Love too 159 
 
 the Priory he used to comment on it to her; and so 
 for many a week, in the dark wainscoted library, 
 and in the clipt yew-alleys of the old gardens, 
 and under the brown autumn trees, they quarried 
 together in that unexhausted mine, among the 
 records of the rich Titan-youth of man. And 
 step by step Lancelot opened to her the everlast- 
 ing significance of the poem; the unconscious 
 purity which lingers in it, like the last rays of 
 the Paradise dawn; its sense of the dignity of 
 man as man ; the religious reverence with which 
 it speaks of all human ties, human strength and 
 beauty ay, even of merely animal human appe- 
 tites, as God-given and God-like symbols. She 
 could not but listen and admire, when he intro- 
 duced her to the sheer paganism of Schiller's 
 Gods of Greece; for on this subject he was more 
 eloquent than on any. He had gradually, in 
 fact, as we have seen, dropped all faith in any- 
 thing but Nature; the slightest fact about a bone 
 or a weed was more important to him than all 
 the books of divinity which Argemone lent him 
 to be laid by unread. 
 
 " What do you believe in ? " she asked him one 
 day, sadly. 
 
 "In this!" he said, stamping his foot on the 
 ground. " In the earth I stand on, and the 
 things I see walking and growing on it. There 
 may be something beside it what you call a 
 spiritual world. But if He who made me intended 
 me to think of spirit first, He would have let me 
 see it first. But as He has given me material 
 senses, and put me in a material world, I take it 
 as a fair hint that I am meant to use those senses 
 first, whatever may come after. I may be intended
 
 160 Yeast 
 
 to understand the unseen world, but if so, it must 
 be, as I suspect, by understanding the visible 
 one: and there are enough wonders there to 
 occupy me for some time to come." 
 
 "But the Bible?" (Argemone had given up 
 long ago wasting words about the "Church.") 
 
 " My only Bible as yet is Bacon. I know that 
 he is right, whoever is wrong. If that Hebrew 
 Bible is to be believed by me, it must agree with 
 what I know already from science. " 
 
 What was to be done with so intractable a 
 heretic? Call him an infidel and a materialist, 
 of course, and cast him off with horror. But 
 Argemone was beginning to find out that, when 
 people are really in earnest, it may be better 
 sometimes to leave God's methods of educating 
 them alone, instead of calling the poor honest 
 seekers hard names, which the speakers them- 
 selves don't understand. 
 
 But words would fail sometimes, and in default 
 of them Lancelot had recourse to drawings, and 
 manifested in them a talent for thinking in visible 
 forms which put the climax to all Argemone's 
 wonder. A single profile, even a mere mathe- 
 matical figure, would, in his hands, become the 
 illustration of a spiritual truth. And, in time, 
 every fresh lesson on the Odyssey was accom- 
 panied by its illustration, some bold and simple 
 outline drawing. In Argemone's eyes, the 
 sketches were immaculate and inspired ; for their 
 chief, almost their only fault, was just those 
 mere anatomical slips which a woman would 
 hardly perceive, provided the forms were generally 
 graceful and bold. 
 
 One day his fancy attempted a bolder flight.
 
 " Murder will out," and Love too 1 6 1 
 
 He brought a large pen-and-ink drawing, and 
 laying it silently on the table before her, fixed 
 his eyes intensely on her face. The sketch was 
 labelled the "Triumph of Woman." In the 
 foreground, to the right and left, were scattered 
 groups of men, in the dresses and insignia of 
 every period and occupation. The distance 
 showed, in a few bold outlines, a dreary desert, 
 broken by alpine ridges, and furrowed here and 
 there by a wandering watercourse. Long shadows 
 pointed to the half-risen sun, whose disc was 
 climbing above the waste horizon. And in front 
 of the sun, down the path of the morning beams, 
 came Woman, clothed only in the armor of her 
 own loveliness. Her bearing was stately, and 
 yet modest; in her face pensive tenderness 
 seemed wedded with earnest joy. In her right 
 hand lay a cross, the emblem of self-sacrifice. 
 Her path across the desert was marked by the 
 flowers which sprang up beneath her steps; the 
 wild gazelle stept forward trustingly to lick her 1 
 hand ; a single wandering butterfly fluttered round 
 her head. As the group, one by one, caught 
 sight of her, a human tenderness and intelligence 
 seemed to light up every face. The scholar dropt 
 his book, the miser his gold, the savage his 
 weapons ; even in the visage of the half-slumber- 
 ing sot some nobler recollection seemed wistfully 
 to struggle into life. The artist caught up his 
 pencil, the poet his lyre, with eyes that beamed 
 forth sudden inspiration. The sage, whose broad 
 brow rose above the group like some torrent-fur- 
 rowed Alp, scathed with all the temptations and 
 all the sorrows of his race, watched with a 
 thoughtful smile that preacher more mighty than
 
 1 62 Yeast 
 
 himself. A youth, decked out in the most fan- 
 tastic fopperies of the middle age, stood with 
 clasped hands and brimming eyes, as remorse 
 and pleasure struggled in his face; and as he 
 looked, the fierce sensual features seemed to 
 melt, and his flesh came again to him like the 
 flesh of a little child. The slave forgot his 
 fetters; little children clapped their hands; and 
 the toil-worn, stunted, savage woman sprung for- 
 ward to kneel at her feet, and see herself 
 transfigured in that new and divine ideal of her 
 sex. 
 
 Descriptions of drawings are clumsy things at 
 best; the reader must fill up the sketch for him- 
 self by the eye of faith. 
 
 Entranced in wonder and pleasure, Argemone 
 let her eyes wander over the drawing. And her 
 feelings for Lancelot amounted almost to wor- 
 ship, as she apprehended the harmonious unity 
 of the manifold conception, the rugged bold- 
 ness of the groups in front, the soft grandeur of 
 the figure which was the lodestar of all their 
 emotions the virginal purity of the whole. 
 And when she fancied that she traced in those 
 bland aquiline lineaments, and in the crisp ring- 
 lets which floated like a cloud down to the knees 
 of her figure, some traces of her own likeness, a 
 dream of a new destiny flitted before her, she 
 blushed to her very neck; and as she bent her 
 face over the drawing and gazed, her whole soul 
 seemed to rise into her eyes, and a single tear 
 dropped upon the paper. She laid her hand over 
 it, and then turned hastily away. 
 
 "You do not like it! I have been too bold," 
 said Lancelot, fearfully.
 
 "Murder will out," and Love too 163 
 
 " Oh, no ! no ! It is so beautiful so full of 
 
 deep wisdom ! But but You may leave 
 
 it." 
 
 Lancelot slipped silently out of the room, he 
 hardly knew why; and when he was gone, Arge- 
 mone caught up the drawing, pressed it to her 
 bosom, covered it with kisses, and hid it, as too 
 precious for any eyes but her own, in the farthest 
 corner of her secretaire. 
 
 And yet she fancied that she was not in love ! 
 
 The vicar saw the growth of this intimacy with 
 a fast-lengthening face; for it was very evident 
 that Argemone could not serve two masters so 
 utterly contradictory as himself and Lancelot, 
 and that either the lover or the father-confessor 
 must speedily resign office. The vicar had had 
 great disadvantages, by the by, in fulfilling the 
 latter function; for his visits at the Priory had 
 been all but forbidden ; and Argemone' s " spiritual 
 state" had been directed by means of a secret 
 correspondence, a method which some clergy- 
 men, and some young ladies too, have discovered, 
 in the last few years, to be quite consistent with 
 moral delicacy and filial obedience. John Bull, 
 like a stupid fellow as he is, has still his doubts 
 upon the point; but he should remember that 
 though St. Paul tells women when they want 
 advice to ask their husbands at home, yet if the 
 poor woman has no husband, or, as often happens, 
 her husband's advice is unpleasant, to whom is she 
 to go but to the next best substitute, her spiritual 
 cicisbeo, or favorite clergyman ? In sad earnest, 
 neither husband nor parent deserves pity in the 
 immense majority of such cases. Woman will 
 have guidance. It is her delight and glory to be
 
 1 64 Yeast 
 
 led; and if her husband or her parents will not 
 meet the cravings of her intellect, she must go 
 elsewhere to find a teacher, and run into the 
 wildest extravagances of private judgment, in the 
 very hope of getting rid of it, just as poor Arge- 
 mone had been led to do. 
 
 And, indeed, she had, of late, wandered into 
 very strange paths: would to God they were as 
 uncommon as strange! Both she and the vicar 
 had a great wish that she should lead a " devoted 
 life ; " but then they both disdained to use com- 
 mon means for their object. The good old Eng- 
 lish plan of district visiting, by which ladies can 
 have mercy on the bodies and souls of those 
 below them, without casting off the holy dis- 
 cipline which a home, even the most ungenial, 
 alone supplies, savored too much of mere " Protes- 
 tantism." It might be God's plan for Christian- 
 izing England just now, but that was no reason, 
 alas ! for its being their plan : they wanted some- 
 thing more "Catholic," more in accordance with 
 Church principles (for, indeed, is it not the 
 business of the Church to correct the errors of 
 Providence ! ) ; and what they sought they found 
 at once in a certain favorite establishment of the 
 vicar's, a Church-of-England btguinage, or quasi- 
 Protestant nunnery, which he fostered in a neigh- 
 boring city, and went thither on all high tides to 
 confess the young ladies, who were in all things 
 nuns, but bound by no vows, except, of course, 
 such as they might choose to make for themselves 
 in private. 
 
 Here they labored among the lowest haunts of 
 misery and sin, piously and self-denyingly enough, 
 sweet souls! in hope of "the peculiar crown,"
 
 "Murder will out," and Love too 165 
 
 and a higher place in heaven than the relations 
 whom they had left behind them "in the world," 
 and unshackled by the interference of parents, 
 and other such merely fleshly relationships, 
 which, as they cannot have been instituted by 
 God merely to be trampled under foot on the 
 path to holiness, and cannot well have instituted 
 themselves (unless, after all, the materialists are 
 right, and this world does grind of itself, except 
 when its Maker happens to interfere once every 
 thousand years), must needs have been instituted 
 by the devil. And so more than one girl in that 
 nunnery, and out of it, too, believed in her 
 inmost heart, though her "Catholic principles," 
 by a happy inconsistency, forbade her to say 
 so. 
 
 In a moment of excitement, fascinated by the 
 romance of the notion, Argemone had proposed 
 to her mother to allow her to enter this beguinage, 
 and called in the vicar as advocate; which pro- 
 duced a correspondence between him and Mrs. 
 Lavington, stormy on her side, provokingly calm 
 on his: and when the poor lady, tired of raging, 
 had descended to an affecting appeal to his 
 human sympathies, entreating him to spare a 
 mother's feelings, he had answered with the same 
 impassive fanaticism, that "he was surprised at 
 her putting a mother's selfish feelings in compe- 
 tition with the sanctity of her child," and that 
 " had his own daughter shown such a desire for a 
 higher vocation, he should have esteemed it the 
 very highest honor;" to which Mrs. Lavington 
 answered, naively enough, that " it depended very 
 much on what his daughter was like." So he 
 was all but forbidden the house. Nevertheless
 
 1 66 Yeast 
 
 he contrived, by means of this same secret corre- 
 spondence, to keep alive in Argemone's mind the 
 longing to turn nun, and fancied honestly that 
 he was doing God service, while he was pamper- 
 ing the poor girl's lust for singularity and self- 
 glorification. 
 
 But, lately, Argemone's letters had become 
 less frequent and less confiding; and the vicar, 
 who well knew the reason, had resolved to bring 
 the matter to a crisis. 
 
 So he wrote earnestly and peremptorily to his 
 pupil, urging her, with all his subtle and refined 
 eloquence, to make a final appeal to her mother, 
 and if that failed, to act "as her conscience 
 should direct her;" and enclosed an answer from 
 the superior of the convent, to a letter which 
 Argemone had in a mad moment asked him to 
 write. The superior's letter spoke of Argemone's 
 joining her as a settled matter, and of her room 
 as ready for her, while it lauded to the skies the 
 peaceful activity and usefulness of the establish- 
 ment. This letter troubled Argemone exceed- 
 ingly. She had never before been compelled to 
 face her own feelings, either about the nunnery 
 or about Lancelot. She had taken up the fancy 
 of becoming a Sister of Charity, not as Honoria 
 might have done, from genuine love of the poor, 
 but from "a sense of duty." Almsgiving and 
 visiting the sick were one of the methods of earn- 
 ing heaven prescribed by her new creed. She 
 was ashamed of her own laziness by the side of 
 Honoria's simple benevolence; and, sad though 
 it may be to have to say it, she longed to outdo 
 her by some signal act of self-sacrifice. She had 
 looked to this nunnery, too, as an escape, once
 
 " Murder will out," and Love too 1 67 
 
 and for all, from her own luxury, just as people 
 who have not strength to be temperate take 
 refuge in teetotahsm ; and the thought of menial 
 services towards the poor, however distasteful to 
 her, came in quite prettily to fill up the little 
 ideal of a life of romantic asceticisms and mystic 
 contemplation, which gave the true charm in her 
 eyes to her wild project. But now just as a field 
 had opened to her cravings after poetry and art, 
 wider and richer than she had ever imagined 
 just as those simple childlike views of man and 
 nature, which she had learnt to despise, were 
 assuming an awful holiness in her eyes just as 
 she had found a human soul to whose regenera- 
 tion she could devote all her energies, to be 
 required to give all up, perhaps forever (and she 
 felt that if at all, it ought to be forever) ; it 
 was too much for her little heart to bear; and 
 she cried bitterly; and tried to pray, and could 
 not; and longed for a strong and tender bosom 
 on which to lay her head, and pour out all her 
 doubts and struggles ; and there was none. Her 
 mother did not understand hardly loved her. 
 Honoria loved her, but understood her even less 
 than her mother. Pride the pride of intellect, 
 the pride of self-will had long since sealed her 
 lips to her own family. . . . 
 
 And then, out of the darkness of her heart, 
 Lancelot's image rose before her stronger than 
 all, tenderer than all ; and as she remembered his 
 magical faculty of anticipating all her thoughts, 
 embodying for her all her vague surmises, he 
 seemed to beckon her towards him. She shud- 
 dered and turned away. And now she first be- 
 came conscious how he had haunted her thoughts
 
 1 68 Yeast 
 
 in the last few months, not as a soul to be saved, 
 but as a living man his face, his figure, his 
 voice, his every gesture and expression, rising 
 clear before her, in spite of herself, by day and 
 night. 
 
 And then she thought of his last drawing, and 
 the looks which had accompanied it, unmistak- 
 able looks of passionate and adoring love. There 
 was no denying it she had always known that 
 he loved her, but she had never dared to confess 
 it to herself. But now the earthquake was come, 
 and all the secrets of her heart burst upward to 
 the light, and she faced the thought in shame 
 and terror. "How unjust I have been to him! 
 how cruel! thus to entice him on in hopeless 
 love!" 
 
 She lifted up her eyes, and saw in the mirror 
 opposite the reflection of her own exquisite 
 beauty. 
 
 "I could have known what I was doing! I 
 knew all the while! And yet it is so delicious 
 to feel that any one loves me ! Is it selfishness ? 
 It is selfishness, to pamper my vanity on an affec- 
 tion which I do not, will not return. I will not 
 be thus in debt to him, even for his love. I do 
 not love him I do not ; and even if I did, to 
 give myself up to a man of whom I know so little, 
 who is not even a Christian, much less a Church- 
 man ! Ay ! and to give up my will to any man ! 
 to become the subject, the slave, of another 
 human being ! I, who have worshipped the belief 
 in woman's independence, the hope of woman's 
 enfranchisement, who have felt how glorious it 
 is to live like the angels, single and self-sus- 
 tained ! What if I cut the Gordian knot, and
 
 " Murder will out," and Love too 1 69 
 
 here make, once for all, a vow of perpetual 
 celibacy ? " 
 
 She flung herself on her knees she could not 
 collect her thoughts. 
 
 "No," she said, "I am not prepared for this. 
 It is too solemn to be undertaken in this miser- 
 able whirlwind of passion. I will fast, and medi- 
 tate, and go up formally to the little chapel, and 
 there devote myself to God; and, in the mean- 
 time, to write at once to the superior of the 
 b/guines ; to go to my mother, and tell her once 
 
 for all What? Must I lose him? must I 
 
 give him up? Not his love I cannot give up 
 that would that I could ! but no ! he will love 
 me forever. I know it as well as if an angel told 
 me. But to give up him ! Never to see him ! 
 never to hear his voice ! never to walk with him 
 among the beech woods any more! Oh, Arge- 
 mone ! Argemone ! miserable girl ! and is it come 
 to this? " And she threw herself on the sofa, and 
 hid her face in her hands. i 
 
 Yes, Argemone, it is come to this; and the 
 best thing you can do, is just what you are doing 
 to lie there and cry yourself to sleep, while the 
 angels are laughing kindly (if a solemn public, 
 who settles everything for them, will permit them 
 to laugh) at the rickety old windmill of sham- 
 Popery which you have taken for a real giant. 
 
 At that same day and hour, as it chanced, 
 Lancelot, little dreaming what the said windmill 
 was grinding for him, was scribbling a hasty and 
 angry answer to a letter of Luke's, which, per- 
 haps, came that very morning in order to put him 
 into a proper temper for the demolishing of 
 windmills. It ran thus:
 
 170 Yeast 
 
 . " Ay, my good Cousin, so I expected 
 
 " Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis 
 E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem . . . 
 
 Pleasant and easy for you Protestants (for I will call you 
 what you are, in spite of your own denials, a truly con- 
 sistent and logical Protestant and therefore a Material- 
 ist) easy for you, I say, to sit on the shore, in cold, 
 cruel self-satisfaction, and tell the poor wretch buffeting 
 with the waves what he ought to do while he is choking 
 and drowning. . . . Thank Heaven, the storm has 
 stranded me upon the everlasting Rock of Peter ; but 
 it has been a sore trouble to reach it. Protestants, who 
 look at creeds as things to be changed like coats, when- 
 ever they seem not to fit them, little know what we 
 Catholic-hearted ones suffer. ... If they did, they 
 would be more merciful and more chary in the require- 
 ments of us, just as we are in the very throe of a new- 
 born existence. The excellent man, to whose care I 
 have committed myself, has a wise and a tender heart 
 ... he saw no harm in my concealing from my father 
 the spiritual reason of my giving up my curacy (for I 
 have given it up), and only giving the outward, but 
 equally true reason, that I found it on the whole an 
 ineligible and distressing post. ... I know you will 
 apply to such an act that disgusting monosyllable of 
 which Protestants are so fond. He felt with me and for 
 me for my horror of giving pain to my father, and for 
 my wearied and excited state of mind ; and strangely 
 enough to show how differently, according to the 
 difference of the organs, the same object may appear to 
 two people he quoted in my favor that very verse 
 which you wrest against me. He wished me to show 
 my father that I had only changed my heaven, and not 
 my character, by becoming an Ultramontane-Catholic 
 . . . that, as far as his esteem and affection were founded
 
 "Murder will out," and Love too 171 
 
 on anything in me, the ground of it did not vanish with 
 my conversion. If I had told him at once of my altered 
 opinions, he would have henceforth viewed every word 
 and action with a prejudiced eye. . . . Protestants are 
 so bigoted . . . but if, after seeing me for a month or 
 two the same Luke that he had ever known me, he were 
 gradually informed that I had all the while held that 
 creed which he had considered incompatible with such 
 a life as I hoped mine would be you must see the 
 effect which it ought to have. ... I don't doubt that 
 you will complain of all this. . . . All I can say is, that I 
 cannot sympathize with that superstitious reverence for 
 mere verbal truth, which is so common among Protes- 
 tants. ... It seems to me they throw away the spirit of 
 truth, in their idolatry of its letter. For instance, 
 what is the use of informing a man of a true fact but to 
 induce a true opinion in him? But if, by clinging to 
 the exact letter of the fact, you create a false opinion in 
 his mind, as I should do in my father's case, if by telling 
 him at once of my change, I gave him an unjust horror 
 of Catholicism, you do not tell him the truth. . . . 
 You may speak what is true to you, but it becomes an 
 error when received into his mind. ... If his mind is 
 a refracting and polarizing medium if the crystalline 
 lens of his soul's eye has been changed into tourmaline 
 or Labrador spar the only way to give him a true 
 image of the fact, is to present it to him already properly 
 altered in form, and adapted to suit the obliquity of his 
 vision ; in order that the very refractive power of his 
 faculties may, instead of distorting it, correct it, and 
 make it straight for him ; and so a verbal wrong in fact 
 may possess him with a right opinion. . . . 
 
 " You see the whole question turns on your Protestant 
 deification of the intellect. ... If you really believed, 
 as you all say you do, that the nature of man, and there- 
 fore his intellect among the rest, was utterly corrupt, you
 
 172 Yeast 
 
 would not be so superstitiously careful to tell the truth 
 ... as you call it ; because you would know that man's 
 heart, if not his head, would needs turn the truth into a 
 lie by its own corruption. . . . The proper use of reason- 
 ing is to produce opinion, and if the subject in which 
 you wish to produce the opinion is diseased, you must 
 adapt the medicine accordingly." 
 
 To all which Lancelot, with several strong 
 curses, scrawled the following answer: 
 
 "And this is my Cousin Luke ! Well, I shall believe 
 henceforward that there is, after all, a thousand times 
 greater moral gulf fixed between Popery and Tractarian- 
 ism, than between Tractarianism and the extremest Prot- 
 estantism. My dear fellow, I won't bother you, by 
 cutting up your charming ambiguous middle terms, 
 which make reason and reasoning identical, or your 
 theory that the office of reasoning is to induce opinions 
 (the devil take opinions, right or wrong I want facts, 
 faith in real facts !) or about deifying the intellect 
 as if all sound intellect was not in itself divine light a 
 revelation to man of absolute laws independent of him, 
 as the very heathens hold. But this I will do thank 
 you most sincerely for the compliment you pay us 
 Cismontane heretics. We do retain some dim belief 
 in a God even I am beginning to believe in be- 
 lieving in Him. And therefore, as I begin to suppose, 
 it is, that we reverence facts, as the work of God, His 
 acted words and will, which we dare not falsify ; which 
 we believe will tell their own story better than we can 
 tell it for them. If our eyes are dimmed, we think it 
 safer to clear them, which do belong to us, than to be- 
 devil, by the light of those very already dimmed eyes, 
 the objects round, which do not belong to us. Whether 
 we are consistent or not about the corruptness of man, 
 we are about the incorruptness of God ; and therefore
 
 "Murder will out," and Love too 173 
 
 about that of the facts by which God teaches men : and 
 believe, and will continue to believe, that the blackest 
 of all sins, the deepest of all Atheisms, that which, above 
 all things, proves no faith in God's government of the 
 universe, no sense of His presence, no understanding of 
 His character, is a lie. 
 
 " One word more Unless you tell your father within 
 twenty-four hours after receiving this letter, I will. And 
 I, being a Protestant (if cursing Popery means Protes- 
 tantism), mean what I say." 
 
 As Lancelot walked up to the Priory that 
 morning, the Reverend Panurgus O'Blareaway 
 dashed out of a cottage by the roadside, and seized 
 him unceremoniously by the shoulders. He was 
 a specimen of humanity which Lancelot could not 
 help at once liking and despising; a quaint mix- 
 ture of conceit and earnestness, uniting the 
 shrewdness of a stockjobber with the frolic of 
 a schoolboy broke loose. He was rector of a 
 place in the west of Ireland, containing some 
 ten Protestants and some thousand Papists. 
 Being, unfortunately for himself, a red-hot 
 Orangeman, he had thought fit to quarrel with 
 the priest, in consequence of which he found 
 himself deprived both of tithes and congregation; 
 and after receiving three or four Rockite letters, 
 and a charge of slugs through his hat (of which 
 he always talked as if being shot at was the most 
 pleasant and amusing feature of Irish life), he 
 repaired to England, and there, after trying to 
 set up as popular preacher in London, declaim- 
 ing at Exeter Hall, and writing for all the third- 
 rate magazines, found himself incumbent of 
 Lower Whitford. He worked there, as he said 
 himself, "like a horse;" spent his mornings in
 
 1 74 Yeast 
 
 the schools, his afternoons in the "cotfages; 
 preached four or five extempore sermons every 
 week to overflowing congregations ; took the lead, 
 by virtue of the "gift of the gab," at all "reli- 
 gious" meetings for ten miles round; and really 
 did a great deal of good in his way. He had an 
 unblushing candor about his own worldly ambi- 
 tion, with a tremendous brogue ; and prided him- 
 self on exaggerating deliberately both of these 
 excellences. 
 
 "The top of the morning to ye, Mr. Smith. Ye 
 haven't such a thing as a cegar about ye? I *ve 
 been preaching to school-children till me throat 's 
 as dry as the slave of a lime-burner's coat." 
 
 "I am very sorry; but, really, I have left my 
 case at home." 
 
 " Oh ! ah ! faix and I forgot Ye must n't be 
 smokin' the nasty things going up to the castle. 
 Och, Mr. Smith, but you're the lucky man!" 
 
 "I am much obliged to you for the compli- 
 ment," said Lancelot, gruffly; "but really I don't 
 see how I deserve it. " 
 
 " Desarve it ! Sure luck 's all, and that 's your 
 luck, and not your deserts at all. To have the 
 handsomest girl in the county dying for love of 
 ye " (Panurgus had a happy knack of blurting 
 out truths when they were pleasant ones). 
 "And she just the beautifulest creature that 
 ever spilte shoe-leather, barring Lady Philandria 
 Mountflunkey, of Castle Mountflunkey, Quane's 
 County, that shall be nameless." 
 
 "Upon my word, O'Blareaway, you seem to be 
 better acquainted with my matters than I am. 
 Don't you think, on the whole, it might be better 
 to mind your own business? "
 
 "Murder will out,'* and Love too 175 
 
 " Me own business ! Poker o' Moses ! and 
 ain't it me own business ? Have n't ye spilte my 
 tenderest hopes? And good luck to ye in that 
 same, for ye 're as pretty a rider as ever kicked 
 coping-stones out of a wall ; and poor Paddy loves 
 a sportsman by nature. Och ! but ye 've got a 
 hand of trumps this time. Didn't I mate the 
 vicar the other day, and spake my mind to 
 him?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked Lancelot, with 
 a strong expletive. 
 
 "Faix, I told him he might as well Faugh a 
 ballagh make a rid road, and get out of that, 
 with his bowings and his crossings, and his 
 Popery made asy for small minds, for there was 
 a gun a-field that would wipe his eye, maning 
 yourself, ye Prathestant. " 
 
 "All I can say is, that you had really better 
 mind your own business, and I '11 mind my own." 
 
 "Och," said the good-natured Irishman, "and 
 it 's you must mind my business, and I'll mind 
 yours; and that 's all fair and aqual. Ye 've cut 
 me out intirely at the Priory, ye Tory, and so 
 ye 're bound to give me a lift somehow. Could n't 
 ye look me out a fine fat widow, with an illigant 
 little fortune? For what's England made for 
 except to find poor Paddy a wife and money? 
 Ah, ye may laugh, but I 'd buy me a chapel at 
 the West End : me talents are thrown away here 
 intirely, wasting me swateness on the desert air, 
 as Tom Moore says " (Panurgus used to attribute 
 all quotations whatsoever to Irish geniuses) ; " and 
 I flatter meself I 'm the boy to shute the Gospel 
 to the aristocracy. " 
 
 Lancelot burst into a roar of laughter, and
 
 1 76 Yeast 
 
 escaped over the next gate: but the Irishman's 
 coarse 'hints stuck by him as they were intended 
 to do. " Dying for the love of me ! " He knew 
 it was an impudent exaggeration, but, somehow, 
 it gave him confidence; "there is no smoke," 
 he thought, " without fire. " And his heart beat 
 high with new hopes, for which he laughed at 
 himself all the while. It was just the cordial 
 which he needed. That conversation determined 
 the history of his life. 
 
 He met Argemone that morning in the library, 
 as usual; but he soon found that she was not 
 thinking of Homer. She was moody and ab- 
 stracted; and he could not help at last saying: 
 " I am afraid I and my classics are de trop this 
 morning, Miss Lavington." 
 
 " Oh, no, no. Never that. " She turned away 
 her head. He fancied that it was to hide a tear. 
 
 Suddenly she rose, and turned to him with a 
 clear, calm, gentle gaze. 
 
 "Listen to me, Mr. Smith. We must part 
 to-day, and forever. This intimacy has gone 
 on too long, I am afraid, for your happiness. 
 And now, like all pleasant things in this miser- 
 able world, it must cease. I cannot tell you 
 why ; but you will trust me. I thank you for it 
 I thank God for it. I have learnt things from 
 it which I shall never forget. I have learnt, at 
 least from it, to esteem and honor you. You 
 have vast powers. Nothing, nothing, I believe, 
 is too high for you to attempt and succeed. But 
 we must part; and now, God be with you. Oh, 
 that you would but believe that these glorious 
 talents are His loan ! That you would but be a 
 true and loyal knight to Him who said ' Learn
 
 "Murder will out," and Love too 177 
 
 of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye 
 shall find rest unto your souls ! ' Ay," she went 
 on, more and more passionately, for she felt that 
 not she, but One mightier than herself was 
 speaking through her, "then you might be great 
 indeed. Then I might watch your name from 
 afar, rising higher and higher daily in the ranks 
 of God's own heroes. I see it and you have 
 taught me to see it that you are meant for a 
 faith nobler and deeper than all doctrines and 
 systems can give. You must become the phi- 
 losopher, who can discover new truths the 
 artist who can embody them in new forms, while 
 
 poor I And that is another reason why we 
 
 should part. Hush ! hear me out. I must not 
 be a clog, to drag you down in your course. Take 
 this, and farewell; and remember that you onoe 
 had a friend called Argemone." 
 
 She put into his hands a little Bible. He took 
 it, and laid it down on the table. 
 
 For a minute he stood silent and rooted to the 
 spot. Disappointment, shame, rage, hatred, all 
 boiled up madly within him. The bitterest 
 insults rose to his lips " Flirt, cold-hearted 
 pedant, fanatic ! " but they sank again unspoken, 
 as he looked into the celestial azure of those 
 eyes, calm and pure as a soft evening sky. A 
 mighty struggle between good and evil shook his 
 heart to the roots; and, for the first time in his 
 life, his soul breathed out one real prayer, that 
 God would help him now or never to play the 
 man. And in a moment the darkness passed ; a 
 new spirit called out all the latent strength 
 within him j and gently and proudly he answered 
 her: 
 
 i vol. y
 
 178 Yeast 
 
 " Yes, I will go. I have had mad dreams, con- 
 ceited and insolent, and have met with my 
 deserts. Brute and fool as I am, I have aspired 
 even to you! And I have gained, in the sun- 
 shine of your condescension, strength and purity. 
 Is not that enough for me ? And now I will 
 show you that I love you by obeying you. 
 You tell me to depart I go forever." 
 
 He turned away. Why did she almost spring 
 after him? 
 
 " Lancelot ! one word ! Do not misunderstand 
 me, as I know you will. You will think me so 
 cold, heartless, fickle. Oh, you do not know 
 you never can know how much I, too, have 
 felt ! " 
 
 He stopped, spell-bound. In an instant his 
 conversation with the Irishman flashed up before 
 him with new force and meaning. A thousand 
 petty incidents, which he had driven contempt- 
 uously from his mind, returned as triumphant 
 evidences ; and, with an impetuous determination, 
 he cried out : 
 
 "I see I see it all, Argemone ! We love 
 each other ! You are mine, never to be parted ! " 
 
 What was her womanhood, that it could stand 
 against the energy of his manly will ! The 
 almost coarse simplicity of his words silenced her 
 with a delicious violence. She could only bury 
 her face in her hands and sob out: 
 
 " Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot, whither are you forc- 
 ing me ? " 
 
 " I am forcing you no whither. God, the Father 
 of spirits, is leading you ! You, who believe in 
 Him, how dare you fight against Him? " 
 
 "Lancelot, I cannot I cannot listen to you
 
 "Murder will out," and Love too 179 
 
 read that ! " And she handed him the vicar's 
 letter. He read it, tossed it on the carpet, and 
 crushed it with his heel. 
 
 " Wretched pedant ! Can your intellect be 
 deluded by such barefaced sophistries? ' God's 
 will,' forsooth ! And if your mother's opposition 
 is not a sign that God's will if it mean any- 
 thing except your own will, or that that man's 
 
 is against this mad project, and not for it, 
 what sign would you have? So ' celibacy is the 
 highest state!' And why? Because 'it is the 
 safest and the easiest road to heaven ? ' A pretty 
 reason, vicar! I should have thought that that 
 was a sign of a lower state and not a higher. 
 Noble spirits show their nobleness by daring the 
 most difficult paths. And even if marriage was 
 but one weed-field of temptations, as these miser- 
 able pedants say, who have either never tried it, 
 or misused it to their own shame, it would be a 
 greater deed to conquer its temptations than to 
 flee from them in cowardly longings after ease 
 and safety ! " 
 
 She did not answer him, but kept her face 
 buried in her hands. 
 
 "Again, I say, Argemone, will you fight 
 against Fate Providence God call it what 
 you will? Who made us meet at the chapel? 
 Who made me, by my accident, a guest in your 
 father's house? Who put it into your heart to 
 care for my poor soul ? Who gave us this strange 
 attraction towards each other, in spite of our 
 unlikeness? Wonderful that the very chain of 
 circumstances which you seem to fancy the off- 
 spring of chance or the devil, should have first 
 taught me to believe that there is a God who
 
 180 Yeast 
 
 guides us ! Argemone ! speak, tell me, if you 
 will, to go forever ; but tell me first the truth 
 You love me ! " 
 
 A strong shudder ran through her frame the 
 ice of artificial years cracked, and the clear 
 stream of her woman's nature welled up to the 
 light, as pure as when she first lay on her 
 mother's bosom : she lifted up her eyes, and with 
 one long look of passionate tenderness she fal- 
 tered out: 
 
 "I love you!" 
 
 He did not stir, but watched her with clasped 
 hands, like one who in dreams finds himself in 
 some fairy palace, and fears that a movement 
 may break the spell. 
 
 "Now, go," she said; "go, and let me collect 
 my thoughts. All this has been too much for 
 me. Do not look sad you may come again 
 to-morrow. " 
 
 She smiled and held out her hand. He caught 
 it, covered it with kisses, and pressed it to his 
 heart. She half drew it back, frightened. The 
 sensation was new to her. Again the delicious 
 feeling of being utterly in his power came over 
 her, and she left her hand upon his heart, and 
 blushed as she felt its passionate throbbings. 
 
 He turned to go not as before. She followed 
 with greedy eyes her new-found treasure; and 
 as the door closed behind him, she felt as if 
 Lancelot was the whole world, and there was 
 nothing beside him, and wondered how a moment 
 had made him all in all to her; and then she 
 sank upon her knees, and folded her hands upon 
 her bosom, and her prayers for him were like the 
 prayers of a little child.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THUNDERSTORM THE FIRST 
 
 BUT what had become of the " bit of writing " 
 which Harry Verney, by the instigation of 
 his evil genius, had put into the squire's fly-book? 
 Tregarva had waited in terrible suspense for many 
 weeks, expecting the explosion which he knew 
 must follow its discovery. He had confided to 
 Lancelot the contents of the paper, and Lancelot 
 had tried many stratagems to get possession of it, 
 but all in vain. Tregarva took this as calmly as he 
 did everything else. Only once, on the morning of 
 the tclaircissement between Lancelot and Arge- 
 mone, he talked to Lancelot of leaving his place, 
 and going out to seek his fortune ; but some spell, 
 which he did not explain, seemed to chain him to 
 the Priory. Lancelot thought it was the want of 
 money, and offered to lend him ten pounds when- 
 ever he liked ; but Tregarva shook his head. 
 
 " You have treated me, sir, as no one else has 
 done like a man and a friend; but I am not 
 going to make a market of your generosity. I will 
 owe no man anything, save to love one another." 
 
 " But how do you intend to live ? " asked 
 Lancelot, as they stood together in the cloisters. 
 
 " There 's enough of me, sir, to make a good 
 navigator if all trades fail."
 
 1 82 Yeast 
 
 " Nonsense ! you must not throw yourself away 
 so." 
 
 " Oh, sir, there 's good to be done, believe me, 
 among those poor fellows. They wander up and 
 down the land like hogs and heathens, and no one 
 tells them that they have a soul to be saved. Not 
 one parson in a thousand gives a thought to them. 
 They can manage old folks and little children, sir, 
 but, somehow, they never can get hold of the young 
 men just those who want them most. There's 
 a talk about ragged schools, now. Why don't they 
 try ragged churches, sir, and a ragged service?" 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " Why, sir, the parsons are ready enough to save 
 souls, but it must be only according to rule and 
 regulation. Before the Gospel can be preached 
 there must be three thousand pounds got together 
 for a church, and a thousand for an endowment, 
 not to mention the thousand pounds that the 
 clergyman's education costs : I don't think of his 
 own keep, sir; that's little enough, often; and 
 those that work hardest get least pay, it seems to 
 me. But after all that expense, when they've built 
 the church, it 's the tradesmen, and the gentry, and 
 the old folk that fill it, and the working men never 
 come near it from one year's end to another." 
 
 "What's the cause, do you think?" asked 
 Lancelot, who had himself remarked the same thing 
 more than once. 
 
 " Half of the reason, sir, I do believe, is that 
 same Prayer-book. Not that the Prayer-book 
 ain't a fine book enough, and a true one; but 
 don't you see, sir, to understand the virtue of it, 
 the poor fellows ought to be already just what you 
 want to make them."
 
 Thunderstorm the First 183 
 
 "You mean that they ought to be thorough 
 Christians already, to appreciate the spirituality of 
 the liturgy. " 
 
 " You Ve hit it, sir. And see what comes of the 
 present plan ; how a navvy drops into a church by 
 accident, and there he has to sit like a fish out of 
 water, through that hour's service, staring or 
 sleeping, before he can hear a word that he under- 
 stands ; and, sir, when the sermon does come at 
 last, it 's not many of them can make much out of 
 those fine book-words and long sentences. Why 
 don't they have a short simple service, now and 
 then, that might catch the ears of the roughs and 
 the blowens, without tiring out the poor thought- 
 less creatures' patience, as they do now? " 
 
 " Because," said Lancelot, " because I really 
 don't know why. But I think there is a simpler 
 plan than even a ragged service." 
 
 "What, then, sir?" 
 
 " Field-preaching. If the mountain won't come 
 to Mahomet, let Mahomet go to the moun- 
 tain." 
 
 " Right, sir ; right you are. ' Go out into the 
 highways and hedges, and compel them to come 
 in.' And why are they to speak to them only 
 one by one? Why not by the dozen and the hun- 
 dred ? We Wesleyans know, sir, for the matter 
 of that, every soldier knows, what virtue there 
 is in getting a lot of men together ; how good and 
 evil spread like wildfire through a crowd ; and one 
 man, if you can stir him up, will become leaven to 
 leaven the whole lump. Oh why, sir, are they so 
 afraid of field-preaching? Was not their Master 
 and mine the prince of all field-preachers? Think, 
 if the Apostles had waited to collect subscriptions
 
 184 Yeast 
 
 for a church before they spoke to the poor heath- 
 ens, where should we have been now?" 
 
 Lancelot could not but agree. But at that 
 moment a footman came up, and, with a face 
 half laughing, half terrified, said : 
 
 "Tregarva, master wants you in the study. 
 And please, sir, I think you had better go in 
 too ; master knows you 're here, and you might 
 speak a word for good, for he 's raging like a mad 
 bull." 
 
 " I knew it would come at last," said Tregarva, 
 quietly, as he followed Lancelot into the house. 
 
 It had come at last. The squire was sitting in 
 his study, purple with rage, while his daughters 
 were trying vainly to pacify him. All the men- 
 servants, grooms, and helpers were drawn up in 
 line along the wall, and greeted Tregarva, whom 
 they all heartily liked, with sly and sorrowful looks 
 of warning. 
 
 " Here, you sir ; you , look at this ! Is this 
 
 the way you repay me? I, who have kept you 
 out of the workhouse, treated you like my own 
 child? And then to go and write filthy, rascally, 
 Radical ballads on me and mine ! This comes of 
 your Methodism, you canting, sneaking hypo- 
 crite ! you viper you adder you snake 
 
 you ! " And the squire, whose vocabulary 
 
 was not large, at a loss for another synonym, 
 rounded off his oration by a torrent of oaths ; at 
 which Argemone, taking Honoria's hand, walked 
 proudly out of the room, with one glance at Lan- 
 celot of mingled shame and love. " This is your 
 handwriting, you villain ! you know it " (and the 
 squire tossed the fatal paper across the table) ; 
 " though I suppose you '11 lie about it. How can
 
 Thunderstorm the First 185 
 
 you depend on fellows who speak evil of their 
 betters ? But all the servants are ready to swear 
 it's your handwriting." 
 
 " Beg your pardon, sir," interposed the old but- 
 ler, " we did n't quite say that ; but we '11 all swear 
 it isn't ours." 
 
 " The paper is mine," said Tregarva. 
 
 " Confound your coolness ! He 's no more 
 
 ashamed of it than Read it out, Smith, read 
 
 it out every word ; and let them all hear how this 
 pauper, this ballad-singing vagabond, whom I have 
 bred up to insult me, dares to abuse his own 
 master." 
 
 " I have not abused you, sir," answered Tre- 
 garva. " I will be heard, sir ! " he went on in a 
 voice which made the old man start from his seat 
 and clench his fist ; but he sat down again. " Not 
 a word in it is meant for you. You have been a 
 kind and a good master to me. Ask where you will 
 if I was ever heard to say a word against you. I 
 would have cut off my right hand sooner than 
 write about you or yours. But what I had to 
 say about others lies there, and I am not ashamed 
 of it." 
 
 "Not against me? Read it out, Smith, and 
 see if every word of it don't hit at me, and at my 
 
 daughters, too, by , worst of all! Read it 
 
 out, I say!" 
 
 Lancelot hesitated; but the squire, who was 
 utterly beside himself, began to swear at him 
 also, as masters of hounds are privileged to do ; 
 and Lancelot, to whom the whole scene was becom- 
 ing every moment more and more intensely ludi- 
 crous, thought it best to take up the paper and 
 begin :
 
 1 86 Yeast 
 
 "A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATTER. 
 
 " The merry brown hares came leaping 
 
 Over the crest of the hill, 
 Where the clover and corn lay sleeping 
 Under the moonlight still. 
 
 u Leaping late and early, 
 
 Till under their bite and their tread 
 The swedes, and the wheat, and the barley 
 Lay cankered, and trampled, and dead. 
 
 u A poacher's widow sat sighing 
 
 On the side of the white chalk bank, 
 Where under the gloomy fir-woods 
 One spot in the ley throve rank. 
 
 u She watched a long tuft of clover, 
 Where rabbit or hare never ran ; 
 For its black sour haulm covered over 
 The blood of a murdered man. 
 
 " She thought of the dark plantation, 
 
 And the hares and her husband's blood, 
 And the voice of her indignation 
 Rose up to the throne of God. 
 
 ** ' I am long past wailing and whining 
 
 I have wept too much in my life : 
 I Ve had twenty years of pining 
 As an English laborer's wife. 
 
 u ' A laborer in Christian England, 
 
 Where they cant of a Saviour's name, 
 And yet waste men's lives like the vermin's 
 For a few more brace of game. 
 
 **' There 's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire; 
 
 There 's blood on your pointer's feet ; 
 There 's blood on the game you sell, squire, 
 And there 's blood on the game you eatl ' "
 
 Thunderstorm the First 187 
 
 " You villain ! " interposed the squire, " when 
 did I ever sell a head of game ? " 
 
 ** ' You have sold the laboring man, squire, 
 
 Body and soul to shame, 
 To pay for your seat in the House, squire, 
 And to pay for the feed of your game. 
 
 44 ' You made him a poacher yourself, squire, 
 When you 'd give neither work nor meat ; 
 And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden 
 At our starving children's feet ; 
 
 u * When packed in one reeking chamber, 
 
 Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay ; 
 While the rain pattered in on the rotting bride-bed. 
 And the walls let in the day; 
 
 ** * When we lay in the burning fever 
 
 On the mud of the cold clay floor, 
 Till you parted us all for three months, squire, 
 At the cursed workhouse door. 
 
 ** ' We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders ? 
 
 What self-respect could we keep, 
 Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers, 
 Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep ? ' " 
 
 "And yet he has the impudence to say he don't 
 mean me ! " grumbled the old man. Tregarva 
 winced a good deal as if he knew what was 
 coming next; and then looked up relieved when 
 he found Lancelot had omitted a stanza which 
 I shall not omit. 
 
 " ' Our daughters with base-born babies 
 
 Have wandered away in their shame ; 
 If your misses had slept, squire, where they did, 
 Your misses might do the same.
 
 1 88 Yeast 
 
 " ' Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking 
 
 With handfuls of coals and rice, 
 Or by dealing out flannel and sheeting 
 A little below cost price ? 
 
 " ' You may tire of the gaol and the workhouse, 
 
 And take to allotments and schools, 
 But you Ve run up a debt that will never 
 Be repaid us by penny-club rules. 
 
 u ' In the season of shame and sadness, 
 
 In the dark and dreary day 
 When scrofula, gout, and madness 
 Are eating your race away ; 
 
 "'When to kennels and liveried varlets 
 
 You have cast your daughters' bread; 
 And worn out with liquor and harlots, 
 Your heir at your feet lies dead; 
 
 ** * When your youngest, the mealy-mouthed rector, 
 
 Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave, 
 You will find in your God the protector 
 Of the freeman you fancied your slave.' 
 
 " She looked at the tuft of clover, 
 
 And wept till her heart grew light ; 
 And at last, when her passion was over, 
 Went wandering into the night 
 
 u But the merry brown hares came leaping 
 
 Over the uplands still, 
 Where the clover and corn lay sleeping 
 On the side of the white chalk hill." 
 
 " Surely, sir," said Lancelot, " you cannot sup- 
 pose that this latter part applies to you or your 
 family?" 
 
 " If it don't, it applies to half the gentlemen in 
 the vale, and that's just as bad, What right has
 
 Thunderstorm the First 189 
 
 the fellow to speak evil of dignities ? " continued 
 he, quoting the only text in the Bible which he 
 was inclined to make a " rule absolute." " What 
 does such an insolent dog deserve? What don't 
 he deserve, I say?" 
 
 " I think," quoth Lancelot, ambiguously, " that 
 a man who can write such ballads is not fit to be 
 your gamekeeper, and I think he feels so him- 
 self; " and Lancelot stole an encouraging look at 
 Tregarva. 
 
 " And I say, sir," the keeper answered, with an 
 effort, " that I leave Mr. Lavington's service here 
 on the spot, once and for all." 
 
 " And that you may do, my fine fellow ! " roared 
 the squire. " Pay the rascal his wages, steward, 
 and then duck him soundly in the weir-pool. He 
 had better have stayed there when he fell in 
 last." 
 
 " So I had, indeed, I think. But I '11 take none 
 of your money. The day Harry Verney was 
 buried I vowed that I'd touch no more of the 
 wages of blood. I'm going, sir; I never harmed 
 you, or meant a hard word of all this for you, or 
 dreamt that you or any living soul would ever 
 see it. But what I've seen myself, in spite 
 of myself, I 've set down here, and am not 
 ashamed of it. And woe," he went on with an 
 almost prophetic solemnity in his tone and gesture 
 " woe to those who do these things ! and woe 
 to those also who, though they dare not do them 
 themselves, yet excuse and defend them who dare, 
 just because the world calls them gentlemen, and 
 not tyrants and oppressors." 
 
 He turned to go. The squire, bursting with 
 passion, sprang up with a terrible oath, turned
 
 190 Yeast 
 
 deadly pale, staggered, and dropped senseless on 
 the floor. 
 
 They all rushed to lift him up. Tregarva was 
 the first to take him in his arms and place him 
 tenderly in his chair, where he lay back with glassy 
 eyes, snoring heavily in a fit of apoplexy. 
 
 "Go; for God's sake, go," whispered Lancelot 
 to the keeper, " and wait for me at Lower Whitford. 
 I must see you before you stir." 
 
 The keeper slipped away sadly. The ladies 
 rushed in a groom galloped off for the doctor 
 met him luckily in the village, and, in a few 
 minutes, the squire was bled and put to bed, and 
 showed hopeful signs of returning consciousness. 
 And as Argemone and Lancelot leant together 
 over his pillow, her hair touched her lover's, and 
 her fragrant breath was warm upon his cheek; 
 and her bright eyes met his and drank light from 
 them, like glittering planets gazing at their 
 sun. 
 
 The obnoxious ballad produced the most oppo- 
 site effects on Argemone and on Honoria. Arge- 
 mone, whose reverence for the formalities and the 
 respectabilities x>f society, never very great, had, 
 of late, utterly vanished before Lancelot's bad 
 counsel, could think of it only as a work of art, 
 and conceived the most romantic longing to raise 
 Tregarva into some station where his talents might 
 have free play. To Honoria, on the other hand, 
 it appeared only as a very fierce, coarse, and im- 
 pertinent satire, which had nearly killed her father. 
 True, there was not a thought in it which had not 
 at some time or other crossed her own mind; 
 but that made her dislike all the more to see those 
 thoughts put into plain English. That very in-
 
 Thunderstorm the First 191 
 
 tense tenderness and excitability which made her 
 toil herself among the poor, and had called out 
 both her admiration of Tregarva and her extrava- 
 gant passion at his danger, made her also shrink 
 with disgust from anything which thrust on her a 
 painful reality which she could not remedy. She 
 was a stanch believer, too, in that peculiar creed 
 which allows every one to feel for the poor, except 
 themselves, and considers that to plead the cause 
 of workingmen is, in a gentleman, the perfection 
 of virtue, but in a workingman himself, sheer high 
 treason. And so beside her father's sick-bed she 
 thought of the keeper only as a scorpion whom 
 she had helped to warm into life; and sighing 
 assent to her mother, when she said, " That wretch, 
 and he seemed so pious and so obliging ! who 
 would have dreamt that he was such a horrid Rad- 
 ical ? " she let him vanish from her mind and out 
 of Whitford Priors, little knowing the sore weight 
 of manly love he bore with him. 
 
 As soon as Lancelot could leave the Priory, 
 he hastened home to find Tregarva. The keeper 
 had packed up all his small possessions and 
 brought them down to Lower Whitford, through 
 which the London coach passed. He was deter- 
 mined to go to London and seek his fortune. He 
 talked of turning coal-heaver, Methodist preacher, 
 anything that came to hand, provided that he 
 could but keep independence and a clear con- 
 science. And all the while the man seemed to 
 be struggling with some great purpose, to feel 
 that he had a work to do, though what it was, and 
 how it was to be done, he did not see. 
 
 "I am a tall man," he said, " like Saul the son 
 of Kish ; and I am going forth, like him, sir, to
 
 192 Yeast 
 
 find my father's asses. I doubt I sha'n't have to 
 look far for some of them." 
 
 "And perhaps," said Lancelot, laughing, "to 
 find a kingdom." 
 
 " May be so, sir. I have found one already, by 
 God's grace, and I 'm much mistaken if I don't 
 begin to see my way towards another." 
 
 "And what is that?" 
 
 " The kingdom of God on earth, sir, as well as 
 in heaven. Come it must, sir, and come it will 
 some day." 
 
 Lancelot shook his head. 
 
 Tregarva lifted up his eyes and said : 
 
 " Are we not taught to pray for the coming of 
 His kingdom, sir? And do you fancy that He 
 who gave the lesson would have set all mankind 
 to pray for what He never meant should come 
 to pass?" 
 
 Lancelot was silent. The words gained a new 
 and blessed meaning in his eyes. 
 
 " Well," he said, " the time, at least, of their ful- 
 filment is far enough off. Union-workhouses and 
 child-murder don't lo k much like it. Talking of 
 that, Tregarva, what is to become of your promise 
 to take me to a village wake, and show me what 
 the poor are like?" 
 
 " I can keep it this night, sir. There is a revel 
 at Bonesake, about five miles up the river. Will 
 you go with a discharged gamekeeper?" 
 
 "I will go with Paul Tregarva, whom I honor 
 and esteem as one of God's own noblemen ; who 
 has taught me what a man can be, and what I am 
 not," and Lancelot grasped the keeper's hand 
 warmly. Tregarva brushed his hand across his 
 eyes, and answered:
 
 Thunderstorm the First 193 
 
 " ' I said in my haste, All men are liars ; ' and 
 God has just given me the lie back in my own 
 teeth. Well, sir, we will go to-night. You are 
 not ashamed of putting on a smock-frock? For 
 if you go as a gentleman, you will hear no more 
 of them than a hawk does of a covey of partridges." 
 
 So the expedition was agreed on, and Lancelot 
 and the keeper parted until the evening. 
 
 But why had the vicar been rumbling on all 
 that morning through pouring rain, on the top of 
 the London coach? And why was he so anxious 
 in his inquiries as to the certainty of catching 
 the up-train? Because he had had consider- 
 able experience in that wisdom of the serpent, 
 whose combination with the innocence of the dove, 
 in somewhat ultramontane proportions, is recom- 
 mended by certain late leaders of his school. He 
 had made up his mind, after his conversation with 
 the Irishman, that he must either oust Lancelot at 
 once, or submit to be ousted by him, and he was 
 now on his way to Lancelot's uncle and trustee, 
 the London banker. 
 
 He knew that the banker had some influence 
 with his nephew, whose whole property was 
 invested rh the bank, and who had besides a 
 deep respect for the kindly and upright practical 
 mind of the veteran Mammonite. And the vicar 
 knew, too, that he himself had some influence 
 with the banker, whose son Luke had been his 
 pupil at college. And when the young man lay 
 sick of a dangerous illness, brought on by de- 
 bauchery, into which weakness rather than vice 
 had tempted him, the vicar had watched and 
 prayed by his bed, nursed him as tenderly as a 
 mother, and so won over his better heart that he
 
 194 Yeast 
 
 became completely reclaimed, and took holy 
 orders with the most earnest intention to play the 
 man therein, as repentant rakes will often do, 
 half from a mere revulsion to asceticism, half 
 from real gratitude for their deliverance. This 
 good deed had placed the banker in the vicar's 
 debt, and he loved and reverenced him in spite 
 of his dread of "Popish novelties." And now 
 the good priest was going to open to him just as 
 much of his heart as should seem fit; and by 
 saying a great deal about Lancelot's evil doings, 
 opinions, and companions, and nothing at all 
 about the heiress of Whitford, persuade the 
 banker to use all his influence in drawing Lance- 
 lot up to London, and leaving a clear stage for 
 his plans on Argemone. He caught the up-train, 
 he arrived safe and sound in town, but what he 
 did there must be told in another chapter.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THUNDERSTORM THE SECOND 
 
 WEARY with many thoughts, the vicar 
 came to the door of the bank. There 
 were several carriages there, and a crowd of 
 people swarming in and out, like bees round a 
 hive-door, entering with anxious faces, and re- 
 turning with cheerful ones, to stop and talk ear- 
 nestly in groups round the door. Every moment 
 the mass thickened there was a run on the 
 bank. 
 
 An old friend accosted him on the steps : 
 " What ! have you, too, money here, then ? " 
 "Neither here nor anywhere else, thank 
 Heaven ! " said the vicar. " But is anything 
 wrong? " 
 
 "Have not you heard? The house has sus- 
 tained a frightful blow this week railway specu- 
 lations, so they say and is hardly expected to 
 survive the day. So we are all getting our money 
 out as fast as possible." 
 
 " By way of binding up the bruised reed, eh ? " 
 " Oh ! every man for himself. A man is under 
 no obligation to his banker, that I know of." 
 And the good man bustled off with his pockets 
 full of gold. 
 
 The vicar entered. All was hurry and anxiety. 
 The clerks seemed trying to brazen out their
 
 196 Yeast 
 
 own terror, and shovelled the rapidly lessening 
 gold and notes across the counter with an air of 
 indignant nonchalance. The vicar asked to see 
 the principal. 
 
 "If you want your money, sir " answered 
 
 the official, with a disdainful look. 
 
 "I want no money. I must see Mr. Smith on 
 private business, and instantly." 
 
 "He is particularly engaged." 
 
 "I know it, and, therefore, I must see him. 
 Take in my card, and he will not refuse me." A 
 new vista had opened itself before him. 
 
 He was ushered into a private room : and, as 
 he waited for the banker, he breathed a prayer. 
 For what? That his own will might be done 
 a very common style of petition. 
 
 Mr. Smith entered, hurried and troubled. He 
 caught the vicar eagerly by the hand, as if glad 
 to see a face which did not glare on him with 
 the cold selfish stamp of "business," and then 
 drew back again, afraid to commit himself by 
 any sign of emotion. 
 
 The vicar had settled his plan of attack, and 
 determined boldly to show his knowledge of the 
 banker's distress. 
 
 "I am very sorry to trouble you at such an 
 unfortunate moment, sir, and I will be brief; but, 
 
 as your nephew's spiritual pastor " (He 
 
 knew the banker was a stout Churchman.) 
 
 "What of my nephew, sir! No fresh misfor- 
 tunes, I hope ? " 
 
 "Not so much misfortune, sir, as misconduct 
 I might say frailty but frailty which may 
 become ruinous." 
 
 "How? how? Some mesalliance ? " interrupted
 
 Thunderstorm the Second 197 
 
 Mr. Smith, in a peevish, excited tone. "I 
 thought there was some heiress on the tapis- at 
 least, so I heard from my unfortunate son, who 
 has just gone over to Rome. There 's another 
 misfortune. Nothing but misfortunes; and your 
 teaching, sir, by the by, I am afraid, has helped 
 me to that one. " 
 
 " Gone over to Rome ? " asked the vicar, slowly. 
 
 "Yes, sir, gone to Rome to the Pope, sir! to 
 the devil, sir ! I should have thought you likely 
 to know of it before I did ! " 
 
 The vicar stared fixedly at him a moment, and 
 burst into honest tears. The banker was moved. 
 
 "Ton my honor, sir, I beg your pardon. I 
 
 did not mean to be rude, but but To be 
 
 plain with a clergyman, sir, so many things com- 
 ing together have quite unmanned me. Pooh, 
 pooh," and he shook himself as if to throw off a 
 weight; and, with a face once more quiet and 
 business-like, asked, "And now, my dear sir, 
 what of my nephew ? " 
 
 "As for that young lady, sir, of whom you 
 spoke, I can assure you, once for all, as her 
 clergyman, and therefore more or less her confi- 
 dant, that your nephew has not the slightest 
 chance or hope in that quarter." 
 
 "How, sir? You will not throw obstacles in 
 the way?" 
 
 " Heaven, sir, I think, has interposed far more 
 insuperable obstacles in the young lady's own 
 heart than I could ever have done. Your 
 nephew's character and opinions, I am sorry to 
 say, are not such as are likely to command the 
 respect and affection of a pure and pious Church- 
 woman."
 
 198 Yeast 
 
 "Opinions, sir? What, is he turning Papist, 
 too?" 
 
 " I am afraid, sir, and more than afraid, for he 
 makes no secret of it himself, that his views 
 tend rather in the opposite direction ; to an infi- 
 delity so subversive of the commonest principles 
 of morality, that I expect, weekly, to hear of 
 some unblushing and disgraceful outrage against 
 decency, committed by him under its fancied 
 sanction. And you know, as well as myself, the 
 double danger of some profligate outbreak, which 
 always attends the miseries of a disappointed 
 earthly passion." 
 
 "True, very true. We must get the boy out 
 of the way, sir. I must have him under my eye." 
 
 "Exactly so, sir," said the subtle vicar, who 
 had been driving at this very point. "How 
 much better for him to be here, using his great 
 talents to the advantage of his family in an 
 honorable profession, than to remain where he is, 
 debauching body and mind by hopeless dreams, 
 godless studies, and frivolous excesses." 
 
 "When do you return, sir?" 
 
 "An hour hence, if I can be of service to you." 
 
 The banker paused a moment. 
 
 " You are a gentleman " (with emphasis on the 
 word), " and as such I can trust you. " 
 
 " Say, rather, as a clergyman. " 
 
 "Pardon me, but I have found your cloth give 
 little additional cause for confidence. I have 
 been as much bitten by clergymen I have seen 
 as sharp practice among them, in money matters 
 as well as in religious squabbles, as I have in 
 any class. Whether it is that their book educa- 
 tion leaves them very often ignorant of the plain
 
 Thunderstorm the Second 199 
 
 rules of honor which bind men of the world, or 
 whether their zeal makes them think that the end 
 justifies the means, I cannot tell ; but " 
 
 "But," said the vicar, half smiling, half 
 severely, "you must not disparage the priest- 
 hood before a priest." 
 
 " I know it, I know it ; and I beg your pardon : 
 but if you knew the cause I have to complain. 
 The slipperiness, sir, of one staggering parson 
 has set rolling this very avalanche, which gathers 
 size every moment, and threatens to overwhelm 
 me now, unless that idle dog Lancelot will con- 
 descend to bestir himself, and help me." 
 
 The vicar heard, but said nothing. 
 
 "Me, at least, you can trust," he answered 
 proudly ; and honestly, too for he was a gentle- 
 man by birth and breeding, unselfish and chiv- 
 alrous to a fault and yet, when he heard the 
 banker's words, it was as if the inner voice had 
 whispered to him, "Thou art the man!" 
 
 " When do you go down ? " again asked Mr. 
 Smith. "To tell you the truth, I was writing to 
 Lancelot when you were announced ! but the post 
 will not reach him till to-morrow at noon, and we 
 are all so busy here, that I have no one whom I- 
 can trust to carry down an express. " 
 
 The vicar saw what was coming. Was it his 
 good angel which prompted him to interpose ? 
 
 " Why not send a parcel by rail ? " 
 
 "I can trust the rail as far as D ; but I 
 
 cannot trust those coaches. If you could do me 
 so great a kindness " 
 
 "I will. I can start by the one o'clock train, 
 and by ten o'clock to-night I shall be in Whit- 
 ford."
 
 2OO Yeast 
 
 " Are you certain ? " 
 
 "If God shall please, I am certain." 
 [' "And you will take charge of a letter? Per- 
 haps, too, you could see him yourself; and tell 
 him you see, I trust you with everything that 
 my fortune, his own fortune, depends on his being 
 here to-morrow morning. He must start to-night, 
 sir to-night, tell him, if there were twenty 
 Miss Lavingtons in Whitford or he is a ruined 
 man!" 
 
 The letter was written and put into the vicar's 
 hands, with a hundred entreaties from the terrified 
 banker. A cab was called, and the clergyman 
 rattled off to the railway terminus. 
 
 "Well," said he to himself, "God has indeed 
 blessed my errand ; giving, as always, ' exceeding 
 abundantly more than we are able to ask or 
 think ! ' For some weeks, at least, this poor 
 lamb is safe from the destroyer's clutches. I 
 must improve to the utmost those few precious 
 days in strengthening her in her holy purpose. 
 But, after all, he will return, daring and cun- 
 ning as ever; and then will not the fascination 
 recommence ? " 
 
 And, as he mused, a little fiend passed by, and 
 whispered, "Unless he comes up to-night, he is 
 a ruined man." 
 
 It was Friday, and the vicar had thought it a 
 fit preparation for so important an errand to taste 
 no food that day. Weakness and hunger, joined 
 to the roar and bustle of London, had made him 
 excited, nervous, unable to control his thoughts, 
 or fight against a stupefying headache; and his 
 self-weakened will punished him, by yielding 
 him up an easy prey to his own fancies.
 
 Thunderstorm the Second 201 
 
 "Ay," he thought, "if he were ruined, after 
 all, it would be well for God's cause. The 
 Lavingtons, at least, would find no temptation in 
 his wealth : and Argemone she is too proud, too 
 luxurious, to marry a beggar. She might em- 
 brace a holy poverty for the sake of her own soul ; 
 but for the gratification of an earthly passion, 
 never! Base and carnal delights would never 
 tempt her so far." 
 
 Alas, poor pedant ! Among all that thy books 
 taught thee, they did not open to thee much of 
 the depths of that human heart which thy dogmas 
 taught thee to despise as diabolic. 
 
 Again the little fiend whispered : 
 
 " Unless he comes up to-night, he is a ruined 
 man." 
 
 " And what if he is ? " thought the vicar. 
 "Riches are a curse; and poverty a blessing. Is 
 it not his wealth which is ruining his soul ? Idle- 
 ness and fulness of bread have made him what he 
 is a luxurious and self-willed dreamer, batten- 
 ing on his own fancies. Were it not rather a boon 
 to him to take from him the root of all evil ? " 
 
 Most true, vicar. And yet the devil was at 
 that moment transforming himself into an angel 
 of light for thee. 
 
 But the vicar was yet honest. If he had 
 thought that by cutting off his right hand he 
 could have saved Lancelot's soul (by canonical 
 methods, of course; for who would wish to save 
 souls in any other?), he would have done it with- 
 out hesitation. 
 
 Again the little fiend whispered : 
 
 " Unless he comes up to-night he is a ruined 
 man." 
 
 J Vol. V
 
 202 Yeast 
 
 A terrible sensation seized him. Why should 
 he give the letter to-night ? 
 
 "You promised," whispered the inner voice. 
 
 "No, I did not promise exactly, in so many 
 words; that ;s, I only said I would be at home 
 to-night, if God pleased. And what if God 
 should not please? I promised for his good. 
 What if, on second thoughts, it should be better 
 for him not to keep my promise?" A moment 
 afterwards, he tossed the temptation from him 
 indignantly: but back it came. At every gaudy 
 shop, at every smoke -grimed manufactory, at the 
 face of every anxious victim of Mammon, of every 
 sturdy, cheerful artisan, the fiend winked and 
 pointed, crying, "And what if he be ruined? 
 Look at the thousands who have, and are miser- 
 able at the millions who have not, and are no 
 sadder than their own tyrants." 
 
 Again and again he thrust the thought from 
 him, but more and more weakly. His whole 
 frame shook; the perspiration stood on his fore- 
 head. As he took his railway ticket, his look 
 was so haggard and painful that the clerk asked 
 him whether he were ill. The train was just 
 starting; he threw himself into a carriage he 
 would have locked himself in if he could; and 
 felt an inexpressible relief when he found him- 
 self rushing past houses and market-gardens, 
 whirled onward, whether he would or not, in the 
 right path homeward. 
 
 But was it the right path ? for again the temp- 
 tation flitted past him. He threw himself back, 
 and tried to ask counsel of One above ; but there 
 was no answer, nor any that regarded. His heart 
 was silent, and dark as midnight fog. Why
 
 Thunderstorm the Second 203 
 
 should there have been an answer? He had not 
 listened to the voice within. Did he wish for a 
 miracle to show him his duty? 
 
 "Not that I care for detection," he said to 
 himself. "What is shame to me? Is it not a 
 glory to be evil-spoken of in the cause of God ? 
 How can the world appreciate the motives of 
 those who are not of the world ? the divine wis- 
 dom of the serpent at once the saint's peculiar 
 weapon, and a part of his peculiar cross, when 
 men call him a deceiver, because they confound, 
 forsooth, his spiritual subtlety with their earthly 
 cunning. Have I not been called ' liar, ' ' hypo- 
 crite, ' 'Jesuit,' often enough already, to harden 
 me towards bearing that name once again ? " 
 
 That led him into sad thoughts of his last few 
 years' career, of the friends and pupils whose 
 secession to Rome had been attributed to his 
 hypocrisy, his "disguised Romanism;" and then 
 the remembrance of poor Luke Smith flashed 
 across him for the first time since he left the 
 bank. 
 
 "I must see him," he said to himself; "I must 
 argue with him face to face. Who knows but 
 that it may be given even to my unworthiness to 
 snatch him from this accursed slough?" 
 
 And then he remembered that his way home 
 lay through the city in which the new convert's 
 parish was that the coach stopped there to 
 change horses; and again the temptation leapt 
 up again, stronger than ever, under the garb of 
 an imperative call of duty. 
 
 He made no determination for or against it. 
 He was too weak in body and mind to resist; and 
 in a half sleep, broken with an aching, terrified
 
 204 Yeast 
 
 sense of something wanting which he could not 
 find, he was swept down the line, got on the 
 coach, and mechanically, almost without know- 
 ing it, found himself set down at the city of 
 
 A , and the coach rattling away down the 
 
 street. 
 
 He sprang from his stupor, and called madly 
 after it ran a few steps 
 
 "You might as well try to catch the clouds, 
 sir," said the ostler. "Gemmen should make up 
 their minds afore they gets down." 
 
 Alas ! so thought the vicar. But it was too 
 late ; and, with a heavy heart, he asked the way 
 to the late curate's house. 
 
 Thither he went. Mr. Luke Smith was just 
 at dinner, but the vicar was, nevertheless, shown 
 into the bachelor's little dining-room. But what 
 was his disgust and disappointment at finding his 
 late pupil t$te-d-tte over a comfortable fish-dinner, 
 opposite a burly, vulgar, cunning-eyed man, with 
 a narrow rim of muslin turned down over his stiff 
 cravat, of whose profession there could be no 
 doubt. 
 
 "My dearest sir," said the new convert, spring- 
 ing up with an air of extreme empressement, " what 
 an unexpected pleasure! Allow me to introduce 
 you to my excellent friend, Padre Bugiardo ! " 
 
 The padre rose, bowed obsequiously, "was 
 overwhelmed with delight at being at last intro- 
 duced to one of whom he had heard so much," 
 sat down again, and poured himself out a bumper 
 of sherry; while the vicar commenced making 
 the best of a bad matter by joining in the now 
 necessary business of eating. 
 
 He had not a word to say for himself. Poor
 
 Thunderstorm the Second 205 
 
 Luke was particularly jovial and flippant, and 
 startlingly unlike his former self. The padre 
 went on staring out of the window, and talking 
 in a loud forced tone about the astonishing 
 miracles of the "Ecstatica" and " Addolorata;" 
 and the poor vicar, finding the purpose for which 
 he had sacrificed his own word of honor utterly 
 frustrated by the priest's presence, sat silent and 
 crestfallen the whole evening. 
 
 The priest had no intention of stirring. The 
 late father-confessor tried to outstay his new 
 rival, but in vain; the padre deliberately an- 
 nounced his intention of taking a bed, and the 
 vicar, with a heavy heart, rose to go to his 
 inn. 
 
 As he went out at the door, he caught an oppor- 
 tunity of saying one word to the convert. 
 
 "My poor Luke! and are you happy? Tell me 
 honestly, in God's sight tell me!" 
 
 "Happier than ever I was in my life! No 
 more self-torture, physical or mental, now. 
 These good priests thoroughly understand poor 
 human nature, I can assure you." 
 
 The vicar sighed, for the speech was evidently 
 meant as a gentle rebuke to himself. But the 
 young man ran on, half laughing : 
 
 " You know how you and the rest used to tell 
 us what a sad thing it was that we were all cursed 
 with consciences, what a fearful miserable bur- 
 den moral responsibility was; but that we must 
 submit to it as an inevitable evil. Now that 
 burden is gone, thank God! We of the True 
 Church have some one to keep our consciences 
 for us. The padre settles all about what is right 
 or wrong, and we slip on as easily as "
 
 206 Yeast 
 
 " A hog or a butterfly ! " said the vicar, bitterly. 
 
 "Exactly," answered Luke. "And, on your 
 own showing, are clean gainers of a happy life 
 here, not to mention heaven hereafter. God 
 bless you! We shall soon see you one of us." 
 
 "Never, so help me God! " said the vicar; all 
 the more fiercely because he was almost at that 
 moment of the young man's opinion. 
 
 The vicar stepped out into the night. The 
 rain, which had given place during the afternoon 
 to a bright sun and clear chilly evening, had 
 returned with double fury. The wind was sweep- 
 ing and howling down the lonely streets, and 
 lashed the rain into his face, while gray clouds 
 were rushing past the moon like terrified ghosts 
 across the awful void of the black heaven. Above 
 him gaunt poplars groaned and bent, like giants 
 cowering from the wrath of Heaven, yet rooted 
 by grim necessity to their place of torture. The 
 roar and tumult without him harmonized strangely 
 with the discord within. He staggered and 
 strode along the plashy pavement, muttering to 
 himself at intervals : 
 
 "Rest for the soul? peace of mind? I have 
 been promising them all my life to others 
 have I found them myself? And here is this 
 poor boy saying that he has gained them in the 
 very barbarian superstition which I have been 
 anathematizing to him! What is true, at this 
 rate? What is false? Is anything right or 
 wrong? except in as far as men feel it to be right 
 or wrong. Else whence does this poor fellow's 
 peace come, or the peace of many a convert more ? 
 They have all, one by one, told me the same 
 story. And is not a religion to be known by its
 
 Thunderstorm the Second 207 
 
 fruits ? Are they not right in going where they 
 can get peace of mind ? " 
 
 Certainly, vicar. If peace of mind be the sum- 
 mum bonum, and religion is merely the science of 
 self-satisfaction, they are right; and your wisest 
 plan will be to follow them at once, or failing 
 that, to apply to the next substitute that can be 
 discovered alcohol and opium. 
 
 As he went on, talking wildly to himself, he 
 passed the Union Workhouse. Opposite the 
 gate, under the lee of a wall, some twenty men, 
 women, and children were huddled together on 
 the bare ground. They had been refused lodging 
 in the workhouse, and were going to pass the 
 night in that situation. As he came up to them, 
 coarse jests, and snatches of low drinking-songs, 
 ghastly as the laughter of lost spirits in the pit, 
 mingled with the feeble wailings of some child of 
 shame. The vicar recollected how he had seen 
 the same sight at the door of Kensington Work- 
 house, walking home one night in company with 
 Luke Smith; and how, too, he had commented to 
 him on that fearful sign of the times, and had 
 somewhat unfairly drawn a contrast between the 
 niggard cruelty of "popular Protestantism," and 
 the fancied " liberality of the middle age. " What 
 wonder if his pupil had taken him at his word ? 
 
 Delighted to escape from his own thoughts by 
 anything like action, he pulled out his purse to 
 give an alms. There was no silver in it, but 
 only some fifteen or twenty sovereigns, which he 
 that day received as payment for some bitter 
 reviews in a leading religious periodical. Every- 
 thing that night seemed to shame and confound 
 him more. As he touched the money, there
 
 208 Yeast 
 
 sprang up in his mind in an instant the thought 
 of the articles which had procured it; by one of 
 those terrible, searching inspirations, in which 
 the light which lighteth every man awakes as a 
 lightning-flash of judgment, he saw them, and his 
 own heart, for one moment, as they were ; their 
 blind prejudice; their reckless imputations of 
 motives; their wilful concealment of any palliat- 
 ing clauses; their party nicknames, given without 
 a shudder at the terrible accusations which they 
 conveyed. And then the indignation, the shame, 
 the reciprocal bitterness which those articles 
 would excite, tearing still wider the bleeding 
 wounds of that Church which they professed to 
 defend ! And then, in this case, too, the thought 
 rushed across him, " What if I should have been 
 wrong and my adversary right ? What if I have 
 made the heart of the righteous sad whom God 
 has not made sad ? I ! to have been dealing out 
 Heaven's thunders, as if I were infallible! I! 
 who am certain at this moment of no fact in 
 heaven or earth, except my own untruth ! God ! 
 who am I that I should judge another ? " And 
 the coins seemed to him like the price of blood 
 he fancied that he felt them red-hot to his 
 hand, and, in his eagerness to get rid of the 
 accursed thing, he dealt it away fiercely to the 
 astonished group, amid whining and flattery, 
 wrangling and ribaldry; and then, not daring to 
 wait and see the use to which his money would 
 be put, hurried off to the inn, and tried in uneasy 
 slumbers to forget the time, until the mail passed 
 through at daybreak on its way to Whitford.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE VILLAGE REVEL 
 
 AT dusk that same evening the two had started 
 for the village fair. A velveteen shooting- 
 jacket, a pair of corduroy trousers, and a waist- 
 coat, furnished by Tregarva, covered with flowers 
 of every imaginable hue, tolerably disguised Lance- 
 lot, who was recommended by his conductor to 
 keep his hands in his pockets as much as possible, 
 lest their delicacy, which was, as it happened, 
 not very remarkable, might betray him. As they 
 walked together along the plashy turnpike road, 
 overtaking, now and then, groups of two or three 
 who were out on the same errand as themselves, 
 Lancelot could not help remarking to the keeper 
 how superior was the look of comfort in the boys 
 and young men, with their ruddy cheeks and smart 
 dresses, to the worn and haggard appearance of 
 the elder men. 
 
 " Let them alone, poor fellows," said Tregarva ; 
 "it won't last long. When they've got two or 
 three children at their heels, they '11 look as thin 
 and shabby as their own fathers." 
 
 "They must spend a great deal of money on 
 their clothes." 
 
 " And on their stomachs, too, sir. They never 
 lay by a farthing ; and I don't see how they can, 
 when their club-money's paid, and their insides 
 are well filled."
 
 2 1 o Yeast 
 
 " Do you mean to say that they actually have 
 not as much to eat after they marry ? " 
 
 " Indeed and I do, sir. They get no more wages 
 afterwards round here, and have four or five to 
 clothe and feed off the same money that used to 
 keep one ; and that sum won't take long to work 
 out, I think." 
 
 " But do they not in some places pay the married 
 men higher wages than the unmarried?" 
 
 " That 's a worse trick still, sir ; for it tempts 
 the poor thoughtless boys to go and marry the 
 first girl they can get hold of; and it don't want 
 much persuasion to make them do that at any 
 time." 
 
 "But why don't the clergymen teach them to 
 put into the savings banks ? " 
 
 " One here and there, sir, says what he can, 
 though it 's of very little use. Besides, every one 
 is afraid of savings banks now; not a year but 
 one reads of some breaking and the lawyers going 
 off with the earnings of the poor. And if they 
 didn't, youth's a foolish time at best; and the 
 carnal man will be hankering after amusement, sir 
 amusement." 
 
 " And no wonder," said Lancelot ; " at all events, 
 I should not think they got much of it. But it 
 does seem strange that no other amusement can 
 be found for them than the beer-shop. Can't they 
 read? Can't they practise light and interesting 
 handicrafts at home, as the German peasantry 
 do?" 
 
 " Who '11 teach 'em, sir ? From the plough-tail 
 to the reaping-hook, and back again, is all they 
 know. Besides, sir, they are not like us Cornish; 
 they are a stupid pig-headed generation at the
 
 The Village Revel 211 
 
 best, these south countrymen. They're grown-up 
 babies who want the parson and the squire to be 
 leading them, and preaching to them, and spur- 
 ring them on, and coaxing them up, every moment. 
 And as for scholarship, sir, a boy leaves school at 
 nine or ten to follow the horses ; and between that 
 time and his wedding-day he forgets every word 
 he ever learnt, and becomes, for the most part, as 
 thorough a heathen savage at heart as those wild 
 Indians in the Brazils used to be." 
 
 " And then we call them civilized Englishmen ! " 
 said Lancelot. " We can see that your Indian is 
 a savage, because he wears skins and feathers; 
 but your Irish cottar or your English laborer, 
 because he happens to wear a coat and trousers, 
 is to be considered a civilized man." 
 
 " It 's the way of the world, sir," said Tregarva, 
 "judging carnal judgment, according to the sight 
 of its own eyes ; always looking at the outsides 
 of things and men, sir, and never much deeper. 
 But as for reading, sir, it's all very well for me, 
 who have been a keeper and dawdled about like a 
 gentleman with a gun over my arm ; but did you 
 ever do a good day's farm-work in your life ? If 
 you had, man or boy, you would n't have been 
 game for much reading when you got home ; you 'd 
 do just what these poor fellows do, tumble into 
 bed at eight o'clock, hardly waiting to take your 
 clothes off, knowing that you must turn up again at 
 five o'clock the next morning to get a breakfast of 
 bread, and perhaps a dab of the squire's dripping, 
 and then back to work again ; and so on, day after 
 day, sir, week after week, year after year, without a 
 hope or a chance of being anything but what you 
 are, and only too thankful if you can get work
 
 2 1 2 Yeast 
 
 to break your back, and catch the rheumatism 
 over." 
 
 " But do you mean to say that their labor is so 
 severe and incessant? " 
 
 " It 's only God's blessing if it is incessant, sir, 
 for if it stops, they starve, or go to the house to be 
 worse fed than the thieves in gaol. And as for its 
 being severe, there 's many a boy, as their mothers 
 will tell you, comes home night after night, too tired 
 to eat their suppers, and tumble, fasting, to bed in 
 the same foul shirt which they Ve been working 
 in all the day, never changing their rag of calico 
 from week's end to week's end, or washing the 
 skin that's under it once in seven years." 
 
 "No wonder," said Lancelot, " that such a life 
 of drudgery makes them brutal and reckless." 
 
 " No wonder, indeed, sir : they Ve no time to 
 think ; they 're born to be machines, and machines 
 they must be ; and I think, sir," he added bitterly, 
 " it 's God's mercy that they dare n't think. It 's 
 God's mercy that they don't feel. Men that write 
 books and talk at elections call this a free country, 
 and say that the poorest and meanest has a free 
 opening to rise and become prime minister, if he 
 can. But you see, sir, the misfortune is, that in 
 practice he can't; for one who gets into a gentle- 
 man's family, or into a little shop, and so saves a 
 few pounds, fifty know that they Ve no chance 
 before them, but day-laborer born, day-laborer 
 live, from hand to mouth, scraping and pinching 
 to get not meat and beer even, but bread and 
 potatoes ; and then, at the end of it all, for a 
 worthy reward, half-a-crown a week of parish pay 
 or the workhouse. That 's a lively hopeful 
 prospect for a Christian man ! "
 
 The Village Revel 213 
 
 " But," said Lancelot, " I thought this new poor- 
 law was to stir them up to independence ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir, the old lav/ has bit too deep : it made 
 them slaves and beggars at heart. It taught them 
 not to be ashamed of parish pay to demand it 
 as a right." 
 
 " And so it is their right," said Lancelot. " In 
 God's name, if a country is so ill-constituted that 
 it cannot find its own citizens in work, it is bound 
 to find them in food." 
 
 " Maybe, sir, maybe. God knows I don't grudge 
 it them. It 's a poor pittance at best, when they 
 have got it. But don't you see, sir, how all poor- 
 laws, old or new either, suck the independent spirit 
 out of a man; how they make the poor wretch 
 reckless ; how they tempt him to spend every extra 
 farthing in amusement?" 
 
 "How then?" 
 
 " Why, he is always tempted to say to himself, 
 1 Whatever happens to me, the parish must keep 
 me. If I am sick it must doctor me; if I am worn 
 out it must feed me; if I die it must bury me; 
 if I leave my children paupers the parish must 
 look after them, and they '11 be as well off with 
 the parish as they were with me. Now they Ve 
 only got just enough to keep body and soul to- 
 gether, and the parish can't give them less than 
 that What 's the use of cutting myself off from 
 sixpenny-worth of pleasure here, and sixpenny- 
 worth there? I 'm not saving money for my chil- 
 dren, 1 'm only saving the farmers' rates 1 . There it 
 is, sir," said Tregarva ; "that's the bottom of it, 
 sir, ' I 'm only saving the farmers' rates. Let us 
 eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ! ' " 
 
 " I don't see my way out of it," said Lancelot.
 
 2 1 4 Yeast 
 
 " So says everybody, sir. But I should have 
 thought those members of parliament, and states- 
 men, and university scholars have been set up in 
 the high places, out of the wood where we are 
 all struggling and scrambling, just that they 
 might see their way out of it; and if they 
 don't, sir, and that soon, as sure as God is in 
 heaven, these poor fellows will cut their way out 
 of it." 
 
 " And blindfolded and ignorant as they are," 
 said Lancelot, " they will be certain to cut their 
 way out just in the wrong direction." 
 
 " I 'm not so sure of that, sir," said Tregarva, 
 lowering his voice. "What is written? That 
 there is One who hears the desire of the poor. 
 ' Lord, Thou preparest their hearts, and Thine 
 ear hearkeneth thereto, to help the fatherless and 
 poor unto their right, that the man of the earth 
 be no more exalted against them.' " 
 
 " Why, you are talking like any Chartist, 
 Tregarva ! " 
 
 "Am I, sir? I haven't heard much Scripture 
 quoted among them myself, poor fellows; but 
 to tell you the truth, sir, I don't know what 
 I am becoming. I 'm getting half mad with all 
 I see going on and not going on ; and you will 
 agree, sir, that what's happened this day can't 
 have done much to cool my temper or brighten 
 my hopes ; though, God 's my witness, there '3 
 no spite in me for my own sake. But what makes 
 me maddest of all, sir, is to see that everybody 
 sees these evils, except just the men who can 
 cure them the squires and the clergy." 
 
 " Why surely, Tregarva, there are hundreds, if 
 not thousands, of clergymen and landlords work-
 
 The Village Revel 2 1 5 
 
 ing heart and soul at this moment, to better the 
 condition of the laboring classes ! " 
 
 " Ay, sir, they see the evils, and yet they don't 
 see them. They do not see what is the matter 
 with the poor man; and the proof of it is, sir, 
 that the poor have no confidence in them. They '11 
 take their alms, but they'll hardly take their 
 schooling, and their advice they won't take at 
 all. And why is it, sir? Because the poor have 
 got in their heads in these days a strange con- 
 fused fancy, maybe, but still a deep and a fierce one, 
 that they have n't got what they call their rights. 
 If you were to raise the wages of every man 
 in this country from nine to twelve shillings a week 
 to-morrow, you would n't satisfy them ; at least, 
 the only ones whom you would satisfy would be 
 the mere hogs among them, who, as long as they 
 can get a full stomach, care for nothing else." 
 
 "What, in Heaven's name, do they want?" 
 asked Lancelot. 
 
 "They hardly know yet, sir; but they know 
 well what they don't want. The question with 
 them, sir, believe me, is not so much, How shall 
 we get better fed and better housed, but whom 
 shall we depend upon for our food and for our 
 house ? Why should we depend on the will and 
 fancy of any man for our rights? They are 
 asking ugly questions among themselves, sir, about 
 what those two words, rent and taxes, mean, and 
 about what that same strange word, freedom, 
 means. Right or wrong, they Ve got the thought 
 into their heads, and it 's growing there, and they 
 will find an answer for it. Depend upon it, sir, I 
 tell you a truth, and they expect a change. You 
 will hear them talk of it to-night, sir, if you Ve luck."
 
 2 1 6 Yeast 
 
 " We all expect a change, for that matter/' said 
 Lancelot " That feeling is common to all classes 
 and parties just now." 
 
 Tregarva took off his hat. 
 
 " ' For the word of the Lord hath spoken it.' 
 Do you know, sir, I long at times that I did 
 agree with those Chartists? If I did I'd turn 
 lecturer to-morrow. How a man could speak out 
 then ! If he saw any door of hope, any way 
 of salvation for these poor fellows, even if it 
 was nothing better than salvation by act of 
 parliament ! " 
 
 "But why don't you trust the truly worthy 
 among the clergy and the gentry to leaven their 
 own ranks and bring all right in time?" 
 
 " Because, sir, they seem to be going the way 
 only to make things worse. The people have been 
 so dependent on them heretofore, that they have 
 become thorough beggars. You can have no 
 knowledge, sir, of the whining, canting, deceit, and 
 lies which those poor miserable laborers' wives palm 
 on charitable ladies. If they were n't angels, some 
 of them, they 'd lock up their purses and never 
 give away another farthing. And, sir, these free- 
 schools, and these penny-clubs, and clothing clubs, 
 and these heaps of money which are given away, 
 all make the matter worse and worse. They make 
 the laborer fancy that he is not to depend upon God 
 and his own right hand, but on what his wife can 
 worm out of the good nature of the rich. Why, 
 sir, they growl as insolently now at the parson or 
 the squire's wife if they don't get as much money 
 as their neighbors, as they used to at the parish 
 vestrymen under the old law. Look at that Lord 
 Vieuxbois, sir, as sweet a gentleman as ever God
 
 The Village Revel 217 
 
 made. It used to do me good to walk behind him 
 when he came over here shooting, just to hear the 
 gentle kind-hearted way in which he used to speak 
 to every old soul he met. He spends his whole 
 life and time about the poor, I hear. But, sir, as 
 sure as you live he 's making his people slaves and 
 humbugs. He does n't see, sir, that they want to 
 be raised bodily out of this miserable hand-to- 
 mouth state, to be brought nearer up to him, and 
 set on a footing where they can shift for them- 
 selves. Without meaning it, sir, all his boundless 
 charities are keeping the people down, and telling 
 them they must stay down, and not help them- 
 selves, but wait for what he gives them. He fats 
 prize-laborers, sir, just as Lord Minchampstead 
 fats prize-oxen and pigs." 
 
 Lancelot could not help thinking of that amus- 
 ingly inconsistent, however well-meant, scene in 
 " Coningsby," in which Mr. Lyle is represented as 
 trying to restore "the independent order of peasan- 
 try," by making them the receivers of public alms 
 at his own gate, as if they had been middle-aged 
 serfs or vagabonds, and not citizens of modern 
 England. 
 
 " It may suit the Mr. Lyles of this age," thought 
 Lancelot, " to make the people constantly and 
 visibly comprehend that property is their protector 
 and their friend, but I question whether it will suit 
 the people themselves, unless they can make prop- 
 erty understand that it owes them something more 
 definite than protection." 
 
 Saddened by this conversation, which had helped 
 to give another shake to the easy-going compla- 
 cency with which Lancelot had been used to con- 
 template the world below him, and look on its evils
 
 2i 8 Yeast 
 
 as necessaries, ancient and fixed as the universe, 
 he entered the village fair, and was a little disap- 
 pointed at his first glimpse of the village-green. 
 Certainly his expectations had not been very ex- 
 alted ; but there had run through them a hope of 
 something melodramatic, dreams of May-pole 
 dancing and athletic games, somewhat of village- 
 belle rivalry, of the Corin and Sylvia school ; or, 
 failing that, a few Touchstones and Audreys, some 
 genial earnest buffo humor here and there. But 
 there did not seem much likelihood of it. Two or 
 three apple and gingerbread stalls, from which 
 draggled children were turning slowly and wistfully 
 away to go home ; a booth full of trumpery fair- 
 ings, in front of which tawdry girls were coaxing 
 maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their 
 button-holes ; another long low booth, from every 
 crevice of which reeked odors of stale beer and 
 smoke, by courtesy denominated tobacco, to the 
 treble accompaniment of a jigging fiddle and a 
 tambourine, and the bass one of grumbled oaths 
 and curses within these were the means of relaxa- 
 tion which the piety, freedom, and civilization of 
 fourteen centuries, from Hengist to Queen Victoria, 
 had devised and made possible for the English 
 peasant ! 
 
 " There seems very little here to see," said 
 Lancelot, half peevishly. 
 
 " I think, sir," quoth Tregarva, " that very thing 
 is what's most worth seeing." 
 
 Lancelot could not help, even at the risk of 
 detection, investing capital enough in sugar-plums 
 and gingerbread, to furnish the urchins around 
 with the material for a whole carnival of stomach- 
 aches; and he felt a great inclination to clear the
 
 The Village Revel 219 
 
 fairing-stall in a like manner, on behalf of the poor 
 bedizened sickly-looking girls round, but he was 
 afraid of the jealousy of some beer-bemuddled 
 swain. The ill-looks of the young girls surprised 
 him much. Here and there smiled a plump rosy 
 face enough ; but the majority seemed under-sized, 
 under-fed, utterly wanting in grace, vigor, and 
 what the penny-a-liners call " rude health." He 
 remarked it to Tregarva. The keeper smiled 
 mournfully. 
 
 " You see those little creatures dragging home 
 babies in arms nearly as big as themselves, sir. 
 That and bad food, want of milk especially, 
 accounts for their growing up no bigger than they 
 do; and as for their sad countenances, sir, most 
 of them must carry a lighter conscience before 
 they carry a brighter face. " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Lancelot. 
 
 "The clergyman who enters the weddings and 
 the baptisms knows well enough what I mean, 
 sir. But we '11 go into that booth, if you want to 
 see the thick of it, sir; that's to say, if you're 
 not ashamed. " 
 
 " I hope we need neither of us do anything to 
 be ashamed of there; and as for seeing, I begin 
 to agree with you, that what makes the whole 
 thing most curious is its intense dulness." 
 
 " What upon earth is that ? " 
 
 " I say, look out there ! " 
 
 "Well, you look out yourself!" 
 
 This was caused by a violent blow across the 
 shins with a thick stick, the deed of certain 
 drunken wiseacres who were persisting in play- 
 ing in the dark the never very lucrative game of 
 three sticks a penny, conducted by a couple of
 
 220 Yeast 
 
 gipsies. Poor fellows ! there was one excuse for 
 them. It was the only thing there to play at, 
 except a set of skittles; and on those they had 
 lost their money every Saturday night for the 
 last seven years each at his own village beer- 
 shop. 
 
 So into the booth they turned ; and as soon as 
 Lancelot's eyes were accustomed to the reeking 
 atmosphere, he saw seated at two long temporary 
 tables of board, fifty or sixty of "My brethren," 
 as clergymen call them in their sermons, wrang- 
 ling, stupid, beery, with sodden eyes and droop- 
 ing lips interspersed with more girls and 
 brazen-faced women, with dirty flowers in their 
 caps, whose whole business seemed to be to cast 
 jealous looks at each other, and defend them- 
 selves from the coarse overtures of their swains. 
 
 Lancelot had been already perfectly astonished 
 at the foulness of language which prevailed ; and 
 the utter absence of anything like chivalrous 
 respect, almost of common decency, towards 
 women. But lo! the language of the elder 
 women was quite as disgusting as that of the 
 men, if not worse. He whispered a remark on 
 the point to Tregarva, who shook his head. 
 
 "It's the field-work, sir the field-work, that 
 does it all. They get accustomed there from 
 their childhood to hear words whose very mean- 
 ings they shouldn't know; and the elder teach 
 the younger ones, and the married ones are 
 worst of all. It wears them out in body, sir, 
 that field-work, and makes them brutes in soul 
 and in manners." 
 
 "Why don't they give it up? Why don't the 
 respectable ones set their faces against it?"
 
 The Village Revel 221 
 
 "They can't afford it, sir. They must go 
 a-field, or go hungered, most of them. And they 
 get to like the gossip and scandal, and coarse fun 
 of it, while their children are left at home to 
 play in the roads, or fall into the fire, as plenty 
 do every year." 
 
 "Why not at school?" 
 
 " The big ones are kept at home, sir, to play at 
 nursing those little ones who are too young to go. 
 Oh, sir," he added, in a tone of deep feeling, 
 "it is very little of a father's care, or a mother's 
 love, that a laborer's child knows in these days !" 
 
 Lancelot looked round the booth with a hope- 
 less feeling. There was awkward dancing going 
 on at the upper end. He was too much sickened 
 to go and look at it. He began examining the 
 faces and foreheads of the company, and was 
 astonished at the first glance by the lofty and 
 ample development of brain in at least one half. 
 There were intellects there or rather capacities 
 of intellect, capable, surely, of anything, had not 
 the promise of the brow been almost always 
 belied by the loose and sensual lower features. 
 They were evidently rather a degraded than an 
 undeveloped race. "The low foreKead of the 
 Kabyle and Koord," thought Lancelot, "is com- 
 pensated by the grim sharp lip, and glittering 
 eye, which prove that all the small capabilities 
 of the man have been called out into clear and 
 vigorous action : but here the very features them- 
 selves, both by what they have and what they 
 want, testify against that society which carelessly 
 wastes her most precious wealth, the manhood of 
 her masses ! Tregarva ! you have observed a 
 good many things did you ever observe whether
 
 222 Yeast 
 
 the men with the large foreheads were better 
 than the men with the small ones ? " 
 
 "Ay, sir, I know what you are driving at. 
 I 've heard of that new-fangled notion of scholars, 
 which, if you'll forgive my plain speaking, 
 expects man's brains to do the work of God's 
 grace." 
 
 " But what have you remarked ? " 
 
 "All I ever saw was, that the stupid-looking 
 ones were the greatest blackguards, and the 
 clever-looking ones the greatest rogues." 
 
 Lancelot was rebuked, but not surprised. He 
 had been for some time past suspecting, from the 
 bitter experience of his own heart, the favorite 
 modern theory which revives the Neo-Platonisra 
 of Alexandria, by making intellect synonymous 
 with virtue, and then jumbling, like poor bewil- 
 dered Proclus, the "physical understanding" of 
 the brain with the pure "intellect" of the 
 spirit. 
 
 "You '11 see something, if you look round, sir, 
 a great deal easier to explain and, I should 
 have thought, a great deal easier to cure than 
 want of wits." 
 
 " And what is that ? " 
 
 "How different-looking the young ones are 
 from their fathers, and still more from their 
 grandfathers! Look at those three or four old 
 grammers talking together there. For all their 
 being shrunk with age and weather, you won't 
 see such fine-grown men anywhere else in this 
 booth." 
 
 It was too true. Lancelot recollected now 
 having remarked it before when at church; and 
 having wondered why almost all the youths were
 
 The Village Revel 223 
 
 so much smaller, clumsier, lower-brained, and 
 weaker-jawed than their elders. 
 
 " Why is it, Tregarva ? " 
 
 "Worse food, worse lodging, worse nursing 
 and, I 'm sore afraid, worse blood. There was too 
 much filthiness and drunkenness went on in the 
 old war-times, not to leave a taint behind it, for 
 many a generation. The prosperity of fools shall 
 destroy them ! " 
 
 "Oh!" thought Lancelot, "for some young 
 sturdy Lancashire or Lothian blood, to put new 
 life into the old frozen South Saxon veins ! Even 
 a drop of the warm enthusiastic Celtic would be 
 better than none. Perhaps this Irish immigration 
 may do some good, after all." 
 
 Perhaps it may, Lancelot. Let us hope so, 
 since it is pretty nearly inevitable. 
 
 Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to 
 the conversation of the men round him. To his 
 astonishment he hardly understood a word of it. 
 It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, made up 
 almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of 
 savages. He had never before been struck with 
 the significant contrast between the sharp, clearly 
 defined articulation, the vivid and varied tones of 
 the gentleman, or even of the London street-boy 
 when compared with the coarse, half-formed 
 growls, as of a company of seals, which he heard 
 round him. That single fact struck him, per- 
 haps, more deeply than any; it connected itself 
 with many of his physiological fancies ; it was 
 the parent of many thoughts and plans of his 
 after-life. Here and there he could distinguish 
 a half sentence. An old shrunken man opposite 
 him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with
 
 224 Yeast 
 
 his pipe-stem, and discoursing of the glorious 
 times before the great war, "when there was 
 more food than there were mouths, and more 
 work than there were hands." "Poor human 
 nature ! " thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow 
 one of those unintelligible discussions about the 
 relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, 
 which ended, as usual, in more swearing, and more 
 quarrelling, and more beer to make it up " Poor 
 human nature ! always looking back, as the German 
 sage says, to some fancied golden age, never look- 
 ing forward to the real one which is coining ! " 
 
 "But I say, vather," drawled out some one, 
 "they say there 's a sight more money in England 
 now than there was afore the war-time." 
 
 "Eees, booy," said the old man; "but it's got 
 into too few hands." 
 
 "Well," thought Lancelot, "there's a glimpse 
 of practical sense, at least. " And a pedler who 
 sat next him, a bold, black-whiskered bully from 
 the potteries, hazarded a joke: 
 
 "It's all along of this new sky-and-tough-it 
 farming. They used to spread the money broad- 
 cast, but now they drills it all in one place, like 
 bone-dust under their fancy plants, and we poor 
 self-sown chaps gets none." 
 
 This garland of fancies was received with great 
 applause; whereat the pedler, emboldened, pro- 
 ceeded to observe, mysteriously, that "donkeys 
 took a beating, but horses kicked at it ; and that 
 they'd found out that in Staffordshire long ago. 
 You want a good Chartist lecturer down here, my 
 covies, to show you donkeys of laboring men that 
 you have got iron on your heels, if you only 
 know'd how to use it."
 
 The Village Revel 225 
 
 "And what's the use of rioting?" asked some 
 one, querulously. 
 
 "Why, if you don't riot, the farmers will starve 
 you. " 
 
 "And if we do, they'd turn sodgers yeo- 
 manry, as they call it, though there ain't a yeo- 
 man among them in these parts; and then they 
 takes sword and kills us. So, riot or none, they 
 has it all their own way." 
 
 Lancelot heard many more scraps of this sort. 
 He was very much struck with their dread of 
 violence. It did not seem cowardice. It was 
 not loyalty the English laborer has fallen below 
 the capability of so spiritual a feeling; Lancelot 
 had found out that already. It could not be 
 apathy, for he heard nothing but complaint upon 
 complaint bandied from mouth to mouth the 
 whole evening. They seemed rather sunk too 
 low in body and mind, too stupefied and spirit- 
 less, to follow the example of the manufacturing 
 districts; above all, they were too ill-informed. 
 It is not mere starvation which goads the Leices- 
 ter weaver to madness. It is starvation with 
 education, an empty stomach and a cultivated, 
 even though miscultivated, mind. 
 
 At that instant, a huge hulking farm-boy rolled 
 into the booth, roaring dolefully the end of a 
 song, with a punctuation of his own invention: 
 
 " He '11 maak me a lady . Zo . Vine to be zyure. 
 And, vaithfully; love me. Although; I; be-e; poor-r-r-r." 
 
 Lancelot would have laughed heartily at him 
 
 anywhere else; but the whole scene was past a 
 
 jest; and a gleam of pathos and tenderness 
 
 seemed to shine even from that doggerel, a 
 
 K Vol. V
 
 226 Yeast 
 
 vista, as it were, of true genial nature, in the 
 far distance. But as he looked round again, 
 "What hope," he thought, "of its realization? 
 Arcadian dreams of pastoral innocence and grace- 
 ful industry, I suppose, are to be henceforth 
 monopolized by the stage or the boudoir ? Never, 
 so help me, God ! " 
 
 The ursine howls of the new-comer seemed to 
 have awakened the spirit of music in the party. 
 
 "Coom, Blackburd, gi' us zong, Blackburd, 
 bo' ! " cried a dozen voices to an impish, dark- 
 eyed gipsy boy, of some thirteen years old. 
 
 " Put 'n on taable. Now, then, pipe up ! " 
 
 "What will 'eeha'?" 
 
 "Mary; gi' us Mary." 
 
 "I shall make a' girls cry," quoth Blackbird, 
 with a grin. 
 
 "Do'n good, too; they likes it: zing away." 
 
 And the boy began, in a broad country twang, 
 which could not overpower the sad melody of 
 the air, or the rich sweetness of his flute-like 
 voice : 
 
 " Young Mary walked sadly down through the green clover, 
 
 And sighed as she looked at the babe at her breast ; 
 ' My roses are faded, my false love a rover, 
 
 The green graves they call me, " Come home to your 
 rest." ' 
 
 " Then by rode a soldier in gorgeous arraying, 
 
 And ' Where is your bride-ring, my fair maid ? ' he cried ; 
 ' I ne'er had a bride-ring, by false man's betraying, 
 Nor token of love but this babe at my side. 
 
 M <Tho' gold could not buy me, sweet words could deceive me; 
 
 So faithful and lonely till death I must roam.' 
 ' Oh, Mary, sweet Mary, look up and forgive me, 
 
 With wealth and with glory your true love comes home j
 
 The Village Revel 227 
 
 44 ' So give me my own babe, those soft arms adorning, 
 
 I '11 wed you and cherish you, never to stray ; 
 
 For it 's many a dark and a wild cloudy morning 
 
 Turns out by the noon-time a sunshiny day.' " 
 
 "A bad moral that, sir," whispered Tregarva. 
 "Better than none," answered Lancelot. 
 " It 's well if you are right, sir, for you '11 hear 
 no other." 
 
 The keeper spoke truly; in a dozen different 
 songs, more or less coarsely, but, in general, 
 with a dash of pathetic sentiment, the same case 
 of lawless love was embodied. It seemed to be 
 their only notion of the romantic. Now and 
 then there was a poaching song ; then one of the 
 lowest flash London school filth and all was 
 roared in chorus in presence of the women. 
 
 " I am afraid that you do not thank me for 
 having brought you to any place so unfit for a 
 gentleman," said Tregarva, seeing Lancelot's sad 
 face. 
 
 " Because it is so unfit for a gentleman, there- 
 fore I do thank you. It is right to know what 
 one's own flesh and blood are doing." 
 
 " Hark to that song, sir ! that 's an old one. I 
 didn't think they 'd get on to singing that." 
 
 The Blackbird was again on the table, but 
 seemed this time disinclined to exhibit. 
 
 " Out wi' un, boy; it wain't burn thy mouth ! " 
 
 "I be af card." 
 
 "O' who?" 
 
 "Keeper there." 
 
 He pointed to Tregarva; there was a fierce 
 growl round the room. 
 
 "I am no keeper," shouted Tregarva, starting 
 up. " I was turned off this morning for speaking
 
 228 Yeast 
 
 my mind about the squires, and now I 'm one of 
 you, to live and die." 
 
 This answer was received with a murmur of 
 applause ; and a fellow in a scarlet merino necker- 
 chief, three waistcoats, and a fancy shooting- 
 jacket, who had been eyeing Lancelot for some 
 time, sidled up behind them, and whispered in 
 Tregarva's ear: 
 
 " Perhaps you 'd like an engagement in our line, 
 young man, and your friend there, he seems a 
 sporting gent too. We could show him very 
 pretty shooting." 
 
 Tregarva answered by the first and last oath 
 Lancelot ever heard from him, and turning to 
 him, as the rascal sneaked off: 
 
 "That's a poaching crimp from London, sir; 
 tempting these poor boys to sin, and deceit, and 
 drunkenness, and theft, and the hulks." 
 
 " I fancy I saw him somewhere the night of our 
 row you understand ? " 
 
 "So do I, sir, but there 's no use talking of it." 
 
 Blackbird was by this time prevailed on to 
 sing, and burst out as melodious as ever, while 
 all heads were cocked on one side in delighted 
 attention. 
 
 " I zeed a vire o' Monday night, 
 
 A vire both great and high ; 
 But I wool not tell you where, my boys, 
 
 Nor wool not tell you why. 
 The varmer he comes screeching out, 
 
 To zave 'uns new brood mare ; 
 Zays I, ' You and your stock may roast, 
 
 Vor aught us poor chaps care.' 
 
 " Coorus, boys, coorus ! " 
 And the chorus burst out :
 
 The Village Revel 229 
 
 44 Then here 's a curse on varmers all 
 
 As rob and grind the poor ; 
 To re'p the fruit of all their works 
 In * * * * for evermoor-r-r-r. 
 
 u A blind owld dame come to the vire, 
 
 Zo near as she could get ; 
 Zays, ' Here 's a luck I war n't asleep 
 To lose this blessed hett. 
 
 " They robs us of our turfing rights, 
 
 Our bits of chips and sticks, 
 Till poor folks now can't warm their hands, 
 Except by varmer's ricks." 
 
 "Then, etc." 
 
 And again the boy's delicate voice rung out 
 the ferocious chorus, with something, Lancelot 
 fancied, of fiendish exultation, and every worn 
 face lighted up with a coarse laugh, that indicated 
 no malice but also no mercy. 
 
 Lancelot was sickened, and rose to go. 
 
 As he turned, his arm was seized suddenly and 
 firmly. He looked round, and saw a coarse, 
 handsome, showily dressed girl, looking intently 
 into his face. He shook her angrily off. 
 
 "You needn't be so proud, Mr. Smith; I've 
 had my hand on the arm of as good as you. Ah, 
 you need n't start ! I know you I know you, I 
 say, well enough. You used to be with him. 
 Where is he?" 
 
 " Whom do you mean ? " 
 
 "He!" answered the girl, with a fierce, sur- 
 prised look, as if there could be no one else in 
 the world. 
 
 "Colonel Bracebridge, " whispered Tregarva. 
 
 " Ay, he it is ! And now walk further off, 
 bloodhound ! and let me speak to Mr. Smith.
 
 230 Yeast 
 
 He is in Norway," she ran on eagerly. "When 
 will he be back? When?" 
 
 "Why do you want to know?" asked Lancelot. 
 
 " When will he be back ? " she kept on 
 fiercely repeating the question; and then burst 
 out : " Curse you gentlemen all ! Cowards ! you 
 are all in a league against us poor girls ! You 
 can hunt alone when you betray us, and lie fast 
 enough then? But when we come for justice, 
 you all herd together like a flock of rooks; 
 and turn so delicate and honorable all of a sud- 
 den to each other ! When will he be back, I 
 say?" 
 
 "In a month," answered Lancelot, who saw 
 that something really important lay behind the 
 girl's wildness. 
 
 "Too late!" she cried wildly, clapping her 
 hands together; "too late! Here tell him you 
 saw me; tell him you saw Mary; tell him where 
 and in what a pretty place, too, for maid, master, 
 or man ! What are you doing here ? " 
 
 " What is that to you, my good girl ? " 
 
 "True. Tell him you saw me here; and tell 
 him, when next he hears of me, it will be in a 
 very different place. " 
 
 She turned and vanished among the crowd. 
 Lancelot almost ran out into the night, into a 
 triad of fights, two drunken men, two jealous 
 wives, and a brute who struck a poor, thin, worn- 
 out woman, for trying to coax him home. Lancelot 
 rushed up to interfere, but a man seized his 
 uplifted arm. 
 
 "He'll only beat her all the more when he 
 getteth home." 
 
 "She has stood that every Saturday night for
 
 The Village Revel 231 
 
 the last seven years, to my knowledge," said 
 Tregarva; "and worse, too, at times." 
 
 " Good God ! is there no escape for her from 
 her tyrant ? " 
 
 "No, sir. It's only you gentlefolks who can 
 afford such luxuries ; your poor man may be tied 
 to a harlot, or your poor woman to a ruffian, but 
 once done, done forever. " 
 
 "Well," thought Lancelot, "we English have 
 a characteristic way of proving the holiness of 
 the marriage tie. The angel of Justice and Pity 
 cannot sever it, only the stronger demon of 
 Money." 
 
 Their way home lay over Ashy Down, a lofty 
 chalk promontory, round whose foot the river 
 made a sudden bend. As they paced along over 
 the dreary hedgeless stubbles, they both started, 
 as a ghostly " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " rang through the 
 air over their heads, and was answered by a like 
 cry, faint and distant, across the wolds. 
 
 "That's those stone-curlews at least, so I 
 hope," said Tregarva. " He '11 be round again in 
 a minute." 
 
 And again, right between them and the clear, 
 cold moon, " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " resounded over their 
 heads. They gazed up into the cloudless star- 
 bespangled sky, but there was no sign of living 
 thing. 
 
 "It's an old sign to me," quoth Tregarva; 
 " God grant that I may remember it in this black 
 day of mine." 
 
 "How so?" asked Lancelot; "I should not 
 have fancied you a superstitious man." 
 
 " Names go for nothing, sir, and what my fore- 
 fathers believed in I am not going to be conceited
 
 232 Yeast 
 
 enough to disbelieve in a hurry. But if you 
 heard my story you would think I had reason 
 enough to remember that devil's laugh up there." 
 
 " Let me hear it then. " 
 
 " Well, sir, it may be a long story to you, but 
 it was a short one to me, for it was the making 
 of me, out of hand, there and then, blessed be 
 God ! But if you will have it " 
 
 "And I will have it, friend Tregarva," quoth 
 Lancelot, lighting his cigar. 
 
 "I was about sixteen years old, just after I 
 came home from the Brazils " 
 
 " What ! have you been in the Brazils ? " 
 
 "Indeed and I have, sir, for three years; and 
 one thing I learnt there, at least, that 's worth 
 going for." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "What the Garden of Eden must have been 
 like. But those Brazils, under God, were the 
 cause of my being here ; for my father, who was a 
 mine-captain, lost all his money there, by no 
 man's fault but his own, and not his either, the 
 world would say, and when we came back to 
 Cornwall he could not stand the bal work, nor I 
 neither. Out of that burning sun, sir, to come 
 home here, and work in the levels, up to our 
 knees in warm water, with the thermometer at 
 85, and then up a thousand feet of ladder to 
 grass, reeking wet with heat, and find the easterly 
 sleet driving across those open furze-crofts he 
 couldn't stand it, sir few stand it long, even of 
 those who stay in Cornwall. We miners have a 
 short lease of life; consumption and strains break 
 us down before we 're fifty." 
 
 "But how came you here? "
 
 The Village Revel 233 
 
 "The doctor told my father, and me too, sir, 
 that we must give up mining, or die of decline : 
 so he came up here, to a sister of his that was 
 married to the squire's gardener, and here he 
 died; and the squire, God bless him and forgive 
 him, took a fancy to me, and made me under- 
 keeper. And I loved the life, for it took me 
 among the woods and the rivers, where I could 
 think of the Brazils, and fancy myself back again. 
 But mustn't talk of that where God wills is 
 all right. And it is a fine life for reading and 
 thinking, a gamekeeper's, for it 's an idle life at 
 best. Now that 's over," he added, with a sigh, 
 "and the Lord has fulfilled His words to me, 
 that He spoke the first night that ever I heard a 
 stone-plover cry. " 
 
 " What on earth can you mean ? " asked Lance- 
 lot, deeply interested. 
 
 "Why, sir, it was a wild, whirling gray night, 
 with the air full of sleet and rain, and my father 
 sent me over to Redruth town to bring home 
 some trade or other. And as I came back I got 
 blinded with the sleet, and I lost my way across 
 the moors. You know those Cornish furze- 
 moors, sir ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Well, then, they are burrowed like a rabbit- 
 warren with old mine-shafts. You can't go in 
 some places ten yards without finding great, 
 ghastly black holes, covered in with furze, and 
 weeds, and bits of rotting timber; and when I 
 was a boy I couldn't keep from them. Some- 
 thing seemed to draw me to go and peep down, 
 and drop pebbles in, to hear them rattle against 
 the sides, fathoms below, till they plumped into
 
 234 Yeast 
 
 the ugly black still water at the bottom. And I 
 used to be always after them in my dreams, when 
 I was young, falling down them, down, down, 
 all night long, till I woke screaming; for I 
 fancied they were hell's mouth, every one of 
 them. And it stands to reason, sir; we miners 
 hold that the lake of fire can't be far below. For 
 we find it grow warmer, and warmer, and warmer, 
 the farther we sink a shaft; and the learned 
 gentlemen have proved, sir, that it 's not the 
 blasting powder, nor the men's breaths, that heat 
 the mine." 
 
 Lancelot could but listen. 
 
 "Well, sir, I got into a great furze-croft, full 
 of deads (those are the earth-heaps they throw 
 out of the shafts), where no man in his senses 
 dare go forward or back in the dark, for fear of 
 the shafts ; and the wind and the snow were so 
 sharp, they made me quite stupid and sleepy ; and 
 I knew if I stayed there I should be frozen to 
 death, and if I went on, there were the shafts 
 ready to swallow me up : and what with fear and 
 the howling and raging of the wind, I was like a 
 mazed boy, sir. And I knelt down and tried to 
 pray; and then, in one moment, all the evil 
 things I 'd ever done, and the bad words and 
 thoughts that ever crossed me, rose up together 
 as clear as one page of a print-book ; and I knew 
 that if I died that minute I should go to hell. 
 And then I saw through the ground all the water 
 in the shafts glaring like blood, and all the sides 
 of the shafts fierce red-hot, as if hell was coming 
 up. And I heard the knockers knocking, or 
 thought I heard them, as plain as I hear that 
 grasshopper in the hedge now."
 
 The Village Revel 235 
 
 "What are the knockers? " 
 
 "They are the ghosts, the miners hold, of the 
 old Jews, sir, that crucified our Lord, and were 
 sent for slaves by the Roman emperors to work 
 the mines; and we find their old smelting- 
 houses, which we call Jews' houses, and their 
 blocks of tin, at the bottom of the great bogs, 
 which we call Jews' tin; and there's a town 
 among us, too, which we call Market -Jew but 
 the old name was Marazion; that means the 
 Bitterness of Zion, they tell me. Isn't it so, 
 sir?" 
 
 "I believe it is," said Lancelot, utterly puzzled 
 in this new field of romance. 
 
 " And bitter work it was for them, no doubt, 
 poor souls ! We used to break into the old shafts 
 and adits which they had made, and find old 
 stags' -horn pickaxes, that crumbled to pieces 
 when we brought them to grass; and they say, 
 that if a man will listen, sir, of a still night, 
 about those old shafts, he may hear the ghosts of 
 them at working, knocking, and picking, as clear 
 as if there was a man at work in the next 
 level. It may be all an old fancy. I suppose 
 it is. But I believed it when I was a boy ; and 
 it helped the work in me that night. But I '11 go 
 on with my story." 
 
 "Go on with what you like," said Lancelot. 
 
 "Well, sir, I was down on my knees among 
 the furze-bushes, and I tried to pray; but I was 
 too frightened, for I felt the beast I had been, 
 sir; and I expected the ground to open and let 
 me down every moment ; and then there came by 
 over my head a rushing, and a cry. ' Ha ! ha ! 
 ha ! Paul ! ' it said ; and it seemed as if all the
 
 236 Yeast 
 
 devils and witches were out on the wind, a-laugh- 
 ing at my misery. 'Oh, I'll mend I'll re- 
 pent, ' I said, ' indeed I will : ' and again it came 
 back, ' Ha ! ha ! ha ! Paul ! ' it said. I knew 
 afterwards that it was a bird; but the Lord sent 
 it to me for a messenger, no less, that night. 
 And I shook like a reed in the water; and then, 
 all at once a thought struck me. ' Why should I 
 be a coward ? Why should I be afraid of shafts, 
 or devils, or hell, or anything else? If I am a 
 miserable sinner, there's One died for me I 
 owe him love, not fear at all. I '11 not be fright- 
 ened into doing right that's a rascally reason 
 for repentance. ' And so it was, sir, that I rose 
 up like a man, and said to the Lord Jesus, right 
 out into the black, dumb air, ' If you '11 be on 
 my side this night, good Lord, that died for me, 
 I '11 be on your side forever, villain as I am, if 
 I'm worth making any use of.' And there and 
 then, sir, I saw a light come over the bushes, 
 brighter, and brighter, up to me ; and there rose 
 up a voice within me, and spoke to me, quite 
 soft and sweet, ' Fear not, Paul, for I will send, 
 thee far hence unto the Gentiles.' And what 
 more happened I can't tell, for when I woke I 
 was safe at home. My father and his folk had 
 been out with lanterns after me; and there they 
 found me, sure enough, in a dead faint on the 
 ground. But this I know, sir, that those words 
 have never left my mind since for a day together; 
 and I know that they will be fulfilled in me this 
 tide, or never. " 
 
 Lancelot was silent a few minutes. 
 
 " I suppose, Tregarva, that you would call this 
 your conversion ? "
 
 The Village Revel 237 
 
 " I should call it one, sir, because it was one. " 
 
 "Tell me now, honestly, did any real, practical 
 change in your behavior take place after that 
 night?" 
 
 "As much, sir, as if you put a soul into a hog, 
 and told him that he was a gentleman's son; and, 
 if every time he remembered that, he got spirit 
 enough to conquer his hoggishness, and behave 
 like a man, till the hoggishness died out of him, 
 and the manliness grew up and bore fruit in him, 
 more and more each day. " 
 
 Lancelot half understood him, and sighed. 
 
 A long silence followed, as they paced on past 
 lonely farmyards, from which the rich manure- 
 water was draining across the road in foul black 
 streams, festering and steaming in the chill night 
 air. Lancelot sighed as he saw the fruitful mate- 
 rials of food running to waste, and thought of the 
 "over-population " cry ; and then he looked across 
 to the miles of brown moorland on the opposite 
 side of the valley, that lay idle and dreary under 
 the autumn moon, except where here and there a 
 squatter's cottage and rood of fruitful garden gave 
 the lie to the laziness and ignorance of man, who 
 pretends that it is not worth his while to cultivate 
 the soil which God has given him. " Good 
 heavens ! " he thought, " had our forefathers had 
 no more enterprise than modem landlords, where 
 should we all have been at this moment? Every- 
 where waste ! Waste of manure, waste of land, 
 waste of muscle, waste of brain, waste of popu- 
 lation and we call ourselves the workshop of 
 the world!" 
 
 As they passed through the miserable hamlet- 
 street of Ashy, they saw a light burning in a
 
 238 Yeast 
 
 window. At the door below, a haggard woman 
 was looking anxiously down the village. 
 
 "What's the matter, Mistress Cooper?" asked 
 Tregarva. 
 
 "Here's Mrs. Grane's poor girl lying sick of 
 the fever the Lord help her ! and the boy died 
 of it last week. We sent for the doctor this 
 afternoon, and he's busy with a poor soul that's 
 in her trouble; and now we've sent down to the 
 squire's, and the young ladies, God bless them! 
 sent answer they'd come themselves straight- 
 way. " 
 
 " No wonder you have typhus here, " said Lance- 
 lot, "with this filthy open drain running right 
 before the door. Why can't you clean it out? " 
 
 "Why, what harm does that do?" answered 
 the woman, peevishly. " Besides, here 's my 
 master gets up to his work by five in the morn- 
 ing, and not back till seven at night, and by then 
 he ain't in no humor to clean out gutters. And 
 where's the water to come from to keep a place 
 clean ? It costs many a one of us here a shilling 
 a week the summer through to pay fetching water 
 up the hill. We 've work enough to fill our 
 kettles. The muck must just lie in the road, 
 smell or none, till the rain carries it away." 
 
 Lancelot sighed again. 
 
 " It would be a good thing for Ashy, Tregarva, 
 if the weir-pool did, some fine morning, run up 
 to Ashy Down, as poor Harry Verney said on his 
 deathbed." 
 
 "There won't be much of Ashy left by that 
 time, sir, if the landlords go on pulling down 
 cottages at their present rate ; driving the people 
 into the towns, to herd together there like hogs,
 
 The Village Revel 239 
 
 and walk out to their work four or five miles 
 every morning." 
 
 "Why," said Lancelot, "wherever one goes 
 one sees commodious new cottages springing 
 up." 
 
 "Wherever you go, sir; but what of wherever 
 you don't go? Along the roadsides, and round 
 the gentlemen's parks, where the cottages are in 
 sight, it's all very smart; but just go into the 
 outlying hamlets a whited sepulchre, sir, is 
 many a great estate; outwardly swept and gar- 
 nished, and inwardly full of all uncleanliness, 
 and dead men's bones." 
 
 At this moment two cloaked and veiled figures 
 came up to the door, followed by a servant. 
 There was no mistaking those delicate footsteps, 
 and the two young men drew back with fluttering 
 hearts, and breathed out silent blessings on the 
 ministering angels, as they entered the crazy and 
 reeking house. 
 
 "I'm thinking, sir," said Tregarva, as they 
 walked slowly and reluctantly away, "that it is 
 hard of the gentlemen to leave all God's work to 
 the ladies, as nine-tenths of them do." 
 
 "And I am thinking, Tregarva, that both for 
 ladies and gentlemen, prevention is better than 
 cure." 
 
 "There's a great change come over Miss 
 Argemone, sir. She used not to be so ready to 
 start out at midnight to visit dying folk. A 
 blessed change!" 
 
 Lancelot thought so too, and he thought that 
 he knew the cause of it. 
 
 Argemone' s appearance, and their late conver- 
 sation, had started a new covey of strange fancies.
 
 240 Yeast 
 
 Lancelot followed them over hill and dale, glad 
 to escape a moment from the mournful lessons of 
 that evening; but even over them there was a 
 cloud of sadness. Harry Verney's last words, 
 and Argemone's accidental whisper about "a 
 curse upon the Lavingtons," rose to his mind. 
 He longed to ask Tregarva, but he was afraid 
 not of the man, for there was a delicacy in his 
 truthfulness which encouraged the most utter 
 confidence, but of the subject itself; but curi- 
 osity conquered. 
 
 "What did Old Harry mean about the Nun- 
 pool ? " he said at last. " Every one seemed to 
 understand him." 
 
 "Ah, sir, he oughtn't to have talked of it! 
 But dying men, at times, see over the dark water 
 into deep things deeper than they think them- 
 selves. Perhaps there 's one speaks through 
 them. But I thought every one knew the story." 
 
 "I do not, at least." 
 
 "Perhaps it 's so much the better, sir." 
 
 "Why? I must insist on knowing. It is 
 necessary proper, that is that I should hear 
 everything that concerns " 
 
 "I understand, sir; so it is; and I'll tell you. 
 The story goes, that in the old Popish times, 
 when the nuns held Whitford Priors, the first 
 Mr. Lavington that ever was came from the king 
 with a warrant to turn them all out, poor souls, 
 and take the lands for his own. And they say 
 the head lady of them prioress, or abbess, as 
 they called her withstood him, and cursed him, 
 in the name of the Lord, for a hypocrite who 
 robbed harmless women under the cloak of pun- 
 ishing them for sins they 'd never committed (for
 
 The Village Revel 241 
 
 they say, sir, he went up to court, and slandered 
 the nuns there for drunkards and worse). And 
 she told him, ' That the curse of the nuns of 
 Whitford should be on him and his, till they 
 helped the poor in the spirit of the nuns of 
 Whitford, and the Nun-pool ran up to Ashy 
 Down. ' " 
 
 "That time is not come yet," said Lancelot. 
 
 "But the worst is to come, sir. For he or his, 
 sir, that night, said or did something to the lady, 
 that was more than woman's heart could bear: 
 and the next morning she was found dead and 
 cold, drowned in that weir-pool. And there the 
 gentleman's eldest son was drowned, and more 
 than one Lavington beside. Miss Argemone's 
 only brother, that was the heir, was drowned 
 there too, when he was a little one." 
 
 " I never heard that she had a brother. " 
 
 " No, sir, no one talks of it. There are many 
 things happen in the great house that you must 
 go to the little house to hear of. But the country- 
 folk believe, sir, that the nun's curse holds true; 
 and they say, that Whitford folks have been get- 
 ting poorer and wickeder ever since that time, 
 and will, till the Nun-pool runs up to Ashy, and 
 the Lavingtons' name goes out of Whitford 
 Priors." 
 
 Lancelot said nothing. A presentiment of evil 
 hung over him. He was utterly down-hearted 
 about Tregarva, about Argemone, about the 
 poor. The truth was, he could not shake off the 
 impression of the scene he had left, utterly dis- 
 appointed and disgusted with the "revel." He 
 had expected, as I said before, at least to hear 
 something of pastoral sentiment, and of genial
 
 242 Yeast 
 
 frolicsome humor; to see some innocent, simple 
 enjoyment : but instead, what had he seen but 
 vanity, jealousy, hoggish sensuality, dull vacuity? 
 drudges struggling for one night to forget their 
 drudgery. And yet withal, those songs, and the 
 effect which they produced, showed that in these 
 poor creatures, too, lay the germs of pathos, 
 taste, melody, soft and noble affections. " What 
 right have we," thought he, "to hinder their 
 development ? Art, poetry, music, science, ay, 
 even those athletic and graceful exercises on 
 which we all pride ourselves, which we consider 
 necessary to soften and refine ourselves, what 
 God has given us a monopoly of them? what 
 is good for the rich man is good for the poor. 
 Over-education ? And what of that ? What if 
 the poor be raised above ' their station ' ? What 
 right have we to keep them down? How long 
 have they been our born thralls in soul, as well 
 as in body ? What right have we to say that they 
 shall know no higher recreation than the hogs, 
 because, forsooth, if we raised them, they might 
 refuse to work for us ? Are we to fix how far 
 their minds may be developed? Has not God 
 fixed it for us, when He gave them the same 
 passions, talents, tastes, as our own ? " 
 
 Tregarva's meditations must have been running 
 in a very different channel, for he suddenly burst 
 out, after a long silence : 
 
 " It 's a pity these fairs can't be put down. They 
 do a lot of harm ; ruin all the young girls round, 
 the Dissenters' children especially, for they run 
 utterly wild ; their parents have no hold on them 
 at all." 
 
 " They tell them that they are children of the
 
 The Village Revel 243 
 
 devil," said Lancelot. " What wonder if the chil- 
 dren take them at their word, and act accordingly? " 
 
 " The parson here, sir, who is a God-fearing man 
 enough, tried hard to put down this one, but the 
 innkeepers were too strong for him." 
 
 " To take away their only amusement, in short. 
 He had much better have set to work to amuse 
 them himself." 
 
 " His business is to save souls, sir, and not to 
 amuse them. I don't see, sir, what Christian 
 people want with such vanities." 
 
 Lancelot did not argue the point, for he knew 
 the prejudices of Dissenters on the subject ; but it 
 did strike him that if Tregarva's brain had been a 
 little less preponderant, he, too, might have found 
 the need of some recreation besides books and 
 thought. 
 
 By this time they were at Lancelot's door. He 
 bid the keeper a hearty good-night, made him 
 promise to see him next day, and went to bed and 
 slept till nearly noon. 
 
 When he walked into his breakfast-room, he 
 found a note on the table in his uncle's hand- 
 writing. The vicar's servant had left it an hour 
 before. He opened it listlessly, rang the bell 
 furiously, ordered out his best horse, and, huddling 
 on his clothes, galloped to the nearest station, 
 caught the train, and arrived at his uncle's bank 
 it had stopped payment two hours before.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 
 
 YES ! the bank had stopped. The ancient 
 firm of Smith, Brown, Jones, Robinson, and 
 Co., which had been for some years past expand- 
 ing from a solid golden organism into a cobweb- 
 tissue and huge balloon of threadbare paper, had 
 at last worn through and collapsed, dropping its 
 car and human contents miserably into the Thames 
 mud. Why detail the pitiable post-mortem exami- 
 nation resulting? Lancelot sickened over it for 
 many a long day; not, indeed, mourning at his 
 private losses, but at the thorough hollowness of 
 the system which it exposed, about which he spoke 
 his mind pretty freely to his uncle, who bore it 
 good-humoredly enough. Indeed, the discussions 
 to which it gave rise rather comforted the good 
 man, by turning his thought from his own losses 
 to general principles. " I have ruined you, my 
 poor boy," he used to say ; " so you may as well 
 take your money 's worth out of me in bullying." 
 Nothing, indeed, could surpass his honest and 
 manly sorrow for having been the cause of Lan- 
 celot's beggary; but as for persuading him that 
 his system was wrong, it was quite impossible. 
 Not that Lancelot was hard upon him; on the 
 contrary, he assured him, repeatedly, of his con- 
 viction, that the precepts of the Bible had nothing to
 
 What 's to be Done ? 245 
 
 do with the laws of commerce ; that though the Jews 
 were forbidden to take interest of Jews, Christians 
 had a perfect right to be as hard as they liked on 
 " brother " Christians ; that there could not be the 
 least harm in share-jobbing, for though it did, to be 
 sure, add nothing to the wealth of the community 
 only conjure money out of your neighbor's 
 pocket into your own yet was not that all fair 
 in trade ? If a man did not know the real value 
 of the shares he sold you, you were not bound to 
 tell him. Again, Lancelot quite agreed with his 
 uncle, that though covetousness might be idol- 
 atry, yet money-making could not be called cov- 
 etousness ; and that, on the whole, though making 
 haste to be rich was denounced as a dangerous 
 and ruinous temptation in St. Paul's times, that 
 was not the slightest reason why it should be so 
 now. All these concessions were made with a 
 freedom which caused the good banker to suspect 
 at times that his shrewd nephew was laughing at 
 him in his sleeve, but he could not but subscribe 
 to them for the sake of consistency; though as 
 a stanch Protestant, it puzzled him a little at 
 times to find it necessary to justify himself by 
 getting his " infidel " nephew to explain away so 
 much of the Bible for him. But men are accus- 
 tomed to do that nowadays, and so was he. 
 
 Once only did Lancelot break out with his real 
 sentiments when the banker was planning how to 
 re-establish his credit; to set to work, in fact, 
 to blow over again the same bubble which had 
 already burst under him. 
 
 "If I were a Christian," said Lancelot, "like 
 you, I would call this credit system of yours the 
 devil's selfish counterfeit of God's order of mutual
 
 246 Yeast 
 
 love and trust; the child of that miserable dream, 
 which, as Dr. Chalmers well said, expects uni- 
 versal selfishness to do the work of universal 
 love. Look at your credit system, how not in 
 its abuse, but in its very essence it carries the 
 seeds of self-destruction. In the first place, a 
 man's credit depends, not upon his real worth 
 and property, but upon his reputation for property ; 
 daily and hourly he is tempted, he is forced, to 
 puff himself, to pretend to be richer than he is." 
 
 The banker sighed and shrugged his shoulders. 
 "We all do it, my dear boy." 
 
 " I know it. You must do it, or be more than 
 human. There is lie the first, and look at lie the 
 second. This credit system is founded on the 
 universal faith and honor of men towards men. 
 But do you think faith and honor can be the 
 children of selfishness ? Men must be chivalrous 
 and disinterested to be honorable. And you 
 expect them all to join in universal faith each 
 for his own selfish interest ? You forget that if 
 that is the prime motive, men will be honorable 
 only as long as it suits that same self-interest." 
 
 The banker shrugged his shoulders again. 
 
 "Yes, my dear uncle," said Lancelot, "you all 
 forget it, though you suffer for it daily and 
 hourly; though the honorable men among you 
 complain of the stain which has fallen on the old 
 chivalrous good faith of English commerce, and 
 say that now, abroad as well as at home, an Eng- 
 lishman's word is no longer worth other men's 
 bonds. You see the evil, and you deplore it in 
 disgust. Ask yourself honestly, how can you 
 battle against it, while you allow in practice, 
 and in theory too, except in church on Sundays,
 
 What's to be Done? 247 
 
 the very falsehood from which it all springs ? 
 that a man is bound to get wealth, not for his 
 country, but for himself; that, in short, not 
 patriotism, but selfishness, is the bond of all 
 society. Selfishness can collect, not unite, a 
 herd of cowardly wild cattle, that they may feed 
 together, breed together, keep off the wolf and 
 bear together. But when one of your wild cattle 
 falls sick, what becomes of the corporate feelings 
 of the herd then? For one man of your class 
 who is nobly helped by his fellows, are not the 
 thousand left behind to perish ? Your Bible talks 
 of society, not as a herd, but as a living tree, 
 an organic individual body, a holy brotherhood, 
 and kingdom of God. And here is an idol which 
 you have set up instead of it ! " 
 
 But the banker was deaf to all arguments. No 
 doubt he had plenty, for he was himself a just 
 and generous ay, and a God-fearing man in his 
 way, only he regarded Lancelot's young fancies 
 as too visionary to deserve an answer; which 
 they most probably are ; else, having been broached 
 as often as they have been, they would surely, 
 ere now, have provoked the complete refutation 
 which can, no doubt, be given to them by hun- 
 dreds of learned votaries of so-called commerce. 
 And here I beg my readers to recollect that I am 
 in no way answerable for the speculations, either 
 of Lancelot or any of his acquaintances ; and that 
 these papers have been, from beginning to end, 
 as in name, so in nature, Yeast an honest 
 sample of the questions which, good or bad, are 
 fermenting in the minds of the young of this day, 
 and are rapidly leavening the minds of the rising 
 generation. No doubt they are all as full of fal-
 
 248 Yeast 
 
 lacies as possible, but as long as the saying of 
 the German sage stands true, that "the destiny 
 of any nation, at any given moment, depends on 
 the opinions of its young men under five-and- 
 twenty," so long it must be worth while for those 
 who wish to preserve the present order of society 
 to justify its acknowledged evils somewhat, not 
 only to the few young men who are interested in 
 preserving them, but also to the many who are not. 
 Though, therefore, I am neither Plymouth 
 Brother nor Communist, and as thoroughly con- 
 vinced as the newspapers can make me, that to 
 assert the duties of property is only to plot its 
 destruction, and that a community of. goods must 
 needs imply a community of wives (as every one 
 knows was the case with the apostolic Christians), 
 I shall take the liberty of narrating Lancelot's 
 fanatical conduct, without execratory comment, 
 certain that he will still receive his just reward 
 of condemnation ; and that, if I find facts, a sen- 
 sible public will find abhorrence for them. His 
 behavior was, indeed, most singular; he abso- 
 lutely refused a good commercial situation which 
 his uncle procured him. He did not believe 
 in being "cured by a hair of the dog that bit 
 him;" and he refused, also, the really generous 
 offers of the creditors, to allow him a sufficient 
 maintenance. 
 
 "No," he said, "no more pay without work for 
 me. I will earn my bread or starve. It seems 
 God's will to teach me what poverty is I will 
 see that His intention is not left half fulfilled. 
 I have sinned, and only in the stern delight of a 
 just penance can I gain self-respect. " 
 
 "But, my dear madman," said his uncle, "you
 
 What 's to be Done? 249 
 
 are just the innocent one among us all. You, 
 at least, were only a sleeping partner." 
 
 "And therein lies my sin; I took money which 
 I never earned, and cared as little how it was 
 gained as how I spent it. Henceforth I shall 
 touch no farthing which is the fruit of a system 
 which I cannot approve. I accuse no one. 
 Actions may vary in rightfulness, according to 
 the age and the person. But what may be right 
 for you because you think it right, is surely 
 wrong for me because I think it wrong." 
 
 So, with grim determination, he sent to the 
 hammer every article he possessed, till he had 
 literally nothing left but the clothes in which he 
 stood. "He could not rest," he said, "till he 
 had pulled out all his borrowed peacock's feathers. 
 When they were gone he should be able to see, 
 at last, whether he was jackdaw or eagle." And 
 wonder not, reader, at this same strength of will. 
 The very genius, which too often makes its pos- 
 sessor self-indulgent in common matters, from 
 the intense capability of enjoyment which it 
 brings, may also, when once his whole being is 
 stirred into motion by some great object, trans- 
 form him into a hero. 
 
 And he carried a letter, too, in his bosom, 
 night and day, which routed all coward fears 
 and sad forebodings as soon as they arose, and 
 converted the lonely and squalid lodging to which 
 he had retired, into a fairy palace peopled with 
 bright phantoms of future bliss. I need not say 
 from whom it came. 
 
 " Beloved ! " (it ran) " Darling ! you need not pain 
 yourself to tell me anything. I know all ; and I know, 
 I^-Vol. V
 
 250 Yeast 
 
 too (do not ask me how), your noble determination to 
 drink the wholesome cup of poverty to the very dregs. 
 
 " Oh that I were with you ! Oh that I could give 
 you my fortune ! but that is not yet, alas ! in my own 
 power. No ! rather would I share that poverty with you, 
 and strengthen you in your purpose. And yet, I cannot 
 bear the thought of you, lonely perhaps miserable. 
 But, courage ! though you have lost all, you have found 
 me; and now you are knitting me to you forever 
 justifying my own love to me by your nobleness ; and am 
 I not worth all the world to you? I dare say this to 
 you; you will not think me conceited. Can we mis- 
 understand each other's hearts ? And all this while you 
 are alone ! Oh ! I have mourned for you ! Since I 
 heard of your misfortune I have not tasted pleasure. 
 The light of heaven has been black to me, and I have 
 lived only upon love. I will not taste comfort while you 
 are wretched. Would that I could be poor like you ! 
 Every night upon the bare floor I lie down to sleep, and 
 fancy you in your little chamber, and nestle to you, and 
 cover that dear face with kisses. Strange ! that I should 
 dare to speak thus to you, whom a few months ago I had 
 never heard of ! Wonderful simplicity of love ! How 
 all that is prudish and artificial flees before it ! I seem 
 to have begun a new life. If I could play now, it would 
 be only with little children. Farewell ! be great a 
 glorious future is before you and me in you ! " 
 
 Lancelot's answer must remain untold; per- 
 haps the veil has been already too far lifted which 
 hides the sanctuary of such love. But, alas ! to 
 his letter no second had been returned; and he 
 felt though he dared not confess it to himself 
 a gloomy presentiment of evil flit across him, 
 as he thought of his fallen fortunes, and the 
 altered light in which his suit would be regarded
 
 What 's to be Done? 251 
 
 by Argemone's parents. Once he blamed himself 
 bitterly for not having gone to Mr. Lavington 
 the moment he discovered Argemone's affection, 
 and insuring as he then might have done his 
 consent. But again he felt that no sloth had 
 kept him back, but adoring reverence for his 
 God-given treasure, and humble astonishment at 
 his own happiness; and he fled from the thought 
 into renewed examination into the state of the 
 masses, the effect of which was only to deepen 
 his own determination to share their lot. 
 
 But at the same time it seemed to him but 
 fair to live, as long as it would last, on that part 
 of his capital which his creditors would have 
 given nothing for namely, his information; 
 and he set to work to write. But, alas ! he had 
 but a "small literary connection;" and the entree 
 of the initiated ring is not obtained in a day. . . . 
 Besides, he would not write trash. He was in 
 far too grim a humor for that ; and if he wrote on 
 important subjects, able editors always were in 
 the habit of entrusting them to old contributors, 
 men, in short, in whose judgment they had 
 confidence not to say anything which would 
 commit the magazine to anything but its own 
 little party-theory. And behold ! poor Lancelot 
 found himself of no party whatsoever. He was 
 in a minority of one against the whole world, on 
 all points, right or wrong. He had the unhap- 
 piest knack (as all geniuses have) of seeing con- 
 nections, humorous or awful, between the most 
 seemingly antipodal things ; of illustrating every 
 subject from three or four different spheres which 
 it is anathema to mention in the same page. If 
 he wrote a physical-science article, able editors
 
 252 Yeast 
 
 asked him what the deuce a scrap of high-church 
 ism did in the middle of it? If he took the same 
 article to a high-church magazine, the editor 
 could not commit himself to any theory which 
 made the earth more than six thousand years old, 
 and was afraid that the public taste would not 
 approve of the allusions to free-masonry and 
 Soyer's soup. . . . And worse than that, one and 
 all Jew, Turk, infidel, and heretic, as well as 
 the orthodox joined in pious horror at his irrev- 
 erence ; the shocking way he had of jumbling 
 religion and politics the human and the divine 
 the theories of the pulpit with the facts of the 
 exchange. . . . The very atheists, who laughed 
 at him for believing in a God, agreed that that, 
 at least, was inconsistent with the dignity of the 
 God who did not exist. . . . It was Syncretism 
 . . . Pantheism. . . . 
 
 "Very well, friends," quoth Lancelot to him- 
 self, in bitter rage, one day, " if you choose to be 
 without God in the world, and to honor Him by 
 denying Him . . . do so! You shall have your 
 way; and go to the place whither it seems lead- 
 ing you just now, at railroad pace. But I must 
 live. . . . Well, at least, there is some old col- 
 lege nonsense of mine, written three years ago, 
 when I believed, like you, that all heaven and 
 earth was put together out of separate bits, like a 
 child's puzzle, and that each topic ought to have 
 its private little pigeon-hole all to itself in a 
 man's brain, like drugs in a chemist's shop. 
 Perhaps it will suit you, friends ; perhaps it will 
 be system -frozen, and narrow, and dogmatic, and 
 cowardly, and godless enough for you. "... 
 
 So he went forth with them to market; and
 
 What's to be Done? 253 
 
 behold ! they were bought forthwith. There was 
 verily a demand for such; . . . and in spite of 
 the ten thousand ink-fountains which were daily 
 pouring out similar Stygian liquors, the public 
 thirst remained unslaked. "Well," thought 
 Lancelot, "the negro race is not the only one 
 which is afflicted with manias for eating dirt. 
 ... By the by, where is poor Luke?" 
 
 Ah ! where was poor Luke ? Lancelot had 
 received from him one short and hurried note, 
 blotted with tears, which told how he had in- 
 formed his father; and how his father had refused 
 to see him, and had forbid him the house; and 
 how he had offered him an allowance of fifty 
 pounds a year (it should have been five hundred, 
 he said, if he had possessed it), which Luke's 
 director, sensibly enough, had compelled him to 
 accept. . . . And there the letter ended, abruptly, 
 leaving the writer evidently in lower depths than 
 he had either experienced already or expected at 
 all. 
 
 Lancelot had often pleaded for him with his 
 father; but in vain. Not that the good man was 
 hard-hearted : he would cry like a child about it 
 all to Lancelot when they sat together after 
 dinner. But he was utterly beside himself, what 
 with grief, shame, terror, and astonishment. On 
 the whole, the sorrow was a real comfort to him : 
 it gave him something beside his bankruptcy to 
 think of; and, distracted between the two differ- 
 ent griefs, he could brood over neither. But of 
 the two, certainly his son's conversion was the 
 worst in his eyes. The bankruptcy was intelli- 
 gible measurable ; it was something known and 
 classified part of the ills which flesh (or, at
 
 254 Yeast 
 
 least, commercial flesh) is heir to. But going 
 to Rome ! 
 
 "I can't understand it. I won't believe it. 
 It's so foolish, you see, Lancelot so foolish 
 like an ass that eats thistles ! . . . There must 
 be some reason ; there must be something we 
 don't know, sir! Do you think they could have 
 promised to make him a cardinal ? " 
 
 Lancelot quite agreed that there were reasons 
 for it, that they or, at least, the banker did 
 not know. . . . 
 
 "Depend upon it, they promised him some- 
 thing some prince-bishopric, perhaps. Else 
 why on earth could a man go over ! It 's out of 
 the course of nature ! " 
 
 Lancelot tried in vain to make him understand 
 that a man might sacrifice everything to con- 
 science, and actually give up all worldly weal for 
 what he thought right. The banker turned on 
 him with angry resignation 
 
 "Very well I suppose he's done right then! 
 I suppose you'll go next! Take up a false 
 religion, and give up everything for it ! Why, 
 then, he must be honest; and if he 's honest he 's 
 in the right ; and I suppose I 'd better go too !" 
 
 Lancelot argued: but in vain. The idea of 
 disinterested sacrifice was so utterly foreign to 
 the good man's own creed and practice, that he 
 could but see one pair of alternatives. 
 
 " Either he is a good man, or he 's a hypocrite. 
 Either he 's right, or he 's gone over for some vile 
 selfish end ; and what can that be but money ? " 
 
 Lancelot gently hinted that there might be 
 other selfish ends besides pecuniary ones sav- 
 ing one's soul, for instance.
 
 What's to be Done? 255 
 
 "Why, if he wants to save his soul, he 's right. 
 What ought we all to do, but try to save our 
 souls? I tell you there's some sinister reason. 
 They've told him that they expect to convert 
 England I should like to see them do it ! and 
 that he'll be made a bishop. Don't argue with 
 me, or you'll drive me mad. I know those 
 Jesuits?" 
 
 And as soon as he began upon the Jesuits, 
 Lancelot prudently held his tongue. The good 
 man had worked himself up into a perfect frenzy 
 of terror and suspicion about them. He suspected 
 concealed Jesuits among his footmen and his 
 housemaids ; Jesuits in his counting-house, Jesuits 
 in his duns. . . . 
 
 " Hang it, sir ! how do I know that there ain't 
 a Jesuit listening to us now behind the curtain ? " 
 
 "I '11 go and look," quoth Lancelot, and suited 
 the action to the word. 
 
 "Well, if there ain't there might be. They 're 
 everywhere, I tell you. That vicar of Whitford 
 was a Jesuit. I was sure of it all along ; but the 
 man seemed so pious; and certainly he did my 
 poor dear boy a deal of good. But he ruined 
 you, you know. And I 'm convinced no, don't 
 contradict me; I tell you, I won't stand it 
 I 'm convinced that this whole mess of mine is a 
 plot of those rascals; I 'm as certain of it as if 
 they'd told me!" 
 
 "For what end?" 
 
 " How the deuce can I tell ? Am I a Jesuit, 
 to understand their sneaking, underhand pah! 
 I 'm sick of life ! Nothing but rogues wherever 
 one turns ! " 
 
 And then Lancelot used to try to persuade him
 
 256 Yeast 
 
 to take poor Luke back again. But vague terror 
 had steeled his heart. 
 
 "What! Why, he'd convert us all! He'd 
 convert his sisters! He'd bring his priests in 
 here, or his nuns disguised as ladies' maids, and 
 we should all go over, every one of us, like a set 
 of nine-pins ! " 
 
 "You seem to think Protestantism a rather 
 shaky cause, if it is so easy to be upset." 
 
 "Sir! Protestantism is the cause of England 
 and Christianity, and civilization, and freedom, 
 and common sense, sir ! and that 's the very reason 
 why it 's so easy to pervert men from it; and the 
 very reason why it's a lost cause, and Popery, 
 and Antichrist, and the gates of hell are coming 
 in like a flood to prevail against it ! " 
 
 "Well," thought Lancelot, "that is the very 
 strangest reason for its being a lost cause ! Per- 
 haps if my poor uncle believed it really to be the 
 cause of God Himself, he would not be in such 
 extreme fear for it, or fancy it required such a 
 hotbed and greenhouse culture. . . . Really, if 
 his sisters were little girls of ten years old, who 
 looked up to him as an oracle, there would be 
 some reason in it. ... But those tall, ball- 
 going, flirting, self-satisfied cousins of mine 
 who would have been glad enough, either of 
 them, two months ago, to snap up me, infidelity, 
 bad character, and all, as a charming rich young 
 rout if they have not learnt enough Protestant- 
 ism in the last five-and -twenty years to take care 
 of themselves, Protestantism must have very few 
 allurements, or else be very badly carried out in 
 practice by those who talk loudest in favor of it. 
 . . o I heard them praising O'Blareaway's ' rain-
 
 What's to be Done? 257 
 
 istry, ' by the by, the other day. So he is up in 
 town at last at the summit of his ambition. 
 Well, he may suit them. I wonder how many 
 young creatures like Argemone and Luke he 
 would keep from Popery!" 
 
 But there was no use arguing with a man in 
 such a state of mind; and gradually Lancelot 
 gave it up, in hopes that time would bring the 
 good man to his sane wits again, and that a 
 father's feelings would prove themselves stronger, 
 because more divine, than a so-called Protestant's 
 fears, though that would have been, in the 
 banker's eyes, and in the Jesuit's also so do 
 extremes meet the very reason for expecting 
 them to be the weaker; for it is the rule with all 
 bigots that the right cause is always a lost cause, 
 and therefore requires God's weapons of love, 
 truth, and reason being well known to be too 
 weak to be defended, if it is to be saved, with 
 the devil's weapons of bad logic, spite, and 
 calumny. 
 
 At last, in despair of obtaining tidings of his 
 cousin by any other method, Lancelot made up 
 his mind to apply to a certain remarkable man, 
 whose "conversion" had preceded Luke's about 
 a year, and had, indeed, mainly caused it. 
 
 He went, . . . and was not disappointed. 
 With the most winning courtesy and sweetness, 
 his story and his request were patiently listened to. 
 
 "The outcome of your speech, then, my dear 
 sir, as I apprehend it, is a request to me to send 
 .back the fugitive lamb into the jaws of the well- 
 meaning, but still lupine wolf?" 
 
 This was spoken with so sweet and arch a 
 smile, that it was impossible to be angry.
 
 258 Yeast 
 
 " On my honor, I have no wish to convert him. 
 All I want is to have human speech of him to 
 hear from his own lips that he is content. 
 Whither should I convert him? Not to my own 
 platform for I am nowhere. Not to that which 
 he has left, ... for if he could have found 
 standing ground there, he would not have gone 
 elsewhere for rest." 
 
 "Therefore they went out from you, because 
 they were not of you," said the "Father," half 
 aside. 
 
 "Most true, sir. I have felt long that argu- 
 ment was bootless with those whose root-ideas of 
 Deity, man, earth, and heaven, were as utterly 
 different from my own, as if we had been created 
 by two different beings." 
 
 " Do you include in that catalogue those ideas 
 of truth, love, and justice, which are Deity itself? 
 Have you no common ground in them ? " 
 
 "You are an elder and a better man than L 
 ... It would be insolent in me to answer that 
 question, except in one way, . . . and " 
 
 " In that you cannot answer it. Be it so. ... 
 You shall see your cousin. You may make what 
 efforts you will for his re-conversion. The 
 Catholic Church," continued he, with one of his 
 arch, deep-meaning smiles, "is not, like popular 
 Protestantism, driven into shrieking terror at the 
 approach of a foe. She has too much faith in 
 herself, and in Him who gives to her the power 
 of truth, to expect every gay meadow to allure 
 away her lambs from the fold." 
 
 "I assure you that your gallant permission is 
 unnecessary. I am beginning, at least, to believe 
 that there is a Father in Heaven who educates
 
 What's to be Done? 259 
 
 His children; and I have no wish to interfere 
 with His methods. Let my cousin go his way 
 ... he will learn something which he wanted, 
 I doubt not, on his present path, even as I shall 
 on mine. ' Se tu segui la tua Stella ' is my motto. 
 . . . Let it be his too, wherever the star may 
 guide him. If it be a will-o'-the-wisp, and lead 
 to the morass, he will only learn how to avoid 
 morasses better for the future." 
 
 " Ave Marts stella / It is the star of Bethlehem 
 which he follows . . . the star of Mary, immacu- 
 late, all-loving ! " . . . And he bowed his head 
 reverently. "Would that you, too, would sub- 
 mit yourself to that guidance! . . . You, too, 
 would seem to want some loving heart whereon 
 to rest. "... 
 
 Lancelot sighed. "I am not a child, but a 
 man ; I want not a mother to pet, but a man to 
 rule me." 
 
 Slowly his companion raised his thin hand, 
 and pointed to the crucifix, which stood at the 
 other end of the apartment. 
 
 "Behold him!" and he bowed his head once 
 more . . . and Lancelot, he knew not why, did 
 the same . . . and yet in an instant he threw his 
 head up proudly, and answered with George 
 Fox's old reply to the Puritans: 
 
 "I want a live Christ, not a dead one. . . . 
 That is noble . . . beautiful ... it may be 
 true. . . . But it has no message for me." 
 
 "He died for you." 
 
 " I care for the world, and not myself. " 
 
 "He died for the world." 
 
 "And has deserted it, as folks say now, and 
 become an absentee, performing His work by
 
 260 Yeast 
 
 deputies. ... Do not start; the blasphemy is 
 not mine, but those who preach it. No wonder 
 that the owners of the soil think it no shame to 
 desert their estates, when preachers tell them 
 that He to whom they say all power is given in 
 heaven and earth, has deserted His." 
 
 " What would you have, my dear sir ? " asked 
 the father. 
 
 "What the Jews had. A king of my nation, 
 and of the hearts of my nation, who would teach 
 soldiers, artists, craftsmen, statesmen, poets, 
 priests, if priests there must be. I want a human 
 lord, who understands me and the millions round 
 me, pities us, teaches us, orders our history, 
 civilization, development for us. I come to you, 
 full of manhood, and you send me to a woman. 
 I go to the Protestants, full of desires to right 
 the world and they begin to talk of the next 
 life, and give up this as lost ! " 
 
 A quiet smile lighted up the thin wan face, 
 full of unfathomable thoughts; and he replied, 
 again half to himself, 
 
 "Am I God, to kill or to make alive, that thou 
 sendest to me to recover a man of his leprosy? 
 Farewell. You shall see your cousin here at 
 noon to-morrow. You will not refuse my bless- 
 ing, or my prayers, even though they be offered 
 to a mother?" 
 
 "I will refuse nothing in the form of human 
 love." And the father blessed him fervently, 
 and he went out. . . . 
 
 " What a man ! " said he to himself, " or rather 
 the wreck of what a man ! Oh, for such a heart, 
 with the thews and sinews of a truly English 
 brain!"
 
 What 's to be Done ? 261 
 
 Next day he met Luke in that room. Their talk 
 was short and sad. Luke was on the point of en- 
 tering an order devoted especially to the worship 
 of the Blessed Virgin. 
 
 " My father has cast me out ... I must go to her 
 feet. She will have mercy, though man has none." 
 
 " But why enter the order? Why take an irrevo- 
 cable step ? " 
 
 " Because it is irrevocable ; because I shall enter 
 an utterly new life, in which old things shall pass 
 away, and all things become new, and I shall forget 
 the very names of Parent, Englishman, Citizen, 
 the very existence of that strange Babel of man's 
 building, whose roar and moan oppress me every 
 time I walk the street. Oh, for solitude, meditation, 
 penance ! Oh, to make up by bitter self-punish- 
 ment my ingratitude to her who has been leading 
 me unseen, for years, home to her bosom? The 
 all-prevailing mother, daughter of Gabriel, spouse 
 of Deity, flower of the earth, whom I have so long 
 despised ! Oh, to follow the example of the 
 blessed Mary of Oignies, who every day inflicted 
 on her most holy person eleven hundred stripes io 
 honor of that all-perfect maiden ! " 
 
 " Such an honor, I could have thought, would 
 have pleased better Kali, the murder-goddess of the 
 Thugs," thought Lancelot to himself; but he had 
 not the heart to say it, and he only replied : 
 
 "So torture propitiates the Virgin? That ex- 
 plains the strange story I read lately, of her hav- 
 ing appeared in the Cevennes, and informed the 
 peasantry that she had sent the potato disease on 
 account of their neglecting her shrines ; that unless 
 they repented, she would next year destroy their 
 cattle ; and the third year, themselves."
 
 262 Yeast 
 
 " Why not? " asked poor Luke. 
 
 " Why not, indeed ? If God is to be capricious, 
 proud, revengeful, why not the Son of God ? And 
 if the Son of God, why not His mother? " 
 
 " You judge spiritual feelings by the carnal test 
 of the understanding; your Protestant horror of 
 asceticism lies at the root of all you say. How 
 can you comprehend the self-satisfaction, the 
 absolute delight, of self-punishment? " 
 
 " So far from it, I have always had an infinite 
 respect for asceticism, as a noble and manful 
 thing the only manful thing to my eyes left in 
 Popery ; and fast dying out of that under Jesuit 
 influence. You recollect the quarrel between the 
 Tablet and the Jesuits, over Faber's unlucky hon- 
 esty about St. Rose of Lima? . . . But, really, 
 as long as you honor asceticism as a means of 
 appeasing the angry deities, I shall prefer to St 
 Dominic's cuirass or St. Hedwiga's chilblains, 
 John Mytton's two hours' crawl on the ice in his 
 shirt, after a flock of wild ducks. They both en- 
 dured like heroes; but the former for a selfish, if 
 not a blasphemous end; the latter, as a man 
 should, to test and strengthen his own powers of 
 endurance. . . . There, I will say no more. Go 
 your way, in God's name. There must be lessons 
 to be learnt in all strong and self-restraining 
 action. ... So you will learn something from 
 the scourge and the hair-shirt. We must all take 
 the bitter medicine of suffering, I suppose." 
 
 " And, therefore, I am the wiser, in forcing the 
 draught on myself. " 
 
 " Provided it be the right draught, and do not 
 require another and still bitterer one to expel the 
 effects of the poison. I have no faith in people's
 
 What 's to be Done ? 263 
 
 doctoring themselves, either physically or spirit- 
 ually." 
 
 " I am not my own physician ; I follow the rules 
 of an infallible Church, and the examples of her 
 canonized saints." 
 
 " Well . . . perhaps they may have known what 
 was best for themselves. . . . But as for you and 
 me here, in the year 1849 However, we shall 
 argue on forever. Forgive me if I have offended 
 you." 
 
 " I am not offended. The Catholic Church has 
 always been a persecuted one." 
 
 " Then walk with me a little way, and I will 
 persecute you no more." 
 
 " Where are you going? " 
 
 " To ... To " Lancelot had not the heart 
 
 to say whither. 
 
 " To my father's ! Ah ! what a son I would have 
 been to him now, in his extreme need ! . . . And he 
 will not let me ! Lancelot, is it impossible to move 
 him ? I do not want to go home again ... to 
 live there ... I could not face that, though I 
 longed but this moment to do it I cannot face 
 the self-satisfied, pitying looks . . . the everlasting 
 suspicion that they suspect me to be speaking 
 untruths, or proselytizing in secret. . . . Cruel 
 and unjust ! " 
 
 Lancelot thought of a certain letter of Luke's 
 . . . but who was he, to break the bruised 
 reed? 
 
 " No ; I will not see him. Better thus ; better 
 vanish, and be known only according to the 
 spirit by the spirits of saints and confessors, 
 and their successors upon earth. No ! I will die, 
 and give no sign."
 
 264 Yeast 
 
 " I must see somewhat more of you, indeed." 
 
 " I will meet you here, then, two hours hence. 
 Near that house even along the way which 
 leads to it I cannot go. It would be too 
 painful : too painful to think that you were walk- 
 ing towards it, the old house where I was born 
 and bred . . . and I shut out, even though it 
 be for the sake of the kingdom of heaven ! " 
 
 " Or for the sake of your own share therein, my 
 poor cousin ! " thought Lancelot to himself, " which 
 is a very different matter." 
 
 "Whither, after you have been ?" Luke 
 
 could not get out the word home. 
 
 " To Claude Mellot's." 
 
 " I will walk part of the way thither with you. 
 But he is a very bad companion for you." 
 
 "I can't help that. I cannot live; and I am 
 going to turn painter. It is not the road in which 
 to find a fortune ; but still, the very sign-painters 
 live somehow,' I suppose. I am going this very 
 afternoon to Claude Mellot, and enlist. I sold the 
 last of my treasured MSS. to a fifth-rate magazine 
 this morning, for what it would fetch. It has been 
 like eating one's own children but, at least, they 
 have fed me. So now 'to fresh fields and 
 pastures new 
 
 i n
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 DEUS EX MACHINA 
 
 WHEN Lancelot reached the banker's a 
 letter was put into his hand ; it bore the 
 Whitford postmark, and Mrs. Lavington's hand- 
 writing. He tore it open; it contained a letter 
 from Argemone, which, it is needless to say, he 
 read before her mother's : 
 
 " My beloved ! my husband ! Yes though you 
 may fancy me fickle and proud I will call you so to 
 the last; for were I fickle I could have saved myself 
 the agony of writing this ; and as for pride, oh ! how 
 that darling vice has been crushed out of me ! I have 
 rolled at my mother's feet with bitter tears, and vain 
 entreaties and been refused ; and yet I have obeyed 
 her after all. We must write to each other no more. 
 This one last letter must explain the forced silence 
 which has been driving me mad with feara that you 
 would suspect me. And now you may call me weak ; 
 but it is your love which has made me strong to do 
 this which has taught me to see with new intensity 
 my duty, not only to you, but to every human being 
 to my parents. By this self-sacrifice alone can I atone 
 to them for all my past undutifulness. Let me, then, 
 thus be worthy of you. Hope that by this submission 
 we may win even her to change. How calmly I write ! 
 but it is only my hand that is calm. As for my heart, 
 read Tennyson's Fatima, and then know how I feel 
 towards you ! Yes, I love you madly, the world would
 
 266 Yeast 
 
 say. I seem to understand now how women have died 
 of love. Ay, that indeed would be blessed ; for then 
 my spirit would seek out yours, and hover over it for- 
 ever ! Farewell, beloved ! and let me hear of you 
 through your deeds. A feeling at my heart, which 
 should not be, although it is, a sad one, tells me that we 
 shall meet soon soon." 
 
 Stupefied and sickened, Lancelot turned care- 
 lessly to Mrs. Lavington's cover, whose blameless 
 respectability thus uttered itself: 
 
 "I cannot deceive you or myself by saying I 
 regret that providential circumstances should have been 
 permitted to break off a connection which I always felt 
 to be most unsuitable; and I rejoice that the inter- 
 course my dear child has had with you has not so far 
 undermined her principles as to prevent her yielding 
 the most filial obedience to my wishes on the point of 
 her future correspondence with you. Hoping that all 
 that has occurred will be truly blessed to you, and lead 
 your thoughts to another world, and to a true concern 
 for the safety of your immortal soul, 
 
 "I remain, yours truly, 
 
 "C. LAVINGTON." 
 
 "Another world!" said Lancelot to himself. 
 "It is most merciful of you, certainly, my dear 
 madame, to put one in mind of the existence of 
 another world, while such as you have their own 
 way in this one!" and thrusting the latter epistle 
 into the fire, he tried to collect his thoughts. 
 
 What had he lost? The oftener he asked him- 
 self, the less he found to unman him. Argemone's 
 letters were so new a want, that the craving for 
 them was not yet established. His intense imagi- 
 nation, resting on the delicious certainty of her
 
 Deus ex Machina" 267 
 
 faith, seemed ready to fill the silence with bright 
 hopes and noble purposes. She herself had said 
 that he would see her soon. But yet but yet 
 
 why did that allusion to death strike chilly 
 through him ? They were but words, a melan- 
 choly fancy, such as women love at times to play 
 with. He would toss it from him. At least 
 here was another reason for bestirring himself at 
 once to win fame in the noble profession he had 
 chosen. And yet his brain reeled as he went 
 upstairs to his uncle's private room. 
 
 There, however, he found a person closeted 
 with the banker, whose remarkable appearance 
 drove everything else out of his mind. He was a 
 huge, shaggy, toil-worn man, the deep melan- 
 choly earnestness of whose rugged features re- 
 minded him almost ludicrously of one of Landseer's 
 bloodhounds. But withal there was a tenderness 
 
 a genial, though covert humor playing about 
 his massive features, which awakened in Lance- 
 lot at first sight a fantastic longing to open his 
 whole heart to him. He was dressed like a 
 foreigner, but spoke English with perfect fluency. 
 The banker sat listening, quite crestfallen, beneath 
 his intense and melancholy gaze, in which, never- 
 theless, there twinkled some rays of kindly 
 sympathy. 
 
 "It was all those foreign railways," said Mr. 
 Smith, pensively. 
 
 "And it serves you quite right," answered the 
 stranger. "Did I not warn you of the folly and 
 sin of sinking capital in foreign countries while 
 English land was crying out for tillage, and 
 English poor for employment ? " 
 
 "My dear friend" (in a deprecatory tone),
 
 268 Yeast 
 
 "it was the best possible investment I could 
 make. " 
 
 "And pray, who told you that you were sent 
 into the world to make investments ? " 
 
 "But " 
 
 " But me no buts, or I won't stir a finger towards 
 helping you. What are you going to do with 
 this money if I procure it for you ? " 
 
 "Work till I can pay back that poor fellow's 
 fortune," said the banker, earnestly pointing to 
 Lancelot. "And if I could clear my conscience 
 of that, I would not care if I starved myself, 
 hardly if my own children did." 
 
 "Spoken like a man!" answered the stranger; 
 "work for that and I'll help you. Be a new 
 man, once and for all, my friend. Don't even 
 make this younker your first object. Say to 
 yourself, not ' I will invest this money where it 
 shall pay me most, but I will invest it where it 
 shall give most employment to English hands, 
 and produce most manufactures for English 
 bodies. ' In short, seek first the kingdom of God 
 and His justice with this money of yours, and 
 see if all other things, profits and such like 
 included, are not added unto you." 
 
 "And you are certain you can obtain the 
 money ? " 
 
 "My good friend the Begum of the Cannibal 
 Islands has more than she knows what to do with ; 
 and she owes me a good turn, you know." 
 
 " What are you jesting about now ? " 
 
 " Did I never tell you ? The new king of the 
 Cannibal Islands, just like your European ones, 
 ran away, and would neither govern himself nor 
 let any one else govern; so one morning his
 
 Deus ex Machina 269 
 
 ministers, getting impatient, ate him, and then 
 asked my advice. I recommended them to put 
 his mother on the throne, who, being old and 
 tough, would run less danger; and since then 
 everything has gone on smoothly as anywhere 
 else." 
 
 " Are you mad ? " thought Lancelot to himself, 
 as he stared at the speaker's matter-of-fact face. 
 
 "No, I am not mad, my young friend," quoth 
 he, facing right round upon him, as if he had 
 divined his thoughts. 
 
 "I I beg your pardon, I did not speak," 
 stammered Lancelot, abashed at a pair of eyes 
 which could have looked down the boldest mes- 
 merist in three seconds. 
 
 " I am perfectly well aware that you did not. 
 I must have some talk with you: I've heard a 
 good deal about you. You wrote those articles 
 
 in the Review about George Sand, did you 
 
 not?" 
 
 "I did."! 
 
 " Well, there was a great deal of noble feeling 
 in them, and a great deal of abominable non- 
 sense. You seem to be very anxious to reform 
 society ? " 
 
 "I am." 
 
 "Don't you think you had better begin by 
 reforming yourself?" 
 
 "Really, sir," answered Lancelot, "I am too 
 old for that worn-out quibble. The root of all 
 my sins has been selfishness and sloth. Am I 
 to cure them by becoming still more selfish and 
 slothful? What part of myself can I reform 
 except my actions? and the very sin of my actions 
 has been, as I take it, that I 've been doing noth-
 
 270 Yeast 
 
 ing to reform others; never fighting against the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil, as your Prayer* 
 book has it." 
 
 " My Prayer-book ? " answered the stranger, 
 with a quaint smile. 
 
 "Upon my word, Lancelot," interposed the 
 banker, with a frightened look, "you must not 
 get into an argument : you must be more respect- 
 ful: you don't know to whom you are speaking." 
 
 "And I don't much care," answered he. '"Life 
 is really too grim earnest in these days to stand 
 on ceremony. I am sick of blind leaders of the 
 blind, of respectable preachers to the respectable, 
 who drawl out second-hand trivialities, which they 
 neither practise nor wish to see practised. I 've 
 had enough all my life of Scribes and Pharisees 
 in white cravats, laying on man heavy burdens, 
 and grievous to be borne, and .then not touching 
 them themselves with one of their fingers." 
 
 " Silence, sir ! " roared the banker, while the 
 stranger threw himself into a chair, and burst 
 into a storm of laughter. 
 
 " Upon my word, friend Mammon, here *s 
 another of Hans Andersen's ugly ducks!" 
 
 "I really do not mean to be rude," said Lan- 
 celot, recollecting himself, "but I am nearly 
 desperate. If your heart is in the right place, 
 you will understand me ! if not, the less we talk 
 to each other the better." 
 
 "Most true," answered the stranger; "and I 
 do understand you; and if, as I hope, we see 
 more of each other henceforth, we will see if we 
 cannot solve one or two of these problems between 
 us." 
 
 At this moment Lancelot was summoned down-
 
 Deus ex Machine 271 
 
 stairs, and found, to his great pleasure, Tregarva 
 waiting for him. That worthy personage bowed 
 to Lancelot reverently and distantly. 
 
 "I am quite ashamed to intrude myself upon 
 you, sir, but I could not rest without coming to 
 ask whether you have had any news " He broke 
 down at this point in the sentence, but Lancelot 
 understood him. 
 
 " I have no news," he said. "But what do you 
 mean by standing off in that way, as if we were 
 not old and fast friends? Remember, I am as 
 poor as you are now; you may look me in the 
 face and call me your equal, if you will, or your 
 inferior; I shall not deny it." 
 
 "Pardon me, sir," answered Tregarva; "but I 
 never felt what a real substantial thing rank is, 
 as I have since this sad misfortune of yours." 
 
 "And I have never till now found out its 
 worthlessness." 
 
 "You're wrong, sir, you are wrong; look at 
 the difference between yourself and me. When 
 you 've lost all you have, and seven times more, 
 you 're still a gentleman. No man can take that 
 from you. You may look the proudest duchess 
 in the land in the face, and claim her as your 
 equal ; while I, sir, I don't mean, though, to 
 talk of myself but suppose that you had loved a 
 pious and a beautiful lady, and among all your 
 worship of her, and your awe of her, had felt that 
 you were worthy of her, that you could become 
 her comforter, and her pride, and her joy, if it 
 wasn't for that accursed gulf that men had put 
 between you, that you were no gentleman; that 
 you did n't know how to walk, and how to pro- 
 nounce, and when to speak, and when to be
 
 272 Yeast 
 
 silent, not even how to handle your own knife 
 and fork without disgusting her, or how to keep 
 
 your own body clean and sweet Ah, sir, I 
 
 see it now as I never did before, what a wall all 
 these little defects build up round a poor man; 
 how he longs and struggles to show himself as 
 he is at heart, and cannot, till he feels sometimes 
 as if he was enchanted, pent up, like folks in 
 fairy tales, in the body of some dumb beast. 
 But, sir," he went on, with a concentrated bitter- 
 ness which Lancelot had never seen in him 
 before, "just because this gulf which rank makes 
 is such a deep one, therefore it looks to me all 
 the more devilish ; not that I want to pull down 
 any man to my level ; I despise my own level too 
 much; I want to rise; I want those like me to 
 rise with me. Let the rich be as rich as they 
 will. I, and those like me, covet not money, 
 but manners. Why should not the workman be 
 a gentleman, and a workman still? Why are 
 they to be shut out from all that is beautiful, 
 and delicate, and winning, and stately?" 
 
 "Now perhaps," said Lancelot, "you begin to 
 understand what I was driving at on that night of 
 the revel ? " 
 
 "It has come home to me lately, sir, bitterly 
 enough. If you knew what had gone on in me 
 this last fortnight, you would know that I had 
 cause to curse the state of things which brings a 
 man up a savage against his will, and cuts him 
 off, as if he were an ape or a monster, from those 
 for whom the same Lord died, and on whom the 
 same Spirit rests. Is that God's will, sir? No, 
 it is the devil's will. ' Those whom God hath 
 joined, let no man put asunder. ' "
 
 Deus ex Machina 273 
 
 Lancelot colored, for he remembered with how 
 much less reason he had been lately invoking in 
 his own cause those very words. He was at a 
 loss for an answer; but seeing, to his relief, that 
 Tregarva had returned to his usual impassive 
 calm, he forced him to sit down, and began 
 questioning him as to his own prospects and 
 employment. 
 
 About them Tregarva seemed hopeful enough. 
 He had found out a Wesleyan minister in town 
 "who knew him, and had, by his means, after 
 assisting for a week or two in the London City 
 Mission, got some similar appointment in a 
 large manufacturing town. Of the state of things 
 he spoke more sadly than ever. " The rich can- 
 not guess, sir, how high ill-feeling is rising in 
 these days. It 's not only those who are out- 
 wardly poorest who long for change; the middling 
 people, sir, the small town shopkeepers especially, 
 are nearly past all patience. One of the City 
 Mission assured me that he has been watching 
 them these several years past, and that nothing 
 could beat their fortitude and industry, and their 
 determination to stand peaceably by law and 
 order; but yet, this last year or two, things are 
 growing too bad to bear. Do what they will, 
 they 'cannot get their bread ; and when a man 
 cannot get that, sir " 
 
 " But what do you think is the reason of it ? " 
 
 "How should I tell, sir? But if I had to say, 
 I should say this just what they say themselves 
 that there are too many of them. Go where 
 you will, in town or country, you'll find half-a- 
 dozen shops struggling for a custom that would 
 only keep up one, and so they 're forced to under- 
 M Vol. V
 
 274 Yeast 
 
 sell one another. And when they've got down 
 prices all they can by fair means, they 're forced 
 to get them down lower by foul to sand the 
 sugar, and sloe-leave the tea, and put Satan 
 only that prompts 'em knows what into the 
 bread; and then they don't thrive they can't 
 thrive; God's curse must be on them. They 
 begin by trying to oust each other, and eat each 
 other up; and while they're eating up their 
 neighbors, their neighbors eat up them; and so 
 they all come to ruin together." 
 
 "Why, you talk like Mr. Mill himself, Tre- 
 garva; you ought to have been a political econo- 
 mist, and not a City missionary. By the by, I 
 don't like that profession for you." 
 
 "It's the Lord's work, sir. It's the very 
 sending to the Gentiles that the Lord promised 
 me." 
 
 " I don't doubt it, Paul ; but you are meant for 
 other things, if not better. There are plenty of 
 smaller men than you to do that work. Do you 
 think that God would have given you that 
 strength, that brain, to waste on a work which 
 could be done without them ? Those limbs would 
 certainly be good capital for you, if you turned a 
 live model at the Academy. Perhaps you 'd 
 better be mine; but you can't even be that if 
 you go to Manchester." 
 
 The giant looked hopelessly down at his huge 
 limbs. 
 
 " Well ! God only knows what use they are of 
 just now. But as for the brains, sir in much 
 learning is much sorrow. One had much better 
 work than read, I find. If I read much more 
 about what men might be, and are not, and what
 
 Deus ex MachinS 275 
 
 English soil might be, and is not, I shall go 
 mad. And that puts me in mind of one thing I 
 came here for, though, like a poor rude country 
 fellow as I am, I clean forgot it a thinking 
 
 of Look here, sir; you 've given me a sight 
 
 of books in my time, and God bless you for it. 
 But now I hear that that you are determined 
 to be a poor man like us; and that you sha'n't be, 
 while Paul Tregarva has aught of yours. So I 've 
 just brought all the books back, and there they 
 lie in the hall ; and may God reward you for the 
 loan of them to His poor child! And so, sir, 
 farewell;" and he rose to go. 
 
 "No, Paul; the books and you shall never 
 part." 
 
 " And I say, sir, the books and you shall never 
 part." 
 
 " Then we two can never part " and a sudden 
 Impulse flashed over him "and we will not 
 part, Paul ! The only man whom I utterly love, 
 and trust, and respect on the face of God's earth, 
 is you ; and I cannot lose sight of you. If we 
 are to earn our bread, let us earn it together ; if 
 we are to endure poverty, and sorrow, and struggle 
 to find out the way of bettering these wretched 
 millions round us, let us learn our lesson to- 
 gether, and help each other to spell it out." 
 
 "Do you mean what you say?" asked Paul, 
 slowly. 
 
 "I do." 
 
 " Then I say what you say. Where thou goest, 
 I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. 
 Come what will, I will be your servant, for good 
 luck or bad, forever. " 
 
 " My equal, Paul, not my servant. "
 
 276 Yeast 
 
 " I know my place, sir. When I am as learned 
 and as well-bred as you, I shall not refuse to call 
 myself your equal ; and the sooner that day comes, 
 the better I shall be pleased. Till then I am 
 your friend and your brother; but I am your 
 scholar too, and I shall not set up myself against 
 my master. " 
 
 "I have learnt more of you, Paul, than ever 
 you have learnt of me. But be it as you will; 
 only whatever you may call yourself, we must eat 
 at the same table, live in the same room, and 
 share alike all this world's good things or we 
 shall have no right to share together this world's 
 bad things. If that is your bargain, there is my 
 hand on it." 
 
 " Amen ! " quoth Tregarva ; and the two young 
 men joined hands in that sacred bond now 
 growing rarer and rarer year by year the utter 
 friendship of two equal manful hearts. 
 
 "And now, sir, I have promised and you 
 would have me keep my promise to go and work 
 for the City Mission in Manchester at least, for 
 the next month, till a young man's place who has 
 just left, is filled up. Will you let me go for 
 that time? and then, if you hold your present 
 mind, we will join home and fortunes thence- 
 forth, and go wherever the Lord shall send us. 
 There 's work enough of His waiting to be done. 
 I don't doubt but if we are willing and able, 
 He will set us about the thing we're meant 
 for." 
 
 As Lancelot opened the door for him, he lin- 
 gered on the steps, and grasping his hand, said 
 in a low, earnest voice : " The Lord be with you, 
 sir. Be sure that He has mighty things in store
 
 Deus ex Machinzl 277 
 
 for you, or He would not have brought you so 
 low in the days of your youth." 
 
 "And so," as John Bunyan has it, "he went 
 on his way;" and Lancelot saw him no more 
 till But I must not outrun the order of time. 
 
 After all, this visit came to Lancelot timely. 
 It had roused him to hope, and turned off his 
 feelings from the startling news he had just 
 heard. He stepped along arm in arm with Luke, 
 cheerful, and fate-defiant, and as he thought of 
 Tregarva's complaints, 
 
 "The beautiful?" he said to himself, "they 
 shall have it ! At least they shall be awakened 
 to feel their need of it, their right to it. What 
 a high destiny, to be the artist of the people ! to 
 devote one's powers of painting, not to mimick- 
 ing obsolete legends, Pagan or Popish, but to 
 representing to the working men of England the 
 triumphs of the Past and the yet greater triumphs 
 of the Future ! " 
 
 Luke began at once questioning him about his 
 father. 
 
 "And is he contrite and humbled? Does he 
 see that he has sinned ? " 
 
 "In what?" 
 
 " It is not for us to judge ; but surely it must 
 have been some sin or other of his which has 
 drawn down such a sore judgment on him." 
 
 Lancelot smiled; but Luke went on, not per- 
 ceiving him. 
 
 "Ah! we cannot find out for him. Nor has 
 he, alas ! as a Protestant, much likelihood of find- 
 ing out for himself. In our holy church he would 
 have been compelled to discriminate his faults 
 by methodic self-examination, and lay them one
 
 278 Yeast 
 
 by one before his priest for advice and pardon, 
 and so start a new and free man once more." 
 
 "Do you think," asked Lancelot, with a smile, 
 "that he who will not confess his faults either to 
 God or to himself, would confess them to man? 
 And would his priest honestly tell him what he 
 really wants to know ? which sin of his has called 
 down this so-called judgment? It would be 
 imputed, I suppose, to some vague generality, to 
 inattention to religious duties, to idolatry of the 
 world, and so forth. But a Romish priest would 
 be the last person, I should think, who could tell 
 him fairly, in the present case, the cause of his 
 affliction ; and I question whether he would give a 
 patient hearing to any one who told it him." 
 
 "How so? Though, indeed, I have remarked 
 that people are perfectly willing to be told they 
 are miserable sinners, and to confess themselves 
 such, in a general way ; but if the preacher once 
 begins to specify, to fix on any particular act or 
 habit, he is accused of personality or uncharita- 
 bleness; his hearers are ready to confess guilty 
 to any sin but the very one with which he charges 
 them. But, surely, this is just what I am urging 
 against you Protestants just what the Catholic 
 use of confession obviates. " 
 
 " Attempts to do so, you mean ! " answered 
 Lancelot. " But what if your religion preaches 
 formally that which only remains in our religion 
 as a fast-dying superstition ? That those judg- 
 ments of God, as you call them, are not judg- 
 ments at all in any fair use of the word, but 
 capricious acts of punishment on the part of 
 Heaven, which have no more reference to the 
 fault which provokes them, than if you cut off a
 
 Deus ex Machimi 279 
 
 man's finger because he made a bad use of his 
 tongue. That is part, but only a part, of what I 
 meant just now, by saying that people represent 
 God as capricious, proud, revengeful. " 
 
 "But do not Protestants themselves confess 
 that our sins provoke God's anger?" 
 
 " Your common creed, when it talks rightly of 
 God as one ' who has no passions, ' ought to make 
 you speak more reverently of the possibility of 
 any act of ours disturbing the everlasting equa- 
 nimity of the absolute Love. Why will men so 
 often impute to God the miseries which they 
 bring upon themselves ? " 
 
 "Because, I suppose, their pride makes them 
 more willing to confess themselves sinners than 
 fools." 
 
 "Right, my friend; they will not remember 
 that it is of ' their pleasant vices that God makes 
 whips to scourge them. ' Oh, I at least have felt 
 the deep wisdom of that saying' of Wilhelm 
 Meister's harper, that it is 
 
 ' Voices from the depth of Nature borne 
 Which woe upon the guilty head proclaim.' 
 
 Of Nature of those eternal laws of hers which 
 we daily break. Yes! it is not because God's 
 temper changes, but because God's universe is 
 unchangeable, that such as I, such as your poor 
 father, having sown the wind, must reap the 
 whirlwind. I have fed my self-esteem with 
 luxuries and not with virtue, and, losing them, 
 have nothing left. He has sold himself to a 
 system which is its own punishment. And yet 
 the last place in which he will look for the cause 
 of his misery is in that very money-mongering
 
 280 Yeast 
 
 to which he now clings as frantically as ever. 
 But so it is throughout the world. Only look 
 down over that bridge-parapet, at that huge 
 black-mouthed sewer, vomiting its pestilential 
 riches across the mud. There it runs, and will 
 run, hurrying to the sea vast stores of wealth, 
 elaborated by Nature's chemistry into the ready 
 materials of food; which proclaim, too, by their 
 own foul smell, God's will that they should be 
 buried out of sight in the fruitful all-regenerat- 
 ing grave of earth: there it runs, turning them 
 all into the seeds of pestilence, filth, and drunk- 
 enness. And then, when it obeys the laws 
 which we despise, and the pestilence is come at 
 last, men will pray against it, and confess it to 
 be ' a judgment for their sins ; ' but if you ask 
 what sin, people will talk about ' les -voiles 
 cfairain,' as Fourier says, and tell you that it is 
 presumptuous to pry into God's secret counsels, 
 unless, perhaps, some fanatic should inform you 
 that the cholera has been drawn down on the 
 poor by the endowment of Maynooth by the rich. " 
 
 " It is most fearful, indeed, to think that these 
 diseases should be confined to the poor that a 
 man should be exposed to cholera, typhus, and a 
 host of attendant diseases, simply because he is 
 born into the world an artisan; while the rich, 
 by the mere fact of money, are exempt from such 
 curses, except when they come in contact with 
 those whom they call on Sunday ' their brethren,' 
 and on week days the ' masses. ' ' 
 
 "Thank Heaven that you do see that, that 
 in a country calling itself civilized and Christian, 
 pestilence should be the peculiar heritage of the 
 poor! It is past all comment."
 
 r 
 
 Deus ex Machina 281 
 
 "And yet are not these pestilences a judg- 
 ment, even on them, for their dirt and profli- 
 gacy ? " 
 
 " And how should they be clean without water ? 
 And how can you wonder if their appetites, sick- 
 ened with filth and self-disgust, crave after the 
 gin-shop for temporary strength, and then for 
 temporary forgetf ulness ? Every London doctor 
 knows that I speak the truth; would that every 
 London preacher would tell that truth from his 
 pulpit ! " 
 
 "Then would you too say, that God punishes 
 one class for the sins of another?" 
 
 "Some would say," answered Lancelot, half- 
 aside, "that He maybe punishing them for not 
 demanding their right to live like human beings, 
 to all those social circumstances which shall not 
 make their children's life one long disease. But 
 are not these pestilences a judgment on the rich, 
 too, in the truest sense of the word ? Are they 
 not the broad, unmistakable seal to God's 
 opinion of a state of society which confesses its 
 economic relations to be so utterly rotten and 
 confused, that it actually cannot afford to save 
 yearly millions of pounds' worth of the materials 
 of food, not to mention thousands of human 
 lives ? Is not every man who allows such things 
 hastening the ruin of the society in which he 
 lives, by helping to foster the indignation and 
 fury of its victims? Look at that group of 
 stunted, haggard artisans, who are passing us. 
 What if one day they should call to account the 
 landlords whose covetousness and ignorance make 
 their dwellings hells on earth ? " 
 
 By this time they had reached the artist's house.
 
 282 Yeast 
 
 Luke refused to enter. . . . "He had done 
 with this world, and the painters of this world." 
 . . . And with a tearful last farewell, he turned 
 away up the street, leaving Lancelot to gaze at 
 his slow, painful steps, and abject, earth-fixed 
 mien. 
 
 " Ah ! " thought Lancelot, " here is the end of 
 your anthropology ! At first, your ideal man is 
 an angel. But your angel is merely an unsexed 
 woman ; and so you are forced to go back to the 
 humanity after all but to a woman, not a man? 
 And this, in the nineteenth century, when men 
 are telling us that the poetic and enthusiastic 
 have become impossible, and that the only pos- 
 sible state of the world henceforward will be a 
 universal good-humored hive, of the Franklin- 
 Benthamite religion . . . a vast prosaic Cockaigne 
 of steam mills for grinding sausages for those 
 who can get at them. And all the while, in spite 
 of all Manchester schools, and high and dry 
 orthodox schools, here are the strangest phan- 
 tasms, new and old, sane and insane, starting up 
 suddenly into live practical power, to give their 
 prosaic theories the lie Popish conversions, 
 Mormonisms, Mesmerisms, Californias, Conti- 
 nental revolutions, Paris days of June. . . . Ye 
 hypocrites! ye can discern the face of the sky, 
 and yet ye cannot discern the signs of this 
 time!" 
 
 He was ushered upstairs to the door of his 
 studio, at which he knocked, and was answered 
 by a loud " Come in. " Lancelot heard a rustle 
 as he entered, and caught sight of a most charm- 
 ing little white foot retreating hastily through 
 the folding doors into the inner room.
 
 Deus ex Machina 283 
 
 The artist, who was seated at his easel, held 
 up his brush as a signal of silence, and did not 
 even raise his eyes till he had finished the touches 
 on which he was engaged. 
 
 " And now what do I see ! the last man I 
 should have expected! I thought you v/ere far 
 down in the country. And what brings you to 
 me with such serious and business-like looks?" 
 
 " I am a penniless youth " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Ruined to my last shilling, and I want to 
 turn artist" 
 
 " Oh, ye gracious powers ! Come to my arms, 
 brother at last with me in the holy order of those 
 who must work or starve. Long have I wept in 
 secret over the pernicious fulness of your purse ! " 
 
 "Dry your tears, then, now," said Lancelot, 
 "for I neither have ten pounds in the world, nor 
 intend to have till I can earn them. " 
 
 "Artist!" ran on Mellot; "ah! you shall be 
 an artist, indeed! You shall stay with me and 
 become the English Michael Angelo; or, if you 
 are fool enough, go to Rome, and utterly eclipse 
 Overbeck, and throw Schadow forever into the 
 shade." 
 
 " I fine you a supper, " said Lancelot, " for that 
 execrable attempt at a pun. " 
 
 " Agreed ! Here, Sabina, send to Covent Garden 
 for huge nosegays, and get out the best bottle of 
 Burgundy. We will pass an evening worthy of 
 Horace, and with garlands and libations honor 
 the muse of painting." 
 
 "Luxurious dog!" said Lancelot, "with all 
 your cant about poverty." 
 
 As he spoke, the folding doors opened, and an
 
 284 Yeast 
 
 exquisite little brunette danced in from the 
 inner room, in which, by the by, had been going 
 on all the while a suspicious rustling, as of gar- 
 ments hastily arranged. She was dressed grace- 
 fully in a loose French morning-gown, down 
 which Lancelot's eye glanced towards the little 
 foot, which, however, was now hidden in a tiny 
 velvet slipper. The artist's wife was a real 
 beauty, though without a single perfect feature, 
 except a most delicious little mouth, a skin like 
 velvet, and clear brown eyes, from which beamed 
 earnest simplicity and arch good humor. She 
 darted forward to her husband's friend, while 
 her rippling brown hair, fantastically arranged, 
 fluttered about her neck, and seizing Lancelot's 
 hands successively in both of hers, broke out in 
 an accent prettily tinged with French: 
 
 "Charming! delightful! And so you are 
 really going to turn painter! And I have longed 
 so to be introduced to you ! Claude has been 
 raving about you these two years; you already 
 seem to me the oldest friend in the world. You 
 must not go to Rome. We shall keep you, Mr. 
 Lancelot; positively you must come and live 
 with us we shall be the happiest trio in Lon- 
 don. I will make you so comfortable : you must 
 let me cater for you cook for you." 
 
 " And be my study sometimes ? " said Lancelot, 
 smiling. 
 
 "Ah," she said, blushing, and shaking her 
 pretty little fist at Claude, "that madcap! how 
 he has betrayed me! When he is at his easel, 
 he is so in the seventh heaven that he sees 
 nothing, thinks of nothing, but his own dreams." 
 
 At this moment a heavy step sounded on the
 
 Deus ex Machina 285 
 
 stairs, the door opened, and there entered, to 
 Lancelot's astonishment, the stranger who had 
 just puzzled him so much at his uncle's. 
 
 Claude rose reverentially, and came forward, 
 but Sabina was beforehand with him, and running 
 up to her visitor, kissed his hand again and again, 
 almost kneeling to him. 
 
 " The dear master ! " she cried ; " what a 
 delightful surprise ! we have not seen you this 
 fortnight past, and gave you up for lost." 
 
 "Where do you come from, my dear master?" 
 asked Claude. 
 
 " From going to and fro in the earth, and from 
 walking up and down in it," answered he, smil- 
 ing, and laying his finger on his lips, "my dear 
 pupils. And you are both well and happy?" 
 
 "Perfectly, and doubly delighted at your 
 presence to-day, for your advice will come in a 
 providential moment for my friend here." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the strange man, " well met once 
 more ! So you are going to turn painter? " 
 
 He bent a severe and searching look on 
 Lancelot. 
 
 "You have a painter's face, young man," he 
 said; "go on and prosper. What branch of art 
 do you intend to study ? " 
 
 "The ancient Italian painters, as my first step." 
 
 "Ancient? it is not four hundred years since 
 Perugino died. But I should suppose you do not 
 intend to ignore classic art ? " 
 
 "You have divined rightly. I wish, in the 
 study of the antique, to arrive at the primeval 
 laws of unf alien human beauty." 
 
 " Were Phidias and Praxiteles, then, so prime- 
 val ? the world had lasted many a thousand years
 
 286 Yeast 
 
 before their turn came. If you intend to begin 
 at the beginning, why not go back at once to the 
 garden of Eden, and there study the true antique ? " 
 
 "If there were but any relics of it," said 
 Lancelot, puzzled, and laughing. 
 
 " You would find it very near you, young man, 
 if you had but eyes to see it." 
 
 Claude Mellot laughed significantly, and Sabina 
 clapped her little hands. 
 
 " Yet till you take him with you, master, and 
 show it to him, he must needs be content with 
 the Royal Academy and the Elgin marbles." 
 
 "But to what branch of painting, pray," said 
 the master to Lancelot, "will you apply your 
 knowledge of the antique? Will you, like this' 
 foolish fellow here" (with a kindly glance at 
 Claude), "fritter yourself away on Nymphs and 
 Venuses, in which neither he nor any one else 
 believes ? " 
 
 " Historic art, as the highest," answered Lance- 
 lot, "is my ambition." 
 
 "It is well to aim at the highest, but only 
 when it is possible for us. And how can such a 
 school exist in England now? You English 
 must learn to understand your own history before 
 you paint it. Rather follow in the steps of your 
 Turners, and Landseers, and Standfields, and 
 Creswicks, and add your contribution to the 
 present noble school of naturalist painters. That 
 is the niche in the temple which God has set you 
 English to fill up just now. These men's patient, 
 reverent faith in Nature as they see her, their 
 knowledge that the ideal is neither to be invented 
 nor abstracted, but found and left where God has 
 put it, and where alone it can be represented, in
 
 Deus ex Machini 287 
 
 actual and individual phenomena; in these lies 
 an honest development of the true idea of Prot- 
 estantism, which is paving the way to the 
 mesothetic art of the future." 
 
 " Glorious ! " said Sabina : " not a single word 
 that we poor creatures can understand ! " 
 
 But our hero, who always took a virtuous delight 
 in hearing what he could not comprehend, went on 
 to question the orator. 
 
 " What, then, is the true idea of Protestantism ? " 
 said he. 
 
 " The universal symbolism and dignity of matter, 
 whether in man or nature." 
 
 " But the Puritans ? " 
 
 " Were inconsistent with themselves and with 
 Protestantism, and therefore God would not allow 
 them to proceed. Yet their repudiation of all art was 
 better than the Judas-kiss which Romanism bestows 
 on it, in the meagre eclecticism of the ancient re- 
 ligious schools, and of your modern Overbecks 
 and Pugins. The only really wholesome designer 
 of great power whom I have seen in Germany is 
 Kaulbach ; and perhaps every one would not agree 
 with my reasons for admiring him, in this white- 
 washed age. But you, young sir, were meant for 
 better things than art. Many young geniuses have 
 an early hankering, as Goethe had, to turn painters. 
 It seems the shortest and easiest method of em- 
 bodying their conceptions in visible form ; but 
 they get wiser afterwards, when they find in them- 
 selves thoughts that cannot be laid upon the can- 
 vas. Come with me I like striking while the 
 iron is hot; walk with me towards my lodgings, 
 and we will discuss this weighty matter." 
 
 And with a gay farewell to the adoring little
 
 288 Yeast 
 
 Sabina, he passed an iron arm through Lancelot's, 
 and marched him down into the street. 
 
 Lancelot was surprised and almost nettled at the 
 sudden influence which he found this quaint per- 
 sonage was exerting over him. But he had, of 
 late, tasted the high delight of feeling himself 
 under the guidance of a superior mind, and longed 
 to enjoy it once more. Perhaps they were reminis- 
 cences of this kind which stirred in him the strange 
 fancy of a connection, almost of a likeness, between 
 his new acquaintance and Argemone. He asked, 
 humbly enough, why Art was to be a forbidden 
 path to him? 
 
 " Besides, you are an Englishman, and a man of 
 uncommon talent, unless your physiognomy belies 
 you; and one, too, for whom God has strange 
 things in store, or He would not have so suddenly 
 and strangely overthrown you." 
 
 Lancelot started. He remembered that Tre- 
 garva had said just the same thing to him that 
 very morning, and the (to him) strange coin- 
 cidence sank deep into his heart. 
 
 " You must be a politician," the stranger went 
 on. "You are bound to it as your birthright. It 
 has been England's privilege hitherto to solve all 
 political questions as they arise for the rest of the 
 world ; it is her duty now. Here, or nowhere, 
 must the solution be attempted of those social prob- 
 lems which are convulsing more and more all 
 Christendom. She cannot afford to waste brains 
 like yours, while in thousands of reeking alleys, 
 such as that one opposite us, heathens and savages 
 are demanding the rights of citizenship. Whether 
 they be right or wrong, is what you, and such as 
 you, have to find out at this day."
 
 Deus ex MachinS 289 
 
 Silent and thoughtful, Lancelot walked on by his 
 side. 
 
 "What is become of your friend Tregarva? I 
 met him this morning after he parted from you, 
 and had some talk with him. I was sorely minded 
 to enlist him. Perhaps I shall ; in the meantime, 
 I shall busy myself with you." 
 
 " In what way," asked Lancelot, " most strange 
 sir, of whose name, much less of whose occupa- 
 tion, I can gain no tidings." 
 
 " My name for the time being is Barnakill. And 
 as for business, as it is your English fashion to call 
 new things obstinately by old names, careless 
 whether they apply or not, you may consider me 
 as a recruiting-sergeant; which trade, indeed, I 
 follow, though I am no more like the popular red- 
 coated ones than your present ' glorious constitu- 
 tion' is like William the Third's, or Overbeck's 
 high art like Fra Angelico's. Farewell ! When I 
 want you, which will be most likely when you want 
 me, I shall find you again." 
 
 The evening was passed, as Claude had prom- 
 ised, in a truly Horatian manner. Sabina was 
 most piquante, and Claude interspersed his genial 
 and enthusiastic eloquence with various wise saws 
 of "the prophet." 
 
 " But why on earth," quoth Lancelot, at last, 
 "do you call him a prophet?" 
 
 " Because he is one ; it 's his business, his call- 
 ing. He gets his living thereby, as the showman 
 did by his elephant." 
 
 " But what does he foretell? " 
 
 " Oh, son of the earth ! And you went to 
 Cambridge are reported to have gone in for the 
 thing, or phantom, called the tripos, and taken a
 
 290 Yeast 
 
 first class ! . . . Did you ever look out the word 
 'prophetes' in Liddell and Scott?" 
 
 " Why, what do you know about Liddell and 
 Scott?" 
 
 " Nothing, thank goodness ; I never had time to 
 waste over the crooked letters. But I have heard 
 say that prophetes means, not a foreteller, but an 
 out-teller one who declares the will of a deity, 
 and interprets his oracles. Is it not so?" 
 
 " Undeniably." 
 
 " And that he became a foreteller among 
 heathens at least as I consider, among all peoples 
 whatsoever because knowing the real bearing 
 of what had happened, and what was happening, 
 he could discern the signs of the times, and so had 
 what the world calls a shrewd guess what I, 
 like a Pantheist as I am denominated, should call a 
 divine and inspired foresight of what was going 
 to happen." 
 
 " A new notion, and a pleasant one, for it looks 
 something like a law." 
 
 " I am no scollard, as they would say in Whit- 
 ford, you know ; but it has often struck me, that 
 if folks would but believe that the Apostles talked 
 not such very bad Greek, and had some slight 
 notion of the received meaning of the words they 
 used, and of the absurdity of using the same term 
 to express nineteen different things, the New 
 Testament would be found to be a much simpler 
 and more severely philosophic book than ' Theo- 
 logians' ('Anthroposophists' I call them) fancy." 
 
 " Where on earth did you get all this wisdom, 
 or foolishness? " 
 
 " From the prophet, a fortnight ago." 
 
 " Who is this prophet ? I will know."
 
 Deus ex Machint 291 
 
 " Then you will know more than I do. Sabina 
 light my meerschaum, there 's a darling; it will 
 taste the sweeter after your lips." And Claude 
 laid his delicate woman-like limbs upon the sofa, 
 and looked the very picture of luxurious non- 
 chalance. 
 
 " What is he, you pitiless wretch? " 
 
 "Fairest Hebe, fill our Prometheus Vinctus 
 another glass of Burgundy, and find your guitar, 
 to silence him." 
 
 " It was the ocean nymphs who came to comfort 
 Prometheus and unsandalled, too, if I recollect 
 right," said Lancelot, smiling at Sabina. " Come, 
 now, if he will not tell me, perhaps you will?" 
 
 Sabina only blushed, and laughed mysteriously. 
 
 "You surely are intimate with him, Claude? 
 When and where did you meet him first?" 
 
 " Seventeen years ago, on the barricades of the 
 three days, in the charming little pandemonium 
 called Paris, he picked me out of a gutter, a boy 
 of fifteen, with a musket-ball through my body; 
 mended me, and sent me to a painter's studio. 
 . . . The next stjour I had with him began in 
 sight of the Demawend. Sabina, perhaps you 
 might like to relate to Mr. Smith that interview, 
 and the circumstances under which you made 
 your first sketch of that magnificent and little- 
 known volcano? " 
 
 Sabina blushed again this time scarlet ; and, 
 to Lancelot's astonishment, pulled off her slipper, 
 and brandishing it daintily, uttered some unintelli- 
 gible threat, in an Oriental language, at the laugh- 
 ing Claude. 
 
 "Why, you must have been in the East?" 
 
 "Why not! Do you think that figure and
 
 292 Yeast 
 
 that walk were picked up in stay-ridden, toe- 
 pinching England? . . . Ay, in the East; and 
 why not elsewhere? Do you think I got my 
 knowledge of the human figure from the live- 
 model in the Royal Academy ? " 
 
 " I certainly have always had my doubts of it. 
 You are the only man I know who can paint 
 muscle in motion." 
 
 "Because I am almost the only man in Eng- 
 land who has ever seen it. Artists should go to 
 the Cannibal Islands for that. . . . f ai fait le 
 grand tour. I should not wonder if the prophet 
 made you take it. " 
 
 " That would be very much as I chose. " 
 
 " Or otherwise. " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " That if he wills you to go, I defy you to stay. 
 Eh, Sabina!" 
 
 "Well, you are a very mysterious pair, and 
 a very charming one." 
 
 " So we think ourselves as to the charming- 
 ness . . . and as for the mystery . . . 'Omnia 
 exeunt in mysterium^ says somebody, somewhere 
 or if he don't, ought to, seeing that it is so. 
 You will be a mystery some day, and a myth, 
 and a thousand years hence pious old ladies will 
 be pulling caps as to whether you were a saint or 
 a devil, and whether you did really work miracles 
 or not, as corroborations of your ex-supra-lunar 
 illumination on social questions. . . . Yes . . . 
 you will have to submit, and see Bogy, and enter 
 the Eleusinian mysteries. Eh, Sabina ? " 
 
 " My dear Claude, what between the Burgundy 
 and your usual foolishness, you seem very much 
 inclined to divulge the Eleusinian mysteries."
 
 Deus ex Machinzl 293 
 
 "I can't well do that, my beauty, seeing that, 
 if you recollect, we were both turned back at the 
 vestibule, for a pair of naughty children as we 
 are." 
 
 " Do be quiet ! and let me enjoy, for once, my 
 woman's right to the last word ! " 
 
 And in this hopeful state of mystification, 
 Lancelot went home, and dreamt of Argemone 
 
 His uncle would, and, indeed, as it seemed, 
 could, give him very little information on the 
 question which had so excited his curiosity. He 
 had met the man in India many years before, had 
 received there from him most important kind- 
 nesses, and considered him, from experience, of 
 oracular wisdom. He seemed to have an un- 
 limited command of money, though most frugal 
 in his private habits; visited England for a short 
 time every few years, and always under a differ- 
 ent appellation ; but as for his real name, habita- 
 tion, or business, here or at home, the good 
 banker knew nothing, except that whenever ques- 
 tioned on them, he wandered off into Panta- 
 gruelist jokes, and ended in Cloudland. So that 
 Lancelot was fain to give up his questions and 
 content himself with longing for the reappearance 
 of this inexplicable sage.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ONCE IN A WAY 
 
 A FEW mornings afterwards, Lancelot, as he 
 glanced his eye over the columns of the 
 Times, stopped short at the beloved name of 
 Whitford. To his disgust and disappointment, 
 it only occurred in one of those miserable cases, 
 now of weekly occurrence, of concealing the 
 birth of a child. He was turning from it, when 
 he saw Bracebridge's name. Another look suf- 
 ficed to show him that he ought to go at once to 
 the colonel, who had returned the day ^before 
 from Norway. 
 
 A few minutes brought him to his friend's 
 lodging, but the Times had arrived there before 
 him. Bracebridge was sitting over his untasted 
 breakfast, his face buried in his hands. 
 
 "Do not speak to me," he said, without look- 
 ing up. " It was right of you to come kind of 
 you ; but it is too late. " 
 
 He started, and looked wildly round him, as if 
 listening for some sound which he expected, and 
 then laid his head down on the table. Lancelot 
 turned to go. 
 
 "No do not leave me! Not alone, for God's 
 sake, not alone ! " 
 
 Lancelot sat down. There was a fearful alter- 
 ation in Bracebridge. His old keen self-confi- 
 dent look had vanished. He was haggard,
 
 Once in a Way 295 
 
 life-weary, shame-stricken, almost abject. His 
 limbs looked quite shrunk and powerless, as he 
 rested his head on the table before him, and mur- 
 mured incoherently from time to time: 
 
 "My own child! And I never shall have 
 
 another! No second chance for those who 
 
 Oh Mary! Mary! you might have waited you 
 might have trusted me ! And why should you ? 
 
 ay, why, indeed? And such a pretty baby, 
 too ! just like his father ! " 
 
 Lancelot laid his hand kindly on his shoulder. 
 
 " My dearest Bracebridge, the evidence proves 
 that the child was born dead." 
 
 " They lie ! " he said, fiercely, starting up. " It 
 cried twice after it was born ! " 
 
 Lancelot stood horror-struck. 
 
 "I heard it last night, and the night before 
 that, and the night before that again, under my 
 pillow, shrieking stifling two little squeaks, 
 like a caught hare ; and I tore the pillows off it 
 
 I did ; and once I saw it, and it had beautiful 
 black eyes just like its father just like a 
 little miniature that used to lie on my mother's 
 table, when I knelt at her knee, before they sent 
 me out ' to see life, ' and Eton, and the army, 
 and Crockford's, and Newmarket, and fine gentle- 
 men, and fine ladies, and luxury, and flattery, 
 brought me to this! Oh, father! father! was 
 that the only way to make a gentleman of your 
 son? There it is again! Don't you hear it? 
 under the sofa-cushions ! Tear them off ! Curse 
 you ! Save it ! " 
 
 And, with a fearful oath, the wretched man 
 sent Lancelot staggering across the room, and 
 madly tore up the cushions.
 
 296 Yeast 
 
 A long postman's knock at the door. He sud- 
 denly rose up quite collected. 
 
 "The letter! I knew it would come. She 
 need not have written it : I know what is in it. " 
 
 The servant's step came up the stairs. Poor 
 Bracebridge turned to Lancelot with something 
 of his own stately determination. 
 
 "I must be alone when I receive this letter. 
 Stay here. " And with compressed lips and fixed 
 eyes he stalked out at the door, and shut it. 
 
 Lancelot heard him stop; then the servant's 
 footsteps down the stairs; then the colonel's 
 treading, slowly and heavily, went step by step 
 up to the room above. He shut that door too. A 
 dead silence followed. Lancelot stood in fearful 
 suspense, and held his breath to listen. Per- 
 haps he had fainted? No, for then he would 
 have heard a fall. Perhaps he had fallen on the 
 bed ? He would go and see. No, he would wait 
 a little longer. Perhaps he was praying? He 
 had told Lancelot to pray once he dared not 
 interrupt him now. A slight stir a noise as of 
 an opening box. Thank God, he was, at least, 
 alive ! Nonsense ! Why should he not be alive? 
 What could happen to him? And yet he knew 
 that something was going to happen. The 
 silence was ominous unbearable; the air of the 
 room felt heavy and stifling, as if a thunderstorm 
 were about to burst. He longed to hear the 
 man raging and stamping. And yet he could not 
 connect the thought of one so gay and full of 
 gallant life, with the terrible dread that was 
 creeping over him with the terrible scene which 
 he had just witnessed. It must be all a temporary 
 excitement a mistake a hideous dream, which
 
 Once in a Way 297 
 
 the next post would sweep away. He would go 
 and tell him so. No, he could not stir. His 
 limbs seemed leaden, his feet felt rooted to the 
 ground, as in long nightmare. And still the 
 intolerable silence brooded overhead. 
 
 What broke it ? A dull, stifled report, as of a 
 pistol fired against the ground ; a heavy fall ; and 
 again the silence of death. 
 
 He rushed upstairs. A corpse lay on its face 
 upon the floor, and from among its hair, a crimson 
 thread crept slowly across the carpet. It was all 
 over. He bent over the head, but one look was 
 sufficient. He did not try to lift it up. 
 
 On the table lay the fatal letter. Lancelot 
 knew that he had a right to read it. It was 
 scrawled, mis-spelt but there were no tear- 
 blots on the paper: 
 
 " SIR I am in prison and where are you ? Cruel 
 man ! Where were you all those miserable weeks, while 
 I was coming nearer and nearer to my shame ? Murder- 
 ing dumb beasts in foreign lands. You have murdered 
 more than them. How I loved you once ! How I hate 
 you now ! But I have my revenge. Your baby cried 
 twice after it was bom!" 
 
 Lancelot tore the letter into a hundred pieces, 
 and swallowed them, for every foot in the house 
 was on the stairs. 
 
 So there was terror, and confusion, and running 
 in and out: but there were no wet eyes there 
 except those of Bracebridge's groom, who threw 
 himself on the body, and. would not stir. And 
 then there was a coroner's inquest; and it came 
 out in the evidence how " the deceased had been 
 for several days very much depressed, and had 
 N Vol. V
 
 298 Yeast 
 
 talked of voices and apparitions ; " whereat the 
 jury as twelve honest, good-natured Christians 
 were bound to do returned a verdict of tempo- 
 rary insanity; and in a week more the penny-a- 
 liners grew tired; and the world, too, who never 
 expects anything, not even French revolutions, 
 grew tired also of repeating, " Dear me ! who 
 would have expected it?" and having filled up 
 the colonel's place, swaggered on as usual, arm- 
 in-arm with the flesh and the devil. 
 
 Bracebridge's death had, of course, a great 
 effect on Lancelot's spirit. Not in the way of 
 warning, though such events seldom act in that 
 way, on the highest as well as on the lowest 
 minds. After all, your "Rakes' Progresses," 
 and "Atheists' Deathbeds," do no more good 
 than noble George Cruikshank's " Bottle " will, 
 because every one knows that they are the excep- 
 tion, and not the rule ; that the Atheist generally 
 dies with a conscience as comfortably callous as 
 a rhinoceros-hide; and the rake, when old age 
 stops his power of sinning, becomes generally 
 rather more respectable than his neighbors. The 
 New Testament deals very little in appeals ad 
 terrorem; and it would be well if some, who fancy 
 that they follow it, would do the same, and by 
 abstaining from making "hell-fire" the chief 
 incentive of virtue, cease from tempting many a 
 poor fellow to enlist on the devil's side the only 
 manly feeling he has left personal courage. 
 
 But yet Lancelot was affected. And when, 
 on the night of the colonel's funeral, he opened, 
 at hazard, Argemone's Bible, and his eyes fell 
 on the passage which tells how "one shall be 
 taken and another left," great honest tears of
 
 Once in a Way 299 
 
 gratitude dropped upon the page ; and he fell on 
 his knees, and in bitter self-reproach thanked the 
 new found Upper Powers, who, as he began to 
 hope, were leading him not in vain, that he had 
 yet a life before him wherein to play the man. 
 
 And now he felt that the last link was broken 
 between him and all his late frivolous com- 
 panions. All had deserted him in his ruin but 
 this one and he was silent in the grave. And 
 now, from the world and all its toys and revelry, 
 he was parted once and forever; and he stood 
 alone in the desert, like the last Arab of a 
 plague-stricken tribe, looking over the wreck of 
 ancient cities, across barren sands where far 
 rivers gleamed in the distance, that seemed to 
 beckon him away into other climes, other hopes, 
 other duties. Old things had passed away 
 when would all things become new? 
 
 Not yet, Lancelot. Thou hast still one selfish 
 hope, one dream of bliss, however impossible, yet 
 still cherished. Thou art a changed man but 
 for whose sake? For Argemone's. Is she to be 
 thy god, then ? Art thou to live for her, or for 
 the sake of One greater than she? All thine 
 idols are broken swiftly the desert sands are 
 drifting over them, and covering them in. All 
 but one must that, too, be taken from thee ? 
 
 One morning a letter was put into Lancelot's 
 hands, bearing the Whitford postmark. Trem- 
 blingly he tore it open. It contained a few pas- 
 sionate words from Honoria. Argemone was 
 dying of typhus fever, and entreating to see him 
 once again; and Honoria had, with some diffi- 
 culty, as she hinted, obtained leave from her 
 parents to send for him. His last bank note
 
 300 Yeast 
 
 carried him down to Whitford; and, calm and 
 determined, as one who feels that he has nothing 
 more to lose on earth, and whose torment must 
 henceforth become his element, he entered the 
 Priory that evening. 
 
 He hardly spoke or looked at a soul; he felt 
 that he was there on an errand which none under- 
 stood; that he was moving towards Argemone 
 through a spiritual world, in which he and she 
 were alone; that in his utter poverty and hope- 
 lessness he stood above all the luxury, even above 
 all the sorrow, around him ; that she belonged to 
 him, and to him alone; and the broken-hearted 
 beggar followed the weeping Honoria towards his 
 lady's chamber, with the step and bearing of a 
 lord. He was wrong; there were pride and 
 fierceness enough in his heart, mingled with that 
 sense of nothingness of rank, money, chance and 
 change, yea, death itself, of all but Love; 
 mingled even with that intense belief that his 
 sorrows were but his just deserts, which now 
 possessed all his soul. And in after years he 
 knew that he was wrong; but so he felt at the 
 time ; and even then the strength was not all of 
 earth which bore him manlike through that 
 hour. 
 
 He entered the room ; the darkness, the silence, 
 the cool scent of vinegar, struck a shudder 
 through him. The squire was sitting half idiotic 
 and helpless, in his arm-chair. His face lighted 
 up as Lancelot entered, and he tried to hold out 
 his palsied hand. Lancelot did not see him. 
 Mrs. Lavington moved proudly and primly back 
 from the bed, with a face that seemed to say 
 through its tears, " I at least am responsible for
 
 Once in a Way 301 
 
 nothing that occurs from this interview. " Lance- 
 lot did not see her, either : he walked straight up 
 towards the bed as if he were treading on his own 
 ground. His heart was between his lips, and yet 
 his whole soul felt as dry and hard as some burnt- 
 out volcano-crater. 
 
 A faint voice oh, how faint, how changed! 
 called him from within the closed curtains. 
 
 "He is there! I know it is he! Lancelot! 
 my Lancelot!" 
 
 Silently still he drew aside the curtain; the 
 light fell full upon her face. What a sight! 
 Her beautiful hair cut close, a ghastly white 
 handkerchief round her head, those bright eyes 
 sunk and lustreless, those ripe lips baked and 
 black and drawn ; her thin hand fingering uneasily 
 the coverlid. It was too much for him. He 
 shuddered and turned his face away. Quick- 
 sighted that love is, even to the last! slight as 
 the gesture was, she saw it in an instant. 
 
 " You are not afraid of infection ? " she said 
 faintly. "I was not." 
 
 Lancelot laughed aloud, as men will at strangest 
 moments, sprung towards her with open arms, 
 and threw himself on his knees beside the bed. 
 With sudden strength she rose upright, and 
 clasped him in her arms. 
 
 "Once more!" she sighed, in a whisper to 
 herself, " Once more on earth ! " And the room, 
 and the spectators, and disease itself faded from 
 around them like vain dreams, as she nestled 
 closer and closer to him, and gazed into his eyes, 
 and passed her shrunken hand over his cheeks, 
 and toyed with his hair, and seemed to drink in 
 magnetic life from his embrace.
 
 302 Yeast 
 
 No one spoke or stirred. They felt that an 
 awful and blessed spirit overshadowed the lovers, 
 and were hushed, as if in the sanctuary of God. 
 
 Suddenly again she raised her head from his 
 bosom, and in a tone in which her old queenliness 
 mingled strangely with the saddest tenderness : 
 
 "All of you go away now; I must talk to my 
 husband alone." 
 
 They went, leading out the squire, who cast 
 puzzled glances toward the pair, and murmured 
 to himself that "she was sure to get well now 
 Smith was come : everything went right when he 
 was in the way." 
 
 So they were left alone. 
 
 " I do not look so very ugly, my darling, do I ? 
 Not so very ugly? though they have cut off all 
 my poor hair, and I told them so often not ! But 
 I kept a lock for you ; " and feebly she drew from 
 under the pillow a long auburn tress, and tried 
 to wreathe it round his neck, but could not, and 
 sunk back. 
 
 Poor fellow! he could bear no more. He hid 
 his face in his hands, and burst into a long low 
 weeping. 
 
 "I am very thirsty, darling; reach me 
 
 No, I will drink no more, except from your dear 
 lips." 
 
 He lifted up his head, and breathed his whole 
 soul upon her lips; his tears fell on her closed 
 eyelids. 
 
 " Weeping ? No. You must not cry. See 
 how comfortable I am. They are all so kind 
 soft bed, cool room, fresh air, sweet drinks, sweet 
 scents. Oh, so different from that room!" 
 
 " What room ? my own ! "
 
 Once in a Way 303 
 
 "Listen, and I will tell you. Sit down put 
 your arm under my head so. When I am on 
 your bosom I feel so strong. God! let me last 
 to tell him all. It was for that I sent for him." 
 
 And then, in broken words, she told him how 
 she had gone up to the fever patient at Ashy, on 
 the fatal night on which Lancelot had last seen 
 her. Shuddering, she hinted at the horrible filth 
 and misery she had seen, at the foul scents which 
 had sickened her. A madness of remorse, she 
 said, had seized her. She had gone, in spite of 
 her disgust, to several houses which she found 
 open. There were worse cottages there than 
 even her father's; some tradesmen in a neighbor- 
 ing town had been allowed to run up a set of rack 
 rent hovels. Another shudder seized her when 
 she spoke of them; and from that point in her 
 story all was fitful, broken, like the images of a 
 hideous dream. " Every instant those foul mem- 
 ories were defiling her nostrils. A horrible 
 loathing had taken possession of her, recurring 
 from time to time, till it ended in delirium and 
 fever. A scent-fiend was haunting her night and 
 day," she said. "And now the curse of the 
 Lavingtons had truly come upon her. To perish 
 by the people whom they made. Their neglect, 
 cupidity, oppression, are avenged on me! Why 
 not? Have I not wantoned in down and per- 
 fumes, while they, by whose labor my luxuries 
 were bought, were pining among scents and 
 sounds, one day of which would have driven me 
 mad! And then they wonder why men turn 
 Chartists! There are those horrible scents 
 again ! Save me from them ! Lancelot darling ! 
 Take me to the fresh air ! I choke ! I am fester-
 
 304 Yeast 
 
 ing away ! The Nun-pool ! Take all the water, 
 every drop, and wash Ashy clean again! Make 
 a great fountain in it beautiful marble to 
 bubble and gurgle, and trickle and foam, for ever 
 and ever, and wash away the sins of the Laving- 
 tons, that the little rosy children may play round 
 it, and the poor toil-bent woman may wash and 
 
 wash and drink Water ! water ! I am dying 
 
 of thirst." 
 
 He gave her water, and then she lay back and 
 babbled about the Nun-pool sweeping "all the 
 houses of Ashy into one beautiful palace, among 
 great flower-gardens, where the school children 
 will sit and sing such merry hymns, and never 
 struggle with great pails of water up the hill of 
 Ashy any more." 
 
 "You will do it! darling! Strong, wise, 
 noble-hearted that you are ! Why do you look at 
 me? You will be rich some day. You will own 
 land, for you are worthy to own it. Oh that I 
 could give you Whitford ! No ! It was mine 
 
 too long therefore I die ! because I Lord 
 
 Jesus! have I not repented of my sin?" 
 
 Then she grew calm once more. A soft smile 
 crept over her face, as it grew sharper and paler 
 every moment. Faintly she sank back on the 
 pillows, and faintly whispered to him to kneel 
 and pray. He obeyed her mechanically. . . . 
 " No not for me, for them for them, and for 
 yourself that yon may save them whom I never 
 dreamt that I was bound to save." 
 
 And he knelt and prayed . . . what, he alone 
 and those who heard his prayer, can tell. . . .
 
 Once in a Way 305 
 
 When he lifted up his head at last, he saw that 
 Argemone lay motionless. For a moment he 
 thought she was dead, and frantically sprang to 
 the bell. The family rushed in with the physi- 
 cian. She gave some faint token of life, but none 
 of consciousness. The doctor sighed, and said 
 that her end was near. Lancelot had known that 
 all along. 
 
 "I think, sir, you had better leave the room," 
 said Mrs. Lavington; and followed him into the 
 passage. 
 
 What she was about to say remained unspoken ; 
 for Lancelot seized her hand in spite of her, with 
 frantic thanks for having allowed him this one 
 interview, and entreaties that he might see her 
 again, if but for one moment. 
 
 Mrs. Lavington, somewhat more softly than 
 usual, said, "That the result of this visit had 
 not been such as to make a second desirable 
 that she had no wish to disturb her daughter's 
 mind at such a moment with earthly regrets." 
 
 " Earthly regrets ! " How little she knew what 
 had passed there ! But if she had known, would 
 she have been one whit softened ? For, indeed, 
 Argemone' s spirituality was not in her mother's 
 language. And yet the good woman had prayed, 
 and prayed, and wept bitter tears, by her daughter's 
 bedside, day after day; but she had never heard 
 her pronounce the talisman ic formula of words, 
 necessary in her eyes to ensure salvation; and 
 so she was almost without hope for her. Oh, 
 Bigotry! Devil, who turnest God's love into 
 man's curse! are not human hearts hard and 
 blind enough of themselves, without thy cursed 
 help?
 
 306 Yeast 
 
 For one moment a storm of unutterable pride 
 and rage convulsed Lancelot the next instant 
 love conquered; and the strong proud man threw 
 himself on his knees at the feet of the woman he 
 despised, and with wild sobs entreated for one 
 moment more one only! 
 
 At that instant a shriek from Honor ia resounded 
 from the sick-chamber. Lancelot knew what it 
 meant, and sprang up, as men do when shot 
 through the heart In a moment he was himself 
 again. A new life had begun for him alone. 
 
 "You will not need to grant my prayer, 
 madam," he said calmly: " Argemone is dead."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 
 
 LET us pass over the period of dull, stupefied 
 misery that followed, when Lancelot had 
 returned to his lonely lodging, and the excitement 
 of his feelings had died away. It is impossible to 
 describe that which could not be separated into 
 parts, in which there was no foreground, no dis- 
 tance, but only one dead, black, colorless present. 
 After a time, however, he began to find that 
 fancies, almost ridiculously trivial, arrested and 
 absorbed his attention; even as when our eyes 
 have become accustomed to darkness, every light- 
 colored mote shows luminous against the void 
 blackness of night. So we are tempted to un- 
 seemly frivolity in churches, and at funerals, and 
 all most solemn moments ; and so Lancelot found 
 his imagination fluttering back, half amused, to 
 every smallest circumstance of the last few weeks, 
 as objects of mere curiosity, and found with 
 astonishment that they had lost their power of 
 paining him. Just as victims on the rack have 
 fallen, it is said, by length of torture, into insensi- 
 bility, and even calm repose, his brain had been 
 wrought until all feeling was benumbed. He 
 began to think what an interesting autobiography 
 his life might make ; and the events of the last few 
 years began to arrange themselves in a most
 
 308 Yeast 
 
 attractive dramatic form. He began even to work 
 out a scene or two, and where " motives" seemed 
 wanting, to invent them here and there. He sat 
 thus for hours silent over his fire, playing with his 
 old self, as though it were a thing which did not 
 belong to him a suit of clothes which he had 
 put off, and which, 
 
 " For that it was too rich to hang by the wall, 
 It must be ripped," 
 
 and then pieced and dizened out afresh as a 
 toy. And then again he started away from his 
 own thoughts, at finding himself on the edge of that 
 very gulf, which, as Mellot had lately told him, 
 Barnakill denounced as the true hell of genius, 
 where Art is regarded as an end and not a means, 
 and objects are interesting, not in as far as they 
 form our spirits, but in proportion as they can be 
 shaped into effective parts of some beautiful whole. 
 But whether it was a temptation or none, the desire 
 recurred to him again and again. He even at- 
 tempted to write, but sickened at the sight of the 
 first words. He turned to his pencil, and tried to 
 represent with it one scene at least; and with the 
 horrible calmness of some self-torturing ascetic, he 
 sat down to sketch a drawing of himself and 
 Argemone on her dying day, with her head upon 
 his bosom for the last time and then tossed it 
 angrily into the fire, partly because he felt just as 
 he had in his attempts to write, that there was 
 something more in all these events than he could 
 utter by pen or pencil, than he could even under- 
 stand; principally because he could not arrange 
 the attitudes gracefully enough. And now, in 
 front of the stern realities of sorrow and death, he
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 309 
 
 began to see a meaning in another mysterious 
 saying of Barnakill's, which Mellot was continu- 
 ally quoting, that " Art was never Art till it was 
 more than Art ; that the Finite only existed as a 
 body of the Infinite ; and that the man of genius 
 must first know the Infinite, unless he wished to 
 become not a poet, but a maker of idols." Still 
 he felt in himself a capability, nay, an infinite 
 longing to speak ; though what he should utter, or 
 how, whether as poet, social theorist, preacher, 
 he could not yet decide. Barnakill had forbidden 
 him painting, and though he hardly knew why, he 
 dared not disobey him. But Argemone's dying 
 words lay on him as a divine command to labor. 
 All his doubts, his social observations, his dreams 
 of the beautiful and the blissful, his intense percep- 
 tion of social evils, his new-born hope faith it 
 could not yet be called in a ruler and deliverer 
 of the world, all urged him on to labor: but at 
 what? He felt as if he were the demon in the 
 legend, condemned to twine endless ropes of 
 sand. The world, outside which he now stood for 
 good and evil, seemed to him like some frantic 
 whirling waltz; 'some serried struggling crowd, 
 which rushed past him in aimless confusion, with- 
 out allowing him time or opening to take his place 
 among their ranks : and as for wings to rise above, 
 and to look down upon the uproar, where were 
 they? His melancholy paralyzed him more and 
 more. He was too listless even to cater for 
 his daily bread by writing his articles for the 
 magazines. Why should he? He had nothing 
 to say. Why should he pour out words and 
 empty sound, and add one more futility to the 
 herd of "prophets that had become wind, and
 
 310 Yeast 
 
 had no truth in them " ? Those who could write 
 without a conscience, without an object except 
 that of seeing their own fine words, and filling 
 their own pockets let them do it : for his part 
 he would have none of it. But his purse was 
 empty, and so was his stomach ; and as for asking 
 assistance of his uncle, it was returning like the dog 
 to his vomit. So one day he settled all bills with 
 his last shilling, tied up his remaining clothes in a 
 bundle, and stoutly stepped forth into the street 
 to find a job to hold a horse if nothing better 
 offered ; when, behold ! on the threshold he met 
 Barnakill himself. 
 
 "Whither away?" said that strange personage. 
 " I was just going to call on you." 
 
 " To earn my bread by the labor of my hands. 
 So our fathers all began." 
 
 "And so their sons must all end. Do you want 
 work?" 
 
 " Yes, if you have any." 
 
 " Follow me, and carry a trunk home from a 
 shop to my lodgings." 
 
 He strode off, with Lancelot after him ; entered 
 a mathematical instrument makeVs shop in the 
 neighboring street, and pointed out a heavy corded 
 case to Lancelot, who, with the assistance of the 
 shopman, got it on his shoulders; and trudging 
 forth through the streets after his employer, who 
 walked before him silent and unregarding, felt him- 
 self for the first time in his life in the same situa- 
 tion as nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every 
 thousand of Adam's descendants, and discovered 
 somewhat to his satisfaction that when he could 
 once rid his mind of its old superstition that every 
 one was looking at him, it mattered very little
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 3 1 1 
 
 whether the burden carried were a deal trunk or a 
 Downing Street despatch-box. 
 
 His employer's lodgings were in St. Paul's 
 Churchyard. Lancelot set the trunk down inside 
 the door. 
 
 "What do you charge?" 
 
 " Sixpence." 
 
 Barnakill looked him steadily in the face, 
 gave him the sixpence, went in, and shut the 
 door. 
 
 Lancelot wandered down the street, half amused 
 at the simple test which had just been applied to 
 him, and yet sickened with disappointment; for 
 he had cherished a mysterious fancy that with this 
 strange being all his hopes of future activity were 
 bound up. Tregarva's month was nearly over, 
 and yet no tidings of him had come. Mellot had 
 left London on some mysterious errand of the 
 prophet's, and for the first time in his life he 
 seemed to stand utterly alone. He was at one 
 pole, and the whole universe at the other. It was 
 in vain to tell himself that his own act had placed 
 him there ; that he had friends to whom he migbt 
 appeal. He would not, he dare not, accept out- 
 ward help, even outward friendship, however 
 hearty and sincere, at that crisis of his existence. 
 It seemed a desecration of its awfulness to find 
 comfort in anything but the highest and the 
 deepest. And the glimpse of that which he had 
 attained seemed to have passed away from him 
 again, seemed to be something which, as it had 
 arisen with Argemone, was lost with her also, 
 one speck of the far blue sky which the rolling 
 clouds had covered in again. As he passed under 
 the shadow of the huge soot-blackened cathedral)
 
 3 1 2 Yeast 
 
 and looked at its grim spiked railings and closed 
 doors, it seemed to him a symbol of the spiritual 
 world, clouded and barred from him. He stopped 
 and looked up, and tried to think. The rays of 
 the setting sun lighted up in clear radiance the 
 huge cross on the summit. Was it an omen? 
 Lancelot thought so ; but at that instant he felt a 
 hand on his shoulder, and looked round. It was 
 that strange man again. 
 
 "So far well," said he. "You are making a 
 better day's work than you fancy, and earning 
 more wages. For instance, here is a packet for 
 you." 
 
 Lancelot seized it, trembling, and tore it open. 
 It was directed in Honoria's handwriting. 
 
 " Whence had you this ? " said he. 
 
 " Through Mellot, through whom I can return 
 your answer, if one be needed." 
 
 The letter was significant of Honoria's character. 
 It busied itself entirely about facts, and showed the 
 depth of her sorrow by making no allusion to it. 
 " Argemone, as Lancelot was probably aware, had 
 bequeathed to him the whole of her own fortune at 
 Mrs. Lavington's death, and had directed that 
 various precious things of hers should be delivered 
 over to him immediately. Her mother, however, 
 kept her chamber under lock and key, and refused 
 to allow an article to be removed from its accus- 
 tomed place. It was natural, in the first burst of 
 her sorrow, and Lancelot would pardon." All his 
 drawings and letters had been, by Argemone's 
 desire, placed with her in her coffin. Honoria had 
 been only able to obey her in sending a favorite 
 ring of hers, and with it the last stanzas which she 
 had composed before her death:
 
 "Twin stars, aloft in ether clear, 
 Around each other roll away, 
 Within one common atmosphere 
 Of their own mutual light and day. 
 
 44 And myriad happy eyes are bent 
 
 Upon their changeless love alway; 
 As, strengthened by their one intent, 
 They pour the flood of life and day, 
 
 * So we, through this world's waning night, 
 
 Shall, hand in hand, pursue our way ; 
 Shed round us order, love, and light, 
 And shine unto the perfect day." 
 
 The precious relic, with all its shattered hopes, 
 came at the right moment to soften his hard-worn 
 heart. The sight, the touch of it, shot like an 
 electric spark through the black stifling thunder- 
 cloud of his soul, and dissolved it in refreshing 
 showers of tears. 
 
 Barnakill led him gently within the area of the 
 railings, where he might conceal his emotion, and 
 it was but a few seconds before Lancelot had 
 recovered his self-possession and followed him up 
 the steps through the wicket door. 
 
 They entered. The afternoon service was pro- 
 ceeding. The organ droned sadly in its iron cage 
 to a few musical amateurs. Some nursery maids 
 and foreign sailors stared about within the spiked 
 felon's dock which shut off the body of the cathe- 
 dral, and tried in vain to hear what was going on 
 inside the choir. As a wise author a Protestant, 
 too has lately said, " the scanty service rattled in 
 the vast building, like a dried kernel too small for 
 its shell." The place breathed imbecility, and un- 
 reality, and sleepy life-in-death, while the whole 
 nineteenth century went roaring on its way outside.
 
 314 Yeast 
 
 And as Lancelot thought, though only as a dilet- 
 tante, of old St. Paul's, the morning star and focal 
 beacon of England through centuries and dynas- 
 ties, from old Augustine and Mellitus, up to 
 those Paul's Cross sermons whose thunders shook 
 thrones, and to noble Wren's masterpiece of art, he 
 asked, " Whither all this? Coleridge's dictum, that 
 a cathedral is a petrified religion, may be taken to 
 bear more meanings than one. When will life re- 
 turn to this cathedral system ? " 
 
 " When was it ever a living system? " answered 
 the other. " When was it ever anything but a 
 transitionary makeshift since the dissolution of the 
 monasteries ? " 
 
 " Why, then, not away with it at once ? " 
 
 " You English have not done with it yet. At all 
 events, it is keeping your cathedrals rain-proof for 
 you, till you can put them to some better use than 
 now." 
 
 "And in the meantime?" 
 
 " In the meantime there is life enough in them ; 
 life that will wake the dead some day. Do you 
 hear what those choristers are chanting now ? " 
 
 "Not I," said Lancelot; "nor any one round 
 us, I should think." 
 
 " That is our own fault, after all ; for we were 
 not good churchmen enough to come in time for 
 vespers. " 
 
 " Are you a churchman then ? " 
 
 "Yes, thank God. There may be other 
 churches than those of Europe or Syria, and 
 right Catholic ones, too. But, shall I tell you 
 what they are singing? ' He hath put down the 
 mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the 
 humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 3 1 5 
 
 with good things, and the rich He hath sent 
 empty away.' Is there no life, think you, in 
 those words, spoken here every afternoon in the 
 name of God ? " 
 
 "By hirelings, who neither care nor under- 
 stand " 
 
 " Hush. Be not hasty with imputations of 
 evil, within walls dedicated to and preserved by 
 the All-good. Even should the speakers forget 
 the meaning of their own words, to my sense, 
 perhaps, that may just now leave the words more 
 entirely God's. At all events, confess that what- 
 ever accidental husks may have clustered round 
 it, here is a germ of Eternal Truth. No, I dare 
 not despair of you English, as long as I hear 
 your priesthood forced by Providence, even in 
 spite of themselves, thus to speak God's words 
 about an age in which the condition of the poor, 
 and the rights and duties of man, are becom- 
 ing the rally ing-point for all thought and all 
 organization. " 
 
 " But does it not make the case more hopeless 
 that such words have been spoken for centuries, 
 and no man regards them ? " 
 
 " You have to blame for that the people, rather 
 than the priest. As they are, so will he be, in 
 every age and country. He is but the index 
 which the changes of their spiritual state move 
 up and down the scale : and as they will become 
 in England in the next half century, so will he 
 become also. " 
 
 "And can these dry bones live?" asked Lan- 
 celot, scornfully. 
 
 " Who are you to ask ? What were you three 
 months ago ? for I know well your story. But do
 
 3 1 6 Yeast 
 
 you remember what the prophet saw in the 
 Valley of Vision? How first that those same 
 dry bones shook and clashed together, as if uneasy 
 because they were disorganized; and how they 
 then found flesh and stood upright : and yet there 
 was no life in them, till at last the Spirit came 
 dow>n and entered into them? Surely there is 
 shaking enough among the bones now! It is 
 happening to the body of your England as it did 
 to Adam's after he was made. It lay on earth, 
 the rabbis say, forty days before the breath of 
 life was put into it, and the devil came and 
 kicked it; and it sounded hollow, as England is 
 doing now; but that did not prevent the breath 
 of life coming in good time, nor will it in 
 England's case." 
 
 Lancelot looked at him with a puzzled face. 
 
 " You must not speak in such deep parables to 
 so young a learner. " 
 
 " Is my parable so hard, then ? Look around 
 you and see what is the characteristic of your 
 country and of your generation at this moment. 
 What a yearning, what an expectation, amid 
 infinite falsehoods and confusions, of some nobler, 
 more chivalrous, more godlike state ! Your very 
 costermonger trolls out his belief that ' there 's a 
 good time coming,' and the hearts of gamins, as 
 well as millenarians, answer, ' True ! ' Is not 
 that a clashing among the dry bones? And as 
 for flesh, what new materials are springing up 
 among you every month, spiritual and physical, 
 for a state such as ' eye hath not seen nor ear 
 heard' ? railroads, electric telegraphs, associate- 
 lodging-houses, club-houses, sanitary reforms, 
 experimental schools, chemical agriculture, a
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 317 
 
 matchless school of inductive science, an equally 
 matchless school of naturalist painters, and all 
 this in the very workshop of the world ! Look, 
 again, at the healthy craving after religious art 
 and ceremonial, the strong desire to preserve 
 that which has stood the test of time; and on 
 the other hand, at the manful resolution of your 
 middle classes to stand or fall by the Bible alone, 
 to admit no innovations in worship which are 
 empty of instinctive meaning. Look at the 
 enormous amount of practical benevolence which 
 now struggles in vain against evil, only because 
 it is as yet private, desultory, divided. How 
 dare you, young man, despair of your own nation, 
 while its nobles can produce a Carlisle, an 
 Ellesmere, an Ashley, a Robert Grosvenor, 
 while its middle classes can beget a Faraday, a 
 Stephenson, a Brooke, an Elizabeth Fry? See, 
 I say, what a chaos of noble materials is here, 
 all confused, it is true, polarized, jarring, and 
 chaotic, here bigotry, there self-will, supersti- 
 tion, sheer atheism often, but only waiting for 
 the one inspiring Spirit to organize, and unite, 
 and consecrate this chaos into the noblest polity 
 the world ever saw realized ! What a destiny 
 may be that of your land, if you have but the 
 faith to see your own honor ! Were I not of my 
 own country, I would be an Englishman this 
 day." 
 
 " And what is your country ? " asked Lancelot. 
 "It should be a noble one which breeds such 
 men as you." 
 
 The stranger smiled. 
 
 "Will you go thither with me? " 
 
 " Why not ? I long for travel, and truly I am
 
 3i 8 Yeast 
 
 sick of my own country. When the Spirit of 
 which you speak," he went on, bitterly, "shall 
 descend, I may return; till then England is no 
 place for the penniless." 
 
 "How know you that the Spirit is not even 
 now poured out? Must your English Pharisees 
 and Sadducees, too, have signs and wonders ere 
 they believe ? Will man never know that ' the 
 kingdom of God comes not by observation ' ? that 
 now, as ever, His promise stands true, ' Lo! I 
 am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
 world ' ? How many inspired hearts even now 
 may be cherishing in secret the idea which shall 
 reform the age, and fulfil at once the longings of 
 every sect and rank ? " 
 
 " Name it to me, then ! " 
 
 "Who can name it? Who can even see it, 
 but those who are like Him from whom it comes? 
 Them a long and stern discipline awaits. Would 
 you be of them, you must, like the Highest who 
 ever trod this earth, go fasting into the wilder- 
 ness, and, among the wild beasts, stand alone 
 face to face with the powers of Nature." 
 
 " I will go where you shall bid me. I will 
 turn shepherd among the Scottish mountains 
 live as an anchorite in the solitudes of Dartmoor. 
 But to what purpose? I have listened long to 
 Nature's voice, but even the whispers of a spirit- 
 ual presence which haunted my childhood have 
 died away, and I hear nothing in her but the grind- 
 ing of the iron wheels of mechanical necessity." 
 
 "Which is the will of God. Henceforth you 
 shall study, not Nature, but Him. Yet as for 
 place I do not like your English primitive 
 formations, where earth, worn out with strug-
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 3 1 9 
 
 gling, has fallen wearily asleep. No, you shall 
 rather come to Asia, the oldest and yet the 
 youngest continent, to our volcanic mountain 
 ranges, where her bosom still heaves with the 
 creative energy of youth, around the primeval 
 cradle of the most ancient race of men. Then, 
 when you have learnt the wondrous harmony 
 between man and his dwelling-place, I will lead 
 you to a land where you shall see the highest 
 spiritual cultivation in triumphant contact with 
 the fiercest energies of matter; where men have 
 learnt to tame and use alike the volcano and the 
 human heart, where the body and the spirit, the 
 beautiful and the useful, the human and the divine, 
 are no longer separate, and men have embodied 
 to themselves on earth an image of the ' city not 
 made with hands, eternal in the heavens. ' ' 
 
 " Where is this land ? " said Lancelot, eagerly. 
 
 "Poor human nature must have its name for 
 everything. You have heard of the country of 
 Prester John, that mysterious Christian empire, 
 rarely visited by European eye ? " 
 
 "There are legends of two such," said Lance- 
 lot, "an Ethiopian and an Asiatic one; and the 
 Ethiopian, if we are to believe Colonel Harris's 
 Journey to Shoa, is a sufficiently miserable 
 failure." 
 
 "True; the day of the Chamitic race is past; 
 you will not say the same of our Caucasian 
 empire. To our race the present belongs, to 
 England, France, Germany, America, to us. 
 Will you see what we have done, and perhaps 
 bring home, after long wanderings, a message for 
 your country which may help to unravel the 
 tangled web of this strange time?"
 
 320 Yeast 
 
 "I will," said Lancelot, "now, this moment. 
 And yet, no. There is one with whom I have 
 promised to share all future weal and woe. With- 
 out him I can take no step. " 
 
 "Tregarva?" 
 
 "Yes he. What made you guess that I 
 spoke of him?" 
 
 "Mellot told me of him, and of you, too, six 
 weeks ago. He is now gone to fetch him from 
 Manchester. I cannot trust him here in England 
 yet. The country made him sad; London has 
 made him mad; Manchester may make him bad. 
 It is too fearful a trial even for his faith. I 
 must take him with us." 
 
 " What interest in him not to say what 
 authority over him have you?" 
 
 " The same which I have over you. You will 
 come with me ; so will he. It is my business, as 
 my name signifies, to save the children alive 
 whom European society leaves carelessly and 
 ignorant ly to die. And as for my power, I 
 come," said he, with a smile, "from a country 
 which sends no one on its errands without first 
 thoroughly satisfying itself as to his power of 
 fulfilling them." 
 
 " If he goes, I go with you. " 
 
 "And he will go. And yet, think what you 
 do. It is a fearful journey. They who travel it, 
 even as they came naked out of their mother's 
 womb even as they return thither, and carry 
 nothing with them of all which they have gotten 
 in this life, so must those who travel to iny 
 land." 
 
 "What? Tregarva? Is he, too, to give up 
 all ? I had thought that I saw in him a precious
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 3 2 1 
 
 possession, one for which I would barter all my 
 scholarship, my talents, ay my life itself." 
 
 " A possession worth your life ? What then ? " 
 
 "Faith in an unseen God." 
 
 " Ask him whether he would call that a posses- 
 sion his own in any sense ? " 
 
 "He would call it a revelation to him." 
 
 "That is, a taking of the veil from something 
 which was behind the veil already." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And which may therefore just as really be 
 behind the veil in other cases without its presence 
 being suspected." 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 " In what sense, now, is that a possession ? Do 
 you possess the sun because you see it? Did 
 Herschel create Uranus by discovering it; or 
 even increase, by an atom, its attraction on one 
 particle of his own body ? " 
 
 "Whither is all this tending?" 
 
 "Hither. Tregarva does not possess his Father 
 and his Lord; he is possessed by them." 
 
 "But he would say and I should believe him 
 that he has seen and known them, not with his 
 bodily eyes, but with his soul, heart, imagina- 
 tion call it what you will. All I know is, 
 that between him and me there is a great gulf 
 fixed." 
 
 "What! seen and known them utterly? com- 
 prehended them ? Are they not infinite, incom- 
 prehensible? Can the less comprehend the 
 greater ? " 
 
 "He knows, at least, enough of them to make 
 him what I am not." 
 
 "That is, he knows something of them. And 
 O Vol. v
 
 322 Yeast 
 
 may not you know something of them also? 
 enough to make you what he is not ? " 
 
 Lancelot shook his head in silence. 
 
 "Suppose that you had met and spoken with 
 your father, and loved him when you saw him, 
 and yet were not aware of the relation in 
 which you stood to him, still you would know 
 him ? " 
 
 " Not the most important thing of all that 
 he was my father." 
 
 " Is that the most important thing ? Is it not 
 more important that he should know that you 
 were his son? That he should support, guide, 
 educate you, even though unseen? Do you not 
 know that some one has been doing that ? " 
 
 " That I have been supported, guided, educated, 
 I know full well; but by whom I know not. 
 And I know, too, that I have been punished. 
 And therefore therefore I cannot free the 
 thought of a Him of a Person only of a 
 Destiny, of Laws and Powers, which have no 
 faces wherewith to frown awful wrath upon me ! 
 If it be a Person who has been leading me, I 
 must go mad, or know that He has forgiven ! " 
 
 " I conceive that it is He, and not punishment, 
 which you fear ? " 
 
 Lancelot was silent a moment; . . . "Yes. 
 He, and not hell at all, is what I fear. He can 
 inflict no punishment on me worse than the inner 
 hell which I have felt already, many and many a 
 time." 
 
 " Bona verba ! That is an awful thing to say : 
 but better this extreme than the other. . . . And 
 you would what ? " 
 
 "Be pardoned."
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 323 
 
 "If He loves you, He has pardoned you 
 already." 
 
 " How do I know that He loves me? " 
 
 " How does Tregarva ? " 
 
 "He is a righteous man, and I " 
 
 "Am a sinner. He would, and rightly, call 
 himself the same." 
 
 " But he knows that God loves him that he is 
 God's child." 
 
 " So, then, God did not love him till he caused 
 God to love him, by knowing that He loved him ? 
 He was not God's child till he made himself one, 
 by believing that he was one when as yet he was 
 not ? I appeal to common sense and logic. . . . 
 It was revealed to Tregarva that God had been 
 loving him while he was yet a bad man. If He 
 loved him, in spite of his sin, why should He not 
 have loved you ? " 
 
 "If He had loved me, would He have left me 
 in ignorance of Himself? For if He be, to know 
 Him is the highest good." 
 
 " Had He left Tregarva in ignorance of Himself ?" 
 
 "No. . . . Certainly, Tregarva spoke of his 
 conversion as of a turning to one of whom he had 
 known all along, and disregarded." 
 
 "Then do you turn, like him, to Him whom 
 
 you have known all along, and disregarded." 
 ii j p 
 
 " Yes you ! If half I have heard and seen of 
 you be true, He has been telling you more, and 
 not less, of Himself than He does to most men. 
 You, for aught I know, may know more of Him 
 than Tregarva does. The gulf between you and 
 him is this : he has obeyed what he knew and 
 you have not." . . .
 
 3 2 4 
 
 Lancelot paused a moment, then 
 
 " No ! do not cheat me ! You said once that 
 you were a churchman." 
 
 " So I am. A Catholic of the Catholics. 
 What then ? " 
 
 "Who is He to whom you ask me to turn? 
 You talk to me of Him as my Father; but you 
 talk of Him to men of your own creed as the 
 Father. You have mysterious dogmas of a Three 
 in One. I know them. ... I have admired 
 them. In all their forms in the Vedas, in the 
 Neo-Platonists, in Jacob Behmen, in your Catho- 
 lic creeds, in Coleridge, and the Germans from 
 whom he borrowed, I have looked at them, and 
 found in them beautiful phantasms of philoso- 
 phy, ... all but scientific necessities; . . . 
 but " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " I do not want cold abstract necessities of 
 logic: I want living practical facts. If those 
 mysterious dogmas speak of real and necessary 
 properties of His being, they must be necessarily 
 interwoven in practice with His revelation of 
 Himself?" 
 
 "Most true. But how would you have Him 
 nnveil Himself? " 
 
 "By unveiling Himself." 
 
 "What? To your simple intuition? That 
 was Semele's ambition. . . . You recollect the 
 end of that myth. You recollect, too, as you 
 have read the Neo-Platonists, the result of their 
 similar attempt." 
 
 "Idolatry and magic." 
 
 "True; and yet, such is the ambition of man, 
 you who were just now envying Tregarva, are
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 325 
 
 already longing to climb even higher than Saint 
 Theresa. " 
 
 " I do not often indulge in such an ambition. 
 But I have read in your Schoolmen tales of a 
 Beatific Vision; how that the highest good for 
 man was to see God." 
 
 " And did you believe that? " 
 
 " One cannot believe the impossible only 
 regret its impossibility." 
 
 " Impossibility ? You can only see the Uncreate 
 in the Create the Infinite in the Finite the 
 absolute good in that which is like the good. 
 Does Tregarva pretend to more? He sees God 
 in His own thoughts and consciousnesses, and in 
 the events of the world around him, imaged in 
 the mirror of his own mind. Is your mirror, 
 then, so much narrower than his ? " 
 
 "I have none. I see but myself, and the 
 world, and far above them, a dim awful Unity, 
 which is but a notion." 
 
 " Fool ! and slow of heart to believe ! Where 
 else would you see Him but in yourself and in 
 the world? They are all things cognizable to 
 you. Where else, but everywhere, would you 
 see Him whom no man hath seen, or can see? " 
 
 "When He shows Himself to me in them, 
 then I may see Him. But now " 
 
 "You have seen Him; and because you do not 
 know the name of what you see or rather will 
 not acknowledge it you fancy that it is not 
 there." 
 
 " How in His name? What have I seen? " 
 
 "Ask yourself. Have you not seen, in your 
 fancy, at least, an ideal of man, for which you 
 spurned (for Mellot has told me all) the merely
 
 326 Yeast 
 
 negative angelic the merely receptive and in- 
 dulgent feminine-ideals of humanity, and longed 
 to be a man, like that ideal and perfect man ? " 
 
 "I have." 
 
 "And what was your misery all along? Was 
 it not that you felt you ought to be a person with 
 a one inner unity, a one practical will, purpose, 
 and business given to you not invented by 
 yourself in the great order and harmony of the 
 universe, and that you were not one ? That 
 your self-willed fancies, and self-pleasing pas- 
 sions, had torn you in pieces, and left you in- 
 consistent, dismembered, helpless, purposeless? 
 That, in short, you were below your ideal, just in 
 proportion as you were not a person? " 
 
 " God knows you speak truth ! " 
 
 "Then must not that ideal of humanity be a 
 person himself ? Else how can he be the ideal 
 man? Where is your logic? An impersonal 
 ideal of a personal species! . . . And what is 
 the most special peculiarity of man? Is it not 
 that he alone of creation is a son, with a Father 
 to love and to obey? Then must not the ideal 
 man be a son also ? And last, but not least, is it 
 not the very property of man that he is a spirit 
 invested with flesh and blood? Then must not 
 the ideal man have, once at least, taken on him- 
 self flesh and blood also? Else, how could he 
 fulfil his own idea?" 
 
 "Yes . . . Yes . . . That thought, too, has 
 glanced through my mind at moments, like a 
 lightning-flash ; till I have envied the old Greeks 
 their faith in a human Zeus, son of Kronos a 
 human Phoibos, son of Zeus. But I could not 
 rest in them. They are noble. But are they
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 327 
 
 are any perfect ideals ? The one thing I did, 
 and do, and will believe, is the one which they 
 do not fulfil that man is meant to be the con- 
 queror of the earth, matter, nature, decay, death 
 itself, and to conquer them, as Bacon says, by 
 obeying them." 
 
 "Hold it fast; but follow it out, and say 
 boldly, the ideal of humanity must be one who 
 has conquered nature one who rules the uni- 
 verse one who has vanquished death itself; and 
 conquered them, as Bacon says, not by violating, 
 but by submitting to them. Have you never 
 heard of one who is said to have done this ? How 
 do you know that in this ideal which you have 
 seen, you have not seen the Son the perfect 
 Man, who died and rose again, and sits forever 
 Healer, and Lord, and Ruler of the universe? 
 . . . Stay do not answer me. Have you not, 
 besides, had dreams of an All-Father from 
 whom, in some mysterious way, all things and 
 beings must derive their source, and that Son 
 if my theory be true among the rest, and above 
 all the rest?" 
 
 "Who has not? But what more dim or distant 
 more drearily, hopelessly notional, than that 
 thought ? " 
 
 "Only the thought that there is none. But 
 the dreariness was only in your own inconsistency. 
 If He be the Father of all, He must be the 
 Father of persons He Himself therefore a Per- 
 son. He must be the Father of all in whom 
 dwell personal qualities, power, wisdom, creative 
 energy, love, justice, pity. Can He be their 
 Father, unless all these very qualities are infi- 
 nitely His ? Does He now look so terrible to you ? "
 
 328 Yeast 
 
 "I have had this dream, too; but I turned 
 away from it in dread." 
 
 " Doubtless you did. Some day you will know 
 why. Does that former dream of a human Son 
 relieve this dream of none of its awfulness? 
 May not the type be beloved for the sake of its 
 Antitype, even if the very name of All-Father is 
 no guarantee for His paternal pity! . . . But 
 you have had this dream. How know you, that 
 in it you were not allowed a glimpse, however 
 dim and distant, of Him whom the Catholics call 
 the Father?" 
 
 "It may be; but " 
 
 "Stay again. Had you never the sense of a 
 Spirit in you a will, an energy, an inspiration, 
 deeper than the region of consciousness and 
 reflection, which, like the wind, blew where it 
 listed, and you heard the sound of it ringing 
 through your whole consciousness, and yet knew 
 not whence it came, or whither it went, or why 
 it drove you on to dare and suffer, to love and 
 hate ; to be a fighter, a sportsman, an artist " 
 
 " And a drunkard ! " added Lancelot, sadly. 
 
 "And a drunkard. But did it never seem to 
 you that this strange wayward spirit, if anything, 
 was the very root and core of your own personal- 
 ity ? And had you never a craving for the help 
 of some higher, mightier spirit, to guide and 
 strengthen yours; to regulate and civilize its 
 savage and spasmodic self-will ? to teach you 
 your rightful place in the great order of the 
 universe around; to fill you with a continuous 
 purpose and with a continuous will to do it? 
 Have you never had a dream of an Inspirer ? a 
 spirit of all spirits ? "
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 329 
 
 Lancelot turned away with a shudder. 
 
 "Talk of anything but that! Little you know 
 and yet you seem to know everything the 
 agony of craving with which I have longed for 
 guidance; the rage and disgust which possessed 
 me when I tried one pretended teacher after 
 anpther, and found in myself depths which their 
 spirits could not, or rather would not, touch. I 
 have been irreverent to the false, from very long- 
 ing to worship the true ; I have been a rebel to 
 sham leaders, for very desire to be loyal to a real 
 one; I have envied my poor cousin his Jesuits; 
 I have envied my own pointers their slavery to 
 my whip and whistle; I have fled, as a last 
 resource, to brandy and opium, for the inspira- 
 tion which neither man nor demon would bestow. 
 . . . Then I found . . . you know my story. . . . 
 And when I looked to her to guide and inspire 
 me, behold ! I found myself, by the very laws of 
 humanity, compelled to guide and inspire her; 
 blind, to lead the blind ! Thank God, for her 
 sake, that she was taken from me ! " 
 
 "Did you ever mistake these substitutes, even 
 the noblest of them, for the reality ! Did not 
 your very dissatisfaction with them show you that 
 the true inspirer ought to be, if he were to satisfy 
 your cravings, a person, truly else how could he 
 inspire and teach you, a person yourself ! but an 
 utterly infinite, omniscient, eternal person ? How 
 know you that in that dream He was not unveil- 
 ing Himself to you He, The Spirit, who is the 
 Lord and Giver of Life ; The Spirit, who teaches 
 men their duty and relation to those above, around, 
 beneath them ; the Spirit of order, obedience, loy- 
 alty, brotherhood, mercy, condescension?"
 
 33 Yeast 
 
 "But I never could distinguish these dreams 
 from each other; the moment that I essayed to 
 separate them, I seemed to break up the thought 
 of an absolute one ground of all things, without 
 which the universe would have seemed a piece- 
 meal chaos; and they receded to infinite distance, 
 and became transparent, barren, notional shadows 
 of my own brain, even as your words are now." 
 
 " How know you that you were meant to dis- 
 tinguish them? How know you that that very 
 impossibility was not the testimony of fact and 
 experience to that old Catholic dogma, for the 
 sake of which you just now shrank from my 
 teaching? I say that this is so. How do you 
 know that it is not?" 
 
 "But how do I know that it is? I want 
 proof." 
 
 " And you are the man who was, five minutes 
 ago, crying out for practical facts, and disdaining 
 cold abstract necessities of logic 1 Can you prove 
 that your body exists ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Can you prove that your spirit exists ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "And yet know that they both exist. And 
 how?" 
 
 " Solvitur ambulando. " 
 
 "Exactly. When you try to prove either of 
 them without the other, you fail. You arrive, if 
 at anything, at some barren polar notion. By 
 action alone you prove the mesothetic fact which 
 underlies and unites them." 
 
 " Quorsum hcec ? " 
 
 "Hither. I am not going to demonstrate the 
 indemonstrable to give you intellectual notions
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 3 3 1 
 
 which, after all, will be but reflexes of my own 
 peculiar brain, and so add the green of my spec- 
 tacles to the orange of yours, and make night 
 hideous by fresh monsters. I may help you to 
 think yourself into a theoretical Tritheism, or a 
 theoretical Sabellianism ; I cannot make you 
 think yourself into practical and living Cathol- 
 icism. As you of anthropology, so I say of 
 theology, Solvitur ambulando. Don't believe 
 Catholic doctrine unless you like; faith is free. 
 But see if you can reclaim either society or your- 
 self without it; see if He will let you reclaim 
 them. Take Catholic doctrine for granted; act 
 on it ; and see if you will not reclaim them ! " 
 
 "Take for granted? Am I to come, after all, 
 to implicit faith ? " 
 
 "Implicit fiddlesticks! Did you ever read the 
 Novum Organum ? Mellot told me that you were 
 a geologist." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " You took for granted what you read in geo- 
 logical books, and went to the mine and the 
 quarry afterwards, to verify it in practice; and 
 according as you found fact correspond to theory, 
 you retained or rejected. Was that implicit 
 faith, or common sense, common humility, and 
 sound induction ? " 
 
 "Sound induction, at least." 
 
 "Then go now, and do likewise. Believe that 
 the learned, wise, and good, for 1800 years, may 
 possibly have found out somewhat, or have been 
 taught somewhat, on this matter, and test their 
 theory by practice. If a theory on such a point 
 is worth anything at all, it is omnipotent and all- 
 explaining. If it will not work, of course there
 
 332 Yeast 
 
 is no use keeping it a mometit. Perhaps it will 
 work. I say it will." 
 
 " But I shall not work it ; I still dread my own 
 spectacles. I dare not trust myself alone to 
 verify a theory of Murchison's or Lyell's. How 
 dare I trust myself in this ? " 
 
 "Then do not trust yourself alone: come and 
 see what others are doing. Come, and become a 
 member of a body which is verifying, by united 
 action, those universal and eternal truths, which 
 are too great for the grasp of any one time-ridden 
 individual. Not that we claim the gift of infal- 
 libility, any more than I do that of perfect utter- 
 ance of the little which we do know."- 
 
 "Then what do you promise me in asking me 
 to go with you ? " 
 
 " Practical proof that these my words are true, 
 practical proof that they can make a nation all 
 that England might be and is not, the sight of 
 what a people might become who, knowing thus 
 far, do what they know. We believe no more 
 than you, but we believe it. Come and see ! 
 and yet you will not see; facts, and the reasons 
 of them, will be as impalpable to you there as 
 here, unless you can again obey your Novum 
 Organum. " 
 
 "How then?" 
 
 " By renouncing all your idols the idols of 
 the race and of the market, of the study and of 
 the theatre. Every national prejudice, every 
 vulgar superstition, every remnant of pedantic 
 system, every sentimental like or dislike, must 
 be left behind you, for the induction of the world 
 problem. You must empty yourself before God 
 will fill you."
 
 The Valley of the Shadow of Death 333 
 
 "Of what can I strip myself more? I know 
 nothing; I can do nothing; I hope nothing; I 
 fear nothing; I am nothing." 
 
 "And you would gain something. But for 
 what purpose ? for on that depends your whole 
 success. To be famous, great, glorious, power- 
 ful, beneficent?" 
 
 "As I live, the height of my ambition, small 
 though it be, is only to find my place, though it 
 were but as a sweeper of chimneys. If I dare 
 wish if I dare choose, it would*be only this 
 to regenerate one little parish in the whole world. 
 ... To do that, and die, for aught I care, with- 
 out ever being recognized as the author of my 
 own deeds ... to hear them, if need be, imputed 
 to another, and myself accursed as a fool, if I 
 can but atone for the sins of . . . " 
 
 He paused; but his teacher understood 
 him. 
 
 "It is enough," he said. "Come with me; 
 Tregarva waits for us near. Again I warn you ; 
 you will hear nothing new; you shall only see 
 what you, and all around you, have known and 
 not done, known and done. We have no peculiar 
 doctrines or systems ; the old creeds are enough 
 for us. But we have obeyed the teaching which 
 we received in each and every age, and allowed 
 ourselves to be built up, generation by genera- 
 tion as the rest of Christendom might have 
 done into a living temple, on the foundation 
 which is laid already, and other than which no 
 man can lay." 
 
 " And what is that ? " 
 
 "Jesus Christ THE MAN." 
 
 He took Lancelot by the hand. A peaceful
 
 334 Yeast 
 
 warmth diffused itself over his limbs; the dron- 
 ing of the organ sounded fainter and more faint ; 
 the marble monuments grew dim and distant; 
 and, half unconsciously, he followed like a child 
 through the cathedral door.
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 I CAN foresee many criticisms, and those not 
 unreasonable ones, on this little book let 
 it be some excuse at least for me, that I have 
 foreseen them. Readers will complain, I doubt 
 not, of the very mythical and mysterious dtnoue- 
 ment of a story which began by things so gross 
 and palpable as field-sports and pauperism. But 
 is it not true that, sooner or later, " omnia exeunt 
 in mysterium " ? Out of mystery we all came at 
 our birth, fox-hunters and paupers, sages and 
 saints ; into mystery we shall all return ... at 
 all events, when we die; probably, as it seems 
 to me, some of us will return thither before we 
 die. For if the signs of the times mean any- 
 thing, they portend, I humbly submit, a some- 
 what mysterious and mythical denouement to this 
 very age, and to those struggles of it which I 
 have herein attempted, clumsily enough, to 
 sketch. We are entering fast, I both hope and 
 fear, into the region of prodigy, true and false; 
 and our great-grandchildren will look back on the 
 latter half of this century, and ask if it were 
 possible that such things could happen in an 
 organized planet ? The Benthamites will receive 
 this announcement, if it ever meets their eyes, 
 with shouts of laughter. Be it so ... nous 
 verrons. ... In the year 1847, if they will
 
 336 Yeast 
 
 recollect, they were congratulating themselves on 
 the nations having grown too wise to go to war 
 any more . . . and in 1848? So it has been 
 from the beginning. What did philosophers 
 expect in 1792? What did they see in 1793? 
 Popery was to be eternal; but the Reformation 
 came nevertheless. Rome was to be eternal; 
 but Alaric came. Jerusalem was to be eternal; 
 but Titus came. Gomorrha was to be eternal, I 
 doubt not; but the fire-floods came. . . . "As it 
 was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the 
 days of the Son of Man. They were eating, 
 drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage; and 
 the flood came and swept them all away." Of 
 course they did not expect it. They went on 
 saying, "Where is the promise of his coming? 
 For all things continue as they were from the 
 beginning." Most true; but what if they were 
 from the beginning over a volcano's mouth? 
 What if the method whereon things have pro- 
 ceeded since the creation were, as geology as 
 well as history proclaims, a cataclysmic method? 
 What then? Why should not this age, as all 
 others like it have done, end in a cataclysm, and 
 a prodigy, and a mystery? And why should not 
 my little book do likewise? 
 
 Again Readers will probably complain of 
 the fragmentary and unconnected form of the 
 book. Let them first be sure that that is not an 
 integral feature of the subject itself, and there- 
 fore the very form the book should take. Do not 
 young men think, speak, act, just now, in this 
 very incoherent, fragmentary way; without me- 
 thodic education or habits of thought; with the 
 various stereotyped systems which they have
 
 Epilogue 337 
 
 received by tradition, breaking up under them 
 like ice in a thaw; with a thousand facts and 
 notions, which they know not how to classify, 
 pouring in on them like a flood? a very Yeasty 
 state of mind altogether, like a mountain burn 
 in a spring rain, carrying down with it stones, 
 sticks, peat-water, addle grouse-eggs and drowned 
 kingfishers, fertilizing salts and vegetable poisons 
 not, alas ! without a large crust, here and 
 there, of sheer froth. Yet no heterogeneous 
 confused flood-deposit, no fertile meadows below. 
 And no high water, no fishing. It is in the long 
 black droughts, when the water is foul from low- 
 ness, and not from height, that Hydras and 
 Desmidiae, and Rotifers, and all uncouth pseud- 
 organisms, bred of putridity, begin to multiply, 
 and the fish are sick for want of a fresh, and the 
 cunningest artificial fly is of no avail, and the 
 shrewdest angler will do nothing except with a 
 gross fleshly gilt-tailed worm, or the cannibal 
 bait of roe, whereby parent fishes, like competi- 
 tive barbarisms, devour each other's flesh and 
 blood perhaps their own. It is when the 
 stream is clearing after a flood, that the fish will 
 rise. . . . When will the flood clear, and the fish 
 come on the feed again ? 
 
 Next; I shall be blamed for having left untold 
 the fate of those characters who have acted 
 throughout as Lancelot's satellites. But indeed 
 their only purpose consisted in their influence 
 on his development, and that of Tregarva; I do 
 not see that we have any need to follow them 
 farther. The reader can surely conjecture their 
 history for himself. . . . He may be pretty cer- 
 tain that they have gone the way of the world
 
 Yeast 
 
 . . . abierunt ad plures ... for this life or for 
 the next. They have done very much what he 
 or I might have done in their place nothing. 
 Nature brings very few of her children to perfec- 
 tion, in these days or any other. . . . And for 
 Grace, which does bring its children to perfec- 
 tion, the quantity and quality of the perfection 
 must depend on the quantity and quality of the 
 grace, and that again, to an awful extent The 
 Giver only knows to how great an extent on 
 the will of the recipients, and therefore in exact 
 proportion to their lowness in the human scale, 
 on the circumstances which environ them. So 
 my characters are now very much what the 
 reader might expect them to be. I confess them 
 to be unsatisfactory; so are most things: but 
 how can I solve problems which fact has not yet 
 solved for me? How am I to extricate my 
 antitypal characters, when their living types have 
 not yet extricated themselves? When the age 
 moves on, my story shall move on with it. Let 
 it be enough, that my puppets have retreated in 
 good order, and that I am willing to give to those 
 readers who have conceived something of human 
 interest for them, the latest accounts of their 
 doings. 
 
 With the exception, that is, of Mellot and 
 Sabina. Them I confess to be an utterly myste- 
 rious, fragmentary little couple. Why not ? Do 
 you not meet with twenty such in the course of 
 your life? Charming people, who for aught you 
 know may be opera folk from Paris, or emissaries 
 from the Czar, or disguised Jesuits, or disguised 
 Angels . . . who evidently "have a history," 
 and a strange one, which you never expect or
 
 Epilogue 339 
 
 attempt to fathom; who interest you intensely 
 for a while, and then are whirled away again in 
 the great world-waltz, and lost in the crowd for- 
 ever? Why should you wish my story to be more 
 complete than theirs is, or less romantic than 
 theirs maybe? There are more things in Lon- 
 don, as well as in heaven and earth, than are 
 dreamt of in our philosophy. If you but knew 
 the secret history of that dull gentleman opposite 
 whom you sat at dinner yesterday ! the real 
 thoughts of that chattering girl whom you took 
 down ! " Omnia exeunt in mysterium, " I say 
 again. Every human being is a romance, a 
 miracle to himself now; and will appear as one 
 to all the world in That Day. 
 
 But now for the rest; and Squire Lavington 
 first. He is a very fair sample of the fate of the 
 British public ; for he is dead and buried : and 
 readers would not have me extricate him out of 
 that situation. If you ask news of the reason and 
 manner of his end, I can only answer that, like 
 many others, he went out as candles do. I be- 
 lieve he expressed general repentance for all his 
 sins all, at least, of which he was aware. To 
 confess and repent of the state of the Whitford 
 Priors estate, and of the poor thereon, was of 
 course more than any minister, of any denomi- 
 nation whatsoever, could be required to demand 
 of him ; seeing that would have involved a recog- 
 nition of those duties of property, of which the 
 good old gentleman was to the last a stanch 
 denier; and which are as yet seldom supposed 
 to be included in any Christian creed, Catholic 
 or other. Two sermons were preached in Whit- 
 ford on the day of his funeral; one by Mr.
 
 340 Yeast 
 
 O'Blareaway, on the text from Job, provided 
 for such occasions "When the ear heard him, 
 then it blessed him," etc. etc. ; the other by the 
 Baptist preacher, on two verses of the forty-ninth 
 Psalm 
 
 " They fancy that their houses shall endure 
 forever, and call the lands after their own 
 names. 
 
 " Yet man being in honor hath no understand- 
 ing, but is compared to the beasts that perish." 
 
 Waiving the good taste, which was probably on 
 a par in both cases, the reader is left to decide 
 which of the two texts was most applicable. 
 
 Mrs. Lavington is Mrs. Lavington no longer. 
 She has married, to the astonishment of the world 
 in general, that " excellent man," Mr. O'Blareaway, 
 who has been discovered not to be quite as young 
 as he appeared, his graces being principally owing 
 to a Brutus wig, which he has now wisely dis- 
 carded. Mrs. Lavington now sits in state under 
 her husband's ministry, as the leader of the re- 
 ligious world in the fashionable watering-place 
 of Steamingbath, and derives her notions of the 
 past, present, and future state of the universe 
 principally from those two meek and unbiassed 
 periodicals, the " Protestant Hue-and-Cry " and the 
 " Christian Satirist " to both of which O'Blareaway 
 is a constant contributor. She has taken such an 
 aversion to Whitford since Argemone's death, that 
 she has ceased to have any connection with that 
 unhealthy locality, beyond the popular and easy 
 one of rent-receiving. O'Blareaway has never en- 
 tered the parish to his knowledge since Mr. Lav- 
 ington's funeral; and was much pleased, the last 
 time I rode with him, at my informing him that a
 
 Epilogue 341 
 
 certain picturesque moorland which he had been 
 greatly admiring, was his own possession. . . . 
 After all, he is " an excellent man ; " and when I 
 met a large party at his house the other day, and 
 beheld dory and surmullet, champagne and lach- 
 ryma Christi, amid all the glory of the Whitford 
 plate . . . (some of it said to have belonged to 
 the altar of the Priory Church four hundred years 
 ago), I was deeply moved by the impressive tone 
 in which, at the end of a long grace, he prayed 
 " that the daily bread of our less favored brethren 
 might be mercifully vouchsafed to them." . . . 
 My dear readers, would you have me, even if I 
 could, extricate him from such an Elysium by any 
 denouement whatsoever ? 
 
 Poor dear Luke, again, is said to be painting 
 lean frescos for the Something-or-other-Kirche at 
 Munich ; and the vicar, under the name of Father 
 Stylites, of the order of St. Philumena, is preaching 
 impassioned sermons to crowded congregations 
 at St. George's, Bedlam. How can I extricate 
 them from that? No one has come forth of it 
 yet, to my knowledge, except by paths whereof 
 I shall use Lessing's saying, " I may have my 
 whole hand full of truth, and yet find good to open 
 only my little finger." But who cares for their 
 coming out? They are but two more added to 
 the five hundred, at whose moral suicide, and dive 
 into the Roman Avernus, a quasi-Protestant pub- 
 lic looks on with a sort of savage satisfaction, cry- 
 ing only, " Did n't we tell you so ? " and more 
 than half hopes that they will not come back again, 
 lest they should be discovered to have learnt any- 
 thing while they were there. What are two among 
 that five hundred? much more among the five
 
 342 Yeast 
 
 thousand who seem destined shortly to follow 
 them? 
 
 The banker, thanks to Barnakill's assistance, is 
 rapidly getting rich again who would wish to 
 stop him ? However, he is wiser, on some points 
 at least, than he was of yore. He has taken up 
 the flax movement violently of late perhaps 
 owing to some hint of Barnakill's talks of noth- 
 ing but Chevalier Claussen and Mr. Donellan, and 
 is very anxious to advance capital to any landlord 
 who will grow flax on Mr. Warnes's method, 
 either in England or Ireland. . . . John Bull, 
 however, has not yet awakened sufficiently to lis- 
 ten to his overtures, but sits up in bed, dolefully 
 rubbing his eyes, and bemoaning the evanishment 
 of his protectionist dream altogether realizing 
 tolerably, he and his land, Dr. Watts' well-known 
 moral song concerning the sluggard and his garden. 
 
 Lord Minchampstead again prospers. Either 
 the nuns of Minchampstead have left no Nemesis 
 behind them, like those of Whitford, or a certain 
 wisdom and righteousness of his, however dim and 
 imperfect, averts it for a time. So, as I said, he 
 prospers, and is hated ; especially by his farmers, 
 to whom he has just offered long leases, and a 
 sliding corn-rent. They would have hated him 
 just the same if he had kept them at rack-rents ; 
 and he has not forgotten that; but they have. 
 They looked shy at the leases, because they bind 
 them to farm high, which they do not know how 
 to do ; and at the corn-rent, because they think 
 that he expects wheat to rise again which, being 
 a sensible man, he very probably does. But for 
 my story I certainly do not see how to extri- 
 cate him or any one else from farmers' stupidity,
 
 Epilogue 343 
 
 greed, and ill-will. . . . That question must have 
 seven years' more free-trade to settle it, before I 
 can say anything thereon. Still less can I fore- 
 shadow the fate of his eldest son, who has just 
 been rusticated from Christ Church for riding one 
 of Simmon's hacks through a china-shop window ; 
 especially as the youth is reported to be given to 
 piquette and strong liquors, and, like many noble- 
 men's eldest sons, is considered " not to have the 
 talent of his father." As for the old lord himself, 
 I have no wish to change or develop him in any 
 way except to cut slips off him, as you do off a 
 willow, and plant two or three in every county 
 in England. Let him alone to work out his own 
 plot ... we have not seen the end of it yet ; but 
 whatever it will be, England has need of him as 
 a transition-stage between feudalism and * * * *, 
 for many a day to come. If he be not the ideal 
 landlord, he is nearer it than any we are like yet 
 to see. . . . 
 
 Except one ; and that, after all, is Lord Vieux- 
 bois. Let him go on, like a gallant gentleman 
 as he is, and prosper. And he will prosper, for 
 he fears God, and God is with him. He has much 
 to learn ; and a little to unlearn. He has to learn 
 that God is a living God now, as well as in the 
 middle ages; to learn to trust not in antique 
 precedents, but in eternal laws : to learn that his 
 tenants, just because they are children of God, are 
 not to be kept children, but developed and edu- 
 cated into sons ; to learn that God's grace, like 
 His love, is free, and that His spirit bloweth where 
 it listeth, and vindicates its own free-will against 
 our narrow systems, by revealing, at times, even to 
 nominal Heretics and Infidels, truths which the
 
 344 Yeast 
 
 Catholic Church must humbly receive, as the 
 message of Him who is wider, deeper, more tol- 
 erant, than even she can be. ... And he is in the 
 way to learn all this. Let him go on. At what 
 conclusions he will attain, he knows not, nor do I. 
 But this I know, that he is on the path to great and 
 true conclusions. . . . And he is just about to be 
 married, too. That surely should teach him some- 
 thing. The papers inform me that his bride 
 elect is Lord Minchampstead's youngest daughter. 
 That should be a noble mixture ; there should be 
 stalwart offspring, spiritual as well as physical, 
 born of that intermarriage of the old and the 
 new. We will hope it: perhaps some of my 
 readers, who enter into my inner meaning, may 
 also pray for it. 
 Whom have I to account for besides? Crawy 
 
 though some of my readers may consider the 
 mention of him superfluous. But to those who do 
 not, I may impart the news, that last month, in the 
 union workhouse he died; and may, for aught 
 we know, have ere this met Squire Lavington. . . . 
 He is supposed, or at least said, to have had a soul 
 to be saved ... as I think, a body to be saved 
 also. But what is one more among so many? 
 And in an over-peopled country like this, too. . . . 
 One must learn to look at things and paupers 
 
 in the mass. 
 
 The poor of Whitford also? My dear readers, 
 I trust you will not ask me just now to draw the 
 horoscope of the Whitford poor, or of any others. 
 Really that depends principally on yourselves. . . . 
 But for the present, the poor of Whitford, owing, 
 as it seems to them and me, to quite other causes 
 than an "overstocked labor-market," or too rapid
 
 Epilogue 345 
 
 " multiplication of their species," are growing 
 more profligate, reckless, pauperized, year by 
 year. O'Blareaway complained sadly to me the 
 other day that the poor-rates were becoming 
 "heavier and heavier" had nearly reached, in- 
 deed, what they were under the old law. . . . 
 
 But there is one who does not complain, 
 but gives and gives, and stints herself to give, 
 and weeps in silence and unseen over the evils 
 which she has yearly less and less power to 
 stem. 
 
 For in a darkened chamber of the fine house at 
 Steamingbath, lies on a sofa Honoria Lavington 
 beautiful no more ; the victim of some mysterious 
 and agonizing disease, about which the physicians 
 agree on one point only that it is hopeless. The 
 " curse of the Lavingtons " is on her ; and she 
 bears it There she lies, and prays, and reads, and 
 arranges her charities, and writes little books for 
 children, full of the Beloved Name which is for- 
 ever on her lips. She suffers none but herself 
 knows how much, or how strangely yet she is 
 never heard to sigh. She weeps in secret she 
 has long ceased to plead for others, not for her- 
 self; and prays for them too perhaps some day 
 her prayers will yet be answered. But she greets 
 all visitors with a smile fresh from heaven ; and all 
 who enter that room leave it saddened, and yet 
 happy, like those who have lingered a moment at 
 the gates of paradise, and seen angels ascending 
 and descending upon earth. There she lies who 
 could wish her otherwise ? Even Doctor Autotheus 
 Maresnest, the celebrated mesmerizer, who, though 
 he laughs at the Resurrection of the Lord, is con- 
 fidently reported to have raised more than one 
 P Vol. V
 
 346 Yeast 
 
 corpse to life himself, was heard to say, after 
 having attended her professionally, that her waking 
 bliss and peace, although unfortunately unattribu- 
 table even to autocatalepsy, much less to som- 
 nambulist exaltation, was, on the whole, however 
 unscientific, almost as enviable. 
 
 There she lies and will lie till she dies the 
 type of thousands more, " the martyrs by the pang 
 without the palm," who find no mates in this life 
 . . . and yet may find them in the life to come. 
 . . . Poor Paul Tregarva ! Little he fancies how 
 her days run by! ... 
 
 At least, there has been no news since that last 
 scene in St. Paul's Cathedral, either of him or 
 Lancelot. How their strange teacher has fulfilled 
 his promise of guiding their education ; whether 
 they have yet reached the country of Prester John ; 
 whether, indeed, that Caucasian Utopia has a local 
 and bodily existence, or was only used by Barnakill 
 to shadow out that Ideal which is, as he said of the 
 Garden of Eden, always near us, underlying the 
 Actual, as the spirit does its body, exhibiting itself 
 step by step through all the falsehoods and con- 
 fusions of history and society, giving life to all in 
 it which is not falsehood and decay ; on all these 
 questions I can give my readers no sort of answer ; 
 perhaps I may as yet have no answer to give; 
 perhaps I may be afraid of giving one ; perhaps the 
 times themselves are giving, at once cheerfully and 
 sadly, in strange destructions and strange births, 
 a better answer than I can give. I have set forth, 
 as far as in me lay, the data of my problem: and 
 surely, if the premises be given, wise men will not 
 have to look far for the conclusion. In homely 
 English I have given my readers Yeast ; if they be
 
 Epilogue 347 
 
 what I take them for, they will be able to bake 
 with it themselves. 
 
 And yet I have brought Lancelot, at least per- 
 haps Tregarva too to a conclusion, and an all- 
 important one, which whoso reads may find fairly 
 printed in these pages. Henceforth his life must 
 begin anew. Were I to carry on the thread of his 
 story continuously, he would still seem to have 
 overleaped as vast a gulf as if I had re-introduced 
 him as a gray-haired man. Strange ! that the 
 death of one of the lovers should seem no complete 
 termination to their history, when their marriage 
 would have been accepted by all as the legitimate 
 denouement, beyond which no information was to 
 be expected. As if the history of love always 
 ended at the altar ! Oftener it only begins there ; 
 and all before it is but a mere longing to love. 
 Why should readers complain of being refused 
 the future history of one life, when they are in 
 most novels cut short by the marriage finale from 
 the biography of two ? 
 
 But if, over and above this, any reader should 
 be wroth at my having left Lancelot's history 
 unfinished on questions in his opinion more im- 
 portant than that of love, let me entreat him to set 
 manfully about finishing his own history a far 
 more important one to him than Lancelot's. If he 
 shall complain that doubts are raised for which no 
 solution is given, that my hero is brought into con- 
 tradictory beliefs without present means of bring- 
 ing them to accord, into passive acquiescence 
 in vast truths without seeing any possibility of 
 practically applying them let him consider well 
 whether such be not his own case ; let him, if he 
 be as most are, thank God when he finds out
 
 348 Yeast 
 
 that such is his case, when he knows at last that 
 those are most blind who say they see, when he 
 becomes at last conscious how little he believes, 
 how little he acts up to that small belief. Let 
 him try to right somewhat of the doubt, confusion, 
 custom-worship, inconsistency, idolatry, within him 
 
 some of the greed, bigotry, recklessness, respect- 
 ably superstitious atheism around him? and per- 
 haps before his new task is finished, Lancelot and 
 Tregarva may have returned with a message, if 
 not for him for that depends upon his having 
 ears to hear it yet possibly for strong Lord Min- 
 champstead, probably for good Lord Vieuxbois, 
 and surely for the sinners and the slaves of Whit- 
 ford Priors. What it will be, I know not altogether ; 
 but this I know, that if my heroes go on as they 
 have set forth, looking with single mind for some 
 one ground of human light and love, some ever- 
 lasting rock whereon to build, utterly careless what 
 the building may be, howsoever contrary to pre- 
 cedent and prejudice, and the idols of the day, 
 provided God, and nature, and the accumulated 
 lessons of all the ages, help them in its construction 
 
 then they will find in time the thing they seek, 
 and see how the will of God may at last be done 
 on earth, even as it is done in heaven. But, alas ! 
 between them and it are waste raging waters, foul 
 mud banks, thick with dragons and sirens; and 
 many a bitter day and blinding night, in cold and 
 hunger, spiritual and perhaps physical, await them. 
 For it was a true vision which John Bunyan saw, 
 and one which, as the visions of wise men are wont 
 to do, meant far more than the seer fancied, when 
 he beheld in his dream that there was indeed a 
 land of Beulah, and Arcadian Shepherd Paradise,
 
 Epilogue 349 
 
 on whose mountain tops the everlasting sunshine 
 lay; but that the way to it, as these last three 
 years are preaching to us, went past the mouth 
 of Hell, and through the valley of the Shadow of 
 Death. 
 
 THE END
 
 A 00 1 nnT "'' """ 
 
 I 2**n *