OF THt 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 823 
 C3Sla
 
 i^H
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM 
 
 VOL I.
 
 1
 
 AGAINST THE 
 STREAM 
 
 S^^e Siorn of an heroic ^ge iit dnglanb 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY' 
 
 IN THREE VOLS.— I. 
 
 STRAHAN & CO. 
 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 
 
 1873
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PKINIKU BV VIRTUK AND CO 
 
 CITY KOAU.
 
 SZ3 
 
 V 'I 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IXTRODUCTORY. 
 
 _ r 
 
 ^ IVfO one who has not tried can imagine 
 c! ^ what a pleasant thing it is to be, un- 
 )^ deniably and consciously, an old woman. 
 ^ I mean, of course, literally, not sym- 
 ~J bolically. 
 
 To have the whole landscape of life be- 
 hind you, and below you. To see, now 
 and then, indications through the mists 
 and shadows, why the path wound here 
 < through barren, empty wastes, and there 
 V through thorny thickets ; in one place 
 ^^ scaled recklessly the perilous rocky steep, 
 in another crept in weary windings along 
 monotonous slopes it had seemed easier to 
 
 ' VOL. I. . B
 
 2 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 clear at a bound ; or why, just there, it 
 broke off in a sudden chasm, which at the 
 time threatened to end its meaning and 
 waste its work altogether. To catch some 
 explanatory hints of a training of eye and 
 nerve for higher work hereafter ; some 
 illuminated glimpses of fellow-travellers, 
 to be succoui'ed just at that perplexing 
 turn, and nowhere else. To have the long 
 uphill all but over, and to find "the up- 
 land slopes of duty " all but merging in 
 the " table-land of glory," as they do, not 
 for the exceptional hero only, but for all 
 who follow the footprints of the blaster's 
 feet, if the Master's words are true ; if 
 heroism means, as lie showed, not excep- 
 tional achievement, but self-surrendering 
 obedience ; and glory, as lie is showing 
 now, not some vague repetition of earthly 
 pomps with a larger than earthly audience, 
 but the expansion and illumination of every 
 faculty, in a life fuller than the intcnsest
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 life below, for a service higher because 
 nearer Him. 
 
 To watch such explanatory broken lights 
 stealing over the past that reaches back so 
 far ; — to catch the dawn of unbroken, satis- 
 fying light on the futiu-e, now so near. 
 Rest here, in the acquiescence in powers 
 enfeebled, unequal to fresh enterprise, that 
 have done their work and can undertake no 
 more, save such stray quiet kindnesses as 
 may come to us demanding to be done; 
 rest here, in the hope of powers renewed, 
 so that their exercise shall become once 
 more a joy, such as it was to move or 
 breathe in childhood. 
 
 A little faint insight through the learning 
 and unlearning of the years,- — thi'ough their 
 tenderer tolerance, and larger judgments, 
 into the patience of Him who has been 
 teaching and long-suffering through the 
 ages. A strong and ever-growing trust, 
 through some discords resolved, and some
 
 4 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 despairs clashed into liopos ; through some 
 misunderstood things explained, and some 
 wrongs righted or turned into sacred instru- 
 ments of martyrdom, through much forgiven 
 and something overcome — in the purpose of 
 llim "who w^lleth not tliat any should 
 perish," not because sin is a mere passing 
 disease of the childhood of humanity, or a 
 mere passing discord of the harmonies of 
 the universe, but because " He willeth that 
 all men should repent." A bright and ever 
 brightening hope in a heaven which shall be 
 the seed-plot of many heavens, through that 
 Death which is the seed of infinite life. 
 
 To find the " great nudtitudc no man can 
 number," the " majority " to which we go, 
 no longer an overwhelming dazzle of super- 
 natural light, a crowd of unknown, unindi- 
 vidutdised angelic faces, but the blessed 
 company where the dearest eyes wonder 
 and sniilo, and the mo^t familiar voices are 
 lieardj in that speech at once so tender and
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 SO high we know not what better to call it 
 than song. 
 
 These things are worth waiting for, worth 
 growing old for, worth having this world 
 emptied for. 
 
 Can I say that ? 
 
 Not always ; not most healthily, I think, 
 in moments of ecstatic foreseeing, but in 
 those moments more frequent, when it is 
 given me, in some simple ways, to fill up 
 the measure of their service who have gone 
 before, and so to feel that, after all, this 
 world is indeed not empty to me, though 
 my best have gone on out of sight. 
 
 So vividly they stand before me, those 
 old times, now that the morning mists and 
 the noon-day haze are over, and the mists 
 of night have scarcely come ; so clearly do 
 the old voices sound back to me in the quiet, 
 especially from the earliest days, and so dif- 
 ferent is the world whence they come from 
 this around me now, that I feel attracted to
 
 6 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 sit dowTi and picture them, with just as 
 little effort as if I were not making pictures 
 at all, but simply tracing outlines of the 
 reflections on a series of mirrors, and trans- 
 forming them thus, by some magic, into a 
 series of stained-glass windows. 
 
 So it seems to me. 
 
 But then, of course, I always see the 
 clear living mirror behind my outlines ; and 
 how far the stained glass represents it to 
 others I cannot know. 
 
 It is worth while to do it, for myself at 
 least, for I have lived through one of om* 
 country's heroic ages, and, as it seems to 
 me, have seen some of the heroes not very 
 far off. 
 
 And, in looking back over my life, if 
 there are any principles which have been its 
 joy and strength, and which I could wish to 
 see more the joy and strength of others, 
 they are these. 
 
 Christianity is to me, and ever has
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 been since I learned to live by it, not so 
 much a fresh mystery, as a revelation of 
 mysteries — a "mystery shown;" not a 
 clouding, but an unveiling; not a new 
 riddle, whose glory is that being the 
 divinest it is the deepest, but a solution of 
 many riddles, although indeed not yet of 
 all. 
 
 The world and its great history are full of 
 darkness; society and our own little histories 
 are full of darkness, and much of this 
 Christianity has left unconquered and un- 
 explained. 
 
 But at the heart and centre of all is not 
 darkness, but light; not only a mind in- 
 finite and incomprehensible, but a heart that 
 loves and speaks; not a subtle setter-forth 
 of riddles which humanity has to solve at its 
 peril, or perish, but a patient teacher of 
 babes, to whom His human creatures are 
 dear; not an inexorable medical examiner 
 testing candidates for appointments, but the
 
 8 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 Physician healing the sick ; not the Sphinx, 
 but the Word. 
 
 Truth obvious indeed, and at the root of 
 all Christian theology (is not the absence of 
 it practically Atheism ?), yet from which it 
 seems to me most Christian theologies are 
 for ever departing into labyrinths of our own 
 making, and ever needing to be recalled. 
 
 And flowing from tliis is another prin- 
 ciple, which lias strengthened me to live and 
 hope. The light, and not the darkness, is 
 meant to conquer, in individuals, as in the 
 whole. Human character is not immutable, 
 like the instincts of animals, but corrigible 
 and perfectible; — perfectible in the best to 
 the end, corrigible in the worst to the 
 end ; — capable of radical change, capable of 
 infinite growth. 
 
 Again, truth most obvious, if Cliristianity 
 is true ; yet one which in the apparent 
 fixedness of character in all men after 
 early youth, and the apparent invincibility
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 of small faults in good men, in wrong from 
 others, in struggles with myself, I, at least, 
 have not found it easy to hold; which, 
 indeed, I should have found it impossible to 
 hold, but for constant recurrence to that 
 first great truth which is its source. 
 
 Faith in God, unboimded; and, for that 
 reason, hope for men unbounded also. 
 
 Are these things so easy to hold in a 
 world where the chaos of a French revolu- 
 tion can whirl on for a century without 
 evolving a creation ? — where the Chui'ch of 
 land after land, and age after age, has suc- 
 ceeded too often in silencing its noblest 
 men? — where a Las Casas originated the 
 slave-trade, and the abolition of slavery has 
 not at all events resulted in a planter's 
 Paradise of grateful industrious labourers? — 
 where a centuiy of philanthropic efforts 
 leaves our English legislation powerless to 
 lift off the accumulating weight of pau- 
 perism, and a millennium of Christianity
 
 10 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 leaves English Christians powerless to stem 
 the increasing flood of intemperance? — 
 where in our own little worlds all of us 
 have seen the race not always won by the 
 swift, nor the battle by the brave ? 
 
 Do we not need in such a world a foith in 
 God, which, whatever is doubtful and what- 
 ever is dark, leaves it not doubtful that " in 
 Him is no darkness at all ? " 
 
 Do we not need a hope for man that has 
 its root deeper than in any man, or in any 
 history, even in Him who loving most has 
 suff'ered most ; "Who " undei-went and over- 
 came ; " Whose life was serving, "WTiose 
 victory was in being vanquished, "Whose 
 reigning is serving, Whose rewai'd for the 
 service of His own is to serve better, Whose 
 work in the midst of the throne is the old 
 fiiniiliar shepherd's work of "leading "and 
 feeding, Whose triumph in the day of His 
 joy will be to " gird himself, and come 
 forth, and serve ? "
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 1 1 
 
 And this leads me to the third living 
 principle of my life; — belief in a heaven 
 which is not a contradiction, but a comple- 
 tion of true Chi'istian life below; in a 
 Master whose promise is, not a rewarding of 
 seventy years of toil by an eternity of 
 luxurious repose; nor an avenging of 
 seventy years of abasement by an eternity 
 of exaltation; nor a compensation for 
 seventy years of service and suffering by an 
 eternity of triumphal pomp and regal state ; 
 but a training by the numbered years of 
 imperfect work here for an eternity of 
 blessed work, unhindered and unwearied ; 
 by seventy years of gradual deliverance 
 from the bondage of self, not for an eternity 
 of the gratification of self, intellectual or 
 spiritual, but for an eternity of the only 
 liberty worth having, the Liberty, not of 
 the Eights of independent atoms, but of the 
 Duties of a mutually dependent brother- 
 hood, in the presence of the Father whom
 
 12 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 all obey, and on whom all depend; the 
 j^lorious Liberty of Love, the necessity of 
 whose natnre, like His who is its source and 
 end, is to give, and in giving, before and in 
 all its gifts, to give itself, giving and re- 
 ceiving in that endless interchange whicli 
 ensures growth, and which only is wortliy 
 to be called life. 
 
 A belief I have found not without prac- 
 tical importance: since earnests and fore- 
 tastes of our promised inheritance are sure 
 to be coveted by the way, and it makes not 
 a little difference to our practical life 
 whether we consider the truest symbol and 
 foretaste of heaven to be the contemplation 
 of toiling cities from suburban paradises, or 
 the succouring and serving the poorest cr(>a- 
 ture toiling in those city streets. 
 
 If I have had any power in my life to 
 "lift up hands that lump: down,'' to revive 
 now and then hope for humanity in some 
 veterans (to whom I have been as a child),
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 13 
 
 worn-out with the disappointments of many 
 victories which have failed to accomplish all 
 they seemed to promise ; or, in some fallen 
 creatures, worn-out with the despair of 
 many defeats, it is to such simple and 
 obvious principles as these that I owe it. 
 
 And yet how vain to think we know the 
 springs of the influences which have 
 moulded us, or through which we have 
 acted on others; so subtle are they, so 
 simple, so subtly combined, so finely dis- 
 tinct I 
 
 Deeper even than its deepest principles is 
 our religion, rooted not in a principle, but in 
 the Person we adore ; and, since the divine 
 history is ever deeper and wider than all 
 the theologies and philosophies drawn from 
 it, to me, doubtless, as to all, from the 
 wisest to the simplest, all true power to 
 ?ive, or to help to live, has come from Him 
 Who, while in Himself revealing the Father, 
 understood and saved the " sinner " who
 
 H AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 washed His feet, hoped in and saved the 
 disciple who denied Him, loved and saved 
 the Pharisee who "persecuted Him," Whose 
 presence makes heaven, and must make a 
 heaven like Himself. 
 
 We may review or analyze our life into 
 principles, as we analyze our food into 
 alkalies, salts, and acids; but no chemical 
 combination of alkalies, salts, and acids yet 
 invented will keep us alive. 
 
 Principles must, after all, be rooted in 
 affections: life can only be nourished by 
 life.
 
 s 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 " Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, 
 With light upon him from his father's eyes." 
 
 UCH Eecollections of early cMdhood 
 with me are all too soon broken in 
 
 upon. 
 
 Yet to me also the world began with 
 Paradise. I can dimly recall such a zone of 
 tenderest sunlight, such a sense of being 
 watched and delighted in, brooded and 
 purred over, and played with; such a 
 golden time of kisses and coaxings, and 
 tender foldings up at night, and laughing 
 wakings up in the morning. 
 
 And then, succeeding it, a time of silence 
 and darkness and cold; of being hushed 
 and kept quiet because Something which
 
 1 6 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 liad made the sunshine of the home was 
 gone, and Something else which needed that 
 lost sunshine more than any had come, and 
 must be cherished and watched and kept 
 alive with such artificial warmth as the 
 world can make for motherless babes, — 
 leaving at the moment little warmth and 
 light to spare anywhere for me. 
 
 A dark confused chaotic time, "without 
 form, and void ; " in looking back, I can 
 scarcely toll whether it lasted days, oi- 
 months, or years; a time when God had 
 made for me no lights, greater or lesser, to 
 divide the light from the darkness. 
 
 So my first associations with my brother, 
 my own brother Piers, who was afterwards 
 the life of my life, were rather of something 
 subtracted than something added, rather of 
 a great loss, than the great gift he was. 
 
 T think we shall find it thus with many 
 of our l)est gifts, often. 
 
 After this comes first into mv recollection
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 17 
 
 a pervading and overshadowing memory of 
 Clothes. 
 
 Before, it was like being a bii'd or a 
 flower. But connected with that dark cha- 
 otic time comes a sense of being in a state of 
 existence where one had always to carry 
 about Things to be taken care of, which one 
 was in some vague and uneasy way identi- 
 fied with and responsible for, and which the 
 people in the nursery who loved one most, 
 felt to be in some sense of more importance 
 than oneself, and yet the very nature of 
 which appeared to be that the influences 
 which were pleasant to theii' wearer were 
 pernicious to them. 
 
 It was, I suppose, the form in which my 
 spirit had to struggle into the consciouness 
 of matter, 
 
 " Obstinate questionings. 
 Blank misgivings of a creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realised." 
 
 How many of the lessons incident to the 
 " shades of the prison-house " came to me 
 VOL. I. c
 
 i8 AGAIXST 7 HE STREAM. 
 
 through my Clothes ! — through that portion 
 of the material world Avhieh -v^oa to me so 
 esseutially part of the " Not ^Ic," ami was 
 evidently regarded by those around me as 
 an integral portion of the " Me ! " 
 
 I can remember now the delighted sense 
 of fi-eedom with which, one Sunday after- 
 noon, I had crept, unnoticed, out of the 
 garden door, with my faithful companion, 
 our great black Newfoundland dog, Pluto, 
 up the green hill outside the garden wall to 
 the edge of the brook beyond, and was 
 enjoying at once the joys of liberty and of 
 tyranny in making him plunge into tlu* 
 water and fetch me a stick, as I had seen 
 my father do. 1 remember now the half- 
 remonstrant, the half-condescending way in 
 which the grand creature yielded to my 
 little imperiousness, and then, landing his 
 freight, shook himself in a storm of spark- 
 ling drops over me and my new frock. 
 
 And I also remember a certain calm
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. ig 
 
 philosophical interest (which ought in any 
 consistent biography to have presaged a 
 genius for scientific investigation) where- 
 with I was observing that the drops did not 
 penetrate my crape, but lay on it, round and 
 sparkling, — when nurse burst upon us with 
 baby in her arms and a wail on her lips. 
 
 " Bless the maid ! what will she be alter 
 next? Miss Bride, Miss Bride, you con- 
 trary cliild, how can you be so unfeeling as 
 to forget your new crape, and your blessed 
 mother, and Sunday, and everything, and 
 romp about like a beggar's brat with that 
 great brute of a dog ? " 
 
 A speech which left me in such a be- 
 wilderment of images and injustices that I 
 was too perplexed to cry or to defend 
 myself, until the dog, liis aifections getting 
 the bettor of his tact, shook himself in a 
 rapture of welcome o\er baby and nurse, 
 and thereby drew on himself a blow which 
 sent him away whining in his inarticulate
 
 io AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 way; whilst I, tearfully protesting that 
 Pluto was not a brute nor I a brat, and that 
 I had not forgotten Sunday, for father had 
 only just given me my Sunday gingerbread, 
 was dragged down the steps of the dear old 
 garden, from terrace to terrace, whining in 
 my half-articulate way. 
 
 And I also remember to this day my 
 father standing at the door of the summer 
 parlour, which opened on the garden, wel- 
 coming me with open arms, caressing and 
 comforting me, and saying that "Clothes 
 did not matter at all, if I would only be 
 his own dear little Bride, and not cry." 
 
 But Clothes did matter, as I knew too 
 well in my feminine experience, and as 
 nurse protested, "How should master know 
 about Clothes, poor dear soul, who had 
 neither to make nor to mend, nor to starch 
 nor to iron? Men, the wisest of them, 
 always talked as if clothes grew upon chil- 
 dren like fur upon kittens."
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 21 
 
 They mattered, indeed, so much to me, 
 that I had never any difficulty at all in 
 receiving the narrative of Genesis connect- 
 ing Clothes with the fall rather than the 
 creation of man, as a most rational explana- 
 tion of the nature of things, being already 
 quite convinced from my own history that 
 they could never have been originally in- 
 tended as essentials in any beneficent 
 scheme of the universe. 
 
 Only, Piers and I used in after years fre- 
 quently to lament that the primitive in- 
 stitution of skins had not been adhered to. 
 
 Also, I suspect. Clothes had much to do 
 with that next step which made so great a 
 change in our lives. 
 
 I have little doubt it was a sense of his 
 incapacity for contending with the diffi- 
 culties springing, not from the characters of 
 his children, but from their Clothes, femi- 
 nine and infantine, with all the feminine 
 care and attendance incident thereunto, that
 
 2 2 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 induced my father to place at the head of his 
 house the discreet and sober-minded gentle- 
 woman who became our stepmother; clothes, 
 I mean, in the larger sense, — conven- 
 tionalities, customs, proprieties. 
 
 The reign of Clothes certainly did not 
 cease with my stepmother. Only the. sig- 
 nification of the word extended. Conven- 
 tionalities, customs, proprieties, all the 
 ritual of life, these were her standard mea- 
 sures, her household gods, her sacred Scrip- 
 tui-es, or at least her tradition of the elders, 
 which brought them down to practice ; her 
 Talmud if not her Pentateuch. AVith most 
 of us, I suppose, our practical commentaries 
 are unwritten. 
 
 On the Upper Olympus, doubtless, with 
 her as with others, sate enthroned the 
 serene for-off orthodox diviniti(>s, but by 
 the hearth were acknowledged two jjresid- 
 ing powers, one deprecated as the root of 
 mischief, and the other honoured with daily
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 23 
 
 incense and libation. Her evil genius was 
 Enthusiasm; her protecting divinity, Mo- 
 deration. 
 
 To understand the Bible or anythin;;- 
 properly, she would have considered that 
 every text should be underlmed with " Let 
 everything be done decently and in order," 
 and, " Let your moderation be known unto 
 all men." 
 
 With her, sin was doing anything too 
 vehemently ; heresy, believing anything 
 too intensely ; justice between contending 
 parties was thinking every one equally 
 wrong ; charity, thinking every one equally 
 right ; the Christian warfare an armed neu- 
 trality; truth, the residuum after the ex- 
 traction of all extreme opinions ; paradise, 
 the place where all exaggerated ideas and 
 characters are either absent or kept quiet. 
 
 At least such was the impression she 
 made on me in the exaggerations of my 
 childish imagination ; for hers was a mode-
 
 2+ AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 ration which always tempted me into ex- 
 tremes, and it was only later that I learned 
 to be just to her. She was as kind as any 
 one can be without sympathy, as just as 
 any one can be without imagination. She 
 adhered as faithfully to the golden rule, 
 "As ye would that men should do to you, 
 do ye also to them," as any one can do who 
 has no conception of the differences between 
 men, between the "they "and the ''you," 
 no idea of the patient study of circumstance 
 and character which the true fulfilling of 
 the precept involves. 
 
 In later years, moreover, we grew to 
 understand each other better ; as she and 
 I both learned, I trust, something from each 
 other, and more from life. 
 
 In earlier years, I can see now, if not the 
 good she did me, at least something of the 
 evils from which she kept me. 
 
 It is good for us all to have some ice 
 early in our lives. It makes the air fresher,
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 25 
 
 and restrains the enthusiasm which is meant 
 to enrich the summers and middle levels 
 with living waters and live-giving soil, from 
 overflowing too early in the spring-time 
 on the higher levels, and so evaporating in 
 mists of sentiment, or being lost in marshes 
 of vague good intention. 
 
 Much fond and foolish talk there was, 
 no doubt, in the nursery, when it was an- 
 nounced that Mr. Danescombe, my father, 
 was about to marry Miss Euphrasia Weston. 
 
 Faltering exhortations were addressed to 
 me by nurse as to the duties of our new 
 relationship to the good lady who was 
 coming to be our " new mother," congratu- 
 lations whose compassionate tones made 
 me interpret them into condolences. Tor 
 children, like dogs, read speech as if it were 
 music, by tones rather than by words. 
 
 The only words of her exhortations which 
 made any impressions on me were those
 
 26 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 terrible promises of a " new mother." To 
 me they were what to a devout Jew might 
 have been the promise of a " new god." 
 
 In those days the French words, vul- 
 garised by bad nursery pronunciation into 
 papa and mamma, which would be so intoler- 
 able if they were not hallowed to two or 
 three generations by the lispings of baby 
 lips, had not yet been introduced into 
 England, or at least had not penetrated 
 to our social level in our little country 
 town. There was, therefore, no convenient 
 intermediate conventional term, expressive 
 rather of position than relationship. 
 
 And the sacred name, mother, was not, 
 in my Protestant childhood, distributed in 
 the liberal manner since the fashion among 
 any benevolent ladies who undertake the 
 charge of young girls, good or naughty. 
 In those days women only became mothers 
 through a mother's anguish and joy. 
 
 To me '' mother" meant one only incom-
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 27 
 
 parable love, one only irreparable loss ; love 
 which had loved me, me as I was, not any 
 goodness or beauty in me, not my clothes, 
 nor my behaviour, but me, her little, help- 
 less, longing, clinging Bride ; loss which had 
 left my childhood, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, one long empty craving, " feeling 
 after if haply I might find " wings to brood 
 over me, arms to fold me like hers. 
 
 And now nurse seemed to expect me 
 to transfer that dear lost name in this easy 
 way to an unknown quantity, as if it meant 
 nothing, like a nonsense nursery rhyme ; as 
 if life meant nothing but a " make-believe " 
 play with dolls ! 
 
 I could not have done so even to an old 
 doll. Yet to remonstrate with any one 
 who could have had the want of perception 
 to propose such a thing was, I instinctively 
 felt, as useless as trying to explain the 
 mysteries of property to Pluto. 
 
 I cried myself to sleep silently that night.
 
 28 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 in one of those unutterable agonies of child- 
 hood. Happily childish agonies do not 
 drive sleep away ! 
 
 And the next morning I awoke and 
 began my vain tears again, but made no 
 moan or complaint, until nurse finding I 
 did not get on with my bread and milk, 
 began one of her half-caressing, half-queru- 
 lous remonstrances. 
 
 " What ails the child ? Miss Bride, you 
 are getting quite beyond poor old nurse. 
 And so no doubt others have thought. 
 May-be the new lady will manage better." 
 
 Then I broke out into one gasping sob, 
 and said, " Must I call the new lady 
 Mother?" 
 
 " Sure enough, child, sure enough ! what 
 would poor dear master say ? " 
 
 " Did father say that ? " 
 
 " Who would make so bold as to ask 
 him ? Never mind, poor lamb, never mind ; 
 what's the name ? The name's nothing."
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 29 
 
 To me the name was unutterably much. 
 But I was consoled by perceiving that it 
 was plain nurse had no sentence on the 
 matter from my father ; and I secretly 
 resolved to ask him myself. 
 
 To me the name was everything. To 
 use it falsely was, I felt in some dim way, 
 to bring a lie into my life, or rather to 
 sap all significance out of the words false- 
 hood and truth, to make all language, all 
 sacred words and names lose their distinc- 
 tive meaning and become mere interchange- 
 able hollownesses. That is to say, this is 
 what I now know my instinctive revulsion 
 meant. 
 
 The very next time that I sate on my 
 father's knee, and coidd get my face well 
 hidden on his breast, with desperate cou- 
 rage I began — 
 
 " Must I call her Mother ? " 
 
 His hands trembled as they stroked my 
 hair, and his lips as they kissed me, and I
 
 30 AGA/XST THE STREAM. 
 
 could hear that his voice -was half choked as 
 he said — 
 
 . "Who, little Bride? What does my 
 darling moan?" 
 
 "The new lady," I said, without lifting 
 my head. 
 
 He put me down, and paced hastily up 
 and down the room ; and then he said, in 
 what seemed to me a very cold and absent 
 voice, " I will ask her." 
 
 ]5ut then again he suddenly seized me 
 in his arms and pressed me to his heart, and 
 I felt his tears as he said — 
 
 " Little Bride, my darling little Bride, 
 you are not afraid of me ? I am only bring- 
 ing some one home to take care of you and 
 baby." 
 
 And so he fully believed, my poor father. 
 Bewildered by the advice of some and the 
 gossip of others, and the well-meant ({uerii- 
 lousness of nurse, and the A'arious feminine^ 
 and infantine incomprehensibilities of baby
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 31 
 
 and of me, he was bringing home this sage 
 and sober-minded new lady who talked 
 good English, which nurse did not, and 
 was a good economist, which he was not, 
 to preside over his household, his children, 
 and himself, to provide us with costumes 
 and catechisms, with clothes, intellectual, 
 moral, and material. 
 
 I am not describing typical relationships 
 or characters. Eelationships and characters 
 are not to be so easily classified into types. 
 Second marriages are as different as first 
 marriages, and stepmothers as different as 
 mothers or mothers-in-law. But oiu* country 
 town was not a normal community, nor was 
 mine a normal life. And this was my 
 experience. 
 
 The next day my father kissed me very 
 tenderly when I went to bed, and said 
 gravely — 
 
 " Miss Weston does not wish my little 
 Bride to call her anything that is not
 
 32 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 strictly correct. You may call her Mrs. 
 Danescombe. She would like it." 
 
 I felt so relieved, and so grateful to the 
 new lady for the relief, I could almost have 
 welcomed her. I suppose a dim hope came 
 to me that she would after all understand 
 me. 
 
 A week after that my father went away 
 for a day or two. In those days weddinp; 
 journeys had not been introduced. He was 
 married in the neighbouring to^vn where 
 Miss Euphrasia was staying, and the next 
 day he brought her home, and we were 
 summoned to greet her. 
 
 She stooped do^^^l graciously and gave 
 me her cheek to kiss ; and she spoke in a 
 high-pitched caressing tone, supposed to 
 suit the infantine taste, to Piers, and made 
 a movement as if she would have taken 
 him in her arms and kissed him. But 
 she seemed to tind her dress a little in the 
 way. She wore a drooping large-brimmed
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 33 
 
 hat with a feather, and ruffles and lappets 
 and laces in various places, and I believe 
 she felt shy with the child, which he Avith 
 a child's instinct of course perceived ; 
 and concluding she had no right or pos- 
 session in him, he turned from her with a 
 little pout, and a little quiver of the lips, 
 to nie. 
 
 I saw her colour rise a little, and I felt 
 rather than saw a slight uneasy fro^^Ti on 
 my father's face. I knew that things were 
 going Avi'ong ; and then all at once some- 
 thing motherly seemed to wake up in my 
 own heart (I do not know what else to 
 call it), a dim feeling that I was not there 
 to be taken care of, but to take care of other 
 people, of Piers and father, and even in 
 some sense of Mrs. Danescombe. And I 
 folded my arms around my little brother, 
 and stretched out his little hands and mine 
 together towards her, and then I seemed 
 to feel father's frown relax to a smile, and 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 3+ A GAINS T THE STREAM. 
 
 in a moment Ave were both caught up and 
 half smothered in his arms, and enveloped 
 in a comprehensive embrace in which Mrs. 
 Danescombe was in some way involved. 
 
 Then afterguards father hastily left the 
 room, as if he had finished the reconcilia- 
 tion scene in a play, his sanguine nature 
 (^uite satisfied that all was going right ; and 
 Mrs. Danescombe, after bestomng a toy on 
 Piers, and a new London doll on me, was 
 quite content to leave Piers to my guardian- 
 ship, while she smoothed herself do^vn 
 before the small cut Venetian glass in the 
 oaken frame over the old high-carved 
 chimney-piece. 
 
 And I remember sitting in the window- 
 seat with my arms around Piers, altogether 
 P'ave and happy with that new feeling of 
 motherliness. We did not touch our toys, 
 but sate gravely conversing ; so that when 
 our father returned, cheerily rubbing his 
 hands, he looked a little disappointed to see
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 55 
 
 the new gifts neglected, and said to me half 
 reproachfully — 
 
 " Does not my little Bride care for her 
 beautiful new doll ? " 
 
 How could I ? I, who was feeling wise 
 and matronly as if I were the mother of the 
 human race, and had the world on my 
 shoulders, himself included I 
 
 Besides, what strange ideas he must have 
 about dolls ! Was a new doll to be made 
 acquaintance Avith and taken to one's heart 
 in a moment ? 
 
 However, I took up th€ doll, and began 
 to behave to it with great politeness. 
 
 And Mrs. Danescombe drew near us, and 
 made sundiy efforts to '' amuse '^ Piers by 
 jerking the angular wooden puppet with 
 which she had presented him, by means of 
 internal strings, into various mountebank 
 attitudes, which were intended to be funny. 
 
 I remember now the sense of grave won- 
 der and pity with which I contemplated
 
 36 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 these futile attempts at entertainment, whilst 
 Tiers continued to gaze steadily into her 
 face, with serious, undeludcd eyes, evidently 
 concluding that she was quite too old to 
 play, and that the whole thing was a piece 
 of very ineffective dramatic performance. I 
 think the coiu'teous complaisance with 
 M'hich little children receive our imbecile 
 attempts to amuse them very remarkable ; 
 they who are never taken in, who are them- 
 selves actors of the first-class, by instinct, 
 liA'ing in a perpetually varied drama as 
 gloriously independent of vulgar necessities of 
 scene-painting as an Athenian audience ; they 
 to \\-hom any few feet square of earth where 
 they can be let alone are an imperial amphi- 
 theatre, and two chairs a hippodrome, and a 
 heap of chips a fortune of theati-ical pro- 
 perties. 
 
 Piers, I am sure, took in the wluilc 
 futility and al)surdity of the situation ; but 
 he also understood that the new lady meant
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 37 
 
 well, and like the little king he was, from 
 time to time he vouchsafed her the patronage 
 of a smile, and even condescended to imitate 
 her movements Avith the puppet. 
 
 Little king that he was I My little king 
 whom I would serve with all I was and had, 
 and guard and cherish, and pet and honour, 
 and keep the world warm for ; and be his 
 interpreter, his queen, his slave ! 
 
 That night I asked nurse if I might say 
 my prayers beside baby's crib, instead of at 
 her knee. The wonderful birds and flowers 
 on her chintz petticoat had always been 
 a hindrance to me, and also her snuff- 
 box, and I so often had to begin all over 
 again. 
 
 At first she seemed rather hurt at the 
 request; but then I began to cry, and 
 pleaded that baby looked so dear ; and sh(^ 
 consented, and called us " Poor innocents ! " 
 and began to cry too. 
 
 Piers was aslee]), one little arm under his
 
 3« AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 round tlieck, flushed as it was with sleep, 
 ;uid tlic other little fat hand clenched like a 
 wrestler's, and thrust out over the edge of 
 his cot. My praj'ers must have been a 
 mysterious ritual to me, scarcely "in a 
 tongue understanded of the people." Xo 
 one had ever explained them to me. I do 
 not remember ever expecting anything to 
 come of them, except some vague harm to 
 some one if they were left out. TVTiat the 
 words were at that time I cannot even tell. 
 There were no Sunday-schools in our town ; 
 nurse was veiy ignorant, and I am sure she 
 could not read. Not improbably they were 
 the Lord's Prayer and the invocation to the 
 Four Evangelists, long after^vards not dis- 
 used in the district. And my theology was, 
 doubtless, neither definite nor broad. It 
 certainly, however, included a beli(>f in 
 Something that could hurt Tiers and me, 
 especially if wc were naughty, and in the 
 dark.
 
 AG A INS T THE STREAM. 39 
 
 But mysterious indeed are all little cldl- 
 dren's prayers ! 
 
 Who knows the " tongues of angels ? " 
 Who knows the mystic, unutterable com- 
 munion there may be between the Father of 
 spirits and those little ones whose angels 
 always see his face ! 
 
 "Exiled children of Eve," little royal 
 strangers, whose wondering eyes have not 
 yet narrowed their range to our mortal 
 vision, — whose free, fearless, questioning 
 thought is not yet fettered to our mortal 
 speech, — who knows the delicate, aerial 
 touches that come and go along those 
 strings the world's rude hands have not yet 
 swept ? Who knows the moment when the 
 Father who fell on the prodigal's neck and 
 kissed him, clasps to his heart those little 
 ones who have not yet wilfully left the 
 Father's house ? what kisses, what con- 
 secrating touches are theirs ? 
 
 TVTio knows, since God is love, — not pri-
 
 40 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 inariiy the Infinite Mind that speaks to us 
 by works or thoughts, but the Father's 
 heart that speaks to us by loving, — what 
 divine touches, real as a mother's kisses, 
 tender as the soft pressure of her arms, rest 
 on the little ones ? 
 
 Not only on a few score of exceptional 
 little Galilean children were the sacred 
 Hands laid, in those three years' which 
 made visible the eternity of unseen Divine 
 love. 
 
 Nor is it only a few Jewish fishermen 
 who have misunderstood the love of the 
 Master for little children, — the babes, — the 
 creatures we call speechless and uncon- 
 scious. 
 
 Is it not rather wc who have become 
 blind, and speechless, and unconscious? 
 blinded by the countless small glitterings, 
 and the countless vain piyings of this 
 world ; robbed of heavenly utterance by its 
 empty chatterings and bitter contentions ;
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 41 
 
 made unconscious by its drowsy charms, of 
 the realities of life and death, and love, of 
 the capacities for soitow and joy, deeper 
 even than sorrow around and within us still, 
 whether we know it or not, — as they are 
 around the little children we think unaware 
 of them? 
 
 Who knows how little the wisest of us 
 know, or how much the simplest ? 
 
 I know not, indeed, what passed in my 
 heart that night, or what words passed my 
 lips. But I remember my cheek resting on 
 my little brother's cheek, and the dear little 
 hand unclenching itself and resting on me, 
 and the sleepy eyes opening for a moment 
 on mine, and the parted lips sleepily lisping 
 my name. 
 
 And I remember lying down in my otvti 
 little bed afterwards, so still and happy, and 
 warm at heart, feeling not so much that I 
 was brooded over, or needed it, as that some 
 kind of wings had unfolded in me, and were
 
 4» AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 brooding over Piers, and keeping him safe 
 and warm. 
 
 That was, as far as I can remember, tlie 
 way God began to teach me ; by filling my 
 heart with that great love which was just a 
 little feeble image of His.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 TN these days to be Insular is a reproach 
 which most people repel with indignation- 
 Or if anyone admits it with a contemptuous 
 pity as but too applicable, in many respects, 
 to our country, it is always with the tacit 
 imderstanding that he himself is contemplat- 
 ing that narrow and common-place little com- 
 munity from some wide continent of experi- 
 ence and thought whence the island and its 
 interests assume their duly diminutive pro- 
 portions. 
 
 In my early days, people gloried in being 
 Insular. The "right little, tight little 
 island " was delighted in Avitli something of 
 the same kind of attachment an old sailor 
 used to feel for his ship — knowing well her
 
 4+ AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 weak points, but knowing also what storms 
 she had weathered, what broadsides she had 
 gallantly stood, and how fearless she was as 
 to the tempests and battles to come ; a 
 patriotism not at all tending to anything 
 international or cosmopolitan, but combative, 
 exclusive, Insular to the core. 
 
 The Americans were still our " colonies " 
 across the seas ; we were fresh from a hot fight 
 with them, in which our national temper had 
 not been sweetened by our having been in 
 the wrong and having been beaten. On most 
 of us the idea had scarcely dawned that they 
 were a iN'ation at all. They were " our plan- 
 tations," a branch of the old tiunk, vigorous 
 certainly, but very knotty, and gnarled ; 
 the vigour of course belonging to the stock 
 they came of, and (perhaps it must be ad- 
 mitted) the knots and gnarls also. The 
 echoes of a hundred years before, moreover, 
 had scarcely died away, and in some English- 
 men resentment against "rebels" who had
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 45 
 
 disowned the king was blended with a dim 
 disapproval of Dissenters who had tried to 
 upset the Church, and were believed for the 
 most part to be Puritans (whatever that 
 meant), and therefore, naturally, to speak 
 through theii' noses. 
 
 Again, the French were " a nation of danc- 
 ing masters," who, with all their misplaced 
 agility, could not climb the shrouds of a ship. 
 Had not their own Yoltaire lately called them 
 a compound of monkey and tiger ? 
 
 The "German States" — (Germany did not 
 exist, even in popular ballads) — were too 
 remote, and too unknown and varying a 
 quantity to have any definite portrait. 
 
 Spain loomed mistily on us, gigantic and 
 yet shadowy, with the old glooms and glories 
 of her past playing fitfully around her, her 
 palaces and prisons still echoing, as we be- 
 lieved, with groans under an Inquisition 
 not yet dead ; her fleets still recalling the 
 Armada ; yet through all, a ghastliness and
 
 46 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 ghostliness, as if the wliolc structiu'C were 
 held together by old spells grown feeble, and 
 at a bold touch or word might crumble help- 
 lessly away. 
 
 Insular ! we thanked God in our hymns 
 for it ; islanded safe, in our green security, 
 with our glorious constitution in Church and 
 State, our King, our Church, our "wooden 
 walls ; " a second " chosen people," better 
 preserved than the first from the various 
 idolatrous nations around. If Israel of old 
 had been guarded by the Straits of Dover and 
 the Gei-man Ocean, who could say that things 
 might not have ended differently ? But no 
 doubt it was to be. Israel was a stiff-necked 
 people, and we, on the contrary, were always 
 improving ourselves and our constitution. 
 
 (Jf course even then tlierc were a few 
 croakers, who might have repeated Oliver 
 Cromwell's old exhortation, " You glory in 
 that ditch which guards your shores ; I tell 
 you your ditch will be no defence to you un-
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 47 
 
 less you reform yourselves ; " and a feAV pro- 
 fane wits infected with the levity of France, 
 who did not regard even the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, or oiu- most religious and gracious 
 king as unassailable ; and a few democrats 
 who did not consider even our glorious con- 
 stitution final. But for the most part, even 
 if when comparing class with class amongst 
 us, we now and then recognised reluctantly 
 that there was some unequal pressure, that 
 there might be some corners which were not 
 quite paradise; when, on the other hand, 
 we compared ourselves with the rest of the 
 world, our self appreciation was restored, and 
 we became once more sensible of our privi- 
 leges. 
 
 Moreover, not only were we one island, 
 we were in another sense an archipelago of 
 islands. 
 
 Not only was England thus islanded 
 from the world. Every country town was 
 islanded from the rest — was a living com-
 
 48 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 numity iu itself, Avitli its owu local his- 
 tory and government, local glories and 
 wrongs, its local circles of families, estab- 
 lished there for generations ; not certainly 
 M'ithout theii- mutual jealousies and rivalries, 
 but belonging to each other, by a real and 
 recognised relationship. 
 
 And still farther within this inner island 
 was an innermost, like the ball within ball 
 of an Indian ivory puzzle. 
 
 In those days every Englishman's '' house 
 was his castle," in a more peculiar sense, or 
 at least in a gi-eater variety of st^nses, than 
 now. A house belonged to a family, was 
 part of its complex existence, more in the 
 same sense than a man's body is part of his 
 complex self. It grew with the family growth, 
 flourished with the family prosperity, d*'- 
 cayed with the family decay ; and as we die 
 out of our bodies and leave them, so, with a 
 mortality in one sense more pathetic b(X'aiise 
 apparently not inevitable, a family might, by
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 49 
 
 misfortune, folly, failure of succession, die 
 out of the old family house. A house, there- 
 fore, had quite a different significance ; it 
 had family histories stamped into it, growing 
 out of it ; it had features, characteristics, a 
 life of its own. 
 
 There are stately mansions of our great 
 families, to which something of this character 
 attaches still. The greatness and glory of 
 the great familj^ is built into them, and they 
 stand. 
 
 But then, this family character attached 
 to countless unpretending English houses, 
 and this not only in country places, to fine 
 old manorial halls, or homely farmsteads, but 
 in the streets of every town. We all of us can 
 recognise these old houses still. They look 
 out on us with pathetic or quaint and humo- 
 rous human faces; the humanity that has 
 grown with them and around them, and from 
 them for generations, cannot die out of them. 
 And when we see them left stranded and Ibr- 
 
 VOL. I. ,E
 
 so AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 loru in some featureless row of windows and 
 doors, such as human creatures now swarm 
 and arc fed in, until the next hive is ready, 
 wo welcome them or compassionate them, not 
 as buildings but as friends. 
 
 In such houses were the families of my 
 childhood islanded in the island of our little 
 countr^^ town, in the island of our England. 
 
 I smile sometimes a little when I see people 
 endeavouring now testhetically to restore this 
 lost sacredness of houses by means of Eliza- 
 bethan windows and fireplaces, and mediaeval 
 texts, and family arms on doors and walls, 
 I think the rush of nineteenth century life 
 will be too strong for them. Will their 
 children live where they lived, or love what 
 they loved, or think as they thought ? 
 
 If it is hard to make a lost religion or a lost 
 architecture live again, I think it is harder 
 still to revive a dead habit of social life. ]5ut 
 our gi-andchildren will see. 
 
 It is this inmost island of home that I must
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 51 
 
 first picture, before the scene widens to the 
 town and the country in which it was en- 
 closed. All true geography, all geography 
 which would lead to the knowledge, not of 
 names, but of things, must begin, not with 
 the ecliptic and the equator, but with the 
 pond in our own farmyard. 
 
 The living germ of our town was a Bene- 
 dictine abbey, one of the finest and earliest 
 in the kingdom. This abbey had been built 
 by the side of a clear, rocky river, where 
 the hills through which it cut its way from 
 the moorland opened out so as to leave a little 
 level of rich meadow land. 
 
 Ai'ound the church and the conventual 
 buildings, the two solid stone bridges, and the 
 weir with its deep pool and salmon trap, 
 whence the to^Ti Abbot's Weii- had its name, 
 the houses of the town clustered, gradually 
 stretching back over the strip of level to the 
 hills. 
 
 Our house had thus been driven to the 
 
 LIBWRY 
 
 UNIVIW81TY OF ILLIN0I8
 
 52 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 foot of the steep slope, and had been con- 
 strained to make the best of it by all kinds of 
 eccentric devices, climbing here and delving 
 there,' until it possessed scarcely two rooms 
 on the same level ; to children perhaps the 
 most delightful plan on which a house could 
 be constructed. Its very existence was a 
 continual victory over adverse circumstances, 
 and tended to communicate to its inhabitants, 
 according to the material on which the stamp 
 was impressed, a character either militant 
 and adventurous, or easy and imperturbable, 
 conquering circumstance by resolutely sur- 
 mounting it, or by accepting its ups and downs 
 as inevitable, and making them part of its 
 own constitution. 
 
 The enti'ance was by a Tudor arch into a 
 broad passage. On the right was a large 
 wainscoted room with a stone floor and one- 
 long, low mullioned window with a long, 
 deep window-seat. In this room, as a rule, 
 the family breakfasted, dined, and had all
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 53 
 
 its family meals — all, that were not con- 
 uected Trith ceremonial, and extended to 
 strangers. This also was the n,earest ap- 
 proach Piers and I had to a day nursery or 
 playi'oom, onr great resource on any wet 
 days which di'ove us from our natural ter- 
 ritory in the garden; a room into which, 
 even after the regime of my stepmother, 
 Pluto was admitted, and my father's fii- 
 vourite pointer and setter, and that long 
 succession of my kittens which came to such 
 a variety of tragical ends. Mrs. Danes- 
 combe's cat, which never came to misfortune 
 of any kind, sleek, impenetrable, demure, 
 resided in the Oak Parlour, approached by 
 a small flight of steps on the opposite side of 
 the passage. Into this we only went by 
 invitation; but that cat had Wiq entree. A 
 most evil and hypocritical creature we con- 
 sidered her ; an embodiment of all the dark 
 side of cat-nature — malignantly breaking 
 all the china and gluttonously imbibing all
 
 54 AGALXST THE STREAM. 
 
 the dainties (on account of wliicli my luck- 
 less kittens suffered), and then sitting up- 
 \'\]x\ii on the parloiu' window-seat winking 
 superciliously at all the world. 
 
 There were few middle tints in the por- 
 traits of oui' childhood, and among the most 
 I\embrandt-like that comes back to me is 
 the image of my stepmother's cat. All that 
 Puritan meant to the most prejudiced of 
 Cavaliers, or Tartuffe to the most anti- 
 ecclesiastical of Frenchmen, that sleek, 
 stealthy, whiskered black-and-white cat 
 meant to me. It scarcely ever pun-ed. We 
 believed it could not purr; its conscience 
 was too laden with crime. Nor do I re- 
 member its ever playing, except once or 
 twice in a murderous way with a fly on the 
 window-pane when it thought no one was 
 looking. Its name was Mignonette, and to 
 this day I can scarcely do justice to the 
 sweetness of the little flower whose appella- 
 tion it polluted.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 55 
 
 The Oak Parloiu' had a very different 
 social rank from the Stone Parlour. It was 
 my stepmother's especial domam. It was 
 seldom entered by an}^ one until the after- 
 noon, being the scene of leisurely employ- 
 ment and sober amusement, and of all social 
 entertainments not of the stateliest kind. 
 There Mrs. Danescombe embroidered mus- 
 lin and made lace, or took snuff and played 
 cards with chosen associates, always for 
 small stakes; and there were solemnly 
 handed around trays with small glasses of 
 liqueurs or cordials, or in aftertimes with 
 dainty small cups of tea. No uproarious 
 merriment was ever heard within those pre- 
 cincts; nothing stronger than tea or cor- 
 dials was ever sipped therein. Seldom did 
 masculine foot invade them. If my father 
 wished to entertain his friends with solid 
 British viands and vigorous British be- 
 verages, recourse was had to the Stone 
 Parloui*, where also we gathered in the
 
 S6 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 winter evenings on oaken settles or foot- 
 stools around the great old chimney with its 
 dogs and log-fires. Echoes of Christmas 
 merriment and of children's laughter hung 
 around those old walls ; but the wainscoting 
 of the Oak Parlour could never have 
 reported anything more sonorous than the 
 murmured gossip of the card-tahle, imless 
 some of the players by any series of other 
 people's mistakes or their own mischances 
 lost their games and their tempers, and 
 broke out of the decorum of the place into 
 the hard realities of imfairly lost shillings 
 and sixpences. 
 
 There were two sacred things to me, 
 however, in the room. 
 
 In the recesses on each side of the high 
 oaken chimneypiece with its carved looking- 
 glass, hung portraits of my father and of 
 my own mother in the dresses they wore 
 just after they were married: he with a 
 bag-wig, hand ruffles, and a sword, and
 
 AGATNST THE STREAM. si 
 
 elaborate shoe-biicklds, which certainly did 
 not recall his every-day appearance; she 
 with powdered hair brushed over a high 
 cushion, a little hat stuck coquettishly on 
 the top of itj a blue satin bodice and train, 
 and brocaded petticoat, with a large bou- 
 quet in the hand laid on her lap, and a 
 shepherd's crook in the other. At her feet 
 was a lamb wreathed with flowers, looking 
 wistfully up in her face. The native Van- 
 dyke or Sir Joshua had evidently a confused 
 Ideal compounded of the pastoral and the 
 courtly, and was very familiar with neither. 
 There must have been something very in- 
 vincible in the character of my mother's 
 face to penetrate as it did at once thi'ough 
 the false idealism and the imperfect exe- 
 cution of the painter. For it was evidently 
 a likeness. Underneath a fair, finely-arched 
 brow were distinct though delicate eye- 
 brows, visible far back at the side of the 
 foreheadj and overshadowing very lai-ge.
 
 58 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 soft dark-groy eyes. There was much depth 
 in the eyes, but no dreaminess. They evi- 
 dently saw — saw the lamb looking up into 
 them, and much besides. The mouth was 
 finn and grave ; the pose of the whole figiu'e 
 was at once easy and commanding ; the small 
 hand, wooden as the painting was, held the 
 crook with a real grasp. You felt instinctively 
 that the visible lamb and the imaginary flock 
 were well cared for under such guardianship. 
 Oh ! with what longing I used to look at 
 that lamb lying so safe at her feet ! 
 
 She sate before me a type not so much of 
 fond, passionate motherliness, as of tender, 
 wise, protective motherhood; not so much 
 of the mother's bliss, as of the mother's 
 care; not like one of Murillo's girl Ma- 
 donnas dreaming over a new delight, but 
 like one of the earlier Italian school, grave 
 with the very weight of the mother's joy, 
 and with the destinies of the life with 
 which her own was bound up.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 59 
 
 For had I not the memory of her touch 
 aucl her kiss to interpret the portrait ? Had 
 not those hands pressed me to her heart, 
 and did I not know how those grave lips 
 could part and smile ? 
 
 Underneath this portrait stood a little 
 table with a well in it, containing, I knew, 
 my mother's work, and especially one dainty 
 little Mil of a baby's cap, imfinished, with 
 her needle in it. Upon it was placed her 
 ebony spinning-wheel. ISTurse used to dust 
 it reverently eveiy morning; and often I 
 stole in with her, and then, when nui'se was 
 not looking, I used to reach up to the 
 picture and softly kiss its hands. 
 
 Every afternoon, when there was no com- 
 pany, I spent an hour in that room with 
 Mrs. Danescombe and the hypocritical cat, 
 learning to sew. But at those times I did not 
 dare to look much at my beloved picture ; 
 because, being frequently in trouble with 
 my work, I was afraid if I caught sight of
 
 6o AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 tliat lamb and of that clear face, a temblc 
 rush of the feeling of motherlessness would 
 come over me, and I should cry. For, once, 
 when I had been very unsuccessful ^vitll my 
 sewing, and had had to unpick it several 
 times, this had haj^pened, and Mrs. Danes- 
 combe had asked what I was crj'ing for; 
 and I, stretching out my arms to the pic- 
 ture, and sobbing out something about 
 ''mother," my stepmother had replied in 
 an even, undisturbed voice — one of her 
 maxims being that "a gentlewoman never 
 degrades reproof into scolding by raising 
 her voice " — 
 
 "Bridget, this is something I cannot per- 
 mit. When little girls lose their tempers 
 over their tasks, I cannot suffer them to 
 deceive themselves by calling their naughty 
 passions sensibility. You have many faults, 
 but I did hope you were a truthful child, 
 ^evcr let me hear you speak in that way 
 again."
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. bi 
 
 And tliat was a reproach I never did 
 incur again. How it burnt into my heart I 
 Not only by the injustice, but the justice in 
 it. For I was a very truthful child ; and it 
 was not only the dull pain of being mis- 
 nnderstood that hurt me ; it was the terrible 
 fear that my stepmother, after all, had 
 understood me better than I understood 
 myself. Was she not older, wiser, my 
 father's chosen ruler for us — set over us by 
 all the mysterious powers whence authority 
 springs — authority against which I had not 
 a thought of rebelling? And had I not 
 been in something very like a naughty tem- 
 per, writing down very hard things against 
 my stepmother, and the bitter fate of little 
 girls in general who had to learn sewing, 
 indeed, even against the Nature of Things 
 which involved clothes that had to be sewn ? 
 And was it possible that I had desecrated 
 that love to my own mother, and the 
 memory of her love, by makiug it an
 
 6« AGALXST THE STREAM. 
 
 excuse even to myself for beiug cross and 
 angry ? 
 
 I certainly had sometimes underneath 
 these perplexities and self-accusations a dim 
 sense, now and then flashing into a pas- 
 sionate persuasion, that it was not all my 
 fault. But then I reproached myself again 
 for this. 
 
 If the things in Mrs. Danescombe's cha- 
 racter which jarred against mine had been 
 angles, the conflict would have been less 
 harassing. But in her there were no 
 angles ; there was nothing to lay hold of ; 
 it was simply coldness, smoothness of sur- 
 face, hard polish, and impenetrability ; and 
 what "case" could be made out of these? 
 She never scolded, or threatened, or pun- 
 ished. She simply reproved. Her severest 
 discipline was a distant politeness and a 
 peculiar way of calling me "Bridget." 
 What was cruel in that ? Yet it froze into 
 my bones. And there were times wlu^n her
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 63 
 
 mere presence was to me a prison worse 
 than the darkest of the dark holes nurse 
 threatened us with. It was not until long- 
 afterwards that I learned why. 
 
 Her government was based on suspicion. 
 She was not theological in any sense; she 
 had no extreme theories of the depravity 
 of human nature. But she had a deep- 
 seated conviction that every man and 
 woman, and more especially every servant 
 and little child, was more likely to do 
 wrong than right, and more likely to 
 do wrong from the worst motives than the 
 best. 
 
 Combined with this, or perhaps flowing 
 from it, was a remarkable keenness of per- 
 ception as to any defect or mistake, in any- 
 thing or person, from a speck of dust or 
 rust on the fui-niture, to the smallest sole- 
 cism in dress or manners, or the least excess 
 or defect in demeanour. 
 
 Therefore she never praised ; partly be-
 
 64 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 cause she thought commendation nourished 
 vanity, and partly because in the Lest work 
 she always detected some petty blemish, not 
 imaginary, but real ; yet, however small, suf- 
 ficient to distract her attention from all that 
 was good in it. 
 
 It would be a difficult atmosphere to (jrow 
 in, but that we had a large space of life free 
 Irom her inspection, and an element of posi- 
 tive freedom, warmth, and breadth in my 
 father, which I suppose would scarcely have 
 (lone alone. 
 
 Only I have often thought that my mo- 
 ther's character would have been the supple- 
 mentary opposite, as my stepmother's was 
 the neutralising contrary of my father. My 
 luotlier's character would have drawn out 
 and filled up all that was highest and best 
 in his. ^Irs. Danescombe nuTely re- 
 pressed and neutralised. With her he was, 
 perhai)s, restrained from doing or saying 
 some things better not done or said ; with
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 65 
 
 my mother he would have become all he 
 might have been. Both made some kmd 
 of harmony, but with my mother all the life 
 would have been larger, richer, fuller. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 4 T the cud of tho passage was a wide 
 ■^ stair-case with bhick oak banisters, 
 wliich led to the liest Parlour, an apartment 
 l-rovided with furniture altogether 
 
 " too bright and good 
 For coininon iiaturt's daily food;" 
 
 A\here from week to week the amber damask 
 curtains and tapestried chairs were pinned 
 into thick coverings, and the carpet was 
 rolled up on one side, and the gilded sconces 
 on the frame of the small round looking- 
 glass was veiled, and the Venetian-blinds 
 were closely shut. 
 
 This was the inmost sanctuary of Mrs. 
 1 )ancscombe's domain. In my mother's time 
 it had not been furnished, and I had faint
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 67 
 
 memories of its having been abandoned to 
 us as a jDlay-room, of wild games played there 
 with my father in winter twilight, and of 
 delicious terrors, half real and half feigned, as 
 he sprang on us from dim corners with awful 
 growls and roars, in the characters of lion or 
 bear. Moreover outside there was a balcony 
 which was a delightfully romantic place, 
 whence the world assumed Cjuite a new 
 aspect, a border land which was neither in- 
 doors nor out-of-doors, where all the life of 
 the street moved before us in a continual pro- 
 cession, better than any picture-book. 
 
 But now all this was changed, and we 
 only entered the room at all on the very 
 highest days in oiu' very best, and therefore 
 most harassing, clothes ; and would as soon 
 have thought of venturing into the pulpit of 
 the chui'ch as into the balcon3\ 
 
 Eehind this were the principal bedrooms, 
 looking on an inner court, and then a flight 
 of rather ladder-like stall's leading to the
 
 68 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 first platform of the garden, on which opened 
 the Summer Parlour. This was my father's 
 especial retreat, the comer of the house which 
 he succeeded in defending against all the as- 
 saults of order, and keeping ft-eely open to us. 
 
 In this room we had the rights of citizen- 
 ship to the fullest extent ; everything was 
 open to us ; and, in consequence, everything 
 was sacred to us. We were trusted and be- 
 lieved in; and to have hurt anything my 
 father cared about, would have been to Piers 
 or me, naturally, the direst of misfortunes. 
 
 My father's principles of government and 
 ^dews of life were the very contrary to Mrs. 
 Danescombe's. Ilis expectation was that 
 every one belonging to him would do right, 
 and everything would go right ; and if, con- 
 trary to expectation, any one did -vnong, or 
 anything went wrong, he was wont to attri- 
 bute it to the best possible motives, and re- 
 sume his sanguine anticipations unbroken. 
 Not perhaps, an altogether adequate principle
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. bg 
 
 for government on any large scale. Although 
 I remember being smitten with a far keener 
 repentance by being misunderstood by him 
 on the too favourable side than all my step- 
 mother's keen detection and exposure of the 
 dark side ever brought to me. 
 
 The real defect in his rule was not, I think, 
 hoping or trusting too much, but suffering 
 his sanguine temperament to dim his sight. 
 To see everything that is wi'ong, and yet 
 hope everything good, is higher, I suppose, 
 because truer. 
 
 And it was there, I fancy, my mother 
 would have helped him. The optimism 
 which revolted to an extreme against Mrs. 
 Danescombe's suspicions would have been 
 braced and corrected by my mother's loving 
 truthfulness. 
 
 That room was a world of interest to us. 
 There were marvellous models of machines 
 in it (those were the days of Watt and Ai'k- 
 wright), balls of twine, fishing tackle, car-
 
 70 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 pentcrs' tools, a turuing lathe, pieces of 
 ^■arious \roods — Si)aiiisli mahogany and cedar, 
 curious knots and blocks of oak, box, walnut, 
 and various native woods ; for my fiithcr de- 
 lighted in experimenting, and had a theory 
 that half the use that might be was not made of 
 ( )ur own English produce. The maiTcd work, 
 and the pieces with unconquerable flaws, 
 wore our Jetsam and Flotsam ; but the 
 greatest pleasure of all was to be allowed to 
 stand by and watch while he was at work. 
 
 To watch the real work of grow7i people 
 M'as an endless interest to us children. It 
 was their amusements, and still more their 
 attempts to amuse us, which seemed to us so 
 (lull. And by mistaken benevolence of that 
 kind wc in our childhood were not much 
 oppressed. 
 
 My father having much *' of the child's 
 heart in his breast," took us quite naturally 
 into his confidence, and enjoyed our sym- 
 pathy in his projects, as much as we did his
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 71 
 
 ill ours. Mrs. Dauescombe, probably never 
 having known cliilcUiood herself, capable of 
 having existed from infancy like the children 
 in old-fashioned family pictures, erect from 
 morning till night in a cnshion and hoop, 
 never thought of us as helpless creatures that 
 had to be made happy, but as fallen and re- 
 fractor}' creatures that had to be kept down, 
 and brought up, and if possible kept tidy. 
 Thus no one took any trouble to amuse us. 
 And accordingly we were endlessly amused. 
 
 Xever, moreover, were children happier in 
 the scenery of their childhood, than we in that 
 dear old up and down house and garden. 
 
 The garden consisted of a succession of 
 platforms and terraces, connected by flights 
 of steps or by steep slopes. The first of these 
 was opposite the Summer Parlour. Eound 
 it was a border of flowers — roses, pansies, 
 marigolds, love-lies-bleeding, hen and chicken 
 daisies, sunflowers, hollyhocks, all Lord 
 Bacon's catalogue. In one corner, hollowed
 
 72 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 out of the rocky hill-side, was a Dropjniig 
 AV'i'll, where the slow falling of the drops, one 
 l>y one, we saw not whence, into the dark, cool 
 water below, mysteriously echoing from the 
 sides, made sweet music for us. The entrance 
 was draped by tufts and fringes of ferns of the 
 richest green and the most delicate forms ; 
 beneath it, under the rock, was a bed of the 
 sweetest lilies of the valley. It was only 
 (^ntered in the early morning by a few stray 
 sunbeams, and of these scarcely one reached 
 the opposite rock, and none ever penetrated 
 into the clefts and comers. 
 
 My father told us it was natural, and cars'cd 
 out by the little drops themselves dropping 
 through hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. 
 They had begun their chimes, he said, long 
 before any had sounded from the old church- 
 tower. 
 
 Thus to us that little melodious well was 
 like the threshold of a thousand delightful 
 mysteries. Where did those melodious drops
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 73 
 
 start from ? From what dark hidden pools 
 under the hills ? fr'om what bright, floating 
 clouds in the sky ? Whose pitchers had they 
 filled, — what little children had they sung to 
 before ? What were they saying to us, or 
 wanting to say? Wistfril Undines and 
 Xixen longing to speak to us ; wise busy 
 gnomes at work for ages, knowing thousands 
 of secrets they would not tell but we would 
 give anything to hear ; all the wild mytho- 
 logy of mountain and water sprites ; all that 
 ' ' nurse" Xature would say to us and cannot ; 
 all that we would leani from her and cannot ; 
 dim reflections of our human life on material 
 things ; dim shinings through and prismatic 
 refractions of the Divine life beyond and 
 within; all this and unutterably more mur- 
 mured to us through that Dropping Well. 
 Children of the mystic and humorous North, 
 did we need legends Scandinavian or Teu- 
 tonic to tell us what a strange compound the 
 world was ?
 
 74 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 "Was there not, moreover, from time to time, 
 in that very well, tin apparition of a gigantic 
 wide-mouthed frog, who in the midst of all 
 that melancholy and mystic music, and those 
 delicate ferns, and those sweet lilies of the 
 valley, would croak and hop, and be as 
 self-satisfied, and as entirely an embodied 
 joke as any of quaintest dwarfs Grim ever 
 disinterred or Cruikshank ever drew; the 
 whole mysterious animal Avorld lay open to 
 us between our sympathetic dog Pluto and 
 that supercilious, impenetrable frog. 
 
 "When years afterwards we saw these 
 German stories, we felt we had known them 
 all our lives. 
 
 For I confess I am tempted to count it 
 among the blessings of our chihlhood that 
 we had no children's books at all. 
 
 No doubt there were childi-en's books in 
 our days; but the allowance Avas scanty, 
 and what there were did not reach us. If 
 we had been provided with any, they would.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 75 
 
 no doubt, have been heavily weighted with 
 morals, and would have been duller to us than 
 oiu' lessons. But, happily, we were not. Our 
 lesson books were good, honest lesson books — 
 my first was a horn-book. Our alphabets had 
 no pictures ; there was no sugar on the 
 margin of our draughts of learning. We 
 took them, certainly not without tears. But 
 if to us " books" meant the antithesis of 
 "play," and we cried over them and their 
 consequences very heartily and very fre- 
 quently, at least we did not fall into the far 
 more desperate fate of yawning over our 
 play, and listlessly requesting to be instructed 
 how to amuse ourselves. 
 
 In our days the age of wise children's 
 literature had not commenced. For us 
 Eosamond and Frank, Harry and Lucy did 
 not exist. They may, indeed, have dawned 
 on some of the higher social summits, but 
 certainly did not penetrate to Abbot's Weir. 
 Still less, of coui'se, was there anything for
 
 76 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 us of the natui'c of the reactionary literature 
 of nonsense, clever or inane, which succeeded 
 that era of prsetematural good sense. 
 
 What nursery nonsense we had was quite 
 genuine, with no perplexing parodies of 
 sense, or half glimmerings of sense treacher- 
 ously lurking beneath the surface. For us 
 Little Jack Ilorner sate in his corner, and 
 took out his plum, and congratulated him- 
 self (not as one might have expected, on 
 his good fortune, but on his vii'tue), in 
 the most literal way, without any alle- 
 gorical construction. No suspicions of 
 satire, or of the signs of the zodiac, marred 
 our enjoyment of the confusion which en- 
 sued when " the cat had the fiddle, the 
 cow jumped over the moon, the little dog 
 laughed to see the sport, and the dish ran 
 away with the spoon." 
 
 For us Mother Hubbard's agreeable dis- 
 appointment at the futility of her dog's 
 coffin was always fresh ; the funeral rites
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 77 
 
 of Jenny Wren could be repeated to any 
 extent ; the Babes in the "Wood and Little 
 Red Riding Hood were alternately dreaded 
 and desired as we felt equal or not to the 
 luxuries of tragedy. But between those 
 ancient histories and the literature of our 
 elders there was no intervening world of 
 little boys and girls, exemplarily good, 
 preeternaturally naughty, sentimental, reli- 
 gious, or scientific. 
 
 The world of grown people's work — of ani- 
 mals and flowers, the garden, and the Timber- 
 yard, and the Iron Foundry were our books. 
 And for us there was no idle reading. 
 
 But perhaps we were exceptionally happy 
 in these respects. My father himself was our 
 Miss Edgeworth, almost always ready to ex- 
 plain to us his own work, or to enter with such 
 serious interest as we felt its due into oui's. 
 
 And, of course, it is not every child who 
 can be free of a Timber-yard and a Foundry 
 as we were.
 
 78 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 For I have not }X't told liulf the delights 
 of our garden. 
 
 By the side of the Dropping Well -was 
 a door, better to lis than any underground 
 step of Aladdin, leading through a short 
 tunnel, ending in a flight of stairs cut in 
 the rock, to the second garden, which was 
 a steep slope crowned at the top with a 
 terrace and an arboui*. 
 
 This was of peculiar interest to us, 
 because it was one of the pages of our 
 own original illustrated copy of the Pil- 
 grim's Progress, being obviously the Hill 
 Difficulty, the arbour where Christian 
 lost his roll, and also in another aspect 
 the Palace Beautiful, aud the Delectable 
 Mountains whence the pilgrims could sur- 
 vey tlie land. 
 
 Could not we survey the whole land from 
 that summit ? 
 
 Below us lay the slate royls of the town, 
 tier below tier, the two bridges aud the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. jg 
 
 river ; and opposite Avas the fine old grey 
 tower of the church, with its pinnacles 
 standing out against the wooded hillsides, 
 whilst above stretched the sweeping curves 
 and sharp angles of the granite Tors, the 
 moorland hills, whence the river flowed, 
 purple and golden, with crisp lights and 
 shadows, or, blue and soft and far away, 
 " the everlasting hills." 
 
 This, therefore, was one of om- usual 
 haunts on Sunday afternoons. 
 
 In the side wall of this garden was 
 another door, and beyond it an orchard, 
 and beyond that a great free range of fields 
 called the Leas, and at the top of this a 
 channel of water called the Leat, which 
 was detached higher up from the river, and 
 fell at one end of the Leas in a cascade 
 which turned the large water-wheel of the 
 Iron Foundiy. At the other end of this 
 field was the Timber-yard, and the Foun- 
 dry and the Timber-yard were among the
 
 8o AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 chief scenes of my father's work and our 
 play. 
 
 In those days it was the general custom 
 for men of business to live near their work. 
 Now, scarcely even the smaller shopkeepers 
 live over their shops; and not only great 
 cities but country towns are fringed with 
 their suburbs of villas. Then, even large 
 merchants lived near their warehouses, and 
 if, as we did, they possessed a farm, it was 
 a genuine farm, in the real country, where 
 men and women did their real work ; and 
 if things were fair to see, it was because 
 it was their nature, not because they were 
 put there to be seen. I suppose there is 
 gain in the change. People breathe better 
 air, at least physically ; of the moral atmo- 
 sphere I am not so sure. It may be good 
 to escape from the cares of business to 
 vineries and conservatories and geranium 
 beds ; it is certainly better than to be bui'ied, 
 body and soul, in business ; but to ennoble
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 8t 
 
 business is even better than to escape from 
 it. All work must be degraded and must 
 degrade, the chief object of which is to 
 earn the means to do no work. The highest 
 art may certainly in that way be degraded 
 into a trade ; and I think there are few 
 manufactures or trades which may not, on 
 the other hand, be raised into art. 
 
 At least it was so with my father. That 
 Timber-yard and that Foundry were to him, 
 and through him to us, outlets into the 
 world of knowledge and of work. 
 
 Into the interior of the Foundry we were 
 not permitted to enter except under his 
 protection. 
 
 My chief associations with that were a 
 sense of the wonder-working powers of 
 Water and of Fire. 
 
 It was, indeed, a perpetual fairy tale to 
 see those creatures which we knew us 
 fantastic dwarfs, or melodious melancholy 
 nymphs, or dancing sprites, when they 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 Sz AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 worked at their own wild will in the Drop- 
 ping "Well, or around the great logs on the 
 hearth of the Stone Parlour, transformed 
 into steadfast and irresistible giants hy the 
 pressure of the steady will of man. 
 
 For thousands of years the slow dropping 
 water had been at work, and had carved 
 out to the sound of its own singing that 
 strange hollow in the rocky hills, with its 
 grotesque angles and dim clefts ; and now 
 at last the great water-wheel was set to 
 direct it, and patiently and willingly the 
 mighty creature, rising to its full strength, 
 turned the great machine round and round, 
 making by its own unconquerable beauty 
 the loveliest sparkling cascades and showers 
 at every tuni. And out of this combined 
 power, of water and man, came harrows, 
 and spades, and scythes ; and pots, and 
 pans, and kettles, and all kinds of fairy 
 household gifts to make our work easier 
 and our hoiiies pleasanter. "Were not the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 83 
 
 swift, flashing waters careering with their 
 rush of rapid music over the wheel as 
 pleasant to see and hear as when dropping 
 into the well ? And were not scythes and 
 even kettles as poetical things to make as 
 caves ? — the fireside and the reaping field 
 being surely as sacred as the rocky hillside 
 and the heathery moors ? 
 
 I have always, however, been rather glad, 
 as far as the lessons and associations of 
 childhood went, that our machinery was 
 worked by the separate powers of Fire and 
 Water, and not by these powers combined, 
 in the more prosaic form of Steam. 
 
 There was a large foundiy not fifty miles 
 from us, worked by steam, before we w^ere 
 born. And at the great engine factory of 
 Boulton and Watt, many years before, my 
 father used to tell how Mr. Boulton showed 
 Dr. Johnson round, and said to him, '' Sir, 
 we sell here the thing all men are in search 
 of — power."
 
 84 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 We lived in the days of the birth and 
 infancy of many things which have since 
 growTi to gigantic powers and overspread 
 the world. 
 
 Our childhood was passed in one of the 
 great dawns of history. The world was 
 awake and stiiTing around us in every 
 direction — machinery, politics, religion ; 
 and my father was a man awake to every 
 throb of the busy life around him. 
 
 The great Steam Power was already in 
 the world, and through the busy brains of 
 Watt, Cartwright, and Arkwriglit was feel- 
 ing after its work in railroads, steamboats, 
 and power-looms. But happily for us, our 
 moorland river did the work for us, and 
 instead of pistons and cranks and close 
 oily rooms, we had our gigantic water- 
 wheel and the cascade which rushed over 
 it from the hill. 
 
 Then, the pictures and parables enacted 
 for us on the great casting-days, when we
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 85 
 
 were taken to see the molten metal flow 
 out of tlie furnace into the moulds of sand, 
 the Eembrandt-like groups of men witli 
 blackened, illumined faces shovelling out 
 the liquid fire as if they had been agents 
 in some fiery horrors of Dante's Inferno ; 
 the power of heat in that red cave of fire 
 raging at its roof into fierce white flames, 
 which always made me think of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar's fiery furnace, and clasp tight my 
 father's hand and Piers,' lest they should be 
 burned up like the wicked executioners ! 
 
 I used to wonder how the three children 
 and that " Fourth " looked in the midst 
 of the flames; not black, I was sui-e, like 
 old Eeuben Pcngelly, the furnace-man, but 
 beautiful and calm, and fresh and white, 
 like a very bright soft moon in the midst of 
 the angry glare. 
 
 Yet old Eeuben himself was very dear 
 to us children. He had lost a little boy 
 about the age of Piers, and he had always
 
 86 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 a very tender feeling to Piers, partly be- 
 cause the child, looking, no doubt, from 
 his blackened face, and muscular bare neck, 
 to his kind eyes, had always had such 
 trust in him, and would have gone in his 
 arms to the mouth of the furnace. Eeuben's 
 delight on Sunday, when he had his clean 
 washed face, and his best coat on, was to 
 carry Piers in his arms about the silent 
 foundry-yard, amongst the stationary wheels 
 and hammers, and to sing us Methodist 
 hymns. For he was a man of a strong, 
 fervent piety, such as fitted his rough work 
 and his muscular frame ; and it was from 
 him I first remember hearing the story of 
 the three childi'cn in the furnace. To 
 Eeuben the Bible was the written part of 
 a continuous living history, unwritten ; and 
 lie told us how that Fourth, "who made 
 the flames as soft as morning dew to them, 
 was with him, old Eeuben Pengelly, as 
 really as with them, and with us little
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 87 
 
 ones, too." And I used often to gaze into 
 the depths of that burning haze, in a vague 
 hope of finding something marvellous there. 
 
 All the men knew us, not. as angelic 
 benefactors descending on them now and 
 then on festival occasions, but as little 
 creatures they had some kind of tender right 
 in ; " master's," and also therefore " theii^s." 
 And we knew the inside of many of their 
 homes, not merely by religious or bene- 
 volent visits, but naturally, as our neigh- 
 hours^ as people who had known and loved 
 and served us and oui's before we had 
 known them. 
 
 There is incalculably much in that tie 
 of neighbourhood between rich and poor, 
 employer and employed. The mere daily 
 natural crossing of our paths is something, 
 the familiarity with each other's faces and 
 dwellings, and the countless kindnesses 
 that may spring out of it, are infinitely 
 more. Our Lord knew us well when He
 
 88 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 siiid, not, '* Ye shall love mankind as your- 
 selves," but, " Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bour as tliyself." We often read it the 
 other way. But the meaning is quite 
 (lifFerent. 
 
 And it often seems to me that half the 
 social problems which beset us arise from 
 tlie rich and poor having ceased in so many 
 instances to be neighbour's. "WTiat is half 
 at least of our charitable machinery but 
 an ineffectual and clumsy effort to replace 
 the countless little interchanges of mutual 
 <^ood-\\dll and service, the countless health- 
 lul, mutually sustaining intertwinings of 
 life and love, which are involved in the 
 simple fact of living within sight of each 
 other? 
 
 The Timber-yard, however, was Piers' 
 and my most constant resource and de- 
 light; our gymnasium, our race-course, the 
 dockyard of our navies. 
 
 Thence also the histories my father told
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 89 
 
 us made a broad chamiel on which our 
 imaginations sailed away to the various 
 northern and southern lands, where the 
 great bare timbers over which we sprang 
 had grown. 
 
 When we were tii-ed we used to sit on 
 these trunks, and Piers would listen to any 
 extent whilst I reproduced to him narra- 
 tives of bears and wolves which had crept 
 stealthily like cats over the snows after 
 their prey, or howled and growled among 
 the stems of these IS'orway pines. 
 
 We must have been rather sensational 
 and gloomy in our tastes, for these bear 
 and wolf stories were always more popular 
 with us than those of the garlanded trees, 
 and gay parrots, or even of the monkeys 
 of the south. Thi'ough the Timber-yard, 
 the atlas became a living world to us ; and 
 I have no doubt the sense of all these far- 
 off things and creatures mingled like music 
 with our play, as we jumped from trunk
 
 qo AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 to trunk, as free and happy as the squirrels 
 and birds which had hopped from branch 
 to branch in former days. 
 
 Here also were the chips out of which 
 we constructed the fleets which sailed in 
 the Leat at the top of the Leas, the fleets 
 for which we made harbours and piers, and 
 canied on our great contest with the ele- 
 ments that were always ruthlessly endea- 
 vouring to draw them over the cascade, to 
 be crushed by the inexorable water-wheel.
 
 CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 rpHE Sundays of our childhood, how much 
 depends on them ! To me the asso- 
 ciations they bring are chiefly of sunshine 
 and rest ; undisturbed, unless by an uneasy 
 sense of responsibility in relation to Sunday 
 clothes. 
 
 I cannot recall much definite religious 
 teaching. We used, certainly, to say the 
 Church Catechism to Mrs. Danescombe : 
 and I must confess it seemed to me a very 
 obscure collocation of words, in which it 
 was nearly impossible not to put the wi*ong 
 sentence first. I do not remember any part 
 of it being explained to us, except the duty 
 to our I^eighbour, which was enforced on 
 us with strong personal application, and
 
 92 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 left me so oppressed with the impossibility 
 of either saying or doing it, and so per- 
 plexed about the quantity of wrong things 
 one might have done without knowing, that 
 I should have been quite ready, with a 
 certain little French girl at her first con- 
 fession, to have pronounced myself guilty 
 of all the sins prohibited in the Decalogue, 
 including Simony. 
 
 My father never gave us direct lessons 
 of any kind, religious or secular. He was 
 undoubtedly not didactic, and I suppose 
 he was not dogmatic ; probably not finding 
 any great necessity of formulas for his owti 
 use, and certainly not disposed to impose 
 them on others. Neither was he given to 
 cavil or to question. His mind was as 
 little of the stuft' heretics as of that in- 
 quisitors are made of; a subtle material, 
 perhaps sometimes more similar than either 
 think. In Scotland I think it probable 
 he would have accepted the "Westminster
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 93 
 
 Confession, in Saxony the Coni'ession of 
 Augsbni'g, in France the great Creeds of 
 the Gallican Church, his faith in all cases 
 remaining substantially the same, and in 
 all cases omitting the anathemas. 
 
 He was not theological at all in the sense 
 of being keenly alive to the defects in other 
 people's theology. He was theological to 
 the core in the sense that St. John was the 
 Theologian; in that his faith began with 
 God rather than with man ; less with man, 
 erring, falling, sinning, than with God, 
 loving, giving, forgiving. 
 
 Analysis and criticism were not his ele- 
 ment. So far from his theology being 
 negative, if anything was wanting in it, 
 it was negations. If in after life we 
 wandered into doubts and perplexities, 
 to come back to him was to come back 
 neither to elaborate solutions nor to anxious 
 denunciations, but to the child's heart and 
 the Apostles' Creed. His influence on us
 
 94 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 was through what he was, and what he 
 loved. 
 
 Cowper, then a new poet, was his de- 
 light ; not for his satire on social frailties, 
 or his bitter lamentations over human de- 
 pravity; but for his sympathy for human 
 wrong, his gentle pathos, his sunny hu- 
 mour, his large and loving hope in man' 
 and God. 
 
 Not that my father was destitute of the 
 force of indignation ; but, like Cowper's, 
 his indignation was reserved for injustice 
 rather than for eiTor; for the Bastille, for 
 the slave-trade, for the desecration of the 
 sacrament into a political test, for the cor- 
 ruption and meanness of '' corporations," 
 for "charging God with such outrageous 
 wrong " as leaving the sages of old 
 
 " in endless woe 
 For ignorance of what they could not know." 
 
 It is strange to see how many abuses then 
 hotly contended for, are now abandoned by
 
 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 95 
 
 the extremest reactionists ; and on the other 
 hand, how much of the larger hopes which 
 still have to be contended for, had even then 
 dawned on generous Christian hearts. 
 
 To my father we owe the blessing of 
 liberation, space, and joyousness connected 
 with Sunday ; and to him also the inestim- 
 able benefit that to us Christianity was 
 associated, not with limitation, prohibition, 
 and retrogression, but with freedom, ex- 
 pansion, and progress, with all that is 
 generous and glad and hopeful, and be- 
 longing to the light. 
 
 At eight o'clock the "warning" church 
 bell announced that it was Sunday; and 
 father used to knock at our nui'sery door, 
 and carry us off to the weekly festival of 
 breakfast in the Stone Parlour, Piers usually 
 perched on his shoulders, and I holding his 
 hand. 
 
 Then followed that long trial of patience, 
 — the apparelling for church ; and then the
 
 96 AGAINST THE STEEAM. 
 
 ^^•alk by father's side down the quiet yet 
 festive street, between the closed shop win- 
 dows, among the friendly greetings of the 
 ueighboui's, across the churchyard, past that 
 (jne comer of it wliich was the most sacred 
 place on earth to him and to us, up the long 
 aisle to our high square pew, between the 
 Squire's and the Yicar's. 
 
 When we sate down my view was neces- 
 sarily quite domestic, limited by the wooden 
 walls. But when the singing began, it was 
 my privilege to stand on the seat and 
 survey the congregation; and most mar- 
 vellous and interesting to me were the 
 Sunday transfomiations of everybody by 
 means of clothes. 
 
 There was far more difference between 
 best and every-day clothes in those days 
 than now, and far more variety in costume, 
 not only between different classes — between 
 what might be generally termed rich and 
 poor — but between the different orders and
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 97 
 
 species of well-to-do peoi^le. Between tlie 
 rich and poor the contrast was not only in 
 form but in material. Silk was utterly 
 unknown below a certain level; calico 
 prints with imitations of French or Damas- 
 cene patterns had not been made common 
 by Manchester looms. Stout wolseys, 
 woven in cottage looms, clean white ker- 
 chiefs, and sober blues and hodden greys 
 characterized the free-seats. 
 
 Yet none of the transformations of Sun- 
 day seemed to me so complete and remark- 
 able as that which set Eeuben Pengelly in 
 the choii' gallery embracing a huge musical 
 instrument — not the "wee sinfu' fiddle," but 
 a gigantic bass-viol — in a bright blue coat 
 and scarlet waistcoat, which sat on his 
 muscular unaccustomed limbs like plate 
 armour, and a conspicuously white shirt, his 
 face shining at once with friction and devo- 
 tion. There was a sober radiance, and yet a 
 sense of responsibility about his countenance 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 g8 ACAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 which contiuiially attracted mc to it, and I 
 always found myself ending my sui'vey of 
 my neighbours with that dear reverent ohl 
 i'ace, as if unconsciously I recognised it to 
 be a shrine and altar from which more than 
 could be heard or seen was going up to 
 heaven. 
 
 And it must be confessed that there was 
 nuich to distract my attention. If the 
 wages-paying and wages-receiving classes 
 were thus sharply defined by the material of 
 their clothes, the minor distinctions among 
 their richer neiglibours were equally marked 
 to a discriminating eye by their chronology. 
 It was but at a slow pace that oiu- town 
 toilettes could approach the standard of the 
 Squire's, and still further of the Countess' 
 pew, in those brief intervals when the 
 Countess shone on us. 
 
 Many decades of the fashion-book were 
 thus represented around nu^, and it was 
 impossible that my eye should nut be
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. oq 
 
 arrested by varieties reacliiug from the aris- 
 tocratic French classics of tight skirts and 
 short waists, to the hoop and high whale- 
 bone hood of Miss Felicity Eenbow, the 
 schoolmistress, to whom a Sunday dress was 
 a possession for life, and who would as soon 
 have thought of changing her grandfather 
 the general's Tory principles for Jacobinism, 
 as her mother's fashions for raiment, which 
 she severely, but blushingiy, characterized 
 as " little better than none at all." 
 
 I was not conscious of doing anything 
 profane or un- sabbatical in thus contem- 
 plating my neighbours. 
 
 At that time no gorgeous varieties of 
 symbolical vesture had been thought of for 
 the clergy ; but I had no doubt that these 
 varieties of costume among the laity formed 
 as integral a part of the Sunday festivities as 
 Tate and Brady, EeubenPengclly's great bass- 
 viol, and my uncle Parson Fyford's preach- 
 ing a sermon in the pulpit robed in black.
 
 loo AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 I cannot remember anything special in 
 those sermons ; but I do remember tn'cII 
 waking up from time to time, not as far as I 
 know by external suggestions, to a sense of 
 meaning and a sense of appropriation in 
 various parts of the Liturgy. 
 
 First there was the Lord's Prayer. What- 
 ever else in the service might be the 
 peculiar possession of grown-up people, that 
 plainly belonged to us children. "W'e said it 
 every morning and evening. Then there 
 was the Apostles' Creed, which seemed to 
 belong to the Lord's Prayer, beginning 
 with the Almighty Father and going on 
 with its simple history of the Savioui' who 
 came from heaven, who also like us had 
 once a mother, and Avas nailed on the dread- 
 ful cross, and had died and had been 
 "buried" like our mother; but unlike her, 
 had risen again. lie had, I knew, made 
 other people rise again, but not mother yet. 
 r>ut one day lie would make us all rise
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. loi 
 
 again; for that, father had told me, was 
 what the end of the Creed meant. And 
 then I should see Mother. 
 
 But there were two versicles in the 
 Prayer-Book which, being entirely incom- 
 prehensible to me, I always privately re- 
 vised. 
 
 "Whatever the rest of the congregation 
 might be able to say, being grown up, and 
 no doubt having better consciences than I 
 had, I, ignorant of archaic English, and 
 keenly conscious of my own misdoings, 
 could certainly never pray that God would 
 "not deal with me after my sins," and 
 "would not reward me after my iniquities." 
 I who had become entangled in such a 
 bewildering labyrinth of sins and iniquities, 
 could I ask God not to deal any more after 
 them with me? Therefore I always left 
 out the "not." "T^ot dealing with me," 
 as I understood it, so exactly represented 
 my stepmother's mode of punishment. My
 
 ro2 AGAmST THE STREAM. 
 
 food was given inc, lessous were taught me, 
 all the mechanism of life went on, even to 
 tlu' morning and evening kiss; but I, as a 
 little, trembling, clinging, living, loving 
 personality, was left out, ignored, the 
 averted eye never meeting mine, my words 
 indeed answered ; my wants supplied, but I 
 myself um*esponded to altogether; close in 
 ])ody, in heart and soul banished into outer 
 darkness. I myself was simply "not dealt 
 with." 
 
 If God were at all like that, watching 
 coldly and gravely in the expectation I 
 should go wrong; Avhat a destiny, if for 
 ever and ever I were to live in his siglit 
 and within his hearing, under the icy 
 weight of his cold displeasure, not clear why 
 I had offended Him, and feeling it quite 
 hopeless to ask, without the resource even of 
 tin occasional flash of indignant revolt, bi^- 
 rause of course He must bo right ! 
 
 Those versicles are, however, especially
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 103 
 
 memorable to me as comiccted with one 
 especial Sunday afternoon. 
 
 I had gone through a week of those small 
 misdemeanours and misfortunes, connected, 
 as usual, chiefly with behaviour and clothes, 
 in which mischance and misdoing were so 
 inextricably confused to me, yet in which I 
 so often felt that if the original offence 
 which had drawn do^Ti the displeasure of 
 my stej)mother had been trifling, the burn- 
 ing anger and revolt aroused in me were not 
 trifles. Moreover, I had fallen into two 
 undeniable passions about wrongs done, as I 
 conceived, to Piers, and to the reigning 
 kitten. 
 
 That Sunday, therefore, with unusual fer- 
 vour, and with bitter secret tears, I had prayed 
 my little private revision of the Liturgy. 
 
 "Deal with me ! oh do not give up deal- 
 ing "with me after my sins." 
 
 Poor blundering childish prayer, I believe 
 it was heard.
 
 104 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 I had certainly no iiTevercnt intention of 
 correcting the compilers of the Prayer- 
 liook, I only thought I must be so much 
 worse than other people who could calmly 
 say the words as they were printed ! Other- 
 wise, of course the words would never have 
 been there. My stepmother had so often 
 told me I was quite exceptionally naughty, 
 and this Sunday at least, after such a week, 
 I felt it must be true; more especially 
 because my father himself, having come in 
 at the climax of one of my passions, and 
 not knowing the cause, had looked gravely 
 distressed at me. 
 
 That Sunday afternoon it happened that 
 my father was occupied with visitors, and 
 Piers and I crept away to our usual re- 
 source, through the field to the Foundry- 
 yard, to pay a visit to Eeuben Pcngelly and 
 Priscy his wife. They lived at the gate- 
 house, and we were welcomed as usual. 
 But I was very unliappy, feeling like a
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 105 
 
 little exile even there. While Piers was 
 sitting complacently on old Priscy Pen- 
 gelly's knee, enjoying her adoration and 
 his bit of apple pasty, I, quite beyond 
 the consolation of caresses and pasties, 
 sate and nursed my sorrows on the little 
 wooden stool in the porch at Eeuben's 
 feet. 
 
 The very quiet of the place seemed to 
 irritate me. I had so many hammers beat- 
 ing, and complicated wheels revolving in my 
 little heart and brain, that the usual din 
 and rattle of the works would have been 
 more congenial to me. 
 
 Everything but me was so good and 
 quiet and fit for Sunday ! The water play- 
 ing over the idle wheel, the lazy occasional 
 creaking of some of the machinery (like a 
 yawn of Pluto awakened out of sleep), the 
 quiet noiseless investigations being pursued 
 by Priscy's cat among heaps of iron, and 
 stationary machines she would not have
 
 io6 AGAIXST THE STJ^FAJf. 
 
 dared to come near on work-days; the 
 absence of all the clamorous busy life that 
 filled the place at other times, and the peace 
 and shining cleanliness of Reuben's house 
 and face, always made that porch seem to 
 me the most Sunday-like place in the world. 
 And I liked to hear old Reuben and Priscy 
 talk, in a way I only half understood, but 
 always, I felt, in j^jood kind voices, about 
 good and happy things. 
 
 But that day the disquiet within was too 
 deep to be soothed by the quiet without. 
 
 All Reuben's benevolent attempts to draw 
 me into happy childish talk had failed, and at 
 length. Piers having fallen asleep on Priscy's 
 knee, and Priscy having fallen fast asleep 
 too, Reuben looked tenderly down at me, and 
 seeing, I suppose, the dull, stony look so un- 
 natural on a childish face, he said — 
 
 " My lamb, what makes thee so wisht? " 
 
 It happened that just then I was watching 
 a little drama being enacted on the opposite
 
 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 107 
 
 side of the yard, between Priscy's cat and a 
 large brown hen. Anxiously the poor 
 mother, ignorant of the restraints imposed 
 on pussy by our presence, had been calling 
 her chickens to her, and at length had suc- 
 ceeded in attracting the last of them from 
 the seductions of crumbs and grains under 
 the shelter of her wings. And there she 
 Bat tenderly clucking over her little ones, 
 nestled close to her ; and heroically confront- 
 ing the enemy. 
 
 I had watched the little parable with a 
 strange, choking bitterness; and, at first, 
 when Eeuben spoke I could say nothing. 
 
 But, when he stooped down and stood mo 
 beside his knee, and then took me on it and 
 held my hands so tenderly in his great sinewy 
 hand, the first ice-crust of my reserve began 
 to melt, and I said quietly — I felt too des- 
 paii-ing for tears — 
 
 " Eeuben, I cannot be good. 1 cannot. I 
 have done so many sins and iniquities. I
 
 io8 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 think God is going to give up dealing with 
 me." 
 
 I suppose he thought my case not very 
 hopeless, for he smiled most complacently 
 and said — 
 
 '* Give thee up, poor lamb I At last ! Why 
 He did not give up dealing with me /" 
 
 I did not feel the force of the consolation. 
 What could Reuben have done as naughty 
 as I had ? I only shook my head. 
 
 "Why, what be ye thinking about, Miss 
 Jjride, my dear ? " came out in his hearty 
 voice. " The Lord is good, yoo6? ; with poor, 
 hardened old sinners, and to thee ! an inno- 
 cent babe like thee ! " 
 
 I felt much more like a hardened sinner 
 whatever that meant, than like an innocent 
 babe ; and suddenly something that had lain 
 hidden at the bottom of my heart rose up at 
 his words — sometliing I could never have 
 said to father, and had scarcely said even to 
 myself.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 109 
 
 "Eeiibon," I said, looking straight up into 
 his eyes, " is God good ? To you, Eeuben. 
 But not to me ; not to me. He took away 
 Mother ! Even those little chickens have 
 somewhere warm and soft to hide ; and I have 
 nowhere. God took away Mother from me. 
 He must have knoTvn I should never be good 
 afterwards. He is not good to me." 
 
 Happily for me, the old man did not 
 crush the helpless cry of anguish with a 
 reproof, as if it had been a mere wilful cry 
 of revolt. But a look of pain came over his 
 face, such as I should have felt if Piers had 
 struck father ! And he said, looking rever- 
 ently upwards — 
 
 " Poor lamb ! Poor motherless babe ! She 
 knows not what she says. She wants to be 
 good ; and she doesn't know how. Thou 
 want'st ! — Thou who hast died for it ! " 
 
 " I do want to be good, Eeuben," I said, 
 afraid I had not been quite honest; ''but I 
 want — oh I want Mother ! "
 
 no AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 " ]\Iy lamb, my lamb," lie said, " you want 
 God I Mother is happy, for she loves God. 
 81i(^ (lid Avhtni she was here, dear soul, and 
 now she is with him and loves him better ; 
 for she knows how God loves." 
 
 "Zs Mother happy, Eeuben?" I said, 
 roused to an unwonted daring. '•'■ How ean 
 she be happy ? If she is living and awake, 
 how can she be hapi)y, and I so unhappy, 
 and not good, and never going to be good ? 
 Why even I could not be happy, on Father's 
 knee, and Father pleased with me, if Piers 
 were hurt or naughty. And how could 
 Mother ? She loved us more than that. T 
 know, I know, if God would let her. Mother 
 would come back from anywhere — from 
 nmjivhere^ to help u>s and make us good. It 
 is God who took her away, and will not ever 
 let her come back. And how can I pretend 
 to love God or say that He is good to me ? " 
 
 Ileuben said nothing, but k(^pt stroking 
 my hands. I was afraid he was vexed. But
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. iii 
 
 when I glanced up at him I thought he had 
 never looked so kind, although great tears 
 were on his cheeks. 
 
 And then gently, as if I had been an in- 
 fant, he carried me into his little house, and 
 shut the door, and knelt down, with me be- 
 side him, and prayed till the drops stood on his 
 forehead and the tears rained down his face. 
 He said something like this : — 
 " 0, blessed Father ! Pity this poor wisht, 
 forlorn babe. She has lost her mother, and she 
 has lost sight of Thee. She doesn't under- 
 stand. She thinks Thou art turning away Thy 
 face from her, and not caring for her. And 
 all the time it is Thou who art stooping down, 
 and likening Thyself to anything^ to that 
 poor helpless fool of a hen gathering her 
 cliickens, just to make us understand how 
 Thou lovest us— calling, calling, spreading 
 out Thy wings — for her, for her I Lord, 
 make the little one understand; make the 
 babe hear and see.
 
 112 AGALXST THE STREAM. 
 
 " Blessed Lord Jesus, Thou kuowest liow 
 we want to hear and touch and sec; above 
 all, the little ones. Thou earnest that w<; 
 might touch and see. Thou tookest them in 
 Thine arms, and laid Thine hands on them, 
 that they might touch and see. Thou hast 
 let them nail Thee to the Cross that we might 
 feel and see. Ah, good Shepherd I and this 
 little lamb has lost sight of thee altogether ! 
 But Thou hearest her crying. Lord, it's 
 only the lamb bleating for its mother — Thy 
 little lamb bleating for Thee ! Take her 
 home on Thy shoulders, Lord. Take her 
 home to Thy heart, and make her happy and 
 make her good." 
 
 Then he rose and sat down, and took me 
 on his knees again. I leant my head on his 
 shoulder, and was quite quiet — quiet in my 
 heart too. 
 
 " My lamb," he said, " that's it ; that's all. 
 You want God. And God wants you to be 
 good. He gave his own Son for us. Ho
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 113 
 
 would have left mother with you if he could. 
 'Seems to me He wants you just to look up, 
 as it were, and see mother smiling on you in 
 heaven, as sure enough she is, and then turn- 
 ing round to Him, just that you may follow 
 her eyes, and turn round to Him too, and see 
 how He is smiling on her, and on you both. 
 Child, child ! mother is happy ! And she 
 would never be happy unless she knew God 
 was good, and good to you. Follow her looks 
 up to His face my lamb, and you will see 
 what she sees." 
 
 All the time I had not cried. I had felt 
 too naughty and wretched. But those word s 
 went to my heart. 
 
 "Mother knows God is good, and good to 
 meP 
 
 And I did try to follow her looks upwards 
 to His face. 
 
 And He helped me ; He did not give up 
 dealing with me. 
 
 My new treasure was soon tested. For 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 I remember the verj^ evening after that Sun- 
 day afternoon talk with Beuben had begun 
 to clear things a little to me, I ventured to 
 say to my stepmother when I kissed her for 
 the night, that I really hoped now I should 
 be good, for I thought I had a little love to 
 God, and he would help me. 
 
 My heart was glowing, yet it cost me 
 much to stammer out those words. To me it 
 was like a confession. It was in the Oak 
 Parlour. She was looking out of the window. 
 She turned round a little sui-prised, and 
 questioned me with her eyes till I turned 
 crimson ; but she only said — 
 
 "Very well, Bridget. I am sure I hope 
 you will be good. You are liable to very 
 violent ebullitions of feeling. I think it was 
 two days since you called me cruel because 
 your kitten was whipped for stealing cream, 
 and tliree days since you tried to take up 
 yoiu' brother and kiss him when he was 
 naughty and was put in the corner, and
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 115 
 
 threw yourself into a frantic rage with me 
 because I would not let you, which your 
 father saw; and four days since you sat sob- 
 bing half an hour as if your heart would 
 break, because you had torn your pinafore, 
 and had to mend it, instead of playing in the 
 garden. You are subject to very vehement 
 changes of emotion. I suppose this is one 
 of them. I hope it will last, and that you 
 will in futui'e wash your hands in time for 
 dinner, and keep your hair smooth, /judge 
 by fruits." 
 
 I crept humbled away, with the feeling 
 one has in seeing the dog in Landseer's 
 pictui-e, with wistful eyes and appealing 
 paws, entreating the parrot for a crumb of 
 cheese. 
 
 Yet I believe the hail-showers and glaciers 
 of my childhood were good for me, as well 
 as its sunshine and soft dews. I went away 
 saddened, but no more chilled to the heart ; 
 for I had learned that the sunshine and the
 
 ii6 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 dews, and soft brooding warm wings of ever 
 present love were at least as real as the cold. 
 The key was in my hand ; it has never been 
 quite lost since ; and secret after secret is 
 unlocked to me whenever I touch the doors 
 of hidden chambers with it. 
 
 So, as it happened, my feeling after 
 mother became at last a feeling after God, 
 and finding Ilim, which, I suppose, was part 
 at least of what He meant. 
 
 It was on the Sunday after this that I 
 was thinking I wished mother had been 
 among some " goodly fellowship " or " glo- 
 rious company" or ''noble army" mentioned 
 in the Te Dcum^ that I might be sure she 
 was among those we sang about as praising 
 with us. And then it occurred to me that 
 the Holy Church throughout the world could 
 not mean the little bit of it where we are 
 and which we see; where the prophets and 
 apostles are not any longer. 
 
 I remembered lieuben's words, and all at
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 117 
 
 once a heavy roof seemed lifted off from the 
 world, and I followed Mother's eyes up to 
 His face, and saw that the Chm-ch of our 
 old town was only a little corner of the great 
 Church throughout the world which is always 
 praising Him ; and that I, down in the dark 
 room, and Mother up in the light where she 
 was waiting for me, without anything 
 between, were singing our Te Deum together. 
 
 Thus the service gradually grew to shine 
 out on me, bit by bit, like far-off fields on 
 our own moors lighted up one by one by the 
 sun. 
 
 My attention to the sermon was less- 
 endangered by external objects ; for I was 
 always caused during its delivery to subside 
 into the depths of a great pew, above whose 
 walls nothing was visible to me but my 
 uncle, Parson Fyford, the top of Miss Fe- 
 licity's whalebone hood, the bows in Madam 
 Glanvil's bonnet, which used periodically to 
 sway about and disappear, and then to re-
 
 ii8 AGAhXST THE STREAM. 
 
 cover and erect themselves inexplicably, in 
 ti defiant manner ; the grave face of Eeuben 
 Pengelly above the choir gallery, and the 
 trees waving in the churchyard outside the 
 -windows. 
 
 I remember wondering why my Uncle 
 Fyford put on quite a different voice from 
 that in which he spoke to us during the 
 week, and whether I should ever be expected 
 to understand what he said. 
 
 But my most vivid recollections of the 
 sermon, especially after that Sunday after- 
 noon with Eeuben in the Foundry-yard, were 
 of a time of delicious rest, when the two 
 people who were kindest to me in the world 
 were looking down serenely on me, and Piers 
 being, by father's express sanction, allowed 
 to go to sleep, was leaning his sleepy little 
 head against me, and I was feeling like a 
 little mother to him, with one hand aroimd 
 him, and the other nestled in father's ; whilst 
 above us was the dear sacred name on a
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 119 
 
 wliite marble tablet, and a consciousness of a 
 sacred corner outside in the churchyard, and 
 of something more sacred and tenderer still 
 above us in the sky ; a light deeper than the 
 sunlight, a smile kinder than father's, em- 
 bracing mother and us, all. 
 
 And eager and restless as I was, the ser- 
 mon did not seem long to me ; and a heaven 
 " where congregations ne'er break up," 
 would not have seemed to me a terrible 
 threat at all.
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 A N excess of theology was not the excess 
 prevalent in Abbot's Weir in my 
 childhood. " High " and " low " in those 
 days had reference rather to social than 
 to ecclesiastical elevations ; and " broad " 
 was applied to acres or to cloth, not to 
 opinions. 
 
 Whatever purposes the laity went to 
 church for, severe critical analysis of my 
 uncle Fyford's or his curate's sermons was 
 not one of them. 
 
 I remember not unfrequently hearing 
 strong comments on the extravagance of 
 some people's garments and the imperfec- 
 tions of others', but never any derogatory 
 remarks on the extravagances or defects, or
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. \z\ 
 
 " iinsoimdness " of any kind, of the various 
 doctrines delivered to us. 
 
 Occasionally I recollect my father's gently 
 protesting that the Doctor — my uncle was a 
 D.D. — had "given us that again a little 
 too soon ; " but a suspicion that sermons 
 were intended to be transferred beyond the 
 church doors for discussion (or, I am afraid 
 also, for practice), never crossed my mind. 
 
 Indeed, all the sects represented in our 
 little town had subsided into a state of 
 mutual tolerance which might have seemed 
 exemplary, had not this tolerance extended 
 to some things which all Christian sects are 
 not supposed to tolerate. 
 
 Protests were not the style of the day, 
 " Against the stream " scarcely any one 
 seemed pulling. The effect was a drowsy 
 tranquillity. The various pulpits would as 
 little have ventured to fulminate against the 
 enormities of the slave-trade, the intoxica- 
 tion common at all convivial gatherings, the
 
 12 2 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 rioting at the races on our Down, the 
 cruelties of our bull-baitings in the market- 
 place, as against each other. 
 
 " Were the feelings of the congregation 
 to be wantonly disregarded ? " my uncle 
 Fyford would have pleaded. "Had not 
 one of Madame Glanvil's sons been a slave- 
 holder ? and had not the enormities of the 
 slave-trade been greatly exaggerated? Were 
 there any of the most respectable of the 
 congregation who did not occasionally take 
 a glass too much ? " (drunkenness was not 
 then a mere low habit of the "lower 
 classes;") "and were the little 'harmless 
 frailties ' of the ' most respectable ' of the 
 parishioners to be wantonly dragged into 
 the light? And even the 'lower orders,' 
 no doubt, must also have their amusements ; 
 poor creatures, their lot of toil was hard 
 enough already without being further em- 
 bittered by Puritanical austerities. What 
 was the occasional discomfort of a bull, a
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 123 
 
 creatui*e without a soul (and without a 
 literatui-e to celebrate its wrongs), compared 
 with the importance of keeping up a manly, 
 ancient English pastime, a healthy outlet, 
 no doubt, for a certain — brutality, — we will 
 not call it, but — a certain recklessness of 
 blood inherent in the very vigour of the 
 Saxon nature ? Was there not even a text 
 for it ? Had not St. Paul said (possibly not 
 in precisely the same connection), 'Did God 
 take care for oxen ? ' And should we be 
 more merciful than St. Paul? I^o; let such 
 pretences be left to the over-refined sensi- 
 bilities of a Jean Jacques Eousseau, to a 
 nation which could guillotine its sovereign 
 and weep over a sentimental love-story 
 (especially if the love were misplaced), or to 
 the gloomy asceticism of an austere Puri- 
 tanism, now, happily for England, extinct." 
 I used sometimes to suspect from the 
 vehemence with which my uncle defended 
 this custom, he being at once a tranquil and
 
 124 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 a merciful man, that his conscience was a 
 little uneasy at the sufferings to which, as a 
 devoted entomologist, he exposed the vari- 
 ous beetles which were impaled in the glass 
 cases in the vicarage. He could always be 
 roused on the subject of the nerv^ous sensi- 
 bilities of animals, and I remember a hot 
 debate between him and my father on 
 Shakspere's lines : — 
 
 " The beetle that we tread upon 
 In corporal suflFerance feels a pang as keen 
 As when a giant dies, — " 
 
 which my uncle characterized as sentimental 
 and pernicious trash. 
 
 I believe he would very gladly have 
 stretched the same conviction to the nervous 
 sensibilities of negroes; but his candour 
 was too much for him ; and with regard to 
 the abolition of the slave-trade he had to 
 take up other grounds, such as the general 
 tendency of Africans to make each other 
 miserable in Africa, if let alone, and the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 125 
 
 antecedent improbability that ' ' Providence ' ' 
 would have created a substance so attractive 
 to white people as sugar, and so impossible 
 for white people to cultivate, and would 
 have prospered our sugar plantations and 
 sugar planters as It had, unless It had 
 meant that sugar should be cultivated by- 
 blacks, and consequently that blacks should 
 be brought from Africa. 
 
 Thus it happened, in consequence of all 
 these various arguments, or rather in conse- 
 quence of the prepossessions by which so 
 many of our arguments are predetermined, 
 that Abbot's Weir protested against very 
 little, at that time, either in church or 
 chapel. My uncle did indeed periodically 
 protest against various evils mostly remote 
 or obsolete, such as Popery on the anni- 
 versary of the Gunpowder Plot, the heresies 
 of the fourth century on Trinity Sunday, or 
 the schisms of the seventeenth century on 
 the festival of King Charles the Martyr.
 
 126 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 But he rejoiced to think that we had 
 fallen on different times, when Englishmen 
 had learned to live in harmony. 
 
 Did not he himself indeed exemplify this 
 harmony by a cordial if somewhat con- 
 descending intercourse with the Eev. Josiah 
 Rabbidge, the mild successor of the fiery 
 Cromwellian minister who, at the Restora- 
 tion, had been driven from the pulpit of the 
 parish church ? 
 
 Mild indeed had that Presbyterian con- 
 gregation become, in doctrine, in discipline, 
 and in zeal ; and difficult would it have 
 been for any one short of a Spanish Inqui- 
 sitor of the keenest scent to fasten a quarrel 
 on theological grounds on the Eev. Josiah 
 llabbidge, a gentle and shy little man whose 
 jiersonality was all but overwhelmed under 
 the combined weight of a tall and aggi*essive 
 wife, the fourteen children with which she 
 had enriched him, the instruction of the 
 boys of the town when they emerged from
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. izj 
 
 the uiixed Dame's School of Miss Felicity 
 Benbow, and a congregation which it was 
 not easy to keep awake, especially on Sun- 
 day afternoons. 
 
 On this last fact I had personal expe- 
 rience, one of our maids being sometimes in 
 the habit of taking us to the chapel on 
 Sunday afternoons, when Uncle Fyford was 
 preaching in his second chui'ch in the 
 country; attracted, I believe, not by the 
 theology, but by the greater brevity of the 
 service, and the greater comfort of the 
 cushions. 
 
 I do not remember being struck with any 
 great difference, except that Mr. Eabbidge's 
 prayers were shorter, and not in the Prayer- 
 Book, and that he generally used the term 
 '' the Deity" where my uncle said "Provi- 
 dence." 
 
 I suppose the terms were characteristic in 
 both cases. Mr. Eabbidge's element, when 
 he could escape to it, was literature ; my
 
 128 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 uncle's, nature. To both human life was a 
 subordinate thing. To my uncle, indeed, it 
 was brought near by the household presence 
 of his orphan nephew, Dick Fyford, and 
 three thousand parishioners, who had at 
 intervals to be married, chi'istened, and 
 buried ; and to Mr. Rabbidge by the con- 
 stant inevitable pressure of a wife to be 
 propitiated, foui-teen childi-en to be fed, a 
 large portion of the boy-humanity of Abbot's 
 Weir to be taught, and that somnolent 
 congregation to be kept awake. Still to 
 both all this tide of human life was a dis- 
 turbing accident, from which they escaped 
 when practicable — Mr. Rabbidge to his 
 dearly-prized ancient folios, and my uncle 
 to his beetles. And as must happen, I 
 think, to all from whom the human life 
 around recedes, the Divine seemed to recede 
 also; and on the very pursuits they cared 
 for more than for humanity fell a lifeless- 
 ness and a barrenness. Natui'e herself re-
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 129 
 
 fuses to be more than a scientific catalogue 
 to those who subordinate humanity to her. 
 The thoughts and lives of the men of the 
 past become mere fossils to those who neg- 
 lect for them the living men and women of 
 the present. If the present does not live 
 for us, how can the past ? If our "neigh- 
 bour" has no personality we reverence and 
 supremely care for, how can nature be to 
 us more than a collection of things ? If 
 humanity does not come home to our hearts, 
 how can God ? Thus, in a measure, mode- 
 rated indeed by the merciful duties they 
 A\'t>re inclined to look on as hindrances, the 
 law of love avenged itself. Natui-e became 
 to my uncle not so much a living wonder 
 and glory, as a storehouse to furnish glass- 
 cases for insects; and histor}^ to Mr. Rab- 
 bidge rather a museum of antiquities than 
 a record of continuous life ; and God not so 
 much the Father and the Saviour as the 
 " Providence " which arranges with mar- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 velloiis ingenuity the mechanism of the 
 universe, or '' the Deity " which dwells 
 afar off in thick darkness at the sources of 
 History. 
 
 Of the Incarnation, or of the Cross, they 
 had little need, in such a view of nature and 
 of human life. 
 
 It was probably, therefore, rather by an 
 accident of position that my uncle retained 
 the dogma in his creed, whilst Mr. Eab- 
 bidge had glided, unperceived by his con- 
 gregation, and possibly by himself, into a 
 mild and most unaggressive Arianism. 
 
 And yet in all this I speak rather of 
 llieir theories, and of what these would 
 have made them, than of themselves ; or 
 rather of what they would have made them- 
 selves than of what God made them. 
 
 My uncle could not, with the best inten- 
 tions, live f(»r beetles, nor i\Ir. Eabbidge for 
 books. 
 
 That rollicking cousin of ours, Dick
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 131 
 
 Fyford, was perpetually plucking him back 
 to the roughest realities of humau life in its 
 crudest form of British Boy ; to the crudest 
 form of British Boy, a boy with an in- 
 vincible inclination for the sea. 
 
 And to poor Mr. Eabbidge's discipline?, 
 no doubt, all Abbot's Weir contributed, 
 from Mrs. Eabbidge to Piers and Dick 
 Fyford, as Mrs. Danescombe did to mine. 
 What fossils, what monsters, or what in- 
 tolerable bores we should become if we 
 could get rid of the things and persons in 
 our lives we are apt to call liindrances ! 
 
 The intercourse between my uncle and 
 Mr. Eabbidge was, no doubt, made more; 
 amicable by the manifest differences in their 
 persons and positions. There could, my 
 uncle felt, be no danger of a man forgetting 
 the social distinctions caused by the union 
 of Church and State, who had, to begin 
 with, to raise his eyes eighteen inches 
 before they encountered his own, whose
 
 132 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 rapid, liositating utterance contrasted cha- 
 racteristically with my uncle's slow, roimd, 
 sonorous enunciation ; who had to compress 
 sixteen people into the Old Abbey Gate- 
 liouse, an apjiendago of the rectory for 
 which my uncle declined to receive any but 
 a peppercorn rent ; to whom the glebe cows 
 and vegetables were as serviceable as to the 
 rector himself. 
 
 Xot that Mr. Eabbidge's independence of 
 thought was in any way affected by these 
 favours, or by the necessity of accepting 
 them. Ko sense of favours past or to come 
 would have made him indifferent to the 
 value of a Greek particle, not, I mean, only 
 in the Athanasian Creed, but anyAvhere ; 
 and he had heresies from the Oxford pro- 
 nunciation of Greek and Latin, in defence 
 of which he would have suffered any perse- 
 cution, civil or domestic. In this the spirit 
 of his Puritan ancestors siu'vived in him, 
 nnd not even the eloquent and forcible Mrs.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 li 
 
 Rabbidge herself could have constrained 
 him to any compliance beyond silence. 
 
 But my uncle's sense of ecclesiastical 
 dignity was satisfied by conferring these 
 benefits. It was not necessary by any extra 
 chill and polish of manner further to accen- 
 tuate a difi'erence already sufficiently marked. 
 And therefore the intercourse was of the 
 friendliest kind, Mr. Rabbidge' s fourteen were 
 welcome at all times to enter the rectory 
 garden thi'ough the arched door, which con- 
 nected it with the little garden of the Gate- 
 house, Dick Fyford being after all a far more 
 dangerous inmate than the whole foiu'teen 
 together. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Rabbidge found recondite 
 allusions to beetles in the classics, Greek 
 and Latin, and my uncle returned the com- 
 pliment by referring in his articles in the 
 Sentimental Magazine to quotations sug- 
 gested by his "learned friend, Mr. Rab- 
 bidge." One point my uncle never yielded
 
 lU ACAhXST THE STRE^Uf. 
 
 to " separatists." As an orthodox Cliurcli- 
 iiuiii, and as the minister of a State religion, 
 lie eould not be expected to concede to the 
 aluumiis of a Dissenting academy the title 
 of Reverend. It ^vould, he considered, be 
 to eliminate all significance from the word. 
 ''Titles," said my uncle, '•^ are titles; to 
 accord the right to confer them on any self- 
 elected community is to imdermine the 
 citadel of all authority. Persons "svho be- 
 gan by calling a Presbyterian teacher Eeve- 
 rend, might naturally end with calling their 
 sovereign 'citizen.' Mr. Riibbidge would, 
 \\v ivuew, comprehend his motives." And 
 ^Ir. Eabbidge did, and never protested. 
 
 For they had the link said to be stronger 
 than a common love — a common hate ; if so 
 liery a word may be applied to any senti- 
 ment possible in zones so temperate. 
 
 They both hated "Jacobinism" — my 
 uncle as a man of property, which any con- 
 vulsions might endanger, and Mr. Kabbidge
 
 A GA nVSr THE STREA M. 1 3 5 
 
 as a peaceable and not very valiant citizen, 
 who in any contest was not likely to get the 
 ujiper hand. 
 
 And they both disapproved of Methodism, 
 the only aggressive form of religion they were 
 acquainted with — my uncle condemning it 
 chiefly as having a " Jacobinical " tendency 
 to set up the "lower orders" and to "turn 
 the world upside down," and Mr. Eabbidge 
 as an enthusiasm likely to set people's 
 hearts above their heads, and so turn their 
 brains upside doT\Ti. 
 
 And yet, such are the inconsistencies of 
 the best balanced minds, Eeuben Pengelly 
 continued every Sunday morning to play 
 the principal bass-viol in the choir gallery, 
 every Sunday evening to take a principal, 
 part in the prayers and exhortations in the 
 little Methodist meeting, and every day and 
 night, everywhere when he was wanted, to 
 pray beside the dying beds or broken hearts 
 among my uncle's parishioners.
 
 136 AGAJXST THE STREAM. 
 
 And there were instances in which Mr. 
 Rabbidge had even been known to call jwor 
 Reuben in, when he had found his somno- 
 lent and respectable congregation roused by 
 some dim memory of the old Puritan teach- 
 ing, for which their forefathers had fought, 
 or by some of the terrible realities of life or 
 death, to an unquenchable thirst for some- 
 thing which he did not comprehend, which 
 neither the mild Arianism of the chapel, 
 nor the mild orthodoxy of the church 
 afforded, but which Eeuben seemed able to 
 give ; some dim orphaned feeling after One 
 who is more than "Providence" and "the 
 Deity," whom Reuben trusted and called 
 on, in no very classical English, " the Lord, 
 the living Lord, the Lord who died for us 
 and liveth evermore, the loving, pitying, and 
 providing God and Father of us all." 
 
 My uncle and Mr. Rabbidgo both thought 
 it very strange ; but human nature, espe- 
 cially in the "lower orders" and in women,
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 137 
 
 is a strange compound ; what classical author 
 has not in one phi-ase or another said so ? 
 
 Principle, sober principle, the incontro- 
 vertible precepts of morality, ought to be 
 enough for rational humanity; but in all 
 the relations of life, and even it seemed in 
 religion, men and women, especially women, 
 could not be satisfied without something 
 more than sober principle to guide their 
 judgment; they must have their hearts 
 stii'red, they must laugh for joy, and tremble, 
 and weep — they must have emotion ; and as 
 this was so, perhaps it was well that a man, 
 on the whole so res])ectful to authority 
 and so trustworthy as Eeuben Pengelly, was 
 to be found to supply the material. 
 
 Or as Eeuben put it : — 
 
 " The devil took care there should always 
 be simiers, and the Lord took care there 
 should always be saints beyond the reach of 
 anything but his blessed Gospel and his 
 good Spirit."
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 /^PrOSITE our windows, across the Com 
 Market, was a long, low, rambliug old 
 house, once a dower house of the Glanvil 
 family, but long before my recollection the 
 abode of Miss Felicity Benbow, the guide 
 and the terror of successive generations of 
 juvenile Abbot's Weir. 
 
 Piers and I, sitting on the window-seat of 
 the Stone Parlour, frequently observed the 
 childi-en going in and out of that wide 
 arched door. The house and Miss Felicity 
 herself had a kind of horrible fascination 
 for us. Sooner or later, we knew tliosc 
 soleiini portals would open on us, and ingulf 
 us also in that unknown world within, 
 where dwelt the dark shadoA\y powers of
 
 A GA INST THE STREA M. 139 
 
 discipline and knowledge represented in the 
 person of Miss Felicity. 
 
 Thither every morning and afternoon we 
 saw the children, a little older than our- 
 selves — some, it was rumoured, not older — 
 tend in twos or threes, or one by one, 
 with lingering and sober steps, the small 
 satchel on the shoulder, and occasionally 
 the book too late consulted being anxiously 
 conned oyer ; and thence, in a body at the 
 appointed hoiu', we saw them issue with 
 softened voices and quiet sobered paces for a 
 few steps beyond the door, as far, at least, 
 as the range of Miss Felicity's windows, 
 subdued by the restraints of those uidvnown 
 powers within ; and then thi-ough the nar- 
 row streets, in different directions, we heard 
 the joyous voices sound louder and freer as 
 they distanced the solemn precincts, scat- 
 tering frolic and music through the to"WTi as 
 they separated to their different homes. 
 
 There, also, on wet days the various
 
 I40 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 maids of the richer families gathered with 
 lioods and eloaks for their young masters 
 and mistresses. And there eveiy morning 
 and evening the aristocrat of the school, 
 3Iadam Glanvil's little orphan grand- 
 daughter, was brought and fetched, by the 
 old black butler in livery, on her white 
 l)ony ; a grave, retiring child with dark, 
 pallid complexion and overhanging brows, 
 and with large, wistful brown eyes, which 
 often seemed to meet mine, and always 
 seemed to speak to me from some myste- 
 rious new world. The rest of the children 
 thought her proud and supercilious, but 
 those strange, deep eyes with their wonder- 
 ful occasional lights, not the dewy sparkle 
 of English eyes, but a flash as from tropical 
 skies, always had an irresistible attraction 
 for me. They had a wistful longing in them 
 lik(^ riuto's eyes, and yet a deptli I could 
 not fathom, which always drew me back 
 questioning and guessing. ^Something be-
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 141 
 
 tween tlie mysteries of the dumb animal 
 world and the mysteries of the invisible 
 spirit- world was in them. I could not tell 
 why ; but they made me think at once of 
 the dog Pluto, and of my mother. 
 
 I could watch no one whilst she was 
 there, and I grew to feel at last that the 
 attraction must be mutual, for she ah\'ays 
 guided the white pony near our windows, 
 and in a furtive way used, I felt, to watch 
 Piers and me, although she always looked 
 away if our eyes met. Occasionally, more- 
 over, on stormy days, an old black nui'se 
 used to appear, with two black footmen and 
 a sedan-chair, instead of the one negro with 
 the white pony. The black nurse used to 
 apparel the young lady in a mass of orange 
 and scarlet splendours, and enter the chair 
 with her, and then in stately procession 
 Miss Amice Glanvil would be borne away 
 to the fine old manor-house among the 
 woods on the hill, called Court.
 
 142 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 Altogether, tlierefore, Miss Amice was to 
 me like u tropical dream of glow and gloom, 
 Slid I as our temperate zone could not pro- 
 duce; a creature from a region of splen- 
 dours and shadows, altogether deeper and 
 richer than ours ; a region where the birds 
 and flowers are scarlet and gold ; a land of 
 earthquakes and liuiTicanes, and wilder- 
 nesses of heauty, of magnificence, and 
 tragedy. 
 
 For I knew that those black people were 
 slaves, and the gleam of their white teeth, 
 and the flash of their brilliant eyes when 
 they pulled their woolly locks, as they used 
 goodhumouredly to do to us chikken watch- 
 ing at the wdndow, used not to terrify me 
 as it did many of the children in the to^^'n, 
 nor to amuse me; but to make me feel 
 inclined to cry. They always made me 
 think of riuto when he was chained up in 
 the kennel and fawned and whined on us. 
 Only Pluto was at home, and they were
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 143 
 
 not ; and Pluto was a dog, and they were 
 not; which made all the difference, I 
 thought, for him and for them. They were 
 called also by the classical names which in 
 France and in Italy have retained their 
 dignity, but in England were only given in 
 a sort of kindly contempt or facetious pity 
 to dogs and to negroes. I had heard the 
 black woman call them Cato and Caesar; 
 and they called her Chloe. 
 
 Moreover we had, through Reuben Pen- 
 gelly, an acquaintance with Chloe's history 
 which gave us a glimpse into the tragedy 
 which imderlaid the splendours of Amice 
 Glanvil's life. 
 
 Chloe had a whole woman's world of her 
 own, in her own country in Africa ; not 
 dead ; living still and needing her still ; but 
 buried to her irrevocably and for ever. 
 
 She used to come now and then, when she 
 was allowed, to Eeuben's prayer-meetings, 
 and sometimes rather to confuse him by
 
 H4 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 the forveucy of her Amcns, and of hor 
 slirill quavering singing, in the refrains of 
 the hymns. One evening she still further 
 howildered the kindly man by breaking out 
 suddenly in a passion of sobs. 
 
 Eeuben told us the story on the next 
 Sunday, in the silent Foundry-yard. 
 
 "I couldn't for the life of me tell why," 
 ho said, he having no oratorical vanity to 
 (^xplain such emotion. " I was only talking 
 to the folks quite plain and quiet how the 
 blessed Lord sate weary by the well, and 
 asked the poor woman for a drink from lier 
 pitcher, and how she was slow to give it 
 Ilim. Chloe stayed after the rest had gone, 
 still rocking herself to and fro, as if she 
 were rocking a baby, hiding her face, and 
 sobbing fit to break her heart. So I went 
 \\\) to her soft and quiet, not to fluster her, 
 iind I said, 'The Lord has touched thee, 
 })oor dear soul. Cheer up. lie wounds 
 and He can bind up.' ' Xever, M.issa
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 145 
 
 Reuben, never ^^ said she (poor soul, she 
 always calls me Massa, she knows no 
 better). ' Never bind up. He knows letter 
 than to try. Let the wounds bleed. No 
 other way.' And then, in their sudden 
 way, like children, she looked up and 
 showed all her white teeth, and smiled, and 
 downright laughed. It was more than a 
 man could make out. ' It was all along of 
 that pitcher and that well,' said she. And 
 then she told how she had gone to the well 
 one evening, years ago, by her hut, away in 
 Africa, with her pitcher, to fetch water for 
 her children, with her baby in her arms. 
 The children lay sick with fever. But at 
 the well the slave-hunters found her, 
 gagged her, bound her, forced her away to 
 the coast, and squeezed her down with 
 hundi-eds of others into the slave-ship. 
 She heard the sick children, day and night, 
 moaning — moaning for her. Many of the 
 poor creatures with her refused to eat, and 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 many died ; but she hud the baby, and tried 
 to live. And as she went on telling she 
 cried again, and then she smiled again. 
 ' Never mind me, Massa Eeuben,' said she ; 
 ' it was only that pitcher. Seemed to me 
 all the place, and all the years melted away. 
 I was at home again at that well again with 
 the pitcher, and instead of the slave-hunters 
 the good Lord Himself stood there, and 
 said, ^' Give me to drink." And she seemed 
 to answer Him her pitcher was gone, all 
 was gone, she had nothing to di-aw with, 
 and there was nothing to draw. And He 
 said, all smiling, it was not the water He 
 wanted, but just herself. ' Just me,' said 
 she, ' sitting there weary, just as He did 
 once, poor old Chloe, that He died for ; me 
 and my bit of love.' And she saw the 
 hands and the feet all torn and bleeding, 
 worse than dust on them that a woman's 
 tears might wash away, blood on them to 
 wash away her sins, and she seemed just to
 
 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 147 
 
 take her heart, as it was all dry and empty, 
 and give it Him. ' And He looked as glad,' 
 said she, ' as a thirsty man for a drink of 
 water. All for me, Massa Eeuben, all 
 because He cared to be loved by me I ' " 
 And then Eeuben said, '' I cried too, just as 
 she did, poor soul ! Her baby had died just 
 as the voyage was over, and then when they 
 came on shore Squire Glanvil bought her 
 for a nurse to Miss Amice. His wife had 
 just died at her birth, and the poor fool 
 loves Miss Amice like her oami. Its won- 
 derful," concluded Reuben, " what them 
 poor creatures will cling to and catch at, 
 just for anything to love, though for the 
 matter of that, Priscy's no better. The 
 women are like enough all the world over, 
 poor souls. God bless them ! " 
 
 Miss Felicity used sometimes to descend 
 to the door with the little lady, and watcli 
 her across the market-place, which gave us
 
 148 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 ample opportunity of studying that physi- 
 ognomy so important to our future fate. 
 
 She was a tall and rather a majestic 
 woman, with a stiff erect can-iage (a 
 perpetual monition to all lounging little 
 hoys and girls), keen black eyes, high 
 Eoman features, and a severe mouth reso- 
 lutely closed, as if her life had been a 
 battle with difficulties harder to conquer 
 than the little mischievous elves who could 
 never evade her penetrating eyes, or the 
 terrible instrument of justice they guided. 
 
 Yet it was not a face which repelled me, 
 or made me feel afraid. I felt rather drawn 
 towards her, as a kind of tutelary Athena ; 
 not very close, not exactly as a cliild to her 
 heart, but as a subject to her feet, with a 
 kind of confidence of justice in those steady 
 eyes, and those stern gi-ave lips. There 
 was no fretfulness in the lines of the 
 i'urrowed brow, or in the curve of the 
 mouth; no uncertainty of temper in the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 149 
 
 large keen eyes. If she had carried the 
 MgiB, I do not think I should have had any 
 fear of her petrifying the "wi'ong people by 
 turning it on them. 
 
 There were two other inhabitants of that 
 old mansion besides Miss Felicity. 
 
 Every fine morning in snmmer, before 
 people were np, and every fine evening in 
 winter as it began to grow dusk, from that 
 arched door, where poured in and out every 
 day the joyous tide of young life, came 
 forth two very difi'erent figm-es, one the 
 stately form of Miss Felicity, and the other 
 a man tall as herself, but bowed and stoop- 
 ing, mo^^ng with uncertain and uneven 
 gait, and leaning on Miss Felicity's arm. 
 They crept away into the country by the 
 least steep of the three roads which led out 
 of the town, and in about an houi' re- 
 entered the old house and disappeared, and 
 the stooping tall man's figure was seen no 
 more till next day. It was believed they
 
 150 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 went always as fur as a certain ancient well 
 by the roadside called the Benit or Blessed 
 Well ; for they were often seen resting on 
 the stone bench beside it, and had never 
 been found farther on. 
 
 It was curions how people respected the 
 mystery Miss Felicity chose to consider 
 tin-own around that ruined life. Keen as 
 her perceptions were, sharp and definite her 
 words on every other subject, around him 
 she gathered a veil of fond excuses and 
 illusions, so thin that all the to^^'n saw 
 through it, and yet all the town recognised 
 it for her sake. 
 
 To us children nideed something of the 
 mystery really existed, taking the form of a 
 half-concealing, half-glorifying mist which 
 surrounded Miss Felicity with a halo, and 
 through which the tall, bent form loomed, 
 at once a tower and a beacon, like a ruined 
 church set on one of the heights along our 
 coasts, once meant to be a sacred shrine,
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 151 
 
 but now, the sacredness shattered out of it, 
 surviving only as a warning against wreck. 
 
 Lieutenant Benbow had been in the 
 army, we knew, and had been a fine hand- 
 some man, and had grown suddenly old in 
 middle life, not altogether by misfortune, 
 but by something sadder, which hung like 
 a sword of Damocles over the festival of 
 life for any of us to whom life was only 
 feasting. 
 
 To me especially those two had a terrible 
 yet tender interest. 
 
 Lieutenant Benbow had been to Miss 
 Felicity what Piers was to me. She had 
 loved him, delighted in him, lived for him 
 after the death of her father. (Happily for 
 herself the mother had died early.) She 
 had loved him with the kind of blind love 
 which some think the truest and most 
 womanly. To me the blindness always 
 seems to come not from the love, but from 
 the little alloy of pride and selfishness in
 
 152 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 the love whict so far makes it false. It is 
 possible so to love another as ourselves, that 
 the very love comes to partake of the 
 nature of self-love, exaggerating, conceal- 
 ing, untrue, unjust, falsely excusing, falsely 
 gilding. And yet, not quite. The little 
 grain of true love at the bottom of the 
 most selfish affection, makes it by that 
 grain at least better than mere selfishness. 
 The miser who half starves his children in 
 hoarding for them has surely in his hoard 
 something a degree more sacred than there 
 can be in that of the miser who hoards for 
 himself alone. And with Miss Felicity 
 that grain of true love was large, and for 
 herself at least, fruitful ; fruitful at least in 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Lieutenant Benbow had followed his 
 father's profession. Their means were not 
 large; but her delight had been to have 
 his appointments as choice and abundant 
 as those of the richest. And the idol had
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 153 
 
 acceiDted the homage, repaid it even by 
 such small and symbolical acknowledg- 
 ments as can be expected from duly in- 
 censed idols. 
 
 She knew he had at least one fatal habit. 
 In a day when all gentlemen drank more 
 than was good for them, he di'ank more 
 than most, and unfortunately could stand 
 less. 
 
 Once only Miss Felicity's eyes were all 
 but opened. He persuaded a lovely young 
 Quaker girl to elope with him and to marry 
 him. 
 
 Miss Felicity did not wonder at the 
 Quaker maiden's infatuation; but she did 
 wonder at her brother's. The Quaker 
 maiden's father was a tanner, and, true 
 daughter of a general and of the Chui-ch, 
 granddaughter of a bishop, Miss Felicity 
 did not enjoy having to double her libations 
 and incense in honour, not of her Adonis 
 of a brother, but of his separatist wife, a
 
 15+ AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 person of " low trading origin wlio had 
 enticed away liis affections." To double 
 her offerings and lose even the little return 
 they had previously won was almost too 
 much to bear. 
 
 The thirteen years of the lieutenant's 
 married life were those, therefore, in which 
 Miss Felicity's adoration was feeblest. 
 
 In thirteen years the lieutenant suc- 
 ceeded in breaking his wife's heart, and 
 ruining his own health. He returned to 
 his sister a widower with one little girl, 
 his constitution and his fortunes alike 
 ^\Tecked, having some time before been 
 obliged to leave the army, partially para- 
 lyzed, with a child's helplessness, and a 
 spoilt child's imperiousness ajid ii-ritability, 
 to be a burden for the rest of his life on 
 tlie woman he had scarcely noticed wliilo 
 ho had another to worship him. liut ho 
 returned ; and that to Miss Felicity was 
 everything. She blotted the tanner's daugh-
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 155 
 
 ter out of her memory, took the tanner's 
 granddaughter to her heart, accepted her 
 idol again, set it on its okl pedestal, with all 
 the strength of her strong will and strong 
 affections, and with a kind of melanchol}^ 
 pleasure in the certainty that if her " Bel 
 bowed down and her Nebo stooped, and 
 were a bui'den to the weary beast," no one; 
 would dispute that burden with her any 
 more. 
 
 So she toiled on, and bore her burden, 
 and adored it, her old beautiful god-image, 
 which " cruel circumstances," she said to 
 herself, "and the excess of his own fasci- 
 nations " had shattered, and crowned the 
 old idol with a crown woven out of all tht^ 
 loss and all the possibilities, of all it had 
 been, and of all it might have been. 
 
 Year by year she bought the finest cloth 
 for his coats, and day by day she bought 
 the best dainties for his palate, and seated 
 him in the one easy-chair in the sunniest
 
 156 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 nook of the window in summer, and the 
 warmest corner of the fireside in winter; 
 and wh(>n he condescended to that milder 
 degree of grumbling which was his form 
 of thanksgiving, she rejoiced in the charac- 
 ter w^hich would have been so lovely but 
 for " the selfish world and the ruthless 
 circumstances which had made him what he 
 was." 
 
 It was a provoking ritual to observe from 
 outside, especially to me, not being a wor- 
 shipper of the lieutenant, and having a 
 reverence little short of worship for the 
 daughter, little Miss Loveday, who was 
 compelled to share in the sacrificial rites. 
 
 Of course Miss Felicity had a right to 
 sacrifice herself; but who coidd have had 
 a right to take all individual hope and 
 pleasure out of that gentle, lovely patient 
 woman's life with all her intellectual and 
 spiritual power, and subordinate her en- 
 tirely to propping up the ruins of what
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 157 
 
 had never been better than a well-grown 
 animal? 
 
 For Miss Loveday was the nearest ap- 
 proach to a saint I knew ; and I thank God 
 I had the grace to know it whilst she was 
 amongst us. It is among the saddest of 
 our irrevocable losses when we find out for 
 the first time that some of the holy ones 
 of God have been beside us, for us to 
 consult, learn of, speak to, listen to, only 
 when they have gone from us to be with 
 the goodly company, who are indeed not 
 far from us, but are just beyond speaking 
 distance, out of reach for the time of voice 
 and sight. 
 
 My father helped me to the recognition. 
 Miss Loveday had been a friend of my own 
 mother's, and he had the greatest reverence 
 and love for her. 
 
 He used to say the poet Cowper must 
 have seen her in spirit when he wrote the 
 lines — ■
 
 158 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 " Artist, attond, your brushes and your paint — 
 Produce thorn ; take a chair, now draw a saint. 
 Oh, sorrowful and sad I The streaming tears 
 Channel her cheeks— a Niobe appears. 
 Is this a saint ? — throw tinta and all away, 
 True piety is cheerful as the day. — 
 Will weep, indeed, and heave a pitying groan 
 For others' woes, but smiles upon her own." 
 
 Certainly Loveday Benbow '' smiled upon 
 her own " woes with a smile so real and 
 bri*;lit, that the woes and saintliuess, the 
 burden and the strength which bore it, 
 might easily have been hidden from a care- 
 less eye. As to the pitying groan for 
 others' woes, not only could that be relied 
 on for any woes, from the breaking of a 
 child's doll to tlie breaking of a maiden's 
 heart, but, what is rarer for one whose life 
 is passed in the shadows, she had a smile 
 true and heart-wanning as a sunbeam for 
 others' joys, from a child's holiday to a 
 maiden's happiness in being loved, or ti 
 mother's joy in loving. 
 
 She was a little deaf, and hud that sweet 
 inquiring wistfulness in her grey eyes
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 159 
 
 which belongs often to deaf and dumb 
 creatures, human or canine; but so sweet 
 and ready was her sympathy, and so wise 
 her counsel, that she was the natural de- 
 pository of half the love-confidences in the 
 place ; the difficulty and danger of shouting 
 such delicate experiences being nothing to 
 the recompense in the quickness of her com- 
 prehension and the fulness of her response. 
 
 Clever, or intellectual, were words you 
 would no more have thought of applying 
 to her than to an archangel ; and with her 
 heart and brain were so blended, that I 
 have sometimes wondered whether it was 
 that her wit was originally keener than 
 other people's, or that it was sharpened by 
 singleness of purpose ; whether it was ori- 
 ginal force of thought and imagination 
 that made her comprehend every character 
 quickly, or love that quickened thought 
 and imagination into something as unerring 
 as instinct.
 
 i6o AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 My stepmother's insight into character 
 was that of a satirist or of a detective keen 
 to scent out a defect. Miss Felicity's was 
 tliat of an inspector of the human species, 
 impartial, penetrating, severe but just. 
 Miss Loveday's insight was that of a phy- 
 sician, as keen and as just as either, but 
 deeper, reaching beyond symptoms to causes, 
 to the springs where the disease can be 
 touched and healed. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, she would reproach 
 herself with this quick penetration through 
 disguises and excuses, as if it were not as 
 necessary to the helpers of humanity as to 
 its critics to see truly. 
 
 But it is true that the heightening of any 
 one power of natiu-e requires the heighten- 
 ing of every other power to avoid deformity; 
 the growth of every spiritual, as well as 
 every intellectual gift, demands the growth 
 of every other to preserve harmony. 
 
 The very truth of Miss Loveday's cha-
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. ibr 
 
 racter which made her perceptions so true 
 woukl have made her a keener detective 
 than my stepmother, and a severer judge 
 than Miss Felicity, if love had not over- 
 whelmed the bitter in the sweet, and made 
 the justice glow into pity through a deeper 
 faith and a larger hope in God and man. 
 
 She always had something of the dove, in 
 my eyes, as Miss Felicity had much of the 
 eagle, and in my darker moments my step- 
 mother not a little of the raven. Doves 
 need sight as keen to defend their brood 
 as eagles to decry their prey. And Miss 
 Loveday's brood were all the human crea- 
 tures that had need of her. Partly, no 
 doubt, this dove-like grace that encircled 
 her was assisted by her voice, which, as 
 with many deaf people, had a peculiar 
 under- toned softness, like cooings under 
 thick summer leaves; and partly by her 
 dress, which was chiefly replenished from 
 her mother's Quaker wardrobe, in which 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 1 62 AGAINST THE STREA.V. 
 
 the prosaic drab was ignored, and the 
 poetical dove-colour and white predomi- 
 nated. 
 
 Miss Loveday's dress was what has 
 always seemed to me the loveliest and most 
 becoming of any to middle-aged and elderly 
 women. It retained tli(.^ Quaker quietness 
 and the delicious Quaker freshness, without 
 the Quaker peculiarities ; and her manner 
 was just like her dress. She is fondly 
 enveloped to my memoiy in a soft grey 
 and white cloud of clothing, which, when 
 I try to analyze it, resolves itself into the 
 whitest of caps, framing her pale sweet 
 face, the neatest of white muslin necker- 
 chiefs folded over her bosom, and the 
 softest of unrustling grey woollen drapery 
 falling in sweeping easy folds around her. 
 Not one sudden, startling, dazzling thing 
 about her in ckess, or manner, or voice, not 
 the rustic of silk, or the glitter of a jewel ; 
 tixccpt the irrepressible occasional twinkle
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 163 
 
 of her kiiicl eyes, and the occasional merry 
 ring which was like an audible twinkle in 
 her soft voice and her laugh. 
 
 She was just the opposite (I do not mean 
 the contrary) of Amice Glanvil, who was 
 all mystery and surprise. 
 
 The sorrows on which Miss Loveday 
 smiled so radiantly were not sentimental. 
 From her childhood she had been under 
 the yoke unimaginable, unavoidable, t)f 
 pain ; the yoke which in some respects 
 presses closer on the immortal spirit, and 
 cuts deeper into it than any other, and 
 therefore can in some respects mould it to 
 a more delicate perfection, and furrow it 
 for larger harvests. 
 
 Ko one in Abbot's Weir had been able to 
 fathom the cause. 
 
 We had two doctors in Abbot's Weir. One, 
 Dr. Kenton, was of a sanguine temperament, 
 attributed all ailments to debility, and relied 
 'for cure chiefly on "nature" and port wine.
 
 1 6+ AGAINST THE STREA^f. 
 
 The other, Dr. Looseleigh, was of a mekiii- 
 choly disposition, had a strong faith in the 
 depravity of the human constitution, attri- 
 buted ailments to excess, and hoped for re- 
 lief, as far as he hoped at all, from bleeding, 
 blistering, and the lowering system in general. 
 
 Both medical gentlemen had patients who 
 recovered, and patients who died. But in 
 Abbot's Weir, although theological contro- 
 versy was mild, the same could not be said 
 of medical. Each generation, whatever its 
 theological procli\4ties, desires to live as long 
 as it can ; debates on what man or system 
 can enable it to live longest, are naturally, 
 therefore not liable to " periods of lukewarm- 
 ness or declension." 
 
 The partisans of Mr. Kenton said that 
 those patients of Mr. Looseleigh who died 
 were killed, actually slain, by his remedies ; 
 and those who recovered, recovered by the 
 force of nature. 
 
 The partisans of Mr. Looseleigh siiid that
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 165 
 
 the patients of Dr. Kenton who recovered 
 struggled through by miracle, or the vigour 
 of an exceptional constitution, and that those 
 who died, perished the victims of neglect, 
 sheer neglect, and faithless contempt of 
 means. 
 
 Both systems had been tried on Miss Love- 
 day, but neither successfully. She had been 
 blistered and bled in childhood by Mr. 
 Looseleigh into all but atrophy. She had 
 been "built up" by Dr. Kenton and Miss 
 Felicity into a fever. The only part of either 
 system which she declined was the port wine 
 or brandy. This she resolutely refused. She 
 had promised her mother never to touch 
 either. Dr. Kenton therefore had the advan- 
 tage in the controversy, in which Miss 
 Loveday's case was a standing weapon. If 
 she could have been induced to break that 
 absurd promise, port wine and nature might 
 have overcome Dr. Looseleigh and disease, 
 and the controversy might have been
 
 1 66 A GA LVST THE STREAM. 
 
 settled for ever, at least so far as facts can 
 settle controversies. As to those deeper roots 
 ill the depths of our o"\ni consciousness, 
 "whence my father and other sceptical neutrals 
 asserted both systems to arise, those, of 
 course, nothing so superficial as facts and 
 phenomena could have reached. 
 
 However, from whatever cause, thus it 
 came to pass that Miss Loveday's yoke was 
 not broken, and she had to suffer and con- 
 quer to the end. 
 
 Miss Felicity, nevertheless, with whom per- 
 manent neutrality was an impossible state 
 of existence, who found it necessary, and 
 therefore practicable, to make up her mind 
 quite decidedly about everything, remained 
 faithful to Dr. Kenton and the port-wine 
 " system," influenced partly, it is believed, 
 by the necessity of seeing some root of good 
 in the evil tendency which had sapped her 
 brother's existence. 
 
 It was also believed that the weekly visits
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 167 
 
 which Dr. Kenton continued to pay had, on 
 his part at least, a tenderer significance 
 than Miss Felicity chose to acknowledge. 
 There had been days when the genial doctor 
 had paid Miss Felicity the most marked 
 attentions ; and dui'ing the years when her 
 brother's marriage had separated her from 
 the one ceaseless object of her devotion, 
 Abbot's Weir had believed that it had de- 
 tected a gradual softening of the tutelary 
 Athena manner towards him. It was con- 
 sidered that the prospect of a pleasant home, 
 a life Avithout care, and an affection which 
 manifested itself in the flattering form of 
 respecting her judgment enough to carry on 
 continual controversies with her, were begin- 
 ning to melt the impenetrable heart of Miss 
 Felicity, and that she would soon consent to 
 be an illustrious case in proof of the suc- 
 cess of the building-up system. 
 
 But her sister-in-law died, the lieutenant 
 became a helpless invalid, and returned to 
 
 n
 
 168 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 receive once more his sister's homage ; and 
 from tliat moment Dr. Kenton's liopes were 
 blighted. 
 
 Miss Felicity returned to her old life-long 
 role of priestess and amazon, adoration at 
 her old shrine, and unflinching conflict with 
 infidels and with circumstances for its sake. 
 And Dr. Kenton, after some vain remon- 
 strances, and some years of comparative 
 estrangement, came back, partly by means 
 of his medical care of Miss Loveday, to his 
 old position of admiration and contention; 
 he ceased to sigh, but never ceased to think 
 it worth while to endeavour to put Miss 
 Felicity right on the various points on wliich 
 they difi'ered ; and to the end the stately 
 brave old gentlewoman had some one who 
 continued to see her with the light of youth 
 on her, and to maintain that she was the 
 finest woman in Abbot's "NVeii', and had more 
 brains and more spirit than all the men of 
 the town put together.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 TT was about two years after my father's 
 second marriage that Piers and I were 
 called on to rejoice in the arrival of a step- 
 brother. 
 
 Then Mrs. Danescomb's heart awoke. It 
 was as if her whole nature, pent up for 
 forty years, burst forth in that late passion 
 of maternal love. 
 
 I believe she tried hard to be just to us 
 all. I believe she tried hard to see what 
 spots there might be in her boy's character. 
 But it was impossible. The rest of the 
 world she continued to see through the same 
 cold, clear, cloudy, frosty, winter daylight 
 in which she had hitherto lived. Ai'ound 
 this child glowed and palpitated ceaselessly
 
 1 70 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 a flood of tropical sunlight. Faults, of course, 
 her Francis had ; her judgment admitted he 
 was human, and her views of humanity in 
 general were unchanged, but with him the 
 deepest shadows glowed with reflected light, 
 like the golden shadows of some rich Vene- 
 tian picture. 
 
 The very nature of the faults he had, more- 
 over, helped to dim her perceptions. He 
 had from childhood no vehement, impetuous 
 outbursts of indignation like those which I 
 was liable to ; no earnest entii'e absorption 
 of his whole being with the subject that in- 
 terested him, to the forgetfulness of all 
 besides, such as characterized Piers. Ilis 
 character had an external smoothness about 
 it which made the world go smootlily witli 
 him. His characteristic motion was gliding : 
 so easy and noiseless was this movement 
 that it was only now and then it struck you 
 that he always contrived to glide into the 
 best place, and into the possession of tho
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 171 
 
 pleasantest things to be attained. "We chil- 
 dren, of coiu'se, who thus lost the pleasantest 
 things and places early perceived it ; bnt to 
 our elders it was scarcely ever apparent. 
 It was always we who created the final dis- 
 turbance ; and what can any government do 
 when there is a riot but punish the rioters, 
 deferring the investigation as to who is in 
 the wrong to a time when the riot and causes 
 have ceased to be of moment. 
 
 Francis was found in tranquil possession 
 of the coveted delights, toy or pictiu-e book, 
 or place in the game; possession is nine points 
 of the law ; tranquillity the desideratum of 
 all governments in the world ; why could we 
 not have left our little brother alone ? 
 
 Thus we who were continually being 
 robbed and wronged were the perpetual 
 plaintiffs ; and the world has no mercy on 
 perpetual plaintiffs. Francis, "poor little 
 darling," as his mother truly said, " was 
 never heard to raise his sweet little voice."
 
 ryz AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 whilst I, at least, was in one continual wail 
 and clamour. 
 
 Even our father often gave the verdict 
 against us. ^' The world was large," he 
 would say, '' and Francis was little ; why 
 did we just want the thing the poor little 
 fellow had set his heart on, and was so peace- 
 ably enjoying ? " 
 
 In vain we pleaded rights which we knew 
 to be unquestionable ; what can be more 
 tiresome, or seem more selfish, than to be 
 always pleading one's rights, especially 
 against what is apparently the weaker party ? 
 
 ''Why were we always shiieking about 
 our rights ? Brothers and sisters should not 
 think about rights. They should be always 
 ready to " give up " to each other, and to do 
 as they should be done by ? 
 
 So, between my stepmother's fondness, 
 my father's generosity, and interpretations 
 of the Sermon on the Mount which drove me 
 Avild with the impossibility of combating
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 173 
 
 tliem, and the certainty of their being wrong, 
 the tyranny of our little brother was estab- 
 lished. 
 
 This was a state of things, however, that 
 could not long continue unbroken. 
 
 At length my stepmother once more pro- 
 posed that Piers and I should be sent to 
 Miss Felicity's school. 
 
 My father had long opposed this, having 
 certain theories of education, partly derived 
 from Eousseau's Emile, not at all in harmony 
 with Miss Felicity's. 
 
 He wished that education should be re- 
 stored to what he considered its true meaning, 
 of leading out the faculties ; should be not 
 so much a putting in as calling out, should 
 be a development of growth from within, 
 not the fitting on of an iron frame to contract 
 and cramp growth from without. Theories 
 which are now worn thi-eadbare and colour- 
 less with discussion or use were then fi-esh 
 and full of bloom. And all such ideas Miss
 
 17+ AGATXST THE STREAM. 
 
 Felicity considered altogether chimerical and 
 Utopian. 
 
 " Calling out faculties," said she. *' The 
 only faculty she knew that could always 
 be sure of coming at the call, was the 
 faculty of mischief. Xo putting in ? What 
 then was the good of learning to read at all ? 
 She supposed Piers and I would not develop 
 out of ourselves even the multiplication table, 
 unless it was put into us, still less the history 
 of the Greeks and Eomans, or the gods and 
 heroes. Xot that she saw much use in his- 
 tory," she would somewhat cynically admit. 
 "What was there in it but wise men's 
 words and foolish men's deeds? Things 
 which, if they had happened in a neighbour's 
 house instead of in jialaces, you would have 
 taken care the children did not hear. But 
 the Greeks and Eomans, and the gods and 
 heroes, and the multiplication table, as the 
 world was, had to be learned, and Mr. Danes- 
 combe might wait some time for a new world,
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 175 
 
 or for a generation of childi-en who came 
 into it witli their little minds filled already." 
 
 j\Iy poor father had certainly seen con- 
 siderable faculty for not getting on developed 
 in Piers and me since our little brother's 
 arrival, and accordingly at last he waived 
 his theory, and abandoned us to Miss Felicity 
 and the "rote system." To us the school 
 meant simply Miss Felicity, and a very 
 awful personality we considered her. My 
 father was in the second stage of human 
 progress, the age of philosophical system 
 and theory; whilst Miss Felicity had ad- 
 vanced to the third, contemptuously ignoring 
 systems and philosophies, and recognising 
 nothing but facts and phenomena; and 
 Piers and I remained in the earliest, seeing 
 nothing but persons and personifications. 
 
 From the beginning, I think, although 
 most kindly disposed towards us, Miss 
 Felicity nevertheless regarded us as rather 
 dangerous little persons, brought up in no
 
 176 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 oue kiiu"svs ^vllut heretical persuasiuiis con- 
 cerning the rights and the -vvrongs of man. 
 
 The years of our school-life were among 
 the most reactionary years England ever saw. 
 
 Not an abuse but was rooted in its place, 
 and not a harvest of reform but was stunted 
 and nipped by the French Reign of Terror. 
 
 Old Tories like Miss Felicity glorified 
 their narrowest political prejudices into 
 articles of the Creed, when the Eevolution 
 and his own heroic patience had consecrated 
 the French king into a martyr. Benevolent 
 and tranquil men of progress like my father 
 had to defend themselves as if they had 
 been Jacobins. Mild Whigs like Dr. 
 Kenton, who looked for the general im- 
 provement of the world on the same san- 
 guine and genial principles on which ho 
 looked for the general recovery of his 
 patients, simply turned a little round the 
 other way, and became for the moment mild 
 Tories.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. ijj 
 
 "What do you say now, Dr. Kenton," 
 Miss Felicity would triumphantly demand, 
 " to your Eeformers and Jacobins ? " 
 
 " I say, Miss Felicity," he would reply, 
 " what I always said. Above all things no 
 convulsions, no violence to the constitution. 
 If nature cannot throw off the ailment for 
 herself, we must assist her a little, Miss 
 Felicity, gently assist her. That is what I 
 mean by reform. If our assistance fails, we 
 must let her alone and wait, Miss Felicity, 
 tranquilly wait." 
 
 Mild Tories, on the other hand, like my 
 uncle Fyford and Mr. Eabbidge, those who 
 were Conservative from fear, became rabid 
 Tories, also from fear. They would have 
 established a Eeign of Terror of their own 
 on behalf of our glorious constitution, 
 would " keep the mob down, sii'," said my 
 uncle to my father, "by fire and sword, if 
 necessary by the gibbet, or the — " 
 
 " The stake,^^ suggested my father drily. 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 My uncle scarcely heeded the interrup- 
 tion. " Are we to have our houses burnt 
 about oui- ears," he said, " by a set of 
 fanatics calling themselves philanthropists 
 and reformers ? " 
 
 And it was thi'ough this tempest of pre- 
 judice and reaction that the noble band of 
 religious men who had set their hearts on 
 abolishing the great wrong of the African 
 slave-trade, steadfastly went on with the 
 conflict, and ten times brought in the mea- 
 sui-e ten times defeated in a House of 
 Commons, excited to a fury of reaction, 
 elected by a nation goaded to a contempt of 
 all progress by the fury and madness of the 
 three years' terrible reaction against centu- 
 ries of oppression in France. 
 
 It was, no doubt, this state of things, of 
 course at the time unknown to us, which 
 brought me into the two difficulties which 
 now recur to my mind.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 179 
 
 One sunny Sunday afternoon Piers and I 
 were sitting on the step of our arbour on 
 the highest terrace of the garden. He was 
 playing with Pluto and I was reading in- 
 tently with my elbows on my knees, so 
 intently, that I did not see my father and 
 my stepmother with little Francis, my uncle 
 Fyford, and Dick approaching up the steep 
 slope, until they were close at hand. 
 
 I was especially absorbed with the book, 
 because I ignorantly thought it was about 
 to throw some light on the " Duty to our 
 Neighbour," and the Sermon on the Mount, 
 especially as connected with my stepmother 
 and Francis, which might bring the Chris- 
 tian code within reach of my practice. 
 There were passages in it about "natural 
 rights," about the "great sin being making 
 each other unhappy," which I thought 
 excellent ; also a passage asserting that 
 "the Duty of Man is not a wilderness of 
 turnpike-gates between us and our Maker,
 
 i8o AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 through which wc pass by ticket from ono 
 to the other, but plaiu and simple, consist- 
 ing in our duty to God as His by hirth and 
 family^ and in doing what we would be 
 done by," which I thought clearer than the 
 C'atechism, at least with my stepmother's 
 commentary. 
 
 My uncle startled me by an approving 
 pat on the head. 
 
 "Well done, little maid ! Quite a little 
 Lady Jane Grey ! Is it Plato, or ' The 
 AYhole Duty of Man ? ' " 
 
 "It is not so much about our dutic8 as 
 about our right s^'^^ I said. " I found it in 
 the Summer Parlour." And I gave the 
 volume confidingly into his hands. 
 
 He started as if he had been stung, 
 dashed it from him to the ground, and 
 gi'ound his heel into it as if it had boon a 
 viper. 
 
 " Piers Danescombe, I could not lune 
 expected this even of toleration like yours: %
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. i8i 
 
 Tom Paine's ' Eights of Man ' — such poison 
 in the hands of this poor innocent babe ! " 
 
 " Indeed, Uncle Fyford," I said, thinking 
 that I had in some way compromised my 
 father, "it is a Sunday book. It is not a 
 story book. The gentleman who wrote it 
 seems to dislike the Bastille and slavery as 
 much as father, and war as much as Miss 
 Loveday. And he speaks about our Father 
 in heaven. Uncle Fyford. Indeed it is a 
 Sunday book." 
 
 " Listen to the poor innocent ! " said 
 Uncle Fyford. "It is enough to pierce 
 one's heart." 
 
 " Bride, my darling," said my father, in 
 his dry quiet way, " Tom Paine's ' Eights 
 of Man ' is not exactly the book for you. 
 If I had had any idea that your tastes lay 
 in that direction, I would have labelled it, 
 ' Not good for little giils.' But, Eichard," 
 he continued, turning to my uncle, " if 
 wise men would take the good in that book
 
 iSz AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 and use it, thoy would do more to neutralise 
 tlif liann in it than by railing at it in a 
 mass for ever." 
 
 " Good in Tom Paine ! " said my uncle, 
 roused beyond his usual decorum. "I am 
 sick of your '•good in everything? I believe 
 you would find good in the devil." 
 
 " There might have been ! you know," said 
 my father, very gravely. His simple quiet 
 words startled me like a flash of lightning. 
 They made me feel that he felt the existence 
 of the devil to be a very real and sorrowful 
 fact, instead of ^the half ridiculous, half 
 terrible, mythical legend 'handed down to us 
 in the nui-sery. 
 
 Mrs. Danescombe intervened. 
 
 " That is precisely what I am always 
 saying to Mr. Danescombe, Dr. Fyford," 
 she said. '' Good in everything there may 
 be, though I confess I have not found it, 
 and I believe it is not thre Bible, but only 
 Shakspere that asserts it. But evil iu
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 183 
 
 everytliing most certainly there is, at least 
 in every person. And I can never see we 
 remove it by blinding our eyes to it." 
 
 " Well, Euphrasia," said my father, 
 "you look for the evil and I for the good ; 
 so, between us, I hope we shall strike the 
 balance. Only, if we both reach the better 
 TS'orld, you will be so unfortunate as to 
 have lost your occupation, while mine can 
 continue for ever." 
 
 " Wait till you are there, Piers," rejoined 
 my uncle. " At all events, you won't find 
 Tom Paine's ' Eights of Man' there." 
 
 "No," replied my father, "the book 
 will have done its work, good and evil, here 
 below." 
 
 " Evil enough ! " said my uncle ; " good, 
 only as Satan did good to Job, by landing 
 him, with his potsherd, among the ashes." 
 
 My investigations into the "natural 
 rights " of man were, however, checked : a
 
 i84 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 check the less painful to mo because even 
 Mr. Paine did not give me any light on the 
 natural "rights of women" or of little 
 girls. I was sent back to the Ten Com- 
 mandments and to the Duty to my Neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 The only result that remained from my 
 inopportune pursuit of knowledge was the 
 rare felicity of a little direct religious lesson 
 from my father. 
 
 That evening he took me on his knee in 
 the Oak Parlour. Piers had gone to bed, 
 and my stepmother was putting Francis to 
 sleep, so that we were alone. And above 
 us was that picture of my mother, present 
 to the consciousness of us both." 
 
 "Bride, my darling," he said, "Duties 
 are better things for us to think about tliiui 
 Rights." 
 
 " If other peoi^le would only tliink about 
 our rights a little, father," I ventured to 
 mui*mur, " then it would be very nice to
 
 A GA INST THE STREA M. 1 8 5 
 
 have nothing to think about but our duties. 
 But they don't. They only think about 
 theii* own rights, and oiu* duties." 
 
 "Very true. Bride," he said. ''They 
 don't, and they won't. And that is the 
 way there is so much troublesome history 
 for you and me to learn. But you know 
 some one must begin. Suppose you and I 
 begin at the other end. Our oivn duties, 
 and other 'people's rights. You will find 
 much more good come of it in the end." 
 
 Then, the only time I can remember, he 
 led me to my mother's pictui-e and stood 
 before it with his hand on my shoulder. 
 
 " That was what she did, my child. God 
 gave her one of his lambs to keep, and she 
 kept it well as long as she was here. God 
 help me to keep it for Him and for her 
 better than I have." 
 
 " Oh, father, you can't keep us better," I 
 said. 
 
 That lesson was brief, but it accomplished
 
 1 86 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 its end. It brought me back to my duties, 
 instead of to his and to my stepmother's. 
 
 It was not very long after this that Piers 
 and I fell into another difficulty, at Miss 
 Felicity's school. 
 
 I remember this with especial distinct- 
 ness, because it was the beginning of Piers 
 and my entering into closer relations with 
 Amice Glanvil and our sweet bright Claire 
 Angelique des Ormes. 
 
 A week before, the three spare rooms in 
 Miss Felicity's house had been engaged and 
 occupied by three foreigners, refugees from 
 France, Madame la Marquise des Ormes, 
 her little daughter Claire Angelique, and 
 Leontine, a vivacious maid, who governed 
 and protected them both, and would fain have 
 governed Miss Felicity, and all Abbot's Weir, 
 had this been possible to any Frenchwoman. 
 Madame had only been seen, a slight 
 fragile lady, leaning rather feebly on the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 187 
 
 arm of Leoiitine, and greeting Miss Felicity 
 as she entered the arched door with such a 
 courtly reverence as Abbot's Weir had not 
 previously dreamed of. 
 
 Leontine had been seen and heard abun- 
 dantly, making her presence felt like a wind 
 through house and town. Little Claire had 
 only been heard prattling in a sweet voice 
 to her mother in the parlour inside the 
 schoolroom until that momentous afternoon 
 when she appeared under Miss Felicity's 
 wing, but not under her rod, as a kind of 
 amateur scholar. 
 
 It was an August afternoon, very sultry. 
 The room was long and low : Miss Felicity 
 was fettered by no goverment regulations 
 as to cubic feet of air and space. Of space 
 there was enough; of air certainly not 
 enough to keep forty children awake. Miss 
 Felicity would on no account have exposed 
 her lessons to the intrusion of the street by 
 opening the window.
 
 i88 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 Want of ozone, therefore, was telling 
 powerfully on the intellects of the pupils, 
 and on the temper of the mistress. The 
 flics were drowsily buzzing now and then 
 against the panes, the black cat sleepily 
 purring on the window-seat, too lazy even 
 to wink at my stepmother's cat on the oppo- 
 site window. Many of the children out of 
 reach of the rod had yielded to sleep, and 
 the rest were hopelessly struggling against 
 it, when the question came in a sharp voice 
 from Miss Felicity — 
 
 " Bridget Danescombe, who were the 
 heroes ? " 
 
 I must have been half asleep myself, for 
 I remember instantly sitting up trying to 
 look especially wide awake, as is the wont 
 with persons so surprised, and responding 
 desperately to tlie last word which I had 
 caught. 
 
 *' Father says there are some in rraufo, 
 Miss Felicity. lie said so last night. They
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 189 
 
 pulled down a wicked place called the 
 Bastille." 
 
 Miss Felicity's colour rose. I think she 
 did not know whether I said it in simplicity 
 or in malice. 
 
 " Bridget Danescombe," she repeated, 
 slightly rapping my fingers to recall my 
 attention, " think what you are saying. 
 Who were the heroes ? " 
 
 "And some, father said, there are in 
 England," I continued, divided between 
 anxiety to sustain myself by that infallible 
 judgment, and dread of the well-known 
 little ebony ruler. " They want to pull 
 down the slave-trade and the impressment 
 — he said impressment. These are our Bas- 
 tilles. I know he said they were heroes. 
 And the only name I remember is Granville 
 Sharp." 
 
 " Silly child, dreaming as usual," said 
 Miss Felicity, diplomatically passing by 
 the perilous answer, and admonishing me
 
 190 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 
 
 by a severe rap on my knuckles, " I pass 
 to your brother — two years your younger 
 and ten years your better. Piers Danes- 
 combe, who were the heroes ?" 
 
 Whatever could have been thought of 
 the spirit of my answer, there could have 
 been no doubt as to that which rang 
 through the tones of Piers. His was a 
 response, not to Miss Felicity's question, 
 but to her rap on my fingers. 
 
 "Sister Pride is right. Miss Felicity," 
 he said. "Father did say so, only last 
 night." 
 
 Py this time the little community was 
 thoroughly aroused, with true Pritish in- 
 stinct scenting the battle from afar. 
 
 " Yes, indeed. Miss Felicity," I ventured, 
 " father said impressing seamen and trading 
 in slaves was as bad as shutting people up 
 in the Pastille ; and Mr. Granville Sharp 
 was a hero for trying to stop it. I remem- 
 ber quite well that was the hero's name,
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 191 
 
 and also that he wants to stop people having 
 slaves, because that is wicked." 
 
 I had rushed on impetuously, forgetful of 
 all but the purpose in hand, when, looking 
 up, I saw Amice Glanvil's great mysterious 
 eyes fixed fully on me, not in anger, but 
 with a look of grave wonder and questioning. 
 She looked a shade more pallid than 
 usual, but I flushed crimson. I remem- 
 bered the black nurse and the negro foot- 
 men, and I felt so sorry I should have said 
 anything to grieve my princess. 
 
 But I had not much time for reflection. 
 For then out and spoke Dick Fyford. 
 
 ^ Miss Felicity, if Bride Danescombe 
 were not a girl, so that no one can do any- 
 thing to her, she would not dare. My own 
 uncle is a sea captain, and I am going to 
 sea, and he says people who cry out against 
 impressment are traitors and fools. I heard 
 him. The king's navy could not be kept up 
 without, and then the French would come
 
 102 AGA/XST THE STREAM. 
 
 and kill the king and burn up London, and 
 Abbot's Weir, and all of us." 
 
 The conflict was becoming perilous. Was 
 Miss Felicity's class of mythology — extra 
 — to prepare the more aristocratic classes 
 for Mr. Eabbidge, and to distinguish them 
 from the common herd, to end in this ? 
 
 Had not Mrs. Eabbidge, always a little 
 too eagerly alive to the growth of Miss 
 Felicity's pupils into her husband's, de- 
 nounced the mythology as a poaching on 
 his demesnes ? And had not Mr. Eab- 
 bidge himself mildly admitted that Miss 
 Felicity was meddling with matters too 
 high for her ? 
 
 And was it to be said that such frightful 
 Jacobinism had been uttered in herpresencc* 
 unavenged ? 
 
 The case was perplexing. On the score 
 of politics it could not be taken up. Piers 
 and I had appealed to C'lrsar in the person 
 of oui- father, and to ^liss Felicity jiaternal
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 193 
 
 authority was a foundation of all other 
 authority, by no means to be lightly inter- 
 fered with. 
 
 She therefore recurred to history, and 
 wisely chose to treat me as a dunce rather 
 than as a heretic. 
 
 " Bridget Danescombe knows better," she 
 assei-ted. "The heroes lived in Greece. 
 They come after the heathen gods. There 
 were Hercules and Perseus, — and others," 
 said Miss Felicity, not having a book, 
 and judiciously becoming vague. " They 
 fought with dragons. And the heroes and 
 the dragons have all been dead and gone 
 thousands of years. Bridget Danescombe, 
 I am sorry ; but I must put the fool's-cap on 
 you, and you must sit on that stool in the 
 middle of the school. Take this book and 
 learn the names of the heroes. When 
 you have learned them you may come 
 down." 
 
 And so saying she took off my little 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 mob-cap, put on the terrible cone of brown 
 pa2)er, and made nie climb on the tall stool. 
 Thus were the germs of Jacobinism crushed ; 
 :ind thus was I set up as a beacon to 
 juvenile Abbot's Weir. Piers came and 
 stood beside me, his eyes flashing and his 
 face crimson, in defiance of authority. 
 Wisely Miss Felicity took no notice. Her 
 government was too strong for her to 
 delight in petty irritating revenges. 
 
 I was too proud to cry, and too be- 
 wildered by anger and shame to learn. And 
 yet by some strange instinct of justice, I 
 made a distinction between my stepmother 
 and Miss Felicity. 
 
 M)^ stepmother had never rapped my 
 knuckles or set me on a stool, or punished 
 me in any way. And yet her cold 
 " Bridget ! " hurt me more than Miss Feli- 
 city's ruler, or even her fool's-cap, terrible 
 as that was. 
 
 I felt that Miss Felicity in some uiiac-
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 195 
 
 countable way had misunderstood my 
 words. I did not feel that she misunder- 
 stood and misjudged me. And after a little 
 while, getting used to my position, I found 
 myself endeavouring to accoimt, not for 
 my conduct (in this instance I had the 
 great and unusual happiness of a clear con- 
 science), but for Miss Felicity's, and to 
 justify her. 
 
 This, of course, did not help me to learn 
 my "heroes," but it quieted my mind, and 
 the book served as a veil as I held it before 
 my face. 
 
 And so the minutes passed on, imtil the 
 bell rang for the school to close. 
 
 We always finished in the morning with 
 the grace before meals, and in the evening 
 with a verse of the evening prayer. 
 
 For this purpose Miss Felicity told me to 
 come down from my elevation. 
 
 To this instant my heart beats faster as I 
 think how that sweet little French girl
 
 196 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 Claire, not of course being in the awe of 
 our punishments and rules of ordinary 
 scholars, glided foi-ward to me before any 
 one could stop her, with her easy French 
 grace, and helped me down, and kissed my 
 cheek, her first kiss, with the fooVs-cap still 
 on, and led me to Miss Felicity, and asked 
 her in sweet broken English to take the caj) 
 off, which Miss Felicity very kindly and 
 rather nervously did. And then Claire 
 herself, with her lissom fingers, aiTanged 
 my hair under my little cap, and kissed my 
 quivering lips, for I was bursting into tears. 
 Then, apparently summoned from the room 
 within, she waved her hand to all of us and 
 curtseyed like a faiiy queen, and disap- 
 peared within the door of her mother's 
 apartment. 
 
 Piers and I, of course, were kept in that 
 day, imtil I had 'learned the mythology. 
 And meantime Miss Felicity went out and 
 left us alone, with Amice Glanvil, who was
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 197 
 
 kneeKng on the window- seat, waiting for 
 the negro nurse. 
 
 When Miss Felicity was gone, Amice 
 came down noiselessly from the window- 
 seat, and suddenly stood before me. 
 
 I looked up from the book, and met those 
 dark wistful eyes for the first time, not 
 turned away from me, but gazing steadily 
 into mine, through my eyes, I felt, into me. 
 
 " Who said it was wicked to have slaves?'''' 
 she asked. 
 
 My eyes sank before her gaze. 
 
 " It was my father," I said in a low 
 voice. I wished to say something in excuse, 
 but I could find nothing. 
 
 '' But people need not be wicked who 
 have slaves," she said. '' My father was 
 good, and he had slaves. And he is dead. 
 He was not wicked. And I was bom with 
 slaves. How can we help what we are born 
 with?" 
 
 She spoke very low, with a deep voice
 
 198 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 and a clear lingering utterance, wliich to me 
 sounded foreign. The question was beyond 
 me. 
 
 "You can be kind to them," I said 
 feebly. That was all I could thinlc of. 
 
 " Some old Greek people set them free," 
 said Piers thoughtfully, more childlike than 
 I ; that is what my father said Mr. Granville 
 Sharp wanted. You can set them free ^''^ he 
 said, with a boy's directness, "that is the 
 only way, I think, of being kind to slaves." 
 
 Amice Glauvil turned her penetrating 
 glance on him, as if to look him thi'ough ; 
 but his frank, blue eyes met hers, with a 
 steady gaze, and bore the scrutiny. 
 
 " Set them free ! Piers Danescombe," 
 she said. " You do not know in the least 
 ^^'hat you are talking about. But you have 
 given me the answer at the very bottom of 
 your thoughts, and I thank you." For she 
 was not in the least like a child, our 
 princess.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 199 
 
 The negro nurse came to fetch her, and 
 interrupted our conversation. 
 
 But when she was wrapped up in her 
 gold and crimson splendours she turned 
 back to us, and took one of our hands in 
 each of hers. 
 
 " Bride Danescombe," she said, " I like 
 you, I have known and liked you a long 
 time, and I like you better to-day. Piers 
 Danescombe, you are a little boy, and do 
 not know in the least what you said. But 
 you speak the truth, and hardly any one 
 does. And I like you too. I will ask 
 Granny. And you will come and see me. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 I felt honoured as by a royal invitation ; 
 but Piers was cooler, and said, "We will 
 see." 
 
 I got up on the window-seat and looked 
 after Miss Amice in a flutter of delight. I 
 forgot all about the heroes. I felt sure I 
 had found my heroine. The spell of silent
 
 200 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 years was broken ; our princess had spoken 
 to us, and the enchanted palace would be 
 sure to open. 
 
 Then a soft voice called me from tlie 
 comer where little Miss Loveday had been 
 lying on her couch, correcting exercises un- 
 observed by any of us. 
 
 "Dear child," she said, ''dear little 
 Bride, let me help thee. Aunt Felicity 
 will come back, and thee will have learned 
 nothing." 
 
 In a few minutes she had taught me the 
 lesson. 
 
 And when Miss Felicity returned I said 
 it to her perfectly. 
 
 I think she was anxious to make some 
 amends to me. I had suffered as a victim 
 to great public considerations, as I did not 
 know, but she did. But I felt there was 
 no personal wrong intended, and I felt no 
 resentment against her. And when she 
 took my hand kindly, and said I had a good
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 201 
 
 father and mother, and she hoped I wonld 
 be a good little girl, I took courage, and 
 looking up in her face said, " Miss Felicity, 
 father said you were one of the heroes, too." 
 
 " Nonsense ! nonsense, child ! " she said, 
 colouring. But I saw that the keen eyes 
 moistened, and she took me to Miss Love- 
 day and said, in a tremulous voice — 
 
 " Loveday, the child grows more like her 
 poor dear mother every day — I saw it on 
 that stool to-day — and she has just that 
 sweet forgiving temper. And, please God, 
 the poor little maid shall never stand there 
 again. It was a mistake of mine, and it cut 
 me to the heart. There," she added, 
 laughing, "there's a foolish thing for a 
 misti-ess to say to a child. Foolish old 
 woman and foolish little Bride. How shall 
 I keep you in order now ? You will never 
 be afraid of the ruler and the fool's-cap 
 more." 
 
 But I began to love Miss Felicity. And
 
 402 AGAINST THE STREA.V. 
 
 oh the good it did mo to hear a gro\ni-up 
 woman actually confess she had made a 
 mistake ;md done wrong I 
 
 It restored to me my ideal of justice. It 
 made me feel there was one right way for 
 little children and gro-wn people. 
 
 From that day I would not have offended 
 or grieved Miss Felicity for the world. 
 
 But when she left the room Miss Love- 
 day put her arm around me and said — 
 
 " Little Bride, it is quite right to learn 
 about the old heroes. All little boys and 
 girls must. But never thou give up be- 
 lieving in the heroes and saints now. That 
 is the great matter for us. IN'ever give up 
 looking for them, little Bride, and always 
 expecting to see them. It is a pity not to 
 know the heroes of long ago. But the most 
 terrible mistake we can make, any of us, is 
 not to learn to know the heroes and saints 
 God is making to-day, who are with us 
 now, because that is like misunderstauduig
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 203 
 
 God Himself, and oiu' dear Lord and Saviour, 
 and the blessed, loving Spirit, and putting 
 Him far back into history, among the 
 Greeks and Eomans. 
 
 " Never think the saints and heroes are all 
 dead and gone. Piers and Bride. It is like 
 thinking our Lord is dead, and his living 
 Spirit with us no more. That is the mistake 
 people who went wi'ong made in every age. 
 Look for them, expect to find them in the 
 world — in your little world — now, and look 
 to God, who is always making them, and 
 you will find them. And then stick close 
 to them, my dears, and follow them, what- 
 ever they are called and whatever they look 
 like ; and, in that way, you may grow like 
 them too. Oh, thank God, Bride," she 
 added in a low voice, " I did ask God long 
 ago for this ; and He heard me, and showed 
 me your mother. He showed her to me 
 before she went away. And that has 
 helped me all my life. Never, never think
 
 204 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 the saints and heroes are living no longer 
 upon earth. The heroes are not dead, nor 
 the dragons ; nor are the saints gone to 
 heaven, or their crosses. Look up and 
 keep your heart open, and you will find 
 them, my poor little ones, never fear." 
 
 I tried to say something to her, but I 
 could not. My voice would not come. 
 . For when father had said Miss Felicity 
 was a hero, he had also said that Miss Love- 
 day was a saint. 
 
 But I smiled all through my heart as I 
 went across to the mai-ket-place, to think 
 how much sooner than Miss Loveday had 
 expected her words had begun to come true.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 rriHEEE are many mornings in our lives, 
 many moments which, are as fountains, 
 from which the rest of our life continues to 
 flow. 
 
 The old promise has been kept. Day and 
 night, winter and summer, seed-time and 
 harvest, have not failed. 
 
 And hereafter, also (I ti'ust), it will be 
 thus. It is in a pagan Elysium, not in 
 a Chiistian Paradise, that "everlasting 
 spring " abides. 
 
 "What are blossoms which never ripen 
 into fruit but painted shows ? What is 
 childhood which never awakens into man- 
 hood but a dwarfed or undeveloped hu- 
 manity ? What are seed-times which have
 
 2o6 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 no liarvest but promises perpetually renewed 
 and never fulfilled ? 
 
 " No n'ujht there " must mean no dark- 
 ness, no bewilderment, no losing our way, 
 no missing our end, no horror of doubt, no 
 shadow of death; certainly not, no fresh 
 mornings. So often we confuse divine 
 suggestions by -vulgarising symbols into 
 pictures, or by hammering out poetical 
 images into prosaic parables ! 
 
 Again and again in our lives '' God takes 
 us by the hand," as the old Moravian hymn 
 sings, " and says, Start afresh." 
 
 Here, indeed, our fresh startings are made 
 necessary, too often, by our wanderings 
 from the way, or our weariness of the way. 
 But the fulness of life there will surely not 
 be less rich in variety and glorious growth 
 than tlie hindered and fluctuating and fail- 
 ing life here. For ever it will be walking 
 in '' newness of life." wondrous ful- 
 ness of joy, when all the past shall
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 207 
 
 euiich, not biu-den and sadden, the present ; 
 when before the heart, satisfied with the 
 present in His presence, shall spread end- 
 less ranges of hope in the futm*e, also in 
 His presence ! 
 
 "We shall not be gods hereafter, but 
 childi'en of God ; and, for ever, in our 
 Father's hand, will be infinite possibilities 
 of growth unforeseen by us, and divine sur- 
 prises of bliss. 
 
 One such morning, or fountain head, in 
 my life was that memorable afternoon when 
 Miss Felicity exalted me to the stool of 
 repentance and crowned me with the fool's- 
 cap, and afterwards exalted herself and 
 human nature in my sight by confessing 
 herself in the wrong, and crowned me with 
 the kiss of reconciliation, which sealed me 
 her loyal subject thereafter. 
 
 For then and there three great fi-iendships 
 of my life began : that dear discipleship to
 
 2o8 AGAINST THE STREA.^f. 
 
 Loveday Benbow — that tender affection to 
 Claire des Ormes, half motherly, half lover- 
 like — that faithful " cameraderie " with 
 Amice Glanvil in many a pull " against the 
 stream." 
 
 Before that day, in looking back, it seems 
 as if life had still been cradled in the moun- 
 tain tarn, mirroring the little world around, 
 filling its own little cup. After that it 
 began to flow. 
 
 And not mine, but my brother's also, 
 which was in many ways more than my 
 own to me. Our lives began to flow ; and 
 they began to part, into those two streams 
 of womanhood and manhood which ai-e each 
 one so much more for being two, — so much 
 more to each other, so much more to the 
 Morld. 
 
 In the first place, it was just after that 
 morning that for the first time I remembcn- 
 Piers took an opposite course to me. 
 
 When, in due time, the invitation came
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 209 
 
 for us from Madam Glanvil to spend a holi- 
 day with Amice at Court, he would not go. 
 
 He was not quite ten, and I was not 
 quite thirteen. I had in my small way 
 been "a mother to him" for so many 
 years ! His refusal surprised me greatly. 
 
 My father did not seem displeased at 
 Piers declining ; indeed, he appeared to 
 wonder a little at my delight in accepting. 
 
 Mrs. Danescombe, on the contrary, com- 
 mended me. She said it was a very desir- 
 able house to visit at, and she was pleased 
 to see me appreciate it. 
 
 "It is a big house, certainly, Bride," 
 said my father ; "but you know we do not 
 grow bigger by being in big houses." 
 
 "Mr. Danescombe," remonstrated my 
 stepmother, " let me entreat you not to 
 teach Jacobinism to Bride : for girls at least 
 it cannot be suitable." 
 
 " It is not the house, father," I said; "it 
 is Amice." 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 "Amice, with the glory of the big house 
 about her," he said, " and the black ser- 
 vants, and the sedan-chair. How long have 
 you known Miss Glanvil ? " 
 
 "Oh, father," I said, "all our lives 
 long." 
 
 " A very extensive period," he said. 
 " I did not know you had ever spoken to 
 each other." 
 
 " No, not exactly spoken until yesterday," 
 I said, " but looked^ and understood each 
 other always." 
 
 He laughed, and said no more. 
 
 But in the evening I endeavoured to 
 shake Piers' s resolution. 
 
 We were sitting in that very miscellane- 
 ous lumber-room, music-room, and work- 
 shop of my father's, called the Summer 
 l^arlour. 
 
 I was planning Armadas, and talking of 
 great naval campaigns. (We were just at 
 the outbreak of the first war with the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 211 
 
 French Eepublic.) Piers was constructing 
 a little ship ; a division of labour frequent 
 between us. He was essentially a maker, 
 not a critic, except as far as criticism is 
 necessary to construction. Whilst I was 
 content with anything that would float, his 
 quick eye caught the angles and curves 
 which made the difference between swift 
 and slow sailing. He was never satisfied 
 until the little vessel was as perfect as his 
 accurate hands could make it. I believe 
 from early years he had an opinion that the 
 talking of the world is mostly to be done 
 by women, and by men who cannot, or will 
 not, work. 
 
 " You will not go to Court, Piers ? " I 
 said. " It never can be because Amice 
 called you a '■ little boy ? ' " 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " How like a gii'l, sister ! " he said (not 
 satirically; I never heard him say a satirical 
 thing in his life, his nature was too down-
 
 ^11 AGAINST THE STREAAf. 
 
 right and too sweet. Later in life I know 
 he thought satire only the poor refuge of 
 people who could not fight the battles), "not 
 like you ! What difi'erence can calling me 
 anything make ? Besides, I am a little boy, 
 rather ; and I like Amice Glanvil. She is 
 almost as good as a boy herself." 
 
 Feminine and masculine distinctions were 
 becoming very pronounced. My Protec- 
 torate was evidently tottering ; and also 
 I felt a little jealous. 
 
 " I don't believe boys like girls better for 
 being like boys," I said; "at least, only 
 quite little boys do. Claire des Ormes is not 
 like a boy ; and I am sure you like her." 
 
 " She is not like a boy or a girl, or any- 
 thing," he replied. 
 
 "Less?" I said. 
 
 " Ko, you know very well, sister," he 
 said, " more ! " 
 
 " Yes, I think so," T said. " When she 
 kissed me, it felt as if it had been the queen.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 213 
 
 What is she like ? A fairy ? or a princess ? 
 or an angel ? or a hero ? " 
 
 " How can we tell, sister ? We never 
 saw either. Only it would be worth while 
 to do something for her, like what she did 
 for you." 
 
 " Yes," I said, " it would. But there is 
 nothing to do." 
 
 '' Something always comes to do," he 
 said, " when we are ready." 
 
 It was a cheerful view of life, and more 
 axiomatic than Piers knew. 
 
 We had wandered from Amice and Court. 
 
 " And you will not go to Court ? T^ot if 
 father wishes it ? " 
 
 " Father does not care," he said. 
 
 Which I knew was true. 
 
 "Not to see Amice? who is nearly as 
 good as a boy, and all those wonderful 
 monkeys, and parrots, and models, and 
 museums ? " 
 
 " I can see Amice at school," he said.
 
 214. AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 "Oh Piers, why won't you? Not vdXh. 
 me ? " 
 
 " Sister Bride, I cannot^'''' he said. " I 
 cannot be waited on by slaves." 
 
 We had heard so many stories of the 
 ■WTongs and cruel hardships of slaver}^ ! 
 
 I had cried over them so many times ; 
 and planned so many wonderful schemes of 
 rescue ; and had sometimes thought Piers 
 i-ather lukewarm on the subject. 
 
 And meantime, the griefs w^hich had 
 melted into tearful dewdrops with me, had 
 been entering into his very heart. 
 
 I could say no more. 
 
 So, I went alone to Court. 
 
 It was more a^^-ful than I expected. I 
 was met at the door by the two black foot- 
 men, and ushered with bows through the 
 hall, museum, and dining-room, into the 
 large withdrawing-room. 
 
 No one was there; and alone in those
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 215 
 
 great stately rooms, among the ancestral 
 portraits and the ancestral chairs, and the 
 Japanese cabinets ; alone, without Piers to 
 matronise, I felt a very little girl indeed. 
 And that uncomfortable consciousness of 
 clothes not quite duly identified with me, 
 which through my stepmother's monitions 
 had become the spectre of my darker 
 moments, came on me. 
 
 Only until Amice came in, and by her 
 presence filled the grand old rooms with life, 
 not rushing or gushing, by any means, but 
 with that essential reality and absence of 
 self-consciousness about her which always 
 made everything of the nature of clothes 
 and conventionalities sink into due sub- 
 ordination. 
 
 That, I suppose, was partly what Piers 
 meant by her being like a boy. 
 
 She came forward and took my hand. 
 
 " Where is Piers ? " she said, " your 
 little brother?"
 
 Ji6 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 My eyes fell. 
 
 "He could not — did not — come," I said, 
 in some confusion. 
 
 " Would not," she said decidedly. " He 
 is a strange little boy, but I like him." 
 
 She seemed to me rather candid about 
 my kindred. 
 
 " He is the dearest brother in the world," 
 I said. 
 
 " No doubt," she said, " to you. He is 
 your own. You are not in the least alike. 
 But I like yoM," 
 
 She never asked if we liked her. 
 
 "You have another brother who is not 
 like either of you," she said ; " very little. 
 I do not like him. He looks as if he had 
 been bom old." 
 
 That was unfortunate ; for my stepmother, 
 I knew, looked on my friendship at Court 
 as an introduction for Francis. 
 
 I began to think her confidences as to the 
 family had better stop.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 217 
 
 But she continued. 
 
 " T like your father ; he is a gentleman, 
 although he does think it wicked to have 
 slaves. I am glad your mother is only your 
 stepmother. She is like your little brother. 
 And I always want her to be well tossed 
 about in a wind. A storm at sea would be 
 best. That shakes one out of many things." 
 
 It was very curious to find we had all 
 been looked at and through so long, by 
 those wistful, inquiring eyes. 
 
 And here was a new and most interesting 
 glimpse into her former life ! 
 
 " You have been in a storm at sea ! That 
 must be wonderful," I said, not sorry to 
 reverse the telescope and turn it on her own 
 Ufe. 
 
 "Yes. I liked it," she said; "especially 
 when it was dangerous." 
 
 She had her hat in her hand ; she put it 
 on and led me into the garden. 
 
 " The waves were very high ? " I asked.
 
 2i8 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 " It was not the waves I liked," she 
 replied, " it was the people. It was as 
 good as the play, indeed it was much better, 
 because it was the other way. Every one 
 changed characters — changed into them- 
 selves. It was great fun. People who had 
 told wonderful stories of their killing lions 
 and tigers, and frightening slaves, turned 
 quite white, and wrung their hands, and 
 kept questioning the captain, like women, 
 if there was any danger ? And one man, 
 who had laughed at the Methodists, and 
 had sworn big oaths, actually came and 
 asked my poor Chloe to pray for him. It 
 was capital fun." 
 
 I began to think her rather elfish and 
 hard-hearted — '' cynical " I should have 
 said had I known the word. 
 
 " Chloe is a Methodist," I replied, rather 
 evasively. '' I know a Methodist too, old 
 Ileuben Pengelly." 
 
 " Yes," she said; "the old man with the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 219 
 
 violoncello, in a scarlet waistcoat. Chloe 
 loves him like a brother. And Chloe heard 
 from him about you. He loves yon all so 
 much. Only Granny won't let her go often 
 to the meetings. She says it gives those 
 poor creatures notions." 
 
 " What notions ? " I said, rising out of 
 my life-long awe of Amice, with some indig- 
 nation. "No one would get anything but 
 good notions from Eeuben." 
 
 " Good notions for white people, very 
 likely," she replied; "but white people 
 and black are not the same. At least, so 
 Granny says. I am not sure ; however, it 
 makes very little difference to Chloe. For 
 she has her notions, wherever she is, and 
 they make her very happy." 
 
 "What notions make her happy?" I 
 asked. 
 
 " That God is very good, and loves every 
 one, black and white. That He can make 
 black people have white hearts," she replied
 
 MO AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 softly. " It makes her very happy. But i 
 cannot quite see it. At least, if I were 
 black I should find it difficult to think God 
 had cared much, or taken much trouble 
 about me." 
 
 "I did not see it once," I said, "till 
 Reuben showed me." 
 
 "Did not see what?'''' she said, looking 
 full into my eyes. 
 
 " That God was good to wee," I said. 
 
 " To you .'" she replied, rather scornfully. 
 " Then you must certainly have been very 
 cross and ungrateful. / can see that 
 plainly enough. You have a father and a 
 brother ! " 
 
 " He had taken away Mother / " I said. 
 It nearly choked me to say it, but I felt I 
 must. " And I ivas ungrateful, and did not 
 understand Him. But I do now ! " 
 
 She smiled a little peculiar smile of her 
 own, sarcastic but not severe. 
 
 " Understand God ! " she said, with a
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 221 
 
 strange depth in her tone. '' That is a good 
 deal for a little girl. You are a year 
 younger than I am. Eeuben told Chloe." 
 
 " Understand that He is my Father, and 
 is good, always," I said, " to every one." 
 
 " That is a good deal too ! '^ she said in 
 a low tone, "more than I do. But Chloe 
 does. She says our Saviour let a black man 
 carry his cross. I am not quite sure of 
 that. Because, they were not all black 
 then in Africa, the history says. That is 
 the worst of history. It disturbs so many 
 nice notions. But Chloe knows nothing of 
 history, at least only that one History. And 
 it comforts her to think of that black man 
 carrying the cross. Why I can't exactly 
 see, even if it is true." 
 
 "Ah, Amice, I can see ! " I said. 
 " Wouldn't you have liked to carry it for 
 Him ? " 
 
 She paused a moment, and then said, 
 very slowly and gravely —
 
 222 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 " If He had given it to me. But He did 
 not. It was only the Romans." 
 
 "It is ahnost always the Romans or the 
 Jews who do lay things like that on people," 
 I said. "But it was his cross. Ah, I do 
 think I should have liked that ! To have 
 helped Him a little ! " 
 
 " I think you would," she said, with a 
 sort of tenderness that had not been in her 
 voice before. " / would rather have beaten 
 off the Jews and the soldiers." 
 
 " I should not like to have been the 
 Romans ! " she added, very low and sadly. 
 " Do you think any one can be like that 
 now ? " she asked, with one of her sudden, 
 inquiring looks, as if she would surprise an 
 answer out of one's eyes. 
 
 The whole meaning flashed on me, and I 
 was dumb. 
 
 "Because," she said, "if /'//a/ History is 
 always going on, as Chloe seems to think, 
 there must always be the two sides, and
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 223 
 
 one would like to be sure on which side 
 one is." 
 
 "Do you care for flowers? " she resumed, 
 changing her tone and subject suddenly. 
 "I don't; unless they are wild. Furze 
 and heather on the down, when one is 
 galloping over it, are nice. But in beds 
 they are tiresome. And especially in green- 
 houses — mere things in pots. It is dreadful 
 to have to grow up. When I am seventeen 
 I shall have to show Granny's visitors 
 round the green-houses, and listen to them 
 saying how gorgeous this flower is, and how 
 lovely that leaf is, on and on for ever. 
 Animals are what I like. They are so 
 queer, and yet so fond of one. And one 
 can so easily make them happy. And they 
 have no souls, which is a great comfort, 
 when creatures belong to one ; it saves one 
 from so much perplexity. At least, no souls 
 that can be lost ; no conscience ; that is the
 
 224 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 troublesome thing. Are you sure they have 
 no souls of some kind? Dogs now, and 
 some horses look as if they had some kind 
 of souls growing in them, something hegin- 
 ning to be a soul. Don't you think so ? " 
 
 I had never speculated on the psychology 
 of animals. My chief personal attach- 
 ments had been among cats, except indeed 
 Pluto. 
 
 " I certainly never thought my step- 
 mother's cat had a soul," I said. ''If it 
 has, it must be such a very bad one, I am 
 sure I hope it hasn't. And I am sure it 
 has no conscience. Nor my own kittens. 
 They purr and rub against one, and are so 
 soft and comfortable that I never thought of 
 their wanting anything more." 
 
 "Cats? Certainly not!" she replied, 
 decidedly. "I always think, one could have 
 made a cat oneself, almost. All fur and 
 purr, and wanting to be stroked. That is, 
 aomv cats. There are others, like tigers, all
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 225 
 
 cunning and stealth, and spite, one could 
 not have made, ivould not if one could. Ah, 
 Bride ! (may I call you Bride ? It is so 
 much more like you than Bridget) how 
 many puzzles there are ! Does it not seem 
 as if the devil must have created some 
 things ? " 
 
 "The devil create anything!" I said 
 indignantly. " No ! God — the good God- 
 created everything, and created everything 
 good." 
 
 "It is not all very good just now," she 
 said, shaking her head. " At all events, 
 the devil has spoiled a great deal." 
 
 All this was said at intervals, as she was 
 showing me round the place, garden, rabbit- 
 hutches, pheasantry, poultry-yard, her own 
 horse in the stables, where the great blood- 
 hound fawned on her, and the large stag- 
 hound put his paws on her shoulders in a 
 rapture of welcome. 
 
 "There!" she said, "down, Leo! poor 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 2 26 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 fellow I Dogs one certaiuly could never 
 have made." 
 
 " Some creatures love me, J5ride, you 
 see," she added. "I am not sure that you 
 do. You think me too like a boy. You 
 see I was the only cliild, there was no son, 
 only a daughter, and I have to do for both." 
 
 She did care, then, to be loved. So daiing 
 and apparently independent, yet so sensi- 
 tive to every change of feeling in those she 
 cared about — she, too, had need of love, 
 as much as I had. 
 
 For I had been feeling just a little doubtful 
 about her ; and she knew it as well as if I 
 had said all I felt, in plainer words than I 
 could have found. 
 
 We came to the kitchen garden. 
 
 " I like this," she said. " The vegetables 
 have something to do. They are not like 
 the flowers, fine hulies living to be looked 
 at. Especially geraniums and dahlias, and
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 227 
 
 camellias. They are as if they were stiffen- 
 ing into wax- work. Some of the flowers are 
 just sweet and lovely because they cannot 
 help it ; and so natural and full of life, no 
 gardeners can spoil them. Eoses, lilies of 
 the valley, the great white queen lily, and 
 violets. But vegetables, poor things, are 
 always doing theii- best in an honest and 
 simple way, and not thinking about them- 
 selves. And the flowers in kitchen gardens 
 arc always the nicest, don't you think ? I 
 suppose the company of the useful humble 
 creatures improves them." 
 
 Then she led me silently to a mouldy little 
 arbour in an angle of the wall. 
 
 " Don't you hate arbours ? " she said. 
 " They are the most ridiculous things. 
 They are neither open air nor indoors. 
 And I hate all things and people that are 
 neither one thing nor another. There is 
 Clapham, for instance ; stuck-up houses and 
 bits of gardens always trying to look like
 
 2 28 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 country. How I should hate to live there ; 
 although your hero, Mr. Granville Sharp, 
 does live there, and other people who are 
 something like him ! " 
 
 How much she had seen ! Clapham, I 
 knew, was near London. My father had a 
 first cousin there, to whom one day we were 
 to pay a visit. 
 
 " What is it in you, Bride Danescombe, 
 that makes me like you, and say everything 
 I ought and I ought not out to you ? You 
 don't say much. And I am sure you don't 
 always like what I say. But you know it 
 is quite useless for me to seem somebody 
 else, and make you like that somebody 
 else, and then wake up and find it was 
 not me." 
 
 I wanted to say how much I did like her. 
 But I could say nothing. 
 
 " Now," she said, with a little mono- 
 syllabic laugh — (she never laughed in peals, 
 only with her lips and eyes, and that one
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 229 
 
 little quiet musical dropping of laughter) — 
 " I will show you my likeness. I have kept 
 it for you since the day you called Granville 
 Sharp a hero." 
 
 And from a corner of the seat she took a 
 little crocus bulb. It had a curious long 
 appendage to it like an ivory knitting-needle. 
 " I found it lying forgotten and forlorn in 
 a piece of turned-up ground," she said.. 
 " It could not get at anything to root itself 
 in, in any natural, proper way, like other 
 crocuses ; and so it shot down this ugly 
 thing, feeling and feeling for something to 
 twist its roots about. And at last it found 
 something.'''' 
 
 " Oh, Amice, Amice," I said, feeling those 
 motherly wings fluttering all warm in my 
 heart once more, "you mean you found me^ 
 —Me ! " 
 
 And I knelt down and put my arms all 
 around her, and hid my head in her lap, 
 and began to cry.
 
 230 AGA/XST THE HTREAM. 
 
 " I do love you. Wc have liked you so 
 long, Piers and I. ]iut oh, indeed, you 
 A^ant more tlian me. What am I ? " 
 
 " You arc a good, dear little soul," she 
 said ; "as kind as old Leo or poor Chloe. 
 And with a kind of soul and conscience which 
 makes you, on the whole, better than Leo, 
 especially as I have nothing to do with it." 
 .• And she gave me such a long kiss, and 
 such a long, close hug — her whole heart 
 seemed to come into mine. 
 
 And then, with her little short laugh again 
 slie gently pushed me away, as one puts 
 down a little child. 
 
 '' There ! what "would Granny say ? She 
 would call it a ' scene.' And Mrs. Danes- 
 combe ? All your pretty feathers iniffled as 
 if you had been out in a south-wester. 
 Come in and preen yourself, and C-hloe shall 
 help you." 
 
 Then again, with that quick sympathetic 
 interpretation — " Not Chloe ? Well, then,
 
 A GA IXST THE ST RE A Jf. 2 3 1 
 
 / will. But you may tell your little brother 
 Cliloe is 7wt a slave. There are no slaves in 
 England now. Your Mr. Granville Sharp 
 got that settled years ago, as you might have 
 known, if he is such a hero, and you such 
 lovers of blacks." 
 
 On our way in we met Madam Glanvil, 
 as she was usually called in Abbot's Weir. 
 
 I had never seen her before, except at 
 church, or in state in her coach. And noA^- 
 she was in her ordinary attire, a plain, closely 
 fitting woollen di-ess (woven in the cottage 
 looms of Abbot's Weir), rather short, with 
 a hood, all grey — not Miss Loveday's gvej, 
 dove-like, but prosaic, black-and-white grey. 
 
 A very fine, erect, manly old lady, pacing 
 through her fields and gardens in stout 
 leather boots, with her steward. 
 
 " Granny is like me," said Amice. " Since 
 my grandfather died, she has had to do for 
 both." 
 
 Described in coloui-, her whole effect was
 
 23* AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 steel-gi*ey, as Loveday Benbow's was dove- 
 rolour. Ilcr eyes were steel-grey, with 
 clear, steely gleams, and also stormy, thun- 
 derous flashes. 
 
 She looked me all over, not, however, in 
 a way which made me conscious of clothes. 
 Then she nodded rather approvingly, and 
 then she said — 
 
 "Go in and get ready for dinner. You 
 have seven minutes. Do you think I can 
 wait for childi-en ? " 
 
 "She says whatever she likes, and no one 
 can answer her," said Amice. " She is deaf, 
 you know — so deaf that she never hears 
 anything but what she likes, so that it is 
 quite useless to be angry or to defend one's 
 self. But she likes you, I see from her nod. 
 Granny's nod is like Jupiter's, you know, 
 in the Homer ; so don't be afraid." 
 
 The dinner was silent. And again, tlu' 
 weight of the big rooms and the black foot- 
 men stepping as softly as my stepmothi'r's
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 233 
 
 cat, and the plate, and the Nankin China, 
 like our very best, which was never used 
 — were a little oppressive to me. 
 
 After dinner Madam Glanvil settled her- 
 self to her nap in a great chair by the win- 
 dow, and told us to go and amuse ourselves. 
 But before she spread the Bandana silk 
 handkerchief over her face to keep off the 
 flies (of which she spoke in language so 
 strong, it sounded to me rather like swear- 
 ing), she called me to her. 
 
 " Stand there in the light, Bridget Danes- 
 combe," she said, "and let me look at 
 you." 
 
 There was something in her direct, im- 
 perious way which amused me ; and not 
 feeling under her sceptre, I stood fearless, 
 looking up occasionally into her grey eyes, 
 wondering what she would say or do next. 
 
 " That will do, child," she said, with her 
 Jupiter nod. " You may go away and play. 
 You are like your father, except bits of you
 
 23+ AGAINST THE STJ^EA.V. 
 
 that I clou't know — your eyes and eyebrows. 
 I suppose they are j'our mother's. The 
 Danescombcs are not a bad stock to come of, 
 as old a family as any in the county, only 
 on the wrong side generally as to polities, 
 when there tvere politics worth thinldng or 
 fighting about ; the older branch, but Par- 
 liamentarians ; the younger branch managed 
 better, stuck to the king, and are in the 
 House of Peers. And I hear your father is 
 following the family ways — "Whig, or even 
 Jacobin, or one of those pliilanthropists 
 who are worse, always minding other 
 people's duties. Don't flush and blush, child. 
 People cannot help what they inherit. I 
 have no opinion of people who change their 
 family politics or religion ; although it is a 
 pity for them, of course^ if they liappon to 
 bo wi'ong. Your father is a gentleman and 
 a Danescombe — Danescombe of Dauesrombe. 
 The pedigree is right enougli. One thing I 
 regret — ho should not have gone into trade ;
 
 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 235 
 
 though, certainly, younger branches and 
 decayed branches sometimes must. It is 
 better than begging, or than that ^ile la^v. 
 I've seen enough of that — always leading 
 one on and then turning against one and 
 making charges for talking and writing. 
 Beggarly ! and the king's service certainly 
 does not pay, or the Church, unless there is 
 a family living. However, that's uo affair 
 of yours. You may come here whenever you 
 like, and Amice likes. Only don't flush and 
 blush, or thi-ow yourself into raptures. And 
 if Amice lends you a horse, Avhich she may, 
 to ride over the Down, together, don't be 
 nervous and thi*ow it down, as town children 
 arc apt to do. And if you can help it, don't 
 be a philanthropist. I will have nothing to 
 do with philanthropists. You look a sen- 
 sible little maid, but rather soft and melt- 
 ing — the kind of stuff those people are 
 made of. And being in the family it is 
 dangerous— infectious too. And remember,
 
 236 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 I will have nothing to do with philanthro- 
 pists. There, go and play, or ride, or any- 
 thing you like." 
 
 And drawing the Bandana handkerchief 
 over her face, she dismissed us. 
 
 " But," I said to Amice, when we were 
 alone, " it is a little trying that your grand- 
 mother should be deaf just in that way. It 
 makes one feel dishonest not to answer her, 
 especially when she says things about other 
 people. If my father is what she calls a 
 philanthropist, I am sure the last thing he 
 does is to mind other people's duties. The 
 motto he gave me was, ' Other people's 
 rights and our own duties.' Is it quite im- 
 possible to make your grandmother under- 
 stand ? at least about father ? " 
 
 " Quite," said Amice. " And if she did 
 hear that motto, she would not like him any 
 better for that. She would think he meant 
 it was his duty to look after people's rights 
 and wrongs ; and that is exactly what she
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 237 
 
 objects to, as to the black people you are all 
 so fond of. But I like the motto, Bride. 
 Only it might lead one no one can tell 
 where ; at least w?e." 
 
 The nearer I came to Amice the deeper 
 the mystery in her seemed. It was like 
 wandering through a great northern pine- 
 forest, in the twilight ; glimpses here and 
 glimmerings there, and everything seeming 
 to lead into a new infinity. 
 
 "What had the shadows been which had 
 lain so deep in her early life that they had 
 made the faith natui-al to her a Manicheau 
 dualism ? that terrible faith always ready to 
 spring on us from the darkness of sin and 
 sorrow, that evil is co-eternal with good, 
 and in might perhaps co-equal.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 i "WHOLE ocean of new life and tlioiiglit 
 was opened to ns through the advent 
 of Madame hi Mar<|uise des Onnes, Claii-e, 
 and Leontine. There was also an Abbe, 
 madame's brother, who occasionally appeared, 
 but preferred to live in a large seaport 
 town about fifteen miles off. M. I'Abbe, 
 like many of his comitrymen, was not 
 complimentary to his land of refuge, llv 
 said the most comprehensible thing to him 
 in the character of the English was their 
 passion for the sea. He could for himself 
 see no way of living in such an island of 
 ^^ brotnllar(V^ and ^^ bourr/coisic,^^ except by 
 keeping constantly in "view the one means 
 of escape from it.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 239 
 
 Among the foui- we had brought before 
 us four sufficiently characteristic phases of 
 the France of our clay. 
 
 Madame was Eoyalist to the core, with 
 the chivalrous old French loyalty which the 
 death of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette 
 enkindled into a passion and exalted into a 
 religion. Monarchy and martyixlom united 
 had surrounded the son of Saint Louis with 
 a halo so mystically interwoven of earthly 
 and heavenly splendours, that to see prosaic 
 fact through it would have passed the 
 penetration of any mortal vision. Li the 
 later days of Louis XIV., and through the 
 reign of Louis XV., her family had lived 
 a good deal in retirement on their estates. 
 The ladies of the race especially had not 
 shared in the sins and splendours of that 
 coiTupt and corrupting couit, but had lived 
 in familiar and gracious intercoui-se with 
 their peasantry, never contemplating the pos- 
 sibility of a state of things in which great
 
 240 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 Indies could do anything but reign and 
 distribute alms, and peasants desire any- 
 thing but rapturously to receive alms and 
 serve. 
 
 That there could be any great fimdamental 
 wrong in the nature of things which made 
 it the highest hope of the majority of 
 labouring men to end life as dependent 
 pensioners on the bounty of the minority 
 never occurred to them. How could it 
 have done so ? 
 
 Such ^Tongs intertwined with the inner- 
 most fabric of society are, I suppose, seldom 
 perceived from within, until the slow growth 
 of abuse at last interferes with some elemen- 
 tary law of gravitation or cohesion, and the 
 whole edifice crumbles into decay or crashes 
 into revolution. 
 
 Ikisides, unfortunately, it is precisely 
 those who would most gladly correct such 
 abuses who naturally come least in contact 
 with them. Their own virtues clear the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 241 
 
 region immediately around them, and if 
 anxious and foreboding politicians talk of 
 ''Augean stables," they reply, incredu- 
 lously, " "Was ever stall cleaner swept than 
 mine ? " 
 
 Madame des Ormes from the first seemed 
 to single out our family. She was sure 
 there was French blood in our veins — the 
 highest compliment she could pay ; there 
 was a peculiar curve of the eyebrow in my 
 mother's picture and in me, never seen in 
 pure English faces. It was true. My 
 mother's grandfather had been one of the 
 exiles in the Huguenot persecution. Ours 
 was the only house in the town she 
 volunteered to enter. My stepmother she 
 considered a little '-'• lourgeoke^'' but my 
 father's manners she approved. Some 
 people's manners she said were too much 
 for them. Like badly made dresses, you 
 could never forget that they had them on ; 
 and some people were unfortunate enough 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 to have no manners at all. In the last 
 category she included Madam Glanvil, who 
 was the only person I remember her speak- 
 ing of with a little tinge of hauteur. 
 
 Her natural social level was that of the 
 Countess of Abbot's Weir. And I well 
 remember the glory reflected on Madame 
 and Claire, and even on Leontine, when the 
 Countess's coach stopped at Miss Felicity's 
 door, and the Earl and Countess went up 
 into Madame's apartment. 
 
 I never knew what happened at Coiu't. 
 Madame, with M. I'Abbe and Claire, had 
 been invited there with all ceremony, and 
 (mtertained with all state ; and Claire told 
 me Madam Glanvil had offered to have them 
 driven home in the family coach. But her 
 mother had declined. " She was only a 
 poor emigr^e,''^ she had said to Madam 
 Glanvil, " and must disuse herself from 
 such pomps." To Claire she said that 
 nothing was so intolerable as that etiquette
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 243 
 
 of the province, or " the great airs of the 
 little noblesse." And she would never go 
 to Court again. 
 
 Nor was Madame altogether charitable to 
 Amice. She pronounced her a little wild : 
 Madame '' liked wild creatures in the forest 
 — they had a fine free grace of their own ; 
 but in the salon one never knew what they 
 would do next." "In a wokI, the whole 
 household was Insular." I am afraid to 
 Claire, Madame said, with a little com- 
 passionate shrug, " in fact, English.'''' 
 
 Madam Glanvil, on the other hand, whose 
 classifications were rather generic than 
 specific, at once set down Madame la 
 Marquise as fi-ivolous and given up to 
 vanities, M. I'Abbe as an ancient dandy, 
 and Claire as a butterfly, and all three as, 
 "in short, French^ The only person of 
 sense and character among them, she con- 
 sidered, was Leontine ; but then Leontine 
 was a Protestant, and made bargains, and
 
 244 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 did her work, and came to church like any 
 other Christian, " so that she was scarcely 
 to be called a Frenchwoman." I tried often 
 to bring my two groups of friends together, 
 but in vain. 
 
 The inevitable result of contact was effer- 
 vescence. Pressed closer, it would have 
 been explosion, at least, on Madam Glanvil's 
 side. So I had to desist. 
 
 Meantime, whatever else we learned or 
 unlearned, the meaning \ of many words 
 expanded wonderfully through our inter- 
 course. 
 
 French and English ceased to be the 
 simple, plain definitions they had been. It 
 was evident to us there were so many kinds 
 of French. And to Claii-e, at least, it soon 
 became evident that there were many kinds 
 of English. 
 
 Then that word "i(>w;v/cow," how many 
 puzzles it made for me ; and also how many 
 it helped to explain, in endeavoui'ing to
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 245 
 
 translate it to myself or to Claire ! How 
 much of English and French social life and 
 politics lay wrapped up in it ! Had we 
 absolutely no synonym for it ? 
 
 I had heard Madam Glanyil use the 
 expression ^^town^s folic'''' with something 
 of the same unflattering emphasis. But 
 then, with her, that meant not merely the 
 lack of a social distinction, but of country 
 habits. She would have used it with 
 little less depreciation for fashionable men 
 about town than for unfashionable men 
 and women in Abbot's Weir. It meant 
 people who could not ride, or hunt, or 
 tramp about ploughed fields ; ejffeminate 
 creatures who carried umbrellas, and could 
 not brave a herd of cattle. It had indeed 
 to do in some measure with trade. Cer- 
 tainly trade was not to be accepted except 
 as a last resource, and people who con- 
 trived to get rich by trade were to be set 
 down.
 
 i^r, AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 But, there even, was no sharp impassable 
 harrier between gentry and " towTi's folk." 
 People of good family had (unfortunately, 
 of course) to live in to\\Tis, and to go into 
 business. Claire's father, on the contrarj^, 
 under the ancien regime^ would have had 
 formally to resign his sword, and his cachet 
 of nobility, before he could demean himself 
 by trade. 
 
 In England there was, indeed, an aristo- 
 cracy prouder, perhaps, than in France ; 
 but prouder because less fenced in. Pride 
 had to hold firm the barriers law had left 
 open. Titles which in the third generation 
 ceased entirely, and a nobility continually 
 recruited from the bench, the manufactory, 
 and the counting-house, were, in a very 
 difi'erent sense, sacred from the great old 
 noblesse of France. 
 
 " Middle classes " — did that express the 
 thought better? In some respects. But
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 247 
 
 it also expressed the difference. Middle ; 
 that is, between the upper and lower. But 
 where the upper ended and the lower be- 
 gan, who could say ? Especially as neither 
 upper, middle, nor lower, were stagnant 
 waters resting at their own level, but all 
 in a continual state of ebb and flow in and 
 through each other; so that, with all due 
 respect to the catechism, the " station to 
 which God has called us " is by no means 
 a fixed line, always perfectly easy to de- 
 termine in a society where nothing is sta- 
 tionary. 
 
 " Pleasant old barriers," Madame des 
 Ormes thought, ''when people were not 
 always struggling upwards, but content 
 with each other, themselves, and their 
 station." There were '' stations " in those 
 days ; and people had " leisure." 
 
 "Pleasant, picturesque old barriers," my 
 father said, "except that, within them all 
 the time was gathering the flood which
 
 2+8 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 swept all burners away, and much soil, 
 and much life, which no floods could re- 
 store." 
 
 Pleasant evenings they were, when Ma- 
 dame des Ormes and my father sat on each 
 side of the great chimney in the Stone 
 Parlour. Madame always preferred the 
 Stone Parlour. She said to Claire, who 
 told me, that the Oak Parlour was like a 
 state-chamber without the court ; and the 
 great drawing-room like a mortuar}^ chapel 
 without the sanctuary, only entered once 
 a year, and terribly hoiirgeoise. But the 
 Stone Parlour was like France, like the 
 hall of an old chateau where they met after 
 the chase. There were the sporting-dogs, 
 and the great logs flaming and crackling, 
 and cheerful talk, and going in and out. 
 
 My father spoke French easily, and 
 understood it perfectly, a rare accomplish- 
 ment for Abbot's Weir in those days ; and 
 to Madame his manner had a deferential
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 249 
 
 courtesy which she said always reminded 
 her of the old Court. 
 
 Her dress I cannot so clearly recall; I 
 suppose because it always seemed such a 
 natural part of herself. But her manner 
 charmed me inexpressibly. There was such 
 vivacity and such suavity in it ; such grace 
 and such freedom. And then her whole 
 person seemed an organ of speech. She 
 spoke not only with her voice, or with her 
 eyes, like Amice ; but with every graceful 
 bend of her throat, and turn of her arms. 
 And as to her hands, their movements were 
 like music. They made her conversation 
 as sweet and as varied as singing. 
 
 She was, however, not without serious 
 anxiety about my father. She thought 
 him, like her poor brother the Abbe, too 
 ^'^ philosophe ;''^ and had not they proved 
 in Paris to what that led ? Many a frag- 
 ment of their conversation used to drop 
 into our minds, as I was playing with Claii-e
 
 250 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 or Piers by the window, or as we sat silent 
 by the fire, and interested me more than 
 anything we were doing. 
 
 They liad many a debate over Arthur 
 Young, the traveller, in the course of which 
 all kinds of curious details of old French 
 manners and customs used to come out. 
 
 And those debates were sure never to 
 spoil any one's temper. Many sparks were 
 struck, but there were no explosions. 
 
 There was a common ground of tender 
 pity for human creatures in general ; and a 
 sense that the world, and even the Church, 
 in every corner of it, even to that most 
 unsearchable comer within oui'selves, needs 
 a great deal of setting right. 
 
 Mr. Young, she would admit, might 
 draw but too truly gloomy pictui-es of 
 famished men, di'iven in herds across the 
 hills, unfed and unpaid, leaving their own 
 fields untilled to render serfs' sen-ice to the
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 251 
 
 "But, Mr. Danescombe — ^he should not 
 have left out the other side — there are 
 hard masters and hungry labourers in all 
 societies. Or are you, perhaps, so fortu- 
 nate as to have none ? Are those parish 
 apprentices you spoke of all exactly con- 
 tent, and well fed? Mr. Young should 
 have come to Des Ormes; and you also, 
 Mr. Danescombe. We would have enter- 
 tained you with an hospitality, not quite, 
 I hope, unworthy of your own. You should 
 have seen how the services our peasants 
 had to render us in harvest or vintage or 
 even on the roads were made quite a fete 
 to them. We killed our oxen and our 
 fatlings, and spread tables for them on the 
 terraces of the chateau ; and we, the ladies 
 of the Castle, waited on them ourselves, 
 and the sons and daughters of the Castle 
 danced with them afterwards on the green- 
 sward. It was Arcadian ; the costume of 
 the peasantry blending with the toilettes
 
 252 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 of the old Court (each, of course, keeping 
 to their own), the prince hand in hand with 
 the peasant. Our peasants complain of our 
 preserving forests for the chase ? They 
 were never so happy as when they accom- 
 panied us in the chase, and I assure you 
 many a fine head of game found its way 
 from the seigneur's pouch to the labourer's 
 pot au feu. They were afraid to complain, 
 perhaps, you think? Quite the contrary. 
 I see here nothing of the free speech there 
 was between our people and ourselves. 
 The quick wit of our countr}''men and 
 countrywomen, moreover, I assure you, 
 could give us as good as we gave." 
 
 (I had heard Amice say much the same of 
 the negroes.) 
 
 "They say our noblesse did not care for 
 the poor. Mr. Danescombe, never believe 
 it. Did not our mother teach us to make 
 petticoats and jackets for the old women ? 
 And did not we dress the young brides from
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 253 
 
 our own wardrobes with oui' own hands ? 
 Did we not make dainties for our sick, 
 and tend them by the sick-beds ? You 
 should have seen our Christmas fetes and 
 distributions. The people adored us. So 
 completely of the past as all that is, I may 
 say it now without vanity. They said no 
 garments wore, and no dainties tasted, like 
 those which came from our hands. Ah^ 
 Mr. Danescombe, they make me forget the 
 Sermon on the Mount, those false accusers. 
 But in those days, believe me, there were 
 little secrets of that kind between us and 
 the good God, which, if the poor deluded 
 people forget, perhaps He will not. You 
 think we were an exceptional family. My 
 mother was perhaps an exceptional woman. 
 Her piety had been learned at Port Royal, 
 and some of oui* friends did sometimes 
 accuse it of being ' tant soil pen Janseniste.'' 
 One of our estates was not far from Port 
 Royal des Champs. As children, we were
 
 2 54 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 sometimes taken to see the ruins. My 
 mother could explain them : the church 
 wliich they filled with corn for the poor, 
 the gardens and fallen cells made sacred 
 by their prayers, made doubly sacred 
 by their charity; and she would never 
 leave those poor upturned gi'aves without 
 praying in memory of the holy souls of 
 those who had lain there. As a child, I 
 never quite knew whether, because by some 
 inexplicable mischance they had missed the 
 way of salvation and needed our prayers, 
 or because we needed theirs. It was diffi- 
 cult. They were so saintly, so heroic, and 
 yet condemned by those who should have 
 known. Ah ! Mr. Danescombe, sometimes 
 a sad thought comes to me about our 
 France. I wonder ^^'llethe^ it can be pos- 
 sible, what our poor Leontine says, whether 
 indeed we have driven away our heroes 
 and saints, who could have rescued us ; 
 and so have nothing left to our country
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 255 
 
 but the martyrs, who can only die for us. 
 These, you know, the good God, and the 
 malicious foe, suffer not to fail in any age 
 or communion. The tradition of those good 
 men and women of Port Eoyal lingered 
 long among the poor of the district. And 
 we called our little daughter herself after 
 one of them, Claire — fi'om the friend of 
 St. Francis, founder of the poor Claires — 
 and Angelique after the Mere Angelique." 
 
 "It was a beautiful and tender tribute, 
 Madame," my father said. " May Made- 
 moiselle be worthy of both her patronesses." 
 
 " I do not say there were no evils that 
 deserved chastisement, and needed correc- 
 tion," she would say. " God knows there 
 were many. Our Great Monarch had been 
 too much like a god, for a mortal man, 
 though a son of St. Louis, safely to endure. 
 There are traditions of Yersailles we would 
 willingly blot out. But we were changing 
 all that. We ! Mr. Danescombe, the poor
 
 2s6 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 noblesse whom your Whigs abuse, and 
 whom our Jacobins have guillotined. "Was 
 it not we, alas ! who commenced the Revolu- 
 tion ? Did not M. de Noailles (M. le Mar- 
 . quis) propose equal taxation, the purchase 
 from our order of certain feudal rights, and 
 the absolute abolition of others, such as the 
 corvees^ or any compulsory service without 
 compensation ? And Mirabeau, and M. de 
 Lafayette, mistaken as some of us may 
 have thought them, were these men of the 
 bourgeoisie or of the canaille ? We had 
 true instincts. We felt the tide must 
 tura,*was turning, and that we must lead 
 it. And did we not try ? We, and even 
 our king ? " 
 
 " You did try nobly, madame," my father 
 said, sorrowfully, " at last." 
 
 "Ah, I know; it was too late. The 
 stream was a flood. The tide was a deluge. 
 But how could we tell ? What could we 
 do ? It was, indeed, too late."
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 257 
 
 "Ah! Madame," my father said very 
 gently, " I am afraid all reforms are too 
 late which wait until the tide turns. All 
 reforms which save from revolution must be 
 not with, but against the stream. God grant 
 we find this out in time. God grant England 
 may not silence her heroes, and only be left 
 her martyrs ! " 
 
 But little Claire ! Madame des Onnes, 
 charming and sweet as she was always, 
 remained a foreigner, an exile, with all her 
 sweet easy grace, a little apart, on an eleva- 
 tion which we never- forgot, and I am not 
 sure that she did. 
 
 But Claire was our own from very early 
 days, our very own, with a difference, a 
 fascinating difference of nature, of tradition, 
 of ideas, of tastes, which made her always 
 as fresh and interesting as a new story. 
 
 If Amice lifted me outside our home, not 
 without a shock, so as to see that in a new 
 
 VOL. 1. S
 
 258 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 light, Claire lifted us outside Abbot's "Weir, 
 and even England, and that without any 
 shock. She saw everything and every 
 person through such a sunny medium, and 
 made the world so delightfully larger. 
 
 For one thing, she learned English, 
 which her mother never attempted, and 
 Leontine and M. I'Abbe never achieved 
 further than as a means of commercial 
 intercourse with the "barbarous people" 
 who had, they confessed, received them 
 " with no little kindness." She learned it 
 carefully, thoroughly, only to the end 
 deliciously blending her own idioms with 
 ours, and giving to our English a clear 
 staccato definiteness and delicacy which 
 pointed it, as often she pointed my work, 
 with the last finish of her accurate fingers. 
 
 And she taught Piers and me, iu return, 
 her clear, graceful French, enjoying our 
 amusement with her mistakes, and never 
 laughing at oui's.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 259 
 
 Claii-e was not exactly a child, according 
 to oui' English, ideas. She had no shyness, 
 or awkwardness ; she seemed to have been 
 born with that gracious tact, and that ready 
 savoir faire which made the wheels of every 
 day's life run smoothly. Where we were 
 self-conscious, possessed by self, she was 
 self-possessed, possessing herself, and all her 
 faculties. 
 
 It was her natural tendency to agree with 
 people, and please them if possible ; to find 
 out their angles to avoid them ; just as in 
 our Teutonic natures there is often a 
 natural tendency not to agree with people, 
 and to find out their angles to rub against 
 them. Hers was the graciousness of a true 
 aristocracy, not instilled by maxim, but 
 infused by the life of centuries. Stiffened 
 into a maxim, it might have read, " Yield ; 
 because it is our right to command.'''' Through 
 all the courtesy there was a touch of coui'tly 
 dignity which made half its charm.
 
 26o AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 It was a sunny atmosphere that Claire 
 lived in, a positive sunshine, like that of 
 her own land of purple vintages and golden 
 harvests ; she actually saw things softened, 
 illumined, with all possible lights brought 
 out, and the shadows glowing with reflec- 
 tions of the light that dwelt within herself ; 
 whilst many of us see things at best through 
 a grey, clear, defining, unillumining day- 
 light, and pride ourselves in consequence on 
 our truthfulness; as if sunshine were not 
 as true as mere daylight. If Amice was 
 like a Northern forest, full of glades and 
 mysteries, Claire was like her owti sunny 
 land of vintage and harvests, and valleys 
 that stand so thick with corn that they 
 laugh and sing. 
 
 To make every- day life as pleasant as wo 
 can to every one around us may not be the 
 very highest aim, but it is a good golden 
 background for the severer work of life 
 to be relieved upon. And it was on
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 261 
 
 that golden ground Claire's world was 
 painted. 
 
 Brave she was by instinct, and by 
 chivalry of race, and ready to make her 
 little person a shield against the world for 
 those she loved or pitied, as she proved that 
 memorable afternoon when she kissed me 
 with the foolscap on. 
 
 But the joys of the fight were not at all 
 comprehensible to her. Her delight was to 
 make us all at peace with one another, and 
 pleased with one another, and also with 
 ourselves. 
 
 When she came into your house, she 
 always found out something pleasant in it 
 you had scarcely noticed before. If your 
 windows looked south, there was nothing so 
 pleasant as a sunny aspect ; if due north, 
 there was nothing like looking out from the 
 cool shadow into the sunlight. 
 
 She taught us first to see how beautiful 
 our quaint old town was, in its green
 
 2 62 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 hollow of the hills. She had especial 
 delight in our wild flowers. The banks of 
 the three ancient roads which wound from 
 it up the hills, worn deep by the rains and 
 tread of centuries, were, she said, each one 
 a hanging garden of delights, from spring 
 to winter. She and Piers and I used to go 
 ou endless expeditions laden with baskets, 
 which in spring were filled with masses of 
 primroses, violets, or blue hyacinths. These, 
 of course, we knew and loved of old ; but 
 Claire had a liberality in her love of flowers 
 beyond ours. Everything came well to 
 her ; things we had called weeds and 
 rubbish, she contrived to make lovely nose- 
 gays of; ragged robins, meadow-sweet, the 
 starry hemlock, " twelve o' clocks," fox- 
 gloves, woodrufie, blue corn-flowers. She 
 made her mother's little apartment gay all 
 the summer tlirough, and when flowers 
 failed she brought in leaves. Leaves were 
 luT speciality, she said, bramble leaves
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 263 
 
 above all. She said the flowers were her 
 English china, better than aU the old 
 majolica and Sevres in the chateau, and the 
 autumn leaves were her English bijouterie 
 and bric-a-brac, richer than all the old 
 bronzes, and ormolu, with their metallic 
 crimsons, and bronze, and gold. And " in 
 shape," she said, "flowers were nothing to 
 leaves." " The good God," she thought, 
 " having left out the colours and perfumes, 
 had all the more beauty to spare for the 
 design." 
 
 How choice and fair she made that little 
 room of her mother's ! 
 
 In the corner was a little, low, narrow 
 bed, like a couch ; but Leontine had draped 
 it with white muslin, always fresh, and con- 
 trived a coverlid out of some antique 
 brocade, so that it looked like a canopied 
 throne. 
 
 Then there was a little table, with a 
 mirror behind it, and upon it a few relics,
 
 2 64 AGA INST THE STREA M. 
 
 such as a jewelled snuff-box, with a portrait 
 of a grandmother, powdered and frizzed, 
 and one or two toilet ornaments. And in 
 the window a common deal table, draped 
 with muslin and frills, and always set with 
 those rich masses of flowers, or leaves, in 
 common white earthenware dishes, but 
 looking as natural and at home as if they 
 were growing on their own green banks. 
 In a comer, a little table like an altar mth 
 a crimson antependium, and a delicately- 
 carved, pathetic ivory crucifix on it ; and a 
 richly-bound prayer-book. On the walls 
 were four or five miniatures grouped, and 
 one larger head, often tenderly garlanded, 
 of the king, Louis XVI. 
 
 "We had nutting and blackberrying expe- 
 ditions, Piers and Claire, and Dick Fyford 
 and I, Claire declaring that no fruit in the 
 garden was equal to blackberries; and 
 many an opportunity was afforded to Piers
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 265 
 
 of risking his life by gathering nuts and 
 berries from impossible places up precipices 
 and over rivers. 
 
 Our old abbey buildings, also, were great 
 bonds of union between us. 
 
 These, Claire said, were as much hers as 
 oui's, being built by the monks, who be- 
 longed to all Christendom, when there was 
 one Christendomj long ago. And she made 
 the old arches and towers live to us, by 
 telling us of an abbey close to her father's 
 chateau, where real living nuns had been 
 cloistered, where the lamp was always burn- 
 ing night and day in the church before the 
 altar, and a sister kneeling before it, until 
 the Kevolution had quenched the lamp, and 
 scattered the sisters, and turned the convent 
 into a factory, and the church into a granary. 
 
 I suppose Claire would not have been a 
 great reformer of wrongs ; although she 
 certainly would not consciously have in- 
 flicted any. She would scarcely have
 
 2 66 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 pulled of her own will against the stream. 
 Side by side with any one on whom that 
 strain of energy devolved, she could lighten 
 the strain inconceivably by delicately indi- 
 cating how to avoid all avoidable collisions, 
 by keeping rowers and steersmen awake to 
 every counter-cui-rent and every possible 
 favouring breeze, above all, by keeping alive 
 in the hearts of the toiling crew, that 
 generous candour, open to every palliation 
 and every excuse for opponents, which is not 
 a little hard to maintain when the stream 
 against which they pull is the injustice 
 and selfishness of angry human beings. 
 
 As a sufferer of wrong, no one could be 
 sweeter than she was. Her hardest epithet 
 for those who had murdered her father, and 
 driven them all houseless and destitute 
 from their fail*, bright country home, was 
 "deluded." Or if any severer denuncia- 
 tions ever passed her lips, they were always 
 levelled at an impersonal " Ow," which had
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. ib-j 
 
 deluded every one. "Our poor, dear, 
 deluded people," she would say, "they 
 (' ow ') persuaded them that they would find 
 gold mines in our chateaux, that they 
 would be Eentiers, and all their starving 
 childi-en live like princesses, without im- 
 poverishing us. I am sure they never 
 meant to ruin us. How could they, with 
 all mamma and papa had done for them all 
 their lives, and grandmamma before ? We 
 loved them, these poor peasants, and surely 
 they had loved us. They had danced us on 
 their shoulders, and sung us songs, and 
 laughed with delight when I lisped in imi- 
 tation. I was their own in a way much as 
 my mother's. And all at once they (ora) 
 came from Paris, and told them a quantity 
 of falsehoods about the cruelties of the 
 noblesse; perhaps also some true things, 
 but certainly not what we had done. And 
 those poor peasants went mad. And one 
 night Leontine came in the middle of the
 
 268 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 night, and drew me out of bed, and huddled 
 on anything she could find, and took me by 
 the little back door, where my mother was 
 waiting, through the wood, up the hill, to a 
 cabin, our woodman's hut. And there we 
 looked down and saw the dear old chateau 
 illuminated more brightly than for any of 
 our fetes, but for the last time; flames 
 breaking out of every window, and those 
 poor, mad people shouting and dancing 
 round it, where they used to dance with us, 
 or wait for alms. They did not steal our 
 things. They burnt them, Leontine said. 
 And all because of what some wicked nobles 
 had done somewhere else to other people. 
 Was it not strange ? L6ontine said it was 
 because of things further off even than that. 
 She said things more precious than ormolu 
 and ebony had been thrown into the flames 
 in old times; men and women, men and 
 women of God ! — her forefathers, she 
 meant, — the Huguenots. She said it was
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 2O9 
 
 God ' avenging His elect ' at last. But ive 
 did not bum the people, nor hurt them, nor 
 any one that we could help. And it seems 
 a very strange kind of justice that my 
 father, who was good to every one, should 
 suffer because some one else's grandfather 
 was cruel to people we never saw." 
 
 Poor little Claire ! ^^ SolidariW was a word 
 that did not exist in her French. And yet 
 in other ways she understood well that 
 nations are not mere conglomerations of in- 
 dependent atoms, but that there is a deep and 
 terrible reality in the words "national life," 
 
 Leontine had her own interpretation of 
 events, to which she steadily adhered. She 
 was the only one among them to which the 
 history of the Eevolution did not seem an 
 unintelligible chaos. " Generation after 
 generation. Monsieur," she said to my father, 
 " our poor France has driven away her 
 heroes, those who could and would have 
 saved us. It was not only that they hunted
 
 270 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 the Protestants away. It was the strongest 
 and bravest of all the Protestants they 
 hunted away. The gentle and timid and 
 helpless and womanly remained. The merij 
 the soldiers of the faith, the heroes, fled or 
 escaped, to you, to Holland, to Prussia. Our 
 strength and courage went to strengthen 
 you in Holland, England, and Prussia. 
 And so when the flood came, there were 
 none strong enough to stem it. Even ladies 
 and gentlemen of Port Eoyal, Catholics 
 of the truest, spoke too much truth for 
 France, and they were trodden down. Gene- 
 ration after generation our poor France has 
 driven away her heroes, and silenced her 
 prophets, and now she has none but her 
 martyrs left. But those, monsieur, believe 
 me, of the best. All our great ladies and 
 lords can suff'er cheerfully, nobly, piously, 
 like apostles. There is blood in France as 
 pure and noble as any in the world. But 
 alas, it seems only to flow for the scaffold."
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 T7EEY soon after my first day with Amice 
 Glanvil at Court, it was decreed that 
 Piers' s path and mine were to separate ; that 
 he was thenceforth to attend Mr. Rabbidge's 
 boys' school, whilst I was to continue with 
 Miss Felicity, with the understanding that 
 three afternoons a week were to be spent 
 with Miss Loveday, learning embroidery, 
 fine needle-work, dress-making, and milli- 
 nery in general, as far as Miss Loveday's 
 exquisitely neat fingers and her very sub- 
 dued tastes could lostruct me. 
 
 It was a teiTible day to me that first 
 morning when Piers and I had to go our 
 different ways to school.
 
 2 72 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 He had a longer walk than mine, and had 
 to start first. 
 
 He was full of glee. The last remnants 
 of childish attire had been laid aside. There 
 was in those days at Abbot's Weir no inter- 
 mediate boys' costume. Piers sallied forth, 
 fully equipped in a miniature edition of 
 my father's " coat, hosen, and hat." 
 
 His very shoes had a manly tramp in 
 them, as he marched down the street. And I 
 stood alone watching at the old arched door, 
 feeling terribly feeble, "female," and forlorn. 
 
 At the comer he had the grace to halt 
 and turn, and give me a protective masculine 
 wave of the hand, before he disappeared, so 
 glad and free in his sensible, tight garments, 
 made of things that would not tear, made 
 so as to be convenient for climbing and 
 racing, and everything I delighted in, and 
 in general with a view to being as little 
 obtrusive as possible ; while mine seemed 
 expressly constructed with a view to being
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 273 
 
 obstructions in the way of OYerything it was 
 best worth while to do, and filling up all 
 the leisure sjDaces of one's life with making 
 and mending them. 
 
 He had good reason to be glad ; and for 
 him I was proud and glad too. I would not 
 have had him go a day longer Tsdth me for 
 all it cost me. 
 
 To him it was a beginning, and through 
 him for me also. But to me it was an 
 ending also : so many things that are begin- 
 nings to brothers are endings to sisters. 
 
 He was to go on and out in so many ways 
 — out into the world of boys and of men, 
 out into the world of Greek and Latin, and 
 all kinds of wisdom, ancient and modern — 
 whilst I was to go no fui'ther than round and 
 round Miss Felicity's history and mythology 
 lessons, the geographical lists of countries, 
 provinces and capitals, and the first rules of 
 arithmetic, my only progress being out 
 of "round hand," businesslike and legible, 
 
 VOL. 1. T
 
 2 74 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 into '* small hand, " angular, ladylike, and 
 indefinite. 
 
 In my double relation to Piers I felt 
 smitten. As his sister, I was never more 
 to be his constant, hourly companion ; as his 
 '' little mother," I could watch over him and 
 l)rotect him no more, except as a helpless 
 hen-mother a brood of ducklings. He was 
 launched into an element where I could not 
 follow him ; he must make his own way, 
 meet his own temptations, encounter his 
 own dangers, fight his ovm battles, whilst 
 I could only cluck and flutter my wings 
 (tu the shore. 
 
 And he liked it, of course ; he delighted 
 in it, felt a generous trust that I delighted 
 in for his sake, and had no idea, should never 
 have any idea, I determined, that when he 
 was quite out of sight, I went into tlie Stt)ne 
 Parlour, and seizing the kitten, rushed up 
 with her to the inmost recess of the old 
 nursery, which was now my bedroom, and
 
 AGAIiYST THE STREAM. 275 
 
 seating myself on the little cot that had been 
 his, where I used to say my prayers beside 
 him, and had felt like his little mother, cried 
 bitterly, and sobbingly told pussy that now 
 I had no one to take care of but her, '' no 
 one in the world ! " 
 
 The old church bell striking the school 
 lioiu' broke in on my lamentations. I sym- 
 bolically anointed my head, and literally 
 washed my face, crossed the market-place, 
 and got into the school before the chimes 
 had finished ; so that no one, I flattered 
 myself, would see I thought it anything 
 but a step onward in life, to have a brother 
 at Mr. Eabbidge's, 
 
 But all the morning the tears kept veiy 
 near the brim, and I felt Amice Glanvil's 
 searching, wistful eyes on me. 
 
 At the end of the morning school, when 
 we were left alone, as we often were, whilst 
 she took the dainty little repast prepared for 
 her dinner, she came up to me and grasped
 
 276 AGAIXSr THE STUEAJf. 
 
 lioth my hands witli one of her abrupt, 
 passionate movements. 
 
 " Bride, I cannot be sorry for you," slie 
 said. " I have tried. But it is of no use. 
 X(^xt to being a man one's self, there can 
 be nothing better than to see one's brother 
 beginning to be on the way to be a man. 
 Think of what they can do ! Think of what 
 he is going to leara to be, he and Dick 
 Fyford, and all of them. They are gone to 
 learn to be soldiers, to fight for England, 
 and sailors to man great ships for England ; 
 and doctors, to cure people's diseases, and 
 lawyers to set people's wrongs right. (Foi- 
 that is what I think lawyers are for, though 
 Granny says they are only to puzzle right 
 and wrong together so cleverly that no one 
 can find the way through without paying 
 toll to them.) And masters to employ 
 men ; or writers of books to teach men. 
 IToAV can you be anything for a moment 
 but glad that Piers is beginning ? "
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. i-;i 
 
 For she kiiew quite well I was not very 
 glad. 
 
 " I shall be very glad to-morrow, Amice," 
 I said. 
 
 " Then be glad to-day," she replied. " I 
 have no patience with people who keep turn- 
 ing their faces the wrong way, and sighing 
 and crying because we must leave things 
 behind. Of course we are always leaving 
 things behind. Look the other way and see 
 what is before you, Bride Danescombe." 
 
 " I do not mind leaving things behind, 
 Amice," I said, thinking her a little hard. 
 "It is being left behind that is hard to 
 bear." 
 
 "Then donH be left behind," she replied, 
 with her rare little laugh. "Go on ! I 
 mean to go on, although I am only a girl. 
 But then, of course, I have no brother, so I 
 have to do for both. But if I had a brother, 
 — a brave little brother like Piers — wouldn't 
 we set some things right, together ! "
 
 278 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 " But I raimot go on, Amice," I said. 
 " You know I have come to an end of Miss 
 Felicity's lessons. And there is nothing to 
 do but to go round again, and to sit still 
 and sew." 
 
 " Sitting still and sewing is dull," she 
 said, emphatically. " Happily for me Chloe 
 does all that." Then, suddenly, her face 
 flushed as with a new thought, and she 
 added, "Do you know. Bride, I think I 
 will ask Granny to let me learn sewing 
 with you. One never knows what one may 
 have to do. And in learning of Miss Love- 
 day one learns so many things more than 
 she knows she is teaching." 
 
 That was a bright prospect for me — after- 
 noons with Amice and Miss Loveday ; and 
 I left the room greatly cheered. 
 
 But in the afternoon little Claire had 
 made some excuse of a message to our 
 house, and we crossed the market-place 
 l)aok to Miss Felicity's together.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 279 
 
 She said nothing ; but as she put her dear 
 little hands in mine, I know well what she 
 meant. She wanted me to feel I had some 
 one to take care of still. And in the even- 
 ing, between Amice's bravery and Claire's 
 soothing, I felt almost as bright as Piers 
 himself when he swung into the passage, 
 and his joyous voice rang through the 
 house, calling for me. 
 
 There was a button to sew on and a rent 
 to mend in those clothes which I had 
 envied as so imperishable. And there was 
 a history, brief but vivid, of the encounter 
 with a bully of a big boy, which had occa- 
 sioned the damage. 
 
 Piers had begun his battle of life with 
 wrestlings literal enough. He did not tell 
 me the name of his adversary, nor could I 
 gather quite clearly the issue of the en- 
 counter, except what might be inferred from 
 the explanatory statement that " he could 
 not help it, he could not see any fellow,
 
 2 So AGALXST THE STREAM. 
 
 whatever his size, throw stones at old black 
 C'ato, and call him names, and not try to 
 stop it, and if the big fellow were to try it 
 again, he must do the same." 
 
 He had, moreover, a suspicious mark on 
 his eyebrow, which, with all his anxiety to 
 conceal it, and all my bathings, grew deeper 
 in tint, so that Piers had to select retired 
 places, lest my stepmother's vigilant eyes 
 should detect that he had begun boy life so 
 pugnaciously. 
 
 It was plain that tliere would bo points 
 enough at which my brother's life and mine 
 would meet, and that he would need his 
 little mother at many extremes yet. 
 
 Apparently, the " big fellow " did try it 
 again, for Piers came back a few da3's after- 
 wards with a peculiar twinkle in his eyes, 
 and with a scar on his cheek. 
 
 " He did not give it me," was all he 
 vouchsafed in explanation, " it was only a 
 corner of a stone I came against in falling.
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 281 
 
 liiit he was under, and I don't think he will 
 try it again." 
 
 " Other people's rights and our own 
 duties ? " I ventured to ask. 
 
 But Piers would explain no fiu'ther. 
 
 " It was a mean thing, in his opinion, to 
 brag of things out of school before girls." 
 
 The force of the contrasts was strong on 
 him. 
 
 Dick Fyford, however, told me enough to 
 show that Piers had won his spurs. 
 
 Claire and I were decidedly proud of 
 Piers's black eye. It consoled us for being 
 girls and being left behind, to find him so 
 unmistakably a boy. 
 
 But all our small public opinion was by 
 no means unanimous on the subject. My 
 stepmother " must beg that for the future, 
 if Piers could not keep out of quarrels, he 
 would quarrel in a gentlemanly way, with 
 gentlemanly boys, and not get his face dis- 
 figured in a manner which made it unfit for
 
 282 AGATNST THE STREAM. 
 
 ladies to sit at meals with him ; and, above 
 all, not in his new coat. She wondered 
 Mr. Danescombe did not take the matter 
 more seriously. But it was so difficult to 
 persuade him to take anything about the 
 children seriously." 
 
 My father merely said — 
 
 "My dear, it is impossible not to envy a 
 little the sanguine Quixotism of these young 
 people. Piers," he added, " if your black 
 eye would begin to set the whole world 
 and all its wrongs right, it would be a very 
 well-invested black eye ; and no doubt you 
 are of opinion it will. 13ut remember you 
 have only two eyes, and only one new coat, 
 and for our sakes, please take proportionate 
 care of each." 
 
 Piers and my stepmother were both 
 silenced, neither seeing clearly where the 
 little sarcasm fitted best. 
 
 But Miss Loveday was profoundly serious 
 on the subject.
 
 AGAIXST THE STREAM. 283 
 
 ''My dear Piers," she said, in her gentlest 
 voice, falling, as usual with her in agitated 
 moments, into the "plain" Quaker mode 
 of speech, "thee will never win the true 
 battles in that way. The weapons of the 
 true warfare are not fists." 
 
 "But boys have not any others, Miss 
 Loveday," he said. 
 
 "It is written, ' Love your enemies,' " 
 said Miss Loveday, with tears in her eyes ; 
 " Do good to them that hate you." 
 
 " But I have no enemies," reiDlied Piers. 
 "As to loving peoj)le who hurt other 
 people who are helpless, I cannot. And 
 as to doing them good, I think it is 
 the best way of doing them good to stop 
 their doing harm. I might have hated 
 him if we could not have fought it out ; 
 but now there is no need to think of it any 
 more." 
 
 Miss Loveday shook her head. 
 
 "Pride can forgive an injury it has
 
 2 8+ AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 avenged," she said. '' Besides, we are told 
 what to do if we are smitten." 
 
 Piers made no rci)ly ; in the art of verbal 
 self-defence he was not strong. Besides, 
 Miss Loveday was a woman, and deaf; and 
 to defend oneself against a woman in the 
 vehement form argument is apt to appear to 
 take with deaf people seemed to him, I 
 believe, unchivalrous. But he said after- 
 wards to me — 
 
 " It says nowhere. Bride, that we are to 
 do nothing but be patient if other people are 
 smitten on the cheek. And if the Sermon 
 on the Mount means that, it must be meant 
 for men, not for boys. Grown men have 
 the Assizes and the Parliament, and all that 
 kind of thing to stop other people from 
 doing wrong ; but we have nothing except 
 our fists. Besides, there is the Old Testa- 
 ment. David and all of them often had to 
 
 fight." 
 
 Claire and I don't think you at
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 285 
 
 all wrong," I said, " nor, I think, does 
 father." 
 
 But this did not console Piers. I think 
 he was more ashamed of our admiration 
 than of Miss Loveday's remonstrance. 
 
 " It is hard to have such a fuss about 
 nothing, only because I was so unlucky as 
 to get hit where it would be seen. Boys 
 are always getting hit, of course." 
 
 In Ulphilas' translation of the Scriptures 
 for the Goths, we are told that the translator 
 left out the Books of Kings, thinking his 
 Goths too likely to draw such encourage- 
 ment as Piers did from the warlike proceed- 
 ings therein recorded. 
 
 But Piers had plunged into the primitive 
 age of lynch-law and "vigilance com- 
 mittees," with which the world is always 
 renewing its boyhood for young human 
 creatures and young nations. 
 
 Homer seemed to him an imperishable 
 picture of life ; only he could never make
 
 2 86 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 out how the Greeks could both scold and 
 light. The scolding, he thought, was the 
 natural share of those who could not fight ; 
 and the talking, of those who could not 
 work, or make. 
 
 Criticism he considered the natui-al pro- 
 vince of women, or of men who have no- 
 thing to do. It was not till later that he 
 learned how some talking is making, and 
 some words are battles. 
 
 The streams of our lives seemed running 
 very far apart. For as Piers's life went 
 forth more and more into the din and 
 tumult, mine Avithdrew more and more into 
 retirement. 
 
 So much farther apart are boyhood and 
 girlhood, than womanhood and manhood, 
 the parting and distribution necessary to 
 the deeper meeting and uniting. 
 
 Even our amusements separated. Clair(> 
 and I pursued our strawberry, and flower 
 and blackberry gatherings, and nuttings,
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 287 
 
 our gardenings, and rambles alone, whilst 
 Piers and Dick Fyford \Yere shouting over 
 cricket and football. 
 
 It was chiefly in making and mending 
 that our lives seemed still linked. 
 
 For ministries in the form of mending 
 there was no lack of opportunity. And 
 Piers, now promoted to a real carpenter's 
 bench and perilous workman's tools, con- 
 structed many a basket and box, and even 
 chair and table, for Claire and me. 
 
 Amice, he always continued to maintain, 
 was "almost as good as a boy;" besides, 
 she had the glory of three additional years ; 
 and with her (his self-banishment from 
 Court having been tacitly annulled in con- 
 sideration of Granville Sharp's achieve- 
 ments) he had many a daring gallop, not to 
 say steeplechase, over the downs and moor- 
 lands. 
 
 But it was always the flowers which 
 Claire loved that he contrived to remember,
 
 2 88 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 and to pour out now and then in a caro- 
 less, casual way from his pockets, when he 
 returned from his expeditions, and to em- 
 power me, if I liked, to carry over the 
 way. 
 
 Meantime, we sewed, and Loveday lis- 
 tened, like Joan of Arc to her "voices," 
 and talked to us. That longing for the 
 liberation of the negro slaves which she had 
 inherited from her Quaker ancestry, and 
 which had been as a patriotic passion to her 
 lonely life, could not but come out in those 
 long quiet afternoons. At first she hesi- 
 tated to speak of it before Amice. But one 
 day, when she had broken off in some story 
 of wrong, Amice rose, and coming close to 
 her, siiid, in those low clear tones Loveday 
 always heard so well — 
 
 " Do not stop. You cannot tell me worse 
 than I know. AVlion I was a child, I heard 
 the cries from the i)unishment house ; 1 saw 
 the spiked collars, and the scars. You
 
 AGAhYST THE STREAM. 289 
 
 cannot tell me worse than I fear. Tell me, 
 if you can, anything to give me hope." 
 
 And Loveday told us the story of the 
 struggle, so that the far-off fields of Penn- 
 sylvania and I^ew England, where John 
 Woolman and Anthony Benazet toiled for 
 emancipation until not one Quaker held a 
 slave, grew to us a land of sacred romance. 
 
 Dear to us also was the story of the poor 
 bruised and half-blinded slave, Jonathan 
 Strong, left to starve by his master, how he 
 was nursed, and fed, and tended, and clothed 
 by Granville Sharp and his brother the 
 sui'geon ; and then how out of that move- 
 ment of natural pity, obeyed, grew the 
 whole noble immortal work of Granville 
 Sharp's life ; how, alone, against the stream 
 of lawyers and judges, and against the law 
 itself embodied in an iniquitous decision, 
 and confirmed by the opinion of Blackstone, 
 he turned the stream, and brought round 
 lawyers and judges, and at last the very 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 2 90 AGAINST THE STREAM. 
 
 law itself, constraining Lord Mansfield to 
 demand the broad issue which he had so 
 long evaded, and to pronounce the liberating 
 words, that whenever a slave touches 
 English soil he is free, thus virtually pro- 
 nouncing slavery itself a wrong, and laying 
 the axe at the root of the tree which fi-om 
 that moment began unperceived to totter to 
 its tall. 
 
 So we sat and sewed and listened afar 
 oil" to the echoes of many warfares, until, 
 under Miss Loveday's influence, sewing 
 itself became ennobled to me, and seemed 
 an essential part of the warfare. 
 
 " For in all wars," she said, "the battles 
 are but the crises of the campaign, the tests 
 of strength long trained and long tried. 
 People are victorious by vii-tue of what they 
 were before the battle. It is not only the 
 men who wield the weapons that fight, but 
 the men who bring the meat and bread, the 
 men who till and plough, and sow the corn,
 
 AGAINST THE STREAM. 291 
 
 and herd the cattle, and," she added, with 
 a growing intensity in her voice, " the 
 women who bake, and milk, and chum, and 
 sew, and bind up the wounds." 
 
 Men's work : tilling, herding, ploughing, 
 and fighting. 
 
 Women's work : cooking, sewing, and 
 nursing ; that is, making raw material of all 
 kinds, material, mental and moral, corn, 
 axioms, principles, into bread for daily use 
 and lint to bind up actual wounds. 
 
 Claire and I grew quite content with 
 our feminine lot. But Amice said, " some 
 women had to take their share in the 
 actual fighting, she believed." 
 
 " Queens," I conceded. 
 
 " All women have to be a kind of queens," 
 she said, "when there are no men in the 
 family. There is no Salic law which screens 
 orphaned or widowed women fi'om taking 
 theii' place on the throne, or their part in 
 the battle."
 
 292 AGAIiXST THE STREA.V. 
 
 And sometimes she said to Miss Love- 
 day, ''It is the waiting that is so trj^ing. 
 If it were all real working, I would not 
 mind a bit wliat the work was. It is the 
 waiting and doing nothing for any one that 
 eats into one's heart like rust." 
 
 "Waiting need not he doing nothing," 
 Loveday said. '' I have had a good deal of 
 it, and I have not found it so." 
 
 '' Waiting may be waiting on God," she 
 added very softly, " and I think there is 
 little work as good as that." 
 
 And as we looked at her patient face, so 
 pale and worn, and yet so often radiant from 
 within, we imderstood something of what 
 she meant. 
 
 END OF VOL 
 
 TIRTI K ANU CO., I'RlNThKS, CITV BOAK. LOSDOH. 
 
 (- Q