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 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 &C., etc., &C. 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 ''LADY AUDLEY'S SECEET," "VIXEN," 
 " ISHMAEL," ETC. 
 
 in Z:f)xtt Volumes. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN AND EOBEET MAXWELL 
 
 illLTOX HOUSE, 35, ST. BRIDE STEEET, LUDGATE CIKCUS, 
 
 AXD 
 
 14 AXD 15, SHOE LAXE, FLEET STEEET, E.G. 
 
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 [All rights reserved.]
 
 R. MAXMKLL, SHOE LA>'E, FLtEi' STBEET, LOXDOX, E.C.
 
 ?5 3 
 
 V, I 
 
 
 CONTEXTS TO VOL. I. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. * Oh, Marked from Birth, and Nurtured tor 
 
 >. 
 
 -.x THE Skies 1 
 
 (^ II. ' "Whence and what art Thou, execrable 
 
 Shape?' 20 
 
 III. 'All that hate Eyes to Weep, Spare one 
 ^■> Tear with Me ' 34 
 
 - IV. ' So WOE-BEGONE A ThING WAS ShE ' . . . 57 
 
 ', V. ' By Degrees the Human Blossom Blows ' . 91 
 
 ^ VI. ' Out of Sight, beyond Light, at what Goal 
 
 ^ may we Meet?' 122 
 
 o 
 
 — VII. The Xew Cinderella 156 
 
 : VIII. A Young Proud "Woman that has "Will to 
 
 T Sail with 217 
 
 IX. ' But as the Days Change Men Change too ' . 233
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/onethingneedful01brad
 
 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 ' OH, MAKKED FROM BIRTH, AXD X'UETURED f OK THE 
 SKIES ' 
 
 The gray old walls of Lashmar Castle rise in 
 a massive pile above a broad reach of the Middle- 
 shire Avon, which here makes a bold and sweeping 
 curve, and dallies with its rushy banks, as if some 
 spirit of these Lashmar woods were the Cleopatra 
 to that watery Antony. The stream has such a 
 languorous flow just at this point ; the river here 
 spreads itself into such a placid expanse, that one 
 would hardly credit the current with force enough to 
 turn a water-mill or drift a barge. It has an Arcadian 
 
 air, a river made for Cbloe and Phillis, and Strephon 
 VOL. I. B
 
 ^ ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 and his flock, and not for tlie vulgar uses of daily 
 li fe. Yet that very river waxes utilitarian enough , and 
 carries all foul things which a seething populace cares 
 to cast into its waters ; it puts on the dark livery of 
 smoke and dirt, only a few miles to the east of those 
 Lashmar woods yonder, where the great manu- 
 facturing town of Brumm obscures the heavens with 
 the smoke of numberless chimneys, and taints the 
 atmosphere with the mixed odours of the people. 
 But here there is no hint of that great industrial 
 centre. No one basking on the green slope above this 
 glassy stream, between a foreground of bulrushes 
 and a background of immemorial oaks, would sus- 
 pect the existence of such a place as Brumm within 
 ten miles. 
 
 Yet, although its smoke made no stain upon 
 the blue sky above yonder gray towers, Brumm 
 had an influence on the inhabitants of Lashmar 
 Castle, and that by no means a pleasant influence ; 
 as witnessed by her ladyship's temper upon this 
 particular morning, as she sat at breakfast in the 
 oak parlour, with her step-son, Lord Lashmar, 
 and the Eton boy, her son.
 
 ' OH, MAEKED FROM BIETH ' 3 
 
 Her ladyship was the Dowager Baroness Lash- 
 mar, and a woman of mark. She was one of the 
 daughters of the illustrious Marchioness of Pitland, 
 famous alike for wealth, talent, and force of cha- 
 lacter. Old Lady Pitland had given laws and 
 fashions to society for nearly forty years before 
 she was translated to that better world in which, 
 perhaps, there are neither coal mines nor leaders 
 of fashion: and she had transmitted much of her 
 managing power, and something of her talent and 
 charm to her daughters, the eldest of whom, as 
 Duchess of Malplaquet, was said to be quite the 
 cleverest matron in England, having managed to 
 marry all her daughters to rich men, and to have 
 dressed and fed them in their spinsterhood, and 
 maintained appearances in town and country on 
 something under five thousand a year. 
 
 Lady Lashmar's powers as an economist had 
 not been so severely taxed ; for the Lashmars were 
 rich in stocks and shares, as well as in that luxury 
 of the well-born, broad acres ; and they could smile 
 serenely at the decay of rents. Lady Lashmar had 
 always had as much money as she wanted, and
 
 *l ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 some of her tastes were costly ; but there was 
 not an ounce of butter or a tea-cup of milk 
 wasted at Lashmar Castle ; there was not a dirty 
 corner, or an unauthorised follower in the great, 
 rambling, old house in Grosvenor Square, which 
 had belonged to the Lashmars from the time of 
 the Pitts and the Foxes, when that aristocratic and 
 exclusive square first came into being. Lady 
 Lashmar had the eye of a hawk, and a mind 
 constructed on the principle of the elephant's trunk, 
 which can uproot an oak, or pick up a pin. Lady 
 Lashmar's mind could grapple with public ques- 
 tions ; and it could stoop to the details of the store- 
 closet and the larder. Yet, it must not be supposed 
 that Lady Lashmar's bodily presence was ever 
 beheld in kitchen or store-room. Her mind did 
 all the work. She had a housekeeper who trem- 
 bled at her frown, and who obeyed her slavishly : 
 and through this faithful servant she was able to 
 rule every corner of her house, to measure every 
 meal eaten by her household, to be assured that the 
 footmen did not consume more than their due 
 allowance of table-beer, and that the maids did not
 
 'OH, MARKED FROM BIRTH* 5 
 
 burn their candles in the small hours reading novels, 
 or making bonnets. 
 
 Lady Lashmar had been ten years a widow, 
 had enjoyed just a decade of undisputed dominion ; 
 she was eight-and-thirty, handsome, straight as a 
 dart, with not a wrinkle or a gray hair. Mrs. 
 Monsoon, the Princess's own particular dressmaker, 
 had been heard to say, in the confidence of friendly 
 intercourse, that Lady Lashmar was the finest 
 figure she had on her books, and the greatest screw. 
 
 * I don't believe I have made twenty pounds 
 out of that woman in all the years I have worked 
 for her,' said Mrs. Monsoon ; ' but she shows off 
 my gowns to perfection, and she brings me new 
 customers.' 
 
 An age in which scandals about the aristocracy 
 are the current coin of conversation had not fur- 
 nished one hint of evil about Lady Lashmar. It 
 was of her that Lord Blandville, the cabinet 
 minister, said, 'My friend Lashmar's wife has all 
 the virtues. She is handsome, well informed, ac- 
 complished, dignified, chaste as Diana, and the 
 most disagreeable woman of my acquaintance.'
 
 6 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Lady Lashmar was not a person who got into 
 violent passions when she was angry. It was said 
 that old Lady Pitland had been wont to swear like 
 a trooper at anybody v/ho crossed her imperious 
 will. Lady Lashmar's anger took a more dignified 
 and a more intense form. This morning the finely- 
 cut face was almost livid with passion as her lady- 
 ship handed the local paper, the Brumm Inde- 
 pendent, to her step-son. 
 
 They were sitting at a cosy round table in one 
 of the prettiest rooms in the castle. It was a small, 
 low room, in which the old oak-panelling had been 
 painted white. The ceiling was decorated with 
 cupids and garlands. The high, narrow mantel- 
 shelves were lit up by bright little bits of old orien- 
 tal china. The curtains and chair-covers were of 
 the delicatest chintz ; and in every spot where flowers 
 could be placed were bowls and shallow vases of 
 the famous Lashmar roses, red and yellow, now 
 in the plenitude of their summer beauty. So long 
 as the roses lasted, Lady Lashmar would have no 
 other flowers to decorate her rooms. It was in 
 vain that the head-gardener put forward his rarities
 
 ' OH, MARKED FKOM BIRTH ' 7 
 
 from the stoves, ' I will have no exotics while 
 I can have roses,' said Lady Lashmar. 
 
 She sat with her face to the window, as one who 
 need not fear the light. 'No, there was not one line 
 that told of advancing years upon the hard, hand- 
 some face. Those finer emotions which plough the 
 human countenance, the cark and fret of sensitive 
 natures, had never affected Lady Lashmar. She 
 had almost always had her own way, and she had 
 almost always been happy. When it pleased Heaven 
 to take her husband, after six years of married life, 
 she bowed to the rod. He was twenty years her 
 senior, and a chronic invalid. It was better that 
 he should be called away at fifty years of age 
 than that he should drag out a life of sufiering to 
 the scriptural three-score and ten. Lady Lashmar 
 thought that ProvideDce would have done well to 
 take her husband's afflicted son and to leave her 
 own boy, a fine healthy youngster, to fill the place 
 which the deformed step-son could never hold with 
 proper dignity. 
 
 Yes, deformed. It is one of those words which 
 are hardest to sav. The old servants who had
 
 S ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 kuown Lord Lashmar from his cradle said that 
 his back was a little weak ; but his step-mother 
 was not a person to sophisticate, or to use soft 
 words. She knew that his spine had been curved 
 in his infancy, a weakly child, bom of an over- 
 educated hyper-intellectual mother, and a father 
 who had lived not wisely but too well. She knew 
 that in the years to come that bent back would 
 get gradually worse, that narrow chest would invite 
 the attack of phthisis. She told herself that Hubert, 
 Lord Lashmar, would never make old bones ; but 
 she feared that he might live long enough to 
 marry and leave some sickly son who should blight 
 the prospects of her boy, Victorian, the very em- 
 bodiment of physical power and fresh unblemished 
 youth. 
 
 She had not been unkind to her step-son. She 
 was far too clever a woman, to make that irreparable 
 mistake. She resolved in the very beginning of 
 things to live pleasantly with her husband's son. 
 It would be so much better for them both ; espe- 
 cially for her. Lashmar was fourteen when his 
 father died, and Victorian was five, a difference of
 
 'OH. MARKED FROM BIRTH ' 9 
 
 nine years ; and Laslimar \vas old for liis years. 
 He had never been at any public scliool. He had 
 not ventured to face the light-hearted republic of 
 a University. What should he, the pariah, the 
 stricken one, do there, among the athletic and 
 robust? He had been brought up in cotton- 
 wool, as it were. He had a middle-aged tutor, who 
 had been with him from his tenth year, and who 
 remained with him as librarian and secretary ; 
 and he had an old servant. He had travelled a 
 good deal with the tutor and the servant. He 
 had read more than most young men of five-and- 
 twenty. He was a good classical scholar, and had 
 some knowledge of science. In a word, he was a 
 sickly lad, who had been brought up and nourished 
 upon books ; but he had fine instincts, and a strong 
 humanitarian feeling. The villagers about Lashmar 
 adored him. He drank tea with the old women, 
 read to them when they were ill, wrote letters for 
 young and old, talked politics or metaphysics with 
 the deep-thinkers, and carried the light of a noble 
 intellect into every house he entered. 
 
 Lady Lashmar was intense in politics, and all
 
 10 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 her ideas upon legislation were of the good old 
 Tory flavour. She hated Eadicals ; and her greatest 
 affliction in life was that Lashmar Castle should lie 
 as it were in the very bosom of revolution. Brumm 
 was Eadical to the backbone, and Brumm was only 
 ten miles off. Brumm was a centre of Freethinking 
 and Nihilism; and Brumm was at her door. If 
 Aladdin's African magician had been at hand to 
 whisk off her castle to the furthest north, or the 
 remotest west of England, her ladyship would have 
 paid him handsomely for the operation. But 
 Lashmar Castle w^as planted deep in that detested 
 soil ; and as her ladyship despised the dower house, 
 which was hers by right, and loved this baronial 
 mansion and its much statelier surroundings, she 
 was fain to endure the vicinity of Brumm and its 
 forty thousand operatives. 
 
 ' It is an outrage against the decencies of life,' 
 she exclaimed. 
 
 * What's the matter, mother ? ' asked Lashmar, 
 looking np at her with his deep-sunken eyes, 
 thoughtful eyes of darkest hazel. * Is it anything 
 ^bout Boldwood ? '
 
 'OH, MARKED FROM BIRTH* 11 
 
 * Of course it is about Boldwood. That low 
 creature has been holding forth at another meeting. 
 They seem to be perpetually having meetings at 
 Brumm.' 
 
 * They have very few other pleasures,' murmured 
 Lashmar. 
 
 ' They have theatres and circuses and horrid low 
 music rooms,' said her ladyship. ' Surely those are 
 enough for them ! ' 
 
 * Enough for the frivolous majority ; but you see 
 there is a superior minority who have learnt to think 
 and who want to say their little say upon great 
 public questions.' 
 
 ' Those thinkers and spouters are the pest of 
 society,* exclaimed Lady Lashmar, throwing her 
 paper aside, and going on with her breakfast, with an 
 air of finding no savour in either truffled chicken or 
 the Arabian berry. ' Over-education is the greatest 
 evil of the age. Thank heaven the people them- 
 selves are beginning to feel the burden of it. After 
 clamouring for free schools and higher teaching they 
 are beginning to groan under the tyranny of com- 
 pulsory education.'
 
 12 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 * Perhaps that is because when they cry for 
 bread we give thera a stone,' answered Lash mar 
 in his gentle, meditative way. * We cram 'ologies 
 down the throats of starving children ; we feed 
 babes and sucklings with grammar and logic, and 
 then wonder that they are not grateful.' 
 
 ' That class of people never are grateful,' said 
 Lady Lashmar, calmly ignoring her stepson's drift. 
 * But, fortunately, there are not many such wretches 
 as Boldwood, or we should have this castle sacked, 
 and find ourselves turned out upon the high road. 
 Boldwood is worse than Eobespierre. Just read his 
 tirade upon the unequal division of property, his 
 revolutionary language about great landowners, and 
 his savage insolence about the Duke of Northerland.' 
 
 * Boldwood always goes too far. Yet there are 
 generally some flashes of sense amidst the cloud of 
 rhetoric. I read that speech of his before you came 
 down to breakfast. He pleads the cause of the 
 yeoman rather cleverly — when one considers that 
 as an operative he cannot have very keen sympathies 
 with the agricultural class. His idea of dividing 
 some of our great farms into small holdings, and
 
 * OH, ^rARKED FEOM BIKTH ' 13 
 
 selling them to the peasantry, to be paid for by 
 instalments, upon the same system as that on which 
 needy people buy pianos, is not at all bad.' 
 
 'And a pleasant place England would be for 
 decent people to live in if it were chopped up 
 in little bits to please such men as Mr. Boldwood. 
 But, really, Lashmar, I believe you are at heart a 
 Eadical,' said her ladyship. 
 
 * No, I am a progressive Conservative ; and I 
 believe the truest conservatism consists in doincr 
 
 o 
 
 the utmost we can for the people. We can only 
 teach them to respect the privileges of property by 
 letting them taste the sweetness of possession. 
 There is no stauncher Conservative than your 
 working-man who has saved a hundred pounds.' 
 
 * You always talk like a book, Lashmar,' 
 sneered her ladyship ; * I should like to hear you 
 speak in reply to this man Boldwood, at a great 
 public meeting.' 
 
 In her heart of hearts she was thinking how 
 sorry a figure this hunch-backed stepson of her's 
 would make upon a public platform ; how poorly his 
 low, grave tones would sound after Boldwood's base
 
 14 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 bellowing, a voice which thundered and reverberated 
 through a vast building, as if it were the roar of 
 Bashan's mightiest bull. 
 
 ' Would you really like to hear mc speak ? * 
 asked Lashmar, smiling faintly. 
 
 Was there ever a young man who has read and 
 thought deeply who does not long to give speech to 
 his thoughts ? It is to satisfy this desire that 
 Mechanics' Institutes are built ; it is for this that an 
 Athenseum is a pleasant thing in a town. 
 
 ' I should like this blatant beast to be answered ! ' 
 replied her ladyship somewhat evasively. 
 
 ' Then I will do my best to answer him next 
 Wednesday week/ said Lashmar. * There is to be a 
 Conservative meeting at the Town Hall on that 
 night. Colonel Spillington, the new Conservative 
 candidate, is going to address the electors. It is 
 expected that Boldwood will be in full force, and 
 that there will be a row. Spillington has asked me 
 to support him — and — yes, I really should like to 
 answer Boldwood. Mine will be a very poor speech, 
 of course ; a very tame reply to Boldwood; who is
 
 ' oil, MARKED FROM BIRTH ' 15 
 
 a born orator ; but I shall have educatiou on my 
 side — ' 
 
 'And prestige,' added Victorian, who had been 
 too busy with his breakfast to speak before. ' I only 
 wish I were old enough to tackle Boldwood. I'd 
 make his hair curl.' 
 
 ' What hideous expressions these boys pick up at 
 Eton,' said her ladyship, with a shiver. Then 
 with a fond approving look at the handsome lad, she 
 said proudly ! 
 
 * I hope you will be in Parliament before you 
 are ten years older, Victorian, and that you will be 
 a distinguished politician.' 
 
 * Oh, I don't mind going into the House in ten 
 years time,' answered the boy easily, ' but I should 
 like to have my fling on the continent for a few 
 years first, as Henry St. John had, don't you know, 
 before he sat for the family borough. iSTothing 
 enlarges a fellow's views like diplomacy. I shall get 
 on to one of the legations directly I leave college, 
 Paris, if possible, and see as much as I can of life 
 before I pin myself down to politicg.' 
 
 * Paris is an admirable place — for a young man
 
 16 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 who wants to waste his time pleasantly,' said 
 Lashmar, smiling at the embryo diplomatist. 
 
 ' Did you waste your time there ? ' asked 
 the boy. 
 
 ' No, Vic. I am not the kind of person to 
 succeed in Parisian society. My gifts are in 
 another line.' 
 
 ' Poor Old Lashmar ! You are out and away 
 the cleverest chap I know. When I think of 
 how much you've read, and how much better you 
 can construe a Greek play than our Toffs in the 
 sixth, I take off my hat to you. Do speak next 
 Wednesday week, Lash, and give that Radical 
 chap a good shaking.' 
 
 'We'll hear what Spillington says about it,' 
 answered Lashmar quietly ; ' if he wants me, I'll 
 speak. He is to stay here the night before the 
 meeting. You don't mind, do you, mother ? ' 
 
 Lord Lashmar always deferred to his step- 
 mother in all household matters, invitations, and 
 engagements. There were only four rooms in 
 Lashmar Castle in which he reigned supreme. 
 The library was one, and his own sitting-room.
 
 ' OH, MARKED FROM BIRTH ' 17 
 
 bed-room, and dressing-room were the others. 
 Outside those rooms he exercised no authority. 
 The Lashmar library was the finest in Middleshire 
 ^one of the finest in England. The apartment 
 which accommodated that noble collection of 
 books was worthy of the treasures it contained. 
 It was long and lofty, with a fire-place at each 
 end, the oak chimney-pieces carved by Grinling 
 Gibbons, the ceiling enriched with oak carving, 
 the book-cases iu harmony with chimney-pieces 
 and ceiling. Lord Lashmar's writing table and 
 reading desk, his capacious arm-chair and dainty 
 little tea-table, only made an island of furniture 
 in the vast expanse of oak flooring, relieved here 
 and there by an oasis of old Indian carpet. The 
 only bright colouring in the room was furnished 
 by the books. The Lashmars had been con- 
 noisseurs in bookbinding for the last hundred 
 years. They had spent thousands upon that 
 elegant art. They had " wasted " thousands, said 
 the unappreciative outer world, persons slow to 
 understand that the case of a shabby-looking 
 
 duodecimo Elzevir ought to cost four or five pounds. 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Laslimar's sitting-room opened out of the library 
 and would have seemed a large room in a smaller 
 house. It was lined from floor to ceiling with 
 bookshelves, containing the young peer's own 
 particular library, those books which had been 
 the one luxury of his life. New books, or new 
 editions, for the most part — books in several 
 languages — books that had been their owner's 
 consolation in many a day of bodily weakness 
 and weariness : for Lashmar's life had been made 
 up of brief intervals of health between long 
 periods of illness. Those halcyon days of well- 
 being were very sweet to him. At such times 
 he spent almost all his life out of doors, and 
 revelled in nature's loveliness as only a highly- 
 trained mind can revel ; tasting the most infinite 
 details in the feast of beaut}, the lights and 
 shadows on the petals of a primrose, the sheen on 
 a beetle's wing; enjoying every variety of at- 
 mosphere and colouring, every form of lowliest 
 life, with that sensitive instinct for nature which 
 breathes in every line of Wordsworth's descriptive 
 verse.
 
 OH, MARKED FKOM BIRTH ' 19 
 
 He had travelled much, and knew nature in 
 her most glorious aspects, but he had no need 
 to go far afield for beauty. The woodlands 
 around Lashmar, the low hills and pastural 
 valleys, the winding Avon and the English 
 hedgerows furnished a banquet which always 
 satisfied the longings of his soul. 
 
 ' If I had but any one to whom I could tell 
 all my foolish fancies, I should be ever so much 
 happier,' he said to himself sometimes regretfully, 
 ' but there is no one. Victorian would only laugh at 
 me as a queer old chap; and my lady would 
 lift her eyebrows and inwardly wonder if there 
 was a strain of madness in the Lashmar blood.'
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 ' WHENCE AND WHAT ART THOU, EXECRABLE SHAPE ? ' 
 
 Colonel Spillington dined at Lashmar Castle 
 upon the night before the meeting. He was 
 a line average specimen of the British officer, 
 bluff, outspoken, unintellectual, right-thinking and 
 honest, a staunch Conservative, and a thorough 
 gentleman. He was a man of just sufficiently 
 good family to be tolerable in the eyes of the 
 great Lady Titland's daughter. There was at 
 least no taint of trade in his lineage, and he was 
 therefore qualified to sit at the table with the 
 lady whose wealth had for the most part come 
 out of the coal pit, and who naturally scorned 
 the idea of commerce. He w^as not elated about 
 his election, and had dark doubts as to the power 
 of the Radicals in Brumm. 'There must be 
 some respectable people in the place,' he said.
 
 ' WHENCE AND WHAT ART THOU ? ' 21 
 
 'I fear not/ replied her ladyship. 'If there 
 were any respectable people such a person as 
 Boldwood would not be allowed to exist.' 
 
 •'Unfortunately for us, mother, the days are 
 past when an obnoxious citizen could be sent 
 about his business, or even put in the pillory. 
 Boldwood is peaceable enough in his private life, 
 I believe, although he is somewhat truculent on 
 the platform.' 
 
 ' Somewhat :' echoed Lady Lashmar, ' you 
 have such a namby-pamby way of expressing 
 yourself. I have never heard the creature speak, 
 but I have read his virulent nonsense in the 
 papers, and that is enough.' 
 
 ' Virulent, sometimes, I grant, but not always 
 nonsense/ said Lashmar quietly. ' The man's 
 ideas are L^topian, but he expresses himself with 
 a certain rough vigour, and with a strain of 
 poetry — in fact, the man is a born orator — and 
 although he is for the most part illogical, he has 
 occasional flashes of common-sense.' 
 
 ' Who is this Boldwood ? ' asked the Colonel, 
 trifling with an olive ; ' everybody has been talking
 
 22 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 to me about him since I consented to stand for 
 Brumm ; and, as I am a stranger in the land and 
 his reputation is entirely local, I confess myself 
 still in the dark as to this powerful antagonist 
 whom I am to meet to-morrow night.' 
 
 *Mr. Boldwood is a high priest of advanced 
 Badicalism,' answered Lashmar. ' He believes 
 in the divine right of every man to lay hands 
 upon any other man's possessions. He is strong 
 upon the old thesis, la propriete c'est le vol. 
 The first man who enclosed a bit of ground was 
 the enemy of the whole human race. He is the 
 sworn foe of the landowner and the manufacturer. 
 His gods are Eousseau and Karl Marx. He would 
 level all ranks, wage war against all privileged 
 classes, raze this house of ours to the ground, or 
 turn it into a hospital or a phalanstery, do away 
 with Monarchy and the House of Lords, and establish 
 a Eepublican senate of working men in which 
 the brain-workers or the professional classes 
 should be as one in three. He would have 
 universal peace — universal free trade : and pending 
 the falling in of other nations with these views,
 
 ' WHENCE AXD WHAT AKt THOU ? 2o 
 
 he would have England walk in gospel ways, and 
 turn her left cheek to be smitten by the hand 
 that has boxed her soundly on the right cheek.' 
 ' You say he is a good speaker.' 
 * I have never heard him ; but I am told 
 that he is magnificent, and his speeches read 
 like oratory. I am looking forward to the fun 
 to-morrow night. We may be in a minority ; 
 but there are plenty of Conservatives in Brumm, 
 in spite of her ladyship's doubts, and we shall 
 make a good light. From what I have heard 
 of Boldwood he is not altogether a ruffian — 
 indeed there are some people who declare that 
 he is a gentleman by birth, and took a degree 
 at Oxford. Yet I should hardly think this 
 likely, from the appearance of the man. He was 
 pointed out to me once in the street as I was 
 driving through Brumm — a giant with unkempt 
 hair, disreputable clothes, and a slouching walk. 
 I hardly saw his face, but T got a good idea 
 of his build and general style. He is a brass- 
 worker, earns high wages, and is said to be 
 almost a genius in his handicraft. He is not
 
 24 O^^E THING NEEDFUL 
 
 a native of Brumm ; and I don't think anyone 
 in the place knows much about his antecedents. 
 He is an infidel, and seems proud of his 
 infidelity. He came to the town seven years 
 ago, with a wife and a baby. The wife died 
 soon after his arrival, and he has not married 
 again. That, Colonel, is the full extent of my 
 information about Jonathan Boldwood.' 
 
 ' I am looking forward to my encounter with 
 the gentleman !' said the Colonel cheerily ! ' He 
 shall see that I can stand fire. But I look to 
 you to reply to him. I am no orator.' 
 
 ' A gentleman is always more than a match 
 for a cad,' said Victorian, who had been making 
 havoc with the peaches while his elders were 
 talking. 
 
 ' Xot when the cad is on his own ground, 
 and has an audience of five or six hundred 
 cads to back him up,' answered Spillington. 
 ' How many does your Town-hall hold, by the 
 way, Lashmar?' 
 
 * Fifteen hundred ; and of those you may be 
 sure more than half will be disciples of Boldwood ;
 
 ' WHENCE AND WHAT ART THOU '-. ^O 
 
 but that need not alarm von, as not half of 
 those are voters.' 
 
 The meeting was at eight o'clock, so the 
 house part}^ at the Castle took a late luncheon, 
 and started for Bmmm soon after tea. Supper 
 after the meeting, was to serve as a substitute 
 for the eidit o'clock dinner. This had been 
 duly explained to Colonel Spillington, who liked 
 his meals, and thoroughly approved of the 
 Lashmar chef. He laid in a heavy stock at 
 luncheon, calculating that there was a terrible 
 gulf to be bridged over before he should again 
 find himself face to face with substantial food. 
 He detested tea, and eakes and muftins, and 
 all those dainties with which Victorian gorcred 
 himself at five o'clock, when the little party 
 assembled in Lady Lashmar's morning room, full 
 of the approaching fray, 
 
 ' Do have some of these chocolate cakes, Colonel,' 
 said Victorian, with his mouth full, 'they're so 
 good.' 
 
 ' Thanks, no, mv bov. I haven't tasted sweets
 
 26 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 for the last twenty years, and I am afraid of tea. 
 It always turns to acidity. If,' with a deprecating 
 glance at her ladyship, * if I might have a brandy 
 and soda.' 
 
 * By all means/ assented the dowager graciously, 
 though she inwardly scorned a man who wanted 
 to be periodically sustained by brandy and 
 soda. 
 
 Lashmar rang the bell. ' A little Dutch courage, 
 eh. Colonel ? ' he said, laughing. 
 
 ' You're beginning to funk Boldwood, I know/ 
 said Victorian, 'and I don't wonder. He looks 
 like one of those fellows in Homer — Cyclops, don't 
 you know ? I've heard that he lived for ever so 
 many years with the gipsies, and that his wife w^as 
 a gipsy girl. He's a rough sort, Colonel ; and I 
 shouldn't wonder if he wanted to come to fisti- 
 cuffs with you on the platform.' 
 
 ' If he comes to fisticuffs, I'm ready for him,' 
 answered Spillington gaily, 'it's the talking that 
 will bother me.' 
 
 They started soon after six, intending to be early 
 at the Town Hall, where the candidate had to
 
 ' AVHEXCE AND WHAT AKT THOU ? ' 27 
 
 meet his aorent, and some of the Conservative 
 notabilities of Brumm. 
 
 It was a delicious summer evening, calm, peace- 
 ful, the atmosphere steeped in sunlight, the earth 
 breathing warmth and perfume : a delightful even- 
 ing on which to loll against the cushions of Lady 
 Lashmar'$ barouche, to be gently lulled upon Cee 
 springs, as the seventeen-handers trotted with rhyth- 
 mical beat along the level turnpike road — a lovely 
 road for the first half of the journey, a road between 
 fair green pastures and golden corn, by wood and 
 copse, and hillocky common land, where the dwarf 
 furze shone yellow amidst the purpling heather, 
 a road by peaceful village and Elizabethan home- 
 stead, by straw-yards populous with lazy kine, by 
 piggery and poultry yard, and duck pond, and 
 cattle trough. Colonel Spillington, who was of 
 the streets streety, thought that the country was 
 a pretty place enough in the westering sun, but 
 that it had an ugly smell, and must needs be the 
 abomination of desolation in the winter, except 
 for a hunting man. And Colonel Spillington had 
 nothing in common with that great creature, the
 
 28 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 British Sportsman. He had shot tigers and bears, 
 and had stuck pigs in Hindostan ; but he did not 
 appreciate the raptures of waiting about at corners 
 for a reluctant fox in a north-east wind, or a chilly- 
 drizzle. 
 
 'A charming country,' he said patronisingly, 
 ' but I wonder you can live so many months in the 
 year at Lashmar Castle ! ' 
 
 ' I am fond of the country, and Lashmar detests 
 London,' answered her ladyship. ' I dare say when 
 Victorian grows up I shall spend more of my time 
 in Grosvenor Square.' 
 
 ' I am not ofoinjr to live in London,' said 
 her son disdainfully. 'When I leave the L^ni- 
 versity I mean to see life. I shall travel all over 
 Europe. I mean to be a man of the world.' 
 
 'You had better stay in London if you want 
 to see life,' said the Colonel. ' The man who has 
 not learnt his Society-alphabet in London is always 
 half a savage. It is all very well to talk about 
 the superiority of foreign manners, but the man who 
 has been educated on the Continent is generally 
 a tiger ! '
 
 * WHENCE AND WHAT AKT THOU ? ' 29 
 
 ' Thoii I will be a tiger,' retorted Victorian 
 stoutly. 
 
 They were nearing Brumra, and there was an 
 unmistakable change in the atmosphere. The 
 fine gold had become dim. That pure radiance 
 of the westering sun was thickened and blurred, yet 
 beautiful exceedingly athwart the smoke-clouds. 
 The tall shafts began lo show against the blue 
 horizon, a veritable grove of chimneys ; and soon her 
 ladyship's splendid barouche, with its big bay 
 horses, white-wigged coachman, and powdered foot- 
 man, its emblazoned panels, and brazen harness, 
 was thrilling the souls of operatives and factory- 
 girls as it Hashed along the dingy crowded streets, 
 past the beer-sliops and the pork butchers, and the 
 general dealers, and the bakers, amidst odours of 
 tallow and herrings, and onions and shoe-leather 
 and beer. The street boys called out ' Hooray/ as 
 the carriage went by. One keen-eyed brat caught 
 the distorted profile of Lashmar's back, and cried 
 out, ' My eye 1 look at tlie hunchback.' 
 
 Lashmar's quick ear heard, and his thin lips 
 contracted ever so slightly, with the faintest expres-
 
 30 OXE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 sion of mental pain. He had heard just such a 
 speech many a time before. It did not come upon 
 him as a revelation. He knew that he was a creature 
 apart, marked out and branded by Nature. Wealth 
 and rank and culture could never undo what Nature, 
 in one blundering moment, had done. The hand 
 that had turned out so many thousands of plough- 
 boys and operatives, beggars and rascals, perfect 
 from head to heel, had faltered in the making of 
 the last Lord of Lashmar : and he must pay the 
 penalty of fate. He bore the disgrace as patiently 
 as he bore that other and heavier burden of neu- 
 ralgic pain, which had wrung his weak frame at 
 intervals ever since he could remember. He had 
 fought against long odds ; had exercised that poor 
 weak body of his to the utmost — rowing, riding, 
 walking. He, the hunchback, was a skilled gym- 
 nast ; but he had never exhibited his skill in any 
 public gymnasium. His own keen sense of the 
 ridiculous hindered any such foolish vanity. 
 
 The meeting had been convened by the local 
 Conservative Association, but it was not a ticket 
 meeting. The hall was to be open to all comers,
 
 ' WHENCE AND WHAT ART THOU ? ' 31 
 
 and the hall was crammed to overflowing before the 
 speeches began. The great oblong room reeked with 
 unwashed, or badly washed, humanity, a multitude 
 clad in long- worn corduroy and fustian, simmering 
 in the glare of the gas. To Lady Lashmar, seated 
 on the platform, that sea of faces in that coarse 
 flare of yellow light, suggested an over-populated 
 pandemonium. They looked like devils, some of 
 those operatives, to her unaccustomed eye. Malig- 
 nant devils — swarthy, grinning, lurid. 
 
 The chairman opened the business in a mildly 
 conventional manner ; recapitulated the usual com- 
 monplaces. The country was on the eve of a great 
 crisis, a crisis involving national interests and 
 individual interests alike, trade, security, prosperity, 
 peace at home, honour abroad. The time had come 
 when the Conservative party were called upon to 
 emerge from that shade in which their modesty 
 delighted; the time, in short — after a great deal 
 more to the same purpose — had come for a long 
 pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether. 
 
 This was the chairman's popular style, which he 
 had generally found answer before a mixed audience.
 
 32 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 But on this present occasion, before the Conservatives 
 could begin their applause, a hoarse voice at the back 
 of the hall called out, ' Yes, and pull the boat over ; 
 that's about what you Conservatives generally does 
 when you do pull together,' and there was a laugh 
 which spoiled the effect of Mr. Mason Bank's pero- 
 ration. And now it was time for the candidate to 
 introduce himself, which he did in a somewhat 
 rambling speech upon old, old lines. The men of 
 Brumm had heard such speeches ever since they 
 had possessed ears to hear political discussion. 
 Colonel Spillington was a poor orator, and he had 
 nothing new to say. But he was hearty, and he 
 had a pleasant manner ; he had the courage of his 
 opinions too, and threw some pretty big stones at the 
 opposite party, in the teeth of hisses and groans 
 from the majority, for it appeared as if the Eadicals 
 were the most numerous. They were certainly the 
 loudest. It might be that noise prevailed over 
 numbers. 
 
 Before the Colonel could sit down, a man stood 
 up in the middle of the hall, an Anak, a giant 
 among dwarfs, for the men of Biumm were stunted
 
 by unhealthy toil. A dark, threatening face was 
 turned towards the pLatform, full in the glare of the 
 gas ; a large face with a broad forehead, high cheek 
 bones and massive jaw, flashing eyes under shaggy 
 brows, a shock of coarse black hair. 
 
 Lashmar looked at that face transfixed. He 
 had seen it before— seen it years and vears a^ro 
 — in a dream, before he was born, yes, in some 
 mystical anterior life, as it seemed to him. He 
 knew its every line. Yes, those lineaments were 
 graven deep upon the tablets of memory. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 * ALL THAT HAVE EYES TO AVEEP, SPAKE ONE TEAR 
 AVITH ME ' 
 
 ' I PISE to move an amendment,' said Jonathan 
 Boldwood; in a deep strong voice. 
 
 ' On the platform, get upon the platform, Bold- 
 wood,' roared the crowd. 'Let's hear thee man, 
 thou hast always summat good to say. Bravo, 
 Boldwood! Three cheers for Boldwood!' 
 
 And there was a shout that seemed as if it 
 would rend the roof of the building, a thrill of 
 delight as at the appearance of some favourite actor. 
 The crowd made way for the orator, and the applause 
 grew deafening, as he scrambled on to the platform, 
 shook his rough mane, folded his arms, and looked 
 round the assembly, those eyes of his shining like 
 coals of fire. 
 
 ' You want to hear me speak, friends,' he said, in
 
 ' SPAEE ONE TEXR WITH ME ' 35 
 
 his deep thrilling voice. ' You shall ! You have had 
 plenty of fustian from these gentlemen. You shall 
 have a little bit of sound cloth from ine — stuff that 
 will stand wear and tear, not devil's dust that will 
 come to bits directly you pull at it.' And then he 
 began to attack the Colonel's speech. He took the 
 old, old story, point by point, from the Revolu- 
 tionist's side ; he laughed to scorn the old institu- 
 tions, the old opinions, bishops and peers, church 
 and state, royal sinecures, royal allowances, princely 
 nobodies, useless functionaries. He spoke with the 
 force and vigour of Danton, with the finesse of 
 Mirabeau; he spoke as a rebel against his queen 
 and against his God. His finest points were barbed 
 with blasphemy ; but he had the audience with him 
 from the moment he opened his mouth. He swayed 
 them as the wind sways the reeds by the river. 
 
 ' YoiD' God, the High-churcli God, the Tory 
 God, made man in His own image, you tell us. If 
 so He had two images, or you have strangely altered 
 and degraded, mutilated and defaced the image He 
 made. There is man as God made him, free, 
 upright, independent, with all the world before
 
 36 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 him where to choose, told to live by the sweat 
 of his brow, and to till the land, but never told 
 that he should have no land to till, that his 
 brow and every inch of his body should sweat 
 in the grinding toil of the factory, that your 
 God's beautiful earth should be shut and fenced 
 off from him by an everlasting park-paling, that 
 his world to choose from should be an endless 
 turnpike road, where he should tramp for ever 
 through the dust and heat of summer, through the 
 mud and mire of winter, in the glare of the dog- 
 days, or with his face to the biting north-easter, 
 and with no halting place but the casual ward, 
 no bourne but the pauper's grave. That is the 
 type of God's noblest work, and the commonest 
 type : such men are as millions against your 
 thousands, you who toil not, you who spend the 
 wages of other men's toil. 
 
 * God made the toiler, made Adam to work 
 for his bread — his own bread, mark you — sowing 
 and reaping on his own land, for himself and his 
 family, enjoying the first fruits of the land, rejoicing 
 in the fulness of the harvest, the fatness of his
 
 * SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME ' 37 
 
 flock, having his share in all the beauty and the 
 glory of this earth. That was patriarchal man 
 as God made him, and as he might have been 
 this day, for God's earth is wide enough for all 
 who live upon it, if it were not for ha-has and 
 park-fences. God's earth is not big enough to 
 keep an aristocracy, not big enough to give parks 
 and deer forests to all the dukes and earls who 
 have sprung from the amours of dead and rotten 
 kings. That is what this earth won't do, and 
 that is what the people of England mean to set 
 their faces against — the profligate splendour of 
 the few who fatten upon the bloody sweat of 
 the many : ay, my friends, a sweat as bloody as 
 that agony in the garden of which your priests 
 tell us ; for it means the gradual waste of life 
 worn out untimely in unnatural toil, life-blood 
 ebbing away drop by drop in the factory and 
 in the mine, lives wasted in premature old age, 
 children born and bred in dirt, in ignorance 
 and in squalor, in order that a few foolish faces 
 should be topped by coronets and a sprinkling of 
 fine gentlemen should lead the fasliions in good
 
 38 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 manners and bad morals. Can any man among 
 you be simple enough to swallow sucli a lie as 
 that God's image is reflected in this type of man ? 
 Xo, my friends : these are the sons of Belial, who 
 come among you this night " flown with insolence 
 and wine," not to ask you for your suffrages, but 
 to order how you shall vote.' 
 
 He flung back the coarse iron-gray hair from 
 his low broad brow, and stood like a tower, Avhile 
 the hall rang with applause, varied by timorous 
 hisses from the Conservative minority. 
 
 Where had Lashmar seen him before ? What 
 was that anterior existence in which this man's face 
 had flashed upon him as it flashed now ? but 
 only for a transient span, appearing and vanishing 
 almost in the same moment, flashing past him as 
 it were in a whirlwind, swept away upon the wings 
 of the hurricane. 
 
 It was either in that dim, unknown world of 
 a previous life, or it was long, long ago in his 
 earliest boyhood. 
 
 Yes, he recalled it all now ; the whole scene 
 stood out before him.
 
 •'SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME' 39 
 
 It was at the University boat-race. He was a 
 little fellow, with his father and mother, on a lawn 
 at Mortlake, a green lawn shadowed by leafless 
 lime-trees. He was clinging to his mother's gown — 
 the poor sickly mother already marked for death, 
 though he knew it not — clinging to her, breathless 
 with excitement, catching the fever of the crowd, 
 scarce knowing what thriUed him so. The crowd 
 and the river seemed to rock under the cold bright- 
 ness of the March day, as the two boats shot under 
 the bridcje, Oxford three lengths behind. 
 
 ' That big man, number six, pulls like the devil,' 
 cried Lord Lashmar. ' If he can only last, I believe 
 he'U make them win. I never saw such an oar.' 
 
 He mentioned the man's name, but his sou had 
 forgotten that, though he distinctly remembered 
 his father's speech. He had his own little boat on 
 the Avon at this time, and had just learnt to row 
 so was keenly interested in feats of oarsmanship. 
 
 The Oxford boat came past the lawn, gaining 
 upon its antagonist, and then Hubert Lashmar saw 
 the face of the oarsman — a dark, ugly face, strong 
 jaw, broad forehead, beetle brows, but a face made
 
 40 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 radiant, glorified, god-like almost, by triumph. Ox- 
 ford was winning. The stroke put on a tremendous 
 spurt, to which number six answered with might and 
 main. The boat was almost lifted out of the water. 
 The other oars nerved themselves for a superhuman 
 effort ; a great cry of exultation broke from the 
 crowd : ' Oxford wins ! ' Men thrilled with the 
 delight of having witnessed a miracle, and that 
 Oxford crew was cheered as never men were cheered 
 along the banks of the Thames. 
 
 This was the man. Xumber six in the Oxford 
 boat nineteen years ago, and the brass-worker 
 yonder, were one and the same. The face was too 
 peculiar a face to be easily forgotten or mistaken 
 for another. 
 
 Lashmar rose and came to the front of the 
 platform, braving that multitude of eyes, that broad 
 glare of light. But here there were no street boys 
 to jeer at his deformity. He stood up before men ; 
 and Nature's unkindness was a claim upon the 
 respect of even the lowest among the crowd. 
 
 He was of the middle height, fairly proportioned 
 from the waist downwards, but the misshapen back
 
 'SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME ' 41 
 
 and the neck sunk between the shoulders too 
 obviously indicated a malformation of the spine 
 The pale, classical features, the slender white hands, 
 the indescribable air of hi2:h birth and refinement 
 interested even these roughs of Brumm. They had 
 heard that this young Lord Lashmar was a student 
 and a poet, something like that Lord Byron of 
 whom most of them had read and heard, whose 
 poetry was familiar to many among them in these 
 days of free libraries and advanced thought. They 
 liked the look of the Lord of Lashmar Castle ; though 
 they had pledged themselves to those new ideas 
 which were to bring all such lordlings to their 
 proper level, cancel all old grants of land, reduce 
 all ancient privileges, and make the soil of England 
 common property, and all things equal between 
 man and man. 
 
 He began to speak, and was heard in silence. 
 He had a grave and steadfast manner, a low, earnest 
 voice, which was distinctly heard at the end of that 
 crowded hall — a voice of a very different calibre from 
 that of Jonathan Boldwood, but a voice of consider- 
 able compass notwithstanding, and of finest quality.
 
 42 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 'My friends,' lie began, 'the gentleman who 
 has just addressed you calls himself your friend, 
 but we all know what the demagogue's friendship 
 means. It means climbing into somebody else's 
 seat upon other men's shoulders. You have heard 
 of Marat, the man whom Charlotte Corday stabbed 
 in his bath, hoping by that one bloody act to stem 
 the torrent of blood which that man was shedding. 
 Now, I am not going to say that Mr. Boldwood 
 is like Marat, or that he would rejoice in that 
 deluge of blood which to Marat was the very wine 
 of life. Mr. Boldwood is an Englishman, and 
 Marat was a Frenchman, and your English demagogue, 
 I am happy to say, is always a very mild translation 
 of the French original. Yet I will venture to say 
 that if Marat were standing on this platform to- 
 night, he would talk to you very much as Mr. 
 Boldwood has talked. He would taunt you with 
 your daily labour as if it were a disgrace to w^ork 
 for your living ; as if every one of us — queen and 
 princes, cabinet ministers, general ofi&cers, great 
 sea captains, lawyers, landowners, painters, poets, 
 musicians — do not toil, and bring forth that w^hich
 
 'SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME' 43 
 
 we have to produce in the sweat of our brows. 
 Granted that there are the sons of Belial, that 
 there are among the honourable and honoured aris- 
 tocracy of England a few black sheep, are there 
 no dusky fleeces, do you think, to be found in the 
 factory ? Are there no black sheep in the mine ? Xo 
 idlers and malingerers battening upon the toil of 
 others ? The warp and the woof of society are woven 
 upon the same lines, my friends, from one end of 
 the fabric to the other ; and those who prate to you 
 of equality prate to you of something that never 
 has existed and never can exist. "Were Cain and 
 Abel equal before God ? Xo ; the Almighty blessed 
 one and cursed the other. Were Jacob and Esau 
 alike in their fate, or were the fortunes of Joseph 
 and his brethren equal ? Is Nature equal in her 
 gifts ? I stand before you, my friends, this night 
 a living instance of Nature's inequality. Shall I 
 blaspheme against my God because it has pleased 
 Him to make me different from my fellow-men ? 
 No, I accept my burden, as other men must needs 
 accept theirs. Be sure there is something in every 
 shoe that pinches the wearer. What I have to do,
 
 44 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 aud what we all Lave to do, is to make the best of 
 the world we live in for ourselves and for each other; 
 improving away evil gently and by degrees, not by 
 rapid wrenches and volcanic upheavals, but in the 
 gradual ripening of the days and years, clinging to 
 all that was good in England's past, and discarding 
 all that was bad ; lopping off the withered branches, 
 but zealously guarding the tree ; and that I take, it 
 to be true Conservatism, and a truly Liberal Con- 
 servatism.' 
 
 There was considerable applause from the Con- 
 servative minority after Lord Lashmar's speech. 
 Bold wood sat facing the audience, his arms folded 
 upon the back of a chair, glaring at them from 
 under those bushy brows of his, with eyes that 
 seemed always to shine with the same angry light : 
 anger at fate, life, fortune — a world in which for 
 him all things were adverse and cruel. Suddenly 
 there arose a murmur of voices, excited voices in 
 the crowd just below the platform — murmurs in 
 which he caught his own name : and then the 
 word " fire ! " Some men by the corner of the plat- 
 form w^re talking about him, looking up at him.
 
 ' SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ^fE ' 45 
 
 He bent do\Yn and qiiestioued one of tliem — 
 ' "What's the matter, mate ? ' 
 
 ' Gold win's ! You live at Gold win's, don't 
 
 YOU ? ' 
 
 ^Yes!' 
 
 * Goldwin's is afire ! ' 
 
 The demaj^ogue bounded from his chair, dropped 
 off the platform, and pushed his way through the 
 crowd, muttering as he went : 
 
 * My God ! And that child— locked in her room 
 on the fourth story ' 
 
 He clutched a man by the shoulder : 
 
 ' What about this fire ? ' he gasped. ' Is it 
 true ? "Who brought the news ? When ? ' 
 
 'Xot five minutes ago ; there's a lot has run 
 off to see. There was a lot of 'era here — a lot of 
 Goldwin's people.' 
 
 Boldwood waited to hear no further, but pushed 
 his way on to the door. The news had wrought 
 confusion in the hall already, and the crowd was 
 surging outwards. There was a greater excite- 
 ment, a fiercer fever of emotion to be had out of 
 doors than the finest speaker could offer within.
 
 46 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 A great fire was one of the spectacles which 
 Brumm most enjoyed. 
 
 Goldwin's was a grirrantic buildins: on the 
 •eastern outsku^ts of the town, on that side most 
 remote from Lashmar Castle — a huge model lodging 
 house, built some years before by a friend of hu- 
 manity who only required nine per cent, for his 
 capital. It was a huge caravanseri, and swarmed 
 like an anthill ; for it was better than the dens 
 and hovels of the slums in the heart of the town, 
 inasmuch as it was wind-and- weather-proof, which 
 they were not. The rents exacted for the rooms 
 were high, and it was only the more prosperous of 
 the working classes who could afford to live at 
 Goldwin's. 
 
 Bold wood had a couple of rooms there : two 
 little square boxes on the fourth story, one with 
 a fireplace, the other without. He had made the 
 room with the fireplace his little daughter's bed- 
 chamber, while he himself slept, and for the most 
 part lived, in the cold. There was a common kit- 
 chen at Goldwin's where the inmates could get 
 anything cooked ; and there was a common laundry
 
 SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME ' 47 
 
 where the women compared their rags and told 
 each other their troubles ; and there was a club- 
 room where the men smoked, and talked politics, 
 and played dominoes — a hot-bed of advanced 
 socialism. 
 
 To the dwellers in the slums Goldwin's seemed 
 a lordly mansion, and to live at Goldwin's was a 
 distinction. It was a huge quadrangular building, 
 six stories high, with a courtyard in the centre — 
 a monster pile of ugly yellow brick, pierced with 
 windows all of one pattern, opening on to covered 
 balconies with iron railings — everything straight 
 and square, and flat and uniform. A huge cube 
 of brickwork it looked from the distance, as seen 
 across the level of the flattest, dreariest outskirt of 
 Brumm ; uglier than factory, or jail, or workhouse. 
 To those wealthier citizens whose prospect that 
 huge bulk defaced, it seemed a monstrous blot upon 
 the horizon. 
 
 The beneficent Goldwin had bought a couple of 
 acres of waste ground for a song, a quarter of a 
 century before; and when a great cry had gone 
 up to heaven from the penny newspapers, about
 
 48 ONE TniNG NEEDFUL 
 
 the way in which the poor of Brumm were 
 lodged, Mr. Gold win had stood up at a public 
 meeting and pledged himself to build a model 
 dwelling which should be as the workman's para- 
 dise. While the building was in progress, Mr. 
 Goldwin was one of the most popular men in 
 Brumm. It was only when his house was finished, 
 and his scale of rents made known, that his popu- 
 larity began to decline. But, although the rents 
 were high, Gold win's was always full from roof to 
 basement. 
 
 The meeting ended amidst confusion, and the 
 last speeches were unheard. The news of the 
 fire had reached the platform, and Lord Lashmar 
 knew that the Eadical leader had rushed away 
 to see to the safety of his child. Even her lady- 
 ship's sympathies were aroused by the tragedy 
 of the scene. 
 
 ' To think that such a creature should have so 
 much human feeling ! ' she exclaimed. ' I hope 
 his people will not be burnt.' 
 
 She had not grasped the fact that the dema- 
 gogue's ' people ' were comprised by one only child.
 
 ' SPAEE ONE TEAi: AVITH ME ' 40 
 
 'I think, mother, if you'll allow me, I'll stay 
 aud see the end of this business after I've put you 
 into your carriage/ said Lashmar. * I can get 
 a lly at the George to take me home.' 
 
 * I'll stay with you,' said Colonel Spillington. 
 
 'And I,' cried Victorian. 
 
 *Xo, Victor, I will not have you struggling in 
 a Brumm crowd 1 ' exclaimed his mother ; ' and 
 you, Lashmar, you would not certainly be so 
 foolish as to trust yourself amongst those roughs.' 
 
 ' They would be safe enough with me,' said 
 the Colonel. ' But the young one can go home 
 with your ladyship ; Lashmar and I will see it 
 out.' 
 
 Lady Lashmar remonstrated ; she offered to wait 
 at the hotel until her stepson was ready to go 
 home with her ; but to this Lashmar would not 
 consent. He took his mother to her carriacje, and 
 saw Victorian seat himself beside her, very 
 reluctantly. The boy was longing for an 
 adventure ; he felt that it was in him to do the 
 work of twenty hireling firemen. The engine 
 came tearing do^n the street while the carriage 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 ONE :iHING XEEDFUL 
 
 stood there, frightening the big bays out of their 
 wits. The firemen looked like demons, the street 
 boys yelped and whooped as the vision of 
 flashing metal and dark resolute faces rushed by. 
 And to have to turn one's back upon that fever 
 of excitement and go home to supper with one's 
 mother! It was hard for impetuous young Eton, 
 strong in the overweening confidence of youth. 
 The barouche drove away through the summer 
 night, drove away from the smoke and grime — 
 towards fields and dewy hills and flowery 
 hedgerows. Lashmar and the Colonel got into 
 a hansom cab — they have had hansoms in 
 Brumm for the last twenty years — and told the 
 driver to go to Gold win's as fast as he could 
 pelt. Driver and horse were both excited, and 
 rattled off at a tremendous pace. 
 
 There were half-a-dozen streets, and an arid 
 waste of market gardens and ground newly 
 plotted out for building, to be traversed before 
 they reached the scene of the fire ; unmade roads, 
 stretching to the right and the left, ghost-like in 
 the moonlight — here a factory, and there a shabby-
 
 * SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME ' 51 
 
 genteel terrace of new houses, and anon a row 
 of allotment gardens ; but straight in front of 
 them they saw Goldwin's, like the fiery pillar 
 in the desert — a monstrous pile, vomiting smoke and 
 flame. 
 
 * The fire must have chained crround terrible 
 before the engines arrived,' said Lashmar, leaning 
 forward over the doors of the cab, with his eyes 
 intent upon that flaming bulk yonder. 
 
 'Engines never are in time to do any sub- 
 stantial good,' answered Spillington. • How lucky 
 the fire did not happen in the middle of the 
 night. People would be up and about, and able 
 to help themselves.' 
 
 'But the children,' cried Lashmar, almost with 
 a moan of anguish. ' The little children, left alone 
 in that tower of Babel. The careless young 
 mothers roaming the streets ; the fathers listening 
 to Boldwood. Perhaps you don't know the kind 
 of mothers that are made out of factory girls ? 
 God help the little children : I'll warrant there 
 were dozens of them left to take care of them- 
 selves in that big house to-night!' 
 
 LIBRARY ^,,,,-0,0
 
 52 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' That's a horrible idea,' muttered the Colonel ; 
 and he felt that there was only too much ground 
 for Lashmar's fear. 
 
 They were in front of the house by this time 
 — a dense crowd between them and the building. 
 
 'Wait!' said Lashmar to the cabman as he 
 alighted, and he and Spillington pushed their way 
 tliroucrh the mob. 
 
 It was a moment of breathless excitement. 
 The engines were on the other side of the 
 building ; the fire-escapes were in full action ; but 
 they could not be everywhere. Lashmar had con- 
 jectured rightly. There was a swarm of children 
 in that human hive : and tlie mothers were rushing 
 about distractedly, pleading to the firemen, to the 
 crowd, to the empty air even, to save their little 
 ones — pointing wildly to windows : there, there, 
 that one, on the fifth floor, the seventh from the 
 end, that one by the broken rain-pipe — oh ! curses 
 on these tall houses, where the children could be 
 roasted alive, and no help possible ! The fire had 
 broken out suddenly, with an astounding fury. 
 It was all the work of an hour; but the mischief
 
 ' SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME ' 53 
 
 had been slowly working for long silent days and 
 nights. The brick-work of that huge shaft which 
 went up from the laundry — the common chimney 
 of kitchen, laundry, and club-room — had been red- 
 hot, and none knew. They had only felt the 
 warmth an annoyance in the hot summer nights. 
 Xo one had guessed that there was danger; and 
 to-night, at ten o'clock, the skirting of one of 
 the rooms next the chimney had burst into flame, 
 and then another, and then another, till a great 
 column of flame was rushing up to heaven through 
 the middle of the house — that central block upon 
 which the initials of William GoldwiD, the people's 
 benefactor, stood out boldly above a great black- 
 faced clock, with white metal hands ; a clock that had 
 ticked off the brief intervals of rest to many a 
 toiler, but which would never tick again for dead 
 or living, since the metal that had composed its 
 works was running down the brick-work in a 
 molten stream like quicksilver. 
 
 Yes ; screams, and clasped hands, and dis- 
 hevelled hair were the livery of all those careless 
 young mothers to-night. Locked in, their chil-
 
 54 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 dreii had all been locked in I To hide the lucifers, 
 and to lock the door, that had been the maternal 
 idea of carefulness. Locked in — looked in one of 
 those pigeon-holes in that great barrack through 
 which the flames were roaring. 
 
 While the mothers were rushing to and fro, 
 threading the crowd, falling into the arms of 
 strangers to sob out their woe, shrieking in wildest 
 hysteria, or standing white and dumb waiting for 
 Fate to strike, there was one father who was acting 
 vigorously for himself, asking help from no man. 
 
 ' Look at him ! ' gasped the crowd, as Jonathan 
 Boldwood's huge form scaled the iron balconies, 
 clambered and swung himself from one point of 
 vantage to another, mounting higher and higher, 
 showing a dark moving blotch against the red light 
 that shone all over the building, as it had been 
 the palace of the setting sun. ' Look at him ! 
 There's a man for you, a man with the heart of 
 a lion. His little girl is up in one o' them rooms — 
 one o' the toppest. The firemen and the 'scapes are 
 all t'other side o' the building. God help him! He'll 
 be suffocated before he gets to that top room ! '
 
 * SPARE ONE TE.U: WITH .ME ' 55 
 
 This was about the "ist of what the crowd 
 
 o 
 
 said, ia short gasps of speech, loquacious, excited, 
 pitying but impotent to help, around and about 
 Lord Lashmar. Neither his gentle blood nor his 
 crooked back attracted any attention in that surg- 
 ing mass of anxious humanity. All distinctions 
 were for the time blotted out. The stronsj human 
 instinct prevailed over all class differences and 
 conventionalities. The hearts of Eadical and Tory 
 throbbed in perfect unison, accelerated by pity and 
 terror. 
 
 ' He'll do it ! ' roared the crowd, and Lashmar's 
 memory went back to that other crowd roaring on 
 the Surrey shore, roaring from the flat swamps of 
 Chiswick yonder, two voices meeting and blending 
 across the river. ' He'll do it ! ' cried the crowd, 
 watching that bulky figure — a figure that had lost 
 the litheness of athletic youth, and which pulled 
 itself heavily, w^ith the strength of a giant, slowly, 
 laboriously, from iron rail to iron rail, bridging 
 the distance with evident difficulty. ' He'll do it ! ' 
 and Lashmar remembered the dark face bent over 
 the oar ; the resolute under jaw and beetle
 
 56 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 l3ro\v, the dark, cropped hair and bull neck. He 
 fancied he could see the face now, turned towards 
 the burning building, lurid in the reflected light. 
 
 * One storv more, and he's there ! ' cried the 
 crowd. 
 
 One more rail to grasp, one last effort to 
 swing himself to the higher level ; but before he 
 could grasp the rail a great wave of flame and 
 smoke rushed out from the shattered windows in 
 front of him, poured over him like black water, 
 and wrapped him in Egyptian darkness — darkness 
 flecked with arrows of flame. Then there arose a 
 groan as of Samson when the pillars yielded and 
 the roof fell— the groan of a despairing Titan. 
 The crowd reeled backward with a shuddering re- 
 coil, and that bulky figure fell in their midst, 
 almost at Lashmar's feet. 
 
 There was no help, no hope. The demagogue's 
 neck ^^ as broken. He expired without a murmur.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ' so AVOE- BEGONE A THIXG WAS SHE ' 
 
 While the mob surrounded the dead man, talking 
 over him, lamenting him. waiting for medical 
 help, for a stretcher to carry that motionless 
 bulk of humanity away, Lashmar had slipped off 
 his coat, flung it to the remonstrant Colonel 
 Spillington, and had begun to climb the iron 
 balconies, just as Boldwood had climbed, but at 
 a greater disadvantage, for the smoke and flame 
 had intensified with every moment; window after 
 window had shivered, and vomitted fire. The 
 lookers-on, those who were not too absorbed by 
 their thoughts of the dead to watch the living, 
 gave a cry of horror — horror at the madness of such 
 an attempt. 
 
 But in a few minutes those spectators under- 
 stood that this climber was of a different calibre
 
 58 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 from Bold wood. This sliglit, slim form was the 
 figure of a trained athlete. Those long lithe arms 
 held on to the balconies, and wreathed themselves 
 about the iron columns with the suppleness and the 
 tenacity of a serpent. Could this be the man 
 with the crooked back, who had been standing 
 in the front of the crowd just now, silent, 
 watchful? 
 
 Some of them recognised him by that marred 
 spine, knew him to be Lord Lashmar, a chronic 
 invalid, a weakling. Others who knew better 
 knew that he had trained himself to the highest 
 feats of athleticism, that he had built a gym- 
 nasium at Lashmar Castle, and that he had 
 exercised his body witli all the devotion of a 
 Greek wrestler, or a Eoman gladiator. To these 
 it w^as no surprise to see the hunchback's long 
 lean arms lift him from balcony to balcony, to see 
 that well-shaped head thrown back to escape 
 the suffocating rush of smoke and fiery dust, to 
 see railing after railing gained, as that stunted figure 
 mounted higher, diminishing almost to a vanishing 
 point. Yes, he will do it ! That wliicli Jonathan
 
 ' so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE o9 
 
 Boldwood — deteriorated by intemperate habits and 
 a sedentary life, hindered by his own balk — had 
 been unable to accomplish, this deformed lordling 
 would do. Would do ? He had done it. That sinuous 
 right arm was wreathed round the iron column 
 between the fourth story [and the balcony above. 
 A mighty cheer swelled from the throats of the 
 crowd — a cheer that was half a sob. 
 
 ' Bring round the fire-escapes,' shouted one 
 and there was a rush to the other side of the 
 building. Lives were being saved there as fast 
 as the firemen could save them — young children, 
 helpless old people, sick, and maimed. But here 
 was a life more precious than them all — the life 
 of the deliverer, the hero, the Hercules who had 
 entered himself, a voluntary combatant, in a hand- 
 to-hand fight with death. 
 
 Would he perish in his generous endeavour ? 
 That was the awful doubt which tlirilled every 
 heart in that watching crowd. Even Eachel 
 weeping for her children, stilled her wailings for 
 the moment, to look up with strained eyes and 
 awe-stricken face towards that upper balcony
 
 60 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 within which the deliverer had disappeared. 
 "What fate awaited him in the darkness and the 
 fire ? Was the room he had entered sound and 
 whole, or was it but the mouth of a fiery pit ? Was 
 that generous heart stilled in death, even while 
 they watched and waited? 
 
 No ; just as the fire-escape appeared round 
 the corner of the building, swaying to and fro as 
 the firemen and the crowd steered it along, just 
 as succour drew near, that slim figure in the white 
 shirt sleeves flashed out again amidst the smoke. 
 Lord Lashmar was standing in that fourth floor 
 balcony with a child in his arms. He had but 
 to wait the adjustment of the escape, to guard 
 himself and his living burden from the flames, 
 and all the rest was easy. 
 
 Five, ten minutes of supreme anxiety, and all 
 was over. Lashmar was standing among the 
 crowd with Bold wood's five-year-old daughter in 
 his arms, a small, thin figure in a little white 
 nightgown, a sallow, wizened little face, with great 
 goblin eyes. 
 
 ' God bless you, sir ; God bless you, my lord.'
 
 ' so WOE-BEGOXE A THING WAS SHE ' 61 
 
 The men clasped him by the hand, the women 
 huDix about him, and kissed those wounded hands 
 of his, raw and bleeding, scratched and scorched 
 and torn, and smelling of smoke and fire. Xo 
 thought of Eadical or Conservative now ; no fierce 
 hatred of landowner and aristocrat. The great 
 heart of the crowd was stirred \vith one divine 
 impulse, made up of love, pity, tenderness — 
 unselfish delight in a generous act nobly done. 
 
 *By Jove, Lashmar, I thought you were a 
 dead man I ' cried Colonel Spillington. ' You must 
 be hurt, surely ; dangerously hurt perhaps,' he 
 added, running his hand over the young man's 
 shoulder and arm, as if in search of broken bones. 
 
 'A few scratches more or less,' answered 
 Lashmar quietly ; and then he added to the 
 crowd: 'Don't make such a fuss, my good friends; 
 I'm sure there isn't one of you that wouldn't 
 have done as much.' 
 
 He made his way through the throng towards 
 the farther side of the broad barren road where 
 he had left the cab, with the rescued child still 
 in his arms, clinging to him, scared and pale,
 
 62 ONE THING XEEDFUL 
 
 with those wide goblin eyes of hers. Spillington 
 followed him closely. 
 
 *What are you going to do with the child?' 
 he asked. ' She'll have to go to the Union, I 
 suppose, poor little soul ! ' 
 
 * She'll have to go to no such place,' answered 
 Lashmar ; ' she is going to my house.' 
 
 ' You mean to take Boldwood's child to 
 Lashmar Castle ? ' asked Spillington, astounded. 
 
 ' Why not ? I should take a stray dog home. 
 Why should I draw the line at a stray child ? ' 
 
 ' Well, there's a considerable difference, I 
 believe, though you may not see it. To take a 
 Eadical orphan upon one's hands is rather a 
 serious business. If I were you I should drive 
 straight to the Union, and deposit this poor little 
 thing with the matron ; much the best thing 
 you can do for her.' 
 
 'I have saved her out of the fire, I am not 
 going to throw her back into it,' answered 
 Lashmar resolutely. ' She is mine, jetsam and 
 flotsam from the great ship Fate; my prize, 
 my portion. She shall never cross the threshold
 
 * so WOE-BEGONE A THIXG WAS SUE ' 63 
 
 of a workhouse while I have power to prevent 
 
 it; 
 
 They were in the cab by this time. Lashmar 
 had wrapped his coat round the child, and was 
 sitting in his shirt-sleeves. He told the man to 
 drive to the George, the chief hotel in Brumm, 
 the hotel patronised by the county people, when 
 they gladdened the great grimy town with their 
 superior presence. It was an old-fashioned hotel, 
 with a wide archway, and a spacious courtyard, 
 and a magpie in a cage by the little low door- 
 way of the bar. It had been an old-established 
 hotel in the coaching days, before ever Brumm 
 had arisen in its grimy might as a manufacturing 
 town. 
 
 Lord Lashmar was known and honoured at 
 the George. The sleepy waiters stifled their 
 yawns, and bowed themselves before him. The 
 landlady, who had lingered over her supper in 
 the snug little parlour behind the bar, waiting 
 up to hear the latest news of the fire, came bustling 
 out to see if she could be of any use to his lordship. 
 
 She almost shrieked at the sight of the child
 
 64 ONE THINCr NEEDFUL 
 
 looking round with frightened eyes ; such a poor 
 little pinched, sallow countenance, so wizened, so 
 unchildlike. The mistress of the George thought 
 she had never seen an uglier brat. 
 
 * Oh ! my Lord, where did you pick her up ? 
 Is she one of the children from Gold win's ? ' 
 
 * She is Boldwood's child, and his lordship 
 risked his life to save her,' answered Spillington. 
 *What will you have, Lashmar, by way of 
 pick-me-up? A brandy-and-soda — a tumbler of 
 champagne, eh ? You must have something ! ' 
 
 *I'll take some soda, with a dash of brandy 
 if you like,' said Lashmar. ' Do you tliink you 
 could lend me a shawl to wi'ap up this little one, 
 Mrs. Sycamour ?' he asked the obsequious land- 
 lady ; ' and do you think you could get me a pair 
 of horses to take us back to Lashmar ? Her lady- 
 ship will be anxious till she sees us all safe at 
 home.' 
 
 ' Certainly, my Lord ' — and Mrs. Sycamour rang 
 a bell : ' Tell Joe to get the landau and the grays 
 ready directly. And, Mary, run and fetch one of 
 my shawls. The warm knitted one in the bottom
 
 'so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE (jd 
 
 drawer, you know, child. Don't stand staring like 
 a simpleton.' 
 
 Mary was gazing at the dark-eyed child in 
 Lord Lashmar's arms. A child in a nightgown 
 was a curious kind of thing for a young nobleman 
 to carry about with him at midnight. 
 
 ' Daddy ! ' cried t!ie little girl piteously, and the 
 great dark eyes began to fill with tears. ' Where's 
 daddy? I want my daddy.' 
 
 Lashmar looked at her helplessly. What could 
 he say to soothe or console, without uttering a 
 deliberate lie ? The little one's breast began to 
 heave with sobs. 
 
 ' Daddy I ' she cried, ' where's daddy ? Was 
 he burnt in the lire — was he hurt ? Let me 
 go to daddy.' 
 
 * By-and-by,' murmured Lashmar, feebly ; ' by- 
 and-by, dear child. Will you give her a little milk 
 and a biscuit, Mrs. Sycamour ? The poor little 
 thing may be hungry.' 
 
 ' Poor little dear,' said the landlady. * Have a 
 nice cake, pet ? Mary, bring me a glass of milk, 
 and a sponge cake.' 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 But when the motherly soul attempted to take 
 the child in her arms, the little one scowled and 
 clung tighter to Lashmar. 
 
 'Take me to daddy,' she pleaded, frowning 
 darkly at Mrs. Sycamour's friendly face, rejecting 
 all tenderness from that source. 
 
 * Upon my soul, Lord Lashmar, this is too much 
 of a good thing,' cried Spillington, who had finished 
 his brandy-and-soda, and was waxing impatient 
 to be gone. For a man who had not dined this 
 indefinite postponement of supper was a trial. 
 ' You had better let our good friend here take 
 charge of the brat for to-night, and hand her over 
 to the proper authorities to-morrow. I never saw 
 such a goblin. Why, she's as dark as Erebus. 
 There must have been a dip of the tar-brush 
 somewhere.' 
 
 * It's the gipsy blood, sir ; everybody says that 
 Boldwood's wife was a gipsy.' 
 
 ' Is that carriage ready,' asked Lashmar. 
 
 The landlady blew down a speaking-tube which 
 communicated with the stables. Mysterious sounds 
 followed, as of voices from spirit land.
 
 'so WOE-BEGOXE A THING WAS SHE' 67 
 
 * In five minutes, my Lord.' 
 
 Mary — no less a person tlian tlie liead cliamber- 
 maid — had brouglit the milk and cake by this time, 
 and Lashmar tried to coax the child to eat and 
 drink. In vain ; She only wept, and pushed aside 
 his gentle hand. 
 
 'Where's my daddy?' she asked hopelessly. 
 
 Lashmar huddled her up in the shawl, and 
 carried her off to the landau, one of those capacious 
 vehicles peculiar to country inns, and seemingly 
 built to hold eight inside. It was very leathery, 
 but not uncomfortable. Colonel Spillingtcn 
 buttoned his light overcoat across his chest, and 
 composed himself in a corner. 
 
 ' If that brat will only let me sleep, now,' he 
 thought, and Providence was kind to him, for 
 before they had left the stones of Brumm far 
 behind them Bold wood' 5 daughter had sobbed 
 herself to sleep upon Lord Lashmar's breast, and 
 the Colonel was able to snore in peace. 
 
 Xot once did slumber visit Lashmar's eyes 
 during that long drive under the summer stars. 
 He was thinking of that dead face, convulsed by
 
 68 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 the shock that snapped the cervical vertebra3 and 
 crushed one side of the skull — that dark powerful 
 face in which every line indicated the double forces 
 of a strong mind in a strong body. And this man 
 who had been so potent an influence in that great 
 hive of workers yonder, this daring speaker, this 
 audacious thinker, the man who blasphemed his 
 Maker and hated his more fortunate fellow-man, 
 was gone for ever — a mere lump of clay now, to 
 be buried out of sight, and forgotten. 
 
 All the Eadicals and Freethinkers of Brumm 
 would deplore the agitator : but perhaps there was 
 only this one helpless little being, this five-year- 
 old child, to mourn for the man. 
 
 And he had been a gentleman once ! What dark 
 experiences, what temptations, errors, misfortunes, 
 lay between that triumphant hour of the Oxford 
 undergraduate, and the dreadful death of the Brumm 
 brass- worker? Lashmar's reading had taught him 
 that most men's misfoi-tunes are in some degree of 
 their own work : and he could but think that this 
 brass-worker must have sinned against God or 
 society before he took to himself the fustian coat
 
 ' so WOE-BEGOXE A THING WAS SHE ' 69 
 
 and the fustian creed of the Bramm demagogue. 
 
 It was past one o'clock when the grays from 
 the George trotted along the avenue that led to 
 Lashmar Castle. The river was gleaming in the 
 starlight, mysterious, beautiful, between its rushy 
 banks, its leaning willows ; and the casements of the 
 castle gleamed also, with an earthlier radiance, and 
 the low Gothic doors stood open under the massive 
 stone porch, revealing the lighted hall within. 
 Lady Lashmar and Victorian came on.t of the white 
 parlour as the carriage stopped. 
 
 *My dear Colonel, I thought you were never 
 coming back ! ' she exclaimed. ' How dreadfully 
 you must want your supper ; ' and then starting 
 at si2:ht of Lashmar's burden — the little fi^^ure 
 muffled in a red fleecy shawl — she exclaimed, ' Why 
 Lashmar, what in Heaven's name have you there 1 ' 
 
 *A child, madam; an imp of darkness : the 
 spawn of the demagogue — Boldwood's child, rescued 
 from the flames by this young hero of your's. By 
 Jove, Lady Lashmar, you have reason to be proud 
 of your ?on.' said the Colonel, collecting his senses
 
 70 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 with an effort, for he had been in the middle of his 
 tirst and soundest sleep when the carriage pulled up. 
 
 ' You rescued Boldwood's child ! ' cried her 
 ladyship, looking at Lashmar's smoke-grimed face, 
 and from his face downward to his nether garments, 
 which were torn and frayed at the knees, one knee 
 rent across, and showing blood-stains on the light 
 summer cloth. ' But how ? ' 
 
 ' By climbing to the top of a four-story building 
 — one of the most heroic acts I ever saw anywhere, 
 except before the walls of a hill fort,' answered the 
 Colonel. ' It's a wonder I've brought him back to 
 you alive. Lady Lashmar.' 
 
 ' The Lashmars were always brave ! ' she said 
 gravely ; and then, with a certain formality which 
 chilled the Colonel's soul, she kissed her stepson 
 on the forehead. 
 
 * You had no right to risk your life for a dema- 
 gogue's brat,' she said. ' Why could not Mr. Bold- 
 wood rescue his child himself?' 
 
 * He did his damnedest, I beg pardon, he did 
 his uttermost, poor beggar, and was killed in the 
 attempt/ said the Colonel.
 
 'so WOE-BEGOXE A THING WAS SHE 71 
 
 • Bold wood killed ? ' 
 
 * Yes ; he will trouble us no more, mother. He 
 is gone — and this is his orphan daughter.' 
 
 ' But why in mercy's name did you bring her 
 here ? Why not at once liand her over to the proper 
 people ?' 
 
 ' That was precisely my idea,' said the Colonel, 
 longing for his supper. 
 
 The white parlour looked so bright and home- 
 like and cheery, in the light of a large swinging 
 colza lamp, under a yellow umbrella-shaped shade. 
 The table was loaded with good things. The red 
 Bordeaux wine glowed in thinnest Venetian llasks. 
 Butler and footman were in attendance by the side- 
 board, and there was an odour of savoury viands 
 from a chaling-dish, which encouraged the Colonel 
 with the hope of at least a hot cutlet or sweet- 
 bread, if this discussion about the beggar's brat in 
 Lashmar's arms would only come to a close. 
 
 'Pray, who are the proper people to whom a 
 five-year-old orphan should be handed over ? ' asked 
 Lashmar deliberately.
 
 72 ONE THIXG NEEDFUL 
 
 * Why, the matron at the Union would of course 
 be the proper person to take care of her.' 
 
 'Exactly what I told Lord Lashmar,' said the 
 Colonel. 
 
 ' And you would have her begin her life 
 in a workhouse — be reared and educated as a 
 pauper ? ' 
 
 'And properly trained for domestic service,' 
 pursued her ladyship ; ' the very best career for 
 any young woman. Do j^ou know, Colonel Spilling- 
 ton, that I pay my third and fourth housemaids 
 twenty pounds a-year, which their innumerable 
 perquisites must increase to thirty. The very best 
 and most comfortable career for any young woman, 
 Lashmar; and our workhouses nowadays are so 
 thoroughly well administered that I have not the 
 least objection to take a servant from the pauper 
 class. Some of our best girls have come from the 
 Union.' 
 
 * This child will not go to the Union while I 
 live, ' answered Lashmar, with quiet determination. 
 ' Are any of the women up, Longley ? ' 
 
 * Only her ladyship's maids,' my Lord,
 
 ' so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE ' 73 
 
 Her ladyship had two personal attendants. She 
 required very little service from them, for she was a 
 woman of active habits, and by no means self- 
 indulgent. But this dual service was an appanage 
 of her state ; it was her pride not her luxuriousness 
 which demanded to be waited upon. 
 
 * Will you allow me to ask a favour of Barker ? ' 
 asked Lord Lashmar. 
 
 ' Certainly ! ' 
 
 Barker was the second and homelier maid. A 
 homely-looking person of five-and-thirty, who lighted 
 the candles and arranged the furniture — sometimes 
 even condescended so far as to use a duster — in 
 Lady Lashmar's private apartments. 
 
 Barker was summoned, and came sleepy but 
 smiling to await her ladyship's orders. 
 
 ' I believe his lordship wishes you to take care 
 of a child, Barker,' said Lady Lashmar. * You will 
 have to put it in your own bed for to-night, I 
 suppose, after you have given it a hot bath. You 
 had better cut its hair, too, as close as you possibly 
 can.' 
 
 ' The child has not had scarlet fever, mother.'
 
 74 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 * Who knows ? Poor people are always liaviDg 
 fevers. At any rate, it is most likely very dirty. 
 Bathe it and crop it, Barker, I beg.' 
 
 The shawl fell off as Lashmar handed the 
 child to Barker, and the little white nightgown 
 and little bare feet were the best answer to her 
 ladyship's sweeping conclusion. Both were spot- 
 lessly clean. 
 
 ' What an ugly child ! ' cried Lady Lashmar ; 
 and then seeing Colonel Spillington standing 
 forlorn, gazing at the supper table yonder, she 
 took pity upon him. 
 
 ' Take the child aw^ay, and make lier as com- 
 fortable as you can, Barker,' slie said. ' And 
 now let me give you both some supper. Poor 
 creatures, you must be dreadfully hungry !' 
 
 'I confess to feeling a vacuum/ said the 
 Colonel, growing cheerful, as he seated himself at 
 the table and unfolded his napkin, lookiug about 
 him with an interested air. 
 
 Lobster mayonaise, chicken aspic, Piussian salad 
 with plenty of stuffed olives — hum, ha, pretty tiny 
 kickshaws — and the footman put a hot cutlet,
 
 * so -WOE-BEGOXE A THING WAS SHE * 7o 
 
 a VIndienne, before him ; while the butler unwired 
 a bottle of De Lossey's dry champagne. Not so 
 bad after all. 
 
 * Lashmar, did you really climb a four-story 
 balcony ? I know Goldwin's — iron balconies all the 
 way up, like a gridiron. I daresay I could do 
 it myself; but it must have been deuced difdcult. 
 I envy you ! ' 
 
 ' I hope you may never have the opportunity 
 or the inclination to attempt anything half so 
 wild,' said Lady Lashmar, in a biting voice. 
 
 It was the first time she had given utterance 
 to her exasperation ; but the pallor of lier fine 
 features, the augry li.cdit in her eyes, had indi- 
 cated the state of her feelings from the moment 
 she had seen Boldwood's child in her stepson's 
 arms. She was wise enough to hold her peace, 
 however. Lashmar Castle was the house of Lord 
 Lashmar, and she, omnipotent although she seemed 
 to the household and the neighbours, was only 
 there on sufferance. If Lashmar chose to bring 
 a pauper brat into the castle, to rear her there, 
 as he might any other domestic pet. it was not
 
 76 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 for her ladyship to interfere. This consciousness 
 of her own impotence intensified her displeasure. 
 
 'Victor, you ought to have been in bed 
 hours ago!' she exclaimed. 'Good-night, Colonel 
 Spillington, or good morning rather. I will leave 
 you and Lashmar to take care of each other.' 
 
 She shook hands with the Colonel, kissed her 
 stepson's brow, and went away with her arm 
 round her boy's neck. 
 
 ' What a glorious fellow Lashmar is ! ' said 
 Victorian, as he and his mother went upstairs. 
 ' So quiet, so unassuming, and so plucky. I wish 
 — I wish his back was as straight as other people's, 
 poor chap ! He bears his burden so well.' 
 
 *I wish he were sane,' retorted her ladyship, 
 'and then he would not have brought home that 
 Eadical's imp.' 
 
 ' Oh ! but if he likes to provide for the little 
 thing, send her to some cheap school, or some 
 institution — orphanage — don't you know ; he is rich 
 enough to indulge his benevolence.' 
 
 Lord Lashmar did not send the Pvadical's child"
 
 ' so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE ' 77 
 
 to a cheap school ; nor did he plague the souls 
 of his friends by canvassing for votes in order to 
 get Stella Boldwood elected as an inmate of some 
 stately orphanage, supported by voluntary contribu- 
 tions, and smiled upon by princes and princesses. 
 Stella was not destined to dwell in one of those 
 vast edifices wliich philanthropy has reared for the 
 shelter of the friendless and the orphan. It was 
 Stella's fate to be reared in the home of an 
 English nobleman, and to become accustomed to all 
 those luxuries and elegancies which are, as it were, 
 the surrounding atmosphere of those born in 
 the purple. 
 
 It was in vain that the great Lady Pitland's 
 daughter protested against her stepson's folly in 
 adopting a pauper's brat, and hinted that the 
 cloven foot of Socialism showed itself in the act. 
 It was in vain that she shuddered at the degrada- 
 tion of those ancestral halls. Lashmar was rock. 
 He was one of those quiet, undemonstrative young 
 men who make up their minds slowly, and who 
 can never be argued or cajoled into the relin- 
 quishment of a settled purpose.
 
 78 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 'I made up my mind as we drove home last 
 night, mother,' said Lashmar, gently, gravely, 
 resolutely, in a tone which her ladyship knew 
 only too well. ' Spillington and the child were 
 both asleep. I had ample time for reflection ; and 
 I thought the matter out thoroughly. I mean to 
 adopt Boldwood's child, and to bring her up as 
 my own daughter. There are many reasons in 
 favour of my project ; there is not one that I 
 can discover against it. I have long wished for 
 something to love, some young unschooled 
 creature, that should be dependent upon me, and 
 should grow up at my feet, as it were. I am 
 very fond of Victorian ; but he can seldom be my 
 companion. He has his education to occupy him 
 now ; he will have his career to think of by-and- 
 by. But a friendless little girl, whom I can train 
 and educate into companionship, will afford me 
 just the kind of solace, just the kind of innocent 
 sympathy, which I have sighed for. A little 
 more than a dog, a little less than an equal. ' 
 
 ' You will find the creature a horrible nuisance
 
 'so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE' 79 
 
 before you have done with her. If you should think 
 of marrying, for instance.' 
 
 *I shall never marry, never have children of 
 my own. By the time this girl has grown up 
 I shall be declining into the vale of years. She 
 will be my link with the future. I have been 
 told lately — you remember my long chat with 
 Sir William Spenser the last time he came down 
 to see me — that in spite of my miserable health 
 I may live to be an old man.' 
 
 Lady Lashmar winced palpably ; but she was 
 sitting at some distance from her stepson, and 
 her face was turned to the window, so he did 
 not see that startled look of keenest pain. She 
 had been telling herself for years past that Hubert 
 Lashmar could not make old bones — that it could 
 only be a question of a few years more or less 
 before her son would fill his place — and now to be 
 told that the great physician, Sir William Spenser, 
 had declared that Lashmar might creep on in this 
 half- life of his to old age ! It was a hard thin^r 
 to be told this, suddenly, in that cool, calm voice 
 of her stepson's. She knew that he was the soul
 
 80 
 
 ONE THINCr NEEDFUL 
 
 of truth, incapable of misrepresentation or exaggera- 
 tion upon any subject whatever. 
 
 *And you look to the child of such a man 
 as Boldwood to be your friend and companion in 
 after years — the mongrel of a gipsy and a dema- 
 gogue ! ' exclaimed Lady Lashmar, unable to control 
 her temper. 'You make no allowance for hereditary 
 instincts.' 
 
 'I believe more in association and education 
 than in hereditary instinct. The child has a fine 
 broad forehead, bright well-opened eyes, sensitive 
 nostrils, thin lips, delicate chin — not at all a bad 
 subject to work upon.' 
 
 ' I really think she is the ugliest child I ever 
 beheld,' said Lady Lashmar, rapping the table with 
 an elephant's tusk paper-knife. ' How you, who 
 pretend to worship ideal beauty, can be interested 
 in such a little monster is more than I can 
 understand.' 
 
 ' She is small and brown, but I don't think her 
 ugly. Her eyes shone like stars last night. It 
 is my idea that she will grow up a very interesting 
 woman.'
 
 'SO WOE-EEGOXE A THING WAS SITE' SI 
 
 ' You have such odd ideas ! ' 
 
 * Don't be angry, mother,' pleaded Lashmar 
 with wondrous gentleness. ' Granted that I am 
 somewhat eccentric — oSTature has made me in a 
 mould of her own, you see — but, after all, I have 
 Tery few whims. And I promise you that this 
 last caprice of mine shall give you no trouble. 
 The child shall live in this house; but you need 
 hardly be aware of her existence. All she will 
 want will be a couple of rooms on the top story, 
 where we have a score of rooms that only serve as 
 a rat-warren.' 
 
 'Mice, not rats,' protested her ladyship. 
 
 * Well, we'll call them mice. It sounds pleas- 
 anter ; only they are the biggest breed I ever saw, 
 and the noisiest. However, my protegee will help 
 to scare away the mice. I shall engage a maid 
 for her, and arrange a couple of rooms for her 
 and her maid, those two pretty rooms in the south- 
 west tower for instance. She will live on that 
 top floor, have her meals there, plague no one ; 
 and when I want her company in my study I can 
 
 have her brought down to me as I would any 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 ONE THING XEEDFCL 
 
 other plaything. You may meet her on the stairs 
 or in the corridor occasionally. But that is about 
 the utmost you need see of her.' 
 
 ' This is your house, Lashmar. If you choose to 
 have it infested by the spawn of Socialism it is not 
 for me to gainsay you. ' 
 
 * I hope the day may come when you will be 
 reconciled to my adopted daughter ; when she may 
 perhaps be a comfort to you as well as to me.' 
 
 * Never, Lashmar ! I can tolerate her existence 
 in the house out of deference to you. I should have 
 to submit if you took it into your head to keep a 
 rattlesnake ; but I have none of your Utopian ideas ; 
 and I have not the least doubt that you will have 
 cause to repent your generous folly before you and 
 your protegee are three years older.' 
 
 ' We will compare notes three years hence, and I 
 hope I shall convince you that you were mistaken,' 
 said Lashmar, with perfect good temper. ' And now, 
 mother, have you any young woman on your list 
 who w^ould make a good maid for Stella ? ' 
 
 ' There is Barker's niece ; her father is in the 
 gardens, don't you know. Barker's niece has
 
 ' so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE ' 83 
 
 been wanting to come here for the last six 
 months.' 
 
 'I should like to see Barker's niece this after- 
 noon.' 
 
 Lady Lashmar sighed, and gave orders in ac- 
 cordance with her stepson's wish. She had not seen 
 the obnoxious orphan since the previous night. The 
 child had been in Barker's care, and had been pro- 
 vided for in the remoteness of the upper servants' 
 apartments. She had been taken to Lord Lashmar, 
 and had spent half-an-hour in his study, before 
 breakfast. 
 
 The intruder did not take kindly to her new life. 
 Again and again, with piteous tears, and childish 
 unreasoning iteration, she entreated to be taken to 
 her father. ' Where is daddy ? Take me to daddy ! ' 
 that was the burden of her cries. And Lashmar, 
 albeit philosophical and strong-minded in most 
 things, could not find it in his heart to tell this 
 orphan child the hard and bitter truth. He could 
 not bring himself to crush her with the word 
 * never.' Childhood so soon learns the meaning of 
 that fatal word. So with weak tenderness he took
 
 84 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 the little girl upou his lap, and drew her to his 
 breast, and told her that she should see her father 
 again, some day. 
 
 ' To-day ? Now ? ' she questioned. 
 
 ' No, dear ; not now — not to-day. He has gone 
 ou a long journey.' 
 
 * To London ? ' she asked. 
 
 * A longer journey than that.' 
 
 * Where ? ' 
 
 * To a beautiful country. You shall go there some 
 day, and you shall be with him again.' 
 
 * Let me go now. ' 
 
 * No, dear ; not yet.' 
 
 ' But I loill go,' cried the child, scrambling off 
 Lashmar's lap, and running towards the door. 
 
 Lashmar followed and stopped her; she cried, 
 and stormed, and struggled with him. 
 
 ' I want to go to my daddy ; I will go to my 
 daddy.' 
 
 He was a quarter of an hour soothing her, and 
 arguing with her. By the end of that time he 
 had begun to exercise a certain influence over her ; 
 she was content to sit on his knee, gazing at him
 
 'so ^YOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE' 85 
 
 with those great dark eyes — star-like eyes, as he had 
 called them. She listened, and seemed comforted. 
 
 ' Tell me your name, little one,' he asked. 
 
 ' Stella.' 
 
 ' Stella ! That is a very pretty name.' 
 
 ' It means a star ! ' said the child. ' Daddy 
 told me.' 
 
 ' Will you be my star ? Will you live with 
 me in this house, and play in those gardens out 
 there, and go in my boat on the river ? ' 
 
 The little one craned her neck and looked out 
 of the broad Tudor window at the flower garden 
 and the green slopes of the park, and the bright 
 blue water in the valley yonder. It was a lovely 
 landscape— passing lovely after the arid purlieus 
 of Brumm, to which those young eyes had grown 
 accustomed. 
 
 ' No,' said the little one firmly, after she had 
 contemplated that delicious picture for some 
 moments. ' I don't want to live with you, I want 
 to live with my daddy.' 
 
 And then with a divinity of patience, with 
 that exquisite gentleness which is a peculiar
 
 86 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 attribute of those who love little children, Lashniar 
 explained how the journey on which daddy had 
 gone must needs last for a long time, how summer 
 and winter must pass before he could come back, 
 or Stella go to him; but how they should meet 
 in the days to come. 
 
 ' And you will leave off crying, and be very 
 good, for his sake, won't you, Stella ? ' pleaded 
 Lashmar. 'Fathers are unhappy when they hear 
 tliat their children have been naughty. You will 
 be good, and you will try to love me, won't you, 
 Stella, for daddy's sake ? ' 
 
 The child made a supreme effort over her 
 childish heart, choked her sobs and dried her tears, 
 and trotted by Lashmar's side to the gardens, and 
 across the dewy park to the river. He took her 
 in his boat, and rowed about with her for half-an- 
 hour or so, and took her. back to the castle with 
 a faint bloom in her sallow cheeks, and a fine 
 appetite for breakfast, as Barker informed him 
 afterwards. 
 
 He saw Barker's niece after luncheon, and 
 found her a buxom, chubby-cheeked young woman
 
 'so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE' 87 
 
 with a fine honest countenance ; so he engaged her 
 at once to be Stella's special attendant. 
 
 The little girl was to be known only as Stella. 
 That obnoxious name Boldwood were well forgotten. 
 And then with Barker for his aid and counsellor, 
 Lord Lashmar ordered the arrangement of those 
 two rooms in the south-west tower, remote from 
 the end of the castle where Lady Lashmar's 
 sumptuous apartments were situated, and on a 
 hicrher floor ; so that the chances of the young 
 yoice or the young presence obtruding themselyes 
 on her ladyship were minimised. 
 
 One of the two rooms was to be furnished as 
 a sitting-room ; the other and inner chamber was to 
 contain two beds, for nurse and child. There was 
 a plethora of substantial old-fashioned furniture upon 
 this upper floor; so the re-furnishing of the rooms 
 was only a matter of adjustment. The view from 
 these tower-chambers was exquisite. A wide ex- 
 panse of wooded park and winding river bounded by 
 low hills, and in the distance the rustic village of 
 Avondale, with red-tiled roofs, and low thatched 
 cottages, and quaint variety of gables, and Xorman
 
 88 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 churcli tower, smiling, amidst rich pastures, glassiug 
 its simple beauties in the blue bright river. For 
 a rural English Midland landscjape nothing could 
 be prettier. 
 
 * She ought to thrive and flourish in such a 
 bower as this,' thought Lashmar, and then he gave 
 Barker's niece — in future to be known as Betsy — 
 some broad general instructions as to the bringing 
 up of childhood upon enlightened principles — cold 
 water, fresh air, regular meals, and good and 
 ample foDd being the chief points. And to the elder 
 Barker he entrusted the task of procuring the 
 child an outfit. She might be driven over to 
 Brumm that afternoon he suo^Qjested, and could 
 make all her purchases before the shops were 
 shut, if her ladyship would kindly dispense with 
 her services for a few hours. 
 
 * I think I can manage to arrange that with 
 Ceiestine,' said Barker. 
 
 Celestine was the Parisian and superior maid 
 who re-arranged Mrs. Monsoon's gowns, and 
 repaired her ladyship's priceless laces. 
 
 ' Do, like a good soul ; and be sure you thank the
 
 'so WOE-BEGONE A TIIIXG WAS SHE' 89 
 
 coachmaii's wife for lending the little one clothes 
 for to-day. You will please buy everything of the 
 best, but of the simplest. When she is a year or 
 two older I may choose her frocks myself, perhaps. 
 For the present I should like her to be dressed 
 always in some cream-coloured stuff— some kind of 
 soft woollen material, and then she need have very 
 few undergarments, and no weight of clothing to 
 impede her movements.' 
 
 ' Lord a 'mercy, what a mollycoddle ! ' thought 
 Barker, and then she ventured a remonstrance on 
 economical grounds. 
 
 * Cream colour so soon gets dirty, my Lord,' she 
 said ; ' don't you think now that a neat lilac print, 
 a small pattern, and rather dark, would be better ? ' 
 
 * Good heavens, no ! Do you suppose I want 
 her to look like a workhouse child ? I want her to 
 brighten the gardens by her presence, like a beautiful 
 human butterfly.' 
 
 * She is such a plain child, my Lord. She will 
 never pay for dress.' 
 
 ' I will have her in cream colour,' said Lashmar, 
 decisively ; ' and you can buy her half-a-dozen
 
 90 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 sashes, the broadest you can get — some scarlet 
 and some pale blue. I will write you a cheque for 
 twenty or thirty pounds before you go. Buy every- 
 thing at Ponsford's, where her ladyship deals.' 
 
 ' The dearest shop in Brumm, my Lord.' 
 
 *The dearest shops are apt to be the cheapest 
 in the Ions: mn.' 
 
 'Ten pounds ought to be ample, even at Pons- 
 ford's,' said Barker. 'I shall only have to buy 
 materials, for Betsy is very clever with her needle, 
 and she will make all the little frocks and things.' 
 
 Betsy grinned, and reddened at this praise. 
 
 ' What a capital Betsy ! ' exclaimed Lashmar. * I 
 shall make the cheque twenty, and be sure you buy 
 soft and fine stuffs ; I want my little girl to look 
 pretty.' 
 
 ' That she will never do, my Lord,' answered 
 Barker with conviction ; ' but me and Betsy will 
 do our best to make her look nice.'
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLO^\'S.' 
 
 The inquest upon Jonathan Bold wood was held 
 next day, and Lord Lashmar was present. There 
 were plenty of witnesses ready to describe his fall, 
 had more than one voice been necessary. The fire- 
 men were exempted from all blame ; they had been 
 working nobly on the other side of the building 
 — not one inhabitant had perished in that great 
 populous hive. The one fatal accident had been the 
 death of the father in his endeavour to rescue his 
 child. 
 
 Xo one came forward out of Bold wood's past 
 life to tell what the man had been, or to tes- 
 tify to their interest in him. "When the coroner 
 asked what had been done with the child, 
 Lord Lashmar stepped forward and said that he
 
 92 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 had adopted her, and would liold himself responsible 
 for her future welfare. 
 
 ' I don't think there is anyone who will dispute 
 that privilege with you, my Lord,' said tlie coroner. 
 ' I hope the child will gi'ow up to be grateful to you 
 for your noble conduct in saving her life.' 
 
 There was a murmur of applause in the room as 
 Lord Lashmar withdrew ; but before he left the 
 tavern where the inquest had been held, he told 
 the authorities that he would pay for a decent 
 funeral, and a grave in the cemetery outside Brumm. 
 It was his particular desire that Boldwood should 
 not be buried by the parish. 
 
 He attended the funeral in person two days after- 
 wards, by no means an agreeable duty, since all 
 the rabble of Brumm turned out to do honour to 
 their favourite agitator. Bat Lashmar told himself 
 that the day would come when Stella would ques- 
 tion him about her father's burial, would ask to be 
 taken to her father's grave : and he wanted to be 
 able to tell her that he had stood beside that grave 
 while the clods of earth were cast upon the coffin, 
 while the words of promise and of hope were spoken.
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 93 
 
 So Lashmar stood beside the parson as he 
 shuffled over those sublime words, and his was 
 the first hand that dropped flowers — summer's 
 whitest roses— upon the demagogue's coflin. The 
 crowd pressed forward to stare down into the 
 grave, and many a grimy hand scattered hedge- 
 row wildlings and humble cottage flowers on the 
 lid of the huge oak coffin. There were women 
 among the crowd who wept, women who had 
 never heard the orator, but who felt as if they 
 had lost a friend. Had he not pleaded the 
 cause of the poor against the rich ? Had he not 
 given voice to that deep undertone of discontent 
 which had been growing stronger day by day 
 with the advance of education. 
 
 The last of the summer roses had bloomed 
 and faded long before Stella ceased from piteous 
 entreaties to be taken to her daddy. She was 
 gentle and obedient to her benefactor ; was 
 gradually growing attached to him. She took 
 pleasure in his society, loved the river and the 
 gardens, the meadows and flowery banks, the 
 picture books in the library, where she used to
 
 94 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 sit upon the lioor quietly turning the leaves of 
 an illustrated volume, while Lashmar read or 
 wrote, undisturbed by her presence. She thrived 
 in Betsy Barker's care, and was happy in the 
 comfort and the brightness of her new life ; but 
 young as she was she did not forget. A cloud 
 would come over her face in the midst of her 
 happiness, and the tears would roll down her 
 cheeks as she asked, ' Will daddy iiever come ? ' 
 Sometimes Lashmar regretted that he had not 
 told her the truth at the very first, and questioned 
 his own wisdom in not having striven to make 
 her young mind comprehend the meaning of that 
 dreadful word 'death.' But having deceived her 
 so long he could not undeceive her now. He 
 could but talk in his vague poetic way of that 
 bright and beautiful country in which they were 
 all to dv/ell together some day. 
 
 Once she asked the name of that distant land, 
 And he told her it was Jerusalem the Golden. 
 
 Never did she see a stranger in the house or 
 the gardens without running up to him, looking 
 up in his face interrogatively, lest by any chance
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 95 
 
 this should be ' daddy ' come back to her un- 
 awares. The vision of a tall man, with broad 
 shoulders, resulted inevitably in bitterest dis- 
 appointment. The figure seen from a distance, 
 perchance, had looked so like daddy, she had 
 run to him, and caught hold of his coat-tails 
 calling him by that dear name. And, oh ! the 
 agony of seeing an unfamiliar face, looking 
 wonderingly down at her! 
 
 She had cried herself to sleep more than once 
 after such a disappointment as this. 
 
 She was a very intelligent child, grave beyond 
 her years, full of serious thoughts and curious 
 questionings — a young mind alive with wonder. 
 She wanted to know about the sun and moon 
 and stars, the earth, and all creatures that dwell 
 thereon. Those picture books afforded perpetual 
 subjects for wonder. They were the stepping- 
 stones to knowledge of all things great and small, 
 from the relics of Agamemnon's tomb to the last 
 discovery about ants or aphids. Lashmar was 
 infinitely patient with this human plaything of 
 his. He would lay aside Plato to answer Stella's
 
 96 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 childish questioning, to explain a picture, to tell 
 her a story. He, to whom books were life itself 
 — the charm and rapture of existence— would shut 
 his best-loved author, and devote himself for an 
 hour at a time to the task of satisfying this 
 eager young mind, impatient with the intensity 
 of its desire for knowledge. 
 
 Bold wood had taught his child a great deal, had 
 talked to her of subjects far beyond her years. He 
 had taught her as a man of large brain and lazy 
 habits would be likely to teach. He had taken her 
 on his lap and talked to her at random, roaming 
 from subject to subject ; now telling her some legend 
 of the old Greek fairyland, and now some strange 
 fact about the manners and customs of crocodiles. 
 There was one subject which he had never touched 
 upon — he had told her nothing about her God. It 
 was left for Lashmar to teach her to pray. That 
 first simple form of prayer which he had learnt 
 years ago from his nursery governess came back to 
 his memory one evening when the child was bidding 
 him good-night in the summer dusk. 
 
 ' Stella, I hope you say your prayers beside
 
 *BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 97 
 
 your little bed, every night and morning,' he 
 said. 
 
 ' AVhat are prayers ? ' she asked. ' Betsy said 
 I ought to say my prayers ; but I don't know 
 what it means.' 
 
 ' Did daddy never teach you to pray. Stella ? ' 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 *If it was good he would have taught me,' 
 she said ; ' he was always good to Stella.' 
 
 'Prayer is good for all of us, dear. Daddy 
 may have thought you too young to pray — too 
 young to understand about the God who created 
 you and all of us, and Whom we all ought to love 
 and to fear.' 
 
 * Daddy said there was no God ; he said only 
 fools believed in God.' 
 
 'My little girl, if we want to be happy we 
 must have something higher and better than 
 ourselves to look up to. We want the conscious- 
 ness of a friend and protector watching over us 
 and caring for us. Happily most of us have that 
 consciousness : it is born with us, a part of our 
 being ; takes strange and various forms in different 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 lands, but is always the same instinct — a looking 
 upward.' 
 
 And then feeling that his words were outside 
 the child's comprehension, he drew her to his 
 breast, and told her the story of Jesus; told her 
 that sweet story in its simplest and most human 
 pliase — the Holy Child on His mother's knee ; 
 the baptism in the river ; the Spirit of God 
 descending from the parted skies in the form of 
 a dove ; the Man of Sorrows ; the story of the 
 cross and the grave. 
 
 The child listened, her eyes wide with wonder. 
 
 ' Daddy did not know, or he would have 
 loved Jesas,' she said. 
 
 And then Lashmar taught her the first four lines 
 of that childish prayer which he had learnt from 
 his governess three-and-twenty years before : ' Gentle 
 Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child.' 
 
 Stella repeated the words after him in her 
 clear, sweet tones ; the first prayer those lips had 
 ever syllabled. Other prayers followed, the Lord's 
 prayer first and chief est — and Betsy's conscience 
 was relieved of a burden.
 
 'BY DEGREES THE H[JMAX BLOSSOM BLOWS' 99 
 
 Stella had lived nearly a month at the castle 
 before she encountered Lady Lashmar. The dowager 
 had gone up to London with Victorian and taken 
 him to Eton, and had spent a week at "Windsor 
 in order to soften the agony of parting with her 
 idol. She saw him in the playing fields, she saw 
 him on the river, ai)d his young beauty seemed 
 to her the perfection of ripening manhood. She 
 talked to him of his future — his career — 
 emphasising the word with heroic meaning, trying 
 to kindle the fire of ambition in that yonng 
 mind. 
 
 ' As a younger son you are bound to distinguish 
 yourself, Victor,' she said. * Your poor brother is 
 Lord Lashmar, he can afford to dream away his 
 days in a library, but you will have no distinc- 
 tion except that which you may win for your- 
 self. You must be the architect of your own 
 fortunes.' 
 
 ' I wouldn't much mind being the architect,' 
 said Victor; 'but I don't want to be the builder 
 — not to have to lay brick upon brick, and carry 
 the hod of mortar, don't vou know — not to have
 
 100 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 to work my way upward incli by iiicL, as some 
 poor beggars do, in the church, or in the law.' 
 'You need have no profession but politics.' 
 ' That's deuced slow work, and deuced hard 
 work, I'm told. One has to drudge over blue 
 books, and cram statistics, and sit in the House on 
 summer afternoons to ask questions, when life and 
 fashion are at fioodtide outside. If I could make 
 a great speech now, upon some burning question, 
 at midnight, and wake next morning to find my- 
 self famous ! ' 
 
 * Ah, that is the way with boys, they want to 
 succeed without working for success ! ' 
 
 'Mother,' said the boy, coming closer to her 
 and lowering his voice, ' do you know some of the 
 fellows here have told me that I should be a fool 
 to work, because I vitist be Lord Lashmar before I 
 am many years older. Poor Lash has such shock- 
 ing bad health, don't you imow, and it isn't likely 
 he'll last long.' 
 
 * Whoever taughc you to think that you will 
 be Lord Lashmar is your worst enemy,' said his 
 mother severely; 'Lashmar suffers a martyrdom
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 101 
 
 from neuralgia, poor fellow, but there is nothing 
 organically ^vrong. Sir William Spenser told him 
 that he may live to Ije an old man.' 
 
 ' I'm glad to hear it,' said the boy, ' for I'm 
 very fond of old Lash. He has always been a good 
 brother to me. As for working, well, I don't like 
 work, who does ? but I always try to be top of the 
 tree everywhere, and I shall try to be top of the 
 tree at St. Stephen's, by-and-by. I shall go in for 
 aristocratic radicalism.' 
 
 * Victorian ! ' cried her ladyship, growing pale 
 with horror. 
 
 * There's no one succeeds better than your swell 
 Ead. Look at Maupertius, for instance. Who, 
 has got the ear of the House half so well as he 
 has ? A man born in the purple makes such a 
 grand effect when he calmly expounds the theories 
 of advanced socialism ? I shall go in for the kind 
 of gospel that poor beggar Boldwood preached so 
 eloquently; only I shall be as mild as Maupertius, 
 don't you know, and I shall be the wit of the 
 House. Nothing tells like wit.' 
 
 ' But wit is one of the few things that cannot
 
 ]02 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 be learnt,' said the mother, smiling fondly at her 
 bov's arro2:ance. ' A man cannot be either a tenor- 
 singer or a wit for the wishing.' 
 
 'AVe shall see,' answered Victorian confidentl}^ 
 ' If I go into the House it will be to make the 
 members laugh — with me, not at me, mother.' 
 
 ' I would have you full to the brim of ambition,' 
 said her ladyship, kissing the broad strong brow, 
 * I do not mind your being self-confident — vain, 
 even — so long as you are earnest and industrious/ 
 
 This was their parting interview. Lady Lash- 
 mar had never so much as hinted at her own 
 hope of her son's succession to his half-brother's 
 honours ; and now she breathed not one word of 
 the bitter blow which Spenser's favourable opinion 
 had been to her. She felt now that the hope had 
 been wicked, unnatural : yet she told herself that 
 she had always done her duty to her stepson, and 
 that nothing could ever make her falter in her 
 performance of that duty. If it had pleased Pro- 
 vidence to relieve him of the burden of existence 
 it would have seemed to her that Providence had 
 acted wisely and beneficially alike for Lashmar
 
 *BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 103 
 
 and for Victorian. But Lady Pitland's second 
 daughter had been too well brought up to be 
 capable of rebellion against Providence. It was 
 not in vain that she went to church twice on 
 Sundays, and once on every Saint's Day, not even 
 slighting the minor saints by non-attendance. She 
 was eminently orthodox in her ideas, and she 
 bowed with dignified submission to the Inscru- 
 table. 
 
 She went back to Middleshire, and was 
 cordially received by her stepson, who was at the 
 station to meet her, testifying to that respect 
 which was her due. He was standing on the 
 platform when the train stopped, and her ladyship 
 thought she had never seen him looking so well. 
 
 * I shouldn't wonder if Sir William were right. 
 He looks as if he might live to be ninety,' she 
 said to herself, and then, with a sigh, she 
 murmured * Poor Victorian.' 
 
 Orthodox as she was it could but seem to 
 her a hardship that her son, in his strength and 
 perfection of manhood, should be kept in the 
 background by this blighted life.
 
 104 OXE THIXG NEEDFUL 
 
 *How brown you have grown, Lashmar,' she 
 said, as they shook hands^ ' and how well you 
 are looking ! ' 
 
 'I have not had one of my headaches since 
 you left. I suppose it is because I have lived 
 more out of doors than I used to do.' 
 
 * I should advise you always to live out of 
 doors,' replied his stepmother, with a forced 
 laugh. 
 
 She was grave and silent as they drove home; 
 excused herself for being dull and stupid on 
 the ground of fatigue. Not one question did she 
 ask about Lashmar's proUgee : yet the thought 
 of Bold wood's child was in her mind as they 
 drew near the castle. It was on account of this 
 brat no doubt that Lashmar had been spending his 
 life in the gardens, bronzing himself to the com- 
 plexion of a plough-boy. It was this whim which 
 had given new brightness to his aspect, a new 
 impetus to his life. Lady Lashmar was far too 
 orthodox to be angry with Providence; but she 
 felt that she might be as angry as she liked with 
 Boldwood's daughter.
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 105 
 
 She stood upon her balcony next morning, 
 wrapped in her dressing-gown, tasting the sweet 
 freshness of the air that swept over woodland and 
 meadow, and rippled the wavelets of the river 
 yonder. Far away in the rose-garden, a quaint 
 old quadrangle of turf and rose-trees, hedged in 
 with clipped yew, she saw two figures — Lashmar's 
 and a little girl in a white frock. The child was 
 flittincr from flower to flower. The man was 
 sauntering up and down the grass, reading; but 
 he looked round every now and then at the child, 
 and occasionally stopped and bent down to talk 
 to her. 
 
 Lady Lashmar stood for a long time watching 
 them. 
 
 ' ^Yas there ever such an absurd infatuation ? ' 
 she said to herself, contemptuously. 
 
 It was nearly a week later when she met 
 the child for the first time in the corridor. 
 Stella was alone, tripping along gaily, holding up 
 a lap full of wild flowers — free, independent, 
 happy. She had just come in fr.mi a morning 
 spent on the river, in Lashmar's boat.
 
 106 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Her ladyship laid her hand upon the child's 
 shoulder, and bent down to scrutinise the small 
 sallow face. 
 
 Ugly ? Well, no, not so ugly as she had 
 thought that night. The small features were too 
 delicately moulded for ugliness. The eyes were 
 wonderful — too large, too dark for childish beauty ; 
 but in a woman they would have been eyes 
 worthy of Cleopatra. 
 
 ' I shouldn't wonder if the creature were to 
 grow up into a handsome woman,' thought her 
 ladyship, 'and then the chances are that Lashmar 
 will marry her. With his eccentric ideas there 
 would be nothing extraordinary in such a marriage. 
 Let me see, she is five — it will be twelve or thirteen 
 years before she is marriageable. That is a comfort. 
 And in the meantime she may hinder his marrying 
 anyone else.' 
 
 There was comfort also in this last idea, and 
 yet Lady Lashmar could not bring herself to regard 
 the child as anything but a viper. 
 
 * What is your name ? ' she asked sternly. 
 
 ' Stella,' answered the child, looking up at her
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 107 
 
 ladyship calmly, unabashed by grandeur of 
 presence or splendour of raiment, or by the frown 
 which contracted the questioner's dark brows. 
 
 ' Stella ! a fine theatrical name, upon my word. 
 I suppose it was Lashmar who called you Stella.' 
 
 ' It was my daddy. He called me Stella. Do 
 you know where he is ? ' looking up eagerly, with 
 sudden interest. 
 
 Her ladyship was on the point of replying. In 
 another instant the hard, bitter truth would have 
 been spoken, had not Lashmar come out of the 
 library close by and interrupted the conversation. 
 
 ' So you have been talking to Stella,' he said 
 cheerily. ' Don't you think she has improved in 
 Betsy's care ? ' 
 
 'Betsy has dressed her a great deal too fine,' 
 said her ladyship, with a scornful glance at the 
 cream-coloured frock and scarlet sash, the scarlet 
 shoes, and the coral necklace on the little throat, 
 which had the yellowish whiteness of ivory. 
 
 ' Oh, I like her to look pretty ! She brings stray 
 gleams of beauty into the dullness of a student's 
 life. There, you can run away, Stella. Run away
 
 108 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 and get your dinner, and come to me again at four 
 o'clock for your reading lesson. Good-bye till four.' 
 
 He stooped to kiss lier, and dismissed her with 
 a smile. She tripped away, murmuring ' Four 
 o'clock, four o'clock — go again at four o'clock/ in 
 a kind of tune, as if to impress the fact upon 
 her mind. 
 
 Lady Lashmar felt the uselessness of argument 
 with her stepson. That quietly determined temper 
 of his had always baffled her in any dispute which 
 involved earnest purpose on his side. In trifles 
 he was always ready to give way to her. He 
 allowed her to reign undisputed mistress of a house 
 which by inheritance was all his own. He allowed 
 her to spend as much of his money as ever she 
 cared to spend in the maintenance of a state wliich 
 was far beyond his desires : but wherever feeling or 
 affection was concerned he had his own way. 
 
 Her ladyship had wished to get rid of the old 
 book-worm tutor when Lashmar came of age. The 
 man had taught his pupil all he could teach. He 
 was a shabby -looking Dominie Sampson-ish per- 
 sonage, whose dingy presence was a blot upon the
 
 'BY DEGREES THE IIUMAX BLOSSOM BLOWS' 109 
 
 elegance of Lash mar Castle. He was receiving two 
 hundred a year for doing nothing. But when these 
 views of hers were made known to Lashmar he 
 informed her that he meant Gabriel Verner to end 
 his days at the castle. 
 
 ' Verner is too old to go among new faces or to 
 learn new habits,' he said ; ' he will be very useful 
 to me as a librarian and secretary. He can take 
 care of my books and write my business letters.' 
 
 * He has no more idea of business than one of 
 those peacocks/ said her ladyship, looking absently 
 out upon the terrace where Juno's birds were 
 spreading their plumes in. the sunshine. 
 
 * Fortunately I have. I can always tell him 
 what to say.' 
 
 So Gabriel Verner stayed, a quaint old figure, 
 with shoulders so bent and rounded by stooping 
 over books that he too seemed a hunchback. Lady 
 Lashmar sometimes thought that he had culti- 
 vated a hump, by way of mute flattery. He 
 was a harmless old man, small and pale, with 
 a large overhanging brow, and silvery hair, which 
 he wore long, like Milton, to whom he fancied
 
 110 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 that he bore a striking resemblance. He had an 
 inoffensive kind of intellectual vanity, and was 
 engaged upon an elaborate commentary on Aris- 
 totle's metaphysics, which he feared to publish 
 lest he should become suddenly famous in the 
 decline of his life, and sink into the grave 
 crushed by the weight of his laurels, like Tarpeia 
 under the bracelets of the besiegers. He con- 
 trived to live at the castle, without obtruding 
 himself upon its proud mistress. He had his 
 private sitting-room near the library, where he 
 dwelt alone when he was not with Lashmar. 
 Once in a way, when she was in a benevolent 
 mood. Lady Lashmar invited him to lunch; or, 
 if she had a learned visitor she would go so 
 far as to ask Mr. Verner to dinner, in order 
 that he might relieve her of her burden, and do 
 all necessary listening and sympathising in her 
 stead. Gradually she had become resigned to 
 the idea that he was to end his days at Lash- 
 mar. She even knitted warm ^comforters for him, 
 which he used to wear, and speak of with 
 reverence as 'her ladyship's little attentions.*
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 111 
 
 It was to Gabriel Verner that Lady Lashmar 
 now turned for sympathy. She joined him on 
 the terrace that afternoon while he was takinsr 
 his constitutional walk, after his temperate 
 luncheon, trotting up and down with a volume 
 of German metaphysics under his arm, a book 
 to which he applied himself for a few minutes 
 ever and anon, reading a little bit, and then 
 pacing up and down. 
 
 'My dear Mr. Yerner, how well you are 
 looking ! ' cried her Ladyship, ' ever so much 
 better than when I left the castle.' 
 
 *I think it must be because I have been 
 more in the open air,' replied the old man, 
 unconsciously answering just as Lashmar had 
 answered ;' his lordship and I have been spending 
 our days on the river during the late glorious 
 weather ; we have taken our books and our 
 luncheon ' 
 
 'And his lordship's latest plaything — that 
 horrid child,' interrupted Lady Lashmar. 
 
 'I can assure your ladyship that the little 
 girl is a most amenable child, and a very in-
 
 112 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 terestiug companion. I never saw so young an 
 intellect of such scope and development ; it 
 induces me to think with Aristotle that as in 
 the young of some of the lower mammals the ' 
 
 'Of course the child must be sharp, cunning, 
 old-fashioned. She is the child of sedition and 
 freethought. The child of a man whose intel- 
 lectual powers were employed only in doing 
 mischief. I am not surprised that you should 
 think the child clever. A few years hence she 
 will be a great deal too clever for any of us — 
 a source of unspeakable mischief — unless you, 
 dear j\Ir. Vei'ner, can exercise your great influence 
 over Lashmar ; for you have great influence over 
 him, my dear sir ; he positively adores you, and 
 thinks your book will revolutionise European 
 thought.' 
 
 The phrase was large, but when Lady Lash- 
 mar had her own purpose to gain she always 
 did things largely. 
 
 'You are too kind,' murmured the Aristotelian 
 meekly. 
 
 ' Yes, dear Mr. Verner,' she hurried on, ' you
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS ' 113 
 
 must really bring your superior brain to bear upon 
 poor Lashmar. He is clever, but a mere dreamer. 
 You must show him the danger involved in 
 this folly of his — the incubus he is preparing 
 for himself in the future. What in heaven's 
 name is he to do with this child by-and-by 
 if she should turn out badly? And of course 
 she will turn out badly. I have a profound 
 belief in hereditary instinct.' 
 
 *And I, dear Lady Lashmar, have an equally 
 profound beHef in education. Not for worlds would 
 I thwart Lashmar in this fancy of his. Eemember, 
 he saved that baby's life at the hazard of his own. 
 She is his — a God-given boon. He has seemed ever 
 so much happier since she has been here. She 
 interests, she amuses him, she takes him out of 
 himself; and think what a blessing that self- 
 forgetfulness must needs be in such a case as his 
 where nature, injusta noverca, has been so unkind.' 
 
 Gabriel Verner stopped in some confusion. What 
 
 if that phrase, injusta noverca, should seem personal. 
 
 Happily Lady Lashmar had been educated at a 
 
 period when young ladies were not taught Latin. 
 VOL. L I
 
 114 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 * Do not fear the result/ continued Verner. * I 
 will be responsible for the child's training ; and 
 I pledge myself that education shall conquer evil 
 instincts, if there is anything evil in that young 
 character.' 
 
 Lady Lashmar pushed the argument no further. 
 There was evidently no help to be obtained here. 
 
 ' I must go and put on my bonnet,' she said rather 
 shortly ; * I have a round of tiresome calls to make. 
 I will leave you to your beloved Plato.' 
 
 The Aristotelian shuddered at that hated name. 
 To think that after all these years of intercourse, 
 after having had the nature of his studies and 
 lucubrations so often expounded to her. Lady 
 Lashmar did not yet know to which school he 
 belonged !' 
 
 For six years of young, fresh life, Stella Bold- 
 wood was almost entirely happy. She lived in a 
 world where aL things were new — to the 
 dweller in the tents of the people — an actual 
 world of beauty and luxury which knew not 
 change ; a world of thought whose horizon 
 widened with every day of her existence. Edu-
 
 'BY DEGllEES THE UUMAN LLOSSOM BLOWS' 115 
 
 cation to Stella was as sunlight to tlie Howers, 
 or spring time to the birds. Her eager mind opened 
 to receive the treasures of knowledge; her vivid 
 imagination shed its own brightness upon every 
 subject ; and she was taught as seldom children are 
 taught in this super- eulightened age of ours. She 
 was taught as sweetly and as pleasantly as cliildren 
 are told the legends of fairyland on a mother's knee. 
 Lashmar devised his own system of education. She 
 was to learn nothing in which she was not inte- 
 rested, to repeat no dry formulae, parrotwise. She 
 was to be troubled with none of those abstruse 
 technicalities which the modern grammarian has 
 devised for the torture of childhood. The story of 
 the earth on which she lived was not to be made 
 odious to her by dry scraps of science, long rows 
 of figures, altitudes of mountains, lengths of rivers. 
 She was to learn the beauty and the glory of the 
 universe unawares, out of picture books and tales 
 of travel and adventure. Instead of knocking her 
 poor little head against a row of unfriendly figure 
 in order to learn the exact height of such and such 
 peaks of the Andes, or the Himalayas, she was iu
 
 116 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 fancy to roam those mountains, to tremble on the 
 edge of stern precipices, to gather strange flowers 
 that bloom in their remoteness, to make acquaint- 
 ance with strange creatures that dwell in those inac- 
 cessible regions. She would sit for hours at 
 Lashmar's feet listening to the experiences of some 
 hardy explorer, and then with her babyish pencil 
 she would draw fancy-pictures of the wild, lonely 
 hills, the gigantic lakes, and awful woods, the 
 world which to her vivid imagination was as fami- 
 liar as the meadows and orchards of Middleshire. 
 
 Lashmar taught his pupil history in a series of 
 narrations, beginning with the Bible-stories of that 
 far-away patriarchal world in which good men 
 dwelt under the personal protection of their God, 
 holding constant converse with heaven ; and 
 working gradually downwards through the dark 
 mystery of Egypt to the fair dawn of Grieece. 
 He lingered long and lovingly over that fairy land 
 of Olympus. He was steeped to the lips in Greek 
 legend, Hesiod and Homer, and all the Homeric 
 hymns. 
 
 And Stella loved to hear these fair myths of a
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 117 
 
 world that is dead, asked again and again for stories 
 of Dionysus and Demeter, of Helen and Paris, of 
 Hector and Achilles, of Ajax and Agamemnon ; stories 
 terrible and stories beautiful, stories at which her 
 hair seemed to rise with horror, stories which 
 brought back the happy smile to the young lips. 
 In the boat beneath the willows on sultriest summer 
 afternoons, or beside the winter fire, betwixt after- 
 noon tea and the eight o'clock dinner, Stella's 
 education was always going on ; an education of 
 legend and history, poetry and fact : an education 
 of oral instruction which exacted no labour from 
 the growing brain, an education which was always 
 sowing the seed and never reaping the harvest. 
 That was to come later. 
 
 Gabriel Verner took the child in hand for an 
 hour every morning. He taught her to read and 
 write and cipher. That was the only drudgery of 
 her education. All the rest was learnt at Lashmar's 
 knee. 
 
 Their life crept onward with a monotony which 
 to anyone, except a student, would have been in- 
 tolerable. Lady Lashmar came and went. She
 
 118 OXE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 was in Grosvenor Square for the season. She 
 spent all one summer at Homburg for her gout, tak- 
 ing Victorian with her. She took him lbr*another 
 vacation to the Engadine. She spent a month 
 with him in Paris. But, except for an occasional 
 week in the picture-seeing season. Lord Lashmar 
 rarely went to London. He found contentment, 
 occupation, variety in that matchless library which 
 was the pride of Lashmar Castle ; and he found 
 recreation and amusement in the society of his 
 adopted daughter. 
 
 And thus, in the lap of luxury, beloved and 
 cherished, Jonathan Boldwood's daughter arrived 
 at her eleventh birthday. She had remembered 
 her birthday, young as she was, and had been able 
 to tell her benefactor the exact date, because it was 
 a day with a name. This dark child with the 
 star-like eyes had begun life upon Midsummer- 
 day. 
 
 Lashmar questioned her sometimes about her 
 earliest experiences — very gently, lest he should 
 evoke sad memories, revive her passionate grief 
 for her father, perhaps. He asked her if her
 
 'BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS* 119 
 
 father had ever told her anything about her 
 mother, or of his own life. 
 
 Yes. He had told her that he was once a 
 gentleman, that he was born in a great house 
 near the sea, far away on the Scottish border. 
 He had told her that her mother was beautiful 
 and ought to have been rich. This — told vaguely 
 as a child would relate shreds and patches of 
 half-remembered speech — was all that Lashmar 
 could obtain by his questioning. 
 
 After all, the past history of Jonathan B oldwood 
 could matter very little. There was evidently no 
 one to claim the child ; and that, in Lashmar's 
 mind, was the main point. 
 
 Only one relic of the dead man had been saved 
 from the fire. A small tin cash-box, with the 
 initials J. B., had been found among the ashes 
 and rubbish below that portion of the ruined pile 
 in which Boldwood's rooms had been situated. It 
 was identified as his by a fellow-lodger; and waa 
 ultimately handed over to Lashmar, together with 
 the key which had been found hanging on his steel 
 watch-chain. Watch, chain, and key, were given 
 up to Lashmar after the inquest.
 
 120 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 The contents of the casket were disappointing. 
 It contained papers which the smoke had blackened 
 so as to be utterly undecipherable. The original 
 form was there, but reduced almost to tinder. 
 The matter had vanished. The only uninjured 
 object was a miniature in a double gold case, 
 which had better resisted the action of the fire 
 than the ill-made metal box. The miniature was 
 an old-fashioned painting upon ivory ; the por- 
 trait of a man in the prime of life. A grave dark 
 face, with large dark eyes, and a high bald fore- 
 head. Lashmar judged by the peculiar form of 
 baard and coat-collar that the original had been 
 a foreigner ; the type was un-English. He 
 showed Stella the picture and asked her if she 
 had ever seen it before. 
 
 * Xo, never. What was it, who was it ? ' 
 Lashmar sealed up the sheets of tindery paper 
 in a large envelope, and subscribed it carefully, 
 * Burned papers found in Bold wood's cash-box,' 
 with the place and date. He cleaned up the cash- 
 box, and put the miniature and the papers back 
 into it, locked it, and tied the key to the handle
 
 'BY DEGEEES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS' 121 
 
 then wrote a label, ' This box is Stella BoldwoocVs 
 property, the only thing saved from her father's 
 lodgings.' He put the box in a locked book-case 
 where he kept some of his most valuable books. 
 A priceless Decameron, an old copy of Eabelais, 
 and some of the least respectable among the 
 classics from the printing press of mediaeval 
 Venice.
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 OUT OF SIGHT, BEYOXD LIGHT, AT WHAT GOAL MAY 
 WE MEET ? ' 
 
 It was Midsummer Day, and Stella was eleven 
 years old, an ever-memorable anniversary in that 
 young life ; so sweet in its summer dawn, so fatal 
 before sundown. 
 
 Lady Lasbmar was in London, Victorian was 
 at Oxford. He bad hardly spent three months at 
 the castle during those six years in which Stella 
 had dwelt there, and he had exchanged scarcely a 
 dozen words with her. He bad exaggerated his 
 mother's prejudices against the orphan, and avoided 
 her as if she had been a toad. 
 
 Lashmar and his protegee had their little world 
 all to themselves, save for their devoted slave, 
 Gabriel Verner, who still hovered on the brink 
 of publication, the manuscript of bis great book
 
 'AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET' 123 
 
 still virgin, unsoiled by the finger-marks of the 
 compositor, and who still forecast with terror the 
 day in which the world should ring with his 
 name, and cabinet ministers insist upon making 
 his acquaintance. 
 
 Stella's birthday had been always made in 
 some wise a festival by her adopted father. He 
 wanted the child to lack none of those childish 
 pleasures which fathers and mothers give their 
 children. She was in after years to recall no 
 deprivation, no loss of privilege or pleasure. And 
 this year he felt more than usually anxious to do 
 honour to her birthday. The time was drawing 
 near when this happy Arcadian existence, this 
 easy-going education at her benefactor's feet must 
 needs be changed for a more conventional form of 
 life. The time was coming when Stella must be 
 handed over to feminine care, in order that she 
 might learn the ways and the accomplishments of 
 women. It would have pleased Lashmar to have 
 carried out his work to the end, to have seen his 
 protegee grow up to ripening womanhood under 
 his care, to have taught her all things that she
 
 124 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 was ever to learn, to have created in lier a 
 spiritual twin-sister, a second self, the sweet com- 
 panion and consolation of his loveless days. But 
 regard for her interests, the fear that he might 
 create that modern monster, the philosopher in 
 petticoats, made him hesitate ; while Gabriel 
 Verner's suggestion, that in days to come scandal 
 might cloLid the relations of protector and pro- 
 tected, was not without weight with him. He 
 made up his mind to seek out some tranquil and 
 happy household, some perfect woman nobly 
 planned, in whose fostering care Stella might 
 develop into enlightened and graceful womanhood. 
 And then — and then — in the days to come she 
 might still be his companion and friend, again live 
 under his roof and brighten his days, the first to 
 bid him good-morning, the last to say good-night. 
 She would marry, perhaps ; yes, that would be 
 best for both of them. She might anchor herself 
 in marriage to some mild young cleric, who could 
 be Lashmar's chaplain; so that husband and wife 
 might live together under his roof. He saw him- 
 self in that far future smiling upon Stella's child-
 
 ' AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET ' 125 
 
 ren, finding a new star in some baby girl who 
 would sit at his feet and listen to him in wide- 
 eyed wonder, just as Stella had done. Surely his 
 age would not be loveless or lonely ; this waif 
 snatched out of the fire would be to him a well- 
 spring of love. 
 
 His life had not been all brightness since Stella 
 had dwelt within his walls. Those sensitive nerves 
 of his — sensitive to cold, to heat, to fatigue, to 
 pleasure even — had been racked many and many 
 a day. The old agony of pain, the old weari- 
 ness of prostration had been his again and again ; 
 but in every new interval of suffering he had 
 found a growing sweetness in SteUa's sympathy. 
 The child had a sense of pity and love far beyond 
 her years, a power to comprehend suffering rarely 
 found even in a woman. She would sit by her 
 benefactor's couch for hours — silent, watchful. She 
 knew every expression of the sufferer's tortured 
 brow, and could mark those intervals of respite 
 in which he liked to talk, and in which it was 
 good for him to have his thoughts diverted into 
 new channels. Her little feet moved lightly over
 
 126 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 the carpet, lier little hands were as gentle as rose 
 leaves falling upon grass. Before she was eight 
 years old she acquired a deftness which made 
 her ministrations pleasanter than those of the 
 most experienced w^oman-servant in the castle. 
 She could pour out a dose of medicine, or mix a 
 tumbler of lemonade with unerring precision. She 
 was Lashmar's chief nurse in all his illnesses, 
 which, being for the most part of a nervous cha- 
 racter, involved no degrading office for nurse or 
 attendant. Gabriel Verner was Stella's subordinate 
 in the sick room, and was quite as gentle as a 
 woman. 
 
 Lord Lash mar generally breakfasted in his 
 study when her ladyship was away, and at such 
 periods Verner and Stella always breakfasted with 
 him. The breakfast hour was nine, and Lashmar 
 often spent an hour in the garden before break- 
 fast, sometimes alone, but more often with Stella 
 for his companion. 
 
 She was with him this morning, proud in the 
 repetition of her first Greek verb. She had been 
 learning Latin for more than a year, and could recite
 
 * AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET ' 127 
 
 b its of the Bucolics with perfect intonation and pre- 
 cision, but Greek had been begun within the last 
 few weeks, and Stella was intensely interested in 
 the beginning of a language which she had been 
 taught to consider the grandest tongue that the 
 peoples of this earth had ever spoken. Had not 
 Homer recited his wondrous tale of Troy in those 
 sonorous syllables ? Stella knew the story of 
 Troy as well as other children know the story 
 of Eed Eiding-Hood. 
 
 Stella repeated her verb in its innumerable 
 tenses with very few mistakes, and won a kindly 
 word of approval from Lashmar. 
 
 * Most little girls at your age would be learn- 
 ing French instead of Greek,' he said ; ' but, as 
 there is nothing in the French language equal to 
 Homer or Plato, I would rather you should learn 
 Greek first and French afterwards.' 
 
 They went into breakfast together. Mr. 
 Verner was in the study waiting for them, with 
 his note-book and pencil in his hand, going 
 over a passage in his book. He wrote his 
 manuscript in small scraps, which he revised
 
 128 OXE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 and re-wrote again and again, carrying the little 
 book about with him wherever he went, poring 
 and pondering over every paragraph, every 
 phrase ; and by this laborious method he had 
 contrived to attain an English style which read 
 like a literal translation from Hegel or Schopen- 
 hauer. 
 
 The table was bright with flowers, old English 
 silver, and old English china. A large dish of 
 strawberries showed crimson against a background 
 of tea-roses in a great Japanese bowl. The 
 substantial were all upon a side-table. Lash- 
 mar was wont to breakfast lightly, on new 
 laid eggs and strawberries and cream, in this 
 summer weather, and Stella cared only for 
 crisp, light rolls and fruit and cream. It 
 was Mr. Verner whose fine appetite did justice 
 to the good things on the side-table. 
 
 Stella gave a cry of surprise and rapture as 
 she took her seat. Upon her folded napkin lay 
 a glittering golden watch, with a slender chain 
 coiled round it like a serpent. The back of the 
 watch was enamelled, and on the enamel appeared
 
 *AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET' 129 
 
 the initial S., surmounted by a star in tiny 
 brilliants. 
 
 * Oh, what a beautiful watch ! ' she cried ; 
 * whose is it ? ' 
 
 * Yours, Stella. You are so precise in giving 
 me my medicine when I am ill that I am sure 
 you know the value of time ; so I thought you 
 would like to have a time-keeper of your own.' 
 
 Stella ran to him, and threw her arms round 
 his neck and kissed him. 
 
 * How good you are to me ! you are always 
 giving me pretty things. But a watch ! I never 
 thought I should have a watch, like a grown-up 
 person ! ' 
 
 'You are more thoughtful and more exact 
 than many grown-up persons, Stella. You deserve 
 to own a watch.' 
 
 'I will be very, very careful of it,' said 
 the child earnestly. 
 
 She had often handled Lashmar's watch : 
 had worn it for a week at a time when he was 
 ill, so she was not afraid to open this one. She 
 read the inscription inside : ' To Stella, from 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 her adopted father, Lashmar, Midsummer Day, 
 1872. 
 
 ' That is the best of all,' she said ; ' I shall always 
 love the watch for my adopted father's sake.' 
 
 They were to start upon an excursion soon 
 after breakfast — an excursion planned in honour 
 of the day. Fifteen miles from Lashmar Castle 
 there were the remains of a mediaeval abbey — 
 extensive ruins, in a very fine state of preserva- 
 tion, and situated in a beautiful country. Lang- 
 dale Abbey was one of the places that everybody 
 went to see, and it afforded an admirable 
 excuse for a picnic. Lashmar knew every stone 
 among the ruins, every wild flower and lichen 
 that ejrew in the interstices of the stones and 
 clothed the old walls with beauty. But he was 
 never weary of Langdale Abbey, and he told 
 himself that there could be no pleasanter way 
 of spending the day than in a drive to Langdale. 
 
 He had lately bought a pair of horses, of 
 which he was particularly proud, fine up-standing 
 bays, an exact match in colour, size, form, action 
 and pace — a pair of horses which would have
 
 'AT \VHA.T GOAL MAY WE MEET' 131 
 
 attracted every eye in Hyde Park, but which 
 were hardly noticed in the neighbourhood of 
 Lashmar Castle where it was an understood 
 thing that Lord Lashmar always drove the finest 
 cattle. He was so rich and had so few ways 
 of spending his money that it seemed only right 
 he should pay high prices for his horses. 
 
 He was an admirable whip, firm, temperate, 
 with light hands and an unerring eye. He 
 loved horses, and horses loved him. These bays 
 were fine, honest animals, and reported to be as 
 quiet as sheep. Lord Lashmar had driven them 
 three or four times, and had foimd them irre- 
 proachable. He would never have risked Stella's 
 safety by placing her behind dangerous animals, 
 nor would he have imperilled the gray hairs of 
 his faithful old tutor. 
 
 The picnic baskets were packed into the 
 phaeton in the stable yard, and at eleven o'clock 
 the carriage came round to the porch. 
 
 Stella was ready in the hall, beaming with 
 happiness, the great dark eyes shining out of 
 the shadow made by her broad-brimmed hat.
 
 132 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Her sliort-waisted white frock, broad blue sash, 
 and long wash-leather gloves made her look like 
 one of Eeynolds's children. Indeed, with her 
 dark eyes and thick hair, cut straight across her 
 brow, she had always a look of Eeynolds's 
 portraits. The aristocratic old Eector of Lashmar 
 used to pat her on the head condescendingly, 
 and call her 'My Eeynolds girl.' He was a 
 good man, after his fashion, which was narrow. 
 He could not see any merit in bringing up one 
 orphan in the lap of luxury. He would have had 
 the cost of Stella's maintenance given to some 
 orphanage where it might have been distributed 
 in the shape of thick bread-and-butter and hob- 
 nailed boots, among many children. Lashmar's 
 benevolence seemed to him as the costly box of 
 ointment seemed to Judas — a lavish, unreasoning 
 expenditure. He was always ready to echo Lady 
 Lashmar's reprobation of her stepson's folly. Yes, 
 no doubt he was preparing trouble for liimself in 
 the future. The girl must eventually become an 
 incubus. 
 
 Stella took her seat beside Lord Lashmar in
 
 'AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET' 133 
 
 the phaeton, Gabriel Verner mounted behind, and 
 the groom leapt lightly into his place when the 
 horses were in full motion, deeming that his 
 dignity would have been compromised by mounting 
 a moment sooner. The bays went with a certain 
 springiness, which told Lashmar they were very 
 fresh. 
 
 ' Were these horses exercised yesterday ? ' he 
 asked of the gi'oom. 
 
 ' No, my Lord, not yesterday. Smiles knew 
 your lordship wanted them for a journey.' 
 
 * Were they out the day before ? ' 
 
 *Xo, my Lord. Smiles thought the weather 
 was too bad.' 
 
 The bays were going splendidly, with no hint 
 of running away ; but they were very eager, and 
 wanted to go at the top of their pace. Lashmar 
 kept them well in hand, and they bowled merrily 
 along the high road outside the castle. They had 
 fifteen miles before them. 
 
 ' What nice horses,' said Stella, enjoying the pace. 
 
 * Do you like them better than Pyramus and 
 Thisbe ? '
 
 134 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 'PjTamus and Thisbe are darlings, but these 
 go faster, don't they?' 
 
 'Yes, they are going faster to-day.' 
 
 They had driven three or four miles in the 
 morning sunshine, between hedge-rows full of 
 eglantine and honeysuckle, past a picturesque 
 Middleshire village, with its tumble-down, half- 
 timbered cottages in black and white, its untidy 
 straw-yards and mouldering barns. The horses 
 were well in hand as Lashmar drove past the 
 little cluster of humble dwellings, and the inn, 
 with its blurred old sign and dripping horse-trough. 
 The village seemed for the most part the abode of 
 sleep or death ; for all the men were in the fields, 
 and all the children were at school. But here 
 and there a woman looked out at her door, and 
 admired Lord Lashmar's horses, the light phaeton, 
 the groom's smart livery, and the pretty child in 
 her white frock and straw hat. 
 
 About a hundred yards from the village the 
 road made a sharp curve, and Lord Lashmar saw 
 himself face to face with that which might mean 
 danger.
 
 ' AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET ' 135 
 
 A traction engine in full cry, snorting, panting, 
 groaning — a traction engine serving as a tug for 
 a huge waggon of hay, which loomed large above 
 it, a waggon which should have been drawn by 
 sleek and placid cart-horses, with plaited manes 
 and decorative net-work flapping over their honest 
 foreheads. 
 
 The groom stood up and uttered one of those 
 inarticulate cries which are as a common language 
 of the stable. The men in charge of the engine 
 tried to abate the fury of their monster. 
 
 Too late ! The horses were in that condition of 
 freshness which would have made them bolt at a 
 feather — they loere off in an instant — all their reserve 
 force in full action. 
 
 ' Sit firmly, for God's sake, Stella ; ' said Lash- 
 mar, and then to those behind, ' Verner, keep your 
 seat whatever happens ; John, try to hold Miss Stella. ' 
 
 The "room wound his arm round the child's 
 waist. She was looking at Lashmar's face, silent, 
 awe-stricken. How pale he was, and how tightly 
 his lips were set ! Yet he did not look frightened, 
 only grave, intent, anxioug.
 
 136 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' Are we all going to be killed ? ' she asked 
 tremulously. 
 
 'We are in God's hands, my darling,' he an- 
 swered. 
 
 There was no time for more. The danger was 
 close upon them. Had there been a clear road the 
 bolting of the horses would have been as nothing 
 with such a whip as Lashmar. 
 
 But the road was narrow, and they had to pass 
 that huge bulk of the hay-waggon and the engine. 
 The drivers were dragging their load as far as they 
 could towards the hedge, but there was little time 
 for this, with those frightened horses tearing along 
 at a mad gallop. Lashmar was holding them firmly, 
 keeping them fairly straight; but, just as they 
 neared the engine, it gave one final snort ; the off- 
 horse swerved, the pole snapped, and both horses 
 fell in a heap, dragging the phaeton over in their 
 fall. 
 
 Black night closed over Stella's dreams, ending 
 this birthday of hers in deepest darkness before it 
 was noon. 
 
 *
 
 'AT "WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET' 137 
 
 After that sudden extinguishment of the actual 
 world, there came one long dream of horror. One 
 long dream — a dream without awakening, yet a 
 vision so entangled that it was, as it were, many 
 dreams within one dream. oSTot once in that long 
 labyrinth of unreality did the child recognise the 
 realities around her ; not once did her senses emerge 
 from that world of phantoms, and the burden of 
 shadows that thronged about her bed — terrible 
 shadows some of them, haunting shapes from the 
 realm of legend and poetry — Agamemnon in his 
 bloody bath, Achilles with the corpse of Hector 
 tied to his chariot. There was one dream in which 
 she was Hector, dead and bleedincj, dracrged to the 
 Grecian ships — the grit and dust were in her throat 
 and choked her, the thundering hoofs of those 
 fiery horses deafened her, she was dead yet sentient. 
 All her studies, and stories, and happy fancies of the 
 past, personified themselves in those everlasting 
 hours of delirium — a period in which hours were 
 exaggerated into ages, and a day seemed an eternity. 
 Her first Greek verb, her lessons from Virgil, her 
 scraps of science, her childish knowledge of the
 
 138 OXE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 heavens — all the things she had learned became 
 a torture to her. 
 
 She was a star in the constellation of Cassiopeia's 
 Chair, shining: with her sister-stars in the cold No- 
 vember sky. Oh ! how remote, and how cold it was 
 in that far world of night and darkness! how 
 dreadful to be parted for ever from her friend and 
 father ! She could see the world she had left, a little 
 spot in the immensity of the universe below her — 
 one little spot, faintly luminous, like a glowworm in 
 a hedge; and there was one speck of brighter light in 
 that dim world, an electric spark, no bigger than a 
 pin's point, which she knew was Lashmar's soul. It 
 shone like a star in that distant earth, brighter than 
 all the other souls of humanity, because he was the 
 kindest and noblest man upon the earth. " Like 
 Christ," she said to herself. She had often told 
 herself in her childish simplicity, unconsciously 
 irreverent, that he was like Christ. And now 
 her agony was the thought of an impassable gulf 
 between her benefactor and herself. She strained, 
 she struggled to pass that black abyss ; she stretched 
 out her arms as if they were wings. Sometimes they
 
 * AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE ^^EET ' 139 
 
 seemed to her as wings, and carried her for a long- 
 way, whirling onward in darkness : but that glow- 
 worm spot in the far distance came no nearer to her 
 straining [eyes — that gulf was infinite and impass- 
 able ! 
 
 ' Xever to see him again/ she moaned ; ' never 
 to see him again. Too far — too far ! ' 
 
 And honest Betsy, who sat beside her bed 
 sewing, wondered that the child, who had never 
 recovered her senses since the accident, should 
 have this instinctive consciousness of an irreparable 
 loss. 
 
 At last there came an interval in that agony 
 of delirium. The throng of spectres was clouded 
 over by a gracious darkness. The weary arms 
 ceased to strain towards that unattainable point. 
 The burning lids fell over the aching eyeballs. A 
 deep and healing sleep followed that feverish unrest ; 
 and the patient woke to know the kindly face 
 of her nurse for the first time in ten long days and 
 nights. of fever. 
 
 She saw the sunshine of a summer afternoon 
 streaming in at her window.
 
 140 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' Is it my birthday ?' slie asked, simply. 'Why 
 didn't we go to Langdale Abbey?' 
 
 Aud then, sitting up in her bed, very weak 
 and white, and wan, she stretched out her tremulous 
 hands, and asked — 
 
 ' Where is my watch ? ' 
 
 ' Here, darling,' answered Betsy, taking the watch 
 out of a morocco case on the dressing-table, delighted 
 to gratify her patient. ' There's your pretty watch. 
 Oh, my, isn't it a pretty one 1 And ain't you lucky 
 to have a watch, just like a grown-up young lady ! ' 
 
 The weak little hands wavered as they took 
 the watch; the exhausted frame sank helpless on 
 the bed, but the child held the watch before her 
 eyes all the time, and the tremulous fingers con- 
 trived to open the case. 
 
 'Eead it,' she said faintly; and Betsy spelled 
 out the inscription, 'To Stella, from her adopted 
 father, Lashmar.' * Oh, isn't it beautiful ! ' ex- 
 claimed Betsy, and then she began to cry, and 
 cried a deluge, as young women of her class usually 
 can, seeming to have a better supplied reservoir of 
 tears than the highly cultured.
 
 ' AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET ' 141 
 
 ' Don't cry,' said Stella ; ' there's nothing to cry 
 for.' 
 
 She had forgotten the dream of the star, the 
 pitiless abyss between her and Lashmar, the sense 
 of everlasting severance. 
 
 She lay for some minutes looking at her watch, 
 holding it in both hands, as if it were too heavy 
 for one. Then she put it to lier ear, and found 
 that it was mute. 
 
 ' A quarter to twelve,' she said, ' why did it 
 stop at a quarter to twelve ? ' 
 
 Again Betsy dissolved into tears. 
 
 'Shoosh, dear,' she murmured, patting Stella's 
 shoulder, ' go to sleep, my pet, till the doctor comes 
 to see you. Let Betsy put the pretty watch under 
 your pillow.' 
 
 * I don't want to sleep any more ; I want to get 
 up and be dressed ; you know it's my birthday, and 
 I am to be all day with Lord Lashmar. How late 
 the sunshine looks — like afternoon. Have I over- 
 slept myself ? ' 
 
 * You have been very, very ill, dear,' answered 
 Betsy, in a soothing, preachy-preachy tone, which is
 
 142 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 peculiarly exasperating to an intellectual child, ' you 
 are much too weak to get up. You shall have your 
 Brand's essence presently and a nice little bit of 
 toast.' 
 
 * But it's my birthday,' urged Stella, ' and I am 
 to dine with his lordship.' 
 
 ' My poor pet, your birthday was ten days ago, 
 a week before the funeral,' answered Betsy. 
 
 The word was spoken unawares. That awe- 
 inspiring, much-discussed event of the funeral — a 
 stately and imposing ceremonial, including all the 
 dismal grandeur of the old school and all the floral 
 decorations of the new — had been in everybody's 
 mouth at Lashmar Castle for the last six days. It 
 was the standard by which time was reckoned. 
 
 * What funeral ? ' cried Stella, starting up in her 
 bed with a scared look. 
 
 She was so weak that cold drops broke out 
 upon her brow in the agitation of this question. 
 Poor Betsy was at her wits' end. 
 
 ' Go to sleep, pet,' she pleaded ; ' the doctor 
 wouldn't like you to talk so much. Lie down and 
 go to sleep, lovey.'
 
 ' AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET ' 1-43 
 
 But even these eudearmeats failed to soothe the 
 perturbed spirit. 
 
 ' What funeral ? ' repeated Stella ; ' is anybody 
 dead ? ' 
 
 Betsy only patted her shoulder dumbly, with 
 streaming eyes. 
 
 ' Who is dead ? Not Mr. Verner ? Oh ! he was 
 so good to me. He is not dead, is he ? ' 
 
 * No, dear, no ; Mr. Verner is quite well. He 
 wasn't hurt at all, poor dear gentleman,' answered 
 Betsy. 
 
 ' He wasn't hurt 1 Who was hurt, then ? Was 
 anybody hurt ? ' cried Stella, her eyes assuming the 
 wild look they had had in delirium. 
 
 * You were hurt, my poor precious. You fell on 
 your dear little head.' 
 
 Stella gave a scream, and flung her arms round 
 Betsy's neck. Memory returned in a flash. 
 
 ' The horses 1 ' she cried ; ' yes, I remember. Oh ! 
 those dreadful horses. Lord Lashmar drove so well ; 
 but I thought we were going to be killed. He was 
 not hurt, was he ? Ask him to come to me ; I want 
 to see Lord Lashmar ; directly, directly.'
 
 144 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Those large dark eyes of hers were growing 
 wilder and wilder. They looked unnaturally large 
 in the small, pale face, sorely shrunken from its 
 childish plumpness during the wasting agony of that 
 ten days' fever. She tried to get out of bed, 
 pushing aside Betsy's restraining arms. 
 
 ' Ask Lord Lashmar to come to me. Let me go 
 to Lord Lashmar.' 
 
 * Lord Lashmar is out, love,' said the frightened 
 Betsy ; ' Lord Lashmar has gone to Brumm for the 
 day, on particular business.' 
 
 It was true. Betsy felt she had satisfied her 
 charge, and saved her soul from the burden of a lie. 
 It was literal truth which she had spoken, and yet 
 for Stella it was not the truth: for Stella it was 
 a miserable, mocking lie. 
 
 She was not satisfied, but lay back upon her 
 pillows too exhausted to struggle. She lay moaning. 
 ' I want to see Lord Lashmar. When will he be 
 back ? Oh ! when, when, when ? ' 
 
 She sobbed herself into a feverish, restless 
 slumber ; and she was delirious again that night. 
 
 The doctor was much concerned when he came
 
 ' AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET ' 143 
 
 to see her ia the evening, and was told how she 
 had recovered her senses for a little while, only 
 to lose them again. 
 
 * Did you tell her anything ? ' he asked. 
 
 * Not a word/ answered Betsy. ' She wanted 
 to see Lord Lashniar dreadfully, but I told her he 
 was out for the day, and she seemed to believe 
 me; but she made herself very unhappy about 
 him. She was so fond of him, poor dear, and 
 well she might be.' 
 
 * Ah, well indeed I ' said the doctor, shaking his 
 head. ' I'm afraid she has seen the best days of 
 her life, poor little thing.' 
 
 Mr. Stokes was a kind, simple soul, v/ho had 
 lived all his life in the village of xlvondale, just 
 a mile from the much smaller village of Lashmar, 
 a pretty little cluster of houses on the bank of 
 the river, nestling round an old Saxon chui-ch 
 that seemed much too large for its surroundings. 
 Mr. Stokes knew everybody in the neighbourhood, 
 and had known the younger generation from their 
 cradles. He was a skilful surgeon, and was toler- 
 ably shrewd in his diagnosis, though he seldom 
 
 VOL. L L
 
 146 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 went farther afield than Brumm, and had not 
 seen much of the great city since he was a student 
 at Bartlemy's. He knew all about Stella, and 
 Lady Lashmar's feelings with regard to her. 
 
 'I am afraid she is in for a relapse,' he said 
 after he had taken her temperature. ' A hundred 
 and five three-fourths. That looks bad. You must 
 do all you can to keep her quiet. Give her Brand's 
 essence and a teaspoonful of brandy with a little 
 yoke of egg alternate half-hours. You'll have to 
 sit up with her again to-night.' 
 
 * I don't mind tliaty said Betsy. ' I don't mind 
 anything except hearing her ask for Lord Lashmar.' 
 
 The doctor was right. Stella re-entered the 
 land of phantoms. This time her worst dream 
 was of a vast and sunless swamp— such a swamp 
 as that she had read about, far across the Atlantic 
 — the Great Dismal Swamp, where never tree or 
 flower flourished ; a place of desolation ; impassable, 
 exhaling poisonous odours, brooded over by dark 
 clouds, a semi-darkness worse than night. 
 
 And she was wading in that swamp for ever 
 and for ever, weary to agony — the dull agony of
 
 ' AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET ' 147 
 
 aching bones and burdened brain. Far, far away 
 a vanishing point in remotest distance, there was 
 a speck of light— the same speck she had seen on 
 the far earth when she was a star — and that light 
 was Lashmar. She vv^as perpetually trying to reach 
 that distant point, weighed down for ever by the 
 sense of utter impossibility, yet obliged to try. 
 The agonising dream seemed to endure for ages ; 
 long nights of repetition, in which Betsy hovered 
 over her charge with cup or teaspoon, forcing her 
 doses of nourishment between the parched hot lips, 
 with a persistence that seemed sheer brutality; 
 but that very tangible presence of the buxom Betsy 
 had no effect upon the visionary world in which 
 Stella dwelt. The dim and distant light was 
 always there, glimmering faintly across the wide, 
 gray waste, in the perpetual twilight. 
 
 Perhaps it was the faint gleam of the night- 
 light in the remotest corner of the room, which 
 suggested that distant ray shining across the dull 
 gray level of dreamland. 
 
 It was in the niccht that the cjoblia crew rode 
 rampant over that distracted brain. The days passed
 
 148 ONE THl^G NEEDFUL 
 
 for the most part in a kind of stupor : the patient 
 lying helpless, apathetic, recognising no one, caring 
 for nothing, in a state of semi-consciousness which 
 was neither sleeping nor waking. 
 
 From such a condition as this she was aroused 
 by the howling of a summer storm in the great 
 oaks, and the sharp rattle of the rain against the 
 casement. The sky was cold and gray. Stella 
 knew not if it were morning or afternoon. Memory 
 was a blank again. She had forgotten all that 
 had happened since her birthday, had forgotten 
 the accident which had made that day fatal. 
 
 This time Betsy was not at hand to be ques- 
 tioned. It was between four and five o'clock, and 
 Betsy had gone down to tea, had gone to expatiate 
 upon the storm to her fellow-servants, who were all 
 wont at such times to wish that they lived in 
 London, where thunder and lightning would seem 
 comparatively harmless amidst the cheerfulness 
 and sense of protection afforded by crowded streets 
 and policemen. The thunder and lightning were 
 over, or Betsy would not have left her charge. 
 
 Stella looked about the room wonderingly
 
 'AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET' 149 
 
 slowly coming back from dreamland, slowly real- 
 ising the facts of the external world. Yes, it was 
 her own room ; there were all those ornaments and 
 knick-knacks which children speak of compre- 
 hensively as 'pretty things.' The silver casket 
 on her dressing-table, the scent bottles, the cliina 
 monsters, the bright coloured pilgrim bottles from 
 that legendary Eastern world, of which she had heard 
 and learnt so much — the cradle of mankind — the 
 well- filled bookshelves, the dolls and doll's-house. 
 But these last had been desrraded from their high 
 estate to an obscure corner, things to be ashamed 
 of, that one could ever have been so babyish as to 
 care much about them. 
 
 Yes, it was her own room, that lightsome, airy 
 chamber, high up among the tree-tops and the 
 swallows. It was her nest, in which she had been 
 as free and happy as the birds of the air, more 
 tenderly cherished than ever nestling by parent bird . 
 
 The door leading into the sitting-room was half 
 open, and there were people talking, she had heard 
 their voices amidst the rattle of the rain and the 
 bluster of the storm.
 
 150 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 'Shall you send her away?' asked a manly 
 voice, rich and full, a voice that was not altogether 
 unfamiliar. It was like her benefactor's, but 
 stronger, fuller. 
 
 * No, I shall keep her here. I consider that 
 a sacred duty, for poor Hubert's sake. But I shall 
 try to repair his sad mistake in the manner of 
 rearing her. I shall bring her up as a child of 
 the lower classes ought to be brought up. I shall 
 train her to be useful, a bread-winner among a 
 class of bread-winners.' 
 
 Too well did Stella know this second voice. 
 These were the sonorous tones of that terrible per- 
 sonage whom she had met from time to time in the 
 corridors or in the gardens, and who had always 
 scowled at her, and passed her by in haughty 
 silence. She knew the face and jSgure to which the 
 voice belonged, the tall and stately form, the 
 strongly marked brows and aquiline nose. 
 
 * Bather rough upon her, poor little wretch, after 
 having been so pampered.' 
 
 * That is poor Hubert's fault, not mine/ replied 
 her ladyship coldly.
 
 'AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET' 151 
 
 'Well, it was one of those silly things which 
 your very clever men are apt to do,' said the other 
 voice. ' I took an intense dislike to the brat from the 
 hour poor Lash brought her home, like some strayed 
 mongrel, and not half so interesting. If I were you 
 I should clear her out of the castle as soon as she is 
 well enough to budge ; pack her off to one of those 
 innumerable institutions for rearing up beggar brats 
 in the fear of their spiritual pastors and masters 
 upon sound Conservative principles. You'll get 
 rid of a nuisance ; and there'll be a better chance 
 of her making a good housemaid than if she is 
 allowed to stay here where she'll always remember 
 Lashmar's idiotic indulgence.' 
 
 ' I have told you that I mean^ to bring her 
 up under my own eye,' replied her ladyship, in 
 a terrible voice. 
 
 She was a woman who could not brook co n 
 tradiction, would not endure to have her will 
 gainsaid or her wisdom questioned ; least of all 
 could she endure such questioning from her own 
 son. She was a woman who loved to govern, 
 and to whom the idea of domineering even over
 
 152 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 such a helpless waif as Boldwood's daughter 
 was very pleasant. 
 
 ' I shall bring her up under my own eye, 
 she repeated ; ' I shall see that she is taught 
 properly, and that above all she learns to forget 
 her foolish childhood, and to understand her 
 position as a friendless orphan, who must learn 
 to earn her daily bread.' 
 
 ' A friendless orphan ! ' repeated Stella, in a 
 faint whisper. Of Avhom ^vere they talking ? 
 she asked herself. Could it be of her? She re- 
 membered how once when old Mr. Verner w^as 
 expatiating upon Lashmar's goodness he had told 
 her that were it not for that generous benefactor 
 she would have been a friendless orphan. 
 
 And now her ladyship was talking about a 
 friendless orphan who had been brought up 
 foolishly. 
 
 SShe will have to begin a new life as soon 
 as she gets Avell.' 
 
 *As soon as she gets well,' repeated Stella. 
 Yes, it was of her they were talking. They 
 had got her into their power somehow, those
 
 'AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET 153 
 
 two enemies. They were going to alter her 
 happy life. They would take away her Greek 
 grammar perhaps, stop that new study of which 
 she was so proud, and which had seemed to 
 hring her nearer to Lashmar. He had talked to 
 her of the time when they would be able to 
 read Homer together. 
 
 Oh ! where was Lashmar ? Why did he not 
 come and stop their cruel talking ? She clasped 
 her hands in an agony of despair. She called 
 out in a faint scream, too weak to cry aloud, as 
 it were struofdincr in a nicfhtmare dream — 
 
 ' Lord Lashmar, Lord Lashmar ! ' 
 
 A face — a bright young face, handsome as 
 Apollo's — looked in at the door, only for a flash. 
 It gave way in the next instant to the stern 
 countenance of the dowager. 
 
 ' Are you awake, child ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' Please ask Lord Lashmar to come to me,' 
 cried the girl piteously. 
 
 'What do you want with Lord Lashmar? 
 Lie down, child ; you are too weak to sit up 
 yet awhile. I'll send Betsy to you.'
 
 154 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 'No, no, I don't want her. I want Lord 
 Lashmar. I sliall go mad if I don't see him ! ' 
 
 The dowager seated herself in Betsy's vacant 
 chair by the bed, an awful figure, stern and 
 terrible as Fate itself. 
 
 She was clad from top to toe in black, 
 densest black, not that rich and glittering 
 raiment in which Stella had often seen her of 
 old — a costly combination of satin and brocade 
 sparkling and flashing with tremulous fringes of 
 jet. This was a gown of some dull fabric which 
 reflected not a ray of light. To her very chin 
 Lady Lashmar was swathed in black crape, and 
 black crape is to a child's eye of all fabrics 
 the most hideous. 
 
 ' You cannot see your benefactor. Lord Lash- 
 mar,' said the stern voice. ' You will never see 
 him again. Cannot you understand what this 
 black gown of mine means ? ' 
 
 * He is dead ! ' shrieked the child, and then 
 remembering that ominous word dropped un- 
 awares by Betsy, 'It was his funeral.' 
 
 *Yes, my unhappy child, your benefactor was
 
 'AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET' 155 
 
 killed in the accident from which you narrowly es- 
 caped with your life. The loss for you is a bitter 
 one in the present, although it may be a blessing 
 to you in the future. My stepson's foolish indulgence 
 might have been your ruin, here and hereafter.' 
 
 SteUa heard not a word of this little sermon. 
 She had cast herself on her pillow, and was 
 sobbing out her heart in the passionate, hopeless 
 grief of childhood. 
 
 Dead! She had never thought that he could 
 die. Dead! How often he had talked to her of 
 what would happen when he was an old man; 
 how she was to be the companion of his declining 
 years, the compensation for all his losses. 
 
 Dead ! Never more to look upon her with 
 those thoughtful eyes ; never more to speak to her 
 in that low, tender voice ; never more to touch 
 her with that hand whose gentle touch upon 
 her head had always seemed a benediction. 
 
 * My angel, my friend, my father ! ' she cried. 
 * Oh, God ! be good to me, and let me die too.' 
 
 That was her prayer at morning and nightfall, 
 for many a day to come.
 
 CHAPTER YIT 
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 
 
 July, with its roses and lilies, blossoming 
 limes, and long sultry days, and lingering sunsets 
 late into the dewy night, was over. It was 
 August, and though summer was still lovely in 
 the land, the summer evenings were shortening, 
 the roses were waning a little, as to the limit- 
 less profusion of bloom ; while here and there 
 those flowers which are the harbingers of autumn 
 began to show in the castle gardens : gaudy 
 dahlias, old-world hollyhocks, flaming sunflowers, 
 staring at the blue sky with their great round 
 brown faces in ragged yellow nightcaps, against a 
 background of gray stone wall. 
 
 Stella's new life had begun. It was verily 
 a new life; so entirely different from the old 
 one that it seemed to the child as if she had
 
 THE ^'E^V CINDERELLA 157 
 
 died and been born again, in the same place, 
 but with another personality. 
 
 And yet though she still had her abode in 
 Lashmar Castle it could hardly be said that it 
 was the same place as that which had been her 
 home in the lifetime of Hubert, Lord Lashmar. 
 She lived in other rooms ; she looked out of other 
 windows, at an utterly dissimilar prospect. She 
 had not entered the library, or those adjoining 
 rooms in whicli she had once been so happy 
 since her benefactor's death. The gardens about 
 which she had once roamed as freely as the 
 butterflies were now a closed world for her. She 
 had no more right to be there than the coach- 
 man's children, or the housekeeper's little niece : 
 and not one of those well-behaved little persons 
 would have presumed to enter her ladyship's 
 garden. 
 
 Stella lived in the servants' quarters now, and 
 looked out of windows which all opened upon 
 the stable-yard, a great stony desert, whose only 
 picturesque feature was the pump, with its stone 
 basin, round which a coachman, with the love
 
 158 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 of the beautiful, had planted some nasturtiums. 
 Those nasturtiums were ahnost the only flowers that 
 Stella saw in that month of August. She was learning 
 to know her place — her place as allotted and ap- 
 pointed by Lady Lashmar, and that place was the 
 place of an under-house-maid. 
 
 There were eleven housemaids at Lashmar 
 Castle. That had been the orthodox number as 
 long as the oldest inhabitant of Lashmar village 
 could remember. It was supposed that by no 
 less a staff could the castle be scrubbed and 
 swept and dusted as it should be. There were 
 three upper-housemaids, each of whom had 
 supreme command upon her particular floor. She 
 was, as it were, captain of that deck. Then 
 came the five second housemaids ; two for the 
 ground-floor, with its spacious state apartments 
 and numerous sitting-rooms; two for the first 
 floor, and which included her ladyship's suite and 
 the new lord's suite, and all the important visitors' 
 rooms ; and one for the upper story, which was 
 given over to rarely used bachelors' rooms and 
 rat-warrens. Lastly, there were three drudges
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 159 
 
 who fetched and carried water and coals, made 
 the fires and cleaned the grates, slaves who were 
 treated as the Israelites in Egypt before the 
 advent of Moses. 
 
 Betsy had been reduced to the ranks of the 
 eleven. She was one of the second housemaids, 
 and her province was the first floor, where she was 
 under the special supervision of her aunt Barker, 
 who had a room of her own in an obscure corner 
 behind her ladyship's suite, one of those curious 
 little rooms such as in Hampton Court Palace are 
 described as the Iving's Closet, or the Queen's 
 Oratory. Under Betsy's eye Stella was to be 
 trained to all the duties of an upper-housemaid 
 She was not to go through the baser drudgeries, 
 the water-drawing and coal-carrying, the black- 
 lead brush and scouring paper. She was to be 
 spared that rude apprenticeship, out of deference 
 to the dead lord's fancy. Xay, should she prove 
 especially teachable, and handy with her needle, 
 she might eventually escape housework altogether 
 and be admitted to the holy of holies, personal 
 attendance upon her ladyship.
 
 160 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' Yoli are getting short of breath and unwieldy, 
 Barker,' said Lady Lashmar ; * by the time that 
 child is seventeen or eighteen I shall want some- 
 body to run about for me.' Barker shook her 
 head, and pursed up her lips. 
 
 * I don't think Miss Stella will ever suit you 
 in that way, my lady,' she began. 
 
 ' How often have I told you that she is not to 
 be called Miss Stella?' 
 
 ' I don't think Stella will ever do for a servant, 
 my lady. His poor lordship spoilt her too much. 
 She knows such a lot, and she frets day and night 
 about her Greek and Latin, over history and 
 geography, and poetry, and such like. She starts 
 up in the middle of the night sometimes sobbing 
 as if her heart would break, and saying that she 
 is forgetting everything his lordship taught her. 
 And then she'll go over a lot of gibberish which 
 she says is Greek or Latin, though I'm sure it don't 
 sound like anything half so sensible. I don't 
 believe she'll ever make a good servant, my lady ; 
 her life has been begun the wrong way.' 
 
 * She is young enough to begin life again,'
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 161 
 
 replied her ladyship sternly. ' The greatest blunder 
 of the present day is the over-education of the masses : 
 a . blunder which is producing a race of young 
 women who all want to be doctors and lawyers 
 instead of wives and mothers ; and a race of young 
 men who would sooner starve in a paradise of 
 pen and ink than be prosperous butchers and bakers, 
 I look to you, Barker, to get all foolish nonsense 
 out of that girl's head. If I hear any more of her 
 fretting I shall send her to the workhouse.' 
 
 After this Barker could say no more. She 
 knew the iron temper of that mistress whom she 
 had served in all faithfulness and submission for 
 the last fifteen years. 
 
 Stella suffered her new life meekly enough, 
 but almost every hour of it was suffering. Eeared 
 as she had been, amongst delicatest, most gracious 
 surroundings, by a man whose original refinement 
 had been spiritualised by illness and seclusion, every 
 detail of this outer world of the servants' hall and 
 still-room jarred upon her sensitive nerves. The 
 loud voices, the everlasting clatter, the quarrelling 
 and jeering — ^jeering which was meant for wit — all 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 tliese revolted the keen young spirit. Had she been a 
 woman she might have put on the armour of philo- 
 sophy. She might have retired within herself, lived 
 her own life of c^uietness and contemplation amidst the 
 bluster of these vulgar lives ; but she was a child, 
 and had not learned stoicism ; she was a child, and 
 dependent upon externals for her joy or sorrow, 
 and all things in her external life had been made 
 bitterness to her, at that time when her heart 
 wounds were still fresh. Under the happiest 
 circumstances she would have been broken-hearted 
 by the loss of her friend and father ; but as it was, 
 all the conditions of her life intensified her sense 
 of loss. 
 
 She had been banished from those pretty rooms 
 in which she had lived for five joyous years. All 
 her cherished treasures, her benefactor's gifts of toys 
 and trinkets and ornaments had been taken away 
 from her ; and, worst loss of all, her books had been 
 taken also. Those books which had been as gates 
 opening into other worlds, the books which Lashmar 
 had taught her to love and to understand. 
 
 The banishment from that Eden of her child-
 
 THE Ni:W CINDERELLA 163 
 
 hood had been effected by the dowager in the 
 briefest, most off-hand manner. So soon as Stella 
 was well enough to leave her room, Lady Lashmar 
 sent her to the still-room. She was to live there 
 with the upper-housemaids, and she was to sleep in 
 the second housemaids' dormitory. Having pro- 
 nounced this sentence, her ladyship locked the 
 outer door and put the key of the tower rooms 
 into her pocket. 
 
 ' I shall arrange by-and-by what use we can 
 make of those two rooms,' she said ; ' no doubt 
 they will be wanted when his lordship fills the 
 house for the shooting.' 
 
 Hubert Lashmar had been no sportsman : and 
 there had not been a battue in the Lashmar preserves 
 since his father's time. Victorian had gone out with 
 a couple of spaniels and a keeper when he happened 
 to be at home in October : but for the most part the 
 pheasants had had no enemies except the poachers. 
 The servants were beginning to perk themselves 
 already at the idea of big shooting parties and liberal 
 vails. 
 
 So Stella was banished from her tower among
 
 164 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 the tree-tops, her casements overlooking dale and 
 river, wood and hill-side. She was much too un- 
 happy to think about her possessions, her ' pretty 
 things' as she had called them, so she made no 
 moan at this off-hand confiscation of her property. 
 It was afterwards, when she found herself sitting 
 in a corner of the still-room, leaning her head 
 against the wall, hearing the chatter of the maids 
 as it were afar off, it w^as then that she thought 
 of her books, and asked Betsy to fetch them for 
 her. 
 
 Good-natured Betsy was almost as down-hearted 
 as her charge at the sad change that had come over 
 both their lives ; for Betsy, as Miss Stella's per- 
 sonal attendant, had been somebody in the house- 
 hold, and had done very much as she liked. 
 As a second housemaid she was nobody, and sub- 
 ject to be ordered about by her superior officer. 
 She ran off to the tower, found it locked, and then 
 went to her aunt Barker, as the only safe means 
 of communication with her ladyship. 
 
 'Might Miss Stella have her books out of the 
 tower room ? ' asked Barker an hour later, when
 
 THE NEW ClNDEEELLA 165 
 
 she was taking out her ladyship's dinner gown, 
 while Celestine dressed her ladyship's hair. 
 
 ' Certainly not,' replied the dowager decisively. 
 ' Eeading for a young person in her position is only 
 another name for idleness. If she read her Bible 
 and her hymn book that will be quite as much 
 reading as she will have leisure for. Middleham 
 tells me that she has hardly an idea of plain needle- 
 work.* 
 
 Middleham was the chief of the housemaids, 
 the oldest servant at Lashmar, older even in service 
 than the housekeeper or the chef, both of whom 
 had grown old-fashioned in the same employment. 
 Middleham was seven-and-forty, and had lived at 
 the castle since she was twelve. She was an awful 
 personage, with a bony figure and gray hair. She 
 could read a little, by spelling out the difficult 
 words ; but she had forgotten how to write, and she 
 was proud of it. 'I left school when I was ten,' 
 she said, 'nowadays the gii^ls go to school up to 
 fourteen, and come away stuck-up minxes that look 
 down upon their parents, and are no more use in 
 their homes than fine ladies. First Standard
 
 166 ONE TlllXa NEEDFUL 
 
 indeed ! The only standard in my day was a 
 broom and a scrnl)bing-l)rush. When a girl had 
 learnt to be handy with those she was a help to 
 her parents.' 
 
 Middleham was a superior needle -woman. Those 
 great bony hands of hers could do fine stitching 
 that looked as if done by fairy fingers. She had 
 sole charge of the rich stores of house linen, finest 
 that the looms of Belfast could produce ; table 
 linen into every piece of which the armorial bear- 
 ings of the Laslimars were woven. Under the 
 cold gray eye of Middleham, Stella made her first 
 essays in plain needlework. 
 
 ' I declare the child hardly knows how to hold 
 her needle,' said the head housemaid. 
 
 ' Lord Lashmar did not like to see me work,' 
 faltered Stella tearfully. 
 
 Middleham groaned aloud. 
 
 * You'll have to work now, and if you don't learn 
 to work well, you'll have to be sent to the work- 
 house,' said Middleham, and then looked round 
 triumphantly as one who had made a pun. The 
 other housemaids all laughed dutifully. They feared
 
 THE XEAV CIXDERELLA 167 
 
 and hated Middlehcam, who was a fierce foe to fol- 
 lowers, and all ' walking out.' It was popularly 
 supposed that she had never walked out with 
 anyone herself, that her innate grimness had kept 
 followers at a distance. That, like Shakespeare's 
 Eoyal Virgin, she had ever walked in maiden medi- 
 tation, fancy free : and it may be observed, that at 
 the time that lovely line was penned, good Queen 
 Bess must have been about as grim a personage as 
 Middleham. 
 
 Oh, how dull the life was ! how dreary and 
 monotonous, despite its clatter ! The great dinner 
 in the servants' hall, the steaming joints, the mon- 
 ster pudding, the all-pervading smell of beer ; the 
 male underlings all clustered at the end of the 
 table, having their own conversation, and their own 
 whispered jokelets, digging each other in the ribs, 
 exploding, with full mouths, into foolish, spluttering 
 laughter. Then the long afternoon ; sitting at work 
 hemming a kitchen cloth, perhaps, by the window, 
 that looked into the stony yard, where all the 
 summer air was scented with stables. How the 
 child pictured the park and the river, the loved
 
 168 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 and lovely river on which she and Lashmar had 
 been wont to spend long summer days, with books 
 and sketching block — dreamy days, idle days, sweet, 
 sweet days ! She could see the shining wherry with 
 its luxurious crimson cushions, its sheepskin mat, its 
 boxes and artful contrivances for picnic luncheon or 
 afternoon tea. She wondered whether the new Lord 
 Lashmar was enjoying himself in that boat on this 
 exquisite afternoon. She looked up at the summer 
 sky, the only thing of beauty which she could see 
 from her dungeon, a sky of deepest sapphire, with 
 fleecy cloudlets dancing gaily in the blue. 
 
 ' I do declare you have not done six stitches in 
 as many minutes/ said Middleham. 'I have been 
 watching you.' 
 
 The pale, pinched face reddened, and the needle 
 went a little quicker over the harsh fabric. Middle- 
 ham resumed her study of a bad place in one of the 
 best table cloths. These two had the spacious stiU- 
 room all to themselves this afternoon. It' was clean- 
 ing day on all the floors of the castle, a universal 
 scrubbing and polishing, which kept the ten house- 
 maids at work till tea-time. It was only Middleham
 
 THE NEW CI^'DE^iKLLA 1G9 
 
 who could afford to sit still after having given her 
 orders. She would walk round the ground-floor 
 rooms by-and-by, just before tea, and spy out grains 
 of dust overlooked in obscure corners, or pieces of 
 furniture that had not been properly polished. 
 
 At five o'clock a bell sounded, and the first and 
 second housemaids came swarming in to tea. The 
 upper servants had their meals in the housekeeper's 
 room ; the drudges, under-housemaids, scullery and 
 kitchen and vegetable maids, herded in a den of 
 their own, a cool, stony room, off one of the kit- 
 chens. Barker was free of housekeeper's room and 
 still-room ; and she had the extra privilege of having 
 her tea carried up to her own little nest, whenever 
 she was so minded. 
 
 How Stella hated that noisy tea-hour, the foolish 
 jokes and laughter, the cruel chaff" for which she 
 sometimes afforded the object, the great metal pots 
 which gave the tea a tinny flavour, the mountains 
 of thick bread-and-butter, the fishy smell of peri- 
 winkles or shrimps, the litter of cresses and other 
 green-meat, without which tea was unpalatable to 
 the housemaids.
 
 170 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 It was the hour at which they all unbent, 
 with elbows on the table, and tea poured into 
 saucers — the hour at which they talked and 
 laughed the loudest. They had all forgotten their 
 dead lord, and were full of anticipations about 
 the high jinks that would be held at the Castle 
 now Victorian was master. 
 
 ' I don't suppose there'll be much of a change 
 yet awhile/ said Barker, who happened to be 
 taking her tea in the still-room. 'His lordship is 
 going away in a fortnight. He has been appointed 
 First Secretary of Legation at Ye-enna.' 
 
 ' You might have told us that before/ retorted 
 Middleham, who was jealous of Barker's superior 
 opportunities. 
 
 * I only heard it this morning when I was 
 waiting on her ladyship. His lordship came into 
 her room with an open letter in his hand, and 
 showed it to her. ''I must be off in a fortnight," 
 says he. I could see that she was very vexed. 
 " That was all very well when you were a younger 
 son," she says, " but I don't see the necessity 
 for it now." " Do you suppose I want to see
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 171 
 
 the world any the less because I am called Lord 
 Lashraar?" says he. "What a queer old mother 
 you are!'" 
 
 ' What a queer old mother ! ' echoed a chorus 
 of housemaids, with Homeric laughter. 'Fancy 
 calling her ladyship a queer old mother. He's a 
 rare one for cheek, is Master Victorian. He's 
 your right sort for a lord ; he'll stamp 'em down 
 wherever he goes.' 
 
 ' " Vienner 'as been the dream of my life," he 
 says, and then goes whistling out of the room, 
 as light-hearted as you like, leaving her lady- 
 ship blacker than thunder.' 
 
 Stella sat amidst their babble, with no relish 
 for steaming tea in a thick crockery cup, and 
 with a loathing of shrimps and periwinkles. 
 Afternoon tea with Lord Lashmar had been a 
 poem. The quaint old silver teapot — silver beaten 
 so thin and enriched with such delicate repouss4 
 work — the semi-transparent cups, the dainty cream- 
 jug and toy sugar-tongs, the wafer biscuits and 
 bread-and-butter, the cool sweet atmosphere of 
 an exquisitely ordered room the flowers, the
 
 172 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 pictures, the books, the all-surrounding beauty: 
 and she had exchanged these things, and the 
 dear love that made them sweetest, for the 
 company of these vulgar women who despised 
 and laughed at her. 
 
 Betsy was kind, and the others did not mean 
 to be unkind. They did not beat or pinch or 
 starve her ; but they were powerless to com- 
 prehend the workings of that young soul. They 
 saw the red swollen eyelids, and called her a 
 cry-baby ; they pointed the finger of derision at 
 her because she was unskilled and clumsy in 
 duties that were so easy to them; because she 
 could not hem a duster expeditiously, or polish 
 a mahogany table. And again and again came 
 the reproach against the dead. ' What a pity 
 Lord Lashmar had brought her up to be such 
 a little fool ! ' 
 
 They had not spared her feelings in their 
 talk of the dead lord. They had freely discussed 
 the details of the accident — how his lordship 
 had been thrown head foremost on the hard 
 high-road, and had broken his neck. It was
 
 THE XE^V CINDERELLA 173 
 
 instantaneous death, they said. And how Stella 
 had fallen more luckily upon the grassy border 
 of the road, and had been brought home un- 
 conscious with concussion of the brain, and then 
 before she awoke from her stupor, fever had set 
 in — symptomatic fever, the doctor called it — and 
 she had been very bad indeed. 
 
 But old Mr. Verner and the oroom had 
 escaped easily ; the groom with a few bruises and 
 a good shaking, and Mr. Verner, who fell on the 
 top of him, without a scratch. Stella asked what 
 had become of ]\Ir. Verner, longing for him, as 
 for the only friend left her ; but she was told 
 that he had left directly after the funeral, to go 
 home to his own people, as it was supposed. 
 There was not even so much comfort as this 
 left to her. 
 
 Night was w^orst of all. She slept in a little 
 bed in the spacious dormitory given up to the 
 five second housemaids. It was a large, bare 
 room, forming part of a special servants' wing 
 which had been added to the castle fifty years 
 before, and which the builder had made as un-
 
 174 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 beautiful as iu him lay ; and builders have large 
 capabilities in that line. It was a long, white- 
 washed room, like the common room of a debtor's 
 prison. The windows looked into a stony well, 
 on the other side of which was the laundry. 
 There was not a tree nor a leaf within sight ; 
 even ivy had refused to grow in that vault-like 
 atmosphere. And to keep up the prison-like idea 
 the windows were all guarded with iron bars, lest 
 perad venture the followers of the housemaids 
 should break in and elope with their ladies, like 
 the knights in border ballads. 
 
 Stella was sent to bed nightly at eight o'clock, 
 sent to bed in the sweet summer gloaming, while the 
 birds were singing so happily in the woods, and the 
 flowers were only just beginning to close. Middleham 
 was inexorable as to this hour of departure. 
 
 'At eight o'clock you go, or I'll know the 
 reason why,' and at eight o'clock Stella crept 
 wearily up the shadowy staircase, and took off 
 her tear-stained black frock, and said her prayers — 
 long, tearful prayers — and laid herself down upon 
 the hard little bed.
 
 THE NEW CINDEKELLA 175 
 
 Xot to sleep. She was too unhappy to sleep 
 easily, and she knew that at half-past ten 
 the live would come, like a band of noisy fiends 
 let loose from Pandemonium, and would talk of 
 their Sunday clothes and their young men, and 
 chaff each other, and perhaps quarrel with each 
 other for a good hour, before slumber fell upon 
 the fold. She would lie with closed eyes, trying 
 not to hear, yet with tliose delicate ears of hers 
 listening involuntarily. They were good-natured, 
 honest girls for the most part ; modest withal, 
 according to their lights; no more frivolous or 
 empty-headed than a band of school-girls in a 
 fashionable seminary ; but their talk, with its 
 monotonous repetitions, its silly jokes, was torture 
 to the sensitive child. 
 
 The hourly suffering of her days, sleepless 
 nights, and loss of appetite soon had their effects, 
 Stella began to look very ill — worse than she had 
 looked even when she first got up from her bed 
 of fever. Betsy was anxious about her ; took her 
 aside and questioned her. Why did she look so 
 miserable ?
 
 176 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Stella burst into tears, and unbardened lier 
 soul. She was altogether unhappy. She hated 
 the still-room, she hated Middleham ; but most 
 of all she hated the room where she slept, and 
 the chatter of the maids. 
 
 ' I hardly ever sleep,' she added piteously ; ' I 
 lie awake all night waiting to see the daylight 
 between the iron bars.' 
 
 ' That's very bad,' said Betsy, ' we must see 
 what can be done.' 
 
 She went off to her aunt, and the two women 
 put their heads together. There was very little 
 use in appealing to her ladyship. Barker knew the 
 state of her feelings towards her stei^son' s protegee. 
 
 There was a little room on the floor over the 
 servants' dormitories, a floor in the roof, which was 
 mostly given over to linen closets and box-rooms, a 
 room that had been occupied once by a valet. It 
 was very small, and had a sloping ceiling ; but the 
 dormer window commanded a sidelong peep of 
 the park — just about as much as that fine view 
 of the sea put forward by a hardened lodging- 
 house keeper — and Betsy, who knew her charge
 
 THE XEW CINDERELLA 177 
 
 better than anyone else, fancied tbat this little 
 
 room would be as a haven of rest to Stella. 
 
 James, the footman, who was a handy youth, 
 
 might put up a shelf or two for her, and by- 
 
 and-by perhaps Betsy would be able to get a 
 
 few of those books — lesson books, poetry books, 
 
 story books — for which the child's sickened heart 
 
 longed so sorely; the only possible consolation 
 
 where all human comfort was lost. 
 
 There were a neat little iron bedstead and the 
 
 necessary furniture, all of the plainest, barest, most 
 
 uninteresting order, as duly made and provided for a 
 
 subject race ; but when Betsy took the child up 
 
 to the little room under the tiles, and told her 
 
 that she could have it for her very own, Stella 
 
 burst into hysterical tears of delight. 
 
 ' Oh, how good of you I ' she cried ; ' how sweet 
 
 of you, Betsy! Somebody loves me still then.' 
 
 ' Of course I love you, you foolish little thing ; 
 
 whoever said I didn't ? only I daren't disobey her 
 
 ladyship ; but some day, perhaps, I shall be able to 
 
 get hold of a few of those books of yours that 
 
 you've been fretting about.' 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' Will you, dearest Betsy ? What, my Latin 
 grammar, and the Greek one too ; and my Virgil, 
 and the Greek Fairy Tales, and the Lady of the 
 Lake ? That was his last Christmas present — such 
 a lovely book. They are all my very own, Betsy. 
 He gave them to me. Her ladyship is a thief if 
 she takes them away.' 
 
 * No, no, Stella, you must not talk like that. 
 A little adopted thing like you, a poor little waif 
 and stray, can have no real right to anything in a 
 great house like this. Only if poor Lord Lashmar 
 gave them to you it is natural that you should 
 fancy they are your own, and I'll see what I can 
 do,' concluded Betsy vaguely. 
 
 She brought Stella half-a-dozen books that 
 night in her apron. The key of the tower rooms 
 had been given up to Middleham, in order that 
 those rooms might be duly swept and dusted ; and 
 Betsy had got the key from that austere personage 
 by sheer artifice, and had made her raid upon the 
 books — Virgil, and two grammars, the Greek Fairy 
 Tales, and Chapman's Iliad, and a volume of 
 Wordsworth. The Lady of the Lake was a richly
 
 THE NEW CINDEEELLA 179 
 
 illustrated quarto with splendid binding. Betsy 
 could not venture to remove so handsome and 
 ostensible a book, lest my lady should come on 
 a visit of inspection, and that keen eye of hers 
 should note the disa])pearance of the volume. The 
 others were all shabby little books which had seen 
 hard usage. 
 
 Stella cried over these recovered treasures, in 
 her tiny room with her dormer casement looking 
 towards the tree-tops and the stars. Her mind 
 was refreshed and soothed by the peaceful solitude 
 of her poor little room. Here there was no coarse 
 laughter, there were no cruel taunts. She could 
 hear the owls hooting in the park, the dogs baying 
 in the stable-yard. That was all. She seemed 
 to be far away from everybody ; and as she was 
 altogether fearless she loved her solitude. 
 
 And now this child of eleven years oLl set 
 herself with heroic patience to carry on unaided 
 and alone the education which had been so cruelly 
 interrupted by that stern foe to progress, Death* 
 With her books and pen and ink, and two or 
 three poor little ends of candle garnered for her
 
 180 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 day by day, by the faithful Betsy, Stella sat late 
 into the night working at Greek and Latin ; happy 
 even when her studies were dry est, at the thought 
 that she was carrying on the work her benefactor 
 had begun. 
 
 'When I see him in heaven I shall be able 
 to tell him what I have done,' she said to 
 herself. 
 
 Her theology was of the simple, confiding kind 
 which has grown old-fashioned even for little 
 children. That fair future world was very real to 
 her ardent fancy. She could picture the woodland 
 walks of a paradise where it was always summer, 
 and where she would meet Hubert Lashmar with a 
 strange light upon his face, like the golden glory 
 round the Infant-Saviour's head in the famous 
 Lashmar Eaffaelle — that marvellous picture which 
 she had so often gazed upon by her benefactor's side. 
 
 Those nightly studies, the reposeful solitude of 
 her remote little garret had a calming influence 
 upon her spirits. She was less unhappy now in the 
 day-time, having her books to look forward to at 
 night, knowing that she was not lapsing into
 
 THE NEW CINDEEELLA 181 
 
 ignorance, not becoming like those young -women 
 with whom she was obliged to live. She had her 
 day-dreams now as she sat in the still-room window, 
 inhaling odours of stables, and hemming an ever- 
 lasting procession of tea-cloths. She had her dream 
 of the day when she would be grown-up, and well 
 educated, and would be able to write books, like 
 old Gabriel Verner, and when she might earn enough 
 money to have a tiny cottage of her own upon the 
 banks of the Avon, and to have honest Betsy to 
 live with her. 
 
 That was her chief day-dream. She had fancies 
 of stories that she might write — stories of beautiful 
 fatal creatures like Helen, or devoted wives like 
 Andromache, or wicked, treacherous \\omen like 
 Clytemnestra. That busy brain of hers had already 
 begun to weave the multi-coloured web of fiction, 
 albeit her pen had not yet essayed to give those 
 dream ings a tangible shape. 
 
 Lashmar had told her of an author — a woman 
 — who had reaped thousands and a lasting renown 
 by a simple story of village life, by reason of hev 
 power to dive deep down into the mystery of human
 
 182 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 nature, to fathom the strange depths of the heart 
 of man, just as Homer did in those dim days when 
 poetry began. She, Stella, sighed not for thousands, 
 only for that lowly little cottage by the river, and 
 a garden and summer-house, and plenty of books, 
 and candles to light the long evenings, and kind 
 Betsy for her companion, they two alone together 
 and happy. 
 
 Lord Lashmar, the new Lord, Victorian, had left 
 for Vienna without ever having looked on the little 
 serf who had once been his brother's darling. He 
 was very sorry to have lost ' poor dear Lash/ as 
 he called him : but he felt not the slightest interest 
 in Lash's latest fad. Lash had always been full 
 of fads, poor dear boy. Of course, her ladyship 
 would do all that was best and wisest for the child. 
 
 'You'll make a sort of semi-genteel waiting- 
 maid of her, I suppose,' he said lightly ; ' have her 
 taught to clean your laces and make your caps — 
 whenever the day comes that you take to caps.' 
 
 * Perhaps that will not be till I aui a grand- 
 mother, Victor,' she answered, smiling fondly at her 
 beloved; 'when you have a wife and children I
 
 THE XEW CINDERELLA 183 
 
 shall feel myself verily a dowager, and then I 
 suppose I must take to caps. By-tlie-by, dear, 
 T saw Clarice last week. They have come back 
 to the Hall; 
 
 ' Indeed ! Puffed ' up by her new dignity as 
 a presented young person, I suppose,' answered 
 Lashmar. 
 
 * No, she was just as sweet as ever, quite 
 simple and childlike. I am told she was one of 
 the prettiest debutantes of the year. The news- 
 papers all said as much.' 
 
 ' The newspapers are always ready to puff a 
 girl whose father counts his fortune by hundreds 
 of thousands,' sneered Lashmar. * I don't think 
 the Brumm people have quite made up their mind 
 whether Job Danebrook is worth one million or 
 half a dozen ; but they are all agreed that his 
 father wheeled a barrow. Xow I think both you 
 and I retain an old-fashioned prejudice in favour of 
 good blood.' 
 
 ' There is some very good blood in Clarice Dane- 
 brook's veins, Victor. You forget that her mother 
 was a Montmorency.'
 
 184 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' One thin trickle of blue blood cannot purify 
 tlie plebeian vat, mother. I know very well what 
 you are hinting at. Clarice is sweet, Clarice is 
 pretty, Clarice has been well brought up, and had a 
 genteel mother. She is, moreover, an only daughter, 
 and will inherit two or three millions. She is one 
 of those exceptionally good matches which you may 
 count upon your fingers. The Lashmars are rich, 
 but they might be richer; would rise to a much 
 higher note in the social scale if they possessed 
 those superfluous millions. Fabulous wealth is the 
 thing people worship nowadays. It is not enough 
 to be rich — a man to be honoured and talked about 
 must be inordinately rich. Yes, I perfectly recog- 
 nise the truth of all that. But all the same I am 
 not going to be manoeuvred into a marriage with 
 Clarice Danebrook. You can trot her out by-and- 
 by, if you like : and if I fall in love with her I'll 
 ask her to marry me. If I don't I won't, were she 
 worth the wealth of Aladdin.' 
 
 * Do you suppose I would ever wish you to 
 marry anyone you could not love ? ' said his mother, 
 masking her batteries. *I know you would only
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 185 
 
 choose the best and worthiest. You are too proud to 
 make one of those wretched matches by which some 
 of your order have degraded their rank of late years. 
 I should never fear anything of that kind from 
 you.' 
 
 'Well, no, I am not quite an idiot,' answered 
 Lashmar. 
 
 'As for Clarice, she is a sweet little thing, and I 
 am really fond of her,' continued her ladyship 
 placidly; ' but I don't think she is quite good enough 
 for you. She has wealth, but she has not rank; and 
 there is, as you say, always that unlucky tradition 
 of the wheelbarrow.' 
 
 * Dear old mother, we always think alike,' said 
 Victorian, bending down to kiss the dowager's broad 
 brow. 
 
 His eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter. He 
 knew her so well — knevv' that she had made up her 
 mind that he was to marry Clarice Danebrook and 
 no other, knew that to this end she had made much 
 of the damsel, and been civil to her very common- 
 place mother, and her sternly plebeian father. For 
 no otlier than an interested motive would the great
 
 186 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Lady Pitland's daughter have cultivated the society 
 of a young person of vulgar lineage ; yea, albeit a 
 tliin streak of the Montmorency blood had qualified 
 the coarseness of the Danebrooks. 
 
 Victorian laughed at his mother's manoeuvres, 
 laughed most of all at the idea that she should think 
 herself able to throw dust in his eyes ; and he held 
 himself in reserve for the future. He meant to do 
 just what he liked with his life. He would have 
 held himself free to marry a beggar-maid, like King 
 Cophetua, had he so pleased. But he was not at 
 all the kind of young man to feel drawn towards 
 beggar-maids. He was worldly to the core, had 
 been brought up to consider everything from the 
 worldling's standpoint. He meant, when his time 
 should come, to marry well, brilliantly if possible, 
 to make such a match as should double his present 
 importance in the world. 'No, he did not think that 
 Clarice was good enough. Mere millions would not 
 suflice. People would want to be told who his wife 
 was ; and for that question to be answered fitly she 
 should be the daughter of a duke. 
 
 It was October when the new Lord Lashmar
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 187 
 
 came back to the Castle, with a chosen company 
 of bachelor friends, old comrades of Eton and 
 Oxford. His lordship came only for a flying 
 visit, to see his mother, to shoot the pheasants, 
 and to look about him a little. Lordship at one 
 and-twenty could not be supposed to care for a 
 long residence beside that broad reach of the Avon 
 amidst the decay of autumn woods. AVhen the 
 pheasants were thinned, Lashmar would be off 
 again, to Paris or Vienna, as the case might be. 
 He affected to hate London and London society. 
 It lacked the glitter and ease of Continental life. 
 He was not going to that dreary barrack in 
 Grosvenor Square until he was obliged ; which 
 would not be before February, when Parliament 
 would re-open and he would go to take his seat 
 in the House of Lords. 
 
 The dowager was at Lashmar to receive her son 
 and his friends. She had not left the Castle 
 since her step-son's death. Her presence had 
 pervaded the mansion like a dark and brooding 
 cloud ; or at least it seemed so to Stella, who 
 shivered even at the distant sound of that voice,
 
 188 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Not once had they two met face to face since 
 the day when those cruel lips told the child of 
 her bereavement ; but it was enough misery for 
 Stella to know that the stern ruler of the house 
 was within its walls, to hear her deep-toned voice 
 from afar. 
 
 Lady Lashmar was not alone when her son 
 arrived. She did not want his house to seem 
 empty and dismal after the brightness of his 
 continental surroundings. She had summoned 
 other two dowagers, one frisky, and one strong- 
 minded, to bear her company. The strong-minded 
 dowager, Lady Clan Allister, had two strong- 
 minded daughters, and these also were bidden. 
 Their presence made an excuse for having Clarice 
 Danebrook continually at the Castle, The wea- 
 ther was lovely. It was not too cold for lawn 
 tennis. A very feeble cousin of Miss Danebrook, 
 who was reading for his Divinity examination, 
 made a fourth. The dowagers had their books 
 and newspapers, their work-bags, and that ever- 
 lasting occupation of letter-writing which holds 
 all society in bondage.
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 189 
 
 The frivolous dowager was the famous Oriana, 
 Lady Hillborough, who had been young and a 
 fashionable beauty when William the Fourth was 
 king. She still wore her hair exactly as she 
 had worn it at that period ; but it was not the 
 same hair — she had worn out a good many of 
 those golden tresses, and had spent a small for- 
 tune at Truefitt's since the sailor king had been 
 laid in the royal charnel house. She dressed as 
 youthfully now as she had dressed then, and 
 skipped about a room as gaily, re-arranging the 
 furniture in that bright airy way of hers, famed 
 for her exquisite taste in the composition of 
 those pictures which fashionable drawing-rooms 
 now offer to the enlightened eye. 
 
 ' My dear, you should have a group of large 
 palms at the other end of your room,' she ex- 
 claimed, surveying Lady Lashmar's morning room 
 through her binoculars. 'You have nothing to 
 break the straight line of your end wall. Yes, 
 of course, I know, those pictures of yours are 
 priceless, and the palms will hide them; but you 
 will get the idea of distance, vagueness, don't you 
 know. The effect will be much finer.'
 
 190 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 And then Lady Hillborough wheeled round and 
 surveyed Clarice coolly, deliberately, through her 
 glasses, which made her own eyes look as the 
 eyes of a giant to those who happened to 
 see them through those magnifying pebbles. Clarice 
 was standing by the window, wondering whether 
 slie was to be presented to the new-comer, or to be 
 ignored, which she would have infinitely preferred. 
 
 ' What a sweet child ! ' said Lady Hillborough 
 in a loud whisper, when she had stared for about 
 three minutes. * Introduce her to me.' 
 
 Lady Lashmar obeyed, and Oriana took Clarice 
 by the hand, made another deliberate inspection at 
 nearer range, and then kissed the girl enthusiasti- 
 cally on both cheeks. 
 
 ' I delight in pretty people,' she exclaimed. ' Of 
 course you know you are pretty, child. Some people 
 try to keep girls of your age from finding out their 
 own prettiness; but its all wasted trouble. If a 
 girl were brought up on a desert island she would 
 know all about her good looks ; she would see herself 
 reflected in some pool, like What's-his-name, in the 
 Greek story — Jonquil.'
 
 THE NEW CINDEKELLA 191 
 
 ' I tliiuk you must mean Xarcissus, Lady Hill- 
 borough,' said one of the stroncir-minded Miss 
 MacAllisters. 
 
 ' What does it matter, my dear, a narcissus and 
 a jonquil are much the same thing,' answered 
 Oriana, who was not learned, and rarely read any- 
 thing except the newspapers. 
 
 Lashmar and his friends arrived in time for 
 dinner. He had spent a couple of nights in London, 
 had arranged to meet his guests at the station, and 
 to bring them down with him. There were two 
 newly-Hedged cavalry subalterns ; a younger son who 
 was going in for a political career, and fancied him- 
 self an embryo Canning ; anotlier younger son who 
 was preparLag himself for the family living ; and a 
 young man who was nobody in particular, but who 
 was much better read, and more amusing than any 
 of the other four. 
 
 They were all young, and they were a noisy 
 crew. Clarice was afraid of them, and they were 
 afraid of the two strong-minded Miss MacAllisters, 
 who were intense politicians, and great upon the 
 Eastern Question, with the complexities whereof
 
 1 92 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 they assailed the masculine mind at every oppor- 
 tunity. So there was a tacit avoidance of the 
 feminine society provided by her ladyship. 
 
 ' I thought you would have liked to find some 
 nice girls here, Lashmar,' she said to her son re- 
 proachfully, after he and his friends had been out 
 shooting all day, and in the smoking room all the 
 evening, while the Miss MacAllisters, who scorned 
 accomplishments as futile, had sat in different 
 corners of the drawing-room, one reading Herbert 
 Spenser, while the other devoured Darwin, and osten- 
 tatiously ignoring Clarice Danebrook's little bits of 
 Chopin and dainty old ballads. 
 
 * So I should, mother,' answered Victorian 
 cheerily, ' only I haven't seen any, except Clarice. 
 She's nice enough, but quite impossible to get on 
 with. She's so painfully shy.' 
 
 ' Her shyness would be got over in a very short 
 time if you'd only talk to her.' 
 
 * Oh, I can't talk to a girl when its uphill work. 
 The women in Vienna are so brilliant, so easy to 
 get on with. As for your MacAllister girls I would 
 as soon converse with a bluebook. One of them
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 193 
 
 asked me yesterday morning what we were going to 
 do with Cyprus, in the event of Eastern complica- 
 tions ^ Such a girl as that ought never to be 
 allowed to set foot inside a country house. In 
 fact, Oriana is the only agTceable person you have 
 got about you. I have half a mind to propose to 
 Oriana, only I'm afraid there'd be a sparsity of 
 coin.' 
 
 The dowager sighed with a vexed air, but said no 
 more. She had hoped that Lashmar, fresh from the 
 meretricious charms of fashionable Viennese beauty, 
 would have been struck by Clarice Danebrook's lily- 
 like loveliness in all its purity of early girlhood. 
 She was only eighteen, divinely fair, with features 
 of most delicate mould, and eyes of heavenly azure. 
 It was hardly possible to imagine a more beautiful 
 girl in that particular style of beauty. There was 
 not a flaw. She was of superior height, exquisitely 
 graceful, with small hands and feet. Whatever 
 coarseness there might have been in the Danebrook 
 mould had been chastened by the judicious union 
 with the Montmorencys. Nobody would ever have 
 suspected Clarice of plebeian origin ; and yet her 
 
 VOL. L
 
 194 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 father had coarse, hairy hands, and feet of ser- 
 viceable breadth, sandy whiskers, and a potato nose. 
 He was an admirable man of business, a liberal 
 master, a staunch friend to the operatives whose 
 labour had created his millions ; but he had never 
 tried or pretended to be a fine gentleman, though he 
 had been born after his father had made a fortune, 
 and had been educated at Rugby and Oxford. 
 
 Clarice was very sweet, and Lashmar gradually 
 awakened to an idea of her sweetness. He 
 began to leave his friends in the billiard-room, 
 or the smoking-room, of an evening, and to sit by 
 the piano listening to those quaint old ballads, and 
 those melodious bits plucked here and there out of 
 the heart of a sonata or a symphony. Clarice was 
 one of those musicians by instinct rather than by 
 training who wander from flower to flower with a 
 sweet capriciousness, stealing the honey out of 
 every blossom : now a joyous little bit of Mozart, a 
 rondo or a minuet ; now an Andante, or an Adagio 
 from one of Beethoven's grandest sonatas ; now one 
 of Chopin's wild wailing movements, half a dirge 
 and half a war^crv.
 
 THE NEW CINDEEELLA 195 
 
 ' AVhat a jolly lot you kuow,' exclaimed Lashmar. 
 ' I wish you'd siug '* Barbara Allen " presently. I 
 was outside in the corridor last night when you 
 were sin!T;in<:j it.' 
 
 '■ Mill has a passage here which seems exactly to 
 hit our present complications/ said Janie Mac- 
 AUister, looking up from her ponderous tome, ' I do 
 wish you'd let me read it to you, Lord Lashmar.' 
 
 * ;N"ot for worlds. AVe should inevitably quarrel 
 if you did. I detest Mill. 
 
 ' But surely at such a crisis as this ' 
 
 * I don't care a straw about the crisis ; we are 
 always at a crisis. I don't even know what it 
 means. I get dosed with European politics abroad 
 till I am simply imbecile upon all political ques- 
 tions. I want " Barbara Allen." ' 
 
 Clarice looked up and smiled at him, with her 
 sweet childish smile. The Miss MacAllisters had 
 been far from civil to her, and she did not love 
 them. They resented her inordinate wealth, and 
 disapproved of her beauty. A rich girl had no 
 right to be pretty. Lady Lashmar's favouritism was 
 also an offence* Clarice was petted and flattered
 
 196 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 while they were only tolerated — they who had 
 cultivated their minds, and were able to enter the 
 arena of argument upon equal terms with the sterner 
 sex. The misfortune was that at Lashmar Castle 
 bo I ,^ w^anted to argue with them, except the 
 foolish cousin, whose feeble brain they sometimes 
 deigned to flood with their electric light. He who 
 had never been able to grasp any one subject won- 
 dered at the wide range of these well-read damsels, 
 who despised Paley with the contempt of long 
 familiarity, and had Butler's Analogy at their fingers' 
 ends, while the Greek Testament was child's play to 
 them, and they were ready at a moment's warning 
 to argue upon any disputed passage. 
 
 Clarice sang her old ballads, and Lashmar listened 
 in a dreamy silence. 
 
 Y'es, his mother was right. She was a very 
 sweet girl — somewhat over-childish, perhaps, for 
 her eighteen years, but passing lovely. Ermine 
 robes and a coronet would not be too good for that 
 delicate beauty. He wondered whether hu was 
 beginning to fall in love with her. 
 
 He fancied that she would be an easy conquest
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 197 
 
 — for him. That shy and shrinking manner of 
 hers argued a foregone conclusion. She had an 
 awe-stricken way of looking up at him, as if his 
 presence thrilled her. But he held liiraself in 
 check, and did not mean to commit himself yet 
 awhile. They were both young enough to wait. 
 
 One morning he let the shooters start without 
 him, and strolled across the park and through the 
 fields to the Hall, which was about a mile-and-a-half 
 from the Castle. He wanted to see Clarice in the 
 bosom of her family, to see whether her surround- 
 ings were too tenible, the father too suggestive of 
 the original barrow. He had seen very little of 
 the Danebrooks in his boyhood. This passion for 
 Clarice was a new craze of her ladyship's. 
 
 The Hall was everything which the Castle was 
 not. It had been built five-and-twenty years 
 before, in the midst of a level expanse of meadow 
 land, which, during that quarter of a century, had 
 been in process of education into a park. But as 
 there had been very few old trees to begin with 
 the park was still barren : a waste of level turf 
 with new plantations dotted about at intervals. A
 
 198 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 fine carriaG[e drive went from the lodsje crates to 
 the Hall door, assuredly the most uninteresting drive 
 in the county. 
 
 The Hall was an immense red brick house, in 
 the modern Gothic style, red brick with stone 
 facings. It was a very fine house, well proportioned, 
 in fairly good taste ; but nothing that the architect 
 could do had been enough to subjugate that terrible 
 air of newness which is the bane of such houses. 
 There was a huge battlemented tower, which stared 
 over the surrounding country and could be seen from 
 afar for many miles ; and there were battlemented 
 stables and battlemented terraces ; and there were 
 acres of well-kept shrubberies, and a fish-pond, and 
 fountains, and spacious conservatories — in a word, 
 there was everything that money could buy. But 
 money cannot buy antiquity, unless it takes the past 
 at second hand. Clarice was very sorry that her 
 father had not bought a dear old crumbly house, in 
 the heart of an overgrown old park, instead of 
 building for himself this modern mansion, with all 
 its comfortable appliance?, its brand-new luxuries 
 and conveniences, speaking-tubes and lifts, and hot
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA .199 
 
 water pipes and scientific ventilators. Clarice would 
 rather have had one ghost than all those speaking 
 tubes ; she would have preferred lichen-covered 
 stone walls to hot-water pipes and ventilators. 
 Clarice fancied the house smelt of newly-made 
 wealth. It had been furnished at one fell swoop by 
 a great London firm, and although the picturesque 
 had been duly considered, it was the modern pictu- 
 resque, and lacked the mellow tones of real old 
 furniture. 
 
 Mrs. Danebrook had just come in from her 
 conservatories, where she snipped off the dead leaves 
 and damaged a few of the plants every morning 
 under the delusion that she was helping the head 
 gardener. She was very stout, and could never 
 steer herself through a conservatory without knocking 
 over a pot or two. She was a large, placid woman, 
 with small, regular features, which must have once 
 been like those of Clarice, but which were now 
 almost submerged in fat. She was very fair, with 
 the lily-like fairness of her daughter, and she had 
 flaxen hair, which her daughter had carried out in 
 a richer and warmer tint of golden brown. The
 
 200 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 daughter seemed to Lashmar to be a refinement 
 upon the mother ; but be told bimself that as the 
 mother was the daughter might be five-and-twenty 
 years hence. 
 
 He met his hostess in the ball, and sbe took bim 
 to her morning room, where Clarice was lolling in 
 an easy chair by the window, reading a novel, which 
 was about the highest form of literature wherewith 
 the young lady ever nourished her ripening mind. 
 She rose in confusion at aight of Lashmar, as it had 
 been a demi-god entering suddenly ; and the trans- 
 parent skin was flooded wdth a lovely blush. 
 
 * My mother sent me to ask you over to tennis, 
 this afternoon,' said Lashmar, inventing a message 
 on the spur of the moment. 
 
 ' Oh, but I was going in any case,' faltered 
 Clarice ; 'dear Lady Lashmar asked me last night.' 
 
 ' She ^vas afraid you would forget all about it 
 to-day.' 
 
 ' There is no chance of her forgetting,' said the 
 mother. ' She is so fond of Lady Lashmar. I feel 
 quite jealous sometimes. I hardly see anything of 
 Clarice. But it is so nice for her to be at the Castle.'
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 201 
 
 Mrs. Danebrook, nee ^Montmorency, had an 
 exaggerated reverence for rank. In the days when 
 she had been a half-pay colonel's daughter, 
 struggling to keep up appearances upon the 
 narrowest means, she had always taken comfort 
 from the thought that she was descended from 
 princes. She had held her head high before lodging- 
 house keepers and small tradesmen; had worn 
 mended gloves and bonnets of doubtful freshness 
 with a proud complacency which overcame the scorn 
 of middle-class prosperity. And when Providence 
 smiled upon her fresh young charms in the person 
 of the broad-shouldered, sandy-whiskered proprietor 
 of the largest foundry in Brumm, who met the 
 young lady at the Stillmington Hunt Ball and fell 
 in love with her on the spot, Yiola Montmorency 
 received the advances of the millionaire with the 
 placid dignity of a princess. Another girl in her 
 position, conscious of shabby surroundings and an 
 impecunious father, might have disgusted her 
 admirer by unwise encouragement. Viola stimulated 
 his affection by a sweet reticence; and it was the 
 colonel who brought matters to a head, and anchored
 
 202 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 the delighted youth. Jonathan Danebrook had 
 never had occasion to repent his precipitancy. His 
 wife had one of those exquisitely easy tempers 
 which are perhaps only a refined form of selfishness, 
 but which allow the wheels of daily Kfe to run as 
 upon velvet. Mr. Danebrook indulged his wife's 
 every whim; but her whims were of the mildest 
 kind, and he had in compensation the privilege of 
 doing exactly what he liked under all circumstances. 
 Danebrook Hall was therefore a kind of earthly 
 paradise, in which the fair young daughter moved 
 like the spirit of youth and gladness, while the 
 mother represented the calm contentment of 
 maturity. 
 
 While Lashmar was dawdling in the morning 
 room, turning over a pile of new novels and discussing 
 their contents with Clarice, Mr. Danebrook came in 
 from his model farm, fresh and breezy as the October 
 morning itself, and bringing with him that compound 
 odour of pigsty and stable which hovers about 
 the person of amateur agriculturists, and in which 
 they apparently delight. 
 
 It was Lord Lashmar's first visit to the Hall.
 
 THE XEW CINDERELLA 203 
 
 and he was to Jonathan Danebrook as a prey, to 
 be dragged off at ouce and paraded through 
 hot-houses and stables, home farm and pad- 
 docks, where the brood mares and their foals 
 were one of the features of the estate. Lash- 
 mar was fond of horses, and did not mind the 
 stables or the brood mares. He would have sub- 
 mitted even to the piggeries with a good grace if 
 Clarice had been of the party; but Clarice never 
 accompanied her father on these agricultural ex- 
 peditions. She detested pigs and poultry, cattle 
 sheds and farm yards. Those pretty little Louis 
 Quatorze shoes of hers had not been made for 
 tripping over cobbles, or across a ploughed field. 
 There was nothing of the typical squire's daughter 
 about her. She never hunted, and she only cared 
 for the one well-trained horse which she was able 
 to ride. She had never handled gun or fishing- 
 rod, and her only idea of a dog was a Russian 
 poodle. So Clarice stayed in the morning room 
 and went on with her novel while Lashmar was 
 inspecting horses and cows, pigs and poultry, until, 
 amidst the splendours of a very fine assemblage of
 
 204 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 cochin-chinas, he was agreeably startled by the 
 sound of a gigantic gong, which might have been 
 heard half a mile off. 
 
 ' Lunch/ cried Danebrook ; * come along, Lord 
 Lashmar, I hope you're as hungry as a hunter 
 after this long round.' 
 
 ' Upon my word I think I ought to go back to 
 the Castle for luncheon/ said Lashmar dubiously. 
 'Her ladyship likes to have me when I am not 
 out with the shooters. She'll take it unkindly 
 perhaps/ 
 
 * No she w^on't, when you tell her where you've 
 been. Her ladyship has been uncommonly friendly 
 to my wife and daughter.' 
 
 * Miss Danebrook is m}^ mother's favourite/ 
 replied Lashmar. *I never knew her take so 
 warmly to any young lady.' 
 
 'And Clarice positively worships Lady Lash- 
 mar — quotes her in everything ; nothing is right 
 unless it is modelled upon Lashmar Castle/ 
 
 They went into luncheon, and Lashmar, who 
 had rather despised Clarice for her stay-at-home 
 metropolitan habits, forgave her when he compared
 
 THE XEW CINDERELLA. 20o 
 
 her pure and delicate beauty with the bronzed 
 and weather-beaten countenance and roughened 
 hair of the average country-bred damsel. 
 
 After luncheon Lashmar proposed that Clarice 
 should walk to the Castle with him, and although 
 Mrs. Danebrook would hardly have seen the fitness 
 of such a proposition from a commoner she was 
 willing to stretch the proprieties just a little for 
 the sake of a noble admirer, and to allow her 
 daughter to stroll across the fields unchaperoned. 
 So Lashmar and Clarice went across those rich 
 Middleshire pastures, as gaily as Phillis and 
 Strephon, in the sweet half-consciousness of dawn- 
 ing love, and were received most graciously by her 
 ladyship. 
 
 The Miss MacAllisters and their mother 
 had driven to meet the shooters, so there was 
 only Oriana at home, and that dear lady always 
 slept for two or three hours after luncheon, 
 a siesta which enabled her to be as fresh 
 as a debutante all the evening, nay, far into the 
 small hours, did pleasure offer itself after 
 midnight.
 
 206 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Las'hmar and Clarice went oft* to the tennis 
 ground and began a set without delay. The lawn 
 was just under the windows of Lady Lashroar's 
 morning room, and she looked up from the 
 newspaper every now and then to watch them, 
 pleased at the ripening of her plan. Yes, the fact 
 was obvious. Lashmar was falling in love. N"© 
 lesser influence than love would have taken him 
 to the Hall ; he who had always spoken slightingly 
 of the newly rich, who detested the magnates and 
 millionaires of Brumm. Clarice Danebrook's beauty 
 and sweetness had conquered all his prejudices. 
 
 Clarice was indeed fair to look upon, with 
 the soft curly auburn air fluttering on her low 
 white forehead, and the gracious lines of her 
 figure set off by the soft folds of her fawn- 
 coloured Indian silk frock, a frock of elegant 
 simplicity, just short enough to show the pretty 
 little feet in the bronze shoes and fawn-coloured 
 stocliings, a frock whose Quakerish hue was relieved 
 by a broad sash of Indian red, tied carelessly upon 
 the left hip. The little toque hat was of the 
 same Indian red, suodued yet glowing, and admi-
 
 THE NEW CINDEEELLA 207 
 
 rably harmonising with the ivory fairness of the 
 wearer's skin. 
 
 They played two sets, and then went wandering 
 off towards the Italian garden, which was at the 
 other end of the castle, out of Lady Lashmar's 
 ken. 
 
 It was upon this garden that the late Lord 
 Lashmar's rooms opened. Clarice loitered to look 
 in at one of the windows of the library. 
 
 ' Oh, what a noble room ! ' she cried, peering in 
 at the spacious apartment, with its wall of books 
 facing her, crowned at intervals with white marble 
 busts which gleamed in the shadowy interior. The 
 room seemed in half darkness as seen from the 
 bright clear light of the garden. 
 
 *Do you know I have never seen the famous 
 Lashmar library/ she said, looking back at Lashmar. 
 
 * I should so like to see it.' 
 
 * Then you shall,' he answered cheerily. 
 
 * Strange that her ladyship should never have 
 taken you in to look at the old Books of Hours 
 and such like valuable rubbish. But the room 
 has very sad associations for her, on account of
 
 208 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 my poor brother. He almost spent his life in that 
 room.' 
 
 'Yes, I know. How very good and sweet he 
 was— such a lovely, mournful face. I only saw 
 him two or three times, but I thought him so nice. 
 He spoke so kindly, he had such a beautiful manner. 
 What became of that pretty little dark-eyed girl, 
 he adopted? I saw her with him one day; such 
 an interesting little thing.' 
 
 ' Oh, she is still here, I believe, somewhere 
 in the housekeeper's quarters,' Lashmar answered 
 carelessly. 
 
 'How strange that I have never happened to 
 see her 1 ' 
 
 They went in at a glass door, which opened 
 into the late Lord Lashmar's sitting-room. Nothing 
 in this or any of his rooms had been altered since 
 his death. Her ladyship meant to have a general 
 turn-out of everything, and a complete re-arrange- 
 ment of these rooms later on, when the sharp 
 sad feeling of recent death should have worn 
 away. She was not altogether without feeling 
 npon the subject; although she had always wished
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA 2()9 
 
 for Hubert's early death, as the best possible 
 arrangement Providence could make for everybody, 
 dear Hubert himself included. 
 
 Long life could not be a blessing in his case. 
 He would have only felt his afflicted condition 
 more keenly as the years rolled on. 
 
 Clarice looked at the room with a mournful, 
 awe-stricken air. It was so simply and prettily 
 furnished ; such charming engravings and photo- 
 graphs of French and German pictures on the 
 walls; such novel and artistic china and bronzes 
 and quaint little ornaments of all kinds, scattered 
 upon the tables ; such delightful reading-lamps 
 and reading-easels ; such low, luxurious chairs ; 
 above all, such a snug, homelike air. It was 
 difficult to realise that he by whom those things 
 had all been chosen, whose hand had cut the 
 leaves of yonder magazines with that elephant's 
 tusk, thrown carelessly across the books, as if he 
 had flung it there — difficult to realise that he had 
 been lying in his grave for months, and would 
 never look upon that place again. 
 
 The walls were lined half-way up with dwarf 
 
 VOL. L P
 
 210 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 book-cases, and in those were the books of Hubert's 
 own collecting. Clarice thought that some of these 
 were passing dry; but that they were on the whole 
 much better than those valuable volumes which 
 Lashmar afterwards showed hei' in the great 
 library. 
 
 He showed her the gems of the collection, in 
 a somewhat perfunctory manner, not caring much 
 about them himself, except as heirlooms, which fed 
 his pride of race and place. He was well read 
 for a young man ; a keen critic of modern books ; 
 had dipped into most things ; but he had not the 
 collector's reverence for old books and old bindings. 
 Clarice looked at them with the wide, wondering 
 eyes of perfect ignorance. That shabby little 
 volume in Italian worth a thousand pounds, just 
 because there were only two of them extant — 
 this and one other. It seemed ridiculous. She 
 had been surprised the other day when her fathe-? 
 gave a thousand pounds for an Alderney cow; but 
 the Alderney was at least beautiful, a sleek, pettable 
 creature, with great pathetic eyes, while this little 
 Italian book was distinctly ugly.
 
 THE XEAV CINDERELLA 211 
 
 Her eyes wandered from the book to the room, 
 which was lovely. Those marble busts, j)l^ced at 
 intervals along the richly- carved cornice of the 
 book-cases; the splendour of cut velvet curtains 
 shrouding the windows and making a semi-darkness 
 in the room ; the two sculptured fire-places, lofty 
 and imposing — all these things impressed Clarice. 
 The Hall had been built and furnished with a reck- 
 less expenditure, and yet there was no room in it 
 that gave this idea of dignity and grandeur. ' One 
 must begin by being noble before one could have such 
 surroundings/ thought Clarice, who worshipped rank. 
 
 Suddenly, in the midst of her contemplation of 
 the room, she gave a little start, and touched 
 Lashmar lightly on the wrist. 
 
 * What is that ? ' she whispered. 
 
 ' That ' was a small fragile figure, a little girl in 
 a black frock, sitting at the further end of the room, 
 perched high up on a library ladder, reading a big 
 volume, which it was as much as her small hands 
 and thin little arms could do to hold in its place, 
 hugged against her stooping chest. 
 
 ' By Jove ! ' exclaimed Lashmar, ' it is the very
 
 212 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 child you were talking of, poor Hubert's protegee, 
 and he went to the other end of the room, followed 
 by Clarice, and looked up with a half-amused air 
 at the queer little figure on the step-ladder. 
 
 * What are you doing up there, Stella ? ' he asked, 
 not ill-naturedly. 
 
 The uncanny dark eyes looked down at him, 
 so large, so black, in comparison with the small 
 pale face; and then the thin black legs uncoiled 
 themselves from the steps, and the child came down 
 and faced her new master, still hugging the quarto 
 in her lean arms. She stood and faced his lordship 
 and the lovely young lady, looking with those great 
 solemn eyes of hers from one to the other. 
 
 No longer a Eeynolds's child, to be patronised 
 and admired by the dilettante Eector. Not by 
 any means a picturesque child in her present 
 apparel. Her ladyship had taken pains to prevent 
 any such foolishness under the new regime. 
 
 That thick straight fringe of hair, which had 
 given quaintness to the childish face, had been care- 
 fully brushed away from the broad bare forehead, 
 by command of her ladyship, who allowed no such
 
 THE XEW CIXDEKELLA 213 
 
 meretricious grace as a '' fringe " in any of her 
 dependents. The black stuff frock was made with 
 a Quaker plainness, tight and prim and spare, and a 
 hoUand apron carried out the idea of dependence 
 and servitude. A very plain child assuredly in her 
 present stage of being. 
 
 * What book is that ? ' asked Lashmar, pointing 
 to the quarto. 
 
 * La ]\Iorte d' Arthur,' she answered. 
 
 * What, can you read Old English ? ' 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' My brother taught you, I suppose ? ' 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' And pray, who gave you leave to come here 
 to read?' 
 
 * Xobody.' 
 
 ' Frank, at any rate. I suppose you know you 
 are doing wrong when you come here? ' 
 
 * No,' she answered doggedly. ' I don't hurt the 
 books ; I am not in anybody's way.' 
 
 ' Do you suppose her ladyship would approve of 
 your loafing here reading old books , instead of learn- 
 ing to be useful ?
 
 214 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' I don't care what her ladyship thinks. I don't 
 care whether I please her or displease her. She has 
 been very unkind to me.' 
 
 ' Oh, but you must not say that,' said Lashmar, 
 waxing stern. * You have every reason to be grate- 
 ful to her ladyship ; but for her, you would be in 
 the workhouse, perhaps.' 
 
 ' If she was kind I should be grateful,' the girl 
 answered resolutely, unabashed, looking at him 
 boldly with those wondrous eyes. * She took away 
 all my books — the books Lord Lashmar gave me ! ' 
 
 The dark eyes filled with tears, which were 
 hurriedly dashed away, as if the child were ashamed 
 of them. 
 
 ' Poor little thing ! ' murmured Clarice ; and with 
 a pretty pitiful air she patted the pale wet cheek 
 with her soft white hand. 
 
 But Cinderella shrank from the touch as if she 
 had been stung. 
 
 * Don't ! ' she cried angrily. 
 
 This last insolence provoked Lashmar's wrath. 
 
 ' You are a very rude little girl,' he exclaimed, 
 * and you must never come into this room again. You
 
 THE XE^V CINDEEELLA 215 
 
 have no right here or in any part of the house except 
 the servants' quarters. You will have to be a servant 
 by-and-by, and you must learn to live contentedly 
 among servants. How did you get into this room ? 
 The doors are locked.' 
 
 * I came as you came — through the glass door.' 
 
 * You have been here often, I suppose ? ' 
 *Yes, very often.' 
 
 * You must never come again. Do you under- 
 stand ? ' 
 
 ' I understand that you are a cruel man/ she 
 answered defiantly, scowling at him, her heart 
 beating tempestuously with fury. ' I am glad you are 
 only my dear Lord Lashmar's half-brother. If you 
 had been really his brother I should have been very 
 sorry to hate you — but you are not his brother, 
 and I don't care how much I hate you.' 
 
 She had been yearning for love and pit)", 
 thinking that perhaps when the new master came 
 back he would be kind to her for his dead 
 brother's sake. She had been yearning for pity ; 
 and yet she had recoiled from Miss Danebrook's 
 gentle touch as if from an adder.
 
 216 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 'You are a very horrid little person, as un- 
 pleasant as you are ugly,' said Lashmar, going to 
 the door and unlocking it, and throwing it wide 
 open ; ' and now march, if you please. Put down 
 that book, and make yourself scarce.* 
 
 She had been hugging the quarto all this time. 
 She laid it slowly down on a table, and as slowly 
 walked out of the room, scowling to the very 
 last. 
 
 'I am afraid she is not a nice child/ said 
 Clarice, shaking her head. 
 
 ' She is a little demon, a veritable imp of dark- 
 ness. I think my brother must have liked her 
 on account of her outlandishness.' 
 
 * Just as some people like a daclislmnd' said 
 Clarice.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 A YOUNG rr.OUD WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL 
 WITH 
 
 Stella went no more to the library. She had 
 stolen round one day by the garden when the 
 family was at luncheon and the coast cl(,'ar, and 
 finding the glass door open had gone in and read 
 there for hours, safe in the solitude of locked 
 doors. ISTo one had missed her, for she had of 
 late been allowed to carry her needle-work to her 
 own little room and to work there in peaceful 
 loneliness between dinner and tea time. Day after 
 day she had crept stealthily round from the hall 
 door to that glass door in the late Lord Lashmar's 
 study, left open for a few hours daily to air the 
 rooms; and she had read to her heart's content, 
 roaming at will among strange tales of fairy land 
 and adventure, from Spenser to Sir Thomas
 
 218 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Malory and Sir John Mandeville ; and never 
 had she been surprised until that afternoon 
 when the new Lord Lashmar caught her in the 
 act. 
 
 She felt herself a detected criminal; and she 
 hated herself for the self-indulgence which had 
 brought this shame upon her. 
 
 ' I ought to have remembered that they are 
 all his books now/ she thought. She had always 
 thought of them before as belonging to her dead 
 friend : she had not fairly realised the transitory 
 character of all such possessions. They had been 
 Hubert's books, in her mind, and he had always 
 encouraged her to read — he would not have grudged 
 her the bliss of poring over those strange old 
 stories. 
 
 She saw no more of Lord Lashmar, though he 
 stayed at the castle till after Christmas, and 
 entertained a good many visitors. The coming 
 and going of guests occupied the servants much 
 more severely than the old dull routine of the late 
 lord's time, and gave Stella more leisure and 
 seclusion. Soon after Christmas, there came a great
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH 219 
 
 improvement in her life, for Lady Laslimar and 
 her son went up to Grosvenor Square for the season, 
 taking with them the greater number of the servants, 
 Three housemaids, and a superannuated housekeeper, 
 who usually lived in one of the lodges, were left 
 in sole charge of the castle : and one of those 
 housemaids was Stella's faithful friend, Betsy. 
 
 Under this new regime the child was free to 
 roam about the house as she pleased : but she never 
 re-entered the library. She would have read her 
 own books again and again to satiety rather than 
 she would have degraded herself by entering that 
 forbidden room after Lashmar's insulting veto. 
 
 She had not forgotten one of his hard words. 
 It was not often that she looked in the glass ; but 
 she never did so look without remembering that he 
 had told her she was as unpleasant as she was ugly. 
 Yes, no doubt she was ugly. The glass confirmed 
 that hard speech ; and perhaps the charge of 
 unpleasantness was equally well founded. One 
 happy change came over her life in this wintry 
 season of the year, when she was free to roam about 
 the park or down by the river, or across the bare,
 
 :^20 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 bleak fields to the village, if slie pleased. Her long 
 imprisonment in ugly, uninteresting rooms had made 
 that newly recovered liberty very precious to her. 
 She was perfectly fearless, cared not hov7 far she 
 went alone, and Betsy was too busy to look after 
 her, and was always satisfied if she appeared 
 punctually at meal time. 
 
 She revisited all the spots which she had known 
 with Lord Lashmar. She went to the boat-house 
 and looked at his empty boats, under linen coverings, 
 ghastly, as if he were lying in one of them dead. 
 She wandered along the river bank, stopping to note 
 this or that landmark, and to remember how utterly 
 happy she had been in those vanished days. 
 
 Would she ever be happy again, she wondered ? 
 Never, surely, unless her father were to come back 
 from that far country whither he had gone that 
 night the house was burnt, the name of which she 
 did not know. She had often questioned Lord 
 Lashmar, and he had evaded her questions, not 
 unkindly, but still firmly. 
 
 ' You will know by-and-by, dear child,' he had 
 said, and she had felt that there was some mystery
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO S.ML WITH 221 
 
 which concerned her absent father, and that she 
 must be patient. 
 
 If he would but come back now — now when she 
 felt so lonely, so sorely in need of love and sweet 
 companionship ; some one to talk to her and to 
 teach her as Lashmar had done. 
 
 Comfort, of some kind, was nearer than she 
 thought. Coming through the little village street 
 one day she saw a familiar iigure standing at the 
 gate of a cottage garden, gazing dreamily at the 
 old church tower nestlmg in a hollow just beyond 
 that sharp curve and sudden drop in the narrow 
 road where the village inn stood out conspicuously, 
 as if on the look-out for accidents to horses and 
 wheels. 
 
 A bent old figure, with bare head and long 
 gray hah- and dim, pale eyes, aged by poring over 
 dry-as-dust books. Yes, it was the mild companion 
 of her happy childhood standing there, a leaf out 
 of that lovely past which contrasted so strongly 
 with her present desolation. 
 
 The girl ran to him and touched him on the 
 sleeve
 
 222 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' Mr. Veraer, dear Mr. Veruer, I am so glad ! 
 she gasped breathlessly. 
 
 Slowly, and as if with an effort, the dim old 
 eyes withdrew themselves from the church tower, 
 and gazed wonderingly upon the pale young face 
 looking eagerly upward. 
 
 ' Why, Stella ! Are you still at the Castle ? 
 They told me you had been sent to school. Why 
 did not you come to see me before ? ' 
 
 ' I was not allowed to go out till her ladyship 
 went away, and I did not know you were here. 
 They said you had gone to London.' 
 
 'They were right, my child,' answered the old 
 man, with a profound sigh; 'I did go to London. 
 I was in London nearly four months. A terrible 
 place, child, a fearful place, when one has lost the 
 habit of cities, as I have. The din of the crowded 
 streets deafened me, the strange faces made me feel 
 distraught. It is a dreary wilderness, Stella, for a 
 man without friends ; and I had no friends in 
 London — no, not one. I thought I had many old 
 college companions, old pupils — men who had pre- 
 tended to love me when they were boys ; but time
 
 A 1.V0MAX THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL AVITH 223 
 
 had chansjecl them into stranorers. All doors were 
 closed against me, very politely, Stella, but they 
 were shut all the same, and I was alone and old 
 and stupid, in that noisy wilderness of streets and 
 squares, and fine shops, and lighted theatres. A 
 dreary desert for the friendless and poor, Stella.' 
 
 ' But your book,' faltered Stella, remembering 
 the old man's shrinking from the burden of cele- 
 brity, ^that will win you new friends instead of the 
 old ones who may have forgotten you.' 
 
 * No, Stella, there are no friends to learning now- 
 a-days. Francis Bacon might wander in that stony 
 labyrinth, die of hunger there for want of a helping 
 hand. There are no Bacons wanted now-a-days; 
 learning is out of date. It was to get my book 
 published that I went to London, Stella. I carried 
 my manuscript from publisher to publisher, till 1 
 came to those that laughed in my face when I men- 
 tioned Aristotle, and asked me if I thought he was 
 a likely kind of author to sell in penny numbers, 
 or his complete works at a shilling ? I was not to 
 be beaten easily, Stella. I went to the great men 
 first ; they were kind and courteous, but told me
 
 224 ONE THING NEEDrUL 
 
 the market was Hooded with books upon the great 
 classics ; that no work of that kind had sold since 
 Grote and Jowett ; that my magnum opus was so 
 much labour wasted, except for the pleasure I had 
 felt in the progress of such an honourable work. 
 That is the kind of thing the great publishers said to 
 me. The small ones openly laughed at me — politely 
 or rudely, as the nature of the creatures prompted. 
 There was no room in the world of letters for my 
 great work on Aristotle. I might publish the book 
 at my own cost if I liked, but it would involve an 
 outlay of two or three hundred pounds. And I had 
 thought that the work would bring me wealth and 
 renown ; I had shrunk from the glare and the dazzle 
 of my future fame. Dreams, Stella, all dreams ! The 
 publishers awakened me : and now I know that I 
 am only a foolish old man, born into this world too 
 late to be of any use to himself or other people.' 
 
 * But you have your book still,' said Stella, in 
 her grave, old-fashioned way — she had grown from 
 a child to a precocious woman in her solitary studious 
 life of the last eight months, had changed curiously 
 in so short a time — * and if it is a great book, as
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH 225 
 
 Lord Lashmar said it was, you must be very proud 
 of it.' 
 
 ' I love it,' faltered the old maD, with an involun- 
 tary glance at the window of the room that held 
 his treasure, — * I love it as if it were a child. I am 
 steadily going over all the old ground again, page 
 by page, annotating, improving. Perhaps, years 
 hence, when I am in the dust, a publisher may be 
 found to print that book — the world may discover 
 that I have left it an imperishable legacy. But let 
 us talk of it no more. Come in doors, and rest 
 yourself, Stella ; it is too cold to be standiug here 
 so long.' 
 
 He led the way into a cottage parlour, littered 
 with the chaotic lumber of a student's days and 
 nights — a table crowded with pamphlets and papers, 
 books piled in every available corner, heaped upon 
 the floor ; dust, untidiness everywhere. The owner 
 of the cottage had given up the struggle for neatness, 
 and had allowed her eccentric lodger to have things 
 in his own way. He was not a troublesome lodger, 
 needed but little attendance, never grumbled at the 
 cooking, paid his way punctually ; but his long 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 night watches were a source of fear to his landlady, 
 lest in long poring over those dry-as-dust old volumes 
 lie should fall asleep and suffer the house to be 
 set on fire. 
 
 * Have you been living here long ?' asked Stella, 
 looking at the chaos, and longing to put things 
 straight with dexterous womanly fingers. 
 
 ' Only since last November. Lord Lashmar has 
 been good enough to give me a small pension, 
 which I accept without compunction, as I know 
 that my dear pupil always intended to provide for 
 my old age. But how could he think that I should 
 outlive him — the old surviving the young ? Yes, 
 Lord Lashmar has been kind enough to provide 
 for me, and I like to live here, near the old 
 home and the old river we were all so fond of. 
 And you, child, how has it fared with you since 
 that fatal day?' 
 
 Stella was slow to answer. She struggled with 
 herself in silence for a little while, the dark brows 
 knitted in a frown ; the crimson of passion 
 kindling in the wan cheeks ; and then she burst 
 into tears.
 
 A WOMAX THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL AVITH 227 
 
 The old man drew her towards him, gathered 
 her upon his knees, sheltered her wet cheek upon 
 his breast with almost maternal tenderness. 
 
 ' My poor child ! my poor child ! ' he murmured, 
 ' death was very cruel to you and me that summer 
 day.' 
 
 ' Oh ! if we had only died too ! Why did not 
 God take us all together ? ' sobbed Stella : and then 
 in broken sentences she told Gabriel Verner what 
 her life had been like since he left the Castle — a 
 life spent among servants, in the bondage of 
 menial servitude. 
 
 'She took away my books too,' Stella went 
 on tearfully ; ' the books he gave me ; my Greek 
 and Latin books ; my book about the stars ; and 
 Scott and Tennyson.' 
 
 ' Inexorable tyrant, to stifle that budding intellect. 
 
 ' But Betsy contrived to get some of them for 
 me. It was almost like stealing them, though 
 they were my own — as much my own as this 
 hand and arm. And I have gone on learning 
 my lessons, and writing exercises, though there 
 has been no one to tell me the faults.'
 
 228 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 * That need be so no longer, Stella. Come to me 
 every day, if they will let you, and I will go on 
 with your education. Yes,' cried the scholar, with 
 sudden enthusiasm, ' it shall be the delight of my 
 life to train this bright young mind. You' — with 
 the rapture of conferring an ineffable boon, ' you 
 shall help me to annotate my book.' 
 
 * I will ! ' said Stella, * and I will keep your 
 room tidy, if you will let me. I know how to 
 arrange books and papers, and keep them all in 
 nice order, without disturbing anything. I used 
 to tidy his papers when I was very, very 
 little, when I could hardly reach up to the 
 table.' 
 
 'Yes, dear, you were always a handy little 
 thing. I v^ill go on with your education. Come 
 to me as often as you can; come whenever they 
 will let you. I am not much of a gadabout. 
 You will almost always find me at home.' 
 
 Stella thanked him with all her heart, cheered 
 and comforted by this new light. To take up 
 the thread of her education where Lashmar had 
 dropped it would seem almost a link with the
 
 A WOMA.N THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH 229 
 
 past, with the life that had been so sweet. It 
 would bring her nearer to the dead. She thought 
 of him always as watching over her from the 
 spirit world, regretting her degradation. And 
 it would please him to know that she was 
 carrying on her education with his dear old 
 tutor. 
 
 She told Betsy everything ; and Betty managed 
 that by hook or by crook she should have time to 
 go on with her education. All she had to do 
 was to satisfy Middleham ; and of late her sewing 
 had been good enough even for that exacting 
 personage ; and she had also shown herself very 
 deft and clever in putting the finishing touches 
 to best bedrooms and morning rooms, arranging 
 draperies, filling the flower vases, putting knick- 
 knacks and indescribable elegancies in just the right 
 places, instead of shoving things about stupidly after 
 the purblind manner of the ordinary housemaid. 
 Stella had spent many a morning at this work 
 when the Castle was full of company, and had 
 won ]\riddleham's blunt approval. 
 
 ' I thought you were a fool, child, when I first
 
 230 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 took you iu hand/ said the queen-mother of the 
 housemaids ; ' but I must say that I have found you 
 a teachable, handy little thing, and very willing to 
 take pains with your sewing ; which is more than 
 I can say for those overgrown young women from 
 the village.' 
 
 The all-powerful Middleham being thus con- 
 ciliated by patient service, life had been made easier 
 for Stella, even at the worst, than it had been ; but 
 it was easiest of all for her now when Middleham 
 and her staff were in Grosvenor Square, and the state 
 rooms and best bedrooms were all wrapped in 
 shadow and silence. Under Betsy's friendly rule 
 Stella was able to spend the greater part of her days 
 with Gabriel Verner, and to learn as much as he 
 felt inclined to teach her. Xor was this little ; for 
 it was a delight to the old man to resume the 
 habits of years gone by witli so docile, so receptive 
 a pupil. 
 
 So day by day and every day, as the leaves 
 unfolded and the flowers came peeping forth in the 
 hedgerows and meadows — first, the season of daffodils, 
 and then the season of king-cups, and then the glad
 
 A WOMAN THAT II IS WILL TO SAIL WITH 231 
 
 dme of blue-bells, and onward even to the first of 
 the dog-roses — Stella lived her own life, and learnt 
 diligently in the great volume of classic lore, till 
 even those modern Middleshire copses, that river- 
 side of to-day, seemed peopled with ideal forms : so 
 interwoven became the fables of the past with the 
 realities of the present. And every day the girl's 
 care helped to make the old student's life more 
 pleasant, providing for and forestalling his wants, 
 supervising his modest wardrobe, beautifying his 
 cottage home, surrounding him with an atmosphere 
 of womanly love and watchfulness. 
 
 Lady Lashmar was in London, in Paris, in Vienna, 
 with her adored son, following him as a satellite 
 follows a planet — not with him, but always near him. 
 He had spoken in the House of Lords, and his 
 speech had attracted attention ; had been talked 
 about as a wonderful speech for so young an orator : 
 and it had been said by some of his party that 
 Lord Lashmar was a young man who would make 
 his mark. 
 
 * Old Lady Pitland's nephew ought to have some - 
 thing in him,' said the old-fashioned section of the
 
 232 ONE THING XEEDFUL 
 
 party: and all Lady Laslimar's particular friends 
 prophesied that old Lady Pitland's nephew was to be 
 one of the lights of the future, and as political skies 
 ^t this period were cloudy, lights were wanted,
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 
 
 The years had come and gone, and strange things 
 had happened in the world of history and politics : 
 wars and treaties, invasions and expeditions, changes 
 in legislature, in science, in art. New whims, new 
 fancies, new theories had rippled the river of time : 
 but here at Lashmar Castle there had been no 
 stirring events by which to distinguish the passing 
 years. Life here had been monotonously placid and 
 tranquil, yet not altogether happy. Lady Lashmar 
 had drunk of the cup of disappointment in those 
 slow years. Life had seemed to open with the 
 buoyant rapture of a wedding march, when Fate 
 made her son master of Lashmar Castle. She who 
 was accustomed to rule had thought it the most 
 natural thing in the world that she should rule her 
 only son ; not with open domination, but with deli-
 
 234 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 cate diplomacy, with tenderest maternal manage- 
 ment. Bitter had been her disappointment wlien she 
 discovered that Lashmar was not so to be ruled. 
 He was not an undutiful son. He treated his mother 
 with affectionate consideration; but he was bent 
 upon living his own life, and that was essentially a 
 manly, independent life — a life of travel and sport. 
 Yachting, mountaineering, salmon fishing iji Canada, 
 bear hunting in the Eockies, deer-stalking in the 
 Highlands, had taken him far from his mother, and 
 the possibility of maternal guidance. Within the 
 last two years he had taken ardently to politics: 
 but even political life was a life of severance from 
 her ladyship, who was no longer in the vigour of 
 health and strength, no longer able to hold her 
 own in the turmoil of London society — a great deal 
 faster and more furious, more capricious, fickle, 
 and volatile than the society of Lady Pitland's 
 time. 
 
 A great change had come over Lady Pitland's 
 daughter within the seven years that had passed 
 since Hubert, Lord Lashmar, had been laid in the 
 family vault yonder, under the old church at the
 
 'BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 235 
 
 end of the park. The hand of atflictiou had weighed 
 heavily on that proud spirit. Lady Lashmar's health 
 had given way ; a slow and gradual depression, 
 indicative, as her physician blandly hinted, of some 
 obscure inward malady, had crept over that active 
 mind, working slow and subtle changes, until little 
 by little, with a gradual transformation hardly 
 perceived by those who were constantly about her, 
 the Lady Lashmar of the present had become an 
 entirely different woman from the Lady Lashmar of 
 the past. The severe lines of that handsome face 
 had softened with the premature whitening of those 
 soft masses of hair, which now recalled the Marie- 
 Antoinette of Delaroche's famous picture. Yet 
 despite this softer aspect the woman was at heart 
 the same : proud as Milton's Satan, but with the 
 melancholy pride of a disappointed life. 
 
 There had been times when she regretted her 
 dead stepson ; regretted the old days in which her 
 influence had been paramount, and her boy, as a 
 y unger son with his own way to make in the world 
 had been dependent upon the maternal purse for all 
 his pleasures and indulgences. She had longed then
 
 236 • ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 for the day when he should stand in his brother's 
 place. That day had come ; and it had been the 
 beginning of severance. Her boy was no longer 
 to be gratified by gifts from the maternal 
 hoard; he had no longer need of the maternal 
 influence and counsel in the difficult career of a 
 younger son. He was his own master, rich, 
 titled, with very little incentive to the creation of 
 a career. 
 
 For five years Lady Lashmar watched her son's 
 idle wanderings with disappointment and anxiety. 
 She began to fear that he was no better than other 
 young men to whom fortune has given too much, and 
 with whom ambition is a dead letter. She was 
 beginning to despair of him, when there came a 
 political crisis, and Lord Lashmar came suddenly to 
 the front. The Conservatives had braced themselves 
 together for a final effort against a Liberal Govern- 
 ment of five years' standing — a Government which 
 its enemies declared to have afforded the most disas- 
 trous example of misrule ever known in the history 
 of parliamentary legislature, and which its friends 
 descanted upon blandly as a reign of peace and
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEX CHANGE TOO ' 237 
 
 prosperity, and, as it were, a perpetual symposium 
 of recumbent lambs and lions. Much in this crisis 
 turned upon the acceptance or rejection of an im- 
 portant measure in the House of Lords : and it was 
 then that Lashmar girded up his loins, and stood up 
 in his place among the gray bearded tribunes, and 
 spoke as men seldom speak in that austere assembly, 
 spoke with the fire and freshness, the vigour and the 
 strong feeling of inexperienced youth. The speech 
 took his fellow-peers by surprise — all the more since 
 the young peer had never had that training in the 
 Lower House without which it is popularly supposed 
 that no man can ever be a good debater. Lashmar 
 awoke next morning to find himself a politician with 
 a reputation. The bill went back to the Commons : 
 and Mr. Xestorius, smarting under the sense of defeat, 
 threw himself upon the country, just at that critical 
 hour when his popularity was on the wane. Nothing 
 can be more fatal than to dissolve Parliament on an 
 ebb tide. The Conservatives came in with triumph ; 
 to their own exceeding surprise. 
 
 All this had happened two years ago, and now 
 Lord Lashmar was a power in the Upper House,
 
 238 * ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 and occupied a position of some importance in the 
 political and social world. He was one of those 
 young men of mark about whose matrimonial views 
 people speculate freely. Society wondered when and 
 whom he would marry. Who was there good enough 
 for him in these days of lamentable decadence ? This 
 question generally resolved itself into a discussion 
 as to which of the heiresses of the year would have 
 most money; since it appeared obvious that Lord 
 Lashmar would require money. 
 
 Seven years had gone by since Clarice Danebrook 
 had played tennis on the lawn under Lady Lashmar's 
 windows ; and nothing had come of her ladyship's 
 hopes in that direction. Clarice and Lord Lashmar 
 had seen a good deal of each other in the London 
 season which followed those quiet autumn days at 
 the Castle. They had waltzed many a waltz, had 
 met in many a crush upon the staircases of Belgravia 
 and May Fair. They had even ridden side by side 
 in the Eow, Job Danebrook jogging quietly beside 
 them on his weight-carrier, thinking of his latest 
 improvements in machinery, or the possibility of a 
 strike amongst his operatives.
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEX CHANGE TOO ' 239 
 
 People had said that young Lord Lashmar was 
 anchored already. The worldly wise had lauded 
 Lady Lashmar's good management. Just what one 
 would expect from a daughter of old Lady Pitland. 
 But nothing came of these rides and these waltzes 
 after all. Lashmar went back to the Continent 
 without having compromised himself by one too- 
 tender word. There had been magnetic looks and 
 gentle hand pressures, on the impulse of the moment, 
 when they two stood side by side amidst the crowd, 
 nestling together, as it were, under the pressure of 
 •that silken throng, in an atmosphere overcharged 
 with the scent of gardenias and tuber- roses. There 
 had been looks that had thrilled the simple Middle- 
 shire maiden ; but nothing had come of those tender 
 glances from dark gray eyes, under heavy brown 
 brows. 
 
 Lord Lashmar had gone away, deeming that it 
 was too soon for him to avow himself. He was not 
 quite sure. He wanted time. And Clarice was 
 assuredly too young to know her own mind. Pre- 
 cipitancy in these matters is always dangerous, often 
 fatal ; but there is seldom harm in delay.
 
 240 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 He went, and he left Clarice lamenting, like 
 Ariadne at Naxos : and, like Ariadne, she found a 
 consoler. 
 
 She had been very fond of Lord Lashmar in 
 her mild, almost infantine, way : and she had set 
 her heart upon being a peeress. Perhaps she wor- 
 shipped him chiefly because he was a nobleman of 
 ancient race and high standing. She had seen him 
 from the flrst invested with that aureole which her 
 mother had taught her to revere — the golden halo 
 of hereditary rank. And now he was gone, and she 
 felt heart-broken, disappointed, crushed. Her mother 
 also was disappointed, and did not conceal her 
 feelings. She told Clarice that Lord Lashmar had 
 behaved shamefully, and that he was unworthy of a 
 moment's thought. Xot withstanding which Clarice 
 thought of him during almost every moment of 
 the day and many a wakeful hour of the night ; 
 until the appearance of a new admirer of still 
 higher rank afforded a spurious kind of 
 consolation. 
 
 The new admirer was Lord Carminow, a marquis, 
 and one of the most dissipated young men in
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHAXGE TOO ' 241 
 
 London or Paris ; a young man who, a year before 
 lie met Clarice, liad the reputation of being in- 
 dustriously engaged in drinking himself to death ; 
 but who was said to have pulled up, on the brink of 
 the precipice, as it were^ and to be in a fair way 
 to reform. His hand was still very shaky, and he 
 was still obliged to put cayenne pepper in his 
 brandy : but he drank less brandy, and his hand 
 was less tremulous than it had been last year. 
 
 Lord Carminow met Clarice and her family at 
 Schwalbach, whither Mr. and Mrs. Danebrook had 
 taken their daughter with the idea that iron would 
 revive her broken spirits. Lord Carminow was there, 
 also in quest of iron. The marquis and the maiden 
 drank the waters together, and sat side by side to 
 hear the band play in the gardens of the little 
 casino. He was 7wf ^n intellectual young man, and 
 brain and nerves were alike shattered by long- 
 established habits of intemperance. At an age when 
 other men are in the morning of life, he was old 
 and broken. It was a melancholy spectacle, piteous 
 in the eyes of Mrs. Danebrook, who never for a 
 moment forgot that the poor shaking hand belonged 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 to a marquis. She was intinitely sorry for him, 
 sorrowful, yet not without hope ; for she told herself 
 and all her intimate friends that if he could only 
 marry a girl who loved him, he w^ould no doubt 
 become a new man. He was already on the right 
 road. All he needed was to have his footsteps 
 sustained by a faithful arm, his days cheered by 
 sweet companionship. 
 
 After three weeks' acc|uaintance he proposed to 
 Clarice Danebrook, and was accepted, with a kind 
 of haughty carelessness on the part of the young 
 lady, as if she took this coronet as her due, and 
 despised the giver; with rapture on the part of 
 the mother ; but by the father with considerable and 
 even outspoken reluctance. 
 
 ' I suppose the world will say that my little girl 
 is making a fine match ! ' said honest Job Danebrook, 
 ' but unless you mend your habits, Lord Carminow, she 
 will be one of the most miserable wives in London.' 
 Carminow swore that his habits were already 
 mended; and that wdth Clarice for his wife there 
 could be no fear of relapse. The wedding took place 
 late in the autumn, much to Lady Lashmar's indig-
 
 * BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 243 
 
 nation. She had done all in her power to deter 
 Clarice ; had told her in plainest language what 
 manner of life Lord Carminow had been leading since 
 he left Oxford, and even at Oxford ; but Clarice had 
 made up her mind to be a marchioness, and she 
 was marble. 
 
 * He is very good-natured, and he is a gentleman,' 
 she said ; ' I can afford to take my chance. I shall 
 do all I can to reform him.' 
 
 ' You ! ' cried her ladyship, surveying her from 
 head to foot with a scathing look. ' Poor baby ! you 
 little know what you are undertaking.' 
 
 Clarice took her chance, and enrolled herself for 
 ever among the marchionesses of England. She 
 endured three and a half years of a most intolerable 
 existence, before Lord Carminow finished that busi- 
 ness of drinking himself to death, which he had 
 begun so blithely at Christ Church, in the dawn of 
 manhood, when many of his fellow-commoners took 
 toast-and-water for their dinner beverage. He was 
 gone, and Job Danebrook was gone, and Clarice, 
 Marchioness of Carminow, was established at Dane- 
 brook Hall, inordinately rich, and as lovely as in
 
 244 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 her earliest girlhood. Mrs. Danebrook lived with 
 her daughter, and had been left very well off by the 
 iron- master ; but Clarice was mistress in all things, 
 and a mistress on a very grand scale, modelling her- 
 self upon the great Lady Pitland, about whose little 
 ways she had heard so much from Lady Lashmar. 
 
 There had been no issue of that unhappy union, 
 and a distant cousin of Lord Carminow had suc- 
 ceeded to the marquisate — an elderly man wdth a 
 large family, who swooped down upon the estate 
 like a flight of vultures, devouring everything. 
 There was only a pittance of seven thousand a year 
 for the widowed Marchioness, an insignificant 
 addition to her own enormous income. The new 
 marchioness and her daughters thought she ought 
 not to have taken that pittance. 
 
 And now in these days of her widowhood Clarice 
 w^as again almost as a daughter to Lady Lashmar, who 
 had much need of solace and society in her present 
 depressed state of health ; need also of much 
 attendance, wanting to be waited upon with exemplary 
 patience, altogether a hard and difficult mistress. 
 
 She had three slaves, who were always in
 
 * BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 245 
 
 attendance upon her — Barker, the patient and homely 
 maid of thirty years' service; Celestine, the expert 
 Abigail, with deft fingers and faultless taste in the 
 confection of a cap or the arrangement of a drapery, 
 were it only the sweeping folds of an Indian shawl 
 worn over an invalid's shoulders. Lady Lashmar 
 had taken to dress as elderly women dress when 
 they have renounced the pomps and vanities of the 
 world. She rarely wore anything but black brocade 
 or velvet, and she wore a cap, and generally had her 
 shoulders draped with some rich shawl. She looked 
 distinguished still ; but she ahvays looked old, and 
 she very often looked ill. 
 
 Her third attendant occupied a nondescript 
 position, was hardly a servant, though she was 
 treated quite as cavalierly as the lowest servant, and 
 was not quite a companion. She was a tall and 
 slender girl, with a pale olive complexion, a small 
 head crowned with ebon hair, and the most wonder- 
 ful dark eyes that were ever seen out of Andalusia. 
 She was always dressed with a severe simplicity, 
 in a black cashmere gown, high to the throat, with 
 a small linen collar, and a long plain skirt. This
 
 246 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 was as much a uniform with her as it was with 
 the housemaids, whose afternoon gowns were just 
 of the same colour and fashion ; yet no one would 
 have taken her for anything but a lady. There 
 was a distinctive grace and dignity in every line of 
 the tall, straight figure. The head had the imperial 
 carriage of a Cleopatra. 
 
 This was Stella Boldwood, now nineteen years 
 of age, and promoted within the last two years to 
 the post of her ladyship's reader and amanuensis. 
 
 Not of her own accord, but very reluctantly, 
 had Lady Lashmar accepted her stepson's proUgee 
 in this intimate familiarity. The girl had been 
 forced upon her l)y circumstances and the officious- 
 ness of her other dependents. The time had come 
 when she, who had been a great reader, had begun 
 to feel the fatigue of reading too much for her 
 broken nerves — the time had come when a chronic 
 languor made it an effort to her to hold a book or 
 follow the lines of a page. She was only fit to 
 recline in her easy chair and listen while some 
 subdued voice read aloud to her, and the accents 
 of that voice must be those of refinement,
 
 '3UT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEX CHANGE TOO' 247 
 
 Celestine was, of course, impossible for English 
 reading, and the twang of her original 
 faubourg made even her French detestable to her 
 ladyship's sensitive ear. Barker was worse. The 
 doctor suggested Stella, whom he had seen very 
 often when sitting in the cottage parlour, 
 where he dropped in once or twice a week to chat 
 with old Gabriel Yerner. He had attended the old 
 man every winter during sharp attacks of bronchitis, 
 and he had seen how Stella excelled as a nurse. 
 
 ' I know something of the young lady,' said 
 Mr. Stokes. 
 
 ' Please don't call her a young lady, my good 
 Stokes,' remonstrated her ladyship, 'she has been 
 brought up among servants, as a servant. You 
 must remember liow I disapproved of my ]30or 
 step-son's folly about that girl.' 
 
 ' You may bring up a fox in a litter of terriers, 
 but he'll be Reynard all the same at the end of the 
 chapter,' said ]\Ir. Stokes. ' That girl is a lady. She 
 has good blood in her veins, I'll go bail. And she 
 got her early training from the late Lord Lashmar, 
 who wns one of the most intellectual men I ever
 
 248 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 had tlie honour to know. You can't undo that, 
 Lady Lashmar. You may order the girl to handle 
 a broom and twh'l a mop, and she may think it her 
 duty to obey you, but she is a lady all the same.' 
 
 ' I think all girls are ladies now-a-days,' retorted 
 the invalid impatiently. ' A great wave of refine- 
 ment has swept over our people. Even country 
 girls are no longer buxom and sturdy and active. 
 They are all pallid, and languid, and lady-like, 
 stuffed with science primers and fine notions, and 
 they want to do as little w^ork as possible. I 
 suppose we must call this paragon of yours a 
 lady-help. I want some one to read to me, 
 but unfortunately I dislike that girl of yours.' 
 
 'Prejudice, Lady Lashmar, idle prejudice/ replied 
 Mr. Stokes, who always said what he liked to her 
 ladyship. 'Let her make a beginning, and if you find 
 her disagreeable you can send her about her business.' 
 
 ' Of course,' answered Lady Lashmar. ' Perhaps 
 she may be rather more endurable than a stranger. 
 I abhor strangers.' 
 
 So Stella was told one morning that her mission 
 would be to act' as Lady Lashmar's reader and
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CUAyCE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 249 
 
 amanuensis until farther notice ; and from that hour 
 she was a slave. 
 
 Her life had been easy enough of late years, easy 
 even to pleasantness. The rule of the uncompro- 
 mising Middleham had been made very light for 
 her, when that autocratic personage found that 
 she was willing, industrious and conscientious, 
 and that whatever she did was well done. She 
 had been able, by early rising, to get her work 
 done before the one o'clock dinner ; and then she 
 had been allowed to do what she liked with her 
 afternoons, always provided she reappeared at 
 the five o'clock tea, wliich of late she had taken 
 with Mrs. Barker in the little room upstairs, a price- 
 less privilege, since it spared her the gossip and 
 uncongenial joviality of the still-room. Little by 
 little the girl had drifted, as it were, into a life of 
 her own, apart from those servants whose existence 
 the dowager wished her to share. She had been 
 among them for a little while, but she had never 
 been one of them. As she grew into girlhood the 
 difference between her and them became more 
 sharply defined. They felt thatf she could never
 
 250 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 be one of them, and her presence became an 
 embarrassment. They were very glad that she 
 preferred solitude to their friendly company, and 
 a quiet cup of tea in Barker's room to their own 
 noisy meal. She had always such old-fashioned 
 ways, they said. Strange that a child should be 
 such a blue-stocking. But of course that was all 
 the late Lord Lashmar's doing. He had brought 
 her up as no child ever was brought up before. 
 She had been dry-nursed upon books. 
 
 As the years wore on Stella was almost happy. 
 The afternoon hours of every day were spent with 
 Gabriel Yerner. He was old and feeble, and some- 
 times very prosy ; but he was a mine of information, 
 he loved learning for learning's sake, and he loved 
 Stella. He carried on her education from the point 
 at which Lord Lashmar had left off. He cultivated 
 her love of the classics, reading Homer and Virgil 
 and Horace with her again and again, dwelling on 
 the passages he loved, ingraining their beauties 
 into the very mind of his pupil. He taught her 
 French and German, and togetlier they read the 
 classics in both languages. They had nothing to
 
 * RUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 251 
 
 distract them from their books, no visitors, no 
 pleasures. In summer time they sat in a quiet spot 
 on the edge of the river, a little nook below the tow- 
 ing path, out of everyone's way, under a willow which 
 Lashmar had loved. In winter they sat opposite each 
 other by the trimly kept hearth, like two old cronies. 
 It is wonderful how much reading may be got 
 through in seven years by a young enthusiast 
 and a veteran student, when the world has no 
 claims upon either, and offers no temptations to 
 youth or age. Stella had read more than many 
 fairly cultivated men of forty, when she was 
 suddenly called upon to do suit and service to 
 Lady Lashmar. From this time her regular studies 
 with Gabriel Yerner were at an end, and those 
 cjentle cares of hers which had made his old asje so 
 easy had now to be performed under difficulties. 
 She could only steal away from the castle now 
 and then for a brief visit to her old friend, just 
 time enough to see to his comforts and to talk 
 to his landlady, who was kindly but stupid, and 
 whom Stella had been gradually training into 
 proper carefulness of her lodger.
 
 252 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ' You do spoil the old gentleman so, miss/ 
 remonstrated the good soul. 
 
 ' Old people require a little spoiling, Mrs. 
 Chipp. But nobody could spoil Mr. Verner. He 
 is so good and so unselfish.' 
 
 ' Well, miss, nobody can deny that he is a nice 
 easy gentleman to get on with, and if I wasn't 
 afraid of his setting the house on fire I should say 
 he was the best lodger I ever had ; much better 
 than they young curates as most people set such 
 store by ; and a permanence too, w^hich the best 
 of curates never was.' 
 
 'You must be more attentive to him than 
 ever, Mrs. Chipp, now that I am so seldom here/ 
 urged Stella; and Mrs. Chipp promised that the 
 student should lack no fostering care. 
 
 It was with a rebellious heart that Stella entered 
 Lady Lash mar's morning room on the first day of her 
 new service. Mr. Stokes had endeavoured to awaken 
 her sympathy for the stern dowager. He had hinted 
 to her that the disease from which Lady Lashmar suf- 
 fered must sooner or later be fatal, that all the rest of 
 her life must be spent under the shadow of affliction.
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CIIAXCxE MEX CHANGE TOO 2o:» 
 
 ' She is very much to be pitied, poor soul,' said 
 the kindly Stokes ; ' all the more so, perhaps, because 
 she is not the kind of woman to invite pity.' 
 
 Yet even after this appeal Stella felt nothing 
 but aversion as she stood, tall and straight as a lily 
 stalk, at the foot of her ladyship's sofa. 
 
 She was thinking of that summer afternoon seven 
 years ago when Lady Lashmar had sat beside her 
 bed, swathed in inky crape, stern, pitiless, and had 
 told her of her benefactor's death — how all life and 
 this bright world had changed to darkness at the 
 sound of that cruel voice. Yes, it was the same 
 face — cold, faultless, unbeautiful, looking at her with 
 disdainful eyes. 
 
 She had not been face to face with Lady Lashmar 
 since that dreadful day. She had lived under her 
 roof and eaten her bread, and had felt the sting of 
 her tyranny; but the mistress of the Castle had 
 been no more visible to her than the Mikado to the 
 meanest of his subjects. And now she looked at 
 her oppressor thoughtfully in the June sunlight, 
 noting the changes time had wrought. 
 
 Yes, it was the same countenance, in no wise
 
 254 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 softened by affliction ; but the hair was white, and 
 there were traces of suftering and of premature age. 
 
 ' I require a person to read to me for some hours 
 daily, sometimes even late at night ; and I am told 
 that you have contrived to educate yourself with 
 Mr. Verner's help, and that you know how to read 
 aloud. Is this so ? ' 
 
 ' I have read aloud to Mr. Verner,' the girl 
 answered quietly. 
 
 ' Often ? ' 
 
 ' Habitually.' 
 
 There was no waste of words on either side. 
 
 * Then you can begin at once. There are my 
 books' (pointing to a revolving bookstand within 
 reach of the sofa, a stand which held about forty 
 volumes). * Invalids are very capricious, and require 
 chansje of mental food. You can besrin with Charles 
 Lamb, Elia's Essays — that one upon old china, for 
 instance. I am in a lazy mood to-day, and would 
 rather not be called upon to think.' 
 
 She was lying on a luxurious sofa, propped up 
 with pillows. She spent a considerable portion of 
 every day in this recumbent position, but she was
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 255 
 
 not coutiiied to her sofa or tu her room ; aud when 
 there was company at the Castle, or when her son 
 was at home, she generally dined downstairs, and 
 held her own with the old air of supremacy which had 
 been to her as a royal robe. She was not easily to 
 be beaten even by bodily pain, or the vague languors 
 of obscure disease. She meant to make a good fight 
 to the end. 
 
 Stella seated herself in a low chair a little way 
 from the sofa, and began to read. She read Lamb 
 for an hour, and then she was told to lay aside 
 Lamb and to take up a volume of travels in 
 Bokhara, a new book which her ladyship had just 
 received ; and when the travels wearied she w^as 
 told to resume the last poem by Browning, at the 
 page which her ladyship had marked. 
 
 She was allowed to read on like a machine. 
 She read for three hours without respite, and then 
 she was told that she might go. 
 
 ' You read very well ! ' said her ladyship, with 
 cold approval ; ' I daresay I shall want you again 
 late in the evening. Stay, you can arrange my 
 pillows before you go.'
 
 256 ONE THIXG NEEDFUL 
 
 Stella bent over the wliite ^Marie- Antoinette 
 head, and with light and careful touch adjusted the 
 heaped-up pillows, and then, without a word of 
 thanks from the invalid, she left the room. 
 
 As she went out by one door Barker entered by 
 another. 
 
 ' Yes, I think she will do ! ' said Lady Lashmar. 
 ' She has a sympathetic voice, and reads well. This 
 is one of my bad days, Barker; I shall not leave 
 my room.' 
 
 At nine in the evening Stella w^as summoned 
 again. The lamplit room with its profusion of roses 
 seemed a revelation of long-forgotten beauty and 
 elegance, after the puritanical plainness of the servant's 
 quarters. The golden-brown brocade curtains and 
 clouds of Indian muslin draping the fine old windows, 
 the rich carmine of old Sevres vases and candelabra, 
 the Chippendale whatnots crowded with richly bound 
 books, the low chairs and dainty little tables offering 
 every possible form of convenience for books, or 
 flowers, or cup and saucer; the old Indian screen 
 and tall young palms in Satsuma bowls. Such sur- 
 roundings were new to Stella, after the prim
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 257 
 
 commonness of the housekeeper's parlour, with its 
 horsehair sofa, and pembroke table ; and yet she felt 
 more at home here than in Mrs. Middleham's room. 
 
 Lady Lashmar looked wan and faded in the 
 lamplight, and the sickly white of her complexion 
 w^as accentuated by the rich dark tints in her 
 brown plush tea gown. A diamond and sapphire 
 brooch fastened her fichu of old English lace, and 
 the semi-transparent hands glittered with costliest 
 rings. There was here no intention of letting down 
 the pride of womanhood or station, even under the 
 grip of a fatal malady. 
 
 ' You can go on with Balaustian ! ' she said. 
 
 Xot a word more. Xo praise or thanks for the 
 
 afternoon's work ; no in^T.tation to take a cup of tea 
 
 from the old silver salver, placed handily on the 
 
 delicious little tea-table beside her ladyship's sofa. 
 
 Jonathan Boldwood's daughter was to be treated only 
 
 as a serf beneath that roof. She had been reared 
 
 there according to the laws of slavery; and there 
 
 is no reason that a slave should be treated any better 
 
 because he happens to have cultivated his intellect. 
 
 She read till eleven, without any sign of fatigue. 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 She had so trained herself during those long after- 
 noons when she had sat on a stool at the old student's 
 feet, reading the authors he loved ; saving the poor 
 old faded eyes. She had read on unconscious of the 
 passage of time, just as she read now, a.bsorbed by 
 her own delight in Browning's verse, with its under- 
 tones of deepest thought. 
 
 At eleven Lady Lashmar dismissed her, with 
 briefest good-night. 
 
 Her duties as reader went on for months, without 
 variation. She spent at least half of every day in 
 Lady Lashmar's rooms, and was often summoned 
 late at night to sit beside her ladyship's bed, and to 
 read till three or four o'clock in the morning. She 
 performed her task with a cold placidity which was 
 agreeable to the highbred dowager, who detested 
 fuss, and would have been disgusted by servility or 
 officiousness. Later on Lady Lashmar allowed her 
 slave to write all her letters to indifferent persons, 
 and sometimes even a letter of friendship ; but the 
 amanuensis was never employed in writing to her 
 ladyship's son. Those letters were always in the 
 mother's penmanship.
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHAXGE TOO ' 259 
 
 Stella had filled tliis office for nearly two years, 
 and had been of the utmost service to Lady 
 Lashmar. Yet the stern (^ wager had but in the 
 smallest measure relented of her original aversion 
 from her stepson's protegee. She used her as a 
 companion and slave, but she never forgot that 
 this thoughtful-looking girl with the large dark 
 eyes was Jonathan Boldw^ood's daughter, and that 
 the venom of Eadicalism ran in those blue veins 
 which showed in such delicate tracery upon the 
 slim white hands and on the ivory pallor of the 
 forehead. The old prejudice still existed in full 
 force, and the dowager in nowise relaxed her 
 hauteur because Stella Boldwood had become useful 
 to her. In her inmost heart she was angry with the 
 girl for the very gifts which made her an invaluable 
 companion. She resented that force of character 
 which had enabled the child-dependent to rise 
 superior to her surroundings, and to make herself 
 a lady in manners and superior to most ladies in 
 education. She was angry at that native grace, 
 which gave elegance even to the black merino gown 
 which was the livery of servitude. TS'othing could
 
 260 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 vulgarise Stella, or reduce her to the level of her 
 ladyship's other dependents. Barker had one day- 
 ventured to suggest that as the girl was now 
 virtually her ladyship's companion she should have 
 some prettier gowns — a black silk, for instance, or 
 at any rate, one of those fine French alpacas which 
 Celestine always wore, a material which combined 
 all the lustre and softness of silk with the merit of 
 never wearing out. But Lady Lashmar replied 
 angrily that the girl was to wear such gowns as 
 the housemaids wore and no other. 
 
 ' She is quite vain enough as it is,' said her lady- 
 ship. ' I believe she spends hours in dressing that 
 hair of hers, and training her eyebrows.' 
 
 This was a cruel attack upon Stella's pencilled 
 brows, whose bold clear line gave such character to 
 the low broad forehead. 
 
 Barker was indignant at this ungenerous treat- 
 ment of a girl who sat up till two or three o'clock 
 in the morning three times a week on an average to 
 beguile the tedium of her ladyship's wakeful nights. 
 But Stella made no complaint against the inevitable 
 black merino gown. She was glad when for the con-
 
 BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 261 
 
 venience of Lady Lashmar she was transferred to a 
 pretty little bedchamber on the principal floor, close 
 to Barker's den, where she now took all her meals, 
 and which she was allowed to use as her own 
 sitting-room. She was thus removed entii^ely from 
 all association with the other servants : and Barker 
 was one of those kindly souls who with but the 
 slightest modicum of education have all the instincts 
 of good breeding. Stella had never revolted against 
 the society of Barker, while Barker's niece Betsy 
 was always dear to her as the friend of her 
 childhood. 
 
 And now it was the end of September, and 
 Lord Lashmar and a little knot of distinguished 
 visitors were expected at the Castle, some intent on 
 the slaughter of the pheasants, others only desiring 
 rest and respite after the fatigues of a London season. 
 
 Among these latter was Mr. Xestorius, the 
 great party-leader, who ha\dng retired from political 
 life finally, after the defeat of his Ministry, now, like 
 Dante's swimmer, looked back, breathless after 
 striving with the waves, upon the raging sea of 
 politics from the calm shore of domesticity.
 
 262 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Nestorius had been a protege of Lady Pitland 
 when his brilliant career was in its dawn ; and the 
 friendship with that wonderful old lady and her 
 family had never been interrupted, albeit their 
 political opinions were as the poles asunder. And 
 now that the politician's distinguished career was 
 a closed book, and that he had withdrawn into the 
 haven of private life, without the faintest intention 
 of ever refitting his damaged craft again to encounter 
 the buffets of ocean, it pleased Lady Lashmar that 
 the great man should enjoy some portion of his 
 well-earned leisure under her roof. 
 
 She talked of hitn beforehand more than 
 of any other of her guests, and arranged that 
 the very best of the best rooms should be given to 
 him. 
 
 ' There are cases in which rank counts for 
 nothing,' she said. * Mr. Xestorius must always 
 be first everywhere. He is not only great as a 
 statesman ; he has won his laurels as a poet, and 
 the interpreter of classic poetry ; and our respect is 
 all the more due to him since he has retired 
 from office for ever — always a melancholy fact to
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHAXGE MEX CHANGE TOO ' 263 
 
 consider when a career has been so great, although 
 so mistaken.' 
 
 ' Is there no possibility of Mr. Nestorius return- 
 ing to public life, whenever the Liberals come into 
 power again ? ' asked Stella simply. 
 
 Lady Lashmar gave her a look which ought to 
 have frozen her. 
 
 ' The Liberals have seen the last of their mis- 
 rule/ she said. 'The country has been taught a 
 lesson which it is not likely to forget.' 
 
 ' Yet history shows that people always do forget,' 
 argued Stella. ' Opinion follows opinion, as wave 
 follows wave ; the world would stagnate if it were 
 otherwise.' 
 
 * Pray do not argue. I do not care for ^h. Yer- 
 ner's ideas at secondhand,' said Lady Lashmar 
 haughtily. 
 
 She encouraged the girl to talk sometimes, 
 snubbed her mercilessly at other times, and was 
 never really kind. Yet it so happened that this 
 kind of life, slavery as it was, suited Stella's tem- 
 perament. Good books and gracious surroundings 
 were at present her only idea of bliss in this world :
 
 264 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 and as Lady Lashmar's companion she had these in 
 abundance — the best of books, old and new, elegant 
 rooms to live in, and the right to wander at will in 
 gardens or park during her brief intervals of leisure. 
 For the rest she was penniless, had no remuneration 
 for her labour, not even the wages of an under- 
 hoiisemaid ; and now that Mr. Nestorius and 
 other great people were bidden to the Castle, 
 Stella knew that her servitude would be in no way- 
 altered, that she would see little or nothing of those 
 great ones. She sat at the little writing table in the 
 window of her ladyship's morning room, waiting for 
 further orders, while Lady Lashmar and the beautiful 
 widow, Lady Carminow, sat on each side of the 
 hearth, brightened by the glow of a small wood 
 fire, and discussed the expected visitors. 
 
 * Eemember, you are on no account to desert me 
 while these people are in the house,' said Lady 
 Lashmar, with an imperative air, almost as a mother 
 talking to a daughter. ' I shall expect you to take 
 nearly all the trouble of receiving them off my 
 hands ; you must be almost as the mistress of the 
 house.'
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 265 
 
 'It will be very nice,' answered Clarice, with her 
 slow, dreamy smile. ' I adore ^Ir. Xestorius, though 
 I know he did his utmost to ruin this country when 
 he was in power ; hut he is such an orator, the finest 
 I am told, since Lord Chatham ; and he is such a 
 thoroughly poetical man, and such a scholar ! His 
 translation of -^^schylus is quite too lovely. I am 
 sure it must be ever so much nicer than the 
 original.' 
 
 Stella's lips moved, and a little impulsive move- 
 ment disturbed the repose of her attitude. She had 
 discussed this translation of Mr. Xestorius's with 
 Gabriel Verner. They had gone over it line by line 
 and it had seemed to them that the Agamemnon of 
 Mr. Nestorius was a treason against the Greek play- 
 wright, so fully had the statesman given the reins to 
 his own vivid imagination ; but it was not for her 
 to give utterance to her doubts in that room, or to 
 air her knowledge of Greek before Lady Carminow. 
 
 * I am getting some new frocks on purpose for 
 your people,' said Clarice, who was fonder of milli- 
 nery than of literature. 
 
 The only books she really enjoyed were French
 
 266 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 novels, and the newest school of English poetry. 
 Her intellectual fibre had a certain limpness which 
 required to be shocked and startled into attention. 
 She went to sleep over Tennyson or Browning, and 
 George Eliot made her head ache. 
 
 ' Who is making your frocks ? ' asked Lady 
 Lashmar, faintly interested. 
 
 'Mrs. Marshall.' 
 
 ' She is very good, but a desperate robber. Her 
 prices are iniquitous.' 
 
 * But she drapes a gown so deliciously. There 
 is an indescribable something which is worth any 
 money she likes to charge. I never grumble at 
 her bills. I have even gone so far as to shake 
 hands with her when I have wanted a gown in a 
 desperate hurry.' 
 
 ' How long is it since you have seen Victorian ? ' 
 asked Lady Lashmar absently, as if her thoughts 
 had wandered ever so far from Mrs. Marshall's 
 bills. 
 
 'Oh! ages and ages; not since the spring. Yes, 
 once in the summer, at a crush at the Foreign 
 Office, We had five minutes toc^ether on the stairs :
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 267 
 
 five minutes that brought back the thought of old 
 times, before I married poor Lord Carmiuow. I 
 felt as if I were a srirl asfain.' 
 
 o o 
 
 •' You are not much more than a girl. He was 
 very attentive, I suppose ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! he said some rather sweet things ; but 
 sweet things are only the small change of society 
 now-a-days. They mean no more than the crystal- 
 lised violets one nibbles at dessert. Lord Lashmar 
 is a great man, quite absorbed in politics.' 
 
 * I hope he will never become a walking blue- 
 book like some of them ! ' said Lady Lashmar 
 vaguely. ' I am proud that he should make his 
 mark in the world; but I should like to see his 
 domestic happiness secure before I die.' 
 
 'Dearest Lady Lashmar, pray do not talk of 
 dying. You have a long life still before you, I hope.' 
 
 'I should be glad to hope so too, if I could, 
 Clarice; but I can't. I am obliged to adopt the 
 Horatian philosophy — abjure extended hopes, and 
 enjoy my life as much as I can in the present. I 
 want to see my son married, and married as I 
 should wish ! '
 
 268 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 'That is just the one thing you must not hope 
 for,' answered Clarice, with a touch of bitterness, 
 as if that placid temper of hers were faintly stirred 
 by the memory of an old wrong. 'Men never 
 marry to please their fathers and mothers ; and the 
 sons who have had ideal fathers and mothers are 
 almost sure to marry badly. It is only the men 
 who have seen a cat-and-dog life exemplified in 
 their parents who are careful in choosing their 
 own wives.' 
 
 ' It would break my heart if Victorian were to 
 marry beneath him.' 
 
 * Oh ! I don't suppose he will do that' said 
 Clarice, with supreme hauteur. * He will marry in 
 his own rank, I have no doubt. He has none of 
 those horrid low instincts which lead young men 
 to make friends of their stablemen and to admire 
 chorus-girls. But he may marry a woman who has 
 been more talked about than you would like ; 
 although as so many women of fashion are talked 
 about now-a-days that would hardly be supposed to 
 matter.' 
 
 ' It would matter very much to me, Clarice,'
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 269 
 
 answered the dowager sternly. ' I wonder you can 
 talk so lightly ! ' 
 
 ' I only talk as other people talk. Things do 
 not count now as they used when my mother was 
 young and Prince Albert was alive. Is it not 
 strange that one good man's death seems to have 
 loosened all the bonds that held society together ? 
 At least, mother says it is so. She puts our 
 moral decadence all down to the untimely death of 
 the Prince Consort.' 
 
 Stella was often a quiet hearer during such 
 conversations. Her presence counted for nothing. 
 Lady Lashmar and Clarice talked as freely before 
 her as if she had been a footman. She was not of 
 their rank or of their world, and so was in a manner 
 non-existent. Lady Carminow would honour her 
 with a passing nod as she entered the room — the 
 most infinitesimal thing in nods — and another as 
 she left; but in the interval between entering and 
 leaving the room the lovely widow appeared utterly 
 unconscious of her existence. Lady Carminow, be 
 it observed, was more thoroughly a peeress than if 
 she had been born in the purple. The conscious-
 
 270 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 ness of her exalted rank never left her. It was 
 for this she had suffered the slow agonies of union 
 with a man she loathed ; for this she had shrunk 
 shuddering from the ravings of delirium tremens y 
 endured the unspeakable horrors of habitual in- 
 temperance ; and she was bent upon making the 
 utmost of the privilege she had won so dearly. 
 The once gentle and pliant Clarice had become 
 the haughtiest of women, but as she had still 
 the placid Montmorency temper — the constitutional 
 amiability of the lymphatic lily-complexioned order 
 of womankind — people managed to endure her pride 
 of rank, and even the oppressive sense of her wealth. 
 Between Lady Carminow and Stella there was a 
 silent antagonism. Neither had forgotten that day 
 in the library when Stella had shrunk from Clarice's 
 pitying touch as if it had been the sting of an adder. 
 There had been no renewal of compassionate feeling 
 on Lady Carminow's side. She was jealous of those 
 gifts which made Stella such a valuable companion 
 for Lady Lashmar. She resented the girl's superior 
 cultivation, and spoke of her sneeringly as a blue- 
 stocking.
 
 BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO Zll 
 
 ' She can read Cl-reek and Latin. How very- 
 absurd I It is only a smattering, of course.' 
 
 * Old Mr. Verner tells me that she knows more 
 than many a B.A./ said Lady Laslimar. ' My poor 
 foolish stepson crammed lier with learning from the 
 time she was able to read. She lias been nourished 
 upon books.' 
 
 ' What a pity she cannot get a degree. I wonder 
 you don't send her to Girton or Xuneham. She 
 would be more in her place there than in this 
 house.' 
 
 ' She is very useful to me. I could not possibly 
 spare her.' 
 
 * Oh, but companions can be got by the hundred. 
 You have only to choose from a column of advertise- 
 ments. There is a fresh column every morning 
 in the Times. I have often looked, thinking I 
 should like to get some one for mother; some one 
 who would amuse her all day, and take her quite 
 off my hands, don't you know.' 
 
 'Needy young women in w^ant of homes may 
 be had in shoals, I have no doubt,' answered Lady 
 Lashmar ; ' but it is not easy to get a really good
 
 272 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 reader. Stella has a sympathetic voice, and reads 
 well. I could not do without her.' 
 
 *She is not sim]}atica with me,' said Clarice, 
 languidly. ' I am very sensitive about my surround- 
 ings. I should not like your Stella in my room 
 after midnight. Those great black eyes and that 
 pale face would frighten me. I should have an idea 
 that I was going to be murdered.' 
 
 Lady Lashmar smiled, as at the nonsense talk 
 of a beautiful child. She was very fond of Clarice, 
 whose loveliness gladdened her eye, and whose 
 intellectual inferiority was a perpetual compliment 
 to her understanding. She was hoping great things 
 from the coming October, which would bring Victo- 
 rian and Clarice together day after day in the easy- 
 going intercourse of a country house. Her own 
 breaking health would be an excuse for leaving her 
 son and the lovely widow very much to their own 
 devices. Lady Carminow would take the place of 
 the mistress of the house, and Lashmar would have 
 to consult her about everything. Could he resist 
 so much beauty and sweetness ? He had been 
 proof against those charms once : or he had shilly-
 
 BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO 
 
 (6 
 
 shallied and had lost his chance. If he had not been 
 proof, if it had been a case of shilly-shally only, and 
 he had been hard hit all the time, how gladly would 
 he seize the golden opportunity which his mother 
 had prepared for him ! It is true that he might 
 have made opportunities for himself during the 
 3'ears in which Lady Carminow had been a widow. 
 But there are men who will make no effort in these 
 matters, who require to have fortune flung into 
 their laps. And then Lashmar had been absorbed 
 by pontics ever since that famous speech which had 
 helped to secure the majority that overthrew the 
 late Cabinet. 
 
 Lord Lashmar arrived, fresh from a yachting 
 excursion in the Hebrides, bronzed and bearded, 
 broad shouldered, muscular, the manliest of young 
 men, with a fresh open-air look about him, yet 
 intellectual withal. It was a fine face, as even 
 Stella was fain to confess to herself as she withdrew 
 from the morning room after his lordship's arrival, 
 leaving mother and son together. 
 
 Yes, it was a fine face, but far from a pleasant 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 face, Stella thought. There was the haughty 
 expression of his grandmother's old Northumbrian 
 race — the Fitz Eollos — who claimed to be descended 
 in a direct line from those Norsemen who swooped 
 like a tlioht of sea-birds on that bleak coast in the 
 dim beginning of English history. 
 
 Stella had been told about those Norse robbers 
 of the long-ago, from whom it was such unspeakable 
 honour to be descended. Some innate taint of 
 Eadicalism made her slow to perceive the glory 
 of such lineage ; but she thought to-day that 
 Victorian, Lord Lashmar, had just the kind of 
 face which would have looked its best under a 
 Norseman's helmet, or at the prow of a piratical 
 craft, with roughened hair blown by the north 
 sea wind, and keen eyes looking landward, ready 
 for rapine and carnage, so soon as that light foot 
 should strike the shore. 
 
 She could fancy him holding his own valiantly 
 amongst the prosy old gentlemen in the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 He gave her a distant bow as she passed him, 
 a salutation which she acknowledged with an almost
 
 •but A3 THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO " 2^0 
 
 imperceptible baud of the loug, slim throat, while 
 the look iu those dark eyes of hers expressed 
 absolute dislike. She had not forgotten his parting 
 speech in the library seven years ago ; or the air 
 with which he had Hung open the door and told 
 her to * march.' He would tell her to march again 
 perhaps, if she should happen to be in his way at 
 any time. This was the first time they two had 
 met face to face since that day. 
 
 He looked after her wonderingly till the portiere 
 fell behind her, and he and his mother were alone. 
 
 ' Your protegee has improved ! ' he said. * She 
 is not half so ugly as she was seven years ago.' 
 
 'Pray 'don't call her my protegee. You know 
 she is a legacy from poor Hubert, an incubus 
 which his Quixotism has imposed upon me.' 
 
 * But I take it she is useful to you, or you would 
 have sent her about her business before now. She 
 fetches and carries for those two lazy old maids of 
 yours — Barker and Celestine — 1 suppose i ' 
 
 ' She reads very well ; that is the only way in 
 which she is useful to me. And now, Victorian, 
 let us talk of yourself and of the future. I hope
 
 276 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 you are going to stay here all the winter — till the 
 House reopens ! ' 
 
 ' Would you like me to stay ? ' 
 
 ' Of course I would, dearest. What have I to 
 live for but your society ? Life is a blank when 
 you are away from me.' 
 
 * That is hard, mother dear, when I have been 
 so much away ! You make me feel that I have 
 been an undutiful son.' 
 
 * No, no ! you are not to be the slave of a too 
 exacting love. Mothers are even more tiresome than 
 wives. It was right that you should see the world : 
 but now that you have travelled, and have seen so 
 much, the time has come for settling down quietly, 
 for assuming your right position as an English noble- 
 man. All our greatest statesmen have been men who 
 spent their lives at home. Our people are jealous of 
 Continental influences, and dislike Continental habits.' 
 
 'My dear mother, I am not such a caterer for 
 popularity as to fashion my manners or my life to 
 please the mob ; but I shall be glad to spend 
 more of my days with you now — now that I am 
 growing middle-aged.'
 
 * BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 277 
 
 He had hesitated before those conchiding words ; 
 saddened by the thought that the limit of those 
 days which his mother and he were to spend 
 together was already marked by Fate, and seemed 
 to him now to lie within a definite distance. There 
 was no longer that vagueness of prospect which 
 makes the horizon of life seem infinite. He could 
 not flatter himself, in the face of obvious decay, 
 that his mother would live to the green old age 
 of Lady Pitland, who had ruled the world of 
 fashion at seventy, and had been a power in her own 
 little world till she was ninety. 
 
 ' That is a good hearing ! ' said Lady Lashmar, 
 with a smile which altered the whole character of 
 her face — the mother's adoring smile. 'And you 
 will marry, I hope, very soon. No anchor like a 
 good wife.' 
 
 * I am not in a hurry to be anchored,' answered 
 Lashmar, laughing ; ' but I have a receptive min d 
 and am ready to fall in love at short notice now 
 that politics are off my mind. "What have you 
 here in the way of beauty, mother mine ? ' 
 
 * The Bishop of Southborough is to be here in a
 
 278 ONE Tiiixr; needful 
 
 week or so, with his two daughters, pretty, fresh 
 young girls, and both musical. I should not object 
 to either as a dausrhter-in-law. Then there is old 
 Lord Banbury's daughter, the Diana of Northamp- 
 tonshire, a frank open-hearted girl, and a superb 
 horsewoman. She comes with Mrs. Mulciber, an 
 old friend of mine.' 
 
 * I am glad you haven't got Banbury himself. 
 He is a dreadful old driveller. Lady Sophia is a 
 good sort of girl, but she has made herself a great 
 deal too public, and is written about in the sporting 
 papers as if she were a jockey. I think one of 
 them called her '' Our Soph." " Our Soph's per- 
 formances with the Pytchley have been creating the 
 usual sensation," or something of that kind. I 
 don't think you would like our Soph for a daughter- 
 in-law.' 
 
 * Old Lord Banbury was a friend of your 
 grandfather ! ' 
 
 ' Was he ? Then he must have been one of the 
 few friends my grandfather was allowed to choose for 
 himself. Lady Pitland would never have tolerated 
 him on her list. Well, mother ; who ehe is comin<:? ?
 
 'BUT AS THE DAYS CHAXOE MEN CHANGE TOO' 279 
 
 ' There is Mr. Xestorius. The rest are all your 
 own invitations.' 
 
 ' Oh ! my invitations are rather ad captandum, 
 given on the spur of the moment. There is ^Ir. 
 Ponsonby, the famous Q.C. and Conservative Member 
 — Ponsonby -who saved Mrs. Brownrigg, don't you 
 know, in the starving case that made such a sensa- 
 tion seven or eight years ago. Ponsonby began 
 life as a Pad, but is now a High Church Tory — 
 swears by Laud, adores Pusey, and weeps when 
 the disestablishment of the Irish Church is 
 meationed ; attributes all our Irish troubles to that 
 destructive measure. I wonder how he and Nestorius 
 will get on under the same roof ? ' 
 
 'Tiiey have been under tlie same roof before,' 
 said her ladyship. 
 
 ' Yes ; but that was a bigger roof, and they were 
 not upon company manners.' 
 
 ' Mr. Xestorius is always charming. Whom else 
 have you asked ? ' 
 
 ' Captain Vavasour, the society novelist, and his 
 wife ; such a delightful little woman, airy, fascinating, 
 eccentric, audacious — ^just like one of her husband's
 
 280 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 novel?. I think she must sit to him for all his 
 heroines ! ' 
 
 * Perhaps she writes his books ? ' 
 
 * Not she ! Aurelia is one of those delicious 
 creatures who never do anything for themselves ; 
 not so much as to fill in a card of invitation, or run 
 up to the nursery to look at a sick baby. Vavasour 
 writes all her letters and fills in all her cards, and 
 she sends her maid to ask after her babies. She 
 would not be half so graceful and charming if she 
 were not the quintesssnce of selfishness. I once 
 heard a woman ask her what her gown cost. 
 **Haven't the least idea!" she answered sweetly. "I 
 never ask what things are going to cost lest I should 
 be afraid to order them." ' 
 
 ' Then your Vavasours are in debt, I conclude.' 
 
 * Enormously.' 
 
 'I feel sure that I shall loathe this person.' 
 
 * 1 doubt it. But please don't show your 
 aversion in any case. Don't freeze the poor little 
 thing with the pride of the Fitz EoUos. That would 
 be to break a butterfly upon a wheel.' 
 
 * I don't suppose she would care. A woman of
 
 * BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 2S1 
 
 that kind is always case-hardened. Did I tell you 
 that Lady Carminow will be here for a week or 
 two ? She wanted to run in and out as she used 
 when she was a girl, but I have insisted upon 
 her sending over her trunks. She will help to 
 amuse Mr. Nestorius.' 
 
 * No doubt. Mr. Nestorius is impressionable, and 
 a widower. Lady Carminow would make him a 
 capital wife.' 
 
 * My dear Lashmar, he is old enough to be her 
 father; 
 
 ' Greatness is of no age. Nestorius at fifty 
 is more attractive than the common herd of 
 young men ; and for a woman of Lady Carminow 's 
 ambitious temper he would be especially attractive. 
 She has secured her coronet. She has made her- 
 self a marchioness, and no one can unmake her. 
 The next step would be to secure an ex-prime 
 minister for her husband and slave.' 
 
 'That is all nonsense. Clarice is full of 
 romance.' 
 
 ' Her marriage with a notorious sot would imply 
 as much.'
 
 282 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 'It was a noble feeling which prompted that 
 unhappy union. She wanted to reclaim him.' 
 
 'She wanted to be Lady Carminow. Don't 
 look so unhappy, mother. I like your favourite 
 well enough. I once almost thought myself in 
 love with her, but that was when I was young 
 and foolish.' 
 
 ' You need not be afraid of her fascinations 
 now,' said Lady Lashmar, piqued at his manifest 
 indifference. 'Clarice is much too well off as a 
 widow to wish to change her condition.' 
 
 ' Precisely. She is one of those sensible women 
 who can estimate the value of everything. She 
 knew the value of a marquis's coronet : so much 
 for the strawberry-leaves, so much for the 
 pearls. She knows the exact value of her position 
 as Lord Carminow's childless widow. It is 
 not very much, bar the title. Take my word 
 for it, mother, she would marry again — to better 
 herself.' 
 
 Lady Lashmar did not argue the point. She 
 was bent upon masking her batteries, if possible. 
 Men are such kittle cattle ; and if Lashmar once
 
 'BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO' 283 
 
 took it into his head that she was bent on match- 
 makin": he would set his face aojainst Clarice and 
 all her charms. She would trust to the chapter 
 of accidents, and to Lady Carminow's beauty, which 
 was in its zenith. 
 
 That beauty came almost as a surprise on 
 Lashmar by-and-by, when Clarice sauntered into 
 the library at afternoon tea-time. He was 
 unprepared for so much loveliness, albeit he had 
 talked with her last June for five minutes on the 
 stairs at the Foreign Office. That girlish loveliness, 
 svelte, flowing, alabaster fair, had expanded into a 
 royal beauty. Lady Carminow was much less 
 slim than she had been in her girlhood, but her 
 stoutness — if it must be called by so ^^ilgar a 
 word — was a Juno-like stoutness, and her loveliness 
 was enhanced by expansion. The alabaster tint 
 was still more dazzling, it had that transparent 
 brilHancy which Horace sings of. Her golden- 
 auburn hair was piled in a coronet above the low 
 classic brow. The turn of the neck was statuesque 
 in its perfection, the carriage of the small liead was 
 full of unaffected dignity. The plainly made gown
 
 284 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 of lustreless brown silk set off the gracious figure 
 with a noble simplicity. 'The lovely wrist and 
 hand looked all the lovelier under a severely 
 cut sleeve with a narrow cuff of old Mechlin lace. 
 
 * How strange that we should meet for the first 
 time in this room,' said Clarice, when she and 
 Lashmar had shaken hands, and she had ensconced 
 herself in the most comfortable of all the comfortable 
 chairs which were grouped about the hearth and tea- 
 table. ' Do you remember that afternoon when you 
 showed me the wonderful books, and when we found 
 that poor little savage sitting on a ladder ? ' 
 
 ' Indeed, I have not forgotten. I was reminded 
 of the fact this morning by the sight of my brother's 
 proUg^e. My mother tells me she has become a 
 bidable young person, and very useful to her as a 
 reader.' 
 
 Clarice shrugged her shoulders, and gave a faint 
 shiver. 
 
 * I should not like such a person about me/ she 
 said; 'but dear Lady Lashmar seems quite taken 
 with her of late.' 
 
 Dear Lady Lashmar disavowed any such friendly
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 285 
 
 a feeling for the girl. 'She is useful to me,' she 
 explained ; * I require some one to read to me, and 
 she reads well. That is all.' 
 
 * I am always afraid of self-educated people,' said 
 Clarice, * they are so arrogant, and so ambitious ; 
 almost always Eadicals, thinking, poor creatures, that 
 book learning is the only thing that counts, and for- 
 getting their hopeless ignorance of everything vje 
 know.' 
 
 'And that naturally means everything worth 
 knowing,' said Lashmar, smiling at her across his 
 teacup. 
 
 'Well, you will acknowledge that in society 
 manners and savoir-faire are of much more import- 
 ance than Latin and Greek,' said Clarice, with con- 
 viction. 
 
 ' I see you are one of those people who think that 
 the classics are the exclusive property of half a dozen 
 elderly gentlemen in the universities, who seldom 
 wash, and who could hardly muster a hair brush 
 among them,' replie d his lordship laughingly. 
 
 Lashmar sipped his tea, and enjoyed the restful- 
 ness of this lazy afternoon hour, when dressing for
 
 286 OIsE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 dinner seems too far oli' to be thought of as a bur- 
 den. He had been the first to arrive ; his guests 
 were expected by a later train ; so he and his mother 
 and Lady Carminow had this delicious interval all to 
 themselves. 
 
 It was a new thing for him to take tea in that 
 grandiose old library, with its bossed ceiling, rich in 
 gold and vermilion, seeming to repeat the colour of 
 the Grolier bindings. Hitherto the room in which 
 Hubert, Lord Lashmar, had lived his pensive un- 
 offending life had been a sealed chamber, dedicated 
 to the memory of the dead, as it were a tomb in the 
 mansion of the living. But within a week of her 
 son's return Lady Lashmar had made up her mind 
 to re-open the library as a general sitting-room — a 
 pleasant place for afternoon tea — a haven in the 
 evening for elderly people who love quiet, or for 
 those unmusical souls who care not for the modern 
 sonata or the modern ballad. It was Clarice who 
 had talked Lady Lashmar into this innovation. 
 
 * The library is quite the handsomest room in the 
 Castle, and you leave it, figuratively speaking, to bats 
 and owls/ she said. ' What is the good of fine rooms
 
 if one does not use them ? The Lashmar library is 
 the one great feature of this house, and you don't 
 even let people see it.' 
 
 Lady Lashmar yielded ; and it was Lady Carmi- 
 now who with her own fair hands, and the aid of 
 half a dozen housemaids, rearranged the room after 
 the luxurious modern idea. She introduced deli- 
 cious little Alma Tadema-cuni-Queen Anne chairs 
 and tables, tilings half Pompeian, half old English. 
 She made delightful corners with old Indian screens, 
 seven leaved, golden, beautiful ; and she set groups 
 of palms in richest red pottery vases. She knew 
 exactly where all the prettiest things were to be had, 
 and what to order. The Genie of the Lamp was 
 hardly more expeditious in the art of furnishing. 
 
 Lashmar was delighted. 
 
 ' "What a sensible idea to use this big old room 
 for living in,' said Lashmar, lolling back in a nest of 
 tawny plush, and looking round at the black and 
 gold screens and vermilion tables and palms and 
 peacock's feathers. 
 
 ' It was Lady Carminow's idea. You have her 
 to thank for the change,'
 
 288 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 Then I do thank her, most cordially.' 
 
 * Oh, but it is I who ought to be thankful,' cried 
 Clarice. ' I delight in arranging a room. I am 
 almost as officious as Lady Hillborough, who cannot be 
 half an hour in anyone's drawing room without 
 re-arranging all the chairs. Now, Oriana has a genius 
 for chairs ; but if I have any talent it is for corners. 
 How do you like that corner with the seven-leaved 
 screen and the palms ? ' 
 
 ' It is simply perfection ; a haven in which to 
 dream away wintry days, too blissful to regret the 
 summer ; a nook for a flirtation, for a proposal even. 
 Young ladies on their promotion ought to be very 
 grateful to you, Lady Carminow.' 
 
 ' I am very fond of nice girls,' murmured Clarice, 
 with an air of matronly superiority worthy of a 
 grandmother. 
 
 Afternoon tea lasted a long time upon this 
 particular occasion. It was dusk when the two 
 ladies closed their work-baskets and went off to 
 their own apartments, Lady Lashmar to secure an 
 hour's rest before she put on velvet and diamonds 
 to receive her son's guests, who were all to arrive
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHAXGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 289 
 
 in time for dinner ; Clarice to waste an hour plea- 
 santly over Ohnet or Daudet, or the milder Greville. 
 A few minutes before seven there came a gi-eat 
 clanging of doors, and the corridors echoed with 
 strange voices, whereby Lady Lashmar, resting her 
 wearied nerves as best she might, knew that the 
 people had all come. She could not help listening 
 for Mr. Xestorius's voice amidst that Babel of 
 mistresses and maids ; and she heard a few words 
 uttered calmly by that mellifluous organ. Depth 
 and smoothness were the chief characteristics of 
 the ex-minister's voice. Soft, grave, and yet strong 
 were those tones which had ruled in the senate, 
 which had touched the hearts of women. Perhaps 
 it was this voice which had been the most powerful 
 influence in Mr. Nestorius's career. He had that fine 
 flow of language and those ever-musical tones which 
 enable a man to talk nonsense unchallenged, nay, 
 rather to make nonsense appear logic, or wit, as 
 the orator chose. 
 
 How reposeful, how soothing sounded that voice 
 amidst the chatter of the women and the haw- 
 hawing of the men. Captain Vavasour was making 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 as much fuss as the noisiest of women, but then, 
 as he had to look after his wife's luggage and his 
 wife's poodle, as w^ell as his own portmanteau, there 
 was some excuse for him. 
 
 ' I wonder how I shall get on with these people,' 
 thought the dowager ; * they are horribly noisy, and 
 their voices have a vulgar twang. Thank heaven 
 there is Clarice to take them off my hands.' 
 
 At ten minutes to eight she was in the drawing- 
 room, and the strangers were being duly presented 
 to her, as she sat supported on one side by Mrs. 
 Mulciber, a spreading woman in a gray satin gown, 
 and by Lady Sophia Freemantle on the other. 
 
 Lady Sophia was a tall, well-made young woman, 
 with the square shoulders which were considered 
 intolerable thirty years ago, but which are permitted 
 and even approved nowadays. She was not hand- 
 some ; she would have scorned to be so. She had a 
 healthy, brunette complexion which had been 
 buffeted by all the winds of heaven, and shone on 
 by the sun, until it had acquired a permanent bronze 
 and a harder consistency than belongs to the 'cheek 
 of beauty. She had regular features, a small, sharp
 
 'BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CIIAN<;E TOO ' 201 
 
 uose, aucl a determined mouth aud chin ; a mouth 
 that had grown resolute in encounters with obstinate 
 horses, refusing the same ditch thirty times on end, 
 to be beaten by Lady Sophia at the thirty-first. She 
 had a loud voice that had qrown stroma in con- 
 versations carried on in the open air, and often 
 at longish distances — with labouring men at the 
 further side of a field, and sometimes with tramps 
 and wayfarers just within hail ; discussions as to 
 which way the hunted fox had gone ; or as to 
 whether an animal lately seen was or was not the 
 hunted fox. There is always a chance of being 
 deluded by that social impostor — the fox out for a 
 quiet airing, and only distinguishable from the real 
 hero by his smug respectable aspect and clean brush. 
 On horseback Lady Sophia looked better than 
 one woman in twenty, not only for her willowy 
 waist or the fit of her habit, but for the admirable 
 pose of that slim, tall figure, and the perfect adjust- 
 ment of the rider to every movement of the horse. 
 In an evening gown Sophia looked her worst, and 
 she regarded the wdiole question of evening gowns 
 with supreme indifference. Her dark red satin was
 
 292 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 at least three seasons old, as Lady Carminow's 
 keen eye perceived in an instant, and the colour 
 was much too near the carnation of the wearer's 
 cheek to be becoming. 
 
 Lady Carminow was at the other end of the 
 drawing-room, half buried in a gigantic chair, and 
 slowly fanning herself with a great ostrich feather 
 fan, while she listened to Mr. Nestorius. She was 
 looking divinely lovely. Her large, fair bust and 
 shoulders looked dazzling in their Parian whiteness 
 against the hedge-sparrow velvet of her gown. 
 Hedge-sparrow had been the fashionable colour of 
 last season. Women had lived and moved and had 
 their being only in hedge-sparrow gowns. The 
 colour was that of a hedge-sparrow's egg, be it 
 understood, not of the sparrow himself, a turquoise 
 blue with just the faintest greenish tint, a colour 
 which became blondes to perfection ; and as most 
 women are blondes nowadays, or make themselves 
 so, the hue had enjoyed a tremendous vogue. 
 
 If there was a particularly attractive woman in 
 a room it generally happened that Mr. Nestorius 
 and she were together. He was said to be a
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CIIAXUE MKX CHANGE TOO " '2'X\ 
 
 magnetic man, and it was an attribute of his 
 magnetism always to draw the nicest women about 
 him. Pallid faces and thrilling tones have an 
 almost irresistible charm for women. Your healthy- 
 looking man, with a florid complexion or a harsh 
 voice, has hardly any chance. 
 
 It was within two minutes of the hour, and 
 Lady Lashmar was beginning to look angry, when 
 Mrs. Vavasour came gliding in, clad in a dragging 
 garment of limp lace and muslin, which might or 
 might not be a gown. There was that marked 
 disproportion between the lady and her clothes 
 which is so often seen nowadays as to be no 
 longer surprising. Tlie lady was so exuberant, and 
 the gown so exiguous, that had it not been for an 
 immense garland of Marechal Niel roses, which 
 made a kind of liower-bed across the ample bust, 
 Lady Lashmar would have been inclined to order 
 the new-comer out of the room. 
 
 As it was she acknowledged her son's introduction 
 somewhat stiffly, gave Mrs. Vavasour the tips of 
 her fingers, and only recognised tlie lady's husband 
 with a haughty inclination of her head : for it was
 
 294 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 her ladyship's opinion that when a married woman 
 made a spectacle of herself, tlie husband was more 
 to blame than the wife. 
 
 In those circles in which Mrs. Vavasour moved 
 it had been often said that she was utterly charming : 
 but that a stranger required half an hour to get 
 accustomed to her. 
 
 She was certainly pretty ; but that her beauty 
 was either made or marred by art was indisputable. 
 The cloud of golden fluffiness which surrounded her 
 head, seeming almost too ethereal for actual hair, 
 the definite line of dark eyebrows, and the lashes 
 clogged with ebon dye, the porcelain whiteness and 
 the rose-leaf bloom were all from the same source ; 
 and a child of four years old could scarcely have been 
 innocent enough to mistake the picture for reality. 
 But the general effect was considered good, and, as 
 Mrs. Vavasour's reputation had never been clouded 
 by the breath of scandal, the lady was caressed 
 and courted, and her little ways were considered 
 charming. 
 
 Her manner was quite as artificial as her com-" 
 plexion. She drawled out her delight at making
 
 *BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO' 295 
 
 Lady Lashmar's acquaintance in the latest slang, and 
 with the latest abbreviations ; Lady Sophia contem- 
 plating her calmly with her hawk's eyes all the time, 
 as if she had been some new specimen in that animal 
 world of rats, weasels, stoats, ferrets, polecats, and 
 other unclean vermin which Lord Banbury's daughter 
 knew so intimately. 
 
 Mr. Nestorius was, of course, entitled to the arm 
 of his hostess, and Lady Carminow to that of her 
 host ; Mr. Ponsonby, the barrister, took Mrs. Vava- 
 sour, and good-natured Mrs. Mulciber put up with the 
 Eector, who had been asked, as it were, to open the 
 shooting season with a good old Anglican grace, 
 short and unintelligible. Captain Vavasour took in 
 Lady Sophia. They had travelled by the same train, 
 and were as friendly as if they had been brought up 
 in the nursery together, Sophia's experience of the 
 hunting-field having given her all the ways of jolly 
 good fellowship ; but this familiarity with the 
 fashionable novelist did not prevent her almost 
 ignoring his wife. 
 
 ' I am afraid Mrs. Vavasour and I can't have 
 much in common,' she said, ducking to get a glimpse
 
 296 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 of that radiant lady athwart a grove of silver 
 trophies, in the way of racing cups and candelabra. 
 
 * She doesn't look as if she hunted/ inwardly adding, 
 
 * not an outdoor make-up.' 
 
 ' And you do nothing else, I have heard,' replied 
 the Captain. * Well, it is the highest kind of fame 
 to do one thing to perfection.' 
 
 ' I write a little in my humble way, but it is 
 always about hunting,' said Lady Sophia. 
 
 'Then you are ''Spur-box," of the ** Sunday 
 Swash-buckler," ' cried Vavasour ; ' I have often 
 been told as much.' 
 
 * Yes, I am " Spur-box," ' admitted the lady, look- 
 ing modestly downward, overcome by the thought 
 of her own fame. ' I rather enjoy writing for the 
 paper. The editor pays me very well ; and there is 
 only one thing I don't altogether like. He insists 
 that I should always pretend to be tipsy when I am 
 writing, or to have been horribly tipsy over night.' 
 
 * Oh ! but that is de rigueur. It is part of 
 the policy of the paper. All the contributors are 
 supposed to exist in a state of chronic drunkenness. 
 I need not tell you that they are some of the
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 297 
 
 soberest meu in Londoii, as temperate as you, Lady 
 Sophia ! ' 
 
 * It is rather good fun, pretending to be hope- 
 lessly obfuscated.' 
 
 'What is supposed to be your particular 
 vanity ? ' 
 
 ' Soda and curagoa. I consume gallons. I am 
 always talking of my little failings. Sometimes I 
 go in for green chartreuse, with fatal results. But 
 the editor wants me to drop liqueurs, which, he says, 
 have a snobbish tone that offends his Eadical 
 subscribers. He wants me to take to dog's-nose. 
 What is dog's-nose ? ' 
 
 'A compound of beer and gin, particularly 
 affected by cabmen. What is supposed to be your 
 social status, as Spur-box ? ' 
 
 * Oh ! it is awfully vague. I am as misty as a 
 mythological personage. I write from all the great 
 hunting centres. Sometimes I am at the George at 
 Grantham, where I seem to live in the bar ; for the 
 editor will put in remarks of liis own about drinks, 
 don't you know, and I hardly know my own writing 
 when I see it in print'
 
 298 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 * I comprehend. He embellishes. That is hardly 
 fair!' 
 
 ' I have told him so, but he says that there must 
 be a single mind directing the whole ' 
 
 ' Just so ! as, according to poor old Anchises 
 when his son interviewed him in the under- world, 
 there was at one time a single soul permeating the 
 human race — ' 
 
 * Anchises must be dead ! ' said Sophia, who 
 only caught the classic and familiar name. 'He 
 won the Derby when I was a little tot. I remember 
 seeing the race from my father's drag. It was 
 the year Facile Princeps was favourite, and came 
 in a bad third. Anchises was a mealy chestnut.' 
 
 The conversation went on at this rate all through 
 dinner. Captain Vavasour hunted, and was fond of 
 racing ; was hand in glove with men who kept 
 racers, and had a good deal to say about the turf. 
 He knew old Lord Banbury's history by heart; 
 knew what to say, and what to avoid saying. Lady 
 Sophia did not usually like writing men. She 
 thought them conceited and uninteresting ; but the 
 liovelist charmed her. He was in the middle of a
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO.' 299 
 
 capital story about Jack Eussell and the Exmoor 
 staghounds when Lady Carmine w rose swan-like at 
 the beck of her hostess. 
 
 ' What a bore ! ' exclaimed Sophia. ' I shall 
 have to go with the lady-pack.' 
 
 And with the lady-pack the fair Sophia departed 
 wondering whether she would find anyone sociable 
 enough to join her with a cigarette. She carried 
 her cigarette case in her pocket, even when she was 
 dressed for the evening; and, in those pleasant 
 houses where ladies were tolerated in the billiard- 
 room, she always smoked. This was her first visit 
 to Lashmar, and ]\Irs. !Mulciber had warned her 
 that it was a severe house. 
 
 Lady Carminow settled herself in a comfortable 
 arm-chair near Lady Lashmar's particular corner, 
 beside the wide old hearth. These two talked apart 
 and left the other three ladies to their own devices. 
 Sophia found the last Saturday Beview with a 
 sporting article, and retired behind that paper. 
 Mrs. Vavasour shed her artificial radiance upon 
 friendly Mrs. Mulciber, whom she entertained with 
 her opinions upon the plays and operas of last
 
 300 ONE THING NEEDFUL 
 
 season, a style of conversation which could not have 
 warmly interested a lady who had not seen one of 
 them. 
 
 But Mrs. Mulciber was one of those admirable 
 women who always appear to be interested, even 
 when they are inwardly sinking with weariness. 
 She was a delightful listener, had very little to say 
 herself, but said that little in a neat and pleasant 
 manner. She had made her way in the world 
 without advantages of birth or fortune, and with 
 very moderate abilities. Born and bred in the 
 middle classes, the daughter of a village vicar, she 
 had contrived to live all her life in the very best 
 circles, staying now at one country house, now at 
 another ; now chaperoning an orphan heiress ; now 
 keeping things straight for an aristocratic household 
 in which the mistress was a dipso-maniac ; anon 
 looking after a widower's young children, or helping 
 in the dirty work of a county election. She was 
 everybody's confidante and everybody's amanuensis. 
 She wrote a magnificent hand, and she was good 
 at accounts. She always read the newspapers, and 
 knew everything that was going on in the world ;
 
 ' BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO ' 301 
 
 but her travelling library consisted of only two 
 books — a peerage and a Bible. These she knew by 
 heart, and here her knowledge of literature ended. 
 She had no imagination, and never read novels. 
 Her mind required hard facts. Her notion of leisure 
 was to sit at a window working high art designs 
 of an angular ecclesiastical character upon brown 
 hoUand, and she was admirable in this wise as 
 the dragon of prudery in a country house full of 
 lovers. For the rest she knew all the latest remedies 
 and palliatives for neuralgia, low spirits, and in- 
 somnia, and was pleasantly officious in such cases. 
 Her headquarters for the last three years had been 
 Banbury Manor, where she acted as a deputy mother 
 for Lady Sophia, whose real mother had run away 
 with a colonel of dragoons at the mature age of 
 nine and thirty, much to the satisfaction of old 
 Lord Banbury, who had tyrannised over her for 
 nineteen weary years, and was beginning to sicken 
 of a worm which had never turned. 
 
 END OF VOL I.
 
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