LI E) RARY OF THE UN IVERSITY or ILLI NOIS V.I The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN a:' M I ^^ i^^f L161— O-1096 . V I A ji/t . % 3 -if- t\^^ STRANGEES AND PILGRBIS LONDON: EOBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W. 8TMNGER8 AND PILGRIMS s iobti BY THE AUTHOR OF «LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET' ETC. ETC. ETC. ' Egypt, thou knewst too well, My heart was to thy nidder tied by the strings, And thou shouldst tow me after ; o'er my spirit Thy full supremacy thou knewst ; and that Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods Command me.' IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON JOHN MAXWELL AND CO. 4 SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET 1873 lAll rights reserved} Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/strangerspilgrim01brad o 923 w. 1 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS CD ^ CHAPTER I. ' Give me a look, give me a face, ^^ That makes simplicity a grace ; C^ ■ Robes loosely flowing, hair as free : Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than aU the adulteries of art ; : They stril5:e mine eyes, but not my heart.' The scene was an ancient orchard on the slope of a - hill, in the far west of England : an orchard bounded "^ on one side by an old-fashioned garden, where roses - and carnations were blooming in their summer glory ; c and on the other by a ponderous red-brick wall, hea- i^ vily buttressed, and with a moat at its outer base — a > wall that had been built for the protection of a more "^ important habitation than Hawleigh Vicarage. Time ^ was when the green slope where the rugged apple- ci YOL. I. B ^ 5i STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. trees spread their crooked limbs in the sunshine was a prim pleasance, and when the hill was crowned by the grim towers of Hawleigh Castle. But the civil wars made an end of the gothic towers and machico- lated galleries that had weathered many a storm, and nothing was now left save a remnant of the old wall, and one solitary tower, to which some archeologically- minded vicar in time past had joined the modest parsonage of Hawleigh parish. This was a low white building, of the farmhouse tj-pe, large and roomy, with bow-windows to some of the lower rooms, and diamond -paned casements to others. In this western land of warm rains and flowers the myrtles and roses climbed to the steeply - sloping roof, and every antique casement was set in a frame of foliage and blossom. It was not a mansion which a modern architect would have been proud to have built, by any means, but a dwelling-place with which a painter or a poet would have fallen madly in love at first sight. There were pigeons cooing and boop-boop-booping among the moss-grown corbels of the tower ; a black- bird in a wicker cage hanging outside one of the nar- row windows ; a skylark in a little green wooden box decorating another. The garden where the roses and carnations flourished had somewhat of a neglected look, not weedy or forlorn, only a little unkempt and STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 6 over-luxuriant, like a garden to which the hireling gardener comes once a week, or which is left to the charge of a single outdoor labourer, who has horses and pigs upon his mind, nay perhaps also the daily distraction of indoor duties, in the boot-and-knife- cleaning way. Perhaps, looking at the subject from a purely poetical point of view, no garden should ever be better kept than that garden at Hawleigh. What ribbon - bordering, or artistically variegated mosaic of lobelia, and petunia, and calceolaria, and verbena, could ever equal the wild beauty of roses that grew at their own . sweet will against a background of seringa and arbu- tus — shrubs that must have been planted by some unknown benefactor in the remote past, for no incum- bent of late years had ever been known to plant any- thing ? What prim platter-like circles of well-be- haved bedding-out plants, spick and span from the greenhouse, could- charm the sense like the various and yet familiar old-world flowers that filled the long; wide borders in Parson Luttrell's flower-garden ? Of this small domain about half an acre consisted of meadow-like grass, not often improved by the rol- ler, and sometimes permitted to flourish in rank luxuriance ankle-deep. The girls — that is to say^ Wilmot Luttrell's four daughters — managed to play 4 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. croquet upon that greensward nevertheless, being at the croquet-playing stage of existence, when a young woman hard driven would play croquet in an empty coal-cellar. Near the house the grass assumed form and dignity, and was bordered by a rugged sweep of loose gravel, called the. carriage-drive ; and just op- posite the drawing-room windows there stood an ancient stone sundial, on which the ladies of Haw- leigh Castle had marked the slow passage of empty hours in centuries gone by. Only a hedge of holly divided the garden from a strip of waste land that bor- dered the dusty high-road.; but a row of fine old elms grew on that intervening strip of grass, and secured the Luttrell damsels from the gaze of the vulgar. But for seclusion, for the sweet sense of utter solitude and retirement, the orchard was best — that undulating slope of mossy turf, cropped close by oc- casional sheep, which skirted the flower-garden, and stretched away to the rear of the low white house. The very wall, crowned with gaudy dragon's-mouth, and creeping yellow stonecrop, was in itself a picture ; and in the shelter of this wall, which turned its stal- wart old back to the west, was the nicest spot for an afternoon's idleness over a new book, or the worthless scrap of lace or muslin which constituted the last mania in the way of fancy-work. This, at least, was STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. O what Elizabeth Luttrell said of the old wall, and as she had been born and reared for the nineteen years of her young life at Hawleigh, she was a tolerable judge of the capabilities of garden and orchard. She sits in the shadow of the wall this June afternoon alone, with an unread book in her lap. Elizabeth Luttrell is the beauty of a family in which all the daughters are or have been handsome — the peerless flower among four fair sisters, w^ho are renowned throughout this part of the western world as the pretty Miss Luttrells. About Gertrude the eldest, or Diana the second, or Blanche the youngest, there might be differences of opinion — a question raised as to the length of Ger- trude's nose, a doubt as to the width of Diana's mouth, a schism upon the merits of Blanche's figure; but the third daughter of the house of Luttrell was simply perfect : you could no more dispute her beauty than that of the Florentine Venus. What a picture she made upon this midsummer afternoon, as she sat in the shade of the ruddy old wall, in a holland dress, and with a blue ribbon twisted in her hair, profile of face and figure in full relief against the warm background, every line the perfec- tion of grace and beauty, every hue and every curve a study for a painter ! 0, if among all the splendid 6 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. fashion-plates in the Eoyal Academy — the duchess in black-velvet train and point-lace flounces and scarlet- silk petticoat and diamonds ; the marchioness in blue satin and blonde and pearls ; the countess in white silk and azaleas ; the viscountess in tulle and rose- Ijuds — if in this feast of millinery Elizabeth Luttrell could but shine forth, sitting by the old orchard wall in her washed-out hoUand gown, what a revelation that fresh young beauty would seem ! It was not a rustic beauty, however — not a loveli- ness created to be dressed in white muslin and to adorn a cottage — but splendid rather, and worthy to rule the heart of a great man. Nose, a small aquiline ; eyes, that darkly-clear gray which in some lights deepens to violet ; complexion, a warm brunette ; forehead, low and broad ; hair of the darkest brown, with ruddy golden gleams lurking in its crisp waves — hair which is in itself almost a sufficient justifica- tion for any young woman to set up as a beauty, if her stock-in-trade were no more than those dark- brown tresses, those delicately- arched brows and up- ward curling lashes. In all the varying charms of expression, as well as in regularity of feature. Nature has gifted Elizabeth Luttrell with a lavish hand. She is the crystallisation of centuries of dead-and-gone Luttrells, all more or less beautiful ; for the race is STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. / one that can boast of good looks as a family heri- tage. She sits alone by the old wall, the western sun- light shining through the red and yellow flowers of the dragon's-mouth above her head ; sits alone, with loosely-linked hands lying idle in her lap, and fixed dreaming eyes. It is nearly an hour since she has turned a leaf of her book, when a ringing soprano voice calling her name, and a shower of rose-leaves thrown across her face, scare away her day-dreams. She looks up impatiently, angrily even, at Blanche, the hoyden of the family, who stands above her on the steep grassy slope, with a basket of dilapidated roses on her arm. The damsel, incorrigibly idle alike by nature and habit, has been seized with an industrious fit, and has been clipping and trimming the roses. ' What a lazy creature you are, Lizzie !' she ex- claims. ' I thought you were going to put the rib- bons on your muslin dress for this evening.' ^ I wish you'd be good enough to concern yourself about your own clothes, Blanche, and leave mine alone. And please don't come screaming at me when I'm — asleep.' ' You weren't asleep ; your eyes were ever so wide open. You were thinking — I can guess what about — and smiling at your own thoughts. I wish I had 8 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. anything as nice to think about. That's the worst of having a handsome sister. How can I suppose that any one will ever take any notice of poor little me?' * Upon my honour, Blanche, I believe you are the most provoking girl in creation !' ' You can't believe that, for you don't know all the girls in creation.' * One of the most, then ; but that comes of send- ing a girl to school. You have all the schoolgirl vulgarities.' * I'm sure I didn't want to go to Miss Derwent's, Lizzie. It was Gertrude's fault, making such a fuss about me, and setting papa at me. I'd much rather have run wild at home.' * I think you'd run wild anywhere, in a convent even.' ' I daresay I should ; but that's not the question. I want to know if you're going to wear your clean white muslin, because my own toilet hinges on your decision. It's a serious matter for girls who are al- lowed only one clean muslin a week.' ' I don't know ; perhaps I shall wear my blue,' replies Elizabeth with a careless air, pretending to read. * You won't do anything of the kind. It's ever STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 9 SO tumbled, and I know you like to look nice when Mr. Forde is here. You're such a mean girl, Eliza- beth Luttrell. You pretend not to care a straw how you dress, and dawdle here making believe to read that stupid old volume of travels to the Victoria Thingembob, which the old fogies of the book-club chose for us, instead of some jolly novel ; and when we've put on our veriest rags you'll scamper up the back-stairs just at the last moment, and come down a quarter of an hour after he has come, all over crisp muslin flounces and fresh pink ribbons, just as if you'd a French milliner at your beck and call.' ' I really can't help it, if I know how to put on my things a little better than you and Diana. I'm sure Gertrude is always nicely dressed.' ' Yes, Gertrude has the brand of Cain — Gertrude is a born old maid; one can see it in her neck-ribbons and top -knots. Now, how about the white mus- lin ?' ' I wish you wouldn't worry, Blanche ; I shall wear exactly what I please. I will not be pestered by a younger sister. What's the time ?' The fourth Miss Luttrell drags a little Geneva silver watch from her belt by a black ribbon — a silver watch presented to her by her father on her fifteenth birthday — to be exchanged for a gold one 10 STRANGERS AND PILGRHIS. at some inclefinitc period of the Vicar's existence, when a gleam of prosperity shall brighten the dull level of his financial career. He has given similar watches to all his daughters on their fifteenth birth- days; but Lizzie's lies forgotten amongst disabled brooches and odd earrings in a trinket-box on her dressing-table. Elizabeth Luttrell does not care to note the progress of her days on a pale-faced Geneva timepiece, value something under five pounds. ' Half-past five by me,' says Blanche. ' Are you twenty minutes slow, or twenty minutes fast ?' 'Well, I believe I'm five -and -twenty minutes slow.' * Then I shall come to dress in half an hour. I wish you'd just tack those pink bows on my dress, Blanche — you're evidently at a loss for something to do.' * Just tack,' repeats the younger sister with a wry face ; ' you mean sew them on, I suppose. That's like people asking j-ou to ''touch" the bell, when you're comfortably coiled up in an easy-chair at the other end of the room. It sounds less than asking one to ring it ; but one has to disturb oneself all the same. I don't see why you shouldn't sew on your own ribbons ; and I'm dead- tired — I've been standing STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 11 in the broiling sun for the last hour, trimming the roses, and trying to make the garden look a little de- cent.' ' 0, very well ; I can get my dress ready myself,' says Elizabeth with a grand air, not lifting her eyes from the volume in which she struggles vainly to fol- low the current of the Victoria Nyanza. Has not Malcolm Forde expressed a respectful wish that she were a little less vague in her notions of all that vast world which lies beyond the market- town and rustic suburbs of Hawleigh ? ^ Don't be offended, Lizzie ; you know I always do anything you ask me. Where are the ribbons?' ' In the left-hand top drawer. Be sure you don't tumble my flounces.' * I'll take care. I'm so glad you're going to wear your white ; for now I can wear mine without Ger- trude grumbling about my extravagance in beginning a clean muslin at the end of the week : as if people with any pretence to refinement ever made any dif- ference in their gowns at the end of the week — as if anybody but utter barbarians would go grubby because it was Friday or Saturday ! Mind you come up-stairs in time to dress, Lizzie.' ' I shall be ready, child. The people are not to be here till seven.' 12 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. * The people ! As if 3-ou cared one straw about Jane Harrison or Laura Melvin and that preposterous brother of hers !' ' You manage to flirt with the preposterous bro- ther, at any rate,' says Lizzie, still looking down at her book. ' 0, one must get one's hand in somehow. And as if there were any choice of a subject in this God- forsaken place !' * Blanche, how can you use such horrid expres- sions ?' *But it is God-forsaken. I heard Captain Field- ing call it so the other day.' * You are always picking up somebody's phrases. Do go and tack on those ribbons, or I shall have to do it myself.' 'And that would be a calamity,' cries Blanche, laughing, ' when there is anj^body else whose services you can utilise !' It was one of the golden rules of Elizabeth Lut- trell's life that she should never do anything for her- self which she could get any one else to do for her. What was the good of having three unmarried sisters — all plainer than oneself — unless one made some use of them ? She herself had grown up like a flower, as beautiful and as useless; not to toil or spin — only STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 13 to be admired and cherished as a type of God-given idle loveliness. That her beauty was to be profitable to herself and to the world by and by in some large way, she regarded as an inevitable consequence of her exist- ence. She had troubled herself very little about the future ; had scarcely chafed against the narrow bounds of her daily life. That certainty of high fortune awaiting her in the coming years supported and sustained her. In the mean while she lived her life — a life not altogether devoid of delight, but into which the element of passion had not yet entered. Even in so dull a place as Hawleigh there were plenty of admirers for such a girl as Elizabeth Lut- trell. She had drunk freely of the nectar of praise ; knew the full measure of her beauty, and felt that she was born to conquer. All the little victories, the trivial flirtations of the present, were, in her mind, mere child's play; but they served to give some variety to an existence which would have been in- tolerably monotonous without them. She went on reading, or trying to read, for half an hour after Blanche had skipped up the green slope where the apple-trees spread a fantastic carpet of light and shade in the afternoon sunshine ; she tried her hardest to chain her thoughts to that book of African 14 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. travel, but the Victoria Nyanza eluded lier like a will- o'-the-wisp. Her thoughts went back to a little scene under an avenue of ancient limes in Hawleigh- road — a scene that had been acted only a few hours ago. It was not very much to think of: only an ac- cidental meeting with her father's curate, Malcolm Forde; only a little commonplace talk about the parish and the choir, the early services, and the latest volumes obtainable at the Hawleigh book-club. Mr. Luttrell had employed four curates since Lizzie's sixteenth birthday; and the first, second, and third of these young Levites had been Lizzie's devoted slaves. It had become an established rule that the curate — Mr. Luttrell could only afford one, though there were two churches in his duty — should fall madly in love with Elizabeth. But the fourth curate was of a different stuff from the material out of which the three simpering young gentlemen fresh from college were created. Malcolm Forde was five- and-thirty years of age ; a man who had been a sol- dier, and who had taken up this new service from conviction ; a man who possessed an income amply sufficient for his own simple needs, and in no way looked to the Church as an honourable manner of solving the great enigma of how a gentleman is to maintain himself in this world. He was a Christian STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 15 in the purest and widest sense of the word ; an ear- nest thinker, an indefatigable worker ; an enthusiast upon all subjects relating to his beloved Church. To such a man as this all small flirtations and girlish follies must needs appear trivial in the ex- treme ; but Mr. Forde was not a prig, nor was he prone to parade his piety before the eyes of the world. So he fell into the ways of Hawleigh with consummate ease : played croquet with the mallet of a master ; disliked high-jinks and grandiose entertainments at rich people's houses, but was not above an impromptu picnic with his intimate associates, a gipsy -tea in Everton Wood, or a friendly musical evening at the parsonage. He had little time to devote to such re- laxations, but did not disdain them on occasion. At the outset of their acquaintance the four Lut- trell girls vowed they should always be afraid of him, that those dreadful cold gray eyes of his made them feel uncomfortable. . ' When he looks at me in that grave searching way, I positively feel myself the wickedest creature in the w^orld,' cried Diana, who was of a sprightly disposition, and prone to a candid confession of all her weaknesses. ' How I should hate to marry such a man ! It would be like being perpetually brought face to face with one's conscience.' IG STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. * I think a woman's husband ought, in a manner, to represent her conscience,' said Gertrude, who was nine-and-tweuty, and prided herself upon being seri- ous-minded. ' At least I should like to see all my faults and follies reflected in my husband's face, and to grow out of them by his influence.' ' What a hard time your husband would have of it, Gerty!' exclaimed the flippant Blanche, assisting at the conversation from outside the open window of the breakfast-room, or den, in which the four damsels were as untidy as they pleased ; Elizabeth's colour- box and drawing-board, Gertrude's work-box, Diana's desk, Blanche's Dorcas bag, all heaped pell-mell upon the battered old sideboard. ' If you spent more time among the poor, Diana,' said Gertrude, not deigning to notice this interrup- tion, 'you need not be afraid of any man's eyes. When our own hearts are at peace — ' ' Don't, please, Gerty; don't give me any warmed- up versions of your tracts. The state of my own heart has nothing to do with the question. If I were the most spotless being in creation, I should feel just the same about Mr. Forde's eyes. As for district-visiting, you know very well that my health was never good enough for that kind of thing ; and I'm sure if papa had six daughters instead of four. 9 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 17 you do enough in the goody-goody line for the whole batch.' Miss Luttrell gave a gentle sigh, and continued her needlework in silence. She could not help feel- ing that she was the one bit of leaven that leavened the whole lump ; that if a general destruction were threatened the daughters of Hawleigh by reason of their frivolities, her own sterling merits might buy them off — as the ten righteous men who were 7iot to be found in Sodom might have ransomed that guilty population. Elizabeth had been busy painting a little bit of still-life — an over-ripe peach and a handful of pansies. and mulberry -leaves lying loosely scattered at the- base of Mr. Luttrell's Venetian claret-flask. She had gone steadily on with her work, laying on little dabs of transparent colour with a quick light touch, and not vouchsafing any expression of interest in the dis- cussion of Mr. Forde's peculiarities. ' He's very good-looking,' Diana said meditatively. * Don't you think so, Lizzie ? You're an authority upon curates.' Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders, and answered in her most indifferent tone : ' Tolerably ! He has rather a good forehead.' ' Rather good !' exclaimed Gertrude, grinding in- VOL. I. C 18 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. dustriously across an expanse of calico with her cut- ting - out scissors. ' He has the forehead of an apostle.' * How do you know that ? You never saw an apostle,' cried Blanche from the window, with her favourite line of argument. ' And as for the pictures we see of them, that's all humbug ! for there were no photographers in Judea.' * Come indoors, Blanche, and write a German ex- ercise,' said Gertrude. 'It's too bad to stand out there all the morning, idling away your time.' * And spoiling your complexion into the bargain,' added Diana. ' What a tawny little wretch you are becoming !' ' I don't care two straws about m}^ complexion, and I'm not going to cramp my hand with that horrid German !' ' Think of the privilege of being able to read Schiller in the original !' said Gertrude solemnly. * I don't think much of it ; for I never see you read him, though you do pride yourself on your German,' answered the flijopant Blanche. And then they went back to Mr. Forde, and discussed his eyes and his forehead over again ; not arriving at any very definite expression of opinion at the last, and Elizabeth holding her ideas in reserve. STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS 19 ' I don't think this one will be quite like the rest, Liz/ said Diana significantly. ' What do you mean by like the rest ?' 'Why he won't make a fool of himself about you, as Mr. Horton did, with his flute-playing and stuff; and he won't go on like Mr. Dysart ; and he won't write sentimental poetry, and languish about all the afternoon spooning at croquet, like little Mr. Adder- ley. You needn't count upon making a conquest of liimy Lizzie. He has the ideas of a monk.' 'Abelard was destined to become a monk,' re- plied Elizabeth calmly, ' but that did not prevent his falling in love with Eloise.' ' 0, I daresay you think it will end by his being as weak as the rest. But he told me that he does not approve of a priest marrying — rather rude, wasn't it ? when you consider that we should not be in existence, if papa had entertained the same opinion.' ' I don't suppose we count for much in his grand ideas of religion,' answered Elizabeth a little con- temptuously. She had held her small flirtations with previous curates as the merest trifling, but the trifling had been pleasant enough in its way. She had liked the incense. And behold, here was a man who withheld all praise ; who had made his own 20 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. scheme of life — a scheme from which she, Elizabeth Luttrell, was excluded. It was a new thing for her to find that she counted for nothing in the existence of any young man who knew her. This conversation took place when Mr. Forde had been at Hawleigh about a month. Time slipped past. Malcolm Forde took the parish in hand with a firm grip, Mr. Luttrell being an easy-going gentle- man, quite agreeable to let his curate work as hard as he liked. The two sleepy old churches awoke into new life. Where there had been two services on a Sunday there were now four ; where there had been one service on a great church festival there were now five. The dim old aisles bloomed with flowers at Easter and Ascension, at "Whitsuntide and Harvest- thanksgiving-feast ; and the damsels of Hawleigh had new work to do in the decoration of the churches and in the embroidery of chalice -covers and altar- cloths. But it was not in extra services and beautifica- tion of the temples alone that Mr. Forde brought about a new aspect of affairs in Hawleigh. The poor were cared for as they had never been cared for be- fore. Almost all the time that the soldier-curate could spare from his public duties he devoted to private ministration. And yet when he did permit STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 21 himself an afternoon's recreation, he came to gipsy tea-drinking or croquet with as fresh an air as if he were a man who lived only for pleasure. Above all, he never preached sermons — out of the pulpit. That was his one merit, Lizzie Luttrell said, in a some- what disparaging tone. * His one fault is, to be so unlike the other cu- rates, Liz, and able to resist your blandishments,' said Diana sharply. Mr. Forde had. made himself a favourite with all that household except Elizabeth. The three other girls worshij^ped him. She rarely mentioned him without a sneer. And yet she was thinking of him this midsummer afternoon, as she sat by the orchard wall, trying to read the volume he had recommended ; she was thinking of a few grave words in which he had confessed his interest in her ; thinking of the dark searching eyes which had looked for one brief moment into her own. * I really thought I counted for nothing,' she said to herself, ' he has such off-hand ways, and sets himself so much above other people. I don't think he quite means to be grand; it seems natural to him. He ought to have been a general at least in India, instead of a twopenny-halfpenny captain !' The half-hour was soon gone. It was very plea- 22 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. sant to her, that idling in the shadow of the old wall ; for the thoughts of her morning's walk were strangely sweet — sweeter than any flatteries that had ever been whispered in her ear. And yet Mr. Forde had not praised her ; had indeed seemed utterly un- conscious of her superiority to other women. His words had been frank, and grave, and kindly : a lit- tle too much like a lecture, perhaps, and yet sweet ; for they were the first words in which Malcolm Forde had betrayed the faintest interest in her welfare. And it is a hard thing for a young woman, who has been a goddess and an angel in the sight of three consecutive curates, to find the fourth as indifi'erent to her merits as if he were a man of stone. Yes, he had decidedly lectured her. That is to say, he had spoken a little regretfully of her trivial wasted life — her neglected opportunities. ' I don't know what you mean by opportunities,' she had answered, with a little contemptuous curl of the rosy upper lip. ' I can't burst out all at once into a female bishop. As for district-visiting, I have really no genius for that kind of thing, and feel my- self a useless bore in poor people's houses. I know I have been rather idle about the church embroidery, too,' she added with a deprecating air, feeling that here he had cause for complaint. STKANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 23 ' I am very anxious that our churches should be made beautiful,' he answered gravely ; ' and I should think it only natural for you to take a delight in that kind of labour. But I do not consider ecclesiastical embroidery the beginning and end of life. I should like to see you more interested in the poor and in the schools, more interested in your fellow-creatures altogether, in short. I fancy the life you lead at Hawleigh Vicarage among your roses and apple-trees is just a little the life of the lotos-eater : " All its allotted length of clays The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades and falls, and hath no toil, Fast rooted in the fruitful soil." It doesn't do for a responsible being to live that kind of life, you know, leaving no better memory be- hind than the record of its beauty. I should hardly venture to say so much as this. Miss Luttrell, if I were not warmly interested in you.' The clear pale face, looking downward with rather a moody air, like the face of a wayward child that can hardly suffer a rebuke, flushed sudden crimson at his last words. To Mr. Forde's surprise ; for the in- terest he had confessed was of a purely priestly kind. But young women are so sensitive, and he was not 24 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. unused to see bis female parishioners blush and tremble a little under the magnetism of his earnest gaze and low grave voice. Conscious of that foolish blush, Elizabeth tried to carry off her confusion by a rather flippant laugh. ' You read your Tennyson, you see,' she said, ' though you lecture me for my idleness. Isn't poetry a kind of lotos-eating ?' * Hardly, I think. I don't consider my duty stern enough to cut me off from all the flowers of life. I should be sorry to moon about with a duodecimo Tennyson in my pocket when I ought to be at work ; but when I have a stray half-hour, I can give myself a little indulgence of that kind. Besides Tennyson is something more than a poet. He is a teacher.' ' You will come to play croquet for an hour this evening, won't you ? Gertrude wrote to you yester- day, I think.' ' Yes, I must apologise for not answering her note. I shall be most happy to come, if possible. But I have two or three sick people to visit this af- ternoon, and I am not quite sure of my time. The poor souls cling to one so at last. They want a friendly hand to grasp on the threshold of the dark valley, and they have some dim notion that we hold the keys of the other world, and can open a door for STKANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 25 them and let them through to a better place than they could win for themselves.' ' It must be dreadful to see so much of death/ said Elizabeth, with a faint shudder. ' Hardly so dreadful as you may suppose. A deathbed develops some of the noblest qualities of a man's nature. I have seen so much unselfish thoughtfulness for others, so much tenderness and love in the dying. And then for these poor people life has been for the most part so barren, so troubled, it is like passing away from a perpetual struggle to a land that is to be all brightness and rest. If you would only spend more time among your father's parishioners. Miss Luttrell, you would learn much that is worth learning of life and death.' ' I couldn't endure it,' she answered, shrugging her shoulders impatiently ; ' I ought never to have been born a parson's daughter. I should do no good, but harm more likely. The people would see how miserable I thought them, and be all the more dis- contented with their wretched lots after my visits. I can't act goody-goody as Gertrude does, and make those poor wretches believe that I think it the nicest thing in the world to live in one room, and have hardly bread to eat, and only one blanket among six. It's too dreadful. Six weeks of it would kill me.' 26 STE ANGERS AND PILGRIMS. Mr. Forde sighed ever so faintly, but said no more. What a poor, selfish, narrow soul this lovely- girl's must be! Nature does sometimes enshrine her commonest spirits in these splendid temples. He felt a little disappointed by the girl's selfishness and coldness ; for he had imagined that she needed only to be awakened from the happy idleness of a young joy-loving spirit. He said no more, though they walked side by side as far as St. Mary's, the red square-towered church at the beginning of the town, and parted with perfect friendliness. Yet the thought of that interview vexed Malcolm Forde all day long. *I had hoped better things of her,' he said to himself. 'But of course I sha'n't give up. She is so young, and seems to have a pliant disposition. What a pity that Luttrell has let his daughters grow up just as they please, like the foxgloves in his hedges!' In Mr. Forde's opinion, those four young women ought to have been trained into a little band of sis- ters of mercy — a pious sisterhood carrying life and light into the dark alleys of Hawleigh. It was not a large place, that western market-town, numbering eleven thousand souls in all ; yet there were alleys enough, and moral darkness and poverty and sickness STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 27 and sorrow enough, to make work for a nunnery of ministering women. Mr. Forde had plenty of district- visitors ready to labour for him ; but they were for the most part ill-advised and frivolous ministrants, and absorbed more of his time by their need of coun- sel and supervision than he cared to give them. They were of the weakest order of womanhood, craving perpetual support and assistance, wanting all of them to play the ivy to Mr. Forde's oak ; and no oak, how- ever vigorous, could have sustained such a weight of ivy. He had to tell them sometimes, in plainest words, that if they couldn't do their work without continual recourse to him, their work was scarcely worth having. Whereupon the weaker vessels drop- ped away, admitting in their High- Church slang that they had no 'vocation ;' that is to say, there was too much bread and too little sack in the business, too much of the poor and not enough of Mr. Forde. For this reason he liked Gertrude Luttrell, who went about her work in a workmanlike way, rarely applied to him for counsel, had her own opinions, and really did achieve some good. It may have been for this reason, and in his desire to oblige Gertrude, that he made a little effort, and contrived to play croquet in the Vicarage garden on this midsummer evening. CHAPTER II. * Best leave or take the perfect creature, Take all she is or leave complete ; Transmute you will not form or feature, Change feet for wings or wings for feet.' It was halcyon weather for croquet ; not a cloucl in the warm summer sky, and promise of a glorious sunset, red and glowing, for 'the shepherd's delight.' The grass had heen shorn that morning, and w^as soft and thick, and sweet with a tliymy perfume ; a little uneven here and there, hut affording so much the more opportunity for the players to prove them- selves superior to small difficulties. The roses and seringa were in their midsummer glory, and from the white walls of the Vicarage came the sweet odours of jasmine and honeysuckle, clematis and myrtle. All sweet-scented flowers seemed to grow here with a wilder luxuriance than Malcolm Forde had ever seen anywhere else. His own small patrimony was on a northern soil, and all his youthful recollections were of a bleaker land than this. STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 29 ' An enervating climate, I'm afraid,' he said to himself; and it seemed to him that the roses and seringa might he 'a snare.' There was something stifling in the slumberous summer air, the Arcadian luxury of syllabubs and cream, the verdure and blos- som of this flowery land. He felt as if his soul must needs stagnate, as if life must become too much an affair of the senses, in so sweet and sensuous a clime. This was but a passing fancy which flashed upon him as he opened the broad white gate and went into the garden, where the four girls in their white gowns and various ribbons were scattered on the grass : Blanche striking the last hoop into its place with her mallet ; Diana trying a stroke at loose croquet ; Gertrude busy at a tea-table placed in the shade of a splendid Spanish chestnut, which spread its branches low and wide, making a tent of greenery beneath which a dozen people could dine in comfort ; Eliza- beth apart from all the rest, standing by the sundial, tall, and straight as a dart, looking like a Greek princess in the days when the gods fell in love with the daughters of earthly kings. Mr. Forde was not a Greek god, but a faint thrill stirred his senses at sight of that gracious figure by the sundial, nevertheless ; only an artist's delight in 30 STK ANGERS AND PILGRIMS. perfect beaut}-. The life wliicli he had planned for himself was in most things the life of a monk ; but he could not help feeling that Elizabeth Luttrell was perfectly beautiful, and that for a man of a weaker stamp there might be danger in this friendly asso- ciation, which brought them together somehow two or three times in every week. 'I have known her a year, and she has never touched my heart in the faintest degree,' he told himself, with some sense of triumph in the know- ledge that he was impervious to such fascinations. ' If we were immortal, and could go on knowing each other for thirty years — she for ever beautiful and young, I for ever in the prime of manhood — I do not think she would be any nearer to me than she is now.' Mr. Forde was the first of the guests. The three girls ran forward to receive him, greeting him with a kind of rapture. It was so good of him to come, they gushed out simultaneously. They felt as if a saint had come to take the first red ball and mallet. Gertrude always gave Mr. Forde the red-ringed balls ; she said they reminded her of the rubric. Elizabeth stirred not at all. She stood by the sundial, her face to the west, comtemplative, or sim- ply indifferent, Mr. Forde could not tell which. Did STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 31 she see him, he wondered, and deliberately refrain from greeting him ? Or was she so lost in thought as to be unconscious of his presence ? Or did she re- sent his little lecture of that morning ? She could hardly do that, he considered, when they had parted in perfect friendship. 'It is so good of you to be punctual,' said Ger- trude, making a pleasant little jingling with the china teacups ; the best china, all blue-and-gold, hoarded away in the topmost of cupboards, wrapped in much silver paper, and only taken down for festive tea- drinkings like this. It was not a kettledrum tea, but a rustic feast rather; or a 'tea-shuffle,' as young Mr. Melvin, the lawyer, called it. There was a round table, covered with a snowy table-cloth, and laden with home pro- duce : a pound-cake of golden hue ; preserved fruits of warm red and amber tint in sparkling cut-glass jars ; that standing-dish on west-country tables, a junket ; home-made bread, with the brown kissing crust that never comes from the hireling baker's oven ; teacakes of feathery lightness ; rich yellow butter, which to the epicure might have been worth a journey from London to Devonshire ; and for the crowning glory of the banquet, a capacious basket of straw- berries and a bowl of clotted cream. 32 STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. * The Melvins are always late,' said Diana ; ' but we are not going to let you wait for your tea, Mr. Forde — are we, Gertrude? Here comes Ann with the kettle.' This silver teakettle was the pride of the Luttrell household. It had been presented to Mr. Luttrell at the close of his ministrations in a former parish, and was engraved with the Luttrell coat of arms in all the splendour of its numerous quarterings. A spirit- lamp burned beneath this sacred vessel, which Ger- trude tended as carefully as if she had been a vestal virgin watching the immortal flame. Mr. Forde insisted that they should wait for the rest of the company. He did not languish for that cup of tea wherewith Miss Luttrell was eager to re- fresh his tired frame. Perhaps in such a moment his thoughts may have glanced back to the half-for- gotten mess-table, and its less innocent banquets; the long table, glittering in the low sunshine, with its bright array of fairy glass and costly silver — was not his corps renowned for its taste in these trifles ? — the pleasant familiar faces, the talk and laughter. Time was when he had lived his life, and that alto- gether another life, difl'ering in every detail from his existence of to-day, holding not one hope, or dream, or project which he cherished now. He could look STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS. 33 back at those idle pleasures, those aimless days, without the faintest sigh of regret. Saddened, dis- couraged, fainthearted, he had often been since this pilgrimage of his was begun ; but never for one weak moment had he looked longingly back. He said a few words to Blanche, who blushed, and sparkled, and answered him in little gasps, with upward worshipping gaze, as if he had been indeed an apostle ; talked with Diana for five minutes or so about the choir — she played the harmonium in St. Mary's, the older of the two churches, which did not boast an organ ; and then strolled across the grass to the sundial, where Lizzie was still standing in mute contemplation of the western sky. They shook hands almost silently. He did not intend to apologise for what he had said that morn- ing. If the reproof had stung her, so much the bet- ter. He had meant to reprove. And yet it pained him a little to think that he had offended her. How lovely she was as she stood before him, smiling, in the western sunshine ! He never remembered havin