LI B RARY 
 
 OF THL 
 
 U N 1 VERS ITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 823 
 
 K6360
 
 f ^1 '^ 
 
 ONLY TO BE MAEEIED.
 
 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 % |l0kL 
 
 BY 
 
 Mes. FLOEENCE WILLIAMSON, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "FREDERICK RIVERS." 
 
 IN THEEE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 TINSLEY BROTHEES, 18, CATHEEINE ST,. STEAND. 
 
 1867. 
 [The Right of Translation is reserved.]
 
 LONDON : 
 BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
 
 8^^ 
 
 v.l. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 i. 
 > 
 
 ? 
 
 f 
 
 J 
 
 3 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. LEIGH 
 
 II. — THE OLD woman's STOEY 
 
 III. — patty's new feiend 
 
 IV. — motherless 
 
 V. from MANCHESTER TO LONDON . 
 
 VI. AN ADOPTED CHILD — HEIR PRESUMPTIVE 
 
 VII. — HEIR APPARENT 
 
 Vni. CRUEL KINDNESSES 
 
 IX. — THE REFUGE 
 
 X. A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL 
 
 XI. — WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 
 
 XII. — PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 26 
 
 40 
 
 64 
 
 80 
 
 96 
 
 120 
 
 141 
 
 160 
 
 180 
 
 215 
 
 250 

 
 ONLY TO BE MAEKIED. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 LEIGH. 
 
 " The Lord's gone out of His ordinary way 
 to bless me to-day ; my wife's confined o' 
 twins. 
 
 Such was the announcement of the advent 
 into the world of Martha Wilson and her 
 brother John, with which their father as- 
 tonished his three most intimate friends on 
 the morning of the first of April, 1830. Martha 
 was never superstitious, but she could not 
 forgive a mysterious Pro^ddence for sending her 
 into the world on that particular day. It 
 seemed as if she were doomed to be an '^ April 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 fool " as long as she lived, and had been 
 written down an ass in the first line of her 
 Ijiography. All through life she fancied that 
 there was in her character, or, at least, in her 
 destiny, a something crooked that could not be 
 made straight ; as if she were fated to be for 
 ever either jest or jester. But at any rate, it 
 was on April fool's day that she was born, and 
 she couldn't alter it. 
 
 As to John, he died about five hours after 
 his birth ; parted from all the more easily after 
 so short an acquaintance. Even five days 
 would have made it wonderfully harder for the 
 eccentric old father and gentle feeble mother 
 to put him into his httle cofiin, and bury him 
 out of their sight. Martha was as plump a 
 Imby as baby could be ; and, considering how 
 easily she exhausted the maternal resources, it 
 seemed a good thing that her tiny twin brother 
 had gone to be taken better care of elsewhere, 
 and had left her alone. There never was such
 
 LEIGH. 3 
 
 a baby, excepting tbe last of your own, good 
 reader, if you have any ; and Mrs. Wilson's 
 nurse was perfectly certain that the little 
 stranger had smiled at her before she was a 
 whole day old. 
 
 The friends to whom, in the words I have 
 quoted above, Mr. Wilson announced the sin- 
 gular mercy of the Lord, were three maiden 
 ladies. They were by no means common old 
 maids. They had no simpering affectations or 
 fascinating sentimentalisms. They were hard- 
 working women of business ; managing a shop 
 of their own in the busiest thoroughfare in 
 Manchester, with an energy and success that 
 many a man of business regarded with envy 
 and surprise. A fom-th sister, an old maid 
 also, kept house for them in one of the 
 healthiest and pleasantest of Manchester sub- 
 urbs. They built the house themselves; or 
 rather, as it is necessary to be exact in speaking 
 of such self-helping maidens, they had it built 
 
 • B 2
 
 4 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 for them. A capital detached house it •was, 
 with trusty foundations and solid walls ; huilt 
 for living in, and not for immediate sale. It 
 was a perfect model of ventilation and good 
 draining, and every nook • and comer was 
 furnished with some cupl^oard or closet, so that 
 even those four tidiest of maiden ladies could 
 never lack a j^lace for everything. Almost the 
 most difficult task they ever had was to find 
 a name for the new house. There was no end 
 of friendly suggestions offered for their assist- 
 ance. Mr. Wilson suggested " Ebenezer Cot- 
 tage," as combining humility with gratitude. 
 " Kose Cottage," " Paradise Place," " Home of 
 Peace," " The Four Sisters," with scores more 
 of ridiculous names, were proposed by tlieii* 
 various friends. But none ^f these would suit. 
 In fact, they had almost made up their minds 
 to leave the naming of their new abode to the 
 genius of tlie postman ; when, in a moment 
 of insjfiration, the fourth sister, who was
 
 LEIGH. 5 
 
 christened Betsey, solved the problem with 
 which they had so long been struggling. 
 
 " We shall never get a name for our house," 
 said Mary, the eldest. 
 
 " Why not ask the postman the address of 
 Miss Ehodes," said Sarah, the second, " and see 
 what he says it is ; for of course he's sure to 
 know." 
 
 " Nonsense, Sally," said Jane, " he can't know 
 our address till we've got one." 
 
 " And we've got one," said Betsey. " Polly 
 just gave it to us ; it's ' Our House.' What 
 could be better ? " ' 
 
 So it was settled at last. " The Misses 
 Ehodes, Our House,, Cheetham Hill, Man- 
 chester." And a very snug house it was. 
 But it was at tli^ shop that Mr. Wilson had 
 called to communicate the news of his unex- 
 pected and undeserved honour. Not being the 
 least affected, and knowing quite well, as a fact 
 in natural history, that there are sucii things
 
 6 ONLY TO BE MARPwIED. 
 
 as twins, Sarah and Betsey and Jane Qon- 
 gratulated their old friend on his new trea- 
 sures. 
 
 " Ah ! " said the old gentleman, " it's the 
 Lord's doing/' 
 
 " And it's marvellous in our eyes," said 
 Betsey. 
 
 "Ah," said the old gentleman again, with a 
 strange mixture of parental affection and Cal- 
 vinistic complacency, "Jacob have I loved, and 
 Esau have I hated. Will they both be Jacobs, 
 Miss Sarah ? " 
 
 "I dont think it's at all Hkely," said mis- 
 chievous Betsey, " for you've just told us one 
 was a girl." 
 
 He could not quite help laughing, though he 
 thought Betsey was approaching too nearly to 
 the jesting which is not convenient. But he 
 wished them a cheerful good-morning, and 
 went to his shop, a few doors from the 
 Ehodeses. Somehow he couldn't work. He
 
 LEIGH. 7 
 
 grew restless and melancholy ; lie kept think- 
 ing of his wife, and wondering, with a strange 
 foreboding that he could not master, whether 
 all was still well at home. At last he could 
 resist the impulse no longer ; he left business, 
 never too busy with him, to the charge of his 
 foreman, and returned to his house. They had 
 just laid little Johnnie in the cradle, dead. 
 
 So, as I said before, Martha was to have no 
 rival or partner to rob her of any share of the 
 parental fondness ; and perhaps too, the little 
 brother, sleeping so quietly in the white cradle, 
 had left her his cares and troubles also. But at 
 any rate, they did not burden her yet ; and her 
 sleep seemed not less peaceful than his, as she 
 lay by her mother's side. The poor mother was 
 speechlessly weeping. It seemed so hard that 
 she should be robbed of the joy after all her 
 pain ; and they had three girls already. Would 
 it not have been better if little Martha had 
 been taken, and the only boy left ? And then
 
 8 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 she jjresscd the little sleeper closer to her 
 bosom, and almost felt that she had been 
 cherishing murderous thoughts against her 
 babe, and half feared that God might take her 
 also, to punish the mother's rebellion. 
 
 But God did not take her. On the contrary- 
 it seemed quite plain that he intended her to stay 
 a very long time, for better or for worse, in this 
 very puzzling world, where perhaps more people 
 lose their way than find it. She had as much 
 health as all her three sisters put together, and 
 being positively " the last appearance " of a baby 
 in Mr. Wilson's family she seemed to be having 
 her benefit, " and producing an immense sensa- 
 tion '^ every day. And yet her father could never 
 persuade himself that she could by any device 
 be kept alive for a whole year, unless she were 
 taken in the summer months to the sea-side ; or 
 to some of the delicious villages, of which there 
 are not a few within easy reach of Manchester. 
 The other three girls were at school for the
 
 LEIGH. 9 
 
 most part, and at any rate, none of tiiem was 
 the baby ; and they had got fairly seasoned to 
 this world, before going out of town had 
 become the fashion in Mr. Wilson's circle. 
 Indeed, it was hardly in fashion yet. But 
 somehow or other he could not bear to think of 
 any kind of harm coming to the baby — they 
 had begun to call her Patty by this time ; so, if 
 nobody else went from home in the hot sum- 
 mer, Patty and her mother were sure to be 
 seen at some watering-place, or walking toge- 
 ther through woods and meadows, over liills 
 and moors, in the cool quiet country. And if 
 Patty did not need it, it was quite plain her 
 mother did. 
 
 Besides, going to the sea-side, or especially 
 into some quiet inland village, was not quite so 
 much going from home in their case, as most 
 people must often have found it. Who does 
 not know the torturing delight of a month at 
 the sea-side 1 We leave a quiet home where
 
 10 ONLY TO BE MARRIEU. 
 
 there is a place for everything, and where 
 everything is generally in its place ; where, if 
 we want anything, we ring the bell and tell 
 
 the servant to bring it ; where, in the privacy 
 and safety of the time-honoured Englishman's 
 castle, we can do just what we like ; and we go 
 to a place where everything is confusion and 
 disappointment, where half the house is in- 
 habited by people who are total strangers to us, 
 and who very likely complain that we are ex- 
 tremely disagreeable, and that they are being in- 
 cessantly disturbed either by our ovm merriment, 
 or the nocturnal lamentations of our children. 
 " Well, my dear," says the A\dfe to her husband, 
 " you can't expect to be so comfortable in lodg- 
 ings as you are at home." Just as if the father 
 of a family had not left liome for the purpose 
 of being rather more comfn-table than usual ; 
 spending three pounds a week for apartments, 
 and a whole mint of money for travelling ex- 
 penses in the hope of special cnjo}Tnent. ]\[ore-
 
 LEIGH. 11 
 
 over, all the prettiest watering-places are the 
 fashionable watering-places ; and then, instead 
 of being more at your ease than you were in 
 No. 1, Any Street, you discover, to your horror, 
 that the customs of the place that you have 
 paid so much to visit require you to dress in 
 your best clothes, and show yourself off on the 
 parade — and, in fact, do everything that from 
 the bottom of your soul you most utterly de- 
 test doing. And at last, when all is over, with 
 what profound melancholy does a man tell the 
 tale of his summer's trip to the little circle of 
 his friends and acquaintances. " Charming 
 place," he says, " glorious parade, splendid sea, 
 
 crowds of fashionable company " and then, 
 
 to his most intimate friend, he relieves his mind 
 by improper language and honesty. For after 
 all, the great benefit of going from home in the 
 summer is simply this, that one finds out what 
 a blessing it is that summer comes only once a 
 year.
 
 12 OXLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 But the watering-place to which ^Ii'S. Wilson 
 and Patty were in the hahit of going every 
 other summer was Blackj^ool. A fashionable 
 watering-place too, in its way ; perhaps the most 
 fashionaljle in Lancashire, and much more 
 fashionable than beautiful. Excepting the sea, 
 which is what people call a fine sea, there is 
 really nothing worth visiting Blackpool for. 
 But Patty and her mother had relations who 
 lived there, and with whom they could really 
 be at home. Like the natives and remilar in- 
 habitants of the place, — the people who not 
 only bask in the sun in the brightest weather, 
 but who also get the cold salt water blown into 
 their faces all through the dreary winter, — they 
 could defy the tyranny of those fashions wdiich 
 were meant only for holiday-makers, for those 
 imhappy mortals who have left a comfortable 
 home to enjoy themselves in uncomfortable 
 apartments. But Blackpool was not the place 
 they liked best to go to ; it was far ploasanter
 
 LEIGH. 13 
 
 to spend the summer months at Leigh. Every 
 other year, in that most delicious hamlet, they 
 spent four or five weeks with old Joseph Piatt, 
 who was an uncle of the maiden Ehodeses. In 
 fact, before they went to Manchester he had 
 been as good as a father to them, not to say, 
 better. For their father had done them the 
 gross injustice of being perseveringly poor ; 
 and dying, when Betsey was only five years old, 
 had left a blessing and four girls to his wife's 
 brother, old Joseph Piatt, aforesaid. 
 
 Mrs. Ehodes had died a year before her 
 husband ; and though very few human beings 
 die of anything like a broken heart, yet poor 
 Mrs. Ehodes's death did really kill her husband. 
 He was a man with not half spirit enough to 
 bear his infirmity, whatever his infirmity might 
 be — a most amiable man, who was never 
 allowed to go out alone with more than a shil- 
 ling in his pocket, because he couldn't resist 
 the temptation of giving all his loose money to
 
 14 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 the first Ijcggar-Avoman with a baby, who was 
 clever enough to invent a pitiful autobiography 
 and burst into tears. He might have been a 
 rich man if he had been a little harder, or even 
 without being really hard at all ; but he was 
 very anxious to Ijc just, and very ready to be 
 kind, and the people with whom he had to do 
 took every sort of mean advantage . of him, 
 doing their wicked best to reverse the benedic- 
 tion, " Blessed are the meek, for they shall in- 
 herit the earth." He never quite understood 
 how badly he was treated ; in fact, it would 
 have given him far more pain to know that his 
 neighbours were so ungenerous, than even his 
 own want of success caused him. But, at any 
 rate, he knew quite well that he was not suc- 
 cessful, and many a time he had lain awake all 
 night thinking how disappointed his wife must 
 be, and wondering what he would do with the 
 girls. And when liis wife had left him, he 
 used to fancy in his loneliness, that perhaps she
 
 LEIGH. 15 
 
 had died of some secret hidden trouble that 
 she had been too brave-hearted to tell him of ; 
 and, at any rate, he had nobody left to talk 
 with, and he did not the least know what to do 
 in all the bewilderment of his ever-increasing 
 ill-success. There was nobody any longer to 
 take all his money out of his pocket, except a 
 shilling ; nobody to manage the servants and 
 look after the children. He never could find 
 anything he wanted in his own wardrobe ; and 
 when plates and dishes were broken, and silver 
 spoons and forks were lost, and the dinners 
 were badly cooked, and all was muddle and 
 confusion together, he never could sufficiently 
 brace himself to give anybody a good scolding, 
 however much it might have been deserved, 
 and reduce his chaos into some sort of order. 
 So, in fact, he gave it up ; gave everything up ; 
 gave up in fine — the ghost. 
 
 About then the Khodeses went to live with 
 their uncle, old Joseph Piatt, who gave them a
 
 16 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 much better education than rustic Leigh was 
 in the halit of thinking necessary, though it in- 
 cluded no showy accomplishments. What was 
 the use, for instance, of learning French, German, 
 or Italian, when no living inhabitant of Leigh 
 could remember ever havino^ seen a foreiomer ? 
 Dancing, again, was sinful, not to mention that 
 there were no young men to dance with in Mr. 
 Piatt's circle of friends. As to music, there 
 was only one house in Leigh in which a piano 
 was to be found, and that was the house of 
 old Aaron Higginbotham, the solicitor ; a very 
 good solicitor too, and one who would also have 
 been a good husband and a good father, but for 
 an inveterate habit of drinking. His horse ^ 
 knew every public-house lietween Leigh and 
 Manchester, and never failed to stop at every 
 one of them, wlioever happened to be driving 
 him. Many a time had the safety of the man 
 depended on the sagacity of the beast ; and 
 when he reached home rather more drunk than
 
 LEIGH. 17 
 
 usual, it was quite uncertain whether he would 
 call his daughters to family prayers, or turn 
 them out into the garden and bolt the doors. 
 But, in spite of his intemperance, he managed 
 the affairs of his clients with great discretion ; 
 and when, after a long sickness brought about 
 by his habitual intemjoerance, he was well 
 enough to take his place in the large square 
 pew at Leigh church, he never failed to request 
 the clergyman to read publicly before the 
 thanksgiving, " Aaron Higginbotham desires to 
 return thanks to Almighty God for recovery 
 from a dangerous illness." Very merry girls 
 his daughters were, in spite of the discomforts 
 that often resulted from their father's infirmity, 
 and they played, and sang, and danced far better 
 than could have been expected from country 
 lasses. But old Mr. Piatt did not like it ; he 
 thought singing songs, and dancing, and poor 
 old Higginbotham's drunkenness, were somehow 
 all of a piece, and that it was better to be on 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 18 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 the safe side. So the only music the Ehodcses 
 learned was the psalm and hymn tunes required 
 for public worship in the Methodist chapel in 
 Leigh. They went once a week to the prac- 
 tising, where there was a fiddle and a flute, and 
 a bass-viol, and a leader, whose furious energy 
 and stentorian voice were, perhaps, sufficient 
 compensation for want of skill and taste. Then, 
 as they grew up, they became more and more 
 useful on old Joseph Piatt's farm, and could 
 milk, and make butter and cheese, and brew as 
 well as anybody. But they had a kind of 
 ambition, and, at any rate, a very proper inde- 
 pendence of spirit, and they did not choose to 
 be a burden on their good-natured uncle ; so 
 he very generously set them up in business in 
 a quiet way in Manchester, where more and 
 more they prospered as all good people will, 
 wdio have really made up their minds what to 
 do, and who stick to the doing of it. 
 
 Mr. Piatt was very old, nearly ninety, when
 
 LEIGH. 19 
 
 Mrs. "Wilson and Patty used to visit him ; but 
 lie was a very cheerful old man, knowing and 
 known by almost everybody in Leigh and its 
 neighbourhood. There was no end to his 
 merry stories, and there was no young child 
 with whom Patty felt half so much at home as 
 she did with old Grandfather Piatt. In Man- 
 chester, and even at Blackpool, she was not 
 allowed to go out alone, for there were many 
 dangerous crossings and crowded streets in 
 which she mig;ht s^et bewildered and lost. But 
 at Leigh she could wander for hours in Mr. 
 Piatt's own fields, and she might have lain 
 do^vn and slept on the king's highway without 
 the slightest danger of being run over. So she 
 would often be away from the farm, excepting 
 at meal times, almost all the day long, walking 
 till she was tired, and then sitting down to rest 
 on the grass, or on a stile, or on some great 
 stone by the river's side. Her favourite walk 
 was down through the fields to the river, and 
 
 2
 
 20 OXLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 then along the water side till it was time to go 
 home again, and somehow or other she was 
 always punctual, though her only clock was the 
 sun and the shadows. 
 
 And so Mrs. Wilson and old Mr. Piatt were all 
 the more frightened when one evening Patty 
 did not come back at all. She was then nearly 
 fourteen years old, and it was late indeed 
 before they began to feel seriously uneasy. 
 Patty, they felt sure, knew her way in all 
 directions for miles round old ^Ir. Piatt's farm, 
 and she was a strano:e child, findino- com- 
 pany when almost every other giil of her own 
 age would liave been terrified by intolerable 
 loneliness. She had scarcely any companions, 
 even in ^lanchester ; none of those bosom 
 friends that are so abundant in earlv childhood, 
 and so few in those riper yeai"s when we so 
 much more deeply need them. At Leigh her 
 choicest friends seemed to be the calves, and 
 lambs, and pigeons, and the little fishes playing
 
 LEIGH. 21 
 
 in the river — a river so clear and brio-lit that 
 you could see almost every gram of sand at 
 the bottom of it — and the wild flowers and 
 mosses in the wood that lay between the Leigh 
 Koad at the top of a high hill and the river at 
 the bottom. She had left the farm as soon as 
 dinner was over ; that is to say, between one 
 and two o'clock, and walked quietly across the 
 fields to the river side. She sat there for per- 
 haps an hour on a great smooth stone that had 
 come to be her favourite seat, watching the fishes, 
 and then watching a pair of blackbirds whose 
 nest w^as at the other side, trying to count how 
 many times they carried home food to their 
 little ones; and then she thought she would go 
 across the bridge, and along the lane at the 
 other side, to see an old woman, a tenant of 
 old Mr. Piatt's, and who had gained her con- 
 fidence by telling wild stories of the old times 
 of Leigh history, which were now almost fading 
 away from the memory of men. The old
 
 22 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 woman persuaded her to stay mtli her till tea- 
 time, and she was only too glad to linger and 
 hear the end of a story that had been begun a 
 week before. It was still light when she left 
 the old woman's house, for it was considerably 
 above the level of the river, and although the 
 sun had already sunk below the hill on the 
 other side and there was no moonlight, it 
 seemed as if in these long ^lidsummer days not 
 even the nights could be dark. So Patty set 
 off about half past seven o'clock to return to 
 the farm, no way hurrying, and intending to 
 ramble through the wood to the Leigh Eoad, 
 instead of taking her ordinary way through the 
 meadows. So she went along over the bridge, 
 over the stile, into the wood, up the steep 
 winding pathAvay, imtil she grew quite tned, 
 and sat down to rest, and think over the story 
 the old woman had been tclhng her. She sat 
 thinking and day-dreaming she could never 
 tell how long, till she fanly fell asleep, for,
 
 LEIGH. 23 
 
 evening though it was, the air was hotter and 
 closer than it had been all the day through. 
 When she woke she could hardly see her own 
 hand ; the wood was thick, and it was " the 
 leafy month of June." She could see no 
 glimpse of sky, for indeed it was black with 
 clouds, and in fact, almost before she had come 
 to understand where she really was, there was 
 a bright blue flash of lightning and a loud roar 
 of thunder that almost paralysed her with fear. 
 For thunder and lightning was the one thing 
 in all nature that utterly terrified her. But, 
 frightened or not, it was no use sitting where 
 she was, and so, slowly and carefully movmg 
 her hands before her, she walked downwards 
 and downwards along the steep winding path, 
 till at last she came to the well-known stile 
 and heard the washing of the river. How well 
 she knew and loved it ; and yet how black and 
 cold it seemed. And now her way would lie, 
 for some hundreds of yards at least, among
 
 24 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 great smooth stones, among which, in fear and 
 darkness, she might easily fall or lose her way. 
 Indeed she did lose her way, and instead of 
 turning towards the meadows, she turned 
 towards the bridge. It was a very narrow 
 bridge, about four feet wide, ^^^th no rail or 
 wall on either side ; — a bridge, from which only 
 a few weeks before the village doctor, coming 
 home drunk, in a dark wild night, had fallen 
 into the river and, washed down over some 
 twenty water-falls, had been at last taken out 
 bruised and mangled almost past recognition. 
 With speechless horror she found herself on the 
 middle of this bridge ; she dared not move 
 either backward or forward ; a single false step, 
 and she must fall into the water without the 
 faintest hope of rescue. Wondering what she 
 could do, bitterly and vainly regretting the 
 delay and weariness that had brought her into 
 so much fear and danger, she heard the firm 
 footsteps of a man walking down the lane at
 
 LEIGH. 25 
 
 the other side, and turning to cross the bridge. 
 She tried to call to him to ask his help, to 
 implore him at least not to harm her, but she 
 was utterly mastered by terror, and fell down 
 senseless. 
 
 " Poor cliild," said the stranger, " how cold- 
 she is ! What can I possibly do with her ? 
 How strange for such a young girl to be here 
 on such a night as this."
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE OLD woman's STORY. 
 
 The old woman, whose story had tempted 
 Patty to stay so long was, as I have said, one 
 of ]\Ir. Piatt's tenants, and one of the oldest 
 inhabitants of Leigh. Yet she was not a 
 native of the place, and nobody seemed clearly 
 to know who she was, or whence she had 
 come. She had not the broad, rough dialect 
 of the Leigh people, and she seemed to have 
 had more schoolinor than Leio-h manners and 
 customs could account for. 
 
 " Where did I leave off, Patty ? " said old 
 Lucy Wylde. 
 
 " Begin it again, granny, won't you ? " 
 said Patty. "You can hurry over the first 
 part ; but I should lilvc to hear it all at once."
 
 THE OLD WOMAN S STORY. 27 
 
 ''God bless you, lovey/' said the old 
 woman ; " it's a hard life that makes a pretty 
 story. Years ago, long before Clayton's fac- 
 tory was built and the Hall on the other side 
 of the new bridge, there was, where the new 
 Hall stands now, a dull old house with broken 
 windows, almost tumbling to pieces for want 
 of somebody to take care of it. The garden 
 was full of weeds, and the wall and fence were 
 broken do^vn wherever boys or stray cattle 
 had minded to pass through. Nobody seemed 
 to care what was done for the old Hall, and it 
 would have been but a dull house at the best. 
 There was the dark wood behind, and only a 
 footway through it to the Leigh Road; and 
 the old bridge was narrower and more dan- 
 gerous than the one just below. A house like 
 that would have needed happy hearts and 
 merry laughs, and true, true love to make it 
 homelike." 
 
 "Why, granny, you look as dull," said
 
 28 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 Patty, "as if you'd been moping there your- 
 self all that time." 
 
 " Nay, lovey, Tm not dull," said old Lucy ; 
 " it's all over now, but it was a weary time." 
 
 She seemed almost living the stor}^ over in 
 silent memory instead of telling it, so long 
 her pause seemed to Patty. 
 
 " Well, granny, go on. Who lived there ? " 
 
 " Ay, ay, who lived there, do you say ? 
 Well, the old Hall was standing, lovey, as I 
 told you ; it was what they called in Chan- 
 eery, but I don't know what that means. 
 Only it was all tumbling to pieces, and nobody 
 seemed able to give orders to have it set right. 
 But at last a man came doAvn all the way from 
 London to look at the place. He had the wall 
 and fences mended and the old house made 
 somethinsf decent-like : and he lived there for 
 two or three months till all was finished to his 
 mind. Then he put old Betty Tyler there to 
 be housekeeper — poor old body, it's years now
 
 THE OLD woman's STORY. 29 
 
 since old Betty's gone — and told her she might 
 have two servants to keep all in order, and 
 then went away again to London. So old 
 Betty did as he bid her, and Mary Briggs and 
 Ann Ashton were the lasses she had to help 
 her. It wasn't to call a hard place ; hut, for 
 all their bits o' sweethearting and good wages, 
 it was but dull livins^ in the old Hall. 'We 
 couldn't make anybody hear us,' old Betty 
 used to say, ' if we Avere all getting murdered 
 together.' And many a stormy night I sat 
 with her there, and we've half trembled to hear 
 the wind in the wood, and the splashing and 
 roaring of the water, and like a shrieking and 
 howling all round. Betty was a good old 
 body, a Methodist, and many a night when it 
 was thundering and lightening, and howling and 
 yeUing all round, she'd get out her little Bible 
 and read and pray ; and ' Lucy,' she'd say, 
 ' we'll be found watching ; perhaps the Lord's 
 
 coming.' "
 
 30 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 "I cant bear thunder and lightning," said 
 Patty. 
 
 *' Well, lovey," said the old woman, " it 
 never hurt old Betty Tyler. But, however, 
 one dark, wild night, just about the beginning 
 of September, there came a loud knocking at 
 the door, and startled all ^f us, for I was 
 keeping Betty company a bit. We all went to 
 the door together, and there stood the gentle- 
 man from London, and two strong men, hold- 
 ing between them a lady, who seemed crazed- 
 like and stared about her \^dthout sa}'ing a 
 word, like a poor mad thing. 
 
 " * Get her in,' said the gentleman, ' and 
 then you go over the liridge, Tom, and fetch 
 her luggage. Tic the horse to a post, and 
 then the driver can help you. Betty, get a 
 nice bright fire and lights in the parlour, and 
 in the two best bedrooms.' 
 
 " Of course Betty did as she was told, but 
 we'd a deal of whispering and wonderment,
 
 THE OLD woman's STORY. 31 
 
 and were half frightened of the poor pretty- 
 darling, though she looked so pale and weak. 
 However, she was very tired, and we soon got 
 her to bed, and one of us was to sleep with 
 her. ' Sleep you with her, Lucy,' they said ; 
 'you're knowinger-like than us, and you'll 
 manage her best, and you can call us if there's 
 any need.' So the clock was just striking 
 eleven as I went up to her room. She started 
 when she saw me and gave a sort of scream ; 
 but I sat down by her and kissed her, and she 
 began to cry, poor dear, and it seemed to com- 
 fort her, and I cried too, lovey, you may be sure. 
 
 " ' Has my guardian gone away ? ' she said. 
 * Mr. Windham, has he gone ? ' 
 
 " ' No, my dear,' I said, ' it's not likely he'd 
 go and never say good-bye. He's sleeping in 
 the large room at the back.' 
 
 " * I wish he would never wake again ! ' she 
 said, and her eyes flashed and glared. * More 
 cruel than all devils ! Only one day together,
 
 32 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 and he tore us apart, and swore we should 
 never see each other more. God ! how 
 couldst thou bear to see our helpless misery ? ' 
 
 " And then she A^^-ung her hands and cried 
 piteously, sitting on the Led and rocking her- 
 self backw\ards and forw^ards, till she grew 
 quite faint and dead-like, and so fell asleep. 
 But over and over again she kept starting up 
 and calling for Edwin. * Come, come, my o'v\ai 
 Edwin, they're taking me away. Save me, my 
 love, my husband ! ' It was little sleep, lovey, 
 I had that nio;ht, and when mornino^ came she 
 was too ill to get up — almost too ill to speak. 
 Of course we sent for the doctor, but he was 
 drunk before he got here, for he never could 
 pass a beer-shop without drinking, and there 
 was many a one between his house and the old 
 Hall. So Mr. Windham just sent liim home 
 again and went to Manchester for another. 
 The new doctor told us to keep her quiet and 
 she ^Avould come round in a day or two ; so as
 
 THE OLD WOMAN S STORY. 33 
 
 soon as she seemed out of danger, Mr. Wind- 
 ham left us and went back to London. ' She'll 
 be sure to tell you all about it when she gets a 
 little better/ he said ; ' all you have to do is 
 to be very kind to her, and see that nobody 
 ^dsits her, and that she does not run away. 
 Make her as happy as you can, poor child.' 
 
 "It was nearly tliree months, for all the doctor 
 said, before she could walk ; and all that time 
 I stayed with Betty and the lasses. They 
 seemed fair terrified. Never a sweetheart 
 would they have come to the old Hall. They 
 said it was never lucky ; and besides that, God 
 bless 'em, they'd kind hearts, and they couldn't 
 bring sweethearts and love-making in her way, 
 poor thing. So it was dull enough, and all the 
 duller for her trying to make us cheerful. 
 About the end of June " 
 
 *' Well, granny, but what did she come for ? 
 did she tell you all about it ?" 
 
 " Yes, lovey, didn't I tell you ? She was 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 what they call 'a ward in Chance^}^' I don't 
 know what that is, but it was bad enough for 
 her, poor dear ; for she was married, or thought 
 she was, and went away with her husband to 
 spend a happy honeymoon. They were down 
 in the other end of England, at a place they 
 call Torquay. It was the evening of the day 
 after their marriage, — just been married a day; 
 they had been walking over the do^vns, looking 
 at the blue, blue sea. I don't think there can 
 be such lovely water anywhere else, darling, for 
 I've seen it. I went down there for her, poor 
 thing, to try and hear news of her husband. I 
 asked for every place where she told me they'd 
 been together, and I'd have walked in every 
 one of their footsteps if I could have found 
 them ; but it was no use. The people at the 
 hotel remembered all about it, but he'd gone 
 away, left all his luggage behind him, and they 
 half thouQ-ht he'd drowned himself But I 
 never told her that, lovey. ' Oh, Lucy, Lucy/
 
 THE OLD woman's STORY. 35 
 
 slie said, ' it was my last hope ; and now I 
 know I shall never see him again. Married for 
 a day, for one day!" 
 
 . And then Lucy stopped, and rocked herself 
 backwards and forwards, aiid seemed to go 
 back a score of years, and live the misery over 
 again. Patty, too, was feeling very miserable 
 and half afraid, but she was getting impatient 
 for the end of the story. 
 
 " Go on, granny, go on ; you have not told 
 me half yet. It was evening, you know — the 
 day after the wedding ; what next ?" 
 
 " Yes, lovey ; but it's a long way to Torquay 
 and back, and I've just been going there again. 
 Well, they were walking in front of the hotel, 
 thinking they'd just see the streets and the best 
 of the shops before supper time, when she sud- 
 denly seized her husband's arm with both her 
 hands, and said, 'Oh, Edwin! there's Mr. 
 Windham ; what can have brought him here V 
 He soon came up to them, and two other gen- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 ONLY TO BE MARPJED. 
 
 tlemen were Avitli him. ' Well, sir 1 ' said Mr. 
 Windham to her husband, ' do you call this 
 the conduct of a gentleman, to huriy this poor 
 trusting child away when you knew you could 
 never marry her V He began to say they were 
 married already, and my poor darling was be- 
 ginning to tell them all about it : ' Yes, guar- 
 dian, we really are married ; and I am very, 
 
 very happy. It was at St. ' but ]\Ir. 
 
 Windham soon stopped them both, ' Nonsense ! 
 nonsense ! ' he said ; ' you might as well have 
 been married on the sofa. He cannot marry 
 you, poor child/ And then my poor pet grew 
 so frightened, she fainted away. And then 
 they took her into the hotel, and the gentlemen 
 explained to her husband all about it, and got 
 him to another hotel for that night, and she 
 never saw him any more. 
 
 " The next day they brought her here, as I 
 told you, lovey, one wild autumn night, and 
 she stayed at tlie old liall till the end of the
 
 THE OLD WOMAN S STORY. 37 
 
 next June. That month, the very last day — 
 we could hardly be sure it wasn't the day after 
 — her pretty baby was born. She was very, 
 very ill, she said she was sure she must die. So 
 the clergyman came from Leigh to see her, and 
 to christen the baby, Edwin Marie, after father 
 and mother. ' It didn't matter,' she said, ' boys 
 often have girls' names abroad, and perhaps it's 
 the only thing that will ever remind him of his 
 mother.' But it was only too true that she 
 would never get better. She just lived ten 
 days after the baby was born, and then she 
 died. The clergyman and the doctor had per- 
 suaded her to make a will to prevent any mis- 
 take ; and she left everything that belonged to 
 her to her boy. Of course we had to do the 
 best we could with the poor little thing, and 
 when it was about a month old, Mr. Windham 
 came down from London with a nurse, and 
 fetched it away. The girls stayed about six 
 months longer at the old Hall, and then Mr.
 
 38 ONLY TO BE MAIIIIIED. 
 
 Windham came down again from London, and 
 paid them the wages that were due, and made 
 them some very pretty presents besides, and 
 then the old Hall was shut up. It soon began 
 to look as it used to do, — the fences were 
 broken down by every idle boy who wanted to 
 steal a flower or fruit from the trees, and it was 
 just as much in Chanceiy as ever it was. At 
 last I suppose they got matters settled, and the 
 old place was pulled down altogether and the 
 new one built, — the one you know, Patty. So 
 that's all my story, lovey, and a ver}' dull 
 story too. And now get your bonnet, and run 
 home, or they'll begin to wonder where you 
 are. The sun will soon be behind the hill, and 
 it's rough, dangerous walking over the bridge 
 and by the water-side." 
 
 So old Lucy bid Patty good-bye, and Patty 
 went away, as we know already, to sleep in the 
 wood, and lose herself in the darkness and 
 storm.
 
 THE OLD WOMAN S STORY. 89 
 
 And where was Patty now ? She was in 
 Clayton Hall, and Edwin Marie was watching 
 over her. How odd that the old woman should 
 have been driven to tell her story on that par- 
 ticular night of all the year.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 patty's new friend. 
 
 With great difficulty, Edwin Forester had 
 carried Patty from the narrow bridge to a 
 cottage about three or four hundred yards off, 
 close to the river side. The cottao-e belongjed 
 to Clayton s factory people, and the man who 
 lived there had charge of the noble reservoirs, 
 which secured ample water-power for the fac- 
 tory, even in the dry est seasons. The mill 
 itself was in the midst of gardens, and its 
 south wall was covered with fruit-trees. It 
 was always scrupulously clean, admii'ably ven- 
 tilated, altogether different from the close, 
 du'ty, unwholesome fiictories of Stochport and 
 Manchester. Edwin knocked at the door of
 
 patty's new friend. 41 
 
 tlie cottage, scarcely knowing whether to leave 
 his burden there, or get assistance to carry the 
 poor child to Clayton's Hall, about a mile 
 further on, close to the mill. He had to knock 
 again and again, for the inmates were akeady 
 in bed ; the wind was loud, and the water was 
 rushing by with more than its wonted roar and 
 dash, and perhaps the inmates were in no hurry 
 to open their doors to a perfect stranger on 
 a dark, wild night. At last, however. Bob 
 Vickers appeared, and wanted to know who 
 the stranger was, and what he meant by 
 knocking at honest people's doors on such a 
 night, when they were only too thankful to be 
 able to get a wink of sleep, what with wind 
 and thunder and the river. 
 
 "But God bless us," said Bob, who had a 
 kind heart enough under his surly manners, 
 " what's amiss, master ? What's matter with 
 the lass ? Her looks welly dead like." 
 
 " Why, I know no more than you, Vickers,"
 
 42 ONLY TO BE MAFJilED. 
 
 said Forester ; " I picked her up on the bridge. 
 She seemed to have lost her way." 
 
 " On the bridge, master ? Good Lord ! It's 
 not many as tumble down there on a dark 
 night but find their way to the t'other side o' 
 the mill wi' all their bones brocken ! Poor 
 little wench, who can her be ? hers none o* our 
 folk. Peggy, lass, get thee things on, and 
 come down as fast as ye can, here's a poor 
 wench seems welly dead like — look sharp." 
 
 Peggy Vickers, his wife, was soon down, and 
 they took Patty in, and tried what they could 
 to revive her. But she seemed utterly un- 
 nerved, and was no sooner brought to con- 
 sciousness than she fainted away again from 
 sheer terror. Moreover, in a cottage where 
 sickness was scarcely ever kno^\Ti, even the 
 simplest restoratives were not to be expected ; 
 and Edwin soon made up his mind that she 
 must be taken on to the Hall as gently and as 
 quickly as possible. Had he not also looked
 
 patty's new feiend. 43 
 
 on her sweet face, and begun to feel tlie fasci- 
 nation of a little liarmless mystery, a romantic 
 adventure ? Who could tell what this maiden 
 might be whom he had rescued like a gallant 
 knight from danger and death ? She was at 
 least beautiful, and in the morning she would 
 be able to tell him who she was, and he could 
 take her home. The Hall was not over cheer- 
 ful at the best, and a new companion, so 
 strangely found, might help to make the dul- 
 ness of the country, to a young man of twenty, 
 somewhat less intolerable. So Vickers and 
 Edwin took her on to the Hall, more carrying 
 than leading her ; not teasing her, and indeed 
 scarcely suffering her, to speak ; and explaining 
 to her where she had been found, and that she 
 should be taken safely home in the morning. 
 
 Once at his own house, Edwin was soon able 
 to find means to restore Patty ; and she was 
 soon well enough to understand where she had 
 been found, and to explain how she came there.
 
 41 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 She was not at all frightened now, and her only 
 anxiety was for her mother and good old Mr. 
 Piatt. But Forester assured her that he would 
 send one of his servants to them at once to 
 tell them that she was safe, and to promise 
 them that he would himself bring her home to 
 them early the next morning. In fact, he 
 despatched a servant for this purpose immedi- 
 ately, and resigned Patty to the care of his 
 housekeeper, that proper arrangements might 
 be made for her rest and comfort. 
 
 Clayton's Hall was very unlike the old Hall, 
 on the site of which it had been built. The 
 rooms were large and lofty, and furnished with 
 excellent taste, and in the most modern style. 
 It seemed to have been the intention of its 
 proprietor to remove ever}i:hing that could 
 revive old associations, or remind its inmates 
 of the gloom and sorrow by which, for many 
 dreary years, the old Hall had been haunted. 
 Many trees had been cut down which used to
 
 patty's new friend. 45 
 
 darken the mndows, and tlie new lioiise stood 
 in the midst of a clear space which extended 
 from the river to the foot of the hill. The 
 garden was well stocked with such hardy plants 
 as would thrive in that north country ; and 
 there were hothouses and conservatories for 
 choice and more delicate flowers and fruits. 
 The old bridge had been taken away, and a 
 new one built ; which formed part of a good 
 road winding through the wood from the 
 factory to the Leigh Eoad above. But as 
 Patty lay awake, with only a dim candle and 
 flickering fire-light lighting the large chamber 
 which had been appropriated to her use, she 
 could shut her eyes and fancy herself in the 
 old Hall to which poor Marie had been brought 
 that wild autumn night, and where her little 
 boy was born. She lay awake thinking of old 
 Lucy's story, and wondering what had become 
 of Edwin Marie, and whether the new Hall 
 was his, and whether he ever came to Adsit it.
 
 46 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 Sometimes, as wild gusts of wind went howling 
 by, and the rain l)eat against her windows, she 
 trembled in her bed with fear, lest there should 
 be some new tragedy in that lonely house in 
 wliich she herself must play the chief sufferer's 
 part. But at last she slept, a sound, dreamless, 
 refreshing sleep — so sound and long, that the 
 sun was high in heaven when she awoke, and 
 remembered that she was in Clayton's Hall. 
 She looked out from the windows on the river, 
 and the meadows on the other side, and the 
 factory reservoirs, and the glorious wood cover- 
 ing the hill with richest foliage of every tint 
 and shade. It seemed a perfect paradise, into 
 which surely no grief or wrong could ever 
 come. And Patty was young, and morning 
 was to her, what it ought to be for all of us, 
 the gladdest, brightest, hopefullest part of all 
 the day. It seemed to assure her that what- 
 ever darkness there was in the past was for- 
 gotten and forgiven, and to call her to a new
 
 patty's new friend. 47 
 
 life of joy and love and trust. But wlien we 
 have had long years of the stern conflict of 
 life, the morning brings us more fear than 
 hope. It renews all our cares. It calls us to 
 battle and danger. And there is scarcely a 
 thanksgiving we more heartily utter than this, 
 " Thank God another day is over ! '' 
 
 Edwin had been up, almost " with the lark,'' 
 and had half begun to think that his young 
 guest would never wake. He himself had 
 scarcely slept at all, for he was almost ridi- 
 culously excited by his romantic adventure, 
 and a little afraid lest it might scarcely 
 bear the disenchanting light of common day. 
 But when Patty came down he was more 
 excited than ever ; and for a young man 
 of twenty, and in utter forgetfulness of his 
 wonted self-possession, far too basliful and 
 bewildered. Young gentlemen of that age, 
 especially if they have come from London to 
 illuminate the rustics of some out-of-the-way
 
 48 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 country district, are perfectly certain that they 
 are and must be the pride and glory of all 
 God's creation, " the roof and cro^\^l of things/' 
 But Forester could only blush and stutter, and 
 ask irrelevant questions, and make silly ob- 
 vious remarks, after the manner of all young 
 gentlemen who so far forget themselves as to 
 be bashful. 
 
 ^' We have a lovely morning, Miss . But, 
 
 indeed, I scarcely heard your name, and I've 
 
 been trying to recollect it all the morning." 
 Thus did Mr. Edwin Forester plunge into 
 
 the profoundest depths of conversational ori- 
 ginality. 
 
 " My name is Patty Wilson, sir," said his 
 guest ; " and I should veiy much like to know 
 you7' name, that I may thank you for yom* 
 great kindness. Of course I couldn't help 
 fainting away on the bridge, could I ? " 
 
 Here her large blue eyes, with their bright 
 beauty and wondi-ous depths of thought and
 
 patty's new friend. 49 
 
 inquiry, and simple trust, doubled his con- 
 fusion. 
 
 " But I never meant to give trouble to any- 
 body, least of all to a stranger." 
 
 "My name's Forester, but you need not 
 thank me. Miss Patty ; you've given me a 
 great deal of pleasure, and no trouble at all," 
 said Edmn. " I'd have taken care of anybody 
 I found in such a place." 
 
 Here the conversation flagged. Forester was 
 bashful again, and had to begin the dialogue 
 afresh, from the invariable starting-point. 
 
 " Wonderfully different morning from last 
 night, Miss Wilson. The sun very much alters 
 the look of places, especially in the country." 
 
 " How the leaves sparkle after the rain," said 
 Patty, " and how fresh and clean they all look, 
 and how glad the birds seem to be, to find it 
 fine again, with plenty of worms for their little 
 ones. Do you live here, Mr. Forester 1 " 
 
 " Well, this is my place, but I don't often 
 
 VOL. I. m
 
 50 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 come down," he said, " it's rather slow, and I 
 like town mucli better.'^ 
 
 " Which town '{ " said Patty. 
 
 " Why, toivn. Miss Wilson — London ; but 
 somehow or other, I always spend a month or 
 two at the Hall. I was bom here, or, at least, 
 in the old Hall. Did you ever see it, Miss 
 Wilson ? " 
 
 " No, sir," said Patty ; " when I first visited 
 Leigh it had just been pulled doA\Ti, and the 
 workmen were busy building this." 
 
 " It was a dull old jdI^cc,'^ said Edwin ; 
 " I could not bear it ; besides, my poor mother 
 died there, and half the neiQ:hbourhood thouoiit 
 it haunted or unlucky ; no servants would 
 stop there, and somehow everything about the 
 place seemed blighted." 
 
 " Are you the poor little baby, sir ? " said 
 Patty, who had quite forgotten for the moment 
 where she was, and was thinking of old Lucy's 
 story.
 
 patty's new friend. 51 
 
 " Well, Miss Patty/' said Edwin, " I'm not 
 much of a baby now, am I ? But I was a 
 baby once, like most other people, and I was 
 born in the old Hall, and my poor mother 
 died when I was only a day or two old. But 
 what did you ever hear about me ? " 
 
 "Why, that's the very story old Lucy was 
 telling me last night, that I stayed so late to 
 hear. I was thinking about it when I fell 
 asleep in the wood, before the storm." 
 
 " Where does old Lucy live ? " asked 
 Forester ; " who is she ? " 
 
 Patty told him, and would have edified him 
 with all she knew of his own history, but for 
 the arrival of her mother and good old Mr. 
 Piatt. Of course poor Mrs. Wilson cried to 
 find Patty so safe and well ; but they were all 
 very grateful to Mr. Forester, and, in fact, 
 became a very merry, happy little breakfast 
 party. Edwin insisted on walking home with 
 them, when he could find no excuse for keep- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 ONLY TO BE MAIUIIED. 
 
 ing them at the hall any longer ; and made 
 them promise before he left them, that they 
 would consider him as a neighbour, and some- 
 times visit the house to which they had been 
 so strangely introduced, and make it more 
 cheerful and homelike for a young man de- 
 prived of the society and enj oyments of life in 
 town. 
 
 Edwin Forester was, as we know already, 
 " the htle baby," the child of disappointed love, 
 of parents who were married only for a day. 
 The weary chancery-suit had almost ruined 
 his prospects, not so much by wasting his 
 fortune, as by flattering him with vain hopes, 
 which prevented that self-reliance and earnest 
 •effort, which might easily have made a better 
 fortune than he expected to inherit. It was 
 proved, however, some ten years after his 
 mother's death, that she really was an heiress, 
 and what the lawyers had left of her fortune, 
 descended by her will to her son. Innocent as
 
 patty's new fpjend. 53 
 
 she was, there really was some flaw in her mar- 
 riage, which made it absolutely null and void, 
 and therefore her son took her name and not his 
 father's. He was scarcely yet released from his 
 legal guardians, but it had been of course quite 
 impossible to conceal from him the fact that 
 there was something strange about his parent- 
 age ; some misfortune that could scarcely be 
 distino;uished from a diso;race. It was not 
 among kith and kin that he had been brought 
 up ; or, rather, his guardians were far-off re- 
 lations who knew quite well that his own birth 
 into the world had deprived themselves of 
 some small frag-ment of a ruined inheritance. 
 They had never spoken gently and humanly of 
 his mother, but only in a dry, legal way, just 
 as the chancery lawyers might have talked of 
 her. They never indeed disgraced her me- 
 mory, or perhaps their cruel wrong might have 
 waked the slumbering instincts of filial affec- 
 tion in Edwin's heart. But they treated her
 
 54 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 with such mere indifference, that she was a 
 strano;er to her own child : and when he came 
 to understand that there was a mystery about 
 his ])irth which woukl always need an expla- 
 nation which might often be disbelieved, he 
 felt almost ready to resent what seemed to 
 him the folly, if not the unkindness, of his 
 mother's error. He was quite unable to ap- 
 preciate her pure simplicity, her fervent love, 
 her bitter, vain regrets, not chiefly for herself, 
 but for her child. 
 
 Edwin, however, had determined in a lazy 
 sort of way to discover who the man was who 
 had persuaded his mother that she was really 
 married to him. He wanted the whole matter 
 set right, to get his father to own him, if it 
 were worth wliile, to have his name changed, 
 if it were necessary, and somehow or other to 
 undo the past. Such a work is difticult enough 
 for everybody, but even a far easier work would 
 soon have exhausted the energy of a man hke
 
 patty's new friend. 55 
 
 Edwin Forester. Every now and then lie 
 fancied he had discovered some clue to his 
 great mystery ; somebody was somewhere or 
 other who could tell him something. Once or 
 twice he had been on this fruitless errand to 
 some of the chief towns and cities on the con- 
 tinent, but he was always baffled in the very 
 beginnings of his inquiries. The people to 
 whom he had been directed knew absolutely 
 nothing about him ; and every time he tried the 
 experiment it seemed more and more ridiculous 
 to rehearse the secrets of his own history to 
 some gaping stranger, who had nothing to tell 
 him in return. So he had come at last to feel, 
 that whenever some fresh clue was offered to 
 him, it was his bounden dutv to avail himself 
 of it, while at the same time it was absolutely 
 certain that all his efforts would be wasted. So 
 in truth, every new hearsay on what had once 
 been his great subject, degenerated into an excuse 
 for a holiday, a country or continental tour.
 
 56 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 It was, however, with a sharpened curiosity 
 that he had heard what Patty told him about 
 old Lucy's story. He determined to find her 
 out, and he began to hope, that now at last the 
 great secret would be discovered, and the mys- 
 tery of his life solved. 
 
 Poor old Lucy had long been silent about 
 that sad liistory which was the one great fact 
 of her life. The servants who had been at the 
 old Hall when Marie was brought there, had 
 died or left the neighbourhood ; and there was 
 no one in the new generation to whom old Lucy 
 cared to tell the story, which never faded from 
 her own memory, which was never absent even 
 from her thoughts. But somehow it was a very 
 heavy burden for an old woman to carry about 
 with her year after year ; she wanted only to 
 find some heart that could receive and fiiitli- 
 fully keep it, with enough of simple love truly 
 to understand it, and then she might tell the 
 tale and find rest. So when Patty came, time
 
 patty's new friend. 57 
 
 after time to hear stories, it was often enough, 
 in her mind to begin that one which had 
 coloured all her life ; not indeed changing her 
 outward circumstances or behaviour, but ab- 
 sorbing her whole thought. 
 
 " Poor darhng," she would often say when 
 Patty had gone, scarcely knowing which darling 
 she meant, so strangely had the fair young girl 
 begun to take the place of Marie in old Lucy's 
 love, and almost in her fears. *' Poor darling 
 — what a life she had in the lone old hall ; I'd 
 rather ha' been one of the martyrs in the pic- 
 ture books, than her. And how much she's 
 like her, when she opens her blue eyes wide, 
 wondering-like, full of questions and love ; and 
 when she sits so still and sad and thoughtful. 
 And yet she isn't married for a day, married to 
 the dead and lost.. But I must tell her ; my 
 poor old heart '11 burst if I don't tell somebody, 
 and I can talk to Patty as if she was my own 
 bairn."
 
 58 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 Patty was indeed wondrously quick iu un- 
 derstanding actual life ; a guileless, open-hearted 
 child, made wise by love ; a true sister for 
 Marie, dead in her widow's grave, so very 
 lonely. 
 
 " Patty, lovey," said old Lucy, when she first 
 began to tell her tale, " I do know a story, but 
 I dare scarcely tell it to you.'' 
 
 " Why, I shan't be frightened, granny," said 
 Patty. 
 
 *' No, my pet, but you'll be so sorry." 
 
 And then old Lucy began to cry, and rock 
 herself backwards and forwards, and very little 
 of the tale could she tell to eager little Patty 
 that first day. But when once it was all told, 
 it seemed as if the child had become part of 
 her very self, and Forester had scarcely left 
 Mr. Piatt's house after taking Patty home, before 
 old Lucy called to see how ^liss Wilson was. 
 She had not heard of her danger and rescue, she 
 had merely come to see and fondle her httle
 
 patty's new friend. 59 
 
 favourite, and perhaps to talk awhile of those 
 past years which Lucy seemed to have brought 
 back by telling their sad story to another. But 
 the old woman was utterly terrified when she 
 heard what had happened to Patty, and who 
 had found her, and where she had been ; and 
 especially she seemed to dread the threatened 
 interview with Edwin Forester. She had kept 
 carefully away from the Hall for years, and 
 scarcely kncAv what its new master was like. 
 
 It was not many days, however, before he 
 visited her. He was a little above the average 
 height, though a slight stoop almost deprived 
 him of that advantage. He was pale and thin, 
 with lono* weak hau\ Indeed weakness was 
 written on every line of his face, and was ma- 
 nifested in every gesture and every tone of his 
 voice. There was a most winning kindness in 
 his manner, a silvery sweetness in his voice, his 
 very stoop almost seemed to have come from a 
 habit of leaning affectionately towards those
 
 60 ONLY TO BE MAKRIED. 
 
 with whom he might be conversing ; but any 
 keen observer might have imessed that his vir- 
 tues would be all akin to feebleness, and might 
 too easily vanish if ever vice were to become 
 easier than goodness. He entered Lucy's cot- 
 tage with a courtesy, a smile, an expression of 
 genuine pleasure that could scarcely have been 
 more comjDlete if the old woman's house had 
 been the oft-frequented home of his best and most 
 cherished friend. AVith perfect ease he seated 
 himself by her side and began to talk about 
 Patty's accident ; and then he told her how often 
 and how earnestly he had longed to gain some 
 certain knowledge of his father, and how un- 
 speakably indebted he should feel to her if she 
 could give him any clue to guide him in his 
 search. The old woman could tell him no more 
 than she had told Patty, and there was little 
 enough of hope in that. But with his charac- 
 teristic love of change, glad of any excuse for 
 a holiday, and for any adventure that had a
 
 patty's new friend. Gi 
 
 little romance and no danger, firmly believing 
 that lie really wished to find his father, and 
 that it was somehow the proper thing to do, he 
 set out in a few days for Torquay. " I shall 
 never have any peace," he said, " till Fve tried 
 my best, and then if after all I fail, it won t be 
 my fault." 
 
 " Ah," said Lucy to herself, when he had left 
 her cottage, "he must be the image of his 
 father. Just the voice to win a lassie, and 
 somehow mean no harm in anything. What a 
 coaxing way he has ; but perhaps these folks 
 that smile so much, and talk so sweet to every- 
 body, don't care much more for their wives and 
 children than they do for the people they meet 
 first time. I half wish somebody else had 
 picked Patty up." 
 
 Their holiday was soon over, and then the 
 Wilsons left Leigh, and returned home to 
 Manchester. Patty had promised Lucy that 
 she would sometimes write a letter to her old
 
 62 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 friend, and that they would surely remember 
 each other, not without love. But the old 
 woman's work was done. The tragedy, in 
 which her share had been only to comfort and 
 bless, was no strange occurrence in such a 
 world as ours. Hearts arc breaking every day 
 ■ — broken l)y folly and by sin. Husbands and 
 wives are parted ; and they who should be 
 bound in holy wedlock find only too often that 
 the end comes before the beginning, and they 
 are miserable and undone for evermore. But 
 Lucy lived too far from the centre of the 
 world's life of evil and vanity to be able to 
 look with coldness, or even without acute 
 suffering, on the lingering grief, the killing 
 disappointment of Marie. She almost felt that 
 on herself there rested some shadow of the 
 guilt, which she was sure must be somewhere, 
 to have worked such woe. So all the last 
 years of her life had been bm'dened and 
 darkened, by what to her was a terrible
 
 patty's new friend. 63 
 
 mystery, never to be forgotten. And now 
 that she had told her story to the gentle, 
 thoughtful child, her very relief of spirit 
 seemed to produce a fatal syncope. In a 
 fortnight Mr. Piatt wrote to the Wilsons to 
 tell them that old Lucy " was gone.'^ 
 
 By that time, also, Edwin was tired of his 
 lazy tour through Devonshire, and had come 
 back to Cla.yton s Hall.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MOTHERLESS. 
 
 Dirty and miserable enough the Manchester 
 streets appeared to Patty and her mother when 
 they first walked through them together after 
 then* return from Leigh. The very sparrows 
 seemed to belong to a totally different race 
 from the sparrows of the country ; and the 
 town boys and gnls, swarming in the poorer 
 streets, seemed more dirty and impudent than 
 the sparrows. The din of traffic and ma- 
 chinery, and the innumerable blended sounds 
 which make the roar and hum of a great city, 
 seemed utterly bewildering after the perfect 
 stillness of field and wood, broken by nothing 
 louder or harsher than the bleating of sheep. 
 
 \
 
 MOTHERLESS. 63 
 
 or the songs of birds, or tlie music of the 
 shallow, rapid river. The bright colour soon 
 faded from Patty's cheeks, when she could no 
 longer spend whole days in the open air 
 watching the fishes and the birds, gathering 
 wild flowers in the fields and lanes, and reading 
 in the cool shade of the wood. Yet she really 
 loved the town, its everlasting stir, its endless 
 stream of human life. She always took town 
 with her into the country ; her favourite birds 
 and fishes and flowers were, to her fancy, busy 
 with such work, happy with such joy, some- 
 times oppressed with such anxieties as belong 
 to men and women. She was not shy, no way 
 afraid of strangers ; indeed, nothing pleased 
 her better than to ask questions of those who 
 were wise enough to perceive how much the 
 oldest and wisest may learn even from children, 
 and who were simple enough and humble 
 enough to teach those who really wish to be 
 taught. But she had so often been disap- 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 06 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 pointed and deceived by people who made 
 very great professions of ^visdom ; she had so 
 often been told that little girls couldn't under- 
 stand the very things she was for ever puzzling 
 herself about, and she had become so sure that 
 such an answer was only a cloak for ignorance 
 or an excuse for lazmess, that she had given 
 up asking questions, and simply thought and 
 waited till the facts she was in search of might 
 come of themselves. Only with her mother 
 had she any real intimacy. Her father loved 
 her with a deep, fervent affection that he some- 
 times feared might be idolatrous ; but he could 
 never have understood her. The conventional- 
 isms of his religious life were as far removed 
 from Patty's simpler virtues as the etiquette of 
 a drawing-room, or the stiffness of a state- 
 ceremony, from the honest good nature of a 
 rustic. He had a notion that all inquiry was 
 dangerous, and that a sceptical " turn of 
 mind " was almost a sure token of reprobation.
 
 MOTHERLESS. 67 
 
 He fancied that, in spite of Patty's sagacity, 
 and gentleness, and obedience, and strict sense 
 of honour, she knew nothing of '^the great 
 change," and must be treated as an inferior 
 and benighted creature in all spiritual matters. 
 He Avas glad, as much as possible, to forget her 
 shortcomings, and to refrain from actually ap- 
 plying to her his narrow religious tests ; and, 
 indeed, he had a good hope that one day she 
 mio'ht be " born ao-ain." But once or twice her 
 doubts and inquiries had almost wrung from 
 him the solemn warning which found better 
 expression in his prayers — ''Oh, deliver my 
 poor child, if indeed she is in Thy bundle of 
 life, from the gall of bitterness and the bond 
 of iniquity." Patty loved her father with a 
 most honest reverence ; but she never could 
 tell him her " experiences," or ask his counsel 
 in the inmost struggles which every true heart 
 must know. Like Job's friends he would have 
 mistaken her very righteousness for sin, and 
 
 F 2
 
 G8 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 her trust in God for reLellion against Him. 
 But to her mother Patty was never reserved. 
 The mother's shyness, her gentle spirit, her 
 child-like simplicity, and the daughter's pen- 
 siveness and haljits of quiet meditation, seemed 
 to bring them together almost as sisters. They 
 were scarcely ever separated in work, or 
 thought, or rest — each seemed a part of the 
 other's very self, the other's one true friend on 
 earth. 
 
 But ever since Patty's birth Mrs. Wilson had 
 been losing strength ; she had come to be 
 known as " quite an invalid," and it was only 
 by summer holidays and avoiding all eflfort and 
 excitement which were not absolutely neces- 
 sary, that she could be kept alive. It was 
 every year more doubtful how her battle with 
 autumn and winter would end. "Creaking 
 gates may hang longest," but even " creaking 
 <]jates" cannot banc: on for ever. 
 
 Not long after her return from Leigh Mrs.
 
 MOTHERLESS. 69 
 
 Wilson had a very severe illness, from which 
 she very slowly and imperfectly recovered. 
 Still she did recover, and all but herself began 
 to hope that the worst was over, and that the 
 raw cold months had once again been con- 
 quered. Patty had been with her continually, 
 not only nursing her, but by her mere presence 
 imparting more comfort to the gentle mother 
 than anything else on earth could bring. The 
 poor father seemed utterly bewildered, as one 
 round whom on every side great calamities were 
 gathering, from which he could see no way of 
 escape. So Patty and her mother clung toge- 
 ther with that desperate love which grows ever 
 fonder as the inevitable separation draws near. 
 "Patty, my love, how kind and good you 
 are to me,'^ said her mother ; " and when you 
 were lying on my bosom, and your little baby 
 brother was lying cold and dead in his cradle, 
 I wished you had died instead and that my 
 little boy had been spared." .
 
 70 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 " Father, forgive us," she murmured, pressing 
 Patty closer to her heart ; " we know not what 
 we do." 
 
 " Perhaps he would have helped you more, 
 mother," said Patty, "though he could never 
 have loved you better than I do. Besides it 
 was natural enough for you to think most of 
 the one that died." 
 
 " Well, my pet, I thought of father and a 
 helper for him in his business, and that a boy 
 is easier provided for, and many such things. 
 But God knows best. Always try to believe 
 that He knows best," she continued, "though 
 I know it's often very hard for all of us : and 
 it will soon be hard for you, darling, very hard 
 indeed." 
 
 She was lying on the sofa, and Patty was 
 sitting on a footstool by her side. She drew 
 her child's hand to her lips and kissed it ; and 
 Patty rose without a word and sat on the sofo 
 by her, their hands clasped together. They
 
 MOTHERLESS. 71 
 
 could only weep and love. Mrs. Wilson was 
 first to speak again, for it is not those who are 
 nearest their dying whom death terrifies ; it is 
 those who are to live on alone. 
 
 "You needn't shrink from thinking about 
 losing me, dearest," she said ; "we shall not 
 love each other less, though I may go so far 
 away we cannot hear each other speak. But 
 youVe been more to me, Patty, than I can ever 
 tell you. I sometimes think it is I who have 
 most to lose." 
 
 They sat together talking with strange calm- 
 ness of the happy past, and the future that, to 
 Patty, at least, would be so lonely. They had 
 both come to know that ever3rthing they 
 wanted to say to each other must be said 
 soon. 
 
 The slight improvement soon passed away, 
 and by the beginning of November Mrs. Wilson 
 was quite unable to leave her room, unable 
 even for more than one hour or two, on her
 
 72 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 best days, to leave her bed. Patty was still 
 her only nurse, her constant companion. 
 
 " Patty," she said, one day — one of her best 
 days — " there's something on my mind I want 
 to say to you ; and yet I don't know whether 
 it's well for you to know it before it comes. 
 God grant it may never come at all." 
 
 She was silent and very thoughtful for some 
 time, till Patty said — 
 
 " Never mind, mother, tell me some other 
 time, when you feel stronger ; or don't tell me 
 at all, if you think that will be best." 
 
 " Ah, my darling," said the mother, " I never 
 shall be stronger ; and I'm sure you'd better 
 know, and yet it may after all be one of my 
 weak fancies, one of the many useless fears 
 that have spoilt my life. But I flmcy that 
 there must be something): ^\Ton2f with father's 
 affairs ; he seems so perfectly bewildered when 
 he comes into my room ; so very kind, so very 
 sorry to lose me, and yet sometimes I fancy
 
 MOTHERLESS. 73 
 
 almost relieved to think that I shall soon be in 
 a better world. Only yesterday, when he left 
 me, he was crying very much, and I could hear 
 him murmuring as he was going out, ' Thank 
 God ! shell be taken away from the evil to 
 come.' Well, I do thank God for it,'' she went 
 on, " for I scarcely know how I should bear it. 
 It's hard enough to see pain that we cannot 
 relieve ; it must be far harder to increase it. I 
 have often wondered, Patty, what you'll do if 
 father's business fails." 
 
 Patty was seriously alarmed by what her 
 mother said to her, though she knew well 
 enough there was something wrong — some 
 trouble that made the kind old man more 
 irritable than he ever meant to be. We can't 
 always help it ; but it's surely rather hard to 
 visit our own troubles upon the innocent ones 
 around us, as if it were possible to make our 
 own hearts lighter by making others sad. Poor 
 Mr. Wilson was so burdened, so entangled and
 
 74 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 bewildered by the fast accumulating difficulties 
 of his position, that everything approaching to 
 cheerfulness seemed a personal unkindness to 
 himself. How cnielly selfish it was for people 
 to be happy, pleased with any paltry trifle, 
 while he was so utterly ^\Tetched and hopeless. 
 His prayers, too, night and morning, had often 
 puzzled and half-terrified his child. Her own 
 prayers were rather thanksgivings than re- 
 quests, the expressions of simple trust in the 
 all-providing love ; but her father often prayed 
 as if he were in the midst of some fierce conflict 
 with implacable enemies, and with a strong 
 efibrt, far enough from being wholly successful, 
 to submit to the irrevocable will of Him who 
 seemed kno^vn to Mr. Wilson only by the 
 clouds and darkness that are round about 
 Him. 
 
 " Yes, mother," said Patty, trying to master 
 her fears, lest she should add to her mother's 
 trouble and excitement, "I'm sure there must
 
 ■mothehless. 75 
 
 be something that father is afraid of ; he often 
 seems quite frightened even to set off to busi- 
 ness. AVhat will happen to us all '? — what 
 must we do, mother ? " 
 
 "Well, darling," said Mrs. WHson, "the 
 others seem almost provided for ; but you, 
 Patty — IVe been so selfish — IVe kept you all 
 to myself, to be my little maid and friend, and 
 now, when youll need more care than ever, I 
 can t stay with you at all. No, Patty, I don't 
 even know what to- advise you, except to 
 remember what we have so often said to one 
 another about the love of God, and the beauty 
 of goodness, and the treasure that we may 
 lay up in heaven, and the peace which passeth 
 all understanding. I know you won't, 
 Patty '' 
 
 " Won t what, mother ? " said Patty, as her 
 mother hesitated. 
 
 " WelV she went on, " you won t let father 
 see more of your trouble than you can help,
 
 76 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 Patty ; he's getting an old man now, and he's 
 much kmder than he sometimes seems, and he 
 will be constantly blaming himself for having 
 brought grief upon you ; and we know he 
 would not do it if he could help it, don't we, 
 Patty ? " 
 
 " Yes, mother, yes," said the child ; " he 
 shall never have a minute's pain that I can 
 save him." 
 
 " And when you have to get your own 
 living," said the mother, " even if you have to 
 work hard amono; strano-ers, who will never 
 trouble to notice whether you are merry or 
 dull ; and if you are ever sorely tempted to 
 rebel against God, and to make life easier by 
 bowing down to him who tempted Chiist, you 
 will fight against it all, darling, won't you ? 
 trying to be a good, brave girl, fearing nothing 
 so much as to grieve your Heavenly Father 
 and doubt His goodness ; and Patty, dearest," 
 she went on, her eyes glowing with strange,
 
 MOTHERLESS. 77 
 
 unwonted light, "perhaps I shall be able to 
 help you still. I shall be sure to love you 
 better when I am nearer Gocl who gave you — 
 I shall be sure to know better what to do to 
 help you. I shall never be able to keep quite 
 away from you, Patty ; and perhaps sometimes 
 when you are sad and lonely, and when sud- 
 denly your heart beats, as bright thoughts of 
 hope and comfort enter your soul, it will just 
 be me whispering to your heart, and making 
 you understand that God is dealing with you 
 ' as one whom a mother comforteth.' * In the 
 resurrection,' " she said, speaking more to her- 
 self than to Patty, "'they shall be Hke the 
 angels of God;' " and then again, with a faint, 
 far-off voice, " ^ are they not all ministering 
 spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall 
 be heirs of salvation ? ' " 
 
 And then they kissed one another — a long 
 kiss of pure, true love. Mrs. Wilson seemed 
 at last exhausted and fell into a quiet sleep.
 
 78 ONLY TO BE MAKPJED. 
 
 For an hour Patty watclied her as she lay, her 
 face seeming to grow almost every moment 
 more iDeautiful with the peace of God. The 
 child gently stirred the fire, looked once again 
 on her mother's face, and left the room. She 
 was busy with one household duty or another 
 for about an hour, and when she came back to 
 the chamber her mother was calmly sleeping 
 still, and the darkness of evening was gathering 
 all around. There was no light in the room 
 but the flicker of the fire, which Patty would 
 not stir now, lest it should rob her mother of so 
 sweet a rest. For another hour she sat, till 
 the fire was almost out and the room was in 
 almost total darkness. Very quietly she rose 
 from her chair and went down for a light ; she 
 found her father below, with the same care- 
 worn face, the same timid, anxious restlessness, 
 the same sad bewilderment which had now 
 become so habitual to him. 
 
 " How is mother now ? " he said.
 
 MOTHERLESS. 79 
 
 '*0h, sleeping so sweetly," said Patty. 
 " It has been one of her best clays. She was 
 talkino' to me for a lono; time, almost too long: 
 for her strength ; but it seemed only to tire 
 her into a calm, beautiful sleep. Come and 
 see her, father." 
 
 They went up together with the light into 
 the quiet chamber where Patty's mother still 
 lay, and still lay sleeping ; but the knees of 
 the poor old man were loosened as he looked 
 into his wife's face, and he sank heavily to the 
 ground by her bedside, for the mark of God 
 was upon her — the perfect peace of those who 
 love Him — the infinite rest of those who sleep 
 in Jesus. 
 
 " I heard a voice from heaven saying to me : 
 Write, from henceforth blessed are the dead 
 who die in the Lord ; even so, saith the Spirit, 
 for they rest from their labours."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FEOM MAXCHESTER TO LO^'DO^^ 
 
 It would be useless to attempt to describe 
 tlie bitter grief of Patty, and her dreadful 
 loneliness. So long as it was possible she 
 found a sort of comfort in stealing quietly into 
 the room where her mother was lying so still ; 
 but it came at last, that a^^'ful, ine^dtable day, 
 when men came to take her mother to her 
 burial, and Patty laiew at last that she was 
 now left alone. Nay, she knew that she was 
 worse than alone. She knew that her father 
 would soon become, if he was not abeady, 
 more child than herself, less able to sfuide him- 
 self, and she seemed left in darkness having 
 no light. Her forebodings of coming trouble
 
 FROM MANCHESTER TO LONDON. 81 
 
 were all too well founded. The very week 
 after the funeral, her father came home about 
 mid-day, to tell her that he had no longer any 
 business to go to, that he had quite failed, that 
 all their furniture must be sold, and that till 
 they could decide what they must do they 
 were to live with the Ehodeses, who had been 
 kind enough to invite them to stay at " Our 
 House." The poor old man seemed half afraid 
 to tell his daughter into what trouble they had 
 fallen ; but she kissed her father, and told him 
 God would help him, and then they quietly 
 packed up together what few things they were 
 permitted to take away, and set off at once to 
 " Our House.'' 
 
 The Ehodeses were very kind, but with just 
 a touch of hardness. In morals and in busi- 
 ness they were something hke those people, 
 who physically are always in the enjoyment of 
 rude health, and who never can by any device 
 be made to know that you are ill, until you 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 8£ ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 have arrived at the brink of your grave. They 
 are perfectly certain that you only want a 
 little more rousing and bracing, and when a 
 quiet walk of half a mile half kills you with 
 fatigue, they assure you that what you want is 
 more vigorous exercise, or perhaps frequent 
 bathing in a moderately rough sea. Now the 
 Khodeses never had failed : they had begun 
 life in comparatively humble cu'cumstances, and 
 had had to make their own way in the world 
 — which they had made accordingly. They 
 had cut their coat, or at least would have done 
 if they had needed a coat, according to their 
 cloth. They had been just before they were 
 generous ; they had taken care of the pennies, 
 in order that the pounds might have a fair 
 opportunity of taking care of themselves ; and, 
 in fact, there was scarcely a single proverb 
 which could not have been illustrated by some 
 part of the Khodeses' Ijiography. And though 
 proverbs generally make people intensely dis-
 
 FROM MANCHESTER TO LONDON. 
 
 agreeable, they had not produced this effect on 
 the Ehodeses. When they found that they 
 had cloth enough, they never hesitated to cut it 
 into coats, or what might be necessary. They 
 were not only just before they were generous, 
 but they were generous after they were just. 
 They were really and genuinely sorry for Mr. 
 Wilson, and would have been perfectly willing, 
 and even pleased, to provide for him and Patty 
 as if they had been the nearest of their own 
 kith and kin. But, somehow, they could 
 hardly help feeling that Mr. Wilson had been 
 rather a fool, because of course a man need 
 not fail with proper care and management. 
 Unfortunately, Mr. Wilson had cared much more 
 for the coats than for the mere cloth they were 
 made of, and had occasionally sacrificed justice 
 to generosity. He was an exceedingly good- 
 natured man, and did not seem to know that 
 money was useful for anything except being 
 spent. When he had made any good bargain, 
 
 a 2
 
 84. ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 he simply felt that the time had evidently 
 arrived for giving to his wife and children 
 such little pleasures as the ordinary course of 
 business prosperity would seldom allow. Of 
 course three maiden ladies had no ^^dves and 
 children, and could never imagine how ^Ir. Wil- 
 son s profits could possibly be so soon exhausted. 
 Besides, there are exceedingly few people in the 
 world who are able to do their duty through 
 every region of their life ; they make a 
 kind of compromise by concentrating their 
 attention upon one point. Even the Ehodeses, 
 feehng much too humble to hope for universal 
 excellence, had determined that, at any rate, 
 all their business transactions should he above 
 suspicion. So they looked upon failm^e in 
 business as a kind of index by which at 
 once to determine a man's general character. 
 Whenever anybody fLiiled, of course they knew 
 there was something wrong, for they had never 
 failed. And yet they went to the sale of ]\Ir.
 
 FROM MANCHESTEE, TO LONDON. 85 
 
 Wilson's furniture, and bougiit up for him and 
 Patty everything that they thought it would 
 be painful to him to lose. They never up- 
 braided him with his losses, and indeed they 
 were so gentle and considerate, that the poor 
 old man became more happy and cheerful than 
 he had been for many long months. In fact, 
 havino; survived two of the sreatest calamities 
 that can ever befal a human being, he began 
 to rally, and he seemed to think that however 
 spiteful destiny might be, his circumstances 
 had become so desperate that it was impossible 
 they could change without improvement. 
 
 So Patty and her father lived quietly and 
 happily together at " Our House " all through 
 the winter and spring. Patty, indeed, was 
 often very lonely, for the Ehodeses were as 
 unfit to be her companions as her father him- 
 self. If they could have known her thoughts 
 and wishes they would have thought her a 
 silly dreaming child, who could never hope to
 
 86 ONLY TO BE ISIARRIED. 
 
 make her way in such a world as this. Per- 
 haps, too, they would have thought right; for 
 it is not easy for any one to make his way in 
 this world, unless that way should chance to He 
 alone: the beaten hi2;h roads of common custom. 
 Moreover, everybody's way must necessarily 
 depend upon the place he wants to reach ; and 
 good as the Khodeses were, they and Patty 
 were by no means journeying towards the same 
 resting place. Patty was quite careless, almost 
 to a fault, of what people in business call suc- 
 cess ; and less generous judges than the good 
 women who were her protectors might have 
 fancied that she was an idle, unambitious child, 
 willino; enouo-h to do nothing: lierself, so lonof as 
 friends could be found who would work to 
 keep her. And yet, though she never mur- 
 mured, and only in the gentlest and quietest 
 way expressed even her gratitude for the kind- 
 ness of her friends, she was continually won- 
 dering how she should be* able to provide for
 
 FROM MAXCHESTER TO LONDON. 87 
 
 herself, and, if necessary, for her father also. 
 She dared not speak to her father on such a 
 matter, for he had become c^iiite settled with 
 the Ehodeses, almost as if he were a child again 
 and they were his parents, taking care of him, 
 as in nature and in duty bound. Any scheme 
 that his daughter might have proposed for 
 leaving;' " Om^ House," beg^inning; over ao'ain the 
 stern work of life, would only have waked him 
 out of a quiet dream to the rough reahties of 
 his position. Patty could never forget her 
 promise that he should never suffer a moment's 
 pain that she could spare him, and yet the life 
 he was leading seemed a quiet enough road 
 indeed, but one that led no whither ; not a home 
 that she could call her own, not a castle of 
 defence for her against all cares and woes. 
 Any one of a thousand possible accidents might 
 cast her friendless upon an unpitying world, 
 and she was not even making the slightest pre- 
 paration against so awful a danger. How much
 
 88 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 she longed to hear that whisper of guidance 
 and comfort which her mother had almost 
 promised to her with her last breath. But 
 nothing was done or arranged, and for six of 
 the summer weeks Mr. Wilson and Patty were 
 at Blackpool again. It was just the same place 
 as ever ; there were the same sea and the same 
 streets, the same sort of people, the same 
 amusements, the same house to stay at, and 
 the same friends to stay with ; but somehow 
 Patty was restless, unsatisfied, miserable. She 
 felt that she had more than ever to do, 
 while she was doing less than ever ; and the 
 sea, reflecting her own mood, seemed to her 
 only the emblem of boundless dangers and 
 everlasting restlessness. So she was glad when 
 her visit was over, and she could return once 
 more to the kind-hearted Rhodeses and the 
 peaceful monotony of " Our House." 
 
 When the nights were just beginning to get 
 long and cosy again, when it began to be neces-
 
 FROM MANCHESTER TO LONDON. 89 
 
 sary to liave the lamps lighted even for the 
 Ehodeses' early tea, and when Patty had long 
 evenings for reading and thinking, with the 
 curtains drawn quite close, and with such a 
 warm and sparkling fire as only people in the 
 north of England know how to make — just 
 about the middle of October, there came two 
 visitors from London to " Our House ;" a gen- 
 tleman and his wife, married for some eighteen 
 years, but with no children. The gentleman 
 had come to know the Ehodeses by some busi- 
 ness transactions in which they had a common 
 interest, and which had been of a kind to test 
 and prove each other's strict integrity and 
 chivalrous honour. For a long time they had 
 paid each other a yearly visit, and Mr. Wilson 
 and Patty had now become so completely 
 members of the family in which they were 
 staying, that their presence could be no sort 
 of reason for deferring, even for a day, the visit 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle. So they came, as I
 
 90 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 have said, about the middle of October. They 
 were exceedingly cheerful people, ^vdthin the 
 limits of becoming mirth, and dotingly fond of 
 each other. Many young ladies who were con- 
 siderably more than half as old as Mrs. Carlisle, 
 and whose affections, however gushing and sin- 
 cere, had as yet been cruelly unrequited, had 
 been heard to remark with a sneer that ]\Ir. 
 and Mrs. Carlisle were ridiculoushj fond of one 
 another. Indeed, there was a freshness in their 
 mutual love, which seemed able to defy all 
 time and change. They kissed one another 
 (though Mr. Carhsle must have been fort}', if 
 he was a day) with the most undisguised plea- 
 sure, and seemed to find as much delight in 
 taking walks with one another as if they were 
 really lovers, which very likely they were. 
 Nevertheless it seemed rather odd and silly to 
 those who had plenty of lovers, but who were 
 as far off as ever from havino; a husband. 
 There was, however, one little trouble ; it miaht
 
 FEOM MANCHESTER TO LONDON. 91 
 
 almost be called a great trouble, to distress tliis 
 happy pair. They had no children. They 
 could not in the least understand it; they 
 thought they deserved a little family as well 
 as many of their neighbours. One of their own 
 servants, who a year after their wedding had 
 married a man who was so poor, that he had to 
 borrow the marrias^e fee of the girl who was to 
 be his wife, had by this time a home like a rabbit- 
 warren ; while they, with all their prosperity 
 and all their snug little fortune, had never been 
 blessed with a single child. They did not know 
 what to make of it. Good, simple-minded 
 people. Mrs. Carlisle had even gone so far as 
 confide this little trouble to her medical adviser ; 
 and Mr. Carlisle had told his minister that he 
 had no doubt it was all for the best ; but for all 
 that, it was a thorn in the flesh. However, in 
 spite of their wishes, and sorrows, and prayers, 
 there was as yet no little Samuel to bless the 
 heart of Hannah Carlisle.
 
 92 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 It is not, perhaps, then, very surprising that 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle began to think that perhaps 
 it was a " Providence," that j ust at the time of 
 their visit to Manchester, Patty AVilson should 
 have been staying at " Our House." They had 
 heard from their friends the story of the old 
 man's failure and the mother's death, and the 
 Khodeses had even asked them whether they 
 knew of anything in London that could be 
 offered to Patty, and by which, without un- 
 happiness or any feeling of degradation, she 
 could be earning her own living. They would 
 be willing enough to keep her as long as she 
 would stay with them, but they knew well 
 that it would be better otherwise, and that 
 Patty would be far happier and far stronger 
 if she could feel that she was making her o^\ti 
 way in the world and burdening nobody. The 
 Carlisles had many a quiet talk about it when 
 they were taking their lovers' walks together. 
 "Ah, Hannah," said Mr. Carlisle, ** our fii-st
 
 FROM MANCHESTER TO LONDON. 93 
 
 would have been just about lier age, if lie'd 
 ever been born, poor thing." 
 
 There was not the smallest reason to say 
 " poor thing ;" for his first had had no exist- 
 ence except in his own hopes, and had suf- 
 fered no disappointment in not being born. 
 
 " Well, well, Johnnie," said his wife, " but 
 perhaps he might have died, poor thing, and 
 that would have been a worse trouble than 
 this." 
 
 " Well, do you think you could really make 
 a child of this Miss Patty Wilson, if we took 
 her to London to live with us ? " 
 
 " Oh, I'm sure, Johnnie, we should be very 
 fond of her ; she's a quiet, loving little thing ; 
 but after all it's a great risk. You see, dear, 
 blood's blood ; and I don't know how we 
 might feel to Patty if little Samuel came." 
 
 They always called that disappointing baby 
 " Samuel," though he was quite as hkely to be 
 a girl as a boy.
 
 94 ONLY TO BE AIARRIED. 
 
 " But, however, dear," she went on, " I'm 
 afraid there's not much fear of that ; so you'll 
 just have to put up with me and little Patty 
 AVilson, if you can get her/' 
 
 So they arranged, after consulting ^vith 
 their friends the Khodeses, to offer to take 
 Patty to live with them in London, partly as 
 a companion to Mrs. Carlisle, partly as a kind 
 of little housekeeper, partly as an adopted 
 child. The Khodeses urged Patty strongly to 
 accept the offer ; and she hesitated to accept it 
 only lest her father should think that she was 
 desertino' him. 
 
 o 
 
 " Patty," he said one day to her, " I'm so 
 glad to hear you're going to London ; they've 
 been telling me all about it. I shan't miss 
 you at all, darling ; I'm very happy here, and 
 I have everything I can wish for. God bless 
 you, child." 
 
 So that little difficulty was over. Not alto- 
 gether to Patty's comfort, though it made the
 
 FROM MANCHESTER TO LONDON. 95 
 
 pleasant road in which she had been loitering 
 lead somewhere. But nobody is quite satisfied 
 not to be missed. When we must go away, 
 we want to go without pain or inconvenience 
 to those we leave behind ; and yet, if they are 
 just a little sorry, we are, perhaps, just a little 
 glad. And after all, Patty was very thankful 
 that she could be spared so easily. Her father 
 had been smitten with a very heavy blow, but 
 the blow had been so heavy that it had dulled 
 his sense of pain ; he had fallen into his second 
 childhood, and he had become like those little 
 ones who love any one as a mother who will 
 feed and play with them. He was among 
 kind friends, friends who could do far better 
 for him than Patty, with all her strong self- 
 devotion ; and so, when their month's visit was 
 over, the Carlisles went back again, and Patty 
 with them, from Manchester to London.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD HEIR PEESUMPTIVE. 
 
 Very few strangers, especially when they 
 come from so large a town as Manchester, are 
 so much surprised by the first sight of London 
 as they expect to be. One large towm is very 
 much like another, and it is only by very slow 
 degrees that any one can come to realize that 
 it would take something like fifty large towns 
 to make one London. Mr. Carlisle's house was 
 in Islington, in Canonbury Square. So as the 
 cab drove thither from Kino^'s Cross there was 
 nothing beyond what Patty had been quite 
 used to see. Pentonville and the rows of 
 shops in Islington were not startlingiy difierent 
 from Oxford Street in Manchester; and Mr.
 
 AX ADOPTED CHILD. 97 
 
 Carlisle's house was certainly neither grander 
 nor prettier than that Avhich had been built 
 for the Ehodeses, with so much consideration 
 and good taste. It was, however, exceedingly- 
 comfortable ; the rooms were bright and warm 
 to receive the travellers ; and if it was im- 
 possible for Patty so soon to feel "at home," 
 she at least hoped that it would very soon l)e, 
 not only possible, but easy. 
 
 Mr. Carlisle had been very successful in 
 business, and had richly deserved to succeed. 
 He had a large shop in Oxford Street, and there 
 were many people who considered that having 
 a shop in Oxford Street was entirely incom- 
 patible with being a gentleman. I can scarcely 
 say what sort of shop it was ; perhaps it might be 
 called a general furnishing shop ; and Mr. Carlisle 
 having perfect confidence in his own honesty, 
 and knowing well that so far as he could secure 
 it, the quality of everything he sold was in 
 strict agreement with the price, felt sure that 
 
 VOL, I. n
 
 98 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 there could be no impropriety in making kno\\Ti 
 that fact through the medium of advertise- 
 ments. There were, of course, many people 
 even in Islington, a suburb of London which is 
 perhaps more snobbish than aristocratic, who 
 were perfectly certain that no ti-ue gentleman 
 would ever be guilty of imploring the British 
 public, in the columns of a newspaper, to " fur- 
 nish your house at Carhsle's, No. 378, Oxford 
 Street, with the best, &c., &c., &c" But really 
 what is to be done in this noisy, self-assei*ting, 
 competing age 1 When everybody in a street is 
 shouting out at the top of his voice his o^^ti 
 merits and the excellence of his wares, what 
 customer can you possibly expect to get, if you 
 stand behind your counter as patiently as Lot's 
 pillar of salt, without a word to say for youi*- 
 self ? Moreover, ]\Ir. Carlisle gave his eustomei's 
 a security for his honesty, which was also re- 
 garded with mean suspicion in some of the 
 Islington circles, by ticketing his goods. " The
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 99 
 
 price of every article/' said the advertisements, 
 " is marked in plain figures." Small profits and 
 quick returns was Mr. Carlisle's business motto. 
 He was exceedingly j^olite to all liis customers, 
 and while his sweet persuasiveness was almost 
 irresistible, as with the utmost patience he took 
 them from room to room, exhibiting almost 
 everything that he thought might tempt them 
 to become purchasers, he seemed to have the 
 gift of perceiving the exact moment at which 
 the unselfish attentions of a shopkeeper become 
 too much for human nature to bear. He was 
 in politics, if anything, a somewhat extreme 
 Liberal, though a little toned down by his in- 
 creasing prosperity. That is to say, he had a 
 kind of vague notion that everybody has a 
 right to something, and " what right," he would 
 ask, " has one class of society to try to mono- 
 polise everything for itself ? " Of course, as 
 his business increased, and especially after he 
 bought himself a private house in Islington, he 
 
 H 2
 
 100 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 began to understand tliat tliere is also a some- 
 thing to which everybody unquestionably has 
 oiot a ridit. In religion he was a churchman, 
 and living in the parish of Islington, it is 
 perhaps superfluous to add that he was a 
 aood Protestant, and an " Evanorelical." *' I 
 haven't time to go into the subject/' he would 
 say, with charming candour, " but if England 
 isn't a Protestant country, Ichabod is written on 
 our walls." As to rationalism, to which allusion 
 was made by his revered ministers nearly every 
 Sunday, he had not the ftiintest notion what it 
 meant, except that it had something to do with 
 wolves in sheep's clothing, which ate the bread 
 of the church, and were Anathema, JMaranatha. 
 He never read books ; " For when I g(ii home 
 from lousiness of an evening, I'm tired, you 
 know, and these books, though very good, are 
 a little hea\y." He was, however, a diligent 
 reader of the '* Record," and generally managed 
 to spread thinly over the four Sundays of a
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 101 
 
 month, the exhilarating contents of the Church- 
 man's Penny Magazine. But for all that, 
 though he was narrow-minded to begin with, 
 and exceedingly uncultivated to end with, he 
 was far more of a gentleman than many of the 
 snobs who looked do^\Ta upon him and his wife 
 with a sort of patronising contempt. Many of 
 them would have regarded his generosity as 
 reckless and preposterous folly; and though their 
 vanity might have been something more sensitive 
 than Mr. Carlisle's, as to the modes of making 
 money, they were very far indeed from knowing 
 half as well as Mr. Carlisle did, how to spend it. 
 For the first few days everything of course 
 was strange to Patty ; even the Carlisles them- 
 selves were strange. They scarcely seemed to 
 have made up their minds what they ought to 
 call her, and kept hovering in a good-natured im- 
 becile way, between " Miss AYilson," and " Miss 
 Patty," and "Patty," with a decided tendency to 
 settle on the neutral ground of " dear." " Wliat
 
 102 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 an astonishing thing it is, ^liss Wilson," said Mr. 
 Carlisle one evening, as they were sitting at 
 supper, " that we should ever have met ^^ith 
 you ; but it's very wonderful how many things 
 take place that we never expected." This re- 
 mark was so obviously true, and implied so easy 
 a generalization from a universal experience, that 
 Patty found no difficulty whatever in assenting 
 to it. Indeed, she could hardly help smiling 
 as she paralleled the remark by an equally 
 sagacious answer. " You see, J\Ir. CarHsle, I was 
 staying at ' Our House,' when you and Mrs. 
 Carlisle came down to visit the Ehodeses, and 
 so in that way we came to know each other." 
 
 Nothing is harder to describe than the every- 
 day life of very common-place people. Shop, 
 politics, and religion — or shop, religion, and 
 politics, are the only subjects on which they 
 ever converse ; excepting that kitchen stuffs and 
 servants may impart a monotonous variety to 
 the cares and conversation of the womanlvind.
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 103 
 
 Not, indeed, that tliey have anytliing to say on 
 these subjects beyond repeating hearsays or the 
 universal experience of harassed matrons. But 
 these topics furnish the stream of verbiage 
 which seems to relieve the overburdened mind, 
 and constitute a difference between animals 
 and articulate-speaking men. Patty seemed at 
 first, to the Carlisles, even more uninteresting 
 than they themselves seemed to some of their 
 friends ; for she had completely lost, or had 
 never acquired, the habit of talking about those 
 innumerable nothings which are scarcely worth 
 thinking about, and which at any rate may well 
 be suffered to die out of thought, almost as 
 soon as they are born into it. She and her 
 mother had not been without their household 
 cares. They had been obliged, like most other 
 grown-up women, to manage servants and to 
 give orders for dinner, and sometimes even to 
 do the work themselves that otherwise must 
 have been left undone, in their very moderate
 
 lOi ONLY TO BE MAnPJED. 
 
 establishment. But they never thought it 
 necessary to occupy half their time by talking 
 about meat and the kitchen ; and as to serv^ants, 
 they had sense enough to know that they were 
 human beings mth a very monotonous life, 
 subject to all the infirmities of temper ^^'hicll 
 beset masters and mistresses ; and that it Avas no 
 way to be wondered at if they were occasion- 
 ally hard to manage and hard to please. Patty 
 was perfectly amazed that Mrs. Carlisle could 
 live so much in the kitchen, and overwhelm 
 herself so needlessly with domestic cares. She 
 was far cnou^^h from thinkinor such cares either 
 unwomanly or mean ; but then she thought the 
 best work in the world only requires to be 
 done, and she could see no advantage whatever 
 in pottering al^out it all day long, not to men- 
 tion the risk of spoiling it, and having to do it 
 all over again. Mrs. Carlisle was one of those 
 good housekeepers who go very often into their 
 own kitchens ; but when she had baked a pie,
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 105 
 
 or triumphed over the inherent difficulties of a 
 jelly, she never could let it alone ; she would 
 come from the lower regions hot and red w^ith 
 the pie in her hands ; she would insist upon 
 Patty's observing how well it had risen, or how 
 beautifully it was browned, and she would 
 spend half the morning talking about the oven 
 or the flues, and how much better the new 
 range was than the old one, and what a silly 
 stupid creature that Jane was ; and how, in 
 another minute, the pie would have been burnt 
 to a cinder if she had not herself opened the 
 oven door. A jelly was even worse than a pie ; 
 for if it happened to be clear, which of course 
 it always ought to be, she would bring it up 
 and show it to Patty, as if nobody had made a 
 clear jelly before. " Isn t that beautiful, dear ? 
 I don't think they could send a better jelly 
 than that from the pastry-cook's." Very likely 
 not — but to Patty's undomesticated mind, there 
 only seemed to be two stages in the exist-
 
 106 OXLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 ence of a jelly — first making it, and then eating 
 it ; and she couldn't for the life of her under- 
 stand why the intervening period should l)e 
 filled up with mere "jelly " conversation. She 
 could make jellies and pies too, with which 
 even Mrs. Carlisle could scarcely find a fault ; 
 but that lady felt in her inmost soul that Patt}' 
 was rather a strange girl, and did not seem to 
 be much interested in domestic affairs. As to 
 servants, Patty had the most provoking habit 
 of always taking the part of the domestic 
 against the mistress. Not that she would have 
 taken a part at all, if ]Mrs. Carlisle had not in 
 a way compelled her, but that estimable woman 
 had a rooted belief that all servants are in a 
 conspiracy to aggravate and ruin their mis- 
 tresses. If Mrs. Carlisle broke a tumbler, or 
 even if Mr. Carlisle broke a tumbler, though 
 that was much less excusable, the worthy 
 matron was perfectly certain that nothing could 
 have prevented the accident but a superhuman
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 107 
 
 control of the powers of nature ; but if Jane or 
 Betsey broke a tumbler, of course it was part 
 of the conspiracy, a clear proof of the total 
 and ineradicable depravity of servant girls. In 
 the same way Mrs. Carlisle could see nothing 
 but immodest forwardness in any little affec- 
 tionate passages between the cook and the 
 baker, whereas it was perfectly plain to the un- 
 sophisticated mind of Patty, that there must also 
 have been similar love-passages between Mr. 
 and Mrs. Carlisle — that they also must have 
 had their little cooings and murmurings, break- 
 ing out at last into articulate speech ; and that, 
 until that happy day, when the progress of science 
 shall enable us to eradicate the distinctions of 
 sex, there always will be an Isaac pretending to 
 meditate in the fields whenever a good-looking 
 Eebekah is riding towards him on a camel. 
 
 While Patty was thus uninterested, or seem- 
 ingly antagonistic, where the Carl isles (and 
 especially Mrs. Carlisle) were absorbed ; she
 
 108 ONLY TO BE MAERIED. 
 
 was far more antagonistic where she was really 
 interested — stirred to the lowest depths of her 
 soul. Of the limited topics of conversation in 
 the house in Canonbury Square, religion was 
 that on which Patty had thought most 
 anxiously and most sincerely, and in the judg- 
 ment of the Islington clergy utterly wrongly. 
 She was as diffident and as teachable as the 
 haughtiest priest could have desired ; but then 
 she wanted real teaching, and not empty 
 verbia2:e. She did not care to know who was 
 ^vrong ; she wanted to know what was right ; 
 and she had a notion that if peoj^lc were 
 wrong they must be to that extent unhappy, 
 and needing great love and pity from their 
 wiser fellow-creatures. But the religious people 
 she met with in the IsHngton circle, and espe- 
 cially the clergy whom she heard always on 
 Sundays, and often at Mrs. Carlisle's tea-table, 
 seemed to think that mistake was a sin deserv- 
 ing damnation, and very much more dangerous
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 109 
 
 than cruelty or craft. They were mostly " Ee- 
 cordites ; " finding their best confession of 
 faith, not in the Bible or Prayer-book, but in 
 the rabid dogmatism of a crazed newspaper. 
 
 " Fm glad to see you reading that," said the 
 Eeverend Jonas Faithful, as he found Patty 
 one day with the * Eecord ' in her hand, and a 
 queer smile on her face ; " we need a trumpet 
 that will give a certain sound in these times." 
 
 " Well, this trumpet gives a certain sound, 
 Mr. Faithful," said Patty, mth a strong em- 
 phasis on the adjective. 
 
 '' Yes, Miss Wilson," said the divine ; " there's 
 nothing here of mistiness and disguise, and the 
 use of sacred words to deceive the trustinsf 
 reader, and lure him on to perdition." 
 
 '' Then you like the ' Eecord,' Mr. Faithful ?" 
 said Pattv. 
 
 " Yes, indeed I do, Miss Wilson ; it seems to 
 me one of the strongest bulwarks of our Holy 
 Church."
 
 110 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 " I can't bear it," said Patt}', with honest 
 impulsiveness. 
 
 " Miss Wilson ! '^ said the parson, absolutely 
 overwhelmed with pain and astonishment ; 
 " Miss Wilson, what can you mean ? '' 
 
 " I mean that I very much dishke the 
 ' Eecord ' newspaper, and always feel very 
 much the worse for readins; it." 
 
 " I can't the least understand you," said Mr. 
 Faithful, with perfectly genuine surprise and 
 bewilderment ; " how can it possibly make you 
 worse 1 " 
 
 " Because it asks me to do what I know is 
 wrong ; to call ill-names ; to condemn books 
 that it advises me not to read ; and to pass 
 judgment upon ministers of the Church and 
 laymen Avhom I do not know, and who are 
 most likely to be much better people than I am.'' 
 
 " Ah, my dear lady, l)ut they deny the 
 tnith — the truth as it is in Jesus," said the 
 clergyman.
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. ]11 
 
 " How do I know that ? " said Patty ; " the 
 ' Eecord ' may be mistaken ; Mr. Carlisle would 
 never repeat slanders against one of his neigh- 
 bours in Oxford Street because heVl heard 
 somebody say something to his injury. Be- 
 sides the ^Record' never helps to set people 
 right, it only curses them for being wrong." 
 
 " But they m^e wrong," said the divine, " and 
 you know what St. Paul and St. John say 
 about such, Miss "Wilson. They are anathema; 
 we are not to eat with them, or bid them God- 
 speed." 
 
 ^^Well, then, Mr. Faithful," said the little 
 heretic, '^ I won't adopt that plan ; 111 go by 
 what Christ says in the Sermon on the Mount 
 — that we are to bless our enemies because God 
 blesses His." 
 
 '' Yes, my dear young lady," said the minister; 
 " but we must not let one part of Scripture 
 contradict another ; St. Paul wrote by inspira- 
 tion of God."
 
 112 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 " And therefore," interrupted Patty, '' couldn't 
 have meant to contradict Jesus Christ, and 
 teach us to curse instead of Tjlessing." 
 
 At this point Mrs. Carhsle entered the room, 
 and Patty was glad to make her escape, not 
 without uneasiness, and the feeling that she 
 had made an enemy, who might come to think 
 that in cursing her he would be doing God 
 service. There was no danger that excellent, 
 matronly Mrs. Carlisle would ever venture into 
 heresy. She had far too much to do ; a person 
 with pies and jellies on her mind can't be wast- 
 ing her thought and energy on controversy. 
 The good woman never inquii'ed, and of course 
 never doubted. She remained perfectly loyal 
 to such scraps of creed as had got first posses- 
 sion of her mind ; and stuck to " what she had 
 been used to." She was much too kind and 
 good-natured to be a bigot, after Mr. Faithfuls 
 own heart ; but she had great reverence for the 
 clergy, and felt it very shocldng that anybody
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 113 
 
 should deny what her favourite divines assured 
 her were the essential doctrines of Christianity. 
 It seemed very hard that they should go to 
 hell for it ; but if the Bible said so, there was 
 nothing for us but to believe it, " and God 
 knew best." It was, therefore, with much 
 anxiety that she listened as the Eeverend 
 Jonas Faithful delivered his soul. 
 
 " Fm almost thankful, Mrs. Carlisle," he 
 said, "that you have no children of your 
 own.'' 
 
 "Eh, sir," said the lady, thinking of the 
 unpmictual Samuel, and wondering how it 
 could possibly be better for him not to come. 
 "Why thankful for that, Mr. Faithful? it's 
 a thing Fve besought the Lord for more than 
 thrice." 
 
 "There are many prayers, ma'am, that it's 
 better for us should be unanswered." 
 
 "But why do you think so of this, Mr. 
 Faithful ? " said the childless woman, to the 
 
 VOL I. I
 
 114 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 man who seemed to care more for doctrine 
 than for all the human spirits in the world. 
 
 " Because I'm very much afraid, my dear 
 Mrs. Carlisle, that your young friend. Miss 
 Patty, is not quite sound in the faith. She 
 seems abeady infected vdiii that dreadful 
 spirit of doubt, which ' eats as doth a canker.' 
 Our conversation before you came into the 
 room was to me exceedingly painful." 
 
 And then he told Mrs. Carlisle that Patty 
 hated the " Eecord ;" and he made her under- 
 stand that her young charge was herself in the 
 utmost danger, and would be a dangerous 
 companion to any other. He had touched the 
 very tenderest place in the good woman's 
 whole nature — the love she had for the child 
 that had never been born ; a love that was 
 growing keener, more overpowering, more 
 strangely selfish every day. She gave poor 
 Patty many solemn warnings ; but she was 
 too ignorant of any theology to do more than
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 115 
 
 vaguely warn her. At tlie same time a cold 
 shadow seemed to be creeping over her love for 
 the girl that she was meaning to take for her 
 own daughter ; and those reverend hands, that 
 should have had far other work to do, had 
 sown the first seeds of distrust and mischief. 
 Poor man ! he thought that was a chief part 
 of the work of those who watch for souls as 
 they who must give account. 
 
 But as time rolled on, the dark shadows 
 seemed to pass off from Mrs. Carlisle's heart. 
 Patty might or might not be a heretic, but she 
 was unquestionably a very good girl. Never 
 had the house in Canonbury Square seemed so 
 homelike. Never had its mistress's wants been 
 so skilfully and so unobtrusively anticipated 
 and supplied. Moreover, to the good old 
 Oxford Street tradesman, Patty Wilson was 
 becoming a pearl of great price. He couldn't 
 explain how it was, but home was no longer 
 home if she were missing. He could scarcely 
 
 I 2
 
 116 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 spare her for a holiday, or to visit her old 
 friends the Khodeses, and her father getting 
 further and further from her continually, till 
 it seemed that even death could scarcely make 
 the breach wider. Mr. Carlisle knew that 
 Patty couJd be more than trusted ; he could 
 see that her quicksighted love gave her a 
 wisdom and energy far beyond her years, and 
 he loved her with a deep, pure love. 
 
 So, about three years after Patty came to 
 London, there was solemn consultation between 
 the worthy couple who had brought her from 
 Manchester. 
 
 " Well, Hannah," said the gudeman, '' let's 
 have a kiss and talk this matter over ; it'll be 
 a weight off our minds." 
 
 " That it will," said the gude wife ; " you 
 know, Johnnie, it shall be just as you please. 
 Pve always my fears about everything," she 
 added, with a sigh. 
 
 " No, no, no, that '11 never do, old woman,"
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 117 
 
 said the good-natured husband ; " it's not to 
 be as / like, but as we hoth like. If you re 
 sometimes timid, you know, Hannah, I'm very 
 often rash. We'd better not do it, if we think 
 we should come to wish it undone." 
 
 " WeU, you know Johnnie," said JVIrs. Car- 
 lisle, with a sigh for Samuel, " there's only 
 that:' 
 
 "But we haven't got that," said the hus- 
 band ; " and I scarcely think we ever shall. 
 I suppose it's best for us." 
 
 A shade passed over the heart and face of 
 Mrs. Carlisle when her husband said this. 
 Was it not the echo of Mr. Faithful's ill- 
 omened warning ? 
 
 " What's the matter, old girl ? " he said ; 
 '' what frightens you ? " 
 
 " Well, Johnnie, that's just what Mr. Faith- 
 ful said more than two years ago ; and he 
 seemed to think that Patty was hindering 
 our prayers."
 
 118 ONLY TO BE ^JARPdED. 
 
 "Well, dear," said Mr. Carlisle, a little 
 indignant that a stranger should come, even 
 though a clergyman, between him and his 
 cherished desire, and not sorry that he had a 
 good excuse for speaking warmly without 
 contradicting or offending his w^ife. " Well, 
 dear, I don't often disagree with our minister, 
 but I did then — I think we've more reason to 
 know what a good, loving little creature Patty 
 is, than he can have to say anything against 
 her. And I'm sure I don't know what fault 
 we have to find with her reliction." 
 
 " No, Johnnie, no ; not a word of fault- 
 finding: will ever come from this mouth " — 
 whereupon Johnnie kissed it — " and I ^^'ish 
 Mr. Faithful somehow had said nothino; about 
 it. But let us do what we so often talked 
 of.'^ 
 
 " Adopt her altogether ? " said the husband, 
 with honest joy shining in his f\ice. 
 
 " Yes, Johnnie," said his wife, " but we'll
 
 AN ADOPTED CHILD. 119 
 
 agree not to tell her so ; at least for a year or 
 two. It will make no difference to her." 
 
 Still, the bad seed of Mr. Faithful's sowing 
 was growing in her heart. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Carlisle called the next 
 day on his lawyer with instructions for a will. 
 It was made with complete nm^eserve ; and if 
 Patty had been Samuel himself she couldn^t 
 have been more generously provided for. 
 There were many legacies ; one even to Mr. 
 Faithful, well-meaning sower of evil seed — 
 but mth these charitable deductions, " Patty 
 Wilson, our beloved, adopted child,'' was heiress 
 presumptive to all the lands and goods of John 
 Carlisle.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HEIR APPARENT. 
 
 About a year after Mr. Carlisle had made 
 his will there was great bustle and preparation 
 in Canonbiiry Square. Wife, doctor, and Mrs. 
 Sawyers had all agreed that Samuel was 
 coming. There had, of course, been a con- 
 siderable interval of fluttering uncertainty 
 before Mrs. Carlisle had ventured to breathe 
 her hopes, even into the ears of her confiding 
 Johnnie. Certainly there was a something — 
 she had her presentiments and her feelmgs — 
 and at last a mysterious consultation with her 
 medical man. He was a gentleman in good 
 practice, a general practitioner, and in special 
 favour with the sedater portion of the Canon-
 
 HEIR APPARENT. 121 
 
 bury ladies. He was perhaps a little too old 
 for the young wives who had been only married 
 a year or eighteen months, but he was exactly 
 the doctor for such a woman as Mrs. Carlisle. 
 He was a moderately tall man, slightly inclined 
 to obesity, but with exceedingly well-shaped 
 hands, such hands as nobody's pulse could be 
 offended by. Moreover, he was a father himself ; 
 which, as Mrs. Carlisle often said, made him 
 able to sympathise with her; for Mrs. Jessop 
 had presented him with fourteen children, 
 twelve of whom were still spared to rejoice in 
 the growing prosperity of their worthy father. 
 He belonged to the semi-clerical race of doctors, 
 always appearing with black clothes and a 
 white cravat, and above all, he was chatty and 
 receptive. Mrs. Carlisle was one of those 
 women who would not have given twopence 
 for a doctor who would have found out what 
 was the matter with her at a glance, and have 
 prescribed the appropriate remedy in a minute.
 
 122 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 She expected ca doctor to sit down in an arm- 
 chair and listen till she had given him a full 
 and particular account of every one of her 
 s5anptoms. Moreover, she was in the habit of 
 diverging into numerous parenthetical analo- 
 gous cases : as, for instance, how Mrs. Jenkin- 
 son was taken in exactly the same way the 
 week before last, and how she thought it must 
 be something in the air. Now Mr. Jessop was 
 exactly the man to deal with a disposition of 
 this sort. Being rather stout, and more easily 
 fatigued than in his youth, an arm-chair 
 decidedly did him good ; and when his duties 
 had been unusually exhausting, he had been 
 known to refresh himself with no apparent 
 reluctance mth biscuits and sliern^ ^loreover, 
 he knew quite well that personal details and 
 inoffensive anecdotes about his other patients 
 relieve the tediousness of scientific explanations 
 or the impalatablencss of mere ad^dce. 
 
 " Ah, well, my dear Mrs. Carlisle," he would
 
 HEIR APPARENT. 123 
 
 say, "your case is no doubt very trying and 
 wearing to a lady of your active disposition, 
 but I think we may be quite sure of setting 
 this little matter rigiit in a few days. Indeed, 
 as you say, there is a great deal of sickness in 
 the neighbourhood. I never mention, of course, 
 the names of my patients — though I am sure 
 with you, Mrs. Carlisle, I need have no fear 
 — but I may tell you that a lady who lives on 
 the other side of the Square was distressed 
 last week by symptoms almost exactly corres- 
 ponding to your own ; and yet, she is now, I 
 am thankful to say, making the most satis- 
 factory progress to her accustomed health.'^ 
 
 Of course Mrs. Carlisle knew perfectly well 
 who the lady thus darkly indicated was, and 
 her case was sure to suo^^est some other case 
 which naturally threw fresh light on her own 
 symptoms. Mr. Jessop would sit and rest 
 himself in the easy chair, and listen, and chat, 
 and sympathise, and indulge his patient with
 
 124 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 precisely that luxury of illness, which ladies 
 who have nothing seriously the matter with 
 them so keenly relish. " Well, well," he would 
 say as he rose to take his leave, " I think I see 
 exactly the medicine that Avill suit your case, 
 Mrs. Carlisle, and I have no doubt that when I 
 call to-morrow I shall hear a very different 
 account of you." 
 
 But what were all previous conferences, 
 ordinary or extraordinary, compared with that 
 solemn consultation which had been rendered 
 necessary by Mrs. Carlisle's fluttering anxieties 
 as to the possible Samuel. Nothing could 
 exceed the worthy lady's embarrassment as she 
 had to reveal to the father of fourteen children 
 the happy suspicion that had entered her o\\'n 
 heart. She felt ftir shyer and queerer than a 
 young girl, for was not this indeed the hun- 
 griest hope that she had ever cherished ? And 
 what if Mr. Jessop should destroy it ? But Mr. 
 Jessop, of course, did not destroy it ; on the
 
 HEIR APPAKENT. 125 
 
 contrary, he took an extra biscuit and a second 
 glass of sherry, and his eye twinkled with just 
 a spark of the waggishness of his youth, while 
 he imparted comic consolation to his bashful 
 patient. 
 
 " Ha, 'ha, ha, my dear old friend," he said 
 to Mr. Carlisle, meeting him at the front door ; 
 "you run in as fast as you can and drink a 
 glass of sherry with your good wife ; she's got 
 something to tell you, ha, ha, ha I " And so he 
 giggled into his carriage, and drove over to the 
 other side of the square. 
 
 No true woman can know that she is surely 
 to become a mother without a strans^e thrill of 
 wonder, and fear, and joy. It is the great 
 divine mystery of her womanhood. It is the 
 sum of all her duties and responsibilities, for to 
 be a good mother is to be a good wife and 
 woman. No man can know the living bonds 
 that bind together mother and child, and the 
 longing love that grows up in the mother's
 
 126 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 heart tlirougli the months of her waiting and 
 preparation. The gush of fondness with which 
 she gazes on each little garment as it is finished 
 and laid Ijy in its pure white beauty, the pride 
 with which she trims the little cot where her 
 darling is to rest in that gentle sleep that 
 the angels watch over, the increasing purpose 
 with which her life is fiUing day by day ; how 
 little of all this can any man know, even the 
 very father himself of her child. But ]Mrs. Car- 
 lisle had longed, and prayed, and sorrowed for 
 this dignity and gladness, until the lengthening 
 years of her married life had well-nigh left her 
 hopeless ; and now that it really was to be 
 granted her she began to fear lest it had been 
 won by her impatience from a reluctant 
 heaven. 
 
 And there was Patty, loving, gentle, good — 
 their adopted child — the sunniest light in theii* 
 house, what of her ? Would there be room for 
 her when the child of promise came ? ^Irs.
 
 HEIR APPAEENT. 127 
 
 Carlisle had never put that question, as yet, 
 even to herself; but it was shaping itself 
 slowly in her mind, though she knew it not. 
 She was not, in the ^ailgarest sense, a super- 
 stitious woman ; so far as she had knowledge 
 she was eminently strong-minded. Nothing- 
 could have persuaded her that her house was 
 haunted, or that it was unlucky to kill a 
 cricket. " Stuff and nonsense," she would 
 have said ; " nasty, whistling things, hopping 
 into everything. Fll pretty soon tread on it, 
 if you 11 only show me where it is." But, like 
 everybody else, she felt that when she walked 
 in the dark she couldn't tell what she mioht 
 stumble over ; and, to her, religion was " the 
 dark," or at least was dreadfully full of dark 
 places. That God governs the world by fixed 
 laws, if she could have been brought to see 
 what that meant, would have seemed to her no 
 better than not governing at all. She had 
 been taught, and she heartily believed, that
 
 128 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 God was for ever interfering with the ordinary 
 course of the world. She had read the most extra- 
 ordinary narratives of answers to prayer, and 
 even of great institutions supported by nothing 
 but prayer, and she had no more doubt of their 
 veracity than she had of her own existence. 
 And yet, on the other hand, all prayers are not 
 answered ; and if we prayed too earnestly, her 
 ministers told her, we might teaze God mto 
 jlivino^ us a curse instead of a blessino^. That 
 was the dark place in Mrs. Carlisle's religion — 
 the character of God. She could never be sure 
 that He would do her only good, and she was 
 terrified lest He should be intending; to curse 
 her httle babe for the punishment of her rebel- 
 lious impatience. 
 
 And this possible curse might easily enough 
 connect itself somehow with Patty Wilson. 
 The sensitive, eager love of a mother is ever on 
 the edge of direst cruelty; utter self-sacrifice 
 close to the darkest selfishness. Mrs. Carlisle
 
 HEIR APPARENT. 129 
 
 was far too ignorant intelligently to enter into 
 the religious controversies of the day, but she 
 could not go to church twice a week, in the 
 very centre of Islington ultra-protestantism, 
 without becoming acquainted with the ortho- 
 dox slang, and soured by the spirit of perse- 
 cution. Patty cared nothing for that jargon, 
 and would never have dreamed of injuring the 
 worst heretic in the world. When Mr. Faith- 
 ful visited her foster-parents he always wore a 
 grieved, pensive, awe-stricken expression as he 
 looked at Patty. He never tried to teach her, 
 to sympathise with her, and help her to fuller 
 light. He gave her up until she should be 
 mysteriously restored to a better mind. "I 
 wish," he would say with a sigh, "that our 
 young friend had more love for the simple 
 truth, Mrs. Carlisle. But nothing's too hard for 
 the Lord." So he kept a sore place always raw 
 and smarting in ]\Irs. Carlisle's spirit, and the 
 wound was all the more painful and irritating 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 ONLY TO BE MAEPJED. 
 
 because slie could in no rational way whatever 
 justify that chill doubt which so often cooled 
 her love for the gentle girl she had adopted. 
 
 Nevertheless, and sometimes even the more 
 for her consciousness of a secret injustice, she 
 treated Patty always with the most careful 
 kindness ; and when she ventured to tell her of 
 what would now so soon happen, she was quite 
 charmed with Patty's unselfish joy and ready 
 help. And at last the long-expected, long 
 prayed for day arrived. It was the first day of 
 December ; a bitter, blo^\y day, raw with sleet 
 and hail. But the house in Canonbury Square 
 had been made so cosy, it might have defied 
 far bitterer weather. The doctor was there, 
 more beaming and chatty and kindly solicitous 
 than ever; and Mrs. Sawyers was there, a 
 monthly nurse, very well recommended, and 
 very well to be paid ; and, of course, the 
 anxious father was there, pacing the dining- 
 room like one of those ^^Tetched, imprisoned
 
 HEIR APPARENT. 131 
 
 * 
 
 malcontents in the Zoological Gardens ; and at 
 half-past ten at niglit Samuel was there. 
 
 Of com'se he was not much to look at. In 
 fact, when Mr. Carlisle was permitted to enter 
 his wife's room, which he did on tip-toe, with 
 tears streaming down his honest face, and his 
 brave loving heart too full for speech, he 
 couldn't see his first-born at all. There was a 
 little mass of blanket, and Mrs. Sawyers told him 
 that Samuel was inside, but otherwise he could 
 never have guessed it ; the baby was as hidden 
 and mysterious as if he had been only a substance 
 with blankets for attributes. Nature had dealt 
 very gently Avith Samuel's mother, and she was 
 very comfortable ; Mrs. Sawyers, costly and 
 well recommended, had duly usurped the 
 monthly nurse's throne, and the purgatory of 
 husbands had begun. 
 
 "What hardy reformer of the domestic and 
 social condition of England will dare to lay his 
 hand on that time-honoured institution, the 
 
 K 2
 
 IS'Z 0^'LY TO BE MAPtPJED. 
 
 monthly nurse? Is there any li\T.ng father 
 Avho has not ciirsecl her, to the peril of his 
 miserable soul ? Between a Betsey Prig and a 
 Matilda Sawyers there's scarcely a pin to 
 choose. Mrs. Sawyers being a very expensive 
 luxury in the lying-in room, was not to be 
 roughly handled, either by herself or anybody 
 else. She was not a nurse of all work ; never 
 troubled to know what it is her place to do, 
 because she knows she has to do everything. 
 A nurse at three poinids the month can cook 
 seductive little dainties to tempt the patient's 
 appetite, she can tidy the room, she can even 
 help to make or alter baby-linen, she doesn't 
 think it indecent for her lady's husband to 
 come into the bed-room occasionally to kiss 
 his own wife ; item, she can fetch and carry ; 
 and, generally speaking, save trouble. She 
 can even put up with good cask porter and 
 wholesome table ale. But your nurse at six 
 pounds and upwards, with all manner of
 
 HEIR APPAREXT. 133 
 
 laundry charges and extras, is a very different 
 creature. She's not a cook, nor a kitchen-maid, 
 nor a parlour-maid, nor a nurse-maid, nor a laun- 
 drymaid, nor a dressmaker, but a *' lady's nurse." 
 She asks what the lady wants, and of course 
 rings the bell for the proper servant to get it. 
 She has a tender stomach that malt licj^uor does 
 not agree vdth, while her exhausting duties 
 render the support of wine and brandy abso- 
 lutely necessary. She has a large corre- 
 spondence and an interesting and eventful auto- 
 biography. She has always received innumer- 
 able handsome presents from former patients, 
 and affectionate and pressing invitations to pay 
 them frequent visits as " a friend." In a word, 
 she's a horrid humbug and imposition, and yet 
 where is the reformer bold enough to put her 
 down ? 
 
 Patty would have been snuffed out at once 
 had not Mrs. Sawyers perceived that she might 
 be made use of to liditen her own labour. So
 
 134 ONLY TO BE MARPJED. 
 
 she was allowed to sit with ]\Irs. Carlisle, for 
 instance, whenever j\Irs. Sawyers wanted to go 
 out, and to hold the bal3y on her lap whenever 
 Mrs. Saw}^ers was tired. But the poor hus- 
 band was absolutely good for nothing in the 
 eyes of the well recommended nurse. He could 
 do nothing, and yet he would keep pottering 
 about, coming home an hour earher from busi- 
 ness to see how his " old woman" was gettmg 
 on, and in the hope of a quiet chat with her 
 about that future which little Samuel had 
 made so large and full. But he was constantly 
 snubbed and out-mana?u\Tcd by the t}Tant 
 Sawyers, and found that even rebellion and 
 battle could end only in ignominy and defeat. 
 
 Like many other people, ^Irs. Sa^^yers was 
 very anxious to speak her mind to her lady's 
 husband, but didn't quite know how to do it. 
 The resources of the class of society to which 
 monthly nurses belong are but limited, and 
 after much consideration she was compelled to
 
 HEIR APPARENT. 135 
 
 fall back upon the very common expedient of 
 saying in a very loud voice to somebody else 
 what she really wanted to say to Mr. Carlisle. 
 That unhappy victim had just been excluded 
 by the tyrant from the chamber of his wife, 
 and was wandering disconsolately along the 
 passage to the dining-room door, when he 
 heard the voice of his oppressor in loud 
 dialogue with the cook. 
 
 "I never see such an indecent old man, 
 cook, in my life," said the fiery Sa^vyers. 
 
 " What's the matter now, nurse 1 " said the 
 cook ; and the master, with his hand on the 
 handle of the dining-room door, listened *' to 
 no good of himself" 
 
 " I'm used to gentlemen s houses, cook, where 
 people know manners," replied the nurse. " I 
 don't mean to have a man walking in and out 
 of our room just when he chooses, as if the 
 month was over; I declare he came in this 
 morning, to say good-bye to Mrs. Carlisle,
 
 136 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 when I was washing the infant. I'm not used 
 such vulgarity, cook, nor do I wish it." 
 
 Mr. Carlisle went into the dining-room very 
 savage and very red, and rang the bell. 
 
 "Send Mrs. Sa^\yers to me," he said, "this 
 instant." 
 
 It was all very well to send for 'Mrs. Saw- 
 yers ; anybody " can call spirits from the vasty 
 deep," but sometimes they don t come, and 
 Mrs. Sawyers wouldn't come. 
 
 " Tell your master, cook, that I'm busy, and 
 can't come," said the despot. 
 
 Mr. Carlisle, more angry than ever, sent a 
 second message more peremptory than the first, 
 which brought the lady's nurse at last to the 
 dining-room. 
 
 " Well, sir," said Mrs. Sawyers, " if you'll 
 kindly be quick, as " 
 
 " I want none of your impertinence, nurse," 
 cut in Mr. Carlisle, with rudest interruption ; 
 " I just want to tell you, next time you've any
 
 HEIR APPARENT. 137 
 
 very impudent remark to make to me, you'd 
 better make it to me direct, and not to the 
 cook." 
 
 " I coukln't tell you were a listener, sir," said 
 the nurse, in a tone of injured and indignant 
 virtue. 
 
 "Listener! woman, what do you mean? 
 You know perfectly well you meant me to 
 hear." 
 
 "AYell, then, it isn't decent," said Sawyers, 
 changing her ground ; " nurses has their 
 feelins, Mr. Carlisle, and it isn't everybody 
 that likes to be seen with her gownd sleeves 
 tucked up, nor am I that one, Mr. Carlisle. 
 But I can tell my lady that you're not satisfied, 
 and that I'd l:)etter go, though she's far from 
 well enough to be left." 
 
 Poor Mr. Carlisle saw at a glance that he 
 was beaten. The woman could any day punish 
 him by making his wife ill, and she was quite 
 mean enough to do it. So she had her own
 
 138 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 way thenceforward to the end of the montL 
 It did come to an end at last, as all months 
 will, and as even the race of Sawyerses must in 
 time. Home was home once more, w^th the 
 miraculous Samuel to make it more homelike 
 than ever. 
 
 At least it surely might have been so. How 
 could a little infant bring sorrow and di\dsion 1 
 And yet Mrs. Carlisle never hushed her baby to 
 sleep on her bosom without remembering that 
 somebody else was standing in his way. She 
 did not know what to do or to suggest, but if 
 Mr. Carlisle should die, what pro^dsion was 
 made for their o^vn child, their own flesh and 
 blood ? 
 
 " It's very fortunate," she said one night to 
 her husband, when Samuel Avas about six 
 months old, "that we said nothing to Patty 
 about your will, and our intention to adopt 
 her ; things are so altered now."
 
 HEIR APPARENT. l;39 
 
 " Why, you don't mean, do yon, Hannali ? 
 — " said her husband. 
 
 " Oh, no, Johnnie, of course not," said Mrs. 
 CarHsle, without letting him finish his sen- 
 tence. " I don't mean anything particular, 
 but, of course, there is a difierence, isn t there, 
 dear 1 " 
 
 " But you 11 make no difference with Patty, 
 will you, mother ? '^ he said, feeling very per- 
 plexed and very unhappy, as strange thoughts 
 came crowding upon him. 
 
 "Well, Johnnie, when there are two, we 
 can't exactly leave everything to one" 
 
 They said no more just then, but when Mrs. 
 Carlisle had gone up-stairs to get baby to sleep, 
 her husband took from his desk his mil, and 
 read it slowly over. Most certainly there was 
 nothing for Samuel, and that must be altered. 
 " I'll make another," he said, " as soon as I can 
 spare time, and they shall share alike, as if 
 they were both our own."
 
 140 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 He put the will on the fire, and watched it 
 while it crackled and l)nrnt to ashes. 
 
 " ril make another very soon," he said. 
 " Mother seems a Lit hard on Patty, though 
 she doesn't mean it. God Ijless the crirl." 
 
 He stood, gazing still in an abstracted mood 
 into the fire. Again and again he wiped the 
 tears that would flow, thoucrh he meant nothino; 
 more sincerely than to make a true daughter of 
 the gentle girl who had so brightened his home 
 and heart. He was still standino; in a mourn- 
 ful reverie when his wife touched his shoulder. 
 
 " Baby's asleep, dear," she said ; " aren't you 
 ready ? " 
 
 " Yes, Hannah. I've been burning the will." 
 
 "Thank you, Johnnie," she said, and kissed 
 him ; " it's a great weight off my mind."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CEUEL KINDNESSES. 
 
 There is scarcely any step of more doubtful 
 prudence tlian to adopt a cliild, unless, indeed, 
 the foster-parents are a great deal older than 
 Abraham and Sarah, when Sarah laughed. 
 Very few people could be trusted even with 
 children of their own, if they had power, when- 
 ever they thought fit, to sever those bonds 
 which bind parents and children together. A 
 fit of passion, and much more the prodigal be- 
 haviour of children, or the lessenino: resources 
 of the father, worfld be continually breaking up 
 famihes, if families were things that could be 
 broken up. Very wisely, both matrimony and 
 parentage have been rendered indestructible,
 
 142 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 and can only be in some degree suspended in 
 very extreme cases, and after the most solemn 
 formalities. But an adopted cliild is bound to 
 its foster-parents neither by blood nor law. 
 All the hopes they have encouraged it to 
 cherish can be destroyed in a moment ; all the 
 habits they have compelled it to form can, by a 
 single act of caprice, be rendered useless or 
 injurious. For adopted children, there is often 
 l)ut a step between affluence and beggary ; be- 
 tween a life of ease and luxury, and the sternest 
 hardships with which human natiu'e can be 
 required to battle. 
 
 On the other hand, there is no stronger 
 temptation to do injustice to an adopted cliild, 
 than the birth of a genuine child of the house. 
 Maternal love is almost as diiSerent from every 
 other kind of affection as love itself is from 
 hatred. Nothino; can exceed a mother s self- 
 devotion, the courage with which she will face 
 danger, the patience wdth which she will endure
 
 CRUEL KINDNESSES. 143 
 
 all manner of liardsliijDS for tlie sake of lier 
 children. And nothing can exceed a mother s 
 bitter hatred, and unrelenting ferocity and 
 fiendish cruelty, when she thinks that her chil- 
 dren are wronged, or that other people are 
 standing in their way. Women seem too often 
 incapable of believing that there is any genuine 
 love at all, which is not selfish, exacting, mo- 
 nopolising; and to love their own children 
 often seems to them incompatible with perfectly 
 loving anybody else's children. So, what is an 
 adopted child to do ? If she is a naughty, ill- 
 conducted child, above all, if she quarrels with 
 the child of her foster-parents, there is of 
 course an immediate and open breach; while 
 even her gentleness and love may be too win- 
 ning, and the mother may feel that the child of 
 a stranger is stealing the affection that belongs 
 to her own flesh and blood. 
 
 From the very first Mrs. Carlisle had doubted 
 the wisdom of taking Patty home to their own
 
 144 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 house. Of course she did not go to them at 
 first as an adopted child ; but it was very diffi- 
 cult to discover in what capacity she really did 
 go. Mrs. Carlisle was a woman of strong com- 
 mon sense, and she never could bear to have to 
 do with what she could not clearly understand, 
 and accurately describe. If Patty had been a 
 servant, or a companion, or a governess, or even 
 an adopted child (though for that Mrs. CarHsle 
 was by no means prepared), the worthy matron 
 would have understood their mutual relation- 
 ships, and the duties arising out of them. But 
 Patty was neither one thing nor another. Mrs. 
 Carlisle did not know what to say to people 
 who asked about her. Was she a niece, or was 
 she the orphan ghl of some dear and cherished 
 friend, or was she a kinswoman of Mr. Car- 
 lisle's '? No, she was none of these, and Mrs. 
 Carlisle be2:an to think it was almost dis- 
 reputable to have so pretty a girl in the house, 
 when she could j^ive so indifferent an account
 
 CRUEL KINDNESSES. U5 
 
 of her. So, when it was proposed that she 
 should be adopted, though Airs. Carlisle's mind 
 was far from satisfied, she felt that that course 
 would at least give a sort of definiteness to 
 their relationship, and so far make their way 
 easier. Yet she never could give up hoping 
 that one day her own child would come, and 
 she could not doubt that Patty would then be 
 in the way ; nay, she had a kind of instinct, 
 which taught her that there might arise a ter- 
 rible conflict in her own heart, until she might 
 come even to hate the gentle, inoffensive girl 
 she was now adopting. 
 
 No such perplexities troubled her husband. 
 He loved with a man's love, not with a woman's ; 
 with a father's love, not with a mother's. Patty 
 had become truly a daughter to him, and no 
 other daughter could be more dear. Children 
 mio'ht be born to him, whom he would love 
 with equal fondness, but they would never 
 turn Patty out of his heart. He never analysed 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 liis own feelinors : but if he had done so, he 
 would have found that he regarded the merely 
 physical relation of parent and child as con- 
 sisting simply of a set of circumstances which 
 necessitate the dependence, and care, and inti- 
 mate mutual knowledge, out of which a deep, 
 lasting, ineradicable affection and unalterable 
 obligations spring. But the circumstances were 
 comparatively unimportant, he thought, so long 
 as the true affection was really produced, and 
 the oblio'ations of father and child recoo^nised 
 and accepted. Some circumstances had brought 
 him and Patty together and united their hearts 
 in bonds of tenderest love ; and it mattered 
 nothing to him that they were not ties of blood. 
 He meant to treat his adopted daughter exactly 
 as he would treat any other child that God 
 might send him. 
 
 And he did treat her well ; more and more 
 tenderly after little Samuel was born : partly, 
 perhaps, because she had become more useful
 
 CRUEL KINDNESSES. 147 
 
 to him, and his wife more occupied with a 
 mother s cares and duties ; partly, also, because 
 of a vague dread that a change was coming, 
 and that he mio-ht have soon to choose between 
 his wife and his adopted child. He knew which 
 he must choose ; but it would be to him a 
 bitter pang — the sorest trial he had ever 
 known. 
 
 By what subtle power is it that spirits have 
 their presentiments of coming evils, cruel sepa- 
 rations, cooling love ? Long before any out- 
 ward sign is given they feel that the storm is 
 gathering, that they are falling into the power 
 of some malign Influence, of which they can 
 give no account, but that it thrills their whole 
 being with restlessness and pain. In the cosy 
 house in Canonbury Square there was this rest- 
 less foreboding of calamity. Everybody felt it ; 
 Patty, Mr. Carlisle, Mrs. Carlisle. They loved 
 one another still ; but not without fear — fear, 
 which hath torment. Mrs. Carlisle was seeking 
 
 L 2
 
 148 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 occasion against Patty ; though she Avould 
 have strenuously denied it, and, in fact, did not 
 know it. ]\Ir. Carlisle felt as if he was beinir 
 dragged into a conspiracy ; that he soon would 
 be expected to do violence to his best and ten- 
 derest feelings ; and that, anyhow, he could 
 not escape inflicting cruel wounds, both on 
 others and on himself. Patty was simply 
 miserable. She was a woman, now ; sensitive — 
 almost morbidly sensitive — to every slightest 
 change in that atmosphere in which her affec- 
 tions lived. Mrs. Carlisle was cooler, Mr. Car- 
 lisle Avas warmer than ever : but both chans^es 
 meant the same thing, and were equally ominous 
 of disaster. It is dreadful to be i^ided ; to be 
 even caressed and fondled by those who can 
 scarcely keep the tears from their eyes while 
 they lavish love upon us, and who seem to say, 
 by every endearment, " Alas ! how soon it 
 must be over ; how bitter will be the change! " 
 It was quite impossible that the change could
 
 CRUEL KINDNESSES. 149 
 
 come without miicli cruelty and injustice. 
 There was absolutely no reason for disinheriting 
 Patty ; she deserved a child's place as much as 
 any child could possibly have deserved it — 
 though " blood is blood." There was no pos- 
 sibility of quarrelling with her, or of justifying 
 any unkindness towards her ; and even Mrs^ 
 Carlisle did not mean to quarrel with her or to 
 be unkind. But she quite forgot how life is 
 filled full of implied promises, and that we have 
 no right to begin a course of conduct involving 
 the happiness of our fellow-creatures, if we are 
 not prepared to follow it to the utmost end. 
 She fancied that Patty could have a happy 
 home for some years, and then be turned out 
 of it, and be hapiner than she would have 
 been without those years of peace at all. 
 " Those years," she would say to herself, " were 
 as happy as we could make them, and she had 
 no claim upon us even for them." But Mrs. 
 Carlisle did not reason ; she had the awful.
 
 150 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 selfish love of Samuel eating up every other 
 affection, and becoming a curse to herself and 
 evciybody else. " She's older than baby,'' she 
 said to herself, as she thought of Patty ; " she's 
 a sort of advantage over him in that. And 
 I believe Johnnie loves her better than his own 
 child. And she's not our own child, after all, 
 and nothino; can make her — and ^o she shall." 
 Of course when Mrs. Carlisle had arrived at 
 this point, there Avas nothing left for her to do 
 but lie in wait for the least ofi^ensive occasion 
 of carrying her purpose into effect. AMiat 
 would she not have given for some burst of 
 ill-temper or impatience from Patty ? nay, she 
 would almost have been thankful if, for the 
 first time in his life, her husband would have 
 treated her with unkindness. But nothino^ of 
 the kind occurred ; Patty was patient and 
 Johnnie was kind, and even little Samuel grew 
 plump and hearty, and laughed and cooed 
 when he was in Patty's arms, as if he hadn't
 
 ^ 
 
 CRUEL KINDNESSES. 151 
 
 tlie smallest notion that he was in the arms of 
 liis worst enemy. Nothing is more aggravating 
 than the persevering goodness of people that 
 you intend to harm, and it was quite plain 
 that Mrs. Carlisle must begin the quarrel, if 
 there was to be any quarrel at all. Of course, 
 when it did come, the innocent Samuel was 
 the occasion of it. Mr. CarKsle and Patty were 
 chatting together after supper, and Mrs. Carlisle 
 was vainly trying to get baby to sleep ; baby, 
 on the other hand, seemed to have made up 
 his mind that he would not go to sleep till 
 morning, till daylight did appear. He was 
 screaming as loudly as if his voice had been 
 born the first moment he himself had been ex- 
 pected, and had been growing stronger and 
 stronger ever since. 
 
 " Don't you think, Hannah," said Mr. Car- 
 lisle, with a suffering tone, " that you could get 
 baby better to sleep up-stairs ? " 
 
 Of course fathers are brutes ; or they would
 
 ]52 ONLY TO BE MARPJED. 
 
 enjoy hearing tlic shrieks of an exasperating 
 infant. 
 
 " Oh yes, Johnnie," said Samuel's mother, 
 " I can take him up-stairs, poor Httle fellow ;" 
 and in that solemn moment it seemed borne in 
 upon her that the hour of settlement had come. 
 She went up-stairs, taking little Samuel with 
 her, howling fearfully all the way, and then she 
 began to consider how she might strike the 
 fatal blow. And while she hushed her baby 
 to sleep she was going through all that frantic 
 self-justification which, in her inmost heart, she 
 knew to be perfectly false and hollow. In 
 about half an hour the baby was asleep, and she 
 gave three or four impatient knocks on the 
 floor to intimate to her husband, in the dining- 
 room below, that it was quite time for him to 
 seek repose, or at any rate to seek the chamber 
 where rest and quiet sleep had often come to 
 him. There was to be not much rest or sleep 
 that night for Samuel's unhappy father.
 
 CEUEL KINDNESSES. 153 
 
 " I should have thought," said Mrs. Carlisle 
 (for every woman who is bent upon doing an 
 injury, is obliged to pretend that she is suffer- 
 ing one), ''that you might have heard that 
 baby was asleep long ago." 
 
 " Why, my love," said good-natured Johnnie, 
 " I quite thought that I heard him cry till 
 within the last five minutes ;" which was per- 
 fectly true. 
 
 " Fm very unhappy and disappointed," said 
 Mrs. Carlisle, bursting into tears. 
 
 " Why, Hannah," said her husband, " what's 
 the matter, old woman? You're quite tired 
 and ill ; that great, big boy is too much for 
 you ; you must try and get rid of him a bit, or 
 he'll pull all your strength down." 
 
 " Oh, Johnnie," said Mrs. Carlisle, " I wish 
 you loved him as much as I do." 
 
 " Well, I think I do love him as much as 
 you do," said her husband. 
 
 " No, my dear, no," said his wife ; "no man
 
 15 i ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 can have a mother's feelings ; and there are 
 other reasons, Johnnie ; you Ve been used to a 
 child that never was a baby ; you never had 
 to bear with its poor little troubles ; it came to 
 you when they were all over, when it was 
 nearly full gro^vn ; and now, when poor little 
 Samuel cries, you think it a hardship, and 
 don't seem at all to like it/' 
 
 *' I don't the least know what you mean," 
 said her husband, entirely baffled by this 
 highly figurative mode of expression. 
 
 " Well, then, Johnnie, I mean Patty," said 
 his wife. 
 
 " Well, what's Patty been doing ? " said Mr. 
 Carlisle, who began to feel that he was drawn 
 into the conspiracy at last. 
 
 *^ Doing; ? she's been doincc nothing;," said 
 Hannah ; " but you know when we brought 
 her here she wasn't a baby, Johnnie ; she 
 did not cry and need putting to sleep, and 
 wake you in the middle of the night, and
 
 CRUEL KINDNESSES. 155 
 
 sometimes just need walking up and down the 
 bed-room for a few minutes. And Fm sure 
 that's not much to do for any dear little baby 
 like Sammy." 
 
 Of course not. To be waked up out of your 
 first sleep, and compelled to march up and 
 do^vn like a sentinel in the dead of the night, 
 with a baby in your arms, measuring the yards 
 from your bed-room window to the fire-place, 
 till youVe walked about two miles — of course 
 that's nothing in any woman's judgment. At 
 any rate, to do Mr. Carlisle justice, he had 
 never complained, and he said so. 
 
 " No, Johnnie, you don't complain ; but I can 
 see you don't hke it," said his spouse, with a 
 penetration into the feelings of the male bosom 
 truly wonderful. 
 
 " No, of course, I don't lihe it," said Mr. 
 Carlisle ; " and I should think there is no 
 human being who does." 
 
 " No, Johnnie, and you never will like it,"
 
 15G ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 said the wife, uttering each word more slowly 
 and more emphatically than the one before it ; 
 "until" and there she stopped. 
 
 " Well, until what, dear ? Until I can't 
 sleep, and want something to occupy my 
 attention in the dead of nvAit ? " 
 
 " No, Johnnie. But I know it's Patty," she 
 said, bursting once more into hysterical tears 
 and sobs. 
 
 Now, there is a point at which even the 
 best-tempered men give way — a last straw 
 that breaks even the strongest camel's back ; 
 and Mr. Carlisle had been driven up to that 
 last point, and upon her fiiithful camel, patient 
 bearer of her burdens, Mrs. Carlisle had laid 
 that last straw. 
 
 " Come, come, Hannah," said her husband ; 
 " stop that stupid crying about nothing. We 
 have never had any words yet since we were 
 married, and God forbid we should begin ; 
 but if you're going to work yourself up into
 
 CRUEL KINDNESSES. 157 
 
 hysterics, you'll have Sammy's bowels all out 
 of order to-morrow, not to mention a bad 
 headache for yourself, and all about nothing 
 too. Wliat have you got to complain of in 
 Patty ? '' 
 
 " Oh no, no, no, Johnnie ! " said his mfe, 
 " IVe nothing to complain of, and it's no use 
 being cross with me, but I know you'll never 
 love him till she's o^one.'^ 
 
 Thouo;h Mr. Carlisle had of course known 
 for a long time that something was coming, he 
 was scarely prepared for this. Indeed, nobody 
 is ever prepared for being crashed against 
 a disagreeable destiny. He was exceedingly 
 anxious to give no unnecessary pain to his 
 wife, and he tried with all his power to sj)eak 
 with the utmost coolness in quiet, well-mea- 
 sured words. What better can a man do under 
 such circumstances? And yet, is there any- 
 thing more completely aggravating ? 
 
 " You talk to me," said Hannah, " as coldly
 
 158 ONLY TO BE IMARKIED. 
 
 as if we were perfect strangers to each other ; 
 and I'm sure I wouldn't have said a word if 
 it hadn't been for baby. I can't bear the 
 thought of your loving anybody better than 
 him." 
 
 " Well, my dear old woman," said the be- 
 wildered man, " don't I love you and baby, 
 and all of you, as much as anybody can love ? 
 Should I make any of you happier by making 
 Patty miserable ? or should I love you more 
 by loving her less ? Besides, I love her as 
 much as if she were your own child, Hannah, 
 and I'm very glad I do. She's a sweet, loving 
 creature as ever made a man's home happy. 
 God bless her ! " 
 
 " I wish she'd never darkened our doors," 
 sobbed out Mrs. Carlisle. " We never had a 
 word till she came." 
 
 " And has she brouQ-ht us to words ? '' 
 said the husband. '' What has the poor dear 
 child done ? You haven't a complaint to
 
 CRUEL KINDNESSES. 159 
 
 make against her; it^s all your own jealous 
 temper." 
 
 " No, Jolm," said Mrs. Carlisle, with strongest 
 emphasis ; '^jealous I am not, and God grant 
 I may have no occasion." 
 
 " There you go," said John ; " that's the 
 way w^hen people begin quarrelling ; they never 
 understand each other. I don't supj)ose you're 
 jealous about me, old woman. I know it's all 
 your love for baby. But we should have 
 thought of this before we adopted Patty ; it 
 would be cruel and wicked to send her away 
 now. And where could we send her ? " 
 
 " Oh, if you will only agree that she shall 
 go," said Hannah, hugging her husband, " you 
 may do what you like for her, and I'm sure 
 I'll do anything I can. But do let us have 
 home to ourselves, Johnnie, and then we shall 
 have no more words."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE EEFUGE. 
 
 No aiTanorcment of course was made that 
 
 o 
 
 night ; but Mrs. Carlisle had won, as any 
 woman may, who determines upon winning, 
 That is to say, she can always get her way — if 
 it is worth while. But is if? What if she 
 loses her husband ; makes him feel enslaved, 
 thwarted, unhappy ; makes him feel that his 
 wife and he have rival interests, and that she 
 means to be master? How much of a hus- 
 band's heart is it worth a wife's while to 
 sacrifice, even for the best "way" she can 
 devise ? 
 
 Mr. Carlisle had never been so miserable in 
 his life, as he was after his wife's distinctly
 
 THE REFUGE. 161 
 
 expressed desire that he should find another 
 home for Patty. He could hardly look his 
 dear adopted child in the face ; he felt himself 
 a cruel monster and, moreover, a cowardly 
 sneak. He dare not openly tell her that 
 something was wrong; but every word he 
 spoke to her trembled with the grief of 
 wounded affection. He would have given 
 worlds to fold her in his arms, and tell her 
 that whatever came to them he loved her with 
 the best love any father could give. But that 
 would have compromised his wife; and he 
 knew that she was not really cruel, only like 
 a tigress with her cubs. The knowledge of the 
 great chasm between his wife and himself, 
 which had suddenly gaped so wide, was even 
 worse to bear than his grief for Patty. He 
 had thought Hannah so difierent. He couldn t 
 understand her. He wished Samuel had never 
 been born. 
 
 Patty knew that she would soon have to 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 leave her friend's home. Nobody told her so ; 
 but she was not the girl to wait to be told. 
 She knew that such sounds as she heard in ^Ir. 
 and Mrs. Carlisle's chamber on the night of their 
 first "misunderstanding" had never come to 
 her ears before; and she was quite sure that 
 she was somehoAv the cause of the coolness and 
 bewilderment and inexplicable unhappiness 
 which was gathering round them all. She 
 couldn't tell what to do. Every day she read 
 the advertisements in the " Times," hoping that 
 they might guide her ; but alas ! the people 
 who want and the peoj)le who are wanted never 
 seem to meet. 
 
 It was baby's birthday, mid-winter again, 
 and Mrs. Carlisle had invited a few friends to 
 tea ; and, being somewhat of the nature of a 
 solemn Christian festival, she had invited her 
 reverend friend and minister, Mr. Jonas Faith- 
 ful. He was just the same as ever, plunged to 
 the neck in religious controversies, which would
 
 THE REFUGE. 1G3 
 
 have been frivolous and laughable but for their 
 accursed fruits. He had fresh news to tell of 
 the spread of Popery " on the one hand," and 
 Kationalism " on the other." It seemed, he 
 thought, almost as if the last times had come, 
 and Satan had grown more vicious and malig- 
 nant than ever, " knowing that he had but a 
 short time." If there was any change in the 
 poor bewildered clergyman, it was that he was 
 more inclined to take refuge from the despair 
 of the present in the large hopes and vague 
 glories of unfulfilled prophecy. If only the 
 Lord would come ! And perhaps He would 
 have come, if He had not been here akeady — 
 from the beginning and for evermore. 
 
 But even philanthropy itself, Mr. Faithful 
 thought, was " baptised with the spirit of the 
 world." The relief of distress was not now, 
 as in better times, connected indissolubly with 
 repentance. Education had become secular and 
 godless. Even refuges and penitentiaries were 
 
 ii 2
 
 164 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 apparently falling into the hands of men who 
 thouo;ht more of restorino; sinners to the social 
 status they had lost than to the favour of God. 
 
 "The world is creeping in everywhere, Mr. 
 Carlisle," said the divine ; "even the people 
 who don't deny the essential truths of our holy 
 religion are trying to do without them." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mrs. Carlisle, filling up a pause 
 in the clergyman's speech, " I'm afraid it is so, 
 Mr. Faithful." 
 
 " I was talking only the other day," he 
 continued, " to Mr. Whitehouse about liis 
 refuge." 
 
 " Does he keep a refuge ?" asked Mrs. Carlisle. 
 
 " Yes," said the minister ; " and I must 
 admit he seems to be doing a good work. But 
 he doesn't seem to care for the one thingr need- 
 
 o 
 
 ful — yet lacketh he one thing." 
 
 "Then who are those nice young women he 
 brings to church with him ?"' asked ]\Ii-s. Car- 
 lisle.
 
 THE REFUGE. 161) 
 
 " They are tlie refuge girls," said Mr. Faith- 
 ful ; " the " 
 
 '' The refuge girls!" interrupted his hostess, 
 overwhelmed with astonishment. " The re- 
 fuge girls ! Do you mean the thieves and — 
 and " 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Carlisle ; it's Mr. "WHiitehouse's 
 peculiar plan. He says it's no use trying to do 
 people good unless you trust them. I don't 
 know how it will answer ; he seems quite to 
 forget the dreadful depravity of the human 
 heart." 
 
 " Perhaps his plan isn't so bad after all," said 
 Mr. Carlisle ; ''almost any thing's worth trying 
 with poor creatures like them." 
 
 " Well, I wonder," said his wife, " that 
 they've impudence to enter a place of worship 
 with respectable people, and sit there as proper 
 and quiet as if nothing had happened." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Patty, they've been reading 
 the parable of the pharisee and publican."
 
 166 ONLY TO BE MARrJED. 
 
 With a queer mystified look at Patty, whom 
 he never could understand, the clergyman went 
 on with his account of Mr. AVliitehouse's refuge. 
 It was not very accurate ; but he concluded 
 with a little l)it of information that made 
 Patty's heart beat fast. 
 
 " Mr. AVhitehouse is looking for a young 
 lady to helj) his wife in the management of his 
 refuge. I earnestly advised him to get an 
 elderly experienced matron — at least, not a day 
 younger than fifty-five — somebody with strong 
 will and a commanding presence, who could 
 keep the girls in subjection. He gave me a 
 very odd answer — ' If God had blessed me with 
 a little gii-1, instead of that great strapping lad 
 of mine, six feet two in his stockings, she'd 
 have been just twenty-one next week. She 
 must have been like her mother, Mr. Faithful, 
 and then she'd have had a heart full of trust 
 and love for everybody — most for those who 
 are in deepest need. I should have had no
 
 THE REFUGE. 167 
 
 occasion to seek for an assistant for Mrs. "White- 
 house, then.^'' 
 
 " I should be very sorry to expose a child of 
 mine to such contamination," said Mrs. Car- 
 lisle. 
 
 " Most people would," said the clergyman. 
 
 Patty did not care much for the rest of the 
 conversation that evening, for she was wishing, 
 wondering, planning, building castles in the 
 air. She felt somehow sure that Mr. White- 
 house would take her, if she asked him, and let 
 her try to do the work he had no daughter to 
 do. Would not her own loneliness teach her 
 to comfort others ? And if she knew very 
 little of " the world," she had such experience 
 of " inner life" as only orphanage and trouble 
 can give. After all, sin cannot give us more 
 sympathy for sinners than purity and goodness 
 can give. 
 
 Mr. Whitehouse's " refuge " was not really
 
 168 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 called by tliat name ; it had no special name at 
 all, indicative of the benevolent purposes to 
 which so much of it was devoted. It was 
 called "Oak Villa/' was not more than a 
 quarter of an hour's walk from Highbury 
 Place, was "delightfully situated in its own 
 grounds," and was simply Mr. Whitehouse's 
 own house, to which he invited what company 
 he chose. It was not a gloomy, prison-like 
 mansion, stucco -fronted, with windows of 
 frosted glass, and outside blinds of massive 
 wood such as one occasionally sees in stables. 
 The girls whom he took home there were not 
 all dressed alike in badly-fitting blue print 
 dresses, with big holland aprons and bibs, and 
 large white night-caps. They had no livery of 
 misfortune there — not even a livery of shame 
 and penitence. Mr. "Wliitehouse found no fault 
 with other institutions ; he never presumed to 
 say that his OA^^l mode of treatment was the 
 only good, or, in every case, the best mode.
 
 THE REFUGE. 169 
 
 But, as he had a large house and an ample 
 fortune, he thought it better to do what good 
 he could himself, in his own way, than to pay- 
 somebody else to do it in a different way. He 
 asked nobody for subscriptions, so he needed 
 no committee or secretary, no annual report, no 
 public meeting, no "charity sermons ;" and, on 
 the other side, he was free to work out his own 
 belief to its utmost practical conclusion. He 
 wanted to know whether what he believed was 
 true — whether kindness could concj[uer cruelty 
 and vice ; whether chastity could win the im- 
 pure to the love of virtue ; whether it was well 
 to kill the fatted calf for the prodigal child. 
 He would at any rate try; — so he had no 
 black-hole, no restraint, no elaborate system of 
 humiliations, no perpetual mementoes of a past 
 that it was degradation to recal even in 
 memory, which it was the beginning of salva- 
 tion to forget. He said nothing against those 
 who strove in a sterner way to raise the fallen.
 
 170 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 and recover the lost ; but it was quite other 
 guidance than theirs that he followed — the 
 discipline of nature and of God. He had 
 written on the first page of his joui-nal the 
 words of imprisoned Alvar, in Coleridge's " Re- 
 morse." 
 
 *' With tender ministrations, thou, O Nature, 
 Hoalest thj'' wandering and distempered child ; 
 Thou poui"est on him thy soft influences, 
 Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets. 
 Thy melodies of woods, and ^sinds, and waters : 
 Till he relent, and can no more endure 
 To be a jarring and a dissonant thing 
 Amid this general dance and minstrelsy ; 
 But, bursting into tears, ■';\TLns back his way, 
 His angrj'' spirit healed and harmonized 
 By the benignant touch of love and beauty." 
 
 It would, of course, have been impossible for 
 Mr. Whitehouse to do the work to which he 
 had been now devoting many years of liis life, 
 without the entii'e sympathy and active co- 
 operation of his ^vife. They had at first taken 
 only one poor, unhappy girl to their home ; a
 
 THE REFUGE. 171 
 
 girl whom they had found one night on the 
 steps of Union Chapel, Islington, weeping over 
 a dead baby — better, far better, dead, though 
 she would have wept it to life again if she 
 could. Dead as it was it seemed the only 
 thing she had in all this cold, treacherous 
 world to love and clino; to. 
 
 " Oh ! lady, lady," she said, as Mrs. White- 
 house bent over her, " look at him. My baby's 
 dead — dead — oh, my God !" 
 
 And then she wept as if her heart would 
 break. He was all she had. Yes, all ! Not a 
 penny, not a crust of bread, not a fireside any- 
 where, for all the world's so wide, that she 
 could go to out of the bleak air, and say " Tm 
 at home." No father, no mother — alas ! the 
 old story of sin and woe ! No husband to 
 take from her the poor dead baby that lay so 
 sickeningly cold against her heart. 
 
 "Look, lady, at his poor worn arms and 
 limbs ;" and she pressed him to her bosom, as if
 
 172 ONLY TO BE MARPJED. 
 
 he could still know the love that was yearning 
 over him — perhaps he could better than ever. 
 " He cried so all day, till I thought somebody 
 was driving sharp nails into my head ; but I 
 had nothing to give him, lady. It was striking 
 seven when I sat down here, and he was getting 
 quiet, quieter and quieter, and it struck eight 
 before I dared look at him. I knew what was 
 making him so still. Oh, my God ! my God !" 
 Mr. Whitehouse slipped away to the corner 
 of Highbury Place for a cab — he thought that 
 would be better than fetching a policeman to 
 take her to the comforts of a workhouse. He 
 took her himself to Oak Villa instead. The 
 inquest on the body of her poor little son was 
 held in his own dining-room, and the poor 
 desolate mother was the first lost sister that 
 this good brother and his wife brought home. 
 And now they had saved so many that they 
 wanted help. Two or three new rooms had 
 been added to Oak Villa, for the growing com-
 
 THE REFUGE. 173 
 
 pany of the " redeemed." It was a costly 
 family ; but after all not so costly as carriages 
 and horses, and idle flunkeys, and wasteful 
 stewards, and all the wreck and ruin of 
 fashionable life. 
 
 To Oak Villa, then, the day after the birth- 
 day party, Patty went to offer herself to Mr. 
 Whitehouse, to be his helper in the good work 
 of his refuo;e home. She told him how she 
 came to hear that he wanted help, not for- 
 getting to explain that she had no recommen- 
 dation from the worthy Mr. Faithful. She told 
 him how it was that she had been living with 
 the Carlisles, and how it was that, notwith- 
 standing their great kindness, she wished to 
 leave them. " She knew that when they took 
 her to their house they expected to have no 
 children of their own ; and she wished to do 
 all she could to relieve them from any obliga- 
 tion which they might think they had con- 
 tracted when their circumstances were so
 
 174 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 different.'' Mrs. Wliiteliouse fully explained 
 to her the principles on which she and her 
 husband were acting ; and the means by which 
 they hoped to restore the unhappy women who 
 had fallen into shame and sin to virtue and self- 
 respect. There was the utmost frankness on 
 both sides ; and it was agreed that ^Ir. White- 
 house should call on Mr. CarHsle at the end of 
 • the next week, and ask him such questions as 
 might enable the good parents of the refuge to 
 judge more accurately of Patty's cpalifications. 
 There was no doubt, however, on either side of 
 the result of such inquiries. 
 
 And now, how was Patty to tell the 
 friends she loved so dearly that she was going 
 to leave them — to be almost as much a stran- 
 ger to them as ever. It was a sort of reUef, 
 and yet how bitter, to know that her ab- 
 sence would bring back a peace and perfect 
 mutual trust to the home she was leaving, 
 which she had been the innocent occasion of
 
 THE REFUGE. 175 
 
 disturbing. And yet it had been a true home 
 for her, so far as she could have a home, when 
 her mother, the only real friend with whom she 
 could have perfect sympathy, to whom she 
 could tell every thought with utter unreserve, 
 had been taken from her. Again and again 
 she tried to tell her friends the determination 
 at which she had arrived ; but again and again 
 her courage failed her. She must go away and 
 ^vrite to them. She asked if she could be 
 spared for a few days to spend this Christmas 
 in Manchester ; her father was getting very old 
 and very infirm — he might not live to another. 
 The day but one after she left them they 
 received the following letter : — 
 
 " Manchester, ' Our House.' 
 '■^ Deceniber 1th, 
 
 "My Very Dear Friends, 
 '' The Dearest Friends I have. 
 
 " I am afraid I must be very cowardly,
 
 176 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 for I've been obliged to come all the way to 
 Manchester to get strength to tell you what I 
 have done, and what I am going to do. But, 
 first of all, I must thank you both from the 
 very bottom of my heart for all your love and 
 care. You took me to your happy home when 
 my home was broken up, a poor motherless 
 girl, with a father kind and good, but dead to 
 past and future, spared in God's great mercy 
 the grief of regretting the joys that were gone, 
 and cbeading the evils that might yet befal 
 him. I have been very, very happy with you — 
 I never expect to be so happy again. 
 
 " But I know, my dearest friends — though 
 you have never told me so — that when you took 
 me to your home you did not expect that God 
 would send you the darling we love so much. 
 If you had expected that, you would perhaps 
 not have taken me — not for want of love, but 
 you might have thought that God sends orphan 
 children only to those who have no children of
 
 THE REFUGE. ]77 
 
 their own. I should not like to be a burden to 
 you, my dear, kind friends — not ever so little 
 a burden — and you have trained me so care- 
 fully that I feel sure I can manage very well 
 now for myself. I went to see Mr. Whitehouse 
 the day after our birthday party, to ask him 
 if he would take me for a helper in his 
 home. If I can do any good to my poor, 
 miserable fellow creatures I shall be very thank- 
 ful, and I think I can. At any rate, he will 
 let me try, and will call on you this week to 
 ask you a few questions about me. He will be 
 glad if I can go to Oak Villa at the beginning 
 of the next year. 
 
 " I shall not l3e very far away from you, my 
 dearest friends, and I shall never, never forget 
 your love. I shall pray in all my prayers that 
 God may bless you ; and that the kindness 
 you have sho^^^l to me may come down ten 
 thousand fold on the head of your darling 
 boy. 
 
 VOL, I. N
 
 178 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 " I am sure you will not think me ungrateful, 
 and I know you will still let me call your 
 house ' home ; ' Ijut I know it is Lest to go — best 
 for all of us. Good-bye, my ever dearest 
 friends. Think of me always as 
 
 " Your most affectionate, 
 
 " And loving, and grateful 
 
 " Patty." 
 
 " Me. and Mrs. Carlisle." 
 
 Big tears rolled down the good man's face as 
 he read the letter. He couldn't s^^eak a word, 
 much less could he eat a bit of breakfast. He 
 loved Patty as he had never loved her before. 
 He would have given worlds to keep her, and 
 yet he loved her for going : he knew it was 
 best for all. 
 
 " I can't speak about it now, old woman," he 
 sobbed out, as he rose from his untastcd break- 
 fast ; "I'll get down to Oxford Street, and see 
 if I can just work a Httle bit of the edge off."
 
 THE EEFUGE. 179 
 
 ''He's veiy much cut up, poor dear," said 
 his "old woman," as she watched him along 
 the square ; " but he'll get over it in time, and 
 it's much better — it's a wonderful rehef to my 
 mind. But she's an odd child — to think of 
 going to AVhitehouse's refuge !" 
 
 Yet, even Samuel's mother went not so 
 lightly about her household tasks that day ; and 
 she almost thought her sight was not so good 
 with nursing that big boy so long. 
 
 One little bit of business Mr. Carlisle did in 
 town, and it was almost all he could manage. 
 He astonished his solicitors by sitting in their 
 private room for something like half-an-hour, 
 speechless Avith weeping, and then in broken 
 words dictating a short will to be made, 
 signed, and witnessed on the spot. " I want 
 Martha Wilson to be treated, when I die, ex- 
 actly as if she'd been my own child — my own 
 flesh and blood — mind you make that safe, 
 gentlemen." 
 
 N 2
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLIT HALL. 
 
 Mr. Jessop was not the medical attendant 
 at Oak Villa, where unhappily much medical 
 attendance was often necessary. Wicked ways 
 are always hard and dangerous ways, and they 
 make even a return to goodness perilous. The 
 fierce stimulants of vice cannot always be 
 safely withdrawn ; the very abstinence seems 
 even to hurry on the delirium that excess had 
 prepared. No doubt the body must be sacri- 
 ficed, if there be no other way of sa\ang the 
 spirit from demoralizing and degrading vices ; 
 but Mr. Whitchouse tliouo;ht that tliere mio^lit 
 be other ways. He was a firm believer in all 
 manner of modern doctrines ; which moreover
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 181 
 
 often fit themselves very oddly into old beliefs. 
 He was sure, for instance, that when men or 
 women are possessed with devils, they need the 
 help of Him who was not only the Kedeemer 
 of the soul, but "the Saviour of the body," 
 and who has bestowed the gift of healing not 
 less on physicians than on apostles. 
 
 Mr. Jessop was not an " old fogie ;'^ but he 
 was not the man for Oak Villa. He was far 
 too chatty and far too conventional. The sort 
 of treatment which never failed to soothe such 
 patients as Mrs. Carlisle would have driven 
 half the inmates of Oak Villa into madness 
 or incurable insubordination. For naturally 
 enough they were almost all of them hysterical 
 to begin with, constantly thinking far too 
 much about themselves and their own symp- 
 toms, both moral and physical. The chatty 
 Jessop would have half killed them, by en- 
 couraging them minutely to describe every- 
 thing they felt, or thought they felt; and
 
 182 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 suff(,Ting them to diverge, not improbably, into 
 numerous and sensational biographies and 
 lengthy autobiographies. Just as the Reverend 
 Jonas Faithful would have ruined their souls, 
 by requiring them to spend the greater part of 
 their time in painful and laborious self-ex- 
 amination, so with equally good intentions, 
 and in a very similar way, would the amiable 
 Mr. Jessop have ruined theii' health. Besides, 
 which was of course an additional proof of his 
 amiability, no sane person would ever have 
 trusted Mr. Jessop wdth a secret. His notion 
 of being good-natured, was imparting the 
 greatest possible amount of pleasure to the 
 greatest possible number of persons ; and every- 
 body knows that that is wholly incompatible 
 with keeping secrets. You always have to 
 choose between giving pleasure to A., and 
 giving pleasure to all the other letters of the 
 alphabet ; and Avith such an alternative, Mr. 
 Jessop was not the man to hesitate for a single
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 183 
 
 moment. Of course lie sacrificed A. with, as it 
 were, a pang of delight ; and yet, after all, he 
 did not exactly sacrifice A., for it was one of 
 his rules, what he called one of " the laws of 
 the Medes and Persians," never to mention 
 names. For instance, he would never speak of 
 Mrs. Johnson, but he would speak of the lady 
 who lived at one of three houses on the other 
 side of the square, w^hich was not No. 13, 
 nor yet No. 15, and indeed he would not 
 say what number it was. If by your un- 
 assisted penetration, you arrived at the happy 
 guess that it was No. 14, he would say 
 with a smile, "Ah, well, well, well, my dear 
 madam, it is really no use trying to keep 
 one's little secrets from a lady of such quick 
 perceptions as yours ; but, however, I have not 
 said that it's No. 14. Indeed, with me, it's a 
 'law of the Medes and Persians' never to 
 mention names." His weak, good-natured 
 tongue, would have made the most important
 
 184 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 secrets of Oak Villa the common property of 
 all his patients before six months were over. 
 Moreover, he would have been utterly shocked 
 and confounded by the cases which he would 
 have been required to treat. Doctors, like 
 ministers of relifl^ion, often receive stranofe con- 
 fidences, but Mr. Jessop's practice had, for many 
 years, been among the quietest and most orderly 
 of respectable Islingtonians. He had never been 
 a " fast " young man," and he had had very little 
 to do with people of that order. He had ex- 
 ceedingly little knowledge of *'life," and would 
 have been unable to restrain the expression of 
 astonishment or horror or disgust which he 
 might naturally enough have felt when dealing 
 with patients " possessed of devils '' — which 
 nevertheless it might have been very indiscreet 
 and even dangerous to manifest. In fact, he 
 might have thought his own reputation almost 
 compromised, and his private practice en- 
 dangered, if he had become the recognized
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 185 
 
 physician in such a household as that of Mr. 
 Whitehouse. 
 
 So, though they were quite intimate, though, 
 in fact, he had been Mrs. AVhitehouse's own 
 doctor when her only son was born, he was 
 never asked to visit one of the poor, unhappy 
 sufierers whom the good people at Oak Villa 
 were trying to restore to peace and virtue. 
 They wanted a man of great skill and wisdom, 
 and with a perfect command of temper and 
 face and tongue. Nobody in the refuge, ex- 
 cepting the actual managers, the doctor and 
 the " divine," knew anything whatever about 
 the previous history of any of the young 
 women admitted into the house ; and they 
 were pledged to one another by the most 
 solemn considerations of piety and honour to 
 maintain a perpetual and inviolable secrecy. 
 
 Many of the inmates of the refuge had been 
 simply unfortunate. One, for instance, had 
 been beguiled into a marriage with a man
 
 186 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 who at the same time had a wife living, whom 
 he had cruelly forsaken and left to shift for 
 herself in one of the colonies. The poor girl 
 soon found out her mistake and the incurable 
 life-long misery into which she had fallen ; but 
 she had married the villain ^\^thout her parents' 
 consent and against theii* wishes. So, when it 
 had all come to shame, and she came to her 
 father's house with a baby in her aims, and 
 asked them to take her in once more, they 
 simply took her by the shoulders and put her 
 outside the front door ; telling her that, as she 
 had thought fit to make her own bed, it might 
 do her good to lie on it. It was perfectly well 
 known, on the other hand, that there were young- 
 women at Oak Villa who had siimed quite as 
 much as they had suffered ; and nobody knew 
 out of what dej^ths of vice and ruin ^ix. 
 Whitehouse might have raised those whom he 
 was seeking to benefit. He would give no 
 explanation, even to those whom he asked so
 
 A VISITOE FROM THE OLD HALL. 187 
 
 far to help him, as to provide what he might 
 consider suitable employment for those whom 
 he thought he might now safely trust, away 
 from the gentle restraints and loving watchful- 
 ness of his own house. He would only say to 
 them, "You know that I am trying to do 
 what good I can to those poor unhappy girls 
 who have fallen into trouble. Some of them 
 have been very wicked, and some of them, 
 thank God, are as virtuous as my own wife. 
 I cannot tell you to which class this girl 
 that I want you to take belongs ; for we 
 never, under any circumstances whatever, 
 reveal the previous history of any of those 
 whom we take into our home. If you will 
 take this girl into your employment, it will 
 be on my own recommendation. I believe she 
 is a very good girl, one whom you may always 
 safely trust, as she has always been safely 
 trusted with us. You will be saved even from 
 the passing temptation of reproaching her with
 
 188 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 the sins of her former life, because we shall 
 never tell you what her former life has been. 
 Don't think for a moment that she comes to 
 you without a character, for I give her one ; 
 and for her own sake, no less than yours, I 
 would never send her to you at all if I could 
 not give her a good one." 
 
 Fortunately Mr. Whitehouse was not com- 
 pelled to avail himself of the services of a 
 committee of ladies ; and it was, perhaps, 
 equally fortunate that his expenditure was not 
 under the control of any committee of gentle- 
 men. He did and spent exactly what he 
 liked. When the work became too burden- 
 some for his wife and himself, he chose, as we 
 have seen, his own assistant. And in the same 
 spirit, with no need to consider what sub- 
 scribers might think extravagant, or red-tapists 
 think conventional, he had long before that 
 appointed a doctor. 
 
 The doctor was a comparatively young man.
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 189 
 
 perhaps eight-and-twenty ; with a good practice 
 for so young a man, but one that by no means 
 occupied all his time. He was moderately tall, 
 a little above the average height, with a very 
 handsome face — kind, firm, mse. His manner 
 always inspired confidence ; his patients felt 
 at once that they were in the hands of one 
 who knew their case, and had a clear notion 
 what to do with them. Or, what is perhaps 
 better still, they felt that they could trust him 
 even when he did not clearly understand their 
 case ; they were confident that he would do 
 his utmost to penetrate its obscurity, and treat 
 them as msely as they could at all expect to 
 be treated by any one who had not had time 
 to make many careful examinations, and pos- 
 sibly some fruitless trials of useless remedies. . 
 Young as he was, scarcely a practitioner in 
 Islington had need of fewer consultations ; or 
 it would be truer to say, that he was in 
 continual consultation with the leaders of his
 
 190 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 profession. He never could have become a mere 
 routinist, but as yet his practice had not so 
 entirely absorl3ed his time and thought as to 
 leave him no leisure for reading and experi- 
 ment. Moreover, he was no mere " doctor ;'' 
 he was a thoroughly well-educated English 
 gentleman, with the healthiest interest in every 
 great social movement, and especially at home 
 in that obscure and fascinating region where 
 physics and metaphysics, nature and spirit, 
 body and soul meet — and in meeting, seem 
 for awhile almost utterly lost. ]\Ir. AVhite- 
 house had first met with him, soon after he 
 came to the parish, at the house of the Eeverend 
 Jonas Faithful. 
 
 "You see, Mr. Faithful," he was saying, 
 when Mr. Whitehouse came up to them to hear 
 and join in the conversation, " we medical men 
 see so much to make us cautious in adopting 
 what seem to some of us very extreme theories 
 of human nature and of sin."
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 191 
 
 " Well, Mr. Leigliton/' said the clergyman — 
 (Frank Leigliton was the doctor's name) — " but 
 you yourself admit that the misery and vice of 
 parents is transmitted to their children.'' 
 
 " Aye, to be sure ; but whose fault is that, 
 Mr. Faithful ? For instance, I know people 
 Avhose ancestors have been drunkards for several 
 generations back ; and it might perhaps be 
 conjectured that a sort of dijDsomania has 
 become hereditary in their families. But 
 surely that lessens the guilt of the unhappy 
 children, does it not?" 
 
 " Yes, no doubt it must," said Mr. Faithful ; 
 "but how dano'crous it would be to confound 
 sin with mere misfortune or even mistake. If 
 we must be in doubt about the criminality of 
 drunkenness, is there any such thing as crime 
 at all, Mr. Leigliton V 
 
 " If you mean unmixed crime without any 
 palliation, simple moral Avrong without any 
 physical element whatever, such a case may
 
 192 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 exist, Mr. Faithful ; but I must confess, I never 
 met with one," said the doctor. 
 
 " Vm half inclined to agree with you, doctor," 
 said Mr. Whitehouse ; " but have you quite 
 settled which comes first, the moral T\Tong or 
 the physical ? I sometimes think it must be 
 the moral" 
 
 " Very possibly," said the doctor ; " but now 
 the complication of symptoms is not much 
 affected by the priority, whichever side it may 
 have been on. If we could have examined and 
 questioned the hypothetical first man " 
 
 *' The hypothetical first man, Mr. Leighton ?" 
 interrupted the clerg}mian. " You surely must 
 believe that there is no doubt about the in- 
 spired history we have of Adam and Eve ? 
 Science doesn't require us to destroy our 
 Bibles, eh, doctor ? ^' 
 
 " Certainly not, Mr. Faithful ; but our Bibles 
 give us a very meagre account of the first sin 
 and the first pain."
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 193 
 
 "Well, well" said Mr. AVliitehouse ; "it 
 doesn't much matter. We can't alter tlie good 
 old Book, even if we wished ; but it is of the 
 greatest practical importance that we should 
 have a sound principle for our guidance in the 
 treatment of those cases in which physical and 
 moral symptoms seem so terribly complicated." 
 
 " What would vou do in such cases, doctor ?" 
 said Mr. Faithful. " How could you and I, for 
 instance, harmoniously visit the same patient?" 
 
 "I don't see," he said, "why there need 
 be any discord or difficulty. I should do my 
 best for the body, and you'd do your best for 
 the soul. I don't see how curing the body 
 could possibly hurt the soul, and if your treat- 
 ment of the soul seemed to hinder or neutralize 
 my treatment of the body, I'd ask you to defer 
 it till the patient was stronger." 
 
 " And if, meanwhile, the patient died instead 
 of becoming stronger — what then, doctor ? " 
 
 "Well, then, I'd leave him to God, Mr. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 Faithful. I should not like to run the risk of 
 killino; him, even to save the soul," said ]\Ir. 
 Leighton. 
 
 " Ah ! my dear sir," said the clergyman, " I 
 should be much more afraid to leave a man's 
 soul in danger, for the sake of keeping his poor 
 body in the world a little longer." 
 
 Even that brief conversation made ISh. 
 Whitehouse understand that he had found a 
 man to his mind ; one who could truly help 
 him in his great and good work. So the very 
 next time one of his " family " was ill, he sent for 
 Mr. Leighton, " to come and prescribe in a case 
 where the moral and physical symptoms were 
 terribly complicated." That was the beginning 
 of a true and intimate friendship, and JNIr. 
 Leijxhton was forthwith included in the little 
 confederacy at Oak Villa of wise and earnest 
 workers for those who are deepest in need — 
 those who are in need of goodness. 
 
 But was it altogether prudent for Mr. White-
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 195 
 
 house, with such a physician for the Oak 
 Villa family, to admit into the confederacy 
 such an assistant as Patty Wilson ? It would 
 have been impossible for him to have put a 
 stronger temptation in the way of her affec- 
 tions, if he had known all her preferences and 
 all her longings, and what sort of ideal man he 
 was that her heart was seeking. She was very 
 self-reliant, where self-reliance was necessary ; 
 but she knew quite well that there was some- 
 thing very much better for human beings than 
 self-rehance ; and that mutual dependence was 
 much better. Unhappily, there are very few 
 men upon whom self-reliant women can depend 
 without losing self-respect. Now, Mr. Leighton 
 was just the sort of man to win the esteem and 
 the reasonable love of a true woman. After 
 all, what is it that the majority of women do 
 fall in love with, or even the majority of men ? 
 Shall we say, a creature of the other sex, Hving 
 sufficiently near to admit of moderately frequent 
 
 o 2
 
 196 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 interviews ; not repulsively ugly, and who has 
 had the good or the ill-luck to seize some oppor- 
 tunity of popping the question ? Indeed, for 
 mankind in general, this poor list of quahfica- 
 tions is dreadfully extravagant. Not long ago, 
 thou oil this it must be confessed is an extreme 
 case, a woman whose right eye had been gouged 
 out by her first husband, took out a summons 
 against her second husband for tlireatening to 
 gouge out her left eye. And people with clulv 
 feet, or mis-shapen humps on their backs, or 
 blind, or totally deaf, are almost always 
 married. Perhaps on the whole, it is most 
 important for the sake of securing the per- 
 manence of being in love, to seize a favourable 
 opportunity of " putting the question." There is 
 not the least reason in the world why ]\liss A. 
 should accept Mr. B., which would not be 
 equally valid for accepting any other letter in 
 the alphabet. But, on the other hand, she does 
 not see any strong reason why she should )wt
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 197 
 
 accept him, and no otlier letter has happened 
 to propose. During the temporary insanity of 
 courtship it is immeasurably more agreeable to 
 receive the enthusiastic attentions of a devoted 
 lover, than the half-reluctant, matter-of-course 
 civilities which are wrung from brothers by 
 their sisters. Moreover, a person must be some- 
 where ; and surely it is likely that it will be as 
 pleasant to keep house for a gentleman nearly 
 of one's OA\Ti age, as to keep house for papa. 
 There will always be ties to bind husband and 
 wife together — probably children ; certainly the 
 responsibility of the husband for the wife's 
 debts — or, to put it more good-naturedly, the 
 anxiety of the husband to secure a comfortable 
 home. Surely that's quite enough. If husband 
 and wife are both intelligent, with very many 
 pursuits and objects of desire in common, so 
 much the better. But such advantages seem to 
 be considered rather the ornaments of married 
 life, than the very stuff it is made of.
 
 198 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 But Patty was not exactly a girl to fall 
 weakly in love, and huny on as fast as possible 
 to matrimony. What she wanted was true 
 fellowship, the union of kindred spirits ; and 
 whether that fellowship took the form of mar- 
 riage or not, was to her a matter of comparative 
 indifference. Mamage, she thought, was pure, 
 genuine, thorough friendship, with certain 
 common interests and duties and experiences 
 in addition ; and of these components she 
 thought the friendship very far the most 
 valuable. It was quite impossible that she 
 and Mr. Leighton should often meet, and be 
 occupied with different parts of the same great 
 and difficult work, without becoming friends ; 
 and for Patty that w^as enough. They found 
 that all their lives they had been thinking the 
 same thoughts, and fighting their way to the 
 same results. They had sympathy with each 
 other, not merely on the uppermost surface of 
 their lives, but in the region of profoundest
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 199 
 
 realities, strongest beliefs and worthiest aspira- 
 tions and efforts. Perhaps it was because they 
 were so perfectly suited to make each other 
 happy that they never thought about marrying 
 at all ; or, at any rate, if they thought about it 
 they did not do it. They were friends. Mr. 
 Leighton had yet to achieve success ; and for 
 Patty, nothing seemed more impossible than 
 that she should ever go away from Oak Villa. 
 And yet there had been a time when Patty 
 was not there ; and if Mr. Leighton had only 
 thought seriously about it, it might have been 
 as well to guard against any possibility of 
 losing her. Generally speaking, it does not 
 much matter if you lose a girl by waiting for 
 her two or three years ; there are plenty more 
 to be found quite as good. But every man 
 is not a Frank Leighton and every woman is 
 not a Patty Wilson ; and when two such people 
 meet, it is wise not to separate if they can 
 help it. 
 
 y
 
 200 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 For, suppose any one ivere to come to Oak 
 Villa and offer to take Patty away and give 
 her a home of her own, and give her all the 
 dignity and happiness of matronly life, what 
 would she be likely to say to him ? Of 
 course she could not say she was waiting for Mr. 
 Leighton. And was she not veiy often lonely 
 with good Mr. Whitehouse and his wife ? The 
 position of a hired servant, even in those very 
 rare cases in which the service is dignified and 
 the remuneration ample, is not, after all, the 
 position with which any woman can feel per- 
 fectly satisfied. Might she not be at any 
 moment dismissed ? and would she be willins: 
 then to thrust herself upon the kindness of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle, or the hospitality of 
 *' Our House " ? And that was by no means 
 all. Patty wanted to be bound to people by 
 indissoluble bonds ; and bonds, moreover, if it 
 were possible, not wholly of her ovm choosing. 
 She longed for kindred, those to love and care
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 201 
 
 for wlio should be, as it were, her own flesh 
 and blood. Just as Mrs. Carlisle had never 
 been able to feel that Patty was her own child, 
 so Patty felt that the best of friends could 
 never be to her what her mother had been, or 
 Avhat she had been to her mother, or what her 
 father and mother had been to each other. 
 She knew quite well that though she had no 
 fortune, she would he a fortune to any true- 
 liearted man ; and perhaps, if anybody she could 
 believe in were really to ask her to be his wife, 
 she might not say no. And why did not Mr. 
 Leio^hton remember that there are some men 
 who can make women believe so very much, 
 though they mean so very little ? 
 
 There was a patient of his, for instance, from 
 the country ; a tall, weak, confiding, coaxing 
 sort of person. He was from the neighbour- 
 hood of Manchester ; not fabulously rich, but 
 in a very good social position, living, as was 
 supposed, on his own estate, and by no means
 
 202 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 condemned to that hard struc!:<^le for life which 
 is to so many young men their first and bitterest 
 experience. He was a great puzzle to Mr. 
 Leighton, who was not quite sure wliich of his 
 vii'tues were really virtues, and which were 
 weaknesses and vice. The young man had been 
 run over in the street almost opposite the 
 doctor s door ; and the doctor had taken him in, 
 till he should be able to bear the jom^ney to 
 his oA^Ti home. He was not very seriously 
 hurt, and was indeed very soon quite able to go 
 home ; Imt he seemed to enjoy staying with 
 Mr. Leighton, and he found no difficulty in 
 making himself an agreeable companion. He 
 had come, therefore, to be rather a boai'der in 
 the doctor's house than a 23atient. He seemed 
 to be interested in ever}i:liing that interested 
 his host, even in the progress of medical science 
 and surgical skill. He seemed yet more deeply 
 interested in every social movement, eveiy new 
 scheme for rendering human beings happier and
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 203 
 
 better. And yet somcliow Mr. Leighton could 
 not quite admire liim, as he often fancied he 
 ought to do. It seems necessary to the per- 
 fection of a man's character that he should 
 have a fair share of aversions and hatreds. 
 Being deeply interested in everything often 
 amounts to being genuinely interested in 
 nothing. Universal sympathy may be mere 
 sentimentalism or even affectation, and at any 
 rate the due proportions of feelings must be 
 maintained. A dead donkey may be a very 
 touching spectacle, but surely it is scarcely so 
 worthy of our tears as the deadj mother of 
 orphan children. Besides, Mr. Leighton was 
 never able to discover that his guest had any- 
 thing better to offer than pity, as the remedy 
 for those many terrible evils with which he 
 appeared so deeply to sympathize. He never 
 did anything to lessen them, though he was 
 often so profoundly anxious that somebody 
 else would do something to lessen them; or
 
 204 ONLY TO BE MAKRIED. 
 
 that at any rate they would get lessened, and 
 with as much rapidity as possible finally dis- 
 appear. The doctor was sometimes afraid that 
 his patient was no better than a mere idler ; 
 who found it rather less exhausting, especially 
 after an accident, to manifest a boundless sym- 
 pathy for all his fellow creatures, than to be 
 coldly out of harmony with the man upon 
 whose society he had become dependent. And 
 perhaps the doctor wasn't far wrong. His 
 guest ivas an idler ; that was, to begin with, 
 his peculiar form of selfishness. He was im- 
 measurably too lazy even to take care of his 
 own interests. He seemed to think that life 
 was no way more serious than lying on your 
 back in a boat on some sunny day, floating 
 down with the current, just exerting yourself 
 now and then sufficiently to pull to shore and 
 take some friend on board, just to lie on Jiis 
 back and help you to do nothing. Like people 
 who sit in boats, and suffer them to go where
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 205 
 
 they will, or where the tide can carry them, so 
 did the doctor's Sliest and his fellow idlers find 
 themselves not seldom aground, and their boat 
 in danger of being upset ; and then each idler 
 was sure to accuse the other of being the cause 
 of the accident. Or sometimes he would find 
 himself hurried on to utmost danger, com- 
 pelled to struggle in some grim life and death 
 encounter, and for his own preservation would 
 change the selfishness of idleness into the 
 selfishness of cruelty. And then when it was 
 all over, he would just lazily lie down, and 
 bask in the warmest sunshine he could find, 
 exactly as if nothing had happened, and find 
 himself in the most delightful sympathy with 
 all mankind. " Let me alone,^' he seemed to be 
 saying to everybody ; " or rather let us make 
 one another as cozy and comfortable as we 
 can ; I don't like the bother of quarrelling with 
 anybody if I can help it, but of course if you 
 get in my way and won't come out of it, I
 
 20G OXLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 shall have to do what I can to knock you out 
 of it." Idleness, after all, is a much more 
 malignant devil than he is often taken for. 
 
 The doctor's guest was Ed^vin Marie Forester ; 
 and, though he didn't know it, he had come to 
 London to meet the pretty little girl whom he 
 had found lying on the bridge above the reser- 
 voirs at Leigh. London is, j^erhaps, the biggest 
 contradiction in all the universe, combining in 
 itself all manner of opposites. It is the densest 
 crowd, and the loneliest wilderness, in all the 
 world ; the place where it is, above all others, 
 the hardest to meet, and the hardest not to 
 meet. Go to meet A. B. in London, and you 
 may wander from Bcthnal Green to Brompton, 
 and never see him. Go to London with a firm 
 conviction that A.' B. is in the Highlands, and 
 you stumble upon him in the middle of Cheap- 
 side. Everybody, who is anybody at all, has 
 to come to London, sometimes ; and you'll see 
 your friends oftener l)y li\^ng there, even
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 207 
 
 thouofh their home be in Lancashire or York- 
 shire, than you would by living in the next 
 villas^e. 
 
 So Forester, expecting nothing less than to 
 meet Patty, really did meet her at Mr. Leigh- 
 ton's house. She had come with some message 
 from the household at Oak Villa, and was 
 chatting comfortably with the doctor, when 
 Forester came back from a stroll to the West 
 End, and, knowing of no visitor, walked as 
 usual into the doctor s room. He was apolo- 
 gising, and retiring ; but Patty looked so hard 
 at him, and he felt so sure he had seen a face 
 like hers before, that he stopped at the door, 
 turned back again, and quietly sat do\vn in his 
 accustomed corner. 
 
 " Well, doctor,'^ he said, " I am tired. My 
 foot aches most disgracefully, considering the 
 excellence of your surgery ; and, besides that, 
 I could never go away without saying a word 
 about this very pleasant surprise you've pre-
 
 208 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 pared for me. I feel perfectly certain — more 
 and more certain every minute — that this lady 
 and I are quite old friends. Wliat do you 
 think, Miss Wilson 1 " 
 
 He rose to shake hands vAt\\ her, with his 
 wonderful confiding stoop, and sweet coaxing 
 voice, and his not unhandsome face — there 
 could be no mistake. 
 
 " Indeed," said Patty, " if I had met you 
 almost anywhere else, I should have said you 
 were Mr. Forester, from the Hall, at dear old 
 Leigh." 
 
 " AVell, well. Miss Wilson," he said, " let me 
 assure you Fm no one else, even though you 
 meet me at Mr. Leighton s house. Everybody's 
 sure to meet everybody in London. I had my 
 foot run over on purpose to meet you again, 
 plainly enough." 
 
 " Well, at any rate, ]\L\ Forester," said Patty, 
 " I am very glad to see you ; and I am very 
 glad to find that your foot is nearly well ; but
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 209 
 
 when you know as many of Mr. Leighton s 
 patients as I do, you will have found out that 
 he makes everybody well." 
 
 " Then I am very thankful, Miss Wilson," 
 »aid Forester, with just a twinge of foolish 
 jealousy (for he was not at all in love), " that 
 I happened to be run over in front of his door, 
 instead of that other person^s door — I forget 
 his name — that nice, stout, chatty gentleman." 
 
 " Ah ! Mr. Jessop, I suppose, you mean," 
 said Patty ; " but then, you know, Mr. Fo- 
 rester, he doesn't pretend to be a surgeon, and 
 you ought not to expect anybody to have such 
 superhuman humility, as to pretend to know 
 less than he does." 
 
 " Oh, certainly not. Miss Wilson ; and I was 
 very far from intending any ojffence to Mr. 
 Jessop, whom, in truth, I like very much. But 
 if Mr. Leighton were not present, I should tell 
 you I do not think Mr. Jessop quite so good a 
 surgeon as our friend here." 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 210 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 " But have you nothing to tell me about 
 Leigh, Mr. Forester ? " said Patty. " I suppose 
 it's just as beautiful as ever ; just the same 
 view from your window as ever ; the same 
 fields, the same river, the same wooded hill, 
 and Inroad reservoirs ? " 
 
 " Just the same, Miss AVilson ; just as dull 
 as ever. A man mth the slightest pretensions 
 to a sociable disposition may be moped to death 
 there in a month. Though I really ought to 
 praise the place, especially as people say that 
 I've improved it a good deal." 
 
 " I'm sure it deserves the best praise you can 
 give it. There is no place in the world I like 
 so much as Leigh," said Patty ; '' though I've 
 never been there since poor mamma died." 
 
 "Then your last visit. Miss Wilson," said 
 Forester, "must have been that summer when 
 1 found a little girl on a very dangerous 
 bridge, one very dark night. By the way, if 
 ever you come to Leigh again, you 11 find that
 
 A VISITOR FROM THE OLD HALL. 211 
 
 we have made that bridge much safer. That 
 very summer I had iron rails put on both 
 sides ; it's a pity nobody thought of it before 
 the poor old doctor was drownied." 
 
 And so they went on talking about old 
 times and places famihar to both of them, 
 while Mr. L eight on listened, half-pleased, half- 
 displeased that there seemed to be so many 
 bonds connecting his friend with his strange 
 patient. In fact, he really was beginning to 
 understand that he would not be altogether 
 himself if Patty were to leave him ; and if 
 she went away to spend a holiday month at 
 "dear old Leigh," she might perhaps never 
 come back as^ain. 
 
 Meantime Patty and Forester went on talk- 
 ing about old Mr. Piatt and Lucy ; and Forester 
 told Patty how he had seen the good old woman 
 buried in Leigh churchyard. He had been quite 
 unable, notwithstanding all that he could learn 
 from Lucy, to find out where his father had 
 
 p 2
 
 212 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 gone, after his mother's guardians had refused 
 their consent to the marriage ; and indeed he 
 had begun to fear that all hope of solving that 
 mystery must be given up for ever. 
 
 " And after all, Miss Wilson/' said Forester, 
 " it may be just as well as it is. A man must 
 make himself, and no father can save him that 
 trouble. And possibly I should never get satis- 
 fied about my father's leaving my poor mother 
 to such loneliness and sorrow as that which 
 killed her in the old Hall. It's better as it is." 
 
 That nevertheless was Forester's sore point. 
 He didn't know his father, and people would 
 be all too ready to shrug their shoulders, and 
 whisper to each other that there must have 
 been dishonour somewhere, in father, or mother, 
 or both. 
 
 Of course Forester and Patty met tolerably 
 often, after this first interview at ]Mr. Leighton's 
 house ; and somehow it is always dangerous for 
 unmarried people to meet often, if they wish
 
 A VISITOE FROM THE OLD HALL. 213 
 
 never to marry each other. Probably Patty 
 did not think enough about the matter to have 
 a wish on either side, but she was certainly 
 glad to meet once more odc of her old friends, 
 somebody who had known her before she came 
 to London, and w^ho might therefore be worth 
 the attention and friendship even of her London 
 friends. Everybody finds it, if not more blessed, 
 at any rate more pleasant to give than to re- 
 ceive ; and though Patty abundantly deserved 
 all the attention she ever had received, yet she 
 could not help thinking that it would be very 
 pleasant if, after loving her for her own sake, 
 her friends in London should find she was not 
 altogether without the power to make some 
 return for those generous services that had been 
 so freely rendered to her. As for Forester, 
 this was one of those times in his life when he 
 was, so to speak, lying comfortably on his back 
 in his boat, drifting down the stream, without 
 taking the trouble even to row. Why not, just
 
 2] 4 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 for a minute or two, exert himself sufficiently 
 to take at least one oar in his hand and pull 
 towards that bank where Patty was standing, 
 and take her into the boat ^\dth him ? — could he 
 not float down the stream more cozily than 
 ever ? Possibly not ; for in spite of arithmetic, 
 two human beings, when they come to Kve 
 together, are very w^idely different from twice 
 one.
 
 CHAPTEK XL 
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 
 
 Why do such people as Edwin Marie 
 Forester ever marry at all 1 They are not the 
 sort of people to make any true woman happy, 
 and they always find marriage a dreadful 
 slavery. Almost before the hone3maoon is 
 over they feel that they have committed them- 
 selves much further than they intended, and 
 the very virtues of their wives increase, instead 
 of lessening, their sense of disappointment and 
 bondage. They are by no means what would 
 be called bad-hearted people ; if they were, 
 they would probably be selfish enough to save 
 women the misery of becoming their wives. 
 Of course they are extremely selfish, but their
 
 216 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 selfisliness is of the lazy sort, not the restless, 
 busy, malignant sort ; and yet, they are 
 probably even more mischievous, because they 
 are much more deceitful and less dreaded than 
 malignant and ill-tempered people. Probably 
 they don't mean to do any harm ; but, on the 
 other hand, they have no firm purpose to do 
 genuine and positive good ; the one thing 
 about which they are perfectly determined is, 
 that never, if they can help it, will they 
 themselves suffer any harm. Why could not 
 Forester enjoy life at the old Hall, or in 
 London, or oscillating between the two, with 
 power to change his mode of life whenever he 
 grew weary of it, without taking do^\'n to 
 Leigh some gentle girl, whose life would be 
 almost fastened there for ever, and at the same 
 time his own life fastened to hers ? 
 
 The fact is, that Forester was in one of those 
 lazy moods, in which the presence of a com- 
 panion very greatly increases the delights of
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 217 
 
 idleness. A human being cannot simply lie 
 down and bask in the sun like an animal ; he 
 must transfer some part of the dignity of 
 human nature even to his vices. There was 
 not the least occasion for Forester to remain 
 another day at Mr. Leighton's ; but it needed 
 much less effort to stay there than to go back 
 to the old Hall. And, moreover, at the old 
 Hall there would be nobody to talk to, except 
 the gardener and domestic servants. Of 
 
 o 
 
 course, if he could have taken Mr. Leighton 
 with him, the change from London to Leigh 
 would have been a mild and quiet excitement 
 that he would very much have enjoyed. That 
 was of course impracticable. But why not 
 take Patty down ? And, indeed, was she not 
 a very charming sort of girl altogether, the 
 sort of girl to make love to, and perhaps to 
 propose to, and even to marry. 
 
 In fact, he had so often thought about her 
 in this way, that it was becoming gradually a
 
 218 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 rather painful effort to conceal his thoughts. 
 He very much exaggerated in his own mind 
 the service he liad rendered to her when he 
 found her on the bridge, investing it with 
 very far more romance than it really possessed, 
 and persuading himself that he was a sort of 
 champion, and that by saving her Ufe there 
 were certain mystic bonds between them 
 which it would be a kind of profanity to sever. 
 He could put all these feelings into the most 
 charming language, and utter them with the 
 sweetest voice. And he did sometimes, when 
 he was walking with Patty (and he did that 
 sometimes), bend towards her, and with a 
 murmuring gentleness talk to her about the 
 old times and places, and about the strange 
 way in which he and she had been brought 
 together. It was at such times that he felt it 
 specially difficult not to ask her to go back 
 with him, and to become mistress of that house 
 to which he had brought her on the dark, wild
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 219 
 
 niglit when he had saved her from so much 
 danger. 
 
 Perhaps Patty was not without the sus- 
 picion both that such thoughts were in his 
 mind, and also that he was by no means the 
 perfect man upon whom she could depend 
 with absolute trust. But, fortunately, we can 
 please one another with good qualities that are 
 very far short of perfection ; and much of 
 Forester's languor might be due, Patty thought, 
 to his accident and the weakness and confine- 
 ment to the house that had resulted from it. 
 So she was quite prepared to be tolerant ; and, 
 in fact, had no very obvious reason to be 
 forming judgments at all about one who was 
 scarcely more than a stranger to her, and 
 might soon pass out of her sight as suddenly 
 and as completely as he did after her last visit 
 to Leigh. 
 
 Forester was really in no position to marry 
 a wife at all. He had very much improved
 
 220 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 the old Hall ; Ijut then he had spent more 
 money upon it, or taken more money out of it, 
 than it was really worth. He scarcely knew 
 how much he had taken out of it or what it 
 ivas really worth. When he wanted money 
 he got it, if he could ; and when the time came 
 for paying it back again he got more, if he 
 could ; and a young man, who is nominal master 
 of a considerable estate, and whose own man- 
 ners are not unpleasing, can generally obtain 
 repeated loans, especially if he can manage to 
 keep his borrowing moderately secret. AMien 
 Forester was telling Patty how beautiful he had 
 made the Hall, and thinking how much more 
 beautiful it would be when she was there, he 
 knew quite well that it was really not his Hall 
 at all ; that she would come there, only to be 
 bitterly disappointed ; and that, in a word, it 
 would be immeasurably better both for her and 
 him if she never saw the place again. But 
 then he was much too lazy to give anything
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 221 
 
 like a due consideration to subjects tliat were 
 so extremely unpleasant. He knew quite well 
 that if he proposed to marry her, and if she 
 listened to him at all, she would trust him far 
 too entirely to dream of asking him whether 
 the Hall was really his, or how much he was 
 in debt, or anything of that sort. Of course it 
 would be better to ask him such questions : 
 not at all less loving, and a great deal more 
 prudent. But Forester knew quite well that 
 she never would ask ; and, if he married her, 
 when the truth came out, as it would be sure 
 to come, " sufficient for the day would be the 
 evil thereof Or rather, to do him justice, 
 perhaps he thought none of these thoughts. 
 He simply thought that Patty was a very 
 charming girl, and that he would like to be 
 very much more familiar with her than two 
 marriageable young people could be with each 
 other, unless they meant to marry. 
 
 Mr. Leighton, on the other hand, was one of
 
 222 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 tliose people who seem almost to be sent into 
 the world to be good examples. He had had 
 to fight his way in life from his very child- 
 hood, earning almost every penny that his 
 education had cost him ; and yet he had suc- 
 ceeded far more than Forester would probably 
 have even wished to succeed. He made no 
 sort of show, much less did he make a show 
 beyond what his real resources would justify; 
 but somehow he seemed always able to obtain 
 what he wanted, and he was in every respect 
 far more comfortable and far more independent 
 than Forester. If he had asked Patty to 
 marry him, he, too, would have been certain 
 that she would ask him no questions about the 
 fortune that he might be able to offer her. He 
 knew quite well that she would have no 
 fortune of her own, and that she would take 
 it for granted that any true man would be an 
 immeasurably better fortune than he could 
 possibly have. But he would never have
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE ? 223 
 
 suffered her to become, in any degree, the 
 victim of her o^vn generosity. He would have 
 told her, without bemg asked, what he could 
 offer her, and what chance there would be that 
 the comfort of their future life would never be 
 disturbed by the beggarly and disgusting 
 annoyances of unexpected poverty. He was 
 in all things a good, brave man ; one who 
 might be trusted, far beyond any promises that 
 he would ever make. 
 
 Perhaps, if he had had anybody to question 
 him, he might have found out that he really 
 loved Patty, and that there was no other 
 woman in the world that he would ever marry. 
 But he had never told her so, even if he knew 
 it ; he had felt sure that somehow or other she 
 would find it out without being told. She 
 was so constantly in his thoughts, she was so 
 large a part of all his j^^u-poses, he saw her so 
 often, and theii* friendship was so uncon- 
 ventional and genuine, that he took it for
 
 V 
 
 224 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 granted that she knew that he was only 
 waiting to tell her his open secret until it 
 should be the very fittest time for them to 
 become, without the foolish, perilous delay of a 
 long courtship, man and wife. Perhaps Patty 
 really did take it for granted, also, and some- 
 how knew in her heart that Mr. Leighton 
 loved her, and that if she would wait till the 
 right time came he would certainly marry her. 
 If she had had a mother or a sister they would 
 have talked to her about him ; and she would 
 have put into clear words, or, at any rate, into 
 some distinct form of thought, what in her 
 inmost heart she believed. But she had no 
 mother, and her sisters were far away ; and so 
 she went on, quietly discharging her duties — 
 undoubtedly much happier for Mr. Leighton's 
 gentle aflfection, but not knowing, and scarcely 
 thinking, to what better or higher it might 
 come. Besides, a gii'l may have ever so many 
 wishes, and hopes, and expectations ; but
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 225 
 
 before a clear offer of marriage, tliey all fade 
 away into comparative insignificance. In- 
 numerable possibilities can never equal that 
 one certainty. Patty was a wise, strong 
 woman ; not at all the sort of woman to marry 
 the first person who offered, as if she had no 
 other chance of honourable life. But she was 
 often exceedingly lonely ; her heart was con- 
 stantly hungering for some home that she 
 could call truly her own. Any one of an 
 innumerable host of not unlikely accidents 
 might reduce her, if not to beggary, at least to 
 dependence. It was very seldom that she felt 
 this danger at all painfully ; but it was a real 
 danger, and one Avhich the very kindness of 
 her friends and the comforts of her position 
 seemed to make more terriljle. Her life was 
 very useful and full of good fruits ; but every- 
 body wants to share the joy of doing good 
 with another, and needs the support of sym- 
 pathy in those dark hours when " all seems 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 vanity and vexation of spirit." For there are 
 times when love seems only to produce ingrati- 
 tude, and^trust betrayal, and good itself every 
 kind of evil. 
 
 " Do you never feel lonely here, Miss 
 Wilson?'' said Forester to Patty one day, as 
 they were walking together under the trees in 
 Kegent's Park ; " even in spite of your good 
 and useful life your position seems to me 
 rather solitary." 
 
 ** I am very happy indeed, j\Ir. Forester,'*' 
 said Patty. 
 
 " Yes, Fve no doubt of it," he replied ; *' you 
 could scarcely fail to be lia'ppy. But I said 
 lonely, Miss Wilson, and vciy possibly I was 
 intruding upon your confidence too much. In 
 fact, I was half interpreting your life l)y my 
 own ; I am utterly lonely a thousand times 
 over, and always have been. Fve not even a 
 happy memory of a sunny past to bear me 
 company. But you know my story, Miss
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 227 
 
 AVilson — a poor story without plot or clia- 
 racters." 
 
 " Nay, Mr. Forester/' said Patty, " I am very 
 far from thinking it a poor story ; and as for 
 the plot, it seems to me that there is too much 
 plot, if anything, rather than too little. Have 
 you even found it out yourself yet 1 " 
 
 " No, indeed ; and for that reason I begin to 
 think, considering how long Fve been seeking, 
 that there is no plot at all, that my past 
 life is a very common-place thing indeed, and 
 that all the difference between my biography 
 and anybody else's is simply this, that the 
 first five or six chapters of mine have been 
 torn out and lost. But do you think. Miss 
 Patty, that if they had been very inte- 
 resting, they would not somehow have been 
 saved ? " 
 
 " Well, I am not in a position to have an 
 opinion," she said. " The early chapters might 
 doubtless have been lost, because they were 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 utterly without interest ; but, on the other 
 hand, they might have been destroyed because 
 they were too interesting. Poor okl Lucy 
 seemed to think they were interesting 
 enough." 
 
 *' Yes," said Forester, " she was a good old 
 soul ; and when she died I almost felt as if I 
 had lost a kinswoman, though in truth I never 
 spoke to her in my life until the day after I 
 found you on the bridge." 
 
 " And did she tell you all she knew ? " said 
 Patty ; " and did not that throw any light 
 upon the mystery ? " 
 
 *' Yes, of course," he said ; '' it did throw 
 some kind of light on a very little bit of the 
 mystery. But the little bit was c[uite by itself, 
 and therefore a useless little bit. She told me 
 that my father and mother spent the one day 
 of their married life in Devonshire, and so I 
 went to Devonshire ; and though I went with 
 the best intentions, I almost felt a fool when I
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 229 
 
 got tliere. I did not know anybody whom I 
 could ask about my father, an unknown 
 individual wlio spent a single niglit at Tor- 
 quay more than a score of years before^ and 
 then vanished. The people were all as dumb 
 as paving-stones, and knew exactly as much 
 about my father as the paving-stones did. 
 Now I don't think myself much of a hero. Miss 
 Patty, but I know quite well that I would set 
 off this moment for the antipodes if I thought 
 I should find my father there ; and I must 
 confess it puzzles me very much to know why 
 he didn t set off to London or Leigh to find 
 my mother. No, no. Miss Patty, he can't have 
 been much of a man. For don't you see," he 
 said, with unwonted energy ; "he must have 
 been a fool to go through a marriage at all 
 under such circumstances ; and he must have 
 been a greater fool still not to carry the thing 
 out when he had once begun it." 
 
 "Well, I think," said Patty, "I wouldn't
 
 230 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 speak quite so harshly about your father, con- 
 sidering that you really know nothing about 
 him. There is a good deal of common sense 
 in all proverbs, and ' what can't be cured must 
 be endured/ I can quite understand how it 
 might have been a very difficult achievement 
 of perfect unselfishness for your father to leave 
 your mother alone. If he had found out 
 where she was, and tried to get interviews 
 with her, he could have done her no sort of 
 good, and he would only have subjected her to 
 a long series of severe persecutions. I don't 
 think we shall ever hear the end of the story ; 
 but I have no doubt there iva^ a story, with 
 a deep plot, and characters both strong and 
 tender. But may I sit ? " she said, for they 
 were close to one of the seats in the park ; " I 
 have had a rather busy day, and am quite 
 tii^ed." 
 
 " Yes, indeed," he said ; " I ought to have 
 thought of that before. But do you know,"
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 231 
 
 « 
 
 he went on, sitting cIo\vn by lier side, " how 
 strange it is for me to hear anybody say ive ? 
 You see, Miss Patty, if I were to succeed ever 
 so well nobody would be the happier ; and if 
 I failed ever so miserably, thank God, nobody 
 would be any the worse/' 
 
 Patty said nothing to this, for indeed what 
 could she say ? 
 
 "Yes, yes, you understand me. Miss Wil- 
 son," he went on ; " that's just what I mean 
 by being so perfectly lonely, though it was a 
 silly thing to say that I thought you must be 
 lonely too. There must be hundreds of people 
 to thank you, and care for you, and love 
 you." 
 
 '' Ah, Mr. Forester," said Patty, " people are 
 thankful for very little, and so I have many 
 more friends than I deserve. But I do feel 
 sometimes rather lonely ; and, on the other 
 hand, I am sure that you need not feel so 
 lonely as you do ; it is quite impossible for
 
 232 ONLY 10 BE MARRIED. 
 
 any human being to be altogether without 
 friends." 
 
 " Well/' he said, " I wish I could believe it ; 
 but if I were shot through the heart to-morrow 
 I don't know a single human beinoj who would 
 shed a tear." 
 
 He rose ; — he seemed to be, and indeed he 
 really was, deeply moved. He teas lonely, and 
 he pitied himself, as he thought how friendless 
 he was ; just as much better men might have 
 pitied a fellow-creature in a similar case. 
 Indeed he might well be moved, contemplating 
 his own soHtariness ; for all the affection that 
 he ought to have bestowed upon a whole 
 world-full of needy, suffering creatures, he had 
 spent almost to the last farthing on himself. 
 He was for himself, the one object in the whole 
 universe, and he loved and pitied himself with 
 his whole soul. And yet he scarcely knew 
 how selfish a man he was. He thought that 
 he was made miserable by the unsatisfied love
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 233 
 
 of his fellow-creatures, whereas he was really 
 made miserable by the unsatisfied love of him- 
 self. He was actually weeping, when Patty 
 looked into his face. 
 
 " Don't be so unhappy, Mr. Forester," she 
 said, rising ; " surely a man like you may find 
 some way to a life of peace and joy.'* 
 
 " No, no. Miss Patty," he said ; " I want to 
 be loved, and how is it likely that anybody 
 will ever love me. The very first questions 
 they would ask me about myself would strike 
 me dumb. You can't think how soured I am 
 sometimes. I have read that poem of Hood's, 
 for instance, that * Bridge of Sighs,' till its very 
 rhymes sound to me like the clanking of 
 chains. ' Who was her father, who was her 
 mother ! ' Yes, of course, that's just the 
 question everybody asks. And who was my 
 father, and who was my mother? I don't 
 know anything about them. Miss Wilson, 
 except that they were never properly married ;
 
 234 ONLY TO BE MAREIED. 
 
 and I never dare talk to people about them, 
 lest they should begin to ask awkward 
 questions, and think my poor unhapj^y parents 
 worse than they probably w^ere. So, you see, I 
 was in a manner shut out from society the 
 very minute I was born. It would be ridicu- 
 lous for me to expect that anybody would 
 really love or care for me." 
 
 They walked slowly on together under the 
 trees. Forester seemed to have said his say, 
 and what could Patty answer. With her 
 whole soul she pitied him. Had she not 
 known his story even sooner and better than 
 he knew it himself? Women are ver}" sus- 
 picious, but they are always suspicious at the 
 wrong time ; and, on the other hand, they are 
 always stupidly confiding when their only 
 safety would be in suspicion. Patty did not 
 look up, but none the less for that she could 
 see Forester's pale face, and she felt, not what 
 he was feeling — nobody can feel that for other
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE ? 235 
 
 people — but wliat she herseK would have felt, 
 if her circumstances had been like his, and 
 with her whole soul she pitied him. 
 
 They turned out of the broad walk into one 
 of the quieter paths, that path which leads by 
 one side of the Zoological Gardens to the 
 bridge over the canal, and still they walked in 
 silence till they came to another seat under 
 some trees. 
 
 " Won't you sit down again and rest ? " said 
 Forester. " And let me tell you," he went on, 
 as they both sat down together, " what I have 
 been thinking about almost every hour since I 
 met you again at Mr. Leighton s house. I 
 have been thinking that it is just possible that, 
 if there be anybody in the world at all who 
 will care to help me out of my loneliness, 
 perhaps you will care to do it. You know as 
 much about the uncertainties of my history as 
 I do myself, and somehow I can scarcely help 
 believing that you were in a manner given to
 
 236 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 me that day when I found you on the bridge. 
 Will you help me ? '' he said. 
 
 Very likely Patty knew what he meant ; but 
 no woman is obliged to know what a man 
 means until he puts it into much plainer 
 Enghsh than that. 
 
 " I shall be most thankful," she said, " if I 
 can be of the least service to you, Mr. Forester." 
 
 " No, no, no. Miss Patty," he said ; " that is 
 not what I mean ; there is only one way in 
 which a girl like you can help me. AVill 
 you be my wife, and come and be mistress 
 of my house and give me something to live 
 for ? " 
 
 He pleaded for himself very earnestly with 
 silent Patty ; with arguments which, in fact, 
 gained all their force from her own needs, 
 rather than from his. She had felt, far more 
 than he had ever been earnest enough to feel, 
 the want of sympathy and of a home and of 
 such recognised place in the world, such centre
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 237 
 
 of far-reacliing good, as only honourable 
 matrons liave or can have. 
 
 No one can have a right to rejDeat every 
 word that lovers say when, in the great passion 
 of their hearts, and the very crisis of their 
 lives, they say their utmost. In presence of 
 Patty, as she listened, and began to gain power 
 to speak, everything that was best and 
 strongest in Forester rose into life, and uttered 
 itself in the conquering eloquence of sincerity 
 and truth. Surely the world were full of 
 heroes if we could be for ever what we are at 
 our best. 
 
 " I cannot answer you now, Mr. Forester," 
 said Patty ; " you must let me ^vrite my 
 answer to-morrow. I'm but a coward, and 
 whatever my answer may be, there will be 
 much that I must say and yet dare not speak. 
 I will write to-morrow." 
 
 They separated there in the park. If they 
 went home together, they could talk just then
 
 238 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 on no other subject than the one which had 
 become so absorbing to both of them, and how- 
 could they talk of that in crowded streets and 
 rattling omnibuses ? And Patty, at least, 
 above all things wanted to be alone, to ask 
 counsel of her own heart, '^ to look before and 
 after," and seek for some sign to guide her 
 steps at this solemn crisis of her life. 
 
 She thought of the good work for which she 
 was living and the kind friends she had found; 
 indeed, in the few hours of that night all her 
 life seemed to pass before her in the minutest 
 detail, Manchester and Blackpool, and Leigh 
 and London. And the brightest spot of all 
 was the last holiday visit to Leigh ^^ith her 
 mother ; the summer when she seemed to grow 
 all at once to such womanhood as might fit her 
 to be her mother's companion, and when she 
 learned to love her mother with a love as great 
 as if all the love of many dutiful years were 
 being gathered into a few short months. And
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? £39 
 
 tlien slie thouglit of the breaking up of the old 
 home, and of the bitter loneliness mth which 
 she sought the shelter even of sincere friends. 
 And then she remembered how she had lived 
 almost as a daughter in the cosy house in 
 Canonbury Square, and how rudely she had 
 been made to feel the uncertainty even of what 
 had seemed true and disinterested affection. 
 And now, she was less dependent perhaps, but 
 she was scarcely less solitary than ever. Even 
 in what was now the great work of her life she 
 had no fair and equal share, and her future 
 happiness and usefulness depended almost 
 wholly on those who, but a few months before, 
 had been perfect strangers to her. Why not 
 accept the offer of a home which should at last 
 be her very own, from which no caprice of 
 friends or fortune should have power to cast 
 her out, where the whole strength and energy 
 of her nature should find adequate work and 
 sure recompense ? And she had seen Forester
 
 240 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 that day as she had never seen him before. 
 Glorified by the earnest puq^ose which had 
 taken full possession of his spirit, his very 
 feebleness had seemed the sweetest gentleness 
 of love. She felt sure that she could trust 
 him ; nay, rather, she felt that she was called 
 to be his supporter, to charm away his lone- 
 liness, to gird on his armour like a hero's 
 bride, and send him to victor}^ How weak 
 and desolate they would be apart ; but toge- 
 ther, how noble and blessed. 
 
 And Forester was thinking, too, that night, 
 much more earnestly than was his manner, 
 thoughts both good and e\il. Whatever his 
 own langiiid indifference might be, it was plain 
 that there was no indifference in Pattv : and 
 that, whatever answer she might send him, she 
 had believed every word he had said. "What 
 is more, and what is more wonderful, he him- 
 self believed every word he had said. For he 
 had been speaking, not of the past, but of the
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE ? 24 1 
 
 present and future, and it was not so hard to 
 believe either his own good resolutions or his 
 hopes. The wonder was that he should have 
 failed to notice that every good resolution was 
 a mockery, and every hope a lie, which began 
 at any particular moment of his life, just as if 
 there were not a long past to be reckoned with, 
 before either the present or the future could be 
 blessed. He meant to make Patty a good 
 husband if she chose to accept his offer of 
 marriage ; but then how could he make her a 
 good husband when he was, in all but outward 
 show, little better than a beggar, and could 
 introduce her, not to a large fortune, but only 
 to large responsibilities ? But they would 
 fight it out together, he thought ; she would 
 have more energy than he had had ; she would 
 repress his extravagances ; she would — not 
 indeed without a struggle, but still she would 
 somehow and in the long run — make both ends 
 meet : an achievement which had been hitherto 
 
 VOL. I. &
 
 242 ONLY TO BE MARKIED. 
 
 very much beyond liis own power. It did not 
 occur to him that it was scarcely honest to 
 offer all this stern conflict to a young girl, 
 without giving her sbmething like fair notice 
 of what was before her. Women are very- 
 brave and very unselfish ; but they expect, and 
 they have surely a right to exj)ect, that the 
 men wdio offer them marria<]^e shall biino- them 
 only the common difiiculties of the future, and 
 not the long accumulations of past misfortune 
 or sin. 
 
 " I don't know," said Forester to himself ; 
 " she's a glorious gii*l, and it would be very 
 mortifying to be refused. And yet, I don't 
 quite know whether I have been taking alto- 
 gether a wise step. I should not quite like to 
 have to tell everything, and spend the honey- 
 moon in what people call making a clean breast 
 of it. Girls never understand business, and 
 they always make a horrible fuss about 
 nothing ; and then, if they happen to find out
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 243 
 
 that you have a single secret, and of course 
 every man who is not an immeasurable fool 
 has secrets, they make themselves perfectly 
 miserable, and tell you that they have lost 
 your confidence and all that kind of thing. 
 However, I dare say I shall get through this 
 little affair as I have got through a good many 
 before. I am not obliged to tell everything 
 that I know, and really it will be charmingly 
 snug at the old Hall. I wonder what she will 
 write ? " 
 
 If he thought her letter would be a little 
 prosy, he very likely thought right. He might 
 have been quite sure that it would be very 
 different from those love-letters which occa- 
 sionally form part of the reports of trials for 
 breach of promise of marriage ; and he might 
 have been quite sure that it would bring him 
 some small measm^e of humiliation. Of course 
 people like to impose upon their neighbours to 
 a certain extent. They like to be considered 
 
 11 2
 
 244 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 of, at least, average goodness, or even some- 
 what superior to the majority of their fellow- 
 creatures. But, then, hypocrisy is meant for 
 the public, and not at all for the private edifi- 
 cation of the hypocrite himself. When a man 
 is alone, masks and such like disguises are not 
 only perfectly useless, but extremely uncom- 
 fortable ; and Patty's letter, when it came, not 
 only made Forester bitterly conscious of liis 
 own shame, but taught him that henceforth he 
 would have to wear his masks and dissiiises 
 alivaySy and keep up a kind of deception at 
 home even more carefully than abroad. For 
 this was the letter : — 
 
 " My dear Mr. Forester, 
 
 " I feel, as I told you before, that it is verj 
 cowardly to write at all, what surely it ought 
 to be very easy for me to say ; and now that I 
 begin to write, I am quite unable to tell you 
 half of what I feel, and I almost fear that when
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 245 
 
 you read what I vaite you will be tempted to 
 think that I have no feeling at all. Is not the 
 very tie that seems to have been binding us 
 together so strangely, our loneliness? And 
 does not that mean that, in this grave matter, I 
 have no one to consult and must be my own 
 adviser ? Am I not the very last person in the 
 world to give myself impartial counsel ? And 
 truly I feel that the step you ask me to take is 
 of quite unspeakable importance. I feel quite 
 certain that if we do not make each other 
 much happier than we are now, we shall make 
 each other very much more miserable. I have 
 not much experience, but 1 am quite sure that 
 we had better die than take this step unwisely 
 if we are not truly meant and fitted for each 
 other. 
 
 " As for you, I cannot doubt that you will 
 be all you wish and promise to be, and it is 
 that also which makes me feel more painfully 
 how very little I can promise. But at least I
 
 246 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 will do wliat you have asked me; and I will do 
 my very best to make you happy, and to help 
 you in every great and good work that you 
 may undertake. You know already, without 
 my reminding you of it, that I can bring you 
 no fortune — I wish I could. And yet if I had 
 been able to do so, there would have been 
 wanting one proof of the entire unselfishness 
 of your love. 
 
 " Your kindness has made me very happy, 
 but not with the sort of happiness that can be 
 cheerful or talkative. Indeed, I find I am 
 quite as unable to write what I feel, as I should 
 have been unable to speak it. And if I wrote 
 ever so much, what more could I say than what 
 I put into these last lines, that I am now, 
 henceforth, and always, 
 
 " Your own 
 
 "Patty Wilson." 
 
 And when the letter was finished Patty lay
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 247 
 
 down and went to sleep. She was very tired ; 
 tired with walking, and tired with thinking — 
 tired with all the excitement of that day. She 
 soon slejDt and dreamed. She was in Eegent's 
 Park ao-ain walkins; with Forester. She seemed 
 
 CD O 
 
 to be living the day over again in her dreams ; 
 for they walked along the same paths, rested 
 on the same seats, spoke the same words. But 
 as they rose at last and parted from each other, 
 and Patty turned to go her o^vn way home, she 
 was aware of a woman, divinely beautiful, 
 standing close by her side, and as Forester 
 began to move away the woman spoke. 
 
 " Bring your lover to me, darling," she said ; 
 " let me look in his face and bless him.''' 
 
 She called Forester back, and the woman 
 stood close by her side till he came up. Then 
 she looked into his face. 
 
 " No, no, Patty ! " she said ; " take him 
 away. This is not the man. Surely it is not 
 for this man I have waited and prayed, and
 
 24S ONLY TO BE MAIUIIED. 
 
 come to you and him a thousand times when 
 you little thought who was bringing you to- 
 gether. No, no, Patty, put him away — I have 
 no blessing for him." 
 
 And as she sj)oke, the divine beauty of her 
 face seemed to pass away, and the glory that 
 she shone in faded ; and Forester, too, vanished 
 utterly, and Patty saw only her mother weeping 
 bitterly, and then she woke. 
 
 It was long, indeed, after that dream before 
 even her weariness of mind and body could 
 bring sleep back again. The dream, indeed, 
 was easily accounted for ; for Patty had been 
 thinking of all her past life, and of her 
 mothers love and death. Nay, if she had 
 only been able to bless the man who was to be 
 her daughter s husband, Patty would have be- 
 lieved that her mother had come in actual fact 
 from her glory and joy to speak to her the 
 words of happy omen. How could she believe 
 otherwise now ? As she lay awake that night
 
 WHICH WILL SHE HAVE? 249 
 
 every lioj^e she had seemed blighted, and she 
 felt as if she had come to the very verge of 
 some dark and awful calamity. 
 
 And Forester slept too, perhaps not quite so 
 quietly, nor quite so soundly as usual, but still 
 he slept ; harassed by no gloomy forebodings, 
 born of ill-omened dreams. The next morning 
 he remembered, indeed, well enough the step 
 he had taken, and some glow of romance still 
 lingered about him ; but he had returned once 
 more to common sense and the easy languor of 
 his every-day life. 
 
 "Yes, to be sure," he said, as he finished 
 reading Patty's letter, " that's perfectly true. I 
 should not be sorry if she had a fortune ; but 
 as she has not, we are not so unequally matched 
 after all."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL O^X'E MOKE. 
 
 If Patty liad only Avaited a day longer ! If 
 Mr. Leighton liad only had courage to speak 
 instead of writing ! We little know how near 
 we often are to the very blessedness we most 
 earnestly desire. Somehow or other ]\Ir. 
 Leighton had been growing more and more 
 jealous of Foresters intimacy with his old 
 friend. That his guest-patient should be glad 
 to meet once again the little gui whom he had 
 saved some years before, that he should be 
 charmed, and in a way surprised, to find her 
 grown to womanhood, beautiful and good, and 
 still almost as simple-minded as any child 
 could be, that was natural enough. But
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 251 
 
 everybody must have found out that love is 
 the most meanly selfish of passions ; and it may 
 be doubted whether Mr. Leighton would not 
 have been willing that Patty should have been 
 neglected by all the world, if only he could 
 have retained her all the more completely for 
 himself. He did not love her any the more 
 because Forester had come, but he unquestion- 
 ably became far more completely convinced 
 that he really did love her ; and often, when 
 Forester was speaking to her, he would watch 
 her face with an acutely-painful eagerness, to 
 see, if it were only possible, all the memories 
 and thoughts that were in her heart. The 
 human face is a very puzzling book to read ; 
 though, after all, Patty's thoughts at that time 
 were not very far beneath the surface. Mr. 
 Leighton was tormenting himself by half 
 taking it for granted that she must necessarily 
 be thinking, or hoping, or intending, or wish- 
 ing something or other, he did not clearly
 
 252 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 know what, Lut which would at any rate 
 destroy his own happiness, and heap up some 
 impassable barrier of separation between him- 
 self and her. So every day, as the certainty of 
 his love grew stronger, he determined that be- 
 fore the night came he would tell Patty how 
 dear she was to him, and with what a manly 
 reverence he honoured her, and how unspeak- 
 ably grateful he would be if she would be- 
 come his own true wife that they might work 
 their life's work too^ether. And then he thouorht 
 again, that perhaps there was no real danger, 
 that it might be premature to speak to her on 
 such a subject, and might defeat his ot\ti pm'- 
 j)ose. He imagined that it must surely be 
 impossible that Forester should ever seem to 
 her a man truly worthy to be her husband, 
 and indeed he doubted, foro;ettino- how the 
 extremes of a lazy indiiference and a reckless 
 impetuosity often meet, whether Forester had 
 earnestness enough even to care to marry the
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 253 
 
 girl who was every day filling more completely 
 the world of his o^vn thoughts. And so 
 another day would pass over ; and perhaps, as 
 they were sitting together in the evening, he 
 and his guest, some single word from Forester, 
 the mere mention for instance of Patty's name, 
 would raise a storm of fears and doubts in his 
 heart, and he would again determine that 
 before another day had ended he would know 
 what his lot was to be. He had no need to 
 fear ; no truer man had ever asked a woman 
 for her love, and no one had a quicker eye than 
 Patty to discern truth and worth. And yet he 
 trembled, as only strong, brave men can 
 tremble, when he asked himself in what words 
 he should tell her how utterly he loved her, 
 and ask her for the priceless gift of her heart 
 and hand. No, he could not speak to her at 
 all — he would write to her ; he could do that 
 more calmly, and moreover would it not be 
 more generous to her 1 She could answer
 
 254 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 more calmly ; and he persuaded himself that 
 his love was far too generous even to win her 
 love against her will, if that were possible. 
 Surely he should have remembered that in love 
 and war all stratagems are fail* ; and in love to 
 speak out in the purest and strongest words 
 everything that the heart feels is of all 
 strataQ-ems the fairest. But Mr. Leicjhton was 
 too timid and gentle in this matter that lay so 
 near to his own interests, so near to the inte- 
 rests of one who had become dearer to him 
 than himself. No, he would not, could not, 
 speak to her ; he would write. 
 
 So while Patty was writing to Forester, and 
 when the letter was finished, and she lay 
 dreamino^ her ill-omened dream, and far on 
 into that night, ]\Ir. Leighton was writing to her. 
 The letter was not long ; perhaps if it had been 
 lonG^er, it mirfit have been sooner written. But 
 even short letters sometimes need very careful 
 writing. Mr. Leighton meant every word that
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL OXCE MORE. 255 
 
 he said ; he wanted to say all that he did mean 
 and nothing more. And so he had all manner 
 of mistakes to correct asfain and a^ain, and after 
 all he had to make a clear copy of the letter. 
 
 Knowing what he had done, and more afraid 
 than ever that it might be too late, it was with 
 a kind of terror that he recognised Patty's 
 handwriting on an envelope addressed to 
 Forester ; and with greater alarm still that he 
 watched Forester's face while he was reading: 
 the letter. Perhaps Forester noticed the 
 strange expression of his countenance, and at 
 any rate he found his new secret a kind of 
 burden. AVhat is the use of being happy if 
 nobody knows it? He knew that Mr. Leighton 
 was fond of Patty ; and perhaps he had a faint 
 suspicion that his doctor and himself had, with- 
 out quite knowing it, been running a kind of 
 race for the same prize. At any rate he soon 
 solved any mystery that might have been in- 
 volved in a letter from Patty to himself.
 
 256 ONLY TO BE MAIIRIED. 
 
 " I think," he said, " you ought to congrar 
 tulatc mc, Mr. Leighton, this morning ; and I 
 am quite certain that I ought to be very 
 thankful to you." 
 
 '' Why, what service have I rendered you, 
 Mr. Forester ? " said the doctor. 
 
 " Cured my lame foot, of course," said Fo- 
 rester, " only you knew that before. But the 
 best thing you have done for me was to find 
 the little friend I saved and had lost, and 
 bring us together again. Do you know that 
 Miss Wilson has promised to come down to the 
 old Hall and really make a man of me ? " 
 
 " No," said Mr. Leighton, '' I really did not 
 know it ; but I've not the least doubt that it 
 will give her the greatest pleasm*e to visit 
 Leigh again. I scarcely know what they can 
 do without her at Oak Villa ; she seems to me 
 just one of those people who never can get a 
 holiday because she deserves one so well." 
 
 " Why, what funny, prosy people you doctors
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 257 
 
 are," said Forester. " It's a very long holiday 
 she will take. Why can't you congratulate me 
 at once ? Miss Wilson has promised to marry 
 me." 
 
 " Well, indeed," said Mr. Leighton, ^' I do 
 congratulate you most sincerely. It seems to 
 me scarcely possible that any human being 
 could have found a better wife.'* 
 
 Poor wretched Leighton ; at that very mo- 
 ment his own letter to Patty was in the breast- 
 pocket of his coat. It was not very easy to 
 make the conversation cheerful; and indeed 
 he Avas only meditating how he could least 
 offensively and most naturally rid himself of 
 his guest altogether. 
 
 "I suppose," he said, after a good deal of 
 irrelevant conversation, " that you'll soon want 
 to be going down to the Hall, and making all 
 needful preparations for this great event ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I thought of going doAvn in 
 a very few days, for both Miss Wilson and 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 258 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 myself arc so entirely free, so completely under 
 our own control, that there is nothing to gain, 
 and a great deal to lose by deferring the mar- 
 riage. I shall of course leave the time entirely 
 to Miss AYilson ; Ijut, for my part, most deci- 
 dedly, the sooner the better.'*' 
 
 " Why I should quite tliink so," said j\Ir. 
 Leighton ; " and, indeed, as you must leave 
 London in a few days, I need make no 'alter- 
 ation in my own plans for securing a very 
 short holiday. I shall be very glad to get 
 away from town myself at the beginning of 
 next week." 
 
 "I am sure you must need a hoHday," 
 Forester said ; "and you may depend upon 
 my getting out of your way by Saturday." 
 
 And there the talk ended ; and ]\Ir. Leighton 
 went to his own room, tore his letter to Patty 
 into very small pieces and then burnt them, 
 and set out to comfort himself with a long day 
 of hard work among his patients. Work is by
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 259 
 
 far the best comfort that any one can have in 
 trouble, at least for those who have strength of 
 mind enough to take it ; and yet, for all his 
 work, Mr. Leighton knew quite well that he 
 had suffered a great loss, and that, somehow, 
 if he worked for ever, the great success that 
 above all others he had desired, had passed for 
 ever out of his reach. 
 
 Of course there was no reason for deferring 
 the marriage, excepting one; and as Mr. Leigh- 
 ton had burnt his letter, it was impossible for 
 Patty to know what that one reason was. So 
 she and Mr. Forester were to be married in 
 about three months. Mr. Leighton took his 
 little holiday, and fought out his battle with 
 disappointment, and gained strength even to 
 face Patty once more, and tell her how heartily 
 he wished for her that happiness which some- 
 how in his heart he could scarcely help fearing 
 she would never have. Meantime, Forester 
 was at Leigh, taxing to the utmost his slender 
 
 s 2
 
 260 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 purse and lessening credit for such decorations 
 and improvements as he tlioiight the Hall 
 should have, to make it fit for its master's 
 bride. It did not seem to occur to him that he 
 was only decorating it Avith debt, and that if he 
 could have sold it altogether and rented a 
 little cottage, and taken Patty there, and en- 
 dowed her with the sacred love of a true man's 
 heart, that would have been immeasurably 
 grander than the most magnificent palace in 
 the world. If there was one thing in the 
 world that Forester despised it was love in a 
 cottage ; and indeed he was delighted and as- 
 tonished, and even amused, at the childish 
 credulity with which people in all du'ections 
 were confiding in him, simply on the gi'ound of 
 his intended marriage. Before his engagement 
 with Patty his credit had been rapidly de- 
 clining. Of course his tradesmen had for years 
 been imposing upon him, rendering to him 
 every half-year the most amusing variations of
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 281 
 
 his oriorinal accounts. But, thouo^h cliar2:ing 
 hiorh interest for lono: credit is not altoo;etlier 
 unprofitable, every tradesman is not unnatu- 
 rally anxious to behold, at least in remote 
 distance, some chance of ultimate payment. 
 It was far from Forester's intention deliberately 
 to cheat his tradespeople ; but when a profitable 
 deception is deliberately put in a young man s 
 way, and in a manner actually forced upon his 
 acceptance, what virtue can be expected to 
 resist the temptation ? The first person that 
 Forester called upon when he went down to 
 Leigh, after his engagement with Patty, was a 
 builder and house-decorator, whose bill for 
 rebuilding the Hall was only about half paid. 
 
 "I really have not come, Mr. Thompson,'' 
 he said, with charming candour — and somehow 
 or other he managed to make all his trades- 
 people like him, and actually help him to 
 swindle them — " to pay your little bill, nor 
 even to pay you the interest upon it, for I
 
 262 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 really want every penny I can get for a new 
 investment." 
 
 "A new investment," said Mr. Thompson, 
 with a very solemn air ; " I hope you ^\dll 
 remember old " 
 
 ''Why, don't be frightened," said Forester, 
 stopping him short., "Fm not going to build 
 a palace, or start a company, or anything of 
 that sort. Fm only going to get married, 
 Mr. Thompson." 
 
 Thereupon Mr. Thompson relaxed, and seized 
 Forester's hand and shook it heartily. 
 
 " Well done, Mr. Forester," he said ; " Fm 
 very glad indeed to hear it. Nothing settles a 
 young man down into a quiet, well-conducted 
 prosperous gentleman like matrimony, and 
 when it's a little investment as well," he said, 
 with a sly laugh; "why you know, Mr. Forester, 
 love in a cottage is all very well, but it's not 
 the kind of thing for you. No, no, no ; an 
 investment is very much better, and I hope
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 263 
 
 you will let me have tlie honour of preparing 
 Clayton's Hall for Mrs. Forester's reception." 
 
 " Why really," said Forester, " you have the 
 instinct of a prophet ; that's the very thing I 
 came to tell you. I really want the old place 
 to be made — well, suppose I say, to be made 
 as handsome and comfortable as you can pos- 
 sibly make it, Mr. Thompson. These London 
 ladies are used to a good deal more show than 
 country folks seem to care for." 
 
 " All right, Mr. Forester," said Thompson ; 
 " if you will just leave it to me, you may 
 depend upon it that nothing shall be wanting 
 on your side of the investment." 
 
 "What a fool that fellow is," said Forester 
 to himself, as he walked away ; " and the best 
 of it is he thinks himself so particularly know- 
 ing. He evidently thinks that I am going to 
 marry an heiress, and that therefore he may 
 just as well have a picking out of her estate 
 as not. It can't possibly be any business of
 
 264 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 mine to tell him that he has found a mare's 
 nest." 
 
 So of course Mr. Thompson set to ^vork ^\'ith 
 the utmost energy to decorate the Hall, sug- 
 gesting innumerable improvements that would 
 never have occurred to Forester himself, and 
 which it would have needed a very good 
 investment indeed to justify. But he rendered 
 to Forester far more important service than 
 even decorating the Hall ; he set an example 
 of trust to all the neighbourhood. Every 
 gossip for miles round was informed of Fores- 
 ter's engagement to a very wealthy London 
 lady, and those who had begun to complain of 
 long-standing accounts, and to refuse further 
 credit, were eager to force both credit and 
 goods upon the man whose prospects of afflu- 
 ence their selfishness and stupidity had so 
 preposterously magnified. He had no need to 
 lie ; he found it far more difficult to gain belief 
 for the truth. Thompson and the gossips had
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 265 
 
 SO determined tlie matter in their own minds, 
 that every disclaimer was regarded as the mere 
 affectation of modesty, or as an attempt to 
 hide from them some part of the good fortune 
 which they had firmly resolved to share. 
 
 So the works went on until Cla5rton's Hall 
 was a little palace of loveliness and comfort. 
 The gardens and conservatories were replen- 
 ished. Trees were cut down where they shut 
 out the beauty of the view, and shrubs were 
 planted to make the walks shadier, fitter for 
 lovers — such lovers as Patty and Forester were 
 to be to the end of the chapter. And Forester 
 was praised by everybody. Happy they thought 
 must be the bonny bride who would have so 
 generous a bridegroom. " London is a big 
 place," said Thompson to the workpeople and 
 gossips, " but if it can beat this, I don't mind 
 eating my head." And Thompsons was a 
 very pardonable pride ; and if his customer had 
 been as good as his work, he might have con-
 
 266 ONLY TO BE MARIIIED. 
 
 gratulatcd himself on one of the best bargains 
 he had ever made. 
 
 And the customer himself was as completely 
 deceived as Thompson, long before the wedding 
 came. It was so charming to give orders and 
 have them executed, not only without grudg- 
 ing, but with the utmost alacrity ; to see beauty 
 springing forth on every side as if by enchant- 
 ment ; to write to Patty and tell her how the 
 improvements were so great that she would 
 scarcely recognise the Hall ; to receive letters 
 from her overflowino: with grateful affection 
 and loving vows. He quite forgot that he was 
 laying heavy burdens upon her even more than 
 on himself, which only long years of such 
 pinching economy as he was little likely to 
 submit to, could ever remove. He quite forgot 
 that he was preparing for himself such bitter 
 and vairi regret, such a long series of humilia- 
 tions, such a necessity for ever-thickening com- 
 plications of trickery and deceit, as would tui'n
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 2G7 
 
 even the fairest paradise into a place of tor- 
 ment. Nay, lie quite forgot that the Hall and 
 everything he had was so heavily encumbered, 
 that there was scarcely anything in the world 
 he could call his own, except the memory of 
 sin and folly in the past, and the foreboding of 
 misery and shame in the future. 
 
 But there was nothing in that to put off a 
 wedding. It was now the beginning of July, 
 and Patty and Forester were to be married at 
 the end of August ; so that they might be at 
 the Hall when the wood on the hill-side would 
 be at the loveHest, adorned with all the ripe, 
 rich hues of autumn. They were to be mar- 
 ried in Manchester, that so they might be near 
 to good old Mr. Wilson, though he was too 
 infirm now to understand what all the bustle 
 and excitement could mean. They were to 
 breakfast at " Our House,'' after the marriage 
 ceremony, and to spend a week or a fortnight 
 at the Lakes, and then to settle down at
 
 268 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 Clayton's Hall like good, staid, old married 
 folk. And so the weeks rolled on — six, five, 
 four, three, two — the ever-lessening space 
 vanishing with a solemn swiftness. At last 
 Patty began to count, not weeks, but days. 
 The last week had come, and nothing remained 
 but the farewell visit to all her London friends. 
 They were not many ; but "good-bye," for all 
 its blessed meaning, is a word we never care to 
 speak. 
 
 As to Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle, the parting was 
 the less painful because they were going dowTi 
 to Manchester to spend a few weeks with the 
 Ehodeses, and to be present at the marriage. 
 Mrs. Carlisle had received the news of Patty's 
 engagement with undisguised pleasure ; and if 
 the pleasure was partly selfish, not unmixed 
 with the reflection that all responsibility for 
 their foster-child was now coming to a natm'al 
 and not unhappy end, all one can say is, that 
 there is very little good in the world at all
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 269 
 
 whicli is not mixed with some baser element. 
 As for Mr. Carlisle, lie was almost as silly as 
 on the morning when he received Patty's 
 letter to tell him that she had made up her 
 mind to leave Canonbury Square, and had 
 offered herself as an assistant to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Whitehouse. He kissed her with the sincerest 
 and gentlest affection, but he could find no 
 words in which to express his good wishes ; 
 and when he took her into another room to 
 show her the presents he had bought for her, 
 he could just do nothing but sob and weep, 
 and point to his gifts, and try to stammer out 
 that they were for her, as a poor token of his 
 love. He was a poor, blundering, good- 
 natured old soul — ''a good man, for whom, 
 peradventure, one would even dare to die" — 
 but with no power of speech, no pretty senti- 
 ments and flowery words. So much the better, 
 thought Patty, as she saw him hurrying away 
 down the Square with his handkerchief to his
 
 270 ONLY TO BE MAERIED. 
 
 eyes — hurrying off to Oxford Street, as was 
 his way in any trouble, to see if honest work 
 would not dull the shar][)ness of its edge. For 
 somehow this parting with Patty, even though 
 she was only going to be married, was a 
 trouble to him. Only going to be married 
 indeed ! 
 
 '^Ah, he's very tender-hearted," said ]\Irs. 
 Carlisle, *'but he's just gone down to business 
 to work it off a little. You must not think he 
 does not approve of it, Patty, or anything of 
 that sort, because he's a little overcome." 
 
 And then this active, strong-minded matron 
 began to ask all manner of questions about the 
 dresses, and the breakfast, and the innumerable 
 trifles Ijy which the melanclioly uncertainties 
 that always surround a wedding are partly 
 disG[uised. 
 
 " Well, well, dear," she said, " I don't know 
 how they manage these things in Manchester, 
 but I've no doubt the Ehodescs will have
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 271 
 
 everything as it slioulcl be. I lialf wish we 
 could have had the wedding in London, but 
 of course it's all right to consider your father/' 
 
 It was a thousand pities that Mrs. Carlisle 
 could not have cooked the breakfast, and 
 occupied all the wedding morning in talking 
 of its merits. However, she took good care, 
 in her bustling way, to show to Patty each 
 and all of those presents which poor Mr. 
 Carlisle had so inarticulately exhibited. 
 
 "We mig:ht have made them look much 
 more," she said; "but then it's all real." 
 Whereupon she exhibited the mark. "Of 
 course there are many handsome things in 
 the plated way ; but what I always think is 
 — silver's silver, and it will always fetch its 
 worth, dear, however fashions may alter." 
 
 "Why, my dear Mrs. Carlisle," said Patty, 
 " your presents are really splendid ; but you 
 must not think that I should have valued 
 them less, whatever they had been."
 
 27^ ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 " Yes, yes, my dear, that's very well, indeed ; 
 and if we could not have afforded real, we 
 must have bought plated : but, thank God, we 
 can. And how do you like the decanters ? " 
 she went on, putting a stopper into Patty's 
 hand ; " they are the very best cut glass we 
 could get, as you may tell by feeling." 
 
 Of course Patty admired them very much, 
 and thanked Mrs. Carlisle very sincerely for 
 them, and for much more, though ^Irs. 
 Carlisle's mode of making presents was not in 
 all respects the one she would have herself 
 adopted. The good lady Avas very generous, 
 though her generosity was not so refined and 
 reticent as with advantage it might have been. 
 But, after all, is not love and real silver de- 
 cidedly better than love and plated goods ? 
 and is a thing less pretty or less worthy of 
 admiration because you are giving it away to 
 somebody else ? ]\Irs. Carlisle was not really 
 glorifying herself while she was making the
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 273 
 
 most of the presents that she had bought for 
 Patty ; she was only trying to make them 
 yield the full amount of satisfaction which 
 they were capable of yielding ; and Patty 
 really was pleased with the gifts, and pleased 
 even more with the givers. And when she 
 left the house in Canonbury Square, it was 
 almost with a feeling of dread that she re- 
 flected how immeasurably her condition would 
 be altered before she crossed that threshold 
 again. 
 
 At Oak Villa, on her last evening, there was 
 a very different scene. There also were pre- 
 sents and kind wishes, and all the terrible grief 
 and pain of separation which everybody has 
 some time or other to go through. But Oak 
 Villa had been for Patty almost the beginning 
 of real life ; not, indeed, that she went there 
 without experience, but her experience before 
 had been all of the passive, receptive sort ; 
 whereas at Oak Villa she had begun to work. 
 
 TOL. I. T
 
 274 ONLY TO BE MARKIED. 
 
 Moreover, it was the sort of work that follows 
 people, work upon the hearts and characters of 
 human beino^s, livino: men and women. "A 
 thing of beauty is a joy for ever ! '' and there 
 is doubtless a sort of sympathy between the 
 artist and his work, which is a far nobler and 
 completer reward than the loud applause of 
 those admirers, the great majority of whom 
 must be very incompetent judges. In the 
 statue or painting, the artist may often read 
 the record of his own imnost life ; months, or 
 even years of his profoundest thought and 
 deepest emotion. He will remember, as he 
 gazes upon his work, what visions were granted 
 him of ideal and eternal beauty, that never in 
 this world can find full and perfect expression. 
 He will remember lofty aspirations, and the 
 purifying power of perfect beauty, which made 
 him a true man. And yet, how little can it 
 be said, that there is any 'perfect sympathy 
 between the artist and even the noblest work
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 275 
 
 of art. What does the picture care for the 
 painter, or the statue for the sculptor? The 
 whole beauty of his work is that which the 
 artist has himself given to it ; and there is no 
 new beauty gained to make his spirit richer. 
 Nay, does not the canvas and the marble limit 
 and spoil that grand ideal which the man's 
 spirit had beheld and tried to copy ? But 
 when Patty was working for those poor un- 
 happy, erring sisters who were brought to the 
 peaceful home of Oak Villa, she could see in 
 them far more than she ever gave. Their own 
 life was renewed. Their love responded to 
 hers. As she taught them, they seemed rather 
 to remember than to learn ; and out of their 
 gratitude and recovered womanhood they gave 
 even more than they had received. 
 
 Far into the last night she was passing from 
 room to room, strengthening each inmate with 
 words of love and trust ; with the genuine 
 love of a sister. Hearts that no cruellest 
 
 T 2
 
 276 ONLY TO BE MAKRIED. 
 
 punishment could have softened, melted in the 
 divine fire of her charity. And when at last 
 she retired to her own chamber, worn out with 
 fatigue and emotion, she knelt down to thank 
 God that she had not lived utterly in vain ; 
 and to pray that if ever her own hour of need 
 should come, some loving lips might with 
 equal sincerity speak God's message to her 
 weary heart. She was full of hope ; but her 
 last night at Oak Villa seemed to reproach her. 
 Was she not going away to ease and selfish 
 rest, just as if all the dreadful problems of 
 human sin and misery had been solved for 
 ever ? 
 
 The next morning she was up early ; she 
 wanted to get to Manchester by the fast train, 
 and to have some brief respite from the pain 
 and excitement of leave-taking, before the 
 wedding-day. But there was one friend, not 
 unremembered or unloved, to whom she had 
 not yet ventiu^ed to say the inevitable adieu.
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 277 
 
 Should slie see him at all ? And yet would 
 it not seem utterly unaccountable to leave 
 London without the " good-bye," which each 
 of them could say to the other so sincerely ? 
 And what meant the strange tumult in her 
 heart, as she thought of Mr. Leighton ? Were 
 not all those old hopes dead and buried — 
 buried in the grave of her new love ? Why 
 not go and see him and say " good-bye ? " 
 Why not, indeed ! She could no more have 
 left London without that, than she could have 
 unlived the last few years of her life. So she 
 stopped the cab at the doctor's door and went 
 in. He was at home. 
 
 " I quite expected you this morning, Miss 
 Wilson,'' he said. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Leighton, I could not leave 
 London without bidding you good-bye — 
 though I'm only going to be married, and 
 I hope often to see my old friends 
 again."
 
 278 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 Poor Leighton ! he was as pale as death ; 
 fighting with all manner of mad impulses. 
 
 "Why, indeed, should you leave us, Miss 
 Patty, without good-bye," he said ; " of course 
 you are only going to be married, but marriage 
 brings many cares and duties, which render 
 the intercourse of friends rare and diffi- 
 cult." 
 
 "I shouldn't like to think, ]\Ir. Leirfiton, 
 that one love can kill another.'' 
 
 " No, no, Miss Wilson, but there are many 
 kinds of death. Perhaps a lonely, lingering 
 life is the worst death of all." 
 
 There was a pause. It seemed as if he had 
 lost all command of his voice. At last he 
 said — 
 
 " How did the girls bear your leaving them, 
 Miss Patty ? " 
 
 Patty could bear it no longer. She fairly 
 broke down, and wept passionately. 
 
 "Oh spare me, Mr. Leighton," she said.
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 279 
 
 " That is my one trouble. Is it right to leave 
 them ? As they spoke to me last night, I felt 
 the most selfish, T^Tetchcd creature in the 
 world. And what can I do at Clayton s Hall 
 but enjoy myself — while there is so much 
 misery unrelieved ? '' 
 
 " God grant that you may have nothing but 
 joy for evermore. But if it should be other- 
 wise — ^which God forbid ! — if ever you are 
 disappointed, lonely, miserable, will you 
 remember me — that I am always your friend ? 
 I will come at your call from the world's end. 
 I shall hear your voice, your faintest whisper, 
 wherever I may be, and I will be with you as 
 smft as thoug;ht " 
 
 He seemed scarcely to know what he was 
 saying, borne along in the great rush of his 
 feeling. 
 
 " No, no, forgive me. Miss Patty,'' he said ; 
 " these are ill-omened words. Good-bye. May 
 you be so utterly happy that you may never
 
 280 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 need to consider what friends you have that 
 you may reckon upon to the uttermost." 
 
 She was gone. He had seen the last he 
 could see ; and still he stood at the window, 
 as if he were rooted to the spot. Slowly, at 
 last, he turned away. " My patients must do 
 as best they can to-day," he said ; and then he 
 scorned his cowardice, fought his battle out, 
 and won once more. 
 
 " The best comforter is duty." 
 
 Yes, truly ; there could be no solace in idle- 
 ness ; but while he went from house to house, 
 trying to forget his own grief in ministering 
 to the wants of others, he could no way escape 
 that heavy burden that was weighing down 
 his heart. It was not onlv that he had lost 
 Patty, but he had no confidence whatever in 
 Forester. Perhaps jealousy made him quick- 
 eyed, for every fault or weakness of his rival ; 
 but he believed him to be utterly unprincipled. 
 He believed that he was lazily unprincipled
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 281 
 
 now, and might remain so until he had stung 
 some ^dctim of his cold-hearted recklessness 
 into fierce retaliation ; and then he too would 
 fight with the unprincipled ferocity of an 
 enraged beast of prey. And now, whatever 
 he might be or become, Patty was going down 
 to Manchester to take him " for better for 
 worse — until death should them j)art." And 
 he could do nothing for her — not even warn ; 
 only in a half frantic way assure her of his 
 help if she should ever come to need it. 
 
 And now the very day had come, and the 
 hour ; and Patty Wilson and Edwin Marie 
 Forester stood side by side in Cheetham 
 Hill Church, that they might be made man 
 and ^^dfe together. How short is the time, 
 how few are the irrevocable words which 
 bring such hopeless misery, where they do 
 not bring pure and holy joy. One poor 
 quarter of an hour, and Patty Forester's very
 
 282 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 life was either won or thrown away beyond 
 recovery. 
 
 But there is scarcely time for a bride to fear 
 on her wedding mornino;. Forester was some- 
 what graver than usual, but Patty was well 
 pleased to have it so ; and he was very gentle 
 and affectionate, almost as tender as if he were 
 pitying the fair young girl, who was so con- 
 fiding and good. They went away, as had 
 been arranged, to the Lakes ; though Forester 
 never stayed more than a day at one place. 
 
 "You know, my darling,'^ he said, — "you 
 can't think how delightful it is to have you 
 with me, and know that no one can ever take 
 you away — but that is not what I was going 
 to say." No, it was only a little parenthetic 
 burst of affection ; — " but what I teas going to 
 say is, that it's all very well for an artist to 
 sit on a cold stone on a hill-side, and spend a 
 whole morning in looking on another cold 
 stone on the other side of the valley — but we
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 283 
 
 are not artists, we are not going to paint the 
 Lakes, nor write an interesting narrative of a 
 honeymoon. So we just stand here, for 
 instance, and open our eyes wide and look 
 about us, and we see a lake and blue sky, and 
 a hill, and green trees, and we rapidly observe 
 the various combinations of all these different 
 elements, and we go on our way rejoicing to 
 something else. Besides," he said, turning 
 round and looking into her face, " I've nothing 
 to do, but turn my head round, when I have 
 you at my side, and then I can see the very 
 sight in all the world that I like best ; always 
 the same and always different.'^ 
 
 And then he walked on of course ; and what 
 would have been the use of her saying that 
 there was a good deal that she wanted to see 
 more of She was hardly prepared in the first 
 week of her married life to face the absurdity 
 of being an artist. So they went on from place 
 to place taking a rapid glance at everything
 
 284 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 Forester's way of making an excursion was 
 this. He first obtained a Bradshaw's Railway 
 Guide ; or rather, he first determined where he 
 should go, and then he provided himself with 
 a Railway Guide. He ascertained which would 
 be the fastest and most luxurious train to travel 
 by, and then the best hotel to stop at. When 
 he arrived at the place that he had determined 
 to honour with a visit, he of course went at 
 once to the hotel that he had determined to stop 
 at. He immediately ordered dinner — four or 
 five courses, and plenty of wine ; for what's 
 the use of staying at an hotel if you do not 
 live sumptuously ? Dinner and dessert would 
 naturally occupy the best part of the day of 
 arrival ; then in the evening he would stroll 
 out at his leisure to ascertain what there was 
 worth seein^]: in the nei^^hbom-hood ; then he 
 would order a carriage, or guide, or whatever 
 might be necessary, and then about the middle 
 of the next morning^ he would c^o and see it.
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL O^X'E MOKE. 285 
 
 At dinner, after having seen what was to be 
 seen, he would once more consult his Brad- 
 shaw, and would set off the next morning by 
 the fastest train to the next place he had deter- 
 mined to visit. In this manner he could make 
 the tour of several counties in a fortnight ; and 
 know much more about them too, than many 
 people would have supposed possible. 
 
 " Yes," he would say, for instance, " the 
 Peak — I have been to the Peak ; no railway at 
 that time, nor anything comfortable ; a miser- 
 able tumble-down old coach ; heaps of nasty 
 tiresome hills, that they make you get out of 
 the coach to walk up, just as if you hadn't paid 
 the coach-fare for the very purpose of being 
 carried up. The last time I Avent up the Peak 
 there was a disgusting cockatoo in the inside 
 of the coach, belonging to a charming old lady, 
 the clergyman's wife apparently. The animal 
 was continually hopping down from its perch, 
 and biting the knees of everybody who didn't
 
 28G ONLY TO EE MARRIED. 
 
 give it biscuit. Of course the clerg}Tiian s \\4fe 
 rebuked the cockatoo for such ill-regulated 
 behaviour; but what comfort is it, when youve 
 had a piece bitten out of your knee, to have 
 the cockatoo reproved ? But after all," he 
 would say, " I think the Peak is a very won- 
 derful piece of scenery — wonderful place for 
 artists ; no end of cold stones to sit on, and 
 draw fogs in the valley." 
 
 It must be very obvious that Mr. Edwin 
 Forester was destitute of what is called an 
 eye for nature ; but when he had plenty of 
 money, his o^vn or anybody else's, as the case 
 might be, and nothing on his mind, he was not 
 by any means an insufferable companion. In 
 his little wedding-tour, though Patty may have 
 wanted to see more, she was at least enjoying 
 her first visit to the Lakes. Everything was 
 provided for her with an almost princely mag- 
 nificence ; for everybody knows the best people 
 in the world to spend money are those who
 
 PATTY AT THE HALL ONCE MORE. 287 
 
 have no money to spend. When you are really 
 spending your o^vn money, the fear of extra- 
 vagance and ultimate penury is ever before 
 your eyes ; but when you positively have 
 nothing, and can only spend other people's 
 money, you can't possibly be poorer than you 
 are, and you may just as well be comfortable 
 as not. At the same time, Patty was not sorry 
 that the honeymoon was to be short. She 
 longed to see Leigh once more, and she longed 
 above all to settle in her own house, and face 
 the life that was before her. She had no mis- 
 givings — at least she thought not, hoped not, 
 tried to beheve not. And yet Forester, in this 
 first fortnight of their married life, was very 
 different from the earnest, lonely man who had 
 pleaded so hard for love, and help, and fellow- 
 ship in the Eegent's Park. He was very 
 amusing; but he seemed to find his fun in 
 surrounding great and holy things with ridi- 
 culous circumstances and degrading associa-
 
 288 ONLY TO BE MARRIED. 
 
 tions. He was very kind and affectionate ; but 
 somehow Patty seemed to feel that he cared 
 most for that which had least to do Avith her 
 truest womanliness and deepest nature. 
 
 However, short or long, all trips come to 
 an end at last ; and Patty found herself one 
 glorious autumn evening at Clayton's Hall, 
 almost on the very spot where Edwin Marie 
 was born, and where Marie, his mother, deso- 
 late? and broken-hearted, had died. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BRADBURY, EVANS, AKD CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIAR5. 
 
 1