a I E> RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 UN IVERSITY 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 V . 
 
 \
 
 'VERTS; 
 
 THE THEEE CREEDS.
 
 'VERTS; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE THREE CREEDS, 
 
 Da. MAURICE DAVIES, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "unorthodox LONDON," "BROAD CHURCH," ITC. 
 
 •' The Bee and Spider, by a diverse power, 
 Suck tioney and poison from the selfsame flower.' 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TINSLEY r.KOTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 
 1876. 
 
 {Right of Tranglation reneroeJ by the Author.]
 
 LONDON : 
 
 6ATI1L, BDWABDS AND CO., PEINTERS, CHANDOS STBIJT, 
 
 COTSNT GABDBN
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIEST VOLUME. 
 
 BOOK L— FEOM ELSIE'S DIAEY. 
 
 -: CHAP. TIGH 
 
 I. ZOAR 1 
 
 II. A CLERK OF OXENFORD .... ... 46 
 
 III. MY EVANGELICAL AUNTS 88 
 
 IV. MY PROTESTANT COUSIN 129 
 
 •^ V. MR. MODDLE 169 
 
 ■i 
 
 •^i VI. UNCLE SAM 212 
 
 A'* 
 
 a VII. THE TORN PAGE IN THE DIARY 256 
 
 4
 
 'VEETS. 
 
 BOOK I -FEOM ELSIE'S DIAKY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ZOAR. 
 
 S I have some idea of one day writing 
 a story, I shall employ these blank 
 pages in my interleaved diary, for 
 the purpose of collecting a few preliminary 
 facts. I was much struck with a remark of 
 Mr. Moddle the other day (of course I 
 shall explain who Mr. Moddle is, all in good 
 time). He said that the most uneventful 
 life, if properly described, would possess all 
 the interest of a three-volume novel. I 
 am not sure he meant this as a compliment, 
 because he depreciates works of fiction. I 
 
 VOL. I, 1
 
 'Verts. 
 
 adore them. At the same time as Mr. 
 Moddle made that remark, he said some- 
 thing to me quietly about my possessing 
 the creative faculty. I did not quite catch 
 what he said ; and if I had been clear as to 
 the words, I should not have felt certain 
 that he was not poking fun at me. Mr. 
 Moddle is very satirical. My Cousin Percy 
 was bv, and said — 
 
 " Don't talk such nonsense to that girl, 
 Moddle ; you'll be turning her head, and 
 inducing her to write her autobiography in 
 three volumes. We have a good many 
 queer people in Zoar, small as it is ; but I 
 hope we shan't disgrace ourselves so far as 
 to number a lady-novelist among the popu- 
 lation at the next census." 
 
 I had never thought of such a thing 
 before, but I tliere and then resolved that 
 I would write a novel in three volumes, and 
 moreover, that it should be autobiographical, 
 but not, I hope, an illustration of Mr. 
 Moddle's remark, because I do not mean my 
 life to be uneventful if I can help it. I
 
 Zoar. 3 
 
 project for myself a stirring career. I have 
 outgrown the period when I thought I 
 should like to marry a pirate or a bandit, 
 provided only he were dark and pictu- 
 resquely dressed. I begin even to see through 
 officers — not that there are many to cross 
 our orbit in Zoar. It is a small cathedral 
 town — the smallest in England I believe ; 
 that is why I give it the pseudonym of 
 Zoar. There are reasons for my thoughts 
 taking a Scriptural turn. 
 
 I mean to devote the opening chapter to 
 myself and my surroundings. But, dear 
 me, what a time it must take to write a 
 three-volume novel ! I have . not got to the 
 end of my second side of foolscap, and I 
 reckon I sliall have to write thirty- five for 
 each chapter. It seems like cutting the 
 first sod for a railway, or laying the first 
 brick for a cathedral. Of course this is all 
 inartistic — a sort of peg on which to hang 
 ,my subsequent story, and not by any means 
 the story itself. 
 
 The plan that I shall adopt, then, is first 
 
 1—2
 
 4 ' Verts, 
 
 to pose myself before the looking-glass, and 
 try to write an honest unflattering pen-and- 
 ink sketch of myself. I wonder whether a 
 woman can do this. Artists have painted 
 their own pictures ; why should not authors 
 describe themselves ? I had thought of 
 heading my opening chapter "Yeluti in 
 speculum." Mr. Moddle taught me Latin; 
 but perhaps it would be pedantic to adopt a 
 classical title. I hate pedantry. Mr. Moddle 
 is very clever, but he never " shows off," as 
 the boys say. 
 
 I am tall ; there can be no doubt of that. 
 I am also thin ; of that there can be equally 
 little question. As I survey my reflected 
 self, I have a considerable sensation of legs. 
 Honestly I don't believe I am a very good 
 person for a heroine: but I have not the 
 slightest imagination to invent another — 
 though Mr. Moddle does say I am creative. 
 I must be egotistical, or I am nothing. Let 
 me proceed. I am very pale, and my face, 
 I grieve to add, is freckled. My eyes, which 
 are deep set, are of no colour in particular.
 
 Zoar, 5 
 
 whicli I regret ; but — so somebody tells me 
 — my bands are nice — very long, tbin, and 
 wbite, my bair golden, and I wear persis- 
 tently one long curl over my sboulder. I 
 bave a reason for doing tbat. I am not yet 
 so ancient as to be afraid to own tbat my 
 age is tbree-and -twenty. I look tbat age, 
 but my manner is younger. I bave tbe 
 reputation of gusbing witb my friends, but 
 am exceedingly reserved before strangers. 
 So mucb for myself at present. 
 
 " Elsie," said Cousin Percy, a day or two 
 after Mr. Moddle's remark about my creative 
 faculty, " you are not letting yourself be 
 influenced by wbat tbat old ass Moddle said, 
 I bope. I notice you bave been a good deal 
 in your room lately, and I bave reason to 
 believe your use of pen and ink is more 
 habitual tban of old. I don't care to bave 
 tbat dear finger of yours ebon-tipped, ivory 
 tbougb it be." 
 
 I said notbing in reply, but simply pulled 
 my band away and looked fierce. He did 
 not seem to mind. He pays compliments
 
 ' Verts. 
 
 much as one would enunciate a proposition 
 of Euclid (I learnt Euclid of Mr. Moddle). 
 He has no right to play with my hand — at 
 least not yet. Besides, Mr. Moddle is cer* 
 tainly not an ass, and not ve?y old. 
 
 " Percy," I continued, " what is the popu- 
 lation of Zoar?" 
 
 " 0, it's a guide-book we are compiling, 
 is it ? That's better than a frivolous love- 
 story. Well, Zoar, in and out " 
 
 " What do you mean by ' in and out ?' " 
 
 " The city and surroundings — would num- 
 ber between five and six thousand." 
 
 "'No more? And yet we have that big 
 cathedral, into which we could put all the 
 population at a pinch, yet to which not half 
 a dozen ever go on weekdays ; besides which 
 we have St. Hilda's and your church." 
 
 " Will you excuse me for remarking that 
 I am not an inquiring stranger, about to 
 study the city and environs. Be quiet, 
 there's a good girl. I want to finish the 
 Becordj and send it off by post to London ; 
 I share it with Uncle Samuel."
 
 Zoar, 7 
 
 So I came upstairs and wrote again. 
 
 Certainly Zoar is one of the quaintest and 
 coziest of bijou cities ; and as you look down 
 upon it from the hills with which it is sur- 
 rounded, you become conscious how clever 
 those old monks and friars were in their 
 choice of site. It rains nearly every day in 
 Zoar, but as nobody has anything very par- 
 ticular to do, or which could not be put off 
 until to-morrow, it does not much matter. 
 Of course the Dean and Canon in residence 
 have to go to cathedral twice a day, and a 
 Dean in canonicals being conveyed across 
 the green by a verger who holds an umbrella 
 over him instead of carrying a mace in front, 
 is not picturesque. But Zoar is very tran- 
 quil, and we soon get to look upon umbrellas 
 and waterproofs as the normal conditions of 
 existence. We residents often cry out about 
 the dulness of Zoar ; but I find when any of 
 us go out into the big world, we are always 
 very glad to get back to Zoar again. I wonder 
 whether I shall ever feel this sensation. 
 It is, I suppose, very irreverent, but I can-
 
 'Verts. 
 
 not help comparing the dean and chapter and 
 numerous clergy, who constitute the upper 
 crust of Zoar society, to the jackdaws that 
 haunt the cathedral. They are so black and 
 sleek and shiny, and seem so thoroughly 
 a part of the building ; and when one dies 
 — either a daw or a dignitary — another 
 equally black and shiny comes and takes 
 his place so naturally that one does not feel 
 the transition in the least, though I suppose 
 the bird or the clergyman does. To me it 
 seems as though there were a sort of clerical 
 anima mundi in Zoar, and the canons and 
 jackdaws were simply different embodied 
 modicums of this. I read the Fourth Book 
 of the Georgics with Mr. Moddle. 
 
 I suppose it will detract from the interest 
 of my story, should these rough notes 
 ever expand into one, when I confess 
 that my family does not belong to the 
 upper stratum of the Zoar formation (I 
 have dabbled a little in natural science, still 
 with Mr. Moddle). My father keeps a shop, 
 a very respectable place, established I am
 
 Zoar. 9 
 
 afraid to say how many years ago, but still 
 an unmitigated shop nevertheless, where he 
 sells hats and coats to the sleek canons while 
 alive, and from whence he issues with hat- 
 bands, plumes, and scarves to inter them 
 when their vital spark rejoins the common 
 stock. In this way I am enabled to hang 
 on to the skirts of clerical life, though at a 
 very respectful, and I fear not quite a re- 
 spectable, distance. I have an idea that this 
 commercial element is a great trial to my 
 Uncle Edward, who is a solicitor and 
 secretary to the Bishop, and has married* a 
 little deaf wife supposed to be genteel. 
 Percy, whom I call my Protestant cousin, 
 is his only son, and Incumbent of 
 St. Simon Magus, in Zoar. He is 
 very young, and some people wonder at 
 his rapid preferment. He was ordained 
 deacon and priest on consecutive days, and 
 popped at once into the living of St. Simon 
 Magus, which fell vacant very opportunely. 
 Scandal said that the Bishop was "hard 
 up," and my Uncle Edward "accommodated"
 
 10 'Verts. 
 
 liim ; but being such a small and religious 
 place, I need scarcely say Zoar is great at 
 gossip. I thought at the time that Percy's 
 rapid promotion was only a recognition by 
 the Bishop of his surpassing merits. I may 
 as well confess at once that I have been 
 always led to consider Percy as possessed 
 of all the cardinal virtues, and to look upon 
 him as my future husband. He is only a 
 year or two my senior ; and when we were 
 boy and girl together, the arrangement 
 suited us admirably. When first we found 
 out we were no longer boy and girl but 
 man and woman, that is, when Percy, after 
 taking his B.A. and passing the Voluntary, 
 came to Zoar for Deacon's Orders, it became 
 necessary to make some reference to this 
 matrimonial arrangement, and the way it 
 was done will afford an insight into Percy's 
 plain, practical, business-like character, and 
 also into the state of my affections. I am 
 not quite clear about the latter myself just 
 at this moment ; and possibly may not be 
 inclined to make a full and unreserved con-
 
 Zoa7\ 11 
 
 fession, even of what is patent to myself. 
 Why should I ? you are not a Father Con- 
 fessor, good reader, are you ? 
 
 Percy is a very decided Evangelical, prin- 
 cipally, I fancy, for the reason that all the dig- 
 nitaries at Zoar are mildly Puseyite ; and he 
 takes this opportunity of showing that he 
 felt no obligation for his promotion, and of 
 resenting their not asking him to their resi- 
 dence dinners. They never do ; and I know 
 Percy feels it acutely, and fancies they do it 
 on account of my father being in business, 
 though he pretends to think it is because*he 
 is a Simeonite. But I am digressing. I 
 always feel a tendency to wander. This is 
 what Percy said — 
 
 " Well, Elsie, are you prepared to sign, 
 seal, and deliver the contract between us 
 made?" and he kissed me in a very cold 
 cousin-like kind of way, not in the least like 
 that he used to adopt when he caught me 
 under the mistletoe, or occasionally without 
 that excuse. Percy, I should add, was 
 articled to his father before going to Cam-
 
 12 'Verts. 
 
 hridge, which would account for the legal 
 phraseology he adopted. 
 
 " Of course I am, Percy, if " 
 
 " if you are going into * ifs,' going to 
 introduce reservations or conditions, or any- 
 thing of that sort, it will take us a very long 
 time to settle a very simple matter." 
 
 ''I thought it was all settled for us 
 already," I replied. " I have never swerved 
 from my engagement" — I very nearly said 
 'agreement,' because we really never have 
 been formally engaged. " I only thought 
 that, as you had been a good deal out in the 
 world, while I had been staying at Zoar, 
 you might have seen somebody you liked 
 better." 
 
 " Leaving me to understand by implication 
 that, if you had not been prisoned in Zoar, 
 but had enjoyed the opportunity of going 
 out into the world too, you might have seen 
 somebody you liked better than me." 
 
 '* It is possible, is it not ?" What girl 
 <3ould resist the temptation of saying so 
 much as that ? " But you are very cross ; or
 
 Zoar, 13 
 
 no, I will not say that — the horrid Arch- 
 deacon has been bothering you with his long 
 examination, perhaps." 
 
 " That doesn't bother me," replied Percy, 
 with ineffable contempt. " The Bishop dares 
 not reject me. I sent in blank papers on 
 several subjects just to see whether they 
 would even speak to me about them/' 
 
 As a fact they did not ; and Percy not 
 only passed his examination, but had to read 
 the Gospel, a compliment always shown to 
 the candidate whose answers have been most 
 satisfactory. I felt very proud of him when 
 I went into one of those large pews, irreve- 
 rently called " horseboxes," at the cathedral. 
 My Evangelical Aunt Phillis, and my great- 
 aunt Eachel, were with me, and Percy's 
 father, my TJncle Edward, was in official 
 attendance on the Bishop. He looked proud 
 indeed as he stood there in the voluminous 
 dress-coat which he wore on all occasions, 
 and saw his only son kneel and receive from 
 the Bishop imposition of hands, together with 
 a twopenny New Testament sold under cost
 
 14 'Verts. 
 
 price by a religious society, with a discount on 
 taking a number. Percy is not altogether 
 handsome, and perhaps a certain morose ap- 
 pearance, which he even then possessed, has 
 grown upon him of late : but it was the 
 first time I had seen him in his surplice, the 
 white of which contrasted beautifully with 
 his almost olive complexion and black curling 
 hair. His father, my Uncle Edward, bears 
 the most ridiculous resemblance to Charles 
 James Fox, and though he is a Conserva- 
 tive in politics, he is exceedingly proud of 
 the likeness. 
 
 Percy has now been some time Incumbent 
 of St. Simon Magus, but I am glad to say 
 does not urge the fulfilment of my matri- 
 monial engagement. Of course it will have 
 to be carried out one of these days, we both 
 know that ; but in the interim I have a little 
 *' affaire" on hand, and so — I happen to know 
 in the most irregular way possible — has 
 Percy. If ever he should find out anything 
 about Alec, and speak to me, as he is sure to 
 do, I shall twit him with Mary Baker. She
 
 Zoar. 15 
 
 is the prima donna in his choir at St. Simon 
 Magus, and certainly the prettiest girl in 
 Zoar. Her mother is a poor widow woman 
 who makes believe to keep a dressmaker's 
 shop in the High Street, only some three or 
 four doors above our house ; but I fancy she 
 has hardly any business ; and how they 
 manage to exist I cannot guess, for the 
 children are always respectable, and Mary 
 herself dresses, if anything, too smartly. 
 Percy, I know, only gives her a mere pittance 
 for singing at St. Simon's. He always was 
 an excellent man of business, which *my 
 Uncle Edward says is the rarest thing among 
 the clergy, and he has so much to do with 
 them that he certainly ought to know. He 
 thought a little drilling in a lawyer's office 
 would be the best means of enabling Percy 
 to get on in the Church. 
 
 " The Law first and then the Gospel, my 
 dear," he said to me in reference to this sub- 
 ject. " When your prospective husband has 
 one of the richest livings in the diocese, and, 
 besides that, you have your Aunt Phillis's
 
 16 'Verts. 
 
 money and possibly the Welsh estates, he 
 will want all his business tact to manage so 
 large a fortune." 
 
 " 0, Uncle Edward," I replied, for I was 
 in my gushing mood then, " I don't want 
 to be rich. St. Simon's would be quite 
 enough for me." 
 
 " Don't hint at such a thing, child. Percy 
 wont stop at St. Simon's to be snubbed by 
 the palace and the deanery, and as long as 
 that shop remains in the High Street, so long 
 he will be snubbed. He must exchange for 
 a country living before you can be married ; 
 but I don't want him to hurry. He may 
 make a good bargain if he finds some country 
 incumbent anxious to bask in the light of 
 the Bishop." 
 
 Nobody seems to want to hurry, which is 
 very nice for Alec and myself under the cir- 
 stances. I am going to confess, not perhaps 
 quite all, but a good deal about Alec in due 
 course of time, but I must do it in my own 
 desultory fashion or not at all. Mr. Moddle 
 says I have not a logical mind, but then he
 
 Zoar. 17 
 
 goes on to add, when had a woman ever a 
 logical mind ? Mr. Moddle can be as great 
 a misogynist as Euripides himself when he 
 likes, though sometimes he can be quite the 
 reverse. 
 
 St. Simon Magus' church is on the out- 
 skirts of Zoar, at the extreme east end of the 
 town, and in one of its least eligible suburbs, 
 if it is possible to predicate suburban ap- 
 pendages of so very tiny a place. By going 
 out at one of the side doors of the church, 
 and crossing the fields, you can avoid the 
 ineligible street, and passing by a large piece 
 of water called the Fishponds — on the lucus 
 a non lucendo principle, I fancy, for there are 
 no fish — you get into a lonely picturesque 
 lane, at the end of which you emerge into a 
 high road leading past the Bishop's palace, 
 and eventually into the market-place of Zoar. 
 In this lonely and picturesque lane Alec 
 and I had been taking an evening walk; 
 and quite forgetting that it was practice 
 night at St. Simon Magus, we omitted to 
 part as we usually did before coming to the 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 18 'Verts. 
 
 rishpond fields. We were just going to 
 emerge from tlie gloom of the overhanging 
 trees when Alec pulled me back and said — 
 
 " Your cousin Percy, look !" 
 
 Sure enough there he was at the stile 
 leadins: from the fields into the lane, and 
 with him was Mary Baker. They could not 
 see us, though we were so close that we could 
 not only see but hear them. I was asto- 
 nished, but not indignant, to observe that 
 when Mary came to the stile and as he lifted 
 her over, he gave her not one, two, or three, 
 but twenty kisses at least — quite unlike the 
 cousinly dabs he gives me, and as she trotted 
 down the lane he said, '' Good night, 
 darling," and stopped watching her until 
 she turned a corner out of sight. He then 
 went slowly back through the fields to the 
 church and home by the street I suppose, 
 for, as John Bunyan says, " I saw him no 
 more." 
 
 I am saving up Alec for my next chapter, 
 therefore I shall not say much about him 
 now, except that after what we have seen I
 
 Zoar. 1 9 
 
 feel less compunction than before in walking 
 out witli him-; and such is the force of 
 example that he at once imitated Cousin 
 Percy by kissing me more than twenty times 
 before I sped down the lane; indeed he 
 would insist upon coming further with me 
 than he had ever done before, running the 
 most tremendous risks of meeting folks, for 
 this was a favourite evening walk with the 
 inliabitants of Zoar, and if one of them had 
 seen us it would have been published all 
 over the place that night. How Percy 
 could risk being seen with Mary Baker I 
 cannot guess ; but perhaps he dreads the 
 Bishop taking away his gown as little as he 
 did his plucking him for Orders. He used 
 to say he could never be sufficiently grateful 
 to my Uncle Edward for accommodating his 
 lordship, and thus putting the screw on him, 
 though he thought his father ought to 
 double the interest on account of the old 
 prig not asking Percy or himself to dinner 
 at the palace. 
 
 " Tve piled it on as heavily as I can.
 
 20 ' Verts. 
 
 Percy," niy uncle replied ; " but after all, 
 you cannot wonder that the Bishop and 
 Dean don't ask us to dinner as long as 
 that shop disfigures the High Street. Not 
 only so, but William'' — that was my father 
 — " is ruining his business and dragging us 
 down a step lower than before, if that were 
 possible, in the social scale by joining the 
 Dissenters and flitting about from sect to sect. 
 Our family name is Llewellyn, on the 
 strength of which we are of course claimed 
 as kindred by all who hail from the Princi- 
 pality ; but it is a most humiliating thing 
 to have to confess that our family tree does 
 not strike root deeper than my grand- 
 father; or, if it does, it is so profoundly 
 buried in the soil that no ordinary heraldry 
 can bring it to light. My grandfather 
 might have been as autocthonous as Topsy 
 herself. As regards his antecedents he was 
 as mysterious as Melchizedek. From the 
 date when our shop was established, there 
 ought to have been a long lineal descent of 
 Dlewellyns; but perhaps it had changed
 
 Zoar. 21 
 
 hands. Suffice it to say, I know nothing 
 about my grandfather beyond the fact, that 
 he was a fine greyheaded old gentleman, 
 much respected by his fellow-townsmen, and 
 that he died some years ago. Towards the 
 close of his life, he was in a low desponding 
 condition, for which most people held Mr. 
 Moddle responsible — unjustly so, I think ; 
 but although my uncle favoured this opinion, 
 it did not interrupt his good fellowship with 
 Mr. Moddle. I was young at the time; 
 but I remember it struck me that after my 
 grandfather's death, my uncle seemed on 
 better terms with Mr. Moddle than before. 
 He certainly encouraged his visits to High 
 Street, though pretending to dislike dissent, 
 and as a rule Mr. Moddle breakfasts with 
 us every Saturday morning, and dines at 
 least once a week. I remember when he 
 used to jump me in his arms ; but that was, 
 of course, before my legs were a tithe of 
 their present length. It sometimes strikes 
 me, that he is dandling me mentally still. 
 He treats me as though I were a grown-up
 
 22 ' Verts. 
 
 baby. I have once or twice asked him how 
 it was my grandfather left the Topaz Farm 
 equally divided between my father, my two 
 uncles, and my Aunt Phillis. 
 
 *' I thought it was only left to my grand- 
 father for his lifetime, and to descend to my 
 father at his death." 
 
 "Did you, indeed, my young Portia? 
 Why don't you put your ideas in more legal 
 phraseology ?" 
 
 "Never mind the phraseology; let us 
 stick to the idea, and talk sense." 
 
 "With which the law has nothing in 
 common, you mean." 
 
 "I should not like Uncle Edward or Cousin 
 Percy to hear me say so ; but yes, I do 
 mean that. Is it not a fact that old Mrs. 
 Susanna Dash, who left the Topaz Parm to 
 my grandfather, personally disliked my Uncle 
 Edward, and said Samuel was a snivel- 
 ler, but liked my father, as she did my 
 grandfather ?" 
 
 " There's your dear old Aunt Eachel, who 
 never tires of talking on this subject, and
 
 Zoar. 23 
 
 who will moreover enlighten you as to your 
 Welsh estates, too. Why do you consult 
 me, an outsider, on family matters ?" 
 
 " Nonsense about Aunt Eachel. To whom 
 shall I speak, if not to you, Mr. Moddle ?" 
 
 " Your Aunt Phillis, your Uncle Edward 
 himself Why not ?" 
 
 "Mention the subject in their presence, 
 and they collapse forthwith. If they would 
 only tell me to hold my tongue, or say 
 something more impertinent still, I should 
 resent it ; but their stolid taciturnity gives 
 me no chance." • 
 
 "Then speak to your father." 
 
 " Dear good-natured old man, I try to 
 get him on the topic, for I do not think he 
 has been justly dealt by ; but there is no 
 keeping him to it. He is as warm as 
 I am — almost as sanguine as I am — one 
 moment. He takes a pinch of snuff, and 
 that seems to change his whole nature. 
 O, I wish I were a man instead of a woman. 
 What can I do ?" 
 
 " Write to Uncle Sam."
 
 24 'Verts. 
 
 " Do you know, it's a dreadful thing to 
 say, but I cordially endorse old Susanna 
 Dash's appraisement of Uncle Sam. If she 
 had included by anticipation his wife, my 
 Aunt Patty, in the same category, I don't 
 think she would have been far wrong. They 
 both snivel." 
 
 " Eeally, Miss Elsie, you take stock of 
 your belongings in a very merciless manner. 
 What does your mother say ?" 
 
 " You know well enough my mother would 
 lie down any moment for the Juggernaut 
 car of family respectability and peace to 
 pass over her mutilated body." 
 
 "Percy?" 
 
 " The most difficult of all ; for he shuts 
 me up by saying that we shall be married 
 directly, and our interests identified. I 
 have tried to pump Aunt Eachel as you 
 suggest, but she has got the Topaz Parm 
 so mixed up with the Welsh estates, 
 which I believe to be simple castles in 
 Spain — and she bothers her poor head so to 
 find out the unpronounceable name of
 
 Zoar. 25- 
 
 that inheritance, and is generally so old 
 and imbecile that I can do nothing with her." 
 
 Then Mr. Moddle subsides into his paper, 
 with a look which says as plainly as words, 
 " / am not to be pumped, Miss ;" and I go 
 into a brown study, and wonder whether I 
 am really the victim of a conspiracy, got up 
 by the uncles and aunts against my good- 
 natured, but rather weak-minded papa, and 
 whether that is the meaning of their being 
 so anxious to marry me to Percy. 
 
 Most of all do I wonder whether, if such 
 be the case, Mr. Moddle knows all about it. 
 If so he is a capital actor. I have a notion 
 that as long as the Saturday breakfasts and 
 weekly dinners come round regularly, Mr. 
 Moddle will let things take their course. If 
 they failed, or the port wine grew inferior, 
 I should not like to reckon on that gen- 
 tleman's fidelity. 
 
 And yet Zoar is a dear dreamy old place, 
 and the more I abuse it the better I like it, 
 just as we do with our most intimate friends. 
 We feel an inward conviction that they are-
 
 26 'Verts. 
 
 stupid, and cherish it as one of the greatest 
 privileges of our association that we are able 
 to tell them so point blank, and let them 
 see by a hundred instinctive acts every day 
 of our lives what our estimate of them is. 
 I have not the slightest doubt that Orestes 
 and Pylades bored one another sometimes, 
 and that each was not only conscious of the 
 fact, but made it perfectly obvious to the 
 other that he was so. It is just the same 
 with Zoar. When I hear my lackadaisical 
 young-lady friends inveigh against its dul- 
 ness, I sympathize with them verbally, and 
 really fancy for the moment that I have a 
 fellow-feeling in my heart. But if I ask 
 myself here, over my diary, or when I am 
 taking long country walks, solitary or other- 
 wise (especially otherwise), whether I should 
 like to say good-by to Zoar, I am quite 
 determined that I should not. I have 
 grown up in Zoar and become acclimatized ; 
 and very much doubt whether, when the 
 inevitable exodus comes, I shall flourish so 
 well anywhere else. 
 
 "When I see Cockney tourists or visitors
 
 Zoar. 27 
 
 of any kind " doing" Zoar, guide-book in 
 hand, mooning about the cathedral green, 
 or staring into the moat round the Bishop's 
 palace, I know they are saying to themselves 
 that it is a very picturesque old place, but 
 that there must be a deal of still life in it. 
 So there is ; but there is a good deal of life 
 that is not still too. 
 
 I confess that my experience in Zoar is 
 to a certain degree exceptional. Shop- 
 keeper's daughter though I am, and mixed 
 up, against my will, with influences that 
 run counter to the received traditions among 
 the ton of our cathedral city, I am treated 
 as a lady by, and am actually on almost 
 familiar terms with, those very dignita- 
 ries whom my clerical cousin and aspiring 
 uncle with the genteel wife affect quite in 
 vain. 
 
 The reason of this is, in the first place, that 
 I have, by the merest fluke, got the reputation 
 of being " clever." I hate the word, and 
 really feel that it amounts almost to an in- 
 sult when people use it in reference to me. 
 They do, however ; and I know they do not
 
 28 'Verts, 
 
 mean it as an insult, so I dare not resent it ; 
 but I take a deeper revenge still. I laugh 
 in my sleeve at them, and rather encourage 
 the idea which I know to be utterly false. 
 I am not in the least clever, nay, in many 
 respects I know myself to be below the level 
 even of commonplace ; but I possess the 
 power of holding my tongue, and not letting 
 everybody see that I am not clever. When I 
 am analysing myself — and I do a good deal 
 in that way — I am always reminded of the 
 story of the Aberdeen lad who was in love, 
 as most Aberdeen lads are, with a Scotch 
 lassie ; whilst, as will sometimes occur, 
 another lad loved the same lassie. The 
 second lad was in the seafaring line, and 
 brought home from a voyage a parrot, which 
 he presented to the object of his affections. 
 This parrot was a capital talker, and amused 
 the pretty lassie immensely. The first 
 swain would not be outdone in generosity ; 
 but, not being a sailor, parrots were out of 
 his line. He therefore bought an owl and 
 bestowed it on this nymph with two strings
 
 Zoar, 29 
 
 to her bow. After a time he asked her how 
 she liked the bird, and her reply was favour- 
 able (I fancy the sailor lad had gone on 
 another voyage just then). She said the 
 bird did not talk like Poll, it was true ; but 
 still he had " a power o' thocht in him." 
 That is the case with me. I do not talk 
 much, and people think I must have a power 
 of thought in me. 
 
 For seven years, from my thirteenth to 
 my twentieth summer, I went every day 
 to Mr. Moddle ; and while my young-lady 
 friends were studying the accomplishments 
 and general inutility at the various boarding- 
 schools in Zoar, I was reading Greek, Latin, 
 German, French, and mathematics with my 
 eccentric but clever instructor. I only went 
 to him from ten to one, so that I had plenty 
 of time to pick up my drawing and practise 
 my music. Thus I did not fall behind in 
 my accomplishments, while the undivided 
 attention I got from Mr. Moddle enabled 
 me to get over a good deal of ground in my 
 heavier studies, and so — how I smile as I
 
 30 'Verts. 
 
 write it — stamped me among the Zoar 
 magnates as a genius. 
 
 The Dean, for instance, who was provost 
 of a college at one of the universities, heard 
 that I had read the Nicomachean Ethics — 
 my father was always fond of boasting 
 about my doings — and this very reverend 
 gentleman actually asked me to call at the 
 Deanery and talk over the subject with him, 
 for he was great at moral science himself. 
 I went, nothing doubtful, for I felt on secure 
 ground in this my favourite study, and 
 actually had the felicity of seeing him 
 smile at my understanding and answers, 
 and of being invited to luncheon with Mrs. 
 Dean, to whom he introduced me in the 
 following terms — 
 
 " Here, my dear, is a young lady — Miss 
 Llewellyn — my wife — who has mastered 
 Aristotle, and has charmed me with her dis- 
 cussion of Whately's Logic. You must 
 know one another." 
 
 From that time forth Mrs. Dean used con- 
 tinually to drive up to the shop door and
 
 Zoar. 31 
 
 wait for me to take an airing with her, I 
 need scarcely say to the wonder and admira- 
 tion of the High Street ; for Jews and 
 Samaritans were on friendly terms compared 
 with the hard and fast line which is drawn 
 between the Church and the World in Zoar 
 as a rule. I am the solitary exception ; and 
 I owe my exception mostly to the fact that 
 I am clever. 
 
 " What a pity it is/* the Bishop was once 
 known to say in private, " that my secretary's 
 son and that draper's daughter can't change 
 sexes. He is an offensive nincompoop, with 
 nothing in his head but Simeonite nonsense 
 and radical ideas ; whereas she is not only 
 clever but " 
 
 But what do you think ? I really do not 
 like to write the word, because it looks like a 
 mockery. I was religious. Now, although 
 I hope I am not irreligious any more than 
 I should like to be a perfect fool, yet I have 
 no more title to be called religious than I 
 have to be set down as clever. 
 
 This is how the idea arose.
 
 -82 'Verts. 
 
 Zoar is celebrated not only as being the 
 bead-quarters of tbe clergy in esse for the 
 diocese, but also for tbe education of tbe 
 clergy in posse. It is tbe seat of a celebrated 
 theological college, where graduates who are 
 desirous of following up their secular studies 
 with some more definite preparation for 
 orders, work for a year at theology, and 
 acquire a Testimonium which is very highly 
 appreciated by most of the Bishops ; by all 
 indeed except the extreme Low Church 
 party, for we are looked upon as carrying 
 things with rather a high hand in Zoar. 
 
 These theological students, who are gene- 
 rally about fifty in number, serve, as I need 
 scarcely say, to keep Zoar alive : and if I 
 must be very honest and outspoken indeed, 
 it was as much to see the students as because 
 I liked the cathedral service that I began to 
 go twice a day directly after I ceased to 
 study at Mr. Moddle's. I was speaking at 
 random when I said only some half dozen 
 people went to cathedral. Of course the 
 choir and canons would amount to consider-
 
 Zoar. 33 
 
 ably more than that ; but there are also the 
 divinity students who go twice a day, and 
 the ladies who, like myself, go because the 
 students do. When I spoke as I did to 
 Percy I must have been thinking of vacation 
 time, when there are no students, and no 
 ladies — and probably the congregation does 
 not average more than six, mostly old alms- 
 house people, nearly all of whom I notice 
 wear white cotton night caps during the 
 service, for the cathedral is draughty. 
 
 I go regularly, not only in term time, but 
 through the vacations. This I do, really not 
 to save appearances, or even to keep up my 
 acquaintance with the dean, but I enjoy the 
 quiet daily service of praise in that beautiful 
 old cathedral. It seems to me the sublima- 
 tion of Zoar existence. I get unmercifully 
 laughed at by Percy, who says I sacrifice 
 myself on the shrine of respectability during 
 the vacation so as to be able to go with 
 decency during term-time. Mr. Moddle asks 
 me what spirituality I find in the squeaking 
 choristers and the gusty organ, and whether 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 ' Verts. 
 
 I think Grod likes to be addressed only in 
 the key of G by a mnsical minor canon. 
 
 Whenever they take this tone I collapse 
 just as they do on the subject of the Topaz 
 Estates. My father and mother — dear old 
 souls ! — Dissenters though they are, en- 
 courage my church-going. My father says 
 it must be better to serve God that way than 
 not at all; whereupon my Uncle Edward 
 generally makes some coarse observation 
 to the effect that he is behind the scenes and 
 knows how much real religion there is in 
 church dignitaries. 
 
 " It may pay perhaps to bring the girl 
 into contact with the bigwigs — confound 
 them ! — but if I had a daughter I would 
 rather she kept clear of them." 
 
 How devoutly he wishes his son could be 
 as hail fellow well met with them as I am. 
 That again is, I am quite aware, an additional 
 reason why he wants Percy and me to marry. 
 
 My Uncle Samuel and Aunt Patty once 
 wrote me a joint letter of remonstrance on 
 the subject of what they chose to call my
 
 Zoar. 35 
 
 " Romanizing tendencies/' and Aunt Phillis 
 girds occasionally in the same strain ; but I 
 answered the former in a long letter, only 
 touching upon the subject in a postscript of 
 three lines : and when Aunt Phillis, having 
 eaten something that disagrees with her, 
 gets on that topic, I treat her to a similar 
 verbal postscript, if I may so express 
 myself, that is, I talk volubly on some in- 
 different topic, and throw in a polite word 
 or two at the end which, rightly inter- 
 preted, would be — 
 
 " Shut up." 
 
 It is a sight to see us of a Sunday morn- 
 ing, going our different ways to church. My 
 father struts preternaturally early for Mr. 
 Moddle's chapel, in which my revered 
 parent holds office. He says he goes so 
 early on account of official duties ; but my 
 private opinion is, that it is to avoid meet- 
 ing the people going to church. My father 
 was an excellent churchman once, and is not 
 so bigoted now but that he sometimes 
 attends St. Hilda's, the incumbent of which 
 
 3—2
 
 36 ' Verts. 
 
 is one of tlie canons of the cathedral. My 
 mother goes with him generally, that is, she 
 attends the same place of worship, following 
 him when she has seen the rest of the house- 
 hold off. She is the Broadest church-woman 
 I ever knew, and would attend the worship 
 of any sect that set up its tabernacle in Zoar, 
 from the Pope down to Mrs. Girling. She 
 holds the grand essentials, and cares 
 nothing for the externals, of Faith and Wor- 
 ship. As soon as the musical old chimes 
 ring forth from the grey towers, I start 
 for cathedral, where I am privileged to 
 share a horsebox with the dean and canons' 
 ladies, and from which I have a capital view 
 of the students in general, and Alec in par- 
 ticular; or, at least, I used to have when he 
 was one of that theological half hundred. I 
 generally meet my Uncle Edward and Percy, 
 and sometimes my deaf aunt, en route from 
 their snug house in the College Gardens to 
 the church in East Zoar. My Uncle Edward 
 is churchwarden, and sits in a pew lined 
 with dark blue cloth, with two large maces
 
 Zoar. 37 
 
 planted like standards in the corners. Lastly, 
 my aunts Phillis and Eachel, who lodge over 
 Mrs. Baker's shop, and whom nothing on 
 earth will persuade to attend Percy's minis- 
 trations, toddle off to St. Hilda's, and so 
 we are all provided for. 
 
 It is astonishing how quickly the week- 
 days go by in Zoar, and how soon the Sun- 
 daj^s seem to come round again. When you 
 have anything like a double daily service 
 to mark off the day into definite portions, 
 it aids the flight of time wonderfully. I 
 fancy that monks and nuns who recite the 
 offices regularly in choir must be greatly 
 conscious of this. My day at Zoar gene- 
 rall3^ proceeds somewhat after this fashion. 
 
 We rise at eight, and, as soon as my 
 father has seen the shop opened, and set 
 business going, we have breakfast and 
 family prayers. Then I help my mother 
 in domestic affairs, for I am very careful not 
 to let either my alleged cleverness or reli- 
 gion interfere with my capacity for making 
 puddings. This brings on ten o'clock, which
 
 38 'Verts. 
 
 is the hour for week-day morning service at 
 the cathedral. The green is quite lively 
 with students walking up and down, in their 
 trencher caps and B.A. gowns, as well as 
 with the chorister boys who are coming out 
 of the Grammar School, where they are 
 foundationers, and playing all sorts of tricks 
 as they pass from school to church. I am 
 often exercised to think why it is that 
 choristers are generally a shade more tricky 
 than other lads, just as they say clergymen's 
 children are. Is it, I wonder, because they 
 see, as my Uncle Edward would say, " be- 
 hind the scenes," and so acquire a fatal 
 familiarity with religious and moral con- 
 cerns? Cousin Percy was on the founda- 
 tion for a time himself, and I have heard it 
 whispered, did not leave with very flying 
 colours ; but I never knew particulars, and 
 have reason to believe he is biassed when 
 he inveighs against choir schools as sinks of 
 iniquity. 
 
 Say what unimpressionable people may, 
 an early musical service does give a tone
 
 Zoar, 39 
 
 to the day, and I feel it constantly when I 
 come home, and sit down to my books and 
 papers directly afterwards. I can write 
 better. I feel decidedly more religious and 
 certainly not less clever. Those ridiculous 
 terms ! 
 
 We dine at the primitive hour of one, in 
 the low oaken parlour behind the shop ; 
 and my mother and I get things ready, with 
 the help of one old servant, Hannah, who 
 is the very type of Zoar itself in appear- 
 ance and character. She is one of those old- 
 fashioned domestics who have no idea that 
 people ever grow up. She speaks to me 
 and thinks of me as a mere child, and 
 annoys Percy considerably by always 
 alluding to him as "Master Percy,'* just as 
 she did when he used to come foraging 
 for apples or plums into the High Street 
 kitchen. At three there is afternoon service 
 at the cathedral, and before or after that I 
 walk — sometimes, as I said, alone, sometimes 
 otherwise. Frequently I defer my constitu- 
 tional altogether until the evening, and get
 
 40 'Verts. 
 
 a second spell at my books and writing in 
 the afternoon. Tea at five and supper at 
 nine conclude our day. 
 
 Now if this kind of thing were going on 
 to the end of the book as well as the 
 chapter, it would be obviously impossible to 
 extract a story from it. I doubt whether 
 the highest creative faculty which even 
 Mr. Moddle could imagine would be able 
 to surround these short and simple annals 
 with anything like interest. But then I 
 have a supreme conviction that all this is 
 not going to last. I am not sure whether 
 I am glad or sorry to think so, but the con- 
 viction is there. As far as one can see there 
 is every element of stability in the present 
 arrangement of affairs, unless indeed my 
 inevitable marriage with Percy alters 
 matters. Why do I use that word "in- 
 evitable," I wonder ? 
 
 Am I shaken l)y that Mary Baker epi- 
 sode? I suppose I ought to be. Some 
 people say there is no true love without 
 jealousy. I know not how that may be,
 
 Zoar. 41 
 
 but I am not the least jealous. Perhaps 
 two wrongs do make one right after all. 
 Possibly Alec and Mary Baker, like two 
 quantities on different sides of an equation, 
 cancel one another ; " go out" and leave 
 Percy and me standing alone. Certain it is 
 that neither Alec nor I seem at all conscious 
 of the just cause or impediment which of 
 course Percy ought to form to our " other- 
 wise" rambles. I often wonder whether 
 Percy knows anything of my *' affaire;" if so, 
 he is as philosophical as I am. Here he is. 
 I wall submit him to a pumping process, ' 
 and note the results. 
 
 " Percy, dear," I said to him, after receiv- 
 ing with my best grace his single cousinly 
 salute, " will you take me for a short walk 
 round the palace before service ? It wants 
 yet a quarter of an hour before the bells 
 begin." 
 
 "Always service, Elsie. I wish I could 
 understand this penchant of yours for 
 church." 
 
 " Eather a remarkable observation for a
 
 42 ' Verts. 
 
 minister of the gospel to make, my dear 
 cousin, is it not ?" 
 
 " Don't call me ' cousin,' there's a good 
 girl. It reminds me of our relationship, 
 which I am not at all sure does not come 
 within the prohibited degrees." 
 
 " Indeed. Shall we kiss and part then ?" 
 
 '* Put on your bonnet and let us walk as 
 you propose." 
 
 " And do our kissing and parting al fresco, 
 in some romantic lane, or halting by a 
 rustic stile," the spirit of mischief prompted 
 me to say. But Percy either did not hear 
 what I said (he is often distrait), or else is a 
 splendid actor. He never winced. "You 
 don't approve of kissing in public, I am sure, 
 do you ?" I continued. 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 Cato the censor could not have given his 
 judgment with greater gravity. 
 
 "There's that blackguard. Alec Lund," 
 he said, giving me a verbal side-blow, as 
 we passed under the crumbling old arch- 
 way that led to the Bishop's palace ; we saw
 
 Zoar. 43 
 
 Alec ahead of us under the giant elms. 
 " Where does he raise funds to enable him 
 always to be sucking away at a big cigar, 
 I wonder ; and who is that he is taking off 
 his hat to? Why, it's Mary Baker," he 
 added. " Where can she have been at this 
 time of day ?" 
 
 " Taking a constitutional, like ourselves, 
 I suppose," said I in reply, glad that 
 something had occurred to prevent his 
 seeing my indignant look when he spoke 
 of Alec Lund as a blackguard. " The only 
 difference is she is alone and we are dh 
 tete-a-tete." 
 
 " I don't believe in the solitary walks 
 of pretty milliners," he answered. " If 
 I thought she had come out to meet 
 Lund I'd discharge her from my choir on 
 the spot." 
 
 He would not have done anything of the 
 kind ; and I knew it ; but T wonder whether 
 he knew that I knew it ? 
 
 Mary passed us with a nod and a blush, 
 and Alec shot on ahead when he saw us
 
 44 ' Verts. 
 
 coming, his big cigar emitting quite a 
 volume of smoke in the fresh breeze, 
 and making him look like a human loco- 
 motive. 
 
 " I cannot understand a man's liking for 
 tobacco," Percy said, more for the sake of 
 saying something than because he felt 
 strongly on the subject of nicotine. I could 
 not help thinking, if we could only have 
 paired off there and then as Fate had evi- 
 dently arranged it, how much more satis- 
 factory it would have been for all parties. 
 
 " Can't you ?" I rejoined. " To me there 
 seems something so companionable in a pipe 
 or cigar." 
 
 " So it's generally supposed. I wonder, 
 Elsie, you have not taken up smoking in 
 addition to your other exceptional accom- 
 plishments." 
 
 He was awfully jealous on the score of 
 my character for cleverness ; much more so 
 than he would have been could he have 
 known the whole truth about Alec. 
 
 Thank goodness, the bells rang out at
 
 Zoar. 45 
 
 last, though the quarter of an hour seemed 
 as though it was never going to end. I had 
 done my duty, and felt the approval of 
 conscience ; and two individuals whom des- 
 tiny had ill assorted, ceased to bore one 
 another, as I wended my way to church 
 and Percy went to do parochial visiting in 
 East Zoar.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A CLERK OF OXENFORD. 
 
 HEEE years ago, just when I was 
 discontinuing my regular studies 
 with Mr. Moddle, Alexander Lund, 
 an Oxford graduate, was among the batch 
 of new theological students who came to 
 Zoar after graduating at their respective 
 universities. Report spoke highly of his 
 abilities, and I was assured by the dean 
 that his place on the class list by no means 
 fairly represented his powers, for he could 
 have done much better had he simply taken 
 the trouble, and it would be his own fault 
 if he did not walk over the course for a 
 Fellowship. This interested me in Mr. 
 Lund before I saw him, and I occupied a 
 good deal of time that first Sunday of term 
 at the cathedral in picking out from the
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 47 
 
 new arrivals the interesting graduate whose 
 abilities so far exceeded his ambition. 
 Such a preponderance is rare. I verily 
 believe most young men now-a-days do 
 think themselves about on a level with the 
 Admirable Crichton. I am certainly no 
 disciple of Spurzheim or Lavater, for I 
 selected a little bright-eyed man, who looked 
 " clever ;" but I found afterwards he was a 
 nonentity who had been "gulfed" to any 
 extent, while the last man I should ever 
 have expected turned out to be my hero — a 
 tall, handsome, rather — but only rather — 
 overdressed Adonis, wearing a moustache 
 which was not so common then as it has 
 grown to be since, and altogether a man 
 who I should have supposed would have 
 over-rated rather than under-rated his own 
 abilities. He was more of the type of 
 clerk I had seen going into the City on the 
 knifeboard of an omnibus, when I had been 
 staying in London, than the conventional 
 clerk of Oxenford. I never could — or indeed 
 can — fancy Alec Lund taking orders; yet
 
 48 'Verts. 
 
 there he was among a batch of theologs, 
 and really the last I should have selected as 
 my typical scholar. This leads me to reflect 
 how very seldom persons, places, or events 
 come up — or down — to the ideas we have 
 formed of them beforehand. They are 
 generally greater or smaller than our pre- 
 conceptions. Alec was greater in some re- 
 spects, smaller in others, than the picture I 
 had drawn of him in my imagination. The 
 coming event did not, in this case, cast its 
 shadow before. 
 
 Until his arrival at Zoar I had not known 
 any of the theological students, though I 
 believe most of them knew me, for I have 
 a sort of reputation. It does not take much 
 to make or mar a reputation in Zoar, and 
 my imputed cleverness and actual association 
 with the Very Eeverend the Dean were 
 quite enough to render me an object of 
 interest with the newly-fledged graduates 
 at Zoar Theological College. My first 
 introduction to Alec was quite a romantic 
 affair : indeed, I ought not to speak of an
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 49 
 
 introduction at all, for really there was none. 
 We omitted that little ceremony ; and now 
 I come to look back over what I perhaps 
 somewhat romantically call " the past," I am 
 glad that such was the case. I am glad, I 
 mean, that there has been, from first to last, 
 up to the present time, nothing formal or 
 commonplace in our association. I seldom 
 dare to look forward to the future, because, 
 as I said, I am Cousin Percy's " intended" — 
 how I hate that word ! — but T feel that, 
 come what may, there can never be anything, 
 of what Alec calls the Act of Parliament 
 kind between him and me. I know it is 
 very wrong — I see myself in the looking- 
 glass opposite blushing as I write the words; 
 but I am purely happy in my association 
 with Alec, and the mere circumstance of 
 writing down how our acquaintance origi- 
 nated is in itself a pleasure. How we love 
 to linger upon past scenes of happiness, 
 especially when there has not been — though 
 there may be yet — anything to mar that 
 happiness. In fact, the possibility of its 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 'Verts. 
 
 coming to an end lends just a spice of 
 romance to one's bliss, like the dash of 
 acidity in a condiment that might else pall 
 from its very sweetness. 
 
 Zoar is great in walks. On all sides of 
 the tiny city stand the grand old hills, often 
 crowned with the most delicious woods ; and 
 when I have climbed one of these hills and 
 am sitting among the bluebells in the 
 woods, or pacing up and down in autumn- 
 tide while the red leaves flutter to the ground 
 in the October sun, I think there is no place 
 so beautiful as my dear little native city, 
 nestling down below with its grey cathedral 
 and red brick houses. I used to think 
 autumn sad until I met Alec Lund ; but it 
 was just on one of those warm days of 
 waning summer, and precisely upon one x)f 
 the grand old Zoar hills, that we came to- 
 gether; and the circumstance seems to have 
 had what I may call almost the same 
 Christianizing eiFect upon my previous 
 views of decay in Nature which I notice 
 religion often has upon one's idea of death.
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 51 
 
 AutTimn is the death- fcide of the year, and 
 that was why I used to think it sad. It is 
 so still; but since that meeting with Alec 
 Lund it no longer seems sad at all. 
 
 I had drawn down upon myself all sorts 
 of badinage from Percy and Mr. Moddle, 
 and any amount of remonstrances from my 
 mother for leaving the house that dark 
 October morning when it had. been raining 
 as usual at Zoar, and steering for Dovecot 
 Hill, on which the clouds still hung heavy, 
 and the sun strove in vain to make his 
 appearance through them. There was some- 
 thing to me indescribably fascinating in the 
 grim grey clouds festooning the summit of 
 my favourite hill ; and I was particularly 
 fond of noting the effect of such a sky upon 
 the landscape. Besides, I wanted to medi- 
 tate. I had already put some things on 
 paper, not with the most distant idea of 
 publication, but simply for the pleasure of 
 rendering permanent the impressions made 
 on my mind and fancy by the beauties of 
 Zoar. To me there seems something as 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 52 'Verts, 
 
 formal in publistiing what one has written 
 under such circumstances, as in getting en- 
 gaged and married, as compared with the 
 informal kind of affection existing between 
 me and Alec. But there, I am anticipating — 
 and wandering as usual. 
 
 I was pacing sentinel-like up and down 
 the summit of Dovecot Hill, which was 
 really a very respectable eminence in- 
 deed, a bluff, rocky acclivity without a tree 
 or shrub upon it, and generally peopled 
 by nothing but the sheep which cropped 
 the short crisp herbage growing on and 
 between the blue masses of the limestone. 
 I thought if anybody had been there to see 
 me, I must have appeared like one of the 
 witches in Macbeth bent on no good, or 
 Hecate on the look-out to see that those 
 same witches did not do any mischief beyond 
 what was befitting their position in her 
 weird society. 
 
 Somebody was there to see me ! 
 
 " Good morning, Miss Llewellyn," said a 
 mysterious voice, which seemed to come
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 55 
 
 from the very innermost recesses of one of 
 the limestone rocks. 
 
 I started, of course, but I did not scream, 
 as most women would have done. I know 
 it is expected of one under certain circum- 
 stances, and that it is considered rather un- 
 feminine to omit it; but I like setting at 
 nought the convenances, so 1 did omit the 
 scream on this occasion, and before I saw 
 who had addressed me, or indeed was quite 
 certain it was not the limestone rock itself, 
 I replied — 
 
 " Good morning, whoever you are." 
 
 Then I looked, and saw a man coiled up 
 in a little nest of rock, with an umbrella 
 forming a sort of canopy over him, and in 
 this remarkable position reading his book 
 and smoking his cigar. I cannot think how 
 it was I failed to smell the latter, for I was 
 close to the smoker, 
 
 " I really must apologize for taking your 
 name in vain," said he, struggling in the 
 most ridiculous way to get out of his sar- 
 cophagus ; " but it is so unusual to see a
 
 54 ' Verts. 
 
 human being here, that I could have no more 
 remained silent than Eobinson Crusoe could 
 under the circumstances." 
 
 Then I saw that it was Alec, for he had 
 got out of his nest and was shaking him- 
 self clear from the moss and lichens that 
 were clinging to his rough frieze shooting- 
 coat. 
 
 " And how did you know my name, Mr. 
 Lund?'' I said, determined to let him know 
 that I was acquainted with his too. 
 
 " How did you know mine ?" 
 
 " We soon get to know the students' 
 names — I really don't know how ; be- 
 sides, your fame reached me through the 
 Dean.^' 
 
 " Precisely as yoars reached me. We are, 
 I hear, fellow-students. I fear I almost 
 wrong you by coupling you in this way with 
 myself, for my studies are very desultory. 
 See, I am reading, not Butler or Hooker, as 
 I ought to be, but John Keats." 
 
 Now here, I suppose, was the first false 
 step. It sounds rather in the last-dying-
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 55 
 
 speech-aiid-confession style to say so, and 
 I really don't feel that I have done, or am 
 going to do, anything so very wrong. I 
 have only got two strings to my bow, which 
 is, I have reason to believe, nothing so very 
 exceptional. 
 
 I ought, no doubt, to have run swiftly 
 down the hill, like the Gadarene herds, 
 directly that voice came from the limestone 
 rock, or, at all events, directly I found it 
 did not come from a limestone rock alone, 
 but from a real live flesh-and-blood man, 
 more especially when that man was a theo- 
 logical student, and most especially of all, 
 when that theological student was Alec 
 Lund. 
 
 I did not. 
 
 " Hence these tears," some would say ; 
 only there are not going to be any tears. 
 "Why should there be tears ? There have 
 been only smiles as yet. Most of the sun- 
 shine, or at least the brightest portion of that 
 which has irradiated my path, seems to be 
 only an extension of the ray which shot so
 
 5Q 'Verts, 
 
 suddenly and strangely across it that sombre 
 October morning on Dovecot Hill. 
 
 "It so happens that my own tastes in- 
 cline especially to the Cockney school of 
 poets in general, and to John Keats in par- 
 ticular," I rephed — most indiscreetly Mrs. 
 Grundy or Mr. Moddle would, of course, 
 inform me. Mr. Moddle is a sort of male 
 adaptation of Mrs. Grundy to my own indi- 
 vidual case. 
 
 " Then I no longer apologize in the 
 faintest degree for having addressed you, 
 because I feel, and I think you will feel too, 
 that in such sympathy as you confess there 
 is the germ of something far too enjoyable 
 to forfeit for any mere conventionality." 
 
 "I hate conventionality." 
 
 There was what Sydney Smith calls a 
 brilliant flash of silence. Mr. Lund (I will 
 not go on calling him Alec just yet, I think) 
 stood looking at me with all his eyes, as 
 they say ; that is, his full, lustrous brown 
 eyes were a degree wider open than I have 
 subsequently found to be their normal con-
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 57 
 
 dition. He has long ago confessed to me 
 that he fell over head and ears in love with 
 me there and then. This brilliant flash of 
 silence seems to afford a good opportunity 
 for describing my hero — for he was my hero 
 on the spot — a little more minutely than I 
 have done. Men look so much alike when 
 they are done up in B.A. gowns as though 
 they were at a funeral, and with their faces 
 made up too, for the purpose of going 
 through an enforced service in cathedral. 
 Now he was in a natural pose that would 
 have been invaluable to a photographer. 
 
 Here is his photograph. He was — I 
 write in the past tense, because I am chro- 
 nicling a reminiscence — a fine, tall, broad- 
 chested man of five-and- twenty. Of his 
 hirsute adornment I have already spoken, 
 and the soft felt hat he wore seemed, if I 
 may so say, to harmonize with his face and 
 features. How seldom is this the case. A 
 man with the head of an Antinous will 
 decorate himself with the hat of a counter 
 jumper, or the shirt-collar of a Yankee
 
 58 'Verts. 
 
 storekeeper. It is a pity, but true never- 
 theless, that we depend so much for our 
 likes and dislikes upon these artificial ad- 
 juncts of the outward man. The great 
 charm of this costume was the utter absence 
 of all effort. The rough frieze suit was of 
 fluffy iron-grey, and the loose shirt-collar 
 was fastened negligently with a voluminous 
 black silk tie, the ends of which floated 
 gaily on the breezes of Dovecot Hill. I 
 hate jewellery, as a rule, for men, and he 
 wore none, beyond a heavy watch-chain 
 with pendant seals, and a massive signet 
 ring. His hair, as I could see when he 
 removed his hat for a moment and ran his 
 hand through his curls, was cut short, and 
 of so deep a brown as to appear almost 
 black. I wonder whether I have at all 
 succeeded in placing Alec (I must call him 
 so sometimes) fairly before my readers. I 
 want to do so, because I am most desirous 
 of accounting for the fact that there and 
 then I fell desperately in love with him, as 
 he with me. Of course I cannot be ex-
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 59 
 
 pected to explain the latter circumstance, 
 can I? 
 
 When he again broke the silence I seemed 
 to have become quite familiar with his 
 voice. We might have been standing 
 staring speechlessly at each other an age 
 or so, there on the top of Dovecot Hill, 
 Zoar. Perhaps we did ! Time is measured 
 less by seconds, minutes, and hours, than by 
 sensations. It seems to me that we must 
 have stood for years, at all events, only I 
 think, in that case I should have found 
 things more changed than I did in Zoar, 
 when I came, like Moses, down from the 
 mount ; I say advisedly " like Moses," for 
 when I descended, and got home, my mother 
 said to me — 
 
 "Well, Elsie, I am glad you did set at 
 nought my advice and have your walk, for 
 it has evidently done you good. Does she 
 not look well, Mr. Moddle ?" It was one 
 of Mr. Moddle's dining days. 
 
 " Eadiant as Hebe," responded Mr. Mod- 
 die, and became absorbed in the Times again,
 
 60 ' Verts. 
 
 after giving me a long, steady, admiring 
 look. 
 
 Percy was tliere too, and regarded Mr. 
 Moddle in a way that made me think he 
 would have liked to call him out, or, at 
 least, to say something very cutting. He 
 did not say anything at all. 
 
 But to return to the summit of Dovecot 
 Hill and the source of my radiancy. How 
 curiously our emotions write themselves 
 upon our faces ! 
 
 Alec — I must call him Alec now — looked 
 at me in a way that made me think he was 
 going to propose on the spot. I am sure 
 we did, both of us, live a lifetime in those 
 few moments of silence. Then he con- 
 tinued, in a tone that would have led a 
 third party to think we were very old ac- 
 quaintances — 
 
 " I do not pretend to read all the Chaldean 
 lore that is inscribed upon a woman's face at 
 one cursory glance, but I thought I was not 
 wrong in my interpretation of yours "
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford, 61 
 
 " To the effect ?" 
 
 " That, as you have just told me, you 
 hated conventionalities. People told me 
 differently." 
 
 " People ! Who ?" 
 
 " My fellow students ; the men who have 
 been here longer than I." 
 
 " Do they discuss me ?" 
 
 " Do we discuss you ? of course. What 
 else is there to do in Zoar ?" 
 
 " How nice. And what did they tell you 
 about me ?" 
 
 " Shall I speak openly ?" 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 "They told me you were a prim blue- 
 stocking, with a stand-at-a-distance-don't- 
 you-come-anigh-me air about you, which 
 made you a fit companion only for that old 
 prig the Dean, or — or " 
 
 " Yes ; go on." 
 
 " That younger prig, to whom they told 
 me you were engaged to be married, the 
 Eev. Percy Llewellyn."
 
 62 'Verts. 
 
 " They seem to know my affairs very 
 accurately." 
 
 " Then it is true, is it?" 
 " 1 did not say so. I only mean they 
 seem posted up in all the reports, true or 
 false, that attach to me." 
 
 " I repeat. What else have they — have 
 we — to do ? Yes ; they know all about your 
 Aristotelian confabs with the Dean, and I 
 believe could tell you the subject of conversa- 
 tion with Mrs. Dean during your last drive." 
 " What Paul Prys you are." 
 " We are. We get into a narrowish groove 
 at college, and here it becomes even more 
 contracted. It is our qualification for curate- 
 life." 
 
 " But you are not going to be a curate ?" 
 " Why not ? Why else am I here ?" 
 
 ''True; but " 
 
 " But what ? Why should I not be a 
 curate ? I will be a curate." He spoke 
 quite warmly, as though I had been oppos- 
 ing his entrance into the ministry. 
 I smiled.
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 63 
 
 " Excuse my petulance," lie said, answer- 
 ing my smile, " but because I read a volume 
 of English literature instead of a crambook 
 or a goody volume, people exclaim, ' You 
 going to be a clergyman !' Because I ven- 
 ture to think for myself on questions where 
 people consent as a rule to be led by the 
 nose, they look quite horrified at the idea of 
 my passing even the portals of the sanc- 
 tuary ; why I cannot imagine." 
 
 " Why, indeed ?" I echoed, in a very pro- 
 found brown study. 
 
 " I am keeping you standing here all this 
 time," he said, " when I ought to be doing 
 the honours of my nest. I call this my nest 
 because I mount up here when I want to be 
 out of the cackle of the Paul Prys. Try it. 
 The sun is up above the mists now, and you 
 will not feel cold." 
 
 I actually climbed up and sat down in the 
 nest, and found it very comfortable except 
 that my legs required a good deal of coiling 
 up to get them well in. 
 
 " I have the greatest confidence in your
 
 64 'Verts. 
 
 opinion," he continued, " because while I 
 have found that you are not the mere blue- 
 stocking my fellow- students make you out, 
 my own observation assures me that you are 
 very many strata above the ordinary run of 
 female society ; and even if you were not, a 
 woman sees these matters more intuitively 
 than a man. Tell me, do you think because 
 I am inclined to exercise to the very full 
 the free thought and private judgment I 
 possess, I ought to avoid the ministry of the 
 Church of England ?" 
 
 " On the contrary, I think it the very 
 reason why you should seek it. The Church 
 of England wants such men as you." 
 
 How very odd it was that he should, after 
 so brief an acquaintance, be asking me ques- 
 tions about the conduct of his life, and I 
 answering him in this oracular manner. He 
 looked at me again in the same significant 
 way as before, and went on — 
 
 " They told me too that you were reli- 
 gious in the vulgar stereotyped sense of 
 that most misused word. You come to
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 65 
 
 cathedral, thej said — but no, I dare not tell 
 you that." 
 
 " To look at the students ?'' 
 
 " Thanks. Yes ; to see and to be seen : 
 but your heart, they added, was bestowed 
 upon the Calvinist of East Zoar. Did you 
 know they called your cousin that ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Is it a fair title ?" 
 
 I could not deny it. Percy is Evangelical 
 to the very boots. 
 
 '' Yes, it is not unfair ; but it is most un- 
 fair to say that my sympathies incline to- 
 wards his cold system." 
 
 "I see it is : but then your family are, 
 some of them. Dissenters." 
 
 I wondered whether he knew what we 
 had for dinner yesterday, or the precise 
 amount of my father^s account at the 
 bank. 
 
 "How can you see it is unfair in my 
 case ?" I asked. " Are you clairvoyant ?" 
 
 " In some cases, where I choose to take 
 the trouble to see, I believe I am." 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 'Verts, 
 
 " And is mine a case where you c/ioose to 
 take the trouble .^" 
 
 This seemed rather like fishing ; but I 
 was relieved to find that he knew about my 
 engagement to Percy, and therefore would 
 not be likely to think I wanted him to pro- 
 pose to me on the spot. 
 
 " I have, in the course of twenty-five 
 years of actual existence, or say four or five 
 years, during which I have been capable of 
 making such an intellectual observation, 
 met about three people, perhaps, whose 
 characters appeared worth investigating. 
 You are one of the three." 
 
 " I am honoured, of course." 
 
 " Not by any means. All I say is, there 
 is evidently in our cases some mutual associa- 
 tion, some occult rapport that makes the 
 examination either of other interesting, 
 and perhaps edifying. I am not wrong in 
 supposing you would like to know something 
 of my history and character, I am sure. 
 You would now, would you not ?" 
 
 *' Immensely."
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 67 
 
 " Arrange yourself a little more comfort- 
 ably in my nest, which scarcely seems to 
 suit you as well as it does me, and I will 
 tell you." 
 
 I tried to focus my legs, for they began 
 to feel cramped abeady. 
 
 " Stop me if I bore you. Promise me 
 that." 
 
 I promised ; and he told me his story. 
 
 He had suffered from loneliness, he said, 
 all his life — now extending over a quarter 
 of a century (how much longer that sounds 
 than twenty-five years !). He had no recollec- 
 tion whatever of either father or mother 
 who had died when he was quite young, 
 leaving him tolerably well provided for as 
 far as money and a guardian went, but with 
 the impression, so much more terrible to a 
 child than to an adult, that he was a waif 
 and stray on the ocean of existence ; that 
 there was no particular purpose served in 
 his being born, and that he was rather in 
 the way than otherwise in the world. 
 
 " I did not," he said (for I shall quote 
 
 5—2
 
 68 'Verts. 
 
 sometimes), " curse the day of my birth 
 formally and in set terms like Job and Dean 
 Swift ; but I looked upon it as a mistake, 
 and I am not quite sure I see the raison 
 d'etre yet." 
 
 All his boyish life was passed at two 
 
 schools, one kept by a grim old lady who 
 
 did her best to ignore the existence of a 
 
 score of such waifs and strays committed to 
 
 her keeping. She did not murder their 
 
 bodies like the baby-farmers — that would 
 
 not have paid — but her system effectually 
 
 stamped out anything like hope, ambition, 
 
 or emulation from them. As long as the 
 
 days went monotonously by without " rows," 
 
 she and they were pleased. If they liked 
 
 to learn they learned, if they did not they 
 
 remained ignorant. Alec Lund did learn, 
 
 because, as he said, he was obliged to do 
 
 something, and learning and reading kept 
 
 him out of the "rows" which his little 
 
 companions got into through idleness and 
 
 mischief. The system was an admirable 
 
 one for turning out either philosophers or
 
 A Clerk of Oxen ford. 69 
 
 fools. Alec Lund flattered himself he had 
 managed to struggle into the former cate- 
 gory. The very large proportion joined the 
 great communion and fellowship of fools. 
 
 From this moral and intellectual baby- 
 farmer's he went to a semi-public school in 
 London, boarding with one of the masters, 
 and having no holidays because he had 
 nowhere to spend them. The school was 
 an overgrown one, so that the boys were 
 again able to work or not as they pleased, 
 
 and the master with whom Alec boarded, 
 
 • 
 
 though an able man in his way, was obliged 
 to eke out a slender income and maintain 
 a long family by taking a curacy as well as 
 his mastership, so that he had no time to 
 devote to his pupils out of school. From 
 his earliest years, therefore, to the time when 
 he went up to the University, Alec had been 
 thrown entirely on himself, and it seemed to 
 him, as it seems to me, marvellous that he 
 did not go wrong. The income to which he 
 succeeded when he came of age was mode- 
 rate and entirely under his own control, so
 
 70 'Verts. 
 
 that he might easily have squandered it had 
 he been so inclined. 
 
 " My guardian," he added, at the conclu- 
 sion of this epoch of his own existence, "was 
 only too glad to wash his hands of me, and 
 when I sat down in my little sky par lour in 
 a second-rate college at Oxford, I felt about 
 as thoroughly alone in the world as it is 
 possible to do ; but as I had never felt any- 
 thing else it did not affect me, and I thought 
 then, as I think now, that there are advan- 
 tages which more than compensate for any 
 imaginary drawbacks in such a hermit style 
 of existence. Social complications are ex- 
 ceedingly embarrassing." 
 
 There was again that peculiar look on 
 Mec's face which told me that the social 
 complication between us two, so far as it 
 had then gone, was neither embarrassing 
 nor unpleasant to him. He was not the 
 only man whom I, even in my limited 
 sphere, had seen try to assume a stoic virtue, 
 though he had it not. I always forget 
 whether Tommy or Harry was the naughty
 
 A Clerk of Oocenford. 71 
 
 brother who was always saying, " I don't 
 care ;" but there are a good many grown-up 
 Tommys or Harrys extant in society. 
 
 I knew the academical antecedents of my 
 recent acquaintance from the Dean, and was 
 able, in my turn, to act female Paul Pry in 
 estimating his exact chance of a fellowship. 
 
 " What a world it is !" he exclaimed. 
 " You seem to discuss us students as micro- 
 scopically as we do the ladies." 
 
 " The ' ladies' do. But I associate very 
 little with my own sex. All my informa- 
 tion about you comes from the deanery." 
 
 " And the Very Eeverend thinks me safe 
 for a fellowship if I try, does he ? I shall 
 try certainly, because a fellowship leads to 
 the nice monastic anti-social life which I 
 have made my ideal." 
 
 I knew he had not made this his ideal, 
 and felt pretty sure would not try for the 
 fellowship. 
 
 " And is that why you are about to take 
 Orders ?" I asked, conscious of my im- 
 pertinence in doing so.
 
 72 'Verts. 
 
 " If it were so I should certainly wait for 
 my possible election, and use my fellowship 
 as my title to Orders. No ; I shall go and 
 bury myself in some remote village as curate ; 
 and if I do try for a fellowship, and get 
 it, simply transfer my hermit's cell from 
 Somersetshire to Oxford — that is, if my 
 views do not materially alter in the mean- 
 time." 
 
 I had no distinct conception then why 
 that last saving clause seemed to cause me 
 such intense relief I do not think I should 
 have come down at all Moses-like from the 
 mount if he had not added it. 
 
 " Now, Miss Llewellyn," he said, when 
 he saw me begin to fidget in my nest, partly 
 because it was time to go, partly from the 
 fact that my legs could bear it no longer, 
 " I will not embarrass you by offering to 
 accompany you on your road home, though 
 I should like to. But I know the proneness 
 of Zoar to gossip, and will re-occupy my nest 
 after I have seen you just over the brow of 
 the hill. May I go so far ?"
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 73 
 
 I told him he might, and was glad to feel 
 my legs getting less stiff, or he would have 
 thought me more ungraceful than I really 
 was. 
 
 " Neither, again, do I wish to make any- 
 thing like an ' appointment,' unless quite 
 agreeable to yourself; but if, on any other 
 glorious October morning" — the sun was 
 shining brightly then — " you deign to visit 
 this nest among the clouds, we can have 
 another interesting confab — more interesting 
 than this one, because you can tell me your 
 autobiography instead of listening to the 
 scanty details of mine." 
 
 Mine, I told him, could be summed up in 
 a monosyllable — nil ; but I did promise to 
 visit him at the nest on the following morn- 
 ing. 
 
 " It is a pity,'' he said, as we stood on the 
 brow of Dovecot Hill and looked down at 
 the magnificent panorama glowing in the 
 sunshine, and flushed with autumnal tints, 
 " to lose this. We must not reckon on 
 many more fine days this side of winter."
 
 74 ' Verts. 
 
 The autumn was a very lingering one in 
 thai particular year ; and when it was gone, 
 we took particular pleasure in studying 
 fog-effects in the woods and fields. Then 
 our proclivities leaned towards snow and 
 frost. In a word, we were never tired of 
 noting the varied influences of sun and 
 shade on the country around my beautiful 
 Zoar. 
 
 At the end of the year's course, Alec 
 passed his theological examination with 
 much credit at Zoar ; but deliberately refused 
 all offers of curacies, and did not present 
 himself as a candidate for a fellowship. He 
 retained his lodgings just as when he had 
 been a student ; but cast his cap and gown 
 to the winds, and settled down to hermit 
 life at Zoar with — as he chose to express 
 it — " one fair spirit" for his minister. That 
 was myself. I rather reproached — and still 
 reproach — myself for the mute inglorious 
 ease into which I feel sure I was the original 
 cause of his drifting ; but his companionship 
 was from the first so very dear to me, that
 
 A Cleric of Oxenford. 75 
 
 I was not unselfish enough to take the step 
 I knew I ought to take, and counsel him to 
 leave Zoar — and me. 
 
 Of course people noticed it. It is some- 
 thing more than a nine days' wonder still ; 
 and if Percy was a different kind of man 
 from what he is, all would have been arranged 
 for Alec and me long ago, without our being 
 forced to take any active steps in bringing 
 about our own misery ourselves. It is now, 
 however, quite evident to both of us that 
 Percy does not care in the least for me, and 
 is only going to marry me for family purposes 
 and from an interested motive. 
 
 Is he going to marry me ? 
 
 It would, I am quite sure, be as impossi- 
 ble for Alec as for me to set down the time 
 when our acquaintance, from being the 
 purely intellectual one it was at first, 
 definitely assumed a warmer complexion, 
 though we did fall in love at first sight. 
 It was, I suppose, inevitable that it should 
 do so, for when I look in the glass I am 
 conscious of not being altogether repulsive,
 
 76 'Verts. 
 
 and Alec is certainly a handsome man. 
 Besides this, our tastes run remarkably in 
 unison. Given these premises, the conclu- 
 sion was pretty certain to follow. When, 
 where, or how it happened deponent sayeth 
 not, but we became openly and consciously, 
 as far as we two were concerned, what we 
 had been from the first moment we met at 
 the nest on Dovecot Hill — lovers. We 
 were only not recognised as such because, I 
 very much regret to say, walking out with 
 the theological students was not quite so 
 exceptional on the part of the young ladies 
 of Zoar as it might have been. Besides, 
 ray intercourse with the deanery had from 
 the first given a colour to my acquaintance 
 with the students which my female com- 
 panions could have scratched my eyes out 
 for possessing. The circumstance went far 
 to prevent my being " talked about" as they 
 were ; and there was nothing remarkable in 
 my continuing my acquaintance with Alec 
 after he ceased to be a student, and became 
 an integral part of the population of Zoar.
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 11 
 
 Though he was in it, however, he was 
 scarcely of it, and I fancy has rather avoided 
 becoming acquainted with my family than 
 otherwise. When he says anything about 
 it, he attributes his unsociability to the 
 hermit life he had laid down for himself as 
 his ideal. 
 
 To the circumstance of his not taking 
 Orders I am not quite reconciled. The mere 
 fact of his thinking for himself ought to 
 have formed, and perhaps would have formed, 
 no impediment to his ministration in a 
 Church which is in its very constitution 
 the Church of private judgment. But his 
 thought had landed him a long way beyond 
 not only Church establishments, but even 
 creeds of all kinds. 
 
 " Elsie, dear," he said one day, as he was 
 coiled up in the Dovecot nest, and I was 
 sitting a good deal closer to him than I did 
 on the first memorable occasion when we 
 met there, '' do you know I have been 
 trying to fix my position in the graduated 
 scale of religious beliefs, and I have come
 
 78 'Verts. 
 
 to the conclusion that pure Theist is about 
 the only term that will cover me." 
 
 " I ought to be very shocked, of course ; 
 but to me, honesty is so very supremely at 
 the head of the cardinal virtues, that I 
 cannot condole with you as heartily as I 
 wish I could." 
 
 " You fine old fellow, you !" Alec has 
 the most remarkable habit of speaking to 
 me as though I belonged to the male sex. 
 " How different your words are from the 
 goody twang they once told me I must 
 expect from you. By the way, what legs 
 you must have not to be able to get them in 
 here. To me this place is what his tub 
 must have been to Diogenes." 
 
 " Well, rest and be thankful, and don't 
 allude disrespectfully to my legs. But tell 
 me, my most erratic Alexander, what have 
 the Unitarians been doing to you? I 
 thought the last idea was to join their 
 ministry." 
 
 *' Very softly be it spoken, Elsie, but I 
 have a notion that to do so would only be
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 79 
 
 to exchange shibboleths, not to rid oneself 
 of them." 
 
 " You may find out the same thing about 
 pure Theism next week." 
 
 " Very possibly, if not probably so. It 
 wants more thinking over." 
 
 " My dear Alec, you have been two 
 years thinking it over."' 
 
 " And am rather farther from the conclu- 
 sion than at first. True, 0, king ! live for 
 ever! What then? It's a big subject, is 
 it not ?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "And yet how glibly we self-styled theo- 
 logians talk about it, as though we had 
 ultimated truth. Not an unfledged bacca- 
 lere down below there, in Zoar, but will 
 descant on the mysteries of the Christian 
 Faith with the air of a Socrates and the 
 impudence of a Cleon. Were it not better 
 to put all from us with one decisive coup ; 
 to give up the great problem as in- 
 soluble until one gets to the fuller light 
 beyond ?"
 
 80 'Verts, 
 
 "Why not do so, and resolve to live as 
 a layman ?" 
 
 " That I may not tell you ; but some 
 unrecognised influence, some power I cannot 
 fathom or define, pulls me back from it, and 
 prompts me to take Orders." 
 
 " Can you do so ?" 
 
 " Scarcely, and save my conscience, except 
 with an amount of reservation which to me 
 now appears Jesuitical." 
 
 " Better anything than that." 
 
 " And yet " 
 
 " And yet what ?" 
 
 " May I speak very plainly, Elsie ?" 
 
 " I don't think you usually beat about 
 the bush much with me, or I with you, 
 Alec. And yet " 
 
 " And yet you will have to make a more 
 hideous reservation still, when you go to 
 the altar with your Calvinistic cousin." 
 
 " Suppose we put that on one side too, as 
 a subject to be thought over, and too big to 
 be settled summarily.'' 
 
 " By all means. Carpe diem. Only then,
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 81 
 
 it occurs to me that these are not the days of 
 Methuselah, and that we cannot authenti- 
 cate a case of centenarianism without tread- 
 ing on the corns of some amiable statistician 
 whose name I have forgotten." 
 
 " Well/' 
 
 " Well ! How are we to go on with carpe 
 diem under these circumstances? There 
 will soon be no more days to seize, or we 
 shall have got old, and they will not be 
 worth the seizing." 
 
 " From which you infer " 
 
 " That we should seize the day once and 
 for all," he said, with an intensity I had 
 never witnessed before. He took my hand, 
 and went on, " Elsie, you said I did not 
 beat about the bush with you. I will put 
 my meaning so plainly that there can be no 
 mistake about it. Let us bolt." 
 
 I was silent. 
 
 " Bolt beyond the reach of Calvinistic 
 cousins, and where all the problems of life 
 shall resolve themselves into the sweet one 
 of love." 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 'Verts. 
 
 " Would that satisfy you, Alec ?" 
 
 " To the heart's core/' 
 ' "You think so now; but suppose the 
 first thrill of possession over, could a man 
 with your powers be content to bury him- 
 self here in Zoar ?" 
 
 " Not here, Elsie ; we would go to some 
 far-off land, where life itself is luxury. 
 There are such, where it is a privilege 
 simply to breathe the soft air and look on 
 the blue skies. Let us go and enjoy them 
 together." 
 
 " And wliat have become of your aspira- 
 tions for hermit life? Alec, you know I 
 am not speaking coldly, do you not?" 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " But I think you are carried away by 
 your feelings. I want you to fix on a career 
 here, and carry it out. Then, if you still 
 want me " 
 
 " You will have married your Cousin 
 Percy, and I shall only be able to compass 
 you circuitously by means of the Divorce 
 Court. Perhaps you will have a rich country
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 83- 
 
 living and a lot of babies, and forget all the 
 heretical colloquies of the nest on Dovecot 
 Hill." 
 
 Again I could not answer him. I could 
 only debate with myself whether I dared 
 face the ordeal of a lifetime with Percy. 
 
 " Family considerations, I know, pull you 
 strongly in a direction contrary to the one 
 I am suggesting," he said ; " but I have 
 long debated the permissibility of suicide : 
 and the life you project for yourself is moral 
 suicide." 
 
 I fear it is. 
 
 I did not say this to Alec, recollect. I 
 write it here among my private confessions, 
 but I do not like to tell him I agree with 
 him quite as much as is the case. These 
 family considerations, which he makes light 
 of, are not such light matters to me. In 
 the first place, I have pledged my faith to 
 Percy. Alec says I have broken it in 
 spirit if not in letter by allowing myself to 
 love another. That is true, 1 suppose. But 
 then my father and mother have set their 
 
 6—2
 
 84 'Vei'ts. 
 
 hearts upon the match. It is, I know, the 
 tacit condition upon which I inherit Aunt 
 Phillis's money, and Aunt Eachel feels 
 certain the Welsh estates will never be got 
 at except with the assistance of my Uncle 
 Edward. For myself I care nothing about 
 these money matters. If I should live and 
 die an old maid (which I must say does not 
 appear very probable), I daresay my dear 
 old father would leave enough to meet all 
 my modest wants ; but they all have these 
 matters, and especially the much-talked-of 
 marriage, at heart. The report that an 
 earthquake had occurred in the night and 
 swallowed up the cathedral would, I am 
 sure, cause less consternation in High Street 
 than the bare idea of my not marrying 
 Percy. What an enormity these family 
 arrangements are ! 
 
 Strangely enough, I never think of Percy 
 himself in the matter. It may be that I 
 know he does not think of me. He looks 
 upon me as a possibly not altogether dis- 
 agreeable means of identifying the interests
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford. 85 
 
 of the two branches of the family. After 
 the Mary Baker episode I cannot feel that 
 Percy is quite inaccessible to the tender 
 passion. Once I thought so, but I do not 
 now. How dare I face life with one that 
 can love and yet does not love me ? 
 
 That would be scanned, as Hamlet says. 
 
 On the other hand, I regret to find that 
 Alec is regarded by most of my family as a 
 mauvais sujet Why it should be so I can 
 scarcely understand, for really the Zoar 
 people can know very little of him, except 
 that he is a clever young graduate who fails 
 to do as well as he might. Idleness is 
 about the worst fault anybody can attribute 
 to him, and yet to hear my Cousin Percy 
 speak of him you would think he was a 
 criminal of the deepest dye. A hundred 
 times of late I have been on the very point 
 of saying all I know about the Mary Baker 
 business and demanding an explanation; 
 but, then, that would make a scene, and I 
 begin to be as desirous of peace at any 
 price as my dear mother herself.
 
 86 'Verts. 
 
 So life goes on at Zoar. My association 
 with Alec is so delightful that I forget all 
 else in the anticipation of my next meeting 
 with him. Why do I not fall in with his 
 plans ? Perhaps my presence would give 
 him the impetus which is all he wants to 
 make him enter on an honourable and useful 
 career. He has his university degree and 
 a modest income. Perhaps that might be 
 the turning-point in his career. 
 
 Perhaps ! 
 
 But, then, perhaps it might be just the 
 reverse. After putting from me all my 
 friends and relations I might find that, 
 though Alec were as good and true as from 
 my heart I believe him to be, yet I was 
 only a drag npon him. A poor man can 
 face the world alone, but with a wife and 
 family he is so terribly weighted. Alec 
 may not be so utterly unambitious as he 
 seems; and it is so dreadful to think that 
 when his ambition dawned, I might be the 
 one obstacle to his carrying it out. 
 
 I will not think of it to-day. I will put
 
 A Clerk of Oxenford, 87 
 
 it from me ; as he shelves the big theological 
 problem, so will I the domestic problem, 
 though conscious that it is cowardly in each 
 of us not to face our difficulties. But on 
 this magnificent summer day I will adjourn 
 to the Dovecot, where I know I shall find 
 Alec dreaming and exulting in existence. I 
 will dream and exult too, for at least one 
 more day.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 MY EVANGELICAL AUNTS. 
 
 AM living in such a perfect glamour 
 in respect of Alec, that not only 
 do the days come and go, and the 
 seasons change imperceptibly, but I feel 
 that I am neglecting my relatives. I do 
 not mean that I am omitting to pay 
 them due respect in the actual affairs of 
 life, but I rather allude to this diary and 
 the imaginary reader I am addressing, 
 who will possibly never have a substantial 
 existence at all. Fancy my ever publish- 
 ing this rodomontade 1 I do not even 
 date it; and not having been at all par- 
 ticular where I wrote in my diary, some 
 of it has got utterly misplaced, and some- 
 times the diary has regularly run over as it 
 were. I have got, besides the MS. volume,
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 89 
 
 quite a drawerful of poetry and prose, as 
 Crabbe said of his youthful lucubrations. 
 
 Of course I cannot see Alec every day. 
 Indeed, sometimes a good many days, or 
 even a whole week, will intervene between 
 our meetings ; but even then I am occupy- 
 ing myself with all sorts of schemes for our 
 next happy meeting, and if I put it off too 
 long Alec dogs me on my way to or from 
 cathedral, and bears me off in triumph ; or 
 else he will send letters by post, addressed 
 
 in the very flimsiest imitation of a female 
 
 • 
 hand. He tells me he does it by way of 
 
 punishment because he feels I am forgetting 
 
 him ; and, to put it in his own language, 
 
 he becomes more and more conscious every 
 
 day that he could do without his victuals 
 
 (he spells it 'vittles') better than without 
 
 me. 
 
 " My dear Alec," I constantly have to 
 say to him, " I wish you would twist your 
 tails a little more." 
 
 " My tails/' 
 
 " Yes ; the tails of your letters when you
 
 90 'Verts. 
 
 address billets to me. You will certainly 
 get me into difficulties if you send such 
 decidedly academical superscriptions. I 
 often see Percy eyeing them on the slab — 
 of course there's a sort of freemasonry about 
 academical writers." 
 
 " Meet me regularly, and I shan't want 
 to write at all," he will reply. 
 
 I am certain they do know more than 
 they pretend about Alec ; in short, it would 
 be quite impossible in a little tittle-tattling 
 place like Zoar for things to be otherwise. 
 I suppose the fact is they think Percy and 
 I are going to be married directly, and that 
 will put an end, they argue, to all such 
 " nonsense." To my intense delight, how- 
 ever, the projected arrangement with Percy 
 appears every day to recede more and more 
 into the background, and to leave Alec and 
 myself more free than ever to practise our 
 mutual nonsense. I cannot imagine why 
 this should be the case, unless indeed, Mary 
 Baker has anything to do with it ; and it 
 seems, of course, to an outsider, a remark-
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 91 
 
 able thing for a young girl to say in re- 
 ference to her approaching marriage and 
 intended husband, but if Percy would only 
 prevent it from ever taking place, by run- 
 ning away with the pretty milliner, I 
 should be happy. Then, perhaps, I could 
 bring my family round to take a sensible 
 view of my relations with Alec Lund. 
 
 But why, it may be reasonably enough 
 asked, do I not make a firm stand — tell 
 Percy and my family that I do not love 
 him, and that I do love Alec? In nine 
 cases out of ten where there are difficulties 
 about love-matters, I do believe that they 
 arise from want of a little preliminary firm- 
 ness on the part of those who are principally 
 concerned in them. I have already pointed 
 out, however, how imperceptibly this affair 
 of mine with Cousin Percy grew up, and it 
 would have been difficult for me to say, at 
 any particular epoch in its history, that I 
 wished the past to be undone and the 
 future to be different from what had been 
 arranged. Now such an announcement
 
 92 ' Verts. 
 
 would be impossible witbout bringing 
 about a catastropbe which it is dreadful 
 to contemplate. 
 
 The result of all this is that I suppose no 
 mortal ever realized so thoroughly as I do 
 at this present time the fact that our life is 
 twofold. I am as entirely two different 
 people when I am with Alec on Dovecot 
 Hill or in the Zoar woods, and when I am in 
 the bosom of my family, as though I had 
 changed every particle of my body and 
 mind in the meantime, or as though two 
 different spirits possessed alternately the 
 same corporeal structure, and swayed it 
 absolutely according to their own sweet will. 
 The parenthetical periods I spend over the 
 Ethics with the Dean, or in conversation 
 with his wife, are a kind of neutral condition, 
 when neither the one spirit nor the other 
 has control, and when I can be almost my 
 own natural self for a time, though I believe 
 Mrs. Dean does know something about the 
 state of things with Alec, for once, after 
 getting out of me pretty well all I know of
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 93 
 
 his antecedents, she gave me a long steady 
 look, and said — 
 
 " You young flirt, you ; I believe you are 
 making a fool of that already not very wise 
 young man." 
 
 It was an occasion when I felt, however 
 silvery speech might have been, silence was 
 golden. I said nothing. 
 
 Next to a tete-a-tete in the nest, my 
 greatest luxury is to come upstairs and sit 
 here over my books and papers, but I find 
 it necessary sometimes to sacrifice myself 
 on the altar of domestic duty, and go to 
 dinner with my genteel Aunt Edward, or 
 to take tea with my Evangelical Aunt Phillis, 
 and great-aunt Rachel. They live together 
 in the lodgings over Mrs. Baker's milliner's 
 shop, not far from our house in the High 
 Street. Poor Mrs. Baker is an exceedingly 
 limp, washed-out kind of widow woman, and 
 I sometimes wonder whether she knows 
 anything about Percy and her daughter 
 Mary, and whether she has told my aunts. 
 For some reason or other, though they
 
 94 'Verts. 
 
 are outwardly on very good terms with 
 Percy, they always manage to make it 
 understood that it is for family and not 
 personal reasons they maintain kindly rela- 
 tions with him. I have been taking a quiet 
 tea with my aunts this evening, and tried 
 whether I could not penetrate a little beneath 
 the surface of our mild family mysteries. I 
 was conscious that the old ladies were talk- 
 ing at me about Alec too, so that the history 
 of our fencing-bout comes to be not out of 
 place in my story. 
 
 Let me focus my camera to photograph 
 the old ladies. 
 
 Aunt Phillis, perhaps, would be aggrieved 
 at being termed old, though her black hair 
 is beginning to be streaked with grey, and I 
 know she has given up all ideas of matri- 
 mony, which women defer doing until they 
 feel they have passed the meridian. But she 
 is a fair and comely spinster yet, and her 
 dumpy white hands would be very good 
 ones indeed if she did not bite her nails so 
 dreadfully. She is another of the peace-at-
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 95 
 
 any-price people, and I really believe has 
 taken to nail-nibbling, not out of ill-temper, 
 which is sometimes said to be the cause of 
 the practice, but simply out of fidget at the 
 ever-recurring possibility of family dissen- 
 sion. 
 
 Aunt Eachel is the reverse in this respect. 
 I have no conception how old she is^ but 
 she has always appeared to me a centenarian. 
 She seemed quite as ancient when I first 
 knew her as she does now. She is one of 
 those old ladies who are said to " wear 
 well," and, certainly, if strict attention 
 to her own comforts, mental and bodily, 
 does anything to prolong existence, she 
 ought to reach the limits of old Parr him- 
 self. Aunt Eachel is very plain. I learnt 
 in my earliest girlhood to draw caricature 
 likenesses of her face, which I represented as 
 principally composed of nose. I used to 
 draw a large nasal organ, surmounted by 
 spectacles, and backed with a mobcap. En- 
 casing the old lady in her accustomed 
 black lace shawl, and representing her read-
 
 96 ^ Verts. 
 
 ing a newspaper, with the candle between it 
 and herself; I managed to make a very re- 
 cognisable portrait, much to the amusement 
 of my uncles, who were not at all fond of 
 Aunt Eachel. 
 
 I said Aunt Eachel was the reverse of 
 Aunt Phillis in the matter of pacific policy. 
 She felt aggrieved with my Uncle Edward 
 on the score of some real or imagined wrong 
 in the distribution of my grandfather's pro- 
 perty, and was always throwing out dark 
 hints as to what she could reveal on the 
 topics of the Topaz estate and the Welsh 
 property respectively. This fired my cu- 
 riosity immensely, and I determined that I 
 would follow Mr. Moddle's advice, and ex- 
 tract from these two old ladies whatever 
 could be got by the process of diligent 
 pumping. 
 
 "Well, Elsie," said my Aunt Eachel, 
 who was niddle-noddling her mobcap over 
 the fire, in the semi-comatose condition 
 which seems so characteristic of very old 
 people, " have you been to cathedral to- 
 day ?"
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 97 
 
 " Twice, aunt/' 
 
 " Twice ! Gracious goodness, girl ; you 
 must spend most of your time there. I 
 can't think what you find so attractive in 
 them popish canons and dean." Aunt 
 Eachel was born in days when Lindley 
 Murray was not quite so much to the front 
 as now, and she often offended the ears of 
 Aunt Phillis, who had been educated at a 
 genteel boarding-school. 
 
 " You forget the students, aunt," said the 
 younger of my two relatives. " There is 
 mettle more attractive than deans or canons, 
 is there not, Elsie?" 
 
 " I scarcely know a single student by 
 sight now," I replied. 
 
 " Since Mr. Lund left." 
 
 " Yes, as you say, since Alec Lund left." 
 I would not be ashamed of him, and I 
 would call him by his Christian name, if 
 only to astonish the weak minds of the old 
 ladies. " I fancy there is something in 
 what people say about the intellectual 
 standard of the men who take Orders becom- 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 'Verts. 
 
 ing gradually lower. They have never had 
 a man who did anything at college since 
 Mr. Lund's days." 
 
 " And his doings were rather in the way 
 of promises than performances, I believe ; 
 were they not ?" said Aunt Phillis, who 
 could be as spiteful as any good Evangelical 
 when she liked. 
 
 I made no reply ; and she continued, 
 pausing in her letter- writing to consult the 
 marginal references of a pocket Bible, and 
 going on when she had " fixed" her text. 
 
 " Besides, do you think it is intellectual 
 excellence that is going to further the king- 
 dom of heaven, Elsie ?" 
 
 I really did not know, and only dreaded 
 a sermon. Aunt Phillis was wont to be 
 long winded when she got upon millennial 
 topics. 
 
 '' It is the foolishness of preaching that 
 is to herald the closing-in of this dispensa- 
 tion," she said, and seemed to pause for a 
 reply. 
 
 " Then all I can say is that from what I
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 99 
 
 hear at the cathedral on Sundays, and 
 gather from the looks of the men who are 
 at the theological college now, I should 
 think the close of the dispensation was 
 imminent." 
 
 " Why don't you come and hear Canon 
 Wilcox at St. Hilda's ?" said Aunt Eachel, 
 who had no more idea of the difference be- 
 tween a Puseyite and a Calvinist than a child 
 of seven had ; but she took Aunt Phillis for 
 granted as a sort of theological vade-mecum 
 in these matters. 
 
 " I am not sure that Elsie would be much 
 awakened by Canon Wilcox, aunt," replied 
 Aunt Phillis, who always speaks of me as a 
 hopeless heathen requiring awakening, con- 
 verting, and all sorts of violent ecclesiastical 
 processes. Her idea is that I always ought 
 to be " hearing" somebody or other. That 
 is her equivalent for going to church. The 
 prayers are, in her regard, a sort of over- 
 ture to the sermon. 
 
 " Canon Wilcox," she went on, launching 
 forth, as I could see, into a sermonette, " is 
 
 7—2
 
 100 'Verts, 
 
 not a decided man. If she could only go 
 with Uncle Sam to St. John's, Bedford 
 Eow, she would get something to feed 
 upon." 
 
 " Is tea nearly ready?" asked Aunt 
 Rachel, not meaning to be irreverent, but 
 managing, as she often did, to give a secular 
 turn to Aunt Phillis's sacred talk. 
 
 As we lingered over the Sally Lunns and 
 watercresses, Aunfc Phillis again turned the 
 conversation into her favourite channel, by 
 mentioning a lot of Evangelical and Non- 
 conformist works, the c/ie/s d'ceuvre of Ryle, 
 Gumming, and Spurgeon, and asking me if 
 I had read them. She knew perfectly well 
 I had not, but it brought the subject 
 forward. 
 
 I mentioned that the works at that 
 moment occupying my attention, were the 
 last sensation novel of a popular authoress 
 and the autobiography of John Stuart Mill. 
 I never could resist the temptation of thus 
 badgering Aunt Phillis when she would foist 
 her peculiar views, men, or books upon me.
 
 My Evangelical Aunts, 101 
 
 She only glared, and looked as much as 
 to ask me whither I expected to go when 
 I died. She had put that very question to 
 me under similar circumstances a very few 
 years before, when I pleaded guilty to the 
 Waverley Novels and Moore's Life of Byron; 
 now she only looked the query, grimly and 
 significantly. 
 
 " Ts that last a recommendation of Mr. 
 Lund's ?" she asked. 
 
 " It is." 
 
 " I should think he as nearly as possible 
 represents the mental — or spiritual — condi- 
 tion of poor Mill, does he not ?" 
 
 " As nearly as possible," I replied. 
 
 " Nothing millennial about either of 'em, I 
 expect, is there, Phillis ?" said Aunt Eachel, 
 who had got back to the fireside again by this 
 time and felt bound every now and then to 
 prove that she was very wide awake indeed. 
 
 " Don't make puns, Aunt Eachel," I ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 "Fancy coupling Mill and the millen- 
 nium," said Aunt Phillis.
 
 102 'Verts. 
 
 " Or Mr. Lund, for the matter of that," 
 I added. 
 
 " Yes, or Mr. Lund either." 
 
 " But, Aunt Phillis," I said, ''1 don't find 
 Percy reads your favourite authors ; and as 
 I am to be his wife, you know, it would be 
 better that I should not take up a style of 
 literature which evidently has no attractions 
 for him." 
 
 " Ah V moralized Aunt Phillis, in a mono- 
 syllabic inteijection ; and Aunt Eachel 
 echoed it drowsily in her chimney corner. 
 
 " Ah !" There are volumes compressed 
 in that interjection on the lips of an old 
 lady. 
 
 "I wish I knew, aunt," I said, putting 
 down some ridiculous fancy work with which 
 I was pretending to amuse myself, and 
 looking at the old ladies like a browbeating 
 barrister, "I wish you would tell me, and 
 then I should know, why it is you always 
 hum and ha when Percy is mentioned. 
 Surely he is a good Evangelical ; at all events 
 he reads his Record like one, and preaches
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 103 
 
 what you call the 'pure gospel/ doesn't 
 he?" 
 
 But the old ladies answered me never a 
 word. Aunt Rachel shammed being quite 
 asleep, which was almost unnecessary, as she 
 was so very near it before ; and Aunt Phillis 
 went back to her reference Bible. This was 
 always her resource in time of need, whether 
 for the positive purpose of demolishing any- 
 body with a text, or the negative one of pre- 
 tending not to hear when somebody spoke. 
 
 I was not to be done by so simple a 
 stratagem as this, however. 
 
 " Aunts," I repeated, striking the table 
 petulantly with my elbows, so hard as pretty 
 well to "bark" them, and frightening the 
 old lady so that I made her knock down the 
 fire-irons, whereat my Aunt Phillis scowled 
 unmistakeably, "you have often told me 
 it is rude not to answer when spoken to. 
 Why don't you like Percy ? As my future 
 husband, I have a right to know what 
 there is about him that makes you dislike 
 him."
 
 104 'Verts. 
 
 "Please, Elsie/' answered Aunt Pliillis, 
 *' don't say anything of the kind. It would 
 make endless mischief with your Uncle Ed- 
 ward if he once got the preposterous idea 
 that we didn't like Percy." 
 
 " Perhaps we like him too well," chimed 
 in old Aunt Rachel. 
 
 " A man may not marry his grandfather's 
 sister, I believe," was my reply, quoting, at 
 a venture, the table of kindred and affinity. 
 
 " Don't joke about such very serious 
 matters, Elsie," said my Aunt Phillis. " I 
 don't know whether it is your association 
 with the Deanery, or your persistent ac- 
 quaintance with Mr. Mill — I mean Mr. 
 Lund, that leads you to do this, but I ob- 
 serve you exempt no subject from your 
 jokes, dear." 
 
 I always knew when Aunt Phillis called 
 me " dear" she was getting angry. Texts 
 and endearing epithets were the worst symp- 
 toms of her impending wrath; but I was 
 not going to be scared from my purpose by 
 the anger of two old ladies.
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 105 
 
 " We will come to Mr. Lund by-and-by, 
 if you wish," I rejoined, *' let us settle Cousin 
 Percy first. If you like him why don't you 
 go to his church?" 
 
 " There is a great deal of difference be- 
 tween liking a man and sitting under him," 
 said Aunt Eachel, with her usual unfor- 
 tunate choice of dubious language. 
 
 " Yes," I answered, for the temptation 
 was too strong for me ; "I did not mean 
 that you should honour Percy so far as to 
 let him sit upon you, literally or meta- 
 phorically." 
 
 " We will change the subject, if you 
 please, Elsie, altogether. We like your 
 cousin as our relative, but esteem Mr. 
 Wilcox as our pastor." 
 
 " Oh !" I replied ; and I fancy I contrived 
 to throw as much meaning into my " Oh !" 
 as the old ladies into their "Ah !" 
 
 " I wonder why Percy isn't in any hurry 
 to get married. Aunt Phillis," was my next 
 irritating remark, when I had allowed a 
 sufficient interval to elapse. " That's a
 
 106 'Verts. 
 
 change of subject now, isn't it ? and 
 certainly one that you can't call irrele- 
 vant." 
 
 " But certainly one that should be settled 
 by you and Percy between yourselves, Elsie. 
 You do ask the most extraordinary ques- 
 tions." 
 
 "We haven't been in a hurry to get 
 married," moralized Aunt Eachel. 
 
 Aunt Phillis blushed very deeply at 
 hearing herself classed thus with her vener- 
 able relative. 
 
 " Why, Aunt Phillis, I declare you're 
 blushing !" I said. *' I hope you have 
 given up all ideas of marriage, have you 
 not?" 
 
 " Yes, Elsie," she answered, with a dash 
 of sadness. 
 
 " I can just recollect the dreadful way in 
 which you jilted that poor young Irvingite 
 apostle you met at our house." 
 
 " Elsie, you are most extraordinary in 
 your remarks to-night." 
 
 " Yes ; it's tender ground, I know. All
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 107 
 
 I mean is, that you have made me your 
 heiress, have you not ? because " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " If Percy and I should marry " 
 
 "If!" said Aunt Eachel. 
 
 " We should scarcely be able to live on 
 his income, should we ?" 
 
 " And so you anticipate my death in that 
 cheerful way, do you ?" 
 
 " No ; that's exactly what we don't do. 
 We are waiting very patiently. Percy, as 
 I said, is in no hurry, and I am sure I am 
 not." 
 
 " And in the meantime you amuse your- 
 self by flirting undisguisedly with Mr. 
 Lund," said Aunt Phillis, fairly roused at 
 last. I knew I should do nothing until I 
 had troubled the surface of the waters a 
 little. 
 
 " Flirting, Aunt Phillis !" 
 
 " Yes, flirting. It is the talk of the town, 
 isn't it, aunt ?" 
 
 But Aunt Eachel was, I was going to 
 say, too wide awake, by which I mean too
 
 108 'Verts, 
 
 apparently sound asleep to answer such a 
 leading question as that. 
 
 "And now we are on these topics," said 
 Aunt Phillis, '' I will just tell you what I 
 have done. As to your Cousin Percy, whose 
 name really need not be dragged into this 
 matter at all, I say nothing. I look upon 
 him as your destined husband, though I 
 cannot understand his procrastination or 
 your extraordinary conduct with Mr. 
 Lund ; but if you really wish to make 
 your calculations on my decease, I will 
 tell you — and show you if you like — that 
 I have willed the little money I have to 
 you, contingently on your not marrying Mr. 
 Lund." 
 
 " 0, not on my marrying Percy." 
 " With that, as I said, I have nothing to 
 do." 
 
 "As much as with Mr. Lund, surely." 
 " No ; I could not bear to think that the 
 few hundreds I have accumulated went to 
 promote the spread of infidelity." 
 
 " But Percy is immaculate ; isn't he ?"
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 109 
 
 " I decline to say one word about your 
 cousin, and nothing that you can do will 
 induce me to alter my decision." 
 
 " Least said, soonest mended, perhaps. 
 But that is an unusual condition to annex 
 to a legacy, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Not at all. Why so ?" 
 
 "Because, supposing anything was to 
 happen to you — that is the usual euphem- 
 ism, I believe — and that I ran away with 
 Mr. Lund." 
 
 " Elsie !" 
 
 " If I did the proper thing under the 
 circumstances and married him, I should, 
 by the provisions of your will, be cut off 
 without even the proverbial shilling; whereas 
 if we omitted that ceremony, your money 
 might still go to spread worse than infidelity, 
 might it not ?" 
 
 " You are, I hope, putting what is quite 
 an impossible case." 
 
 "Improbable. But Percy says that in 
 legal arrangements no improbability, how- 
 ever great, must be accepted as an impossi-
 
 110 'Verts. 
 
 bility. In fact, the law is omnipotent, and 
 recognises no impossibilities." 
 
 " Be that as it may, such is the disposal 
 I have made. Certainly the amount at 
 stake is not large, and I may live to be as 
 old as " 
 
 " Aunt Eachel." 
 
 " I should never have thought of alluding 
 to such a subject, of course, but you forced 
 it upon me." 
 
 "Like a prudent prospective housewife, 
 is it not ?'' 
 
 " Perhaps. There is the document if you 
 wish to see it,'* and she threw me something 
 written on the conventional blue paper, all 
 I could see being that it was somebody's 
 last will and testament, and that it was 
 drawn up by Edward Llewellyn and Son. 
 That was a little fiction to which my uncle 
 lent himself at the time Percy was articled. 
 So he had a finger in drawing up this will, 
 had he ? 
 
 " I wouldn't doubt your word for a 
 moment," I replied, as I tossed the paper
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. Ill 
 
 back again. " Besides, what matters the 
 will ? you could cancel it to-morrow. Indeed, 
 I have no doubt you will before you sleep 
 to-night, if, as I think not at all unlikely, 
 Mr. Lund comes and calls to take me home 
 by-and-by/' 
 
 This was the wildest romance on my part, 
 but the poor old souls did not know whether 
 to believe it or not. Aunt Phillis involun- 
 tarily looked round the modest apartment, 
 and Aunt Rachel, waking up suddenly as 
 was her wont, settled her cap to her own 
 satisfaction, if to nobody else's. 
 
 " I know you too well, I am thankful to 
 say," replied Aunt Phillis, with appropriate 
 gravity, " to fear that you would ever per- 
 petrate such an outrage as that, Elsie. Lax 
 as may be the morals in the sphere of 
 society where you unfortunately sometimes 
 mix, and indiscreet — to say the least — as 
 are your relations with this Mr. Lund, I am 
 glad, at all events, that you have compro- 
 mised no member of your family except 
 yourself."
 
 112 ' Verts. 
 
 I had got as mucli as I wanted out 
 of Aunt Phillis ; so, after an interval of 
 irrelevant, and, to me, uninteresting' con- 
 versation, I returned to the charge, making 
 Aunt Eachel the object of my attentions. 
 She was so unmistakeably wide awake now 
 that any assumption, even of drowsiness, 
 would have been a transparent pretence on 
 her part. 
 
 " What are you going to do for us, Auntie 
 Eachel ?" I asked, assuming a childish tone. 
 " But I forgot ; your money dies with you, 
 does it not ? They only allowed you an 
 annuity out of my grandfather's estate." 
 
 "Ah ! If my poor dear brother could only 
 see me as I am ; living here with just 
 
 enough to keep body and soul together 
 
 There ! I hope he can't, or I'm sure he 
 couldn't be happy." 
 
 My Aunt Phillis knew what was coming, 
 and sat on thorns. 
 
 " Lawyers do make ducks and drakes of 
 property, don't they, aunt, even when they're 
 one's own flesh and blood ?"
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 113 
 
 *' If the dead could speak, Elsie, you and 
 I should be in very different positions from 
 what we are." 
 
 " You mean that my father would be sole 
 possessor of the Topaz Farm instead of its 
 being divided between him, my uncles, and 
 Aunt Phillis here, and with the power of 
 devising it to me/' 
 
 " Poor Susanna Dash couldn't rest in her 
 grave if she knew it was otherwise. If one 
 person ever abominated another she abomi- 
 nated Edward Llewellyn. There was only 
 one she hated worse, and that was your 
 Uncle Samuel — ' Snivelling Sam/ she called 
 him as a boy." 
 
 " And yet Mrs. Dash's will left it simply 
 to my grandfather for life, without binding 
 his disposal of it, did it not ? and his will 
 left it divided as now." 
 
 " Both wills drawn up by Edward Llew- 
 ellyn, then a youngster in practice, and 
 each executed within a suspiciously short 
 interval of the testator's death, with Edward 
 Llewellyn's clerks as witnesses. It was 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 'Verts. 
 
 just the same with my wretched annuity. I 
 only wonder Edward and Sam spared me 
 that. I wonder they did not take all and 
 leave me quite penniless." 
 
 My Aunt Phil lis hereupon gave a sniff, to 
 let us know she was crying, fearing we 
 might else not be aware of that circumstance. 
 She cried at the shortest notice, and on the 
 smallest provocation. 
 
 " Don't cry, auntie, dear," I said, though 
 I believe my words were as transparently 
 hollow as her tears ; " it is better these little 
 family matters should be temperately dis- 
 cussed. Eecollect I am a child no longer, 
 and it is time I was taken round to all the 
 cupboards and introduced to the family 
 skeletons." 
 
 " Supposing all were as your Aunt Eachel 
 insinuates, what would it matter? Directly 
 you are married to Percy your interests 
 are identical." 
 
 "But supposing I don't marry Percy? 
 Supposing I adopt your suggestion, and go 
 off with Alec — I mean Mr. Lund, omitting
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 115 
 
 tlie formality of marriage in deference to 
 the provisions of your will?" 
 
 " Elsie !" 
 
 " Not only so ; but supposing, as you 
 say, things are as my Aunt Eachel not 
 only insinuates but asserts, and as I daily 
 and hourly more and more believe them to 
 be, my father is being kept out of his rights. 
 Dear good old weakminded man that he is, 
 he might have been a landed gentleman here 
 in Zoar, instead of a petty tradesman, in a 
 different position from the rest of his family. 
 Why, it would have saved my Uncle Ed- 
 ward's dignity better to have let the Topaz 
 estates go as, in equity, at all events, if not 
 in law, they ought to have gone. He might 
 then have had a chance of mingling with 
 the cathedral people, without the scandal of 
 the shop in the High Street." 
 
 "He may do that still," said my Aunt 
 Phillis, waxing wroth. 
 
 " I guess what you mean by that. I 
 pretty well guess my Uncle Edward has 
 bought your share of Topaz, and my Uncle 
 
 8—2
 
 116 'Verts. 
 
 Sam's. As a lawyer, too, he has no doubt 
 endless devices for getting my father's por- 
 tion too, and perhaps ruining him in his 
 business — literally shutting up his shop. 
 He may think that because my father is 
 good-natured to a fault, and has no son to 
 assert his rights, that therefore he is at the 
 mercy of himself and Uncle Sam ; but, I 
 tell you, that though I were twenty times 
 married to Percy I would not see wrong 
 done to my father without proclaiming it on 
 the housetops/' 
 
 " You are proclaiming it to the entire 
 High Street now," replied Aunt Philiis, 
 " by talking so unnecessarily loud." 
 
 '' I have no right to be talking in High 
 Street at all. I ought to be at Topaz Farm, 
 a mile hence, with my father as present 
 proprietor, and myself the future owner, in- 
 stead of its being let to a wretched farmer, 
 and the proceeds handed out in driblets. I 
 know wrong has been done, has it not, 
 Aunt Eachel?" 
 
 But Aunt Eachel found the argument
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 117 
 
 running too high for her, and had prudently 
 dropped off again. 
 
 My Uncle Edward is a splendid illustra- 
 tion of the proverb, that nothing succeeds 
 like success. I believe that my Aunt Phillis 
 is a thoroughly good woman, as far as cold 
 duty goes. She would not do anybody an 
 injury, not so much because she has any 
 kindly feeling for people, as because wrong- 
 doing would violate some far-down deduction 
 from the Decalogue, or something in the 
 margin of her annotated Bible. But she is 
 blinded by success. Edward Llewellyn is*a 
 power in the family, and if she really has 
 been party to any fraud as to the Topaz 
 Earm, it is a marvellous instance of the power 
 of success to reproduce itself. 
 
 But I had not yet done my pumping 
 process, and I had to hit upon a strange 
 device for waking up Aunt Rachel. I said, 
 to the evident relief of Aunt Phillis — 
 
 " What have you got for supper, auntie ? 
 It smells very savoury." 
 
 Aunt Phillis told me what it was, but I
 
 118 'Verts. 
 
 heeded her not. All I wanted was to see 
 whether the question roused Aunt Eachel. 
 It succeeded to a miracle. The poor old 
 soul had outlived almost all other enjoyments 
 except the creature comforts of eating and 
 drinking, and she still wielded a potent 
 knife and fork. It was the old lady's boast 
 that she had never tasted plain water, and 
 could not even guess the flavour of it. 
 
 " And these Welsh estates, Aunt Eachel, 
 that you sometimes speak of — where are 
 they?" 
 
 " Mudwalla is the name, I'm sure, dear," 
 answered the old lady. " Mudwalla, I'm 
 sure, was the name, but the county I can't 
 remember." 
 
 I ran through the Welsh counties, but 
 she could not recollect. She had the most 
 hazy reminiscences of her own girlhood 
 prior to coming to Zoar ; but my great- 
 grandfather was, she said, only under a 
 temporary cloud. My grandfather ought 
 to have been, and my father ought now to 
 be a great man in Mudwalla.
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 119 
 
 " But in the ordinary course of things 
 these Welsh estates, if such there were, 
 would have come to Percy, would they not ? 
 I made the mistake of being born a girl, 
 you see. In fact we all made that mistake, 
 did we not ?" 
 
 " In the ordinary course of things they 
 would ; but it might have been, as was the 
 case with Topaz^ an extraordinary state of 
 things. I shouldn't a bit wonder if Percy 
 had found out that you were the heiress, and 
 that makes him so anxious to marry you." 
 
 " Thank you for the compliment, aunt ; 
 but I don't see his anxiety." 
 
 " No ; he don't act as though he was very 
 much in love, does he ? But then love- 
 making among cousins is very likely different 
 from other cases.'' 
 
 " Very likely. It may be as you say that 
 if he did not think I was the heiress he 
 might have married somebody else." 
 
 " Leaving you free for Mr. Lund,^' said 
 Aunt Phillis, snappishly. 
 
 " Provided I could bring my conscience
 
 120 'Verts. 
 
 to carry out the suggestions of that most 
 immoral will of yours, Aunt Phillis." 
 
 That will was a trump card for me, and 
 I played it boldly whenever an opportunity 
 offered. 
 
 " Supposing I did run away with Mr. 
 Lund, who do you think Percy's wife would 
 be ; or do you believe he would instantly 
 become a devoted celibate ?'' 
 
 " Bless the girl, what questions she do 
 ask 1" ejaculated my Aunt Each el from her 
 coign of vantage. 
 
 " 1 think I could guess." 
 
 " Who, in the name of goodness ?'' 
 
 "Mary Baker." 
 
 My Aunt Eachel immediately stirred the 
 fire with a vengeance that set at defiance 
 all economic ideas as to coals, while Aunt 
 Phillis jumped up and vigorously cleared the 
 table for supper. I had raised the master- 
 spirit of silence by the mention of that 
 name, and knew I should get nothing more 
 from my Evangelical aunts if I talked till 
 midnight.
 
 My Evangelical Aunts, 121 
 
 As I rose to help Aunt Phillis, and just 
 as Aunt Eachel had rung the bell for 
 supper, there was a double knock at the 
 side door. 
 
 " Mr. Lund," I exclaimed, " come to fetch 
 me home." 
 
 " Better be quiet," said Aunt Phillis, 
 listening at the door of the sitting-room. 
 " It is Percy." 
 
 " Oh, indeed !" I replied. " He doesn't 
 often come to fetch me home. Is he a 
 frequent visitor here ? And who — I am 
 anxious to know — is letting him in ? He 
 is a long time making his appearance." 
 
 Eeply was rendered unnecessary by the 
 entrance of Percy himself. He kissed the 
 old ladies and myself as in duty bound, and 
 I could not help wondering whether he had 
 regaled himself with Mary on the stairs. 
 Strangely enough I thought at the same 
 time that I had a note in my pocket making 
 an appointment with Alec Lund for a long 
 walk the next day. 
 
 " I called in at Uncle William's and found
 
 122 'Verts. 
 
 Elsie was here, so I thought I would kill 
 two birds with one stone " 
 
 " Three, you mean, Percy." 
 
 " I thought I might pay my respects to 
 my aunts and at the same time fetch Elsie 
 home. You have not supped, I see. Have 
 you a knife and fork for me ?" 
 
 He could make himself very agreeable if 
 he chose, and on that particular occasion 
 he did choose. He talked Evangelicalism 
 with the old ladies, and even retailed mild 
 Zoar gossip to me. When at last he took 
 me home, he sat and drank a glass of grog 
 with my father after sending me upstairs to 
 write my three-volume novel or Zoar guide- 
 book, whichever it might happen to be. It 
 was very late indeed when I heard him go, 
 my father in his dear old cheery voice 
 bidding him good-night at the side door, as 
 though Percy were the dearest friend he had 
 on earth. 
 
 Alec was vastly interested in the conver- 
 sation which I repeated to him next day, as
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 123 
 
 nearly as possible in the same terms as I 
 have written it here. 
 
 " Let us turn our steps towards Topaz 
 Farm," he said, " and see your future — as it 
 ought to be your present — home. Your 
 father, Elsie, has, in one significant word, 
 been swindled by his goody and lawyer 
 brothers. Promise me, darling, that you 
 will be mine. Percy is only marrying you 
 to patch up the evil-doing, and insure his 
 own interests/' 
 
 *' Thank you for the compliment, sir. 
 Let me tell yoa, Percy made himself very 
 agreeable last night.'' 
 
 I do so like to tell Alec that somebody 
 makes himself agreeable to me, especially 
 Percy; perhaps, because, in his case, it is 
 such a rare event. But dear Alec does look 
 so deliciously jealous. He never says a 
 word, but I know he would like to demolish 
 the unfortunate individual who happens to 
 merit my approval. 
 
 Say what people will, it is very nice to
 
 124 'Verts, 
 
 make a great big fellow temporarily un- 
 comfortable on your account, if only for the 
 pleasure of immediately setting his mind 
 at rest by saying something unusually 
 sweet. 
 
 " The worst sign of all when your cousin 
 exerts himself to be agreeable. Had he 
 interviewed Mary Baker previously ?" 
 
 " He was a very long time coming up- 
 stairs." 
 
 " Then that accounts for his being so 
 agreeable." 
 
 I believe it was so. Just as I am g^ene- 
 rally "radiant" when I come from Dove- 
 cot Hill. 
 
 Topaz Farm is a dear old spot, about a 
 mile from Zoar, and in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of St. Simon Magus' church. I 
 suppose if we had been going to remain in 
 Zoar after we were married, and Percy still 
 retained the incumbency, we should have 
 made Topaz the parsonage house. The 
 residence itself was a farmhouse, and no- 
 thing more ; but there could not be a finer
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 125 
 
 site for a country mansion, and there was 
 just enougli land around to give the pro- 
 prietor a position in the place. 
 
 " That house shall, one day, be ours, 
 Elsie," said Alec, as we stood hand in hand 
 in th^ lane looking over the hedge of one 
 of the home-fields. 
 
 " If wishes were horses " I suggested. 
 
 " Beggars would ride. Yes ; and I mean 
 you to caracole over these paternal acres — 
 if with me as your attendant cavalier, so 
 much the better." 
 
 " Your intentions, Mr. Lund, can scarcely 
 be deemed disinterested, since you thus look 
 upon me as a prospective heiress." 
 
 " I'm not at all afraid of your thinking, 
 that, Elsie. I am far too uncommercial 
 a traveller along the highway of life for you 
 to think my views interested. What I 
 should like best of all would be to marry 
 you in the teeth of Aunt Phillis's will, and 
 to let you find out — as then you would find, 
 Elsie — that I had something in me. I could 
 work for you."
 
 126 'Verts. 
 
 " And turn commercial instead of uncom- 
 mercial traveller." 
 
 '' Yes." 
 
 There again occurred an opportunity when 
 I ought to have said, " Gro and do it. Make 
 a position and come back for me if you want 
 me. Then — if Percy has not forced me to 
 stand to my word — I am yours." I said 
 nothing of the kind ; but we sauntered 
 hand in hand among the Zoar fields, and, in 
 a very little time, had forgotten all about 
 disputed inheritances and old ladies' wills in 
 the supreme pleasure of being together. 
 
 We are told by certain seers, I believe by 
 Swedenborg among the number, but am 
 not sure, that when their inner vision is 
 opened on the realities of the world beyond, 
 there is no such thing as loneliness to be 
 seen. It is as purely negative as darkness 
 itself, and in that land of positive results 
 neither one nor the other of these negations 
 exists. 
 
 Those severed segments of being which 
 here seem to be wearily seeking one another,
 
 My Evangelical Aunts. 127 
 
 and which so seldom — so very seldom — 
 meet, are there for ever reunited, and so it 
 comes that the seer beholds each individual 
 not as one but as two persons ; two, yet by 
 some strange process of fusion, still only a 
 single personality. I often — always — think, 
 when T am walking with Alec, that we have 
 forestalled this exceedingly eligible arrange- 
 ment, and that whatever may happen to 
 one or the other of us here — whether it be 
 death or (worse still) marriage with any 
 but the other of our two selves — all will be 
 remedied there. If I could only sit dow'n 
 and spend a lifetime with him here, I 
 could be perfectly happy. Why can it not 
 be so ? What else ousrht to weisrh asrainst 
 so strong and unmistakeable an assertion of 
 nature ? This is what I think when I am 
 with him, and the spell of his presence is 
 upon me. 
 
 Then I go home and argue with myself, 
 Is not this merely a refined form of selfish- 
 ness ? Have I any right to set at nought 
 all family arrangements and social usages ?
 
 128 
 
 Verts. 
 
 The consequence is, I am in the most divided 
 state of mind. All I can do is to drift on 
 from day to day, as I am doing, dubiously 
 debating with myself whether I shall elect 
 happiness and Alec, or self-sacrifice and — 
 Percy.
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 MY PROTESTANT COUSIN. 
 
 HERE are, as I scarcely need ob- 
 serve, Protestants and Protestants. 
 How very didactic that sentence 
 looks ; and how far more appropriate for 
 the exordium of a sermon than for the 
 commencement of an entry on a blank pag^ 
 of a young lady's diary. By the way, I 
 daresay some people will be inclined to 
 protest against so plebeian a party as a 
 tradesman's daughter calling herself a young 
 lady at all ; but I am not going to be 
 always a tradesman's daughter only. 
 
 My Cousin Percy's Protestantism — to 
 revert to the oracular sentence with which 
 I set out — is of the Aggressive order. 
 (After considerable hesitation I decide upon 
 writing Aggressive with a capital A.) 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 'Verts, 
 
 Etymologically, of course, Protestantism of 
 all kinds is Aggressive. Why should we 
 protest against other people's opinions or 
 practices, except in so far as they violate 
 good morals ? Surely it is enough for us 
 to see that our own do not err in this 
 respect. 
 
 Percy is one of those men — far from ex- 
 ceptional ones I fancy — of whom it sounds 
 almost profane to say that they would be 
 far better if you could take their religion 
 out of them. Possibly these lengthy 
 analyses of my cousin may be tedious ; but 
 I am naturally interested in taking stock of 
 my future lord, and it really does appear to 
 me something of a phenomenon that persons 
 should contrive to turn a system which was 
 so appropriately heralded by angel-carols as 
 " Peace on earth,'' into a source of bitterness 
 and ill will. The sweet voices of the little 
 boys at the cathedral, the deep tones of the 
 organ, and the long vista of the Gothic 
 arches ending in storied windows, however 
 far they may be removed from what Percy
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 131 
 
 calls '' primitive simplicity," surely convey 
 much more of the genius of Christianity 
 than spiteful tracts and frothy orations on 
 controversial subjects. That is what I 
 mean by Aggressive Protestantism : the 
 faith and works of those people who, to use 
 a homely phrase from an old ballad, " Won't 
 let a body be." I want to let everybody 
 be ; and I expect everybody to do the same 
 by me, but they won't. 
 
 On the other hand, the Protestantism of 
 my Evangelical aunts is of the incomprehen- 
 sible or hereditary kind, whose raisbn 
 d'etre seems only to lie in the fact that it is 
 because it is. They were born to it, as they 
 were to their family name. The old ladies 
 imbibed Protestant principles, goodness 
 knows how, in some remote palaeozoic period, 
 and those principles had become encrusted, 
 fossilized, in their minds. It might just as 
 well have been ultramontane, or, if the dear 
 old creatures will forgive me for saying so, 
 rationalistic ideas that they imbibed. In 
 fact I am not sure that, under their special 
 
 9— :&
 
 132 'Verts. 
 
 training, infidelity itself would not almost 
 have been more acceptable than Eomanism. 
 My own Protestantism, if I am to be called 
 a Protestant at all, appears to me to be 
 exactly that of my good old mother. I 
 protest against protesting. I interfere with 
 nobody's creed or practice, and, as 1 said, 
 all I ask is to be let alone in mine. 
 
 There is a residuum of this negative kind 
 of Protestant or Evangelical opinion, like 
 that of my aunts, in Zoar, chiefly represented 
 by old ladies, though they are of both sexes, 
 for fogeydom has no genders. It is on this 
 that Percy, ecclesiastically speaking, exists. 
 I don't believe his Protestantism is a bit 
 more sincere than his affection, and I know 
 how much that is worth, or I think I do. 
 The way the Church of St. Simon Magus 
 was got up is very edifying. A college friend 
 of Percy, who is now a leading Evangelical 
 star in London, came to St. Hilda's one 
 summer in place of a curate who was taking 
 holiday, and by his highly flavoured Calvin- 
 istic preaching stirred up the residuum I
 
 My Protestant Cousin, 133 
 
 speak of into something like activity. 
 When this luminary waned, the residuum 
 felt its darkness ; and as the orb was un- 
 attached to any ecclesiastical solar system 
 at that time, it was suggested that he might 
 gyrate round the cathedral of Zoar as a 
 centre ; in other words, that he might come 
 and get up a church in the little city. 
 That phrase "getting up" was eminently 
 suggestive. Where the funds originally 
 came from I cannot say, though I suspect. 
 I only know that Percy was exceedingly 
 active in the matter ; but of course nly 
 Uncle Edward could not personally advance 
 the interests of a system that ran counter 
 to the tone of the dignitaries in Zoar. I 
 know, moreover, that the most impecunious 
 people in Zoar subscribed really large sums 
 to St. Simon Magus, and simultaneously my 
 Uncle Edward complained that his account 
 at the bank was considerably overdrawn. 
 He attributed it to the large sums he 
 advanced to the Bishop. I suspected St. 
 Simon Magus' and the Protestant men of
 
 134 'Verts. 
 
 straw who subscribed to its erection and 
 endowment. I have a further idea that m j 
 father " accommodated" his brother Edward 
 at that time, and crippled himself not a 
 little in his business to do so. Anyhow the 
 star-curate was appointed ; the trustees of 
 the subscription fund managing (through 
 my Uncle Edward again, I suspect), to 
 secure three presentations. The star dropped 
 out of the Zoar system to gravitate towards 
 that of the metropolis. He " resigned in 
 consequence of preferment in London," and 
 Percy was at once instituted. He only 
 managed to be in the nick of time by 
 scrambling, as I have said; but he was in 
 the nick of time nevertheless. 
 
 Now it appears to me that, with the very 
 comfortable income Percy gets from St. 
 Simon's, added to the handsome allowance 
 with which Uncle Edward supplements any 
 possible deficiencies, he ought to be ex- 
 tremely comfortable, and to let me drop 
 quite out of his calculations. He has a 
 suite of rooms at home, and will be a rich
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 135 
 
 man when his father dies ; but he wants to 
 live en grand seigneur 2X Topaz, and be simul- 
 taneously Protestant popeling of St. Simon 
 Magus ! He has the most colossal ideas for 
 an Elizabethan mansion on the site of the 
 present modest farm ; and one day lately, 
 when he had been roasting me about going 
 to cathedral, and then began to picture the 
 grandeur in which we could live at Topaz, 
 if we had it all to ourselves, I said — 
 
 " That's hardly ' primitive simplicity,* 
 Percy, is it?" 
 
 " My expression referred to worship. 
 Miss/' He called me "Miss" very often, 
 as though I were a school girl. 
 
 " I thought life was worship," I replied. 
 
 It is very odd how easily we wriggle out 
 of the conclusions in which our own pre- 
 mises land us as a logical necessity. 
 
 I have now to chronicle what, if left to my 
 own feminine resources, I should of course 
 term a contretemps. Alec says it is much 
 better rendered by the plain Saxon "bust-up." 
 It scarcely amounts to that at present j but it
 
 136 'Verts, 
 
 has within it the elements of a possible 
 earthquake. 
 
 Alec and I had been studying the Zoar 
 lanes through a long summer afternoon, 
 watching the effect of the broad belts of 
 shadow cast by the trees across the brilliant 
 emerald of the grassy sideways, and the 
 white dust of the midroad. Every now 
 and again we would stop and lean pensively 
 over a gate, or sit on a stile, and, I remem- 
 ber, we debated, as actively as the warm 
 weather would allow, whether the cows who 
 were champing the cud under the umbra- 
 geous elms were not better off than human 
 beings. Alec was decidedly of the opinion 
 that they were. More for the sake of 
 opposing him, than because I felt strongly 
 anti- bovine, I held that humanity had the 
 advantage. 
 
 " These * huge but imperfect organisms,' 
 as the ' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table' calls 
 them, are free," he argued ; " if from the 
 rare joys, certainly from most of the inevi- 
 table sorrows, of human kind. See how
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 137 
 
 placid the J look, while we are fuming about 
 eccentric matrimonial arrangements, Topaz 
 estates. Evangelical aunts, and Protestant 
 cousins. They neither reflect nor anticipate, 
 and go to the slaughter-house as compla- 
 cently as to the dairy." 
 
 " All a perfectly gratuitous assumption," 
 I answered ; " but, even supposing it true, 
 inconclusive. Go a step lower, and envy 
 the grass itself, which to-day is, and to- 
 morrow is cast into the oven." 
 
 "I go lower still, and ambition what 
 seems to us the nonentity, as far as organic 
 life is concerned, of the mineral world. I 
 never could dread annihilation." 
 
 " Complimentary to me." 
 
 " I don't see that it is the reverse. This 
 moment I have you, and am happy ; the 
 next moment your Cousin Percy may come 
 upon the scene " 
 
 Talk of the ! The next moment 
 
 he did come upon the scene. 
 
 It is said that is a long lane which has 
 no turning. The Zoar lanes were prodi-
 
 138 'Verts. 
 
 giouslj long, with very few turnings some- 
 times, and this particular one was of the 
 lengthiest and straightest. Eight at the 
 other end, where it emerged upon the high 
 road, my Cousin Percy hove in sight, making 
 believe to be taking a constitutional, I sup- 
 pose — a thing, by the way, he never did — 
 for we were two good miles out of Zoar 
 proper. We were standing at a stile, at the 
 further end of the lane, but full against 
 a background of greenery, which might or 
 might not render us visible to a spectator 
 at the far end. We might possibly have 
 escaped, but we agreed we would not. It 
 would look mean if we were caught. Alec 
 did not want to avoid a meeting with Percy ; 
 why should I ? We would have it. 
 
 Percy was walking very slowly, and of 
 course did not pretend to see us until he 
 came quite close. I feel sure he wanted us 
 to run away from him, and thought we 
 should do so. We decided, as I say, to re- 
 main, and had ample time to rehearse our 
 parts. No doubt he went over his too.
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 139 
 
 Now, under such circumstances, the parties 
 at rest — that was in the present case Alec 
 and myself — have great advantages over 
 the one in motion — namely, Percy. 
 
 The defensive are immensely easier than 
 the offensive tactics in such a case. He 
 looked infinitely av^kward as he neared us. 
 Alec adopted a practice he often does with 
 me when I meet him — namely, looking at 
 my boots. It makes one feel as though 
 there must be something wrong about them ; 
 and really Percy shambled up to us as un- 
 gracefully as a recruit doing his goose-step. 
 
 I looked at his face, and saw he was 
 angry. That gave me an advantage in- 
 stantly. T would be cool as a cucumber, 
 whatever he might say or do. I was quite 
 sure of Alec— he is a philosopher. 
 
 Without the slightest salutation to me or 
 recognition of Alec, Percy faced me, and 
 said — 
 
 " Come home, Elsie." 
 
 " Exactly what we were thinking of doing. 
 By the way, I can't tell from your manner
 
 140 'Verts. 
 
 whether you know Mr. Lund or not. Let 
 me introduce you to one another'' — which I 
 did — " and we can all go home together." 
 
 " I neither have, nor seek, Mr. Lund's 
 acquaintance, and decline the honour thrust 
 upon me. You will come home with me 
 alone, Elsie." 
 
 " I shall do nothing of the kind." 
 
 " Miss Llewellyn came out with me, and 
 I shall certainly escort her home, unless 
 she herself tells me it will be disagreeable 
 to her.'' 
 
 " Escort her home ! Will you dare to 
 take her down the High Street, dare to take 
 her even to her father's door — I do not 
 speak of risking being kicked out by crossing 
 the threshold?" 
 
 Alec smiled sardonically, and I drew the 
 figure of the fifth proposition of the first 
 book of Euclid with the point of my parasol 
 in the dust. 
 
 Percy only paused for breath, and then 
 ran on — 
 
 " No ; you will sneak away from her on
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 141 
 
 the outskirts of the town, just as you wait 
 for her there, like a cowardly thief, as you 
 are. 
 
 "You are doubly protected, Mr. Llewellyn, 
 by your cloth and by the presence of a lady. 
 Pray go on, I would not interrupt you for 
 worlds." 
 
 The very fact of being told to go on shut 
 Percy up at once. There was an awkward 
 pause. If we had stopped till Doomsday 
 neither Alec nor I would have said any- 
 thing — it was not our r61e. We elected to 
 be dumb personages, and Percy was fairly- 
 obliged to speak. 
 
 It was simply the accident of the aggres- 
 sive attitude he had assumed. 
 
 " Once more I say, follow me home, Elsie. 
 I am going." 
 
 " Don't go with the most distant idea 
 that I shall follow you, because I shan't. I 
 came out with Mr. Lund, and with Mr. 
 Lund I will return ; if you like to join us, 
 well and good ; if not, go solus." 
 
 "Are you aware that this lady is my
 
 142 'Verts, 
 
 future wife, Mr. Lund?" was the next 
 demand of my irate cousin. 
 
 " I am aware tliat Miss Llewellyn has 
 that brilliant prospect in view, unless such 
 an exhibition as this makes her change her 
 mind." 
 
 " Allude to my private affairs in that 
 way, and I'll " 
 
 I really did not think Percy had it in him, 
 but he advanced towards Alec in quite a 
 menacing attitude, and his thick oak stick 
 quivered in his right hand. 
 
 " No you will not," replied Alec, without 
 lifting his arm ; but just standing a trifle 
 more erect than usual, filling out his Her- 
 culean chest and fixing his eyes on 
 Percy. 
 
 " You forget your position as a man of 
 peace. You also forget it was you, not I, 
 who alluded to your engagement with Miss 
 Llewellyn." 
 
 " Do you suppose for one moment that 
 I am going to walk home by myself, and 
 leave you to escort my — my " He did
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 1 43 
 
 not know exactly what to say, so compro- 
 mised it by saying, " my cousin ?" 
 
 " I suppose nothing ; I am acting under 
 orders. If Miss Llewellyn tells me to go, 
 I am over that stile and off in a moment. 
 Unless she does so I remain." 
 
 " Eemain !" I said. 
 
 " And you defy me ?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 " Then we will go home together. I can 
 spoil your tete-a-tete, if I can't make that 
 fellow forbear to obtrude his company where 
 it is not wanted. He dares not, as I said, 
 follow us to your father's door." 
 
 " I will not follow, but accompany Miss 
 Llewellyn until she herself dismisses me 
 wherever that may be," said Alec, with the 
 most seraphic smile ; and off we all set to- 
 gether. 
 
 It was a sweet and pleasant walk, as may 
 be imagined. Alec and I made the most 
 frantic endeavours to be natural, and, of 
 course, succeeded in being as artificial as 
 possible. We descanted on the various
 
 144 'Verts, 
 
 beauties of the Zoar scenery just as though 
 we had never seen it before, and in language 
 really very like that of the guide-book I 
 was credited by Cousin Percy with being 
 engaged upon. 
 
 As for him, he walked silent and sullen, 
 with us but not of us : and I could not help 
 thinking, from the expression of his face, 
 that he was making up hard speeches to 
 assail me with when he got me alone or 
 with a majority on his side. For the 
 moment he was in the minority. 
 
 At every gate through which we had to 
 pass, and there were a good many between 
 that Lane of Destiny and Zoar, Alec stood 
 politely on one side first to let me pass in 
 deference to my sex, and then Percy — I 
 suppose in consideration of his cloth. Poor 
 Percy ! I really felt for him. He had put 
 himself in a false position, and the way he 
 shambled along at our side, or bundled him- 
 self through the gates while Alec waited, 
 was so infinitely ridiculous that I could not 
 help pitying him in spite of myself, and
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 145 
 
 picturing what would be the state of his 
 feelings when we came to the market-place. 
 
 Before we emerged upon that centre of 
 still life, and just as we were passing under 
 the archway that led thereto from the 
 Bishop's palace, he paused as if to give Alec 
 an opportunity of leaving us should he be 
 magnanimous enough to do so ; but he was 
 inexorable as Fate herself, and not by a word 
 or look did I encourage him to relent. 
 Thus we sped, a remarkable trio, across the 
 market-place and down the High Street, to 
 the marvel of the inhabitants, who had 
 never so seen it in Zoar. 
 
 When we arrived at the door of my home 
 I held out my hand to Alec by way of 
 giving him his conge, and he bade me good 
 day in the stiiFest and most hypocritical 
 fashion. If the suppression of the truth 
 amount to an assertion of falsehood, Alec 
 then and there burdened his conscience con- 
 siderably ; for, under ordinary circumstances, 
 we should scarcely have parted without a 
 much warmer salutation, and certainly not 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 'Ferts. 
 
 without arranging plans for another speedy 
 meeting; but then we did not generally 
 part in the High Street. He raised his hat 
 to Percy in the most approved style, but 
 my cousin took no notice beyond scowling a 
 little more than before. 
 
 When we got into the low oaken parlour 
 we found quite a family party assembled. 
 There was an early tea-drinking, and my 
 Evangelical aunts were the guests. My 
 Uncle Edward was looking on and enjoying 
 the gossip. Indeed, he seemed always to 
 run down to High Street when the atmo- 
 sphere of his more genteel home became too 
 rarefied for his really plebeian tastes, or his 
 small wife was more deaf than usual. She 
 varies a good deal with the weather, and her 
 tympanum pretty well serves my uncle as a 
 barometer. 
 
 " Here come the pair of turtle-doves home 
 to the dovecot after an afternoon's cooing," 
 said my uncle, who went in for being witty, 
 and liked to have his mild joke at other 
 people's expense. I quite expected Percy
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 147 
 
 would fire up at once, and tell them how 
 one of the doves had chosen the wrong 
 mate ; but no, he really looked and behaved 
 like the bird of peace my uncle made him 
 out to be. He said nothing, indeed, but 
 tried to assume a little graceful confusion 
 quite like an ordinary lover under the cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 What was the meaning of this, I wonder ? 
 Was he ashamed to own he had a rival ; or 
 did the presence of my aunts make him 
 taciturn ? It was wonderful the spell those 
 two old ladies exercised on this not very 
 sensitive parson. At all events, I could see 
 he was going to let the matter drop for the 
 time, waiting, no doubt, until he could catch 
 me alone ; so, of course, the spirit of con- 
 trariety tempted me to tease him by alluding 
 to the subject he would fain have tabooed. 
 
 " The cooing has not been very dovelike," 
 I said ; " and I have had no voice in it ; in 
 fact there has been a good deal more of the 
 eagle than the dove about it." 
 
 " Oh, I see, a lovers' quarrel," returned 
 
 10—2
 
 148 'Ferts, 
 
 my uncle. " Well, ' amantium irae/ — you 
 know tlie rest, don't you ?" 
 
 "I do ; but I don't think that musty 
 old proverb will hold good in the present 
 case." 
 
 " Oh yes, it will," said my Aunt Phillis, 
 who had not the most distant idea what it 
 meant, Latin not being in her day included 
 even among the extras of a young lady's 
 education. *' Kiss and be friends." 
 
 " Not in public, I should hope," ejaculated 
 Aunt Eachel. 
 
 " Not in public or private," I pouted, 
 and threw my bonnet, as was my untidy 
 habit, on a chair. I felt hot and flushed. 
 
 " Have a cup of tea, dear," said my good 
 old mother. This was her panacea for every 
 ill — a good cup of tea ; and she had already 
 supplied Percy with his. By this time he 
 looked positively beaming, and had the im- 
 pudence to say, " Come and sit by me, 
 Elsie, in case a change for the better should 
 come o'er the spirit of your dream." 
 
 I had no idea that man could dissemble
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 149 
 
 so well. I would not appear as annoyed as 
 I really was ; so I flopped myself down in 
 the chair he offered me, as much as to say, 
 " I can disguise my feelings too, if I like." 
 Whether it was the tea, or what, I cannot 
 say, but in ten minutes' time no one could 
 have guessed that the surface of our love- 
 making had even been ruffled. 
 
 I knew this was too millennial to last, 
 however, and suspected Percy was only 
 biding his time. He found it very difficult 
 to get an interview during the next few 
 days ; but at length he adopted Alec's plafi, 
 and caught me coming out of the cathedral 
 after the afternoon service. I could see 
 Alec himself on the look-out at his window 
 on the other side of the green ; and if I had 
 been very anxious to avoid the discussion I 
 could easily have telegraphed to him or 
 refused to leave the spot ; but, like the visit 
 to the dentist, I felt the operation must be 
 performed sooner or later, so I might as 
 well get it over. 
 
 " Come for a walk, Elsie/' he said, in a
 
 150 'Verts. 
 
 tone cleverly regulated, so as to be between 
 a request and a command. 
 
 " I am at your orders, of course," I replied, 
 in the same style. " Is it to be cooing, or 
 fighting ?" 
 
 " That depends upon you.'' 
 
 " It takes two to make a quarrel," I re- 
 joined. 
 
 " It took three last time. You could not 
 possibly have thought me unreasonable in 
 my objection." 
 
 "I daresay I could if I tried," I said, 
 determined to be aggravating. 
 
 "Well, don't try. Walk with me to 
 East Zoar, or as far as Topaz if you are not 
 tired." 
 
 " Very well. Let us go and inspect our 
 future Paradise." 
 
 ^' Do I understand that you are anxious 
 to cancel our engagement ?" 
 
 " I did not say so, or throw out the 
 remotest hint to that effect." 
 
 " But you certainly acted the other day 
 as though you meant it. Did you not ?"
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 151 
 
 " Perhaps so/' 
 
 I succeeded at last. My dogged manner 
 made him angry. I knew we should get on 
 more quickly then. 
 
 " Look you here," he continued. " 1 
 demand an explanation ; I have a right to 
 it in virtue of our engagement." 
 
 " Do leave alone these business terms," I 
 said. 
 
 " But I won't leave alone these business 
 terms. It's a matter of business, as well as 
 of—of " 
 
 " Cooing." 
 
 " As well as of affection," he concluded, 
 with an effort. " Just say whether you will 
 consent to give up that blackguard Lund's 
 acquaintance or our engagement. I will 
 not drop the business term, as you call 
 it." 
 
 " And I will not accept your alternative," 
 I answered. "Why should I? Eenounce 
 Mr. Lund's acquaintance I will not. I am 
 not a child that I should be told with whom 
 I may or may not associate. If you like to
 
 152 'Verts. 
 
 make my refusal the ground for breaking 
 off our engagement, do it. Go and tell my 
 father the reason. You may choose to be 
 jealous of the Dean next, and insist on my 
 dropping him." 
 
 " Very possibly." 
 
 " Then I should again refuse. I repeat 
 T am not a child." 
 
 " And I am not a fool, though you evi- 
 dently think me one. Knowing a man is 
 very different from taking two-mile walks 
 with him three times a week, and lingering 
 by rustic stiles and five-barred gates with 
 him." 
 
 "I'm not the only one that lingers at 
 rustic stiles," I replied, " and you never 
 saw him kiss me as I saw you kiss Mary 
 Baker at the stile by the Fishponds." 
 
 Percy collapsed. 
 
 " I don't know what cock-and-bull story 
 you allude to," he was going on. 
 
 " I allude to no story at all, but to what 
 I saw with my own eyes," and I gave him 
 the exact day, hour, and spot where it
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 153 
 
 occurred. He found it convenient to ignore 
 the circumstance, and proceeded — 
 
 " I am now in a position to marry, and I 
 demand the fulfilment of our engage- 
 ment." 
 
 " You will have your bond ?" 
 
 " I will, or let the bond be publicly can- 
 celled." 
 
 " Then it is better we spoke plainly, is it 
 not ?" 
 
 " Much better. Speak out." 
 
 " You are perfectly aware that I do not 
 love you, are you not ?" • 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 "You more than suspect that I love 
 somebody else?" 
 
 "I know it." 
 
 " And yet you are willing, for family and 
 financial reasons, to make me your wife, 
 notwithstanding this twofold knowledge ?" 
 
 "For family and financial reasons, yes. 
 Do you think one marriage contract out of 
 a thousand is made under more romantic 
 auspices ?"
 
 154 'Verts, 
 
 "Heaven help the nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine if they are not." 
 
 " They certainly are not." 
 
 "And yon/' I continued, losing my 
 temper almost as much as he had done 
 before, and for something of the same 
 reason, "you, too, love some one else. I 
 know you do ; I don't ask the question." 
 
 "Do be content to leave that ridiculous 
 monosyllable to boarding-school misses. I 
 thought you were strong-minded, Elsie." 
 
 " I don't know why." 
 
 " Of course I love you as a sensible man 
 loves a sensible woman, and that is a kind 
 of feeling which grows with marriage. The 
 romantic passion of a moustached loafer never 
 outlives the honeymoon." 
 
 " And the same remark would apply to 
 the sensible man's penchant for a pretty 
 milliner, I suppose ?" 
 
 " A sensible woman would scarcely be 
 jealous of a doll-faced flirt, I should think," 
 rejoined Percy. " But I have sought this 
 interview for a special purpose."
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 155 
 
 " To threaten matrimonj. Is it not so ?" 
 
 " If you like to put it so, yes. I require 
 you to fulfil your engagement with me at 
 once." 
 
 *' At once ? Here, and now ?" 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous. I shall speak to 
 Uncle William to-night, and beg him to 
 make all arrangements as soon as possible. 
 Whether I shall remain in Zoar, or exchange 
 St. Simon's, I do not know." 
 
 " But on immediate marriage you are re- 
 solved ?" 
 
 "lam." ^ 
 
 " And you anticipate your husband's au- 
 thority by commanding me to discontinue 
 altogether my acquaintance with every one 
 who does not exactly meet your approval." 
 
 " With Mr. Lund only." 
 
 ''With Alec— Mr. Lund, I mean— to- 
 day ; with the Dean or Mr. Moddle to- 
 morrow, I should not wonder." 
 
 " Very well, if you choose to think so. 
 What is your reply ?" 
 
 " Such blind unreasoning obedience to
 
 156 'Verts, 
 
 your commands I should refuse, even thougli 
 T were actually your wife. Eeasonable con- 
 cession to your wishes I should be of course 
 prepared to make." 
 
 " Supposing you were my wife ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " But under present circumstances — I 
 mean because we are only engaged and not 
 actually married — you refuse even that ?" 
 
 " No, I do not say so ; but the question 
 in my mind is whether what might be 
 purely reasonable then is not unreasonable 
 now." 
 
 " And the question I put is one much 
 more easily answered : Are you prepared at 
 once, without any further delay, to fulfil 
 your promise by marrying me ?" 
 
 " I don t know." 
 
 " Don't know ! Who, in the name of 
 wonder, should know, if you don't ?" 
 
 " Well, nobody I suppose. But I want 
 time to consider my reply. Give me twenty- 
 four hours." 
 
 " To enable you to see Lund, and ascer-
 
 J/y Protestant Cousin. 157 
 
 tain whether he means matrimony or 
 not ?" 
 
 " Don't be coarse," I answered ; " go to 
 St. Simon Magus', for I see the sexton at 
 the door, who evidently wants to speak to 
 you. I can go home by myself. We have 
 had enough cooing for one while." 
 
 " In twenty-four hours from this time, I 
 expect a definite answer, then." 
 
 " Twenty-four hours after date — let us be 
 commercial, by all means — you shall have 
 an answer as plain and precise as your ques- 
 tion." ^ 
 
 And so we parted. 
 
 I wonder whether I was a very dreadful 
 hypocrite when I told Percy not to be 
 coarse because he suggested that I wanted 
 to ascertain the real state of Alec's feelings. 
 It was literally what I did want. The 
 wishes of my family are very influential with 
 me, and I should be glad if my mar- 
 riage could prevent family feuds, and cement 
 interests which are else likely to be divided, 
 but I cannot go to God's altar with a deli-
 
 158 'Verts, 
 
 berate lie on my lips, and I am sure my 
 nearest and dearest relative would be the 
 last to wish me to. The legal portion of 
 my kindred may, and would, but not my 
 dear good and too indulgent parents ; not 
 even, I believe, my Evangelical aunts if the 
 matter were fairly represented to them. 
 Yes; I would see Alec — and 1 will see 
 somebody else too — before I give my final 
 answer. 
 
 I cannot think how people can be such 
 sceptics as to doubt an occult and uncon- 
 scious rapport between persons circum- 
 stanced like Alec and myself. When I saw 
 him at the window of his lodgings, on the 
 cathedral green, he was reading his book, 
 smoking his constant cigar, and looking 
 as permanent as the pyramids. I knew I 
 could have summoned him to my side — 
 our side — by a look so secret that even 
 Percy should not have detected it, though I 
 studiously refrained, for the reason I gave, 
 from making an}^ such sign. But the 
 thought certainly did pass through my
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 159 
 
 mind, "I should wish Alec to dodge us like 
 a detective, to hang upon our footsteps, and 
 meet me directly I left Percy," and, do 
 you know? that was exactly what Alec did. 
 There was a back street running parallel 
 with the main thoroughfare of East Zoar, 
 and joining Topaz Lane somewhat higher 
 up. Instinct told me that Alec would linger 
 there, and, as soon as Percy was closeted 
 with his sexton at St, Simon Magus', I 
 turned up a little court, and, on reaching 
 the back street, found myself face to face 
 with Alec. I have no conception how I did 
 it, but I did convey all that long message to 
 him, and he followed it out to the letter. 
 
 " I have only a quarter of an hour to 
 give you. Alec,'' I said, "and lots to say 
 in it. Let us walk as far away as we can 
 from East Zoar, and you just listen to 
 what I have to tell you.'' 
 
 Then I told him every word that had 
 passed between Percy and me. 
 
 " And you ask me what your answer shall 
 be?" he said.
 
 160 'Verts, 
 
 " Will you promise to abide by what I 
 say r 
 
 " I would rather you did not exact a pro- 
 mise from me, but just advise me uncoil' 
 ditionally.'' 
 
 " I will ; and I will be as business-like as 
 Cousin Percy himself, when I contrast my- 
 self with him, and our relations with those 
 existing between you and your cousin." 
 
 " That is right." 
 
 " In the first place, and as I may with- 
 out being romantic or unbusiness-like say, 
 there is this supreme difference : 1 love you, 
 and your intended husband does not. You 
 believe this ?" 
 
 " Shall I believe it ? Or is it possible, 
 Alec, that you are deceiving, not me, but 
 yourself? Are you mistaking for real love 
 what mai/ only be a passing fancy ? Every- 
 thing for me depends on this." 
 
 " I know it does ; and that is why I put 
 it first, and said it was supreme over all 
 else. Your cousin would — naturally enough
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 161 
 
 perhaps — persuade you that I do not, to use 
 his own graphic phraseology, ' mean matri- 
 mony.' Very likely he thiuks he is saying 
 what is true. It is not true, Elsie. Do 
 you believe me still ?" 
 
 ** If you say it now, I must believe it. 
 This is far too serious for trifling.'' 
 
 "And you wish to believe it, do you 
 not?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then never let one shadow of doubt cross 
 your mind again. I have doubted myself 
 sometimes. I have taken myself to task as 
 though I were somebody else, and asked my- 
 self whether I could take the responsibility 
 of stealing your heart away from your 
 cousin ; away perhaps from all your family ; 
 whether 1 had a heart to offer you worth all 
 the great sacrifice you would make if you 
 accepted my love." 
 
 " And you have stood the test of such 
 self-examination ?" 
 
 " Thoroughly. I knew this must come. 
 I have, as you are aware, rather coveted 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 162 'Verts. 
 
 such a crisis than otherwise. I am doubly 
 glad now that it enables me to assure you, 
 darling Elsie, that it is no passing admira- 
 tion of your beauty or your talents " 
 
 " Alec !" I dreaded lest he should call 
 me clever. 
 
 " Yes ; T will say it, you are beautiful, 
 and you are talented; tenfold more than even 
 the good opinion of your neighbours gives 
 }'ou credit for being. But it is not that. 
 For the first time in my life I feel the master 
 passion, and I deliberately ask you — what I 
 could not do if I had the least doubt about 
 myself — to relinquish your cousin, and take 
 me in his stead." 
 
 " To give up for you every friend I have 
 on earth. Alec? for it may come to that, 
 so blindly are they attached to this family 
 arrangement." 
 
 " Even so, I ask it ; because I know you 
 love me, and that, therefore, I can more 
 than replace them all. Besides, I will make 
 myself a name. I know I can do it, do you 
 not think so ?"
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 163 
 
 " I am sure of it/' 
 
 " Even as I am, they could not say you 
 liad married quite a penniless fellow, though 
 I know I ought to have done more and 
 dreamed less of late." 
 
 " That has been my fault. '^ 
 
 "Partly so, perhaps, but rather let us 
 say nobody's fault, only our destiny. Let 
 us accept it." 
 
 " No philosophy would be required on my 
 part to make me do that." 
 
 " In another point, too, I elect to differ 
 from your Cousin Percy. I do not wish you 
 to give your answer now. I would rather you 
 did not. Go home and reflect well on this. 
 Consult those in whom you feel confidence. 
 See your cousin to-morrow, as arrranged ; 
 give him your final answer, and then come 
 here and let me know mine. Will you do 
 this ?" 
 
 '' I will. Alec." 
 
 We were by this time in some of the 
 fields which skirted the little city, and really 
 there was no reason why I should not there 
 
 11—2
 
 164 'Verts, 
 
 and then speak plainly to Alec, for I knew 
 there could be but one answer. For the 
 first time, in our strange association, I felt 
 that ineffable peace which I was sure could 
 spring from but one source. I had, I could 
 scarcely say doubted, but still held it open 
 to question, what Alec's course of action 
 would be if the decision were thus suddenly 
 thrust upon him. There was no doubt or 
 question now. I knew he loved me, and I 
 felt that perfect peace which assured me I 
 should be wicked as well as weak if I en- 
 trusted my heart to another. 
 
 I am posting up this diary in my own 
 quiet room, on the eve of what is to be, for 
 me such an important epoch in existence. 
 I have not said one word to my father or 
 mother, because I want whatever I do to be 
 my own act and deed alone. Alec is now 
 only too anxious to see my father on the 
 subject ; and, of course, if I refuse Percy's 
 request, that will be the next course to 
 adopt, so I have to think the matter out. 
 
 All the house is quiet, and I open my
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 165 
 
 window noiselessly to gaze out upon the 
 tranquil moonlight. That strange sensa- 
 tion of peace which I felt to-day with Alec 
 in the fields, comes over me again. I am 
 looking down into the garden, where the 
 shrubs are gleaming white in the silver 
 sheen, and casting long black shadows across 
 the dewy grass ; and the grand old chestnut 
 trees at the back are just moving their broad 
 leaves in the light summer breeze. They 
 put me in mind of Alec's hands stretched 
 out to greet me, and I find myself extending 
 my arms in response. Yes, Alec ; I, , like 
 you, am experiencing the master passion. 
 Vv'ere I to go to the altar with Percy, feel- 
 ing as I do for you, I should violate not 
 only the laws of God and man, but the dic- 
 tates of my own heart. I must love you 
 still, and how could I hypocritically offer 
 another the afiection which must be yours 
 alone ? 
 
 I retire every now and then from the 
 window, and write a paragraph, returning to 
 gaze once more at the moonlit garden. It
 
 ]6Q 'P'erts. 
 
 seems to me that tlius it must have been in 
 Paradise when there were no sins and sor- 
 rows, no carking cares, no money, no pro- 
 perty — no Evangelical aunts or Protestant 
 cousins. 
 
 I dread to think what will be the effect 
 on them all of the announcement which I 
 must make. Must I? or will something 
 occur to prevent it ? Will my courage fail 
 at last ? Shall I find on the morrow that 
 Alec has played me false ? The other 
 alternative seems too good to be true. It 
 seems impossible that to-morrow night — 
 when that marvellous period of twenty-four 
 hours shall have sped — I may be sitting at this 
 same casement, looking down on the moonlit 
 garden as now, but with my heart given 
 openly — as it is even now in secret given — 
 to Alec. 
 
 I do not know whether it really amounts 
 to a presentiment, or whether it is only one 
 of those vague fears that haunt us in the 
 very midst of our joys, but I cannot bring 
 myself to believe that all this great hap-
 
 My Protestant Cousin. 167 
 
 piness may be in store for me, and so soon ; 
 that all, in fact, depends upon the utterance 
 of one or two words by my own lips ; that 
 it might have been mine now had 1 not 
 chosen to delay. Shall I be cheated out of 
 it still for my silly indecision ? 
 
 The moon went down, and another radi- 
 ance lit up the eastern sky before I retired 
 finally to rest. I knew it was the light of 
 the coming sun, and felt that, while the 
 former light was like the romance of my 
 love-dream, the latter was more illustrative 
 of the stern realities which would come along 
 with it. That sun would soon wake up our 
 western world to labour and activity ; and 
 along with my fairy dreams I am aware 
 there will come the day's difficulties — it may 
 be the day's sorrows and suffi^rings. Yet, 
 beautiful as that silver moonlight is, the 
 sun is, after all, the real source of life ; and 
 though I have no doubt my late watching 
 will make my complexion a little more paste- 
 like than usual to-morrow, I do not regret 
 this, because I feel the rising sun has given
 
 168 
 
 'Verts. 
 
 me courage, while the waning moon only 
 encouraged my romantic dreams. 
 
 If I look very sallow indeed, perhaps that 
 will reconcile Percy to his loss. But will it 
 scare off Alec, too, I wonder ?
 
 CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 MR. MODDLE. 
 
 HEN I got up this morning the first 
 thing I did was to repeat the 
 process I described at the opening 
 of the story (for really it seems to be de- 
 veloping into one), that is, I looked at myself 
 in the glass. It is not enough to say I Was 
 pale. I was green. Then I felt the mistake 
 I had made in sitting up amid the moonlight 
 and until the sunrise. I had a trying day 
 before me ; and I began by feeling tired. 
 This was worse than anything that could 
 happen to my complexion. However, it is 
 all over now, and I sit down to recapitulate 
 the events of this, which has been so far 
 the most eventful day in my not very long 
 or varied life. 
 
 I suppose the history of the confessional
 
 170 'Verts. 
 
 proves the necessity of some kind of direction 
 for the feminine mind. I do not by that 
 expression mean to speak of women only ; 
 for some men have minds quite as feminine 
 as we have. Some can bear to stand alone : 
 others must lean and twine themselves about 
 something else for support. All women do 
 not feel this I know, but the majority of 
 the sex do ; and therefore I call it the 
 feminine condition of mind. I was very 
 conscious of this feeling when I got up to- 
 day. I felt the need of some unprejudiced 
 and dispassionate person before whom I 
 could lay all the facts of the case, and to 
 whom, furthermore, I could add with 
 sincerity so perfect as to be disagreeable — 
 " I do not pledge myself to take your advice ; 
 very probably I shall not : but still give it 
 to me frankly and without reserve.'' 
 
 Mr. Moddle's name at once occurred to 
 me. 
 
 I am always conscious, when I rise in the 
 morning, of considerable clearness in my 
 ideas, which I frequently lack when I retire
 
 Mr, Moddle. 171 
 
 to rest at night. It is my constant custom 
 to put quietly aside any question, whether 
 intellectual or domestic, that troubles me, 
 and to " sleep upon it." Very often the 
 solution comes the first thing in the morning, 
 and seems to arise from some source as dis- 
 tinctly outside my own consciousness as 
 though an audible voice suggested it. That 
 was the case this morning. My own ideas 
 were certainly not in a lucid condition ; but 
 at all events I was receptive. Perhaps I 
 have a familiar, as though I were really 
 what my fellow-citizens believe me — a 
 female Socrates. Certainly something or 
 somebody suggested almost in articulate 
 words this morning the name of Mr. Moddle. 
 
 " Consult Mr. Moddle." 
 
 I recollect one of the earliest promises I 
 made in this rambling story, was that I 
 would describe Mr. Moddle. I am rather 
 glad I have deferred doing so up to this 
 point, because I should perhaps have been 
 inclined to tone down the portrait a bit ; 
 but I have no compunction now. I will be
 
 172 'Verts. 
 
 faithful and unflattering as a photograph. 
 Still, while I extenuate nothing, I will set 
 down nought in malice. How often Shak- 
 speare's words say what we want better 
 than our own phraseology. I suppose that 
 is one of the surest tests of the true poet. 
 Many people feel this with the psalms, I 
 know. Perhaps, at present, mine is rather 
 a secular mind, but I am more conscious of 
 it in reference to Shakspeare, and, in a 
 smaller degree, a few other poets. They 
 seem to have gone over all my experiences 
 for me beforehand, and to give me excellent 
 advice in a compendious epigrammatic form. 
 Personally, as far as his outward man is 
 concerned, Mr. Moddle is very much the 
 reverse of prepossessing. He is short, 
 stoutish and bull-necked ; but he has a 
 redeeming point in his hands, which are 
 almost effeminately small, and seem to 
 bespeak blue blood in his veins. His 
 immediate origin was, I have heard, ex- 
 tremely humble, and I know he has worked 
 his way up to the position he now holds by
 
 Mr. Moddle. 173 
 
 sheer energy and dogged perseverance. He 
 is certainly a first-rate scholar, and, I believe, 
 had some academical training at a Scotch 
 university ; but he took no degree, and 
 never refers to his college career. He has 
 done the real work of education for himself, 
 just as, I am thankful even now to confess, 
 he did it for me or rather put me in the way 
 of doing it for myself afterwards. He came 
 to Zoar as a Baptist minister, and soon 
 afterwards married a pretty waxen-faced 
 woman who was unsuited to him in every 
 respect except one. She had a little money, 
 and he nothing but his modest stipend. 
 The income she brought him covered the 
 expenses of his moderate household, and 
 enabled him to indulge his only extravagance, 
 which ran in the direction of books. They 
 never had any family, but lived and loathed 
 together in one of the old-fashioned houses 
 under the shadow of the great cathedral, 
 until one day she ran away with a former 
 admirer and left Mr. Moddle alone in his 
 glory. Satisfactory arrangements were
 
 174 'Ferts. 
 
 made as to money matters, and he was well 
 content to pass the remainder of his days 
 as a widower bewitched. Such, however, 
 was not his destiny. Mrs. Moddle died 
 very soon after her escapade, and her de- 
 parture, it was whispered, did not lacerate 
 the hearts of either of her lords. They 
 were even on speaking terms afterwards 
 when they met ; and I do not think it was 
 a common sorrow which linked them each to 
 the other. They agreed that poor Mrs. M.'s 
 departure was " a happy release." They 
 did not say for whom ; perhaps they meant 
 for all three ! 
 
 When the Irvingite movement was new, 
 and that was many years before it ambi- 
 tiously assumed the title of the Catholic 
 Apostolic Church, Mr. Moddle at once 
 joined it. It had been over and over again 
 suggested to him by certain of the digni- 
 taries of Zoar, who recognised his talents, 
 that if he saw his way to accepting Anglican 
 orders, there would be no difficulty on the 
 part of the Bishop. But Mr. Moddle would
 
 Mr. Moddle. 175 
 
 not be merged in this way among the infe- 
 rior members of a body of clergy whom he 
 affected, at all events, to despise. He would 
 be a Triton among the minnows. He lived 
 on sensation. His one absorbing idea was 
 that society was running about with a pencil 
 in its hand, taking down his sermons, and 
 reproducing^ them in the most unlikely 
 places. Not only did he deliberately accuse 
 the dean and canons of appropriating his 
 pulpit utterances as their own, but if any- 
 body hazarded a theological idea in a de- 
 scriptive work, or a three-volume novel, he 
 asserted, and perhaps believed, they had 
 stolen it from him at the little chapel of 
 which he was appointed '* angel," and where, 
 I believe, my father is an " evangelist," down 
 a back street in Zoar. It is strange that a 
 man who is so sensible on most points should 
 be so weak on this one ; but we all of us 
 have one or two soft places in our cerebral 
 developments. I have found out a second 
 soft place in Mr. Moddle's head— or heart — 
 to-day.
 
 176 'Verts, 
 
 The programme I laid out for myself was 
 to go to morning service as usual, by way of 
 sedative, then to call on Mr. Moddle, lay 
 my case before him, get his advice, return 
 and digest that advice along with early 
 dinner ; take another sedative at afternoon 
 service, and then give Percy his quietus — 
 or the reverse. It was possible, if not pro- 
 bable, that what I might have to say would 
 serve as anything rather than a sedative for 
 him. 
 
 I wonder whether these things really do 
 happen by chance, or whether that most 
 unimpressionable Mr. Briggs, the precentor 
 of Zoar cathedral, had some intuition of 
 what would be my special needs when he 
 set down that exquisite anthem which con- 
 tains the soprano solo : "0 that I had 
 wings like a dove ; then would I flee away 
 and be at rest'' Surely that fair-haired boy, 
 the first treble (whom, by the way, I know 
 to be one of the most unmitigated little 
 rips in Zoar) never sang and looked so like 
 an angel as he did on this particular morning.
 
 Mr. Moddle. 177 
 
 The precentor must have known how badly 
 I wanted to flee away and be at rest. Could 
 he have suspected that Alec had asked me 
 to flee away and be at rest with him, and 
 that I was more than half resolved that I 
 would flee away and be at rest with him ? 
 Zoar is a very gossiping little place, but Mr. 
 Briggs could scarcely have guessed that I 
 had, this very afternoon, to decide the great 
 fleeing-away-and-being-at-rest question on 
 my own account. I really believe, though, 
 that seraphic little rip of a chorister 
 helped me in my decision as much as Mr. 
 Moddle did. How strangely sacred words 
 sometimes identify themselves with our 
 secular concerns ! I have a great idea that 
 is why the Psalms have such a hold upon 
 us. The transference from David's expe- 
 riences to our own is often — as it was in 
 my case this morning at cathedral — so 
 easy and so natural. The secular frame of 
 mind was, for the nonce, merged in the 
 sacred. 
 
 It was no very unusual thing for me to 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 'Verts. 
 
 look in upon Mr. Moddle, even after I dis- 
 continued my attendance as a pupil, and I 
 always felt as though I were back in my 
 school days again, when his grim-visaged old 
 housekeeper, Mrs. Bevan, opened the door 
 to me, and ushered me into his little library. 
 There he was, as usual, over his books, 
 coaching up his next Sunday's sermon, from 
 sources far more recondite than those which 
 were probed by any dignitary in Zoar, and 
 which had the effect of elevating his pulpit 
 flights considerably over the heads of his 
 hearers at the Irvingite chapeh 
 
 " Ah !" he exclaimed, laying down his 
 pen as if he was glad to be interrupted ; 
 " this puts one in mind of old times, Elsie, 
 does it not? I suppose I ought to apologize 
 for my deshabille now, though, oughtn't 
 I?" 
 
 " Don't apologize for anything, Mr. 
 Moddle. I am not going to, though I have 
 no right to interrupt you in your work ; 
 but I have a very serious matter about 
 which I want to consult you, and which
 
 Mr. Moddle. 179 
 
 will not allow either of us time for com- 
 pliments." 
 
 " What is it ; a question of scholarship, 
 or" — he added, with a sly laugh — " some 
 further questions as to the Welsh estates 
 and Aunt Phillis's money ?" 
 
 " Certainly not the former, and not exactly 
 the latter. I want to consult you as to my 
 marriage with Percy." 
 
 " You don't want to have the ceremony 
 performed by me, do you ? Remember I 
 can't officiate at St. Hilda's, and your cousin 
 is not likely to secede to us, whatever you 
 may do." 
 
 " Don't laugh at me. I am very much 
 in earnest." And I suppose I looked so, for 
 he straightway became serious too. 
 
 " Depend upon it, Elsie, you shall have 
 my best advice ; but as to the main ques- 
 tion, that is settled long ago, of course." 
 
 " Settled by everybody except those whom 
 my legal as well as clerical cousin calls, 
 grandiloquently enough, 'the contracting 
 parties.' It is at this moment an open ques- 
 
 12—2
 
 180 'Verts. 
 
 tion between Percy and me ; but I have to 
 give him a final answer tliis very afternoon." 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 It is quite impossible to convey in waiting 
 the immense amount of meaning that Mr. 
 Moddle compressed into this exceedingly 
 commonplace exclamation. 
 
 " And you come to me instead of going 
 to your father or any of your relations." 
 
 " Because, as you know, they could not 
 possibly give me unprejudiced, dispassionate 
 advice. You can." 
 
 "Yes," he said; and I believe tried his 
 very best to look as though he could give 
 that passionless counsel. 
 
 Pushing his books and manuscripts from 
 him with an impetuosity which seemed to 
 me to prove that he was going to enter on 
 the subject co7i amove, he continued — ^ 
 
 " When a patient goes to a doctor, or a 
 client to a lawyer, for advice, the first re- 
 quirement, I need not say, Elsie, is that the 
 whole case shall be unreservedly laid before 
 them."
 
 Mr. Moddle. 181 
 
 " And such, too, is the case with a peni- 
 tent coming to confess ; the second being 
 that matters divulged in the consulting 
 room, the private office, or the confessional, 
 respectively, shall be kept secret/' 
 
 *' Of course. Now for your case." 
 
 " You know it all beforehand, but I will 
 not assume such knowledge. There has 
 been a tacit rather than a formal arrange- 
 ment that I am to marry Percy." 
 
 " For wise family reasons, I know." 
 
 " You do not know, perhaps, that he now 
 urges the immediate fulfilment of that 
 arrangement." 
 
 " Ah !" 
 
 " Though I think you know, or guess at 
 all events, that this is not a marriage of love 
 on my part. Do you know this ?" 
 
 " Only as all Zoar knows it, by guessing. 
 The guess is correct, is it not ?" 
 
 " Neither on my side nor on his has 
 affection the smallest part or lot in this 
 matter. That we have openly stated either 
 to other."
 
 182 'Verts, 
 
 "You don't mean it?" 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " But what is tlie alternative to this mar- 
 riage r 
 
 " Do you not guess that ?" 
 
 " I have given up guessing for the 
 moment. You are to tell me all, recollect." 
 
 " I will. I love some one else. Did you 
 know that ?" 
 
 " I have guessed that too ; but tell me 
 who it is." 
 
 " Mr. Lund ; did you know ?'' 
 
 " We are mixing up our parts as catechist 
 and catechumen ; but I will answer you 
 frankly I did not know — and I do not 
 know now — that you love Mr. Lund." 
 
 " But I tell you so." 
 
 " I know you do ; yet that does not con- 
 vince me in the least." 
 
 " That's not polite, Mr. Moddle." 
 
 " I thought you came for advice, not for 
 politeness, Elsie. If you had informed me 
 you came for politeness I should have told 
 you at once that you had come to the wrong
 
 Mr. Moddle. 183 
 
 person. If you want advice I can give you 
 that/' 
 
 " And I do want it bitterly. Here are 
 the two alternatives. On the one side I am 
 to propitiate my family by making myself 
 miserable with a man whom I do not love, 
 and who plainly tells me he does not love 
 me ; on the other, I have only to say the 
 word to link my fate with one whose affec- 
 tion is beyond doubt, and whom I daily feel 
 I love more than all other beings in this 
 world. Which alternative shall I accept ?" 
 
 "Neither." 
 
 This was more than I expected. I felt 
 sure that Mr. Moddle would at once advise 
 uncompromising obedience to my parents, 
 and the fulfilment of Percy's wishes. I had 
 come fully prepared for this, and determined 
 to scorn the advice I was still so anxious to 
 get. What strange anomalies we are, and 
 how we juggle with ourselves in these 
 matters ! Well, at all events, here was one 
 point gained. He did not scare me by 
 passive non-resistance principles.
 
 184 'ferts. 
 
 " You do not advise me to marry 
 Percy?" 
 
 '' I do not." 
 
 " You suggest that I should tell him this 
 afternoon that I cannot carry out the family 
 arrangement ?" 
 
 " Decidedly." 
 
 I know I breathed more easily than I 
 had done for a long time, and I feel sure I 
 showed the exultation I experienced. 
 
 " Yet, on the other hand, you equally dis- 
 suade me from the other alternative ?" 
 
 " Not equally, but much more strongly." 
 
 " And why ?" 
 
 " The former course will cause some little 
 temporary difficulty, and perhaps involve 
 you in some amount of disagreeables 
 with your family ; the latter would alienate 
 them altogether." 
 
 " I cannot imagine why." 
 
 "No, you cannot, but I can. Your 
 Cousin Percy does not stand quite so high 
 in the estimation of Zoar in general, or his 
 own family in particular, as he fancies he
 
 Mr. Moddle. 185 
 
 does ; but even lie is immeasurably more 
 in favour than Mr. Lund/' 
 
 " How utterly unjust ! They cannot 
 know him. My family do not guess that 
 he loves me." 
 
 " They will not be likely to think the 
 better of him for making known that fact 
 to you whilst he was aware you were en- 
 gaged to your cousin." 
 
 '' Then your advice is that I discard both 
 of my lovers and deliberately adopt a life of 
 single blessedness ?" 
 
 " No ; I did not say so." • 
 
 " Then what is your alternative ? For 
 pity's sake, Mr. Moddle, do not trifle 
 with me. Eecollect I have no one else to 
 advise me. Do speak plainly." 
 
 " Very plainly ?" 
 
 "Oyes." 
 
 " Marry me'' 
 
 If he had fired off a gun or got up and 
 executed a maniacal war-dance around the 
 table, he would have astonished me far less. 
 I looked straight into his face, hoping that I
 
 186 'Verts. 
 
 should see some sign he was making fun of 
 me. Alas ! I saw that he was in serious 
 earnest, and that his advice was not dis- 
 passionate. I could not say a word, or even 
 resist his holding my hand while he con- 
 tinued — 
 
 " Elsie, you are surprised to hear these 
 words from me. You think of me as an old 
 man, and deem that I look on you as a 
 child in comparison. I have tried to do 
 so. I have striven, you know how success- 
 fully, to stamp out this love for you — a love 
 which has spread itself over many, many 
 years ; even when you were a child, and used 
 to sit here day after day and fascinate me 
 with your presence. I believed, until this 
 moment, that my love was utterly hopeless 
 — that you would sacrifice yourself, and fulfil 
 your engagement with your cousin, so I 
 made no sign. Now I find that such is not 
 the case, and oh, how glad I am to see that 
 you deliberately put from you such a hideous 
 future ! I am emboldened to tell you a secret 
 that I thought would have died with me.
 
 Mr. Moddle. 187 
 
 Elsie, darling, I love you more than life, 
 more than " 
 
 "Mr. Moddle, let me go," I said, and 
 tore my hand from his grasp, which tight- 
 ened upon it at every word he uttered. 
 " This is madness — this is worse still — ridi- 
 culous." 
 
 " And why, Elsie ? You have told me 
 you do not love your cousin." 
 
 " But I told you in the same breath that 
 I loved another." 
 
 " And I tell you that you do not, cannot 
 love that other, for he is unworthy of 
 you." 
 
 " I will not listen to this," I said, and 
 rose to go, but he detained me almost by 
 force ; at least he looked as though he 
 would have used force if I resisted him. He 
 seized my hand again, and put me back in 
 my chair. I could not choose but hear. 
 
 " You came to me for advice " 
 
 " And you meanly take advantage of that 
 to plead your own preposterous cause." 
 
 " You are making use of some strong
 
 188 'Verts. 
 
 terms : meanness, ridiculous, preposterous ; 
 but I will not let them anger me — at least 
 not yet." 
 
 " Be as angry as you like, I shall simply 
 leave you/' 
 
 " Not until you have heard me out. I 
 am going to talk business for a moment 
 now, not to make love. Will you listen ?" 
 
 " With that proviso, yes." 
 
 " Your father's afiairs are hopelessly em- 
 barrassed. He has borrowed largely from 
 your Uncle Edward, and even parted with 
 his share in Topaz." 
 
 " To him ?" 
 
 " Yes, to him. So has your Aunt Phillis ; 
 and of course there will be no difficulty 
 with your Uncle Sam. Topaz virtually be- 
 longs to your Uncle Edward, and can only 
 be yours by your marrying Percy." 
 
 " Never !" 
 
 " Then, as you know, and as I have long 
 known, your Aunt Phillis leaves you her 
 money only on condition of your not marry- 
 ing Mr. Lund."
 
 Mr, Moddle. 189 
 
 " I am weary of all this talk about money. 
 I will marry Alec, though I lose every 
 farthing." 
 
 " And leave your father a beggar. I 
 am not romancing. It will come to that." 
 
 " I do not, and will not believe it. Be- 
 sides, if such were true, the third alternative 
 would be mine, not yours. I am as wearied 
 of matrimonial as of money matters." 
 
 " Do not say so, dear Elsie. Your mar- 
 riage with me — nay, hear me for one mo- 
 ment — though it might alienate you from 
 one branch of your family, would have ilo 
 such effect with your dear parents ; your 
 anxiety about whom I fully appreciate, since 
 it led you even to contemplate a marriage 
 with your cousin. I am not a rich man, 
 but I am not a poor one. Can you not see 
 in me a third alternative, if I may say so, 
 midway between the death in life of a mar- 
 riage without love and the possibly ephe- 
 meral passion of a man you have known so 
 short a time ? Will you give me a hope ? 
 Will you, at all events, refrain from saying
 
 190 'Verts, 
 
 ' no' now ? Think of it, as you have been 
 thinking of the other two alternatives." 
 
 " Not for one instant. You are breaking 
 your prpmise when you recur to such an 
 impossible proposal. It is best to speak 
 plainly ; I would rather marry Percy." 
 
 I had never realized until the occurrence of 
 this remarkable love-passage how ugly Mr. 
 Moddle was. I knew he was not handsome, 
 but his hideousness culminated when he 
 took my hand and leered his horrible love- 
 looks at me. Now the passion died out of 
 his face, and was succeeded by a look of 
 fiendish malignity, as he said — 
 
 " Be it so ; you have made your choice. 
 Accept that alternative; marry Percy, if 
 you will, but you shall not marry Lund." 
 
 " Shall not 1 Who dares say so ?" 
 
 " I do. Listen again. I am not in the 
 least afraid of your betraying my secret — 
 for I bid you keep it as one — but I caution 
 you not to harbour the slightest idea of that 
 mad marriage you speak of. You shall not 
 even select the lot of single blessedness you
 
 Mr, Moddle. 191 
 
 hinted at. You shall marry either Percy 
 or me." 
 
 " Your imperative moods are simply silly," 
 I rejoined, with a scornful laugh. " Who is 
 to make me ? Y"ou ?" 
 
 "No; your father. His ruin or his sal- 
 vation — perhaps his life or death — will de- 
 pend on it." 
 
 " Mr. Moddle, I have hitherto considered 
 you, not only my true friend, but a sane 
 man. I am grievously disappointed in the 
 former idea; do not give me occasion to 
 doubt the latter too." 
 
 " I care not what you doubt, Elsie. At 
 the risk of your displeasure, I again tell you 
 that no family arrangements — no pretended 
 passion of one who cannot know and love 
 you as 1 do will ever be to you what my 
 love " 
 
 That horrible look came over him again, 
 and he was meditating a dive at my hand. 
 I could not get away, for he prisoned me 
 in the chair ; but I could reach the bell, 
 and I rang a tremendous peal. The grim-
 
 192 'Verts, 
 
 visaged housekeeper answered it imme- 
 diately ; so very quickly, indeed, as to 
 suggest the possibility that she had been 
 listening at the door. Mr. Moddle was 
 back among his books and MSS. in a 
 moment, and said, with a composure which 
 was really admirable under the circum- 
 stances — 
 
 " Good morning, Elsie. Show Miss Llew- 
 ellyn out, if you please, Mrs. Bevan.'* 
 
 When I got into the open air I really did 
 not know whether to laugh or cry at what 
 had occurred, so I compromised the matter 
 by doing neither the one nor the other. 
 Certainly among the possibilities that could 
 have occurred to me as resulting from my 
 visit, the very last would have been a deli- 
 berate proposal of marriage from Mr. Moddle. 
 I had gone with the hope of freeing myself 
 from my matrimonial embarrassments, and 
 lo I I had added to them. Was I a Helen 
 of Troy that every one must act Paris or 
 Menelaus to me ? I began this narrative 
 with what I believe to have been an honest
 
 Mr. Moddle. 193 
 
 appraisement of my personal attractions, and 
 I have no reason to believe that any fairy 
 Eachel had suddenly made me beautiful for 
 ever, yet I found myself in the predica- 
 ment of having no less than three candidates 
 for my hand, two of them expecting answers 
 within a few hours, and the third, and last, 
 still writhing under the unceremonious 
 conge I had just given him. Captain Mac- 
 heath's position was a trifle compared with 
 mine. 
 
 I carried out my programme to the letter, 
 and after taking a short walk in the environs 
 of Zoar, to collect my scattered thoughts, I 
 went home to dinner, though what I had to 
 digest was very different from what I ex- 
 pected. I scarcely gave Percy or Alec a 
 thought. All my meditation was devoted 
 to that ridiculous old Moddle. Coidd it be 
 that he was playing an outrageous trick 
 upon me ? Even now, I can scarcely believe 
 that this morning's episode was real. I 
 should like to be able to think he was merely 
 acting a part ; but that is not possible. 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 'Verts. 
 
 In the calm of the afternoon service all 
 my excitement died away, and I became 
 able to look at my future course as a simple 
 matter of duty. I cannot think I did wrong 
 in paying very little attention to the actual 
 service, and rather letting the genius loci and 
 the tranquil influences of the music and 
 prayers sway my judgment on the one sub- 
 ject uppermost in my thoughts. I doubt 
 whether it is necessary, as clergymen tell 
 us, to leave the world outside the church 
 porch as we enter the House of God. Rather 
 do I think we ought to carry all our burdens 
 in thither along with us and have them 
 lightened. Here again old David's expe- 
 rience seemed exactly to stand over against 
 my own. Like him I had sought to under- 
 stand this complication that was pressing 
 upon me, but it was " too hard for me — 
 until I went into the sanctuary." Then I 
 understood. 
 
 I might, under ordinary circumstances, 
 have been somewhat disquieted to find, as I 
 emerged from the cathedral, my Cousin
 
 Mr.Moddle. 195 
 
 Percy pacing up and down the green, as I 
 knew he would be, but not alone. Mr. 
 Moddle was with him, and left when he saw 
 me coming. Was it possible that he had 
 betrayed me ? He certainly promised, by 
 implication, if not in actual words, that he 
 would keep my secret as though it had 
 been imparted in the confessional, and as 
 inviolate as he knew I would keep his, 
 though he had extracted no promise from 
 me, but rather irritated me by daring me to 
 divulge it. It might have been fancy, but 
 I thought I could see signs on Percy's face 
 that he was prepared for what I had to say. 
 
 " Will you give me your decision here, 
 or shall we walk farther before we enter on 
 the matter ?" he said, in a cold hard voice, 
 which I flatter myself I imitated very 
 successfully when I replied — 
 
 " There is no need of a rural expedition ; 
 I can give it in a monosyllable." 
 
 " Of how many letters — two or three ?" 
 
 " Two.'' 
 
 *' Be it so," was his only reply ; but he 
 
 13—2
 
 196 'Verts, 
 
 scowled savagely upon me with his cruel 
 black eyes, turned upon his heel and left 
 me standing alone in the middle of the 
 cathedral green. He then walked at a 
 quick pace in the same direction as Mr. 
 Moddle had gone, and with the evident 
 intention of overtaking him. 
 
 So the deed was done. I saw Alec sitting 
 as usual at his window ; then, before Percy 
 had left me one minute, and long before he 
 passed out of the wicket which led from the 
 green, Alec was by my side. Holding my 
 unresisting hand in his own, he said, " I 
 know what your answer will be to me now, 
 dear Elsie. I saw the unceremonious way 
 in which your cousin left you. Your mind 
 is made up ; you will take me for better or 
 for worse." 
 
 " Till death us do part, dear Alec," I 
 replied, continuing his own quotation. 
 
 Then we did what we had never done 
 before: paced the cathedral green arm in 
 arm and in full light of day. We walked 
 across to the deanery with the Very Eeverend
 
 Mr, Moddle. 197 
 
 himself preceded by the verger with his 
 silver mace, both of them in full canonicals, 
 and had a brief gossip with Mrs. Dean 
 afterwards. She looked very sly, but said 
 nothing; and the lay vicars and chorister- 
 boys were evidently making their observa- 
 tions too at the unexpected conjunction 
 they beheld. As for the chance passers-by 
 who saw us cross the green in procession 
 with the two cathedral dignitaries (for 
 Wiggins the verger deemed himself one), I 
 am sure they thought we had been married 
 off-hand at afternoon service, uncanonical 
 though the hour might be, and were return- 
 ing triumphantly with the officiating priest. 
 Let me pause here, and, recalling the 
 intense feeling of relief I experienced at 
 the decisive step I had taken, counsel any 
 young lady who may read these remarks 
 and who may be suffering, as I have been, 
 from a plethora of lovers, to halt between 
 two opinions no longer, but definitely make 
 up her mind and act as her conscience 
 dictates. I am not alluding to a mere
 
 198 'Verts. 
 
 flirtation, of course ; in that case two strings 
 to one's bow are quite allowable, or any 
 number of strings for the matter of that. 
 I cannot believe that my position this 
 morning was altogether an exceptional one. 
 Cases must continually occur where duty 
 seems to pull one way and inclination 
 another. I do not pretend to determine 
 which of the conflicting forces should under 
 the circumstances be allowed to sway conduct; 
 but I do suggest that the decision should be 
 made, and so the misery avoided which 
 results from a life — ^if not a heart — divided 
 against itself. 
 
 I wonder how I should have felt if my 
 course had been reversed ; if I had put three 
 letters into my monosyllabic answer to 
 Percy and given Alec his conge. I wonder 
 whether I should have written that excellent 
 advice to my plethorically-loved sisters then ! 
 
 Of course I had no secrets from dear 
 Alec now. I defied Mr. Moddle, and told 
 him the whole truth about the morning's 
 episode, even including the damaging obser-
 
 Mr. Moddle, 199 
 
 vations tliat had been made about him- 
 self. 
 
 " I cannot understand," I said, " how it 
 is you have such a bad character in Zoar, 
 Alec." 
 
 "Not by the revelation of this morn- 
 mg? 
 
 " No, not even under that light. Do you 
 drink, gamble, and otherwise throw stum- 
 bling-blocks in the way of our local Grrundies 
 when I am not by to keep you respectable ?" 
 
 " Your local Grrundies are no others than 
 Percy Llewellyn and Thomas Moddle, Elsie. 
 I have traced every scandalous report about 
 myself to them," 
 
 " And yet you took no notice ?" 
 
 " What need was there ? Let them rave. 
 Am I not a philosopher ?" 
 
 "But then. Alec dear," I urged, quite 
 belying my own feelings, which ran 
 thoroughly with his own, " your philosophy 
 seems to sanction the Grundy reports by 
 your silence. It may complicate still farther 
 our position when you come to speak to
 
 200 'Verts. 
 
 papa. You will have to go througli that 
 interesting process, you know." 
 
 " Of course. I shall make an appoint- 
 ment with your father for to-morrow 
 morning, and it will be strange indeed if I 
 cannot talk down two scandalmongers." 
 
 " They will have the first word, and are, 
 I doubt not, at this moment prejudicing as 
 far as they can the home authorities against 
 us." 
 
 " Shall we go to High Street at once and 
 circumvent them?" 
 
 " I think not. Do as you propose and 
 leave the rest to me. I have learnt the 
 advisability of acting promptly and de- 
 cisively in these crises by the approval 
 which I feel in my own conscience at this 
 moment. If the combination is too strong 
 for us, then we must take the law into our 
 own hands." 
 
 " Bolt ?" 
 
 " Yes. You do not think it unwomanly 
 of me to allude to your pet project, do you ?" 
 
 " You are an angjel, Elsie."
 
 3Ir, Moddk. 201 
 
 Of course T cannot help putting down 
 some of the sweet as well as the complimen- 
 tary things that are said to me. That is 
 the disadvantage of a diary or an auto- 
 biography (I scarcely know which to call 
 this). At the same time, I am not going 
 to chronicle all the tender remarks Alec 
 made to me during that long walk this 
 afternoon. What bold plans we formed as 
 we looked down the dim vista of our future 
 blended life. I hesitated whether I should 
 write "life" or "lives;" but are we not to 
 be — nay, are we not even now — one ? W© 
 were both to work with the brains God had 
 given us, and carve out fortune, not only for 
 ourselves, but for my belongings ; he had 
 none, dear fellow, except myself I felt if 
 my dear impetuous old father could have 
 heard him talk in the way he did to me (I 
 mean as far as the practical business portion 
 of our conversation went) he would have 
 set at nought all possible opposition, and 
 cast in his broken fortunes with our own 
 then and there.
 
 202 'Verts. 
 
 But my narrative of this strange eventful 
 day is not yet done, and I must not sit up 
 late again to-night, for I have another try- 
 ing morrow before me. 
 
 When I bade Alec good-by and went 
 home, I fully expected to find Percy and 
 Mr. Moddle there, or, at all events, to dis- 
 cover some signs that they had been there, 
 but there were none. I thought my dear 
 father seemed a little silent and serious at 
 tea-time, and my mother reflected, as she 
 always did, his changeful temperament. 
 There was nothing very noticeable, how- 
 ever, and it was agreed that I should say 
 nothing until Alec's letter arrived in the 
 evening. I came upstairs as usual, and 
 was, of course, not at all surprised to receive 
 a summons from Hannah to the effect that 
 my father wanted to speak to me down- 
 stairs. I felt a little flutter as I rose to go. 
 My great fear was lest Percy should be 
 present, but the servant, in answer to my 
 query, informed me that no one was there, 
 and I was quite sure that whatever coarse
 
 Mr. Moddle. 203 
 
 the dear old people felt bound to adopt would 
 be not only kindly meant, but considerately 
 put to me. 
 
 When I arrived in tbe cozy oaken parlour 
 I found my father and mother sitting, not 
 as I expected, over Alec's letter, but over 
 their account books, as usual. They both 
 looked worried, and my father said — 
 
 " Elsie, I have bad news for you. Busi- 
 ness has not thriven with me of late, and I 
 am in difficulties." 
 
 " Money difficulties ?" 
 
 " Yes, dear; none but what can, I hope,* 
 be tided over ; but in the meantime I want 
 you to " 
 
 " Marry Percy ?" I could not help say- 
 ing. 
 
 "No, dear. I don't think your Uncle 
 Edward, or even Percy, would like that 
 while I am in straits. No; I want you 
 just to put aside all matrimonial ideas for 
 the present, and help me out of this hobble. 
 You will ; won't you ?" 
 
 " My dear, dear father, of course I will do
 
 204 'Verts. 
 
 anything you ask me ; but what is it ? 
 Shall I go out as governess, or " 
 
 " Not at this moment, Elsie, though it 
 may come to that, for things look very ugly. 
 What I want you to do is to accept an in- 
 vitation which has come from your Uncle 
 Sam, and go to London by the early train 
 to-morrow morning/' 
 
 " To London !" 
 
 "Yes, dear/* 
 
 "But if a time of difficulty is coming, 
 surely the proper place for me is at your 
 side/' 
 
 " If you had been a man, yes," interposed 
 my mother ; '* but as you made what you 
 so often call the mistake of being a girl, you 
 see, you would only be in the way," and she 
 tried very ineffectually to smile. 
 
 " But if I am a girl, you are a woman, 
 dear mother. Will you not come with me ?" 
 
 "A woman, yes ; but a thorough woman of 
 business," replied my father ; " and, as you 
 know, my factotum. You will, I am sure, 
 do as we ask you, Elsie. If you are here I
 
 Mr. Moddle. 205 
 
 shall be worried by this matter ; but if you 
 will only go away, though it mayn't be 
 complimentary to say so, we shall get on 
 swimmingly." 
 
 ** I will, as I need not say, do everything 
 you wish ; but I cannot help feeling you 
 are only sending me away that I may 
 escape the annoyance which I ought surely 
 to share with you." 
 
 " And I assure you, on the contrary," 
 answered my father, "that I only send 
 you away to save myself from the burthen 
 of your presence. Is that plain-spoken- 
 enough, Elsie? Your Uncle Edward will 
 pull me through this easily ; but he makes 
 it a stipulation that you shall be off the 
 premises. Now," he added, closing his 
 books and packing up his papers with an air 
 of finality, " if you want to oblige me and 
 your mother, and to save me from any 
 possible worry, you will not talk any 
 more about these business matters, or your 
 still more perplexing matrimonial arrange- 
 ments."
 
 206 'Verts, 
 
 That was all. We had a merry evening, 
 and were certainly more jovial than usual at 
 supper. I could not find it in my heart 
 to thrust my own selfish affairs upon my 
 parents ; though I felt quite sure the course 
 I had adopted, while it might not look so 
 promising as the previous arrangements just 
 at first, would be the best in the long run. 
 Like my father, I am of a mercurial dis- 
 position, and have considerable power of 
 laying my difficulties on one side, acting in 
 the meantime as though they did not exist, 
 and only resuming the consideration of them 
 when absolutely necessary. 
 
 I wonder what my father meant by my 
 " still more perplexing matrimonial arrange- 
 ments." 
 
 In order not to cause him unnecessary 
 " perplexity" at such a crisis, I took the 
 opportunity of running to the street-door 
 when Alec's letter arrived in due course, 
 and confiscating that document, while I sent 
 back by the messenger who brought it, a
 
 Mr. Moddle. 207 
 
 note I had previously prepared, to this 
 ejQfect — 
 
 " Dearest Alec, — A complication has oc- 
 curred ; nothing serious as affecting our- 
 selves, but touching only my father's busi- 
 ness. I am goiug to London by the early 
 train to-morrow. You can run down a few 
 stations with me if you like ; I want to 
 speak to you, and in the meantime I refrain 
 from letting your epistle reach my father. 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 " Elsie." • 
 
 I anticipate a future entry in this diary, 
 just to say that Alec did accompany me, 
 not a few stations down the line, but all 
 the way to London. He walked as far as 
 the ticket station, which is a little way from 
 Zoar Terminus, and got in there : while — 
 wonderful to relate — we had a carriasre to 
 ourselves all the hundred and odd miles 
 from Zoar to the metropolis.
 
 208 'Ferts. 
 
 When I came upstairs to my own quiet 
 room, after sitting unusually late with my 
 father and mother, I did my little matter of 
 packing all by myself, insisting on that dear 
 good soul, my mother, going to bed, or she 
 would have remained up half the night to 
 see that I had every requisite in my port- 
 manteau for making a presentable appear- 
 ance before Uncle Sam and Aunt Patty, of 
 whom she stood in considerable awe. When 
 this was finished I took this book, which I 
 kept out to the very last, and sat down to 
 make my final entry in it. 
 
 I do not know what vague apprehension 
 oppresses me, but I feel just as though I 
 were leaving Zoar and my dear old home 
 for ever. It may be that I stopped up too 
 late last night, and am over-tired ; but then 
 I always feel this when I am parting from a 
 person or a place for the shortest time. I 
 feel, I mean, as though we could never, by 
 any possibility, meet again. I try to-night 
 to reason myself out of this feeling in refe- 
 rence to Zoar and my home, but it is no use.
 
 Mr. Moddle. 209 
 
 Though I know I am only going for a week 
 or two, I feel just as if I were saying good- 
 by for ever. I should like to go as Alcestis 
 did on the eve of her death, and look at 
 every room, every nook and cranny of the 
 dear old house. I would, if I were quite 
 sure I should not disturb any one, but old 
 Hannah sleeps with one eye permanently 
 open, and would feel certain I was a robber. 
 
 How glad I am that I did not suffer this 
 new " matrimonial perplexity" in the shape 
 of Alec's letter to reach my dear, dear father. 
 I wonder to what extent his business diffi- 
 culties have gone. I hope, and feel sure, 
 that Mr. Moddle exaggerated them. At all 
 events, my Uncle Edward will, of course, 
 take care that he — that we — do not suffer. 
 Let him have Topaz if he likes. I can look 
 at that now as complacently as at the loss of 
 Aunt Phillis's money, which is, of course, 
 involved in my projected marriage with 
 Alec. Sometimes thoughts of this kind 
 make me feel quite hard about Zoar, though 
 I am conscious of injustice in harbouring 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 'Verts. 
 
 such ideas. Let us go, I say to myself, and 
 lead a Bohemian life in London. There 
 are scores of different openings for men and 
 women like Alec and myself there. The 
 kind of qualifications we possess — the 
 "cleverness" to wit which is assigned to 
 me — would be utterly unprolific in Zoar but 
 convertible into money in London. Let 
 the worrying old shop go, and the father 
 and mother depend upon our exertions for 
 the rest of their lives, even if they reaped 
 nothing from the relinquishment of the 
 business. I even picture the dear Copper- 
 field cottage in the suburbs of London, 
 where we could be all so happy and comfort- 
 able, if once the wrench from Zoar could be 
 got over; and why not? Will it not be 
 home wherever Alec is with me — with us ? 
 Vague ideas of a Pantisocracy like that 
 of dreamy opium -eating Coleridge come 
 over me. Let us return to the condition of 
 the noble savage. Alec shall shoot parrots, 
 I will cook them, and the old people sit 
 cozily in their log- hut and eat them ; my
 
 Mr. Moddle. 211 
 
 father's sole occupation being to smoke the 
 calumet of peace, and go down to his grave 
 with the honoured ease of a patriarchal 
 chief. Of course all this would look very 
 romantic if anybody were ever going to read 
 it. Alec may have that privilege one of 
 these days, but nobody else — no third 
 parties. If a girl is not to be romantic on 
 the evening of a day when she has refused 
 two offers and accepted a third, then romance 
 must have died out from our midst altogether, 
 and we must be in very truth the nation of 
 shopkeepers we are falsely represented on the 
 other side of the English Channel. 
 
 14—2
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 TJNCLE SAM. 
 
 SEE evident symptoms tliafc tliis 
 diary is going to expand into a 
 story after all; not a sensational 
 story, perhaps — in fact, there is no appear- 
 ance of anything like sensation in it at 
 present — but still a story. At the same 
 time, as I warned my readers at the outset, 
 it must of necessity be the most inartistic 
 thing possible, because I just link together 
 scraps of my diary with this sort of running 
 commentary. In all other respects the 
 diary itself is the story. Of course I do 
 not say this to disarm criticism. Mr. 
 Moddle used to say there was no such 
 thing as criticism now-a-days ; in fact he 
 did not know when there had been. It 
 used to be political, he said, and was now
 
 Uncle Sam, 213 
 
 personal. If you had rendered yourself 
 obnoxious to a person or a clique who had 
 the entree to a newspaper, you might write 
 like an archangel and yet get bullied, or, 
 worse still, passed over in silence. The 
 fact was, Mr. Moddle had published a 
 volume or two himself, and never got 
 noticed at all. He would have preferred 
 any amount of adverse criticism to silence ; 
 and so he railed against critics and criticism 
 in general. There would be no fair criti- 
 cism, he averred, as long as critics wrote 
 anonymously. The public were entitled' 
 to know who was praising or blaming, just 
 as much as — nay, more than — who was 
 writing what was lauded or the reverse. 
 
 As it was, one big organ set the example 
 of praise, blame, or silence, and all the 
 small fry followed suit. This was what 
 Mr. Moddle said ; but I received it all with 
 a good deal of suspicion, because I knew he 
 had reason for his grudge against reviewers. 
 
 I am writing this amid surroundings 
 which seem to me to form exactly the
 
 214 'Verts. 
 
 antipodes of Zoar. I am in the heart of 
 London, yet not the London of which I 
 have had previous glimpses in the visits I 
 paid with my father to the great metropolis. 
 Then we used to stop at Anderton's Hotel, 
 Fleet Street, see all the stock sights during 
 the day, except just when my father was 
 paying his visits to the city warehouses, 
 when he would leave me in pawn at St. 
 Paul's, the National Gallery, or the British 
 Museum, and invariably wind up with a 
 theatre in the evening. We never made 
 known the date of our advent to my rela- 
 tives in Gower Street until the Sunday 
 came round, when we would take an early 
 dinner with Uncle Sam and Aunt Patty, 
 and go "to hear" some Evangelical or 
 Nonconformist luminary in the evening, 
 leaving before supper-time, for we both 
 liked warm suppers, and Gower Street held 
 cooking to be wrong. It seemed, I remem- 
 ber thinking when I was quite a child, as 
 though it were always Sunday at Gower 
 Street; and the day answered but slenderly
 
 Uncle Sam. 215 
 
 to its bright and happy etymology. It was 
 essentially a day of gloom, and everybody 
 was glad to get a long sleep in the after- 
 noon, so as to abridge the monotony as 
 much as possible. That Sunday siesta was 
 a real blessing — a green oasis amid the 
 desert of Gower Street existence. I only 
 wonder my uncle and aunt did not think 
 it " wrong." 
 
 Those relatives of mine seem to be always 
 engaged in "hearing" somebody or other; 
 it does not matter who, as long as they are 
 not " High." Grower Street in this respect 
 is a very focus and headquarters of metro- 
 politan Evangelicalism, which culminates in 
 what my Aunt Patty terms her Wednesday 
 " T. and P." Those mysterious initials 
 represent " Tea and Prayers." The con- 
 sumption of Bohea is enormous, for 
 ministers and ladies predominate. Then 
 there is conversation — the common English 
 for which is scandal— and in the midst of 
 this. Bibles are handed round on a tray, and 
 the entertainment concludes (but not for
 
 216 'Verts. 
 
 a very long time) with exposition and 
 prayers. The number and variety of doc- 
 trines broached at these religious exercises 
 is infinite ; and the prayers, which would 
 seem scarcely to admit of much divergence 
 of opinion, are decidedly the most dogmatic 
 of all. The only common basis on which 
 these jarring theologians meet, is the dogma 
 that the Pope is the " Man of Sin." We 
 are held to be religious at Zoar ; but I am 
 thankful to say our religion is of a very 
 different order from this. What puzzles 
 me is how Uncle Sam can possibly remain 
 a member of the Established Church, and 
 yet hear the State religion run down so 
 tremendously as it is by all his guests at T. 
 and P. 
 
 I suppose it is very uncharitable, but the 
 idea sometimes strikes me, that both Uncle 
 Sam and his clerical friends of the Church 
 of England stick to the Establishment 
 because it pays. The clergymen virtually 
 say as much. They say, " Of course the 
 High Church party would like us to go out.
 
 Uncle Sam. 217 
 
 and leave them all the loaves and fishes ; 
 and Dean Stanley would like us to secede, 
 so that he might put Broad Church people 
 into all the best things." Even the 
 Dissenters who frequent T. and P. seem, if 
 I may say so, to have caught a sort of 
 Church flavour, and aver that they do not 
 wish the Church of England to be abolished. 
 Their policy is constructive and compre- 
 hensive, they say; not destructive and 
 narrow; which, I fancy, being interpreted, 
 means that they believe a millennial change 
 to be imminent, and that concurrent en-- 
 dowment will be its chief characteristic. 
 In the meantime, they do not wish Church 
 property to be secularized. A particularly 
 broad-bottomed pastor once gave it out at 
 T. and P. that the millennium had actually 
 commenced, and he parodied Wren's 
 epitaph by saying, " Circumspice " — only 
 he called it circum5/>^c?y — "for do we not 
 see," he asked, " the Establishmentarian 
 taking tea with the Nonconformist, the 
 Wesleyan sitting down with the Indepen-
 
 218 'Verts. 
 
 dent, and the very Irvingites eating crum- 
 pets like the elect ?" 
 
 But the most marvellous point about this 
 strange combination, is the nature of Uncle 
 Sam's own avocations. He is called, 
 vaguely enough, a "legal gentleman," and 
 had, I believe, made preparations for enter- 
 ing the same profession as his brother 
 Edward, but stopped short somewhere on 
 the wrong side of the Eubicon. Yet still 
 he has his " offices" at the West End, and 
 appears to do a very large and mysterious 
 business of some kind. Alec knows what 
 it is, and makes pointed remarks about it, 
 when I tell him of T. and P. I confess, I 
 have my suspicions too, seeing that Alec 
 will insist upon calling my eminently 
 respectable relative by the suggestive title 
 of "Old Sixty per Cent." 
 
 I am not at all sure that this same Alec 
 and myself felt properly grateful to the 
 Great Western Eailway Company for the 
 efforts they make towards abridging the 
 journey between the West country and
 
 Uncle Sam. 219 
 
 London. Looking back upon tlie happy- 
 hours I have just spent, it really seems to 
 me as though we simply got into the 
 carriage at Zoar and forthwith disembarked 
 at Paddington ; at least the only portion of 
 the time that dragged at all was between 
 the terminus and the ticket-station, when 
 Alec joined me, and had made matters all 
 right with the guard so that we should be 
 sure to have a carriage to ourselves all the 
 way. I really repented of my extravagance 
 in going by ordinary train, and thought we 
 might just as well have economized and gone 
 by the Parliamentary, as we were in no sort 
 of hurry. I was quite amused to find our 
 reserved compartment labelled " engaged" at 
 the junction, and told Alec he need not 
 have advertised the fact of poor Percy being 
 jilted so publicly as all that came to. 
 
 "I feelj Elsie dear," the darling fellow 
 said (though I, of course, soften down the 
 dialogue for publication), " as though we had 
 made our first start in life to-day. For once 
 in my sombre existence I do not feel lonely."
 
 220 'Vei'ts. 
 
 " And I, Alec, for tlie first time since I 
 have known you, feel other than a dreadful 
 hypocrite. The way I have burdened my 
 conscience on your account is simply fearful 
 to contemplate." 
 
 " And are you happy now, Elsie ?" 
 
 " Were it not for the news of my father's 
 difficulties, I could answer 'yes' unreservedly. 
 And you ?" 
 
 " Without reservation *yes' — at least " 
 
 " Ah ! what, you have a saving clause 
 too?" 
 
 " Only one that I know has occurred to 
 you likewise, for we have often discussed it. 
 You will guess what I mean." 
 
 "Our difference of opinion on religious 
 details ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I don't think that distresses you much. 
 Alec; so don't be hypocritical and manu- 
 facture a grievance on that score." 
 
 " But you would be glad if we could think 
 alike ?" 
 
 " Yes ; and I feel no doubt we shall."
 
 Uncle Sam. 221 
 
 "What, you are going to convert me, 
 eh?" 
 
 " Even that is on the cards, as you would 
 say ; but I was not thinking of that. I do 
 believe we shall find common ground, some- 
 how, though. Do you wish it ?" 
 
 "From my heart. Now we are one in 
 all else I should like us to be united in 
 belief." 
 
 " Or disbelief. You want to convert me, 
 do you?" 
 
 " I am not sure that I do. My creed has 
 the disadvantage of isolation. There is 
 something cheerless in doubt. It suited my 
 previous condition of existence; but is 
 scarcely compatible with my feeling so like 
 a Benedict as I do to-day. Is not this like 
 starting on our honeymoon ?" 
 
 " Be quiet. Does it not prove how much 
 our creed is at the mercy of our feelings, 
 how thoroughly religion is of the heart 
 rather than of the head, and how foolishly 
 we omit the emotional nature of man as a 
 factor in questions of faith ? I would
 
 222 'Verts. 
 
 guarantee to convert yon into a decent 
 Churcliman before we got to Swindon." 
 
 " At which point I might take np the 
 good work, and each of us land red-hot 
 Ultramontanists at Paddington ready to be 
 received by Monsignor Capel next day into 
 the capacious embrace of the Catholic 
 Church." 
 
 "And commence our blended life as a 
 pair of Verts. We will wait awhile for 
 that, though, wont we ?" 
 
 " I think so. Festina lente," 
 I never before realized how true an idea 
 is conveyed in that expression, " the glory of 
 motion," as I did in this particular railway 
 journey. When I set out from home, 
 clouds seemed to gather round my present 
 and future, which even the presence of Alec 
 could not quite dispel. A little while, and 
 these were gone. Then there reappeared on 
 the horizon the intense satisfaction of 
 feeling that I had spoken out; that I was 
 no longer walking about with a lie in my 
 right hand. Even the sacrifice of Mr.
 
 Uncle Sam. 223 
 
 Moddle on the altar of my affection for Alec 
 no longer discomposed me though I knew I 
 had left two dangerous enemies behind who 
 might work me harm through those near 
 and dear to me. But who, on that balmy 
 summer day, and under circumstances such 
 as ours, could dream of disquiet? It was 
 something to see written on Alec's face the 
 signs that all his loneliness had passed 
 away; it was much to sit with his dear 
 hand enfolding mine, while we two were as 
 isolated from the world as though we had 
 found the poetic lodge in the vast wilderness^ 
 but more still was the sensation of glorious 
 motion through the beautiful country that 
 seemed to unrol like a panorama before us. 
 What wonder that I surrendered myself 
 to the easy epicureanism it suggested? 
 Shelley's musical lines to the Skylark kept 
 pacing through my mind — that is, of course, 
 when Alec's still more musical voice was not 
 vibrating there — and my former and my 
 present life were perfectly illustrated in that 
 happy contrast : —
 
 224 'Veris. 
 
 " We look before and after, 
 And pine for wliat is not : 
 Our sincerest laughter 
 
 With some pain is fraught ; 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of 
 saddest thought. 
 
 " Yet if we could scorn 
 
 Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
 If we were things born 
 Not to shed a tear, 
 I know not how thy joy we ever could 
 come near." 
 
 There are some few green spots in tlie 
 desert pilgrimage of life to which memory 
 constantly recurs, and rests in them, when 
 we are in the mood of looking " before and 
 after ;" and I feel sure this, our first railway 
 journey, will be one of these oases for us. 
 Even now it seems as though it had oc- 
 curred a long time ago, and the reminiscence 
 already brought repose. I am prisoned on 
 the second-floor back spare-room of one of 
 those grimy houses in Gower Street, which 
 look as though their faces wanted washing ; 
 and yet I seem to see still the green fields 
 apparently pirouetting around us as we 
 sped through them, the white cottages, or
 
 Uncle Sam. 225 
 
 picturesque hamlets, with the blue smoke 
 lazily curling up through the summer air ; 
 anon a trim town either sped through with 
 a dash, or detaining us awhile at a station, 
 and then away again, off amid the green 
 fields, browsing cattle, and startled horses, 
 once more. I think, if I were a very rich 
 person, and of course supposing I had so 
 agreeable a companion as Alec, I should be 
 tempted to make long infructuous journeys 
 nowhither b}^ rail, and back again, just to 
 enjoy this same glory of motion. 
 
 When Uncle Sam met me at Paddingtoh 
 Station, Alec and I had shot off by some 
 centrifugal action into the most distant 
 corners of the carriage, and that dear awk- 
 ward fellow took such a time collecting his 
 coats and portmanteaus, and changing his 
 travelling cap, when the train stopped, that 
 my relative had got me well into a growler 
 before it could be seen who my fellow- 
 traveller had been. We had taken a some- 
 what protracted farewell in advance, and 
 arranged the Eegent's Park as our rendez- 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 'Verts. 
 
 vous for the morrow, since I knew my 
 Uncle Sam would be oif to his office, and 
 Aunt Patty to her district-visiting, leaving 
 me ample time on my hands for seeing 
 Alec. We agreed it was better he should 
 not be introduced to my relatives in London 
 until the same process had been previously 
 adopted with my parents. I have no notion 
 of Uncle Sam knowing my prospective 
 husband before even m}^ dear father and 
 mother do. 
 
 Uncle Sam always dresses in a sleek suit 
 of black, with white tie, and wears a long 
 beard, just beginning to turn white too, as 
 if to match his neckcloth. This gives him 
 a venerable appearance — as venerable. Alec 
 says, as that of Calcraft himself — to whose 
 avocations, he adds, there is a good deal 
 that is analogous in my uncle's business. 
 
 " I have experienced, though in a very 
 slender degree, Elsie, the delicate attentions 
 of that fraternity to which your uncle 
 belongs, and know only too well how they 
 can smile, and murder while they smile."
 
 Uncle Sam. 227 
 
 If I should live to the age of the 
 Patriarchs (which Heaven forefend), I shall 
 never fail to associate the idea of cold 
 mutton with that of Gewer Street existence. 
 My Uncle Sam and Aunt Patty seem to me 
 to live in an atmosphere of this not very 
 tasty viand. On Sundays I know they 
 have it because they think cooking wrong; 
 and I fancy that the fact of its forming the 
 piece de resistance on so many days during 
 the week results from the position lately 
 assumed by this estimable couple on the 
 subject of creature comforts in generalr 
 They are all " carnal," and I shall never be 
 surprised to find my relatives develope into 
 Vegetarians and Teetotallers. They were 
 very much the reverse once ; Sam was a bit 
 of a gourmet, just as Patty is said to have 
 been a regular flirt before Sam bore her off 
 in triumph from a garrison town ; and they 
 astonished the officers who had been her 
 admirers and my uncle's customers, by 
 going in rather severely for " goody " 
 principles and practice. I was uncommonly 
 
 15—2
 
 228 'Verts. 
 
 hungry after my long journey, and could 
 have made a good meal on even more taste- 
 less food, supposing such to have been pro- 
 curable. But when I glanced from one 
 end of the table to the other, and saw my 
 aunt's lugubrious face and my uncle's less 
 melancholy visage trying to look resigned 
 to the cold mutton and plain boiled potatoes 
 which succeeded a thin soup, and were to 
 be followed by a rice pudding, T could 
 scarcely help bursting out laughing, and 
 saying, in my own hoydenish fashion — 
 
 " You good, pious, uninteresting people, 
 is it possible you ever enjoyed your food, or 
 behaved in other respects like reasonable 
 folks ?" 
 
 I did not, I am thankful to say, so far 
 forget myself; but I fancy I must have 
 looked rather waggish, for Aunt Patty 
 pulled a longer face than usual, and said — 
 
 " You don't seem to take your father's 
 difficulties to heart much, Elsie. It is a 
 marvellous dispensation of Providence, is it 
 not?" and she wiped a sympathetic tear,
 
 Uncle Sam. 229 
 
 which was rather understood than ex- 
 pressed, from her eye. Aunt Patty had 
 been pretty once, and was comely still ; a 
 little dollish, but fair enough to look upon 
 when she did not think it wrong to smile. 
 
 " Indeed, aunt, I do ; but then I am one 
 of the undemonstrative sort, you know. As 
 to its being a mysterious dispensation, I 
 think it is pretty well explained in the way 
 of cause and effect ; though that, of course, 
 does not make it less providential." 
 
 '' Of course not," echoed my uncle, " and 
 what is your theory of cause and effect^ 
 Elsie?" 
 
 " My dear father is too easy, and trusts 
 everybody too readily and too implicitly. 
 He has not improved his business by his 
 Nonconformist experiences." 
 
 " You would not have him sacrifice his 
 convictions to his interests, would you?" 
 asked my aunt, parenthetically. 
 
 " Certainly not. I am only stating facts. 
 Then I am aware he has borrowed largely." 
 
 At this my Uncle Sam, who blushes like
 
 230 'Verts. 
 
 2L girl on the slightest provocation, reddened 
 to the very tip of his Eoman nose. I 
 thought my father had been borrowing, 
 and that Uncle Sam, as well as Uncle 
 Edward, had been "accommodating" him. 
 This rubicunditj convinced me my random 
 shot had taken effect, and that my previous 
 idea was correct. My poor Either had 
 indeed fallen among thieves, and his foes 
 were literally of his own household. 
 
 The nnctuous pretence of sympathy made 
 by this estimable pair is something which 
 I would rather not repeat in detail. I 
 clung as long as I possibly could to a vague 
 hope that I might have been doing my 
 relatives an injustice; but I can no longer 
 disguise from myself the fact that my father 
 and myself are victims of an infamous con- 
 spiracy. Alec has frequently insinuated 
 such an idea ; Mr. Moddle did not deny it, 
 and, by his reticent manner, aroused my 
 suspicions ; but now I know it, and am 
 determined to join Alec hand and glove, as 
 they say, in his endeavours to unravel the
 
 UncU Sam. 231 
 
 family mystery. Of course, now Mr. 
 Moddle has gone over to the conspirators 
 too, it is almost a case of Athanasius 
 contra mundum ; but in this instance. Alec 
 and I — unorthodox though we be — repre- 
 sent the champion of orthodoxy, and I feel 
 that with us union is strength. 
 
 It was settled unanimously, j&rst, that I 
 was too tired to go and "hear'' Mr. Some- 
 body-or- other at Bedford Eow that evening; 
 secondly, that I should have to earn my 
 living, and probably support mj parents 
 too. At least, I could see that was the lin^ 
 chalked out by the conspirators, of whom I 
 shall now speak in their collective capacity, 
 and take Uncle Sam, for the time being, as 
 my representative man. 
 
 " Think over what I have been saying, 
 dear Elsie," he said, as he was sallying 
 forth to week-day church. " Eeally I think 
 dear William will be better off in a little 
 suburban cottage, with perhaps some slight 
 employment in the way of law -stationery, 
 and you with a nice daily engagement.
 
 232 'Verts. 
 
 We shall be so glad to have you all near us, 
 shan't we, Patty ?" 
 
 " So glad," echoed Patty, with a female 
 Judas- kiss. So the door closed on this 
 well-matched pair, and I mounted to my 
 second-floor back, to meditate and write. 
 
 I always did hate people who keep on 
 calling you, and everybody belonging to 
 you, " dear," as though you needed to be 
 continually reminded how affectionate they 
 were, or you would be sure to forget it. 
 Sam and Patty are always treating me to 
 this moral raspberry jam ; and as for their 
 talk one to the other in public, it is all 
 " Petty Pops," and " darling hubby," or 
 " wifey." In private, all the world knows 
 that they quarrel like cats. If I must have 
 raspberry jam at all, I like it spread 
 smoothly and equally, not a great dab of 
 sweet here, and a lump of hard crust there ; 
 but then I am, as I said, undemonstrative ; 
 some folks call me cold and apathetic. I 
 cannot gush. 
 
 So the days have sped on at Gower
 
 Uncle Sam. 233 
 
 Street ; or no, that is not the word. 
 Things never speed here. The days 
 succeeded one another in wearisome mono- 
 tony, broken only by episodes of T. and P., 
 and stirred here and there with letters from 
 home. My father wrote in good spirits — I 
 am condensing the remainder of my Gower 
 Street diary, and therefore speak in the past 
 tense — but I feared then, and know now, he 
 was disguising the difficulties of his position. 
 There was scarcely any reference to my 
 break with Percy, though I could find they 
 were aware of it, and indeed I had ap-. 
 proached the subject in my own letters 
 home. On my part, however, I felt it would 
 be really selfish to force my foolish love- 
 afiairs on my parents, when they were in 
 such difficulties in other respects, especially 
 as the line I had adopted was calculated to 
 increase rather than diminish those diffi- 
 culties ; and my father and mother were so 
 exceedingly delicate on all these matters that 
 I knew they would never touch on them 
 except I led the way. Scarcely anything,
 
 234 'Verts. 
 
 therefore, was said. Percy was only casually 
 mentioned along with my Uncle Edward, 
 who was, my father said, actively en- 
 deavouring to make the best of what all 
 feared was a very bad job. Not a word 
 about Mr. Moddle ; and I dared not ask. 
 
 " Alec," I said, one day, at last, when we 
 had been disporting ourselves in the formal 
 walks of the Eegent's Park, much as we 
 used to do in the vicinity of Zoar, '^ I can 
 bear this no longer !" 
 
 " What ? This cockney Paradise, eh ?" 
 
 " No ; but my present existence alto- 
 gether. It seems to me that I am mooning 
 away my time, and making you do the 
 same, leaving the dear, good old people at 
 home to get out of their hot water, or bear 
 its discomforts as best they may. Let us 
 go back to Zoar, or do something, at all 
 events." 
 
 " I'm rather glad to hear that sentiment 
 from you, Elsie. In fact, shall I confess ? 
 I have been a bit disappointed to find it has 
 not existed before."
 
 Uncle Sam. 235 
 
 It has existed, but- 
 
 " Well, that it has not come to the surface 
 before." 
 
 " That horrible Gower Street existence 
 turns one into an absolute mummy ; but, my 
 dear Alec, if I have been lethargic, so have 
 you. One would think you were qualifying 
 for the Fellowship of the Zoological Society, 
 instead of anything on the foundation of 
 your own University, to see the diligent 
 way in which you study the manners and 
 customs of those interesting animals. 
 
 " Exactly, but that's your fault. My 
 studies of animated nature are limited to the 
 occasions when I take you out. We have 
 found the Zoological Gardens very con- 
 venient." 
 
 " But I don't hear that you are doing any- 
 thing when you do not meet me ; and our 
 meetings are not so frequent as in Zoar. I 
 repeat I fear I have encouraged you to moon 
 like myself." 
 
 " Then please disabuse yourself of the 
 idea, as far as I am concerned, Elsie. I
 
 236 'Verts. 
 
 have been busier than ever I was in my life 
 before, in the intervals between our mutual 
 visits to the Zoological Gardens." 
 
 " Busy ! In what way ? Please give an 
 account of yourself, sir. I have heard of 
 nothing beyond days spent at the reading- 
 room of the British Museum, and evenings 
 devoted to the theatre. Not much business 
 in either of those pursuits, I fancy. '^ 
 
 " My own Elsie has evidently eaten of 
 something for breakfast in the serene retire- 
 ment of Gower Street which does not quite 
 suit her digestion." This Avas always Alec's 
 rationale of my being in a bad temper. I 
 had eaten something that disagreed with 
 me — something acid, and the acidity had 
 transferred itself to my disposition. 
 
 " Let me, however, explain," he continued, 
 " since I do not see the use of unnecessary 
 mystery. I have been doing business even 
 in those unlikely localities. In the first 
 place, I have written to the Oxenford folks 
 and learnt that there will be chances of 
 fellowship in October. Should nothing
 
 Uncle Sam. 237 
 
 of a connubial kind happen in the in- 
 terim " 
 
 " Be quiet, Alec, and let go my hand, 
 the Park-keeper is looking at us." 
 
 "It might be as well to have had a 
 fellowship, if one only held it a week. My 
 classics were a bit rusty, so I have been 
 looking them up." 
 
 " Good boy." 
 
 " Wait a bit ; there is better to come. In 
 the interim I must live, and it would be 
 well to accumulate a small store in addition 
 to my own very slender resources, and stiU 
 in anticipation of those hymeneal con- 
 tingencies before-mentioned." 
 
 '' Well." 
 
 " Well ; so I turned my classics to 
 account; wrote a learned treatise on the 
 digamma which I got inserted in the 
 dreariest of scholastic magazines, at a very 
 fair rate of remuneration, and also translated 
 a few antique gems which have also found 
 their w^ay into periodicals of a livelier turn 
 of mind— still, for a consideration."
 
 238 'Verts. 
 
 " Well done !" 
 
 " But I have not done yet. The 
 theatrical visits to which you alluded as 
 acrimoniously as a good Evangelical could 
 have done, were all in the way of business. 
 I am dramatic critic on a London daily paper 
 — a probationer at present ; nay, let us say 
 it out, simply a penny-a-liner, but the 
 pennies have really mounted up very satis- 
 factorily, and I do not despair of a regular 
 engagement on a fair income if I still prefer 
 to hold my present roving commission." 
 
 And this was the dear active fellow I had 
 half reproached with loafipg away his time 
 in London, when it was only I who made 
 him idle — I who had loafed away my time at 
 T. and P., browsing on cold mutton or yawn- 
 ing under Evangelical stars. I did all I 
 could, confessed my error, and asked his 
 pardon. 
 
 " Well," he went on, drawing a bundle of 
 letters from his pocket. '* I cannot say that 
 you have been altogether idle either. Ecce 
 I"
 
 Uncle Sam. 239 
 
 " You mysterious creature, what do you 
 mean?" 
 
 " These are all answers to the adver- 
 tisement you inserted in the Ti7nes a few 
 days ago." 
 
 "I inserted no advertisement in the 
 limes. 
 
 " No ; but I once again in anticipation of 
 the matrimonial event, did it on your 
 account." 
 
 "To what effect pray?" 
 
 "Can you possibly ask? When the 
 wishes of your affectionate relatives in 
 Grower Street were so very clearly expressed, 
 could 1 fly in the face of them ? They 
 suggested you should be a daily governess, 
 and a daily governess you are to be. This 
 is the copy of the advertisement in the 
 Times. You will not complain that it 
 understates your acquirements. There is, I 
 think, ^gcarcely a branch of human know- 
 ledge or an item of female accomplishment 
 with which you will not find yourself 
 credited. You would not have done it half
 
 240 'Verts. 
 
 so well yourself. The proverbial modesty 
 of genius would have certainly stood in your 
 way." 
 
 I looked it down, and found he had 
 indeed described me as a feminine Admirable 
 Crichton. 
 
 "And your announcement actually pro- 
 duced all those replies ! I thought the 
 governess market was overstocked." 
 
 " With the ordinary run of incapable s, 
 yes ; but not with such articles as this." 
 
 " Of course you have made your selec- 
 tion ?" 
 
 "Oh yes ; and seen the lady. All that 
 remains now is for her to see you and satisfy 
 herself that you haven't a wooden leg or 
 anything of that sort." 
 
 "Well, this is energy indeed." 
 
 " Quite a new line for me, I assure you ; 
 but I have learnt the truth of the French 
 proverb, Ce n'est que le premier pas qui 
 coute ; and moreover I have found this, that 
 in a big place like London, it's a man's own 
 fault if he does not get on ; either he is
 
 Uncle Sam. 241 
 
 lethargic and does not like work at all, or 
 cocktailed, and won't take it because it does 
 not quite square with his dainty preconceived 
 ideas as to the eternal fitness of things." 
 
 " And the same remark, no doubt, applies 
 to womankind." 
 
 " In these days of Higher Education, yes, 
 to a very great degree indeed." 
 
 "And what have 3^ou got for me? I 
 wonder whether I shall prove lazy or 
 fastidious." 
 
 "Neither, I dare be sworn, darling. I 
 have got for you," he went on, selecting a 
 letter from his very voluminous collection, 
 " an offer as exceptional as are the advan- 
 tages you can bring." 
 
 " Not a definite offer." 
 
 "An offer as definite as mine was before 
 Percy got his conge. It is all but settled, 
 Mrs. Fane, the writer of this, is an Ultra- 
 montane Anglo-Catholic, whose son Fred [ 
 knew at Oxford. He was, of course, after 
 all the maternal training, a violent Broad 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 'Verfs. 
 
 Churchman, some few degrees beyond even 
 your humble servant." 
 
 " Is it possible ?" 
 
 " Eeally. On the strength of my friend- 
 ship with the son, I renewed a previous 
 slight acquaintance with the mother, told her 
 the whole of your story — our story- — and re- 
 ferred her to the Very Eeverend the Dean of 
 Zoar. He more than confirmed all that was 
 said by me and my flaming advertisement. 
 The result is that only a call is needed on 
 your part to ratify the whole thing." 
 
 Although not given to the melting mood, 
 I felt the tears rise to my eyes when I re- 
 membered how unjustly I had thought 
 and spoken of Alec. I could only stammer 
 out some insufferably foolish remark to the 
 effect that he had made me feel quite a 
 woman of business all at once. To this he 
 replied with the supremest scorn. 
 
 "Immensely like a wom.an of business, 
 indeed. I should like to hear what your 
 Uncle Edward, or Percy the Beloved, would 
 say on that score."
 
 Uncle Sam. 243 
 
 " What have I done, or left undone ?" 
 
 " Never even asked what you are to do, 
 or how much you are to get for it.'* 
 
 " Tell me." 
 
 " You are to convert one nice, merry, but 
 meaningless little girl of sixteen, into as 
 great a genius as yourself; and you are to 
 
 receive " he named a most exceptionally 
 
 large sum — " which I may inform you is 
 about the stipend of two full-blooded 
 curates, who have been at the expense of a 
 college education." 
 
 " But, Alec, 3^ou are romancing." 
 
 " Possibly. Mrs. Fane may be a w^oman 
 of such discrimination as to loathe you 
 directly she sets eyes upon your gaunt 
 form — -just as I did, you know. However, 
 we are at the Park gates, and yonder is an 
 opportune hansom. Let us go and turn 
 my romancing, as you call it, into reality." 
 
 AVe went ; and, as far as I am concerned, 
 I may add, in the words of Caesar's " thra- 
 sonical brag," "I saw, I conquered." My 
 employer — how strange it seems to write 
 
 16—2
 
 244 ' Verts. 
 
 that word for the first time — is a little, 
 fashionable, almost fast widow ; and her 
 daughter, my pupil, a pretty loveable girl 
 appropriately named Amy, for she is beyond 
 doubt a spoiled child. The barest reference 
 was made to terms, subjects, or hours, and 
 that only to confirm the almost fabulous 
 state of things reported by Alec. The 
 whole business conversation was over in 
 five minutes ; and when we adjourned to 
 luncheon, I felt as much at home with Amy 
 and her mamma as though I had known 
 them for years. We do get to know some 
 people better in an hour than others in a 
 lifetime. Mrs. Fane is an Anglo-Indian, 
 and the national reserve is pretty well burnt 
 out of us in the tropics. 
 
 '' Will you excuse my asking, Mrs. Fane," 
 I said, " whether Mr. Lund has duly ap- 
 prised you of what I suppose I ought to 
 call on?' heretical opinions ?" 
 
 " Miss Llewellyn finds everything so 
 much couleur de rose, Mrs. Fane," added 
 Alec, "that she wants just a dash of
 
 Uncle Sam., 245 
 
 colder colour. She will make herself out 
 the most awful heretic." 
 
 " You are a heretic past praying for, I 
 know," replied Mrs. Fane ; " but I am 
 willing to accept even your estimate of 
 Miss Llewellyn's faith — not that I have 
 any right to inquire into it at all. You 
 describe her as Broad; but she went to 
 cathedral twice a day." 
 
 " So did I." 
 
 " Because you were obliged, you horrid 
 man." 
 
 " But then she only went to look at me. 
 See the awful consequences. I am a pre- 
 destined Benedict. My fellowship will be a 
 hollow mockery " 
 
 " If you get it — very !" 
 
 I assured Mrs. Fane I meant to conveii; 
 Alec out of hand now I had secured him ; 
 and she said — 
 
 " Let him be. Don't hurry the process. 
 A bad Vert is worse than the most deter- 
 mined heretic. I can bear a good destruc- 
 tive Broad Churchman. It is only your
 
 246 'Verts. 
 
 dogmatic Evan' that my soul cannot 
 abide." 
 
 " My firm opinion is/' answered Alec, in a 
 stage whisper, " that Mrs. Fane is one of 
 those wolves in sheep's clothing, a Jesuit iu 
 disguise, and that she is thus civil to us — • 
 to you especially — only to burn you as a 
 heretic." 
 
 " Or else convert vou," she susrsrested. 
 
 " I beg par don, j??er- vert me, if you please," 
 rejoined Alec. 
 
 " As Uncle Sam would say," I added. 
 
 " Well, 'vert you. Let us drop the 
 prefix." 
 
 " And you, Elsie," continued Alec, " go 
 back to the sequestered realms of Gower 
 Street, and drop, in your turn, a bombshell 
 into the family circle by stating that it is 
 your intention at once to accept office under 
 Mrs. Fane. See how long it will be before 
 the Man of Sin is brought to the front." 
 
 I had a brief conversation with Amy; 
 found out what she had been doing — which 
 required very few words indeed to convey —
 
 Uncle Sam. 247 
 
 and then we parted, it being arranged that I 
 should commence my attendance on the fol- 
 lowing Monday morning. 
 
 " To complete this transformation scene, 
 Alec, and constitute you my good genius 
 altogether on the spot, it is only necessary 
 that you should introduce me to my future 
 residence. I presume I shall go into 
 lodgings when I begin with Miss Fane; 
 or do you contemplate my remaining at 
 Gower Street ?" 
 
 " On no account. Hey, presto, quick 1 
 Behold the good genius cap-a-pie. Turn 
 down this next street. Here, at this door. 
 Are Miss Llewellyn's apartments ready?" 
 he inquired, as the maid-servant answered 
 our summons. 
 
 "All ready, sir/' and upstairs we went. 
 
 It is the sweetest bijou apartment in the 
 French, not the English sense of the term : 
 three little rooms au troisieme and a doll's 
 house kitchen en suite. My sitting-room is 
 furnished plainly, but with all necessaries; my 
 bedroom quite in the conventual style. All
 
 248 ' Verts. 
 
 bears the impress of my dear Alec's care and 
 thought. I could not help noticing at the 
 first glance that there was a little standard 
 oak cross on the chimney-piece of the sitting- 
 room, and a crucifix at the bed-head : nor 
 could I refrain from putting my arms round 
 his great brawny shoulders and giving him 
 a kiss before the grinning maid-servant, as I 
 said — 
 
 " You dear, thoughtful fellow ! And you 
 put these for me ?" 
 
 " No ; do not let me shine in borrowed 
 plumes. The ecclesiastical apparatus is an 
 after-thought of Mrs. Fane's. The apart- 
 ment was mine — is yours. That is, I vacate 
 it in your favour pro tern. This morning 
 I project a visit to Doctors' Commons. 
 Do you know what that means, Mary ?" 
 Alec asked of the still wonder-stricken 
 domestic. 
 
 " Please, sir, I fancy it means putting up 
 the banns," she simpered. 
 
 " Quite right, Mary ; it often does." 
 
 " Alec 1" I feel bound to protest.
 
 Uncle Sam. 249 
 
 " Well, make yourself easy, Elsie, for the 
 present. It is not to take out the licence I 
 am going to Doctors' Commons to-day ; but 
 to look into the provisions of two wills in 
 which you are interested. If, however, you 
 would like me to combine pleasure with 
 business, I will at the same time procure 
 that interesting document. You have room 
 for a married couple here, haven't you, 
 Mary ?" 
 
 " Oh, plenty, sir ; and we shall be so sorry 
 to lose you." 
 
 Alec went off to Doctors' Commons, and 
 I returned to Gower Street for the last time, 
 as it was deemed better I should transfer 
 my household goods at once, and get ready 
 for the ensuing Monday, when I was to begin 
 my new life. 
 
 When I announced to Uncle Sam over 
 the cold mutton that I had procured a 
 situation as governess, I saw him ex- 
 change a significant look with Aunt Patty. 
 Apollonius of Tyana was said to possess the 
 power of interpreting the language of birds.
 
 250 'Verts. 
 
 How he got at tlie grammar and vocabulary 
 I never could imagine ; but I have a great 
 idea that 1 also have acquired the faculty of 
 reading the inarticulate thoughts of my 
 neighbours, as well as of conveying my own 
 without the intervention of words. Accord- 
 ing to my interpretation, Uncle Sam meant 
 to say to Patty — 
 
 "Good. We shall be relieved of a re- 
 sponsibility ; but the girl is going ahead 
 rather too fast for us." 
 
 What he said aloud was — " Indeed, that 
 is very creditable to you ; but how did you 
 hear of it ?" 
 
 "From an advertisement. It is in the 
 family of Mrs. Fane." 
 
 " Mrs. Fane, of Green Street, Grosvenor 
 Square ! You cannot mean it, Elsie. She 
 is a Ritualist." 
 
 "Is she indeed, Aunt Patty?" I replied, 
 assuming a childish solemnity. " How very 
 dreadful ! But she is an exceedingly nice 
 woman, and pays me a ridiculously high 
 salary."
 
 Uncle Sam. 251 
 
 " Wages to ensnare your soul, Elsie. 
 She is the most worldly woman in Mayfair ; 
 and at the same time the most active pro- 
 pagandist, nominally for Anglicanism, really 
 for Eome." 
 
 "Anyhow, I am going to her to-morrow 
 morning. You know Eome is not the same 
 bugbear to me. Aunt Patty, that it is to 
 you and Uncle Sam. It appears to me to 
 be conceding a great deal too much when 
 we say we cannot come near a Eoman 
 Catholic, or be present at their worship, 
 without 'going over' there and then." 
 
 "Can you touch pitch and not be defiled ?" 
 Sam asked. 
 
 " Undoubtedly yes ; if you know how to 
 go to work. I could tar a mile of palings, 
 and any number of five-barred gates, with- 
 out getting a particle on my fingers or 
 dress." 
 
 " Your simile is very bucolic, and scarcely 
 relevant," sniggled Aunt Patty. 
 
 " Let us drop the subject, then, dear 
 aunt, as one on which we are not likely to
 
 252 'Verts. 
 
 agree. I will go to my room, and write 
 home to tell them of my good fortune. 
 It's a T. and P. night, I know, is it 
 not ?" 
 
 " Yes ; dear Mr. Morphine, a convert 
 from Eome — a convert, not a pervert, 
 mark you, Elsie — is going to give an 
 address on the ahuses of the conventual 
 system. That will come home to your case, 
 I hope." 
 
 " I don't exactly see why ; since I am 
 going to be a governess, not a nun, and am 
 no more likely to turn Eoman Catholic 
 than you, my very dear aunt." 
 
 I thought I might as well try my skill 
 at a passing gush, especially as I wanted to 
 lead up to an announcement of my depar- 
 ture on the morrow, via a thanksgiving for 
 her hospitality and cold mutton. 
 
 We went upstairs, and made an 
 elaborate toilette for T. and P., my Aunt 
 Patty by no means omitting to sacrifice to 
 the Graces on such occasions. When I 
 came down after having scribbled a brief
 
 Uncle Sam, 253 
 
 note home, to announce my brave day's 
 work, and Alec's share in it, my uncle 
 said — 
 
 " Shall I send your letter to the post 
 with mine? I am writing* to Zoar, too." 
 
 So the two missives went together. 
 
 I am afraid I did not profit as I might by 
 Mr. Morphine's address. I felt myself 
 continually wandering off from tlie abuses of 
 monasteries and convents to indulge in 
 brown studies as to my own cosy little 
 convent, and wondering how long it would 
 be before I should close my spinsterly caree^ 
 I was certainly a member of a contemplative 
 order all through that evening; and when 
 Mr, Morphine, having been set on me, as I 
 could see, by Aunt Patty, came and asked 
 me what I thought of his harangue, I shut 
 him up by telling him plainly I had not 
 heard one word of it. 
 
 How delicious is the sensation of earning 
 money for the first time, and so feeling 
 independent ! I do not think I am mer- 
 cenary ; but I have been sitting up to-night
 
 254 'Verts. 
 
 in my second-floor back tottling up little 
 sums and seeing what our joint incomes will 
 be — I mean mine and Alec's — and liow far 
 that will go towards providing for the dear 
 old folks living as they have been accus- 
 tomed to do, supposing the worst comes to 
 the worst ; that my father is ruined — Aunt 
 Phillis unrelenting, and the Topaz estate ir- 
 retrievably gone. I have wandered off into 
 little division sums and seen how much I 
 shall be making a day, and what I can put 
 by to form a nest ^^g, so that there may be 
 something to begin upon when the exodus 
 takes place. I have even found myself 
 looking at these idiotic sheets, and won- 
 dering whether a publisher would give me 
 anything for them if I expanded them into 
 a novel. I wish something startling would 
 take place, in reference to the Topaz Farm 
 or the Welsh estates, so that I might get a 
 spice of sensation into my story. Supposing 
 Alec were to discover something at Doctors' 
 Commons to-day, in reference to the wills.
 
 Uncle Sam, 
 
 255 
 
 A will is always an interesting feature in a 
 story. 
 
 I will retire to rest now, and hope for the 
 best. Things have taken such a happy 
 turn to-day, that anything may be on the 
 cards.
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 THE TORN PAGE IN THE DIARY. 
 
 MONG the cardinal virtues recog- 
 nised at Gower Street, the most 
 human were those enshrined in the 
 proverb, " Early to bed and early to rise," 
 &c. I mean the others, such as Predesti- 
 narianism, and unflinching opposition to 
 the Eoman Catholic system, which were 
 two of the most prominent at T. and P., 
 seem, as far as I, in my unregenerate con- 
 dition, can see, to have little bearing on 
 social existence. This double maxim too, 
 of early retirement and rising, was not re- 
 commended on the usual grounds — namely, 
 that it made a man healthy, and wealthy, 
 and wise ; it was looked upon in the light 
 of a duty — disagreeable, and ergo to be 
 adopted. Just when we were getting
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary, 257 
 
 sociable of an evening, if sociability could 
 ever be predicated of us at all, and just as 
 (I could not help thinking) the hot water 
 was being brought in at home for my 
 father's " night-cap," a prim maid-servant 
 used to appear with a trayfal of bibles 
 and hymn-books, and, after protracted 
 family devotions, we retired to our rooms. 
 I still adhered to my old habit of writing ; 
 and during my stay with Uncle Sam was 
 continually losing my credit for the cardinal 
 virtues by oversleeping myself in the morn- 
 ing, and coming down when my aunt wns 
 in the thick of a chapter of Chronicles, or the 
 " Eeflections" in Brown's Family Bible. I 
 have lost all chance of attaining the cardinal 
 virtues now, for have I not formed a league 
 with Mrs. Fane ? and did not Alec come this 
 morning, in the most brazen-faced way, and 
 fetch me in a four-wheeler ? My aunt said 
 nothing, it is true, but she looked as though 
 she felt it acutely, and wiped away the 
 accustomed tear from her sympathetic eye 
 when I introduced her to Alec. If she had 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 'Verts. 
 
 given me an opportunity, I would have en- 
 lightened her as to the relations in which 
 we stand. It would have relieved her mind, 
 I think, but she was too horrified to allow 
 much conversation, and is, I feel sure, glad 
 to have washed her hands of me. 
 
 Uncle Sam was not there. We got up 
 as usual, it seemed to me in the dead of 
 night, and for once I was down in time for 
 prayers : but Uncle Sam was off before me, 
 and Patty prayed for him on his journey in 
 a little paragraph which was made to fit 
 into Thornton's Family Prayers in case of 
 emergency. Those moveable paragraphs 
 are terrible stumbling-blocks, and I dis- 
 graced myself dreadfully one evening when 
 Patty had a cold and asked me to read 
 prayers for her. Uncle Sam never would 
 read — I cannot tell why — and I fancied, 
 rightly or wrongly, was always glad when 
 family devotions, and especially T. and P., 
 were over. Uncle and aunt have no off- 
 spring; but in the Family Prayers there is 
 a passage where a blessing is asked on the
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 259 
 
 " children and servants of this family." I 
 did not notice the italics, and serenely read 
 the petition through ; nor do I think I 
 should have observed my faux pas (for I 
 v^as thinking hard of something else), had 
 I not heard the servants sniggling. The 
 cook exploded unmistakeably, and was 
 frowned out of the room by Aunt Patty, 
 who I felt sure would read herself into a 
 bronchitis before she ever asked me to 
 officiate for her again. 
 
 " Where is Uncle Sam journeying, 
 auntie ?" I asked, assuming the accustomed 
 childish manner which I always adopted 
 when I wanted to ferret anything out. 
 
 " To the north of Ireland, dear, on an 
 evangehzing mission," she replied; and do 
 you know, it is a dreadful thing to say, but 
 I felt certain Patty was not telling the 
 truth. This is one of the most questionable 
 gifts I possess, that of knowing, apart from 
 the ordinary outward and visible signs, 
 when people are fibbing. I really do not 
 like it. My maxim always was, "Let people 
 
 17—2
 
 260 'Verts, 
 
 say what tliey like of me behind my back 
 as long as they are civil to my face," but it 
 is no use for them to be civil to my face, 
 since I can thus see through them. I never 
 could echo the prayer that w^e might see 
 ourselves as others see us ; and really I 
 find the reverse of it — namely, the seeing 
 people as they are, almost as uncomfortable 
 and ineligible. It takes the glamour away 
 from life, and renders Fools' Paradises im- 
 possible. Perhaps I could have liked Cousin 
 Percy had T not seen quite so far into him. 
 Even Mr. Moddle might have had a chance 
 had I been a trifle more obtuse. 
 
 " Why does he start evangelizing in the 
 middle of the night? And why did he not 
 tell me he was going?" 
 
 " The post " 
 
 Aunt Patty was just going to commit 
 herself; but I really was anxious not to 
 make her tell more fibs than were necessary. 
 
 " The post does not come in during the 
 small hours, does it? And I was up until 
 after midnight, writing.''
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 261 
 
 Aunt Patty reddened a little and said — 
 
 " Your uncle, dear Elsie, does not sound 
 a trumpet before liim/' 
 
 " As the hypocrites do?" 
 
 " And lie very often receives sudden im- 
 pressions to do things/' 
 
 "Does he indeed, and in the middle of 
 the night, too? It must be very incon- 
 venient." 
 
 My aunt said something about the wind 
 blowing where it listed. 
 
 "But that's like the spirit-rappers. 
 They talk of impressions, and say they 
 come oftenest in the middle of the night 
 Do you know, they get so angry with me 
 when I tell them it's indigestion." 
 
 I have passed, thank goodness, out of 
 the atmosphere of this particularly small 
 talk now — passed, never more to return I 
 hope, out of the orbit of T. and P. And 
 yet 1 cannot help pausing to ask why T. 
 and P. people think it necessary to make 
 life so utterly uninteresting, and themselves 
 so exceedingly objectionable, and cannot for
 
 262 'Verts. 
 
 the life of me see why what are called 
 spiritual views of life should jaundice their 
 professors against all that makes existence 
 loveable — nay, liveable. Among those 
 phases of faith through which I have so 
 far passed, none is to me more curious than 
 this. They are — I mean those of my im- 
 mediate acquaintance, who belong to the 
 Evangelical school — thoroughly good people, 
 I daresay ; I am sure I try to believe and 
 think so. But they do possess the singular 
 knack of making their religion uncomfort- 
 able to themselves and everybody else. 
 Why this should be so, I repeat I cannot 
 imagine. 
 
 I am glad to think that this diary-keep- 
 ing is almost over. I hear a voice within 
 me saying, much as somebody observed to 
 Macbeth, " Write no more." It seems fear- 
 fully egotistical to be always chronicling 
 small beer about one's self. Besides, now 
 that Alec's existence is so blended with my 
 own, I feel as though it were only one 
 segment of our united selves writing, and
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. ^ 263 
 
 that a single moiety has no right to assume 
 responsibility for the entire duality. These 
 are uncommonly long words, I know ; but 
 indulge me, kind reader (always supposing 
 I am ever going to have readers), in a single 
 outburst of egotism, and I liave done. 
 
 Everything is, indeed, as Alec said, cou- 
 leur de rose. I get the best accounts from 
 Zoar. My father is being " pulled through" 
 by Uncle Edward. I have no notion in 
 what that process consists ; but it sounds 
 to me rather like a violent one. I knew 
 Aunt Patty was telling me a story ; Uncle 
 Sam has gone down to Zoar, and never 
 went to the north of Ireland at all. Alec 
 says he wants to be " in at the death," but 
 I have no notion what he means. Even 
 Percy and Mr. Moddle, my father tells me, 
 are all kindness. How much better people 
 are than we give them credit for ! I really 
 fancied my two rejected suitors would 
 wreak their vengeance on the devoted heads 
 of my parents, in fact they almost threatened 
 to do so ; and here I am told that they are
 
 204 'Verts. 
 
 '' all kindness." I cannot be surprised at 
 their being piqued just at the moment. It 
 must be so annoying for a big, full-grown 
 man to be refused l)y a gaunt girl like me. 
 But then I have a theory that no man 
 should ever lay himself open to such an 
 indignity. He ought to be able to see 
 beforehand how the land lies. If the 
 custom of Leap Year should ever become 
 permanent, and strong-minded ladies take 
 to wooing, I am quite sure I should never 
 incur the danger of a refusal from the 
 swain to whom I laid siege. I should read 
 him through and through like a book 
 beforehand; but then I have, as I said, 
 this fatal gift of knowledge, and am " clever." 
 Perhaps that is what the Zoar folks meant 
 by this epithet. Dear old Zoar ! what ages 
 ago it seems since I was there. It appears 
 as far off as Timbuctoo or California. 
 
 My work is child's play. I try to gild 
 the pill with Amy by adopting old 
 Ascham's direction ''teach the childe cheer- 
 fullie and plainlie." What a real man
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 265 
 
 before his time dear Eoger was ! Mr. 
 Moddle taught me Latin composition en- 
 tirely on Ascham's plan of retranslating* the 
 epistles of Cicero, and not omitting the 
 suaviter in modo element. "Where the childe 
 doth well, either in choosing or true placing 
 of Tullie's words, let the master praise him, 
 and say ' Here ye do well,' " says honest 
 Eoger, " for I assure you there is no such 
 whetstone to sharpen a good witte, and en- 
 courage a will to learning as is praise." 
 
 I dine with the Fanes about five days 
 out of the seven, and the exception is f#r 
 Alec to be absent. Then of course he sees 
 me home, and I give him his conge ruth- 
 lessly at the street door. I am gradually 
 losing all my landmarks in this diary, and 
 am not in the least responsible for past and 
 present tenses. It would be just as easy 
 to write or print " gave" as " give" there, 
 but I fancy I rather like the idea of 
 bewildering my possible readers and critics ; 
 or is it the truth that I am a little bewil- 
 dered myself ? Perhaps so.
 
 266 'Verts. 
 
 One night when we had come as usual to 
 the portal, and I rigidly delayed putting my 
 latch-key into the keyhole until Alec had 
 said good-night — for he always looked 
 threateningly as to coming in — he said — 
 
 " I don't feel in the least bed-like, nor do 
 I think you are inclined for Morpheus, I 
 will come in and chat." 
 
 " That you will not," I replied. 
 
 " And what for no? Are you going to 
 play Miss Propriety ?" 
 
 " Perhaps. You do not enter." 
 
 " Then let us take a walk about the quiet 
 streets, and talk a bit." 
 
 " I am not quite sure that such a pro- 
 ceeding would enter into the role of Miss 
 Propriety ; but I will do that ;" and we did 
 take a walk, first about the quiet streets, 
 and next into the quieter Park, where we 
 sat down on one of the benches with 
 guardsmen making demonstrative love to 
 erratic cooks and housemaids on all sides of 
 us. 
 
 I began to take Alec to task as to his
 
 Tlie Torn Page in the Diary. 267 
 
 discoveries at Doctors' Commons, about 
 which he thinks proper to preserve the 
 most ridiculously mysterious silence; but, 
 carried away, perhaps, by the atmosphere of 
 billing and cooing around him he begun, 
 after a little preliminary billing and cooing 
 on his own part upon which I do not feel 
 bound to expatiate — 
 
 " Tell me, Elsie, why you were so rigid 
 on the subject of my not crossing the 
 threshold to-night. Was it really Miss 
 Propriety ?" 
 
 " Let us put it to the score of the 
 lodginghouse people, and say they wouldn't 
 like it/' 
 
 " Which is not the case ; they know me 
 — know us — too well." 
 
 " They may, but the neighbours don't. 
 Put it down to that." 
 
 " But why not speak out ? Are you not 
 above what simpering girls call les con- 
 venances ?" 
 
 "Can any girl, simpering or otherwise, 
 afford to be?"
 
 268 'Verts. 
 
 " Oh ! if you put it as a matter of 
 /. s. dr 
 
 " I did not mean that exactly ; but put it 
 so. What would Mrs. Fane think ?" 
 
 " What would Mrs. Grundy think ?— the 
 Tiniversal standard. But I want to put 
 Grundy aside for the moment, and discuss 
 the matter on broad principles." 
 
 " Do you mean Broad with a big B ?" 
 
 "Yes; I mean this. Does not breadth 
 of doctrine involve almost of necessity 
 corresponding breadth of practice ?" 
 
 "As Mrs. Fane's sacramental theory 
 logically leads to her genuflexions at the 
 Consecration and Incarnatus?" 
 
 "Yes ; or Sam's Calvinism to T. 
 and P. Does not anything like breadth 
 of creed lift us out of the atmosphere of 
 Grundy ?" 
 
 " Into the most transcendental Anti- 
 nomianism ?" 
 
 " Well, if you like good long Meso- 
 potamia-like words, yes. Are we not a law 
 unto ourselves?"
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 269 
 
 " It were a perilous thing to say or think 
 so !" 
 
 •' As an exoteric creed for the uninitiated 
 vulgar, yes ; but for us who have passed the 
 portal of the sanctuary " 
 
 " That was just what I did not allow you 
 to do, you see." 
 
 " But ask yourself, my darling, whether 
 it be not utterly unreal for you to adopt this 
 tone of exclusion towards me ; and that is 
 the one thing to dread, Elsie, lest the 
 faintest suspicion of untruthfulness or un- 
 reality should ever come between us twaia ; 
 we should be ' twain' then instead of one as 
 we are now, are we not ?" 
 
 I answered him to his satisfaction, and he 
 went on — 
 
 ''Let us, as a matter of principle, set 
 these gossips — if there be gossips out of 
 Zoar — at defiance. Supposing they did 
 grumble ; supposing even my most elastic of 
 friends, Mrs. Fane, got scandalized, could we 
 not solve the difficulty at a stroke ?" 
 
 "How?"
 
 270 'Verts. 
 
 " Hymen would be our deus ex machina. 
 It is but one more visit to Doctors' 
 Commons, twenty minutes interview with 
 a mild curate, and the glaring impropriety 
 would be metamorphosed into a bounden 
 duty. Do you believe in this power of the 
 clergy, the power of an empty ceremony to 
 transform wrong into right ?" 
 
 "I did not say I did, but " 
 
 " I know what is coming. People do. 
 Those ' people' are our sole standard of 
 morality. The conventionalities are our 
 creed, and our practice is to set our prin- 
 ciples at defiance whenever we have the 
 chance of doing so without being found 
 out." 
 
 '' Indeed ! I should write a satire if I 
 were you." 
 
 " What more bitter satire can there be 
 than you and I sitting out here in the cold 
 to talk our heresies, when there is a decent 
 room yawning to receive us ?" 
 
 "It's very romantic." 
 
 " In the Zoar Woods it would be, and
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 271 
 
 delicious too ; but not here, where the very 
 moonlight seems adulterated." 
 
 " My Alec is severe." 
 
 " It angers me to see anything small in 
 you, Elsie." 
 
 " Angers you with me ?" 
 
 '' No ; but with society which tries so 
 successfully to dwarf you down to its own 
 low standard." 
 
 Next day, to my shame and confusion of 
 face. Alec broached this matter at dinner, 
 and chaffed me in the most dreadful way at 
 my assumption of Miss Propriety, particularly 
 after my Zoar escapades. To my astonish- 
 ment he found a warm ally in Mrs. ^'ane. 
 As for poor Amy, she sat with her great 
 meaningless eyes wide open, wondering what 
 it was all about. 
 
 " Eeally, Elsie," Mrs. Fane said, for she 
 had got to call me by my Christian name, 
 " I have found that the devotion to Grundy 
 is thrown away. If one could alwa3^s ride 
 the high horse, it might be as well perhaps . 
 but I have found that impossible, and the
 
 272 'Verts, 
 
 creed of Grrundy is as sanguiDary as that of 
 Draco. One faux pas and you are im- 
 molated. Dovecot Hill was fatal to you." 
 
 " But people here know nothing about 
 that." 
 
 " Oh, on the grounds of what ' people 
 say' you are right. I was discussing the 
 matter rather with a reference to one's own 
 innate sense of propriety." 
 
 " Checked with the compensating in- 
 fluence of Grundy," suggested Alec. 
 
 " Yes. In your own consciousness, and 
 if Grundy knew, Elsie, you were undone on 
 Dovecot Hill. Do you cave in ?" 
 
 " I suppose I must." 
 
 That night Alec came in, smoked his 
 cigar all up the stairs, routed up the land- 
 lady to say a cheery word or two, and even 
 asked the maid-servant whom we met going 
 to bed, whether she was not shocked at the 
 bad hours Miss Llewellyn kept ; and even- 
 tually sat deep into the small hours, de- 
 fending his position against a long series of 
 assaults on my part made with the object
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 273 
 
 of ascertaining what he had discovered at 
 Doctors' Commons. 
 
 From the transparently triumphant man- 
 ner he assumes, I am sure he holds a trump 
 card in the will which he means to play off 
 suddenly and astonish me as he did in the 
 matter of Mrs. Fane and my lodgings. I 
 have discovered that he is in correspondence 
 with Briggs, the precentor of Zoar Cathedral, 
 who was at the same college with him, 
 though considerably his junior, and with 
 whom he had a slight acquaintance only at 
 Zoar. He calls him his special corre- 
 spondent at the seat of war now. 
 
 On Sundays Alec and myself accompany 
 Mrs. Fane and Amy to an advanced 
 Eitualistic church in the suburbs ; and it 
 is a problem for me to study the effect of 
 the sensuous worship on those two widely 
 different, but apparently equally unpro- 
 mising natures. Mrs. Fane is thoroughly 
 a woman of the world ; Alec the very type 
 of the philosophical sceptic ; and yet I have 
 seen each of their eyes filled with tears at 
 VOL. I. IS
 
 274 'Verts. 
 
 some thrilling passage in an Anglican Mass, 
 or a more than usually pathetic stanza in 
 one of those hymns they sing so effectively 
 at St. Cyprian's. It is, I fancy, the only 
 church in London where they have adopted 
 a modification of the beautiful Eoman 
 Benediction Service. I scarcely know, in- 
 deed, whether I ought to call it a modifica- 
 tion ; for with the single exception that 
 they substitute a Litany of the Elessed 
 Sacrament for that of our Lady of Loretto, 
 the two services are identical. The " Host" 
 is reserved, elevated, and benediction given 
 to the sound of silvery bells and the fumes 
 of incense, just as in the Church of Eome 
 herself; and I constantly see Alec's head go 
 bobbing down at the " veneremur cernui," 
 and Mrs. Fane's nose level with the tessel- 
 lated pavement, whilst I sit erect like a 
 good Protestant, and coldly wonder whether 
 it is not good for us to be there ; whether 
 anything is not better than that cold creed 
 of the sceptic which would appertain to 
 them both — perhaps does still appertain to
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 275 
 
 them both, and in a degree to myself too, 
 but leavened in their cases, at all events, 
 with an element of beauty and hopeful- 
 ness in their susceptibility to the influences 
 of that ornate ritual. 
 
 Little Amy, my own pretty pupil, is the 
 type of the worshipper pure and simple. 
 No doubt has ever shadowed that childish 
 mind, nor is it ever likely to do so. She is 
 one of those unquestioning little bodies (I 
 wonder whether we mean by that expression 
 to exclude the idea of soul) who give its 
 devotees to every faith ; and whose lot is &o 
 purely enviable because they never appear 
 to have any trouble in making up their 
 minds on any subject. They take them 
 ready made. It is a matter of feeling witii 
 them from beginning to end. They live, 
 love, marry, perhaps die, without any very 
 keen interest in the matter, so far re- 
 sembling those lower orders of creation 
 Alec on a certain memorable occasion made 
 believe to envy. 
 
 '' I sometimes feel, Elsie," he said to me 
 
 18—2
 
 276 'Verts, 
 
 in explanation one Sunday night, when I 
 had roasted him not a little abont his 
 genuflexions at St. Cyprian's, '' as though I 
 should like to swamp Reason in these 
 matters of religion altogether, and develope 
 Faith o\i\j. Newman and Manning must 
 have done that." 
 
 "But I thought you defined Faith as 
 reasonable belief based on evidence, and 
 declined to draw any line of distinction 
 between Faith popularly, and Faith theo- 
 logically so termed." 
 
 " That has been my theory, but will it 
 hold water ?" 
 
 " I liardly know," 
 
 " And I am beginning to doubt it. I 
 talked the other night, in my capacit}" of 
 descriptive writer on a penny paper, to a 
 poor girl who had thrown herself over 
 London Bridge, and been rescued from 
 drowning. I should immensely like to talk 
 to one of those — not the Cardinal or the 
 great Doctor of the Oratorians — but one of 
 the smaller men of my own calibre who had
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. ^11 
 
 made the plunge from Anglicanism to 
 Kome." 
 
 " Well, there is no dearth of Verts. But 
 why does not your ornate Anglicanism 
 suffice you ?" 
 
 " Because I cannot reconcile it with 
 Estabhshmentarian principles. At every 
 genuflexion I have to ask myself whether I 
 am not flying in the face of the Arches 
 Court and the Judicial Committee of Privy 
 Council. In Eome it is all recognised 
 and a matter of course. Never be sur- 
 prised, Elsie, if you find Mrs. Fane and 
 myself become a brace of interesting 
 'verts." 
 
 " Even with your avowed rationalistic 
 principles." 
 
 " Even so." 
 
 "You are an enigma, Alec." 
 
 " But you have solved me, darling Elsie, 
 have you not ?" 
 
 " I think so. I believe you to be 
 thoroughly religious — naturally rehgious, I 
 would say — but scared ofl' almost into
 
 278 'Verts. 
 
 irreligion by anything conventional in creed 
 or practice.'* 
 
 "As far as I can appraise myself after 
 really an honest stock-taking, I believe I am 
 a neologian in my esoteric, but a Catholic 
 in my exoteric creed/' 
 
 " What a combination !" 
 
 * * * * 
 
 I warned yoa, courteous reader, did I 
 not? at the outset, that I was not going to 
 confess — at least, that I did not pledge 
 myself to a full confession. I also suggested 
 a brief while since that I might not im- 
 probably be led to bring this diary to a 
 close. I am going to end it finally with 
 this chapter, and even before doing so, I 
 tear up several pages, and in their place put 
 those mysterious asterisks. To be altogether 
 dramatic, let me go on and say you must 
 imagine a period of about two months to 
 elapse between these two entries. I cannot 
 help what inferences may be drawn from 
 the hiatus. It would be quite impossible 
 for me to let those written pages remain in
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 279 
 
 existence. I am cremating tkem as I pen 
 the present lines. They are slowly con- 
 suming on the hearth, and Alec is stirring 
 their charred remains irreverently about 
 with my poker to see that none of the 
 sheets remain unconsumed. 
 
 " By all means let them perish oiF the 
 face of the earth," says Alec, who is com- 
 fortably arrayed in dressing-gown and 
 slippers. " If you really want to finish off' 
 that volume with the interesting and sug- 
 gestive gap in it, I will go to my study 
 ontil you have done ; only let me remind 
 you that 'tis now the very witching time of 
 night, and we both of us have to be up early 
 in the morning." 
 
 Alec's study was the third room in my 
 little suite, and he has taken up his abode 
 there permanently now. He thrives won- 
 derfully at his journalism, and makes me 
 write occasionally in magazines. He sug- 
 gested that two housekeepings united would 
 be much more economical than separate 
 establishments, so here we are. Mrs. Fane
 
 280 'Verts. 
 
 again helped us to furnish, and tells nie that 
 the plan of keeping Alec under my eye, and 
 seeing that he reads as well as writes, is the 
 only possible means of securing him a chance 
 for the fellowship. His examination is now 
 perilously near ; and I have made him 
 promise that, when he returns from Oxen- 
 ford after his ordeal, he will take Zoar en 
 route ; for I hear little about my father's 
 affairs, and am getting anxious. He writes 
 too hilariously, and I hear so much of Uncle 
 Sam being backwards and forwards and in 
 collusion with Uncle Edward, Percy, and 
 Mr. Moddle, that I suspect mischief is 
 brewing. The connexion with Gower 
 Street is quite broken. Aunt Patty blushes, 
 I am told, at the mention of my name, begs 
 it may not be alluded to, and says it is 
 nothing more than what she expected. 
 Dishonest doctrines always eventuate in 
 discreditable practices, she says ; which is 
 only, after all, a plain-spoken way of stating 
 Alec's own theory on the subject — is it ? 
 The expected time has at length arrived ;
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 281 
 
 for I did not finish off the diary that nio-ht. 
 Alec suggested cooking something warm for 
 supper in our doll's-house kitchen, and it 
 struck me a more appropriate " situation" 
 might occur for the fall of the curtain. The 
 time has come for the fellowship examina- 
 tion, and Alec is off to his fiery trial. His 
 last words were to bid me beware lest, in 
 event of his being successful, the attraction 
 of college life should be too great for him, 
 and he should never appear au troisieme 
 again, I am not afraid of that. 
 
 Whilst he is away I am staying with 
 Mrs. Fane. I cannot quite account for the 
 fascination that little woman exercises over 
 me, and still less do I comprehend why she 
 takes to me as she does. We are as unlike 
 as two women can be ; and though it may 
 be true that " in contrasts lieth love's 
 delight" as far as people of opposite sexes 
 are concerned, I cannot understand that 
 being the case with two women or two men. 
 One would fancy there must be some 
 similarity to form a basis for the friendship.
 
 282 'Verts. 
 
 So it is, however, we are fast friends; and 
 Mrs. Fane makes no secret of her wish to 
 ''Vert" Alec, as she still terms it. 
 
 " But I am nearly as bad as Alec. Don't 
 you care about Verting me ; or are you 
 such a Mahometan as to hold that we 
 have no souls at all, either to be Verted or 
 — the other thing ?" 
 
 ''No, I am not elevating the Koran 
 above the Bible ; but I am so certain that 
 big fellow would be happier if he could 
 believe. You do believe. I have gone 
 through your phase of experience, and know 
 well that any possible scepticism of yours is 
 but the faintest reflection of Alec's graver, 
 because more ingrained doubt." 
 
 " Then it is my mind rather than my 
 soul, that you call in question." 
 
 " It sounds like it, does it not ? I 
 wonder how that great lad — I often think 
 of him as no more — has got on at examina- 
 tions to-day. It seems like making war for 
 an idea to go and subject one's self to 
 badgering from a lot of stupid dons when
 
 The Tor7i Page in the Diary. 283 
 
 he will never touch a farthing of emolument 
 from his fellowship." 
 
 "Alec thinks it will sound well to say 
 ' late Fellow of — ■. — College, Oxenford/ " 
 
 " As I said, he makes war for an idea." 
 
 " No ; I think he fancies it will pay in 
 journalism." 
 
 " But he isn't going to journalise all his 
 life, is he ?" 
 
 " What else is open to him ?" 
 
 " Surely the Church." 
 
 I laughed and said I did not think Alec 
 would ever so far revert to his former plans 
 as to take Orders ; and, do you know, there 
 came something very like an audible chuckle 
 from Mrs. Fane when I said that ; so much 
 so that Amy, who was sitting by, observed 
 it, and, with a feeble attempt at incipient 
 slang, asked her mamma what was the 
 "little joke." 
 
 "I was trying to imagine Mr. Lund in 
 canonicals calling me a ' Dearly beloved 
 brother,' my dear." 
 
 For the life of me I could not see the
 
 284 'Verts. 
 
 incongruity ; and even as she spoke, one of 
 those strange flashes of thought came across 
 me — I wonder whether it was a presenti- 
 ment of anything looming in the future? 
 I thought I saw Alec, with all the dark 
 cloud of doubt removed, and reflecting on 
 myself no longer scepticism but faith ; saw 
 him the centre of life in a parish, brilliant 
 in the pulpit, beloved in his closer ministra- 
 tions among his flock. For the space of 
 Ave minutes or thereabouts I felt quite 
 romantic ; so much so that Amy came up to 
 me, put her loving little arms round my 
 neck, and said — 
 
 " Elsie, dear, I believe you are cross with 
 mamma for laughing." 
 
 " You know nothing at all about it, my 
 dear Amy," replied Mrs. Fane, " and there 
 is plenty of time for you to learn yet. One 
 of these days you may look romantic, when 
 your heart's adored leaves you even for a 
 week." 
 
 " And somebody sniggles at him in his 
 absence, dear Amy," I added, turning the
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 285 
 
 affair into a joke ; but that picture hangs 
 by me still, and I wonder whether it is one 
 ever destined to be realized. Alec says 
 there is no work that pays so well, or at all 
 events, pays so readily, as scribbling; and 
 projects a life of quill-driving for us both. 
 
 If I were not afraid of diminishing the 
 effect of the asterisks above, I could insert 
 a few more here ; in fact they might be 
 peppered pretty evenly over the whole of 
 these concluding pages of my diary. I have 
 only to perform that most irksome of all 
 duties, waiting patiently for news. AT^c 
 sends me his papers every day, and I amuse 
 myself with trying how much of them I 
 could "floor" myself, resolving to compare 
 notes with him on his return, and see how 
 far our notions on the subjects of the 
 Peloponnesian War, or the Eleusinian 
 Mysteries coincide, and whether our solu- 
 tions of the mathematical problems are 
 identical. For him they are ridiculously 
 easy, and I cannot fancy it possible that he 
 will do otherwise than amble gently over
 
 286 'Verts. 
 
 the course, and wonder whether he will an- 
 nounce the result in a telegram or a letter. 
 He cannot do it personally, as he is to re- 
 turn via Zoar. 
 
 I am glad to say this diary is to end 
 dramatically, after all. There are events 
 to chronicle, one a very unexpected occur- 
 rence indeed ; of course I ought not to 
 say I am glad of this one, but I should 
 be hypocritical if I pretended to be very 
 sorry. 
 
 Amy and I suspended our studies this 
 morning to watch for the country post, and 
 my little pupil ran down to get the letter 
 for me. She came up very slowly, and 
 looked scared as she handed me one with 
 the Zoar postmark, addressed in my father's 
 handwriting, and with a deep black edge. 
 My heart beat as I broke the seal. 
 
 " I hope no bad news, Elsie?" 
 
 "None, darling," I said, as I recovered 
 my breath. " At least, not ve/y bad. My 
 aunt is dead." 
 
 " Your aimt, Elsie ?" said Mrs. Fane, as
 
 Tlie Torn Page in the Diary. 287 
 
 she entered the schoolroom. " Poor old 
 lady ! she was of a great age, was she 
 not ?" 
 
 " It's not the old one," I replied ; " she 
 has a;n annuity, and therefore is sure to live 
 on ; it's Aunt Phillis." 
 
 " Aunt Phillis 1 And her money ?" 
 
 " She has left it to me unconditionally." 
 
 " One more instance of people being 
 better than their creeds. So she did not 
 even except poor Alec from your list of 
 possible husbands ?" 
 
 " She appears to have annexed no coh- 
 ditions to her will at all." 
 
 " Then she must have re-made it, or 
 added a codicil." 
 
 " Yes ; the one I saw was certainl}^ drawn 
 by my Uncle Edward and Percy. This 
 one, my father tells me, was made by 
 Sheppard, a rival solicitor, shortly before 
 her death." 
 
 " Eequiescat in pace," said Mrs. Fane. 
 " We shall have Elsie resigning her post 
 now, Amy," she added. "Be very defe-
 
 288 'l^erts. 
 
 rential to her, if you please. She is an 
 heiress." 
 
 " Not so large a one as to make her give 
 you up, Amy, is she?" 
 
 ''I am sure I hope not, Elsie — I shall 
 still call you so, may I not ?" 
 
 " What else should 3^ou call me ?" 
 
 " Miss Llewellyn." 
 
 " Not if you expect me to answer to my 
 name." And Mrs. Fane and myself had a 
 mutual sniggle then. 
 
 The news from Alec was long delayed. 
 The competition was close and keen. Two 
 men were bracketed equal in examination, 
 and Keniority had to decide. Alec was 
 academically older by some Terms, and was 
 therefore awarded the fellowship. 
 
 " I had the satisfaction," he wrote, " of 
 having attained my end, and • at the same 
 time of doing an agreeable act in reference 
 to my competitor. When we were both 
 summoned by the electors, and I was being 
 congratulated, and my co- equal candidate 
 encouraged to try again, I astounded them
 
 Tlie Torn Page in the Diary. 289 
 
 all by asking then and there to resign in 
 his favour. I craved their pardon for 
 troubling them to examine me ; but stated 
 that it was my intention to marry at once, 
 and not to touch the emoluments of my 
 fellowship. I did not tell them that I 
 was married already'' 
 
 Simpleminded, and possibly alarmed 
 reader, now you know the meaning of those 
 suggestive asterisks. We had anticipated 
 the event of the fellowship examination by 
 adjourning to St. Cyprian's at the earliest 
 canonical hour one autumnal morning, and 
 then and there, in presence of Mrs. Fane, 
 and a cassocked verger, giving and plighting 
 our troth either to other as man and wife. 
 We said nothing to anybody else about it. 
 Alec was to convey the news to my father 
 ;ind mother by word of mouth when he 
 visited Zoar, and nobody else had any 
 business to inquire into the matter, except 
 the lodging-house keeper from whom we 
 rented our modest abode. 
 
 If one may augur the effect of this 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 290 'Ferts. 
 
 announcement on the average reader of 
 novels, from the way Amy opened her eyes 
 when it was made to her, the denouement 
 must be a striking one indeed. Tt was 
 something to hear I was an heiress ; but to 
 have to address me as Mrs. Lund was some- 
 thing quite beyond that small girl's com- 
 prehension. 
 
 Yes, Alec ; this diary is quite done 
 now. Our blended life, begun some time 
 since, is one outwardly as well as in- 
 wardly now. All our little world knows 
 it by this time, for he will have told my 
 father, and 
 
 No. It is to have a more dramatic 
 finale still than I had imagined. A 
 telegram is brought to me. From Alec, of 
 course. No ; to Alec, and coming from ^ir. 
 Briggs, at Zoar, so Alec has not got there 
 yet. " Come at once ; your presence abso- 
 lutely necessary." 
 
 Well ; he is there, no doubt, by this 
 time. What can it be ? I have a presen- 
 timent. Uncle Edward disputes the will.
 
 The Torn Page in the Diary. 291 
 
 Oh, these wills and money matters in gene- 
 ral ! Why cannot two people like our- 
 selves, in the prime of life, and with a 
 clear stage before them, carve out a future 
 for themselves, and leave Doctors' Commons 
 to the lawyers ? 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 eiVlMF, KDWAllDS AND CO., PHINTBBB, CHANnOS 8THH1T, 
 COVKNT GABPBN.