Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 1 of 3

‘Ruined trunks on withered forksEmpty scarecrows, I and you.’

But it is not everyone who cares for such companionship.

‘Where are my dead forefathers?’ asked the pagan Frisian of Bishop Wolfran, as he stood with one of his royal leg’s in the baptismal font.

‘In hell with all the other unbelievers,’ was the reply.

‘Mighty well!’ exclaimed Radbrod, removing his leg. ‘Then I will rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden, than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians in heaven.’

To return to Wentworth. He was disappointed, not only as regards the ministry, but as regards love, and that is a yet more awful thing. Plotinus taught that God made women beautiful that by means of them men might be drawn to love a beauty that is divine. To one capable of strong affection no blow can be more terrible than that of a disappointed love. It is vain to doubt on the subject. To all human appearances Wentworth was lost, but God never leaves a man to fall away for ever. ‘A gracious hand,’ writes the pious Wilberforce, ‘leads us in ways we know not, not only with, but against our plans and inclinations.’ Happily, this was so in Wentworth’s case. There came to him strength to reform, to conquer himself, to rise out of his dead self to something higher and better, partly from the memory of a pious home, partly by the natural working of his soul, partly by the needs of daily life, partly and chiefly by contact with an actress, who reproached him with his idleness and want of energy and aimlessness. Both were Bohemians, but the woman supported herself and her widowed mother. Both had loved and lost, both had found the ways of transgressors hard, that pleasure is not happiness, that there is no way to escape from God’s universal law, that wrongdoing, in thought or word or deed, is never without its inseparable penalty, and that is, the worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched. You may forget much, but you can never forget, if you live till the age of Methuselah, what you have done inconsistent with the native nobility of man; if you have brought dishonour on your name, betrayed the right, trifled with a woman’s heart, brought the gray hairs of father or mother to the grave with sorrow. The memory of such acts will continue, and sting and torture as long as life and though and being last. For such a one there are no waters of Lethe, cry for them as he will. A man cannot hide himself from himself. He may deceive the world; he may lead a life of pleasure; but he cannot deceive himself, however he may try to do so. Alone in the stillness of the night, in the quiet of the sick-room, in the awful presence of death, conscience will speak, and he cannot stifle its voice. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’ is the teaching of all daily life. To be happy even in this world, as old Franklin found out, you must be virtuous. It is a false creed, that which makes us believe that man is better without God than with Him – better as a vicious than a virtuous man – better as a mild Agnostic or a gay infidel than a decent, sober Christian.

The home training in evangelical circles fifty years ago had many serious defects. It was conducted too much with reference to the future world rather than the present one. Had Wentworth been taught the beauty of work – that life was a battlefield in which the victory was to the strong – that man was here to do the best he could for himself, to enjoy the world which the good God had made beautiful – that he was to aim high, to cherish noble expectations, to do manly deeds, to be true and honest and courageous, how different would have been his life! Only the emotional part of him had been developed, and he fell an easy prey when temptation came to him and the voice of passion thundered in his ear and he fell. Why should he not, as he grew tired of sinning and repenting, he asked himself, ignore the past and find peace where peace could never be found? He would eat of the grapes of Sodom and the clusters of Gomorrah. He would sit in the seat of the scorner. There, at any rate, conscience would cease to sting. It was the old story over again. Facilis descensus Averni.

Wentworth was beginning to find this out. He had eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as all must do – though some more than others – and he had found it fairer to the eye than pleasant to the palate. He was getting sick of worldly men and worldly things. There is a cant of the world as well as of the Church, and he had found it out. The cloud passed away, and then came to him a clearer spiritual insight than he had ever possessed before. He had lost the childish faith of his early home, and there came in its stead the grander and fuller one of a man who had put away childish things, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who had found peace and safety, not in the pleasant places, gay with flowers and musical with the song of birds, where we never dream of danger, but in the storm and tempest of the raging sea. Old ideas, modified by hard experience, asserted themselves; old inspirations were revived; old hopes and purposes were brought to life. He would be a preacher – but from the press, rather than from the more cramped and circumscribed pulpit. Temporal things also went better with him. Some of his writings had been republished, and had brought him fame and fortune. In the accomplished actress of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, known as Miss Howard, he had met a sympathetic friend. It was she who had originally raised him from the Slough of Despond, and had recalled him to his better self.

It is told of an Indian Prince who in prosperity was too much elevated and in adversity too much depressed, that he gave notice that on his forthcoming birthday the most acceptable present that any of his courtiers could make him would be a sentence short enough to be engraved on a ring, and suggesting a remedy for the grievance of which he complained. Many phrases were accordingly proposed, but not one was deemed satisfactory, till his daughter came forward and offered an emerald on which were engraved two Arabic words, the literal translation of which was, ‘This, too, will pass.’ Warren Hastings, who told the story, adds how the sentence cheered him when on his trial in Westminster Hall. It was thus Wentworth was upheld, and ‘This, too, will pass’ was the thought that urged him on.

CHAPTER IX.

THE OLD, OLD STORY

Once upon a time there was a sad hubbub in the Independent Chapel at Sloville. At the monthly tea-meeting of the teachers the prettiest of the female teachers was missing, much to the grief of the young men, and to the relief of some plain but pious young women, who had been rather in the shade since she had come amongst them.

‘Where is Rose Wilcox?’ was the universal query.

‘She’s give up religion, and gone off to the Church, I suppose,’ said the senior deacon, who was president on the occasion.

‘I fear it is worse than that,’ whispered a young female teacher, who, as the neighbour of the missing Rose, was supposed to know more of her movements than anyone else.

‘I can’t say I am surprised; indeed, I may say it is only what I expected,’ continued the senior deacon, ‘considering how frivolous she was, and how little her family availed themselves of the means of grace.’

The senior deacon’s words commended themselves to all. Rose Wilcox was volatile. She was at that critical age when most pretty girls are so – a time of life always severely criticised by those who have passed it, or who have been preserved by kindly circumstances from its many dangers, and who ignore the godly and humane advice of Burns:

‘Then gently scan your brother Man, till gentler sister Woman.’

The Rose thus criticised was, perhaps, the prettiest girl in all the town. Her father had been an officer in the navy, who had married for love a wife who had nothing to give him but a pretty face and a loving heart. For a time they lived humbly but comfortably on his half-pay. They had two children, a son and a daughter. The former grew up wild and wayward, and was a sad trouble to the family on the occasion of his visits on shore; for he was a sailor, like his father. Rose was her father’s companion. He taught her all that he knew himself: to read Shakespeare; to get a smattering of French; to play a little on the piano. But he became involved in debt through becoming a surety for an old friend who had no one else to stand between him and impending ruin, and that friend, alas! left him in the lurch, or, in other words, handed him over to his creditors, and he died broken-hearted, leaving his wife and daughter almost penniless and friendless. The mother then moved to Sloville, where she managed, with the assistance of her daughter, to secure a scanty living as milliner and dressmaker – a calling which she had followed before she became a wife, and where, almost to her alarm and at the same time much to her pride, she beheld her daughter grow handsomer and lovelier every day.

The Sloville people said Rose was the prettiest girl in the town, and they were right. The landlord of the leading hotel would have given anything to have secured her services at the bar. The snobs of the place were much given to pester her with their impertinence, while lads of a lower grade inundated her with valentines and poetical effusions, as amorous as they were ill-spelt and badly written; and gay Lotharios in the shape of commercials, far removed from the chastening influences of their own lawful spouses, said to her all sorts of silly things on their occasional visits to the town and her mother’s shop.

As the world goes, this was not much to be wondered at. Even in the good houses round the Park, where all the best families lived, and where carriage company was kept, it was to be questioned whether any more attractive young lady could be found than Rose, in spite of the plainness of her dress and the humble drudgery of her daily life. In no conservatory in that part of the world were to be seen fairer roses than those which adorned her cheeks. Her profile was exquisitely classical; her every action graceful. No lady in the town had such a head of rich brown hair, none so downy a cheek of loveliest pink, none a blue eye so lustrous or sparkling, none a more melodious voice. Many a Belgravian maiden would have given a fortune to have had a hand as delicately formed, a waist as tempting, a step as elastic, a figure as fair, a carriage as superb, a smile as irresistible.

Personal advantages, declaim against them as we will – though why we should do so I know not, since they are the gift of God, and not to be bought with hard cash – are of inestimable value to a woman. It is no use arguing with a jury, Serjeant Ballantine tells us, when the plaintiff or defendant, as the case may be, is a pretty woman, and that it was the same in the time of the Athenians the case of Phryne is an illustration. Is it not Balzac who tells us that the faintest whisper of a pretty woman is louder than the trumpet-call of duty? Nevertheless, a poor girl whose only dower is her beauty finds it often a perilous gift. Indeed, it was owing to this very possession that poor Rose had the world at a disadvantage. She had been spoilt by an indulgent father, and her fond mother was little fitted to act the part of a guide, philosopher, and friend in the perplexities and temptations of real life. Her brother was of no avail, as when at sea he was too far away, and when on shore he had shown a thoughtlessness and heedlessness which made him a burden rather than a help.

It was not true that she had given up religion, as was indicated by some of her associates; the fact was she had none to give up worth speaking of. She had gone to chapel with her mother as a matter of course, and being intelligent and good-natured and willing to be useful, she had been worked into the Sunday-school. It was interesting to her to teach the young idea how to shoot, and she was fond of children, and so she went as a Sunday-school teacher. She had left the chapel because it was dark and dull; because the people were censorious and hard; because the service was uninteresting; because the preacher was always full of the Jews and the prophecies, and seemed to have no idea of life as she saw it around her, and was perpetually railing at a world which seemed to her so bright and fair; because in her heart, as in that of most of us at her age, there was a love of pleasure, impetuous and impatient of control.

Nor was it true that she had gone to church, as intimated above. The fact was, she had summoned up her energies for an awful step for anyone to take: she had run away from poverty, and hard work, and privation, and discomfort, and wretchedness, in the hope and belief – alas! too rudely to be shaken – that henceforth there was to be perpetual sunshine in her path, and perpetual joy in her heart.

We are all of us too ready to fancy that grapes grow on thorns, and Rose was no exception to the general rule. She had never read Wordsworth, and perhaps if she had she would not have understood that grand ode, though the knowledge did painfully come to her in after-life, where he invokes Duty as stern daughter of the voice of God:

‘Who art a light to guide, a rodTo check the erring and reprove;Thou who art victory and lawWhen empty terrors overawe;From vain temptations dost set freeAnd calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity.’

At home for a long time she had been disappointed at her lot. She was getting tired of hard work and humble fare, ignorant of the fact that God gives us what is best for us, and that His wisdom is as omnipotent as His love. She had no companions to guide her aright, and was tired of the awkward admiration of the homely and lubberly lads with whom she came in contact. She had taken to reading trashy novels, which had not merely amused her, but filled her head with nonsense. Greedily she drank in all their poison. Little by little they broke down all the defences of her common-sense, as she read of splendid marriages made by simple village girls, of runaway matches, of wonderful elopements. They taught her how pleasure was the supreme good, how true happiness consisted in having wealth, in riding in a brougham, in being dressed in silks and satins, in wearing diamonds, in going to grand balls; in short, in realizing what at the meeting-house had been pretty plainly denounced as the pleasures of sin for a season.

The more the poor girl reasoned on her condition the harder to her it seemed to be. It must be false what the parsons said; people who had money, who lived sumptuously, who were arrayed in purple and fine linen, must be happy – as she herself was when she had a crown-piece in her pocket, a dress a little smarter than usual, or a bonnet of the latest fashion. There was the senior deacon, who more fond of money than he? though he always called it dross and filthy lucre. Then there were the senior deacon’s daughters and wife; did not they always look a little more amiable when they had new clothes on? There was the old parson himself; did not everyone laugh at him because he was poor and shabby, and had not his long life of poverty reduced him to such a state that he could not say ‘Bo!’ to a goose? Money meant health, and happiness, and honour, and power; that was clear. Why, the wickedest men in the town, who had money, were made more of than the old parson, who had never done harm to anyone, and whose long record was unsullied. Naturally, this sort of reasoning made the poor girl a little discontented and out of sorts.

At times she had all the youthful recklessness of her sex, and not a little was her mother terrified. A father or a brother might have taught her a little common-sense, but her only confidante was her mother – as fond as she was foolish – who felt herself that her daughter had a smile as sunny, a carriage as graceful, an air as distinguished, and a birth as gentle, as any of the leaders of society in Sloville. She always insisted on her daughter’s fitness for something higher. Love levels all distinctions of rank, and Rose herself was half a Radical – at any rate, much more of one than pretty women generally are. She was also ambitious. She had a charming voice, and danced well. Why should she not shine in society? Why should not she be the star of the ball-room and the theatre? Why should not she have a brougham and drive in the parks? Why should not the men fall down and worship at her shrine? Beauty had a magic power, and wonders were ever being performed daily by the sorcery of Love. Did not King Cophetua take a beggar-maid to be his queen?

‘I’ll be a lady yet,’ said the silly girl; ‘I am tired of stitching and sewing from morn to night; I am tired of this dull street and this dull town; I’ll be a lady yet, mother,’ she said, ‘and you shall come and live with me in a fine house in town with plenty of servants to wait on us and real nice dinners to eat.’

‘Nonsense, girl!’ said the mother. ‘You had better marry the deacon’s shopman; he is very fond of you, and I am sure, by this time, he could furnish a house well and keep a wife comfortable.’

Now, as the individual in question was as fat as a porpoise, and very much the shape of one; as his manners were as plebeian as his appearance, and as he never had anything to say for himself, Rose regarded him with infinite disgust, and vowed she’d rather go into a nunnery or die an old maid.

On the night of the Chartist meeting already referred to, Rose was met by the individual in question, and as there were so many people about, Rose graciously accepted the offer of his arm to take her home, much to his delight and joy. He determined to make the best of his chance. There are some men who take an ell when you give them an inch. Rose’s rustic admirer belonged to this class.

Rose became alarmed at his amorous attention, and screamed. That scream was heard by a gentleman, Sloville’s only baronet, the lord of the manor, as he was riding past in his brougham. By the clear moonlight he saw that the girl who stood trembling before him was the girl whose face had haunted his dreams since he first caught sight of her in Sloville, and in pursuit of whom he had scoured the town like a hawk ever since. He had caught sight of her for a moment at the Chartist meeting, and here she was actually in his power, and needing his aid! How he blessed his stars, as eagerly, with the most polished air, he offered to drive Rose home. At first she hesitated, as was natural. If she would get inside, he would mount the box and drive.

Rose accepted his offer; there could be no harm in that, though she would not allow the brougham to come nearer her home than the top of the street in which she lived, for fear of scandal. She accepted the offer, partly because she wished for the sensation of riding in a brougham like a real lady, and partly because of her anxiety to get rid of her loutish lover. Perhaps it had been as well if Rose had ridden up to the door in the brougham, or had refused the offer of it altogether. As it was, she got out, and the driver of the brougham would not allow her to go home alone. If he was proud as Lucifer, he was subtle as the serpent that tempted Eve. She could not refuse his offer of guardianship, his appearance was so handsome, and his manner so polished and flattering and deferential. Surely he could not do her any harm. The offer was one she had not sufficient self-denial to repel as she ought to have done, as any well-regulated young lady in superior circles of course would have done.

Alas! Rose was but a poor dressmaker, barely eighteen, an age when to the young woman clings a good deal of the romantic folly of the girl. She was the pride of an indulgent mother who never restrained her little whims, and whose scanty means afforded but little relief to the dull monotony of her daily life. Rose, of course, was in her seventh heaven. Her hour of triumph and reward had arrived. Here was the prince who had come to marry the beggar’s daughter; the gallant knight who was to lead her out of the prison house of poverty, to reveal to her all the glories of a world which, after all, looks best at a distance.

There is a tide in the affairs of women as well as men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, and Rose believed that the tide was now in her favour. Here was the chance for which she had been dreaming, for which she had been prepared by a due course of silly novel-reading.

‘A tall, dark gentleman is in love with you,’ said the gipsy whom Rose had last consulted on the subject. ‘He will come to you when you least expect it. He is immensely rich, and will make you handsome presents. He will take you to London, where he will marry you, and you shall have horses and carriages, and servants, and music, and wine, and balls, and will live happy ever after.’

The tall, dark gentleman had come, and he had fallen in love with her. It amused him in that dull town to have an affair of this kind on hand. It gave a new zest to his blasé life; the only things he cared for were pretty faces, and he had spent his life ever since leaving Oxford in search of them. Now that he had come to the family estate and title; now that he was Sir Watkin Strahan, of Elm Court, it is not to be presumed that there was any diminution of zeal in his search; on the contrary, he pushed it with more zest than ever. In the language of his friends, he was a devil of a fellow for women, and it was clear to him that this young rustic beauty would soon fall an easy prey.

The chances were all in favour of the execution of his wicked design, for he was a cruel man, in spite of his youth and handsome face and figure, a polished gentleman, yet venomous and dangerous as a cobra or a wolf. He was now given up to one pursuit, the ruin of this fair young girl, on whom, in an evil moment, he had cast a longing eye; and poor Rose thought him a model gentleman! He had no scruples of conscience when his fancy was aroused. All he cared for, all he thought of, was himself. Pleasure was to be had, regardless of the cost to himself, of the misery to others. In a rich and old community like ours the number of such men is immense, and the mischief they do no tongue can tell. In our streets by night we see the ruin they have wrought.

‘I am mad after that girl,’ said Sir Watkin to a friend one day. ‘I have made her presents of all kinds; I have followed up every chance; I have promised even to marry her, and yet she keeps me at arm’s length. She is a regular Penelope. It seems years since I first saw her.’

‘Nonsense!’ said his friend – an old rake of the Regency, to whom all women were mere childish toys – ‘she can’t resist you. You are bound to win her. She is only a little more artful than others of her class.’

‘I wish it were so. I almost despair; and that makes me the more determined she shall be mine. I was never disappointed yet.’

‘Courage, mon ami,’ was the reply. ‘Such a little beauty is not to be caught in a day. Take the advice of an old soldier. You are too cautious. You must carry her by a grand coup de main.’

Alas! an opportunity soon occurred. There was to be a grand horse-race a few miles off. Rose had never seen one, and wished to go. She had let herself be taken there by the Baronet. She was very sorry she had agreed to the arrangement, but it was too late to draw back, and she made an excuse to her mother for her temporary absence. After the race there was a grand dinner, followed by a ball. The poor girl had hardly the heart to refuse, and, indeed, she was too far from home to go back alone, though the agreement was that she was to be taken back immediately the race was over. This part of the programme the Baronet never intended to put in execution, and he made some excuse or other for its non-fulfilment, which she was obliged to accept. Off her guard with excitement and wine yet not without misgivings of heart, she was persuaded to accompany the party back to London. In her sober moments she would never have done such a thing, but she was surrounded by men and women who laughed at her scruples and overcame her objections. Hardly knowing what she was about, she – a dove, innocent and unprotected – was borne by the vultures to town.

For the first time she had tasted of the charmed cup, and she found it pleasant. She felt sorry for her mother, to whom she wrote a hasty note, but without giving her any address, telling her not to be alarmed at her absence, stating that she was staying with some kind friends, and that she would soon let her know further particulars, which she felt sure would please her. She was to stay at the house of a real lady, who was to take her to see all the grand sights of the town. Her spirits rose to the occasion, and, dressed magnificently in the latest fashions, she found some kind of enjoyment in the gay company she kept, in riding in a brougham, in going to the theatre and the opera, in finding herself in a new world, where she was received with a favour never extended to her in the tamer circles of Sloville. She felt that she had made a wonderful start in the world, and how wrong were they who spoke of its pleasures as transitory and of little worth.