Chapter I: Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”--SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

A WEEKLY JOURNAL
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

No. 307.] SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1856. {PRICE 2_d._
{STAMPED 3_d._

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE SULINA MOUTH OF THE DANUBE. DAY-WORKERS AT HOME. TWO COLLEGE FRIENDS. SORROW AND MY HEART. FRENCH AND ENGLISH STAFF OFFICERS. CHIPS. LITTLE SAINT ZITA.

THE SULINA MOUTH OF THE DANUBE.

It was November, and the morrow of our arrival at Sulina dawned a dreary, sunless day, rather cold. We spent it waiting for the boat, which was due from Constantinople. Our pilot, however, surmised that there had been bad weather for many days in the Black Sea, and that no captain in the service of the Austrian Lloyd’s would have ventured to pass the Bosphorus while it lasted. The pilot was a dark, sharp-featured, timorous Greek, of about forty years of age. His name was Birbantaki, a name of high account in every port of the Euxine.

So the long and the short Austrian officer--part of our company from Galatz[1]--very sensibly went out snipe-shooting. They were joined by the Greek consul; who, having no house here, is living on board one of the Danube Company’s vessels, called the Metternich. That consul is driving a very brisk business; for, from the masts of six hundred of the thousand ships detained here by stress of weather, fluttered the gay colours of King Otho. Also, with the shooting-party, goes the agent of the Lloyd Company; a pleasant and influential gentleman, very popular about here. It is said he had five thousand pounds’ worth of property--the hard savings of many thrifty years--destroyed by us. If this be true I shall be surprised to learn it is considered by the authorities as one of the inevitable private wrongs which are wrought by all wars. I cannot quite admit such reasoning, however; for surely, this person is as much entitled to a fair indemnity for the loss of his property, as were the owners of the British merchantman destroyed by the Russians at Sinope. By the way, also, what with Count Zamoïski and Colonel Turr, as well as such little episodes as the agent’s affair, have we not been playing a very strange little game with Austria? Not to put too fine a point upon it, may I be bold enough to hint that we have been soliciting her alliance while slyly tweaking her nose? I wish, sometimes, that our good folks in authority had taken riper counsel in these matters; for we have made many needless and many very bitter enmities. When the shooting party return, therefore, I am not at all surprised to see a Russian officer with them. He is a common-looking-man; awkward, dirty, and, seemingly, of no social importance; but, as he comes on board, two Levantines seize eagerly on an opportunity of offering a loud insult to an Englishman, and then strut, blustering and bowing to the Muscovite, after the manner of their kind.

[Footnote 1: See “The Show Officer,” page 23, of the present volume.]

Mechanically marking these things, and hearing that there was no chance of our departure that day, I determined to go on shore, and visit all that avenging fires have left of Sulina. In truth, our prospect from the steamer was not very cheering. A large timber raft lay alongside us, with a log hut upon it; where its mouldy, amphibious guardians lived. They appeared to be always drying the same pair of calico drawers, on the same stick. Round and round this raft constantly paddled a froggy-looking fellow, seated in a small canoe roughly hewn out of the trunk of a tree. His business was to see that none of the timber drifted away, or was stolen. He was also employed as a sort of messenger, going to and fro among the ships. He used his single paddle--shaped something like a spade--with great skill. Our chief occupation was drowsily watching him. We saw also flocks of wild fowl in great numbers, flying almost out of sight in the air, and a few gulls, which perched, from time to time, about our rigging in the most friendly manner. The only objects of interest were a few Russian boats, fluttering about the harbour. In them sat Cossacks with hessian boots, red breeches, and small red turban-shaped peak-less caps. They were the rude troops of the frontier; clumsy, leaden-faced fellows, who seem to have grown bloated and unhealthy in the air of the marshes. I was glad to land, if only for a change.

Sulina is a wretched place. Russia has ruined it, to build up the trade of Odessa; although it is naturally, perhaps, one of the happiest commercial sites in the world--the natural outlet of Germany and the rich corn-lands of the Principalities. So, the shore, which should be splendid with merchant palaces and populous with busy men from every nation, has been purposely rendered the very abomination of desolation. I say purposely, giving ear to a report current among all sailors in these seas. When the Russian government was reproached with a direct breach of faith in virtually blockading the mouth of the Danube during nine months of the year, they took their own way of clearing themselves from the imputation. It was eminently Russian. A great fuss was made: men and machines were furiously employed to remove the obstructions; but everything that was cleared out on one day, was scrupulously replaced on the next.

The state of the Sulina mouth of the Danube therefore, remains a most notable scandal. Vessels can only get over the bar when lightened of their cargoes, and are subject to all manner of official hindrance and fiscal extortion. They are sometimes detained a whole winter, to the serious loss of owners, to the stoppage of trade, to the increase of the price of food; also to the grave injury of the Moldo-Wallachian ports of Galatz and Ibraila, and the comparative ruin of the navigation of the whole Danube. Wrecks are awfully numerous; the loss of life, appalling, as I had after opportunities of observing.

Sulina is, at this time, a miserable collection of huts hastily run up to meet the pressing exigencies of the moment, being mere temporary erections of dried reeds. Their interiors--of which I visited several--presented no incorrect idea of the very extreme of discomfort in this raw damp climate. In some huts were haggard grisly men asleep, after an ague fit; and withered women, like the dried figs of a bad season with respect to personal appearance, cowering over their smoky fires, and grumbling as they cooked their unsavoury meals, or tore damp sticks for fuel. They had seldom any furniture besides an earthenware pan, or a black pot to stew their food. They had also generally a mat of rushes, dried or undried as the case might be, to sleep on; and they made fires on the bare earth outside their hovels. The central streets--mere muddy lanes--were choked up with sailors; among them, plenty of bad truculent Greeks from the Pirate Islands, seated before the doors of dram booths, gambling with filthy cards, and swearing canting oaths in the pauses of their sneaking debauch. On the face of each skulking rake the stamp of scoundrel was branded, so plainly that a child might read it. It is a pity that we know these rascals too well, to connect one pleasant thought with their fine features and pretty dresses.

These, perhaps, were some of the selfsame revellers who lurked about the seas as buccaneers at the beginning of the war, armed to the teeth, and who bore down one night upon a British merchant ship becalmed; who stabbed the watch; then cut the throats of the sleeping crew; then played ghastly tricks to their mangled remains; then plundered the vessel, and then departed. The ship drifted with her dreadful burden over the beautiful waters of the Ægean, where she was found, some hours afterwards by a man-of-war’s boat, which put off, irate at having hoisted signals to the death-laden bark in vain!

From the open doors of other booths and hovels I heard nasal droning songs, the uncouth sounds of rude instruments, and the shrill tones of wrangling women of no good repute. Here, also, were a crowd of Maltese and Ionians, who bring our name into discredit wherever they are known. Lounging groups of superstitious mariners of the Adriatic added their lazy figures to the heterogeneous mass--a wild company; amongst whom it is never prudent to venture; for their knives gleam on small pretence; and their victims are never heard of more. Human life is held of a strange cheapness by these miscreants, and the law is powerless.

Towards sundown, I returned to the ship; and, after dinner, as the evening closed quite in, a wandering Italian boy came on board. He was one of those itinerant musicians who roam over every country in the world; gathering up a little hoard with many a stern, unchronicled act of self-denial, and passing bitter days enough, poor lads, Heaven help them! This specimen had a hurdygurdy, an ivory whistle, and a rich impudent voice, with which he trolled forth a number of those ballads popular in the Austrian and Neapolitan sea-ports. They were mostly in the form of a dialogue between a young sailor sweetheart, a girl, and her mother, on the old subject of love and ruse, of which the salt is savoured among the people of every land, and the fresh, lively charm is felt from pole to pole. At the end of each verse the singer always lingered on the last note with an arch relish; and, carrying it on through his whistle, trilled out a sparkling impromptu chorus, which had a world of droll life and inuendo in it. Some of the airs he whistled had a dashing, seafaring pathos, quite captivating; and we fairly lay back and had a laugh at his roguish jests, as pleasant and refreshing as is awakened by the airy couplets of a French vaudeville. Yet those ballads seemed to speak aside to me, with a touching and eloquent plea for a race whose children have been taught to solace their captivity with songs, till they have mercifully learned a wondrous cunning in them; and who (knowing that their hopes are a coin with which they can buy but shadows) have courted oblivion so long, that they have found all beauty, freedom, heart-food, their brightest, quickest life, within a dream.

It was very pretty and affecting to see our captain and his wife--a lady from Ragusa--exchange bashful smiles and tell-tale glances, as they both listened to some song which, perhaps revealed their own story, and invested it with the fascination of a romance. Once, the volatile sailor was so moved, by an uncontrollable impulse, that he seized his wife round the waist, and whirled her off in a waltz. It was a fine tribute to the untaught craft of the singer, whose eyes lighted up with a minstrel fire, and his feet beat time as he watched them. When the captain stopped for want of breath, it was but polite to make a bow, and offer to take the lady round and round again; for there she stood, offering irresistible invitation, with foot advanced. Then the other women began to stand up; while the dark-eyed gypsies from Galicia grouped naturally round the dancers in picturesque attitudes, and looked on. So we had quite a little ball.

At nine o’clock the trumpets sounded from an Austrian man-of-war on the station, and the report of a solitary cannon boomed over the sulky waters. After this, the officers went away, and our little festival terminated.

So ended the first day we lay in the port of Sulina; and I noticed, as night came on, that the moon looked veiled and misty; also that light feathery clouds were flitting about in an unsettled way, as if the sky were troubled. About eleven o’clock we heard the wind rising. At first a few sobbing gusts reached us, at intervals, as if they came from afar off, but making our spars rattle, and our cordage whip the masts. I could see also, before I turned in, that the sailing-vessels in the offing had made all taut and trim, and had lowered their yards for rough weather; but the steamers got their steam up and went out to sea. From time to time during the night we heard the mournful sound of distress guns to windward, and now and then a majestic hulk drifted labouring towards us. The winds and the sea-gulls seemed to whoop in derision around her, and the waves reared their heads triumphant and rejoicing.

It was an awful storm. The sea was everywhere convulsed with a pitiless wrath, and the white foam flashed proud and high, as wave rushed upon wave in passionate strife. Of the fifteen sail riding yesterday at anchor yonder, nine broke from their cables, and three lay wrecked in sight of us. Though we were within the bar, our captain was roused thrice during the night, and the voices of our crew sounded in alarm through the darkness; for we were wedged in by shipping, and ever and again some vessel was driven furiously against us by the might of the elements; our vessel danced and rolled like a child’s toy, even in its sheltered place. Our gaunt lean sailors ran to and fro, yelping fears at every fresh collision, and muttering hasty prayers to the Virgin; Jews gasped and gabbled to themselves, clutching the handles of their sea-chests, and keeping always a wary eye upon them; but some Turks who were with us, sat calmly smoking through it all, uttering no sound but “God is great.”

Below, in the cabin were the Christian ladies pale and terrified, and huddled altogether on the sofa by the fire-place. Near them boozed a gang of sharpers, whom no dread or danger could drag from the gambling-table. Their blasphemy and hot disputes mingled with the storm. Perhaps, however, they were impressed equally with us according to their differing natures, by the grand horror of the scene. Let no man judge the depth of another’s feeling by the mode of its expression.

The sky above us was the true old leaden grey Crimean colour, which canopied our sickening armies before Sebastopol last winter. There was a partial fog over the land. On such a sky looked the helpless crew of the fated Prince, when her machinery refused to work, and they were dashed against the iron heights of Balaclava. It was such a fog which closed round gallant Giffard when the Tiger stranded, and he could only flash back a hopeless defiance to the Russian guns. On this low gloomy shore, too--over which the sea-birds swoop and scream so ominously--dwelt the last dying glance of the young and chivalrous Parker.

The gale lasted for three days, raging every hour more rudely. The third day, towards evening, a rain, fine as dust, mingled with the wind. At night the rain changed to snow, and the cold increased. Then we had a fall of mingled rain and snow. The wind abated a little towards morning: but, before noon, there came a perfect hurricane with rain and snow very fierce. The small snow-flakes were whisked about by the wind with incredible violence.

Again we counted the work of the night, and numbered five wrecks. A crowd of Cossacks, assembled round the devoted vessels, were trying to seize two swollen corpses with grappling hooks. As the drowned bodies, however, obviously did not belong to any of the wrecks we saw, they had probably floated to us from some scene of disaster elsewhere. It was a ghastly thing to see the breakers twirling and tossing about them so scornfully. God’s images, who, a few days, or perhaps hours, before, had been like unto ourselves.

Of the wrecked ships the crew of one perished: all hands on board the rest were saved. At night we saw another fated vessel going to inevitable destruction; then the darkness hid her. When morning broke she was among the breakers; but, out of the reach of help, and they swept disdainfully over her shrieking decks. The miserable crew clung wildly on to spar and mast, no boat venturing out to save them. We saw the hungry waves sweep on towards them with a hoarse cry; the keen ice wind palsying their strength. They were, poor fellows, carried away one by one. Their contortions were horrible. They writhed, and twisted, and grappled on to anything they could seize, with despairing energy. For a little while their shrill screams rose even over the cry of the elements,--then all was still. Six only of the crew were saved. These, springing into a boat, dropped over before she struck, and had been carried as witnesses of Almighty mercy, miraculously to land.

Late in the afternoon of the fifth day, the sun peeped coyly and ashamed at us, once or twice. Then came the windgusts again, like the tumultuous sobs of a grief not yet subsided, and the sun was veiled again, and the storm howled on as before.

Something deserving of notice was that, all the time the hurricane lasted, a broad streak of sky was distinctly visible towards the east. It never grew larger or smaller, and its promise of fine weather was altogether illusory.

We lay fifteen days at the Port of Sulina. At length our wine was exhausted, and even our provisions ran short; for the bakers lazily refused to bake us any bread, though the captain himself went to parley with them. We got a little stringy fresh meat now and then, with sometimes a fresh fish; but we lived chiefly on raw ham and ship’s biscuits. The steward--a plump, tight, rich-complexioned Sancho Panza, with sleek black hair and small roguish eyes--having the distribution of these delicacies, became a man of importance, and found it a very good business. Our fore-cabin passengers suffered severely. They watched us of the after cabin with famished and hateful looks as we went down to dinner; for their own meals were infinitely more scanty than ours. The small supply of orthodox food which the Jews also had brought with them being nearly exhausted, the Greeks, who have a traditional hatred of the chosen people, taunted them with offers of pork. It was at once ludicrous and pathetic to see the feverish trembling indignation, and hear the odd anathemas with which the children of Israel garrulously replied.

Upon the whole, our position was not so cheerful and exhilarating as might have been desired by persons fond of comfort and gaiety. To make it the less inviting, cholera gadded about the neighbourhood with great activity, and did not contribute materially to raise our spirits, nor increase our current fund of pleasing anecdote. A guest of our captain, in sound health and with a noticeable appetite, came and sat with us at dinner one day. On the next day we asked whether he was coming to dinner again, and we were told he was buried. One of our passengers died at breakfast in the midst of us. Moreover, it was an awful sort of thing to wake in the small hours of the night and hear a man in the next cabin bemoaning his crimes in a strange tongue; calling on the saints for mercy, under an impression (likely enough to be true) that he was attacked by the swift destroyer, and was hastening with panic-stricken steps on his journey to another world.

Therefore I was truly thankful when the wind at last abated. It was sometime, however, even then, before our troubles were over; for there was such a heavy swell that no boat, with sail or oar, dared venture to convey us from one steamer to the other. A steam-tug would have done our business in half an hour; but there was no steam-tug.

It was not until the seventeenth day after our arrival that we were at length delivered from durance. The sea having then grown calmer (though still running very high) we fired a gun and hoisted signals for the packet that was to convey us to Constantinople, and which had returned to her anchorage. So she stood nearer in towards us about mid-day; then one half of the passengers who had left Galatz with us, nearly three weeks before, on urgent business, returned whence they came, having missed their opportunities. The others--I among the number--went over the bar.

It was a hazardous trip. Our boatmen charged us eighteen ducats, or about nine pounds; every man in it fairly staking his life against our money. It was a large boat and well manned; but it shook and trembled on the waters at the mouth of the river, as if it had been a cockleshell. Once we were carried quite round, and I made up my mind to swim for it, if I should lose my grasp on the boat when she turned over. She righted again, however, and went rearing and pitching forward for some hundred yards till the danger was over. Not a week before, a boat with fifteen souls in it had gone down in the very spot where we met and escaped that peril.

No one knows how long the present infamous condition of the Sulina mouth of the Danube may last; for few, I am sorry to say, seem seriously to interest themselves in such questions. I have written this paper, therefore; not to amuse an idle hour, but with a solemn and earnest hope that it may be the means of calling general attention to a matter of European importance. I have rather understated the case than overstated it; having omitted many things which might have added to the interest of the description, lest any word should creep in that might appear fanciful or exaggerated; for I know that a public writer, who would render any real service to mankind, must simply abide by indisputable facts.

Let me add, then, that, although it is but a very few weeks ago I was on the scene I have endeavoured to describe, I learn by the French papers that no less than sixty vessels have been wrecked since then, and that three hundred human lives have been lost off the Sulina Mouth. I have not dared to trifle with the sympathies of the public in this matter. I have honestly made a plain statement, and venture, with respectful importunity, to press it on their attention. We have taken upon ourselves a grave responsibility in these countries, and whenever Peace is discussed, it behoves us to be mindful of it, so that not in vain and as to a heedless people may have been confided in trust to our generation that immense inheritance--the Empire of the Seas.

DAY-WORKERS AT HOME.

There are two classes of milliners’ girls. In the first class are those who live in the house at which they work, receiving for their labour board, what passes for lodging, and as much pay as a governess--a sum that may be twelve or twenty pounds, or may be even four times that amount, per annum. Girls in this class are stimulated by some prospect of promotion: they may live to be forewomen, or to have shops of their own. The second class consists of day-workers, who go to the milliners, at eight in the morning, after an early breakfast, and (with an allowance of time during which they may depart in search of dinner) work until eight or nine at night; sometimes in the season, until ten or eleven. Work over, the labourers return to their own lodgings. A young woman in this class earns about seven shillings a week, wherewith to pay for lodging, food, and clothes. If she have any relatives in London to whose homes she can betake herself, then it is well; if she be a solitary worker, forced to earn an independent livelihood--a young girl from the country, or an orphan--she goes to her garret; and there, sitting in utter cheerlessness, suffers temptations which there is no poor man, even though a rogue, who would not wish to see his daughter spared.

These workers labour in support of luxury all the day long: their sense of pleasure, love of ornament and colour, is developed, and their honest earnings only suffer them to lodge in dingy garrets chiefly found among back streets. Two shillings a week, or at the utmost, half-a-crown, is all that can be spared, for rent out of an income that is only fourteen pence a working day; at most a penny-farthing for the working hour. Half-a-crown or two shillings is the rent of a dilapidated room, even among the pauperised inhabitants of Bethnal Green. Necessarily it can purchase no very pleasant dwelling, we may be assured, in the purlieus of Regent Street.

To make the position of such young women pleasanter and safer is not difficult; but there is only one way of improving it. The solitary day-worker cannot do much for herself with seven shillings; but, by associating with companions of her own class and adopting some system of combination, her funds may be made sufficient to maintain a tolerably happy little household. How to begin is the question. Two ladies, thoughtful for their less fortunate sisters--the Lady Hobart, and the Viscountess Goderich--have been endeavouring, during the last few months, to help them in the making of the troublesome first step. Their chief difficulty has lain in the necessity of having one of these associated homes not distant from the places of business, which are most numerous at the west end of London. In extending the experiment which these benevolent ladies have commenced, care must be taken, therefore, to select a house which, for the rent it costs, supplies within its walls space enough for every just want of as many inmates as are necessary to the working of the system. The ladies before mentioned have taken upon themselves the first risk by opening a home of this description at number two, Manchester Street, Manchester Square. It allows ample sleeping space; each dormitory containing four or six single beds. It supplies also a spacious sitting-room, in which there is a hired piano and a little library of cheap and pleasant books; the use of a kitchen-range, light, firing, and all necessary household furnishing--linen, plates and dishes, knives, forks, and spoons--all for the price of a cold, dark garret--two shillings a week. If two persons unite, and pay rent for a double bed, the charge is only eighteenpence to each of them.

Possibly, for accommodation and the quality provided in this instance, the rent ought to be a few pence higher. Be that as it may, the establishers of this nest think, that when it contains its full complement of thirty-five or forty inmates, it will pay its own expenses, even with no higher contribution from each inmate than that now fixed. All they desire is that its existence should be widely known, and that especially the hard-working girls who may be made happier by adopting the suggestion it embodies, may hear of it; may understand the comfort of it; and learn to co-operate with one another not merely in this house, but in a great many others of the kind.

It is entirely their own affair: nothing is meant but to help them through the difficulty of beginning. In the home now established there are at present not more than eleven inmates; and only ignorance of its existence or its meaning could keep out the other five-and-twenty. It means no charity, no intrusion, no meddling supervision; only such help as woman may receive from woman, willingly and thankfully. The house to be self-supporting must indeed be full; but once understood, there will rarely be, in any of these snug little establishments, a vacant bed.

If it be ever the privilege of this journal to cheer during an odd half-hour, the weary heart of a young day-worker, and this page comes to be read by her; and if she be not by happy chance, already well lodged, let her accept our counsel, offered with all cordiality, and with the most sincere good-will: we recommend that she should visit Manchester Street, look at the house, and talk all its arrangements over with the Mrs. Lomas, who, as matron, watches on the spot over the beginnings of the scheme. She will find this matron herself to be young and cheerful, and in earnest with the wish to be of use. She is one who has paid many a friendly visit to day-workers in their garrets, for the purpose of explaining to them what it is so much for their own comfort to understand.

When this house is full, it will belong fairly to the day-workers themselves; and there are no rules but such as they would, with a regard to the economy of their funds, and to their personal respectability, make for their own following. Though few return from duties until nine in the evening the sitting-room fire, in winter-time, is lighted at six o’clock and it is kept alight all day on Sunday; so that the apartment is always warm and comfortable when the inmates use it. At eleven at night it is put out; and any inmate staying out of the house after eleven must give a reason for so doing. A respectable reference is necessarily required with each new-comer (if only to her own employer), and there are no other customs that are not to be found usual in any other private household. The girls buy what they please, and cook it how and when they please for themselves, at their kitchen ranges. If any or all of them like to associate their funds for common meals, it is for them to say and do what they desire.

At Manchester Street, it should be added, there is a free singing-class, and there are evenings of music. Opportunities of self-improvement are also supplied by the warmhearted promoters of the scheme. But in all this the sole desire is, to give a kindly and a hearty lift at starting, to a way--into which those whom it concerns may soon get for themselves--of extracting all the happiness, security, and comfort in their power out of scanty incomes.

TWO COLLEGE FRIENDS.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

In the year seventeen hundred and seventy three, two young men took possession of the only habitable rooms of the old tumble-down rectory-house of Combe-Warleigh, in one of the wildest parts of one of the western counties, then chiefly notable for miles upon miles of totally uncultivated moor and hill. The rooms were not many; consisting only of two wretched little bed-chambers and a parlour of diminutive size. A small building which leaned against the outer wall served as a kitchen to the establishment; and the cook, an old woman of sixty years of age, retired every night to a cottage about a quarter of a mile from the parsonage, where she had occupied a garret for many years. The house had originally been built of lath and plaster, and in some places revealed the skeleton walls where the weather had peeled off the outer coating, and given the building an appearance of ruin and desolation which comported with the bleakness of the surrounding scenery. With the exception of the already-named cottage and a small collection of huts around the deserted mansion of the landlord of the estate, there were no houses in the parish. How it had ever come to the honour of possessing a church and rectory no one could discover; for there were no records or traditions of its ever having been more wealthy or populous than it then was;--but it was in fact only nominally a parish, for no clergyman had been resident for a hundred years; the living was held by the fortunate possessor of a vicarage about fifteen miles to the north, and with the tithes of the united cures made up a stately income of nearly ninety pounds a-year. No wonder there were no repairs on the rectory--nor frequent visits to his parishioners. It was only on the first Sunday of each month he rode over from his dwelling-place and read the service to the few persons who happened to remember it was the Sabbath, or understood the invitation conveyed to them by the one broken bell swayed to and fro by the drunken shoemaker (who also officiated as clerk) the moment he saw the parson’s shovel hat appear on the ascent of the Vaird hill. And great accordingly was the surprise of the population; and pleased the heart of the rector, when two young gentlemen from Oxford hired the apartments I have described--fitted them up with a cart load of furniture from Hawsleigh, and gave out that they were going to spend the long vacation in that quiet neighbourhood for the convenience of study. Nor did their conduct belie their statement. Their table was covered with books and maps, and dictionaries; and after their frugal breakfast, the whole day was devoted to reading. Two handsome intelligent looking young men as ever you saw--both about the same age and height; with a contrast both in look and disposition that probably formed the first link in the close friendship that existed between them.

Arthur Hayning, a month or two the senior, was of a more self relying nature and firmer character than the other. In uninterrupted effort he pursued his work, never looking up, never making a remark, seldom even answering a stray observation of his friend. But when the hour assigned for the close of his studies had arrived, a change took place in his manner. He was gayer, more active and enquiring than his volatile companion. The books were packed away, the writing-desk locked up; with a stout stick in his hand, a strong hammer in his pocket, and a canvas bag slung over his shoulders, he started off on an exploring expedition among the neighbouring hills; while Winnington Harvey arming himself with a green gauze net, and his coat-sleeve glittering with a multitude of pins, accompanied him in his walk--diverging for long spaces in search of butterflies, which he brought back in triumph, scientifically transfixed on the leaves of his pocket-book. On their return home, their after-dinner employment consisted in arranging their specimens. Arthur spread out on the clay floor of the passage the different rocks he had gathered up in his walk. He broke them into minute fragments, examined them through his magnifying glass, sometimes dissolved a portion of them in aquafortis, tasted them, smelt to them, and finally threw them away; not so the more fortunate naturalist: with him the mere pursuit was a delight, and the victims of his net a perpetual source of rejoicing. He fitted them into a tray, wrote their names and families on narrow slips of paper in the neatest possible hand, and laid away his box of treasures as if they were choicest specimens of diamonds and rubies.

“What a dull occupation yours is!” said Winnington one night, “compared to mine. You go thumping old stones and gathering up lumps of clay, grubbing for ever among mud or sand, and never lifting up your eyes from this dirty spot of earth. Whereas I go merrily over valley and hill, keep my eyes open to the first flutter of a beautiful butterfly’s wing, follow it in its meandering, happy flight--”

“And kill it--with torture,” interposed Arthur Hayning, coldly.

“But it’s for the sake of science. Nay, as I am going to be a doctor, it’s perhaps for the sake of fortune--”

“And that justifies you in putting it to death?”

“There you go with your absurd German philanthropies; though, by the bye, love for a butterfly scarcely deserves the name. But think of the inducement, think of the glory of verifying with your own eyes the identity of a creature described in books; think of the interests at stake; and, above all, and this ought to be a settling argument to you, think of the enjoyment it will give my cousin Lucy to have her specimen-chest quite filled; and when you are married to her--”

“Dear Winnington, do hold your tongue. How can I venture to look forward to that for many years? I have only a hundred a-year. She has nothing.” Arthur sighed as he spoke.

“How much do you require? When do you expect to be rich enough?”

“When I have three times my present fortune--and that will be--who can tell? I may suddenly discover a treasure like Aladdin’s, and then, Winnington, my happiness will be perfect.”

“I think you should have made acquaintance with the magician, or even got possession of the ring, before you asked her hand,” said Winnington Harvey with a changed tone. “She is the nicest girl in the world, and loves you with all her heart; but if you have to wait till fortune comes--”

“She will wait also, willingly and happily. She has told me so. I love her with the freshness of a heart that has never loved anything else. I love you too, Winnington, for her sake; and we had better not talk any more on the subject, for I don’t like your perpetual objections to the engagement.”

Winnington, as usual, yielded to the superiority of his friend, and was more affectionate in his manner to him than ever, as if to blot out the remembrance of what he had recently said. They went on in silence with their respective works, and chipped stones, and impaled butterflies till a late hour.

“Don’t be alarmed, Winnington,” said Arthur, with a smile, as he lighted his bed-candle that night. “I am twenty-one and Lucy not nineteen. The genii of the lamp will be at our bidding before we are very old, and you shall have apartments in the palace, and be appointed resident physician to the princess.”

“With a salary of ten thousand a year, and my board and washing.”

“A seat on my right hand, whenever I sit down to my banquets.”

“Good. That’s a bargain,” said Winnington, laughing, and they parted to their rooms.

Geology was not at that time a recognised science--in England. But Arthur Hayning had been resident for some years in Germany, where it had long been established as one of the principal branches of a useful education. There were chairs of metallurgy, supported by government grants, and schools of mining, both theoretic and practical, established wherever the nature of the soil was indicative of mineral wealth. Hayning was an orphan, the son of a country surgeon, who had managed to amass the sum of two thousand pounds. He was left in charge of a friend of his father, engaged in the Hamburg trade, and by him had been early sent to the care of a protestant clergyman in Prussia, who devoted himself to the improvement of his pupil. His extraordinary talents were so dwelt on by this excellent man, in his letters to the guardian, that it was resolved to give him a better field for their display, than the University of Jena could afford, and he had been sent to one of the public schools in England, and from it, two years before this period, been transferred, with the highest possible expectations of friends and teachers to ---- College, Oxford. Here he had made acquaintance with Winnington Harvey; and through him, having visited him one vacation at his home in Warwickshire, had become known to Lucy Mainfield, the only daughter of a widowed aunt of his friend, with no fortune but her unequalled beauty, and a fine, honest, open, and loving disposition, which made an impression on Arthur, perhaps, because it was in so many respects in contrast with his own.

For some weeks their mode of life continued unaltered. Study all the day, geology and natural history in the evening. Their path led very seldom through the village of Combe-Warleigh; but, on one occasion, having been a distant range among the wilds, and being belated, they took a nearer course homeward, and passed in front of the dwelling-house of the squire. There was a light in the windows on the drawing-room floor, and the poetic Winnington was attracted by the sight.

“I’ve read of people,” he said, “seeing the shadows of beautiful girls on window-blinds, and dying of their love, though never knowing more of them,--wouldn’t it be strange if Squire Warleigh had returned, and with a daughter young and beautiful, and if I saw her form thrown clearly like a portrait on the curtain, and--”

“But there’s no curtain,” interrupted Arthur. “Come along.”

“Ha, stop!” cried Winnington, laying his hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “Look there!”

They looked, and saw a girl who came between them and the light, with long hair falling over her shoulders, while she held a straw hat in her hand; her dress was close-fitting to her shape, a light pelisse of green silk edged with red ribbons, such as we see as the dress of young pedestrians in Sir Joshua’s early pictures.

“How beautiful,” said Winnington, in a whisper. “She has been walking out. What is she doing? Who is she? What is her name?”

The apparition turned half round, and revealed her features in profile. Her lips seemed to move, she smiled very sweetly, and then suddenly moved out of the sphere of vision, and left Winnington still open-mouthed, open-eyed, gazing towards the window.

“A nice enough girl,” said Arthur coldly; “but come along; the old woman will be anxious to get home; and besides, I am very hungry.”

“I shall never be hungry again,” said Winnington, still transfixed and immoveable. “You may go if you like. Here I stay in hopes of another view.”

“Good night, then,” replied Arthur, and rapidly walked away.

How long the astonished Winnington remained I cannot tell. It was late when he arrived at the rectory. The old woman, as Arthur had warned him, had gone home. Arthur let him in.

“Well!” he enquired, “have you found out the unknown?”

“All about her--but for heaven’s sake some bread and cheese. Is there any here?”

“I thought you were never to be hungry again.”

“It is the body only which has these requirements. My soul is satiated for ever. Here’s to Ellen Warleigh!”--he emptied the cup at a draught.

“The Squire’s daughter?”

“His only child. They have been abroad for some years; returned a fortnight ago. Her father and she live in that desolate house.”

“He will set about repairing it, I suppose,” said Arthur.

“He can’t. They are as poor as we are. And I am glad of it,” replied Winnington, going on with his bread and cheese.

“He has an immense estate,” said Arthur, almost to himself. “Combe-Warleigh must consist of thousands of acres.”

“Of heath and hill. Not worth three hundred a year. Besides, he was extravagant in his youth. I met the shoemaker at the gate, and he told me all about them. I wonder if she’s fond of butterflies,” he added: “it would be so delightful for us to hunt them together.”

“Nonsense, boy; finish your supper and go to bed. Never trouble yourself about whether a girl cares for butterflies or not whose father has only three hundred a year and has been extravagant in his youth.”

“What a wise fellow you are,” said Winnington, “about other people’s affairs! How many hundreds a year had Lucy’s father? Nothing but his curacy and a thousand pounds he got with aunt Jane.”

“But Lucy’s very fond of butterflies, you know, and that makes up for poverty,” said Arthur, with a laugh. “The only thing I see valuable about them is their golden wings.”

The companions were not now so constantly together as before. Their studies underwent no change; but their evening occupations were different. The geologist continued his investigations among the hills; the naturalist seemed to believe that the Papilio had become a gregarious insect, and inhabited the village. He was silent as to the result of his pursuits, and brought very few specimens home. But his disposition grew sweeter than ever. His kindness to the drunken shoemaker was extraordinary. His visits to several old women in the hamlet were frequent and long. What a good young man he was! How attentive to the sick!--and he to be only twenty-one! On the first Sunday of the month he was in waiting at the door to receive the rector. He took his horse from him, and put it into the heap of ruins which was called the stable with his own hands. He went with him into the church. He looked all the time of service at the Squire’s pew, but it was empty. He walked alongside the rector on his return; he accompanied him as far as the village, and told him quite in a careless manner, of the family’s return.

“I have done it,” he said, when he got home again, late at night. “I know them both. The father is a delightful old man. He kept me and the clergyman to dinner--and Ellen! there never was so charming a creature before; and, Arthur, she’s fond of butterflies, and catches them in a green gauze net, and has a very good collection--particularly of night-hawks. That’s the reason she was out so late the night we saw her at the window. They were very kind; they knew all about our being here, and Ellen thanked me so for being good to her poor people. I felt quite ashamed.”

The young man’s eyes were flashing with delight; his voice trembled; he caught the cold gaze of his friend fixed upon him, and blushed.

“You look very much ashamed of yourself,” said Arthur, “and I am sorry you have made their acquaintance. It will interfere with our object in coming here.”

“Ah! and I told her you were a perfect German; and she understands the language, and I said you would lend her any of your books she chose.”

“What!” exclaimed Arthur, starting up excited to sudden anger; “what right had you, sir, to make any offer of the kind? I wouldn’t lend her a volume to save her life, or yours, or any one’s in the world. She shan’t have one,--I’ll burn them first.”

“Arthur!” said Winnington, astonished. “What is it that puts you in such a passion? I’m sure I didn’t mean to offend you. I will tell her you don’t like to lend your books; I’m sorry I mentioned it to her,--but I will apologise, and never ask you again.”

“I was foolish to be so hot about a trifle,” said Arthur, resuming his self-command. “I’m very sorry to disappoint your friend; but I really can’t spare a single volume,--besides,” he said, with a faint laugh, “they are all about metallurgy and mining.”

“I told her so,” said Winnington, “and she has a great curiosity to see them.”

“You did!” again exclaimed Arthur, flushing with wrath. “You have behaved like a fool or a villain,--one or both, I care not which. You should have known, without my telling, that these books are sacred. If the girl knows German let her read old Gotsched’s plays. She shall not see a page of any book of mine.”

Winnington continued silent under this outbreak; he was partly overcome with surprise; but grief was uppermost.

“I’ve known you for two years, I think, Hayning,” he said; “from the first time we met I admired and liked you. I acknowledge your superiority in everything; your energy, your talent, your acquirements. I felt a pleasure in measuring your height, and was proud to be your friend. I know you despise me, for I am a weak, impulsive, womanly-natured fellow;--but I did not know you disliked me. I shall leave you to-morrow, and we shall never meet again.” He was going out of the room.

“I did not mean what I said,” said Arthur, in a subdued voice. “I don’t despise you. I don’t dislike you. I beg your pardon,--will you forgive me, Winnington?”

“Ay, if you killed me!” sobbed Winnington, taking hold of Arthur’s scarcely extended hand. “I know I am very foolish; but I love Ellen Warleigh, and would give her all I have in the world.”

“That’s not much,” said Arthur, still moodily brooding over the incident; “and never will be, if you wear your heart so perpetually on your sleeve.”

“You forget that I don’t need to have any riches of my own,” said Winnington, gaily. “I am to be physician to the Prince and Princess in Aladdin’s palace, and shall sit always on your right hand when you entertain the nobility. So, shake hands, and good night.”

“But Ellen is not to have my books,” said Arthur, sitting down to the table, and spreading a volume before him. “I wouldn’t lend you for an hour,” he said, when he was alone, cherishing the book, “no, not to Lucy Mainfield herself.”

CHAPTER II.

August and September passed away, and October had now begun. Arthur avoided the Warleighs as much as he could; Winnington was constantly at their house. The friends grew estranged. But, with the younger, the estrangement made no difference in the feeling of affection he always had entertained for Arthur. He was hurt, however, by the change he perceived in his manner. He was hurt at his manifest avoidance of the society of the squire and his daughter. He was hurt, also, at the total silence Arthur now maintained on the subject of his cousin Lucy. He saw her letters left unopened, sometimes for a whole day, upon the table instead of being greedily torn open the moment the straggling and uncertain post had achieved their delivery at the door. He was hurt at some other things besides, too minute to be recorded; too minute perhaps to be put into language even by himself, but all perceptible to the sensitive heart of friendship such as his. With no visible improvement in Arthur’s fortune or prospects, it was evident that his ideas were constantly on the rise. A strange sort of contempt of poverty mingled with his aspirations after wealth. An amount of income which, at one time, would have satisfied his desires, was looked on with disdain, and the possessors of it almost with hatred. The last words Winnington had heard him speak about Lucy were, that marriage was impossible under a thousand a-year. And where was that sum to come from? The extent of Lucy’s expectations was fifty,--his own, a hundred--and yet he sneered at the Warleighs as if they had been paupers; although in that cheap country, and at that cheap time, a revenue of three hundred pounds enabled them to live in comfort, almost in luxury.

Winnington took no thought of to-morrow, but loved Ellen Warleigh, with no consideration of whether she was rich or poor. It is probable that Ellen had no more calculating disposition than Winnington; for it is certain her sentiments towards him were not regulated by the extent of his worldly wealth,--perhaps she did not even know what her sentiments towards him were--but she thought him delightful, and wandered over the solitary heaths with him, in search of specimens. They very often found none, in the course of their four hours’ ramble, and yet came home as contented as if they had discovered an Emperor of Morocco on every bush. Baulked in their natural history studies by the perverse absence of moth and butterfly, they began,--by way of having something to do--to take up the science of botany. The searches they made for heath of a particular kind! The joy that filled them when they came on a group of wild flowers, and gathered them into a little basket they carried with them, and took them back to the manor, and astonished Mr. Warleigh with the sound of their Latin names! What new dignity the commonest things took under that sonorous nomenclature! How respectable a nettle grew when called an urtica, and how suggestive of happiness and Gretna Green when a flower could be declared to be cryptogamic.

“See what a curious root this piece of broom has,” said Winnington, one night, on his return from the Manor, and laid his specimen on the table.

Arthur hardly looked up from his book, and made some short reply.

“It took Ellen and me ten minutes, with all our force, to pull it up by the roots. We had no knife, or I should merely have cut off the stalk; but see, now that the light falls on it, what curious shining earth it grows in; with odd little stones twisted up between the fibres! Did you ever see anything like it?” Arthur had fixed his eyes on the shrub during this speech--He stretched forth his hand and touched the soil still clinging to the roots--he put a small portion to his lips--his face grew deadly pale.

“Where did you get this?” he said.

“Down near the waterfall--not a hundred yards from this.”

“On whose land?--on the glebe?” said Arthur, speaking with parched mouth, and still gazing on the broom.

“Does Warleigh know of this?” he went on, “or the clergyman? Winnington! no one must be to told, tell Ellen to be silent; but she is not aware perhaps. Does she suspect?”

“What? what is there to suspect, my dear Arthur? Don’t you think you work too much,” he added, looking compassionately on the dilated eye and pale cheek of his companion. “You must give up your studies for a day or two. Come with us on an exploring expedition to the Outer fell to-morrow; Mr. Warleigh is going.”