Chapter XLV: A Thunderbolt in Standon Square (3)

I was alone in this place: the people were not such as would be my choice of companions, for there were no Friends in the community, and I scarcely think I ever was fitted for the society of the world's people. I care much for silent meditation and in-looking, and the joys and pleasures of the gayer people seemed but noisome, and not of a tone with Nature's silent sunshine and green leaves, white snows and growing things. It is, I know, my early training that has made me fitted only to see thus. I cared now much to stay in my room after the tasks of the day were over and think of the friends far off. Belike I am most domestic in my desires, and that may be the cause why my mind travelled swiftly and surely to friend Hicks's fireside, and dwelt so long and with all gentleness close beside his daughter. And then I began, in my being so much alone, to inconsistently connect friend Barbara with friend Jordan. The demented woman was always calling out for those who were much to her, but who were far from her--was always saying that her heart wanted the love that was denied it. I bethink me that I more fully sympathized with her than was my wont, simply because I cared so much for friend Barbara and heard so much of longing for affection that had been denied. Therefore, as time passed on and the letters from friend Hicks were very few, and always ended with "My daughter sends her duty to thee"--never one word more or less--and I could not with becoming grace say aught of her to her father when I replied to his letters, which were strictly of a business nature and acknowledged the receipt of various moneys which I sent him for the keeping,--therefore, as time passed on, friend Jordan grew upon me. I would leave my room-door open of nights, and take a chair and seat myself upon the threshold; and as she walked up and down, up and down, restless and discontented, repeating disconnected scraps of Bible verses, I would often say a word to her in answer to some heedless and terrible question of the goodness of the Lord. Friend Afton had less care of her at such times, for she told me friend Jordan cared very well for me because I was so quiet and orderly. Then when the woman was tired and could walk no more, I would offer her my chair and would talk to her--not giving her frivolous answer for frivolous question, but saying to her what I had to say as earnestly as though I had been moved by Spirit in meeting to give the assurances of my own heart. It is a wonder to me at this day how calm she often became under my mode of speech. She fell into the way of looking for me and expecting me, and often when I saw her, far in the night, at her window holding out her very thin hands in supplication, I would softly raise my own window and say kindly, "Don't thee think thee could sleep if thee tried, friend Jordan?"--"I will try, Quaker," she would say, and go in and close the window, and remain quiet for the rest of the night. It was a sad contrast, I am sure--she wild and uncontrollable from self-government, and I held in and still by discipline of many ancestors. And then when she found that her cavilling against the Lord and His mighty works was the opposite of pleasant to me, and made me sad of visage, she after a while would content herself to say, "I used to say" so and so, as the case might be, "but now I doubt myself;" which was more comforting.

But there came a letter from friend Hicks; and after much talk concerning a certain lot of lumber and other matters of business, he said, "My daughter is not looking healthful, and is not so well as could be desired." I do not know what made me forget all the rest of his letter but that one line. It seemed to me that I was stricken with pain with that thin black miracle--pen-and-ink words. I wrote a letter to him instantly; I put aside all modesty of demeanor and spoke only of Barbara, of my desire to have her well and cheerful; I never once in all my lines mentioned business. Friend Hicks must have been sensibly astonished. That night when I went home friend Jordan for the first time grated upon me, and I would fain have gone into my room and closed the door and thought long and painfully. In my flighty mind I saw Barbara pining, and for me! Never before had I thought she cared so well for me as now when she was not in fair health. It is a sad happiness to think that some dear one is far from thee, and heavy of heart all for thee. But I was selfish, for I heard a sob at my closed door, and friend Jordan was crouched on the sill. "Have _you_ deserted me too?" she asked.

"Nay, friend," I replied, "but I had sad news which left me beyond much comfort."

"'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me,'" she said.

"Will thee touch my hand?" I tried to say, for my voice was quite broken. "Comfort!"

And so we talked long and tirelessly: she seemed in her sanest mind, and something in me appeared to make her look at me more than usual.

"Why do you not complain?" she asked me. And I told her that I had nothing to complain of.

And to-night she told me that she had read the Scriptures misunderstandingly all her life; that she had taken their truths to her in affright; that their majesty had, instead of raising her up to their height, debased her even below herself. I saw in all from the first, even had friend Afton not told me, that what is called religion had wrecked her mind, and in my own manner of understanding the Lord's way I could scarcely comprehend it.

Although I had not much mind in my affairs after I had heard of Barbara's illness, yet a week sped along before I had word again. And what word was it that _did_ come? I have read that to hear of the death of one who is infinitely near to us in spirit is not the worst we can hear--that the separation by death is not so eternal as the separation which life can make. Barbara wrote me herself this time, unknown to her father; and I had been away but a matter of three months. She said no word of her illness nor of her father: she addressed herself in all honesty and ruth to me. She had, somehow, in the place met with a man, one of the world's people, whom she found much to her mind--far more than I had ever been, she said: her father necessarily knew nothing of this, and she had chosen rather to tell me of it first, as I had the best right to know first of all. (The best right! I remembered the time when I had spoken to her father before I had spoken to her of my intended coming to this place where I was.) She asked me would I be willing to take as a wife a woman who could not care for me solely, carrying guiltily into her married life the memory of her great feeling for a man who was not her husband. She asked if it were not better that she should tell me this, rather than to hold herself tied to a false code of honor which should make her give herself to me because she had promised to do so. She would, if I still chose to hold her to her word, marry me, but it was best I should know; and she trusted I would say no word to her father about this, as it was clearly between her and me. She further said that did I refuse to give her up she would not compromise me in the least, as she did not know if that other man cared at all for her; and she was sure, as I must be, that she had never shown him that he was aught to her.

This was the letter I was to answer unknown to her father. I saw her honor standing out white and unassailable in it: I saw even her modesty, and, above all, her truth and the womanly knowledge of what a wife should be to her husband. I also saw that her father's will was her law; that her father's will had influenced her ever; and that when I first proffered my request of him for his daughter in marriage she took such a request as his will: had he said No, her answer would have been likewise: as it was Yes, she had acquiesced. But the pain of it! the pain of it!

I never once, from the minute the words clung to my mind like burning iron to flesh, questioned as to how I must reply to the letter: the reply shaped itself while I read her words. Could I take to myself a wife who cared little for me? I cared too much for Barbara to have such a wife.

And yet when I had come to friend Afton's house and entered my room, I closed and locked the door before I sat down to reply to the letter, as though I were doing a guilty deed. My hand trembled: the words I wrote were blurred. I heard a low knock at my door, but I answered it not: why should even a demented woman see me as I was? I wrote and re-wrote my answer before I found it fitted to my mind. My letter must have not myself in it: it must be clean of all foolish extravagance. And yet I extenuated, for I called for another letter from her. I wrote, Did she rightly know her mind? was she firm in her reasoning? _and who was the man?_ I had not intended writing that last, but something forced me to it: it was not vain curiosity, for curiosity is too far removed from pain to be a part of it. But I could not see whom she could possibly know of all the inhabitants of the place that could thus exercise her spirit. There were few people there whom she had not known for years, and it was not likely she should have known any one all this time and only now be awakened to a greater knowledge. Perhaps a cruel feeling of jealousy actuated me in some measure. Why, I reasoned, had friend Barbara thus led me on? But I stopped there. Had she led me on? Nay. She had never given me reason to think that I was aught to her: I had ever wrestled in spirit, hoping that she would see in me what I saw so clearly in her--all that I could ever care to call my own. She had never tried to deceive me by false words or looks or actions: she had been true to her instincts as a woman in all this time, and had been as I had seen her. Too truly I saw that the care had been upon my side alone--that when I was most uplifted in spirit it was because I had been blinded to anything save my own inordinate feeling and hope of comfort. I forgot all else as I sat there with her letter in my hand; and even my discipline was of little account when I folded my arms across the table and let my head rest there for a little while.

How long I rested there I know not, but I was aroused by words of friend Jordan, and she said those awful questionings from the Cross, "My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" And I arose and raised my hand, and said those same words too. Then I opened the door, and she sprang into my arms. She was wild and excited, and friend Afton was with her, but powerless to do anything. I let her weep close to me and cry out and laugh--do just as she would until she sank exhausted. Then I talked with her calmly and dispassionately, and she clung to me and would not be removed. For an hour or so we rested there, and then friend Afton gave me a letter from friend Hicks. I started, and would have put the letter in my pocket, but the eyes of friend Jordan were upon me, and I thought to allay her suspicions of my not acting toward her as I would toward others; so I opened and read the letter. No need to send friend Barbara the letter now. Her father wrote me that his daughter, much against his will, had formed the acquaintance of a hireling minister, one Richard Jordan, who had charge of the new church just built there, and that, though friend Barbara had never told of the man, yet her father had seen her walking with him. Friend Hicks deemed that her being promised to me gave only me the right to expostulate with her upon this, and desired me to write to her forthwith, as he himself had said no word to her. I had friend Barbara's letter and her father's: which should I obey? The one coming from the friend who was nearest to me?

I afterward wrote to Barbara that I could not say one word of myself in this matter, but that she must act as she thought best; only that she must take all things into consideration, and must weigh one thing in the balance with another--that did she make a mistake in going from her people into the world, she might never rectify it to her own mind; but that if she could justify her acts to herself, there was no need to call upon any aid outside of what her own principles of right could afford her. I thought it as well not to put myself at all in the letter, and to let her think that it was as though I were writing as an interested friend to another who scarcely knew what to do in a momentous time. Her father's letter I passed entirely over. He never knew, nor does Barbara know to this day, that I received it.

Yet that night, when I sat with friend Jordan in the hallway of friend Afton's house, my mind seemed confused and full of uncertainty. I scarcely noted the name which friend Hicks told me belonged to the man he had seen his daughter walking with, and not until friend Afton called to the other woman that she should retire for the night did the similarity of the names bear upon me. The hireling minister was named Jordan, the demented woman's name was Jordan: it might be a casual coincidence, but the man seemed taking all away from me that had made my life pleasant and hopeful, while the woman said I gave her new life, new hope, and all that life and hope consisted of--a healthful belief in the Lord and His works--although I knew that while she said so her lost mind was perhaps only being influenced by a quiet and moderate one. Yet maybe there are moments of what is called delusion which are the most sane constituents of a lifetime. As it was, late in the night, as I lay awake and sore in spirit, and wild with all things and almost with the Lord, sleepless and with much yearning grown upon me, I heard the voice calling out in the night up to the stars and the mystery of quiet for love and all that had been near and dear to this one clouded mind; and I turned my face to the wall. And I was like Ishmael indeed when I remembered, while that voice threw out its plaint and the words were clear and cleaved the darkness, that when I had last parted with Barbara, when I hurried from her presence fearful to look back lest she might call me from manly order by a look or a smile, I had thrown myself against a man outside the garden-gate, the man with a white neckcloth and long black ill-cut coat, who had told me that he was the minister of the church but newly erected, and that I had bidden peace go with him, and he had bidden it back to me.

III.

I bethink me that I was very much perturbed in my mind after this, albeit I was exteriorly the quiet, drab-colored Quaker that all knew me to be. Still, I have failed yet to ascertain what discipline that can govern actions, looks and speech can make man's heart throb more sluggishly than the feelings to which all Nature is prone must ever provoke. Thee knows a Friend must be seemly to all, and that alone will inform thee that I manifested no alteration in my demeanor. And my business qualifications were not impaired because of the uprising in my mind, for what has worldly business to do with spiritual? I could bargain and sell to the best advantage, be wholly consistent in all things, and be termed a man whose feelings were so schooled that no emotion ever dared come nigh them. Thee may think, the world may think, that suppressed emotion is annihilated emotion: I who wear drab know differently. And the silence between friend Barbara and myself was not a silence to be broken by useless speech: it was too closely allied to the end of something I had been brought to think almost eternal. I still had letter after letter from friend Hicks, which I replied to always--letters on purely business-matters, never once touched by so much as the name of Barbara, for she no longer sent her duty to me; and I could but realize how stern her father must be to her at home for her dereliction, and I--pitied her. As the weeks went by and I heard nothing of or from her, I may safely asseverate that the cruelly weak feeling that had oppressed me at first left me by degrees, and I could see far clearer than before, and could perchance blame myself for having failed to see ere this that I was what I was to her. I began to weigh the many chances of happiness against the many certainties of unhappiness, and I could but understand that she had with a woman's keen insight found out easily what it had cost me so considerably to know. I could not blame her: why should I? She had acted most fairly to me: had I done as well to her? In friend Afton's house I fought the battle which alone Friends approve of and sanction--the battle of the spirit against the flesh; and I conquered well, I am assured, although I could never cease to care for friend Barbara as I had cared for her since I had known her: it would have been entirely inconsistent with the principles of constancy and truth which had been so early and late imbibed by me.

I must say now that my great comfort in these times was friend Jordan; and, odd as it may appear, the similarity of her name with that of the man whom friend Hicks's daughter had learned to regard so highly seemed to call her closer to me than anything else at the same season might have done. Of evenings we would take up our old manner, and she would say, "Quaker, you are kinder than you know."

She had never learned my name, nor had expressed a desire to know it: what were names of things to her who had lost the things themselves?

"Thank thee, friend Jordan," I would say; and then we would sit and talk. Sometimes she would do all the talking: at other times she let me join her. With her confused mind it was perhaps the best work I could have had, to try to let in a little light where darkness had been so long.

"We always love those the most who give us the most pleasure, do we not?" she asked me.

I could not give her the reply she wanted, for friend Hicks's daughter had given me considerable happiness; so I remained quiet.

"Then next to those I love, and who nightly shine down to me in long, cool reaches of light from the stars, I love you, Quaker," she said.

"I thank thee," I replied.

"You should never thank for love," she said, "for it is a gift that requires as much as it bestows."

"And yet they call thee crazed!" I said, and placed my hand upon her wild dishevelled hair.

"But you Quakers never show any feeling," she went on, "and I suppose you never love."

"Sometimes we do," said I.

She seemed to think I was made sorry by what she had spoken, for she started. "What am I saying?" she exclaimed, "when you have shown me more feeling than any one in the world; and maybe you love me a little."

"We should love our neighbors as ourselves."

"I want the stars," she began, weeping: "I want to reach them, to go to them, to have the light in my mind that is gone out of it up to them."

I could say nothing, for my want was something akin to hers.

Many a wild night had she now, and friend Afton and I had often but sad chances of keeping her within bounds: we had to watch her while she would stand and call out to the far-off lights in the sky; and as, like a prophet of old, she stood and repeated divine words of care and an all-seeing love, she was grown softer and gentler, and her speech seemed to come from one who understood what the words imparted to her hearers. She was fond of saying the Psalms of David, and would weep at the touching words of suffering, of joy and of exultation which that man, so many thousand years dead, had been wont to sing as perchance he stood as she now did, looking up to the same nightly skies and weeping as she now wept, as his words rang through the ever-settled calmness of the night, and had no answer borne to his ears, but only the quiet made even quieter by his sorrow or his joy.

But I find that again I am using superfluous if not wholly irrelevant speech. Let me say, however, that had I possessed more curiosity--or, rather, if I had expressed more curiosity--friend Afton would have told me, as she afterward did, that the woman was not so entirely alone as she imagined herself to be, for that weekly letters reached friend Afton wherein were goodly wages for the care of the stricken one.

That my affairs prospered I am glad to relate--that in the six months I should be here I should accumulate an agreeable sum might have pleased me. But what was that sum to me now, when I realized to what purpose I had expected to put it? Yet my greed received a check. I had a letter from friend Hicks. It was a most grievous letter: my money, all that he held in trust for me (and it was my all), had been stolen from his keeping. The theft had occurred more than a month ago, but as he had sedulously hoped to detect the culprit, he had kept the fact from me for shame at what might be termed his negligence of reposed trust. He had instigated diligent search, but nothing had come of it: there was no one to accuse. He had determined, however, to pay back to my account from his own moneys the full amount, and had only informed me of the loss that there might be no secrecy between us, and that I should never hear from outside parties that this thing had occurred, and that he had used most reprehensive tact to disguise the fact from me. I wrote a letter to him. I reminded him that the money was of no account--that as it had been intended for the well-known purpose, and as my marriage was to be at no set time, let it rest to my loss, and not his, for that I would never accept of his money to cover what was truthfully a theft from me.

I heard long afterward that he let his daughter read this letter, as he knew that she was often with Richard Jordan, and he desired to acquaint her that I meant to be well in all my principles. This was as I understood it.

The loss of this money gave me little concern, I assure thee; and now that it would never be put to its originally-intended use, I perhaps cared less than I ordinarily might have cared; for friend Barbara's long silence could help me but to one conclusion, and that was that she would never be my wife. For had she consented to be guided by her former promise, her confession of much care for another man would have most effectively debarred me from calling into requisition that promise so exactingly obtained from her. My wife must have no fondness for another man than me. And yet when, a few days after the receipt and reply of her father's letter, another in friend Barbara's writing was placed in my hand, I can but say that more joy than I had ever before experienced was mine, and I thought of Miriam's song so full of triumph and gladness. And then the wonderful words of the psalm came to me. "'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me,'" I said aloud, and thought of poor friend Jordan as she had understood those words so short a time ago.

Suppose Barbara had written in answer to my letter to her--had owned that her thought of the man was a delusion, and that she cared for me, and me only, above all others in the world! I carried the letter by me for many an hour, for it was business-time when I had it, and I let nothing interfere with needful duties of the day. It lay within my pocket pulseless, as a letter always is: its envelope had my name upon it carefully and neatly inscribed. Then when I had an hour to myself I walked, not more briskly than usual, to a sunny hollow surrounded by new boards smelling most pleasantly of the rich forests they had helped to form, and there, surrounded by deal that had held many a singing bird's voice in its time, I broke the seal of Barbara's second letter to me. I think I was vastly stricken as I read it--more stricken perhaps than life can ever experience twice. Did she write as I had most hoped and desired? It was a long letter, and I read it through twice to fully comprehend it. She was a thief! she herself had stolen the money! She knew that her father must have written me that the money was gone, and she did not wish to see the blame rest on an innocent person. Her father had been harsher than usual with her, and, when she would have asserted herself in many ways, had always referred her to me, telling her that I was the rightful one to say what might and what might not be: her father had refused to hear her make mention of the man she had mentioned to me, and had not recognized her being with him at all. (I could see in this that friend Hicks had tried more than arbitrary means to reduce his daughter's mind to the level of his wishes. But to the letter.) How could she, then, she wrote, tell her father of the taking of the money? She trusted that I might not think her overly bold, but if I did, it made no difference to her, for she was rendered desperate on all sides. (Ah, friend Barbara! thy father had ever such a cold reserve, that was not meant unkindly, but nevertheless was overly severe.) She could trust me, for it was my own money she had taken. (I bethink me it was but an odd trust at best.) She had taken the money to send to the man she cared so much for: he was a very poor man, and the congregation of which he was the hired preacher was poor; and as they had built a church which they could not afford to pay for, it was but in reason that they could not pay the minister of the church. The church was what the world's people call "a split" from another church--split because the people quarrelled about the Thirty-nine Articles, whatever they be, one party wanting thirty-eight or forty, and the other perhaps the original number. She knew that the minister was woefully in debt; that no one would trust him any further; that he had met and told her nothing at all of it; that he was duly polite to her, and mentioned none of his affairs at all. (O Barbara! how thee shielded him!) But she had questioned a woman who knew much of him, and the woman had said that he must have money for a certain secret purpose, the nature of which purpose the woman refused to tell, and that he was crazed for money. Barbara had asked the woman if the purpose were a sinful or shameful purpose, but the answer had been that it was the most holy one a man could have. Then Barbara had looked upon his white face and knew of his straits, and had pitied him. It was borne in upon her that she should help him. "Thee would have felt so, I am assured," she wrote. Then looking around her, confused by many and conflicting feelings, sad and grieving for herself, having no one to go to in the greatest trial a woman can have, she had seen but one thing to do: she called to mind Samuel Biddle, and how generously he had acted toward her--more generously than she had reason to suppose another man could ever do. Friend Biddle's letter to her was couched in such kindly terms that she knew it had been no great overthrow of feeling on his part to give her the liberty which she had long debated with herself whether to accept or not; and had finally concluded to do so. Then she had taken the money from her father's iron safe. She had sent it anonymously to the man, though she feared that he suspected from whom it came; and that was the saddest stroke of all, "for, friend Biddle," she wrote, "I know not if I am anything unto him, but I do assure thee he is much to me." (Poor friend Barbara! how I pitied thee for that!)

This was all of the letter, and I read it through twice.

I had gotten over my foolish emotion of disappointment, as I have told thee before this, and I went back to my office and indited a reply to the epistle immediately. "Let it be as thee has done, and thee may think that I fully sympathize with thee." That was my only reply.

And when I thought over the letter--her letter--from beginning to end, all day long, I did not see that I could have indited a different reply. Still, when I went home to friend Afton's house, and friend Afton came to me and told me that friend Jordan had had a more miserable day than ever, although my sympathy was fully aroused, yet it was with a sense of relief that I entered my room and closed the door, for I bethought me that I had much to ponder on. But my thought was interrupted: the poor demented woman was weeping in her room. She was stormy in her grief, and I heard friend Afton scolding. I opened my door. "Friend Jordan, is thee grieved?" I asked.

"Oh, Quaker," she cried, running to me, "they are all in the sky calling to me, and this woman will not let me reach them."

"She would have jumped out," whispered friend Afton, "and I had to nail down the sash."

I nodded, and motioned for her to keep quiet. "Does thee think thee would like to talk to me a while?" I asked.

"Not now, for I only want to talk with them. But tell me, Quaker--tell me if you want one thing more than any other in this world, and I will ask them to give it to you. Is there any one that you want to love you? For they can easily help you, as they have made me love you, and made you be good to me."

"Nay, friend," I said, "even the light from the stars cannot make one care for me who would not."

Then she cried out that I was sorrowful, and that I made her heart heavy--I who had always been a comfort and a guidance before.

"I will be so to thee now," I said.

"Then give me rest," she cried.

"The Lord knows I would give thee rest, O soul! if I could."

She looked at me most suddenly--I may say as a flash--and quickly glanced in at my room.

"Then I think I can rest in your room," she said.

"Thee shall do so."

Then I put on my hat and prepared to go out, and friend Afton said it was a relief to have one so obliging in the house.

"Farewell to thee," I said to friend Jordan.

She stood inside my doorway and looked at me. "'Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest,'" she said, and moved like a spirit toward me, placed her lips upon my cheek, and went in and closed the door. It was the first time any woman save my mother had ever kissed me.

Those words made me feel that they applied to me, youth is so vain and exacting even of the Lord's words. Nevertheless, as I went along the dark streets I heard them ringing in my ears with such a benign meaning as I never had understood in them before.

Long I walked the streets, lost in much thought and contemplation, and I felt what was weakness leaving me, and I deemed how heavy were some yokes compared to mine--friend Barbara's, for instance, she who must be surrounded and held in by unsympathizing moods. I fain would have helped her more than I did, but any further succor only meant a further offering of my feeling for her, and _that_ she was as powerless to accept as I was to make her accept it. Long I walked the streets, and had the hopeful, helping words around and within me. And late in the night I turned my wearied steps toward friend Afton's, and once more was entering the house, when, as though an angel--as though the Lord above--had spoken to me from high overhead, in grave, solemn, holy voice came the words, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." And I turned my eyes above as I hope to turn them on the last Vast Day, when methinks those words may again be spoken and call forth a mighty response. But what was that white form so far above, even upon the sill of my window, three stories from the ground? With a great terror grown upon me I rushed into the street, and saw far up there, far in the night, friend Jordan standing out in the darkness with hands supplicating the stars, saying those words. This was why she had desired to rest in my room: with the cunning of insanity, she had known that the windows of her own room were nailed down, and so on the instant had thought of mine as a possible means of reaching to her stars. With every limb frozen, it seemed, by sudden petrification, I had no power to unclose my lips, but I made a sound like a groan, I know, and then I saw her reach up high, high toward the sky and give a leap into the air. There came a crash of breaking glass, and I saw a whirl of white garments far above me that came fluttering down in a spiral motion. I rushed toward it ere it fell: there came a sickening thud on the ground beside me, and a lifeless mass lay there.

I can scarcely narrate this calmly or well, but thee sees I have tried my best.

Then when friend Afton came to me, and in pardonable and much agitation asked me to write to the friends of the dead woman, I complied, and directed the letter to the Reverend Richard Jordan; and his address was the place where friend Hicks sojourned, as likely thee has guessed.

"What was this man to the deceased? does thee know?" I asked friend Afton.

"No, sir. He placed her with me a year ago, and asked me to take the best of care of her, and has always sent me money for her wants, and paid me well besides. And, strange to say, I never could get her to mention him. He seemed to be a good man, but poor in his dress--too young in the profession to get a wealthy 'call.'"

So the Reverend Richard Jordan, who had cared for this woman, was the man whom friend Barbara thought well of! This was what the money had been wanted for--this was the secret which was "neither sinful nor shameful, but the most holy that a man can have"!

When he came in at friend Afton's I went to him. "Who was the deceased?" I asked--most bluntly, I fear me.

"She was my wife," he said sadly, and so altogether frankly that I knew he was no guilty man, whatever else he might be.

"I grieve with thee," I said. "And before thee goes up to thy solemn office of praying by thy dead wife's side, I would tell thee something. I met thee--look at me!--months ago, when I almost stumbled against thee outside of Benjamin Hicks's garden-gate. Thee was new to the place, thee told me."

"I remember you," he said, and flushed painfully.

"Nay, do not redden," I said almost with anger. "I know all things about thee, and nothing that is harmful."

"Nor ever has been harm," he said firmly.

"I know thee has had much money sent to thee, and thee does not know from whom."

"I do," he said, "and am ashamed to say I accepted it. It came from your friend Hicks's daughter, but it was for my poor wife--for her alone. I could not help myself--I--"

"Thee has no need of shame for that. The Lord must have made it patent to thee that we are placed here to help one another. And so much as friend Hicks's daughter did for thee she did well, and she has my consent; for it was my money that she sent thee."

"God bless you, man!" he said, holding his hand to his face, "for I am nothing to you."

"And what is Benjamin Hicks's daughter to thee if thee is nothing to me?"

He looked at me in wonder: "She is to me a good woman who did her benefits in secret. I never had much conversation with her, for we seldom met; but she was ever kind, and I heard that she would marry soon. I never talked much to any one, for my cares have been great to me, and that sorrow up stairs has been a goodly portion."

"Go to thy sorrow," I said, "and let it comfort thee, as sorrow should, that thee did the best thee could."

Was I cruel in having spoken to him as I had, and at this time?

Then I wrote all--everything of the past months, of to-day, of the deceased woman's suffering, of her death, her husband's arrival, and all that he had said to me. It was a considerably lengthy letter, but what of that? It was for friend Barbara. I sent it at once. Then I must not neglect my duties here, so I stayed the allotted time, receiving occasional word from friend Hicks, but none from his daughter.

I think my mind was much inclined toward the hireling minister, for I clearly saw, as thee no doubt does, that he never knew what Barbara thought of him, and that he never could know, for he was a pure man and the sad husband of a sad wife. And when he would have said words of thanks to me when he left me I checked him: "Thee knows a Friend is not well pleased with many words: let the many good deeds which thee will do act as the many kind words thee would give me."

"With God's help I will," said he.

"Verily," I said; "and I bid peace be unto thee!"

"And unto you, friend!" he said. And the words that had been our first parting at friend Barbara's father's gate were the words that were our last as I left him at his wife's grave, from whence he was to go to a church in a distant city.

And when the six months were over and I was at liberty to go, I wrote another letter of a single line to Barbara, and this was it: "I am coming to thy father's house." That was all, for I thought that maybe she might not care overly much to greet me, all things considered, and might peradventure choose to make a trifling visit to her cousin Ann Jones, to whose house she as often as not went for those changes which most women much incline toward. Yet when I entered upon the porch of friend Hicks's house, and Barbara was there, and said, "I am pleased to see thee, friend Biddle," and her father said, "How does thee do?" altogether as though I had seen them but a day before, it was most agreeable to my mind and soothing to my spirit. And when, after the dinner was over, before which there was little chance at conversation, although I thought I detected a slight pallor in friend Barbara's face where before the dints had been, and when she had betaken herself to some place out of sight, and friend Hicks was beginning to talk upon my loss in his suffering a theft on his premises, I merely said, "Yea, friend Barbara took the money." Thee should have seen his face: it must have afforded thee considerable amusement.

"Barbara?" he said with much difficulty.

"Yea," I answered. "I know all about it; and she gave it to Richard Jordan, whom thee thought to frighten me with. He was poor, in need, and had a wife whom he must care for. I was in the house where his wife was ever since thee parted with me."

"Samuel Biddle!"

"Verily, friend Hicks. And she was a demented woman, whom her husband had to take good care of, and she relied upon me for such poor comfort as I could afford her. She is deceased, and it was myself who sent for her husband. Maybe there was much secrecy which thy daughter and I kept without thee, but mayhap we did it for the best. And thee must never inquire anything more about it; and I regret thee had so much concern, and thank thee for a most kind and generous friend."

"Samuel Biddle, I deemed that Barbara was not unto thee, nor thee unto her, as both had been to one another."

"Thee must be at odds with reason, friend Hicks, for I never have cared less for Barbara than I did at the first."

So I told the narrative to him; and although I strictly adhered to the facts, I bethink me that had I made them a trifle straighter he might not have comprehended them as he did. But he came to me as I sat there on the porch, and he laid his hand on my arm: "I have been overly strict with Barbara, friend Samuel, and thee must pardon me, for I only kept her for thee. Thee is a good man; and although some of Barbara's and thy doings in this matter, as thee has related it, are scarcely in accordance with an understanding of the world such as I have, and such as thee may hope to have in time, and most of what thee has done is rather removed from orthodox, yet I hold myself in thy debt."

Then as I glanced up I saw a face looking narrowly from far off in the hall: I fear me that Barbara must inevitably have heard every word. However, it was rather warmish weather, and as she came out to the porch with her knitting in her hands, she looked as though she were grateful to me; and there were wet rings about her eyes which made me sad to see, and I remembered the time in the lane, a long while ago, when I had seen just such rings and stains about her eyes. We spake not a word, and she sat down on one side of me and her father on the other. As in another time, friend Hicks put his handkerchief over his face to protect him from the air--the flies not being come yet--and I scarcely hesitate to say that he covered his left eye as well as his right. Then I am positive that the silence grew irksome to me, for I knew not what to think of Barbara's manner, nor what to say. So I arose and stood on the edge of the porch, and looked far over the large unbroken landscape, as all early spring landscapes are. I could not have been there many minutes before a soft touch made me turn about, and Barbara was beside me, and the rings about her eyes were wetter than ever.

"Barbara!" I said softly.

"Hush!" she whispered most gently, glancing toward her father, now balmily sleeping. "Samuel Biddle, I must thank thee: thee knows what for, so I need not repeat it. I thank thee, not as I would have thanked thee six months ago, but as--"

"As what, Barbara?"

"As thy wife soon to be, Samuel Biddle."

I placed her hand in mine. "And thee is not mistaken?" I said.

"Nay, not mistaken now. I never knew thee till I understood that all men are not like thee. I never knew thee till I most foolishly thought that a few words from another man on even trivial subjects meant more than thy silence of devotion. I learned my own mind in many ways, Samuel, and then I learned thee; for I had thought thee was in a measure thrust upon me, and only because I had not seen thee before father's approval of thee. That other man's care of his wife--a care that kept her affliction from any and all eyes--showed me what thee was even, and what thee was for me. I cannot rightly say all that I would, but I can only say this--that I never cared overly much for thee at first, Samuel Biddle; but Richard Jordan has taught me one thing, which perhaps no other man in the world could have done."

"And that is--?"

"What love is."

"Barbara!"

"Yea, Samuel Biddle, what love is; for I love thee, I love thee, and but only thee; and might never have told thee so, but I heard what thee said a spell ago to father, and I knew that thee was not disgusted with me, but cared for me as much as ever. Yea, a stranger man has taught me what love is."

And while I could but pat her head as it rested upon my shoulder, I said gladly, "Barbara, more than man has taught me what love is, and to love thee; but maybe a man can teach to woman what the Lord alone has taught to me."

"Let me think so, Samuel--that the Lord taught thee, and thee taught me the knowledge fresh from the Lord."

Then I placed my lips upon Barbara's lips.

ROBERT C. MEYERS.

LADY MORGAN.

With her wit and vanity, poor French and fine clothes, good common sense and warm Irish heart, Lady Morgan was a most entertaining and original character--a spirited, versatile, spunky little woman, whose whole life was a grand social success. She was also one of the most popular and voluminous writers of her day; but, with all her sparkle and dash, ambition and industry, destined in a few generations more to be almost unknown, vanishing down that doleful "back entry" where Time sends so many bright men and women. As the founder of Irish fiction--for the national tales of Ireland begin with her--and the patron of Irish song (she stimulated Lover to write "Rory O'More," and "Kate Kearney" is her own), always laboring for liberty and the interests of her oppressed countrymen, and preserving her name absolutely untouched by scandal through a long and brilliant career, she deserves a place among distinguished women. She evidently had no idea of being forgotten, and completed twenty chapters of autobiography--its florid egotism at once its fault and its charm--besides keeping a diary in later years, and preserving nearly all the letters written to her, and even cards left at her door. But on those cards were the names of Humboldt, Cuvier, Talma and the most celebrated men of that epoch, down to Macaulay, Douglas Jerrold and Edward Everett, while she could count among her intimates the noted men and women of three countries. La Fayette declared he was proud to be her friend; Byron praised her writings, and always expressed regret that he had not made her acquaintance in Italy; Sydney Smith coupled her name with his own as "the two Sydneys;" Leigh Hunt celebrated her in verse; Sir Thomas Lawrence, Ary Scheffer and other famous artists begged for the honor of painting her portrait. Was it strange after all this, and being told for half a century that she was an extraordinarily gifted and fascinating woman, that (being a woman) she should believe it?

She was extremely sensitive in regard to her age, and if forced to state it on the witness-stand would doubtless have whispered it to the judge in a bewitching way, as did a pretty but slightly _passé_ French actress under similar embarrassing circumstances. She pleads: "What has a woman to do with dates--cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates--new style, old style, precession of the equinox, ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their station and never come? Her poetical idiosyncrasy, calculated by epochs, would make the most natural points of reference in woman's autobiography. Plutarch sets the example of dropping dates in favor of incidents; and an authority more appropriate, Madame de Genlis, who began her own memoirs at eighty, swept through nearly an age of incident and revolution without any reference to vulgar eras signifying nothing (the times themselves out of joint), testifying to the pleasant incidents she recounts and the changes she witnessed. _I_ mean to have none of them!"

Sydney Owenson was born in "ancient ould Dublin" at Christmas: the year is a little uncertain. The encyclopædias say about 1780: 1776 has been suggested as more correct, but we will not pry into so delicate a matter. A charming woman never loses her youth. Doctor Holmes tells us that in travelling over the isthmus of life we do not ride in a private carriage, but in an omnibus--meaning that our ancestors or their traits take the trip with us; and in studying a character it is interesting to note the combinations that from generations back make up the individual. Sydney's father was the child of an ill-assorted marriage. "At a hurling-match long ago the Queen of Beauty, Sydney, granddaughter of Sir Maltby Crofton, lost her heart, like Rosalind, to the victor of the day, Walter McOwen (anglicized Owenson), a young farmer, tall and handsome, graceful and daring, and allowed him to discover that he had 'wrestled well and overthrown more than his enemies.' Result, an elopement and mésalliance never to be forgiven--the husband a jolly, racketing Irish lad, unable to appreciate his high-toned, accomplished wife, a skilful performer on the Irish harp, a poetess and a genius, called by the admiring neighbors 'the Harp of the Valley.'" Their only child, the father of Lady Morgan, was a tolerable actor, of loose morals and tight purse, who could sing a good song or tell a good story, and who was always in debt.