Chapter XXVII (1)

If Griffith Gaunt suffered anguish, he inflicted agony. Mrs. Gaunt was a high-spirited, proud, and sensitive woman; and he crushed her with foul words. Leonard was a delicate, vain, and sensitive man, accustomed to veneration. Imagine such a man hurled to the ground, and trampled upon.

Griffith should not have fled; he should have stayed and enjoyed his vengeance on these two persons. It might have cooled him a little had he stopped and seen the immediate consequences of his savage act.

The priest rose from the ground, pale as ashes, and trembling with fear and hate.

The lady was leaning, white as a sheet, against a tree, and holding it with her very nails for a little support.

They looked round at one another,--a piteous glance of anguish and horror. Then Mrs. Gaunt turned and flung her arm round so that the palm of her hand, high raised, confronted Leonard. I am thus particular because it was a gesture grand and terrible as the occasion that called it forth,--a gesture that _spoke_, and said, "Put the whole earth and sea between us forever after this."

The next moment she bent her head and rushed away, cowering and wringing her hands. She made for her house as naturally as a scared animal for its lair; but, ere she could reach it, she tottered under the shame, the distress, and the mere terror, and fell fainting, with her fair forehead on the grass.

Caroline Ryder was crouched in the doorway, and did not see her come out of the grove, but only heard a rustle; and then saw her proud mistress totter forward and lie, white, senseless, helpless, at her very feet.

Ryder uttered a scream, but did not lose her presence of mind. She instantly kneeled over Mrs. Gaunt, and loosened her stays with quick and dexterous hand.

It was very like the hawk perched over and clawing the ringdove she has struck down.

But people with brains are never quite inhuman: a drop of lukewarm pity entered even Ryder's heart as she assisted her victim. She called no one to help her; for she saw something very serious had happened, and she felt sure Mrs. Gaunt would say something imprudent in that dangerous period when the patient recovers consciousness but has not all her wits about her. Now Ryder was equally determined to know her mistress's secrets, and not to share the knowledge with any other person.

It was a long swoon; and, when Mrs. Gaunt came to, the first thing she saw was Ryder leaning over her, with a face of much curiosity, and some concern.

In that moment of weakness the poor lady, who had been so roughly handled, saw a woman close to her, and being a little kind to her; so what did she do but throw her arms round Ryder's neck and burst out sobbing as if her heart would break.

Then that unprincipled woman shed a tear or two with her, half crocodile, half impulse.

Mrs. Gaunt not only cried on her servant's neck; she justified Ryder's forecast by speaking unguardedly: "I've been insulted--insulted--insulted!"

But, even while uttering these words, she was recovering her pride: so the first "insulted" seemed to come from a broken-hearted child, the second from an indignant lady, the third from a wounded queen.

No more words than this; but she rose, with Ryder's assistance, and went, leaning on that faithful creature's shoulder, to her own bedroom. There she sank into a chair and said, in a voice to melt a stone, "My child! Bring me my little Rose."

Ryder ran and fetched the little girl; and Mrs. Gaunt held out both arms to her, angelically, and clasped her so passionately and piteously to her bosom, that Rose cried for fear, and never forgot the scene all her days; and Mrs. Ryder, who was secretly a mother, felt a genuine twinge of pity and remorse. Curiosity, however, was the dominant sentiment. She was impatient to get all these convulsions over, and learn what had actually passed between Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt.

She waited till her mistress appeared calmer; and then, in soft, caressing tones, asked her what had happened.

"Never ask me that question again," cried Mrs. Gaunt, wildly. Then, with inexpressible dignity, "My good girl, you have done all you could for me; now you must leave me alone with my daughter, and my God, who knows the truth."

Ryder courtesied and retired, burning with baffled curiosity.

Towards dusk Thomas Leicester came into the kitchen, and brought her news with a vengeance. He told her and the other maids that the Squire had gone raving mad, and fled the country. "O lasses," said he, "if you had seen the poor soul's face, a-riding headlong through the fair, all one as if it was a ploughed field; 't was white as your smocks; and his eyes glowering on 't other world. We shall ne'er see that face alive again."

And this was her doing.

It surprised and overpowered Ryder. She threw her apron over her head, and went off in hysterics, and betrayed her lawless attachment to every woman in the kitchen,--she who was so clever at probing others.

* * * * *

This day of violent emotions was followed by a sullen and sorrowful gloom.

Mrs. Gaunt kept her bedroom, and admitted nobody; till, at last, the servants consulted together, and sent little Rose to knock at her door, with a basin of chocolate, while they watched on the stairs.

"It's only me, mamma," said Rose.

"Come in, my precious," said a trembling voice; and so Rose got in with her chocolate.

The next day she was sent for early; and at noon Mrs. Gaunt and Rose came down stairs; but their appearance startled the whole household.

The mother was dressed all in black, and so was her daughter, whom she led by the hand. Mrs. Gaunt's face was pale, and sad, and stern,--a monument of deep suffering and high-strung resolution.

* * * * *

It soon transpired that Griffith had left his home for good; and friends called on Mrs. Gaunt to slake their curiosity under the mask of sympathy.

Not one of them was admitted. No false excuses were made. "My mistress sees no one for the present," was the reply.

Curiosity, thus baffled, took up the pen; but was met with a short, unvarying formula: "There is an unhappy misunderstanding between my husband and me. But I shall neither accuse him behind his back, nor justify myself."

Thus the proud lady carried herself before the world; but secretly she writhed. A wife abandoned is a woman insulted, and the wives--that are not abandoned--cluck.

Ryder was dejected for a time, and, though not honestly penitent, suffered some remorse at the miserable issue of her intrigues. But her elastic nature soon shook it off, and she felt a certain satisfaction at having reduced Mrs. Gaunt to her own level. This disarmed her hostility. She watched her as keenly as ever, but out of pure curiosity.

One thing puzzled her strangely. Leonard did not visit the house; nor could she even detect any communication between the parties.

At last, one day, her mistress told her to put on her hat, and go to Father Leonard.

Ryder's eyes sparkled; and she was soon equipped. Mrs. Gaunt put a parcel and a letter into her hands. Ryder no sooner got out of her sight than she proceeded to tamper with the letter. But to her just indignation she found it so ingeniously folded and sealed that she could not read a word.

The parcel, however, she easily undid, and it contained forty pounds in gold and small notes. "Oho! my lady," said Ryder.

She was received by Leonard with a tender emotion he in vain tried to conceal.

On reading the letter his features contracted sharply, and he seemed to suffer agony. He would not even open the parcel. "You will take that back," said he, bitterly.

"What, without a word?"

"Without a word. But I will write, when I am able."

"Don't be long, sir," suggested Ryder. "I am sure my mistress is wearying for you. Consider, sir, she is all alone now."

"Not so much alone as I am," said the priest, "nor half so unfortunate."

And with this he leaned his head despairingly on his hand, and motioned to Ryder to leave him.

"Here's a couple of fools," said she to herself, as she went home.

That very evening Thomas Leicester caught her alone, and asked her to marry him.

She stared at first, and then treated it as a jest. "You come at the wrong time, young man," said she. "Marriage is put out of countenance. No, no, I will never marry after what I have seen in this house."

Leicester would not take this for an answer, and pressed her hard.

"Thomas," said this plausible jade, "I like you very well; but I couldn't leave my mistress in her trouble. Time to talk of marrying when master comes here alive and well."

"Nay," said Leicester, "my only chance is while he is away. You care more for his little finger than for my whole body; that they all say."

"Who says?"

"Jane, and all the lasses."

"You simple man, they want you for themselves; that is why they belie me."

"Nay, nay; I saw how you carried on, when I brought word he was gone. You let your heart out for once. Don't take me for a fool. I see how 't is, but I'll face it, for I worship the ground you walk on. Take a thought, my lass. What good can come of your setting your heart on _him_? I'm young, I'm healthy, and not ugly enough to set the dogs a-barking. I've got a good place; I love you dear; I'll cure you of that fancy, and make you as happy as the day is long. I'll try and make you as happy as you will make me, my beauty."

He was so earnest, and so much in love, that Mrs. Ryder pitied him, and wished her husband was in heaven.

"I am very sorry, Tom," said she, softly; "dear me, I did not think you cared so much for me as this. I must just tell you the truth. I have got one in my own country, and I've promised him. I don't care to break my word; and, if I did, he is such a man, I am sure he would kill me for it. Indeed he has told me as much, more than once or twice."

"Killing is a game that two can play at."

"Ah! but 't is an ugly game; and I'll have no hand in it. And--don't you be angry with me, Tom--I've known him longest, and--I love him best."

By pertinacity and vanity in lying, she hit the mark at last. Tom swallowed this figment whole.

"That is but reason," said he. "I take my answer, and I wish ye both many happy days together, and well spent." With this he retired, and blubbered a good hour in an outhouse.

Tom avoided the castle, and fell into low spirits. He told his mother all, and she advised him to change the air. "You have been too long in one place," said she; "I hate being too long in one place myself."

This fired Tom's gypsy blood, and he said he would travel to-morrow, if he could but scrape together money enough to fill a pedler's pack.

He applied for a loan in several quarters, but was denied in all.

At last the poor fellow summoned courage to lay his case before Mrs. Gaunt.

Ryder's influence procured him an interview. She took him into the drawing-room, and bade him wait there. By and by a pale lady, all in black, glided into the room.

He pulled his front hair, and began to stammer something or other.

She interrupted him. "Ryder has told me," said she, softly. "I am sorry for you; and I will do what you require. And, to be sure, we need no gamekeeper here now."

She then gave him some money, and said she would look him up a few trifles besides, to put in his pack.

Tom's mother helped him to lay out this money to advantage; and, one day, he called at Hernshaw, pack and all, to bid farewell.

The servants all laid out something with him for luck; and Mrs. Gaunt sent for him, and gave him a gold thimble, and a pound of tea, and several yards of gold lace, slightly tarnished, and a Queen Anne's guinea.

He thanked her heartily. "Ay, Dame," said he, "you had always an open hand, married or single. My heart is heavy at leaving you. But I miss the Squire's kindly face too. Hernshaw is not what it used to be."

Mrs. Gaunt turned her head aside, and the man could see his words had made her cry. "My good Thomas," said she, at last, "you are going to travel the country: you might fall in with him."

"I might," said Leicester, incredulously.

"God grant you may; and, if ever you should, think of your poor mistress and give him--this." She put her finger in her bosom and drew out a bullet wrapped in silver paper. "You will never lose this," said she. "I value it more than gold or silver. O, if ever you _should_ see him, think of me and my daughter, and just put it in his hand without a word."

As he went out of the room Ryder intercepted him, and said, "Mayhap you will fall in with our master. If ever you do, tell him he is under a mistake, and the sooner he comes home the better."

Tom Leicester departed; and, for days and weeks, nothing occurred to break the sorrowful monotony of the place.

But the mourner had written to her old friend and confessor, Francis; and, after some delay, involuntary on his part, he came to see her.

They were often closeted together, and spoke so low that Ryder could not catch a word.

Francis also paid several visits to Leonard; and the final result of these visits was that the latter left England.

Francis remained at Hernshaw as long as he could; and it was Mrs. Gaunt's hourly prayer that Griffith might return while Francis was with her.

He did, at her earnest request, stay much longer than he had intended; but, at length, he was obliged to fix next Monday to return to his own place.

It was on Thursday he made this arrangement; but the very next day the postman brought a letter to the Castle, thus addressed:--

"To Mistress Caroline Ryder,
Living Servant with Griffith Gaunt, Esq.,
at his house, called Hernshaw Castle,
near Wigeonmoor,
in the county of Cumberland.
These with speed."

The address was in a feigned hand. Ryder opened it in the kitchen, and uttered a scream.

Instantly three female throats opened upon her with questions.

She looked them contemptuously in their faces, put the letter into her pocket, and, soon after, slipped away to her own room, and locked herself in while she read it. It ran thus:--

"GOOD MISTRESS RYDER,--I am alive yet, by the blessing; though
somewhat battered; being now risen from a fever, wherein I lost
my wits for a time. And, on coming to myself, I found them
making of my shroud; whereby you shall learn how near I was to
death. And all this I owe to that false, perjured woman that
was my wife, and is your mistress.

"Know that I have donned russet, and doffed gentility; for I
find a heavy heart's best cure is occupation. I have taken a
wayside inn, and think of renting a small farm, which two
things go well together. Now you are, of all those I know, most
fitted to manage the inn, and I the farm. You were always my
good friend; and, if you be so still, then I charge you most
solemnly that you utter no word to any living soul about this
letter; but meet me privately where we can talk fully of these
matters; for I will not set foot in Hernshaw Castle. Moreover,
she told me once 't was hers; and so be it. On Friday I shall
lie at Stapleton, and the next day, by an easy journey, to the
place where I once was so happy.

"So then at seven of the clock on Saturday evening, be the same
wet or dry, prithee come to the gate of the grove unbeknown,
and speak to

"Your faithful friend
and most unhappy master,

"GRIFFITH GAUNT.

"Be secret as the grave. Would I were in it."

This letter set Caroline Ryder in a tumult. Griffith alive and well, and set against his wife, and coming to her for assistance!

After the first agitation, she read it again, and weighed every syllable. There was one book she had studied more than most of us,--the Heart. And she soon read Griffith's in this letter. It was no love-letter; he really intended business; but, weak in health and broken in spirit, and alone in the world, he naturally turned to one who had confessed an affection for him, and would therefore be true to his interests, and study his happiness.

The proposal was every way satisfactory to Mrs. Ryder. To be mistress of an inn, and have servants under her instead of being one herself. And then, if Griffith and she began as allies in business, she felt very sure she could make herself, first necessary to him, and then dear to him.

She was so elated she could hardly contain herself; and all her fellow-servants remarked that Mrs. Ryder had heard good news.

Saturday came, and never did hours seem to creep so slowly.

But at last the sun set, and the stars come out. There was no moon. Ryder opened the window and looked out; it was an admirable night for an assignation.

She washed her face again, put on her gray silk gown, and purple petticoat,--_Mrs. Gaunt_ had given them to her,--and, at the last moment, went and made up her mistress's fire, and put out everything she thought could be wanted, and, five minutes after seven o'clock, tied a scarlet handkerchief over her head, and stepped out at the back door.

What with her coal-black hair, so streaked with red, her black eyes, flashing in the starlight, and her glowing cheeks, she looked bewitching.

And, thus armed for conquest, wily, yet impassioned, she stole out, with noiseless foot and beating heart, to her appointment with her imprudent master.

BAD SYMPTOMS.

Mons. Alphonse Karr writes as follows in his _Les Femmes_:--"When I wish to become invisible, I have a certain rusty and napless old hat, which I put on as Prince Lutin in the fairy tale puts on his chaplet of roses; I join to this a certain coat very much out at elbows: _eh bien_! I become invisible! Nobody on the street sees me, nobody recognizes me, nobody speaks to me."

And yet I do not doubt that the majority of M. Karr's friends and acquaintances, as is the case with the friends and acquaintances of nearly every one else, are well-disposed, good-hearted, average persons, who would be heartily ashamed, if it could be brought home to them, of having given him the go-by under such circumstances. What, then, was the difficulty? In what consisted this change in the man's appearance, so signal that he trusted to it as a disguise? What was there in hat and coat thus to eclipse the whole personality of the man? There is a certain mystery in the philosophy of clothes too deep for me to fathom. The matter has been descanted upon before; the "Havamal, or High Song of Odin," the Essays of Montaigne, the "Sartor" of Thomas Carlyle, all dwell with acuteness upon this topic; but they merely give instances, they do not interpret. I am continually meeting with things in my intercourse with the world which I cannot reconcile with any theories society professes to be governed by. How shall I explain them? How, for example, shall I interpret the following cases, occurring within my own experience and under my own observation?

I live in the country, and am a farmer. If I lived in the city and occupied myself with the vending of merchandise, I should, in busy times at least, now and then help my clerks to sell my own goods,--if I could,--make up the packages, mark them, and attend to having them delivered. Solomon Gunnybags himself has done as much, upon occasion, and society has praised Solomon Gunnybags for such a display of devotion to his business. But I am a farmer, not a merchant; and, though not able to handle the plough, I am not above my business. One day during the past summer, while my peach-orchard was in full bearing, my foreman, who attends market for me, fell sick. The peaches would not tarry in their ripening, the pears were soft and blushing as sweet sixteen as they lay upon their shelves, the cantelopes grew mellow upon their vines, the tomato-beds called loudly to be relieved, and the very beans were beginning to rattle in their pods for ripeness. I am not a good salesman, and I was very sorry my foreman could not help me out; but something must be done, so I made up a load of fruit and vegetables, took them to the city to market, and sold them. While I was busily occupied measuring peaches by the half and quarter peck, stolidly deaf to the objurgations of my neighbor huckster on my right, to whom some one had given bad money, and equally impervious to the blandishments of an Irish customer in front of me, who could not be persuaded I meant to require the price I had set upon my goods, my friend Mrs. Entresol came along, trailing her parasol with one gloved hand, with the other daintily lifting her skirts out of the dust and dirt. Bridget, following her, toiled under the burden of a basket of good things. Mrs. Entresol is an old acquaintance of mine, and I esteem her highly. Entresol has just obtained a partnership in the retail dry-goods house for which he has been a clerk during so many years; the firm is prosperous, and, if he continues to be as industrious and prudent as he has been, I do not doubt but my friend will in the course of time be able to retire from business with money enough to buy a farm. My pears seemed to please Mrs. Entresol; she approached my stall, looked at them, took one up. "What is the price of your--" she began to inquire, when, looking up, she recognized the vender of the coveted fruit. What in the world came over the woman? I give you my word that, instead of speaking to me in her usual way, and telling me how glad she was to see me, she started as if something had stung her; she stammered, she blushed, and stood there with the pear in her fingers, staring at me in the blankest way imaginable. I must confess a little of her confusion imparted itself to me. For a moment the thought entered my mind that I had, in selling my own pears and peaches, been guilty of some really criminal action, such as sheep-stealing, lying, or slandering, and it was not pleasant to be caught in the act. But only for a moment; then I replied, "Good morning, Mrs. Entresol"; and, stating the price, proceeded to wait upon another customer.

My highly business-like tone and manner rather added to my charming friend's confusion, but she rallied surprisingly, put out her little gloved hand to me, and exclaimed in the gayest voice: "Ah, you eccentric man! What will you do next? To think of you selling in the market, _just like a huckster_! You! I must tell Mrs. Belle Etoile of it. It is really one of the best jokes I know of! And how well you act your part, too,--just as if it came naturally to you," etc., etc.

Thus she ran on, laughing, and interfering with my sales, protesting all the while that I was the greatest original in all her circle of acquaintance. Of course it would have been idle for me to controvert her view of the matter, so I quietly left her to the enjoyment of such an excellent joke, and was rather glad when at last she went away. I could not help wondering, however, after she was gone, why it was she should think I joked in retailing the products of my farm, any more than Mr. Entresol in retailing the goods piled upon his shelves and counters. And why should one be "original" because he handles a peck-measure, while another is _comme il faut_ in wielding a yardstick? Why did M. Karr's thread-bare coat and shocking bad hat fling such a cloud of dust in the eyes of passing friends, that they could not see him,

"Ne wot who that he ben?"

Now for another case. There is Tom Pinch's wife. Tom is an excellent person, in every respect, and so is his wife. I don't know any woman with a light purse and four children who manages better, or is possessed of more sterling qualities, than Mrs. Tom Pinch. She is industrious, amiable, intelligent; pious as father AEneas; in fact, the most devoted creature to preachers and sermons that ever worked for a fair. She would be very angry with you if you were to charge her with entertaining the doctrine of "justification by works," but I seriously incline to believe she imagines that seat of hers in that cushioned pew one of the mainstays to her hope of heaven. And yet, at this crisis, Mrs. Tom Pinch can't go to church! There is an insurmountable obstacle which keeps the poor little thing at home every Sunday, and renders her (comparatively) miserable the rest of the week. She takes a course of Jay's Sermons, to be sure, but she takes it disconsolately, and has serious fears of becoming a backslider. What is it closes the church door to her? Not her health, for that is excellent. It is not the baby, for her nurse, small as she is, is quite trustworthy. It is not any trouble about dinner, for nobody has a better cook than Mrs. Tom Pinch,--a paragon cook, in fact, who seems to have strayed down into her kitchen from that remote antiquity when servants were servants. No, none of these things keeps the pious wife at home. None of these things restrains her from taking that quiet walk up the aisle and occupying that seat in the corner of the pew, there to dismiss all thought of worldly care, and fit her good little soul for the pleasures of real worship, and that prayerful meditation and sweet communion with holy things that only such good little women know the blessings of;--none of these things at all. It is Mrs. Tom Pinch's _bonnet_ that keeps her at home,--her last season's bonnet! Strike, but hear me, ladies, for the thing is simply so. Tom's practice is not larger than he can manage; Tom's family need quite all he can make to keep them; and he has not yet been able this season to let Mrs. Tom have the money required to provide a new fall bonnet. She will get it before long, of course, for Tom is a good provider, and he knows his wife to be economical. Still he cannot see--poor innocent that he is!--why his dear little woman cannot just as well go to church in her last fall's bonnet, which, to his purblind vision, is quite as good as new. What, Tom! don't you know the dear little woman has too much love for you, too much pride in you, to make a fright of herself, upon any consideration? Don't you know that, were your wife to venture to church in that hideous condition of which a last year's bonnet is the efficient and unmistakable symbol, Mrs. A., Mrs. B., Mrs. C., all the ladies of the church, in fact, would remark it at once,--would sit in judgment upon it like a quilt committee at an industrial fair, and would unanimously decide, either that you were a close-fisted brute to deny such a sweet little helpmeet the very necessaries of life, or that your legal practice was falling off so materially you could no longer support your family? O no, Tom, your wife must not venture out to church in her last season's bonnet! She is not without a certain sort of courage, to be sure; she has stood by death-beds without trembling; she has endured poverty and its privations, illness, the pains and perils of childbirth, and many another hardship, with a brave cheerfulness such as you can wonder at, and never dream of imitating; but there is a limit even to the boldest woman's daring; and, when it comes to the exposure and ridicule consequent upon defying the world in a last season's bonnet, that limit is reached.

I have one other case to recount, and, in my opinion, the most lamentable one of all. Were I to tell you the real name of my friend, Mrs. Belle Etoile, you would recognize one of the most favored daughters of America, as the newspapers phrase it. Rich, intelligent, highly cultivated, at the tip-top of the social ladder, esteemed by a wide circle of such friends as it is an honor to know, loving and beloved by her noble husband,--every one knows Mrs. Etoile by reputation at least. Happy in her pretty, well-behaved children, she is the polished reflection of all that is best and most refined in American society. She is, indeed, a noble woman, as pure and unsullied in the instincts of her heart, as she is bright and glowing in the display of her intellect. Her wit is brilliant; her _mots_ are things to be remembered; her opinions upon art and life have at once a wide currency and a substantial value; and, more than all, her modest charities, of which none knows save herself, are as deep and as beneficent as those subterranean fountains which well up in a thousand places to refresh and gladden the earth. Nevertheless, and in spite of her genuine practical wisdom, her lofty idealism of thought, her profound contempt for all the weak shams and petty frivolities of life, Mrs. Belle Etoile is a slave! "They who submit to drink as another pleases, make themselves his slaves," says that Great Mogul of sentences, Dr. Johnson; and in this sense Mrs. Belle Etoile is a slave indeed. The fetters gall her, but she has not courage to shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle, a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden wealth from contracts and petroleum speculations, and who has in consequence set herself up for a leader of _ton_. A certain downright persistence and energy of character, acquired, it may be, in bullying the kitchen-maids at the country tavern where she began life, a certain lavish expenditure of her husband's profits, the vulgar display and profusion at her numerous balls, and her free-handed patronage of _modistes_ and shop-keepers, have secured to Mrs. Colisle a sort of Drummond-light position among the stars of fashion. She imports patterns, and they become the mode; her caterer invents dishes, and they are copied throughout the obeisant world. There are confections _a la_ Colisle; the confectioners utter new editions of them. There is a Colisle head-dress, a Colisle pomade, a Colisle hat,--the world wears and uses them. Thus, Mrs. Colisle has set herself up as Mrs. Belle Etoile's rival; and that unfortunate lady, compelled by those _noblesse-oblige_ principles which control the chivalry of fashion, takes up the unequal gage, and enters the lists against her. The result is, that Mrs. Belle Etoile has become the veriest slave in Christendom. Whatever the other woman's whims and extravagances, Mrs. Belle Etoile is their victim. Her taste revolts, but her pride of place compels obedience. She cannot yield, she will not follow; and so Mrs. Colisle, with diabolical ingenuity, constrains her to run a course that gives her no honor and pays her no compensation. She scorns Mrs. Colisle's ways, she loathes her fashions and her company, and--outbids her for them! It is a very unequal contest, of course. Defeat only inspires Mrs. Colisle with a more stubborn persistence. Victory cannot lessen the sad regrets of Mrs. Belle Etoile's soul for outraged instincts and insulted taste. It is an ill match,--a strife between greyhound and mastiff, a contest at heavy draught between a thoroughbred and a Flanders mare. Mrs. Etoile knows this as well as you and I can possibly know it. She is perfectly aware of her serfdom. She is poignantly conscious of the degrading character of her servitude, and that it is not possible to gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles; and yet she will continue to wage the unequal strife, to wear the unhandsome fetters, simply because she has not the courage to extricate herself from the false position into which the strategic arts of Fashion have inveigled her.

Now I do not intend to moralize. I have no purpose to frighten the reader prematurely off to the next page by unmasking a formidable battery of reflections and admonitions. I have merely instanced the above cases, three or four among a thousand of such as must have presented themselves to the attention of each one of us; and I adduce them simply as examples of what I call "bad symptoms" in any diagnosis of the state of the social frame. They indicate, in fact, a total absence of _social courage_ in persons otherwise endowed with and illustrious for all the useful and ornamental virtues, and consequently they make it plain and palpable that society is in a condition of dangerous disease. Whether a remedy is practicable or not I will not venture to decide; but I can confidently assure our reformers, both men and women, that, if they can accomplish anything toward restoring its normal and healthy courage to society, they will benefit the human race much more signally than they could by making Arcadias out of a dozen or two Borrioboola-Ghas.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

1. _Croquet._ By CAPTAIN MAYNE REID. Boston: James Redpath.

2. _Handbook of Croquet._ By EDMUND ROUTLEDGE. London: George Routledge and Sons.

3. _The Game of Croquet; its Appointments and Laws._ By R. FELLOW. New York: Hurd and Houghton.

4. _Croquet, as played by the Newport Croquet Club._ By one of the Members. New York: Sheldon & Co.

The original tower of Babel having been for some time discontinued, and most of our local legislatures having adjourned, the nearest approach to a confusion of tongues is perhaps now to be found in an ordinary game of croquet. Out of eight youths and maidens caught for that performance at a picnic, four have usually learned the rules from four different manuals, and can agree on nothing; while the rest have never learned any rules at all, and cannot even distinctly agree to disagree. With tolerably firm wills and moderately shrill voices, it is possible for such a party to exhibit a very pretty war of words before even a single blow is struck. For supposing that there is an hour of daylight for the game, they can easily spend fifteen minutes in debating whether the starting-point should be taken a mallet's length from the stake, according to Reid, or only twelve inches, according to Routledge.

More than twenty manuals of croquet have been published in England, it is said, and some five or six in America. Of the four authorities named above, each has some representative value for American players. Mayne Reid was the pioneer, Routledge is the most compact and seductive, Fellow the most popular and the poorest, and "Newport" the newest and by far the best. And among them all it is possible to find authority for and against almost every possible procedure.

The first point of grave divergence is one that occurs at the very outset of the game. "Do you play with or without the roquet-croquet?" has now come to be the first point of mutual solicitude in a mixed party. It may not seem a momentous affair whether the privilege of striking one's own ball and the adversary's without holding the former beneath the foot, should be extended to all players or limited to the "rover"; but it makes an immense difference in both the duration and the difficulty of the game. By skilfully using this right, every player may change the position of every ball, during each tour of play. It is a formidable privilege, and accordingly Reid and "Newport" both forbid it to all but the "rover," and Routledge denies it even to him; while Fellow alone pleads for universal indulgence. It seems a pity to side with one poor authority against three good ones, but there is no doubt that the present tendency of the best players is to cultivate the roquet-croquet more and more; and after employing it, one is as unwilling to give it up, as a good billiard-player would be to revert from the cue to the mace. The very fact, however, that this privilege multiplies so enormously the advantages of skill is perhaps a good reason for avoiding it in a mixed party of novices and experts, where the object is rather to equalize abilities. It should also be avoided where the croquet-ground is small, as is apt to be the case in our community,--because in such narrow quarters a good player can often hit every other ball during each tour of play, even without this added advantage. If we played habitually on large, smooth lawns like those of England, the reasons for the general use of the roquet-croquet would be far stronger.

Another inconvenient discrepancy of the books relates to the different penalties imposed on "flinching," or allowing one's ball to slip from under one's foot, during the process of croquet. Here Routledge gives no general rule; Reid and "Newport" decree that, if a ball "flinches," its tour terminates, but its effects remain; while, according to Fellow, the ball which has suffered croquet is restored, but the tour continues,--the penalties being thus reversed. Here the sober judgment must side with the majority of authorities; for this reason, if for no other, that the first-named punishment is more readily enforced, and avoids the confusion and altercation which are often produced by taking up and replacing a ball.

Again, if a ball be accidentally stopped in its motion by a careless player or spectator, what shall be done? Fellow permits the striker either to leave the ball where the interruption left it, or to place it where he thinks it would have stopped, if unmolested. This again is a rule far less simple, and liable to produce far more wrangling, than the principle of the other authorities, which is that the ball should either be left where it lies, or be carried to the end of the arena.

These points are all among the commonest that can be raised, and it is very unfortunate that there should be no uniformity of rule, to meet contingencies so inevitable. When more difficult points come up for adjudication, the difficulty has thus far been less in the conflict of authorities than in their absence. Until the new American commentator appeared, there was no really scientific treatise on croquet to be had in our bookstores.

The so-called manual of the "Newport Croquet Club" is understood to proceed from a young gentleman whose mathematical attainments have won him honor both at Cambridge and at New Haven, and who now beguiles his banishment as Assistant Professor in the Naval Academy by writing on croquet in the spirit of Peirce. What President Hill has done for elementary geometry, "Newport" aims to do for croquet, making it severely simple, and, perhaps we might add, simply severe. And yet, admirable to relate, this is the smallest of all the manuals, and the cheapest, and the only one in which there is not so much as an allusion to ladies' ankles. All the others have a few pages of rules and a very immoderate quantity of slang; they are all liable to the charge of being silly; whereas the only possible charge to be brought against "Newport" is that he is too sensible. But for those who hold, with ourselves, that whatever is worth doing is worth doing sensibly, there is really no other manual. That is, this is the only one which really grapples with a difficult case, and deals with it as if heaven and earth depended on the adjudication.

It is possible that this scientific method sometimes makes its author too bold a lawgiver. The error of most of the books is in attempting too little and in doing that little ill. They are all written for beginners only. The error of "Newport" lies in too absolute an adherence to principles. His "theory of double points" is excellent, but his theory of "the right of declining" is an innovation all the more daring because it is so methodically put. The principle has long been familiar, though never perhaps quite settled, that where two distinct points were made by any stroke,--as, for instance, a bridge and a roquet,--the one or the other could be waived. The croquet, too, could always be waived. But to assert boldly that "a player may decline any point made by himself, and play precisely as if the point had not been made," is a thought radical enough to send a shudder along Pennsylvania Avenue. Under this ruling, a single player in a game of eight might spend a half-hour in running and rerunning a single bridge, with dog-in-the-mangerish pertinacity, waiting his opportunity to claim the most mischievous run as the valid one. It would produce endless misunderstandings and errors of memory. The only vexed case which it would help to decide is that in which a ball, in running the very last bridge, strikes another ball, and is yet forbidden to croquet, because it must continue its play from the starting-point. But even this would be better settled in almost any other way; and indeed this whole rule as to a return to the "spot" seems a rather arbitrary and meaningless thing.

The same adherence to theory takes the author quite beyond our depth, if not beyond his own, in another place. He says that a ball may hit another ball twice or more, during the same tour, between two steps on the round, and move it each time by concussion,--"but only one (not necessarily the first) contact is a valid roquet." (p. 34.) But how can a player obtain the right to make a second contact, under such circumstances, unless indeed the first was part of a _ricochet_, and was waived as such? And if the case intended was merely that of ricochet, it should have been more distinctly stated, for the right to waive ricochet was long since recognized by Reid (p. 40), though Routledge prohibits, and Fellow limits it.

Thus even the errors of "Newport" are of grave and weighty nature, such as statesmen and mathematicians may, without loss of dignity, commit. Is it that it is possible to go too deep into all sciences, even croquet? But how delightful to have at last a treatise which errs on that side, when its predecessors, like popular commentators on the Bible, have carefully avoided all the hard points, and only cleared up the easy ones!

_Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Satirical, of the Civil War._ Selected and Edited by RICHARD GRANT WHITE. New York: The American News Company.

We confess that our heart had at times misgiven us concerning the written and printed poetry of our recent war; but until Mr. White gave us the present volume, we did not know how strong a case could be made against it. The effect is perhaps not altogether intended, but it shows how bad his material was, and how little inspiration of any sort attended him in his work, when a literary gentleman of habits of research and of generally supposed critical taste makes a book so careless and slovenly as this.

We can well afford the space which the editor devotes to Mr. Lowell's noble poem, but we must admit that we can regard "The Present Crisis" as part of the poetry of the war only in the large sense in which we should also accept the Prophecies of Ezekiel and the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Many pious men beheld the war (after it came) foreshadowed in the poetry of the awful and exalted prophecies, and we wonder that Mr. White did not give us a few passages from those books. It is scarcely possible that he did not know "The Present Crisis" to have been written nearly a score of years ago; though he seems to have been altogether ignorant of "The Washers of the Shroud," a poem by the same author actually written after the war began, and uttering all that dread, suspense, and deep determination which the threatened Republic felt after the defeats in the autumn of 1861. As Mr. White advances with his poetical chronology of the war, he is likewise unconscious of "The Commemoration Ode," which indeed is so far above all other elegiac poems of the war, as perhaps to be out of his somewhat earth-bound range. Yet we cannot help blaming him a little for not looking higher: his book must for some time represent the feeling of the nation in war time, and we would fain have had his readers know how deep and exalted this sentiment really was, and how it could reach, if only once and in only one, an expression which we may challenge any literature to surpass. Of "The Biglow Papers," in which there is so much of the national hard-headed shrewdness, humor, and earnestness, we have but one, and that not the best.

As some compensation, however, Mr. White presents us with two humorous lyrics of his own, and makes us feel like men who, in the first moments of our financial disorder, parted with a good dollar, and received change in car-tickets and envelopes covering an ideal value in postage-stamps. It seems hard to complain of an editor who puts only two of his poems in a collection when he was master to put in twenty if he chose, and when in both cases he does his best to explain and relieve their intolerable brilliancy by foot-notes; yet, seeing that one of these productions is in literature what the "Yankee Notions" and the "Nick-Nax" caricatures of John Bull are in art, and seeing that the other is not in the least a parody of the Emersonian poetry it is supposed to burlesque, and is otherwise nothing at all, we cannot help crying out against them.

The foot-notes to Mr. White's verses _are_ comical, however, we must acknowledge; and so are all the foot-notes in the book. If the Model of Deportment had taken to letters with a humorous aim, we could conceive of his writing them. "If burlesque," says Mr. White of his "Union" verses, "were all their purpose, they would not be here preserved"; adding, with a noble tenderness for his victim, "Mr. Emerson could well afford to forgive them, even if they did not come from one of his warmest admirers,"--in which we agree with Mr. White, whose consideration for the great transcendentalist is equalled only by his consideration for the reader's ignorance in regard to most things not connected with the poetry of the war. "Bully," he tells us, was used as "an expression of encouragement and approval" by the Elizabethan dramatists, as well as by our own cherished rowdies; which may be readily proven from the plays of Shakespeare. But what the author of the poem in which this word occurs means by "hefty" Mr. White does not know, and frankly makes a note for the purpose of saying so. Concerning the expression "hurried up his cakes," he is, however, perfectly _au fait_, and surprises us with the promptness of his learning. "As long as the importance of hurrying buckwheat pancakes from the griddle to the table," says he, with a fine air of annotation, "is impressed upon the American mind, this vile slang will need no explanation. But the fame,"--mark this dry light of philosophy, and the delicacy of the humor through which it plays,--"but the fame of the Rebel march into Pennsylvania, and of the victory of Gettysburg, will probably outlive even the taste for these alluring compounds." This is Mr. White's good humor; his bad humor is displayed in his note to a poem by Fitz James O'Brien on the "Seventh Regiment," which he says was "written by a young Irishman, one of its members." The young Irishman's name is probably as familiar to most readers of the magazines as Mr. White's, and we cannot help wondering how he knew a writer of singularly brilliant powers and wide repute only as "a young Irishman."

But there are many things which Mr. White seems not to know, and he has but a poor memory for names, and in his despair he writes _anonymous_ against the title of every third poem. We might have expected a gentleman interested in the poetry of the war to attend the lectures of Dr. Holmes, who has been reading in New York and elsewhere "The Old Sergeant," as the production of Mr. Forcythe Willson of Kentucky. By turning to the index of that volume of the Atlantic from which the verses were taken, Mr. White could have learned that "Spring at the Capital" was written by Mrs. Akers; and with quite as little trouble could have informed himself of the authorship of a half-score of other poems we might name. We have already noted the defectiveness of the collection, in which we are told "no conspicuous poem elicited by the war is omitted"; and we note it again in Mr. White's failure to print Mr. Bryant's pathetic and beautiful poem, "My Autumn Walk," and in his choosing from Mr. Aldrich not one of the fine sonnets he has written on the war, but a _jeu d'esprit_ which in no wise represents him. Indeed, Mr. White's book seems to have been compiled after the editor had collected a certain number of clippings from the magazines and newspapers: if by the blessing of Heaven these had the names of their authors attached, and happened to be the best things the poets had done, it was a fortunate circumstance; but if the reverse was the fact, Mr. White seems to have felt no responsibility in the matter. We are disposed to hold him to stricter account, and to blame him for temporarily blocking, with a book and a reputation, the way to a work of real industry, taste, and accuracy on the poetry of the war. It was our right that a man whose scholarly fame would carry his volume beyond our own shores should do his best for our heroic Muse, robing her in all possible splendor; and it is our wrong that he has chosen instead to present the poor soul in attire so very indifferently selected from her limited wardrobe.

_The Story of Kennett._ By BAYARD TAYLOR. New York: G. P. Putnam; Hurd and Houghton.

In this novel Mr. Taylor has so far surpassed his former efforts in extended fiction, as to approach the excellence attained in his briefer stories. He has of course some obvious advantages in recounting "The Story of Kennett" which were denied him in "Hannah Thurston" and "John Godfrey's Fortunes." He here deals with the persons, scenes, and actions of a hundred years ago, and thus gains that distance so valuable to the novelist; and he neither burdens himself with an element utterly and hopelessly unpicturesque, like modern reformerism, nor assumes the difficult office of interesting us in the scarcely more attractive details of literary adventure. But we think, after all, that we owe the superiority of "The Story of Kennett" less to the felicity of his subject than to Mr. Taylor's maturing powers as a novelist, of which his choice of a happy theme is but one of the evidences. He seems to have told his story because he liked it; and without the least consciousness (which we fear haunted him in former efforts) that he was doing something to supply the great want of an American novel. Indeed, but for the prologue dedicating the work in a somewhat patronizing strain to his old friends and neighbors of Kennett, the author forgets himself entirely in the book, and leaves us to remember him, therefore, with all the greater pleasure.