Chapter IV: We All Meet to Part (1)

A second time I recovered. I was still in the same place, and the same hand was supporting me. Some brandy was forced down my throat, and it revived me.

“Now listen,” he said. “I have good news for you. Why, the man is going off again! Here, Roger, take another nip. So. Now you are much nearer being a dead man than your father, only you will not let me tell you quietly. Hush, now! Not a word, or I am dumb. You lie still and listen, and let me talk. Everything is well here. That is about as much information as you can bear at present. There is nothing the matter with anybody, except with yourself. Miss Herbert, in consequence of a lucky little telegram received this afternoon commissioned me to await your arrival here, and tell you just that much. Everything else was to be explained at the Grange, where your father and some friends are waiting to receive with open arms the returned prodigal. This much I may add: Your father has been ill, very ill. But he has recovered. Now, another nip and I think we may be moving. That was Sir Roger at whose feet you fell outside. The noble old veteran never moved a foot, or your brains might have been dashed out. He is a truer friend than I, Roger, for he knew you at once, pricked up his ears, bent down his head towards you, and gave a low whinny that told me the whole story in a second. I’ll be bound you have had nothing to eat all day. That is bad. Why, you are the sick man after all. Do you feel equal to moving now? Well, come: easy--in--hold this skin up to your chin--so! And now we are off. Mr. Roger Herbert, I wish you a very merry Christmas!”

I sat silent with that delicious sense of relief after a great danger averted while the shadow of that danger has not quite passed away. Kenneth did all the talking. The snowfall had ceased and the moon was up. How well I remembered every house we passed, as the cheery lights flashed out of the windows, and the sounds of merry voices, whose owners I could almost name, broke on my ear. Leighstone seemed fairy-land, which I had reached after long wanderings through stony deserts and over barren seas. There is the old Priory, rising dark and solemn out of the white snow, with the white gravestones standing mute at the head of white graves all around it. The moonlight falls full on the family tomb. I shuddered as I looked upon it, not yet quite assured that it is not open for another occupant. I can see the frozen figure of Sir Roger stiff and stark with his winter grave-clothes upon him as we roll by the Priory gates. And there, at last, are the gleaming windows of the Grange, and the faint feeling again steals over my heart.

The heavy snowfall deadens the sound of the wheels, and we are within the house before our arrival is known. Miss Herbert is called out quietly by a servant, a stranger to me. Dear hearts! What these women are! She does not cry out, she does not speak a word; watching and suffering had made her so wise. She clings to me, and weeps silently on my breast a long while, smothering even the sobs that threaten to break her heart. When at last we look around for Kenneth he is nowhere to be seen, but there is a strange hush over all the house, and the voices that I heard on my entrance are silent.

“Papa is alone in the study--waiting,” whispered Nellie. “I received your telegram. O Roger! that little scrap of paper was like a message from heaven. He is growing anxious, but expects you. Hush! follow me.”

She stole along on tiptoe, and I after her. The door of the study was ajar. She opened it softly, and, standing in the shadow, I peeped in. He was seated in an easy-chair and had dozed off. His face wore that gentle, languid air of one who has been very ill and is slowly recovering; of one who has looked death in the face and to whom life is still new and uncertain. Ten years seemed to have been added to his life. Whether owing to his illness or to some other cause, I could not tell, but it seemed to me that a certain look of firmness and resolve, that was at times too prominent, had quite disappeared. Instead of his own brown locks he wore a wig. He had suffered very much. The door creaked as Nellie entered, disturbing but not awakening him. He sighed, his lips moved, and I thought he muttered my name.

“Papa!” said Nellie, touching his arm lightly. How matronly the Fairy looked! “Papa!”

“Ah! Yes, my dear. Is that you, my child? Is--is nobody with you?” What a wistful look in the eyes at that last question!

“Do you feel any better, papa? It is time to take your medicine.” How slow the demure minx is about it.

“Is it? I don’t think I will take any now. I want nothing just now, my darling.”

“What--no medicine! Nothing at all, papa?”

“Nothing at all. Is not that train arrived yet?” he asked, looking around anxiously at the clock.

“I--I think so, papa. And it brought such a lot of visitors.”

“Any--any--for us, Nellie?” He coughed, and his voice trembled into a feeble old treble as he asked this question.

“Only one, papa. May he come in?”

He knew all in an instant. He rose and tottered towards the door, where he would have fallen had I not caught him in my arms. Only one word escaped him.

“Roger!”

After some time Kenneth stole in, and seeing how matters stood insisted on bearing me off to dinner. He took me into the parlor, which was blazing with lights and decorated with holly and red berries in good old Christmas fashion. The first object to meet my eyes was a great “Welcome Home” which flashed in letters of fragrant blossoms cunningly woven in strange device about my portrait. Mrs. Goodal came forward and kissed me while the tears fell from her eyes. “You don’t deserve it, you wicked boy, but I can’t help it,” she said. Mr. Goodal had seized both my hands in his. A beautiful girl stood a little apart watching all with wondering eyes, and in them too there were tears, such is the force of example with women. I had never seen her before, but I needed no ghost to tell me that she was Kenneth’s sister.

“This is Elfie, Roger,” said Fairy. “She wants to welcome you too. Elfie is my sister. I stole her. Oh! a sister is so much nicer than a great rough brother who runs away!”

“And this,” said Mrs. Goodal, leading forward a tall, spare gentleman, with that closely shaven face and quiet lip and eye that, with or without the conventional garb, stamp the Catholic priest all the world over--“this is our dear friend and father, the friend and father of all of us, Father Fenton.”

There was a general pause at this introduction. I suppose that my countenance must have shown some perplexity, for a general laugh followed the pause. Mrs. Goodal came to the rescue.

“You expected to meet Mr. Knowles, I suppose, sir, or the Abbot Jones. Kenneth has told me about the Abbot Jones. But you must know that the present Archdeacon Knowles is far too high and mighty a dignitary for Leighstone, and the abbot is laid up with the gout. Your father has not been to the Priory for a very long time--for so long a time that he thinks he would no longer be known there. The Herbert pew is very vacant; and Nellie has had no one to take her. Still mystified? You see what comes of silly boys running away from home and never writing. They miss all the news.”

She led me to the other end of the parlor, and I stood before a lofty ivory crucifix. The light of tapers flashed upon the thin pale face; blood gleamed from the nailed hands and feet, from the pierced side, from the bowed and thorn-crowned head. It was the figure of “the Man of Sorrows,” and the artist had thrown into the silent agony of the face an expression of infinite pity. My own heart bowed in silence.

“We are all Papists, Roger. What are you?” whispered Mrs. Goodal at my elbow.

“Nothing,” I murmured. “Nothing.”

“Nothing yet,” she whispered again. “But do you think that we have all been praying to _Him_ all this time for _nothing_?”

“And my father?”

“The most inveterate Papist of us all!”

There was a tone of triumph in her voice that was almost amusing.

“How did it all come about?”

“She did it,” broke in Kenneth, pointing to his mother. “Did I not tell you that she was the sweetest woman to have her own way? If I were a heretic, I would sooner face the Grand Inquisitor himself than this most amiable of women. Set a thief to catch a thief, Roger. But come; heretics don’t abstain as do wicked creatures like these ladies. I forget, they do, though; and my heretic, fair ladies, has had nothing to eat all day; so I insist upon not another word until the fatted calf is disposed of by our returned prodigal.”

That was a merry Christmas eve. We all nestled together, and bit by bit the whole story came out. On the receipt of my first letter, after a fruitless inquiry for me, Kenneth and his mother posted down to Leighstone. Their arrival was most opportune; for my father, on hearing of my departure, suffered a relapse that laid him quite prostrate. Poor Nellie was in despair, brave heart though she was. By unremitting care he was partially restored, and then followed the long dreary months and the weary waiting, day after day, for some scrap of news from me. In such cases, the worst is generally dreaded save when the worst actually takes place, and my father drooped gradually. He was prevailed upon to pay a visit to the Goodals, and there it was that his heart, pierced with affliction, and bowed down with sorrow, opened to the holier and higher consolation that religion only affords. Father Fenton, who was invalided from a severe course of missionary labors, was staying with them, and the intercourse thus begun developed into what we have seen. On his return to Leighstone, the silent house opened up the bitter poignancy of his grief. Every familiar object on which his eye rested only served to remind him of one who had passed away; whom he accused himself of having driven away by an order that he could only now regard with abhorrence. A cold, something slight, seized him, and soon appeared alarming symptoms. In view of the recent changes, Nellie knew not to whom of our relatives to apply in this emergency, and could only write to Mrs. Goodal, who flew to her assistance. The arrival of my letter brought down Kenneth, “like a madman,” his mother said. The letter arrived just at the crisis of the fever in which my father lay; the good news was imparted to him in one of his lucid intervals, and the crisis took a favorable turn. The Christmas holy-days brought Elfie from her convent; and finally all came together, awaiting my expected return. How that letter had been kissed, petted, wept over, laughed over, spelt out inch by inch! I wonder that a fragment of it remained; but even had it been worn to dust by reverent fingers, it would not have mattered: the women knew every word of it by heart. It formed the staple topic of conversation whenever they met. There never yet was such a letter written, and the idea that the writer of it should only receive ten dollars--how much money was ten dollars?--a week was proof positive that the American people did not appreciate true genius when it found its way among them. Mr. Culpepper, indeed! Who cared what he would think? The idea of a person of the name of Culpepper having to do with men of genius! They wondered how I could consent to write for such a person at all. And Mrs. Jinks! Good gracious! that dreadful Mrs. Jinks and her “littery gents”; Mrs. Jinks and the beefsteak; Mrs. Jinks and the pork chops; Mrs. Jinks and her “mock turtle” soup; Mrs. Jinks and “her Jane,” etc. etc. Poor old Roger! Poor, dear boy! How miserable it made them all, and yet how absurdly ridiculous it all was. It made them laugh and cry in the same breath.

What a hero I had become! What was all my fancied triumph to this? What is all the success one can win in this world to the genuine love and the foolish adoration of the two or three hearts that made up our little world before we knew that great wide open beyond the boundary of our own quiet garden? And all this fuss and affection was poured out over me, who had run away from it, and thought of it so little while I was away. It was, speaking reverently, like the precious ointment in the alabaster vase, broken and poured out over me, in the fond waste of love. Why, indeed, was this waste for me? This ointment was precious, and might have been sold for many pence and given to the poor--the poor of this great world, who were hungering and thirsting after just such love as this, that we who have it accept so placidly, and let it run and diffuse itself over us, and take no care, for is not the source from which it comes inexhaustible, as the widow’s cruse of oil? But so it is, and so it will continue to be while human nature remains truly human nature. The good shepherd, leaving the ninety-nine sheep, will go after the one which was lost, and finding him, bear him on his own travel-weary and travel-worn shoulders in triumph home. The father will kill the fatted calf for the prodigal who has lived riotously and wasted his inheritance, but the faint cry of whose repentant anguish is heard from afar off. The mother’s heart will go out after the scapegrace son who is tramping the world alone, turned out of doors for misbehavior; and all the joy she feels in the good ones near her is as nothing compared with the thought that _he_ at last has come back, sad and sorrowful and forlorn, to the home he left long ago, in the brightness of the morning, with so gay a step and so light a heart. It is unjust, frightfully unjust, that it should be so. Did not the good son so feel it, and was his protest not right? Did not the laborers in the vineyard so find it when those who came at the eleventh hour, and had borne naught of the heat and the burden of the day, received the same reward as they? And who shall say that the laborers were not right and the lord of the vineyard unjust? What trades-union could ever take into consideration such reasoning as this, forbidden by the very book of arithmetic? Wait awhile, friends. Some day when we, who now feel so keenly the injustice of it all, are fathers and mothers, let us put the question then to ourselves: “Why this waste of precious ointment on one who values it not? I will seal up the alabaster jar, let the ointment harden into stone, and no sweetness shall flow out of it.” Do so--if you can, and the world will be a very barren place. It would dry and shrivel up under arid justice. Did not the Master tell us so? Did he not say that he came to call not the just but sinners to repentance? And is it not this very injustice that makes earth likest heaven, where we are told there shall be more joy over one sinner doing penance than over the ninety-nine just who need not penance?

And here am I preaching, instead of spending my Christmas merrily like a man. But the thought of all this affection wasted on so callous a wretch as I had proved myself to be, was too tempting to let pass. Suddenly the chimes rang out from the old steeples, and we were silent, listening with softened hearts and moistening eyes.

“There is another surprise for you yet,” said Mrs. Goodal, mysteriously. “Come, I want to show you your room.”

She took me upstairs, paused a moment at the door to whisper: “It has another Occupant now, Kenneth. Go in and visit him,” opened the door and pushed me gently in.

The room was lighted only by a little lamp, through which a low flame burned with a rosy glow. The flame flickered and shone on an altar with a small tabernacle, before which Father Fenton was kneeling in silent prayer. My old room had been converted into a chapel, and there they had knelt and prayed for me. Presently the chapel was lighted up, and my father was assisted to a chair that had been prepared for him. Mr. Goodal took up his position near a harmonium, in one corner, while I retired into the other. One or two of the household came in and took their places quietly. Father Fenton rose up, and, assisted by Kenneth, vested himself, and the midnight Mass began. Soon the harmonium was heard, and then in tones that trembled at first, but in a moment cleared and grew firm and strong and glorious, Elfie, laughing Elfie, who now seemed transformed into one of those angels who brought the glad tidings long, long ago, burst forth into the _Adeste Fideles_.

“Natum videte
Regem angelorum.”

All present joined in the refrain, Nellie’s sweet voice mingling with the strong, manly tones of Kenneth. I saw his face light up as a soldier’s of old might at a battle cry. How happy are the earnest!

Before the Mass was ended, Father Fenton turned and spoke a few words:

“One of old said, ‘When two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’ I need not point out to you the solemn manner in which a few moments since he who made that promise fulfilled it, for he has spoken to your own hearts. But I would call your attention to the wonderful and special manner in which Christ has visited and blessed the two or three gathered together here this night in his name. We are here like the shepherds of old, come to adore the Christ born in a manger. One by one have we dropped in, taken in hand and led gently, as though by the Lord himself. This great grace has not been given us for nothing. It has been the answer to fervent, earnest, and unceasing prayer, which, though it may sometimes seem to knock at the gates of heaven a long while in vain, has been heard all the while, and at length, entering in, falls back on our hearts laden with gifts and with graces. The two or three have increased now by one, now by another, and under Providence are destined to increase until the Master calls them away unto himself. Happy is the one who comes himself to Christ, thrice happy he who helps to lead another! He it is who answers that bitter cry of anguish that rang out from the darkness and the suffering of Calvary--‘I thirst.’ He holds up the chalice to the lips of the dying Saviour filled with the virtues of a saved soul. It was for souls Christ thirsted, and he gives him to drink. But when a conversion is wrought, when a stray sheep is brought into the fold, the work is only begun. All the debt is not paid. It is well to be filled with gratitude for the wonderful favor of God in bringing us out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage into the land flowing with milk and honey, where the good shepherd attends his sheep, where we draw water from the living fountain. We have left behind us the fleshpots of Egypt. But there is ingratitude to be remembered and wiped out. Many weary years have we wandered in desert places seeking rest and finding none. Yet the voice of the shepherd was calling to us all the while. Peace, peace, peace! Peace to men of good-will has been ringing out of the heavens over the mountains of this world these long centuries, yet how many ears are deaf to the angels’ song! The star in the East has arisen, has moved in the heavens, and stood over his cradle--the star of light and of knowledge--yet how many eyes have been blind to its lustre and its meaning. It is because it points to a lowly place. In Bethlehem of Judæa Christ is born, not in the city of the king; in a stable, not in the palace of Herod; in a manger he is laid, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, not in the purple of royalty. He is lowly; we would be great. He is meek; we would be proud. He is a little innocent child; we would be wise among the children of men. The birth-place of Christianity is humility. We must begin there, low down, for he himself has said it: ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’; ‘Unless ye become as one of these little ones, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.’

“My brethren, my dear children, little flock whom Christ has visited really and truly in his body and blood, soul and divinity, this is our lesson--to be humble as he is. In this was his church founded on this memorable night, at this solemn hour, while day and night are in conflict. The day dawned on the new birth and the night was left for ever behind. There is no longer excuse for being children of the darkness, for the light of the world has dawned at length. It dawned in lowliness, poverty, suffering--these are its surroundings. Christ’s first worshippers on this earth were the one who bore him and her spouse, Joseph the carpenter. His second, the poor shepherds, whose watchful ears heard first the song of peace. The kings from afar off followed who were looking and praying for light from heaven, and it came. The angels guided the ignorant shepherds to where he lay; but of those to whom more was given, more was expected. The gifts of intellect, learning, and the spirit of inquiry are gifts of God, not of man, or of Satan. They are to be used for God, not sharpened against him. Happy are those to whom he has given them, who, like the Kings of the East, though far away from the lowly place where he lies, hearken to the voice of God calling to them over the wildernesses that intervene, and make answer to the divine call. Search in the right spirit--search in the spirit of humility, and honesty, and truth. To them will the star of Truth appear to guide them aright over many dangers and difficulties, and disasters mayhap, to the stable where Christ is sleeping, to lay at his feet the gifts and offerings he gave them--the gold of faith, the frankincense of hope, the myrrh of charity.”

I suppose it is intended that sermons should apply to all who hear them. That being the case, how could Father Fenton’s words apply to me? There was not a single direct allusion to me throughout. What he said might apply equally to all, and yet surely of all there I was the most guilty. I alone did not adore; and why? After all, was humility the birthplace of Christianity? But was not I humble as the rest of them? “You! who are so fond of mounting those stilts,” whispered Roger Herbert senior--“you, who spend your days and nights dreaming of the _divinus afflatus_--you, who would give half your life, were it yours to give, to convert those little stilts into a genuine monument, and for what purpose? That men might point and look up at the dizzy height and say, Behold Roger Herbert, the mighty, his feet on earth, his head among the gods of heaven!” And was it true that Truth had been speaking all this time, all these centuries, to so little purpose? Why was it? how could it be if the voice was divine? “The devil, the world, and the flesh, Roger; forget not the devil, the world, and the flesh. Were there only truth, we should all be of one mind; but unfortunately, truth is confronted with falsehood.” What is truth--what is truth? Ay, the old agony of the world. One alone of all that world dared to tell us that he was the Truth, he was the Way, he was the Life. “Let us find him, Roger. Father Fenton says he is in the midst of those gathered together in his name.”

Christmas passed, and a New Year dawned on us--a happy new year to all except myself. I was the only unhappy being at the Grange. Elfie went back to her convent school. My father’s health was on the high road to restoration, and the growing attachment between Kenneth and Nellie was evident even to my purblind vision. Strange to say, I did not like to talk to Kenneth as openly as at first about my doubts and difficulties, and Father Fenton’s company, when alone, I avoided, although he was the most amiable of men, gifted with wit softened by piety, and a learning that not even his modesty could conceal. He must have observed how studiously I shunned him, for, after seeking ineffectually once or twice to draw me into serious conversation, he refrained, and only spoke on ordinary topics. I began to grow restless again.

The season had advanced into an early spring; the green was already abroad and the birds beginning to come, when one afternoon, that seemed to have strayed out of summer, so soft and balmy was the air, Nellie and I sat together out on the lawn as in the old days. My father was taking a nap within; the Goodals had driven to Gnaresbridge to meet a friend whom they expected to pass by the up-town train to London. Nellie was working at something, and I was musing in silence. Suddenly she said:

“Roger, do you remember the promises you made me the night before you ran away?”

“Yes, Fairy.”

“Well, sir?”

“Well, madam?”

“Is that all?”

“Is what all?”

“Do you only remember your promise?”

“Is not that a great deal?”

“No; unless you have kept it.”

“Ah--h--h!”

“What do you mean by ah--h?”

“What did I promise?”

“That from that day forward you would not only try not to do harm, but to do some good for others as well as for yourself.”

“That is a very big promise.”

“No bigger now than it was then.”

“But it means more now than it did then.”

“Not a bit, not a bit, not a bit!”

“Things look to me so differently now. One grows so much older in a year sometimes.”

“Then you have not kept your promise? O Roger!”

“Good, though you can spell it in four letters, is a very large word, Nellie, and means so much; and others mean so many. Not to do much harm is one thing; but to do good, not once in a while, but to be constant in it--that is another thing, Nellie, and that was what I promised. That promise I cannot say I have kept.”

Nellie bent her head lower over her work, and I believe I saw some tears fall, but she said nothing. I went on:

“Now Kenneth does good.”

There was no mistake about the tears this time, although the head bent a little lower still. “Kenneth does a great deal of good. He goes about among the poor as regularly as a physician, and whatever his medicine may be it seems to do them more good than any they can get at the druggist’s. He has sent I don’t know how many youngsters off to school, where he pays for them. In fact, he seems to me to be always scheming and thinking about others and never dreaming of himself, whereas I am always scheming and thinking about myself and never seem to see anybody else in the world. Why, what are you doing with that stuff in your hands, Nellie? You are sewing it anyhow.”

“O Roger! You--you--” she could say no more, but hid her face, that was rosy and pure as the dawn, on my breast.

“A very pretty picture,” said a deep voice behind us, and Nellie started away from me, while all the blood rushed back to her heart. She was so white that Kenneth--for it was he who had stolen up unobserved at the moment--was frightened, and said:

“Pardon me, Miss Herbert, if I have startled you. I have only this instant come, and quite forgot that the grass silenced the sound of my footsteps. Take this chair--shall I bring a glass of water?”

“No, thank you; I am better now. It was only a moment. We did not hear you.”

“May I join you, then? Or was it a _tête-à-tête_?”

“No; sit down, Kenneth. The fact is, we were just discussing the character of an awful scamp.”

“Who arrived just too late to hear any evil of himself--is that it?”

“No, he was here all the time,” said Nellie, laughing, and herself again.

“But what brings you from Gnaresbridge so soon, Kenneth, and all alone? Where have you left Mr. and Mrs. Goodal?”

“Mrs. Goodal had some shopping to do at Gnaresbridge, and Mr. Goodal, as in duty bound, waited patiently the results of that interesting operation. His patience makes me blush for mine. The shopping is such a very extensive operation that I preferred a walk back, and even now you see I have arrived before them.”

“How very ungallant, Mr. Goodal! I am surprised at you. I thought Roger was the only gentleman who didn’t like shopping.”

“On the contrary, I am quite fond of it. I used to do all my own shopping in New York. I got Mrs. Jinks to buy me some things once, but as she, woman-like, measured everybody by Mr. Jinks, the articles, though an excellent fit for him, were an abomination on me.”

“And what did you do with them?”

“What could I do with them? Gave them to Mrs. Jinks, of course, and for the future did my own shopping. Indeed, I am getting quite lazy here. There is nothing for a fellow to do--is there, Kenneth?”

“I was thinking of that as I came along.”

“Thinking of what?”

“The great puzzle--What to do. I put it in every imaginable form. The question was this: ‘Kenneth Goodal, what are you going to do with yourself?’ and the whole eight miles passed before I could arrive at anything like a satisfactory conclusion. I finally resolved to leave the question to arbitration, and get others to decide for me. I have already applied to one.”

He paused, and his gaze was fixed on the ground. His face was flushed, and his broad brow knitted as though trying to find the right clue to a puzzling query. I glanced at Nellie, and observed that her face had whitened again, while her eyes were also bent upon the ground, and her breath came and went painfully.

“Yes,” he went on without raising his head--Nellie was seated between us--“I determined to leave my case to arbitration. Your father was one of the arbiters; you were to be another, Roger; and a certain young lady was to be a third. I had intended to attack the members of this high court of arbitration singly; but as I find two of them here together, I see no reason why I should not receive my verdict at once.. ..”

A further report of this most important and interesting case it is not for me to give, inasmuch as I was not present. I saw at once that the decision rested now with the third arbiter, and that my opinion was practically valueless in the matter. How the case proceeded I cannot tell. Thinking that there was little for me to do, and how deeply engaged were the other two parties, I took advantage of the noiseless grass to slink away without attracting the attention of either, heartily ashamed of myself for being so persistent an intruder where it was clear I was not particularly wanted. It was a lovely evening, and I took a long quiet ramble all by myself. How much longer the court was in session I do not know, I only know that it was broken up before I entered, just in time for dinner. I noticed that in my father’s eyes there was a softer look than usual; that Mrs. Goodal took Nellie’s place at table, opposite to my father; that Mr. Goodal and myself were neighbors, while opposite to us sat the adjourned court of arbitration, looking--looking as young persons look only once in their lives. There was a rather awkward silence on my entrance, which I found so unpleasant that I rattled away all through dinner. I must have been excellent company for once in my life; for though at this moment I do not recollect a single sentence that I uttered, there was so much laughter throughout the dinner, laughter that grew and grew until we found ourselves all talking at length, all joining in, all joking, all so merry that we were astounded to find how the evening had passed. My father looked quite young again.

As I was retiring to my own room for the night, Nellie caught me, put both her arms around my neck, and looked up into my eyes a long time without saying a word, until at last she seemed to find in them something she was looking for, and when, kissing her, I asked if I should blow the candle out again, as I did on a former memorable confession, she flew away, her face lost amid blushes, laughter, and tears. I was congratulating myself on seeing an end to a long day, when a guilty tap came to my door, and Kenneth stole in with the air of a burglar who purposed making for the first valuable he could lay hands on, and vanishing with it through the window. He closed the door as cautiously as though a policeman, whom he feared to disturb, was napping without, and sat down without saying a word. I looked at the ceiling; he sat and stared at me. In his turn, he began examining my eyes. I could bear it no longer, but burst out laughing, and held out my hand, which he almost crushed in his.

“You are as true a knight as ever was old Sir Roger,” said Kenneth, wringing my hand till I cried out with pain. “I went on talking for I don’t know how long, and saying I forget now what, but, on looking up, I found there was only one listener. Well, we did without you.”

“So now you know what to do with yourself. Happy man! What a pity Elfie is only fourteen! She might tell me what to do with Roger Herbert.”

I saw the two who, after my father, I loved the best in all the world made one. I waited until they returned from the bridal trip, by which time my father was fully restored to health. We spent that season in London, and when it was over returned to Leighstone. The brown hand of autumn was touching the woods, when one morning I began packing my trunk again, and that same evening ate my last dinner at the Grange. It was not a pleasant dinner. The ladies were in tears at times, and the gentlemen were inclined to be taciturn. I did my best to rally the party as on a former occasion, but the effort was not very successful.

“Oh! you are all Sybarites here,” was my closing rejoinder to all queries, tears, and complaints; “and I should never do anything among you. Not so fortunate as Kenneth, who has found some one to tell him what to do with himself, I am driven back on my own resources, and must work out that interesting problem for myself. I was advancing in that direction when called away. I go back to resume my labors in the old way. You cannot realize the delicious feeling that comes over one at times who is struggling all alone, and groping in the darkness towards a great light that he sees afar off and hopes to reach. I leave my father with a better son than I, and my sister with something that even sisters prefer to brothers. I am only restless here. There is work to be done beyond there. I may be making a mistake: if so, I shall come back and let you know.”

AN OLD IRISH TOUR.

It was the long vacation in Dublin, 186-. Summer reigned supreme over the Irish capital. The long, bright afternoons, still and drowsy, seemed never to have an end. The soft azure overhead, so different from our deep blue skies, was whole days without a cloud--rare phenomenon in Irish weather. It was hot. The leaves drooped and the insects hummed, till I, a solitary American student, holding my chambers in college for a couple of weeks after all others had left--waiting for some friends to make up a party for the seaside--began to think of the fierce blaze of the Broadway pavement in July. The four o’clock promenade on Grafton and Westmoreland streets seemed almost abandoned by the tall, fresh-colored Dublin belles; and even the military band on Wednesday afternoons in Merrion square drew few listeners. It was dull as well as hot.

Taking down volume after volume at a venture from the shelves of the house library, I happened on Arthur Young’s _Tour in Ireland in 1776-9_. I opened it at the account of his visit to the Dargle. I had not yet visited the glen, and was interested by his description. “What!” said I, laying the book open on my knee, “shall I stay here broiling for another week? I will run down to Bray and Wicklow for a day or two, and have a look at the lions.” From my windows every morning I used to look out at the distant hills, till they seemed to me like old acquaintances. The next day I started. The trip is still a pleasant one in my memory; but it is not of my own short Wicklow tour I am going to write, although in these fast days it also might now be called ancient.

This was my first acquaintance with Arthur Young’s celebrated _Tour_. Not long ago I met with his work again. It was a copy of the second edition, “printed by H. Goldney for T. Cadell in the Strand, MDCCLXXX.” I recognized my old friend at a glance. The quaint engraving of the “Waterfall at Powerscourt, I. Taylor, _sculp._,” renewed old associations, and led to a second and more attentive reading.

Although Young’s works are still the standard authority on the agricultural condition of England and Ireland, one hundred years ago, recognized in those countries, he is not so well known on this side of the water, and a few facts concerning his life and writings may be given. He was born in 1741. He was the son of the Rev. Arthur Young, rector of Bradford, and sometime chaplain to Speaker Onslow. His father was noted for some fierce blasts against “Popery,” but our author, in many passages of a just and humane spirit, shows that he did not imbibe the iconoclast zeal of Arthur Young the elder. His works are voluminous, comprised in twenty volumes. They relate almost exclusively to the state of agriculture in the two kingdoms and in France. His _Travels_ in the East, West, and North of England, in Wales, in Ireland, and in France, and his _Political Economy_, are the chief titles. But Arthur Young was more than a practical farmer, honorable as that vocation is. He was a man of liberal education and cultivated taste, and his works often rise above the dull level of the fields and are pervaded with a true Virgilian flavor. They have been warmly praised by such widely different authorities as McCulloch, De Tocqueville, and the _Times_ Commissioner in 1869; and Miss Edgeworth, herself now grown a little antiquated, says of his _Tour in Ireland_: “It was the first faithful portrait of its inhabitants.” Arthur Young died in 1820. An extended but not complete list of his works will be found in Allibone.

Young had a high but well-grounded idea of the place that agriculture holds in the economy of the state.

“The details,” he says, “of common management are dry and
unentertaining; nor is it easy to render them interesting by
ornaments of style. The tillage with which the peasant prepares
the ground; the manner with which he fertilizes it; the
quantities of the seed of the several species of grain which
he commits to it; and the products that repay his industry,
necessarily in the recital run into chains of repetition which
tire the ear, and fatigue the imagination. Great, however, is
the structure raised on this foundation; it may be dry, but it
is important, for these are the circumstances upon which depend
the wealth, prosperity, and power of nations. The minutiæ of
the farmer’s management, low and seemingly inconsiderable as
he is, are so many links of a chain which connect him with
the state. Kings ought not to forget that the splendor of
majesty is derived from the sweat of industrious and too often
oppressed peasants. The rapacious conqueror who destroys and
the great statesman who protects humanity, are equally indebted
for their power to the care with which the farmer cultivates
his fields. The monarch of these realms must know, when he is
sitting on his throne at Westminster, surrounded by nothing but
state and magnificence, that the poorest, the most oppressed,
the most unhappy peasant, in the remotest corner of Ireland,
contributes his share to the support of the gaiety that
enlivens and the splendor that adorns the scene.”

Our author, it will be seen, lived close enough to the great Dr. Johnson to catch something of the swelling and sonorous rotundity of style which he impressed upon the Georgian era. And, in truth, there is a weighty and nervous energy about the prose writing of that age which contrasts, not to our advantage, with the extenuated and sharply accented style of our day.

The careful investigation of his special study led Young into minute inquiries and much experimental journalizing, into which it would not be possible or even desirable for us to follow him. We shall therefore content ourselves with a notice of his more general observations in the character of tourist.

Arthur Young started from Holyhead for Dunleary--as Kingstown was then called, before the “First Gentleman in Europe” set his august foot upon its quay--on the 19th of June, 1776. What a tremendous turn of the wheel has the world taken since then! These colonies had just plunged slowly but resolutely into that great struggle for independence, the centennial commemoration of which we shall celebrate next year. Progress in Ireland, though not so radical, has been such as would have been derided as a day-dream by the generation then living. In the arts and sciences the advance has been as amazing as in politics. As we read of Young’s tedious passage of twenty-two hours on board the small sailing packet of those days, we take in at a glance the difference of times which has substituted for those “Dutch clippers” the magnificent steamships which now make the passage between those ports with undeviating regularity in four hours.

Young’s tour was made under the auspices of the English Board of Agriculture. It was his intention to make a complete survey of the state of the art in the island. He complains, however, of the want of encouragement his project met with in England; the Earl of Shelburne, “Edmund Burke, Esq.,” and a few others being the only persons of eminence who took the trouble to interest themselves in the undertaking. “Indeed,” says our author, commenting on this indifference, “there are too many possessors of great estates in Ireland who wish to know nothing more of it than the collection of their rents”--a remark which has not lost its force in our own day.

The reception he met with in Dublin, however, when the purpose of his visit became known, seems to have compensated him for the coldness he had experienced on the other side of the Channel. The most distinguished persons of the Irish capital--a title then to some extent real--warmly encouraged him in his project, treated him with true Irish hospitality in their own houses, and provided him with letters of introduction to facilitate his inquiries. Thus equipped, Young felt sure of bringing his undertaking to a successful issue; nor did he disappoint his subscribers. But before going further, let us first note his impressions of the capital.

Dublin exceeded his anticipations. Its public buildings, which still recall its old glories to the Irish-American tourist, “are,” he says, “magnificent; very many of the streets regularly laid out, and exceedingly well built.” The Parliament House, within the walls of which Grattan and Flood were then exerting their growing powers, attracted his admiration, although some of its architectural features seemed to him open to criticism. Young found the subject of Union an unpopular one wherever broached, and, although an advocate of the scheme, does not appear to have imagined that in a little over twenty years the doors of the Parliament House would be closed upon the representatives of Ireland. The cold and business-like precincts of the Bank of Ireland, as the building is now called, make stronger by contrast the recollection of the fervid eloquence once heard within its walls. Young attended the debates frequently; but, whether it was from English phlegm, or perhaps it would be more just to him to say, from the recollection of the transcendent powers of Burke and Chatham, he does not appear to have been carried away by the _perfervidum ingenium_ of the Irish orators. After naming Mr. Daly, Mr. Flood (who had dropped out of the scene), Mr. Grattan, Serjeant Burgh, and others, he says: “I heard many eloquent speeches, but I cannot say they struck me like the exertion of the abilities of Irishmen in the English House of Commons.”

Young’s opinion of the musical talent of Dublin would be apt also to excite the ire of its present opera-goers. No city in the United Kingdom flatters itself more upon its correct musical taste and warm encouragement of talent. But this is what our unabashed tourist says: “An ill-judged and unsuccessful attempt was made to establish the Italian opera, which existed but with scarce any life for this one winter; of course, they could rise no higher than a comic one. ‘La Buona Figliuola,’ ‘La Frascatana,’ and ‘Il Geloso in Cimento’ were repeatedly performed, or rather murdered, except the part of Sestini. The house was generally empty and miserably cold.” This is no doubt an honest description of the fortunes of the opera in his day, but those who have witnessed the successive appearances of Grisi, of Piccolomini (in light _rôles_), of Titjens, and Patti will not accuse a modern Dublin audience of want of sympathy.

Dublin, always a gay city socially, was enlivened in Young’s day by the presence of a larger resident aristocracy than ever since. The greater power and state of the “Castle” before the Union, the splendid hospitality of the old Irish nobility, the beauty of its fair dames--the toast of more than one court, the gallant, open-handed manners of the native landed gentry, made it then one of the most brilliant capitals in Europe. Young supposes the common computation of its inhabitants, two hundred thousand, to be exaggerated; he thinks one hundred and forty or one hundred and fifty thousand would be nearer the mark. Although Dublin, to-day, nearly if not quite doubles the latter figures, and in countless ways shares in the general progress of the age, she misses the independent spirit her native parliament gave her, and which filled the smaller city of the last century with an exuberant life that is now absent in her streets and along her quays.

Young thus sums up his observations on the city: “From everything I saw, I was struck with all those appearances of wealth which the capital of a thriving community may be supposed to exhibit. Happy if I find through the country in diffused prosperity the right source of this splendor!” Whatever the gaiety of the capital, the impartial observer, as Young himself soon found, could not fail to note through the country, notwithstanding some gleams of better times, the fixed wretchedness of a whole people, bowed down under the yoke of those penal laws the unspeakable horror of which no later English legislation, however beneficent, can ever redeem. But the native buoyancy of the Irish character was well exemplified in the comparatively cheerful and quiescent spirit with which they bore their hard lot in the breathing space, if one may so term it, between 1750 and 1770. For some years previous to Young’s _Tour_, the general state of the country, contrasted with what it had been seventy years previously, was what might almost be called prosperous. The population was increasing, and was not suffering from want of food; and the penal laws in some instances were allowed to fall into abeyance. The country was comparatively free from agrarian disturbances. Whiteboys and “Hearts of Steel” had sprung up in some counties after Thurot’s landing in 1759, but were quickly suppressed; their indiscriminate attacks upon private property in some instances causing the Catholic country people to rise against them. The trade of Ireland was still oppressed by the English prohibitory laws, but some mitigation had been granted; and in 1778 the threatening attitude of the Irish Volunteers at last wrung a tardy measure of justice from the English government. The value of land in many counties had more than doubled in the previous thirty years. Much of this rise in value was undoubtedly due to natural causes--improved and extended cultivation, and the increase of population--but it is plain from Young’s testimony, without going to Catholic contemporary evidence, that the rents were raised artificially in numberless cases by the grinding agents of the absentee landlords. The Irish woollen trade had been annihilated by English monopoly. The manufacture of linen, which was at its height in 1770, had greatly declined in consequence of the American difficulties, but was beginning to revive a little. The effect of the war had also been to check the emigration, which was chiefly confined, however, to the North. Young gave particular attention to this subject, noting down the emigration in each parish he visited; and the result of his observations is summed up in these words: “The spirit of emigrating in Ireland appeared to be confined to two circumstances, the Presbyterian religion and the linen manufacture. I heard of very few emigrants except among the manufacturers of that persuasion.” This remark has of course been completely nullified in later years by the famine and continued misgovernment, which at last, breaking down the Irishman’s strong love of home, have sent him forth as a wanderer, but, in the designs of Providence, to carry with him his faith and build up a greater Catholic Church in America--happy also in the country and the laws which enable him by his own exertions to gain a position equal to any other citizen’s, and to throw off that poverty and servility which too often weighed down his spirit at home.

On the whole, then, it may be said that the time of Arthur Young’s visit was a favorable one, if any time might be accounted favorable in that long night of oppression which was still brooding over Ireland, and which had yet to reach its darkest hour before the first faint streaks of dawn gladdened the eyes of its weary watchers. The country was just touching on that short period of flickering prosperity, culminating in the assertion of its constitutional independence in 1782, but destined to set in fire and blood in the tragedy of ’98 and the ill-starred Union of 1800.