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"Nothanksthat isI have no doubt you teach them all that's right, and we are exceedingly gratified with the way in which you conduct the school.I say Val," cried Scoutbush, who could support the part of patron no longer, "what pretty little ducks they are, I wish I had a dozen of them! Come you here!" and down he sat on a bench, and gathered a group round him.
"Now, are you all good children? I'm sure you look so!" said he, looking round into the bright pure faces, fresh from Leaven, and feeling himself the nearer heaven as he did so. "Ah! I see Mr. Mellot's been drawing you pictures. He's a clever man, a wonderful man, isn't he? I can't draw you pictures, nor tell you stories, like your schoolmistress. What shall I do?"
"Sing to them, Fred!" said Valencia.
And he began warbling a funny song, with a child on each knee, and his arms round three or four more, while the little faces looked up into his, half awe-struck at the presence of a live lord, half longing to laugh, but not sure whether it would be right.
Valencia and Campbell stood close together, exchanging looks.
"Dear fellow!" whispered she, "so simple and good when he is himself!
And he must go to that dreadful war!"
"Never mind. Perhaps by this very act he is earning permission to come back again, a wiser and a more useful man."
"How then?"
"Is he not making friends with angels who always behold our Father's face? At least he is showing capabilities of good, which God gave; and which therefore God will never waste."
"Now, shall I sing you another song?"
"Oh yes, please!" rose from a dozen little mouths.
"You must not be troublesome to his lordship," says Grace.
"Oh no, I like it. I'll sing them one more song, and thenI want to speak to you, Miss Harvey."
Grace curtsied, blushed, and shook all over. What could Lord Scoutbush want to say to her?
That indeed was not very easy to discover at first; for Scoutbush felt so strongly the oddity of taking a pretty young woman into his counsel on a question of sanitary reform, that he felt mightily inclined to laugh, and began beating about the bush, in a sufficiently confused fashion.
"Well, Miss Harvey, I am exceedingly pleased withwith what I have seen of the schoolthat is, what my sister tells, and the clergyman"
"The clergyman?" thought Grace, surprised, as she well might be, at what was entirely an impromptu invention of his lordship's.
"Andandthere is ten pounds toward the school, andand, I will give an annual subscription the same amount."
"Mr. Headley receives the subscriptions, my lord," said Grace, drawing back from the proffered note.
"Of course," quoth Scoutbush, trusting again to an impromptu: "but this is for yourselfa small mark of our sense of youryour usefulness."
If any one has expected that Grace is about to conduct herself, during this interview, in any wise like a prophetess, tragedy queen, or other exalted personage; to stand upon her native independence, and scorning the bounty of an aristocrat, to read the said aristocrat a lecture on his duties and responsibilities, as landlord of Aberalva town; then will that person be altogether disappointed. It would have looked very well, doubtless: but it would have been equally untrue to Grace's womanhood, and to her notions of Christianity. Whether all men were or were not equal in the sight of Heaven, was a notion which, had never crossed her mind. She knew that they would all be equal in heaven, and that was enough for her. Meanwhile, she found lords and ladies on earth, and seeing no open sin in the fact of their being richer and more powerful than she was, she supposed that God had put them where they were; and she accepted them simply as facts of His kingdom. Of course they had their duties, as every one has: but what they were she did not know, or care to know. To their own master they stood or fell; her business was with her own duties, and with her own class, whose good and evil she understood by practical experience. So when a live lord made his appearance in her school, she looked at him with vague wonder and admiration, as a being out of some other planet, for whom she had no gauge or measure: she only believed that he had vast powers of doing good unknown to her; and was delighted by seeing him condescend to play with her children. The truth may be degrading, but it must be told. People, of course, who know the hollowness of the world, and the vanity of human wealth and honour, and are accustomed to live with lords and ladies, see through all that, just as clearly as any American republican does; and care no more about walking down Pall-Mall with the Marquis of Carabas, who can get them a place or a living, than with Mr. Two-shoes, who can only borrow ten pounds of them; but Grace was a poor simple West-country girl; and as such we must excuse her, if, curtseying to the very ground, with tears of gratitude in her eyes, she took the ten-pound note, saying to herself, "Thank the Good Lord! This will just pay mother's account at the mill."
Likewise we must excuse her if she trembled a little, being a young womanthough being also a lady, she lost no jot of self-possession when his lordship went on in as important a tone as he could
"Andand I hear, Miss Harvey, that you have a great influence over these children's parents."
"I am afraid some one has misinformed your lordship," said Grace, in a low voice.
"Ah!" quoth Scoutbush, in a tone meant to be reassuring; "it is quite proper in you to say so. What eyes she has! and what hair! and what hands, too!" (This was, of course, spoken mentally.) "But we know better; and we want you to speak to them, whenever you can, about keeping their houses clean, and all that, in case the cholera should come." And Scoutbush stopped. It was a quaint errand enough; and besides, as he told Mellot frankly, "I could think of nothing but those wonderful eyes of hers, and how like they were to La Signora's."
Grace had been looking at the ground all the while. Now she threw upon him one of her sudden, startled looks, and answered slowly, as her eyes dropped again:
"I have, my lord; but they will not listen to me."
"Won't listen to you? Then to whom will they listen?"
"To God, when He speaks Himself," said she, still looking on the ground. Scoutbush winced uneasily. He was not accustomed to solemn words, spoken so solemnly.
"Do you hear this, Campbell? Miss Harvey has been talking to these people already, and they won't hear her."
"Miss Harvey, I dare say, is not astonished at that. It is the usual fate of those who try to put a little common sense into their fellow-men."
"Well, and I shall, at all events, go off and give them my mind on the matter; though I suppose (with a glance at Grace) I can't expect to be heard where Miss Harvey has not been."
"Oh, my lord," cried Grace, "if you would but speak" And there she stopped; for was it her place to tell him his duty? No doubt he had wiser people than her to counsel him.
But the moment the party left the school, Grace dropped into her chair; her head fell on the table, and she burst into an agony of weeping, which brought the whole school round her.
"Oh, my darlings! my darlings!" cried she at last, looking up, and clasping them to her by twos and threes; "Is there no way of saving you? No way! Then we must make the more haste to be good, and be all ready when Jesus comes to take us." And shaking off her passion with one strong effort, she began teaching those children as she had never taught them before, with a voice, a look, as of Stephen himself when he saw the heavens opened.
For that burst of weeping was the one single overflow of long pent passion, disappointment, and shame.
She had tried, indeed. Ever since Tom's conversation and Frank's sermon had poured in a flood of new light on the meaning of epidemics, and bodily misery, and death itself, she had been working as only she could work; exhorting, explaining, coaxing, warning, entreating with tears, offering to perform with her own hands the most sickening offices; to become, if no one else would, the common scavenger of the town. There was no depth to which, in her noble enthusiasm, she would not have gone down. And behold, it had been utterly in vain! Ah! the bitter disappointment of finding her influence fail her utterly, the first time that it was required for a great practical work! They would let her talk to them about their souls, then!They would even amend a few sins here and there, of which they had been all along as well aware as she. But to be convinced of a new sin; to have their laziness, pride, covetousness, touched; that, she found, was what they would not bear; and where she had expected, if not thanks, at least a fair hearing, she had been met with peevishness, ridicule, even anger and insult.