"
"Hets," answered Jean, who had in fact cleared the plate.
"Hets," answered Jean, who had in fact cleared the plate.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 - Rab to Rus
Charles spent much of his childhood in boarding-
school; for years with a merciless Mr. Slater, who flogged his pupils
daily, and whose only idea of teaching was memory-cramming. It
was not until he escaped from this thraldom that Reade began to
show his quickness of mind.
In 1831 he entered Magdalen College on a demyship; and three
years later, when he took his degree, he was appointed to a fellow-
ship, which he held for fifty years, until his death in 1884. In spite
of this long connection he did not love Oxford. His free-lance spirit
detested her conventions, and he preferred the freer air of London.
Nor did he love the fellowship which he could not resign. Charles
Reade never experienced acute poverty, yet for years his means
were just meagre enough to make him feel pinched and uncomforta-
ble. His fellowship with its income was necessary to him. So his
life was perforce influenced by monasticism; and he showed a deep
personal appreciation of all the commonplace happiness renounced by
the monk Gerard, the epic hero of The Cloister and the Hearth. '
After his graduation he read law; in rather desultory fashion, for his
## p. 12105 (#143) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12105
livelier interests were in general reading, in making himself an
authority upon violins ancient and modern, and in traveling when-
ever he could afford it.
It took the public some time to relish Reade's new flavor and to
recognize his merit. But with 'It's Never too Late to Mend' (1856)
he found himself a popular novelist. The book provoked wide dis-
cussion, and was read, praised, and reviled on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Charles Reade was a fighting Englishman, always ready for a fray,
always believing himself or somebody else ill-used. He was a man
of deep feeling, too alive to human suffering to take life lightly. He
was a man of intense energy which constantly sought vent.
He was
generous and warm-hearted, ready to give time, money, and influence
for the relief of others. The morbid sensitiveness to criticism which
continually embroiled him with critics and publishers, and most of
those with whom he had business dealings, made him a butt of ridi-
cule. It was not all self-love, but a stout demand for justice, which
he was as ready to make for others as for himself. No sooner was
he fairly launched as a writer of repute than he aspired to become a
social reformer. This inclination was doubtless strengthened by his
friendship with Dickens, for whose Household Words and All the
Year Round he wrote; and whom he warmly admired. The two had
been introduced by Bulwer-Lytton, and found themselves in sym-
pathy at once. Like the author of 'Nicholas Nickleby,' Reade longed
to right abuses. 'It's Never too Late to Mend' was an exposition of
the evils of the English prison system. So strong was the indignation
aroused, that when reproduced at the Princess Theatre years after
its first dramatization, there was almost a riot in the audience. What
he himself said in it might stand as a motto to most of his novels:
"I have taken a few undeniable truths out of many, and have labored to
make my readers realize those appalling facts of the day which most men
know, but not one in a thousand comprehends, and not one in a hundred
thousand realizes, until fiction—which, whatever you may have been told to
the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest, and greatest of all the arts-
comes to his aid, studies, penetrates, digests the hard facts of chronicles and
blue-books, and makes their dry bones live. "
He took up one alleged evil after another: in 'Hard Cash,' abuses
of insane asylums, and still more the legal power of physicians to
commit for insanity, which he accused them of exercising on the
sane for bribes; in Foul Play,' those in the merchant shipping ser-
vice; in 'Put Yourself in His Place,' those resulting from trades-unions
and labor conditions. Upon these different themes he employed all
his strength of mind and imagination, and he produced novels which
## p. 12106 (#144) ##########################################
12106
CHARLES READE
were read, and are still read, for their lively romantic interest. Never
dully didactic, they fully achieved a forceful presentment of the evil.
The system upon which he worked was laborious. "I propose
never to guess what I can know," he said; and was an indefatigable
collector of newspaper clippings, institution reports, and the like.
When his statements were questioned, his facts denied, or he was
accused of exaggeration, he would turn triumphantly to his carefully
classified collections, and refute the objection with positive proof.
He knew how to fuse this material into an artistic whole. "It
would require a chemical analysis to separate the fiction from the
reality," said Justin McCarthy of Reade's novels.
"I studied the great art of fiction closely for fifteen years before
I presumed to write a word of it. I was a ripe critic long before I
became an artist," wrote Reade. One result of this study was the
determination to seek personal sincerity of expression above every-
thing else. In the effort to see things for himself, not through other
people's eyes, his unusualness of phrase is sometimes startling. The
effect is often delightfully novel, occasionally harsh and jagged. Yet
there is always a charm in his trenchant wit and uncompromising
frankness. He pictured English life as he saw it, with an intuition of
what was salient in a character, a locality, or a period.
In 1859 Charles Reade published in Once a Week a short serial
called 'A Good Fight. ' While writing it he discovered other possibil-
ities in the plot, and resolved to give it a more comprehensive treat-
ment. But the publishers of the magazine took editorial liberties
with the manuscript, which Reade quickly resented. Therefore he
hurried up the tale to a happy but inartistic conclusion, and soon set
about remodeling it on a different scale, and with the new title, 'The
Cloister and the Hearth. '
"The Cloister and the Hearth' (1861), Reade's masterpiece, stands
out clearly differentiated from anything else he did. He put his best
into it, and the maturity of his mind. He was a scholar as well as
man of general reading, and for all his knowledge he found scope in
this great mediæval romance. All the minor characters as well as
the pathetic figures of Gerard and Margaret, and the gay Burgundian
Denys are drawn with an artistic insight and power of sympathy.
which make the old time live again. With rare synthetic power, his
imagination grasped the social conditions of the fifteenth century, and
recognized what the lives of men and women must have been. His
book is truer than history; for while based on historical records, it
reflects with life and color, not alone outward fact but also the work-
ings of minds and hearts.
## p. 12107 (#145) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12107
VISCOUNT AND LOWER CLASSES
From Christie Johnstone'
THE
HE air was tepid, pure and sweet as heaven. This bright
afternoon, nature had grudged nothing that could give fresh
life and hope to such dwellers in dust and smoke and vice
as were there, to look awhile on her clean face and drink her
honeyed breath.
This young gentleman was not insensible to the beauty of the
scene. He was a little lazy by nature, and made lazier by the
misfortune of wealth: but he had sensibilities. He was an artist
of great natural talent. Had he only been without a penny, how
he would have handled the brush! And then he was a mighty
sailor. If he had sailed for biscuit a few years, how he would
have handled a ship!
As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for nature's beauties;
and the sea always came back to him like a friend after an
absence.
This scene, then, curled round his heart a little; and he felt
the good physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that
name, and strive to build health on the sandy foundation of
drugs.
"Saunders, do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the
lower classes? "
"Perfectly, my lord. "
"Are there any about here? "
"I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord. "
"Get me some » - (cigarette).
Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful empressement, but
an internal shrug of his shoulders.
He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a
double expression on his face. Pride at his success in diving to
the very bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished
up thence.
He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, sotto voce but
impressively, "This is low enough, my lord. " Then glided back,
and ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he
had ever opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed
existence.
On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin,
with a broad lace border, stiffened, and arched over the forehead
## p. 12108 (#146) ##########################################
12108
CHARLES READE
about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unincum-
bered.
They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in pat-
terns, confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed
below the waist; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical
stripes, red and white, most vivid in color; white worsted stock-
ings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets
they wore a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of
which was visible round the lower part of the throat.
Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or gathered up
towards the front; and the second, of the same color, hung in the
usual way.
Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with
the red blood mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious
black eyebrows.
The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as
white as milk; glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which
glittered like gold, and a blue eye, which being contrasted with
dark eyebrows and lashes, took the luminous effect peculiar to
that rare beauty.
Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a
noble swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on
the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters,
who with their air-like sylphs, and their smoke-like verses, fight
for want of flesh in woman and want of fact in poetry as paral-
lel beauties.
They are, my lads. - Continues!
These women had a grand corporeal trait: they had never
known a corset! so they were straight as javelins; they could
lift their hands above their heads! -actually! Their supple per-
sons moved as nature intended; every gesture was ease, grace,
and freedom.
What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and
brightness of their costume, they came like meteors into the
apartment.
Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet
politeness with which he would have received two princes of the
blood, said, "How do you do? " and smiled a welcome.
་་
"Fine! hoow's yoursel'? " answered the dark lass, whose name
was Jean Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face.
"What'n lord are ye? " continued she. "Are you a juke? —I
wad like fine to hae a crack wi' a juke. "
## p. 12109 (#147) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12109
Saunders, who knew himself the cause of this question, replied
sotto voce, "His Lordship is a viscount. "
"But it has a bonny
"I dinna ken't," was Jean's remark.
soond. "
"What mair would ye hae? " said the fair beauty, whose name
was Christie Johnstone. Then appealing to his Lordship as the
likeliest to know, she added, "Nobeelity is just a soond itsel', I'm
tauld. »
The viscount, finding himself expected to say something on
a topic he had not attended much to, answered dryly, "We must
ask the republicans: they are the people that give their minds to
such subjects. "
"And yon man," asked Jean Carnie,- "is he a lord too? »
"I am his Lordship's servant," replied Saunders gravely, not
without a secret misgiving whether fate had been just.
"Na! " replied she, not to be imposed upon. "Ye are state-
lier and prooder than this ane. "
"I will explain," said his master. "Saunders knows his value:
a servant like Saunders is rarer than an idle viscount. "
"My lord, my lord! " remonstrated Saunders, with a shocked
and most disclamatory tone. "Rather! " was his inward reflection.
"Jean," said Christie, "ye hae muckle to laern. Are ye for
herrin' the day, Vile Count? "
"No: are you for this sort of thing? "
At this, Saunders, with a world of empressement, offered the
Carnie some cake that was on the table.
She took a piece, instantly spat it out into her hand, and with
more energy than delicacy flung it into the fire.
"Augh! " cried she, "just a sugar and saut butter thegither:
buy nae mair at yon shoep, Vile Count. "
"Try this, out of Nature's shop," laughed their entertainer;
and he offered them, himself, some peaches and things.
"Hech! a medi-cine! " said Christie.
"Nature, my lad," said Miss Carnie, making her ivory teeth
meet in their first nectarine, "I dinna ken whaur ye stoep, but
ye beat the other confectioners, that div ye. "
The fair lass, who had watched the viscount all this time as
demurely as a cat cream, now approached him.
This young woman was the thinker: her voice was also rich,
full, and melodious, and her manner very engaging; it was half
advancing, half retiring, not easy to resist or to describe.
## p. 12110 (#148) ##########################################
12110
CHARLES READE
"Noo," said she, with a very slight blush stealing across her
face, "ye maun let me catecheeze ye, wull ye? »
The last two words were said in a way that would have in-
duced a bear to reveal his winter residence.
He smiled assent.
Saunders retired to the door, and exclud-
ing every shade of curiosity from his face, took an attitude half
majesty, half obsequiousness.
Christie stood by Lord Ipsden, with one hand on her hip (the
knuckles downwards), but graceful as Antinoüs, and began: —
"Hoo muckle is the Queen greater than y'are? "
His Lordship was obliged to reflect.
as is the moon to a
"Let me see;
wax taper, so is her
Majesty the Queen to you and me and the rest. "
"An' whaur does the juke come in? "
"On this particular occasion, the duke makes one of us, my
pretty maid. "
"I see! Are na ye awfu' prood o' being a lorrd? "
"What an idea! "
--
"His Lordship did not go to bed a spinning-jenny, and rise up
a lord, like some of them," put in Saunders.
"Saunders," said the peer doubtfully, "eloquence rather bores
people. "
"Then I mustn't speak again, my lord," said Saunders, respect-
fully.
"Noo," said the fair inquisitor, "ye shall tell me how ye came
to be lorrds, your faemily. "
"Saunders! "
"Na! ye mauna flee to Sandy for a thing: ye are no a bairn,
are ye? "
Here was a dilemma: the Saunders prop knocked rudely away,
and obliged to think for ourselves.
But Saunders would come to his distressed master's assist-
ance. He furtively conveyed to him a plump book,- this was
Saunders's manual of faith; the author was Mr. Burke-not
Edmund.
Lord Ipsden ran hastily over the page, closed the book, and
said, "Here is the story:-
"Five hundred years ago - >>
"Listen, Jean," said Christie: "we're gaun to get a boeny
story. 'Five hundre' years ago,'" added she, with interest and
awe.
## p. 12111 (#149) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
་་
was a great battle," resumed the narrator in cheerful tones,
as one larking with history, "between a King of England and
his rebels. He was in the thick of the fight-"
12111
"That's the King, Jean,- he was in the thick o't. "
"My ancestor killed a fellow who was sneaking behind him;
but the next moment a man-at-arms prepared a thrust at his
Majesty, who had his hands full with three assailants. "
"Eh! that's no fair," said Christie, "as sure as deeth. ”
"My ancestor dashed forward, and as the King's sword passed
through one of them, he clove another to the waist with a blow. "
"Weel done! weel done! "
Lord Ipsden looked at the speaker: her eyes were glittering
and her cheek flushing.
"Good Heavens! " thought he: "she believes it! " So he be-
gan to take more pains with his legend.
"But for the spearsman," continued he, "he had nothing but
his body: he gave it,-it was his duty,- and received the death
leveled at his sovereign. "
"Hech! puir mon. " And the glowing eyes began to glisten.
"The battle flowed another way, and God gave victory to the
right; but the King came back to look for him, for it was no
common service. "
face.
"Deed no!
Here Lord Ipsden began to turn his eye inwards, and call up
the scene. He lowered his voice.
"They found him lying on his back, looking death in the
"The nobles by the King's side uncovered as soon as he was
found, for they were brave men too. There was a moment's
silence: eyes met eyes, and said, This is a stout soldier's last
battle.
"The King could not bid him live,—”
"Na! lad, King Deeth has ower strong a grrip. "
"But he did what kings can do: he gave him two blows with
his royal sword. "
"Oh, the robber, and him a deeing mon!
"Two words from his royal mouth, and he and we were
barons of Ipsden and Hawthorn Glen from that day to this. "
"But the puir dying creature? »
"What poor dying creature — ? »
«< Your forbear, lad. "
>>>
## p. 12112 (#150) ##########################################
12112
CHARLES READE
"I don't know why you call him poor, madam: all the men
of that day are dust; they are the gold dust, who died with
honor.
――
"He looked round uneasily for his son,- for he had but one,
-and when that son knelt, unwounded, by him, he said, 'Good
night, Baron Ipsden;' and so he died, fire in his eye, a smile on
his lip, and honor on his name for ever. I meant to tell you a
lie, and I've told you the truth. "
"Laddie," said Christie, half admiringly, half reproachfully,
"ye gar the tear come in my een. Hech! look at yon lassie!
how could you think t'eat plums through siccan a boeny story?
"
"Hets," answered Jean, who had in fact cleared the plate.
"I aye listen best when my ain mooth's stappit. "
"But see now," pondered Christie: "two words fra a king-
thir titles are just breeth. "
"Of course," was the answer. "All titles are.
What is popu-
larity? Ask Aristides and Lamartine: the breath of a mob,—
smells of its source,- and is gone before the sun can set on it.
Now, the royal breath does smell of the Rose and Crown, and
stays by us from age to age. "
The story had warmed our marble acquaintance. Saunders
opened his eyes, and thought, "We shall wake up the House of
Lords some evening,- we shall. "
His Lordship then added, less warmly, looking at the girls:
"I think I should like to be a fisherman. " So saying, my
lord yawned slightly.
To this aspiration the young fishwives deigned no attention,
doubting perhaps its sincerity; and Christie, with a shade of
severity, inquired of him how he came to be a Vile Count.
"A baron's no a Vile Count, I'm sure," said she; "sae tell me
how ye came to be a Vile Count. "
"Ah! " said he, "that is by no means a pretty story, like the
other: you will not like it, I am sure. "
I'm aye seeking knowledge. "
"Ay will I,-ay will I:
"Well, it is soon told.
seat, in the same house, so
"Ower muckle pay for
"Now don't say that; I wouldn't do it to be Emperor of
Russia. "
One of us sat twenty years on one
one day he got up a-Viscount. "
ower little wark.
>>
―
"Aweel, I hae gotten a heap out o' ye; sae noow I'll gang,
since ye are no for herrin': come away, Jean. ”
## p. 12113 (#151) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12113
At this their host remonstrated, and inquired why bores are
at one's service night and day, and bright people are always in
a hurry. He was informed in reply, "Labor is the lot o' man.
Div ye no ken that muckle? And abune a', o' women. ”
"Why, what can two such pretty creatures have to do, except
to be admired ? »
This question coming within the dark beauty's scope, she
hastened to reply:-
"To sell our herrin',— we hae three hundre' left in the creel. "
"What is the price?
At this question the poetry died out of Christie Johnstone's
face; she gave her companion a rapid look, indiscernible to male
eye, and answered: -
"Three a penny, sirr: they are no plenty the day," added she,
in smooth tones that carried conviction.
――――――
>>
(Little liar, they were selling six a penny everywhere. )
"Saunders, buy them all, and be ever so long about it, count
them, or some nonsense. "
"He's daft! he's daft! Oh, ye ken, Jean, an Ennglishman and
a lorrd, twa daft things thegither, he couldna' miss the road.
Coont them, lassie. "
"Come away, Sandy, till I coont them till ye," said Jean.
Saunders and Jean disappeared.
Business being out of sight, curiosity revived.
"An' what brings ye here from London, if you please? " re-
commenced the fair inquisitor.
"You have a good countenance; there is something in your
face. I could find it in my heart to tell you, but I should bore
you. "
"De'el a fear! Bore me, bore me! whaat's thaat, I wonder? »
"What is your name, madam? Mine is Ipsden. "
"They ca' me Christie Johnstone. ”
"Well, Christie Johnstone, I am under the doctor's hands. "
"Puir lad! What's the trouble? " (solemnly and tenderly).
"Ennui! " (rather piteously).
"Yawn-we? I never heerd tell o't. "
"Oh you lucky girl! " burst out he; "but the doctor has under-
taken to cure me: in one thing you could assist me, if I am not
presuming too far on our short acquaintance. I am to relieve
one poor distressed person every day, but I mustn't do two: is
not that a bore? "
XXI-758
## p. 12114 (#152) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12114
"Gie's your hand, gie's your hand. I'm vexed for ca'ing you
daft. Hech! what a saft hand ye hae. Jean, I'm saying, come
here; feel this. "
Jean, who had run in, took the viscount's hand from Christie.
"It never wroucht any," explained Jean.
"And he has boeny hair," said Christie, just touching his
locks on the other side.
"He's a boeny lad," said Jean, inspecting him scientifically
and point-blank.
"Ay is he," said the other. "Aweel, there's Jess Rutherford,
a widdy, wi' four bairns: ye meicht do waur than ware your sil-
ler on her. "
"Five pounds to begin? " inquired his Lordship.
"Five pund! Are ye made o' siller? Ten schell'n! "
Saunders was rung for, and produced a one-pound note.
"The herrin' is five and saxpence; it's four and saxpence
I'm awin' ye," said the young fishwife, "and Jess will be a glad
woman the neicht. "
The settlement was effected, and away went the two friends,
saying:-
"Good boye, Vile Count. "
Their host fell into thought.
"When have I talked so much? " asked he of himself.
"Dr. Aberford, you are a wonderful man; I like your lower
classes amazingly. "
"Méfiez-vous, Monsieur Ipsden! " should some mentor have
said.
As the devil puts into a beginner's hands ace, queen, five
trumps, to give him a taste for whist, so these lower classes have
perhaps put forward one of their best cards to lead you into a
false estimate of the strength of their hand.
Instead however of this, who should return to disturb the
equilibrium of truth but this Christina Johnstone.
She came
thoughtfully in, and said:-
"I've been taking a thoucht, and this is no what yon gude
physeecian meaned: ye are no to fling your chaerity like a
bane till a doeg; ye'll gang yoursel' to Jess Rutherford; Flucker
Johnstone, that's my brother, will convoy ye. "
"But how is your brother to know me? "
"How? Because I'll give him a sair, sair hiding if he lets ye
gang by. "
## p. 12115 (#153) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12115
She then returned the one-pound note, a fresh settlement was
effected, and she left him.
At the door she said, "And I am muckle obleeged to ye for
your story and your goodness. "
Whilst uttering these words she half kissed her hand to him,
with a lofty and disengaged gesture such as one might expect
from a queen, if queens did not wear stays,—and was gone.
When his Lordship, a few minutes after, sauntered out for a
stroll, the first object he beheld was an exact human square: a
handsome boy, with a body swelled out, apparently to the size
of a man's, with blue flannel, and blue cloth above it, leaning
against a wall, with his hands in his pockets,- a statuette of
insouciance.
This marine puff-ball was Flucker Johnstone, aged fourteen.
Stain his sister's face with diluted walnut-juice, as they make
the stage gipsy and red Indian (two animals imagined by actors
to be one), and you have Flucker's face.
A slight moral distinction remains, not to be so easily got
over.
She was the best girl in the place, and he a baddish boy.
He was however as sharp in his way as she was intelligent
in hers.
This youthful mariner allowed his Lordship to pass him, and
take twenty steps, but watched him all the time, and compared
him with a description furnished him by his sister.
He then followed, and brought him to, as he called it.
"I daursay it's you I'm to convoy to yon auld faggitt! " said
this baddish boy.
On they went, Flucker rolling and pitching and yawing to
keep up with the lordly galley; for a fisherman's natural waddle
is two miles an hour.
At the very entrance of Newhaven, the new pilot suddenly
sung out, "Starboard! "
Starboard it was: and they ascended a filthy "close" or alley,
they mounted a staircase which was out of doors, and with-
out knocking, Flucker introduced himself into Jess Rutherford's
house.
"Here a gentleman to speak till ye, wife. "
The widow was weather-beaten and rough. She sat mending
an old net.
## p. 12116 (#154) ##########################################
12116
CHARLES READE
"The gentleman's welcome," said she; but there was no grati-
fication in her tone, and but little surprise.
His Lordship then explained that, understanding there were
worthy people in distress, he was in hopes he might be permit-
ted to assist them; and that she must blame a neighbor of hers
if he had broken in upon her too abruptly with this object. He
then, with a blush, hinted at ten shillings, which he begged she
would consider as merely an installment, until he could learn
the precise nature of her embarrassments, and the best way of
placing means at her disposal.
The widow heard all this with a lack-lustre mind.
For many years her life had been unsuccessful labor; if any.
thing ever had come to her, it had always been a misfortune;
her incidents had been thorns,- her events, daggers.
She could not realize a human angel coming to her relief,
and she did not realize it; and she worked away at her net.
At this Flucker, to whom his Lordship's speech appeared
monstrously weak and pointless, drew nigh, and gave the widow
in her ear his version; namely, his sister's embellished. It was
briefly this: "That the gentleman was a daft lord from England
who had come with the bank in his breeks, to remove poverty
from Scotland, beginning with her. Sae speak loud aneuch, and
ye'll no want siller," was his polite corollary.
His Lordship rose, laid a card on a chair, begged her to make
use of him, et cetera; he then, recalling the oracular prescrip-
tion, said, "Do me the favor to apply to me for any little sum
you have a use for, and in return I will beg of you (if it does
not bore you too much) to make me acquainted with any little
troubles you may have encountered in the course of your life. "
His Lordship, receiving no answer, was about to go, after
bowing to her and smiling gracefully upon her.
His hand was on the latch, when Jess Rutherford burst into
a passion of tears. He turned with surprise.
"My troubles, laddie," cried she, trembling all over. "The
sun wad set, and rise, and set again, ere I could tell ye a' the
trouble I hae come through.
"Oh! ye needna vex yourself for an auld wife's tears: tears
are a blessin', lad, I shall assure ye. Mony's the time I hae
prayed for them, and could na hae them. Sit ye doon! sit ye
doon! I'll no let ye gang fra my door till I hae thankit ye,-
## p. 12117 (#155) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12117
but gie me time, gie me time. I canna greet a' the days of the
week. "
Flucker, ætat. 14, opened his eyes, unable to connect ten
shillings and tears. .
Lord Ipsden sat down, and felt very sorry for her.
And she cried at her ease.
If one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, methinks
that sweet and wonderful thing, sympathy, is not less powerful.
What frozen barriers, what ice of centuries, it can melt in a
moment!
His bare mention of her troubles had surprised the widow
woman's heart: and now she looked up, and examined his coun-
tenance; it was soon done.
A woman, young or old, high or low, can discern and appre-
ciate sensibility in a man's face at a single glance.
What she saw there was enough. She was sure of sympathy.
She recalled his resolve, and the tale of her sorrows burst from
her like a flood.
The old fishwife told the young aristocrat how she had borne
twelve children, and buried six as bairns; how her man was
always unlucky; how a mast fell on him, and disabled him a
whole season; how they could but just keep the pot boiling by
deep-sea fishing, and he was not allowed to dredge for oysters
because his father was not a Newhaven man. How, when the
herring-fishing came to make all right, he never had another
man's luck; how his boat's crew would draw empty nets, and a
boat alongside him would be gunwale down in the water with
the fish. How at last, one morning, the 20th day of November,
his boat came into Newhaven Pier without him, and when he
was inquired for, his crew said "he had stayed at home, like a
lazy loon, and not sailed with them the night before. " How
she was anxious, and had all the public-houses searched, "for he
took a drop now and then,-nae wonder, and him aye in the
weather. " Poor thing! when he was alive she used to call him a
drunken scoundrel to his face. How when the tide went down,
a mad wife, whose husband had been drowned twenty years ago,
pointed out something under the pier, that the rest took for sea-
weed floating,- how it was the hair of her man's head, washed
about by the water; and he was there, drowned without a cry or
a struggle by his enormous boots, that kept him in an upright
position, though he was dead; there he stood,-dead,- drowned
## p. 12118 (#156) ##########################################
12118
CHARLES READE
by slipping from the slippery pier, close to his comrades' hands,
in a dark and gusty night; how her daughter married, and was
well-to-do, and assisted her; how she fell into a rapid decline,
and died, a picture of health to inexperienced eyes.
How she,
the mother, saw and knew and watched the treacherous advance
of disease and death; how others said gayly "her daughter was
better," and she was obliged to say "Yes. " How she had
worked eighteen hours a day at making nets; how when she
let out her nets to the other men at the herring-fishing, they
always cheated her because her man was gone. How she had
many times had to choose between begging her meal and going
to bed without it, but thank Heaven! she had always chosen
the latter.
――――
She told him of hunger, cold, and anguish. As she spoke
they became real things to him; up to that moment they had
been things in a story-book. And as she spoke she rocked her-
self from side to side.
Indeed, she was a woman "acquainted with grief. " She might
have said, "Here I and sorrow sit! This is my throne; bid kings
come bow to it! "
Her hearer felt this: and therefore this woman, poor, old,
and ugly, became sacred in his eye; it was with a strange sort
of respect that he tried to console her.
He spoke to her in tones gentle and sweet as the south wind
on a summer evening.
“Madam,” said he, "let me be so happy as to bring you some
comfort. The sorrows of the heart I cannot heal; they are for a
mightier hand: but a part of your distress appears to have been
positive need; that we can at least dispose of, and I entreat you
to believe that from this hour want shall never enter that door
again. Never! upon my honor! "
The Scotch are icebergs with volcanoes underneath; thaw the
Scotch ice, which is very cold, and you shall get to the Scotch
fire, warmer than any sun of Italy or Spain.
His Lordship had risen to go. The old wife had seemed ab-
sorbed in her own grief; she now dried her tears.
"Bide ye, sirr," said she, "till I thank ye. "
So she began to thank him, rather coldly and stiffly.
"He says ye are a lord," said she; "I dinna ken, an' I dinna
care: but ye're a gentleman, I daursay, and a kind heart ye
hae. "
## p. 12119 (#157) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
Then she began to warm.
"And ye'll never be a grain the poorer for the siller ye hae
gi'en me; for he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. "
-
12119
Then she began to glow.
"But it's no your siller; dinna think it,—na, lad, na! Oh,
fine! I ken there's mony a supper for the bairns and me in yon
bits metal; but I canna feel your siller as I feel your winsome
smile, the drop in your young een,-and the sweet words ye
gied me, in the sweet music o' your Soothern tongue, Gude
bless ye! " (Where was her ice by this time? ) Gude bless ye!
and I bless ye! "
And she did bless him; and what a blessing it was! —not a
melodious generality, like a stage parent's, or papa's in a damsel's
novel. It was like the son of Barak on Zophim.
She blessed him as one who had the power and the right to
bless or curse.
«<
She stood on the high ground of her low estate and her afflic-
tions, and demanded of their Creator to bless the fellow-creature
that had come to her aid and consolation.
This woman had suffered to the limits of endurance; yester-
day she had said, "Surely the Almighty doesna see me a' these
years! "
So now she blessed him, and her heart's blood seemed to gush
into words.
She blessed him by land and water.
She knew most mortal griefs; for she had felt them.
She warned them away from him one by one.
school; for years with a merciless Mr. Slater, who flogged his pupils
daily, and whose only idea of teaching was memory-cramming. It
was not until he escaped from this thraldom that Reade began to
show his quickness of mind.
In 1831 he entered Magdalen College on a demyship; and three
years later, when he took his degree, he was appointed to a fellow-
ship, which he held for fifty years, until his death in 1884. In spite
of this long connection he did not love Oxford. His free-lance spirit
detested her conventions, and he preferred the freer air of London.
Nor did he love the fellowship which he could not resign. Charles
Reade never experienced acute poverty, yet for years his means
were just meagre enough to make him feel pinched and uncomforta-
ble. His fellowship with its income was necessary to him. So his
life was perforce influenced by monasticism; and he showed a deep
personal appreciation of all the commonplace happiness renounced by
the monk Gerard, the epic hero of The Cloister and the Hearth. '
After his graduation he read law; in rather desultory fashion, for his
## p. 12105 (#143) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12105
livelier interests were in general reading, in making himself an
authority upon violins ancient and modern, and in traveling when-
ever he could afford it.
It took the public some time to relish Reade's new flavor and to
recognize his merit. But with 'It's Never too Late to Mend' (1856)
he found himself a popular novelist. The book provoked wide dis-
cussion, and was read, praised, and reviled on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Charles Reade was a fighting Englishman, always ready for a fray,
always believing himself or somebody else ill-used. He was a man
of deep feeling, too alive to human suffering to take life lightly. He
was a man of intense energy which constantly sought vent.
He was
generous and warm-hearted, ready to give time, money, and influence
for the relief of others. The morbid sensitiveness to criticism which
continually embroiled him with critics and publishers, and most of
those with whom he had business dealings, made him a butt of ridi-
cule. It was not all self-love, but a stout demand for justice, which
he was as ready to make for others as for himself. No sooner was
he fairly launched as a writer of repute than he aspired to become a
social reformer. This inclination was doubtless strengthened by his
friendship with Dickens, for whose Household Words and All the
Year Round he wrote; and whom he warmly admired. The two had
been introduced by Bulwer-Lytton, and found themselves in sym-
pathy at once. Like the author of 'Nicholas Nickleby,' Reade longed
to right abuses. 'It's Never too Late to Mend' was an exposition of
the evils of the English prison system. So strong was the indignation
aroused, that when reproduced at the Princess Theatre years after
its first dramatization, there was almost a riot in the audience. What
he himself said in it might stand as a motto to most of his novels:
"I have taken a few undeniable truths out of many, and have labored to
make my readers realize those appalling facts of the day which most men
know, but not one in a thousand comprehends, and not one in a hundred
thousand realizes, until fiction—which, whatever you may have been told to
the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest, and greatest of all the arts-
comes to his aid, studies, penetrates, digests the hard facts of chronicles and
blue-books, and makes their dry bones live. "
He took up one alleged evil after another: in 'Hard Cash,' abuses
of insane asylums, and still more the legal power of physicians to
commit for insanity, which he accused them of exercising on the
sane for bribes; in Foul Play,' those in the merchant shipping ser-
vice; in 'Put Yourself in His Place,' those resulting from trades-unions
and labor conditions. Upon these different themes he employed all
his strength of mind and imagination, and he produced novels which
## p. 12106 (#144) ##########################################
12106
CHARLES READE
were read, and are still read, for their lively romantic interest. Never
dully didactic, they fully achieved a forceful presentment of the evil.
The system upon which he worked was laborious. "I propose
never to guess what I can know," he said; and was an indefatigable
collector of newspaper clippings, institution reports, and the like.
When his statements were questioned, his facts denied, or he was
accused of exaggeration, he would turn triumphantly to his carefully
classified collections, and refute the objection with positive proof.
He knew how to fuse this material into an artistic whole. "It
would require a chemical analysis to separate the fiction from the
reality," said Justin McCarthy of Reade's novels.
"I studied the great art of fiction closely for fifteen years before
I presumed to write a word of it. I was a ripe critic long before I
became an artist," wrote Reade. One result of this study was the
determination to seek personal sincerity of expression above every-
thing else. In the effort to see things for himself, not through other
people's eyes, his unusualness of phrase is sometimes startling. The
effect is often delightfully novel, occasionally harsh and jagged. Yet
there is always a charm in his trenchant wit and uncompromising
frankness. He pictured English life as he saw it, with an intuition of
what was salient in a character, a locality, or a period.
In 1859 Charles Reade published in Once a Week a short serial
called 'A Good Fight. ' While writing it he discovered other possibil-
ities in the plot, and resolved to give it a more comprehensive treat-
ment. But the publishers of the magazine took editorial liberties
with the manuscript, which Reade quickly resented. Therefore he
hurried up the tale to a happy but inartistic conclusion, and soon set
about remodeling it on a different scale, and with the new title, 'The
Cloister and the Hearth. '
"The Cloister and the Hearth' (1861), Reade's masterpiece, stands
out clearly differentiated from anything else he did. He put his best
into it, and the maturity of his mind. He was a scholar as well as
man of general reading, and for all his knowledge he found scope in
this great mediæval romance. All the minor characters as well as
the pathetic figures of Gerard and Margaret, and the gay Burgundian
Denys are drawn with an artistic insight and power of sympathy.
which make the old time live again. With rare synthetic power, his
imagination grasped the social conditions of the fifteenth century, and
recognized what the lives of men and women must have been. His
book is truer than history; for while based on historical records, it
reflects with life and color, not alone outward fact but also the work-
ings of minds and hearts.
## p. 12107 (#145) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12107
VISCOUNT AND LOWER CLASSES
From Christie Johnstone'
THE
HE air was tepid, pure and sweet as heaven. This bright
afternoon, nature had grudged nothing that could give fresh
life and hope to such dwellers in dust and smoke and vice
as were there, to look awhile on her clean face and drink her
honeyed breath.
This young gentleman was not insensible to the beauty of the
scene. He was a little lazy by nature, and made lazier by the
misfortune of wealth: but he had sensibilities. He was an artist
of great natural talent. Had he only been without a penny, how
he would have handled the brush! And then he was a mighty
sailor. If he had sailed for biscuit a few years, how he would
have handled a ship!
As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for nature's beauties;
and the sea always came back to him like a friend after an
absence.
This scene, then, curled round his heart a little; and he felt
the good physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that
name, and strive to build health on the sandy foundation of
drugs.
"Saunders, do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the
lower classes? "
"Perfectly, my lord. "
"Are there any about here? "
"I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord. "
"Get me some » - (cigarette).
Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful empressement, but
an internal shrug of his shoulders.
He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a
double expression on his face. Pride at his success in diving to
the very bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished
up thence.
He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, sotto voce but
impressively, "This is low enough, my lord. " Then glided back,
and ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he
had ever opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed
existence.
On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin,
with a broad lace border, stiffened, and arched over the forehead
## p. 12108 (#146) ##########################################
12108
CHARLES READE
about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unincum-
bered.
They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in pat-
terns, confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed
below the waist; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical
stripes, red and white, most vivid in color; white worsted stock-
ings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets
they wore a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of
which was visible round the lower part of the throat.
Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or gathered up
towards the front; and the second, of the same color, hung in the
usual way.
Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with
the red blood mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious
black eyebrows.
The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as
white as milk; glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which
glittered like gold, and a blue eye, which being contrasted with
dark eyebrows and lashes, took the luminous effect peculiar to
that rare beauty.
Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a
noble swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on
the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters,
who with their air-like sylphs, and their smoke-like verses, fight
for want of flesh in woman and want of fact in poetry as paral-
lel beauties.
They are, my lads. - Continues!
These women had a grand corporeal trait: they had never
known a corset! so they were straight as javelins; they could
lift their hands above their heads! -actually! Their supple per-
sons moved as nature intended; every gesture was ease, grace,
and freedom.
What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and
brightness of their costume, they came like meteors into the
apartment.
Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet
politeness with which he would have received two princes of the
blood, said, "How do you do? " and smiled a welcome.
་་
"Fine! hoow's yoursel'? " answered the dark lass, whose name
was Jean Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face.
"What'n lord are ye? " continued she. "Are you a juke? —I
wad like fine to hae a crack wi' a juke. "
## p. 12109 (#147) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12109
Saunders, who knew himself the cause of this question, replied
sotto voce, "His Lordship is a viscount. "
"But it has a bonny
"I dinna ken't," was Jean's remark.
soond. "
"What mair would ye hae? " said the fair beauty, whose name
was Christie Johnstone. Then appealing to his Lordship as the
likeliest to know, she added, "Nobeelity is just a soond itsel', I'm
tauld. »
The viscount, finding himself expected to say something on
a topic he had not attended much to, answered dryly, "We must
ask the republicans: they are the people that give their minds to
such subjects. "
"And yon man," asked Jean Carnie,- "is he a lord too? »
"I am his Lordship's servant," replied Saunders gravely, not
without a secret misgiving whether fate had been just.
"Na! " replied she, not to be imposed upon. "Ye are state-
lier and prooder than this ane. "
"I will explain," said his master. "Saunders knows his value:
a servant like Saunders is rarer than an idle viscount. "
"My lord, my lord! " remonstrated Saunders, with a shocked
and most disclamatory tone. "Rather! " was his inward reflection.
"Jean," said Christie, "ye hae muckle to laern. Are ye for
herrin' the day, Vile Count? "
"No: are you for this sort of thing? "
At this, Saunders, with a world of empressement, offered the
Carnie some cake that was on the table.
She took a piece, instantly spat it out into her hand, and with
more energy than delicacy flung it into the fire.
"Augh! " cried she, "just a sugar and saut butter thegither:
buy nae mair at yon shoep, Vile Count. "
"Try this, out of Nature's shop," laughed their entertainer;
and he offered them, himself, some peaches and things.
"Hech! a medi-cine! " said Christie.
"Nature, my lad," said Miss Carnie, making her ivory teeth
meet in their first nectarine, "I dinna ken whaur ye stoep, but
ye beat the other confectioners, that div ye. "
The fair lass, who had watched the viscount all this time as
demurely as a cat cream, now approached him.
This young woman was the thinker: her voice was also rich,
full, and melodious, and her manner very engaging; it was half
advancing, half retiring, not easy to resist or to describe.
## p. 12110 (#148) ##########################################
12110
CHARLES READE
"Noo," said she, with a very slight blush stealing across her
face, "ye maun let me catecheeze ye, wull ye? »
The last two words were said in a way that would have in-
duced a bear to reveal his winter residence.
He smiled assent.
Saunders retired to the door, and exclud-
ing every shade of curiosity from his face, took an attitude half
majesty, half obsequiousness.
Christie stood by Lord Ipsden, with one hand on her hip (the
knuckles downwards), but graceful as Antinoüs, and began: —
"Hoo muckle is the Queen greater than y'are? "
His Lordship was obliged to reflect.
as is the moon to a
"Let me see;
wax taper, so is her
Majesty the Queen to you and me and the rest. "
"An' whaur does the juke come in? "
"On this particular occasion, the duke makes one of us, my
pretty maid. "
"I see! Are na ye awfu' prood o' being a lorrd? "
"What an idea! "
--
"His Lordship did not go to bed a spinning-jenny, and rise up
a lord, like some of them," put in Saunders.
"Saunders," said the peer doubtfully, "eloquence rather bores
people. "
"Then I mustn't speak again, my lord," said Saunders, respect-
fully.
"Noo," said the fair inquisitor, "ye shall tell me how ye came
to be lorrds, your faemily. "
"Saunders! "
"Na! ye mauna flee to Sandy for a thing: ye are no a bairn,
are ye? "
Here was a dilemma: the Saunders prop knocked rudely away,
and obliged to think for ourselves.
But Saunders would come to his distressed master's assist-
ance. He furtively conveyed to him a plump book,- this was
Saunders's manual of faith; the author was Mr. Burke-not
Edmund.
Lord Ipsden ran hastily over the page, closed the book, and
said, "Here is the story:-
"Five hundred years ago - >>
"Listen, Jean," said Christie: "we're gaun to get a boeny
story. 'Five hundre' years ago,'" added she, with interest and
awe.
## p. 12111 (#149) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
་་
was a great battle," resumed the narrator in cheerful tones,
as one larking with history, "between a King of England and
his rebels. He was in the thick of the fight-"
12111
"That's the King, Jean,- he was in the thick o't. "
"My ancestor killed a fellow who was sneaking behind him;
but the next moment a man-at-arms prepared a thrust at his
Majesty, who had his hands full with three assailants. "
"Eh! that's no fair," said Christie, "as sure as deeth. ”
"My ancestor dashed forward, and as the King's sword passed
through one of them, he clove another to the waist with a blow. "
"Weel done! weel done! "
Lord Ipsden looked at the speaker: her eyes were glittering
and her cheek flushing.
"Good Heavens! " thought he: "she believes it! " So he be-
gan to take more pains with his legend.
"But for the spearsman," continued he, "he had nothing but
his body: he gave it,-it was his duty,- and received the death
leveled at his sovereign. "
"Hech! puir mon. " And the glowing eyes began to glisten.
"The battle flowed another way, and God gave victory to the
right; but the King came back to look for him, for it was no
common service. "
face.
"Deed no!
Here Lord Ipsden began to turn his eye inwards, and call up
the scene. He lowered his voice.
"They found him lying on his back, looking death in the
"The nobles by the King's side uncovered as soon as he was
found, for they were brave men too. There was a moment's
silence: eyes met eyes, and said, This is a stout soldier's last
battle.
"The King could not bid him live,—”
"Na! lad, King Deeth has ower strong a grrip. "
"But he did what kings can do: he gave him two blows with
his royal sword. "
"Oh, the robber, and him a deeing mon!
"Two words from his royal mouth, and he and we were
barons of Ipsden and Hawthorn Glen from that day to this. "
"But the puir dying creature? »
"What poor dying creature — ? »
«< Your forbear, lad. "
>>>
## p. 12112 (#150) ##########################################
12112
CHARLES READE
"I don't know why you call him poor, madam: all the men
of that day are dust; they are the gold dust, who died with
honor.
――
"He looked round uneasily for his son,- for he had but one,
-and when that son knelt, unwounded, by him, he said, 'Good
night, Baron Ipsden;' and so he died, fire in his eye, a smile on
his lip, and honor on his name for ever. I meant to tell you a
lie, and I've told you the truth. "
"Laddie," said Christie, half admiringly, half reproachfully,
"ye gar the tear come in my een. Hech! look at yon lassie!
how could you think t'eat plums through siccan a boeny story?
"
"Hets," answered Jean, who had in fact cleared the plate.
"I aye listen best when my ain mooth's stappit. "
"But see now," pondered Christie: "two words fra a king-
thir titles are just breeth. "
"Of course," was the answer. "All titles are.
What is popu-
larity? Ask Aristides and Lamartine: the breath of a mob,—
smells of its source,- and is gone before the sun can set on it.
Now, the royal breath does smell of the Rose and Crown, and
stays by us from age to age. "
The story had warmed our marble acquaintance. Saunders
opened his eyes, and thought, "We shall wake up the House of
Lords some evening,- we shall. "
His Lordship then added, less warmly, looking at the girls:
"I think I should like to be a fisherman. " So saying, my
lord yawned slightly.
To this aspiration the young fishwives deigned no attention,
doubting perhaps its sincerity; and Christie, with a shade of
severity, inquired of him how he came to be a Vile Count.
"A baron's no a Vile Count, I'm sure," said she; "sae tell me
how ye came to be a Vile Count. "
"Ah! " said he, "that is by no means a pretty story, like the
other: you will not like it, I am sure. "
I'm aye seeking knowledge. "
"Ay will I,-ay will I:
"Well, it is soon told.
seat, in the same house, so
"Ower muckle pay for
"Now don't say that; I wouldn't do it to be Emperor of
Russia. "
One of us sat twenty years on one
one day he got up a-Viscount. "
ower little wark.
>>
―
"Aweel, I hae gotten a heap out o' ye; sae noow I'll gang,
since ye are no for herrin': come away, Jean. ”
## p. 12113 (#151) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12113
At this their host remonstrated, and inquired why bores are
at one's service night and day, and bright people are always in
a hurry. He was informed in reply, "Labor is the lot o' man.
Div ye no ken that muckle? And abune a', o' women. ”
"Why, what can two such pretty creatures have to do, except
to be admired ? »
This question coming within the dark beauty's scope, she
hastened to reply:-
"To sell our herrin',— we hae three hundre' left in the creel. "
"What is the price?
At this question the poetry died out of Christie Johnstone's
face; she gave her companion a rapid look, indiscernible to male
eye, and answered: -
"Three a penny, sirr: they are no plenty the day," added she,
in smooth tones that carried conviction.
――――――
>>
(Little liar, they were selling six a penny everywhere. )
"Saunders, buy them all, and be ever so long about it, count
them, or some nonsense. "
"He's daft! he's daft! Oh, ye ken, Jean, an Ennglishman and
a lorrd, twa daft things thegither, he couldna' miss the road.
Coont them, lassie. "
"Come away, Sandy, till I coont them till ye," said Jean.
Saunders and Jean disappeared.
Business being out of sight, curiosity revived.
"An' what brings ye here from London, if you please? " re-
commenced the fair inquisitor.
"You have a good countenance; there is something in your
face. I could find it in my heart to tell you, but I should bore
you. "
"De'el a fear! Bore me, bore me! whaat's thaat, I wonder? »
"What is your name, madam? Mine is Ipsden. "
"They ca' me Christie Johnstone. ”
"Well, Christie Johnstone, I am under the doctor's hands. "
"Puir lad! What's the trouble? " (solemnly and tenderly).
"Ennui! " (rather piteously).
"Yawn-we? I never heerd tell o't. "
"Oh you lucky girl! " burst out he; "but the doctor has under-
taken to cure me: in one thing you could assist me, if I am not
presuming too far on our short acquaintance. I am to relieve
one poor distressed person every day, but I mustn't do two: is
not that a bore? "
XXI-758
## p. 12114 (#152) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12114
"Gie's your hand, gie's your hand. I'm vexed for ca'ing you
daft. Hech! what a saft hand ye hae. Jean, I'm saying, come
here; feel this. "
Jean, who had run in, took the viscount's hand from Christie.
"It never wroucht any," explained Jean.
"And he has boeny hair," said Christie, just touching his
locks on the other side.
"He's a boeny lad," said Jean, inspecting him scientifically
and point-blank.
"Ay is he," said the other. "Aweel, there's Jess Rutherford,
a widdy, wi' four bairns: ye meicht do waur than ware your sil-
ler on her. "
"Five pounds to begin? " inquired his Lordship.
"Five pund! Are ye made o' siller? Ten schell'n! "
Saunders was rung for, and produced a one-pound note.
"The herrin' is five and saxpence; it's four and saxpence
I'm awin' ye," said the young fishwife, "and Jess will be a glad
woman the neicht. "
The settlement was effected, and away went the two friends,
saying:-
"Good boye, Vile Count. "
Their host fell into thought.
"When have I talked so much? " asked he of himself.
"Dr. Aberford, you are a wonderful man; I like your lower
classes amazingly. "
"Méfiez-vous, Monsieur Ipsden! " should some mentor have
said.
As the devil puts into a beginner's hands ace, queen, five
trumps, to give him a taste for whist, so these lower classes have
perhaps put forward one of their best cards to lead you into a
false estimate of the strength of their hand.
Instead however of this, who should return to disturb the
equilibrium of truth but this Christina Johnstone.
She came
thoughtfully in, and said:-
"I've been taking a thoucht, and this is no what yon gude
physeecian meaned: ye are no to fling your chaerity like a
bane till a doeg; ye'll gang yoursel' to Jess Rutherford; Flucker
Johnstone, that's my brother, will convoy ye. "
"But how is your brother to know me? "
"How? Because I'll give him a sair, sair hiding if he lets ye
gang by. "
## p. 12115 (#153) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12115
She then returned the one-pound note, a fresh settlement was
effected, and she left him.
At the door she said, "And I am muckle obleeged to ye for
your story and your goodness. "
Whilst uttering these words she half kissed her hand to him,
with a lofty and disengaged gesture such as one might expect
from a queen, if queens did not wear stays,—and was gone.
When his Lordship, a few minutes after, sauntered out for a
stroll, the first object he beheld was an exact human square: a
handsome boy, with a body swelled out, apparently to the size
of a man's, with blue flannel, and blue cloth above it, leaning
against a wall, with his hands in his pockets,- a statuette of
insouciance.
This marine puff-ball was Flucker Johnstone, aged fourteen.
Stain his sister's face with diluted walnut-juice, as they make
the stage gipsy and red Indian (two animals imagined by actors
to be one), and you have Flucker's face.
A slight moral distinction remains, not to be so easily got
over.
She was the best girl in the place, and he a baddish boy.
He was however as sharp in his way as she was intelligent
in hers.
This youthful mariner allowed his Lordship to pass him, and
take twenty steps, but watched him all the time, and compared
him with a description furnished him by his sister.
He then followed, and brought him to, as he called it.
"I daursay it's you I'm to convoy to yon auld faggitt! " said
this baddish boy.
On they went, Flucker rolling and pitching and yawing to
keep up with the lordly galley; for a fisherman's natural waddle
is two miles an hour.
At the very entrance of Newhaven, the new pilot suddenly
sung out, "Starboard! "
Starboard it was: and they ascended a filthy "close" or alley,
they mounted a staircase which was out of doors, and with-
out knocking, Flucker introduced himself into Jess Rutherford's
house.
"Here a gentleman to speak till ye, wife. "
The widow was weather-beaten and rough. She sat mending
an old net.
## p. 12116 (#154) ##########################################
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CHARLES READE
"The gentleman's welcome," said she; but there was no grati-
fication in her tone, and but little surprise.
His Lordship then explained that, understanding there were
worthy people in distress, he was in hopes he might be permit-
ted to assist them; and that she must blame a neighbor of hers
if he had broken in upon her too abruptly with this object. He
then, with a blush, hinted at ten shillings, which he begged she
would consider as merely an installment, until he could learn
the precise nature of her embarrassments, and the best way of
placing means at her disposal.
The widow heard all this with a lack-lustre mind.
For many years her life had been unsuccessful labor; if any.
thing ever had come to her, it had always been a misfortune;
her incidents had been thorns,- her events, daggers.
She could not realize a human angel coming to her relief,
and she did not realize it; and she worked away at her net.
At this Flucker, to whom his Lordship's speech appeared
monstrously weak and pointless, drew nigh, and gave the widow
in her ear his version; namely, his sister's embellished. It was
briefly this: "That the gentleman was a daft lord from England
who had come with the bank in his breeks, to remove poverty
from Scotland, beginning with her. Sae speak loud aneuch, and
ye'll no want siller," was his polite corollary.
His Lordship rose, laid a card on a chair, begged her to make
use of him, et cetera; he then, recalling the oracular prescrip-
tion, said, "Do me the favor to apply to me for any little sum
you have a use for, and in return I will beg of you (if it does
not bore you too much) to make me acquainted with any little
troubles you may have encountered in the course of your life. "
His Lordship, receiving no answer, was about to go, after
bowing to her and smiling gracefully upon her.
His hand was on the latch, when Jess Rutherford burst into
a passion of tears. He turned with surprise.
"My troubles, laddie," cried she, trembling all over. "The
sun wad set, and rise, and set again, ere I could tell ye a' the
trouble I hae come through.
"Oh! ye needna vex yourself for an auld wife's tears: tears
are a blessin', lad, I shall assure ye. Mony's the time I hae
prayed for them, and could na hae them. Sit ye doon! sit ye
doon! I'll no let ye gang fra my door till I hae thankit ye,-
## p. 12117 (#155) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
12117
but gie me time, gie me time. I canna greet a' the days of the
week. "
Flucker, ætat. 14, opened his eyes, unable to connect ten
shillings and tears. .
Lord Ipsden sat down, and felt very sorry for her.
And she cried at her ease.
If one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, methinks
that sweet and wonderful thing, sympathy, is not less powerful.
What frozen barriers, what ice of centuries, it can melt in a
moment!
His bare mention of her troubles had surprised the widow
woman's heart: and now she looked up, and examined his coun-
tenance; it was soon done.
A woman, young or old, high or low, can discern and appre-
ciate sensibility in a man's face at a single glance.
What she saw there was enough. She was sure of sympathy.
She recalled his resolve, and the tale of her sorrows burst from
her like a flood.
The old fishwife told the young aristocrat how she had borne
twelve children, and buried six as bairns; how her man was
always unlucky; how a mast fell on him, and disabled him a
whole season; how they could but just keep the pot boiling by
deep-sea fishing, and he was not allowed to dredge for oysters
because his father was not a Newhaven man. How, when the
herring-fishing came to make all right, he never had another
man's luck; how his boat's crew would draw empty nets, and a
boat alongside him would be gunwale down in the water with
the fish. How at last, one morning, the 20th day of November,
his boat came into Newhaven Pier without him, and when he
was inquired for, his crew said "he had stayed at home, like a
lazy loon, and not sailed with them the night before. " How
she was anxious, and had all the public-houses searched, "for he
took a drop now and then,-nae wonder, and him aye in the
weather. " Poor thing! when he was alive she used to call him a
drunken scoundrel to his face. How when the tide went down,
a mad wife, whose husband had been drowned twenty years ago,
pointed out something under the pier, that the rest took for sea-
weed floating,- how it was the hair of her man's head, washed
about by the water; and he was there, drowned without a cry or
a struggle by his enormous boots, that kept him in an upright
position, though he was dead; there he stood,-dead,- drowned
## p. 12118 (#156) ##########################################
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CHARLES READE
by slipping from the slippery pier, close to his comrades' hands,
in a dark and gusty night; how her daughter married, and was
well-to-do, and assisted her; how she fell into a rapid decline,
and died, a picture of health to inexperienced eyes.
How she,
the mother, saw and knew and watched the treacherous advance
of disease and death; how others said gayly "her daughter was
better," and she was obliged to say "Yes. " How she had
worked eighteen hours a day at making nets; how when she
let out her nets to the other men at the herring-fishing, they
always cheated her because her man was gone. How she had
many times had to choose between begging her meal and going
to bed without it, but thank Heaven! she had always chosen
the latter.
――――
She told him of hunger, cold, and anguish. As she spoke
they became real things to him; up to that moment they had
been things in a story-book. And as she spoke she rocked her-
self from side to side.
Indeed, she was a woman "acquainted with grief. " She might
have said, "Here I and sorrow sit! This is my throne; bid kings
come bow to it! "
Her hearer felt this: and therefore this woman, poor, old,
and ugly, became sacred in his eye; it was with a strange sort
of respect that he tried to console her.
He spoke to her in tones gentle and sweet as the south wind
on a summer evening.
“Madam,” said he, "let me be so happy as to bring you some
comfort. The sorrows of the heart I cannot heal; they are for a
mightier hand: but a part of your distress appears to have been
positive need; that we can at least dispose of, and I entreat you
to believe that from this hour want shall never enter that door
again. Never! upon my honor! "
The Scotch are icebergs with volcanoes underneath; thaw the
Scotch ice, which is very cold, and you shall get to the Scotch
fire, warmer than any sun of Italy or Spain.
His Lordship had risen to go. The old wife had seemed ab-
sorbed in her own grief; she now dried her tears.
"Bide ye, sirr," said she, "till I thank ye. "
So she began to thank him, rather coldly and stiffly.
"He says ye are a lord," said she; "I dinna ken, an' I dinna
care: but ye're a gentleman, I daursay, and a kind heart ye
hae. "
## p. 12119 (#157) ##########################################
CHARLES READE
Then she began to warm.
"And ye'll never be a grain the poorer for the siller ye hae
gi'en me; for he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. "
-
12119
Then she began to glow.
"But it's no your siller; dinna think it,—na, lad, na! Oh,
fine! I ken there's mony a supper for the bairns and me in yon
bits metal; but I canna feel your siller as I feel your winsome
smile, the drop in your young een,-and the sweet words ye
gied me, in the sweet music o' your Soothern tongue, Gude
bless ye! " (Where was her ice by this time? ) Gude bless ye!
and I bless ye! "
And she did bless him; and what a blessing it was! —not a
melodious generality, like a stage parent's, or papa's in a damsel's
novel. It was like the son of Barak on Zophim.
She blessed him as one who had the power and the right to
bless or curse.
«<
She stood on the high ground of her low estate and her afflic-
tions, and demanded of their Creator to bless the fellow-creature
that had come to her aid and consolation.
This woman had suffered to the limits of endurance; yester-
day she had said, "Surely the Almighty doesna see me a' these
years! "
So now she blessed him, and her heart's blood seemed to gush
into words.
She blessed him by land and water.
She knew most mortal griefs; for she had felt them.
She warned them away from him one by one.
