The nobility of
intention
in this, the first of Mrs.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 - Tur to Wat
But I went straight to
Mr. Cullen.
“ Too late. Just promised Jim Jacobs,” said he, speaking up
quick: it was just business to him, you know.
(
(
Next morning somebody woke me up with a push, and there
was the boss.
"Why, Mr. Cullen! ” says I, with a jump.
a
"Hurry up, mari, and eat your breakfast,” said he: "Jacobs
is down sick with his cold. ”
"Oh! ” said I.
« You and the pork must be back here day after to-morrow,
so be spry,” said he.
It was just eight o'clock when I started; it took some time to
get breakfast, and feed the nags, and get orders. I stood there,
slapping the snow with my whip, crazy to be off, hearing the
last of what Mr. Cullen had to say.
They gave me the two horses, we hadn't but two: oxen are
tougher for going in, as a general thing,- and the lightest team
on the ground: it was considerably lighter than Bob Stokes's. If
it hadn't been for the snow, I might have put the thing through
in two days; but the snow was up to the creaturs' knees in the
>
## p. 15636 (#590) ##########################################
15636
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
»
-
shady places all along; off from the road, in among the gullies,
you could stick a four-foot measure down anywhere. So they
didn't look for me back before Wednesday night.
"I must have that pork Wednesday night sure,” says Cullen.
"Well, sir,” says I, "you shall have it Wednesday noon, Prov- .
idence permitting; and you shall have it Wednesday night any-
way. ”
“You will have a storm to do it in, I'm afraid,” said he, look-
ing at the clouds, just as I was whipping up. « You're all right
on the road, I suppose ? ”
"All right,” said I; - and I'm sure I ought to have been, for
the times I'd been over it.
Bess and Beauty — they were the horses; and of all the ugly
nags that ever I saw, Beauty was the ugliest - started off on a
round trot, slewing along down the hill; they knew they were
going home just as well as I did. I looked back, as we turned
the corner, to see the boys standing round in their red shirts,
with the snow behind them, and the fire and the shanties. I
felt a mite lonely when I couldn't see them any more: the snow
was so dead still, and there were thirty miles of it to cross be-
fore I could see human face again,
The clouds had an ugly look, - a few flakes had fallen already,
- and the snow was purple, deep in as far as you could see
under the trees.
There is no place like the woods for bringing a storm down
on you quick: the trees are so thick you don't mind the first few
flakes, till first you know there's a whirl of 'em, and the wind
is up.
I was minding less about it than usual, for I was thinking
of Nannie, - that's what I used to call her, Johnny, when she
was a girl; but it seems a long time ago, that does.
I was
thinking how surprised she'd be, and pleased. I knew she would
be pleased. I didn't think so poorly of her as to suppose she
wasn't just as sorry now as I was for what had happened. I
knew well enough how she would jump and throw down her
sewing with a little scream, and run and put her arms about my
neck and cry, and couldn't help herself.
So I didn't mind about the snow, for planning it all out, till
all at once I looked up, and something slashed into my eyes and
stung me: it was sleet.
## p. 15637 (#591) ##########################################
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
15637
“Oho! ” said I to myself, with a whistle; - it was a very
long whistle, Johnny: I knew well enough then it was no play-
work I had before me till the sun went down, nor till morning
either.
That was about noon: it couldn't have been half an hour
since I'd eaten my dinner; I eat it driving, for I couldn't bear to
waste time.
The road wasn't broken there an inch, and the trees were
thin: there'd been a clearing there years ago, and wide, white,
level places wound off among the trees; one looked as much like
a road as another, for the matter of that. I pulled my visor
down over my eyes to keep the sleet out;- after they're stung
too much they're good for nothing to see with, and I must see,
if I meant to keep that road.
It began to be cold. The wind blew from the ocean, straight
as an arrow. The sleet blew every way,– into your eyes, down
your neck, in like a knife into your cheeks. I could feel the
snow crunching in under the runners, crisp, turned to ice in a
minute. I reached out to give Bess a cut on the neck, and the
sleeve of my coat was stiff as pasteboard before I bent my elbow
up again.
If you looked up at the sky, your eyes were shut with a snap
as if somebody'd shot them. If you looked in under the trees,
you could see the icicles a minute, and the purple shadows. If
you looked straight ahead, you couldn't see a thing.
By-and-by I thought I had dropped the reins. I looked at
my hands, and there I was holding them tight. I knew then
that it was time to get out and walk.
I didn't try much after that to look ahead: it was of no use,
for the sleet was fine, like needles, twenty of 'em in your eye at
a wink; then it was growing dark. Bess and Beauty knew the
road as well as I did, so I had to trust to them. I thought I
must be coming near the clearing where I'd counted on putting
up overnight, in case I couldn't reach the deaf old woman's.
Pretty soon Bess stopped short. Beauty was pulling on,-
Beauty always did pull on,- but she stopped too. I couldn't
stop so easily; so I walked along like a machine, up on a line
with the creaturs' ears. I did stop then, or you never would
have heard this story, Johnny.
Two paces — and then two hundred feet shot down like a
plummet. A great cloud of snow-flakes puffed up over the edge.
## p. 15638 (#592) ##########################################
15638
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
There were rocks at my right hand, and rocks at my left. There
was the sky overhead. I was in the Gray Goth!
There was no going any farther that night, that was clear:
so I put about into the hut, and got my fire going; and Bess and
Beauty and I, we slept together.
It was an outlandish name to give it, seems to me, anyway.
I don't know what a Goth is, Johnny; maybe you do. There
was a great figure up on the rock, about eight feet high: some
folks thought it looked like a man. I never thought so before,
but that night it did kind of stare in through the door as natural
as life.
When I woke up in the morning I thought I was on fire. I
stirred and turned over, and I was ice. My tongue was swollen
up so I couldn't swallow without strangling. I crawled up to my
feet, and every bone in me was stiff as a shingle.
Bess was looking hard at me, whinnying for her breakfast.
“Bess,” says I, very slow, we must get home-to-night - any
—
— how. ”
I pushed open the door. It creaked out into a great drift, and
slammed back. I squeezed through and limped out. The shanty
stood up a little, in the highest part of the Goth. I went down
a little,– I went as far as I could go. There was a pole lying
there, blown down in the night; it came about up to my head.
I sunk it into the snow, and drew it up.
Just six feet.
I went back to Bess and Beauty, and I shut the door. I
told them I couldn't help it,- something ailed my arms,
-I
couldn't shovel them out to-day. I must lie down and wait till
*to-morrow.
I waited till to-morrow. It snowed all day, and it snowed all
night. It was snowing when I pushed the door out again into
the drift. I went back and lay down. I didn't seem to care.
The third day the sun came out, and I thought about Nannie.
I was going to surprise her. She would jump up and run and
put her arms about my
neck. I took the shovel, and crawled
out on my hands and knees. I dug it down, and fell over on it
like a baby.
After that I understood. I'd never had a fever in my life,
and it's not strange that I shouldn't have known before.
It came all over me in a minute, I think. I couldn't shovel
through. Nobody could hear. I might call, and I might shout.
## p. 15639 (#593) ##########################################
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
15639
By-and-by the fire would go out. Nancy would not come.
Nancy did not know. Nancy and I should never kiss and make
up now.
I struck my arm out into the air, and shouted out her name,
and yelled it out. Then I crawled out once more into the drift.
I tell you, Johnny, I was a stout-hearted man, who'd never
known a fear. I could freeze. I could burn up there alone in
the horrid place with fever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor
awfulness I couldn't face,- not that, not that, but I loved her
true, I say,– I loved her true, and I'd spoken my last words
to her, my very last; I had left her those to remember, day in
and day out, and year upon year, as long as she remembered her
husband, as long as she remembered anything.
I think I must have gone pretty nearly mad with the fever
and the thinking. I fell down there like a log, and lay groaning
“God Almighty! God Almighty! ” over and over, not knowing
what it was that I was saying, till the words strangled in my
throat.
Next day, I was too weak so much as to push open the door.
I crawled around the hut on my knees, with my hands up over
my head, shouting out as I did before, and fell, a helpless heap,
into the corner; after that I never stirred.
How many days had gone, or how many nights, I had no
more notion than the dead. I knew afterwards; when I knew
how they waited and expected and talked and grew anxious, and
sent down home to see if I was there, and how she
But no
matter, no matter about that.
I used to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the
stupors. The bread was the other side of the fire; I couldn't
reach round. Beauty eat it up one day; I saw her. Then the
wood was used
up. I clawed out chips with my nails from
the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept up a little
blaze. By-and-by I couldn't pull any more. Then there were
only some coals, - then a little spark. I blew at that spark a
long while, - I hadn't much breath. One night it went out, and
the wind blew in. One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had
fallen down in the corner, dead and stiff. Beauty had pushed
out of the door somehow and gone.
Sometimes I thought Nancy was there in the plaid shawl,
walking round the ashes where the spark went out. Then again
I thought Mary Ann was there, and Isaac, and the baby. But
## p. 15640 (#594) ##########################################
15640
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
1
1
they never were. I used to wonder if I wasn't dead, and hadn't
made a mistake about the place that I was going to.
One day there was a noise. I had heard a great many noises,
so I didn't take much notice. It came up crunching on the snow,
and I didn't know but it was Gabriel or somebody with his char-
iot. Then I thought more likely it was a wolf.
Pretty soon I looked up, and the door was open; some men
were coming in, and a woman. She was ahead of them all, she
was; she came in with a great spring, and had my head against
her neck, and her arm holding me up, and her cheek down to
mine, with her dear, sweet, warm breath all over me: and that
was all I knew.
Well, there was brandy, and there was a fire, and there were
blankets, and there was hot water, and I don't know what; but
warmer than all the rest I felt her breath against my cheek,
and her arms about my neck, and her long hair, which she had
wrapped all in, about my hands.
So by-and-by my voice came. “Nannie! ” said I.
"Oh, don't! ” said she, and first I knew she was crying.
But I will,” says I, “for I'm sorry. ”
“Well, so am I," says she.
Said I, “I thought I was dead, and hadn't made up, Nannie. ”
«O dear! ” said she; and down fell a great hot splash right
»
on my face.
Says I, “It was all me, for I ought to have gone back and
kissed you. "
“No, it was me," said she, "for I wasn't asleep, not any such
thing. I peeked out this way, through my lashes, to see if you
wouldn't come back. I meant to wake up then. Dear me! ”
says she, “to think what a couple of fools we were, now! ”
“Nannie,” says I, "you can let the lamp smoke all you want
to! »
"Aaron » she began, just as she had begun that other night,
– “Aaron – ” but she didn't finish, and — Well, well, no matter:
I guess you don't want to hear any more, do you ?
»
-
## p. 15641 (#595) ##########################################
15641
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
(1851-)
ma
He history of the growth of English fiction, from Richardson
and Fielding to the present day, is the history of the
increasing attention given to character. The modern novel
studies personality, and depends for its interest mostly upon the
inter-relations of men and women in the social complex, subjectively
viewed. The main stream of story-telling has set stronger and
stronger in this direction for a hundred and fifty years; although
cross-currents, even counter-currents at times, have seemed to deflect
it from its due course. The adventure tale,
caring more for incident and action and for
the objective handling of character than for
the subjective analysis of motive, has had
since (Robinson Crusoe a vigorous if spo-
radic life. Romantic fiction has had always
its makers and its wide public. Some of the
unpalatable developments of the analytic
school, too, have been such that the parent
is hardly to be recognized in the children.
One such offspring is the so-called realistic
fiction, which errs in laying over-emphasis
upon relatively unimportant detail, and in
forgetting that life is no more all-sour than MRS. H. WARD
it is all-sweet. And what is known as nat-
uralism shows how much the analytic method may be abused in the
hands of those who strive to divorce art from ethics, and have a
penchant for the physical.
But the higher and nobler conception of fictional art, recognizing
the heart and soul of man as the most tremendous possible stage for
the playing out of social dramas, has been held and illustrated by
a line of gifted modern writers, among whom Thackeray, Dickens,
George Meredith, Hardy, and George Eliot are major stars. In this
literary genealogy Mrs. Humphry Ward belongs by taste, sympathy,
and birthright of power. She is one of the few contemporaneous
novel-writers whose work is in a sound tradition, and has enough
of lofty purpose and artistic conscientiousness to call for careful con-
sideration. Had Mrs. Ward failed, she would deserve respect for her
## p. 15642 (#596) ##########################################
15642
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
high aim, in a day when tyros turn off pseudo-fiction as easily as
they do business letters.
Mrs. Ward's first story, Miss Bretherton,' which appeared in
1884, made no great stir; but it was a charming and thoroughly well-
done piece of fiction, revealing marked ability in character study, and
a comprehension of English society. The theme chosen, the slowly
generating love between a brilliant young actress and a middle-aged
man of letters, is developed with delicate idealism, with sympathy
and imagination. The writer of the later and greater novels is fore-
shadowed if not fully confessed in the tale; which in its pleasant
ending, and its absence of definite special pleading, declares itself a
younger book. To some, the fact that “Miss Bretherton' is a straight-
away love story will make it all the better. But to one who under-
stands Mrs. Ward's intellectual and artistic growth, the book will be
seen to be tentative.
By the publication of 'Robert Elsmere) four years later, in 1888,
its writer defined her position and gave a clear idea of her quality.
The book made a deep impression. The fact that it dealt with the
religious problem, tracing in the person of the hero the intellectual
change undergone by a mind open to modern scholarship and thought,
gave it for many the glamour of the dangerous, and no doubt helped
its vogue. It was a story which people took sides for or against, and
fought over. But Robert Elsmere) would never have achieved more
than a critical success if it had been nothing but an able polemic
against orthodox views. It was far more: a vital story full of human
nature, intensely felt, strong in its characterization, and in some of
its scenes finely dramatic,—this last implied in the fact that the
novel was dramatized. Elsmere is not a lay figure to carry a thesis,
but an honest human brother, yearning for the truth. His wife is
an admirable picture of the sweet, strong, restricted conservatism of
a certain type of nature. And Rose and Langham — to mention only
two more personages of the drama are real and attractive creations.
The nobility of intention in this, the first of Mrs. Ward's full-length
social studies depicting the tragedy of the inner life, must be felt by
every receptive reader. The charge of didacticism commonly pre-
ferred against this novel has some justification, though the artistic
impulse was present in large measure,— indeed prevailed in the work.
And in the next book, "The History of David Grieve,' given to
the public after another four years had intervened (1892), the human
elements are broader, the life limned more varied, and hence the
impression that the author has a nut to crack is not so strong. Yet
David's experience, like Robert's, with all its difference of birth, po-
sition, training, and influences, is one of the soul: the evolution of
personal faith may be said to be the main motive of the tale. The
-
## p. 15643 (#597) ##########################################
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
15643
art of it is finer, the interpretation of humanity richer. The story is
a sombre one,– Mrs. Ward's work as a whole, and progressively, may
be so described, — but it is far from pessimistic. The teaching is that
men and women may conquer through soul stress; that the world is
an arena for the most momentous of all things,-character training.
Parts of David Grieve' have a convincing fervor and sweep, and
an imaginativeness of conception, which denote the writer's highest
accomplishment. The opening sketches of English country life, as
David and his sister grow up together, and the storm-and-stress phase
of his development, are superbly conceived and carried through.
the Parisian episode particularly, the Bohemianism of the situation,
which in some hands would have been excuse for sensational vul-
garity, is touched with a romantic idealism, lifting it to a far higher
plane, and making the scenes typical, elemental. Mrs. Ward never
drew a more distinct, impressive figure than that of David's fierce,
strange, deep-hearted sister Louie. But aside from particulars, and
judging the novel as a whole, the later works are perhaps superior.
Since (David Grieve,' Mrs. Ward's stories have represented polit-
ical, social, and economic, instead of religious interests. The love
motive is always given due place, and the display of character in a
certain milieu is steadily the intention. Marcella'- --a volume which
dates from 1894 — is a truthful and noble study of woman nature: the
novelist's sex should be grateful to her for portraying in this and the
companion story, (Sir George Tressady,' the organic development of
so rich and representative an English gentlewoman as Marcella. She
is taken in the vealy stage, when her ideals involve much foolish-
ness, young selfishness, and false romanticism. She irritates and even
antagonizes at first. But under the fructifying and clarifying influ-
ences of love and life, she works out into a splendid creature, and one
feels that the evolution is absolutely consistent. Marcella was always
Marcella potentially, after all. Very seldom has the nobleman in
politics and as land-owner been done with so much clearness and
justness as in Aldous Raeburn, Marcella's lover. The parliamentary
and socialistic scenes are drawn with knowledge and power, by a
writer sensitive to the most significant drift of thought of our day.
Modern London in its most important streams of influence is photo-
graphed with rare fidelity in this very strong broad story, and the
photographic reality is softened by artistic selection and the imagi-
native instinct. The quivering humanitarianism with which Mrs.
Ward portrays the struggles and hardships of the English poor is
another admirable trait.
In the year between Marcella' and (Tressady,' came the most
relentlessly realistic of all this author's works,- the novelette called
'The Story of Bessie Costrell. One can but think that Mrs. Ward's
a
## p. 15644 (#598) ##########################################
15644
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
-
mood in making it was one of temporary exasperation and gloom;' for
the tale - a sordid bit of peasant life, whose ugly dénouement does
not seem inevitable — leaves the reader depressed and dubious, with
cui bono? on his lips, — which cannot be said of any of the longer
stories. As a work of art, it is one of the closest knit and best con-
structed things she has written; and the impression it makes is as
powerful as it is unpleasant.
In (Sir George Tressady) (1896), Mrs. Ward returned to her true
métier, and furnished another proof of her mature grasp on art and
life. The book compels interest in several ways. It reveals Mar-
cella as Lady Maxwell; a superb woman of the social world, a regal
leader of men, who wields an influence all the more potent in that it
is social and indirect, not professional or of the polls; reveals her as
she walks unscathed through an intimacy with Tressady, perilous for
any woman save one of exceptional dignity and purity. Then the
relation of Tressady to his pretty, shallow little wife is a subtle
study of mismated temperaments, whose unhappiness is logical and
self-sought, since the two rushed into marriage with no serious appre-
ciation of what it is and should be. Another facet of life reflected
in the story is a phase of the labor-capital conflict. Tressady's posi-
tion as a mine-owner brings up one of the burning modern questions,
and his tragic death in the mine explosion seems the only solution of
the trouble. Socio-political activities, whose phenomena have been
well assimilated by this writer, form the warp and woof of a novel
which one trusts in its scenes and characters. One is assured that
it is real, for under its absolute contemporaneity are working the ele-
mental springs of human action. Mrs. Ward has done nothing more
complete and satisfying to the æsthetic and moral senses than this
fiction.
The scope and ability of such work set it apart from the run of
stories which cheapen the very name fiction, and justify the use for
it of the half-contemptuous epithet “light literature. ” Mrs. Ward is
serious-minded certainly, and regards her art as important. This,
even if it involves a deficient sense of humor, as some of her critics
claim, is welcome in a day when amusement is often bought too
dear!
Mrs. Ward's birth, education, and social environment fit her to do
this large, serious work. Born Mary Arnold, she is the granddaughter
of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, the niece of Matthew Arnold, the wife of a
cultivated editor and essayist. Her natal place was the Tasmanian
Hobart Town, with its extra-insular view-point: she was reared in a
social atmosphere in the best sense stimulating, and productive of
fine thought and enlightened activities. Like George Eliot, her contact
with literature and life has been broad and fruitful, her outlook has
## p. 15645 (#599) ##########################################
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
15645
not felt the restriction of a limited nature. Her scholarship was indi-
cated a dozen years ago by the admirable translation of the Journal'
of the French thinker, Amiel. Mrs. Ward has done two important
and serviceable things: she has proved that the content of fiction
is wide enough to include politics and religion as legitimate artistic
material; and she has drawn modern women who have brains as well
as hearts, and the capacity to keep even step with men in the higher
social activities. She has done this as George Meredith and Ibsen
have done it, and has shown thereby that she grasps one meaning of
the late nineteenth century. The New Woman is a dubious phrase;
but after all, the type exists in its purity and power, and demands
expression in literature. Mrs. Ward is a woman of the world who
comprehends the gravest issues of the time; she is a woman of books
without being a blue-stocking. She is a banner-bearer of the current
analytic school. She believes in the aristocracy of intellect, the inter-
est in character-building. In her art she has not forgotten that the
heart counts for more than the head; that love is eternally in fiction,
because it is in life, a grand mainspring of action. "After all,” she
says in Miss Bretherton,' “beauty and charm and sex have in all
ages been too much for the clever people who try to reckon without
them. ”
MARCELLA IN PEASANT SOCIETY
From Marcella. Copyright 1894, by Macmillan & Co.
OM
N THE afternoon of the day which intervened between the
Maxwells' call and her introduction to the court, Marcella
walked as usual down to the village. She was teeming
with plans for her new kingdom, and could not keep herself out
of it. And an entry in one of the local papers had suggested to
.
her that Hurd might possibly find work in a parish some miles
from Mellor. She must go and send him off there.
When Mrs. Hurd opened the door to her, Marcella was aston-
ished to perceive behind her the forms of several other persons
filling up the narrow space of the usually solitary cottage - in
fact, a tea-party.
"Oh, çome in, miss,” said Mrs. Hurd, - with some embar-
rassment, as though it occurred to her that her visitor might
legitimately wonder to find a person of her penury entertain-
ing company. Then lowering her voice, she hurriedly explained:
“There's Mrs. Brunt come in this afternoon to help me wi' the
washin', while I finished my score of plait for the woman who
## p. 15646 (#600) ##########################################
15646
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
a
takes 'em into town to-morrow. And there's old Patton an' his
wife - you know 'em, miss ? - them as lives in the parish houses
— —
top o' the common. He's walked out a few steps to-day. It's
not often he's able, and when I see him through the door I said
to 'em, If you'll come in an' take a cheer, I dessay them tea-
leaves ’ull stan' another wettin': I haven't got nothink else. And
there's Mrs. Jellison: she came in along o' the Pattons. You can't
say her no, - she's a queer one. Do you know her, miss ? »
"Oh, bless yer, yes, yes. She knows me! ” said a high, jocular
voice, making Mrs. Hurd start: “she couldn't be long hereabouts
without makkin' eëaste to know me. You coom in, miss. We're
not afraid o' you
- Lor' bless you! ”
Mrs. Hurd stood aside for her visitor to pass in, looking round
her the while, in some perplexity, to see whether there was
spare chair and room to place it. She was a delicate, willowy
woman, still young in figure, with a fresh color belied by the
gray circles under the eyes and the pinched sharpness of the
features. The upper lip, which was pretty and childish, was
raised a little over the teeth; the whole expression of the slightly
open mouth was unusually soft and sensitive. On the whole,
Minta Hurd was liked in the village, though she was thought a
trifle fine. The whole family, indeed, "kept theirsels to their-
sels,” and to find Mrs. Hurd with company was unusual. Her
name, of course, was short for Araminta.
Marcella laughed as she caught Mrs. Jellison's remarks, and
made her way in, delighted. For the present, these village peo-
ple affected her like figures in poetry or drama. She
She saw them
with the eye of the imagination through a medium provided
by socialistic discussion, or by certain phases of modern art;
and the little scene of Mrs. Hurd's tea-party took for her in an
instant the dramatic zest and glamour.
“Look here, Mrs. Jellison,” she said, going up to her, “I was
just going to leave these apples for your grandson. Perhaps
you'll take them, now you're here. They're quite sweet, though
they look green. They're the best we've got, the gardener
says. ”
“Oh, they are, are they? ” said Mrs. Jellison, composedly
looking up at her. "Well, put 'em down, miss. I daresay he'll
eat 'em. He eats most things, and don't want no doctor's stuff
nayther, though his mother do keep on at me for spoilin' his
stummuck. "
»
(
))
((
## p. 15647 (#601) ##########################################
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
15647
»
“You are just fond of that boy, aren't you, Mrs. Jellison ? ”
said Marcella, taking a wooden stool, — the only piece of furni-
ture left in the tiny cottage on which it was possible to sit, - and
squeezing herself into a corner by the fire, whence she com-
manded the whole group. "No! don't you turn Mr. Patton out
of that chair, Mrs. Hurd, or I shall have to go away. ”
For Mrs. Hurd, in her anxiety, was whispering in old Patton's
ear that it might be well for him to give up her one wooden
arm-chair, in which he was established, to Miss Boyce. But he,
being old, deaf, and rheumatic, was slow to move, and Marcella's
peremptory gesture bade her leave him in peace.
"Well, it's you that's the young 'un, ain't it, miss? ” said Mrs.
Jellison cheerfully. “Poor old Patton! he do get slow on his
legs, don't you, Patton ? But there, there's no helping it when
you're turned of eighty. ”
And she turned upon him a bright, philosophic eye; being
herself a young thing not much over seventy, and energetic ac-
cordingly. Mrs. Jellison passed for the village wit, and was at
least talkative and excitable beyond her fellows.
« Well, you don't seem to mind getting old, Mrs. Jellison,” said
Marcella, smiling at her.
The eyes of all the old people round their tea-table were
by now drawn irresistibly to Miss Boyce in the chimney corner,-
to her slim grace, and the splendor of her large black hat and
feathers. The new squire's daughter had so far taken them
by surprise. Some of them, however, were by now in the second
stage of critical observation,- none the less critical because fur-
tive and inarticulate.
"Ah ? ” said Mrs. Jellison interrogatively, with a high, long-
drawn note peculiar to her. “Well, I've never found you get
forrarder wi' snarlin' over what you can't help. And there's
mercies. When you've had a husband in his bed for fower year,
miss, and he's took at last, you'll know. ”
She nodded emphatically. Marcella laughed.
"I know you were very fond of him, Mrs. Jellison, and looked
after him very well too. "
"Oh, I don't say nothin' about that,” said Mrs. Jellison hastily.
“But all the same you kin reckon it up, and see for yoursen.
Fower year - an' fire up-stairs, an' fire down-stairs, an' fire all
night, an' soomthin' allus wanted. An' he such an objeck afore
he died! It do seem like a holiday now to sit a bit. ”
>
>
## p. 15648 (#602) ##########################################
15648
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
And she crossed her hands on her lap with a long breath of
content. A lock of gray hair had escaped from her bonnet,
across her wrinkled forehead, and gave her a half-careless rakish
air. Her youth of long ago- a youth of mad spirits, and of an
extraordinary capacity for physical enjoyment - seemed at times
to pierce to the surface again, even through her load of years.
But in general she had a dreamy, sunny look, as of one fed with
humorous fancies, but disinclined often to the trouble of com-
municating them.
“Well, I missed my daughter, I kin tell you,” said Mrs.
Brunt with a sigh, “though she took a deal more lookin' after
nor your good man, Mrs. Jellison. ”
Mrs. Brunt was a gentle, pretty old woman, who lived in
another of the village almshouses, next door to the Pattons, and
was always ready to help her neighbors in their domestic toils.
Her last remaining daughter, the victim of a horrible spinal dis-
ease, had died some nine or ten months before the Boyces arrived
at Mellor. Marcella had already heard the story several times;
but it was part of her social gift that she was a good listener to
such things even at the twentieth hearing.
«You wouldn't have her back, though,” she said gently, turn-
ing towards the speaker.
“No, I wouldn't have her back, miss,” said Mrs. Brunt, rais-
ing her hand to brush away a tear,– partly the result of feeling,
-
partly of a long-established habit. « But I do miss her nights
terrible! Mother, ain't it ten o'clock ? -- mother, look at the
clock, do; — mother! ain't it time for my stuff, mother ? oh, I do
hope it is. '
That was her stuff, miss, to make her sleep. And
when she'd got it, she'd groan — you'd think she couldn't be
-
asleep, and yet she was, dead-like — for two hours.
I didn't get
no rest with her, and now I don't seem to get no rest without
her. "
And again Mrs. Brunt put her hand up to her eyes.
"Ah, you were allus one for toilin' an' frettin',” said Mrs. Jel-
lison calmly. "A body must get through wi' it when it's there,
but I don't hold wi' thinkin' about it when it's done. ”
"I know one,” said old Patton slyly, “that fretted about her
darter when it didn't do her no good. ”
He had not spoken so far, but had sat with his hands on his
stick, a spectator of the women's humors. He was a little hunched
man, twisted and bent double with rheumatic gout,- the fruit of
(
(
>
## p. 15649 (#603) ##########################################
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
15649
now
seventy years of field work. His small face was almost lost, dog-
like, under shaggy hair and overgrown eyebrows, both snow-white.
Mr. Cullen.
“ Too late. Just promised Jim Jacobs,” said he, speaking up
quick: it was just business to him, you know.
(
(
Next morning somebody woke me up with a push, and there
was the boss.
"Why, Mr. Cullen! ” says I, with a jump.
a
"Hurry up, mari, and eat your breakfast,” said he: "Jacobs
is down sick with his cold. ”
"Oh! ” said I.
« You and the pork must be back here day after to-morrow,
so be spry,” said he.
It was just eight o'clock when I started; it took some time to
get breakfast, and feed the nags, and get orders. I stood there,
slapping the snow with my whip, crazy to be off, hearing the
last of what Mr. Cullen had to say.
They gave me the two horses, we hadn't but two: oxen are
tougher for going in, as a general thing,- and the lightest team
on the ground: it was considerably lighter than Bob Stokes's. If
it hadn't been for the snow, I might have put the thing through
in two days; but the snow was up to the creaturs' knees in the
>
## p. 15636 (#590) ##########################################
15636
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
»
-
shady places all along; off from the road, in among the gullies,
you could stick a four-foot measure down anywhere. So they
didn't look for me back before Wednesday night.
"I must have that pork Wednesday night sure,” says Cullen.
"Well, sir,” says I, "you shall have it Wednesday noon, Prov- .
idence permitting; and you shall have it Wednesday night any-
way. ”
“You will have a storm to do it in, I'm afraid,” said he, look-
ing at the clouds, just as I was whipping up. « You're all right
on the road, I suppose ? ”
"All right,” said I; - and I'm sure I ought to have been, for
the times I'd been over it.
Bess and Beauty — they were the horses; and of all the ugly
nags that ever I saw, Beauty was the ugliest - started off on a
round trot, slewing along down the hill; they knew they were
going home just as well as I did. I looked back, as we turned
the corner, to see the boys standing round in their red shirts,
with the snow behind them, and the fire and the shanties. I
felt a mite lonely when I couldn't see them any more: the snow
was so dead still, and there were thirty miles of it to cross be-
fore I could see human face again,
The clouds had an ugly look, - a few flakes had fallen already,
- and the snow was purple, deep in as far as you could see
under the trees.
There is no place like the woods for bringing a storm down
on you quick: the trees are so thick you don't mind the first few
flakes, till first you know there's a whirl of 'em, and the wind
is up.
I was minding less about it than usual, for I was thinking
of Nannie, - that's what I used to call her, Johnny, when she
was a girl; but it seems a long time ago, that does.
I was
thinking how surprised she'd be, and pleased. I knew she would
be pleased. I didn't think so poorly of her as to suppose she
wasn't just as sorry now as I was for what had happened. I
knew well enough how she would jump and throw down her
sewing with a little scream, and run and put her arms about my
neck and cry, and couldn't help herself.
So I didn't mind about the snow, for planning it all out, till
all at once I looked up, and something slashed into my eyes and
stung me: it was sleet.
## p. 15637 (#591) ##########################################
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
15637
“Oho! ” said I to myself, with a whistle; - it was a very
long whistle, Johnny: I knew well enough then it was no play-
work I had before me till the sun went down, nor till morning
either.
That was about noon: it couldn't have been half an hour
since I'd eaten my dinner; I eat it driving, for I couldn't bear to
waste time.
The road wasn't broken there an inch, and the trees were
thin: there'd been a clearing there years ago, and wide, white,
level places wound off among the trees; one looked as much like
a road as another, for the matter of that. I pulled my visor
down over my eyes to keep the sleet out;- after they're stung
too much they're good for nothing to see with, and I must see,
if I meant to keep that road.
It began to be cold. The wind blew from the ocean, straight
as an arrow. The sleet blew every way,– into your eyes, down
your neck, in like a knife into your cheeks. I could feel the
snow crunching in under the runners, crisp, turned to ice in a
minute. I reached out to give Bess a cut on the neck, and the
sleeve of my coat was stiff as pasteboard before I bent my elbow
up again.
If you looked up at the sky, your eyes were shut with a snap
as if somebody'd shot them. If you looked in under the trees,
you could see the icicles a minute, and the purple shadows. If
you looked straight ahead, you couldn't see a thing.
By-and-by I thought I had dropped the reins. I looked at
my hands, and there I was holding them tight. I knew then
that it was time to get out and walk.
I didn't try much after that to look ahead: it was of no use,
for the sleet was fine, like needles, twenty of 'em in your eye at
a wink; then it was growing dark. Bess and Beauty knew the
road as well as I did, so I had to trust to them. I thought I
must be coming near the clearing where I'd counted on putting
up overnight, in case I couldn't reach the deaf old woman's.
Pretty soon Bess stopped short. Beauty was pulling on,-
Beauty always did pull on,- but she stopped too. I couldn't
stop so easily; so I walked along like a machine, up on a line
with the creaturs' ears. I did stop then, or you never would
have heard this story, Johnny.
Two paces — and then two hundred feet shot down like a
plummet. A great cloud of snow-flakes puffed up over the edge.
## p. 15638 (#592) ##########################################
15638
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
There were rocks at my right hand, and rocks at my left. There
was the sky overhead. I was in the Gray Goth!
There was no going any farther that night, that was clear:
so I put about into the hut, and got my fire going; and Bess and
Beauty and I, we slept together.
It was an outlandish name to give it, seems to me, anyway.
I don't know what a Goth is, Johnny; maybe you do. There
was a great figure up on the rock, about eight feet high: some
folks thought it looked like a man. I never thought so before,
but that night it did kind of stare in through the door as natural
as life.
When I woke up in the morning I thought I was on fire. I
stirred and turned over, and I was ice. My tongue was swollen
up so I couldn't swallow without strangling. I crawled up to my
feet, and every bone in me was stiff as a shingle.
Bess was looking hard at me, whinnying for her breakfast.
“Bess,” says I, very slow, we must get home-to-night - any
—
— how. ”
I pushed open the door. It creaked out into a great drift, and
slammed back. I squeezed through and limped out. The shanty
stood up a little, in the highest part of the Goth. I went down
a little,– I went as far as I could go. There was a pole lying
there, blown down in the night; it came about up to my head.
I sunk it into the snow, and drew it up.
Just six feet.
I went back to Bess and Beauty, and I shut the door. I
told them I couldn't help it,- something ailed my arms,
-I
couldn't shovel them out to-day. I must lie down and wait till
*to-morrow.
I waited till to-morrow. It snowed all day, and it snowed all
night. It was snowing when I pushed the door out again into
the drift. I went back and lay down. I didn't seem to care.
The third day the sun came out, and I thought about Nannie.
I was going to surprise her. She would jump up and run and
put her arms about my
neck. I took the shovel, and crawled
out on my hands and knees. I dug it down, and fell over on it
like a baby.
After that I understood. I'd never had a fever in my life,
and it's not strange that I shouldn't have known before.
It came all over me in a minute, I think. I couldn't shovel
through. Nobody could hear. I might call, and I might shout.
## p. 15639 (#593) ##########################################
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
15639
By-and-by the fire would go out. Nancy would not come.
Nancy did not know. Nancy and I should never kiss and make
up now.
I struck my arm out into the air, and shouted out her name,
and yelled it out. Then I crawled out once more into the drift.
I tell you, Johnny, I was a stout-hearted man, who'd never
known a fear. I could freeze. I could burn up there alone in
the horrid place with fever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor
awfulness I couldn't face,- not that, not that, but I loved her
true, I say,– I loved her true, and I'd spoken my last words
to her, my very last; I had left her those to remember, day in
and day out, and year upon year, as long as she remembered her
husband, as long as she remembered anything.
I think I must have gone pretty nearly mad with the fever
and the thinking. I fell down there like a log, and lay groaning
“God Almighty! God Almighty! ” over and over, not knowing
what it was that I was saying, till the words strangled in my
throat.
Next day, I was too weak so much as to push open the door.
I crawled around the hut on my knees, with my hands up over
my head, shouting out as I did before, and fell, a helpless heap,
into the corner; after that I never stirred.
How many days had gone, or how many nights, I had no
more notion than the dead. I knew afterwards; when I knew
how they waited and expected and talked and grew anxious, and
sent down home to see if I was there, and how she
But no
matter, no matter about that.
I used to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the
stupors. The bread was the other side of the fire; I couldn't
reach round. Beauty eat it up one day; I saw her. Then the
wood was used
up. I clawed out chips with my nails from
the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept up a little
blaze. By-and-by I couldn't pull any more. Then there were
only some coals, - then a little spark. I blew at that spark a
long while, - I hadn't much breath. One night it went out, and
the wind blew in. One day I opened my eyes, and Bess had
fallen down in the corner, dead and stiff. Beauty had pushed
out of the door somehow and gone.
Sometimes I thought Nancy was there in the plaid shawl,
walking round the ashes where the spark went out. Then again
I thought Mary Ann was there, and Isaac, and the baby. But
## p. 15640 (#594) ##########################################
15640
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD
1
1
they never were. I used to wonder if I wasn't dead, and hadn't
made a mistake about the place that I was going to.
One day there was a noise. I had heard a great many noises,
so I didn't take much notice. It came up crunching on the snow,
and I didn't know but it was Gabriel or somebody with his char-
iot. Then I thought more likely it was a wolf.
Pretty soon I looked up, and the door was open; some men
were coming in, and a woman. She was ahead of them all, she
was; she came in with a great spring, and had my head against
her neck, and her arm holding me up, and her cheek down to
mine, with her dear, sweet, warm breath all over me: and that
was all I knew.
Well, there was brandy, and there was a fire, and there were
blankets, and there was hot water, and I don't know what; but
warmer than all the rest I felt her breath against my cheek,
and her arms about my neck, and her long hair, which she had
wrapped all in, about my hands.
So by-and-by my voice came. “Nannie! ” said I.
"Oh, don't! ” said she, and first I knew she was crying.
But I will,” says I, “for I'm sorry. ”
“Well, so am I," says she.
Said I, “I thought I was dead, and hadn't made up, Nannie. ”
«O dear! ” said she; and down fell a great hot splash right
»
on my face.
Says I, “It was all me, for I ought to have gone back and
kissed you. "
“No, it was me," said she, "for I wasn't asleep, not any such
thing. I peeked out this way, through my lashes, to see if you
wouldn't come back. I meant to wake up then. Dear me! ”
says she, “to think what a couple of fools we were, now! ”
“Nannie,” says I, "you can let the lamp smoke all you want
to! »
"Aaron » she began, just as she had begun that other night,
– “Aaron – ” but she didn't finish, and — Well, well, no matter:
I guess you don't want to hear any more, do you ?
»
-
## p. 15641 (#595) ##########################################
15641
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
(1851-)
ma
He history of the growth of English fiction, from Richardson
and Fielding to the present day, is the history of the
increasing attention given to character. The modern novel
studies personality, and depends for its interest mostly upon the
inter-relations of men and women in the social complex, subjectively
viewed. The main stream of story-telling has set stronger and
stronger in this direction for a hundred and fifty years; although
cross-currents, even counter-currents at times, have seemed to deflect
it from its due course. The adventure tale,
caring more for incident and action and for
the objective handling of character than for
the subjective analysis of motive, has had
since (Robinson Crusoe a vigorous if spo-
radic life. Romantic fiction has had always
its makers and its wide public. Some of the
unpalatable developments of the analytic
school, too, have been such that the parent
is hardly to be recognized in the children.
One such offspring is the so-called realistic
fiction, which errs in laying over-emphasis
upon relatively unimportant detail, and in
forgetting that life is no more all-sour than MRS. H. WARD
it is all-sweet. And what is known as nat-
uralism shows how much the analytic method may be abused in the
hands of those who strive to divorce art from ethics, and have a
penchant for the physical.
But the higher and nobler conception of fictional art, recognizing
the heart and soul of man as the most tremendous possible stage for
the playing out of social dramas, has been held and illustrated by
a line of gifted modern writers, among whom Thackeray, Dickens,
George Meredith, Hardy, and George Eliot are major stars. In this
literary genealogy Mrs. Humphry Ward belongs by taste, sympathy,
and birthright of power. She is one of the few contemporaneous
novel-writers whose work is in a sound tradition, and has enough
of lofty purpose and artistic conscientiousness to call for careful con-
sideration. Had Mrs. Ward failed, she would deserve respect for her
## p. 15642 (#596) ##########################################
15642
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
high aim, in a day when tyros turn off pseudo-fiction as easily as
they do business letters.
Mrs. Ward's first story, Miss Bretherton,' which appeared in
1884, made no great stir; but it was a charming and thoroughly well-
done piece of fiction, revealing marked ability in character study, and
a comprehension of English society. The theme chosen, the slowly
generating love between a brilliant young actress and a middle-aged
man of letters, is developed with delicate idealism, with sympathy
and imagination. The writer of the later and greater novels is fore-
shadowed if not fully confessed in the tale; which in its pleasant
ending, and its absence of definite special pleading, declares itself a
younger book. To some, the fact that “Miss Bretherton' is a straight-
away love story will make it all the better. But to one who under-
stands Mrs. Ward's intellectual and artistic growth, the book will be
seen to be tentative.
By the publication of 'Robert Elsmere) four years later, in 1888,
its writer defined her position and gave a clear idea of her quality.
The book made a deep impression. The fact that it dealt with the
religious problem, tracing in the person of the hero the intellectual
change undergone by a mind open to modern scholarship and thought,
gave it for many the glamour of the dangerous, and no doubt helped
its vogue. It was a story which people took sides for or against, and
fought over. But Robert Elsmere) would never have achieved more
than a critical success if it had been nothing but an able polemic
against orthodox views. It was far more: a vital story full of human
nature, intensely felt, strong in its characterization, and in some of
its scenes finely dramatic,—this last implied in the fact that the
novel was dramatized. Elsmere is not a lay figure to carry a thesis,
but an honest human brother, yearning for the truth. His wife is
an admirable picture of the sweet, strong, restricted conservatism of
a certain type of nature. And Rose and Langham — to mention only
two more personages of the drama are real and attractive creations.
The nobility of intention in this, the first of Mrs. Ward's full-length
social studies depicting the tragedy of the inner life, must be felt by
every receptive reader. The charge of didacticism commonly pre-
ferred against this novel has some justification, though the artistic
impulse was present in large measure,— indeed prevailed in the work.
And in the next book, "The History of David Grieve,' given to
the public after another four years had intervened (1892), the human
elements are broader, the life limned more varied, and hence the
impression that the author has a nut to crack is not so strong. Yet
David's experience, like Robert's, with all its difference of birth, po-
sition, training, and influences, is one of the soul: the evolution of
personal faith may be said to be the main motive of the tale. The
-
## p. 15643 (#597) ##########################################
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
15643
art of it is finer, the interpretation of humanity richer. The story is
a sombre one,– Mrs. Ward's work as a whole, and progressively, may
be so described, — but it is far from pessimistic. The teaching is that
men and women may conquer through soul stress; that the world is
an arena for the most momentous of all things,-character training.
Parts of David Grieve' have a convincing fervor and sweep, and
an imaginativeness of conception, which denote the writer's highest
accomplishment. The opening sketches of English country life, as
David and his sister grow up together, and the storm-and-stress phase
of his development, are superbly conceived and carried through.
the Parisian episode particularly, the Bohemianism of the situation,
which in some hands would have been excuse for sensational vul-
garity, is touched with a romantic idealism, lifting it to a far higher
plane, and making the scenes typical, elemental. Mrs. Ward never
drew a more distinct, impressive figure than that of David's fierce,
strange, deep-hearted sister Louie. But aside from particulars, and
judging the novel as a whole, the later works are perhaps superior.
Since (David Grieve,' Mrs. Ward's stories have represented polit-
ical, social, and economic, instead of religious interests. The love
motive is always given due place, and the display of character in a
certain milieu is steadily the intention. Marcella'- --a volume which
dates from 1894 — is a truthful and noble study of woman nature: the
novelist's sex should be grateful to her for portraying in this and the
companion story, (Sir George Tressady,' the organic development of
so rich and representative an English gentlewoman as Marcella. She
is taken in the vealy stage, when her ideals involve much foolish-
ness, young selfishness, and false romanticism. She irritates and even
antagonizes at first. But under the fructifying and clarifying influ-
ences of love and life, she works out into a splendid creature, and one
feels that the evolution is absolutely consistent. Marcella was always
Marcella potentially, after all. Very seldom has the nobleman in
politics and as land-owner been done with so much clearness and
justness as in Aldous Raeburn, Marcella's lover. The parliamentary
and socialistic scenes are drawn with knowledge and power, by a
writer sensitive to the most significant drift of thought of our day.
Modern London in its most important streams of influence is photo-
graphed with rare fidelity in this very strong broad story, and the
photographic reality is softened by artistic selection and the imagi-
native instinct. The quivering humanitarianism with which Mrs.
Ward portrays the struggles and hardships of the English poor is
another admirable trait.
In the year between Marcella' and (Tressady,' came the most
relentlessly realistic of all this author's works,- the novelette called
'The Story of Bessie Costrell. One can but think that Mrs. Ward's
a
## p. 15644 (#598) ##########################################
15644
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
-
mood in making it was one of temporary exasperation and gloom;' for
the tale - a sordid bit of peasant life, whose ugly dénouement does
not seem inevitable — leaves the reader depressed and dubious, with
cui bono? on his lips, — which cannot be said of any of the longer
stories. As a work of art, it is one of the closest knit and best con-
structed things she has written; and the impression it makes is as
powerful as it is unpleasant.
In (Sir George Tressady) (1896), Mrs. Ward returned to her true
métier, and furnished another proof of her mature grasp on art and
life. The book compels interest in several ways. It reveals Mar-
cella as Lady Maxwell; a superb woman of the social world, a regal
leader of men, who wields an influence all the more potent in that it
is social and indirect, not professional or of the polls; reveals her as
she walks unscathed through an intimacy with Tressady, perilous for
any woman save one of exceptional dignity and purity. Then the
relation of Tressady to his pretty, shallow little wife is a subtle
study of mismated temperaments, whose unhappiness is logical and
self-sought, since the two rushed into marriage with no serious appre-
ciation of what it is and should be. Another facet of life reflected
in the story is a phase of the labor-capital conflict. Tressady's posi-
tion as a mine-owner brings up one of the burning modern questions,
and his tragic death in the mine explosion seems the only solution of
the trouble. Socio-political activities, whose phenomena have been
well assimilated by this writer, form the warp and woof of a novel
which one trusts in its scenes and characters. One is assured that
it is real, for under its absolute contemporaneity are working the ele-
mental springs of human action. Mrs. Ward has done nothing more
complete and satisfying to the æsthetic and moral senses than this
fiction.
The scope and ability of such work set it apart from the run of
stories which cheapen the very name fiction, and justify the use for
it of the half-contemptuous epithet “light literature. ” Mrs. Ward is
serious-minded certainly, and regards her art as important. This,
even if it involves a deficient sense of humor, as some of her critics
claim, is welcome in a day when amusement is often bought too
dear!
Mrs. Ward's birth, education, and social environment fit her to do
this large, serious work. Born Mary Arnold, she is the granddaughter
of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, the niece of Matthew Arnold, the wife of a
cultivated editor and essayist. Her natal place was the Tasmanian
Hobart Town, with its extra-insular view-point: she was reared in a
social atmosphere in the best sense stimulating, and productive of
fine thought and enlightened activities. Like George Eliot, her contact
with literature and life has been broad and fruitful, her outlook has
## p. 15645 (#599) ##########################################
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
15645
not felt the restriction of a limited nature. Her scholarship was indi-
cated a dozen years ago by the admirable translation of the Journal'
of the French thinker, Amiel. Mrs. Ward has done two important
and serviceable things: she has proved that the content of fiction
is wide enough to include politics and religion as legitimate artistic
material; and she has drawn modern women who have brains as well
as hearts, and the capacity to keep even step with men in the higher
social activities. She has done this as George Meredith and Ibsen
have done it, and has shown thereby that she grasps one meaning of
the late nineteenth century. The New Woman is a dubious phrase;
but after all, the type exists in its purity and power, and demands
expression in literature. Mrs. Ward is a woman of the world who
comprehends the gravest issues of the time; she is a woman of books
without being a blue-stocking. She is a banner-bearer of the current
analytic school. She believes in the aristocracy of intellect, the inter-
est in character-building. In her art she has not forgotten that the
heart counts for more than the head; that love is eternally in fiction,
because it is in life, a grand mainspring of action. "After all,” she
says in Miss Bretherton,' “beauty and charm and sex have in all
ages been too much for the clever people who try to reckon without
them. ”
MARCELLA IN PEASANT SOCIETY
From Marcella. Copyright 1894, by Macmillan & Co.
OM
N THE afternoon of the day which intervened between the
Maxwells' call and her introduction to the court, Marcella
walked as usual down to the village. She was teeming
with plans for her new kingdom, and could not keep herself out
of it. And an entry in one of the local papers had suggested to
.
her that Hurd might possibly find work in a parish some miles
from Mellor. She must go and send him off there.
When Mrs. Hurd opened the door to her, Marcella was aston-
ished to perceive behind her the forms of several other persons
filling up the narrow space of the usually solitary cottage - in
fact, a tea-party.
"Oh, çome in, miss,” said Mrs. Hurd, - with some embar-
rassment, as though it occurred to her that her visitor might
legitimately wonder to find a person of her penury entertain-
ing company. Then lowering her voice, she hurriedly explained:
“There's Mrs. Brunt come in this afternoon to help me wi' the
washin', while I finished my score of plait for the woman who
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MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
a
takes 'em into town to-morrow. And there's old Patton an' his
wife - you know 'em, miss ? - them as lives in the parish houses
— —
top o' the common. He's walked out a few steps to-day. It's
not often he's able, and when I see him through the door I said
to 'em, If you'll come in an' take a cheer, I dessay them tea-
leaves ’ull stan' another wettin': I haven't got nothink else. And
there's Mrs. Jellison: she came in along o' the Pattons. You can't
say her no, - she's a queer one. Do you know her, miss ? »
"Oh, bless yer, yes, yes. She knows me! ” said a high, jocular
voice, making Mrs. Hurd start: “she couldn't be long hereabouts
without makkin' eëaste to know me. You coom in, miss. We're
not afraid o' you
- Lor' bless you! ”
Mrs. Hurd stood aside for her visitor to pass in, looking round
her the while, in some perplexity, to see whether there was
spare chair and room to place it. She was a delicate, willowy
woman, still young in figure, with a fresh color belied by the
gray circles under the eyes and the pinched sharpness of the
features. The upper lip, which was pretty and childish, was
raised a little over the teeth; the whole expression of the slightly
open mouth was unusually soft and sensitive. On the whole,
Minta Hurd was liked in the village, though she was thought a
trifle fine. The whole family, indeed, "kept theirsels to their-
sels,” and to find Mrs. Hurd with company was unusual. Her
name, of course, was short for Araminta.
Marcella laughed as she caught Mrs. Jellison's remarks, and
made her way in, delighted. For the present, these village peo-
ple affected her like figures in poetry or drama. She
She saw them
with the eye of the imagination through a medium provided
by socialistic discussion, or by certain phases of modern art;
and the little scene of Mrs. Hurd's tea-party took for her in an
instant the dramatic zest and glamour.
“Look here, Mrs. Jellison,” she said, going up to her, “I was
just going to leave these apples for your grandson. Perhaps
you'll take them, now you're here. They're quite sweet, though
they look green. They're the best we've got, the gardener
says. ”
“Oh, they are, are they? ” said Mrs. Jellison, composedly
looking up at her. "Well, put 'em down, miss. I daresay he'll
eat 'em. He eats most things, and don't want no doctor's stuff
nayther, though his mother do keep on at me for spoilin' his
stummuck. "
»
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MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
15647
»
“You are just fond of that boy, aren't you, Mrs. Jellison ? ”
said Marcella, taking a wooden stool, — the only piece of furni-
ture left in the tiny cottage on which it was possible to sit, - and
squeezing herself into a corner by the fire, whence she com-
manded the whole group. "No! don't you turn Mr. Patton out
of that chair, Mrs. Hurd, or I shall have to go away. ”
For Mrs. Hurd, in her anxiety, was whispering in old Patton's
ear that it might be well for him to give up her one wooden
arm-chair, in which he was established, to Miss Boyce. But he,
being old, deaf, and rheumatic, was slow to move, and Marcella's
peremptory gesture bade her leave him in peace.
"Well, it's you that's the young 'un, ain't it, miss? ” said Mrs.
Jellison cheerfully. “Poor old Patton! he do get slow on his
legs, don't you, Patton ? But there, there's no helping it when
you're turned of eighty. ”
And she turned upon him a bright, philosophic eye; being
herself a young thing not much over seventy, and energetic ac-
cordingly. Mrs. Jellison passed for the village wit, and was at
least talkative and excitable beyond her fellows.
« Well, you don't seem to mind getting old, Mrs. Jellison,” said
Marcella, smiling at her.
The eyes of all the old people round their tea-table were
by now drawn irresistibly to Miss Boyce in the chimney corner,-
to her slim grace, and the splendor of her large black hat and
feathers. The new squire's daughter had so far taken them
by surprise. Some of them, however, were by now in the second
stage of critical observation,- none the less critical because fur-
tive and inarticulate.
"Ah ? ” said Mrs. Jellison interrogatively, with a high, long-
drawn note peculiar to her. “Well, I've never found you get
forrarder wi' snarlin' over what you can't help. And there's
mercies. When you've had a husband in his bed for fower year,
miss, and he's took at last, you'll know. ”
She nodded emphatically. Marcella laughed.
"I know you were very fond of him, Mrs. Jellison, and looked
after him very well too. "
"Oh, I don't say nothin' about that,” said Mrs. Jellison hastily.
“But all the same you kin reckon it up, and see for yoursen.
Fower year - an' fire up-stairs, an' fire down-stairs, an' fire all
night, an' soomthin' allus wanted. An' he such an objeck afore
he died! It do seem like a holiday now to sit a bit. ”
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MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
And she crossed her hands on her lap with a long breath of
content. A lock of gray hair had escaped from her bonnet,
across her wrinkled forehead, and gave her a half-careless rakish
air. Her youth of long ago- a youth of mad spirits, and of an
extraordinary capacity for physical enjoyment - seemed at times
to pierce to the surface again, even through her load of years.
But in general she had a dreamy, sunny look, as of one fed with
humorous fancies, but disinclined often to the trouble of com-
municating them.
“Well, I missed my daughter, I kin tell you,” said Mrs.
Brunt with a sigh, “though she took a deal more lookin' after
nor your good man, Mrs. Jellison. ”
Mrs. Brunt was a gentle, pretty old woman, who lived in
another of the village almshouses, next door to the Pattons, and
was always ready to help her neighbors in their domestic toils.
Her last remaining daughter, the victim of a horrible spinal dis-
ease, had died some nine or ten months before the Boyces arrived
at Mellor. Marcella had already heard the story several times;
but it was part of her social gift that she was a good listener to
such things even at the twentieth hearing.
«You wouldn't have her back, though,” she said gently, turn-
ing towards the speaker.
“No, I wouldn't have her back, miss,” said Mrs. Brunt, rais-
ing her hand to brush away a tear,– partly the result of feeling,
-
partly of a long-established habit. « But I do miss her nights
terrible! Mother, ain't it ten o'clock ? -- mother, look at the
clock, do; — mother! ain't it time for my stuff, mother ? oh, I do
hope it is. '
That was her stuff, miss, to make her sleep. And
when she'd got it, she'd groan — you'd think she couldn't be
-
asleep, and yet she was, dead-like — for two hours.
I didn't get
no rest with her, and now I don't seem to get no rest without
her. "
And again Mrs. Brunt put her hand up to her eyes.
"Ah, you were allus one for toilin' an' frettin',” said Mrs. Jel-
lison calmly. "A body must get through wi' it when it's there,
but I don't hold wi' thinkin' about it when it's done. ”
"I know one,” said old Patton slyly, “that fretted about her
darter when it didn't do her no good. ”
He had not spoken so far, but had sat with his hands on his
stick, a spectator of the women's humors. He was a little hunched
man, twisted and bent double with rheumatic gout,- the fruit of
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MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
15649
now
seventy years of field work. His small face was almost lost, dog-
like, under shaggy hair and overgrown eyebrows, both snow-white.
