Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/351

Rh seemed to feel the look of them on her back, yet she lingered. Now that Malcolm was gone, how was she to learn when Mr. Graham would be preaching?

"If you please, ma'am," said a humble and dejected voice.

She turned and saw the seamed and smoky face of the pew-opener, who had been watching her from the lobby, and had crept out after her. She dropped a curtsy, and went on hurriedly, with an anxious look now and then over her shoulder: "Oh, ma'am, we sha'n't see him no more. Our people here — they're very good people, but they don't like to be told the truth. It seems to me as if they knowed it so well they thought as how there was no need for them to mind it."

"You don't mean that Mr. Graham has given up preaching here?"

"They've given up astin' of 'im to preach, lady. But if ever there was a good man in that pulpit, Mr. Graham he do be that man."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Yes, ma'am, but it would be hard to direct you." Here she looked in at the door of the chapel with a curious, half-frightened glance, as if to satisfy herself that the inner door was closed. "But," she went on, "they won't miss me now the service is begun, and I can be back before it's over. I'll show you where, ma'am."

"I should be greatly obliged to you," said Clementina; "only I am sorry to give you the trouble."

"To tell the truth, I'm only too glad to get away," she returned, "for the place it do look like a cemetery, now he's out of it."

"Was he so kind to you?"

"He never spoke word to me, as to myself like, no, nor never give me sixpence, like Mr. Masquar do; but he give me strength in my heart to bear up, and that's better than meat or money."

It was a good half-hour's walk, and during it Clementina held what conversation she might with her companion. It was not much the woman had to say of a general sort. She knew little beyond her own troubles and the help that met them, but what else are the two main forces whose composition results in upward motion? Her world was very limited — the houses in which she went charing, the chapel she swept and dusted, the neighbors with whom she gossiped, the little shops where she bought the barest needs of her bare life — but it was at least large enough to leave behind her; and if she was not one to take the kingdom of heaven by force, she was yet one to creep quietly into it. The earthly life of such as she — immeasurably less sordid than that of the poet who will not work for his daily bread, or that of the speculator who, having settled money on his wife, risks that of his neighbor — passing away like a cloud, will hang in their west, stained indeed, but with gold; blotted, but with roses. Dull as it all was now, Clementina yet gained from her unfoldings a new outlook upon life, its needs, its sorrows, its consolations, and its hopes; nor was there any vulgar pity in the smile of the one, or of degrading acknowledgment in the tears of the other, when a piece of gold passed from hand to hand as they parted.

The Sunday-sealed door of the stationer's shop — for there was no private entrance to the house — was opened by another sad-faced woman. What a place to seek the secret of life in! Lovelily enfolds the husk its kernel; but what the human eye turns from as squalid and unclean may enfold the seed that clasps, couched in infinite withdrawment, the vital germ of all that is lovely and graceful, harmonious and strong, all without which no poet would sing, no martyr burn, no king rule in righteousness, no geometrician pore over the marvelous must.

The woman led her through the counter into a little dingy room behind the shop, looking out on a yard a few feet square, with a water-butt, half a dozen flower-pots, and a maimed plaster Cupid perched on the window-sill. There sat the schoolmaster, in conversation with a lady, whom the woman of the house, awed by her sternness and grandeur, had, out of regard to her lodger's feelings, shown into her parlor, and not into his bedroom.

Cherishing the hope that the patent consequences of his line of action might have already taught him moderation, Mrs. Marshal, instead of going to chapel to hear Mr. Masquar, had paid Mr. Graham a visit, with the object of enlisting his sympathies if she could — at all events, his services — in the combating of the scruples he had himself aroused in the bosom of her son. What had passed between them I do not care to record, but when Lady Clementina — unannounced of the landlady — entered, there was light enough, notwithstanding the non-reflective properties of the water-butt, to reveal Mrs. Marshal flushed and flashing, Mr. Graham grave and luminous, and to 