Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers Part 8

Afterwards the thought that she had been close to suicide was for months a new terror. She was unaware that the distance between us and dreadful crimes is much greater often than it appears to be. The man who looks on a woman with adulterous desire has already committed adultery in his heart if he be restrained only by force or fear of detection; but if the restraint, although he may not be conscious of it, is self-imposed, he is not guilty. Nay, even the dread of consequences is a motive of sufficient respectability to make a large difference between the sinfulness of mere l.u.s.t and that of its fulfilment. No friendly hand, we say, interrupted her purpose, but she went on her way. Hardly had she reached the open quay, when there came a peal of thunder. In London the gradual approach of a thunderstorm working up from a long distance is not perceived, and the suddenness of the roar for a moment startled her. But from her childhood she had always shown a strange liking to watch a thunderstorm, and, if possible, to be in it. It was her habit, when others were alarmed and covered their eyes, to go close to the window in order to see the lightning, and once she had been caught actually outside the door peering round the corner, because the strength of the tempest lay in that direction. The rain in an instant came down in torrents, the flashes were incessant, and flamed round the golden cross of St. Paul's nearly opposite to her. She took off her bonnet and prayed that she might be struck, and so released with no sin and no pain. She was not heard; a bolt descended within a few feet of her, blinding her, but it fell upon a crane, pa.s.sed harmlessly down the chain into a lot of rusty old sc.r.a.p, and so spent itself. She remained standing there alone and unnoticed, for the street was swept clear as if by grapeshot of the very few persons who might otherwise have been in it at that hour.

Gradually the tumult ceased, and was succeeded by a steady, dull downpour; Miriam then put on her bonnet and walked home.

The next day she was ill, unaccountably feverish and in great pain.

Hers was one of those natures--happy natures, it may perhaps be said--which hasten always to a crisis. She had nothing of that miserable temperament which is never either better or worse, and remains clouded with slow disease for months or years. She managed to do her work, but on the following morning she was delirious. She remembered nothing more till one afternoon when she seemed to wake.

She looked up, and whose face was that which bent over her? It was Miss Tippit's. Miss Tippit had learned through the doctor what was the state of affairs, and had managed, notwithstanding the demand which the lodgings made upon her, to take her share in watching over the sufferer. Her stepmother had been summoned from Cowfold, and these two, with the landlady, had tended her and had brought her back to life. In an instant the scene in Miss Tippit's room when she was sick pa.s.sed through Miriam's brain, and she sobbed piteously, lifted up her arms as if to clasp her heroic benefactor, but the thought was too great for her, and she fainted. Nevertheless she was recovering, and when she came to herself again, Miss Tippit was ready with the intervention of some trifle to distract her attention. As her strength returned she was able to talk a little, and her first question was--

"Miss Tippit, why did you come here? Oh, if you but knew! What claim have I on you?"

"Hush, my dear; those days are past. You did not love me then perhaps; but what of that? I am sure, you will not mind my saying it: 'If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?' But I know you did love me really."

"Where is Andrew?"

"Quite well, at home in Cowfold."

That was as much as Miriam could stand then. For weeks to come she was well-nigh drained of all vitality, and it flowed into her gradually and with many relapses. The doctor thought she ought to be moved into the country. Mrs. Tacchi had some friends in one of the villages lying by the side of the Avon in Wilts.h.i.+re, just where that part of Salisbury Plain on which stands Stonehenge slopes down to the river. Miriam knew nothing of the history of the Amesbury valley, but she was sensible--as who must not be?--to its exquisite beauty and the delicacy of the contrasts between the downs and the richly-foliaged fields through which the Avon winds. It is a chalk river, clear as a chalk river always is if unpolluted; the downs are chalk, and though they are wide-sweeping and treeless, save for cl.u.s.ters of beech here and there on the heights, the dale with its water, meadows, cattle, and dense woods, so different from the uplands above them, is in peculiar and lovely harmony with them.

One day she contrived to reach Stonehenge. She was driven there by the farmer with whom she was staying, and she asked to be left there while he went forward. He was to fetch her when he returned. It was a clear but grey day, and she sat outside the outer circle on the turf looking northwards over the almost illimitable expanse. She had been told as much as is known about that mysterious monument,--that it had been built ages before any record, and that not only were the names of the builders forgotten, but their purpose in building it was forgotten too.

She was oppressed with a sense of her own, nothingness and the nothingness of man. If those who raised that temple had so utterly pa.s.sed away, for how long would the memory of her existence last?

Stonehenge itself too would pa.s.s. The wind and the rain had already worn perhaps half of it; and the place that now knows it will know it no more save by vague tradition, which also will be extinguished.

Suddenly, and without any apparent connection with what had gone before, and indeed in contrast with it, it came into Miriam's mind that she must do something for her fellow-creatures. How came it there?

Who can tell? Anyhow, there was this idea in the soul of Miriam Tacchi that morning.

The next question was, What could she do? There was one thing she could do, and she could not go astray in doing it. Whatever may be wrong or mistaken, it cannot be wrong or a mistake to wait upon the sick and ease their misery. She knew, however, that she could not take up the task without training, and she belonged to no church or a.s.sociation which could a.s.sist her. Perhaps one of the best recommendations of the Catholic Church was that it held out a hand to men who, having for some reason or other, learned to hold their lives lightly, were candidates for the service of humanity--men for whom death had no terrors--by whom it was even courted, and who were willing therefore to wait upon the plague-smitten, or to carry the Cross amongst wild and savage tribes. Those who are skilled in quibbling may say that neither in the case of the Catholic missionary nor in that of the Sister of Mercy is there any particular merit. What they do is done not from any pure desire for man's welfare, but because there is no healthy pa.s.sion for enjoyment. Nothing is idler than disputes about the motives to virtuous deeds, or the proportion of praise to be a.s.signed to the doers of them. It is a common criticism that a sweet temper deserves no commendation, because the blessed possessor of it is naturally sweet-tempered, and undergoes no terrible struggle in order to say the sweet word which he who is cursed with spite only just manages to force himself to utter. What we are bound to praise or blame, however, is the result, and the result only--just as we praise or blame perfect or imperfect flowers. If it comes to a remorseless probing of motives, there are none of us who can escape a charge of selfishness; and, in fact, a perfectly _abstract_ disinterestedness is a mere logical and impossible figment.

To revert to what was said a moment ago, it may be urged that no sufficient cause is shown for Miriam's determination. What had she undergone? A little poverty, a little love affair, a little sickness.

But what brought Paul to the disciples at Damascus? A light in the sky and a vision. What intensity of light, what brilliancy of vision, would be sufficient to change the belief and the character of a modern man of the world or a professional politician? Paul had that in him which could be altered by the pathetic words of the Crucified One, "I am He whom thou persecutest." The man of the world or the politician would evade an appeal from the heaven of heavens, backed by the glory of seraphim and archangel. Miriam had a vitality, a susceptibility or fluidity of character--call it what you will--which did not need great provocation. There are some mortals on this earth to whom nothing more than a certain, summer morning very early, or a certain chance idea in a lane ages ago, or a certain glance from a fellow-creature dead for years, has been the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, or the Descent of the Holy Ghost.

A man now old and nearing his end is known to Miriam's biographer, who one Sunday November afternoon, when he was but twenty years old, met a woman in a London street and looked in her face. Neither he nor she stopped for an instant; he looked in her face, pa.s.sed on, and never saw her again. He married, had children, who now have children, but that woman's face has never left him, and the colours of the portrait which hangs in his soul's oratory are as vivid as ever. A thousand times has he appealed to it; a thousand times has it sat in judgment; and a thousand times has its sacred beauty redeemed him.

Miriam wrote to Miss Tippit expressing her newly-formed wish. Miss Tippit, with some doubts as to her friend's fitness for the duty, promised to do what she could; and at last, after complete recovery, Miriam was allowed to begin a kind of apprentices.h.i.+p to the art of nursing in a small hospital, recommended by Miss Tippit's friend, the doctor. One morning, a bright day in June, she was taken there. When the door opened, there was disclosed a long white room with beds on either side, and a broad pa.s.sage down the middle. The walls were relieved by a few illuminated sentences, scriptural and secular; women dressed in a blue uniform were moving about noiselessly, and one of the physicians on the staff, with some students or a.s.sistants, was standing beside a patient happily unconscious, and demonstrating that he could not live. Round one of the beds a screen was drawn; Miriam did not quite know what it meant, but she guessed and shuddered. She pa.s.sed on to a little room at the end, and here she was introduced to her new mistress, the lady-superintendent. She was a small, well-formed woman of about thirty, with a pale thin face, lightish brown hair, grey eyes, and thinnish lips. She also was dressed in uniform, but with a precision and grace which showed that though the material might be the same as that used by her underlings, it was made up at the West End.

She was evidently born to command, as little women often are. It was impossible to be five minutes in her company without being affected by her domination. Her very clothes felt it, for not a rebellious wrinkle or crease dared to show itself. The nurses came to her almost every moment for directions, which were given with brevity and clearness, and obeyed with the utmost deference. The furniture was like that of a yacht, very compact, scrupulously clean, and very handy. There was a complete apparatus for instantaneously making tea, a luxurious little armchair specially made for its owner, a minute writing-case, and, for decorations, there were dainty and delicate water-colours.

Half-a-dozen books lay about, a novel or two of the best kind, and two or three volumes of poems.

"You wish to become a nurse?" said Miss Dashwood.

"Yes."

"I am afraid you hardly know what it is, and that when you do know you will find it very disagreeable. So many young women come here with entirely false notions as to their duties."

Miriam was silent; Miss Dashwood's manner depressed her.

"However, you can try. You will have to begin at the very bottom. I always insist on this with my probationers. It teaches them how the work ought to be done, and, in addition, proper habits of subordination. For three months you will have to scrub the floors and a.s.sist in keeping the wards in order."

Miriam had imagined that she would at once be asked to watch over grateful patients, to give them medicine, and read to them. However, she was determined to go through with her project, and she a.s.sented.

The next morning saw her in coa.r.s.e clothes, busy with a pail and soap and water. It was very hard. She was not a Catholic novice; she was not penetrated with the great religious idea that, done in the service of the Master, all work is alike in dignity; she had, in fact, no religion whatever, and she was confronted with a trial severe even to an enthusiast received into a nunnery with all the pomp of a gorgeous ritual and sustained by the faith of ages.

Specially troublesome was her new employment to Miriam, because she was by nature so unmethodical and careless. Perhaps there are no habits so hard to overcome as those of general looseness and want of system.

They are often a.s.sociated with abundance of energy. The corners are not s.h.i.+rked through fatigue, but there is an unaccountable persistency in avoiding them, which resolution and preaching are alike unable to conquer. The root of the inconsistency is a desire speedily to achieve results. To keep this desire in subjection, to shut the eyes to results, but patiently to remove the dust to the last atom of it lying in the dark angle, is a good part of self-culture.

In a hospital Miriam's defect was one of the deadly sins, and many were the admonitions which she received from Miss Dashwood. One evening, after a day in which they had been more frequent than usual, she went to bed, but lay awake. She was obliged to confess to herself that the light of three months ago, which had then shone round her great design, had faded. To conceive such a design is one thing, to go down on the knees and scour floors week after week is something different.

She did not intend, however, to give up. When she rose in the morning she looked out over the London tiles and through the smoke with a miserable sinking of heart, hoping, if she hoped for anything, for the end of the day, and still more for the end of life; but still she persevered, and determined to persevere.

One day a new case came into the ward. It was evidently serious. A man returning home late at night, drunk or nearly so, had fallen under a cart in crossing a road and had been terribly crushed. He had received some injury to the head and was unconscious. Miriam, to whom such events were now tolerably familiar, took no particular notice until her work brought her near the bed, and then she saw to her amazement and horror that the poor wretch was Montgomery. Instantly all that had slumbered in her, as fire slumbers in grey ashes, broke out into flame. She continually crept as well as she could towards him, and listened for any remark which might be dropped by nurse or doctor upon his condition. Three days afterwards he died, without having once regained his reason save just one hour before death. He then opened his eyes--they fell upon Miriam; he knew her, and with a faint kind of astonishment muttered her name. Before she could come close to him he had gone.

Another month pa.s.sed, and as Miriam's const.i.tutional failings showed no sign of mitigation, Miss Dashwood found herself obliged to take serious notice of them. The experienced, professional superintendent knew perfectly well that the smart, neat, methodical girl, with no motive in her but the desire of succeeding and earning a good living, was worth a dozen who were self-sacrificing but not soldierly. One morning, after Miss Dashwood's patience had been more than usually tried, she sent for Miriam, and kindly but firmly told her that she was unsuitable for a hospital and must prepare to leave. She was not taken by surprise; she had said the same thing to herself a dozen times before; but when it was made certain to her by another person, it sounded differently.

She sought her friend Miss Tippit. To Miss Tippit the experience was not new. She had herself in her humble way imagined schemes of usefulness, which were broken through personal unfitness; she knew how at last the man who thinks he will conquer a continent has to be content with the conquest of his own kitchen-garden, fifty feet by twenty. She knew this in her own humble way, although her ambition, so far from being continental, had never extended even to a parish. She, however, could do Miriam no good. She had learned how to vanquish her own trouble, but she was powerless against the very same trouble in another person. She had the sense, too, for she was no bigot, to see her helplessness, and she gave Miriam the best of all advice--to go home to Cowfold. Alpine air, Italian cities, would perhaps have been better, bat as these were impossible, Cowfold was the next best.

Perhaps the worst effect of great cities, at any rate of English cities, is not the poverty they create and the misery which it brings, but the mental mischief which is wrought, often unconsciously, by their dreariness and darkness. In Pimlico or Bethnal Green a man might have a fortune given him, and it would not stir him to so much grat.i.tude as an orange if he were living on the South Downs, and the peculiar sourness of modern democracy is due perhaps to deficiency of oxygen and sunlight. Miriam had no objection to return. She was beaten and indifferent; her father and mother wrote to welcome her, and she recollected her mother's devotion to her when she was ill. She had not the heart to travel by the road on which she and Andrew came to London, and she chose a longer route by which she was brought to a point about ten miles from Cowfold. She found affection and peace, and Andrew, who had lost his taste for whisky, was quietly at work in his father's shop at his old trade. There was at the same time no vacant s.p.a.ce for her in the household. There was nothing particular for her to do, and after a while, when the novelty of return had worn off, she grew weary, and longed unconsciously for something on which fully to exercise her useless strength.

In Cowfold at that time dwelt a basketmaker named Didymus Farrow. Why he was called Didymus is a very simple story.

His mother had once heard a sermon preached by a bishop from the text, "Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with Him." The preacher enlarged on the blessed privilege offered by our Lord, and observed how happy he should have been--how happy all his dear brethren in Christ would have been, if the same privilege had been extended to them. But, alas! G.o.d had not so decreed. When the day arrived on which they would see their Master in glory, they could then a.s.sure Him, and He would believe them, how willingly they would have borne His cross--aye, and even have hung with Him on the fatal tree.

Some weeks before Didymus Farrow was born, Mrs. Farrow remembered the bishop and part of his discourse, but what she remembered most distinctly was, "Thomas, which is called Didymus." These words were borne in upon her, she said, and accordingly the son was baptized Didymus. When he grew up, he entered upon his father's trade, which was that of making the willow hampers for fruit-growers, of whom there were a good many round Cowfold, and who sent their fruit to London, stacked high on huge broad-wheeled waggons. Didymus also manufactured hand-baskets, all kinds of willow ware and white wood goods. He had a peculiar apt.i.tude for the lathe, and some of his bread-plates were really as neatly executed as any that could be seen in London. He had even turned in poplar some vases, which found their way to a drawing-master, and were used as models. He was now about thirty, had yellow hair, blue eyes, a smiling face, widish mouth, always a little open, nose a little turned up, whistled a good deal, and walked with a peculiar dance-like lilt. He was a gay, innocent creature, honest in all his dealings, and fairly prosperous. He had been married early, but had lost his wife when he was about twenty-six, and had been left with one daughter, whom his sister had in charge. The sister was about to be married, and when her brother knew that the day for her departure was fixed, it came into his head that he ought to be married again.

Otherwise, who could manage his house and his family?

He was not a man to seek any recondite reasons for doing or not doing anything. He was not in the habit of pausing before he acted, and demanding the production of every conceivable argument, yea or nay, and then with toil adjusting the balance between them. If a lot of withies looked cheap, he bought them straightway, and did not defer the bargain for weeks till he could ascertain if he could get them cheaper elsewhere.

Going home one evening, he pa.s.sed his friend Giacomo's shop, and through the window saw Miriam talking to her father. Instantly it struck him that Miriam was the girl for him, and he began to whistle the air to "Hark the Lark," for he was a member of the Cowfold Glee Club, and sang alto. This was on the 25th May. Miriam being accustomed to walk in the fields in the evening, and Mr. D. Farrow being fully aware of her custom, he met her on the 26th and after some preliminary skirmis.h.i.+ng requested her to take him for better or for worse. She was surprised, but did not say so, and asked time for consideration. She did consider, but consideration availed nothing.

It is so seldom even at the most important moments that our faculties are permitted fully to help us. There is no free s.p.a.ce allowed, and we are dragged hither and thither by a swarm of temporary impulses. The result has to stand, fixed for ever, but the operative forces which determine it are those of the moment, and not of eternity. Miriam, moreover, just then lacked the strong instinct which mercifully for us so often takes us in hand. She was not altogether unhappy, but dull and careless as to what became of her. No oracle advised her. There is now no pillar of cloud or of fire to guide mortals; the heavenly apparition does not appear even in extremities; and consequently a week afterwards she said yes, and six months afterwards she was Mrs. Farrow.

For some time the day went pleasantly enough. She had plenty to do as mistress of the house, and in entertaining the new friends who came to see her. After a while, when the novelty had worn off, the old insuperable feeling of monotony returned, more particularly in the evening. Mr. Farrow never went near a public-house, but he never opened a book, and during the winter, when the garden was closed, amused himself with an accordion, or in practising his part in a catch, or in cutting with a penknife curious little wooden chairs and tables.

This mode of pa.s.sing the time was entertaining enough to him, but not so to Miriam, who was fatally deficient, as so many of her countrymen and countrywomen are, in that lightness which distinguishes the French or the Italians, and would have enabled her, had she been so fortunately endowed with it, to sit by the fire and prattle innocently to her husband, whatever he might be doing. When she came to her new abode and was turning out the corners, she discovered upstairs in a cupboard a number of brown-looking old books, which had not been touched for many a long day. Amongst them were Rollin's Ancient History, some of Swift's Works with pages torn out, doubtless those which some impatiently clean creature had justly considered too filthy for perusal. There were also Paul and Virginia, Dryden's Virgil, Robinson Crusoe, and above all a Shakespeare. Miriam had never been much of a reader; but now, having nothing better to do, she looked into these books, and generally brought one downstairs in the afternoon.

Swift she did not quite understand, and he frightened her; she never, in fact, got through anything but Gulliver and the Tale of a Tub; but some of his sayings stuck to her and came up against her again and again, until, like most of us who have had even a glimpse of the dark and dreadful caverns in that man's soul, she wished that he had never been born. For years, even to the day of her death, the poison of one sentence in the Tale of a Tub remained with her--those memorable words that "happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived." Yet she pitied him; who does not pity him? Who is there in English history who excites and deserves profounder pity?

Of all her treasures, however, the one which produced the deepest impression on her was "Romeo and Juliet." She saw there the possibilities of love. For the first time she became fully aware of what she could have been. One evening she sat as in a trance. Cowfold had departed; she was on the balcony in Verona, Romeo was below. She leaned over and whispered to him--

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep: the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite."

She went on; the day was breaking; she heard the parting--

"Farewell! farewell! one kiss and I'll descend,"

Her arms were round his neck with an ecstasy of pa.s.sion; he was going; the morning star was flas.h.i.+ng before the sun, and she cried after him--

"Art thou gone so? love, lord, ay husband, friend!

I must hear from thee every day in the hour, For in a minute there are many days."

Ah, G.o.d! what is the count of all the men and women whom, since it was first "plaid publiquely with great applause," this tragedy has reminded of the _what might have been_!

Mr. Didymus Farrow, during his wife's absence in Verona, had been very much engaged in whittling a monkey which toppled over on a long pole, but being dissatisfied with its performance he had taken his accordion out of the box, and, just as Lady Capulet called, he struck up "Down amongst the dead men," which, whatever its merit may be, is not particularly well adapted to that instrument. Verona and Romeo were straightway replaced by Cowfold and the Cowfold consort. He was in the best of spirits, and he stooped down just as his wife was waking, took the cat--which was lying before the fire--and threw it on her lap.

"Oh, please do not!" she exclaimed, a little angry, shocked, and sad.

"I wish you would not sit and addle your brains over those books.

Blessed if I don't burn them all! What good do they do? Why don't you talk?"