PART II.

When you found yourself last night in the oak bed-chamber, which Dame Alice had assigned to you as the pleasantest in the house, you felt strangely disinclined for slumber. So you set the wax candle (which had been borne before you very ceremoniously, to light you to your quarters) in a place secure from the night breeze, and, unbolting the heavy wooden shutter as noiselessly as possible, you opened your lattice, and stepped out into the balcony—out into the night that was sweet with flowers and starlight.

Then, as you sought among the stars for those with which you had made friendship when you formed one of the little group of star-gazers on the roof of the new building, you seemed to hear again the voice of your host. How droll he had been as he pulled Daisy’s pink ear, and praised her for that she was able, on occasion, to tell the sun from the moon! But, presently, the laughter and bantering had died away, and you found yourself listening in a delicious hushed expectancy for a whisper of the music of the spheres as your host’s words made you think of them as moving harmoniously, carrying each its appointed luminary like a blazing jewel set in a crystal circlet! Ah! truly the “Almagest”[13] would make a man a poet in spite of himself; and now you know how a certain look in Margaret’s eyes came there. For who could gaze, night after night, into the great spaces wherein the revolutions of the spheres make melody, and around which the fixed stars are built, in their firmament, into a mighty battlement, without carrying some of the wonder and the glory of it all away in one’s own soul?

In the lighted hall, afterwards, cozy with candlelight and a great log ablaze on the wide hearth, you came back very gently to earth. Such a good earth and a kind earth; not so very far from heaven either, since there was love, and light, and music to keep the roadway free!

Here Dame Alice, taking her capable part in the concert of instrumental music (which you learned is a nightly event in this household), relaxed a little from her attitude of housewifely overcarefulness, and showed you a pleasanter part of her nature. And when you looked round the circle and saw the happy looks of each little performer on harp, and lute, and monochord, and flute, it is odds but your pity was stirred for certain little girls you left behind you in the twentieth century, who spend such miserable, profitless, lonely hours in “practising.” If the “practice hour” were such a jolly re-union of the whole family as it is here, be sure our little maids would get more good out of their music-lessons!

Gradually the instruments were laid carefully aside, and the maid-servants, who had been busy with their spinning and sewing during the concert, prepared the place for the night prayers. One thing surprised you no little, and this was the accuracy with which everyone in the household recited the alternate verses of the psalms chosen: “Miserere,” “Ad Te Domine levavi,” and “Deus misereatur nostri.”

Surely the blessing of God rested visibly on this home, where everything was done to show Him perpetual honour! And so with a sense of great spiritual peace in your heart you came away from your star-watch on the balcony, and presently were lost in blissful dreams in the huge four-poster bed, with its downy pillows and sheets that smelled of lavender.

And now it is morning again, and the sun is streaming through the chink in the wooden shutter, which you neglected to fasten properly last night. Someone below in the garden is singing, and you speed your toilet to the merry tune and time:—

“The Hunt is up, the Hunt is up, And it is well nigh Daye, Harry our King has gone hunting To bring his Deere to baye. The East is bright with Morning Lighte, And Darkness it is fled, And the merrie Horn wakes up the Morn To leave his idle Bed. Behold the Skies with golder Dies. Tra la la la la la!”

“Up with it, young ones; up with the burden though it do come before it’s time,” says the merry voice of your host. And certainly they take him at his word, until the thrushes and blackbirds start singing, too—in self-defence.

“Shall we visit the menagerie now?” queries Master More, when there comes a moment’s silence in the wake of the “good-morrows” which greeted your appearance. “Nay,” as you look round the groups for an explanation, “these be not the only wild animals we keep in the enclosure.”

And then you look again, and see that everybody has some feeding stuff in his or her hand, and you find yourself presently engaged on a round of visits to the quaintest and most varied collection of pet-animals you ever dreamed of. There is one condition laid down in this household for all who would own a pet in it, and that is that the whole care of it devolves on the owner. Methinks in this there is a fine training in thoughtfulness and in the sense of responsibility as well as in Natural History.

There is a little time to spare yet, it seems, before the bell rings for Mass, and you willingly accept the invitation to pass it in the study in the new building. “And Meg shall come with us, too,” your host promises, “but for the others, I would ask no four walls to try and hold them while they be in such spirits.”

So off they go scampering round the garden, the wild young things!

In the new building you find a long gallery lined with books, which leads to a charming little room built all for study and retirement. On the broad oak table lie leaves of the manuscript which has occupied Master More during long hours while all the world beside slept. “Oh! Father,” says Margaret reproachfully, “what a state your desk is in,” and, thereupon, she sets about tidying it with deft hands, and an understanding mind.

“Our Meg here,” says her father, laying a hand on her bonny brown head, “is the only one of her sex one can trust among one’s books and papers, with the hope of finding one’s way safely through them after her. She is the tidy part of my own soul.”

“A part of his own soul!” Nobody shall know until the end has come on earth how true are these words; what tender, holy secrets are confided to this dear daughter alone in all the world; how much apart he lives, even in the midst of that gay and happy family life, in some respects, from all but her! But here as you note her flitting among his books, finding out those which she feels he will need for this work, looking up references and marking passages, you see how closely she is identified with his intellectual interests. Here in this little study she is as much at home as he. And in what lies beyond it, in the little bare room where only a carved crucifix breaks the white line of wall, and where her father seeks God and his own soul in solitude, what is her place? Oh! truly a privileged one there, too—as the world shall know at last when he shall have made the last distribution of his gifts from the Tower—and to her falls his hair-shirt, while Cecily has his “handkerchief,” and Elizabeth “a picture in parchment with her name on the back thereof.”

The bell for Mass sounds from the Parish Church a little bit down the river, and you follow your host and Margaret to the door to find Dame Alice (more stately than ever in her blue cloak and white head-dress), waiting to take Master More’s arm, and head the family procession, by the path they have made for themselves by the end of the meadows to the little church. What an appetite you carry home with you, and how the sweetness of that morning hour in the quaint old English church lingers with the band that seats itself for breakfast in the long hall, afterwards, making the meal a veritable “agape,” a feast of love! What merry jests and quips are bandied round, and how heartily your host makes you feel yourself of the company when you prove yourself not inapt to catch and throw back the light and shining ball of words aimed at you by Henry Pattieson, the official jester to the household. And so the morning hours pass.

And now it is time for Master More to make himself ready for the day’s business in the Law Courts. It appears, however, that you need not terminate your pleasant visit so quickly. It is proposed by the master of the house himself, seconded most cordially by Dame Alice, and passed with acclamation by the whole band of youngsters, that you spend yet another day in this hospitable household, and strengthen your acquaintance with its inmates. It is not to be expected, as you perfectly agree when the fact is pointed out to you by Dame Alice, that that good lady should spend much time with you, having heavy household duties to attend to, but the girls will be free presently, and as for the boys, having nothing more important to do than lessons, they and Master Gunnel are ready to devote themselves to you immediately.

But first Master More has to be seen off, and kerchiefs and sashes have to be waved at him from the water-stairs, until his barge grows smaller and smaller, and finally the speck it has become has been caught into the distance. Then off go the girls, under the bustling and energetic directions of Dame Alice, to help in the dairy or kitchen, or attend to the wants of the poor, whose meals are as regular a part of the household machinery as those of the family themselves. In the meantime you go to the schoolroom with Master Gunnel and the boys—young John Clement, and Jack Dancey, and Will Roper, wards or protégés of Master More, and the son of the house, young John More. A word or two puts you in possession of the present position and future prospects of the lads. Young Clement has a marked taste for medicine, and is already a distinguished botanist. He has been taken into the household at the recommendation of Dean Colet, at whose School of St. Paul’s he has already distinguished himself, and while pursuing his own Greek and Latin studies under Master Gunnel, preparatory to entering Oxford, he acts as assistant tutor and directs the botanical researches of the others. Will Roper is a ward of Master More, and Jack Dancey is the son of a legal client, whom the good man has taken into his house until his affairs can be settled. Otherwise it were ill for young Dancey, of whose estates the lawyers alone draw the profits. To balance matters, Dancey, very wisely, proposes to became a lawyer himself. As for Jack More, you know a little of his abilities already—but it needs no Master Gunnel to tell you presently when you shall be alone with him—the boys being given a task to do, and sent into the garden with it—that in the matter of brains, poor Jack can never hope to compete with his sisters.

You venture to remark that it is a pity, but you do not find Master Gunnel over ready to agree with you.

“For my part,” he says, “I hold with Master More that the harvest will not be much affected whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. In truth, it is a matter on which he hath done me the honour to put his views in writing, at some length—if you care to see his letter, I have it at hand.”

Indeed, you care very much, and presently you are seated in a comfortable window seat, with the treasured letter spread out on your knees.

To your shame, be it spoken, you read the Latin with less ease than Cecy or Jack would show; noting which, Master Gunnel unostentatiously begins to read in English some of the more important passages.

“Listen to this,” he counsels you, pointing to a marked passage, and thereupon begins:—

“Nor do I think that the harvest will be much affected whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. They both have the same human nature, which reason differentiates from that of beasts; both, therefore, are equally suited for those studies by which reason is perfectioned, and becomes fruitful like a ploughed land, on which the seed of good lessons has been sown. If it be true that the soil of woman’s brain be bad, and apter to bear bracken than corn, by which saying many keep women from study, I think, on the contrary, that a woman’s wit is, on that account, all the more diligently to be cultivated, that nature’s defect may be redressed by industry. This was the opinion of the ancients, of those who were most prudent as well as most holy. Not to speak of the rest, St. Jerome and St. Augustine not only exhorted excellent matrons and most noble virgins to study, but also, in order to assist them, diligently explained the abstruse meanings of Holy Scripture, and wrote for tender girls letters replete with so much erudition, that now-a-days old men, who call themselves professors of sacred science, can scarcely read them correctly, much less understand them. Do you, my learned Gunnel, have the kindness to see that my daughters thoroughly learn these works of those holy men....”

“So that is the explanation of the Saint Augustine we found on Margaret’s desk yesterevening?”

Master Gunnel nods confirmation, but he is much occupied in finding the next suitable passage in the letter, and does not speak immediately.

Then with his thumb on the paragraph selected, he looks up for a moment out of kind, rather near-sighted eyes.

“Do you remember last night when he spoke of the ‘Valiant Woman,’ and showed how all those who have girls to educate can find in her an imperishable model? For his own daughters he hath borne in mind, that, of all the virtues of the ‘Valiant Woman,’ it is her fear of the Lord that alone giveth substance and value to the others. ‘Many daughters have gathered together riches: thou hast surpassed them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.’ Hark, how he drives home the point. He hath been praising Elizabeth for her good conduct in her mother’s absence.

“‘Let her understand that such conduct delights me more than all possible letters I could receive from anyone. Though I prefer learning joined with virtue, to all the treasures of kings, yet renown for learning, when it is not united with a good life, is nothing else than splendid and notorious infamy: this would be specially the case in a woman. Since erudition in women is a new thing, and a reproach to the sloth of men, many will gladly assail it, and impute to literature what is really the fault of nature, thinking from the vices of the learned to get their own ignorance esteemed as virtue. On the other hand, if a woman (and this I desire and hope with you as their teacher for all my daughters) to eminent virtue should add an outwork of even moderate skill in literature, I think she will have more real profit than if she had obtained the riches of Crœsus and the beauty of Helen. I do not say this because of the glory which will be hers, though glory follows virtue as a shadow follows a body, but because the reward of wisdom is too solid to be lost like riches or to decay like beauty, since it depends on the intimate conscience of what is right, not on the talk of men, than which nothing is more foolish or mischievous.

“‘It belongs to a good man, no doubt, to avoid infamy, but to lay himself out for renown is the conduct of a man who is not only proud, but ridiculous and miserable. A soul must be without peace which is ever fluctuating between elation and disappointment from the opinions of men. Among all the benefits that learning bestows on men, there is none more excellent than this, that by the study of books we are taught in that very study to seek not praise, but utility. Such has been the teaching of the most learned men, especially of philosophers, who are the guides of human life, although some may have abused learning, like other good things, simply to court glory and popular renown.’”

Master Gunnel interrupts himself a moment with a reminiscent smile: “It may well have been that I was in danger of turning Margaret’s attention to the wrong things, but, if this were so, I was soon made to discover the mistake. Mark how gently I am brought to task:

“‘I have dwelt so much on this matter, my dear Gunnel, because of what you say in your letter, that Margaret’s lofty character should not be abased. In this judgment I quite agree with you; but to me, and, no doubt, to you also, that man would seem to abase a generous character who should accustom it to admire what is vain and low. He, on the contrary, raises the character who rises to virtue and true goods, and who looks down with contempt from the contemplation of what is sublime, on those shadows of good things which almost all mortals, through ignorance of truth, greedily snatch at as if they were true goods.’”

But here come the boys back with their finished tasks; and little Cecy is at the door, with her stepmother’s compliments, and are you fond of curds and cream? If so, you will come to the dairy and eat them, with a dish of strawberries, gathered by Dame Alice herself when the morning dew was yet on them, and carefully kept for you until this moment on the coolest shelf of the cool dark pantry.

MARIE JEANNE D’AUMALE

A Little Schoolgirl of Saint-Cyr