Part 12

“A man who can’t sacrifice himself must be selfish,” said Bobby; “and we are all agreed to hate selfish people.”

“And what about the widow’s mite?” said Mrs. Granger.

“That’s all very well, and you may knock me down with the Bible if you like, as you might do also if I talked about pre-Adamite formations. I believe every word of the Bible, but I do not believe that I understand it all thoroughly.”

“You might understand it better if you studied it more,” said the parson.

“Very likely. I won’t be so uncourteous as to say the same thing of my elders. But now about these sacrifices. You wouldn’t wish to keep people in distress that you might benefit yourself by releasing them?”

“But the people in distress are there,” said Nora.

“They oughtn’t to be there; and as your self-sacrifices, after all, are very insufficient to prevent distress, there certainly seems to be a question open whether some other mode should not be tried. Give me the country in which the humanitarian principle is so exercised that no one shall be degraded by the receipt of charity. It seems to me that you like poor people here in England that you may gratify yourselves by giving them, not as much to eat as they want, but just enough to keep their skins from falling off their bones. Charity may have its double blessing, but it may also have its double curse.”

“Not charity, Mr. Frew,” said Mrs. Granger.

“Look at your Lady Bountifuls.”

“Of course it depends on the heart,” continued the lady; “but charity, if it be charity----”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Frederic F. Frew interrupting her. “In Philadelphia, which in some matters is the best organised city I know----”

“I’m going down to the village,” said the parson jumping up. “Who is to come with me?” and he escaped out of the room before Frew had had an opportunity of saying a word further about Philadelphia.

“That’s the way with your uncle always,” said he, turning to Nora, almost in anger. “It certainly is the most conclusive argument I know--that of running away.”

“Mr. Granger meant it to be conclusive,” said the elder lady.

“But the pity is that it never convinces.”

“Mr. Granger probably had no desire of convincing.”

“Ah! Well, it does not signify,” said Frew. “When a man has a pulpit of his own, why should he trouble himself to argue in any place where counter arguments must be met and sustained?”

Nora was almost angry with her lover, whom she regarded as stronger and more clever than any of her uncle’s family, but tyrannical and sometimes overbearing in the use of his strength. One by one her aunt and cousin left the room, and she was left alone with him. He had taken up a newspaper as a refuge in his wrath, for in truth he did not like the manner in which his allusions to his own country were generally treated at the parsonage. There are Englishmen who think that every man differing with them is bound to bet with them on any point in dispute. “Then you decline to back your opinion,” such men say when the bet is refused. The feeling of an American is the same as to those who are unwilling to argue with him. He considers that every intelligent being is bound to argue whenever matter of argument is offered to him; nor can he understand that any subject may be too sacred for argument. Frederic F. Frew, on the present occasion, was as a dog from whose very mouth a bone had been taken. He had given one or two loud, open growls, and now sat with his newspaper, showing his teeth as far as the spirit of the thing went. And it was in this humour that Nora found herself called upon to attack him on the question of her own proposed charity. She knew well that he could bark, even at her, if things went wrong with him. “But then he never bites,” she said to herself. He had told her that she might come to her wedding in an old cloak if she pleased, but she had understood that there was nothing serious in this permission. Now, at this very moment, it was incumbent on her to open his eyes to the reality of her intention.

“Fred,” she said, “are you reading that newspaper because you are angry with me?”

“I am reading the newspaper because I want to know what there is in it.”

“You know all that now, just as well as it you had written it. Put it down, Sir!” And she put her hand on to the top of the sheet. “If we are to be married in three weeks’ time, I expect that you will be a little attentive to me now. You’ll read as many papers as you like after that, no doubt.”

“Upon my word, Nora, I think your uncle is the most unfair man I ever met in my life.”

“Perhaps he thinks the same of you, and that will make it equal.”

“He can’t think the same of me. I defy him to think that I’m unfair. There’s nothing so unfair as hitting a blow, and then running away when the time comes for receiving a counterblow. It’s what your Lord Chatham did, and he never ought to have been listened to in parliament again.”

“That’s a long time ago,” said Nora, who probably felt that her lover should not talk to her about Lord Chatham just three weeks before their marriage.

“I don’t know that the time makes any difference.”

“Ah! but I have got something else that I want to speak about. And, Fred, you mustn’t turn up your nose at what we are all doing here,--as to giving away things I mean.”

“I don’t turn up my nose at it. Haven’t I been begging of every American in Liverpool till I’m ashamed of myself?”

“I know you have been very good, and now you must be more good still,--good to me specially, I mean. That isn’t being good. That’s only being foolish.” What little ceremony had led to this last assertion I need not perhaps explain. “Fred, I’m an Englishwoman to-day, but in a month’s time I shall be an American.”

“I hope so, Nora,--heart and soul.”

“Yes; that is what I mean. Whatever is my husband’s country must be mine. And you know how well I love your country; do you not? I never run away when you talk to me about Philadelphia,--do I? And you know how I admire all your institutions,--my institutions, as they will be.”

“Now I know you’re going to ask some very great favour.”

“Yes, I am; and I don’t mean to be refused, Master Fred. I’m to be an American almost to-morrow, but as yet I am an Englishwoman, and I am bound to do what little I can before I leave my country. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“Well, it’s about my wedding-clothes. It does seem stupid talking about them, I know. But I want you to let me do without them altogether. Now you’ve got the plain truth. I want to give Uncle Robert the money for his soup-kitchen, and to be married just as I am now. I do not care one straw what any other creature in the world may say about it, so long as I do not displease you.”

“I think it’s nonsense, Nora.”

“Oh, Fred, don’t say so. I have set my heart upon it. I’ll do anything for you afterwards. Indeed, for the matter of that, I’d do anything on earth for you, whether you agree or whether you do not. You know that.”

“But, Nora, you wouldn’t wish to make yourself appear foolish? How much money will you save?”

“Very nearly twenty pounds altogether.”

“Let me give you twenty pounds, so that you may leave it with your uncle by way of your two mites, as you call it.”

“No, no, certainly not. I might just as well send you the milliner’s bill, might I not?”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t do that.”

“Ah, but I do. You wouldn’t wish me to be guilty of the pretence of giving a thing away, and then doing it out of your pocket. I have no doubt that what you were saying about the evil of promiscuous charity is quite true.” And then, as she flattered him with this wicked flattery, she looked up with her bright eyes into his face. “But now, as the things are, we must be charitable, or the people will die. I feel almost like a rat leaving a falling house, in going away at this time; and if you would postpone it----”

“Nora!”

“Then I must be like a rat, but I won’t be a rat in a white silk gown. Come now, say that you agree. I never asked you for anything before.”

“Everybody will think that you’re mad, and that I’m mad, and that we are all mad together.”

“Because I go to church in a merino dress? Well; if that makes madness, let us be mad. Oh, Fred, do not refuse me the first thing I’ve asked you! What difference will it make? Nobody will know it over in Philadelphia!”

“Then you are ashamed of it?”

“No, not ashamed. Why should I be ashamed? But one does not wish to have that sort of thing talked about by everybody.”

“And you are so strong-minded, Nora, that you do not care about finery yourself?”

“Fred, that’s ill-natured. You know very well what my feelings are. You are sharp enough to understand them without any further explanation. I do like finery, quite well enough, as you’ll find out to your cost some day. And if ever you scold me for extravagance, I shall tell you about this.”

“It’s downright Quixotism.”

“Quixotism leads to nothing, but this will lead to twenty pounds’ worth of soup,--and to something else too.”

When he pressed her to explain what that something else was, she declined to speak further on the subject. She could not tell him that the satisfaction she desired was that of giving up something,--of having made a sacrifice,--of having thrown into the treasury her two mites,--two mites off her own back, as she had said to her aunt, and out of her own mouth. He had taxed her with indifference to a woman’s usual delight in gay plumage, and had taxed her most unjustly. “He ought to know,” she said to herself, “that I should not take all this trouble about it, unless I did care for it.” But, in truth, he did understand her motive thoroughly, and half approved them. He approved the spirit of self-abandonment, but disapproved the false political economy by which, according to his light, that spirit was accompanied. “After all,” said he, “the widow would have done better to have invested her small capital in some useful trade.”

“Oh, Fred;--but never mind now. I have your consent, and now I’ve only got to talk over my aunt.”

So saying, she left her lover to turn over in his mind the first principles of that large question of charity.

“The giving of pence and halfpence, of scraps of bread and sups of soup, is, after all, but the charity of a barbarous, half-civilised race. A dog would let another dog starve before he gave him a bone, and would see his starved fellow-dog die without a pang. We have just got beyond that, only beyond that, as long as we dole out sups of soup. But charity, when it shall have made itself perfect, will have destroyed this little trade of giving, which makes the giver vain and the receiver humble. The charity of the large-hearted is that which opens to every man the profit of his own industry; to every man and to every woman.” Then having gratified himself with the enunciation of this fine theory, he allowed his mind to run away to a smaller subject, and began to think of his own wedding garments. If Nora insisted on carrying out this project of hers, in what guise must he appear on the occasion? He also had ordered new clothes. “It’s just the sort of thing that they’ll make a story of in Chestnut Street.” Chestnut Street, as we all know, is the West End of Philadelphia.

When the morning came of the twelfth of January,--the morning that was to make Nora Field a married woman, she had carried her point; but she was not allowed to feel that she had carried it triumphantly.

Her uncle had not forbidden her scheme, but had never encouraged it. Her lover had hardly spoken to her on the subject since the day on which she had explained to him her intention.

“After all, it’s a mere bagatelle,” he had said; “I am not going to marry your clothes.”

One of her cousins, Bob, had approved; but he had coupled his approval with an intimation that something should be done to prevent any other woman from wearing bridal wreaths for the next three months. Charley had condemned her altogether, pointing out that it was bad policy to feed the cotton-spinners at the expense of the milliners. But the strongest opposition had come from her aunt and the Miss Fosters. Mrs. Granger, though her heart was in the battle which her husband was fighting, could not endure to think that all the time-honoured ceremonies of her life should be abandoned. In spite of all that was going on around her, she had insisted on having mince-pies on the table on Christmas Day. True, there were not many of them, and they were small and flavourless. But the mince-pies were there, with whisky to burn with them instead of brandy, if any of the party chose to go through the ceremony. And to her the idea of a wedding without wedding-clothes was very grievous. It was she who had told Nora that she was a widow with two mites, or might make herself one, if she chose to encounter self-sacrifice. But in so saying she had by no means anticipated such a widowhood as this.

“I really think, Nora, you might have one of those thinner silks, and you might do without a wreath; but you should have a veil;--indeed you should.”

But Nora was obstinate. Having overcome her future lord, and quieted her uncle, she was not at all prepared to yield to the mild remonstrances of her aunt. The two Miss Fosters were very much shocked, and for three days there was a disagreeable coolness between them and the Plumstock family. A friend’s bridal is always an occasion for a new dress, and the Miss Fosters naturally felt that they were being robbed of their rights.

“Sensible girl,” said old Foster, when he heard of it. “When you’re married, if ever you are, I hope you’ll do the same.”

“Indeed we won’t, papa,” said the two Miss Fosters. But the coolness gradually subsided, and the two Miss Fosters consented to attend in their ordinary Sunday bonnets.

It had been decided that they should be married early, at eight o’clock; that they should then go to the parsonage for breakfast, and that the married couple should start for London immediately afterwards. They were to remain there for a week, and then return to Liverpool for one other remaining week before their final departure for America.

“I should only have had them on for about an hour if I’d got them, and then it would have been almost dark,” she said to her aunt.

“Perhaps it won’t signify very much,” her aunt replied. Then when the morning came, it seemed that the sacrifice had dwindled down to a very little thing. The two Miss Fosters had come to the parsonage over night, and as they sat up with the bride over a bed-room fire, had been good-natured enough to declare that they thought it would be very good fun.

“You won’t have to get up in the cold to dress me,” said Nora, “because I can do it all myself; that will be one comfort.”

“Oh, we shouldn’t have minded that; and as it is, of course, we’ll turn you out nice. You’ll wear one of your other new dresses; won’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t know; just what I’m to travel in. It isn’t very old. Do you know, after all, I’m not sure that it isn’t a great deal better.”

“I suppose it will be the same thing in the end,” said the younger Miss Foster.

“Of course it will,” said the elder.

“And there won’t be all that bother of changing my dress,” said Nora.

Frederic F. Frew came out to Plumstock by an early train from Liverpool, bringing with him a countryman of his own as his friend on the occasion. It had been explained to the friend that he was to come in his usual habiliments.

“Oh, nonsense!” said the friend, “I guess I’ll see you turned off in a new waistcoat.” But Frederic F. Frew had made it understood that an old waistcoat was imperative.

“It’s something about the cotton, you know. They’re all beside themselves here, as though there was never going to be a bit more in the country to eat. That’s England all over. Never mind; do you come just as if you were going into your counting-house. Brown cotton gloves, with a hole in the thumbs, will be the thing, I should say.”

There were candles on the table when they were all assembled in the parsonage drawing-room previous to the marriage. The two gentlemen were there first. Then came Mrs. Granger, who rather frightened Mr. Frew by kissing him, and telling him that she should always regard him as a son-in-law.

“Nora has always been like one of ourselves, you know,” she said, apologisingly.

“And let me tell you, Master Frew,” said the parson, “that you’re a very lucky fellow to get her.”

“I say, isn’t it cold?” said Bob, coming in--“where are the girls?”

“Here are the girls,” said Miss Foster, heading the procession of three which now entered the room, Nora, of course, being the last. Then Nora was kissed by everybody, including the strange American gentleman, who seemed to have made some mistake as to his privilege in the matter. But it all passed off very well, and I doubt if Nora knew who kissed her. It was very cold, and they were all wrapped close in their brown shawls and greatcoats, and the women looked very snug and comfortable in their ordinary winter bonnets.

“Come,” said the parson, “we mustn’t wait for Charley; he’ll follow us to church.” So the uncle took his niece on his arm, and the two Americans took the two bridesmaids, and Bob took his mother, and went along the beaten path over the snow to the church, and, as they got to the door, Charley rushed after them quite out of breath.

“I haven’t even got a pair of gloves at all,” he whispered to his mother.

“It doesn’t matter; nobody’s to know,” said Mrs. Granger.

Nora by this time had forgotten the subject of her dress altogether, and it may be doubted if even the Misses Foster were as keenly alive to it as they thought they would have been. For myself, I think they all looked more comfortable on that cold winter morning without the finery which would have been customary than they could have done with it. It had seemed to them all beforehand that a marriage without veils and wreaths, without white gloves and new gay dresses, would be but a triste affair; but the idea passed away altogether when the occasion came. Mr. Granger and his wife and the two lads clustered around Nora as they made themselves ready for the ceremony, uttering words of warm love, and it seemed as though even the clerk and the servants took nothing amiss. Frederic F. Frew had met with a rebuff in the hall of the parsonage, in being forbidden to take his own bride under his own arm; but when the time for action came, he bore no malice, but went through his work manfully. On the whole, it was a pleasant wedding, homely, affectionate, full of much loving greeting; but not without many sobs on the part of the bride and of Mrs. Granger, and some slight suspicion of an eagerly-removed tear in the parson’s eye; but this, at any rate, was certain, that the wedding-clothes were not missed. When they all sat down to their breakfast in the parsonage dining-room, that little matter had come to be clean forgotten. No one knew, not even the Misses Foster, that there was anything extraordinary in their garb. Indeed, as to all gay apparel, we may say that we only miss it by comparison. It is very sad to be the wearer of the only frock-coat in company, to carry the one solitary black silk handkerchief at a dinner-party. But I do not know but that a dozen men so arrayed do not seem to be as well dressed as though they had obeyed the latest rules of fashion as to their garments. One thing, however, had been made secure. That sum of twenty pounds, saved from the milliners, had been duly paid over into Mr. Granger’s hands. “It has been all very nice,” said Mrs. Granger, still sobbing, when Nora went up stairs to tie on her bonnet before she started. “Only you are going!”

“Yes, I’m going now, aunt. Dear aunt! But aunt, I have failed in one thing--absolutely failed.”

“Failed in what, my darling?”

“There has been no widow’s mite. It is not easy to be a widow with two mites.”

“What you have given will be blessed to you, and blessed to those who will receive it.”

“I hope it may; but I almost feel that I have been wrong in thinking of it so much. It has cost me nothing. I tell you, aunt, that it is not easy to be a widow with two mites.”

When Mrs. Granger was alone with her husband after this, the two Miss Fosters having returned to Liverpool under the discreet protection of the two young Grangers, for they had positively refused to travel with no other companion than the strange American,--she told him all that Nora had said.

“And who can tell us,” he replied, “that it was not the same with the widow herself? She threw in all that she had, but who can say that she suffered aught in consequence? It is my belief that all that is given in a right spirit comes back instantly, in this world, with interest.”

“I wish my coals would come back,” said Mrs. Granger.

“Perhaps you have not given them in a right spirit, my dear.”

THE LAST AUSTRIAN WHO LEFT VENICE.

THE LAST AUSTRIAN WHO LEFT VENICE.

In the spring and early summer of the year last past,--the year 1866,--the hatred felt by Venetians towards the Austrian soldiers who held their city in thraldom, had reached its culminating point. For years this hatred had been very strong; how strong can hardly be understood by those who never recognise the fact that there had been, so to say, no mingling of the conquered and the conquerors, no process of assimilation between the Italian vassals and their German masters.

Venice as a city was as purely Italian as though its barracks were filled with no Hungarian long-legged soldiers, and its cafés crowded with no white-coated Austrian officers. And the regiments which held the town, lived as completely after their own fashion as though they were quartered in Pesth, or Prague, or Vienna,--with this exception, that in Venice they were enabled, and, indeed, from circumstances were compelled,--to exercise a palpable ascendency which belonged to them nowhere else. They were masters, daily visible as such to the eye of every one who merely walked the narrow ways of the city or strolled through the open squares; and, as masters, they were as separate as the gaoler is separate from the prisoner.

The Austrian officers sat together in the chief theatre,--having the best part of it to themselves. Few among them spoke Italian. None of the common soldiers did so. The Venetians seldom spoke German; and could hold no intercourse whatever with the Croats, Hungarians, and Bohemians, of whom the garrison was chiefly composed. It could not be otherwise than that there should be intense hatred in a city so ruled. But the hatred which had been intense for years had reached its boiling point in the May preceding the outbreak of the war.

Whatever other nations might desire to do, Italy, at any rate, was at this time resolved to fight. It was not that the King and the Government were so resolved. What was the purpose just then of the powers of the state, if any purpose had then been definitely formed by them, no one now knows. History, perhaps, may some day tell us. But the nation was determined to fight. Hitherto all had been done for the Italians by outside allies, and now the time had come in which Italians would do something for themselves.

The people hated the French aid by which they had been allowed to live, and burned with a desire to prove that they could do something great without aid. There was an enormous army, and that army should be utilised for the enfranchisement of Venetia and to the great glory of Italy. The King and the ministers appreciated the fact that the fervour of the people was too strong to be repressed, and were probably guided to such resolutions as they did make by that appreciation.