Part 2 — CHAPTER IV. MERLE'S LAST EVENING AT HOME.

o it is all settled, Merle."

"Yes, Aunt Agatha," I returned, briskly, for she spoke in a lugubrious voice, and as one sad face is enough beside the family hearth, I assumed a tolerably cheerful aspect. If only Aunt Agatha's eyes would not look at me so tenderly!

"Poor child!" she sighed; and then, as I remained silent, she continued in a few minutes, "I wish I could reconcile myself more to the idea, but I cannot help feeling a presentiment that you will live to repent this strange step you are taking."

I found this speech a little damping, but I bore it without flinching. One can never set out down some new road without a few friendly missiles flying about one's ears. "Remember, I told you such and such a thing would happen if you did not take my advice. I am only warning you for your good." Alas! that one's dearest friend should be transformed into a teasing gad-fly! What can one do but go straight across the enemy's country when the boats are destroyed behind one? I always did think that a grand action on Xenophon's part.

"You have not given me your opinion of my new mistress," was my wicked rejoinder.

Aunt Agatha drew herself up at this and put on her grandest manner. "You need not go out of your way to vex me, Merle. I am sufficiently humiliated without that."

"Aunt Agatha," I remonstrated; for this was too much for my forbearance, "do you think I would do anything to vex you when we are to part in a few days? Oh, you dear, silly woman!" for she was actually crying, "I am only longing to know what you think of Mrs. Morton."

"She is perfectly lovely, Merle," she returned, drying her eyes, as I kissed and coaxed her. "I very nearly fell in love with her myself. I liked the simple way in which she sat down and talked to me about my old pupils, making herself quite at home in our little drawing-room, and I was much pleased with her manner when she spoke about you; it was almost a pity you came into the room just then."

"I left you alone for nearly half an hour; please to remember that."

"Indeed! it did not seem nearly so long. Half an hour! and it passed so quickly, too. Well, I must say Mrs. Morton is a most interesting woman; she is full of intelligence, and yet so gentle. She has lost her baby—did she tell you that? only four months ago, and her husband does not like her to wear mourning. She is a devoted wife, I can see that, but I have a notion that you will have some difficulty in satisfying Mr. Morton; he is very particular and hard to please."

"I have found out that for myself; he is a man of strong prejudices."

"Well, you must do your best to conciliate him; tact goes a long way in these cases. Mrs. Morton has evidently taken a fancy to you, Merle. She told me over again how her baby boy had made friends with you at once; she said your manner was very frank and winning, and though you looked young you seemed very staid and self-reliant."

"I wish Uncle Keith had heard that. Did she say any more about me, Aunt Agatha?"

"No, you interrupted us at that point, and the conversation became more general; but, my dear, I must scold you about one thing: how absurd you were to insist on wearing caps. Mrs. Morton was quite embarrassed; she said she would never have mentioned such a thing."

"But I have set my heart on wearing them, Aunt Agatha," I returned, very quickly; "you have no idea how nice I shall look in a neat bib apron over my dark print gown, and a regular cap such as hospital nurses wear. I should be quite disappointed if I did not carry out that part of my programme; the only thing that troubles me is the smallness of my salary—I mean wages. Thirty pounds a year will never make my fortune."

"You cannot ask more with a good conscience, Merle; you have never been out before, and have no experience. Mrs. Morton said herself that her husband had promised to raise it at the end of six months if you proved yourself competent; it is quite as much as a nursery governess's salary."

"Oh, I am not mercenary," I replied, hastily, "and I shall save out of thirty pounds a year. I must keep a nice dress for my home visits and for Sundays, though it is dreadful to think that I shall not always go to church every Sunday until little Joyce is older; that will be a sad deprivation."

"Yes, my poor child, but you must not speak as though this were the only serious drawback; you will find plenty of difficulties in your position; even Mrs. Morton confessed that."

"The world is full of difficulties," I returned, loftily; "there have been thorns and briars ever since Adam's time. Do you remember your favourite fable of the old man and the bundle of sticks, Aunt Agatha? I mean to treat my difficulties in the same way he managed his. I shall break each stick singly."

She smiled approvingly at this, and then, as Uncle Keith's knock reached her ear, she rose quickly and went out of the room.

The moment I was left alone my assumed briskness of manner dropped into the mental dishabille that we wear for our own private use and comfort. Those two had always so much to say to each other that I was sure of at least half an hour's solitude, and in some moods self is the finest company. Yes, I had destroyed my boats, and now my motto must be "Forward!" This afternoon I had pledged myself to a new service—a service of self-renunciation and patient labour, undertaken—yes, I dare to say it—for the welfare of the large sisterhood of waiting and working women. A servant? No, a soldier; for I should be one among the vanguard, who strive to make a breach in the great fortress of conventionality. Not that I feared the word service, considering what Divine lips had said on that subject—"I am among you as one who serveth—" but I knew how the world shrank from such terms.

I have always maintained that half the so-called difficulties of life consist mainly in our dread of other people's opinions; women are especially trammelled by this bondage. They breathe the atmosphere of their own special world, and the chill wind of popular opinion blows coldly over them; like the sensitive plant, they shiver and wither up at a touch. I believe the master minds that achieve great things have created their own atmosphere, else how can they appear so impervious to criticism? How can they carry themselves so calmly, when their contemporaries are sneering round them? We must live above ourselves and each other; there is no other way of getting rid of the shams and disguises of life; and yet how is one who has been born in slavery to be absolutely true? How is an English gentlewoman to shake off the prejudices of caste and declare herself free?

Ah, well! this was the enigma I had set myself to solve. And now the old life—the protected girl's life—was receding from me; the old guards, the old landmarks were to be removed by my own hands. Should I live to repent my rash act, as Aunt Agatha predicted, or should I at some future time, when I looked back upon this wintry day, thank God, humbly and with tears of gratitude, that I had courage given me to see the right and do it, "ad finem fidelis," faithful to the last?

I found those last few days of home-life singularly trying. Indeed, I am not sure that I was not distinctly grateful when the final evening arrived. When one has to perform a painful duty there is no use in lingering over it; and when one is secretly troubled, a spoken and too discursive sympathy only irritates our mental membrane. How could Job, for example, tolerate the sackcloth and ashes, and, worse still, the combative eloquence of his friends?

Aunt Agatha's pathetic looks and pitying words fretted me to the very verge of endurance. I wished she would have been less mindful of my comforts, that she would not have insisted on helping me with my sewing, and loading me with little surprises in the shape of gifts. But for the bitter cold that kept me an unwilling prisoner by the fireside, I would have escaped into my own room to avoid the looks that seemed to follow me everywhere.

But I would not yield to my inward irritability; I hummed a tune; I even sang to myself, as I hemmed my new bib aprons, or quilled the neat border for my cap. Nay, I became recklessly gay the last night, and dressed myself in what I termed my nurse's uniform, a dark-navy blue cambric, and then went down to show myself to Uncle Keith, who was reading aloud the paper to Aunt Agatha. I could see him start as I entered; but Aunt Agatha's first words made me blush, and in a moment I repented my misplaced spirit of fun.

"Why, Merle, how pretty you look! Does not the child look almost pretty, Ezra, though that cap does hide her nice smooth hair? I had no idea that dress would be so becoming." But the rest of Aunt Agatha's speech was lost upon me, for I ran out of the room. Why, they seemed actually to believe that I was play-acting, that my part was a becoming one! Pretty, indeed! And here such a strange revulsion of feeling took possession of me that I absolutely shed a few tears, though none but myself was witness to this humiliating fact.

I did not go downstairs for a long time after that, and then, to my relief, I found Uncle Keith alone; for men are less sharp in some matters than women, and he would never find out that I had been crying, as Aunt Agatha would; but I was a little taken aback when he put down his paper, and asked, in a kind voice, why I had stayed so long in the cold, and if I had not finished my packing.

"Oh, yes," I returned, promptly, "everything was done, and my trunk was only waiting to be strapped down."

"That is right," he said, quite heartily, "always be beforehand with your duties, Merle; your aunt tells me you have made up your mind to leave us in the morning. I should have thought the afternoon or early evening would have been better."

"Oh, no, Uncle Keith," I exclaimed, and then, oddly enough, I began to laugh, and yet the provoking tears would come to my eyes, for a vision of sundry school domestics arriving towards night with their goods and chattels, and the remembrance of their shy faces in the morning light seemed to evoke a sort of dreary mirth; but to my infinite surprise and embarrassment, Uncle Keith patted me on the shoulder as though I were a child.

"There, there; never mind showing a bit of natural feeling that does you credit; your aunt is fretting herself to death over losing you—Hir-rumph; and I do not mind owning that the house will be a trifle dull without you; and, of course, a young creature like you must feel it, too." And with that he took my hands, awkwardly enough, and began warming them in his own, for they were blue with cold. If Aunt Agatha had only seen him doing it, and me, with the babyish tears running down my face.

"Why, look here," continued Uncle Keith, cheerily, with a sort of cricket-like chirp, "we are all as down as possible, just because you are leaving us, and yet you will only be two or three miles away, and any day if you want us we can be with you. Why, there is no difficulty, really; you are trying your little experiment, and I will say you are a brave girl for venturing on such a brave scheme. Well, if it does not answer, here is your home, and your own corner by the fireside, and an old uncle ready to work for you. I can't say more than that, Merle."

"Oh, Uncle Keith," I returned, sobbing remorsefully, "why are you so good to me, when I have always been so ungrateful for your kindness?"

"Nay, nay, we will leave bygones alone," he answered, a little huskily. "I never minded your tandrums, knowing there was a good heart at the bottom. I only wished I was not such a dry old fellow, and that you could have been fonder of me. Perhaps you will understand me better some day, and——" Here he stopped and cleared his throat, and said "hir-rumph" once or twice, and then I felt a thin crackling bit of paper underneath my palm. "It will buy you something useful, my dear," he finished, getting up in a hurry. A five-pound note, and he had lost so much money and had to do without so many comforts! Who can wonder that I jumped up and gave him a penitent hug.

It was long before I slept that night, and my first waking thoughts the next morning were hardly as pleasant as usual. A premonitory symptom of homesickness seized me as I glanced round my little room in the dim, winter light. Aunt Agatha had made it so pretty; but here a certain suspicious moisture stole under my eyelids, and I gave myself a resolute shake, and commenced my toilet in a business-like way that chased away gloomy thoughts.

Never had the little dining-room looked more inviting than when I entered it that morning. One of Uncle Keith's carefully hoarded logs blazed and crackled in the roomy fireplace, a delicious aroma of coffee and smoking ham pervaded the room. Aunt Agatha, in her pretty morning cap, was placing a vase of hothouse flowers some old pupil had sent her in the centre of the table, and the bullfinch was whistling as merrily as ever, while old Tom watched him, sleepily, from the rug. I was rather long warming my hands and stroking his sleek fur, for somehow I could not bring myself to look or speak in quite my ordinary manner; and though Uncle Keith did his best to enliven us by reading out scraps from his newspaper, I am afraid we gave him only a partial attention. When Uncle Keith had bade me a husky good-bye, and had gone to his office, Aunt Agatha and I made a grand feint of being busy. There was very little to do, really, but I considered it incumbent to be in a great state of activity. I am afraid to say how many times I ran up and down stairs for articles that were safely deposited at the bottom of my box. Aunt Agatha put a stop to it at last by taking my hand and putting me forcibly in Uncle Keith's big chair.

"Sit there and keep warm, Merle; the cab will not be here for another half hour; what is the use of our pretending that we are not exceedingly unhappy? My dear, you are leaving us with a sore heart, I can see that, and it only makes me love you all the better. Yes, indeed, Merle," for I was clinging to her now and sobbing softly under my breath; "and however things may turn out, whether this step be a failure or not, I will always say that you are a brave girl, who tried to do her duty."

"Are you sure you think that, Aunt Agatha?"

Then she smiled to herself a little sadly.

"You remind me of the baby Merle who was so anxious to help everyone. I remember you such a little creature, trying to lift the nursery chair, because your mother was tired; and how you dragged it across the room until you were red in the face, and came to me rubbing your little fat hands, and looking so important. 'The chair hurted baby drefful, but it might hurted poor mammy worser:' that was what you said. I think you would still hurt yourself 'drefful' if you could help someone else."

It was nice to hear this. What can be sweeter or less harmful than praise from one we love? It was nice to sit there with Aunt Agatha's soft hand in mine, and be petted. It would be long before I should have a cosy time with her again. It put fresh heart in me somehow; like Jonathan's taste of honey, "it lightened my eyes," so that when the final good-bye came, I could smile as I said it, and carry away an impression of Aunt Agatha's smile too, as she stood on the steps, with Patience behind her, watching until I was out of sight. I am afraid I am different to most young women of my age—more imaginative, and perhaps a little morbid. Many things in everyday life came to me in the guise of symbols or signs—a good-bye, for example. A parting even for a short time always appears to me a faint type of that last solemn parting when we bid good-bye to temporal things. I suppose kind eyes will watch us then, kind hands clasp ours; as we start on that long journey they will bid God help us, as with failing breath and, perhaps, some natural longings for the friends we love, we go out into the great unknown, waiting until a Diviner Guide take us by the hand. "God help you, poor soul," we seem to hear them say, and perhaps we hear the drip of their tears as they say it; but in that other room, who can tell how gently those human drops will be wiped away, in that place where pain and trouble are unknown?

(To be continued.)