CHARLES KINGSLEY

Alton Locke

Charles Kingsley, English novelist, poet, and clergyman, was born June 12, 1819, and died Jan. 23, 1875. The son of the rector of Chelsea, London, Kingsley went from King's College, London, to Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree in 1842, and becoming rector of Eversley in 1844. He was made one of the Queen's chaplains in 1859, and in 1873 was appointed canon of Westminster. After publishing "Village Sermons" and "The Saint's Tragedy," Kingsley took part with F.D. Maurice in the Christian Socialist movement of 1848, attacking the horrible sweating then rife in the tailoring trade, calling attention to the miserable plight of the agricultural labourer, and the need for sanitary reform in town and country. In "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet," first published in 1849, Kingsley writes from the point of view of the earnest artisan of sixty years ago, and the success of the book, following the author's pamphlet on "Cheap Clothes and Nasty," did much to stimulate social and philanthropic work in London and other great industrial centres. Various editions of the novels of Kingsley are obtainable.

I.--A Sweating Shop

I am a cockney among cockneys.

My earliest recollections are of a suburban street; of his jumble of little shops and little terraces.

My mother was a widow. My father, whom I cannot recollect, was a small retail tradesman in the city. He was unfortunate, and when he died, as many small tradesmen do, of bad debts and a broken heart, he left us beggars, and my mother came down and lived penuriously enough in that suburban street.

My mother moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and that only. She seldom smiled. She never commanded twice without punishing. And yet she kept the strictest watch over our morality.

Sometimes on a Sunday evening the ministers of the Baptist chapel would come in to supper after the meeting. The elder was a silver-haired old man, who loved me; and I loved him, too, for there were always lollipops in his pocket for me and for my only sister Susan. The other was a younger man, tall and dark. He preached a harsher doctrine than his gentler colleague, and was much the greater favourite at the chapel. I hated him; and years later he married my sister.

When I had turned thirteen, my father's brother, who had risen in wealth, and now was the owner of a first-rate grocery business in the City and a pleasant villa at Herne Hill, and had a son preparing for Cambridge, came to visit us. When he had gone my mother told me, very solemnly and slowly, that I was to be sent to a tailor's workrooms the next day.

What could my uncle make me but a tailor--or a shoemaker? A pale, consumptive boy, all forehead and no muscle.

With a beating heart I shambled along by my mother's side to Mr. Smith's shop, in a street off Piccadilly, and here Mr. Smith handed me over to Mr. Jones, the foreman, with instructions to "take the young man upstairs to the workroom."

I stumbled after Mr. Jones up a dark, narrow, iron staircase till we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to work--perhaps through life! A low room, stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The windows were tight-closed to keep out the cold winter air, and the condensed breath ran in streams down the panes.

The foreman turned to one of the men, and said, "Here, Crossthwaite, take this younker and make a tailor of him. Keep him next you, and prick him with your needle if he shirks."

Mechanically, as if in a dream, I sat down, and as the foreman vanished a burst of chatter rose. A tall, sharp-nosed young man bawled in my ear, "I say, young 'un, do you know why we're nearer heaven here than our neighbours?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Acause we're the top of the house in the first place, and next place yer'll die here six months sooner nor if yer worked in the room below. Concentrated essence of man's flesh is this here as you're a-breathing. Cellar workroom we calls Rheumatic Ward, acause of the damp. Ground floor's Fever Ward--your nose'd tell yer why if you opened the back windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward--don't you hear 'um now through the cracks in the boards, apuffing away like a nest of young locomotives? And this here most august and uppercrust cock-loft is the Consumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceeds to expectorate, and then when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering backs of the hairystocracy--

Die, die, die, Away you fly, Your soul is in the sky!

as the hinspired Shakespeare wittily remarks."

And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and pretended to die in a fit of coughing, which last was, alas! no counterfeit, while poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears fall fast upon my knees.

I never told my mother into what pandemonium I had fallen, but from that time my great desire was to get knowledge. I fancied that getting knowledge I should surely get wisdom, and books, I thought, would tell me all I needed.

That was how it was I came to know Sandy Mackaye, whose old book-shop I used to pass on my walk homeward. One evening, as I was reading one of the books on his stall, the old man called me in and asked me abruptly my name, and trade, and family.

I told him all, and confessed my love of books. And Mackaye encouraged me, and taught me Latin, and soon had me to lodge in his old shop, for my mother in her stern religion would not have me at home because I could not believe in the Christianity which I heard preached in the Baptist chapel.

II.--I Move Among the Gentlefolks

The death of our employer threw many of us out of work, for the son who succeeded to the business determined to go ahead with the times, and to that end decided to go in for the "show-trade"; which meant an alteration in the premises, the demolition of the work-rooms, and the giving out of the work to be made up at the men's own homes.

Mackaye would have me stay with him.

"Ye'll just mind the shop, and dust the books whiles," he said.

But this I would not do, for I thought the old man could not afford to keep me in addition to himself. Then he suggested that I should go to Cambridge and see my cousin, with a view to getting the poems published which I had been writing ever since I started tailoring.

"He's bound to it by blude," said Sandy; "and I'm thinking ye'd better try to get a list o' subscribers."

So to Cambridge I went.

It was some time since I had seen my cousin George, and at our last meeting he had taken me to the Dulwich Gallery. It was there that two young ladies, one so beautiful that I was dazzled, and an elderly clergyman, whom my cousin told me was a dean, had spoken to me about the pictures, and that interview marked a turning point in my life. When I got to Cambridge, and had found my cousin's rooms, I was received kindly enough.

"You couldn't have got on at tailoring--much too sharp a fellow for that," he said, on hearing my story. "You ought to be at college, if one could only get you there. Those poems of yours--you must let me have them and look over them, and I dare say I shall be able to persuade the governor to do something with them."

Lord Lynedale came to my cousin's rooms next day--George told me plainly that he made friends with those who would advance him when he was a clergyman--and taking an interest in a self-educated author, bade me bring my poems to the Eagle and ask for Dean Winnstay. Lord Lynedale was to marry Dean Winnstay's niece. When I arrived at the Eagle, the first person I saw was Lillian--for so her father, the dean, called her--the younger lady, my heroine of the Dulwich Gallery, looking more beautiful than ever. I could have fallen down--fool that I was!--and worshipped--what? I could not tell you, for I cannot tell even now.

The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and disposed my papers on his knee. I obeyed him, trembling, my eyes devouring my idol, forgetting why I had come, seeing nothing but her, listening for nothing but the opening of those lips.

"I think I may tell you at once that I am very much surprised and gratified with your poems," said the old gentleman.

"How very fond of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke," said Lillian, "to be able to describe so passionately the longing after them!"

I stammered out something about working-men having very few opportunities of indulging the taste for--I forget what.

"Ah, yes! I dare say it must be a very stupid life. So little opportunity, as he says. What a pity he is a tailor, papa! Such an unimaginative employment! How delightful it would be to send him to college and make him a clergyman!"

Fool that I was! I fancied--what did I not fancy?--never seeing how that very "he" bespoke the indifference--the gulf between us. I was not a man, an equal, but a thing--a subject, who was to be talked over and examined, and made into something like themselves, of their supreme and undeserved benevolence.

"Gently! Gently, fair lady!" said the dean. "We must not be as headlong as some people would kindly wish to be. If this young man really has a proper desire to rise to a higher station, and I find him a fit object to be assisted in that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to go to some training college. Now attend to me, sir! Recollect, if it should be in our power to assist your prospects in life, you must give up, once and for all, the bitter tone against the higher classes which I am sorry to see in your MSS. Next, I think of showing these MSS. to my publisher, to get opinion as to whether they are worth printing just now. Not that it is necessary that you should be a poet. Most active minds write poetry at a certain age. I wrote a good deal, I recollect, myself. But that is no reason for publishing."

At this point Lillian fled the room, to my extreme disgust. But still the old man prosed.

"I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your cousin for the next week. I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious, moral, rising young man, and I only hope that you will follow his good example. At the end of the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to see more of you at my house at D----. Good-morning!"

My cousin and I stayed at D---- long enough for the dean to get a reply from the publishers concerning my poems. They thought that the sale of the book might be greatly facilitated if certain passages of a strong political tendency were omitted; they were somewhat too strong for the present state of the public taste.

On the dean's advice, I weakly consented to have the book emasculated. Next day I returned to town, for Sandy Mackaye had written me a characteristic note telling me that he could deposit any trash I had written in a paper called the "Weekly Warwhoop."

Before I went from D----, my cousin George warned me not to pay so much attention to Miss Lillian if I wished to stand well with Eleanor, the dean's niece, who was to marry Lord Lynedale. He left me suspecting that he had remarked Eleanor's wish to cool my admiration for Lillian, and was willing, for his own purposes, to further it.

III.--Riot and Imprisonment

At last my poems were printed and published, and I enjoyed the sensation of being a real live author. What was more, my book "took" and sold, and was reviewed favourably in journals and newspapers.

It struck me that it would be right to call upon the dean, and so I went to his house off Harley Street. The good old man congratulated me on my success, and I saw Lillian, and sat in a delirium of silent joy. Lord Lynedale had become Lord Ellerton, and I listened to the praises that were sung of the newly married couple--for Eleanor had become Lady Ellerton, and had entered fully into all her husband's magnificent philanthropic schemes--a helpmeet, if not an oracular guide.

After this, I had an invitation to tea in Lillian's own hand, and then came terrible news that Lord Ellerton had been killed by a fall from his horse, and that the dean and Miss Winnstay had left London; and for three years I saw them no more.

What happened in those three years?

Mackaye had warned me not to follow after vanity. He was a Chartist, and with him and Crossthwaite, my old fellow-workman, I was vowed to the Good Cause of the Charter. Now I found that I had fallen under suspicion.

"Can you wonder if our friends suspect you?" said Crossthwaite. "Can you deny that you've been off and on lately between flunkeydom and the Cause, like a donkey between two bundles of hay? Have you not neglected our meetings? Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems? Though Sandy is too kind-hearted to tell you, you have disappointed us both miserably, and there's the long and short of it."

I hid my face in my hands. My conscience told me that I had nothing to answer.

Mackaye, to spare me, went on to talk of the agricultural distress, and Crossthwaite explained that he wanted to send a deputation down to the country to spread the principles of the Charter.

"I will go," I said, starting up. "They shall see I do care for the Cause. Where is the place?"

"About ten miles from D----."

"D----!" My heart sank. If it had been any other spot! But it was too late to retract.

With many instructions from our friends and warnings from Mackaye, I started next day on my journey. I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, and a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker met me, and we walked together across the open down towards a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, of some old British town.

Inside it, some thousand or so of labouring people, all wan and haggard, with many women among them, were swarming restlessly round a single large block of stone.

I made my way to the stone, and listened as speaker after speaker poured out a string of incoherent complaints. Only the intense earnestness gave any force to the speeches.

I noticed that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks, and pitchforks, and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons; and when a fierce man with a squint asked who would be willing to come "and pull the farm about the folks' ears," I felt that now or never was the time for me to speak. If once the spirit of mad, aimless riot broke loose, I had not only no chance of a hearing, but every likelihood of being implicated in deeds which I abhorred.

I sprang on the stone, assured them of the sympathy of the London working-men, and explained the idea of the Charter.

To all which they answered surlily that they did not know anything about politics--that what they wanted was bread.

In vain I went on, more vehement than ever; the only answer was that they wanted bread. "And bread we will have!"

"Go, then!" I cried, losing my self-possession. "Go, and get bread! After all, you have a right to it. There are rights above all laws, and the right to live is one."

I had no time to finish. The murmur swelled into a roar for "Bread! Bread!" And amid yells and execrations, the whole mass poured down the hill, sweeping me away with them. I was shocked and terrified at their threats. I shouted myself hoarse about the duty of honesty; warned them against pillage and violence; but my voice was drowned in the uproar. I felt I had helped to excite them, and dare not, in honour, desert them; and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the worst.

A large mass of farm buildings lay before us, and the mob rushed tumultuously into the yard--just in time to see an old man on horseback gallop hatless away.

"The old rascal's gone! And he'll call up the yeomanry! We must be quick, boys!" shouted one.

The invaders entered the house, and returned, cramming their mouths with bread, and chopping asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were broken open, and the contents were scrambled for, amid immense waste, by the starving wretches.

Soon the yard was a pandemonium, as the more ruffianly part of the mob hurled furniture out of windows, or ran off with anything they could carry. The ricks had been fired, and the food of man, the labour of years, devoured in aimless ruin, when some one shouted: "The yeomanry!" And at that sound a general panic ensued.

I did not care to run. I was utterly disgusted, disappointed, with myself--the people. I just recollect the tramp of the yeomanry horses, and a clear blade gleaming in the air, and after that I recollect nothing--till I awoke and found myself lying on a truckle-bed in D---- gaol, and a warder wrapping my head with wet towels.

Mackaye engaged an old compatriot as attorney at the trial, and I was congratulated on "only getting three years."

The weary time went by. Week after week, month after month, summer after summer, I scored the days off, like a lonely schoolboy, on the pages of a calendar.

Not till I was released did I learn from Sandy Mackaye that my cousin George was the vicar of his church, and that he was about to marry Lillian Winnstay.

IV.--In Exile

Brave old Sandy Mackaye died on the morning of the tenth of April, 1848, the day of the great Chartist demonstration at Kennington Common. Mackaye had predicted failure, and every one of his predictions came true. The people did not rise. Whatever sympathy they had with us, they did not care to show it. The meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal, drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain.

That same night, after wandering dispiritedly in the streets by the river, I was sick with typhus fever.

I know not for how long my dreams and delirium lasted, but I know that at last I sank into a soft, weary, happy sleep.

Then the spell was snapped. My fever and my dreams faded away together, and I woke to the twittering of the sparrows and the scent of the poplars, and found Eleanor, Lady Ellerton, and her uncle sitting by my bed, and with them Crossthwaite's little wife.

I would have spoken, but Eleanor laid her finger on her lips, and taking her uncle's arm, glided from the room.

Slowly, and with relapses into insensibility, I passed, like one who recovers from drowning, through the painful gate of birth into another life.

Crossthwaite and his wife, as they sat by me, tender and careful nurses both, told me in time that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts. "She's an angel out of heaven," he said. "Ah, Alton, she was your true friend all the time, and not that other one, if you had but known it."

I could not rest till I had heard more of Lady Ellerton.

"Why, then, she lives not far off. When her husband died, she came, my wife Katie tells me, and lived for one year down somewhere in the East End, among the needlewomen. And now she's got a large house hereby, with fifty or more in it, all at work together, sharing the earnings among themselves, and putting into their own pockets the profits which would have gone to their tyrants; and she keeps the accounts for them, and gets the goods sold, and manages everything, and reads to them while they work, and teaches them every day."

Crossthwaite went on to speak of Mackaye.

"When old Mackaye's will was read, he had left £400 he'd saved, to be parted between you and me, on condition that we'd go and cool down across the Atlantic, and if it hadn't been for your illness, I'd have been in Texas now."

Often did I see Eleanor in those days of convalescence, but it was not till a month had gone by that I summoned courage to ask after my cousin. Eleanor looked solemnly at me.

"Did you not know it? He is dead--of typhus fever. He died three weeks ago; and not only he, but the servant who brushed his clothes, and the shopman who had a few days before brought him a new coat home."

"How did you learn all this?"

"From Mr. Crossthwaite, who found out that you most probably caught your fever from a house near Blackfriars, and in that house this very coat had been turned out, and had covered a body dead of typhus."

Half unconscious, I stammered Lillian's name inquiringly.

"She is much changed; sorrow and sickness--for she, too, has had the fever--have worn her down. Little remains now of that loveliness----"

"Which I idolised in my folly."

"I tried to turn you from your dream. I knew there was nothing there for your heart to rest upon. I was even angry with you for being the protégé of anyone but myself."

Eleanor bade me go, and I obeyed her, and sailed--and here I am. And she bade me write faithfully the story of my life, and I have done so.

Yes, I have seen the land! Like a purple fringe upon the golden sea. But I shall never reach the land. Weaker and weaker, day by day, with bleeding lungs and failing limbs, I have travelled the ocean paths. The iron has entered too deeply into my soul.

This is an extract from a letter by John Crossthwaite.

"Galveston, Texas, October, 1848.

"And now for my poor friend, whose papers, according to my promise to him, I transmit to you. On the very night on which he seems to have concluded them--an hour after we had made the land--we found him in his cabin, dead, resting peacefully as if he had slumbered."

Hereward the Wake

With, the appearance of "Hereward the Wake," sometimes called "Hereward, the Last of the English," Kingsley brought to a close a remarkable series of works of fiction. Although the story was not published until 1866, the germ of it came to Kingsley, according to Mrs. Kingsley's "Memoirs" of her husband, during the summer of 1848, while on a visit to Crowland Abbey, near Peterborough, with the Rev. F.D. Maurice. As its title implies, the romance is suggested by the life and adventures of Hereward, a Saxon yeoman who flourished about 1070. The story itself perhaps does not move along with the same spirit and vigour that characterise Kingsley's earlier works; it shows, nevertheless, that he had lost none of his cunningness for dramatic situations, nor his vivid powers of visualising scenes and events of the past.

I.--Hereward Seeks His Fortune

In the year of Canute's death was born Hereward, second son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Godiva. At the age of eighteen he was a wild, headstrong, passionate lad, short in stature, but very broad, and his eyes were one blue and one grey. Always in trouble with authority, the climax came when he robbed Herluin, steward of Peterborough, of a sum of sixteen silver pennies collected for the use of the monastery, and for this exploit he was outlawed.

Accordingly, he left his home and went north, to Siward, who was engaged in war with Macbeth, and for aught we know he may have helped to bring great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill. However that may be, he stayed in Scotland with one Gilbert of Ghent, at whose house, among other doughty deeds, single-handed he slew a mighty white bear that escaped from captivity, incidentally saving the life of a pretty little maiden named Alftruda, and earning the hatred of the other men, who had not dared to face the bear.

Finding Scotland a little uncomfortable in consequence, he went to Cornwall, taking with him only his faithful servant Martin, and there at the court of Alef, a Danish kinglet, he had cause to kill a local celebrity, a giant named Ironhook, who was betrothed to Alef's daughter, though much against her will, she being in love with Sigtryg, son of Ranald, king of Waterford.

So Hereward went to Waterford with a ring and a message from the princess, returning later with Sigtryg, only to find that Alef had betrothed his daughter afresh to Hannibal of Marazion, and the wedding ceremony was actually proceeding when they arrived. An ambush was laid for the returning bridal party, Hannibal duly accounted for, and the princess carried off to Waterford, where they

Prepared another wedding With all their hearts so full of glee.

Earl Leofric dead, Hereward determined to take the risk of returning home, to which end he begged two ships from Ranald and set sail. Thrown by a storm on the Flanders coast, he and all his men were like to have been knocked on the head, after the friendly custom of the times, but for the intervention of Arnoul, grandson of Baldwin of Flanders.

Entering his service, Hereward assisted Baldwin in an argument with Eustace of Guisnes, who differed with his lord on the question of payment of certain dues, and so keenly did he reason that the difference of opinion was satisfactorily composed--from Baldwin's point of view.

Anon a war with Holland claimed attention, but in the meantime Hereward had fallen in love with a most beautiful damsel named Torfrida, niece of the Abbot of St. Berlin, reputed a sorceress. Her favour he won in the lists from Sir Ascelin, to whom she had committed it, and upon him she bestowed it, together with her love and a suit of magic armour, through which no sword could pierce.

Then Hereward went off to Holland, and there he encountered Dirk Hammerhand, from whom to take a buffet was never to need another, and bought from him his famous mare Swallow, the price agreed on being the half of what Hereward had offered and a box on the ear.

"Villain!" groaned Dirk as he lay on the ground. "It was I who was to give the buffet, not thou!"

"Art mad?" said Hereward, as he coolly picked up the coins which Dirk had scattered in his fall. "It is the seller's business to take, and the buyer's to give."

In Holland Hereward remained a year, but as, under the terms of a wager made in a boastful mood, he went through the campaign without any armour and without changing his clothes, it was a disreputable looking man with many a wound who returned to Bruges, where, at the court of Adela, a jest was played on Torfrida by the countess, not without the privity of Hereward.

For before all her ladies Adela took her to task for having so long remained unmarried. Then, forming the assembly into a court of love, she asked the ladies what punishment should be meted out. One said one thing, one another.

"Marry her to a fool," said Richilda.

"Too common a misfortune," said the Lady of France. "No," said she. "We will marry her to the first man who enters the castle."

And from her sentence there was no appeal. Married poor Torfrida must be, and to the first man who happened in, be he who he might. And the first man was a ragged beggarman, with whom, when he was introduced into the presence, Torfrida was preparing to deal in her own way with a little knife, be the cost what it might, when she recognised the eye of grey and the eye of blue.

II.--Hereward Encounters Some Old Friends

In the spring it was hey for the war again, whence Hereward returned in November to find himself the father of a daughter and the recipient of letters from Harold of England and William of Normandy, both asking his assistance. Regarding Harold as a usurper, Hereward bluntly told him so. To William his reply was equally decisive, but less uncompromising. "When William is King of all England, Hereward will put his hands between his and be his man."

Whereat William laughed. "It is a fair challenge from a valiant man," he said to the messenger. "The day shall come when I shall claim it."

In Bruges one day Hereward found Gilbert of Ghent, who for reasons of his own had come thither with his ward Alftruda, and mightily disappointed was Gilbert to find him married; for he had a scheme whereby Hereward should marry Alftruda, and he should share her dowry, which was great. Alftruda, too, was mightily displeased, as she seemed one whom Hereward thought the most beautiful he had ever beheld; indeed, for one moment he even forgot Torfrida, and gazed at her spellbound. The only remark she vouchsafed to her former preserver was a whispered "So you could not wait for me," and then passed on to marry Dolfin, Gospatric's eldest son; and Gilbert pursued his way to France to join the Norman.

After that news came thick and fast.

News of Harold Hardraada sailing to England with a mighty host, of how the Gonfanon of St. Peter had come to Rouen, of William of Normandy's preparations at St. Pierre sur Dive, of the Norsemen landing in the Humber. Anon the news of Stamford Bridge and Hardraada's death, and lastly news of Senlac, and the death of the other Harold.

For well-nigh three years after these great happenings Hereward stayed in Flanders, grieving for the woes that had come upon his native land. Not that he sat moping all the time, for some deed of arms was ever on hand to afford distraction; but in the main his thoughts all turned on schemes for freeing England from the French tyrant. But not till Gyda, Harold's widowed mother, came to Baldwin for sanctuary did he take any overt action.

By skilful flattery, not unmixed with truth, she persuaded him that he was the man destined to free England once more; and so one morning he set out alone, accompanied only by Martin Lightfoot and a dozen house-carles, to spy out the land and see what might be done. Within a week he landed at Boston, only to find that Bourne, his home, had been bestowed upon the cook of Gilbert of Ghent, and that at that moment his younger brother's head was decorating the gable of the hall.

And so to Bourne went Hereward by night, and burst in upon the Frenchmen during a drunken carouse: in the morning there were fifteen heads upon the gable to replace the one that he had taken down overnight. Forthwith he returned to Flanders, having bestowed his mother in safety at Crowland Abbey, with a promise to his countrymen of the Fens that he would return to aid them shortly.

III.--Hereward in England

Having settled his affairs in Flanders, in due time he landed once more in the Wash with Torfrida and the child and two shiploads of stout fighters, with whom he went through Fenland raising an army. In the spring came Sweyn with his Danes, all eager for plunder; and Hereward had much ado to prevent them from plundering Crowland Abbey, only succeeding by promising them a richer booty in Peterborough.

So Peterborough they took and sacked, but at Peterborough Hereward found Alftruda, who had left her husband, and rescued her from the Danes during the sack of the minster. And, looking upon her extraordinary beauty, for the second time he forgot Torfrida; but for all that he sent her for safety to old Gilbert of Ghent, who had thrown in his lot with William, and was now at Lincoln. Having done with Peterborough, and later with Stamford, the army marched to Ely and there encamped.

And in Ely a great council was held, after which Sweyn and all his Danes returned home. For as Sweyn truly said, "While William the Frenchman is king by the sword, and Edgar the Englishman king by proclamation of earls and thanes, there seems no room here for Sweyn, nephew of Canute, king of kings." To which Hereward could advance no good reason to prove that there was. Anon came William of Ely, and built a floating bridge a full half-mile in length across the black abyss of mud and reeds that yawned between the island and the mainland. But the bridge was unable to bear the weight of all the French who crowded on to it; the fastenings at the shore-end broke, and the bridge itself overturned, so that all upon it were thrown into the mud and miserably drowned.

Whereon William withdrew his forces to Brandon for a space, and Hereward, being minded to find out for himself what next was purposed against the island, followed him thither, with shorn hair and beard, and disguised as a travelling potter. Anon he came to William's palace with his good mare Swallow, bearing on her back a load of crockery. At the palace he narrowly escaped recognition, being sent to the kitchen, where he got into a quarrel with the scullions. In consequence of which he was haled before William himself, who quickly detected that he was other than he pretended.

"Look you," said William, "you are no common churl--you have fought too well for that; show me your arm."

Hereward drew up his sleeve.

"Potters do not carry sword-scars like these, nor are they tattooed like English thanes. Hold up thy head, man, and let me see thy throat.

"Aha! so I suspected. There is fair ladies' work there. Is not this he who was said to be so like Hereward? Very good. Put him in ward till I come back from hunting, but do him no harm. For were he Hereward himself, I should be right glad to see Hereward safe and sound; my man at last, and earl of all between Humber and the Fens." Whereupon Hereward was clapped into an outhouse, whence he escaped forthwith by the simple device of cutting off the head of the man sent to fetter him, and the good mare Swallow bore him back to Ely in safety.

A little later William came again to Ely and built a stronger bridge, but this the English destroyed by fire, with many of the French on it, setting the reeds aflame on the windward side of it.

Some other scheme must now be thought out, and the one that pleased William most was to send to the monks a proclamation that, unless they submitted within a week, all their lands and manors outside the island would be confiscated. Furthermore, that if Hereward would submit he should have his lands in Bourne, and a free pardon for himself and all his comrades.

To which message Sir Ascelin and Ivo Taillebois, not being over desirous of having Hereward as a neighbour, saw fit to add a clause exempting Torfrida from the amnesty, but that she should be burnt on account of her abominable and notorious sorceries.

When the proclamation arrived, Hereward was away foraging. He came back in hot haste when he heard of it, but not fast enough; for ere they were in sight of the minster tower they were aware of a horse galloping violently towards them through the dusk, and on its back were Torfrida and her daughter. The monks had surrendered the island rather than lose their lands.

The French were already in Ely.

And now is Hereward to the greenwood gone, to be a bold outlaw, and the father of all outlaws, who held those forests for two hundred years from the Fens to the Scottish border, and with some four hundred men he ranged up the Bruneswald, dashing out to the war cry of "A Wake! A Wake!" and laying waste with fire and sword; that is, such towns as were in the hands of Frenchmen.

Now, Hereward had been faithful to Torfrida, a virtue most rare in those days, and he loved her with an overwhelming adoration--as all true men love. And for that very reason he was the more aware that his feeling for Alftruda was strangely like his feeling for Torfrida; and yet strangely different. Wherefore, when it befell that once on a day there came riding to Hereward in the Bruneswald a horseman who handed to him a letter, the sight of Alftruda's signature at the end sent a strange thrill through him. There was naught in it that he should not have read--it was but to tell him that the French were upon him, the posse comitatus of seven counties were rising, and so forth. Continuing, the letter told him that Dolfin had been slain on the Border, and William and Gilbert of Ghent were going to marry her to Ascelin, and that, having saved her twice, she feared that Hereward could not save her a third time; concluding with an entreaty to submit to William, hinting that an opportunity presented itself now which might never recur.

The messenger took back the answer. "Tell your lady that I kiss her hands and feet; that I cannot write, for outlaws carry no pen or ink. But that what she has commanded, that will I perform." Having showed the letter to Torfrida, they agreed that it were well to take precautions, and withdrew into the heart of the forest.

Alftruda's warning was both timely and true, for anon came Ivo Taillebois, who had taken to wife Hereward's niece Lucia, and Abbot Thorold, of Peterborough, who had an old score to wipe off in connection with Hereward's last visit to his abbey, and Sir Ascelin, his nephew, and many another. And they rode gaily through the greenwood, where presently they found Hereward, to their sorrow, for of their number some returned home only after payment of ransom, and others never returned at all. And of the former were Abbot Thorold and Ascelin; and the ransom that Hereward exacted for those two was thirty thousand silver marks. Whereby Hereward was enabled to put a spoke in Ascelin's wheel.

"Eh? How, most courteous victor?" said Sir Ascelin.

"Sir Ascelin is not a very wealthy gentleman?"

Ascelin laughed assent.

"Nudus intravi, nudus exeo--England; and I fear now this mortal life likewise."

"But he looked to his rich uncle the abbot to further a certain marriage project of his. And, of course, neither my friend, Gilbert of Ghent, nor my enemy, William of Normandy, are likely to give away so rich an heiress without some gratification in return."

IV.--The Last of the English

Thereafter they lived for two years in the forest, and neither Torfrida nor Hereward was the better for them. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, and a sick heart is but too apt to be a peevish one. So there were fits of despondency, jars, mutual recriminations. Furthermore, that first daughter was Torfrida's only child, and she knew almost as well as he how hard that weighed on Hereward. In him the race of Leofric, of Godiva, of Earl Oslac, would become extinct, and the girl would marry--whom? Who but some French conqueror, or at best some English outlaw? What wonder if he longed for a son to pass his name down to future generations?

And one day Martin Lightfoot came with another letter to Hereward, which he delivered to Torfrida, who learned from him that it came from Alftruda. She bade him deliver it to Hereward, to whom it was addressed, the which he did; but she noticed that this letter Hereward never mentioned to her, as he had done the former.

A month later Martin came again.

"There is another letter come; it came last night," said he.

"What is that to thee or me? My lord has his state secrets. Is it for us to pry into them? Go."

"I thought--I thought--"

"Go, I say!"

There was a noise of trampling horses outside. The men were arming and saddling, and Hereward went with them, saying that he would be back in three days.

After he had gone she found, close to where his armour had hung, a letter from Alftruda. It congratulated Hereward on having shaken himself free from the fascinations of "that sorceress." It said that all was settled with King William; Hereward was to come to Winchester. She had the king's writ for his safety ready to send to him; the king would receive him as his liegeman. Alftruda would receive him as her husband. Archbishop Lanfranc had made difficulties about the dissolution of his marriage with Torfrida, but gold would do all things at Rome; and so forth.

When this was read, after a night of frenzy, to Crowland Torfrida went under the guidance of Martin, and laid her head upon the knees of the Lady Godiva.

"I am come, as you always told me I should do. But it has been a long way hither, and I am very tired."

And at Crowland remained Martin, donning a lay brother's frock that he might the better serve his mistress. And to Crowland, after three days, came Leofric, the renegade priest, who had been with Hereward in the greenwood, and with him the child.

And so it came that when Hereward returned, as he had said, after three days, he found neither wife nor child, and to Crowland he too went, but came away even as he had gone. But with Torfrida he had no word, nor with Godiva, for both refused him audience.

So Hereward went to Winchester, and with him forty of his knights, and placed his hands between the hands of William, and swore to be his man.

And William walked out of the hall leaning on Hereward's shoulder, at which all the Normans gnashed their teeth with envy.

And thereafter Hereward married Alftruda, after the scruples of Holy Church had been duly set at rest.

Then Hereward lived again at Bourne, and tried to bring forgetfulness by drink--and drink brought boastfulness; for that he had no more the spirit left to do great deeds, he must needs babble of the great deeds which he had done, and hurl insult and defiance at his Norman neighbours. And in the space of three years he had become as intolerable to those same neighbours as they were intolerable to him, and he was fain to keep up at Bourne the same watch and ward that he had kept up in the forest.

And Judith came to Bourne, and besought Alftruda to accompany her to Crowland, where she would visit the tomb of Waltheof, her husband. And Alftruda went with her, taking a goodly company of knights to be her escort, while Hereward remained at Bourne with few to guard it.

And knowing this, to Bourne came Ascelin and Taillebois, Evermue, Raoul de Dol, and many another Norman, and burst in upon Hereward in some such fashion as he had done himself some ten years earlier. "Felons," he shouted, "your king has given me his truce! Is this your French law? Is this your French honour? Come on, traitors all, and get what you can of a naked man; you will buy it dear. Guard my back, Winter!"

And with his constant comrade at his back, he dashed right at the press of knights:

And when his lance did break in hand Full fell enough he smote with brand.

And now he is all wounded, and Winter, who fought at his back, is fallen on his face, and Hereward stands alone within a ring of eleven corpses. A knight rushes in, to make a twelfth, cloven through the helm; but with the blow Hereward's blade snaps short, and he hurls it away as his foes rush in. With his shield he beat out the brains of two, but now Taillebois and Evermue are behind him, and with four lances through his back he falls, to rise no more.

So perished the last of the English.

Hypatia

In "Hypatia," published in 1853, after passing through "Fraser's Magazine," Kingsley turned from social problems in England to life in Egypt in the fifth century, taking the same pains to give the historical facts of the old dying Roman world as he did to describe contemporary events at home. The moral of "Hypatia," according to its author, is that "the sins of these old Egyptians are yours, their errors yours, their doom yours, their deliverance yours. There is nothing new under the sun."

I.--The Laura

In the 413th year of the Christian era, some 300 miles from Alexandria, the young monk Philammon was sitting on the edge of a low range of inland cliffs, crested with drifting sand. Behind him the desert sand waste stretched, lifeless, interminable, reflecting its lurid blare on the horizon of the cloudless vault of blue. Presently he rose and wandered along the cliffs in search of fuel for the monastery from whence he came, for Abbot Pambo's laura at Scetis.

It lay pleasantly enough, that lonely laura, or lane of rude Cyclopean cells, under the perpetual shadow of the southern walls of crags, amid its grove of ancient date-trees. And a simple, happy, gentle life was that of the laura, all portioned out by rules and methods. Each man had food and raiment, shelter on earth, friends and counsellors, living trust in the continual care of Almighty God. Thither had they fled out of cities, out of a rotten, dying world of tyrants and slaves, hypocrites and wantons, to ponder undisturbed on duty and on judgment, on death and eternity.

But to Philammon had come an insatiable craving to know the mysteries of learning, to see the great roaring world of men. He felt he could stay no longer, and on his return he poured out his speech to Abbot Pambo.

"Let me go! I am not discontented with you, but with myself. I knew that obedience is noble, but danger is nobler still. If you have seen the world, why should not I? Cyril and his clergy have not fled from it."

Abbot Pambo sought counsel with the good brother Aufugus, and then bade Philammon follow him.

"And thou wouldst see the world, poor fool? Thou wouldst see the world?" said the old man when the abbot had left them alone together.

"I would convert the world!"

"Thou must know it first. Here I sit, the poor unknown old monk, until I die. And shall I tell thee what that world is like? I was Arsenius, tutor of the emperor. There at Byzantium I saw the world which thou wouldst see, and what I saw thou wilt see. Bishops kissing the feet of parricides. Saints tearing saints in pieces for a word. Falsehood and selfishness, spite and lust, confusion seven times confounded. And thou wouldst go into the world from which I fled?"

"If the harvest be at hand, the Lord needs labourers. Send me, and let that day find me where I long to be, in the forefront of the battle of the Lord."

"The Lord's voice be obeyed. Thou shalt go. Here are letters to Cyril, the patriarch. Thou goest of our free will as well as thine own. The abbot and I have watched thee long, knowing that the Lord had need of such as thee elsewhere. We did but prove thee, to see, by thy readiness to obey, whether thou were fit to rule. Go, and God be with thee. Covet no man's gold or silver. Neither eat flesh nor drink wine, but live as thou hast lived--a Nazarite of the Lord. The papyrus boat lies at the ferry; thou shalt descend in it. When thou hast gone five days' journey downward, ask for the mouth of the canal of Alexandria. Once in the city, any monk will guide thee to the archbishop. Send us news of thy welfare by some holy mouth. Come."

Silently they paced together down the glen to the lonely beach of the great stream. Pambo was there, and with slow and feeble arms he launched the canoe. Philammon flung himself at the old men's feet, and besought their blessing and their forgiveness.

"We have nothing to forgive. Follow thou thine inward call. If it be the flesh, it will avenge itself; if it be of the Spirit, who are we that we should fight against God? Farewell!"

A few minutes more, and the youth and his canoe were lessening down the rapid stream in the golden summer twilight.

II.--Hypatia, Queen of Paganism

On his first morning in Alexandria, Philammon heard praises of Hypatia from a fruit porter who showed him the way to the archbishop's house. Hypatia, according to his guide, was the queen of Alexandria, a very unique and wonderful person, the fountain of classic wisdom.

Later in the day, after he had presented himself to Archbishop Cyril, Philammon learnt from an old priest, and from a fanatical monk named Peter, that the very name of Hypatia was enough to rouse the clergy to a fury of execration. It seemed that Orestes, the Roman governor of the city, although nominally a Christian, was the curse of the Alexandrian Church; and Orestes visited Hypatia, whose lectures on heathen philosophy drew all the educated youth of the place.

Philammon's heart burned to distinguish himself at once. There were no idols now to break, but there was philosophy.

"Why does not some man of God go boldly into the lecture-room of the sorceress, and testify against her?" he asked.

"Do it yourself, if you dare," said Peter. "We have no wish to get our brains knocked out by all the profligate young gentlemen in the city."

"I will do it," said Philammon.

The archbishop gave permission.

"Only promise me two things," he said. "Promise me that, whatever happens, you will not strike the first blow, and that you will not argue with her. Contradict, denounce, defy. But give no reasons. If you do you are lost. She is subtler than the serpent, skilled in all the tricks of logic, and you will became a laughing-stock, and run away in shame."

"Ay," said Peter, bitterly, as he ushered Philammon out. "Go up to Ramoth Gilead and prosper, young fool! Ay, go, and let her convert you. Touch the accursed thing, like Achan, and see if you do not end by having it in your tent."

And with this encouraging sentence the two parted, and Philammon, on the following morning, followed the train of philosophers, students, and fine gentlemen to Hypatia's lecture-room.

Philammon listened to Hypatia in bewilderment, attracted by the beauty of the speaker, the melody of her voice, and the glitter of her rhetoric. As she discoursed on truth a sea of new thoughts and questions came rushing in on his acute Greek intellect at every sentence. A hostile allusion to the Christian Scriptures aroused him, and he cried out, "It is false, blasphemous! The Scriptures cannot lie!"

There was a yell at this. "Turn the monk out!" "Throw the rustic through the window!" cried a dozen young gentlemen. Several of the most valiant began to scramble over the benches up to him, and Philammon was congratulating himself on the near approach of a glorious martyrdom, when Hypatia's voice, calm and silvery, stifled the noise and tumult in a moment.

"Let the youth listen, gentlemen. He is but a monk and a plebeian, and knows no better; he has been taught thus. Let him sit here quietly, and perhaps we may be able to teach him otherwise."

And, without even a change of tone, she continued her lecture.

Philammon sprang up the moment that the spell of her voice was taken off him, and hurried out through the corridor into the street. But he had not gone fifty yards before his friend the fruit porter, breathless with running, told him that Hypatia called for him. "Thereon, her father, commands thee to be at her house--here--to-morrow at the third hour. Hear and obey."

Cyril heard Philammon's story and Hypatia's message with a quiet smile, and then dismissed the youth to an afternoon of labour in the city, commanding him to come for his order in the evening.

But in the evening, Peter, already jealous of Cyril's interest in Philammon, and enraged at any toleration being extended to Hypatia, refused to let the youth enter the archbishop's house, and then struck him full in the face. The blow was intolerable, and in an instant Peter's long legs were sprawling on the pavement, while he bellowed like a bull to all the monks that stood by, "Seize him! The traitor! The heretic! He holds communion with heathens! And he was in Hypatia's lecture-room this morning!"

A rush took place at the youth, but Philammon's blood was up. The ring of monks were baying at him like hounds round a bear, and, against such odds, the struggle would be desperate. He turned and forced his way to the gate, amid a yell of derision which brought every drop of blood in his body into his cheeks.

"Let me leave this court in safety! God knows whether I am a heretic; and the archbishop shall know of your iniquity. I will not cross this threshold again until Cyril himself sends for me to shame you!"

He strode on in his wrath some hundred yards or more before he asked himself where he was going. Gradually one fixed idea began to glimmer through the storm--to see Hypatia and convert her. He had Cyril's leave. It must be right. That would justify him--to bring back, in the fetters of the Gospel, the Queen of Heathendom. Yes, there was that left to live for.

III.--Pandemonium

Philammon did not convert Hypatia, but he became her favourite pupil. And Hypatia, dreaming that the worship of the old gods might be restored, and her philosophy triumph over Christianity, received daily visits from Orestes, the governor, and entered into his plans--to her undoing.

For Orestes had an idea of becoming emperor, and of purchasing the favour of the populace by a show of gladiators. To win Hypatia for himself, he promised to restore the heathen games, and Hypatia, caring nothing for Orestes, but always longing for the revival of the old religion, promised, against her better judgment, to bear him company on the day of the festival, and to sit by his side, and even to acclaim him emperor.

The success of Orestes' plot depended on the success of a bigger rebellion--the attempt of Heraclian, Count of Africa, to conquer Rome. Heraclian had been defeated, and this was known to Cyril, but Orestes was misled by false intelligence, and counted on Heraclian's victory for his own triumph.

When the day of the spectacle arrived, to the horror and surprise of Philammon, Hypatia herself sat by the side of the Roman prefect, while, on the stage before them, a number of Libyan prisoners fought fiercely for their lives, only to be butchered in the end by the professional gladiators.

The sleeping devil in the hearts of the brutalised multitude burst forth at the sight, and with jeers and applause the hired ruffians were urged on to their work of blood.

Then a shameless exhibition of Venus followed, and Philammon could bear no more. For Venus was his sister, long parted from him in childhood, and only in the last few days had he learnt of his relationship to Pelagia, the lady who had consented to act the part of the Goddess of Love, and who was betrothed to Amal, the leader of the band of Goths. He rushed down through the dense mass of spectators, leaped the balustrade into the orchestra below, and tore across to the foot of the stage.

"Pelagia! Sister! My sister! Have mercy on me! On yourself! I will hide you! Save you! We will flee together out of this infernal place! I am your brother! Come!"

She looked at him one moment with wide, wild eyes. The truth flashed on her. And she sprang from the platform into his arms, and then, covering her face with both her hands, sank down among the bloodstained sand.

A yell ran along the vast circle. Philammon was hurried away by the attendants, and Pelagia, her face still hidden by her hands, walked slowly away and vanished among the palms at the back of the stage. A cloud, whether of disgust or disappointment, now hung upon every brow, and there was open murmuring at the cruelty and heathenry of the show. Hypatia was utterly unnerved. Orestes alone rose to the crisis.

In a well-studied oration he declared that Heraclian the African was conquerer of Rome, and a roar of hired applause supported him. Then the prefect of the guards encouraged the city authorities to salute Orestes as emperor, and Hypatia, amid shouts of her aristocratic scholars, rose and knelt before him, writhing inwardly with shame and despair.

At the same moment a monk's voice shouted from the highest tiers in the theatre, "It is false! False! You are tricked! Heraclian was utterly routed; Cyril has known it, every Jew has known it, for a week past. So perish all the enemies of the Lord, caught in their own snare!"

For a minute an awful silence fell on all who heard; and then arose a tumult, which Orestes in vain attempted to subdue. The would-be emperor summoned his guards around him and Hypatia, and made his way out as best he could, while the multitude melted away like snow before the rain, to find every church placarded by Cyril with the particulars of Heraclian's ruin.

Two days later, when Hypatia went to give her farewell lecture to her pupils--for all hope was dead--a mob of monks and their followers seized her, dragged her into the church of the Caesareum, and there, before the great, still figure of Christ, Peter struck her down, and the mob tore her limb from limb.

IV.--Back to the Desert

Philammon had done his best, struggling in vain, to pierce the dense mass of people, and save Hypatia. He had been wedged against a pillar, unable to move, in the great church.

The little fruit porter, alone of all her disciples, fought his way through the mob, only to be thrown down the steps.

When all was over in the church, and Hypatia was dead, and the mob had rushed out, Philammon sank down exhausted outside, and the little porter burst out into a bitter agony of human tears.

"She is with the gods," said the porter at last.

"She is with the God of gods," answered Philammon.

Then he felt that he must arise and flee for his life. He had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it. Arsenius was in the right after all. Home to the desert. But first he would go himself, alone, and find Pelagia, and implore her to flee with him.

Abbot Pambo, as well as Arsenius, had been dead several years; the abbot's place was filled, by his own dying command, by a hermit from the neighbouring deserts, who had made himself famous for many miles round by his extraordinary austerities, his ceaseless prayers, and his loving wisdom.

While still in the prime of his manhood, he was dragged, against his own entreaties, to preside over the laura of Scetis. The elder monks considered it an indignity to be ruled by so young a man; but the monastery throve and grew rapidly under his government. His sweetness, patience, and humility, and, above all, his marvellous understanding of the doubts and temptations of his own generation, soon drew around him all whose sensitiveness or waywardness had made them unmanageable in the neighbouring monasteries.

Never was the young Abbot Philammon heard to speak harshly of any human being, and he stopped, by stern rebuke, any attempt to revile either heretics or heathens.

One thing was noted, that there mingled always with his prayers the names of two women. And when some worthy elder, taking courage from his years, dared to hint kindly that this caused some scandal to the weaker brethren, "It is true," answered he. "Tell my brethren that I pray nightly for two women, both of them young, both of them beautiful; both of them beloved by me more than I love my own soul; and tell them that one of the two was an actress, and the other a heathen." The old monk laid his hand on his mouth and retired.

The remainder of his history it seems better to extract from an unpublished fragment of the lives of the saints.

"Now when the said abbot had ruled the monastery of Scetis seven years with uncommon prudence, he called one morning to him a certain ancient brother, and said: 'Make ready for me the divine elements, that I may consecrate them, and partake thereof with all my brethren, ere I depart hence. For know assuredly that within the seventh day, I shall migrate to the celestial mansions.' And the abbot, having consecrated, distributed among his brethren, reserving only a portion of the most holy bread and wine; and then, having bestowed on them all the kiss of peace, he took the paten and chalice in his hands, and went forth from the monastery towards the desert; whom the whole fraternity followed weeping. And having arrived at the foot of a certain mountain, he stopped, and blessing them, dismissed them, and so ascending, was taken away from their eyes.

"But the eldest brother sent two of the young men to seek their master, who, meeting with a certain Moorish people, learnt that a priest, bearing a paten and chalice, had passed before them a few days before, crossing the desert in the direction of the cave of the holy Amma.

"And they inquiring who this Amma might be, the Moors answered that some twenty years ago there had arrived in those mountains a woman more beautiful than had ever before been seen in that region, who, after distributing among them the rich jewels which she wore, had embraced the hermit's life, and sojourned upon the highest peak of a neighbouring mountain.

"Then the two brothers, determining to proceed, arrived upon the summit of the said mountain.

"There in an open grave, guarded by two lions, lay the body of Philammon, the abbot; and by his side, wrapped in his cloak, the corpse of a woman of exceeding beauty, such as the Moors had described. And by the grave-side stood the paten and the chalice, emptied of their divine contents. Whereupon, filling in the grave with all haste, they returned weeping to the laura.

"Now, before they returned, one of the brethren, searching the cave wherein the holy woman dwelt, found nothing there, saving one bracelet of gold, of large size and strange workmanship, engraven with foreign characters, which no one could decipher.

"And it came to pass years afterwards that certain wandering barbarians of the Vandalic race saw this bracelet in the laura of Scetis, and pretended that it had belonged to a warrior of their tribe."

So be it. Pelagia and Philammon, like the rest, went to their own place; to the only place where such in such days could find rest; to the desert and the hermit's cell.

Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone, whether at Hypatia or Pelagia, Cyril or Philammon.

Two Years Ago

Kingsley's "Two Years Ago" has been said by his son to be the only novel, pure and simple, that ever came from the pen of the famous writer, Published in 1857, it was begun two years earlier while staying at Bideford. At this time Kingsley was deeply interested in the Crimean War, and many thousands of copies of his pamphlet, "Brave Words to Brave Soldiers," were distributed to the army. His military tastes no doubt go a long way towards explaining his doctrine in "Two Years Ago" that the war was to exercise a great regenerating influence in English life. Although the story is in many respects weaker than its predecessors, it nevertheless abounds in brilliant and vivid word-paintings, the descriptions of North Devon scenery being probably unsurpassed in English prose.

I.--Tom Thurnall's Wanderings

To tell my story I must go back sixteen years to the days when the pleasant old town of Whitbury boasted of forty coaches a day, instead of one railway, and set forth how there stood two pleasant houses side by side in its southern suburb.

In one of these two houses lived Mark Armsworth, banker, solicitor, land agent, and justice of the peace. In the other lived Edward Thurnall, esquire, doctor of medicine, and consulting physician of all the countryside. These two men were as brothers, both were honest and kind-hearted men.

Dr. Thurnall was sitting in his study, settled to his microscope, one beautiful October morning, and his son Tom stood gazing out of the bay window.

Tom, who had been brought up in his father's profession, was of that bull-terrier type so common in England; sturdy, middle-sized, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, his face full of shrewdness and good nature, and of humour withal. It was his last day at home; tomorrow he was leaving for Paris.

Presently Mark Armsworth came in, and Tom was seen cantering about the garden with a weakly child of eight in his arms.

"Mark, the boy's heart cannot be in the wrong place while he is so fond of little children."

"If she grows up, doctor, and don't go to join her poor dear mother up there, I don't know that I'd wish her a better husband than your boy."

"It would be a poor enough match for her."

"Tut! She'll have the money, and he the brains. Doctor, that boy'll be a credit to you; he'll make a noise in the world, or I know nothing. And if his fancy holds seven years hence, and he wants still to turn traveller, let him. If he's minded to go round the world, I'll back him to go, somehow, or I'll eat my head, Ned Thurnall!"

So Tom carried Mary about all the morning, and next day went to Paris, and soon became the best pistol shot and billiard-player in the Quartier Latin. Then he went to St. Mumpsimus's Hospital in London, and became the best boxer therein, and captain of the eight-oar, besides winning prizes and certificates without end, and becoming in time the most popular house-surgeon in the hospital; but nothing could keep him permanently at home. Settle down in a country practice he would not. Cost his father a farthing he would not. So he started forth into the wide world with nothing but his wits and his science, an anatomical professor to a new college in some South American republic. Unfortunately, when he got there, he found that the annual revolution had just taken place, and that the party who had founded the college had all been shot. Whereat he whistled, and started off again, no man knew whither.

"Having got round half the world, daddy," he wrote home, "it's hard if I don't get round the other half."

With which he vanished into infinite space, and was only heard of by occasional letters dated from the Rocky Mountains, the Spanish West Indies, Otaheite, Singapore, the Falkland Islands, and all manner of unexpected places, sending home valuable notes, zoological and botanical.

At last when full four years were passed and gone since Tom started for South America, he descended from the box of the day-mail at Whitbury, with a serene and healthful countenance, shouldered his carpet-bag, and started for his father's house.

He walked in, and hung up his hat in the hall, just as if he had come in from a walk. Not finding the old man, he went into Mark Armsworth's, frightening out of her wits a pale, ugly girl of seventeen, whom he discovered to be his old playfellow, Mary. However, she soon recovered her equanimity, and longed to throw her arms round his neck as of old, and was only restrained by the thought that she was grown a great girl now. She called her father, and all the household, and after a while the old doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son.

Tom Thurnall stayed a month at home, and then went to America, whence he wrote home in about six months. Then came a long silence, and then a letter from California; and then letters more regularly from Australia. Sickened with California life, he had crossed the Pacific once more, and was hard at work in the diggings, doctoring and gold-finding by turns.

"A rolling stone gathers no moss," said his father.

"He has the pluck of a hound, and the cunning of a fox," said Mark, "and he'll be a credit to you yet."

So the years slipped on till the autumn of 1853. And then Tom, at the diggings at Ballarat, got a letter from Mary Armsworth.

"Your father is quite well in health, but his eyes have grown much worse, and the doctors are afraid that he has little chance of recovering the sight, at least of the left eye. And something has happened to the railroad in which he had invested so much, and he has given up the old house. He wants you to come home; but my father has entreated him to let you stay. You know, while we are here, he is safe."

Tom walked away slowly into the forest. He felt that the crisis of his life was come.

"I'll stay here and work," he said to himself finally, "till I make a hit or luck runs dry, and then home and settle; and, meanwhile, I'll go down to Melbourne tomorrow, and send the dear old dad two hundred pounds."

And there sprang up in him at once the intensest yearning after his father and the haunts of his boyhood, and the wildest dread that he should never see them.

II.--The Wreck

Half the village of Aberalva is collected on the long sloping point of a cliff. Sailors wrapped in pilot-cloth, oil-skinned coast guardsmen, women with their gowns turned over their heads, while every moment some fresh comer stumbles down the slope and asks, "Where's the wreck?" A shift of wind, a drift of cloud, and the moon flashes out a moment.

"There she is, sir," says Brown, the head-boatman to the coastguard lieutenant.

Some three hundred yards out at sea lies a long, curved, black line, amid the white, wild leaping hills of water. A murmur from the crowd.

"A Liverpool clipper, by the lines of her."

"God help the poor passengers, then!" sobs a woman. "They're past our help."

A quarter of an hour passes.

"God have mercy!" shouts Brown. "She's going!"

The black curve coils up, and then all melts away into the white seething waste.

The coastguard lieutenant settles down in his macintoshes, knowing that his duty is not to leave as long as there is a chance of saving--not a life, for that was past all hope, but a chest of clothes or a stick of timber.

And with the coastguardsmen many sailors stayed. Old Captain Willis stays because Grace Harvey, the village schoolmistress, is there, sitting upon a flat slope of rock, a little apart from the rest, with her face resting on her hands, gazing intently out into the wild waste.

"She's not one of us," says old Willis. "There's no saying what's going on there in her. Maybe she's praying; maybe she sees more than we do, over the sea there."

"Look at her now! What's she after?" Brown replies.

The girl had raised her head, and was pointing toward the sea. Then she sprang to her feet with a scream.

"A man! A man! Save him!"

As she spoke a huge wave rolled in, and out of it struggled, on hands and knees, a human figure. He looked wildly up and around, and lay clinging with outstretched arms over the edge of the rock.

"Save him!" she shrieked again, as twenty men rushed forward--and stopped short. The man was fully thirty yards from them, but between them and him stretched a long, ghastly crack, some ten feet wide, with seething cauldrons within.

Ere they could nerve themselves for action, the wave had come, half-burying the wretched mariner, and tearing across the chasm.

The schoolmistress took one long look, and as the wave retired, rushed after it to the very brink of the chasm, and flung herself on her knees.

"The wave has carried him across the crack, and she's got him!" screamed old Willis. And he sprang upon her, and caught her round the waist.

"Now, if you be men!" shouted he, as the rest hurried down.

"Now, if you be men; before the next wave comes!" shouted big Jan, the fisherman. "Hands together, and make a line!" And he took a grip with one hand of the old man's waistband, and held out the other for who would to seize.

Strong hand after hand was clasped, and strong knee after knee dropped almost to the rock, to meet the coming rush of water.

It came, and surged over the man and the girl, and up to old Willis's throat, and round the knees of Jan and his neighbour; and then followed the returning out-draught, and every limb quivered under the strain; but when the cataract had disappeared, the chain was still unbroken.

"Saved!" and a cheer broke from all lips save those of the girl herself--she was as senseless as he whom she had saved.

Gently they lifted each, and laid them on the rock; and presently the schoolmistress was safe in bed at her mother's house. And the man, weak, but alive, had been carried triumphantly up to the door of Dr. Heale, which having been kicked open, the sailors insisted on carrying him right upstairs, and depositing him on the best spare bed, saying, "If you won't come to your patients, doctor, your patients shall come to you."

The man grumbled when he awoke next morning at being thrown ashore with nothing in the world but an old jersey and a bag of tobacco, two hundred miles short of the port where he hoped to land with £1,500 in his pocket.

To Dr. Heale, and to the Rev. Frank Headley, the curate, who called upon him, he mentioned that his name was Tom Thurnall, F.R.C.S.

Later in the day Tom met the coastguard lieutenant and old Captain Willis on the shore, and the latter introduced him to "Miss Harvey, the young person who saved your life last night."

Tom was struck by the beauty of the girl at once, but after thanking her, said gently, "I wish to tell you something which I do not want publicly talked of, but in which you may help me. I had nearly £1,500 about me when I came ashore last night, sewed in a belt round my waist. It is gone."

Grace turned pale, and her lips quivered. She turned to her mother and Captain Willis.

"Belt! Mother! Uncle! What is this? The gentleman has lost a belt!"

"Dear me! A belt! Well, child, that's not much to grieve over, when the Lord has spared his life," said her mother, somewhat testily.

Grace declared the money should be found, and Tom vowed to himself he would stay in that little Cornish village of Aberalva until he had recovered it.

So after writing to some old friends at St. Mumpsimus's Hospital to send him down some new drugs, and to his father, he settled down as Dr. Heale's assistant; and Dr. Heale being addicted to brandy and water, there was plenty of room for assistance.

III.--The Cholera

Tom Thurnall had made up his mind in June 1854, that the cholera ought to visit Aberalva in the course of the summer, and, of course, tried his best to persuade people to get ready for their ugly visitor; but in vain. The collective ignorance, pride, laziness, and superstition of the little town showed a terrible front to the newcomer.

"Does he think we was all fools afore he came here?"

That was the rallying cry of the enemy, and sanitary reform was thrust out of sight.

But Lord Minchampstead, who owned the neighbouring estates of Pentremochyn, on Mark Armsworth's advice, got Tom to make a report on the sanitary state of his cottages, and then acted on the information.

Frank Headley backed up Tom in his sanitary crusade, the coastguard lieutenant proved an unexpected ally, and Grace Harvey promised that she would do all she could.

Tom wrote up to London and detailed the condition of the place to the General Board of Health, and the Board returned, for answer, that, as soon as cholera broke out in Aberalva, they would send down an inspector.

Then in August it came, and Tom Beer, the fisherman, and one of the finest fellows in the town, was dead after two hours' illness.

Up and down the town the foul fiend sported, now here, now there, fleshing his teeth on every kind of prey. He has taken old Beer's second son, and now clutches at the old man himself; then across the street to Jan Beer, his eldest; but he is driven out from both houses by chloride of lime, and the colony of the Beers has peace awhile. The drunken cobbler dies, of course; but spotless cleanliness and sobriety do not save the mother of seven children, who has been soaking her brick floor daily with water from a poisoned well, defiling where she meant to clean. Youth does not save the buxom lass who has been filling herself with unripe fruit.

And yet sots and fools escape where wise men fall; weakly women, living amid all wretchedness, nurse, unharmed, strong men who have breathed fresh air all day.

Headley and Grace and old Willis, and last, but not least, Tom Thurnall, these and three or four brave women, organised themselves into a band, and commenced at once a visitation from house to house, saving thereby many a life. But within eight-and-forty hours it was as much as they could do to attend to the acute cases.

Grace often longed to die, but knew that she should not die till she had found Tom's belt, and was content to wait.

Tom just thought nothing about death and danger at all, but, always cheerful, always busy, yet never in a hurry, went up and down, seemingly ubiquitous. Sleep he got when he could, and food as often as he could; into the sea he leapt, morning and night, and came out fresher every time; the only person in the town who seemed to grow healthier, and actually happier, as the work went on, in that fearful week.

The battle is over at last, and Tom is in London at the end of September, ready to go to war as medical officer to the Turks. The news of Alma has just arrived.

But he pays a visit to Whitbury first, and there Lord Minchampstead sees him, and his lordship expresses satisfaction at the way Tom conducted the business at Pentremochyn, and offers him a post of queen's messenger in the Crimea, which Tom accepts with profuse thanks.

Before Tom left for the East old Mark Armsworth took him aside, and said, "What do you think of the man who marries my daughter?"

"I should think," quoth Tom, wondering who the happy man could be, "that he would be lucky in possessing such a heart."

"Then be as good as your word, and take her yourself. I've watched you, and you'll make her a good husband."

Tom was too astonished and puzzled to reply. He had never thought that he had found such favour in his old playfellow Mary Armsworth's eyes.

It was a terrible temptation. He knew the plain English of £50,000, and Mark Armsworth's daughter, a good house, a good consulting practice, and, above all, his father to live with him.

And then rose up before his imagination the steadfast eyes of Grace Harvey, and seemed to look through and through his inmost soul, as through a home which belonged of right to her, and where no other woman must dwell, or could dwell; for she was there and he knew it; and knew that, even if he never married till his dying day, he should sell his soul by marrying anyone but her.

So Tom told old Mark it was impossible, because he was in love with another woman. And then just as he was packing up next morning came a note from Mark Armsworth and a cheque for £500, "To Thomas Thurnall, Esq., for behaving like a gentleman." And Tom went Eastward Ho!--two years ago.

IV.--Christmas Eve

It was in September, after Tom had left, that Grace found the missing belt. Her mother had hidden it in a cave on the shore, and Grace, following her there, came upon the hiding-place. The shock of detection brought out the disease against which Mrs. Harvey had taken so many precautions, and within two days the unhappy woman was dead.

Grace sold all her mother's effects, paid off all creditors, and with a few pounds left, vanished from Aberalva. She had written at once to Tom at Whitbury, telling him that his belt and money were safe, but had received no answer; and now she went to Whitbury herself, only to arrive a week after Tom had gone. Mark Armsworth and Mary kept her for a night, and she left Tom's money with the old banker, retaining the belt and then set out Eastward Ho! too, to nurse the wounded in the war; and, if possible, to find Tom and clear her name of all suspicion.

How Grace Harvey worked at Scutari and at Balaclava, there is no need to tell. Why mark her out from the rest, when all did more than nobly? In due time she went home to England--home, but not to Aberalva.

She presented herself one day at Mark Armsworth's house in Whitbury, and begged him to obtain her a place as servant to old Dr. Thurnall. And by the help of Mark, and Mary, Grace Harvey took up her abode in the old man's house; and ere a month was past she was to him a daughter.

Mary loved her--wanted to call her sister; but Grace drew back lovingly, but humbly, from all advances; for she had divined Mary's secret with the quick eye of a woman. She saw how Mary grew daily paler, sadder. Be it so; Mary had a right to him, and she had none.

And where was Tom Thurnall all the while? No man could tell.

Mark inquired; Lord Minchampstead inquired; great personages inquired; but all in vain. A few knew, and told Lord Minchampstead, who told Mark, in confidence, that he had been heard of last in the Circassian Mountains about Christmas 1854; but since then all was blank.

The old man never seemed to regret him; and never mentioned his name after a while. None knew it was because he and Grace never talked of anything else. So they had lived, and so they had waited.

And now it is the blessed Christmas Eve; the light is failing fast; when down the High Street comes Mark's portly bulk. The next minute he has entered the old doctor's house, and is full of the afternoon's run, for he has been out fox-hunting.

The old doctor is confident to-day that his son will return, and Grace reassures him.

"Yes, he is coming soon to us," she half whispers, leaning over the old man's chair. "Or else we are soon going to him. It may mean that, sir. Perhaps it is better that it should."

"It matters little, child, if he be near, as near he is."

And sure enough while Mark is telling of the good run he has had, Tom's fresh voice is heard. Yes! There he was in bodily flesh and blood; thin, sallow, bearded to the eyes, dressed in ragged sailor's clothes.

Grace uttered a long, soft, half laughing cry, full of the delicious agony of sudden relief; and then slipped from the room past the unheeding Tom, who had no eyes but for his father. Straight up to the old man he went, took both his hands, and spoke in the old, cheerful voice.

"Well, my dear old daddy! I'm afraid I've made you very anxious; but it was not my fault; and I knew you would be certain I should come at last, eh?"

"My son! my son!" murmured the old man. "You won't go away again, dear boy? I'm getting old and forgetful; and I don't think I could bear it again, you see."

"Never again, as long as I live, daddy."

Mark Armsworth burst out blubbering like a great boy.

"I said so! I always said so! The devil could not kill him and God wouldn't."

"Tom," said his father presently, "you have not spoken to Grace yet. She is my daughter now, Tom, and has been these twelve months past."

"If she is not, she will be soon," said Tom, quietly. With that he walked straight out of the room to find Grace in the passage.

And Grace lay silent in his arms.

Water-Babies

Charles Kingsley wrote "The Water-Babies, a Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby," under romantic circumstances. Reminded in 1862 of a promise he had made that "Rose, Maurice, and Mary have got their books, the baby must have his," Kingsley produced the story about little Tom, which forms the first chapter in "The Water-Babies," a fairy tale occupying a nook of its own in the literature of fantasy for children. After running serially through "Macmillan's Magazine," the "Water-Babies" was published in book form in 1863, dedicated "To my youngest son, and to all other good little boys." Mrs. Kingsley, in the life of her husband says "that it was perhaps the last book that he wrote with any real ease." The story, with its irresponsible and whimsical humour, throws an altogether delightful light upon the character of Charles Kingsley--clergyman, lecturer, historian, and social reformer.

I.--"I Must be Clean!"

Once upon a time there was a little chimney-sweep, and his name was Tom. He lived in a great town in the North Country where there were plenty of chimneys to sweep and plenty of money for Tom to earn, and his drunken master to spend. He could not read nor write, and did not care to do either; and he never washed himself, for there was no water up the court where he lived. Chimney-sweeping and hunger and beatings, he took all for the way of the world, and when his master let him have a pull at the leavings of his beer Tom was the jolliest boy in the whole town.

One day, Tom's master, Mr. Grimes, was sent for to sweep all the chimneys at Sir John Harthover's mansion, Harthover Place.

At four in the morning they passed through the silent town together and along the peaceful country roads to Sir John's, Mr. Grimes riding the donkey in front and Tom and the brushes walking behind. On the way they came up with an old Irishwoman, limping slowly along and carrying a heavy bundle. She walked along with Tom and asked him many questions about himself, and seemed very sad when he told her that he knew no prayers to say. She told him that she lived far away by the sea; and, how the sea rolled and roared on winter nights and lay still in the bright summer days, for the children to bathe and play in it; and many a story more till Tom longed to go and see the sea and bathe in it likewise.

When, at length, they came to a spring, Grimes got off his donkey, to refresh himself by dipping his head in the water. Because Tom followed his example, his master immediately thrashed him.

"Are you not ashamed of yourself, Thomas Grimes?" said the Irishwoman.

Grimes looked up, startled at her knowing his name; but he answered: "No, nor never was yet," and went on beating Tom.

"True for you. If you ever had been ashamed of yourself, you would have gone into Vendale long ago."

"What do you know about Vendale?" shouted Grimes; but he left off beating Tom.

"I know about Vendale and about you, too, and if you strike that boy again I can tell you what I know."

Grimes seemed quite cowed and got on his donkey without another word.

"Stop!" said the Irishwoman. "I have one more word for you both, for you will see me again. Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be. Remember."

She turned away into a meadow and disappeared. And Tom and Grimes went on their way. When they came to Harthover Place, the housekeeper turned them into a grand room all covered up in sheets of brown paper. Up the chimney went Tom with a kick from his master.

How many chimneys Tom swept I cannot say; but he swept so many that he got tired, and puzzled too, for they ran into one another so that he fairly lost his way in them. At last he came down. But it was the wrong chimney, and he found himself in a room the like of which he had never seen before. The room was all dressed in white: white window-curtains, white bed-curtains, white furniture, and white walls. There was a washhand-stand, with ewers and basins, and soap and brushes and towels; and a large bath full of clean water. What a heap of things--all for washing!

And then he happened to look towards the bed, and there lay the most beautiful little girl Tom had ever seen. He wondered whether all people were as white as she when they were washed. Thinking of this, he tried to rub some of the soot from his own wrist, and thought, perhaps, he might look better himself if he were clean.

And looking round, he suddenly saw a little ugly black figure with bleared eyes and grinning teeth. And behold, it was himself reflected in the mirror. With tears of shame and anger at the contrast he turned to sneak up the chimney and hide. But in his haste he upset the fire-irons.

Up jumped the little white lady with a scream; in rushed her nurse and made a dash at Tom. But out of the window went he and down a tree and away through the garden and the park into the wood beyond, with the gardener, the groom, the dairymaid, Grimes, the steward, the keeper, Sir John, and the Irishwoman all in hot pursuit.

Through the wood rushed Tom until he came to a wall, where his quick wits enabled him to evade his pursuers--except the Irishwoman, who followed him all the way, although he never knew.

At length he stood on a limestone rock which overhung a valley a thousand feet below, and down there he could see a little stream winding in and out, and by the stream a cottage. It was a dangerous descent, but down went Tom without a moment's hesitation; sick and giddy, on he went until at last he dropped on the grass and lay there unconscious. But after a time he roused himself and stumbled on to the cottage.

The old dame of the cottage took pity on him and laid him on a bed of sweet hay. But Tom could not rest, and think of the little white lady, he found his way to the river murmuring. "I must be clean! I must be clean!"

And still he had not seen the Irishwoman; in front of him now, for she had stepped into the river just before Tom, and had changed into the most beautiful of fairies underneath the water. For she was, indeed, the Queen of the Water-Fairies, who were all waiting to receive her the moment she came back from the land-world.

Tom was so hot and longed so to be clean for once that he tumbled as quick as he could into the cool stream. And he had not been in it half a minute before he fell into the quietest, coolest sleep that ever he had in his life. The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep is very simple. It was merely that the fairies took him. In fact, they turned him into a water-baby.

Meanwhile, of course, the chase after Tom had come to an end, although Sir John and his keepers made a second search the next day, for he felt sorry for the little sweep, and was afraid he might have fallen over some of the crags. They found the little fellow's rags by the side of the stream, and they also discovered his body in the water, and buried it over in Vendale churchyard.

II.--A Lonely, Mischievous Water-Baby

Tom was very happy swimming about in the river, although he was now only about four inches long, with a set of external gills, just like those of an eft. There are land-babies, and why not water-babies? Some people tell us that water-babies are contrary to nature, but there are so many things in nature which we don't expect to find that there may as well be water-babies as not.

He was still as mischievous as any land-baby, and made himself a perfect nuisance to the other creatures of the water, teasing them as they went about their work, until they were all afraid of him, and got out of his way, or crept into their shells; so that he had no one to speak to or to play with.

It was from a dragon-fly that he learned some valuable lessons in good conduct. For all his short sight the dragon-fly had noticed a great many interesting things in nature, about which Tom knew nothing, and of which he heard with wonder. One day he might have been eaten by an otter; but, behold, seven little terrier dogs rushed at the otter, and drove her off, much to Tom's relief, though he did not guess that these were really water-fairies sent to protect him.

But before the otter had been headed off she had twitted Tom with being only an eft, and told him he would be eaten by the salmon when they came up from the sea--the great wide sea. Tom himself decided he would go down the stream, and discover what the great wide sea was like.