It Is Never Too Late to Mend. Charles Reade Reade

see her, for he dared not look back.

      “Bob, loose the dog,” muttered William hastily, in a broken voice.

      The dog was loosed, and ran after George, who, he thought, was only going for a walk. Susan was sinking pale and helpless upon her brother's bosom.

      “Pray, sister,” said gentle William; “pray, sister, as I must.”

      A faint shiver was all the answer; her senses had almost left her.

      When George was a little way up the hill, something ran suddenly against his legs——he started—it was Carlo. He turned and lifted up his hands to Heaven; and William could see that George was blessing him for this. Carlo was more than a dog to poor George at that cruel moment. Soon after that, George and Carlo reached the crown of the hill. George's figure stood alone a moment between them and the sky. He was seen to take his hat off, and raise his hands once more to Heaven, while he looked down upon all he loved and left; and then he turned his sorrowful face again toward that distant land—and they saw him no more!

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

THE world is full of trouble.

       Table of Contents

      While we are young we do not see how true this ancient homely saying is.

      That wonderful dramatic prologue, the first chapter of Job, is but a great condensation of the sorrows that fall like hail upon many a mortal house. Job's black day, like the day of the poetic prophets—the true sacri vates of the ancient world—is a type of a year—a bitter human year. It is terrible how quickly a human landscape all gilded meadow, silver river and blue sky can cloud and darken.

      George Fielding had compared himself this very day to an oak tree, “Even so am I rooted to my native soil.” His fate accepted his simile. The oak of centuries yields to an impalpable antagonist, whose very name stands in proverbs for weakness and insignificance. This thin, light trifle, rendered impetuous by motion, buffets the king of the forest, tears his roots with fury out of the earth, and lays his towering head in the dust; and even so circumstances, none of them singly irresistible, converging to one point, buffeted sore another oak pride of our fields, and, for aught I know, of our whole island—an honest English yeoman; and tore him from his farm, from his house hard by his mother's grave, from the joy of his heart, his Susan, and sent him who had never traveled a hundred miles in his life across a world of waters to keep sheep at the Antipodes. A bereaved and desolate heart went with Farmer Dodd in the gig to Newborough; sad, desolate and stricken hearts remained behind. When two loving hearts are torn bleeding asunder it is a shade better to be the one that is driven away into action, than the bereaved twin that petrifies at home.

      The bustle, the occupation, the active annoyances are some sort of bitter distraction to the unfathomable grief—it is one little shade worse to lie solitary and motionless in the old scenes from which the sunlight is now fled.

      It needed but a look at Susan Merton, as she sat moaning and quivering from head to foot in George's kitchen, to see that she was in no condition to walk back to Grassmere Farm to-night.

      So as she refused—almost violently refused—to stay at “The Grove,” William harnessed one of the farm-horses to a cart and took her home round by the road.

      “It is six miles that way 'stead of three, but then we shan't jolt her going that way,” thought William.

      He walked by the side of the cart in silence.

      She never spoke but once all the journey, and that was about half way, to complain in a sort of hopeless, pitiful tone that she was cold. It was a burning afternoon.

      William took off his coat, and began to tie it round her by means of the sleeves; Susan made a little, silent, peevish and not very rational resistance; William tied it round her by brotherly force.

      They reached her home; when she got out of the cart her eye was fixed, her cheek white, she seemed like one in a dream.

      She went into the house without speaking or looking at William. William was sorry she did not speak to him; however he stood disconsolately by the cart, asking himself what he could do next for her and George. Presently he heard a slight rustle, and it was Susan coming back along the passage. “She has left something in the cart,” thought he, and he began to look in the straw.

      She came like one still in a dream, and put her hand out to William, and it appeared that was what she had come back for.

      William took her hand and pressed it to his bosom a moment. At this Susan gave a hysterical sob or two, and crept away again to her own room.

      What she suffered in that room the first month after George's departure I could detail perhaps as well as any man living; but I will not. There is a degree of anguish one shrinks from intruding upon too familiarly in person; and even on paper the microscope should spare sometimes these beatings of the bared heart. It will be enough if I indicate by-and-by her state, after time and religion and good habits had begun to struggle, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing, against the tide of sorrow. For the present let us draw gently back and leave her, for she is bowed to the earth—fallen on her knees, her head buried in the curtains of her bed; dark, faint and leaden, on the borders of despair—a word often lightly used through ignorance. Heaven keep us all from a single hour, here or hereafter, of the thing the Word stands for; and Heaven comfort all true and loving hearts that read me, when their turn shall come to drain the bitter cup like Susan Merton.

CHAPTER V.

       Table of Contents

      THE moment George Fielding was out of sight, Mr. Meadows went to the public-house, flung himself on his powerful black mare, and rode homeward without a word.

      One strong passion after another swept across his troubled mind. He burned with love, he was sick with jealousy, cold with despondency, and for the first time smarted with remorse. George Fielding was gone, gone of his own accord; but like the flying Parthian he had shot his keenest arrow in the moment of defeat.

      “What the better am I?” thus ran this man's thoughts. “I have opened my own eyes, and Susan seems farther from me than ever now—my heart is like a lump of lead here—I wish I had never been born!—so much for scheming—I would have given a thousand pounds for this, and now I'd give double to be as I was before; I had honest hopes then; now where are they? How lucky it seemed all to go, too. Ah! that is it—'May all your good luck turn to wormwood!' that was his word—his very word—and my good luck is wormwood; so much for lifting a hand against gray hairs, Jew or Gentile. Why did the old heathen provoke me, then? I'd as soon die as live this day. That's right, start at a handful of straw; lie down in it one minute and tremble at the sight of it the next, ye idiot. Oh, Susan! Susan! Why do I think of her? why do I think of her? She loves that man with every fiber of her body. How she clung to him! how she grew to him! And I stood there and looked on it, and did not kill them both. Seen it! I see it now, it is burned into my eyes and my heart forever; I am in hell!—I am in hell!—Hold up, you blundering fool; has the devil got into you, too?—Perdition seize him! May he die and rot before the year's out, ten thousand miles from home! may his ship sink to the bottom of the ——. What right have I to curse the man, as well as drive him across the sea? Curse yourself, John Meadows. They are true lovers, and I have parted them, and looked on and seen their tears. Heaven pity them and forgive me. So he knew of his brother's love for her, after all. Why didn't he speak to me, I wonder, as well as to Will Fielding? The old Jew warned him against me, I'll swear. Why? why because you are a respectable man, John Meadows,