CHAPTER I. LONG ISLAND CITY, N. Y. HETTYHOS REBECCA'S REASONS FOR MARRYING ANY BODY CLEVERLY 693 6th AVENUE. Circulating Library. downright ruin. The ruin says to you, "Here, come here, I belong to you as much as to any one now; come, and I will tell you stories ;" and tells them to you accordingly; whereas the halfIN one of the narrowest and dullest lanes in dilapidated house says only, "We have secrets the neighborhood of Walham Green lived George here yet." Turner's house was dark red brick, Turner, Esq., Solicitor, of Gray's Inn. His with a high tile roof, perpendicular to the top of house was the largest in the lane, had certainly the garret-windows, and then sloping like another pretensions to be, or to have been, a "gentle--the most hideous of roofs; its door was apman's" house, for there was a coach-house and proached by high steps, and the windows of the stable beside it; and the garden before and be-living-rooms were long and narrow, with thick hind was full three-quarters of an acre. wooden frames and bulgy glass panes; some looking out of window a luxury difficult to indulge in: internally, the furniture was principally of horse-hair and dark mahogany. And Miss Rebecca wished it was burned down. The other houses in the lane were eight-room-were with a knob in the middle, which made ed, semi-detached, brown brick boxes of houses; with long gardens in front, and little back-yards, with a water-butt and a clothes-line behind. They were miserable little places; yet Rebecca | Turner, the youngest daughter, while lolling and In this house she lived. Mr. Turner was in yawning, could envy their inhabitants the pos- religion of the strictest form of Calvinism and Sabsession of the key many times a day. batarianism, forbidding any books except theologFor there was life among them. Those among ical ones on a Sunday, and never allowing a novel them who were thrifty, or well to do, or child- or a book of poetry into the house. There had less, or whose children were good, had pretty been a time once when she had been able to escape plots of flowers even; but this was rare, for there all this; before she had grown up; but that was were too many children; and so, on a washing- all over. She had, unlike her sister, grown up day, the clothes-lines and poles were always up good-looking. The widower, her father, had in the front-garden, stamped hard and black by consulted religious women of the congregation; a hundred little feet. Nay, there was another they had been unanimous; the girl Rebecca was reason against flowers. The landlord of that much too pretty to go out by herself. From that lane did not see his way to new palings; and so, time she was a prisoner, for her father was no if you wanted flowers, you must keep them in re-man to be trifled with. Can one wonder that a pair yourself. Yet there was life enough there. The neighbors the women-dawdled into one another's houses, and gossiped-nay, now and then, but very seldom, quarreled. Once there was a fire; and Miss Turner, the precise elder daughter, seeing them running, hoped it was not their house. "No such luck," said Miss Rebecca, with such singular emphasis that her elder sister let her be. Turner's house, or The Cedars, stood back from the road, in a blotch of mangy grass, and a blotch of mangy, soot-stained gravel, and accounted for its apparent usurped title by one miserable stump and one miserable bough of the tree of Lebanon, which solitary bough pointed meekly and sorrowfully to where its brother had once stood. Behind the house was a bit of kitchen-garden, and a bit of grass unmown for years; which would have been something had it been secluded, but even that was denied you. It ended in a wide, wild waste of market-garden, stretching away acre after acre. The timber on the estate consisted of a broken-down mulberrytree and a large quantity of sooty lilac. The house, though in habitable repair, was in that half state of dilapidation which is sometimes a good deal more melancholy than a really good high-spirited girl, capable of any kind of pleasure, should one very wet Sunday evening, after chapel and a sermon of an hour, as she was going to bed, emphatically wish she was dead, wish she had never been born, and most particularly wish she had been ugly? "If I had been as ugly as you, I could have gone any where I chose, and done as I liked. It was old Mother Russel and Mrs. Soper that put him up to my being pretty. I wish they were dead with all my heart." 66 My dear sister Rebecca! After chapel, too!" said her sister Carry, solemnly. She didn't say she wished that was dead; she only clenched her hands and gasped for breath. That was the last of it all-all the dull misery of her life came before her stronger than ever at the mention of chapel, and she cast herself sobbing on the bed. "I wish somebody would come and marry me," she said; "but there's no chance—no young men ever come near us. I'd marry Jim Akers, I'd marry any body-except that beast," she added, suddenly, with a shrill determination which pointed to a small chance in favor of the beast's prospects, and then by degrees she sobbed herself quiet. 2404 CHAPTER II. MRS. RUSSEL TELLS MISS SOPER SO MUCH AS SHE KNOWS OF THE FAMILY HISTORY. THE lady so disrespectfully mentioned by Miss Rebecca as old Mother Russel, was taking tea with Miss Soper. Mrs. Russel had been, some said, born at. Walham Green; but was certainly, with few exceptions, the oldest inhabitant there; Miss Soper, on the other hand, was a comparatively new-comer. These, it will be remembered, were the two ladies who had given poor Rebecca such very dire offense by persuading her father that she was too pretty to walk out by herself; and, having just talked through some of their other neighbors in whom we are not interested, and having come to the Turners, in whom we are, we will just make bold to listen a little to them. at the top of her voice at him, calling him every bad name she could lay her tongue to; he praying at the top of his voice, to pray the evil spirit out of her, until he'd lose his temper and fixt hold of her, and you'd hear her trying to bite him; and the little children a-screaming, and the maid run away for fear, and all the lane out to listen! Ah, quiet as Turner looks now, he has had something to go through in his time. You may well ask if he had trouble with his wife. "Was she mad?" 66 I mean But I "He never dared say it of her at all events," said Mrs. Russel. 'I'll tell you all I know. She was a lady. Says you, so are we. a real lady. Says you again, so are we. mean a real tip-top carriage lady, you know." So did Miss Soper, who nodded. "And how did she come to marry him, then?" "Well, Turner is a good figure of a man, Mrs. Russel was a fat, heavy woman, whose though it was not that. He had got the manfat, unlike that of some people, had become phys-agement of her affairs when she was left a widically distressing to her, and had made her cross. She had discovered the solace of spirits, but used them moderately. It is possible that she may have been a good-natured woman once, but the continual distress of her earthly load had made her ill-natured. Religion with her meant a slight excitement and society, but little more. Miss Soper was a very different woman-pale, gaunt, black, rigid, with a face like a Romannosed horse. She had been for some years teacher in a small suburban ladies' school, until she came into a little money, when she retired, with no heart and a small annuity, to Walham Green. It was in her capacity as ex-schoolmistress that she voted on Rebecca's not going out alone. She was consulted as an expert, and left no doubt on the minds of Mrs. Russel and Mr. Turner as to her opinion on that score. In her religion she was most deeply sincere, in her duties most rigid; she saw no harm in talking over her neighbors' affairs, and she had a voice like an aged pie-man to do it with. "That's a bright, clever-looking girl, that Rebecca Turner," she said. "Quick to learn." "A deal too quick," said Mrs. Russel. "She seems quicker than her sister." "Caroline is a real good pious girl, and takes after her father." "Rebecca don't, then?" said Miss Soper. "No, Rebecca is another sort of girl. She looks so like her mother sometimes that I shake like a mould of jelly" (which was an apt illustration). "She takes after her mother; and Turner is a man who washes his dirty linen at home, but I misdoubt he has trouble with her If he hasn't, he will." now. "Did he have trouble with her mother, then?" "Do you mean to say you have never heard?" said Mrs. Russel, in solemn staccato. "How could I? I had not come to the Green. Do tell," said Miss Soper, eagerly. ow, and he managed them well enough to excite her gratitude; and she had been ill-used, and her friends had dropped away, and I fancy she thought she might do worse, and so she had him; and a bad job it was. But if a good sound Protestant marries a Papist and a worldling with his eyes open he must take the consequences." "A Papist!" almost screeched Miss Soper. "Mr. Turner marry a Papist!" "Well, she had a fine penny of money, mind you, and she was a thorough worldling, and careless of religion, and Turner thought he could convert her. We used to have her name down for conversion in the general prayer ever so long until she found it out, and had words with him. But it all came to nothing; she laughed him to scorn when he spoke to her about it, all of which he has told us at experience-meetings; and she found that out, and got furious, and things went on from bad to worse until Caroline being born put things square for a time. But after that Rebecca was born, Mrs. Turner fell ill, and asked for a priest to come to her, she having, of course, gone to mass on her own accord; and he made answer that no priest should cross his doors, not if she was on her death-bed. That was the worst scene she made him, for she started up in a shawl and petticoat to run all the way to Cadogan Terrace by Sloane Street, and had to be fetched back by force. Well, then nothing went right any way, and she seemed to lose head. She accused him of taking her money, and insisted that one of the children should be brought up a Papist, and used to smuggle off Rebecca continually to mass and confession, and such things, and some say got the child baptized into the Romish faith." "It is extremely probable," said Miss Soper; "and how did it end?" "It was after a worse row than usual," said Mrs. Russel, lowering her voice again. "It was Mrs. Russel took her cup in her hand, and the worst and the last, and there had been viohaving stirred her tea, used the spoon for rhetor-lence-it all came out at the inquest-and she ical purposes, and solemnly and immediately be- went out somewhere, some said to the public house, but I never saw nothing of that, and others will confirm me; and when she came back he had gone away with little Rebecca, leaving word that she would never see the child no more, for that he had taken it away to save its soul." gan. "There's never been murder done in that house, my dear, for there's many a slip between cup and lip, but it's been hollered often enough. Awful nights have been in that house, my dear, between Turner and his wife," she continued, drawing closer and speaking low; "she yelling "He was a fool to do that," said Miss Soper." Mrs. Russel eyed her curiously. "You're a sensible woman, ma'am," she said; "though I doubt if we are right religiously, seeing that he saved it from Popery. But," added the vulgar old gossip, flushing up scarlet, “if my man had come between me and my children in the old times I'd have But as I was saying, when she hears that, she outs into the lane and carries on to that extent that Mrs. Akin (the washerwoman, you know, my dear soul, Jim Akin's, the coster-monger's, mother, whose mother had been with the barrer for years herself) says she never heard any thing like it. There was nothing low in it-no vulgar language nor swearing-but just downright awful cursing, like that in the Bible; and it frightened all that heard it. Then she went into the house and up stairs; and the maid had run away. And when he came home the neighbors told him what they'd seen, and how the child (that's Caroline now) had been a-crying all the afternoon. And when they burst in there she was a-lying stone-dead at the bottom of the stairs." "What did the inquest say?" 66 Nothing. Whether she fell down, or chucked herself down, there was nothing to show. The child only said that it had found its mamma asleep on her face, and that it wanted its tea, and couldn't make her wake. Well, ma'am, and that's the history of that little mystery." "I'll go and see 'em," said Miss Soper, emphatically. "What time do they have their tea?" CHAPTER III. REBECCA'S LOVER, AND WHAT SHE THOUGHT OF HIM. MR. TURNER, a man of about sixty, must have been at one time handsome, but now, although his features were good, his complexion was gone; and the continual habit, persisted in for so many years, of self-contemplation, had left an expression which was not very pleasant on his face; a look which an ill-natured person might say was something between a scowl and a sneer, as though he was continually saying, "I am George Turner, that is who I am, and who the deuce are you?" His conversation was, like that of many other men of the same standing, entirely about himself; arguing, one would fancy, from a certain feeling of being wanting in the more ornamental business of life, and from a determination that the hearer should know what an exceeding fine fellow he was. Partly from religion, and partly from temper, he had been very careful to banish every thing graceful from his house, so that there should not be a snare in it. So he had sternly refused poor Rebecca's, who craved for such things, petitions for cocks and hens, for rabbits-nay, even for one poor little tiny bird. However, in an old house, where there are rats and mice, you must have a cat; and you'll not hinder a cat having kittens. And so it came about that Rebecca had two kittens to play with; and her father, letting himself into the house at half past four on a winter's afternoon, found Rebecca, perfectly happy, lying in the dark before the fire, playing with her two kittens, one of which had a blue ribbon round its neck, and the other a red. "Get up," he said, "and don't lie there like a hoyden. Get up, and make yourself tidy. There are people coming to tea. Rebecca never answered; that would only make her father colorably and openly angry, and she would have had the worst of it. But by long practice in this happy household she had got the trick of annoying him, and yet of keeping within the law. "Pretty little darlings!" she said, with effusion, as she rose with a cat on each arm. "I wonder if you have immortal souls, dears; if so, they don't seem to be much trouble to you.” 66 'Don't talk such nonsense as that. People would say that you were mad, if they heard you. For a grown girl to be kissing cats, too, and a marriageable girl! Bah!" "Who's coming to tea, pa?" "Mrs. Russel and Miss Soper." "Daniel Lambert and the Old Dragoon. Pa, I wonder if Miss Soper was regularly discharged from the army, or whether she deserted. If I was her I should shave off that mustache, and let my whiskers grow. Who else is coming?" "Mr. Morley," said Turner, without any open manifestation of anger, for certain reasons; "and also, I believe, Mr. Hagbut." "Oh, pa!" "I am at a loss to conceive why you should make an exclamation at Mr. Hagbut's name,' said Turner. "Are you?" said Rebecca. "I am not. If you were as young and pretty as I am, how would you like such a-minister of the gospel, setting down beside you the whole evening, quoting texts of Scripture to you which bore on the subject of love and marriage. If he wants to marry me, why don't he say so like a man-and get his answer?" "I should feel highly flattered by Mr. Hagbut's attentions," said Mr. Turner; and, moreover, I should reflect that his suit was backed by your father. Only, mind one thing, Rebeccayou refuse that good man at your peril. I insist on the match, mind that. You dare refuse him, that is all." Not one word did Rebecca say to this, but left her father secretly fuming with anger. She went up stairs to her room, and began her toilet very slowly and very thoughtfully, and as she thought the face grew darker and darker, until the muscles in it began to quiver, and there grew upon it a look of deep horror and deep loathing terrible to see. She arose stealthily, and went with her candle to a box in the corner of the room, and secretly taking out a book began reading with shaking hands; the book came open easily at the place she wanted, and she was deep in the passage when she was utterly scared by her sister's voice in the room, crying petulantly, "Why, Rebecca, you'll never be ready in time. Mr. Hagbut's come already. "I'll be ready directly, dear Carry; don't tell on me. It is only one of Sir Walter Scott's novels, and it is so interesting at the end." "So it seems," said matter-of-fact Carry.. "Why, you are as pale as a ghost, and all of a tremble? Now I can see why the ministers forbid us to read such godless rant." One of Sir Walter Scott's novels, she said. Could it have been the "Bride of Lammermoor?" Heaven forbid ! Although she was going into company which she disliked, and although there was at least one man there whom she hated, and whom she wished to hate her, yet in the irresistible instinct of beauty she dressed herself prettily, and coming calmly and proudly into the room with a bow, sat down by her sister. Mrs. Russel and Miss Soper were there, and two ministers, one of whom she had never seen before, but one of them was only known too well. He was a very large, stout man, with a head the color and shape of an addled egg, with the small end uppermost. He had a furze of gray hair, and whiskers shaved close in the middle of his cheeks; he had large pale blue, almost opaque eyes, very large ears, and a continual smile on a mouth made for talking. Probably black dress clothes and a white tie was as becoming a dress as exists-on certain people; on him they were hideous; his collarless cravat was a wisp, the lapels of his coat were like elephants' ears, and the coat itself was perfectly straight down the back, so as to set off his great stomach better in profile. His cuffs nearly concealed his great fat hands, and his short, ill-made trowsers scarce met his clumsy shoes. The whole man was a protest against beauty or grace of life in any way; to Rebecca he was loathsome, hideous beyond measure; and she was to marry himunless she herself, alone and unaided, could fight a battle against all her little world. Poor thing! it was hard for her, it was, indeed. Forgive her desperation. Mrs. This horrible great moon-calf rose from his chair when she entered, and with a leering conscious smile on his face stood there, following her with his pale eyes, until she sat down. Russel looked "arch"'—a horrible thing for any body to do off the stage of a third-rate theatre, still more horrible in the case of a fat old woman. Miss Soper, au fait at things of this kind, moved from her seat and gave it up to the Rev. Mr. Hagbut, so that he now sat next poor shuddering Rebecca. "The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak," said he, smiling. "I don't think that the spirit was willing,' she answered. 66 "I hate sermons. This was very confusing, but under these circumstances one must say something. "The prayer, or the hymn, pleases you better, doubtless ?" "I hate the prayer worse than the sermon, but I like some of the hymns-nay, most of them. I should like the service to be all music, light, and ornament, as it was at the Catholic church where I used to go with my poor mother.' "Vanity, my dear daughter, vanity." "I don't see any particular vanity about it. Why, when you are praying extempore before a large congregation, and take pains, you are thinking all the time how it will succeed with the congregation. I have watched you." Really it was very uphill work with this young lady; but see how beautiful she was, and besides she would have a little property. Mr. Hagbut drew nearer still to the shrinking hot form that held the ice-cold heart. "Are you cold, dear Miss Turner?" he drawled. "No, I am uncomfortably hot," she snapped out. "I think that I am not well. I think that I shall go nearer the door, if you will let me pass." He was forced to do so, and with a great gasp she went and sat beside Mr. Morley and her father: her father seeing the Rev. Hagbut, his future son-in-law, looking exceedingly foolish, went to his assistance, and bound up the cracks in that savory vessel, leaving Rebecca sitting with Mr. Morley. 66 Now Rebecca knew Mr. Morley to be a Dissenting minister, as her father described him, of great unction;" consequently she regarded him in the light of her natural enemy, and was prepared to do battle with him on the very smallest provocation. She could not, however, avoid confessing that he was a considerable improvement on that other horrible fat man with a head like an egg. "Will you ask a blessing, Mr. Hagbut?" Smooth came the easy words from that mouth, Indeed, she might have said, a very great imin the well-practiced, whining falsetto; dextrous-provement, indeed. Mr. Morley was a man with ly quoted were the well-known texts of Scripture, so dextrously that he brought in the Marriage in Cana, and made through that an allusion to earthly marriages. "He has not asked me yet," she thought; “and if I am firm they can't kill me. His style of talking was what one may be allowed to call spondaic; that is, he lengthened every syllable, and even when he came across one which was unavoidably short he lengthened it as much as possible. Then again he put the emphasis of his sentence just where no one else would have put it, and on the whole was one of the most painfully labored masses of artificiality and affectation ever seen. That the man may have been a good man I do not deny; I have only to do with his effect on Rebecca. He gave himself, if not the airs of an accepted lover, at least of a man who was sure of his game. "You heard my discourse the last Sabbath evening, Miss Turner?" he said, bringing his head as near hers as he could. "I heard it," said Rebecca; "but I did not attend to it." a well-shaped head, good and singularly amiable features, hair but slightly grizzled, curling all over his head, a fine deep brown complexion, and a beautiful set of regular white teeth, which contrasted well with the complexion, and which were pretty frequently shown by a manly, kindly smile. He looked a man every inch of him, although his face was gentle even to softness. He had been watching Rebecca and her troubles. He had been brought here as the friend of Mr. Hagbut, he having to-day preached a sermon for him. He had, of course, been welcomed heartily by Mr. Turner, who in the openness of his heart toward a minister and a friend of Mr. Hagbut, had let him know the high honor which was in store for Rebecca. So Mr. Morley had watched while talking to Mr. Turner; and he had seen brutish, low, calculating admiration on the one side, and on the other a depth of loathing aversion which was terrible to him. He said to Mr. Turner, 66 66 They will be happy, you think?" Any woman would be happy with such a man of God as Mr. Hagbut." And when he had said it he scorned himself. Yet for mere decen |