the divers emotions excited by very unexpected occurrence may be better evidenced by the manner in which the evening of that day was spent in various houses in carlingford than by any other means.

first, in the little house of the christians. it was a cottage on the other side of grove street—a homely little box of two stories, with a morsel of garden in front, and some vegetables behind. there, on that spring afternoon, matters{600} did not look cheerful. the little sitting-room was deserted—the fire had died out—the hearth was unswept—the room in a litter. bessie’s pupils had not come to-day. they had got holiday three days ago, in happy anticipation of being dismissed for ever; and only their young teacher’s prudential remonstrances had prevented poor mrs christian from making a little speech to them, and telling them all that henceforward miss christian would have other occupations, but would always be fond of them, and glad to see her little friends in their new house. to make that speech would have delighted mrs christian’s heart. she had managed, however, to convey the meaning of it by many a fatal hint and allusion. in this work of self-destruction the poor woman had been only too successful; for already the mothers of the little girls had begun to inquire into the terms and capabilities of other teachers, and the foundations of bessie’s little empire were shaken and tottering, though fortunately they did not know of it to-day. everything was very cold, dismal, and deserted in that little parlour. faint sounds overhead were the only sounds audible in the house; sometimes a foot moving over the creaky boards: now and then a groan. upstairs there were two rooms; one a close, curtained, fire-lighted, stifling, invalid’s room. there was bessie sitting listlessly by a table, upon which were the familiar tea-things, which conveyed no comfort to-night; and there was her paralytic father sitting helpless, sometimes shaking his head, sometimes grumbling out faint half-articulate words, sighs, and exclamations. “dear, dear! ah! well! that’s what it has come to!” said the sick man, hushed by long habit into a sort of spectatorship, and feeling even so great a disappointment rather by way of sympathy than personal emotion. bessie sat listless by, feeling a vague exasperation at this languid running accompaniment to her thoughts. the future had been blotted out suddenly, and at a blow, from bessie’s eyes. she could see nothing before her—nothing but this dark, monotonous, aching present moment, pervaded by the dropping sounds of that faint, half-articulate voice. other scene was not to dawn upon her youth. it was hard for poor bessie. she sat silent in the stifling room, with the bed and its hangings between her and the window, and the fire scorching her cheek. she could neither cry, nor scold, nor blame anybody. none of the resources of despair were possible to her. she knew it would have to go on again all the same, and that now things never would be any better. she could not run away from the prospect before her. it was not so much the continuance of poverty, of labour, of all the dreadful pinches of thrift; it was the end of possibility—the knowledge that now there was no longer anything to expect.

on the other side of the passage bessie’s own sleeping-room was inhabited by a restless fever of disappointment and despair and hope. there was mrs christian lying on her daughter’s bed. the poor woman was half-crazed with the whirl of passion in her brain. that intolerable sense of having been duped and deceived, of actually having a hand in the overthrow of all her own hopes, aggravated her natural disappointment into frenzy. when she recollected her state of exultation that morning, her confident intentions—when they were to remove, what changes were to be in their manner of life, even what house they were to occupy—it is not wonderful if the veins swelled in her poor head, and all her pulses throbbed with the misery of the contrast. but with all this there mingled a vindictive personal feeling still more exciting. nancy, whom she knew more of than any one else did—her close, secret, unwavering enemy; and even the innocent lawyer, whom, in her present condition of mind, she could not{601} believe not to have known of this dreadful cheat practised upon her, or not to care for that prize which, now that it was lost, seemed to her worth everything that was precious in life. the poor creature lay goading herself into madness with thoughts of how she would be revenged upon these enemies; how she would watch, and track out, and reveal their hidden plots against her; how she would triumph over and crush them. all these half-frenzied cogitations were secretly pervaded—a still more maddening exasperation—by a consciousness of her own impotence. the evening came creeping in, growing dark around her—silence fell over the little house, where nobody moved or spoke, and where all the world, the heavens, and the earth, seemed changed since this morning; but the wonder was how that silence could contain her—all palpitating with pangs and plans, a bleeding, infuriated, wounded creature show no sign of the frenzy it covered. she had lain down to rest, as the saying is. how many women are there who go thus to a voluntary crucifixion and torture by lying down to rest! mrs christian lay with her dry eyes blazing through the darkness, no more able to sleep than she was to do all that her burning fancy described to her. she was a hot-blooded celtic woman, of that primitive island which has preserved her name. if she could have sought sympathy, here was nobody to bestow it. not the heart which that poor ghost of manhood in the next room had lost out of his chilled bewildered bosom; not bessie’s steadfast, unexcited spirit. the poor soul saved herself from going wild by thinking of her boy; holding out her passionate arms to him thousands of miles away; setting him forth as the deliverer, with all the absolute folly of love and passion. he would come home and have justice done to his mother. never fancy was more madly unreasonable; but it saved her from some of the effects of the agitation in her heart.

on the other side of the road, at the same hour, nancy prepared her tea in the house of which she was temporary mistress. there could not be any doubt, to look at her now, that this tall, dry, withered figure, and face full of characteristic wrinkles, was like mrs christian. the resemblance had been noticed by many. and as old mrs thomson had not hesitated to avow that her faithful servant was connected with her by some distant bond of relationship, it was not difficult to imagine that these two were really related, though both denied it strenuously. nancy had a friend with her to tea. they were in the cheerful kitchen, which had a window to the garden, and a window in the side wall of the house, by which a glimpse of the street might be obtained through the garden gate. the firelight shone pleasantly through the cheerful apartment. all the peculiar ornaments of a kitchen—the covers, the crockery, the polished sparkles of shining pewter and brass—adorned the walls. through it all went nancy in her new black dress and ample snowy-white apron. she carried her head high, and moved with a certain rhythmical elation. it is surely an unphilosophical conclusion that there is no real enjoyment in wickedness. nancy had no uneasiness in her triumph. the more she realised what her victory must have cost her opponent, the more entire grew her satisfaction. remorse might have mixed with her exultation had she had any pity in her, but she had not; and, in consequence, it was with unalloyed pleasure that she contemplated the overthrow of her adversary. perhaps the very satisfaction of a good man in a good action is inferior to the absolute satisfaction with which, by times, a bad man is permitted to contemplate the issue of his wickedness. nancy marched about her kitchen,{602} preparing her tea with an enjoyment which possibly would not have attended a benevolent exercise of her powers. possibly she could almost have painted to herself, line by line, the dark tableau of that twilight room where mrs christian lay, driving herself crazy with wild thoughts. she did the gloom of the picture full justice. if she have peeped into the window and seen it with her own eyes, she would have enjoyed the sight.

“i’ll make mr brown keep me in the house,” said nancy, sitting down at a table piled with good things, and which looked an embodiment of kitchen luxury and comfort, “and get me a girl. it was what missis always meant to do. i’ll show it to him out of the will that i was left in trust to be made commforable. and in course of nature her things all comes to me. it’s a deal easier to deal with a single gentleman than if there was a lady poking her nose about into everything. thank my stars, upstarts such like as them christians shall never lord it over me; and now i have more of my own way, i’ll be glad to see you of an evening whenever you can commforable. bring a bit of work, and we’ll have a quiet chat. i consider myself settled for life.”

the young surgeon’s house was at the other end of the town; it was close to a region of half-built streets—for carlingford was a prosperous town—where successive colonies were settling, where houses were damp and drainage incomplete, and a good practice to be had with pains. the house had a genteel front to the road, a lamp over the door, and a little surgery round the corner, where it gave forth the sheen of its red and blue bottles across a whole half-finished district. mr rider had come home tired, unaccountably tired. he had kicked off one boot, and taken a cigar from his case and forgotten to light it. he sat plunged in his easy-chair in a drear brown study—a brown study inaccessible to the solaces which generally make such states of mind endurable. his cigar went astray among the confused properties of his writing-table; the book he had been reading last night lay rejected in the farthest corner of the room. he was insensible to the charms of dressing-gown and slippers. on the whole, he was in a very melancholy, sullen, not to say savage mood. he sat and gazed fiercely into the fire, chewing the cud of fancies, in which very little of the sweet seemed to mingle with the bitter. he had been the medical attendant of mrs thomson of grove street, and had assisted this afternoon at her funeral, and you might have supposed he had hastened the advent of that melancholy day, had you seen his face.

on the whole, it was a hard dilemma in which the poor young man found himself. he, too, like nancy, kept realising the interior of that other little house in grove street. both of them, by dint of that acquaintance with their neighbours which everybody has in a small community, came to a moderately correct guess at what was going on there. young mr rider sat in heavy thought, sometimes bursting out into violent gestures which fortunately nobody witnessed; sometimes uttering sighs which all but blew out his lights—impatient, urgent sighs, not of melancholy but of anger and resistance—the sighs of a young man who found circumstances intolerable, and yet was obliged to confess, with sore mortification and humbling, that he could not mend them, and behoved to endure. the visions that kept gliding across his eyes drove him half as wild as poor mrs christian: one moment a pretty young wife, all the new house wanted to make it fully tenable; but he had scarcely brought her across the threshold when a ghastly figure in a chair was carried over it after her, upstairs into the bridal apartments, and another woman, soured and drawn{603} awry by pressure of poverty, constitutionally shabby, vehement, and high-tempered, pervaded the new habitation. no use saying pshaw! and pah!—no use swearing bigger oaths,—no use pitching unoffending books into the corners, or breathing out those short deep breaths of desperation. this was in reality the state of affairs. midnight did not change the aspect it had worn in the morning. pondering all the night through would bring no light on the subject. nothing could change those intolerable circumstances. the poor young surgeon threw his coat off in the heat and urgency of his thoughts, and pitched it from him like the books. there was no comfort or solace to be found in all that world of fancy. only this morning sweeter dreams had filled this disordered apartment. in imagination, he had helped his bessie to minister to the comfort of the poor old sick parents in mrs thomson’s house. now he knitted his brows desperately over it, but could find no outlet. unless some good fairy sent him a patient in the middle of the night, the chances were that the morning would find him pursuing that same interminable brown study of which nothing could come.

mr brown’s house was an old house in the middle of the town. the offices were in the lower floor, occupying one side of the building. on the other side of the wide old-fashioned hall was his dining-room. there he sat all by himself upon this agitating night. it was a large, lofty, barely-furnished room, with wainscoted walls, and curious stiff panelling, and a high mantel-shelf which he, though a tall man, could scarcely reach with his arm. it was dimly lighted, as well as barely furnished—altogether an inhuman, desert place—the poorest though the grandest of all we have yet looked into in carlingford. mr brown was not sensible of its inhospitable aspect; he was used to it, and that was enough. it occurred to him as little to criticise his house as to criticise his manners. thus they were, and thus they would continue; at least he had always believed so till to-night.

he sat in his easy-chair with his feet on the fender, and a little table at his elbow with his wine. as long as there was anything in his glass he sipped it by habit, without being aware of what he was doing; but when the glass was empty, though he had two or three times raised it empty to his lips, he was too much absorbed in his thoughts to replenish it. he was not by any means a handsome man; and he was five-and-forty or thereabouts, and had a habit of making portentous faces, when anyway specially engaged in thought; so that, on the whole, it was not a highly attractive or interesting figure which reclined back in the crimson chair, and stretched its slippered feet to the fire, sole inmate of the dim, spacious, vacant room. he was thinking over his new position with profound disgust and perplexity. nevertheless it cannot be denied that the subject lured him on, and drew out into stretches of imagination far beyond his wont;—hunting all the world over after ph?be thomson! but, after all, that was only a preliminary step; he was required only to use reasonable means, and for three years. if she turned up, there was an end of it; if she did not turn up—— here mr brown sprang up hurriedly and assumed the favourite position of englishmen in front of his fire. there, all glittering in the distance, rose up, solid and splendid, an appearance which few men could see without emotion—twenty thousand pounds! it was not life and death to him, as it was to poor mrs christian. it did not make all the difference between sordid want and comfortable existence; but you may well believe it did not appear before the lawyer’s eyes without moving him into a considerable degree of excitement. such a fairy apparition had never appeared before in{604} that cold, spacious, uninhabited room. involuntarily to himself, mr brown saw his house expand, his life open out, his condition change. roseate lights dropped into the warming atmosphere which had received that vision; the fairy wand waved through the dim air before him in spite of all his sobriety. the wiles of the enchantress lured john brown as effectually as if he had not been five-and-forty, an old bachelor, and an attorney; and after half an hour of these slowly-growing, half-conscious, half-resisted thoughts, any chance that had brought the name of the dead woman’s lost daughter to his memory, would have called forth a very different “confound ph?be thomson!” from that which burst from his troubled lips in the house in grove street. possibly it was some such feeling which roused him up a moment after, when the great cat came softly purring to his feet and rubbed against his slippers. mr brown started violently, thrust puss away, flung himself back into his chair, grew very red, and murmured something about “an ass!” ashamed to detect himself in his own vain imaginations. but that sudden waking up did not last. after he had filled his glass and emptied it—after he had stirred his fire, and made a little noise, with some vague idea of dispelling the spell he was under—the fairy returned and retook possession under a less agreeable aspect. suppose he were to be enriched, what was to become of the poor christians? they were not very near relations, and the old woman had a right to leave her money where she liked. still there was a human heart in john brown’s bosom. somehow that little episode in the street returned to his recollection; bessie running across, light and noiseless, with her message. how young the creature must be after all, to have so much to do. poor little bessie! she had not only lost her chance of being a great fortune, and one of the genteel young ladies of carlingford, but she had lost her chance of the doctor, and his new house and rising practice. shabby fellow! to leave the pretty girl he was fond off, because she was a good girl, and was everything to her old father and mother. “i wonder will they say that’s my fault too?” said john brown to himself; and stumbled up to his feet again on the stimulus of that thought, with a kind of sheepish, not unpleasant embarrassment, and a foolish half-smile upon his face. somehow at that moment, looking before him, as he had done so many hundred times standing on his own hearthrug, it occurred to him all at once what a bare room this was that he spent his evenings in—what an inhuman, chilly, penurious place! scarcely more homelike than that bit of open street, across which bessie came tripping this afternoon, wanting to speak to him. nobody wanted to speak to him here. no wonder he had a threatening of rheumatism last winter. what a cold, wretched barn of a room! he could not help wondering to himself whether the drawing-room was any better. in the new start his long-dormant imagination had taken, john brown actually shivered in the moral coldness of his spacious, lonely apartment. in his mind he daresaid that the christians looked a great deal more comfortable in that little box of theirs, with that poor little girl working, and teaching, and keeping all straight. what a fool that young doctor was! what if he did work a little harder to make the old people an allowance? however, it was no business of his. with a sigh of general discontent mr brown pulled his bell violently, and had the fire made up, and asked for his tea. his tea! he never touched it when it came, but sat pshawing and humphing at it, making himself indignant over that fool of a young doctor. and what if these poor people, sour and sore after their misfortune, should think that this too was his fault