we have known many prettier girls than mary gresley, and many handsomer women—but we never knew girl or woman gifted with a face which in supplication was more suasive, in grief more sad, in mirth more merry. it was a face that compelled sympathy, and it did so with the conviction on the mind of the sympathiser that the girl was altogether unconscious of her own power. in her intercourse with us there was, alas! much more of sorrow than of mirth, and we may truly say that in her sufferings we suffered; but still there came to us from our intercourse with her much of delight mingled with the sorrow; and that delight arose, partly no doubt from her woman’s charms, from the bright eye, the beseeching mouth, the soft little hand, and the{4} feminine grace of her unpretending garments; but chiefly, we think, from the extreme humanity of the girl. she had little, indeed none, of that which the world calls society, but yet she was pre-eminently social. her troubles were very heavy, but she was making ever an unconscious effort to throw them aside, and to be jocund in spite of their weight. she would even laugh at them, and at herself as bearing them. she was a little fair-haired creature, with broad brow and small nose and dimpled chin, with no brightness of complexion, no luxuriance of hair, no swelling glory of bust and shoulders; but with a pair of eyes which, as they looked at you, would be gemmed always either with a tear or with some spark of laughter, and with a mouth in the corners of which was ever lurking some little spark of humour, unless when some unspoken prayer seemed to be hanging on her lips. of woman’s vanity she had absolutely none. of her corporeal self, as having charms to rivet man’s love, she thought no more than does a dog. it was a fault with her that she lacked that quality of womanhood. to be loved was to her all the world; unconscious desire for the admiration of men was as strong in her as in other women; and her instinct taught her, as such instincts do teach all women, that such love and admiration was to be{5} the fruit of what feminine gifts she possessed; but the gifts on which she depended,—depending on them without thinking on the matter,—were her softness, her trust, her woman’s weakness, and that power of supplicating by her eye without putting her petition into words which was absolutely irresistible. where is the man of fifty, who in the course of his life has not learned to love some woman simply because it has come in his way to help her, and to be good to her in her struggles? and if added to that source of affection there be brightness, some spark of humour, social gifts, and a strong flavour of that which we have ventured to call humanity, such love may become almost a passion without the addition of much real beauty.

but in thus talking of love we must guard ourselves somewhat from miscomprehension. in love with mary gresley, after the common sense of the word, we never were, nor would it have become us to be so. had such a state of being unfortunately befallen us, we certainly should be silent on the subject. we were married and old; she was very young, and engaged to be married, always talking to us of her engagement as a thing fixed as the stars. she looked upon us, no doubt,—after she had ceased to regard us simply in our editorial capacity,—as a subsidiary old uncle whom providence had supplied to{6} her, in order that, if it were possible, the troubles of her life might be somewhat eased by assistance to her from that special quarter. we regarded her first almost as a child, and then as a young woman to whom we owed that sort of protecting care which a graybeard should ever be ready to give to the weakness of feminine adolescence. nevertheless we were in love with her, and we think such a state of love to be a wholesome and natural condition. we might, indeed, have loved her grandmother,—but the love would have been very different. had circumstances brought us into connection with her grandmother, we hope we should have done our duty, and had that old lady been our friend we should, we trust, have done it with alacrity. but in our intercourse with mary gresley there was more than that. she charmed us. we learned to love the hue of that dark gray stuff frock which she seemed always to wear. when she would sit in the low arm-chair opposite to us, looking up into our eyes as we spoke to her words which must often have stabbed her little heart, we were wont to caress her with that inward undemonstrative embrace that one spirit is able to confer upon another. we thought of her constantly, perplexing our mind for her succour. we forgave all her faults. we exaggerated her virtues. we exerted ourselves for her with a zeal{7} that was perhaps fatuous. though we attempted sometimes to look black at her, telling her that our time was too precious to be wasted in conversation with her, she soon learned to know how welcome she was to us. her glove,—which, by-the-bye, was never tattered, though she was very poor,—was an object of regard to us. her grandmother’s gloves would have been as unacceptable to us as any other morsel of old kid or cotton. our heart bled for her. now the heart may suffer much for the sorrows of a male friend, but it may hardly for such be said to bleed. we loved her, in short, as we should not have loved her, but that she was young and gentle, and could smile,—and, above all, but that she looked at us with those bright, beseeching, tear-laden eyes.

sterne, in his latter days, when very near his end, wrote passionate love-letters to various women, and has been called hard names by thackeray,—not for writing them, but because he thus showed himself to be incapable of that sincerity which should have bound him to one love. we do not ourselves much admire the sentimentalism of sterne, finding the expression of it to be mawkish, and thinking that too often he misses the pathos for which he strives from a want of appreciation on his own part of that which is really vigorous in language and touching{8} in sentiment. but we think that thackeray has been somewhat wrong in throwing that blame on sterne’s heart which should have been attributed to his taste. the love which he declared when he was old and sick and dying,—a worn-out wreck of a man,—disgusts us, not because it was felt, or not felt, but because it was told;—and told as though the teller meant to offer more than that warmth of sympathy which woman’s strength and woman’s weakness combined will ever produce in the hearts of certain men. this is a sympathy with which neither age, nor crutches, nor matrimony, nor position of any sort need consider itself to be incompatible. it is unreasoning, and perhaps irrational. it gives to outward form and grace that which only inward merit can deserve. it is very dangerous because, unless watched, it leads to words which express that which is not intended. but, though it may be controlled, it cannot be killed. he, who is of his nature open to such impression, will feel it while breath remains to him. it was that which destroyed the character and happiness of swift, and which made sterne contemptible. we do not doubt that such unreasoning sympathy, exacted by feminine attraction, was always strong in johnson’s heart;—but johnson was strong all over, and could guard himself equally from{9} misconduct and from ridicule. such sympathy with women, such incapability of withstanding the feminine magnet, was very strong with goethe,—who could guard himself from ridicule, but not from misconduct. to us the child of whom we are speaking—for she was so then—was ever a child. but she bore in her hand the power of that magnet, and we admit that the needle within our bosom was swayed by it. her story,—such as we have to tell it,—was as follows.

mary gresley, at the time when we first knew her, was eighteen years old, and was the daughter of a medical practitioner, who had lived and died in a small town in one of the northern counties. for facility in telling our story we will call that town cornboro. dr. gresley, as he seemed to have been called, though without proper claim to the title, had been a diligent man, and fairly successful,—except in this, that he died before he had been able to provide for those whom he left behind him. the widow still had her own modest fortune, amounting to some eighty pounds a year; and that, with the furniture of her house, was her whole wealth, when she found herself thus left with the weight of the world upon her shoulders. there was one other daughter older than mary, whom we never saw, but who was always mentioned{10} as poor fanny. there had been no sons, and the family consisted of the mother and the two girls. mary had been only fifteen when her father died, and up to that time had been regarded quite as a child by all who had known her. mrs. gresley, in the hour of her need, did as widows do in such cases. she sought advice from her clergyman and neighbours, and was counselled to take a lodger into her house. no lodger could be found so fitting as the curate, and when mary was seventeen years old she and the curate were engaged to be married. the curate paid thirty pounds a year for his lodgings, and on this, with their own little income, the widow and her two daughters had managed to live. the engagement was known to them all as soon as it had been known to mary. the love-making, indeed, had gone on beneath the eyes of the mother. there had been not only no deceit, no privacy, no separate interests, but, as far as we ever knew, no question as to prudence in the making of the engagement. the two young people had been brought together, had loved each other, as was so natural, and had become engaged as a matter of course. it was an event as easy to be foretold, or at least as easy to be believed, as the pairing of two birds. from what we heard of this curate, the rev. arthur donne,—for{11} we never saw him,—we fancy that he was a simple, pious, commonplace young man, imbued with a strong idea that in being made a priest he had been invested with a nobility and with some special capacity beyond that of other men, slight in body, weak in health, but honest, true, and warm-hearted. then, the engagement having been completed, there arose the question of matrimony. the salary of the curate was a hundred a year. the whole income of the vicar, an old man, was, after payment made to his curate, two hundred a year. could the curate, in such circumstances, afford to take to himself a penniless wife of seventeen? mrs. gresley was willing that the marriage should take place, and that they should all do as best they might on their joint income. the vicar’s wife, who seems to have been a strong-minded, sage, though somewhat hard woman, took mary aside, and told her that such a thing must not be. there would come, she said, children, and destitution, and ruin. she knew perhaps more than mary knew when mary told us her story, sitting opposite to us in the low arm-chair. it was the advice of the vicar’s wife that the engagement should be broken off; but that, if the breaking-off of the engagement were impossible, there should be an indefinite period of waiting. such engagements cannot be broken{12} off. young hearts will not consent to be thus torn asunder. the vicar’s wife was too strong for them to get themselves married in her teeth, and the period of indefinite waiting was commenced.

and now for a moment we will go further back among mary’s youthful days. child as she seemed to be, she had in very early years taken a pen in her hand. the reader need hardly be told that had not such been the case there would not have arisen any cause for friendship between her and us. we are telling an editor’s tale, and it was in our editorial capacity that mary first came to us. well;—in her earliest attempts, in her very young days, she wrote—heaven knows what; poetry first, no doubt; then, god help her, a tragedy; after that, when the curate-influence first commenced, tales for the conversion of the ungodly;—and at last, before her engagement was a fact, having tried her wing at fiction, in the form of those false little dialogues between tom the saint and bob the sinner, she had completed a novel in one volume. she was then seventeen, was engaged to be married, and had completed her novel! passing her in the street you would almost have taken her for a child to whom you might give an orange.

hitherto her work had come from ambition,—or from{13} a feeling of restless piety inspired by the curate. now there arose in her young mind the question whether such talent as she possessed might not be turned to account for ways and means, and used to shorten, perhaps absolutely to annihilate, that uncertain period of waiting. the first novel was seen by “a man of letters” in her neighbourhood, who pronounced it to be very clever;—not indeed fit as yet for publication, faulty in grammar, faulty even in spelling,—how i loved the tear that shone in her eye as she confessed this delinquency!—faulty of course in construction, and faulty in character;—but still clever. the man of letters had told her that she must begin again.

unfortunate man of letters in having thrust upon him so terrible a task! in such circumstances what is the candid, honest, soft-hearted man of letters to do? “go, girl, and mend your stockings. learn to make a pie. if you work hard, it may be that some day your intellect will suffice to you to read a book and understand it. for the writing of a book that shall either interest or instruct a brother human being many gifts are required. have you just reason to believe that they have been given to you?” that is what the candid, honest man of letters says who is not soft-hearted;—and in ninety-nine cases{14} out of a hundred it will probably be the truth. the soft-hearted man of letters remembers that this special case submitted to him may be the hundredth; and, unless the blotted manuscript is conclusive against such possibility, he reconciles it to his conscience to tune his counsel to that hope. who can say that he is wrong? unless such evidence be conclusive, who can venture to declare that this aspirant may not be the one who shall succeed? who in such emergency does not remember the day in which he also was one of the hundred of whom the ninety-and-nine must fail;—and will not remember also the many convictions on his own mind that he certainly would not be the one appointed? the man of letters in the neighbourhood of cornboro to whom poor mary’s manuscript was shown was not sufficiently hard-hearted to make any strong attempt to deter her. he made no reference to the easy stockings, or the wholesome pie,—pointed out the manifest faults which he saw, and added, we do not doubt with much more energy than he threw into his words of censure,—his comfortable assurance that there was great promise in the work. mary gresley that evening burned the manuscript, and began another, with the dictionary close at her elbow.

then, during her work, there occurred two circumstances{15} which brought upon her,—and, indeed, upon the household to which she belonged,—intense sorrow and greatly-increased trouble. the first of these applied more especially to herself. the rev. arthur donne did not approve of novels,—of other novels than those dialogues between tom and bob, of the falsehood of which he was unconscious,—and expressed a desire that the writing of them should be abandoned. how far the lover went in his attempt to enforce obedience we, of course, could not know; but he pronounced the edict, and the edict, though not obeyed, created tribulation. then there came forth another edict which had to be obeyed,—an edict from the probable successor of the late dr. gresley,—ordering the poor curate to seek employment in some clime more congenial to his state of health than that in which he was then living. he was told that his throat and lungs and general apparatus for living and preaching were not strong enough for those hyperborean regions, and that he must seek a southern climate. he did do so, and, before i became acquainted with mary, had transferred his services to a small town in dorsetshire. the engagement, of course, was to be as valid as ever, though matrimony must be postponed, more indefinitely even than heretofore. but if mary{16} could write novels and sell them, then how glorious would it be to follow her lover into dorsetshire! the rev. arthur donne went, and the curate who came in his place was a married man, wanting a house, and not lodgings. so mary gresley persevered with her second novel, and completed it before she was eighteen.

the literary friend in the neighbourhood,—to the chance of whose acquaintance i was indebted for my subsequent friendship with mary gresley,—found this work to be a great improvement on the first. he was an elderly man, who had been engaged nearly all his life in the conduct of a scientific and agricultural periodical, and was the last man whom i should have taken as a sound critic on works of fiction;—but with spelling, grammatical construction, and the composition of sentences he was acquainted; and he assured mary that her progress had been great. should she burn that second story? she asked him. she would if he so recommended, and begin another the next day. such was not his advice.

“i have a friend in london,” said he, “who has to do with such things, and you shall go to him. i will give you a letter.” he gave her the fatal letter, and she came to us.{17}

she came up to town with her novel; but not only with her novel, for she brought her mother with her. so great was her eloquence, so excellent her suasive power either with her tongue or by that look of supplication in her face, that she induced her mother to abandon her home in cornboro, and trust herself to london lodgings. the house was let furnished to the new curate, and when i first heard of the gresleys they were living on the second floor in a small street near to the euston square station. poor fanny, as she was called, was left in some humble home at cornboro, and mary travelled up to try her fortune in the great city. when we came to know her well we expressed our doubts as to the wisdom of such a step. yes; the vicar’s wife had been strong against the move. mary confessed as much. that lady had spoken most forcible words, had uttered terrible predictions, had told sundry truths. but mary had prevailed, and the journey was made, and the lodgings were taken.

we can now come to the day on which we first saw her. she did not write, but came direct to us with her manuscript in her hand. “a young woman, sir, wants to see you,” said the clerk, in that tone to which we were so well accustomed, and which indicated the dislike{18} which he had learned from us to the reception of unknown visitors.

“young woman! what young woman?”

“well, sir; she is a very young woman;—quite a girl like.”

“i suppose she has got a name. who sent her? i cannot see any young woman without knowing why. what does she want?”

“got a manuscript in her hand, sir.”

“i’ve no doubt she has, and a ton of manuscripts in drawers and cupboards. tell her to write. i won’t see any woman, young or old, without knowing who she is.”

the man retired, and soon returned with an envelope belonging to the office, on which was written, “miss mary gresley, late of cornboro.” he also brought me a note from “the man of letters” down in yorkshire. “of what sort is she?” i asked, looking at the introduction.

“she aint amiss as to looks,” said the clerk; “and she’s modest-like.” now certainly it is the fact that all female literary aspirants are not “modest-like.” we read our friend’s letter through, while poor mary was standing at the counter below. how eagerly should we have run{19} to greet her, to save her from the gaze of the public, to welcome her at least with a chair and the warmth of our editorial fire, had we guessed then what were her qualities! it was not long before she knew the way up to our sanctum without any clerk to show her, and not long before we knew well the sound of that low but not timid knock at our door made always with the handle of the parasol, with which her advent was heralded. we will confess that there was always music to our ears in that light tap from the little round wooden knob. the man of letters in yorkshire, whom we had known well for many years, had been never known to us with intimacy. we had bought with him and sold with him, had talked with him, and perhaps, walked with him; but he was not one with whom we had eaten, or drunk, or prayed. a dull, well-instructed, honest man he was, fond of his money, and, as we had thought, as unlikely as any man to be waked to enthusiasm by the ambitious dreams of a young girl. but mary had been potent even over him, and he had written to me, saying that miss gresley was a young lady of exceeding promise, in respect of whom he had a strong presentiment that she would rise, if not to eminence, at least to a good position as a writer. “but she is very young,” he added. having{20} read this letter, we at last desired our clerk to send the lady up.

we remember her step as she came to the door, timid enough then,—hesitating, but yet with an assumed lightness as though she was determined to show us that she was not ashamed of what she was doing. she had on her head a light straw hat, such as then was very unusual in london,—and is not now, we believe, commonly worn in the streets of the metropolis by ladies who believe themselves to know what they are about. but it was a hat, worn upon her head, and not a straw plate done up with ribbons, and reaching down the incline of the forehead as far as the top of the nose. and she was dressed in a gray stuff frock, with a little black band round her waist. as far as our memory goes, we never saw her in any other dress, or with other hat or bonnet on her head. “and what can we do for you,—miss gresley?” we said, standing up and holding the literary gentleman’s letter in our hand. we had almost said, “my dear,” seeing her youth and remembering our own age. we were afterwards glad that we had not so addressed her; though it came before long that we did call her “my dear,”—in quite another spirit.

she recoiled a little from the tone of our voice, but{21} recovered herself at once. “mr. —— thinks that you can do something for me. i have written a novel, and i have brought it to you.”

“you are very young, are you not, to have written a novel?”

“i am young,” she said, “but perhaps older than you think. i am eighteen.” then for the first time there came into her eye that gleam of a merry humour which never was allowed to dwell there long, but which was so alluring when it showed itself.

“that is a ripe age,” we said laughing, and then we bade her seat herself. at once we began to pour forth that long and dull and ugly lesson which is so common to our life, in which we tried to explain to our unwilling pupil that of all respectable professions for young women literature is the most uncertain, the most heart-breaking, and the most dangerous. “you hear of the few who are remunerated,” we said; “but you hear nothing of the thousands that fail.”

“it is so noble!” she replied.

“but so hopeless.”

“there are those who succeed.”

“yes, indeed. even in a lottery one must gain the prize; but they who trust to lotteries break their hearts.”{22}

“but literature is not a lottery. if i am fit, i shall succeed. mr. —— thinks i may succeed.” many more words of wisdom we spoke to her, and well do we remember her reply when we had run all our line off the reel, and had completed our sermon. “i shall go on all the same,” she said. “i shall try, and try again,—and again.”

her power over us, to a certain extent, was soon established. of course we promised to read the ms., and turned it over, no doubt with an anxious countenance, to see of what kind was the writing. there is a feminine scrawl of a nature so terrible that the task of reading it becomes worse than the treadmill. “i know i can write well,—though i am not quite sure about the spelling,” said mary, as she observed the glance of our eyes. she spoke truly. the writing was good, though the erasures and alterations were very numerous. and then the story was intended to fill only one volume. “i will copy it for you if you wish it,” said mary. “though there are so many scratchings out, it has been copied once.” we would not for worlds have given her such labour, and then we promised to read the tale. we forget how it was brought about, but she told us at that interview that her mother had obtained leave from the pastrycook round{23} the corner to sit there waiting till mary should rejoin her. “i thought it would be trouble enough for you to have one of us here,” she said with her little laugh when i asked her why she had not brought her mother on with her. i own that i felt that she had been wise; and when i told her that if she would call on me again that day week i would then have read at any rate so much of her work as would enable me to give her my opinion, i did not invite her to bring her mother with her. i knew that i could talk more freely to the girl without the mother’s presence. even when you are past fifty, and intend only to preach a sermon, you do not wish to have a mother present.

when she was gone we took up the roll of paper and examined it. we looked at the division into chapters, at the various mottoes the poor child had chosen, pronounced to ourselves the name of the story,—it was simply the name of the heroine, an easy-going, unaffected, well-chosen name,—and read the last page of it. on such occasions the reader of the work begins his task almost with a conviction that the labour which he is about to undertake will be utterly thrown away. he feels all but sure that the matter will be bad, that it will be better for all parties, writer, intended readers, and intended{24} publisher, that the written words should not be conveyed into type,—that it will be his duty after some fashion to convey that unwelcome opinion to the writer, and that the writer will go away incredulous, and accusing mentally the mentor of the moment of all manner of literary sins, among which ignorance, jealousy, and falsehood, will, in the poor author’s imagination, be most prominent. and yet when the writer was asking for that opinion, declaring his especial desire that the opinion should be candid, protesting that his present wish is to have some gauge of his own capability, and that he has come to you believing you to be above others able to give him that gauge,—while his petition to you was being made, he was in every respect sincere. he had come desirous to measure himself, and had believed that you could measure him. when coming he did not think that you would declare him to be an apollo. he had told himself, no doubt, how probable it was that you would point out to him that he was a dwarf. you find him to be an ordinary man, measuring perhaps five feet seven, and unable to reach the standard of the particular regiment in which he is ambitious of serving. you tell him so in what civillest words you know, and you are at once convicted in his mind of jealousy, ignorance, and{25} falsehood! and yet he is perhaps a most excellent fellow, and capable of performing the best of service,—only in some other regiment! as we looked at miss gresley’s manuscript, tumbling it through our hands, we expected even from her some such result. she had gained two things from us already by her outward and inward gifts, such as they were,—first that we would read her story, and secondly that we would read it quickly; but she had not as yet gained from us any belief that by reading it we could serve it.

we did read it,—the most of it before we left our editorial chair on that afternoon, so that we lost altogether the daily walk so essential to our editorial health, and were put to the expense of a cab on our return home. and we incurred some minimum of domestic discomfort from the fact that we did not reach our own door till twenty minutes after our appointed dinner hour. “i have this moment come from the office as hard as a cab could bring me,” we said in answer to the mildest of reproaches, explaining nothing as to the nature of the cause which had kept us so long at our work.

we must not allow our readers to suppose that the intensity of our application had arisen from the overwhelming interest of the story. it was not that the story{26} entranced us, but that our feeling for the writer grew as we read the story. it was simple, unaffected, and almost painfully unsensational. it contained, as i came to perceive afterwards, little more than a recital of what her imagination told her might too probably be the result of her own engagement. it was the story of two young people who became engaged and could not be married. after a course of years the man, with many true arguments, asked to be absolved. the woman yields with an expressed conviction that her lover is right, settles herself down for maiden life, then breaks her heart and dies. the character of the man was utterly untrue to nature. that of the woman was true, but commonplace. other interest, or other character there was none. the dialogues between the lovers were many and tedious, and hardly a word was spoken between them which two lovers really would have uttered. it was clearly not a work as to which i could tell my little friend that she might depend upon it for fame or fortune. when i had finished it i was obliged to tell myself that i could not advise her even to publish it. but yet i could not say that she had mistaken her own powers or applied herself to a profession beyond her reach. there were a grace and delicacy in her work which were charming. occasionally{27} she escaped from the trammels of grammar, but only so far that it would be a pleasure to point out to her her errors. there was not a word that a young lady should not have written; and there were throughout the whole evident signs of honest work. we had six days to think it over between our completion of the task and her second visit.

she came exactly at the hour appointed, and seated herself at once in the arm-chair before us as soon as the young man had closed the door behind him. there had been no great occasion for nervousness at her first visit, and she had then, by an evident effort, overcome the diffidence incidental to a meeting with a stranger. but now she did not attempt to conceal her anxiety. “well,” she said, leaning forward, and looking up into our face, with her two hands folded together.

even though truth, standing full panoplied at our elbow, had positively demanded it, we could not have told her then to mend her stockings and bake her pies and desert the calling that she had chosen. she was simply irresistible, and would, we fear, have constrained us into falsehood had the question been between falsehood and absolute reprobation of her work. to have spoken hard, heart-breaking words to her, would have{28} been like striking a child when it comes to kiss you. we fear that we were not absolutely true at first, and that by that absence of truth we made subsequent pain more painful. “well,” she said, looking up into our face. “have you read it?” we told her that we had read every word of it. “and it is no good?”

we fear that we began by telling her that it certainly was good,—after a fashion, very good,—considering her youth and necessary inexperience, very good indeed. as we said this she shook her head, and sent out a spark or two from her eyes, intimating her conviction that excuses or quasi praise founded on her youth would avail her nothing. “would anybody buy it from me?” she asked. no;—we did not think that any publisher would pay her money for it. “would they print it for me without costing me anything?” then we told her the truth as nearly as we could. she lacked experience; and if, as she had declared to us before, she was determined to persevere, she must try again, and must learn more of that lesson of the world’s ways which was so necessary to those who attempted to teach that lesson to others. “but i shall try again at once,” she said. we shook our head, endeavouring to shake it kindly. “currer bell was only a young girl when she succeeded,” she{29} added. the injury which currer bell did after this fashion was almost equal to that perpetrated by jack sheppard, and yet currer bell was not very young when she wrote.

she remained with us then for above an hour;—for more than two probably, though the time was not specially marked by us; and before her visit was brought to a close she had told us of her engagement with the curate. indeed, we believe that the greater part of her little history as hitherto narrated was made known to us on that occasion. we asked after her mother early in the interview, and learned that she was not on this occasion kept waiting at the pastrycook’s shop. mary had come alone, making use of some friendly omnibus, of which she had learned the route. when she told us that she and her mother had come up to london solely with the view of forwarding her views in her intended profession, we ventured to ask whether it would not be wiser for them to return to cornboro, seeing how improbable it was that she would have matter fit for the press within any short period. then she explained that they had calculated that they would be able to live in london for twelve months, if they spent nothing except on absolute necessaries. the poor girl seemed to keep back{30} nothing from us. “we have clothes that will carry us through, and we shall be very careful. i came in an omnibus;—but i shall walk if you will let me come again.” then she asked me for advice. how was she to set about further work with the best chance of turning it to account?

it had been altogether the fault of that retired literary gentleman down in the north, who had obtained what standing he had in the world of letters by writing about guano and the cattle plague! divested of all responsibility, and fearing no further trouble to himself, he had ventured to tell this girl that her work was full of promise. promise means probability, and in this case there was nothing beyond a remote chance. that she and her mother should have left their little household gods, and come up to london on such a chance, was a thing terrible to the mind. but we felt before these two hours were over that we could not throw her off now. we had become old friends, and there had been that between us which gave her a positive claim upon our time. she had sat in our arm-chair, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands stretched out, till we, caught by the charm of her unstudied intimacy, had wheeled round our chair, and had placed{31} ourselves, as nearly as the circumstances would admit, in the same position. the magnetism had already begun to act upon us. we soon found ourselves taking it for granted that she was to remain in london and begin another book. it was impossible to resist her. before the interview was over, we, who had been conversant with all these matters before she was born; we, who had latterly come to regard our own editorial fault as being chiefly that of personal harshness; we, who had repulsed aspirant novelists by the score,—we had consented to be a party to the creation, if not to the actual writing, of this new book!

it was to be done after this fashion. she was to fabricate a plot, and to bring it to us, written on two sides of a sheet of letter paper. on the reverse sides we were to criticise this plot, and prepare emendations. then she was to make out skeletons of the men and women who were afterwards to be clothed with flesh and made alive with blood, and covered with cuticles. after that she was to arrange her proportions; and at last, before she began to write the story, she was to describe in detail such part of it as was to be told in each chapter. on every advancing wavelet of the work we were to give her our written remarks. all this we promised to do because{32} of the quiver in her lip, and the alternate tear and sparkle in her eye. “now that i have found a friend, i feel sure that i can do it,” she said, as she held our hand tightly before she left us.

in about a month, during which she had twice written to us and twice been answered, she came with her plot. it was the old story, with some additions and some change. there was matrimony instead of death at the end, and an old aunt was brought in for the purpose of relenting and producing an income. we added a few details, feeling as we did so that we were the very worst of botchers. we doubt now whether the old, sad, simple story was not the better of the two. then, after another lengthened interview, we sent our pupil back to create her skeletons. when she came with the skeletons we were dear friends and learned to call her mary. then it was that she first sat at our editorial table, and wrote a love-letter to the curate. it was then mid-winter, wanting but a few days to christmas, and arthur, as she called him, did not like the cold weather. “he does not say so,” she said, “but i fear he is ill. don’t you think there are some people with whom everything is unfortunate?” she wrote her letter, and had recovered her spirits before she took her leave.{33}

we then proposed to her to bring her mother to dine with us on christmas day. we had made a clean breast of it at home in regard to our heart-flutterings, and had been met with a suggestion that some kindness might with propriety be shown to the old lady as well as to the young one. we had felt grateful to the old lady for not coming to our office with her daughter, and had at once assented. when we made the suggestion to mary there came first a blush over all her face, and then there followed the well-known smile before the blush was gone. “you’ll all be dressed fine,” she said. we protested that not a garment would be changed by any of the family after the decent church-going in the morning. “just as i am?” she asked. “just as you are,” we said, looking at the dear gray frock, adding some mocking assertion that no possible combination of millinery could improve her. “and mamma will be just the same? then we will come,” she said. we told her an absolute falsehood, as to some necessity which would take us in a cab to euston square on the afternoon of that christmas day, so that we could call and bring them both to our house without trouble or expense. “you sha’n’t do anything of the kind,” she said. however, we swore to our falsehood,—perceiving, as we did{34} so, that she did not believe a word of it; but in the matter of the cab we had our own way.

we found the mother to be what we had expected,—a weak, ladylike, lachrymose old lady, endowed with a profound admiration for her daughter, and so bashful that she could not at all enjoy her plum-pudding. we think that mary did enjoy hers thoroughly. she made a little speech to the mistress of the house, praising ourselves with warm words and tearful eyes, and immediately won the heart of a new friend. she allied herself warmly to our daughters, put up with the schoolboy pleasantries of our sons, and before the evening was over was dressed up as a ghost for the amusement of some neighbouring children who were brought in to play snapdragon. mrs. gresley, as she drank her tea and crumbled her bit of cake, seated on a distant sofa, was not so happy, partly because she remembered her old gown, and partly because our wife was a stranger to her. mary had forgotten both circumstances before the dinner was half over. she was the sweetest ghost that ever was seen. how pleasant would be our ideas of departed spirits if such ghosts would visit us frequently!

they repeated their visits to us not unfrequently during the twelve months; but as the whole interest{35} attaching to our intercourse had reference to circumstances which took place in that editorial room of ours, it will not be necessary to refer further to the hours, very pleasant to ourselves, which she spent with us in our domestic life. she was ever made welcome when she came, and was known by us as a dear, well-bred, modest, clever little girl. the novel went on. that catalogue of the skeletons gave us more trouble than all the rest, and many were the tears which she shed over it, and sad were the misgivings by which she was afflicted, though never vanquished! how was it to be expected that a girl of eighteen should portray characters such as she had never known? in her intercourse with the curate all the intellect had been on her side. she had loved him because it was requisite to her to love some one; and now, as she had loved him, she was as true as steel to him. but there had been almost nothing for her to learn from him. the plan of the novel went on, and as it did so we became more and more despondent as to its success. and through it all we knew how contrary it was to our own judgment to expect, even to dream of, anything but failure. though we went on working with her, finding it to be quite impossible to resist her entreaties, we did tell her from day to day that, even presuming she were{36} entitled to hope for ultimate success, she must go through an apprenticeship of ten years before she could reach it. then she would sit silent, repressing her tears, and searching for arguments with which to support her cause.

“working hard is apprenticeship,” she said to us once.

“yes, mary; but the work will be more useful, and the apprenticeship more wholesome, if you will take them for what they are worth.”

“i shall be dead in ten years,” she said.

“if you thought so you would not intend to marry mr. donne. but even were it certain that such would be your fate, how can that alter the state of things? the world would know nothing of that; and if it did, would the world buy your book out of pity?”

“i want no one to pity me,” she said; “but i want you to help me.” so we went on helping her. at the end of four months she had not put pen to paper on the absolute body of her projected novel; and yet she had worked daily at it, arranging its future construction.

during the next month, when we were in the middle of march, a gleam of real success came to her. we had{37} told her frankly that we would publish nothing of hers in the periodical which we were ourselves conducting. she had become too dear to us for us not to feel that were we to do so, we should be doing it rather for her sake than for that of our readers. but we did procure for her the publication of two short stories elsewhere. for these she received twelve guineas, and it seemed to her that she had found an el dorado of literary wealth. i shall never forget her ecstasy when she knew that her work would be printed, or her renewed triumph when the first humble cheque was given into her hands. there are those who will think that such a triumph, as connected with literature, must be sordid. for ourselves, we are ready to acknowledge that money payment for work done is the best and most honest test of success. we are sure that it is so felt by young barristers and young doctors, and we do not see why rejoicing on such realisation of long-cherished hope should be more vile with the literary aspirant than with them. “what do you think i’ll do first with it?” she said. we thought she meant to send something to her lover, and we told her so. “i’ll buy mamma a bonnet to go to church in. i didn’t tell you before, but she hasn’t been these three sundays because she hasn’t one fit to be seen.” i{38} changed the cheque for her, and she went off and bought the bonnet.

though i was successful for her in regard to the two stories, i could not go beyond that. we could have filled pages of periodicals with her writing had we been willing that she should work without remuneration. she herself was anxious for such work, thinking that it would lead to something better. but we opposed it, and, indeed, would not permit it, believing that work so done can be serviceable to none but those who accept it that pages may be filled without cost.

during the whole winter, while she was thus working, she was in a state of alarm about her lover. her hope was ever that when warm weather came he would again be well and strong. we know nothing sadder than such hope founded on such source. for does not the winter follow the summer, and then again comes the killing spring? at this time she used to read us passages from his letters, in which he seemed to speak of little but his own health.

in her literary ambition he never seemed to have taken part since she had declared her intention of writing profane novels. as regarded him, his sole merit to us seemed to be in his truth to her. he told{39} her that in his opinion they two were as much joined together as though the service of the church had bound them; but even in saying that he spoke ever of himself and not of her. well;—may came, dangerous, doubtful, deceitful may, and he was worse. then, for the first time, the dread word, consumption, passed her lips. it had already passed ours, mentally, a score of times. we asked her what she herself would wish to do. would she desire to go down to dorsetshire and see him? she thought awhile, and said that she would wait a little longer.

the novel went on, and at length, in june, she was writing the actual words on which, as she thought, so much depended. she had really brought the story into some shape in the arrangement of her chapters; and sometimes even i began to hope. there were moments in which with her hope was almost certainty. towards the end of june mr. donne declared himself to be better. he was to have a holiday in august, and then he intended to run up to london and see his betrothed. he still gave details, which were distressing to us, of his own symptoms; but it was manifest that he himself was not desponding, and she was governed in her trust or in her despair altogether by him. but when august came{40} the period of his visit was postponed. the heat had made him weak, and he was to come in september.

early in august we ourselves went away for our annual recreation:—not that we shoot grouse, or that we have any strong opinion that august and september are the best months in the year for holiday-making,—but that everybody does go in august. we ourselves are not specially fond of august. in many places to which one goes a-touring mosquitoes bite in that month. the heat, too, prevents one from walking. the inns are all full, and the railways crowded. april and may are twice pleasanter months in which to see the world and the country. but fashion is everything, and no man or woman will stay in town in august for whom there exists any practicability of leaving it. we went on the 10th,—just as though we had a moor, and one of the last things we did before our departure was to read and revise the last-written chapter of mary’s story.

about the end of september we returned, and up to that time the lover had not come to london. immediately on our return we wrote to mary, and the next morning she was with us. she had seated herself on her usual chair before she spoke, and we had taken her hand asked after herself and her mother. then, with{41} something of mirth in our tone, we demanded the work which she had done since our departure. “he is dying,” she replied.

she did not weep as she spoke. it was not on such occasions as this that the tears filled her eyes. but there was in her face a look of fixed and settled misery which convinced us that she at least did not doubt the truth of her own assertion. we muttered something as to our hope that she was mistaken. “the doctor, there, has written to tell mamma that it is so. here is his letter.” the doctor’s letter was a good letter, written with more of assurance than doctors can generally allow themselves to express. “i fear that i am justified in telling you,” said the doctor, “that it can only be a question of weeks.” we got up and took her hand. there was not a word to be uttered.

“i must go to him,” she said, after a pause.

“well;—yes. it will be better.”

“but we have no money.” it must be explained now that offers of slight, very slight, pecuniary aid had been made by us both to mary and to her mother on more than one occasion. these had been refused with adamantine firmness, but always with something of mirth, or at least of humour, attached to the refusal. the mother{42} would simply refer to the daughter, and mary would declare that they could manage to see the twelvemonth through and go back to cornboro, without becoming absolute beggars. she would allude to their joint wardrobe, and would confess that there would not have been a pair of boots between them but for that twelve guineas; and indeed she seemed to have stretched that modest incoming so as to cover a legion of purchases. and of these things she was never ashamed to speak. we think there must have been at least two gray frocks, because the frock was always clean, and never absolutely shabby. our girls at home declared that they had seen three. of her frock, as it happened, she never spoke to us, but the new boots and the new gloves, “and ever so many things that i can’t tell you about, which we really couldn’t have gone without,” all came out of the twelve guineas. that she had taken, not only with delight, but with triumph. but pecuniary assistance from ourselves she had always refused. “it would be a gift,” she would say.

“have it as you like.”

“but people don’t give other people money.”

“don’t they? that’s all you know about the world.”

“yes; to beggars. we hope we needn’t come to that.” it was thus that she always answered us, but always{43} with something of laughter in her eye, as though their poverty was a joke. now, when the demand upon her was for that which did not concern her personal comfort, which referred to a matter felt by her to be vitally important, she declared, without a minute’s hesitation, that she had not money for the journey.

“of course you can have money,” we said. “i suppose you will go at once?”

“oh yes,—at once. that is, in a day or two,—after he shall have received my letter. why should i wait?” we sat down to write a cheque, and she, seeing what we were doing, asked how much it was to be. “no;—half that will do,” she said. “mamma will not go. we have talked it over and decided it. yes; i know all about that. i am going to see my lover,—my dying lover; and i have to beg for the money to take me to him. of course i am a young girl; but in such a condition am i to stand upon the ceremony of being taken care of? a housemaid wouldn’t want to be taken care of at eighteen.” we did exactly as she bade us, and then attempted to comfort her while the young man went to get money for the cheque. what consolation was possible? it was simply necessary to admit with frankness that sorrow had come from which there could be no present release.{44} “yes,” she said. “time will cure it,—in a way. one dies in time, and then of course it is all cured.” “one hears of this kind of thing often,” she said afterwards, still leaning forward in her chair, still with something of the old expression in her eyes,—something almost of humour in spite of her grief; “but it is the girl who dies. when it is the girl, there isn’t, after all, so much harm done. a man goes about the world and can shake it off; and then, there are plenty of girls.” we could not tell her how infinitely more important, to our thinking, was her life than that of him whom she was going to see now for the last time; but there did spring up within our mind a feeling, greatly opposed to that conviction which formerly we had endeavoured to impress upon herself,—that she was destined to make for herself a successful career.

she went, and remained by her lover’s bed-side for three weeks. she wrote constantly to her mother, and once or twice to ourselves. she never again allowed herself to entertain a gleam of hope, and she spoke of her sorrow as a thing accomplished. in her last interview with us she had hardly alluded to her novel, and in her letters she never mentioned it. but she did say one word which made us guess what was coming. “you will find{45} me greatly changed in one thing,” she said; “so much changed that i need never have troubled you.” the day for her return to london was twice postponed, but at last she was brought to leave him. stern necessity was too strong for her. let her pinch herself as she might, she must live down in dorsetshire,—and could not live on his means, which were as narrow as her own. she left him; and on the day after her arrival in london she walked across from euston square to our office.

“yes,” she said, “it is all over. i shall never see him again on this side of heaven’s gates.” we do not know that we ever saw a tear in her eyes produced by her own sorrow. she was possessed of some wonderful strength which seemed to suffice for the bearing of any burden. then she paused, and we could only sit silent, with our eyes fixed upon the rug. “i have made him a promise,” she said at last. of course we asked her what was the promise, though at the moment we thought that we knew. “i will make no more attempt at novel writing.”

“such a promise should not have been asked,—or given,” we said vehemently.

“it should have been asked,—because he thought it right,” she answered. “and of course it was given.{46} must he not know better than i do? is he not one of god’s ordained priests? in all the world is there one so bound to obey him as i?” there was nothing to be said for it at such a moment as that. there is no enthusiasm equal to that produced by a death-bed parting. “i grieve greatly,” she said, “that you should have had so much vain labour with a poor girl who can never profit by it.”

“i don’t believe the labour will have been vain,” we answered, having altogether changed those views of ours as to the futility of the pursuit which she had adopted.

“i have destroyed it all,” she said.

“what;—burned the novel?”

“every scrap of it. i told him that i would do so, and that he should know that i had done it. every page was burned after i got home last night, and then i wrote to him before i went to bed.”

“do you mean that you think it wicked that people should write novels?” we asked.

“he thinks it to be a misapplication of god’s gifts, and that has been enough for me. he shall judge for me, but i will not judge for others. and what does it matter? i do not want to write a novel now.”

they remained in london till the end of the year for{47} which the married curate had taken their house, and then they returned to cornboro. we saw them frequently while they were still in town, and despatched them by the train to the north just when the winter was beginning. at that time the young clergyman was still living down in dorsetshire, but he was lying in his grave when christmas came. mary never saw him again, nor did she attend his funeral. she wrote to us frequently then, as she did for years afterwards. “i should have liked to have stood at his grave,” she said; “but it was a luxury of sorrow that i wished to enjoy, and they who cannot earn luxuries should not have them. they were going to manage it for me here, but i knew i was right to refuse it.” right, indeed! as far as we knew her, she never moved a single point from what was right.

all these things happened many years ago. mary gresley, on her return to cornboro, apprenticed herself, as it were, to the married curate there, and called herself, i think, a female scripture reader. i know that she spent her days in working hard for the religious aid of the poor around her. from time to time we endeavoured to instigate her to literary work; and she answered our letters by sending us wonderful little dialogues between tom the saint and bob the sinner. we are in no humour to{48} criticise them now; but we can assert, that though that mode of religious teaching is most distasteful to us, the literary merit shown even in such works as these was very manifest. and there came to be apparent in them a gleam of humour which would sometimes make us think that she was sitting opposite to us and looking at us, and that she was tom the saint, and that we were bob the sinner. we said what we could to turn her from her chosen path, throwing into our letters all the eloquence and all the thought of which we were masters: but our eloquence and our thought were equally in vain.

at last, when eight years had passed over her head after the death of mr. donne, she married a missionary who was going out to some forlorn country on the confines of african colonisation; and there she died. we saw her on board the ship in which she sailed, and before we parted there had come that tear into her eyes, the old look of supplication on her lips, and the gleam of mirth across her face. we kissed her once,—for the first and only time,—as we bade god bless her!