1861.] The Power of Woman. barians, frame all their measures I hazarded this argument with "The bull-headed, superstitious, beef-devouring gladiators! was the reply, with just enough sense to knock their heads against a wall, which luckily for them had been sapped and crumbling for centuries. Could they keep Rome when they had it? Could they defend Constantinople when it was in their clumsy iron grasp? Did not the Turks press them hard on the Bosphorus ? did not the Moors enslave them in Spain? the polygamist against the monogamist all the world over, till the latter abandoned his creed and began to put his faith in policy and common sense, instead of a cross-handled sword and a long-eyed ladye lighto'love!' Then you scorn the institution of chivalry, Gilbert,' was my reply; 'and prefer the picture of Archimedes demonstrating his problem during the assault, to that of Dunois bleeding to death with his back to a tree and his face to the enemy, the while he made a Christian ending before the crucifix of his sword-hilt?' 'Dunois was a fine fellow!' answered Gilbert; besides, there was no woman in his case. What I protest against is the raising up I rose and followed him in CHAPTER III. 'EARLY FROSTS.' 11 I was not always a recluse-not always the musty bookworm who exists only amongst dusty shelves and rare old badly-printed editions. The same man who some years ago year-olds gallop, now asks me to I would have bade me see his twoarrange his library. I once lived in the world as others do. Shall I confess it? my heart was never thoroughly interested in what is termed society. Perhaps I had not room for so many objects of interest and affection; perhaps, like an unskilful gambler, I set all my store on one desperate throw, and lost, and cared not to try again; staked gold. So the bowl has stood to play for silver where I had once empty ever since. This is no story of my own life. I only mention it because I want an explanation of something which my former experience has convinced me to be an undoubted fact; and I do not wish my experience to be has never been down in the arena, set at nought, as that of one who sand. and spilt his blood upon the thirsty Why is it that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred those women who have been brought up chiefly sisters, who have lost a mother amongst men, who have had no early in life (doubtless for many reasons a sad affliction to a girl), who have been dependent on father sation, should turn out the most or brothers for society and converfascinating and superior of their sex? Why is it that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, the boy who is educated solely by his mother becomes a triumphant and successful man in after-life? Perhaps the opposite influence other, perhaps the girl derives vigoof either sex is beneficial to the rous thought, expanded views, charity and forbearance, from her habits of reflection, nay, more, male associates, as the boy is indebted to his mother's tuition and his mother's companionship for the gentleness and purity of heart which combine so well with a manly and generous nature, for the refinement and delicacy of feeling which so adorn true courage, above all, for that exalted standard of womankind which shall prove his surest safeguard from shame and defeat in the coming battle; a shield impervious so long as it is bright, but that when once soiled slides and crumbles from his grasp, leaving him in the press of angry weapons a naked and defenceless man. We have all heard of the little boy who sturdily upheld, in defiance of the poet, that 'his mamma was the noblest work of God.' I think the truest and holiest homage that can be offered to a fellow-creature, is that which such a child tenders unconsciously to his mother. She is to him the one bright beautiful being upon earth. His young eyes open wide with childish wonder at the magnificence of her apparel, the mingled grace and majesty of her bearing; he feels so proud to belong to her, and at the same time so conscious of his right to a place by her side, a seat on her knee. When others caress him, he smiles pleasantly enough for a time, but soon wearies, and hurries off to be at play again; but when she lays her quiet hand upon his brow, the boy forgets hoop and marbles, the new knife and the promised pony, to nestle by her side, and look up in her face, and sit lovingly down at the feet of his own mamma. All that he knows of good he learns from her. She teaches him to love and pray. She teaches him to hope and to believe. If ever he gets to the end of the narrow way, where the little wicket stands, and hears the bolts drawn back, and sees the golden light from the happy land shining through, whom shall he thank and bless on earth, but her who first taught him the pass-word and gave him the key? Perhaps she will also be the first to bid him welcome on the other side. Gilbert Orme was without this unspeakable blessing. Everything else that the world deems advantageous was lavished on him in profusion. Health, vigour, childish spirits, a fine place, and a long minority, but no mother, at least, not in the sense in which I understand the word. Gilbert was an only child, but in good truth he was far from being spoilt, as people consider only children usually destined to be. From boyhood his was a nature on which harshness or ill-usage made but slight impression, a spirit that could only have been broken through its affections, and these, even when I was reading Homer with him at eighteen, had been called but little into play. Lady Olivia never seemed to care for her child. Not a labourer about West-Acres but took more pride in the bright-haired handsome boy than did his own reserved and haughty mother. When I first knew her, she was not yet a widow, but I could never see that the event which soon after deprived her of her husband, made the slightest difference in her manners or softened her character one jot. Of Mr. Orme I knew but little. I had heard of him in former days (for he was somewhat after my time) as a gay dashing young man; on the turf, in society, member for a most corruptible borough in his own county, good-looking, goodhumoured, not much troubled with brains, with a slight tendency to literature, and a rather stronger turn for love-making. I saw him once or twice at Newmarket, and missed meeting him at a country place or two, to which we were both invited for the slaughter of pheasants and other game. interested me but little, and astonished me not at all, to learn that he had married the Lady Olivia, of whose maiden name I will say no more than that it was identical with that of Lady Gertrude, whose father indeed had been the elder lady's brother. But after his marriage Mr. Orme dropped out of society altogether. People in London do not trouble themselves much about absentees. 'Here's Orme accepted the Chiltern Hundreds,' said one of his club friends It 1861.] Gilbert's Father and Mother. 'Mad!' observed young Tattleton, sententiously, who preferred hazarding a falsehood to betraying ignorance on any subject whatever, 'and shut up down at that place in the country,' he added, shaking his head commiseratingly, and pointing with his forefinger to the spot where his own brains ought to have been. The two friends were quite satisfied with the explanation, and fell to discussing their last night's dinner, taking no more thought for 'poor Órme.' He was not mad, though, nevertheless, only thoroughly and essentially miserable. Lady Olivia might have made an excellent wife to another; probably, like the rest of us, under totally different circumstances, would have been a totally different person. As it was, however, she made a most uncomfortable one to him. He had fallen into a mistake not unusual with one of his temperament-weak, kindly, and over-imaginative-and had invested the lady, whom he had met at some half-a-dozen balls and a breakfast, with all the qualities of his ideal, none of which did she happen to possess. Then came the disenchantment, the disagreements, the recriminations, the offended pride on one side, the growing dislike and blank hopelessness on the other. It was an ill-judged and most unhappy union. 'But,' as Lady Olivia observed, 'was that her fault? Was she to be punished because Mr. Orme mistook her for somebody else? No! he had been in error; let him be the sufferer!' The argument was not without some show of reason, and he suffered accordingly, without much complaint, and with a strong bridle 13 on a temper naturally keen and self-asserting. A sterner nature would have bent her to his will, and altered her character to assimilate it with his own. She would have loved him all the better. A milder would have succumbed, and learned, like other slaves, to submit to despotic authority with a good grace. But Orme was as God had made him, and took refuge in a listless, hopeless, pitiable apathy. He ceased to tear at the chain he had not strength to break, the chain that bound him to one with whom he had not a single feeling in common save abhorrence of the fetter, and threw his hands up like the drowning man, who has the sense to know that his struggles can but prolong his agony. Those are wise and suggestive words in our Prayer Book which exhort us to take in hand marriage, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God,' words that refer to the highest source, the most important action in the lives of most human beings-words that suggest to the least considerate the awful gravity of the interest at stake. A loving marriage is a good and holy sight in the eyes of men and angels, but that was the refinement of a fiend's torture, which bound the living, breathing being hard and fast to the senseless corpse. I have heard his neighbours say that Mr. Orme grew strangely idle and indifferent and lethargic. He left off field-sports altogether, gave away his famous pointers, sold his hunters, doubled his subscription to the hounds, and otherwise conducted himself in an unaccountable manner. Some people thought he had gout in the stomach, others vowed it was water on the brain. His old butler, who wouldn't leave, though Lady Olivia gave him warning once a fortnight, opined it was neither of these, for a certain tall bottle labelled V. O. P. stood in his master's dressing-room; and that faithful domestic, who, liking brandy less than beer, took very little of it himself, knew that it was never quite empty and never full. By degress he chafed less and less under Lady Olivia's provocations, took less and less interest in his boy (he was fond of the urchin, but a child's love will scarcely stand a man in the stead of everything else), and dozed away more and more time in his arm-chair over the embers of his study-fire. One spring morning they both went out together, and the tall bottle, too, had ebbed to the last teaspoon ful. So there was a fine funeral, and Lady Olivia became a widow, and Gilbert an orphan with a little black frock on his back, and a long minority before him. Nobody seemed to care much for poor Orme but the old butler, and he gave up his place immediately, and took the public-house in the village. In most families such an event would have drawn tighter the bonds of affection which should unite mother and son: with the Ormes, however, it was not so. Lady Olivia, when the customary year of a widow's seclusion had passed by, went into society as before. Perhaps a little more frequently than during the latter months of her husband's life. She was a great stickler for conventional forms, and went to London_regularly in the season to keep up her acquaintance, just as she gave large, solemn, frigid dinners at West-Acres to sustain her influence in the county. seemed to have no inclination to marry again. She People speculated, indeed, on her intentions, as they always will upon matters with which they can have no earthly concern, and coupled her name with a rich London banker, a superannuated Lord of the Bedchamber, and a neighbouring Squire still in his minority. Such reports disturbed her ladyship's equanimity but little. Even Diana was talked about with that young rake Endymion, and Lady Olivia carried her indomitable head so high that she could well afford to look down upon the nods and winks and signs of humbler mortals. He would have been a bold man too who could have ventured on a tender subject with that severe beauty crushing him to the dust, those grave eyes looking sternly into his own. Old Flippant, a lady-killer of some twenty years' practice, called her the Marble Widow. 'Egad, sir,' said that mature Lothario, 'she's a chiller, a regular black frost; when the wind's in the east I can't go near her without sneezing.' And, indeed, veteran as he was, he stood in considerable awe of the icy dame of whom he spoke so disparagingly. To give her her due, like Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory, she was one of those admirable ladies who could 'look a lion down.' 6 I wish for her own sake she could have been kinder to the child. When I first came to live near West-Acres he was a bright handsome boy of some seven or eight summers, the least bit of a scapegrace, and rather too fond of rat-catching, rabbiting, and such illiterate amusements; but, as the old keeper used to say, a little gentleman every inch of him!' He had all a boy's spirits and a boy's pluck, with something feminine in the shyness of his glance and the soft kindliness of his disposition which endeared him wondrously to the domestics and work-people about the place. One of the numerous grievances for which he was taken sternly to task by Lady Olivia was his predilection for the society of the grooms and coachman, and his natural preference of the stable to her ladyship's own morning-room, which was in truth a dull place of resort for a child; inasmuch as he was not permitted to romp about or make a noise in those sacred precincts. Also-and of this fault I cannot fairly hold him guiltless-for the reckless manner in which he rode and otherwise maltreated a certain longsuffering pony called 'Mouse,' of which the extraordinary speed and endurance were daily tested to an unjustifiable extent. By the way, my first introduction to the young gentleman was brought about through the instrumentality of this much aggrieved quadruped. I was walking with Lady Olivia in the park a day or two after my arrival in the neighbourhood, dis cussing with her a matter of business, in which she showed her usual clear-headedness and precision, when my attention was arrested by the child and his pony scouring over the park in our vicinity, I need not say at poor Mouse's utmost speed. Lady Olivia stopped in her walk and drew herself up as was her wont. 'I wish you to know my son,' she said in her cold measured voice; and the clear imperious tones calling 'Gilbert! Gilbert!' cut through the summer air to where he was galloping, intent only on Mouse and his performances. The child seemed pleased to be taken notice of, and turned quickly in our direction. As he approached us without checking speed, a fallen tree of no great girth lay in his course, and with a pardonable display of horsemanship he put his pony straight at the obstacle. I can see him now, sitting resolutely back on his little saddle, his golden curls floating behind him, and his smooth brow bent, and rosy lips set fast, for the effort. Mouse rose gallantly, but predestined to failure, or perhaps a little blown with the pace, caught his fore legs in the leap, and pitching his little rider forward over his head, followed him in a very complicated and dangerous kind of fall. I was standing close to his mother, and I thought I heard her breath come quick; but as the child rose to his feet, I glanced at her face ere I went to catch the pony, and saw that it retained its usual marble composure. 'What is the woman made of?' I thought, as I ran my arm through Mouse's rein, who no sooner found himself on his legs again without a rider, than he took advantage of the respite to crop a mouthful of the short sweet grass. When I came back to them the child had his hand in his mother's. He was pale, and evidently shaken, but not frightened the least bit, though there was a severe bruise reddening and smarting on his cheek-bone. With some vague remembrance of his nursery days, he looked up in VOL. LXIII. NO. CCCLXXIII. 15 Lady Olivia's face, and I heard him whisper 'It does hurt, mamma dear; kiss it and make it well!' 'Nonsense, Gilbert,' was the cold reply, don't be so silly; how can my kissing it do it any good?' I saw his little face flush up and change all in a minute; I think I remembered even then of Him who said it was not good to offend one of these little ones; but I helped the child into his saddle in silence, and was not surprised to see poor Mouse taken short by the head, and turned round to jump once, twice, over the unlucky tree, with so fierce an application of his rider's whip as I have seldom witnessed before or since. 'Gently, child,' I could not forbear saying as I took hold of the pony's bridle and caressed it after the second performance; 'do not punish your poor pony, it was more your fault than his. Another time do not ride so fast at an upright leap.' The boy stared at me without replying, then turned and galloped away; whilst Lady Olivia and I continued our walk and our conversation without again reverting to the accident. But when the luncheon-bell rang, and her ladyship had gone into the house, I met Gilbert on his way from the stables. He came up to me very shyly, and put his little hand timidly in mine. 'I like you,' he said, because you were sorry for poor Mouse when I beat him. Then looking down and getting very red, he added, 'I like people who are sorry; I would like you very much if you would let me.' Need I say that henceforth we were fast friends? I will not recapitulate the progress of our intimacy. How family circumstances brought me more and more into contact with Lady Olivia and her son. How I used to correspond with the lad at Eton, and visit him regularly in the dear old College, from the after-twelve' on which with three others of the fourth form he was most deservedly 'swished,' having attempted in vain B |