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 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 ,QRDRACH.GCfLONIE 
 
 I
 
 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 BY 
 
 fM. E. BRADDON,) 
 
 OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," 
 
 AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," ETC. ETC. 
 
 ^^' COPYRIGHT EDITION. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 
 
 1886. 
 
 The Right oj Tra/isiation is reserved.
 
 CONTENTS 
 OF VOLUME I. 
 
 Page 
 CHAPTER I. "Oh, marked from Birth , and nur- 
 tured for the Skies .... 7 
 
 — II. "Whence and what art thou, exe- 
 
 crable Shape?" 24 
 
 — III. "All that have Eyes to weep, spare 
 
 one Tear with me " .... 37 
 
 — IV. "So woe-begone a Thing was she" 58 
 
 — V. "By Degrees the human Blossom 
 
 blows" 89 
 
 — VI. "Out of Sight, beyond Light, at 
 
 what Goal may we meet?" . . 117 
 
 — VII. The new Cinderella 148 
 
 — VIII. A young proud Woman that has 
 
 Will to sail with 203 
 
 — IX. "But as the Days change Men 
 
 change too " 217
 
 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 "oh, marked from birth, and nurtured for 
 
 THE skies!" 
 
 The gray old walls of Lashmar Castle rise in 
 a massive pile above a broad reach of the Middle- 
 shire Avon, which here makes a bold and sweep- 
 ing curve , and dallies with its rushy banks, as if 
 some spirit of these Lashmar woods were the 
 Cleopatra to that watery Antony. The stream 
 has such a languorous flow just at this point; the 
 river here spreads itself into such a placid ex- 
 panse, that one would hardly credit the current 
 w'ith force enough to turn a w'ater-mill or drift a 
 barge. It has an Arcadian air, a river made for 
 Chloe and Phillis, and Strephon and his flock, 
 and not for the vulgar uses of daily life. Yet
 
 8 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 that very river waxes utilitarian enough, and 
 carries all foul things which a seething populace 
 cares to cast into its Avaters; it puts on the dark 
 livery of smoke and dirt, only a few miles to the 
 east of those Lashmar woods yonder, where the 
 great manufacturing town of Brumm obscures the 
 heavens with the smoke of numberless chimneys, 
 and taints the atmosphere with the mixed odours 
 of the people. But here there is no hint of that 
 great industrial centre. No one basking on the 
 green slope above this glassy stream, between a 
 foreground of bulrushes and a background of im- 
 memorial oaks, would suspect the existence of 
 such a place as Brumm within ten miles. 
 
 Yet, although its^ smoke made no stain upon 
 the blue sky above yonder gray towers, Brumm 
 had an influence on the inhabitants of Lashmar 
 Castle, and that by no means a pleasant influence; 
 as witnessed by her ladyship's temper upon this 
 particular morning, as she sat at breakfast in the 
 oak parlour, with her step-son, I-ord I.ashmar, and 
 the Eton boy, her son. 
 
 Her ladyship was the Dowager Baroness Lash- 
 mar, and a woman of mark. She was one of the 
 daughters of the illustrious Marchioness ofPitland, 
 famous alike for wealth, talent, and force of cha-
 
 "oh, marked from birth." g 
 
 racter. Old Lady Pitland had given laws and 
 fashions to society for nearly forty years before 
 she was translated to that better world in which, 
 perhaps, there are neither coal mines nor leaders 
 of fashion: and she had transmitted much of her 
 managing power, and something of her talent and 
 charm to her daughters, the eldest of whom, as 
 Duchess of Malplaquet, was said to be quite the 
 cleverest matron in England, having managed to 
 marry all her daughters to rich men, and to have 
 dressed and fed them in their spinsterhood , and 
 maintained appearances in town and country on 
 something under five thousand a year. 
 
 Lady Lashmar's powers as an economist had 
 not been so severely taxed; for the Lashmars 
 were rich in stocks and shares, as well as in that 
 luxury of the well-born, broad acres; and they 
 could smile serenely at the decay of rents. Lady 
 Lashmar had always had as much money as she 
 wanted, and some of her tastes were costly; but 
 there was not an ounce of butter or a tea-cup of 
 milk wasted at Lashmar Castle; there was not a 
 dirty corner, or an unauthorised follower in the 
 great, rambling, old house in Grosvenor Square, 
 which had belonged to the Lashmars from the 
 time of the Pitts and the Foxes, when that
 
 lO ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 aristocratic and exclusive square first came into 
 being. Lady Lashmar had the eye of a hawk, 
 and a mind constructed on the principle of the 
 elephant's trunk, which can uproot an oak, or 
 pick up a pin. Lady Lashmar's mind could 
 grapple with public questions; and it could stoop 
 to the details of the store-closet and the larder. 
 Yet, it must not be supposed that Lady Lashmar's 
 bodily presence was ever beheld in kitchen or 
 store-room. Her mind did all the work. She had 
 a housekeeper who trembled at her frown, and 
 who obeyed her slavishly: and through this faith- 
 ful servant she was able to rule every corner of 
 her house, to measure every meal eaten by her 
 household, to be assured that the footmen did 
 not consume more than their due allowance of 
 table-beer, and that the maids did not burn their 
 candles in the small hours reading novels, or 
 making bonnets. 
 
 Lady Lashmar had been ten years a widow, 
 had enjoyed just a decade of undisputed dominion; 
 she was eight-and-thirty, handsome, straight as a 
 dart, with not a wrinkle or a gray hair. Mrs. 
 Monsoon, the Princess's own particular dress- 
 maker, had been heard to say, in the confidence 
 of friendly intercourse, that Lady Lashmar Avas
 
 "oh, marked from birth." II 
 
 the finest figure she had on her books, and the 
 greatest screw. 
 
 "I don't believe I have made twenty pounds 
 out of that woman in all the years I have worked 
 for her," said Mrs. Monsoon; "but she shows off 
 my gowns to perfection, and she brings me new 
 customers." 
 
 An age in which scandals about the aristocracy 
 are the current coin of conversation had not fur- 
 nished one hint of evil about Lady Lashmar. It 
 was of her that Lord Blandville, the cabinet 
 minister, said, "My friend Lashmar's wife has all 
 the virtues. She is handsome, well informed, ac- 
 complished, dignified, chaste as Diana, and the 
 most disagreeable woman of my acquaintance." 
 
 Lady Lashmar was not a person who got into 
 violent passions when she was angry. It was said 
 that old Lady Pitland had been wont to swear 
 like a trooper at anybody who crossed her im- 
 perious will. Lady Lashmar's anger took a more 
 dignified and a more intense form. This morn- 
 ing the finely -cut face was almost livid with 
 passion as her ladyship handed the local paper, 
 the Bru?iim Independent, to her step-son. 
 
 They were sitting at a cosy round table \\x
 
 12 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 one of the prettiest rooms in the castle. It was 
 a small, low room, in which the old oak-panelling 
 had been painted white. The ceiling was de- 
 corated with cupids and garlands. The high, 
 narrow mantel-shelves were lit up by bright little 
 bits of old oriental china. The curtains and 
 chair-covers were of the delicatest chintz; and in 
 every spot where flowers could be placed were 
 bowls and shallow vases of the famous Lashmar 
 roses, red and yellow, now in the plenitude of 
 their summer beauty. So long as the roses lasted, 
 Lady Lashmar would have no other flowers to 
 decorate her rooms. It was in vain that the head- 
 gardener put forward his rarities from the stoves, 
 "I will have no exotics while I can have roses," 
 said Lady Lashmar. 
 
 She sat with her face to the window, as one 
 who need not fear the light. No, there was not 
 one line that told of advancing years upon the 
 hard, handsome face. Those finer emotions which 
 plough the human countenance, the cark and fret 
 of sensitive natures, had never affected Lady 
 Lashmar. She had almost always had her own 
 way, and she had almost always been happy. 
 When it pleased Heaven to take her husband, 
 after six years of married life, she bowed to the
 
 "oh, marked from birth." 13 
 
 rod. He was twenty years her senior, and a 
 chronic invalid. It was better that he should be 
 called away at fifty years of age than that he 
 should drag out a life of suffering to the scriptural 
 three-score and ten. Lady Lashmar thought that 
 Providence would have done well to take her 
 husband's afflicted son and to leave her own boy, 
 a fine healthy youngster, to fill the place which 
 the deformed step-son could never hold with 
 proper dignity. 
 
 Yes, deformed. It is one of those words 
 which are hardest to say. The old servants who 
 had known Lord Lashmar from his cradle said 
 that his back was a little weak; but his step- 
 mother was not a person to sophisticate, or to 
 use soft words. She knew that his spine had 
 •been curved in his infancy, a weakly child, born 
 of an over -educated hyper-intellectual mother, 
 and a father who had lived not wisely but too 
 well. She knew that in the years to come that 
 bent back would get gradually worse, that narrow 
 chest would invite the attack of phthisis. She 
 told herself that Hubert, Lord Lashmar, would 
 never make old bones; but she feared that he 
 might live long enough to marry and leave some 
 sickly son who should blight the prospects of her
 
 14 ONE THING NEEDFUL, 
 
 boy, Victorian, the very embodiment of physical 
 power and fresh unblemished youth. 
 
 She had not been unkind to her step-son. She 
 was far too clever a woman, to make that ir- 
 reparable mistake. She resolved in the very be- 
 ginning of things to live pleasantly with her hus- 
 band's son. It would be so much better for them 
 both; especially for her. Lashmar was fourteen 
 when his father died, and Victorian was five, a 
 difference of nine years; and Lashmar was old 
 for his years. He had never been at any public 
 school. He had not ventured to face the light- 
 hearted republic of a University. What should 
 he, the pariah, the stricken one, do there, among 
 the athletic and robust? He had been brought 
 up in cotton-wool, as it were. He had a middle- 
 aged tutor, who had been with him from his 
 tenth year, and who remained with him as librarian 
 and secretary; and he had an old servant. He 
 had travelled a good deal with the tutor and the 
 servant. He had read more than most young 
 men of five-and-twenty. He was a good classical 
 scholar, and had some knowledge of science. In 
 a word, he was a sickly lad, who had been 
 brought up and nourished upon books; but he 
 had fine instincts, and a strong humanitarian
 
 "oh, marked from birth." 15 
 
 feeling. The villagers about Lashmar adored him. 
 He drank tea with the old women, read to them 
 when they were ill, wrote letters for young and 
 old, talked politics or metaphysics with the deep- 
 thinkers, and carried the light of a noble intellect 
 into every house he entered. 
 
 Lady Lashmar was intense in politics, and all 
 her ideas upon legislation were of the good old 
 Tory flavour. She hated Radicals; and her greatest 
 affliction in life was that Lashmar Castle should 
 lie as it were in the very bosom of revolution. 
 Brumm was Radical to the backbone, and Brumm 
 was only ten miles off". Brumm was a centre of 
 Freethinking and Nihilism; and Brumm was at 
 her door. If Aladdin's African magician had been 
 at hand to whisk off her castle to the furthest 
 north, or the remotest west of England, her lady- 
 ship would have paid him handsomely for the 
 operation. But Lashmar Castle was planted deep 
 in that detested soil; and as her ladyship despised 
 the dower house, which was hers by right, and 
 loved this baronial mansion and its much statelier 
 surroundings, she was fain to endure the vicinity 
 of Brumm and its forty thousand operatives. 
 
 "It is an outrage against the decencies of life," 
 she exclaimed.
 
 / 
 
 l6 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "What's the matter, mother?" asked Lashmar, 
 looking up at her with his deep-sunken eyes, 
 thoughtful eyes of darkest hazel. "Is it anything 
 about Boldwood?" 
 
 "Of course it is about Boldwood. That low 
 creature has been holding forth at another meet- 
 ing. They seem to be perpetually having meet- 
 ings at Brumm." 
 
 "They have very few other pleasures," mur- 
 mured Lashmar. 
 
 "They have theatres and circuses and horrid 
 low music rooms," said her ladyship. "Surely 
 those are enough for them!" 
 
 "Enough for the frivolous majority; but you 
 see there is a superior minority who have learnt 
 to think and who want to say their little say 
 upon great public questions." 
 
 "Those thinkers and spouters are the pest of 
 society," exclaimed Lady Lashmar, throwing her 
 paper aside, and going on with her breakfast, 
 with an air of finding no savour in either truffled 
 chicken or the Arabian berry. "Over-education 
 is the greatest evil of the age. Thank heaven 
 the people themselves are beginning to feel the 
 burden of it. After clamouring for free schools
 
 "OH, MARKED FROM BIRTK." 1 7 
 
 and higher teaching they are beginning to groan 
 under the tyranny of compulsory education." 
 
 "Perhaps that is because when they cry for 
 bread we give them a stone," answered Lashmar 
 in his gentle, meditative way. "We cram 'ologies 
 down the throats of starving children; we feed 
 babes and sucklings with grammar and logic, and 
 then wonder that they are not grateful." 
 
 "That class of people never are grateful," said 
 Lady Lashmar, calmly ignoring her stepson's drift. 
 "But, fortunately, there are not many such wretches 
 as Boldwood, or we should have this castle sacked, 
 and find ourselves turned out upon the high road. 
 Boldwood is worse than Robespierre. Just read 
 his tirade upon the unequal division of property, 
 his revolutionary language about great landowners, 
 and his savage insolence about the Duke of 
 Northerland." 
 
 "Boldwood always goes too far. Yet there 
 are generally some flashes of sense amidst the 
 cloud of rhetoric. I read that speech of his be- 
 fore you came down to breakfast. He pleads the 
 cause of the yeoman rather cleverly — -when one 
 considers that as an operative he cannot have 
 very keen sympathies with the agricultural class. 
 His idea of dividing some of our great farms into 
 
 One Thins: Needful. I. 2
 
 l8 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 small holdings, and selling them to the peasantry, 
 to be paid for by instalments, upon the same 
 system as that on which needy people buy pianos, 
 is not at all bad." 
 
 "And a pleasant place England would be for 
 decent people to live in if it were chopped up in 
 little bits to please such men as Mr. Boldwood. 
 But, really, Lashmar, I believe you are at heart a 
 Radical," said her ladyship. 
 
 "No, I am a progressive Conservative; and I 
 believe the truest conservatism consists in doing 
 the utmost we can for the people. We can only 
 teach them to respect the privileges of property 
 by letting them taste the sweetness of possession. 
 There is no stauncher Conservative than your 
 working-man who has saved a hundred pounds." 
 
 "You always talk like a book, Lashmar," 
 sneered her ladyship; "I should like to hear you 
 speak in reply to this man Boldwood, at a great 
 public meeting." 
 
 In her heart of hearts she was thinking how 
 sorry a figure this hunchbacked stepson of hers 
 would make upon a public platform; how poorly 
 his low, grave tones would sound after Boldwood's 
 base bellowing, a voice which thundered and re-
 
 "OH, I\L\RKEP FROM BIRTH." 1 9 
 
 verberated through a vast building, as if it were 
 the roar of Bashan's mightiest bull. 
 
 "Would you really like to hear me speak?" 
 asked Lashmar, smiling faintly. 
 
 Was there ever a young man who has read and 
 thought deeply who does not long to give speech 
 to his thoughts? It is to satisfy this desire that 
 Mechanics' Institutes are built; it is for this that 
 an Athenaeum is a pleasant thing in a town. 
 
 "I should like this blatant beast to be an- 
 swered!" replied her ladyship somewhat evasively. 
 
 "Then I will do my best to answer him next 
 Wednesday week," said Lashmar. "There is to 
 be a Conservative meeting at the Town Hall on 
 that night. Colonel Spillington, the new Con- 
 servative candidate, is going to address the elec- 
 tors. It is expected that Boldwood will be in 
 full force, and that there will be a row. Spilling- 
 ton has asked me to support him — and — yes, I 
 really should like to answer Boldwood. Mine 
 will be a very poor speech, of course; a very 
 tame reply to Boldwood, who is a born orator; 
 but I shall have education on my side — " 
 
 "And prestige," added Victorian, who had 
 been too busy with his breakfast to speak before. 
 
 2*
 
 20 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "I only wish I were old enough to tackle Bold- 
 wood. I'd make his hair curl." 
 
 "What hideous expressions these boys pick 
 up at Eton," said her ladyship, with a shiver. 
 Then with a fond approving look at the hand- 
 some lad, she said proudly, 
 
 "I hope you will be in Parliament before you 
 are ten years older, Victorian, and that you will 
 be a distinguished politician." 
 
 "Oh, I don't mind going into the House in 
 ten years time," answered the boy easily, "but I 
 should like to have my fling on the continent for 
 a few years first, as Henry St. John had, don't 
 you know, before he sat for the family borough. 
 Nothing enlarges a fellow's views like diplomacy. 
 I shall get on to one of the legations directly I 
 leave college, Paris, if possible, and see as much 
 as I can of life before I pin myself down to 
 politics." 
 
 "Paris is an admirable place — for a young 
 man who wants to waste his time pleasantly," 
 said Lashmar, smiling at the embryo diplomatist. 
 
 "Did you waste your time there?" asked 
 the boy. 
 
 "No, Vic. I am not the kind of person to
 
 "OH, MARKED FROM BIRTH." 21 
 
 succeed in Parisian society. My gifts are in an- 
 other line." 
 
 "Poor Old Lashmar! You are out and away 
 the cleverest chap I know. When I think of how 
 much you've read, and how much better you can 
 construe a Greek play than our Toffs in the sixth, 
 I take off my hat to you. Do speak next Wed- 
 nesday week, Lash, and give that Radical chap a 
 good shaking." 
 
 "We'll hear what Spillington says about it," 
 answered Lashmar quietly; "if he wants me, I'll 
 speak. He is to stay here the night before the 
 meeting. You don't mind, do you, mother?" 
 
 Lord Lashmar always deferred to his step- 
 mother in all household matters, invitations, and 
 engagements. There were only four rooms in 
 Lashmar Castle in which he reigned supreme. 
 The library was one, and his own sitting-room, 
 bed-room, and dressing-room were the others. 
 Outside those rooms he exercised no authority. 
 The Lashmar library was the finest in Middle- 
 shire — one of the finest in England. The apart- 
 ment which accommodated that noble collection 
 of books was worthy of the treasures it contained. 
 It was long and lofty, with a fire-place at each 
 end, the oak chimney-pieces carved by Grinling
 
 22 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Gibbons, the ceiling enriched with oak carving, 
 the book-cases in harmony with chimney-pieces 
 and ceiling. Lord Lashmar's writing table and 
 reading desk, his capacious arm-chair and dainty 
 little tea-table, only made an island of furniture 
 in the vast expanse of oak flooring, relieved here 
 and there by an oasis of old Indian carpet. The 
 only bright colouring in the room was furnished 
 by the books. The Lashmars had been connois- 
 seurs in bookbinding for the last hundred years. 
 They had spent thousands upon that elegant art. 
 They had "wasted" thousands, said the unappre- 
 ciative outer world, persons slow to understand 
 that the case of a shabby -looking duodecimo 
 Elzevir ought to cost four or five pounds. 
 
 Lashmar's sitting-room opened out of the 
 library and would have seemed a large room in 
 a smaller house. It was lined from floor to ceil- 
 ing with bookshelves, containing the young peer's 
 own particular library, those books which had 
 been the one luxury of his life. New books, or 
 new editions, for the most part — books in several 
 languages — books that had been their owner's 
 consolation in many a day of bodily weakness 
 and weariness: for Lashmar's life had been made 
 up of brief intervals of health between long periods
 
 "OH, MARKED FROM BIRTH." 2$ 
 
 of illness. Those halcyon days of well-being were 
 very sweet to him. At such times he spent al- 
 most all his life out of doors, and revelled in 
 nature's loveliness as only a highly-trained mind 
 can revel; tasting the most infinite details in the 
 feast of beauty, the lights and shadows on the 
 petals of a primrose, the sheen on a beetle's wing; 
 enjoying every variety of atmosphere and colour- 
 ing, every form of lowliest life, with that sensitive 
 instinct for nature which breathes in every line 
 of Wordsworth's descriptive verse. 
 
 He had travelled much, and knew nature in 
 her most glorious aspects, but he had no need to 
 go far afield for beauty. The woodlands around 
 Lashmar, the low hills and pastural valleys, the 
 winding Avon and the English hedgerows furnished 
 a banquet which always satisfied the longings of 
 his soul. 
 
 "If I had but any one to whom I could tell 
 all my foolish fancies, I should be ever so much 
 happier," he said to himself sometimes regretfully, 
 "but there is no one. Victorian would only laugh 
 at me as a queer old chap; and my lady would 
 lift her eyebrows and inwardly v/onder if there 
 was a strain of madness in the Lashmar blood."
 
 24 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 "WHENCE AND WHAT ART THOU, EXECRABLE 
 SHAPE ? " 
 
 Colonel Spillington dined at Lashmar Castle 
 upon the night before the meeting. He was a 
 fine average specimen of the British officer, bhiff, 
 outspoken, unintellectual, right-thinking and honest, 
 a staunch Conservative, and a thorough gentle- 
 man. He was a man of just sufficiently good 
 family to be tolerable in the eyes of the great 
 Lady Pitland's daughter. There was at least no 
 taint of trade in his lineage, and he was there- 
 fore qualified to sit at the table with the lady 
 whose wealth had for the most part come out of 
 the coal pit, and who naturally scorned the idea 
 of commerce. He was not elated about his elec- 
 tion, and had dark doubts as to the power of the 
 Radicals in Brumm. "There must be some re- 
 spectable people in the place," he said. 
 
 "I fear not," replied her ladyship. "If there 
 were any respectable people such a person as 
 Boldwood would not be allowed to exist."
 
 "whence and what ap.t thou?" 25 
 
 "Unfortunately for us, mother, the days are 
 past when an obnoxious citizen could be sent 
 about his business, or even put in the pillory. 
 Boldwood is peaceable enough in his private life, 
 I believe, although he is somewhat truculent on 
 the platform." 
 
 "Somewhat!" echoed Lady Lashmar, "you 
 have such a namby-pamby way of expressing 
 yourself. I have never heard the creature speak, 
 but I have read his virulent nonsense in the 
 papers, and that is enough." 
 
 "Virulent, sometimes, I grant, but not always 
 nonsense," said Lashmar quietly. "The man's 
 ideas are Utopian, but he expresses himself with 
 a certain rough vigour, and with a strain of poetry 
 — in fact, the man is a born orator — and although 
 he is for the most part illogical, he has occasional 
 flashes of common-sense." 
 
 "Who is this Boldwood?" asked the Colonel, 
 trifling with an olive; "everybody has been talk- 
 ing to me about him since I consented to stand 
 for Brumm; and, as I am a stranger in the land 
 and his reputation is entirely local, I confess my- 
 self still in the dark as to this powerful antagonist 
 whom I am to meet to-morrow night." 
 
 "Mr. Boldwood is a high priest of advanced
 
 26 ON^ THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Radicalism," answered Lashmar. "He believes 
 in the divine right of every man to lay hands 
 upon any other man's possessions. He is strong 
 upon the old thesis, la propriete c'est le vol. 
 The first man who enclosed a bit of ground was 
 the enemy of the whole human race. He is the 
 sworn foe of the landowner and the manufacturer. 
 His gods are Rousseau and Karl Marx. He would 
 level all ranks, wage war against all privileged 
 classes, raze this house of ours to the ground, or 
 turn it into a hospital or a phalanster}^, do away 
 with Monarchy and the House of Lords, and 
 establish a Republican senate of working men in 
 which the brain-workers or the professional classes 
 should be as one in three. He would have uni- 
 versal peace — universal free trade: and pending 
 the falling in of other nations with these views, 
 he would have England walk in gospel ways, and 
 turn her left cheek to be smitten by the hand 
 that has boxed her soundly on the right cheek." 
 
 "You say he is a good speaker." 
 
 "I have never heard him; but I am told that 
 he is magnificent, and his speeches read like 
 oratory. I am looking forward to the fun to- 
 morrow night. We may be in a minority; but 
 there are plenty of Conservatives in Brumm, in
 
 "whence and what -XT THOU?" 2"] 
 
 spite of her ladyship's doubts, and we shall make 
 a good fight. From what I have heard of Bold- 
 wood he is not altogether a ruffian — indeed there 
 are some people who declare that he is a gentle- 
 man by birth, and took a degree at Oxford. Yet 
 I should hardly think this likely, from the appear- 
 ance of the man. He was pointed out to me 
 once in the street as I was driving through 
 Brumm — a giant with unkempt hair, disreputable 
 clothes, and a slouching walk. I hardly saw his 
 face, but I got a good idea of his build and 
 general style. He is a brass-worker, earns high 
 wages, and is said to be almost a genius in his 
 handicraft. He is not a native of Brumm; and I 
 don't think anyone in the place knows much 
 about his antecedents. He is an infidel, and 
 seems proud of his infidelity. He came to the 
 town seven years ago, with a wife and a baby. 
 The wife died soon after his arrival, and he has 
 not married again. That, Colonel, is the full 
 extent of my information about Jonathan Bold- 
 wood." 
 
 "I am looking forward to my encounter with 
 the gentleman!" said the Colonel cheerily. "He 
 shall see that I can stand fire. But I look to you 
 to reply to him. I am no orator."
 
 28 ONE 'thing needful. 
 
 "A gentleman is always more than a match 
 for a cad," said Victorian, who had been making 
 havoc with the peaches while his elders were 
 talking. 
 
 "Not when the cad is on his own ground, and 
 has an audience of five or six hundred cads to 
 back him up," answered Spillington. "How 
 many does your Town-hall hold, by the way, 
 Lashmar?" 
 
 "Fifteen hundred; and of those you may be 
 sure more than half will be disciples of Boldwood; 
 but that need not alarm you, as not half of those 
 are voters." 
 
 The meeting was at eight o'clock, so the 
 house party at the Castle took a late luncheon, 
 and started for Brumm soon after tea. Supper 
 after the meeting, was to serve as a substitute 
 for the eight o'clock dinner. This had been 
 duly explained to Colonel Spillington, who liked 
 his meals, and thoroughly approved of the 
 Lashmar chef. He laid in a heavy stock at 
 luncheon, calculating that there was a terrible 
 gulf to be bridged over before he should again 
 find himself face to face with substantial food. 
 He detested tea, and cakes and muffins, and all
 
 "whence and what art thou?" 29 
 
 those dainties with which Victorian gorged him- 
 self at five o'clock, when the little party assembled 
 in Lady Lashmar's morning room, full of the ap- 
 proaching fray. 
 
 "Do have some of these chocolate cakes. 
 Colonel," said Victorian, with his mouth full, 
 "they're so good." 
 
 "Thanks, no, my boy. I haven't tasted sweets 
 for the last twenty years, and I am afraid of tea. 
 It always turns to acidity. If," with a deprecating 
 glance at her ladyship, "if I might have a brandy 
 and soda." 
 
 "By all means," assented the dowager gra- 
 ciously, though she inwardly scorned a man who 
 wanted to be periodically sustained by brandy 
 and soda. 
 
 Lashmar rang the bell, "A little Dutch 
 courage, eh, Colonel?" he said, laughing. 
 
 "You're beginning to funk Boldwood, I know," 
 said Victorian, "and I don't wonder. He looks 
 like one of those fellows in Homer — Cyclops, don't 
 you know? I've heard that he lived for ever so 
 many years with the gipsies, and that his wife was 
 a gipsy girl. He's a rough sort, Colonel; and I 
 shouldn't wonder if he wanted to come to fisti- 
 cuffs with you on the platform,"
 
 30 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "If he comes to fisticuffs, I'm ready for him," 
 answered Spillington gaily, "it's the talking that 
 will bother me." 
 
 They started soon after six, intending to be 
 early at the Town Hall, where the candidate had 
 to meet his agent, and some of the Conservative 
 notabilities of Brumm, 
 
 It was a delicious summer evening, calm, 
 peaceful, the atmosphere steeped in sunlight, the 
 earth breathing warmth and perfume: a delightful 
 evening on which to loll against the cushions of 
 Lady Lashmar's barouche, to be gently lulled upon 
 Cee springs, as the seventeen-handers trotted with 
 rhythmical beat along the level turnpike road — -a 
 lovely road for the first half of the journey, a road 
 between fair green pastures and golden corn, by 
 wood and copse, and hillocky common land, where 
 the dwarf furze shone yellow amidst the purpling 
 heather, a road by peaceful village and Elizabethan 
 homestead, by straw-yards populous with lazy kine, 
 by piggery and poultry yard, and duck pond, and 
 cattle trough. Colonel Spillington, who was of 
 the streets streety, thought that the country was 
 a pretty place enough in the westering sun, but 
 that it had an ugly smell, and must needs be the 
 abomination of desolation in the winter, except
 
 "whence and what art thou?" 31 
 
 for a hunting man. And Colonel Spillington had 
 nothing in common with that great creature, the 
 British Sportsman. He had shot tigers and bears, 
 and had stuck pigs in Hindostan; but he did not 
 appreciate the raptures of waiting about at corners 
 for a reluctant fox in a north-east wind, or a 
 chilly drizzle. 
 
 "A charming country," he said patronisingly, 
 "but I wonder you can live so many months in 
 the year at Lashmar Castle!" 
 
 "I am fond of the country, and Lashmar de- 
 tests London," answered her ladyship. "I dare 
 say when Victorian grows up I shall spend more 
 of my time in Grosvenor Square." 
 
 "I am not going to live in London," said her 
 son disdainfully. "When I leave the University 
 I mean to see life. I shall travel all over Europe. 
 I mean to be a man of the world." 
 
 "You had better stay in London if you want 
 to see life," said the Colonel. "The man who 
 has not learnt his Society-alphabet in London is 
 always half a savage. It is all very well to talk 
 about the superiority of foreign manners, but the 
 man who has been educated on the Continent is 
 generally a tiger!"
 
 32 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "Then I will be a tiger," retorted Victorian 
 stoutly. 
 
 They were nearing Brumm, and there was an 
 unmistakable change in the atmosphere. The 
 fine gold had become dim. That pure radiance 
 of the westering sun was thickened and blurred, 
 yet beautiful exceedingly athwart the smoke-clouds. 
 The tall shafts began to show against the blue 
 horizon, a veritable grove of chimneys; and soon 
 her ladyship's splendid barouche, with its big bay 
 horses, white-wigged coachman, and powdered 
 footman, its emblazoned panels, and brazen 
 harness, was thrilling the souls of operatives and 
 factory-girls as it flashed along the dingy crowded 
 streets, past the beer-shops and the pork butchers, 
 and the general dealers, and the bakers, amidst 
 odours of tallow and herrings, and onions and 
 shoe-leather and beer. The street boys called 
 out "Hooray," as the carriage went by. One 
 keen-eyed brat caught the distorted profile of 
 Lashmar's back, and cried out, "My eye! look at 
 the hunchback." 
 
 Lashmar's quick ear heard, and his thin lips 
 contracted ever so slightly, with the faintest ex- 
 pression of mental pain. He had heard just such 
 a speech many a time before. It did not come
 
 "WHENCE AND WHAT ART THOU?" 33 
 
 upon him as a revelation. He knew that he was 
 a creature apart, marked out and branded by 
 Nature. Wealth and rank and culture could never 
 undo what Nature, in one blundering moment, 
 had done. The hand that had turned out so 
 many thousands of ploughboys and operatives, 
 beggars and rascals, perfect from head to heel, 
 had faltered in the making of the last Lord of 
 Lashmar: and he must pay the penalty of fate. 
 He bore the disgrace as patiently as he bore that 
 other and heavier burden of neuralgic pain, which 
 had wTung his weak frame at intervals ever since 
 he could remember. He had fought against long 
 odds; had exercised that poor weak body of his 
 to the utmost — rowing, riding, walking. He, the 
 hunchback, was a skilled gymnast; but he had 
 never exhibited his skill in any public gymnasium. 
 His own keen sense of the ridiculous hindered 
 any such foolish vanity. 
 
 The meeting had been convened by the local 
 Conservative Association, but it was not a ticket 
 meeting. The hall was to be open to all comers, 
 and the hall was crammed to overflowing before 
 the speeches began. The great oblong room 
 reeked with unwashed, or badly washed, humanity, 
 a multitude clad in long-worn corduroy and fustian, 
 
 One Thing Needful. I, 3
 
 J' 
 
 34 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 simmering in the glare of the gas. To Lady 
 Lashmar, seated on the platform, that sea of faces 
 in that coarse flare of yellow light, suggested an 
 over-populated pandemonium. They looked like 
 devils, some of those operatives, to her unac- 
 customed eye. Malignant devils — swarthy, grin- 
 ning, lurid. 
 
 The chairman opened the business in a mildly 
 conventional manner; recapitulated the usual 
 commonplaces. The country was on the eve of 
 a great crisis, a crisis involving national interests 
 and individual interests alike, trade, security, 
 prosperity, peace at home, honour abroad. The 
 time had come when the Conservative party were 
 called upon to emerge from that shade in which 
 their modesty delighted; the time, in short — after 
 a great deal more to the same purpose — had 
 come for a long pull, and a strong pull, and a 
 pull altogether. 
 
 This was the chairman's popular style, which 
 he had generally found answer before a mixed 
 audience. But on this present occasion, before 
 the Conservatives could begin their applause, a 
 hoarse voice at the back of the hall called out, 
 "Yes, and pull the boat over; that's about what 
 you Conservatives generally does when you do
 
 "whence and avhat art thou?" 35 
 
 pull together," and there was a laugh which 
 spoiled the effect of Mr. Mason Bank's peroration. 
 And now it was time for the candidate to intro- 
 duce himself, which he did in a somewhat 
 rambling speech upon old, old lines. The men 
 of Brumm had heard such speeches ever since 
 they had possessed ears to hear political dis- 
 cussion. Colonel Spillington was a poor orator, 
 and he had nothing new to say. But he was 
 hearty, and he had a pleasant manner; he had 
 the courage of his opinions too, and threw some 
 pretty big stones at the opposite party, in the 
 teeth of hisses and groans from the majority, for 
 it appeared as if the Radicals were the most 
 numerous. They were certainly the loudest. It 
 might be that noise prevailed over numbers. 
 
 Before the Colonel could sit down, a man 
 stood up in the middle of the hall, an Anak, a 
 giant among dwarfs, for the men of Brumm were 
 stunted by unhealthy toil. A dark, threatening 
 face was turned towards the platform, full in the 
 glare of the gas; a large face with a broad fore- 
 head, high cheek bones and massive jaw, flashing 
 eyes under shaggy brows, a shock of coarse black 
 hair. 
 
 Lashmar looked at that face transfixed. He
 
 36 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 had seen it before — seen it years and years ago 
 — in a dream, before he was born, yes, in some 
 mystical anterior life, as it seemed to him. He 
 knew its every line. Yes, those lineaments were 
 graven deep upon the tablets of memory.
 
 "spare one tear with i\te." 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 "ALL THAT HAVE EYES TO WEEP, SPARE ONE TEAR 
 WITH ME." 
 
 "I RISE to move an amendment," said Jona- 
 than Boldwood, in a deep strong voice. 
 
 "On the platform, get upon the platform, 
 Boldwood," roared the crowd. "Let's hear thee, 
 man, thou hast always summat good to say. 
 Bravo, Boldwood! Three cheers for Boldwood!" 
 
 And there was a shout that seemed as if it 
 would rend the roof of the building, a thrill of 
 delight as at the appearance of some favourite 
 actor. The crowd made way for the orator, and 
 the applause grew deafening, as he scrambled on 
 to the platform, shook his rough mane, folded his 
 arms, and looked round the assembly, those eyes 
 of his shining like coals of fire. 
 
 "You want to hear me speak, friends," he 
 said, in his deep thrilling voice. "You shall! 
 You have had plenty of fustian from these gentle- 
 men. You shall have a little bit of sound cloth
 
 38 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 from me — stuff that will stand wear and tear, not 
 devil's dust that will come to bits directly you 
 pull at it." And then he began to attack the 
 Colonel's speech. He took the old, old story, 
 point by point, from the Revolutionist's side; he 
 laughed to scorn the old institutions, the old 
 opinions, bishops and peers, church and state, 
 royal sinecures, royal allowances, princely nobodies, 
 useless functionaries. He spoke with the force 
 and vigour of Danton, with the finesse of Mira- 
 beau; he spoke as a rebel against his queen and 
 against his God. His finest points were barbed 
 with blasphemy; but he had the audience with 
 him from the moment he opened his mouth. He 
 swayed them as the wind sways the reeds by the 
 river. 
 
 *^Vour God, the High-church God, the Tory 
 God, made man in His own image, you tell us. 
 If so He had two images, or you have strangely 
 altered and degraded, mutilated and defaced the 
 image He made. There is man as God made 
 him, free, upright, independent, with all the world 
 before him where to choose, told to live by the 
 sweat of his brow, and to till the land, but never 
 told that he should have no land to till, that his 
 brow and every inch of his body should sweat in
 
 / 
 
 "SPARE ONE TEAR WITH AIE." 39 
 
 the grinding toil of the factory, that your God's 
 beautiful earth should be shut and fenced off 
 from him by an everlasting park-paling, that his 
 world to choose from should be an endless turn- 
 pike road, where he should tramp for ever through 
 the dust and heat of summer, through the mud 
 and mire of winter, in the glare of the dog-days, 
 or with his face to the biting north-easter, and 
 with no halting place but the casual ward, no 
 bourne but the pauper's grave. That is the type 
 of God's noblest work, and the commonest type: 
 such men are as millions against your thousands, 
 you who toil not, you who spend the wages of 
 other men's toil. 
 
 "God made the toiler, made Adam to work 
 for his bread — his own bread, mark you — sowing 
 and reaping on his own land, for himself and 
 his family, enjoying the first fruits of the land, 
 rejoicing in the fulness of the harvest, the fatness 
 of his flock, having his share in all the beauty 
 and the glory of this earth. That was patriarchal 
 man as God made him, and as he might have 
 been this day, for God's earth is wide enough 
 for all who live upon it, if it were not for ha-has 
 and park-fences. God's earth is not big enough 
 to keep an aristocracy, not big enough to give
 
 40 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 parks and deer forests to all the dukes and earls 
 who have sprung from the amours of dead and 
 rotten kings. That is what this earth won't do, 
 and that is what the people of England mean to 
 set their faces against — the profligate splendour 
 of the few who fatten upon the bloody sweat of 
 the many: ay, my friends, a sweat as bloody as 
 that agony in the garden of which your priests 
 tell us; for it means the gradual waste of life 
 worn out untimely in unnatural toil, life-blood 
 ebbing away drop by drop in the factory and in 
 the mine, lives wasted in premature old age, 
 children born and bred in dirt, in ignorance and 
 in squalor, in order that a few foolish faces 
 should be topped by coronets and a sprinkling of 
 fine gentlemen should lead the fashions in good 
 manners and bad morals. Can any man among 
 you be simple enough to swallow such a lie as 
 that God's image is reflected in this type of 
 man? No, my friends: these are the sons of 
 Belial, who come among you this night 'flown 
 with insolence and wine,' not to ask you 
 for your suffrages, but to order how you shall 
 vote." 
 
 He flung back the coarse iron-gray hair from 
 his low broad brow, and stood like a tower, while
 
 "SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME." 4 1 
 
 the hall rang with applause, varied by timorous 
 hisses from the Conservative minority. 
 
 Where had Lashmar seen him before? What 
 was that anterior existence in which this man's 
 face had flashed upon him as it flashed now? 
 but only for a transient span, appearing and 
 vanishing almost in the same moment, flashing 
 past him as it were in a whirlwind, swept away 
 upon the wings of the hurricane. 
 
 It was either in that dim, unknown world of 
 a previous life, or it was long, long ago in his 
 earliest boyhood. 
 
 Yes, he recalled it all now; the whole scene 
 stood out before him. 
 
 It was at the University boat-race. He was 
 a little fellow, with his father and mother, on a 
 lawn at Mortlake, a green lawn shadowed by 
 leafless lime-trees. He was clinging to his 
 mother's gown — the poor sickly mother already 
 marked for death, though he knew it not — cling- 
 ing to her, breathless with excitement, catching 
 the fever of the crowd, scarce knowing what 
 thrilled him so. The crowd and the river seemed 
 to rock under the cold brightness of the March 
 day, as the two boats shot under the bridge, 
 Oxford three lengths behind.
 
 42 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "That big man, number six, pulls like the 
 devil," cried Lord Lashmar. "If he can only 
 last, I believe he'll make them win. I never saw 
 such an oar." 
 
 He mentioned the man's name, but his son 
 had forgotten that, though he distinctly remem- 
 bered his father's speech. He had his own little 
 boat on the Avon at this time, and had just 
 learnt to row, so was keenly interested in feats of 
 oarsmanship. 
 
 The Oxford boat came past the lawn, gaining 
 upon its antagonist, and then Hubert Lashmar 
 saw the face of the oarsman — a dark, ugly face, 
 strong jaw, broad forehead, beetle brows, but a 
 face made radiant, glorified, god-like almost, by 
 triumph. Oxford was winning. The stroke put 
 on a tremendous spurt, to which number six an- 
 swered with might and main. The boat was 
 almost lifted out of the water. The other oars 
 nerved themselves for a superhuman effort; a 
 great cry of exultation broke from the crowd: 
 "Oxford wins!" Men thrilled with the delight of 
 having witnessed a miracle, and that Oxford crew 
 was cheered as never men were cheered along 
 the banks of the Thames. 
 
 This was the man. Number six in the Ox-
 
 "spare one tear with me." 43 
 
 ford boat nineteen years ago, and the brass- 
 worker yonder, were one and the same. The 
 face was too pecuhar a face to be easily forgotten 
 or mistaken for another. 
 
 Lashmar rose and came to the front of the 
 platform, braving that multitude of eyes, that 
 broad glare of light. But here there were no 
 street boys to jeer at his deformity. He stood 
 up before men; and Nature's unkindness was a 
 claim upon the respect of even the lowest among 
 the crowd. 
 
 He was of the middle height, fairly pro- 
 portioned from the waist downwards, but the 
 misshapen back and the neck sunk between the 
 shoulders too obviously indicated a malformation 
 of the spine. The pale, classical features, the 
 slender white hands, the indescribable air of 
 high birth and refinement interested even these 
 roughs of Brumm. They had heard that this 
 young Lord Lashmar was a student and a poet, 
 something like that Lord Byron of whom most of 
 them had read and heard, whose poetry was 
 familiar to many among them in these days of 
 free libraries and advanced thought. They liked 
 the look of the Lord of Lashmar Castle; though 
 they had pledged themselves to those new ideas
 
 44 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 which were to bring all such lordlings to their 
 proper level, cancel all old grants of land, reduce 
 all ancient privileges, and make the soil of Eng- 
 land common property, and all things equal be- 
 tween man and man. 
 
 He began to speak, and was heard in silence. 
 He had a grave and steadfast manner, a low, 
 earnest voice, which was distinctly heard at the 
 end of that croAvded hall — a voice of a very dif- 
 ferent calibre from that of Jonathan Boldwood, 
 but a voice of considerable compass notwithstand- 
 ing, and of finest quality. 
 
 "My friends," he began, "the gentleman who 
 has just addressed you calls himself your friend, 
 but we all know what the demagogue's friendship 
 means. It means climbing into somebody else's 
 seat upon other men's shoulders. You have heard 
 of Marat, the man whom Charlotte Corday stabbed 
 in his bath, hoping by that one bloody act to stem 
 the torrent of blood which that man was shedding. 
 Now, I am not going to say that Mr. Boldwood 
 is like Marat, or that he would rejoice in that 
 deluge of blood which to Marat was the very wine 
 of life. Mr. Boldwood is an Englishman, and Marat 
 was a Frenchman, and your English demagogue, I 
 am happy to sa)', is always a very mild translation
 
 "SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME." 45 
 
 of the French original. Yet I will venture to say- 
 that if Marat were standing on this platform to- 
 night, he would talk to you very much as Mr. 
 Boldwood has talked. He would taunt you with 
 your daily labour as if it were a disgrace to work 
 for your living; as if every one of us — queen and 
 princes, cabinet ministers, general officers, great 
 sea captains, lawyers, landowners, painters, poets, 
 musicians — do not toil, and bring forth that which 
 we have to produce in the sweat of our brows. 
 Granted that there are the sons of Belial, that 
 there are among the honourable and honoured 
 aristocracy of England a few black sheep, are 
 there no dusky fleeces, do you think, to be found 
 in the factory? Are there no black sheep in the 
 mine? No idlers and malingerers battening upon 
 the toil of others? The warp and the woof of 
 society are woven upon the same lines, my friends, 
 from one end of the fabric to the other; and those 
 who prate to you of equality prate to you of 
 something that never has existed and never can 
 exist. Were Cain and Abel equal before God? 
 No; the Almighty blessed one and cursed the 
 other. Were Jacob and Esau alike in their fate, 
 or were the fortunes of Joseph and his brethren 
 equal? Is Nature equal in her gifts? I stand
 
 46 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 before you, my friends, this night, a living in- 
 stance of Nature's inequality. Shall I blaspheme 
 against my God because it has pleased Him to 
 make me different from my fellow-men? No, I 
 accept my burden, as other men must needs ac- 
 cept theirs. Be sure there is something in every 
 shoe that pinches the wearer. What I have to do, 
 and what we all have to do, is to make the best 
 of the world we live in for ourselves and for each 
 other; improving away evil gently and by degrees, 
 not by rapid wrenches and volcanic upheavals, 
 but in the gradual ripening of the days and years, 
 clinging to all that was good in England's past, 
 and discarding all that was bad; lopping off the 
 Avithered branches, but zealously guarding the 
 tree; and that I take it to be true Conservatism, 
 and a truly Liberal Conservatism." 
 
 There was considerable applause from the Con- 
 servative minority after Lord Lashmar's speech. 
 Boldwood sat facing the audience, his arms folded 
 upon the back of a chair, glaring at them from 
 under those bushy brows of his, with eyes that 
 seemed always to shine Avith the same angry light: 
 anger at fate, life, fortune — a world in which for 
 him all things were adverse and cruel. Suddenly 
 there arose a murmur of voices, excited voices in
 
 "SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME." 47 
 
 the crowd just below the platform — murmurs in 
 which he caught his own name: and then the 
 word "fire!" Some men by the corner of the 
 platform Avere talking about him, looking up at 
 him. 
 
 He bent down and questioned one of them — 
 "What's the matter, mate?" 
 
 "Goldwin's! You live at Goldwin's, don't 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "Goldwin's is afire!" 
 
 The demagogue bounded from his chair, 
 dropped off the platform, and pushed his way 
 through the crowd, muttering as he went: 
 
 "My God! And that child— locked in her 
 room on the fourth story " 
 
 He clutched a man by the shoulder: 
 
 "What about this fire?" he gasped. "Is it 
 true? Who brought the news? When?" 
 
 "Not five minutes ago; there's a lot has run 
 off to see. There was a lot of 'em here — a lot of 
 Goldwin's' people." 
 
 Boldwood waited to hear no further, but pushed 
 his way on to the door. The news had wrought 
 confusion in the hall already, and the crowd was 
 surging outwards. There was a greater excite-
 
 48 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 merit, a fiercer fever of emotion to be had out of 
 doors than the finest speaker could offer within. 
 A great fire was one of the spectacles which 
 Brumm most enjoyed. 
 
 Goldwin's was a gigantic building on the 
 eastern outskirts of the town, on that side most 
 remote from Lashmar Castle — a huge model 
 lodging house, built some years before by a friend 
 of humanity who only required nine per cent, for 
 his capital. It was a huge caravansery, and swarmed 
 like an anthill; for it was better than the dens 
 and hovels of the slums in the heart of the town, 
 inasmuch as it was wind-and-weather-proof, which 
 they were not. The rents exacted for the rooms 
 were high, and it was only the more prosperous 
 of the working classes who could afford to live at 
 Goldwin's. 
 
 Boldwood had a couple of rooms there: two 
 little square boxes on the fourth story, one with 
 a fireplace, the other without. He had made the 
 room with the fireplace his little daughter's bed- 
 chamber, while he himself slept, and for the most 
 part lived, in the cold. There was a common 
 kitchen at Goldwin's where the inmates could get 
 anything cooked; and there was a common laundry 
 where the women compa:-ed their rags and told
 
 "SPARE ONE TEAR WITH I\IE." 49 
 
 each other their troubles; and there was a club- 
 room where the men smoked, and talked politics, 
 and played dominoes — a hot-bed of advanced 
 socialism. 
 
 To the dwellers in the slums Goldwin's seemed 
 a lordly mansion, and to live at Goldwin's was a 
 distinction. It was a huge quadrangular building, 
 six stories high, with a courtyard in the centre — 
 a monster pile of ugly yellow brick, pierced with 
 windows all of one pattern, opening on to covered 
 balconies with iron railings — everything straight 
 and square, and flat and uniform. A huge cube 
 of brickwork it looked from the distance, as seen 
 across the level of the flattest, dreariest outskirt 
 of Brumm; uglier than factory, or jail, or work- 
 house. To those wealthier citizens whose prospect 
 that huge bulk defaced, it seemed a monstrous 
 blot upon the horizon. 
 
 The beneficent Goldwin had bought a couple 
 of acres of waste ground for a song, a quarter of 
 a century before; and when a great cry had gone 
 up to heaven from the penny newspapers, about 
 the way in which the poor of Brumm were lodged, 
 Mr, Goldwin had stood up at a public meeting 
 and pledged himself to build a model dwelling 
 which should be as the workman's paradise. 
 
 One Thing Needful. /, 4
 
 50 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 While the building was in progress, Mr. Goldwin 
 was one of the most popular men in Brumm. It 
 was only when his house was finished, and his 
 scale of rents made known, that his popularity 
 began to decline. But, although the rents were 
 high, Goldwin's was always full from roof to base- 
 ment. 
 
 The meeting ended amidst confusion, and the 
 last speeches were unheard. The news of the 
 fire had reached the platform, and Lord Lashmar 
 knew that the Radical leader had rushed away 
 to see to the safety of his child. Even her lady- 
 ship's sympathies were aroused by the tragedy of 
 the scene. 
 
 "To think that such a creature should have 
 so much human feeling!" she exclaimed. "I hope 
 his people will not be burnt." 
 
 She had not grasped the fact that the dema- 
 gogue's "people" were comprised by one only 
 child. 
 
 "I think, mother, if you'll allow me, I'll stay 
 and see the end of this business after I've put 
 you into your carriage," said Lashmar. "I can 
 get a fly at the George to take me home." 
 
 "I'll stay with you," said Colonel Spillington, 
 
 "And I," cried Victorian.
 
 "spare one tear with me." 51 
 
 "No, Victor, I will not have you struggling in 
 a Brumm crowd!" exclaimed his mother; "and 
 you, Lashmar, you would not certainly be so 
 foolish as to trust yourself amongst those roughs." 
 
 "They would be safe enough with me," said 
 the Colonel. "But the young one can go home 
 with your ladyship; Lashmar and I will see it 
 out." 
 
 Lady Lashmar remonstrated; she offered to 
 wait at the hotel until her stepson was ready to 
 go home with her; but to this Lashmar would 
 not consent. He took his mother to her carriage, 
 and saw Victorian seat himself beside her, very 
 reluctantly. The boy was longing for an ad- 
 venture; he felt that it was in him to do the 
 work of twenty hireling firemen. The engine 
 came tearing down the street while the carriage 
 stood there, frightening the big bays out of their 
 wits. The firemen looked like demons, the street 
 boys yelped and whooped as the vision of flash- 
 ing metal and dark resolute faces rushed by. 
 And to have to turn one's back upon that fever 
 of excitement and go home to supper with one's 
 mother! It was hard for impetuous young Eton, 
 strong in the overweening confidence of youth. 
 The barouche drove away through the summer 
 
 4*
 
 52 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 night, drove away from the smoke and grime — • 
 towards fields and dewy hills and flowery hedge- 
 rows. Lashmar and the Colonel got into a hansom 
 cab — they have had hansoms in Brumm for the 
 last twenty years — and told the driver to go to 
 Goldwin's as fast as he could pelt. Driver and 
 horse were both excited, and rattled off at a tre- 
 mendous pace. 
 
 There were half-a-dozen streets, and an arid 
 waste of market gardens and ground newly plotted 
 out for building, to be traversed before they 
 reached the scene of the fire; unmade roads, 
 stretching to the right and the left, ghost-like in 
 the moonlight — here a factory, and there a shabby- 
 genteel terrace of new houses, and anon a row of 
 allotment gardens; but straight in front of them 
 they saw Goldwin's, like the fiery pillar in the 
 desert — a monstrous pile, vomiting smoke and 
 flame. 
 
 "The fire must have gained ground terribly 
 before the engines arrived," said Lashmar, lean- 
 ing forward over the doors of the cab, with his 
 eyes intent upon that flaming bulk yonder. 
 
 "Engines never are in time to do any sub- 
 stantial good," answered Spillington. "How lucky 
 the fire did not happen in the middle of the
 
 "SPARE ONE TEAR WITH IvIE." 53 
 
 night. People would be up and about, and able 
 to help themselves." 
 
 "But the children," cried Lashmar, almost 
 with a moan of anguish. "The little children, 
 left alone in that tower of Babel. The careless 
 young mothers roaming the streets; the fathers 
 listening to Boldwood. Perhaps you don't know 
 the kind of mothers that are made out of factory 
 girls? God help the little children! Til warrant 
 there were dozens of them left to take care of 
 themselves in that big house to-night!" 
 
 "That's a horrible idea," muttered the Colonel; 
 and he felt that there was only too much ground 
 for Lashmar's fear. 
 
 They were in front of the house by this time 
 — a dense crowd between them and the build- 
 ing. 
 
 "Wait!" said Lashmar to the cabman as he 
 alighted, and he and Spillington pushed their 
 way through the mob. 
 
 It Avas a moment of breathless excitement. 
 The engines were on the other side of the build- 
 ing; the fire-escapes were in full action; but they 
 could not be everywhere. Lashmar had conjec- 
 tured rightly. There was a swarm of children in 
 that human hive: and the mothers were rushing
 
 54 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 about distractedly, pleading to the firemen, to 
 the crowd, to the empty air even, to save their 
 little ones — pointing wildly to windows: there, 
 there, that one, on the fifth floor, the seventh 
 from the end, that one by the broken rain-pipe 
 — oh! curses on these tall houses, where the chil- 
 dren could be roasted alive, and no help possible ! 
 The fire had broken out suddenly, with an 
 astounding fury. It was all the work of an hour; 
 but the mischief had been slowly working for 
 long silent days and nights. The brick-work of 
 that huge shaft which went up from the laundry 
 — the common chimney of kitchen, laundiy, and 
 club-room — had been red-hot, and none knew. 
 They had only felt the warmth an annoyance in 
 the hot summer nights. No one had guessed 
 that there was danger; and to-night, at ten 
 o'clock, the skirting of one of the rooms next the 
 chimney had burst into flame, and then another, 
 and then another, till a great column of flame 
 was rushing up to heaven through the middle of 
 the house — that central block upon which the 
 initials of William Goldwin, the people's bene- 
 factor, stood out boldly above a great black- faced 
 clock, with white metal hands; a clock that had 
 ticked off the brief intervals of rest to many a
 
 "SPARE ONE TEAR WITH ME." 55 
 
 toiler, but which would never tick again for dead 
 or living, since the metal that had composed its 
 works was running down the brick -work in a 
 molten stream like quicksilver. 
 
 Yes; screams, and clasped hands, and dis- 
 hevelled hair were the livery of all those careless 
 young mothers to-night. Locked in, their chil- 
 dren had all been locked in! To hide the luci- 
 fers, and to lock the door, that had been the 
 maternal idea of carefulness. Locked in — locked 
 in one of those pigeon-holes in that great bar- 
 rack through which the flames were roaring. 
 
 While the mothers were rushing to and fro, 
 threading the crowd, falling into the arms of 
 strangers to sob out their woe, shrieking in 
 wildest hysteria, or standing white and dumb 
 waiting for Fate to strike, there was one father 
 who was acting vigorously for himself, asking 
 help from no man. 
 
 "Look at him!" gasped the crowd, as Jona- 
 than Boldwood's huge form scaled the iron bal- 
 conies, clambered and swung himself from one 
 point of vantage to another, mounting higher and 
 higher, showing a dark moving blotch against the 
 red light that shone all over the building, as it 
 had been the palace of the setting sun. "Look
 
 56 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 at him! There's a man for you, a man with the 
 heart of a lion. His little girl is up in one o' 
 them rooms — one o' the toppest. The firemen 
 and the 'scapes are all t'other side o' the build- 
 ing. God help him! He'll be suffocated before 
 he gets to that top-room!" 
 
 This was about the gist of what the crowd 
 said, in short gasps of speech, loquacious, ex- 
 cited, pitying but impotent to help, around and 
 about Lord Lashmar. Neither his gentle blood 
 nor his crooked back attracted any attention in 
 that surging mass of anxious humanity. All dis- 
 tinctions were for the time blotted out. The 
 strong human instinct prevailed over all class 
 differences and conventionalities. The hearts of 
 Radical and Tory throbbed in perfect unison, ac- 
 celerated by pity and terror. 
 
 "He'll do it!" roared the crowd, and Lash- 
 mar's memory went back to that other crowd 
 roaring on the Surrey shore, roaring from the flat 
 swamps of Chiswick yonder, two voices meeting 
 and blending across the river. "He'll do it!" 
 cried the crowd, watching that bulky figure — a 
 figure that had lost the litheness of athletic youth, 
 and which pulled itself heavily, with the strength 
 of a giant, slowly, laboriously, from iron rail to
 
 "spare one tear with me." 57 
 
 iron rail, bridging the distance with evident diffi- 
 culty. "He'll do it!" and Lashmar remembered 
 the dark face bent over the oar; the resolute 
 under jaw and beetle brow, the dark, cropped 
 hair and bull neck. He fancied he could see 
 the face now, turned towards the burning build- 
 ing, lurid in the reflected light. 
 
 "One story more, and he's there!" cried the 
 crowd. 
 
 One more rail to grasp, one last effort to 
 swing himself to the higher level; but before he 
 could grasp the rail a great wave of flame and 
 smoke rushed out from the shattered windows in 
 front of him, poured over him like black water, 
 and wrapped him in Egyptian darkness — dark- 
 ness flecked with arrows of flame. Then there 
 arose a groan as of Samson when the pillars 
 yielded and the roof fell — the groan of a despair- 
 ing Titan. The crowd reeled backward with a 
 shuddering recoil, and that bulky figure fell in 
 their midst, almost at Lashmar's feet. 
 
 There was no help, no hope. The dema- 
 gogue's neck was broken. He expired without a 
 murmur.
 
 58 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 
 
 While the mob surrounded the dead man, 
 talking over him, lamenting him, waiting for 
 medical help, for a stretcher to carry that mo- 
 tionless bulk of humanity away, Lashmar had 
 slipped off his coat, flung it to the remonstrant 
 Colonel Spillington, and had begun to climb the 
 iron balconies, just as Boldwood had climbed, 
 but at a greater disadvantage, for the smoke and 
 flame had intensified with every moment; window 
 after window had shivered, and vomited fire. 
 The lookers-on, those who were not too absorbed 
 by their thoughts of the dead to watch the living, 
 gave a cry of horror — horror at the madness of 
 such an attempt. 
 
 But in a few minutes those spectators under- 
 stood that this climber was of a different calibre 
 from Boldwood. This slight, slim form was the 
 figure of a trained athlete. Those long lithe arms 
 held on to the balconies, and wreathed them-
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 59 
 
 selves about the iron columns with the suppleness 
 and the tenacity of a seipent. Could this be the 
 man with the crooked back, who had been stand- 
 ing in the front of the crowd just now, silent, 
 watchful? 
 
 Some of them recognised him by that marred 
 spine, knew him to be Lord Lashmar, a chronic 
 invalid, a weakling. Others who knew better 
 knew that he had trained himself to the highest 
 feats of athleticism, that he had built a gym- 
 nasium at Lashmar Castle, and that he had 
 exercised his body with all the devotion of a 
 Greek wrestler, or a Roman gladiator. To these 
 it was no surprise to see the hunchback's long 
 lean arms lift him from balcony to balcony, to 
 see that well-shaped head thrown back to escape 
 the suffocating rush of smoke and fiery dust, to 
 see railing after railing gained, as that stunted 
 figure mounted higher, diminishing almost to a 
 vanishing point. Yes, he will do it! That which 
 Jonathan Boldwood — deteriorated by intemperate 
 habits and a sedentary life, hindered by his own 
 bulk — had been unable to accomplish, this de- 
 formed lordling would do. Would do? He had 
 done it. That sinuous right arm was wreathed 
 round the iron column between the fourth story
 
 6o ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 and the balcony above. A mighty cheer swelled 
 from the throats of the crowd — a cheei» that was 
 half a sob. 
 
 "Bring round the fire-escapes," shouted one 
 and there was a rush to the other side of the 
 building. Lives were being saved there as fast 
 as the firemen could save them — young children, 
 helpless old people, sick, and maimed. But here 
 was a life more precious than them all — the life 
 of the deliverer, the hero, the Hercules who had 
 entered himself, a voluntary combatant, in a 
 hand-to-hand fight with death. 
 
 Would he perish in his generous endeavour? 
 That was the awful doubt which thrilled every 
 heart in that watching crowd. Even Rachel 
 weeping for her children, stilled her wailings for 
 the moment, to look up with strained eyes and 
 awe-stricken face towards that upper balcony 
 within which the deliverer had disappeared. 
 What fate awaited him in the darkness and the 
 fire? Was the room he had entered sound and 
 whole, or was it but the mouth of a fiery pit? 
 Was that generous heart stilled in death, even 
 while they watched and waited? 
 
 No; just as the fire-escape appeared round 
 the corner of the building, swaying to and fro as
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 6 1 
 
 the firemen and the crowd steered it along, just 
 as succour drew near, that slim figure in the 
 white shirt sleeves flashed out again amidst the 
 smoke. Lord Lashmar was standing in that 
 fourth floor balcony with a child in his arms. He 
 had but to wait the adjustment of the escape, to 
 guard himself and his living burden from the 
 flames, and all the rest was easy. 
 
 Five, ten minutes of supreme anxiety, and all 
 was over. Lashmar was standing among the 
 crowd with Boldwood's five-year-old daughter in 
 his arms, a small, thin figure in a little white 
 nightgown, a sallow, wizened little face, with 
 great goblin eyes. 
 
 "God bless you, sir; God bless you, my lord." 
 
 The men clasped him by the hand, the women 
 hung about him, and kissed those wounded hands 
 of his, raw and bleeding, scratched and scorched 
 and torn, and smelling of smoke and fire. No 
 thought of Radical or Conservative now; no fierce 
 hatred of landowner and aristocrat. The sreat 
 heart of the crowd was stirred with one divine 
 impulse, made up of love, pity, tenderness — un- 
 selfish delight in a generous act nobly done. 
 
 "By Jove, Lashmar, I thought you were a 
 dead man!" cried Colonel Spillington. "You
 
 62 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 must be hurt, surely; dangerously hurt perhaps," 
 he added, running his hand over the young man's 
 shoulder and arm, as if in search of broken 
 bones. 
 
 "A few scratches more or less," answered 
 Lashmar quietly; and then he added to the 
 crowd: "Don't make such a fuss, my good friends; 
 I'm sure there isn't one of you that wouldn't have 
 done as much." 
 
 He made his way through the throng towards 
 the farther side of the broad barren road where 
 he had left the cab, with the rescued child still 
 in his arms, clinging to him, scared and pale, 
 with those wide goblin eyes of hers. Spillington 
 followed him closely. 
 
 "What are you going to do with the child?" 
 he asked. "She'll have to go to the Union, I 
 suppose, poor little soul!" 
 
 "She'll have to go to no such place," an- 
 swered Lashmar; "she is going to my house." 
 
 "You mean to take Boldwood's child to Lash- 
 mar Castle?" asked Spillington, astounded. 
 
 "Why not? I should take a stray dog home. 
 Why should I draw the line at a stray child?" 
 
 "Well, there's a considerable difference, I be- 
 lieve, though you may not see it. To take a Ra-
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 63 
 
 dical orphan upon one's hands is rather a serious 
 business. If I were you I should drive straight 
 to the Union, and deposit this poor little thing 
 with the matron; much the best thing you can do 
 for her." 
 
 "I have saved her out of the fire, I am not 
 going to throw her back into it," answered Lash- 
 mar resolutely. "She is mine, jetsam and flotsam 
 from the great ship Fate; my prize, my portion. 
 She shall never cross the threshold of a work- 
 house while I have power to prevent it." 
 
 They were in the cab by this time. Lashmar 
 had WTapped his coat round the child, and was 
 sitting in his shirt-sleeves. He told the man to 
 drive to the George, the chief hotel in Brumm, 
 the hotel patronised by the county people, when 
 they gladdened the great grimy town with their 
 superior presence. It was an old-fashioned hotel, 
 with a wide archway, and a spacious courtyard, 
 and a magpie in a cage by the little low doorway 
 of the bar. It had been an old-established hotel 
 in the coaching days, before ever Brumm had 
 arisen in its grimy might as a manufacturing 
 town. 
 
 Lord Lashmar was known and honoured at 
 the George. The sleepy waiters stifled their
 
 64 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 yawns, and bowed themselves before him. The 
 landlady, who had lingered over her supper in 
 the snug little parlour behind the bar, waiting up 
 to hear the latest news of the fire, came bustling 
 out to see if she could be of any use to his lord- 
 ship. 
 
 She almost shrieked at the sight of the child 
 looking round with frightened eyes; such a poor 
 little pinched, sallow countenance, so wizened, so 
 unchildlike. The mistress of the George thought 
 she had never seen an uglier brat. 
 
 "Oh! my Lord, where did you pick her up? 
 Is she one of the children from Goldwin's?" 
 
 "She is Boldwood's child, and his lordship 
 risked his life to save her," answered Spillington. 
 "What will you have, Lashmar, by way of pick- 
 me-up? A brandy- and-soda — a tumbler of cham- 
 pagne, eh? You must have something!" 
 
 "I'll take some soda, with a dash of brandy 
 if you like," said Lashmar. "Do you think you 
 could lend me a shawl to wrap up this little one, 
 Mrs. Sycamour?" he asked the obsequious land- 
 lady; "and do you think you could get me a 
 pair of horses to take us back to Lashmar? Her 
 ladyship will be anxious till she sees us all safe 
 at home."
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 65 
 
 "Certainly, my Lord" — and Mrs. Sycamour 
 rang a bell: "Tell Joe to get the landau and the 
 grays ready directly. And, Mary, run and fetch 
 one of my shawls. The warm knitted one in the 
 bottom drawer, you know, child. Don't stand 
 staring like a simpleton." 
 
 Mary was gazing at the dark-eyed child in 
 Lord Lashmar's arms. A child in a nightgown 
 was a curious kind of thing for a young nobleman 
 to carry about with him at midnight. 
 
 "Daddy!" cried the little girl piteously, and 
 the great dark eyes began to fill with tears. 
 "Where's daddy? I want my daddy." 
 
 Lashmar looked at her helplessly. What could 
 he say to soothe or console, without uttering a 
 deliberate lie? The little one's breast began to 
 heave with sobs. 
 
 "Daddy!" she cried, "where's daddy? Was 
 he burnt in the fire — was he hurt? Let me go to 
 daddy." 
 
 "By-and-by," murmured Lashmar, feebly; "by- 
 and-by, dear child. Will you give her a little 
 milk and a biscuit, Mrs. Sycamour? The poor 
 little thing may be hungry." 
 
 "Poor little dear," said the landlady. "Have 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. 5
 
 66 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 a nice cake, pet? Mary, bring me a glass of milk, 
 and a sponge cake." 
 
 But when the motherly soul attempted to take 
 the child in her arms, the little one scowled and 
 clung tighter to Lashmar. 
 
 "Take me to daddy," she pleaded, frowning 
 darkly at Mrs. Sycamour's friendly face, rejecting 
 all tenderness from that source. 
 
 "Upon my soul, Lord Lashmar, this is too 
 much of a good thing," cried Spillington, who 
 had finished his brandy-and-soda, and was wax- 
 ing impatient to be gone. For a man who had 
 not dined this indefinite postponement of supper 
 was a trial. "You had better let our good friend 
 here take charge of the brat for to-night, and 
 hand her over to the proper authorities to-mor- 
 row. I never saw such a goblin. Why, she's as 
 dark as Erebus. There must have been a dip of 
 the tar-brush somewhere." 
 
 "It's the gipsy blood, sir; everybody says that 
 Boldwood's wife was a gipsy." 
 
 "Is that carriage ready," asked Lashmar. 
 
 The landlady blew down a speaking-tube 
 which communicated with the stables. Mysterious 
 sounds followed, as of voices from spirit land. 
 
 "In five minutes, my Lord."
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 67 
 
 Mary — no less a person than the head cham- 
 bermaid — had brought the milk and cake by this 
 time, and Lashmar tried to coax the child to eat 
 and drink. In vain! She only wept, and pushed 
 aside his gentle hand. 
 
 "Where's my daddy?" she asked hopelessly. 
 
 Lashmar huddled her up in the shawl, and 
 carried her off to the landau, one of those capa- 
 cious vehicles peculiar to country inns, and seem- 
 ingly built to hold eight inside. It was very 
 leathery, but not uncomfortable. Colonel Spilling- 
 ton buttoned his light overcoat across his chest, 
 and composed himself in a corner. 
 
 "If that brat will only let me sleep, now," he 
 thought, and Providence was kind to him, for be- 
 fore they had left the stones of Brumm far be- 
 hind them Boldwood's daughter had sobbed her- 
 self to sleep upon Lord Lashmar's breast, and the 
 Colonel was able to snore in peace. 
 
 Not once did slumber visit Lashmar's eyes 
 during that long drive under the summer stars. 
 He was thinking of that dead face, convulsed by 
 the shock that snapped the cervical vertebrae and 
 crushed one side of the skull — that dark power- 
 ful face in which every line indicated the double 
 forces of a strong mind in a strong body. And 
 
 5*
 
 68 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 this man who had been so potent an influence in 
 that great hive of workers yonder, this daring 
 speaker, this audacious thinker, the man who 
 blasphemed his Maker and hated his more for- 
 tunate fellow-man, was gone for ever — a mere 
 lump of clay now, to be buried out of sight, and 
 forgotten. 
 
 All the Radicals and Freethinkers of Brumm 
 would deplore the agitator: but perhaps there 
 was only this one helpless little being, this five- 
 year-old child, to mourn for the man. 
 
 And he had been a gentleman once! What 
 dark experiences, what temptations, errors, mis- 
 fortunes, lay between that triumphant hour of the 
 Oxford undergraduate, and the dreadful death of 
 the Brumm brass-worker? Lashmar's reading had 
 taught him that most men's misfortunes are in 
 some degree of their own work: and he could 
 but think that this brass-worker must have sinned 
 against God or society before he took to himself 
 the fustian coat and the fustian creed of the 
 Brumm demagogue. 
 
 It was past one o'clock Avhen the grays from 
 the George trotted along the avenue that led to 
 Lashmar Castle. The river was gleaming in the
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 69 
 
 starlight, mysterious, beautiful, between its rushy 
 banks, its leaning willows; and the casements of 
 the castle gleamed also, with an earthlier ra- 
 diance, and the low Gothic doors stood open 
 under the massive stone porch, revealing the 
 lighted hall within. Lady Lashmar and Victorian 
 came out of the white parlour as the carriage 
 stopped. 
 
 "My dear Colonel, I thought you were never 
 coming back!" she exclaimed. "How dreadfully 
 you must want your supper;" and then starting 
 at sight of Lashmar's burden — the little figure 
 muffled in a red fleecy shawl — she exclaimed, 
 "Why Lashmar, what in Heaven's name have you 
 there?" 
 
 "A child, madam; an imp of darkness: the 
 spawn of the demagogue — Boldwood's child, res- 
 cued from the flames by this young hero of yours. 
 By Jove, Lady Lashmar, you have reason to be 
 proud of your son," said the Colonel, collecting 
 his senses with an effort, for he had been in the 
 middle of his first and soundest sleep when the 
 carriage pulled up. 
 
 "Von rescued Boldwood's child!" cried her 
 ladyship, looking at Lashmar's smoke-grimed face, 
 and from his face downward to his nether gar-
 
 70 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 ments, which were torn and frayed at the knees, 
 one knee rent across, and showing blood-stains 
 on the light summer cloth. "But how?" 
 
 "By climbing to the top of a four-story build- 
 ing — one of the most heroic acts I ever saw any- 
 where, except before the walls of a hill fort," an- 
 swered the Colonel. "It's a wonder I've brought 
 him back to you alive. Lady Lashmar." 
 
 "The Lashmars were always brave!" she said 
 gravely; and then, with a certain formality which 
 chilled the Colonel's soul, she kissed her stepson 
 on the forehead. 
 
 "You had no right to risk your life for a de- 
 magogue's brat," she said. "Why could not Mr, 
 Boldwood rescue his child himself?" 
 
 "He did his damnedest, I beg pardon, he did 
 his uttermost, poor beggar, and was killed in the 
 attempt," said the Colonel. 
 
 "Boldwood killed?" 
 
 "Yes; he will trouble us no more, mother. He 
 is gone — and this is his orphan daughter." 
 
 "But why in mercy's name did you bring her 
 here? Why not at once hand her over to the 
 proper people?" 
 
 "That was precisely my idea," said the Colonel, 
 longing for his supper.
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE, 7 I 
 
 The white parlour looked so bright and home- 
 like and cheery, in the light of a large swinging 
 colza lamp, under a yellow umbrella-shaped shade. 
 The table was loaded with good things. The red 
 Bordeaux wine glowed in thinnest Venetian flasks. 
 Butler and footman Avere in attendance by the 
 side-board, and there was an odour of savoury 
 viands from a chafing-dish, which encouraged the 
 Colonel with the hope of at least a hot cutlet or 
 sweet-bread, if this discussion about the beggar's 
 brat in Lashmar's arms would only come to a 
 close. 
 
 "Pray, who are the proper people to whom a 
 five-year-old orphan should be handed over?" 
 asked Lashmar deliberately. 
 
 "Why, the matron at the Union would of 
 course be the proper person to take care of her." 
 
 "Exactly what I told Lord Lashmar," said the 
 Colonel. 
 
 "And you would have her begin her life 
 in a workhouse — be reared and educated as a 
 pauper?" 
 
 "And properly trained for domestic service," 
 pursued her ladyship; "the very best career for 
 any young woman. Do you know, Colonel Spilling- 
 ton, that I pay my third and fourth housemaids
 
 72 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 twenty pounds a-year, which their innumerable 
 perquisites must increase to thirty. The very best 
 and most comfortable career for any young woman, 
 Lashmar; and our workhouses nowadays are so 
 thoroughly well administered that I have not the 
 least objection to take a servant from the pauper 
 class. Some of our best girls have come from 
 the Union." 
 
 "This child will not go to the Union while I 
 live," answered Lashmar, with quiet determina- 
 tion. "Are any of the women up, Longley?" 
 
 "Only her ladyship's maids, my Lord." 
 Her ladyship had two personal attendants. 
 She required very little service from them, for 
 she was a woman of active habits, and by no 
 means self-indulgent. But this dual service was 
 an appanage of her state; it Avas her pride not 
 her luxuriousness which demanded to be waited 
 upon. 
 
 "Will you allow me to ask a favour of Barker?" 
 asked Lord Lashmar. 
 "Certainly!" 
 
 Barker was the second and homelier maid. 
 A homely-looking person of five-and-thirty, who 
 lighted the candles and arranged the furniture —
 
 <'S0 WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 73 
 
 sometimes even condescended so far as to use a 
 duster — in Lady Lashmar's private apartments. 
 
 Barker was summoned, and came sleepy but 
 smiling to await her ladyship's orders. 
 
 "I believe his lordship wishes you to take 
 care of a child, Barker," said Lady Lashmar. 
 "You will have to put it in your own bed for to- 
 night, I suppose, after you have given it a hot 
 bath. You had better cut its hair, too, as close 
 as you possibly can." 
 
 "The child has not had scarlet fever, mother." 
 
 "Wlao knows? Poor people are always having 
 fevers. At any rate, it is most likely very dirty. 
 Bathe it and crop it. Barker, I beg." 
 
 The shawl fell off as Lashmar handed the 
 child to Barker, and the little white nightgown 
 and little bare feet were the best answer to her 
 ladyship's sweeping conclusion. Both were spot- 
 lessly clean. 
 
 "What an ugly child!" cried Lady Lashmar; 
 and then seeing Colonel Spillington standing for- 
 lorn, gazing at the supper table yonder, she took 
 pity upon him. 
 
 "Take the child away, and make her as com- 
 fortable as you can. Barker," she said. "And
 
 74 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 now let me give you both some supper. Poor 
 creatures, you must be dreadfully hungry!" 
 
 "I confess to feelmg a vacuum," said the 
 Colonel, growing cheerful, as he seated himself 
 at the table and unfolded his napkin, looking 
 about him with an interested air. 
 
 Lobster mayonaise, chicken aspic, Russian 
 salad with plenty of stuffed olives — hum, ha, 
 pretty tiny kickshaws — and the footman put a 
 hot cutlet, a I'Indienne, before him; while the 
 butler unwired a bottle of De Lossey's dry cham- 
 pagne. Not so bad after all. 
 
 "Lashmar, did you really climb a four-story 
 balcony? I know Goldwin's — iron balconies all 
 the way up, like a gridiron. I daresay I could 
 do it myself; but it must have been deuced diffi- 
 cult. I envy you!" 
 
 "I hope you may never have the opportunity 
 or the inclination to attempt anything half so 
 wild," said Lady Lashmar, in a biting voice. 
 
 It was the first time she had given utterance 
 to her exasperation; but the pallor of her fine 
 features, the angry light in her eyes, had indi- 
 cated the state of her feelings from the moment 
 she had seen Boldwood's child in her stepson's 
 arms. She was wise enough to hold her peace,
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 75 
 
 however. Lashmar Castle was the house of Lord 
 Lashmar, and she, omnipotent although she 
 seemed to the household and the neighbours, 
 was only there on sufferance. If Lashmar chose 
 to bring a pauper brat into the castle, to rear her 
 there, as he might any other domestic pet, it was 
 not for her ladyship to interfere. This con- 
 sciousness of her own impotence intensified her 
 displeasure. 
 
 "Victor, you ought to have been in bed 
 hours ago!" she exclaimed. "Good-night, Colonel 
 Spillington, or good morning rather. I will leave 
 you and Lashmar to take care of each other." 
 
 She shook hands with the Colonel, kissed her 
 stepson's brow, and went away with her arm 
 round her boy's neck. 
 
 "What a glorious fellow Lashmar is!" said 
 Victorian, as he and his mother went upstairs. 
 "So quiet, so unassuming, and so plucky. I wish 
 — I wish his back was as straight as other 
 people's, poor chap! He bears his burden so 
 well." 
 
 "I wish he were sane," retorted her ladyship, 
 "and then he would not have brought home that 
 Radical's imp."
 
 76 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "Oh! but if he likes to provide for the little 
 thing, send her to some cheap school, or some 
 institution — orphanage — don't you know; he is 
 rich enough to indulge his benevolence." 
 
 Lord Lashmar did not send the Radical's 
 child to a cheap school; nor did he plague the 
 souls of his friends by canvassing for votes in 
 order to get Stella Boldwood elected as an inmate 
 of some stately orphanage, supported by voluntary 
 contributions, and smiled upon by princes and 
 princesses. Stella was not destined to dwell in 
 one of those vast edifices which philanthropy has 
 reared for the shelter of the friendless and the 
 orphan. It was Stella's fate to be reared in the 
 home of an English nobleman, and to become 
 accustomed to all those luxuries and elegancies 
 which are, as it were, the surrounding atmosphere 
 of those born in the purple. 
 
 It was in vain that the great Lady Pitland's 
 daughter protested against her stepson's folly in 
 adopting a pauper's brat, and hinted that the 
 cloven foot of Socialism showed itself in the act. 
 It was in vain that she shuddered at the degrada- 
 tion of those ancestral halls. Lashmar was rock. 
 He was one of those quiet, undemonstrative young 
 men who make up their minds slowly, and who
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 77 
 
 can never be argued or cajoled into the relin- 
 quishment of a settled purpose. 
 
 "I made up my mind as we drove home last 
 night, mother," said Lashmar, gently, gravely, 
 resolutely, in a tone which her ladyship knew 
 only too well. "Spillington and the child were 
 both asleep. I had ample time for reflection; 
 and I thought the matter out thoroughly. I mean 
 to adopt Boldwood's child, and to bring her up 
 as my own daughter. There are many reasons 
 in favour of my project; there is not one that I 
 can discover against it. I have long wished for 
 something to love, some young unschooled crea- 
 ture, that should be dependent upon me, and 
 should grow up at my feet, as it were. I am very 
 fond of Victorian; but he can seldom be my 
 companion. He has his education to occupy him 
 now; he will have his career to think of by-and- 
 by. But a friendless little girl, whom I can train 
 and educate into companionship, will afford me 
 just the kind of solace, just the kind of innocent 
 sympathy, which I have sighed for. A little more 
 than a dog, a little less than an equal." 
 
 "You will find the creature a horrible nuisance 
 before you have done with her. If you should 
 think of marrying, for instance."
 
 78 ONE THING NEEDFUL, 
 
 "I shall never marry, never have children of 
 my own. By the time this girl has grown up I 
 shall be declining into the vale of years. She 
 will be my link with the future. I have been 
 told lately — you remember my long chat with 
 Sir William Spenser the last time he came down 
 to see me — that in spite of my miserable health 
 I may live to be an old man." 
 
 Lady Lashmar winced palpably; but she was 
 sitting at some distance from her stepson, and 
 her face was turned to the window, so he did not 
 see that startled look of keenest pain. She had 
 been telling herself for years past that Hubert 
 Lashmar could not make old bones — that it could 
 only be a question of a few years more or less 
 before her son would fill his place — and now to 
 be told that the great physician, Sir William 
 Spenser, had declared that Lashmar might creep 
 on in this half-life of his to old age! It was a 
 hard thing to be told this, suddenly, in that cool, 
 calm voice of her stepson's. She knew that he 
 was the soul of truth, incapable of misrepresenta- 
 tion or exaggeration upon any subject whatever. 
 
 "And you look to the child of such a man 
 as Boldwood to be your friend and companion in 
 after years — the mongrel of a gipsy and a dema-
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 79 
 
 gogue!" exclaimed Lady Lashmar, unable to 
 control her temper. "You make no alloAvance 
 for hereditary instincts." 
 
 "I believe more in association and education 
 than in hereditary instinct. The child has a fine 
 broad forehead, bright well-opened eyes, sensitive 
 nostrils, thin lips, delicate chin — not at all a bad 
 subject to work upon." 
 
 "I really think she is the ugliest child I ever 
 beheld," said Lady Lashmar, rapping the table 
 with an elephant's tusk paper-knife. "How you, 
 who pretend to worship ideal beauty, can be 
 interested in such a little monster is more than I 
 can understand." 
 
 "She is small and brown, but I don't think 
 her ugly. Her eyes shone like stars last night. 
 It is my idea that she will grow up a very 
 interesting woman." 
 
 "You have such odd ideas!" 
 "Don't be angry, mother," pleaded Lashmar 
 with wondrous gentleness. "Granted that I am 
 somewhat eccentric — Nature has made me in a 
 mould of her own, you see — but, after all, I 
 have very few whims. And I promise you that 
 this last caprice of mine shall give you no trouble. 
 The child shall live in this house; but you need
 
 8o ONE THING NEEDFUL, 
 
 hardly be aware of her existence. All she will 
 want will be a couple of rooms on the top story, 
 where we have a score of rooms that only serve 
 as a rat-warren." 
 
 "Mice, not rats," protested her ladyship. 
 
 "Well, we'll call them mice. It sounds pleas- 
 anter; only they are the biggest breed I ever 
 saw, and the noisiest. However, my protegee will 
 help to scare away the mice. I shall engage a 
 maid for her, and arrange a couple of rooms for 
 her and her maid, those two pretty rooms in the 
 south-west tower for instance. She will live on 
 that top floor, have her meals there, plague no 
 one; and when I want her company in my study 
 I can have her brought down to me as I would 
 any other plaything. You may meet her on the 
 stairs or in the corridor occasionally. But that is 
 about the utmost you need see of her." 
 
 "This is your house, Lashmar. If you choose 
 to have it infested by the spawn of Socialism it 
 is not for me to gainsay you." 
 
 "I hope the day may come when you will be 
 reconciled to my adopted daughter; when she 
 may perhaps be a comfort to you as well as 
 to me."
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 8 1 
 
 "Never, Lashmar! I can tolerate her existence 
 in the house out of deference to you. I should 
 have to submit if you took it into your head to 
 keep a rattlesnake; but I have none of your 
 Utopian ideas; and I have not the least doubt 
 that you will have cause to repent your generous 
 folly before you and your proiegie are three years 
 older." 
 
 "We will compare notes three years hence, 
 and I hope I shall convince you that you were 
 mistaken," said Lashmar, with perfect good 
 temper. "And now, mother, have you any young 
 woman on your list who would make a good maid 
 for Stella?" 
 
 "There is Barker's niece; her father is in the 
 gardens, don't you know. Barker's niece has 
 been wanting to come here for the last six 
 months." 
 
 "I should like to see Barker's niece this after- 
 noon." 
 
 Lady Lashmar sighed, and gave orders in ac- 
 cordance with her step-son's wish. She had not 
 seen the obnoxious orphan since the previous 
 night. The child had been in Barker's care, and 
 had been provided for in the remoteness of the 
 upper servants' apartments. She had been taken 
 
 One Thins Needful. I. 6
 
 82 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 to Lord Lashmar, and had spent half-an-hour in 
 his study, before breakfast. 
 
 The intruder did not take kindly to her new 
 Hfe. Again and again, with piteous tears, and 
 childish unreasoning iteration, she entreated to 
 be taken to her father. "Where is daddy? Take 
 me to daddy ! " that was the burden of her cries. 
 And Lashmar, albeit philosophical and strong- 
 minded in most things, could not find it in his 
 heart to tell this orphan child the hard and bitter 
 truth. He could not bring himself to crush her 
 with the word "never." Childhood so soon learns 
 the meaning of that fatal word. So with weak 
 tenderness he took the little girl upon his lap, 
 and drew her to his breast, and told her that she 
 should see her father again, some day. 
 
 "To-day? Now?" she questioned. 
 
 "No, dear; not now — not to-day. He has gone 
 on a long journey." 
 
 "To London?" she asked. 
 
 "A longer journey than that." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "To a beautiful country. You shall go there 
 some day, and you shall be with him again." 
 
 "Let me go now." 
 
 "No, dear; not yet."
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 83 
 
 "But I will go," cried the child, scrambling 
 off Lashmar's lap, and running tOAvards the door. 
 
 Lashmar followed and stepped her; she cried, 
 and stormed, and struggled with him. 
 
 "I want to go to my daddy; I will go to my 
 daddy." 
 
 He was a quarter of an hour soothing her, 
 and arguing with her. By the end of that time 
 he had begun to exercise a certain influence over 
 her; she was content to sit on his knee, gazing 
 at him with those great dark eyes — star-like eyes, 
 as he had called them. She listened, and seemed 
 comforted. 
 
 "Tell me your name, little one," he asked. 
 
 "Stella." 
 
 "Stella! That is a very pretty name." 
 
 "It means a star!" said the child. "Daddy 
 told me." 
 
 "Will you be my star? Will you live with me 
 in this house, and play in those gardens out there, 
 and go in my boat on the river?" 
 
 The little one craned her neck and looked out 
 of the broad Tudor window at the flower garden 
 and the green slopes of the park, and the bright 
 blue water in the valley yonder. It was a lovely 
 landscape — passing lovely after the arid purlieus
 
 84 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 of Brumm , to which those young eyes had grown 
 accustomed. 
 
 "No," said the Httle one firmly, after she had 
 contemplated that delicious picture for some mo- 
 ments. "I don't want to live with you, I want to 
 live with my daddy." 
 
 And then with a divinity of patience, with 
 that exquisite gentleness which is a peculiar at- 
 tribute of those who love little children, Lashmar 
 explained how the journey on which daddy had 
 gone must needs last for a long time, how sum- 
 mer and winter must pass before he could come 
 back, or Stella go to him; but how they should 
 meet in the days to come. 
 
 "And you will leave off crying, and be very 
 good, for his sake, won't you, Stella?" pleaded 
 Lashmar. "Fathers are unhappy when they hear 
 that their children have been naughty. You will 
 be good, and you will try to love me, won't you, 
 Stella, for daddy's sake?" 
 
 The child made a supreme effort over her 
 childish heart, choked her sobs and dried her 
 tears, and trotted by Lashmar's side to the gardens, 
 and across the dewy park to the river. He took 
 her in his boat, and rowed about with her for 
 half-an-hour or so, and took her back to the castle
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 85 
 
 with a faint bloom in her sallow cheeks, and a 
 fine appetite for breakfast, as Barker informed 
 him aftenvards. 
 
 He saw Barker's niece after luncheon, and 
 found her a buxom, chubby-cheeked young woman 
 with a fine honest countenance; so he engaged 
 her at once to be Stella's special attendant. 
 
 The little girl was to be known only as Stella. 
 That obnoxious name Boldwood were well for- 
 gotten. And then with Barker for his aid and 
 counsellor, Lord Lashmar ordered the arrange- 
 ment of those two rooms in the south-west tower, 
 remote from the end of the castle where Lady 
 Lashmar's sumptuous apartments were situated, 
 and on a higher floor; so that the chances of the 
 young voice or the young presence obtruding 
 themselves on her ladyship were minimised. 
 
 One of the two rooms was to be furnished as 
 a sitting-room; the other and inner chamber was 
 to contain two beds, for nurse and child. There 
 was a plethora of substantial old-fashioned furni- 
 ture upon this upper floor; so the re-furnishing of 
 the room was only a matter of adjustment. The 
 view from these tower-chambers was exquisite. 
 A wide expanse of wooded park and winding 
 river bounded by low hills, and in the distance
 
 86 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 the rustic village of Avondale, with red-tiled roofs, 
 and low thatched cottages, and quaint variety of 
 gables, and Norman church tower, smiling amidst 
 rich pastures, glassing its simple beauties in the 
 blue bright river. For a rural English Midland 
 landscape nothing could be prettier. 
 
 "She ought to thrive and flourish in such a 
 bower as this," thought Lashmar, and then he 
 gave Barker's niece — in future to be known as 
 Betsy — some broad general instructions as to the 
 bringing up of childhood upon enlightened prin- 
 ciples — cold water, fresh air, regular meals, and 
 good and ample food being the chief points. 
 And to the elder Barker he entrusted the task of 
 procuring the child an outfit. She might be 
 driven over to Bnmim that afternoon he sug- 
 gested, and could make all her purchases before 
 the shops were shut, if her ladyship would kindly 
 dispense with her services for a few hours. 
 
 "I think I can manage to arrange that with 
 Celestine," said Barker. 
 
 Celestine was the Parisian and superior maid 
 who re- arranged Mrs. Monsoon's gowns, and re- 
 paired her ladyship's priceless laces. 
 
 "Do, like a good soul; and be sure you thank 
 the coachman's wife for lending the little one
 
 "so WOE-BEGONE A THING WAS SHE." 87 
 
 clothes for to-day. You will please buy every- 
 thing of the best, but of the simplest. When she 
 is a year or two older I may choose her frocks 
 myself, perhaps. For the present I should like 
 her to be dressed always in some cream-coloured 
 stuff — some kind of soft woollen material, and 
 then she need have very few undergarments, and 
 no weight of clothing to impede her move- 
 ments." 
 
 "Lord a 'mercy, what a mollycoddle!" thought 
 Barker, and then she ventured a remonstrance on 
 economical grounds. 
 
 "Cream colour so soon gets dirty, my Lord," 
 she said; "don't you think now that a neat lilac 
 print, a small pattern, and rather dark, would be 
 better?" 
 
 "Good heavens, no! Do you suppose I want 
 her to look like a workhouse child? I want her 
 to brighten the gardens by her presence, like a 
 beautiful human butterfly." 
 
 "She is such a plain child, my Lord. She 
 will never pay for dress." 
 
 "I will have her in cream colour," said Lash- 
 mar, decisively; "and you can buy her half-a- 
 dozen sashes, the broadest you can get — some 
 scarlet and some pale blue. I will write you a
 
 88 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 cheque for twenty or thirty pounds before you go. 
 Buy everything at Ponsford's, where her ladyship 
 deals." 
 
 "The dearest shop in Brumm, my Lord." 
 
 "The dearest shops are apt to be the cheapest 
 in the long run." 
 
 "Ten pounds ought to be ample, even at 
 Ponsford's," said Barker. "I shall only have to 
 buy materials, for Betsy is very clever with her 
 needle, and she will make all the little frocks 
 and things." 
 
 Betsy grinned, and reddened at this praise. 
 
 "What a capital Betsy!" exclaimed Lashmar. 
 "I shall make the cheque twenty, and be sure 
 you buy soft and fine stuffs; I want my little girl 
 to look pretty." 
 
 "That she will never do, my Lord," answered 
 Barker with conviction; "but me and Betsy will 
 do our best to make her look nice."
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 8g 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 
 
 The inquest upon Jonathan Boldwood was held 
 next day, and Lord Lashmar was present. There 
 were plenty of witnesses ready to describe his 
 fall, had more than one voice been necessary. 
 The firemen were exempted from all blame; they 
 had been working nobly on the other side of the 
 building — not one inhabitant had perished in that 
 great populous hive. The one fatal accident had 
 been the death of the father in his endeavour to 
 rescue his child. 
 
 No one came forward out of Boldwood's past 
 life to tell what the man had been, or to testify 
 to their interest in him. When the coroner asked 
 what had been done with the child. Lord Lashmar 
 stepped forward and said that he had adopted 
 her, and would hold himself responsible for her 
 future welfare. 
 
 "I don't think there is anyone who will dis- 
 pute that privilege with you, my Lord," said the
 
 QO ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 coroner. "I hope the child will grow up to be 
 grateful to you for your noble conduct in saving 
 her life." 
 
 There was a murmur of applause in the room 
 as Lord Lashmar withdrew; but before he left the 
 tavern where the inquest had been held, he told 
 the authorities that he would pay for a decent 
 funeral, and a grave in the cemetery outside 
 Brumm. It was his particular desire that Bold- 
 wood should not be buried by the parish. 
 
 He attended the funeral in person two days 
 afterwards, by no means an agreeable duty, since 
 all the rabble of Brumm turned out to do honour 
 to their favourite agitator. But Lashmar told him- 
 self that the day would come when Stella would 
 question him about her father's burial, would ask 
 to be taken to her father's grave: and he wanted 
 to be able to tell her that he had stood beside 
 that grave while the clods of earth were cast 
 upon the coffin, while the words of promise and 
 of hope were spoken. 
 
 So Lashmar stood beside the parson as he 
 shuffled over those sublime words, and his was 
 the first hand that dropped flowers — summer's 
 whitest roses — upon the demagogue's coffin. The 
 crowd pressed forward to stare down into the
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 91 
 
 grave, and many a grimy hand scattered hedge- 
 row wildlings and humble cottage flowers on the 
 lid of the huge oak coffin. There were women 
 among the crowd who wept, women who had 
 never heard the orator, but who felt as if they 
 had lost a friend. Had he not pleaded the cause 
 of the poor against the rich? Had he not given 
 voice to that deep undertone of discontent which 
 had been growing stronger day by day with the 
 advance of education. 
 
 The last of the summer roses had bloomed 
 and faded long before Stella ceased from piteous 
 entreaties to be taken to her daddy. She was 
 gentle and obedient to her benefactor; was 
 gradually growing attached to him. She took 
 pleasure in his society, loved the river and the 
 gardens, the meadows and flowery banks, the 
 picture books in the library, where she used to 
 sit upon the floor quietly turning the leaves of 
 an illustrated volume, while Lashmar read or 
 wrote, undisturbed by her presence. She thrived 
 in Betsy Barker's care, and was happy in the 
 comfort and the brightness of her new life; but 
 young as she was she did not forget. A cloud 
 would come over her face in the midst of her 
 happiness, and the tears would roll down her
 
 92 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 cheeks as she asked, "Will daddy never come?" 
 Sometimes Lashmar regretted that he had not 
 told her the truth at the very first, and questioned 
 his own wisdom in not having striven to make 
 her young mind comprehend the meaning of that 
 dreadful word "death." But having deceived her 
 so long he could not undeceive her now. He 
 could but talk in his vague poetic way of that 
 bright and beautiful country in which they were 
 all to dwell together some day. 
 
 Once she asked the name of that distant land, 
 and he told her it was Jerusalem the Golden. 
 
 Never did she see a stranger in the house or 
 the gardens without running up to him, looking 
 up in his face interrogatively, lest by any chance 
 this should be "daddy" come back to her un- 
 awares. The vision of a tall man, with broad 
 shoulders, resulted inevitably in bitterest dis- 
 appointment. The figure seen from a distance, 
 perchance, had looked so like daddy, she had 
 run to him, and caught hold of his coat-tails 
 calling him by that dear name. And, oh! the 
 agony of seeing an unfamiliar face, looking won- 
 deringly down at her! 
 
 She had cried herself to sleep more than once 
 after such a disappointment as this.
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 93 
 
 She was a very intelligent child, grave beyond 
 her years, full of serious thoughts and curious 
 questionings — a young mind alive with wonder. 
 She wanted to know about the sun and moon 
 and stars, the earth, and all creatures that dwell 
 thereon. Those picture books afforded perpetual 
 subjects for wonder. They were the stepping- 
 stones to knowledge of all things great and small, 
 from the relics of Agamemnon's tomb to the last 
 discovery about ants or aphids. Lashmar was 
 infinitely patient with this human plaything of 
 his. He would lay aside Plato to answer Stella's 
 childish questioning, to explain a picture, to tell 
 her a story. He, to whom books were life itself 
 — the charm and rapture of existence — would shut 
 his best-loved author, and devote himself for an 
 hour at a time to the task of satisfying this eager 
 young mind, impatient with the intensity of its 
 desire for knowledge. 
 
 Boldwood had taught his child a great deal, 
 had talked to her of subjects far beyond her years. 
 He had taught her as a man of large brain and 
 lazy habits would be likely to teach. He had 
 taken her on his. lap and talked to her at random, 
 roaming from subject to subject; now telling her 
 some legend of the old Greek fairyland, and now
 
 94 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 some strange fact about the manners and customs 
 of crocodiles. There was one subject which he 
 had never touched upon — he had told her no- 
 thing about her God. It was left for Lashmar to 
 teach her to pray. That first simple form of prayer 
 which he had learnt years ago from his nursery 
 governess came back to his memory one evening 
 when the child was bidding him good-night in 
 the summer dusk. 
 
 "Stella, I hope you say your prayers beside 
 your little bed, every night and morning," he 
 said. 
 
 "What are prayers?" she asked. "Betsy said 
 I ought to say my prayers; but I don't know what 
 it means." 
 
 "Did daddy never teach you to pray, Stella?" 
 
 She shook her head, 
 
 "If it was good he would have taught me," 
 she said; "he was always good to Stella." 
 
 "Prayer is good for all of us, dear. Daddy 
 may have thought you too young to pray — too 
 young to understand about the God who created 
 you and all of us, and Whom we all ought to 
 love and to fear." 
 
 "Daddy said there was no God; he said only 
 fools believed in God."
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 95 
 
 "My little girl, if we want to be happy we 
 most have something higher and better than our- 
 selves to look up to. We want the consciousness 
 of a friend and protector watching over us and 
 caring for us. Happily most of us have that 
 consciousness: it is born with us, a part of our 
 being; takes strange and various forms in different 
 lands, but is always the same instinct — a looking 
 upward." 
 
 And then feeling that his words were outside 
 the child's comprehension, he drew her to his 
 breast, and told her the story of Jesus; told her 
 that sweet story in its simplest and most human 
 phase — the Holy Child on His mother's knee; the 
 baptism in the river; the Spirit of God descend- 
 ing from the parted skies in the form of a dove; 
 the Man of Sorrows; the story of the cross and 
 the grave. 
 
 The child listened, her eyes wide with wonder. 
 
 "Daddy did not know, or he would have 
 loved Jesus," she said. 
 
 And then Lashmar taught her the first four 
 lines of that childish prayer which he had learnt 
 from his governess three-and-twenty years before: 
 "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little 
 child."
 
 96 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Stella repeated the words after him in her 
 clear, sweet tones; the first prayer those lips had 
 ever syllabled. Other prayers followed, the Lord's 
 prayer first and chiefest — and Betsy's conscience 
 was relieved of a burden. 
 
 Stella had lived nearly a month at the castle 
 before she encountered Lady Lashmar. The 
 dowager had gone up to London with Victorian 
 and taken him to Eton, and had spent a week at 
 Windsor in order to soften the agony of parting 
 with her idol. She saw him in the playing fields, 
 she saw him on the river, and his young beauty 
 seemed to her the perfection of ripening manhood. 
 She talked to him of his future — his career — 
 emphasising the word with heroic meaning, trying 
 to kindle the fire of ambition in that young mind. 
 
 "As a younger son you are bound to dis- 
 tinguish yourself, Victor," she said. "Your poor 
 brother is Lord Lashmar, he can afford to dream 
 away his days in a libraiy, but you will have no 
 distinction except that which you may win for 
 yourself. You must be the architect of your own 
 fortunes." 
 
 "I wouldn't much mind being the architect," 
 said Victor; "but I don't want to be the builder 
 — not to have to lay brick upon brick, and carry
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 97 
 
 the hod of mortar, don't you know — not to have 
 to work my way upward inch by inch, as some 
 poor beggars do, in the church, or in the law." 
 
 "You need have no profession but politics." 
 
 "That's deuced slow work, and deuced hard 
 work, I'm told. One has to drudge over blue 
 books, and cram statistics, and sit in the House 
 on summer afternoons to ask questions, when life 
 and fashion are at floodtide outside. If I could 
 make a great speech now, upon some burning 
 question, at midnight, and wake next morning to 
 find myself famous!" 
 
 "Ah, that is the way with boys, they want to 
 succeed without working for success!" 
 
 "Mother," said the boy, coming closer to her 
 and lowering his voice, "do you know some of 
 the fellows here have told me that I should be a 
 fool to work, because I must be Lord Lashmar 
 before I am many years older. Poor Lash has 
 such shocking bad health, don't you know, and it 
 isn't likely he'll last long." 
 
 "Whoever taught you to think that you will 
 be Lord Lashmar is your worst enemy," said his 
 mother severely; "Lashmar suffers a martyrdom 
 from neuralgia, poor fellow, but there is nothing 
 
 One Thins Needful. I. ^
 
 98 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 organically wrong. Sir William Spenser told him 
 that he may live to be an old man." 
 
 "I'm glad to hear it," said the boy, "for I'm 
 very fond of old Lash. He has always been a 
 good brother to me. As for working, well, I 
 don't like work, who does? but I always try to 
 be top of the tree everywhere , and I shall try to 
 be top of the tree at St. Stephen's, by-and-by. I 
 shall go in for aristocratic radicalism." 
 
 "Victorian!" cried her ladyship, growing pale 
 with horror. 
 
 "There's no one succeeds better than your 
 swell Rad. Look at Maupertius, for instance. 
 Who, has got the ear of the House half so well 
 as he has? A man born in the purple makes 
 such a grand effect when he calmly expounds 
 the theories of advanced socialism? I shall go 
 in for the kind of gospel that poor beggar Bold- 
 wood preached so eloquently; only I shall be as 
 mild as Maupertius, don't you know, and I shall 
 be the wit of the House. Nothing tells like wit." 
 
 "But wit is one of the few things that cannot 
 be learnt," said the mother, smiling fondly at her 
 boy's arrogance. "A man cannot be either a 
 tenor-singer or a wit for the wishing." 
 
 "We shall see," answered Victorian con-
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 99 
 
 fidently. "If I go into the House it will be to 
 make the members laugh — with me, not at me, 
 mother," 
 
 "I would have you full to the brim of ambi- 
 tion," said her ladyship, kissing the broad strong 
 brow, "I do not mind your being self-conlident — 
 vain, even — so long as you are earnest and in- 
 dustrious." 
 
 This was their parting interview. Lady Lash- 
 mar had never so much as hinted at her own 
 hope of her son's succession to his half-brother's 
 honours; and now she breathed not one word of 
 the bitter blow which Spenser's favourable opinion 
 had been to her. She felt now that the hope 
 had been wicked, unnatural: yet she told herself 
 that she had always done her duty to her step- 
 son, and that nothing could ever make her falter 
 in her performance of that duty. If it had 
 pleased Providence to relieve him of the burden 
 of existence it would have seemed to her that 
 Providence had acted wisely and beneficially alike 
 for Lashmar and for Victorian. But Lady Pit- 
 land's second daughter had been too well brought 
 up to be capable of rebellion against Providence. 
 It was not in vain that she went to church twice 
 on Sundays, and once on every Saint's Day, not
 
 lOO ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 even slighting the minor saints by non-attendance. 
 She was eminently orthodox in her ideas, and 
 she bowed with dignified submission to the In- 
 scrutable. 
 
 She went back to Middleshire, and was 
 cordially received by her stepson, who was at 
 the station to meet her, testifying to that respect 
 which was her due. He was standing on the 
 platform when the train stopped, and her lady- 
 ship thought she had never seen him looking so 
 well. 
 
 "I shouldn't wonder if Sir William were right. 
 He looks as if he might live to be ninety," she 
 said to herself, and then, with a sigh, she 
 murmured "Poor Victorian." 
 
 Orthodox as she was it could but seem to 
 her a hardship that her son, in his strength and 
 perfection of manhood, should be kept in the 
 background by this blighted life. 
 
 "How brown you have grown, Lashmar," she 
 said, as they shook hands, "and how well you 
 are looking!" 
 
 "I have not had one of my headaches since 
 you left. I suppose it is because I have lived 
 more out of doors than I used to do." 
 
 "I should advise you always to live out of
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." ioi 
 
 doors," replied his stepmother, with a forced 
 laugh. 
 
 She was grave and silent as they drove home; 
 excused herself for being dull and stupid on the 
 ground of fatigue. Not one question did she 
 ask about Lashmar's protegee: yet the thought of 
 Boldwood's child was in her mind as they drew 
 near the castle. It was on account of this brat 
 no doubt that Lashmar had been spending his 
 life in the gardens, bronzing himself to the com- 
 plexion of a plough-boy. It was this whim which 
 had given new brightness to his aspect, a new 
 impetus to his life. Lady Lashmar was far too 
 orthodox to be angry with Providence; but she 
 felt that she might be as angry as she liked with 
 Boldwood's daughter. 
 
 She stood upon her balcony next morning, 
 wrapped in her dressing-gown, tasting the sweet 
 freshness of the air that swept over woodland 
 and meadow, and rippled the wavelets of the 
 river yonder. Far away in the rose-garden, a 
 quaint old quadrangle of turf and rose-trees, 
 hedged in with clipped yew, she saw two figures 
 — Lashmar's and a little girl in a white frock. 
 The child was flitting from flower to flower. The 
 man was sauntering up and dov/n the grass,
 
 102 OXE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 reading; but he looked round every now and 
 then at the child, and occasionally stopped and 
 bent down to talk to her. 
 
 Lady Lashmar stood for a long time watching 
 them. 
 
 "Was there ever such an absurd infatuation?" 
 she said to herself, contemptuously. 
 
 It was nearly a week later when she met the 
 child for the first time in the corridor. Stella 
 was alone, tripping along gaily, holding up a lap 
 full of wild flowers — free, independent, happy. 
 She had just come in from a morning spent on 
 the river, in Lashmar's boat. 
 
 Her ladyship laid her hand upon the child's 
 shoulder, and bent down to scrutinise the small 
 sallow face. 
 
 Ugly? Well, no, not so ugly as she had 
 thought that night. The small features were too 
 delicately moulded for ugliness. The eyes were 
 wonderful — too large, too dark for childish beauty; 
 but in a woman they would have been eyes worthy 
 of Cleopatra. 
 
 "I shouldn't wonder if the creature were to 
 grow up into a handsome woman," thought her 
 ladyship, "and then the chances are that Lashmar 
 will marry her. With his eccentric ideas there
 
 "ey degrees the human blossom blows." 103 
 
 would be nothing extraordinary in such a mar- 
 riage. Let me see, she is five — it will be twelve 
 or thirteen years before she is marriageable. That 
 is a comfort. And in the meantime she may 
 hinder his marrying anyone else." 
 
 There was comfort also in this last idea, and 
 yet Lady Lashmar could not bring herself to re- 
 gard the child as anything but a viper. 
 
 "What is your name?" she asked sternly. 
 "Stella," answered the child, looking up at 
 her ladyship calmly, unabashed by grandeur of 
 presence or splendour of raiment, or by the frown 
 which contracted the questioner's dark brows. 
 
 "Stella! a fine theatrical name, upon my 
 word. I suppose it was Lashmar who called you 
 Stella." 
 
 "It was my daddy. He called me Stella. Do 
 you know where he is?" looking up eagerly, with 
 sudden interest. 
 
 Her ladyship was on the point of replying. 
 In another instant the hard, bitter truth would 
 have been spoken, had not Lashmar come out of 
 the library close by and interrupted the con- 
 versation. 
 
 "So you have been talking to Stella," he said
 
 I04 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 cheerily. "Don't you think she has improved in 
 Betsy's care?" 
 
 "Betsy has dressed her a great deal too fine," 
 said her ladyship, with a scornful glance at the 
 cream-coloured frock and scarlet sash, the scarlet 
 shoes, and the coral necklace on the little throat, 
 which had the yellowish whiteness of ivory. 
 
 "Oh, I like her to look pretty! She brings 
 stray gleams of beauty into the dullness of a 
 student's life. There, you can run away, Stella. 
 Run away and get your dinner, and come to me 
 again at four o'clock for your reading lesson. 
 Good-bye till four." 
 
 He stooped to kiss her, and dismissed her 
 Avith a smile. She tripped away, murmuring 
 "Four o'clock, four o'clock — go again at four 
 o'clock," in a kind of tune, as if to impress the 
 fact upon her mind. 
 
 Lady Lashmar felt the uselessness of argu- 
 ment with her stepson. That quietly determined 
 temper of his had always baffled her in any dis- 
 pute which involved earnest purpose on his side. 
 In trifles he was always ready to give way to her. 
 He allowed her to reign undisputed mistress of 
 a house which by inheritance was all his own. 
 He allowed her to spend as much of his money
 
 < "by degrees the human blossom blows." X05 
 
 as ever she cared to spend in the maintenance 
 of a state which was far beyond his desires: but 
 wherever feeling or affection was concerned he 
 had his own way. 
 
 Her ladyship had wished to get rid of the 
 old book-worm tutor when Lashmar came of age. 
 The man had taught his pupil all he could teach. 
 He was a shabby-looking Dominie Sampson-ish 
 personage, whose dingy presence was a blot upon 
 the elegance of Lashmar Castle. He was receiv- 
 ing two hundred a year for doing nothing. But 
 when these views of hers were made known to 
 Lashmar he informed her that he meant Gabriel 
 Verner to end his days at the castle. 
 
 "Verner is too old to go among new faces or 
 to learn new habits," he said; "he will be very 
 useful to me as a librarian and secretary. He 
 can take care of my books and write my business 
 letters." 
 
 "He has no more idea of business than one 
 of those peacocks," said her ladyship, looking ab- 
 sently out upon the terrace where Juno's birds 
 were spreading their plumes in the sunshine. 
 
 "Fortunately / have. I can always tell him 
 what to say." 
 
 So Gabriel Verner stayed, a quaint old figure,
 
 I06 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 with shoulders so bent and rounded by stooping 
 over books that he too seemed a hunchback. 
 Lady Lashmar sometimes thought that he had 
 cultivated a hump, by way of mute flattery. He 
 was a harmless old man, small and pale, with a 
 large overhanging brow, and silvery hair, which 
 he wore long, like Milton, to whom he fancied 
 that he bore a striking resemblance. He had an 
 inoffensive kind of intellectual vanity, and was 
 engaged upon an elaborate commentary on Aris- 
 totle's metaphysics, which he feared to publish 
 lest he should become suddenly famous in the 
 decline of his life, and sink into the grave 
 crushed by the weight of his laurels, like Tarpeia 
 under the bracelets of the besiegers. He con- 
 trived to live at the castle, without obtruding 
 himself upon its proud mistress. He had his 
 private sitting-room near the library, where he 
 dwelt alone when he was not with Lashmar. 
 Once in a way, when she was in a benevolent 
 mood, Lady Lashmar invited him to lunch; or, 
 if she had a learned visitor she would go so far 
 as to ask Mr. Verner to dinner, in order that he 
 might relieve her of her burden, and do all ne- 
 cessary listening and sympathising in her stead. 
 Gradually she had become resigned to the idea
 
 "BY DEGREES SHE ITOMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS." IO7 
 
 that he was to end his days at Lashmar. She 
 even knitted warm comforters for him, which he 
 used to wear, and speak of with reverence as 
 "her ladyship's little attentions." 
 
 It was to Gabriel Verner that Lady Lashmar 
 now turned for sympathy. She joined him on 
 the terrace that afternoon while he was taking his 
 constitutional walk, after his temperate luncheon, 
 trotting up and down with a volume of German 
 metaphysics under his arm, a book to which he 
 applied himself for a few minutes ever and anon, 
 reading a little bit, and then pacing up and 
 down. 
 
 "My dear Mr. Verner, how well you are look- 
 ing!" cried her ladyship, "ever so much better 
 than when I left the castle." 
 
 "I think it must be because I have been 
 more in the open air," replied the old man, 
 unconsciously answering just as Lashmar had 
 answered; "his lordship and I have been spend- 
 ing our days on the river during the late glorious 
 weather; we have taken our books and our 
 luncheon " 
 
 "And his lordship's latest plaything — that 
 horrid child," interrupted Lady Lashmar. 
 
 "I can assure your ladyship that the little girl
 
 I08 ONE THING NEEDFUL,. 
 
 is a most amenable child, and a very interesting 
 companion. I never saw so young an intellect 
 of such scope and development; it induces me to 
 think with Aristotle that as in the young of some 
 of the lower mammals the " 
 
 "Of course the child must be sharp, cunning, 
 old-fashioned. She is the child of sedition and 
 freethought. The child of a man whose intel- 
 lectual powers were employed only in doing 
 mischief I am not surprised that you should 
 think the child clever. A few years hence she 
 will be a great deal too clever for any of us — 
 a source of unspeakable mischief — unless you, 
 dear Mr. Verner, can exercise your great in- 
 fluence overLashmar; for you have great influence 
 over him, my dear sir; he positively adores you, 
 and thinks your book will revolutionise European 
 thought." 
 
 The phrase Avas large, but when Lady Lash- 
 mar had her own purpose to gain she always did 
 things largely. 
 
 "You are too kind," murmured the Aristotelian 
 meekly. 
 
 "Yes, dear Mr. Verner," she hurried on, "you 
 must really bring your superior brain to bear upon 
 poor Lashmar, He is clever, but a mere dreamer.
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 109 
 
 You must show him the danger involved in this 
 folly of his — the incubus he is preparing for him- 
 self in the future. What in heaven's name is he 
 to do with this child by-and-by if she should 
 turn out badly? And of course she will turn 
 out badly. I have a profound belief in hereditary 
 instinct." 
 
 "And I, dear Lady Lashmar, have an equally 
 profound belief in education. Not for worlds 
 would I thwart Lashmar in this fancy of his. 
 Remember, he saved that baby's life at the hazard 
 of his own. She is his — a God-given boon. He 
 has seemed ever so much happier since she has 
 been here. She interests, she amuses him, she 
 takes him out of himself; and think what a bless- 
 ing that self-forgetfulness must needs be in such 
 a case as his where nature, injusta noverca, has 
 been so unkind." 
 
 Gabriel Verner stopped in some confusion. 
 What if that phrase, injusta noverca, should seem 
 personal. Happily Lady Lashmar had been 
 educated at a period when young ladies were 
 not taught Latin. 
 
 "Do not fear the result," continued Verner. 
 "I will be responsible for the child's training; and 
 I pledge myself that education shall conquer evil
 
 no ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 instincts, if there is anything evil in that young 
 character." 
 
 Lady Lashmar pushed the argument no 
 further. There was evidently no help to be ob- 
 tained here. 
 
 "I must go and put on my bonnet," she said 
 rather shortly; "I have a round of tiresome calls 
 to make. I will leave you to your beloved Plato." 
 
 The Aristotelian shuddered at that hated 
 name. To think that after all these years of 
 intercourse, after having had the nature of his 
 studies and lucubrations so often expounded to 
 her, Lady Lashmar did not yet know to which 
 school he belonged! 
 
 For six years of young, fresh life, Stella Bold- 
 wood was almost entirely happy. She lived in a 
 world wh«re all things were new — to the dweller 
 in the tents of the people — an actual world of 
 beauty and luxury which knew not change; a 
 world of thought whose horizon widened with 
 every day of her existence. Education to Stella 
 was as sunlight to the flowers, or spring time to 
 the birds. Her eager mind opened to receive 
 the treasures of knowledge; her vivid imagination 
 shed its own brightness upon every subject; and 
 she was taught as seldom children are taught in
 
 "BY DEGREES THE HUMAN BLOSSOM BLOWS." 1 1 I 
 
 this super-enlightened age of ours. She was 
 taught as sweetly and as pleasantly as children 
 are told the legends of fairyland on a mother's 
 knee. Lashmar devised his own system of edu- 
 cation. She was to learn nothing in which she 
 was not interested, to repeat no dry formulae, 
 parrotwise. She was to be troubled with none of 
 those abstruse technicalities which the modern 
 grammarian has devised for the torture of child- 
 hood. The story of the earth on which she lived 
 was not to be made odious to her by dry scraps 
 of science, long rows of figures, altitudes of moun- 
 tains, lengths of rivers. She was to learn the 
 beauty and the glory of the universe unawares, 
 out of picture books and tales of travel and ad- 
 venture. Instead of knocking her poor little head 
 against a row of unfriendly figures in order to 
 learn the exact height of such and such peaks of 
 the Andes, or the Himalayas, she was in fancy to 
 roam those mountains, to tremble on the edge of 
 stern precipices, to gather strange flowers that 
 bloom in their remoteness, to make acquaintance 
 with strange creatures that dwell in those inac- 
 cessible regions. She would sit for hours at 
 Lashmar's feet listening to the experiences of 
 some hardy explorer, and then with her babyish
 
 112 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 pencil she would draw fancy-pictures of the wild, 
 lonely hills, the gigantic lakes, and awful woods, 
 the world which to her vivid imagination was as 
 familiar as the meadows and orchards of Middle- 
 shire. 
 
 Lashmar taught his pupil history in a series 
 of narrations, beginning with the Bible-stories of 
 that far-away patriarchal world in which good 
 men dwelt under the personal protection of their 
 God, holding constant converse with heaven; and 
 working gradually downwards through the dark 
 mystery of Egypt to the fair dawn of Greece. 
 He lingered long and lovingly over that faiiy 
 land of Olympus. He was steeped to the lips in 
 Greek legend, Hesiod and Homer, and all the 
 Homeric hymns. 
 
 And Stella loved to hear these fair myths of 
 a world that is dead, asked again and again for 
 stories of Dionysus and Demeter, of Helen and 
 Paris, of Hector and Achilles, of Ajax and Aga- 
 memnon; stories terrible and stories beautiful, 
 stories at which her hair seemed to rise with 
 horror, stories which brought back the happy 
 smile to the young lips. In the boat beneath the 
 willows on sultriest summer afternoons, or beside 
 the Avinter fire, betwixt afternoon tea and the
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 113 
 
 eight o'clock dinner, Stella's education was always 
 going on; an education of legend and history, 
 poetry, and fact; an education of oral instruction 
 which exacted no labour from the growing brain, 
 an education which was always sowing the seed 
 and never reaping the harvest. That was to 
 come later. 
 
 Gabriel Verner took the child in hand for an 
 hour every morning. He taught her to read and 
 write and cipher. That was the only drudgery 
 of her education. All the rest was learnt at Lash- 
 mar's knee. 
 
 Their life crept onward with a monotony which 
 to anyone, except a student, would have been in- 
 tolerable. Lady Lashmar came and went. She 
 was in Grosvenor Square for the season. She 
 spent all one summer at Homburg for her gout, 
 taking Victorian with her. She took him for an- 
 other vacation to the Engadine. She spent a month 
 with him in Paris. But, except for an occasional 
 week in the picture-seeing season, Lord Lashmar 
 rarely went to London. He found contentment, 
 occupation, variety in that matchless library which 
 was the pride of Lashmar Castle; and he found 
 recreation and amusement in the society of his 
 adopted daughter. 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. "
 
 I 1 4 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 And thus, in the lap of luxury, beloved and 
 cherished, Jonathan Boldwood's daughter arrived 
 at her eleventh birthday. She had remembered 
 her birthday, young as she was, and had been 
 able to tell her benefactor the exact date, be- 
 cause it was a day with a name. This dark child 
 with the star-like eyes had begun life upon Mid- 
 summer-day. 
 
 Lashmar questioned her sometimes about her 
 earliest experiences — very gently, lest he should 
 evoke sad memories, revive her passionate grief 
 for her father, perhaps. He asked her if her 
 father had ever told her anything about her 
 mother, or of his own life. 
 
 Yes. He had told her that he was once a 
 gentleman, that he was born in a great house 
 near the sea; far away on the Scottish border. 
 He had told her that her mother was beautiful 
 and ought to have been rich. This — told vaguely 
 as a child would relate shreds and patches of 
 half-remembered speech — was all that Lashmar 
 could obtain by his questioning. 
 
 After all, the past history of Jonathan Bold- 
 Avood could matter very little. There was evi- 
 dently no one to claim the child; and that, in 
 Lashmar's mind, was the main point.
 
 "by degrees the human blossom blows." 115 
 
 Only one relic of the dead man had been 
 saved from the fire. A small tin cash-box, with 
 the initials J. B., had been found among the 
 ashes and rubbish below that portion of the 
 ruined pile in which Boldwood's rooms had been 
 situated. It was identified as his by a fellow- 
 lodger; and was ultimately handed over to Lash- 
 mar, together with the key which had been found 
 hanging on his steel watch-chain. Watch, chain, and 
 key, were given up to Lashmar after the inquest. 
 
 The contents of the casket were disappointing. 
 It contained papers which the smoke had black- 
 ened so as to be utterly undecipherable. The 
 original form was there, but reduced almost to 
 tinder. The matter had vanished. The only un- 
 injured object was a miniature in a double gold 
 case, which had better resisted the action of the 
 fire than the ill-made metal box. The miniature 
 was an old-fashioned painting upon ivory; the 
 portrait of a man in the prime of life. A grave 
 dark face, with large dark eyes, and a high bald 
 forehead. Lashmar judged by the peculiar form 
 of beard and coat-collar that the original had 
 been a foreigner; the type was un-English. He 
 showed Stella the picture and asked her if she 
 
 had ever seen it before. 
 
 8*
 
 Il6 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "No, never. What was it, who was it?" 
 Lashmar sealed up the sheets of tindery paper 
 in a large envelope, and subscribed it carefully, 
 "Burned papers found in Boldwood's cash-box," 
 with the place and date. He cleaned up the 
 cash-box, and put the miniature and the papers 
 back into it, locked it, and tied the key to the 
 handle, then wrote a label, "This box is Stella 
 Boldwood's property, the only thing saved from 
 her father's lodgings." He put the box in a 
 locked book-case where he kept some of his most 
 valuable books. A priceless Decameron, an old 
 copy of Rabelais, and some of the least respectable 
 among the classics from the printing press of 
 mediaeval Venice.
 
 "at what goal ALA.Y WE MEET?" II7 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "OUT OF SIGHT, BEYOND LIGHT, AT WHAT GOAL 
 MAY WE MEET?" 
 
 It was Midsummer Day, and Stella was eleven 
 years old, an ever-memorable anniversary in that 
 young life; so sweet in its summer dawn, so fatal 
 before sundown. 
 
 Lady Lashmar was in London, Victorian was 
 at Oxford. He had hardly spent three months at 
 the castle during those six years in which Stella 
 had dwelt there, and he had exchanged scarcely 
 a dozen words with her. He had exaggerated 
 his mother's prejudices against the orphan, and 
 avoided her as if she had been a toad. 
 
 Lashmar and his protegee had their little world 
 all to themselves, save for their devoted slave, 
 Gabriel Vemer, who still hovered on the brink 
 of publication, the manuscript of his great book 
 still virgin, unsoiled by the finger-marks of the 
 compositor, and who still forecast with terror the
 
 I 1 8 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 day in which the world should ring with his 
 name, and cabinet ministers insist upon making 
 his acquaintance. 
 
 Stella's birthday had been always made in 
 some wise a festival by her adopted father. He 
 wanted the child to lack none of those childish 
 pleasures which fathers and mothers give their 
 children. She was in after years to recall no 
 deprivation, no loss of privilege or pleasure. And 
 this year he felt more than usually anxious to do 
 honour to her birthday. The time was drawing 
 near when this happy Arcadian existence, this 
 easy-going education at her benefactor's feet must 
 needs be changed for a more conventional form 
 of life. The time was coming when Stella must 
 be handed over to feminine care, in order that 
 she might learn the ways and the accomplish- 
 ments of women. It would have pleased Lashmar 
 to have carried out his work to the end, to have 
 seen his protegie grow up to ripening womanhood 
 under his care, to have taught her all things that 
 she was ever to learn, to have created in her a 
 spiritual twin-sister, a second self, the sweet com- 
 panion and consolation of his loveless days. But 
 regard for her interests, the fear that he might 
 create that modern monster, the philosopher in
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 119 
 
 petticoats, made him hesitate; while Gabriel 
 Verner's suggestion, that in days to come scandal 
 might cloud the relations of protector and pro- 
 tected, was not without weight with him. He 
 made up his mind to seek out some tranquil and 
 happy household, some perfect woman nobly 
 planned, in whose fostering care Stella might 
 develop into enlightened and graceful womanhood. 
 And then — and then — in the days to come she 
 might still be his companion and friend, again 
 live under his roof and brighten his days, the 
 first to bid him good -morning, the last to say 
 good-night. She would marry, perhaps; yes, that 
 would be best for both of them. She might anchor 
 herself in marriage to some mild young cleric, 
 who could be Lashmar's chaplain; so that hus- 
 band and wife might live together under his roof. 
 He saw himself in that far future smiling upon 
 Stella's children, finding a new star in some baby 
 girl who would sit at his feet and listen to him 
 in wide-eyed wonder, just as Stella had done. 
 Surely his age would not be loveless or lonely; 
 this waif snatched out of the fire would be to 
 him a well-spring of love. 
 
 His life had not been all brightness since 
 Stella had dwelt within his walls. Those sensi-
 
 120 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 tive nerves of his — sensitive to cold, to heat, to 
 fatigue, to pleasure even — had been racked many 
 and many a day. The old agony of pain, the 
 old weariness of prostration had been his again 
 and again; but in every new interval of suffering 
 he had found a growing sweetness in Stella's 
 sympathy. The child had a sense of pity and 
 love far beyond her years, a power to comprehend 
 suffering rarely found even in a woman. She 
 would sit by her benefactor's couch for hours — 
 silent, watchful. She knew every expression of 
 the sufferer's tortured brow, and could mark those 
 intervals of respite in which he liked to talk, and 
 in which it was good for him to have his thoughts 
 diverted into new channels. Her little feet moved 
 lightly over the carpet, her little hands were as 
 gentle as rose leaves falling upon grass. Before 
 she was eight years old she acquired a deftness 
 which made her ministrations pleasanter than 
 those of the most experienced woman-servant in 
 the castle. She could pour out a dose of medi- 
 cine, or mix a tumbler of lemonade with unerring 
 precision. She was Lashmar's chief nurse in all 
 his illnesses, which, being for the most part of a 
 nervous character, involved no degrading office 
 for nurse or attendant. Gabriel Verner was Stella's
 
 *AT WHAT GOAL MAV WE MEET?" 121 
 
 subordinate in the sick room, and was quite as 
 gentle as a woman. 
 
 Lord Lashmar generally breakfasted in his 
 study when her ladyship was away, and at such 
 periods Verner and Stella always breakfasted with 
 him. The breakfast hour was nine, and Lashmar 
 often spent an hour in the garden before break- 
 fast, sometimes alone, but more often with Stella 
 for his companion. 
 
 She was with him this morning, proud in the 
 repetition of her first Greek verb. She had been 
 learning Latin for more than a year, and could 
 recite bits of the Bucolics with perfect intonation 
 and precision, but Greek had been begun within 
 the last few weeks, and Stella was intensely in- 
 terested ,in the beginning of a language which 
 she had been taught to consider the grandest 
 tongue that the peoples of this earth had ever 
 spoken. Had not Homer recited his wondrous 
 tale of Troy in those sonorous syllables? Stella 
 knew the story of Troy as well as other children 
 know the story of Red Riding-Hood. 
 
 Stella repeated her verb in its innumerable 
 tenses with very few mistakes, and won a kindly 
 word of approval from Lashmar. 
 
 "Most little girls at your age would be learn-
 
 122 ONE THING NEEDFtTL. 
 
 ing French instead of Greek," he said; "but, as 
 there is nothing in the French language equal to 
 Homer or Plato, I would rather you should learn 
 Greek first and French afterwards." 
 
 They went into breakfast together. Mr. Vemer 
 was in the study waiting for them, with his note- 
 book and pencil in his hand, going over a passage 
 in his book. He wrote his manuscript in small 
 scraps, which he revised and re-wrote again and 
 again, carrying the little book about with him 
 wherever he went, poring and pondering over 
 every paragraph, every phrase; and by this 
 laborious method he had contrived to attain an 
 English style which read like a literal translation 
 from Hegel or Schopenhauer. 
 
 The table was bright with flowers, old English 
 silver, and old English china. A large dish of 
 strawberries showed crimson against a background 
 of tea-roses in a great Japanese bowl. The sub- 
 stantials were all upon a side-table. Lashmar 
 was wont to breakfast lightly, on new laid eggs 
 and strawberries and cream, in this summer 
 weather, and Stella cared only for crisp, light 
 rolls and fruit and cream. It was Mr. Vemer 
 whose fine appetite did justice to the good things 
 on the side-table.
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 123 
 
 Stella gave a cry of surprise and rapture as 
 she took her seat. Upon her folded napkin lay 
 a glittering golden watch, with a slender chain 
 coiled round it like a serpent. The back of the 
 watch was enamelled, and on the enamel ap- 
 peared the initial S., surmounted by a star in 
 tiny brilliants. 
 
 "Oh, what a beautiful watch!" she cried; 
 "whose is it?" 
 
 "Yours, Stella. You are so precise in giving 
 me my medicine when I am ill that I am sure 
 you know the value of time; so I thought you 
 would like to have a time-keeper of your own." 
 
 Stella ran to him, and threw her arms round 
 his neck and kissed him. 
 
 "How good you are to me! you are always 
 giving me pretty things. But a watch! I never 
 thought I should have a watch, like a grown-up 
 person ! " 
 
 "You are more thoughtful and more exact 
 than many grown-up persons, Stella. You deserve 
 to own a watch." 
 
 "I will be very, very careful of it," said the 
 child earnestly. 
 
 She had often handled Lashmar's watch: had 
 worn it for a week at a time when he was ill, so
 
 124 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 she was not afraid to open this one. She read 
 the inscription inside: "To Stella, from her 
 adopted father, Lashmar, Midsummer Day, 1872. 
 
 "That is the best of all," she said; "I shall 
 always love the watch for my adopted father's 
 sake." 
 
 They were to start upon an excursion soon 
 after breakfast — an excusion planned in honour 
 of the day. Fifteen miles from Lashmar Castle 
 there were the remains of a mediaeval abbey — 
 extensive ruins, in a very fine state of preserva- 
 tion, and situated in a beautiful country. Lang- 
 dale Abbey was one of the places that everybody 
 went to see, and it afforded an admirable excuse 
 for a picnic. Lashmar knew every stone among 
 the ruins, every wild flower and lichen that grew 
 in the interstices of the stones and clothed the 
 old walls with beauty. But he was never weary 
 of Langdale Abbey, and he told himself that 
 there could be no pleasanter way of spending 
 the day than in a drive to Langdale. 
 
 He had lately bought a pair of horses, of 
 which he was particularly proud, fine up-standing 
 bays, an exact match in colour, size, form, action 
 and pace — a pair of horses which would have 
 attracted every eye in Hyde Park, but which
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 125 
 
 were hardly noticed in the neighbourhood of 
 Lashmar Castle where it was an understood thing 
 that Lord Lashmar always drove the finest cattle. 
 He was so rich and had so few ways of spending 
 his money that it seemed only right he should 
 pay high prices for his horses. 
 
 He was an admirable whip, firm, temperate, 
 with light hands and an unerring eye. He loved 
 horses, and horses loved him. These bays were 
 fine, honest animals, and reported to be as quiet 
 as sheep. Lord Lashmar had driven them three 
 or four times, and had found them irreproachable. 
 He would never have risked Stella's safety by 
 placing her behind dangerous animals, nor would 
 he have imperilled the gray hairs of his faithful 
 old tutor. 
 
 The picnic baskets were packed into the 
 phaeton in the stable yard, and at eleven o'clock 
 the carriage came round to the porch. 
 
 Stella was ready in the hall, beaming with 
 happiness, the great dark eyes shining out of the 
 shadow made by her broad-brimmed hat. Her 
 short-waisted white frock, broad blue sash, and 
 long wash-leather gloves made her look like one 
 of Reynolds's children. Indeed, with her dark 
 eyes and thick hair, cut straight across her brow,
 
 126 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 she had always a look of Reynolds's portraits. 
 The aristocratic old Rector of Lashmar used to 
 pat her on the head condescendingly, and call 
 her "My Reynolds girl." He was a good man, 
 after his fashion, which was narrow. He could 
 not see any merit in bringing up one orphan in 
 the lap of luxury. He would have had the cost 
 of Stella's maintenance given to some orphanage 
 where it might have been distributed in the shape 
 of thick bread-and-butter and hob-nailed boots, 
 among many children. Lashmar's benevolence 
 seemed to him as the costly box of ointment 
 seemed to Judas — a lavish, unreasoning expendi- 
 ture. He was always ready to echo Lady Lash- 
 mar's reprobation of her stepson's folly. Yes, no 
 doubt he was preparing trouble for himself in the 
 future. The girl must eventually become an 
 incubus. 
 
 Stella took her seat beside Lord Lashmar in 
 the phaeton, Gabriel Verner mounted behind, and 
 the groom leapt lightly into his place when the 
 horses were in full motion, deeming that his 
 dignity would have been compromised by mount- 
 ing a moment sooner. The bays went with a 
 certain springiness, which told Lashmar they were 
 very fresh.
 
 "AT WHAT GOAL MAY WE MEET?" 1 27 
 
 "Were these horses exercised yesterday?" he 
 asked of the groom. 
 
 "No, my Lord, not yesterday. Smiles knew 
 your lordship wanted them for a journey." 
 "Were they out the day before?" 
 "No, my Lord. Smiles thought the weather 
 was too bad." 
 
 The bays were going splendidly, with no hint 
 of running away; but they were very eager, and 
 wanted to go at the top of their pace. Lashmar 
 kept them well in hand, and they bowled merrily 
 along the high road outside the castle. They 
 had fifteen miles before them. 
 
 "What nice horses," said Stella, enjoying the 
 pace. 
 
 "Do you like them better than Pyramus and 
 Thisbe?" 
 
 "Pyramus and Thisbe are darlings, but these 
 go faster, don't they?" 
 
 "Yes, they are going faster to-day." 
 They had driven three or four miles in the 
 morning sunshine, between hedgerows full of 
 eglantine and honeysuckle, past a picturesque 
 Middleshire village, with its tumble-down, half- 
 timbered cottages in black and white, its untidy 
 straw-yards and mouldering barns. The horses
 
 128 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 were well in hand as Lashmar drove past the 
 little cluster of humble dwellings, and the inn, 
 with its blurred old sign and dripping horse- 
 trough. The village seemed for the most part 
 the abode of sleep or death; for all the men were 
 in the fields, and all the children were at school. 
 But here and there a woman looked out at her 
 door, and admired Lord Lashmar's horses, the 
 light phaeton, the groom's smart livery, and the 
 pretty child in her white frock and straw hat. 
 
 About a hundred yards from the village the 
 road made a sharp curve, and Lord Lashmar saw 
 himself face to face with that which might mean 
 danger. 
 
 A traction engine in full cry, snorting, pant- 
 ing, groaning — a traction engine serving as a tug 
 for a huge waggon of hay, which loomed large 
 above it, a waggon which should have been drawn 
 by sleek and placid cart-horses, with plaited manes 
 and decorative net- work flapping over their honest 
 foreheads. 
 
 The groom stood up and uttered one of those 
 inarticulate cries which are as a common language 
 of the stable. The men in charge of the engine 
 tried to abate the fury of their monster. 
 
 Too late! The horses were in that condition
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 129 
 
 of freshness which would have made them bolt 
 at a feather — they were off in an instant — all their 
 reserve force in full action. 
 
 "Sit firmly, for God's sake, Stella;" said Lash- 
 mar, and then to those behind, "Verner, keep 
 your seat whatever happens; John, try to hold 
 Miss Stella." 
 
 The groom wound his arm round the child's 
 waist. She was looking at Lashmar's face, silent, 
 awe-stricken. How pale he was, and hoAv tightly 
 his lips were set ! Yet he did not look frightened, 
 only grave, intent, anxious. 
 
 "Are we all going to be killed?" she asked 
 tremulously. 
 
 "We are in God's hands, my darling," he an- 
 swered. 
 
 There was no time for more. The danger was 
 close upon them. Had there been a clear road 
 the bolting of the horses would have been as no- 
 thing with such a whip as Lashmar. 
 
 But the road was narrow, and they had to 
 pass that huge bulk of the hay-waggon and the 
 engine. The drivers were dragging their load as 
 far as they could towards the hedge, but there 
 was little time for this, with those frightened 
 horses tearing along at a mad gallop. Lashmar 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. 9
 
 130 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 was holding them firmly, keeping them fairly 
 straight; but, just as they neared the engine, it 
 gave one final snort; the off-horse swerved, the 
 pole snapped, and both horses fell in a heap, 
 dragging the phaeton over in their fall. 
 
 Black night closed over Stella's dreams, ending 
 this birthday of hers in deepest darkness before 
 it was noon. 
 
 ***** 
 
 After that sudden extinguishment of the actual 
 world, there came one long dream of horror. One 
 long dream — a dream without awakening, yet a 
 vision so entangled that it was, as it were, many 
 dreams within one dream. Not once in that long 
 labyrinth of unreality did the child recognise the 
 realities around her; not once did her senses 
 emerge from that world of phantoms, and the 
 burden of shadows that thronged about her bed 
 — terrible shadows some of them, haunting shapes 
 from the realm of legend and poetry — Agamem- 
 non in his bloody bath, Achilles with the corpse 
 of Hector tied to his chariot. There was one 
 dream in which she was Hector, dead and bleed- 
 ing, dragged to the Grecian ships — the grit and 
 dust were in her throat and choked her, the 
 thundering hoofs of those fiery horses deafened
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 131 
 
 her, she was dead yet sentient. All her studies, 
 and stories, and happy fancies of the past, per- 
 sonified themselves in those everlasting hours of 
 delirium — a period in which hours were exag- 
 gerated into ages, and a day seemed an eternity. 
 Her first Greek verb, her lessons from Virgil, her 
 scraps of science, her childish knowledge of the 
 heavens — all the things she had learned became 
 a torture to her. 
 
 She was a star in the constellation of Cassio- 
 peia's Chair, shining with her sister-stars in the 
 cold November sky. Oh! how remote, and how 
 cold it was in that far world of night and dark- 
 ness! how dreadful to be parted for ever from her 
 friend and father! She could see the world she 
 had left, a little spot in the immensity of the 
 universe below her — one little spot, faintly lumin- 
 ous, like a glow-worm in a hedge; and there was 
 one speck of brighter light in that dim world, an 
 electric spark, no bigger than a pin's point, which 
 she knew was Lashmar's soul. It shone like a 
 star in that distant earth, brighter than all the 
 other souls of humanity, because he was the 
 kindest and noblest man upon the earth. "Like 
 Christ," she said to herself. She had often told 
 herself in her childish simplicity, unconsciously 
 
 9*
 
 1^2 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 irreverent, that he was like Christ. And now her 
 agony was the thought of an impassable gulf 
 between her benefactor and herself She strained, 
 she struggled to pass that black abyss; she 
 stretched out her arms as if they were wings. 
 Sometimes they seemed to her as wings, and car- 
 ried her for a long way, whirling onward in dark- 
 ness: but that glowworm spot in the far distance 
 came no nearer to her straining eyes — that gulf 
 was infinite and impassable! 
 
 "Never to see him again," she moaned; "never 
 to see him again. Too far — too far!" 
 
 And honest Betsy, who sat beside her bed 
 sewing, wondered that the child, who had never 
 recovered her senses since the accident, should 
 have this instinctive consciousness of an irrepar- 
 able loss. 
 
 At last there came an interval in that agony 
 of delirium. The throng of spectres was clouded 
 over by a gracious darkness. The weary arms 
 ceased to strain towards that unattainable point. 
 The burning lids fell over the aching eyeballs. A 
 deep and healing sleep followed that feverish un- 
 rest; and the patient woke to know the kindly 
 face of her nurse for the first time in ten long 
 days and nights of fever.
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 133 
 
 She saw the sunshine of a summer afternoon 
 streaming in at her window. 
 
 "Is it my birthday?" she asked, simply. "Why 
 didn't we go to Langdale Abbey?" 
 
 And then, sitting up in her bed, very weak 
 and white, and wan, she stretched out her tre- 
 mulous hands, and asked — 
 
 "Where is my watch?" 
 
 "Here, darling," answered Betsy, taking the 
 watch out of a morocco case on the dressing-table, 
 delighted to gratify her patient. "There's your 
 pretty watch. Oh, my, isn't it a pretty one! And 
 ain't you lucky to have a watch, just like a grown- 
 up young lady!" 
 
 The weak little hands Avavered as they took 
 the watch, the exhausted frame sank helpless on 
 the bed, but the child held the watch before her 
 eyes all the time, and the tremulous fingers con- 
 trived to open the case. 
 
 "Read it," she said faintly; and Betsy spelled 
 out the inscription, "To Stella, from her adopted 
 father, Lashmar." "Oh, isn't it beautiful!" ex- 
 claimed Betsy, and then she began to cry, and 
 cried a deluge, as young women of her class 
 usually can, seeming to have a better supplied 
 reservoir of tears than the highly cultured,
 
 134 O^^ THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "Don't cry," said Stella; "there's nothing to 
 cry for." 
 
 She had forgotten the dream of the star, the 
 pitiless abyss between her and Lashmar, the sense 
 of everlasting severance. 
 
 She lay for some minutes looking at her watch, 
 holding it in both hands, as if it were too heavy 
 for one. Then she put it to her ear, and found 
 that it was mute. 
 
 "A quarter to twelve," she said, "why did it 
 stop at a quarter to twelve?" 
 
 Again Betsy dissolved into tears. 
 
 "Shoosh, dear," she murmured, patting Stella's 
 shoulder, "go to sleep, my pet, till the doctor 
 comes to see you. Let Betsy put the pretty watch 
 under your pillow." 
 
 "I don't want to sleep any more; I want to 
 get up and be dressed; you know it's my birth- 
 day, and I am to be all day with Lord Lashmar. 
 How late the sunshine looks — like afternoon. 
 Have I overslept myself?" 
 
 "You have been very, very ill, dear," answered 
 Betsy, in a soothing, preachy-preachy tone, which 
 is peculiarly exasperating to an intellectual child, 
 "you are much too weak to get up. You shall
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 135 
 
 have your Brand's essence presently and a nice 
 little bit of toast." 
 
 "But it's my birthday," urged Stella, "and I 
 am to dine with his lordship." 
 
 "My poor pet, your birthday was ten days ago, 
 a week before the funeral," answered Betsy. 
 
 The word was spoken unawares. That awe- 
 inspiring, much-discussed event of the funeral — a 
 stately and imposing ceremonial, including all the 
 dismal grandeur of the old school and all the 
 floral decorations of the new — had been in every- 
 body's mouth at Lashmar Castle for the last six 
 days. It was the standard by which time Avas 
 reckoned. 
 
 "What funeral?" cried Stella, starting up in 
 her bed with a scared look. 
 
 She was so weak that cold drops broke out 
 upon her brow in the agitation of this question. 
 Poor Betsy was at her wits' end. 
 
 "Go to sleep, pet," she pleaded; "the doctor 
 wouldn't like you to talk so much. Lie down and 
 go to sleep, lovey." 
 
 But even these endearments failed to soothe 
 the perturbed spirit. 
 
 "What funeral?" repeated Stella; "is anybody 
 dead?"
 
 136 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Betsy only patted her shoulder dumbly, with 
 streaming eyes. 
 
 "Who is dead? Not Mr. Verner? Oh! he 
 was so good to me. He is not dead, is he?" 
 
 "No, dear, no; Mr. Verner is quite well. He 
 wasn't hurt at all, poor dear gentleman," an- 
 swered Betsy. 
 
 "He wasn't hurt! Who was hurt, then? Was 
 anybody hurt?" cried Stella, her eyes assuming 
 the wild look they had had in delirium. 
 
 "You were hurt, my poor precious. You fell 
 on your dear little head." 
 
 Stella gave a scream, and flung her arms 
 round Betsy's neck. Memory returned in a 
 flash. 
 
 "The horses!" she cried; "yes, I remember. 
 Oh! those dreadful horses. Lord Lashmar drove 
 so well; but I thought we were going to be killed. 
 He was not hurt, was he? Ask him to come to 
 me; I want to see Lord Lashmar; directly, 
 directly." 
 
 Those large dark eyes of hers were growing 
 wilder and wilder. They looked unnaturally 
 large in the small, pale face, sorely shrunken 
 from its childish plumpness during the wasting 
 agony of that ten days' fever. She tried to get
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 137 
 
 out of bed, pushing aside Betsy's restraining 
 arms. 
 
 "Ask Lord Lashmar to come to me. Let me 
 go to Lord Lashmar." 
 
 "Lord Lashmar is out, love," said the fright- 
 ened Betsy; "Lord Lashmar has gone to Brumm 
 for the day, on particular business." 
 
 It was true. Betsy felt she had satisfied her 
 charge, and saved her soul from the burden of a 
 lie. It was literal truth which she had spoken, 
 and yet for Stella it was not the truth: for Stella 
 it was a miserable, mocking lie. 
 
 She was not satisfied, but lay back upon her 
 pillows too exhausted to struggle. She lay moan- 
 ing. "I want to see Lord Lashmar. When will 
 he be back? Oh! when, when, when?" 
 
 She sobbed herself into a feverish, restless 
 slumber; and she was delirious again that night. 
 
 The doctor was much concerned when he 
 came to see her in the evening, and was told 
 how she had recovered her senses for a little 
 while, only to lose them again. 
 ■ "Did you tell her anything?" he asked. 
 
 "Not a word," answered Betsy. "She wanted 
 to see Lord Lashmar dreadfully, but I told her 
 be was out for the day, and she seemed to be'
 
 138 Otm THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 lieve me; but she made herself very unhappy 
 about him. She was so fond of him, poor dear, 
 and well she might be." 
 
 "Ah, well indeed!" said the doctor, shaking 
 his head. "I'm afraid she has seen the best 
 days of her life, poor little thing." 
 
 Mr. Stokes was a kind, simple soul, who had 
 lived all his life in the village of Avondale, just 
 a mile from the much smaller village of Lash- 
 mar, a pretty little cluster of houses on the bank 
 of the river, nestling round an old Saxon church 
 that seemed much too large for its surroundings. 
 Mr. Stokes knew everybody in the neighbourhood, 
 and had known the younger generation from 
 their cradles. He was a skilful surgeon, and was 
 tolerably shrewd in his diagnosis, though he sel- 
 dom went farther afield than Brumm, and had 
 not seen much of the great city since he was a 
 student at Bartlemy's. He knew all about Stella, 
 and Lady Lashmar's feelings with regard to her. 
 
 "I am afraid she is in for a relapse," he said 
 after he had taken her temperature. "A hundred 
 and five three- fourths. That looks bad. You 
 must do all you can to keep her quiet. Give her 
 Brand's essence and a teaspoonful of brandy with
 
 *'at what goal may we meet?" i3g 
 
 a little yoke of egg alternate half-hours. You'll 
 have to sit up with her again to-night." 
 
 "I don't mind that," said Betsy. "I don't 
 mind anything except hearing her ask for Lord 
 Lashmar." 
 
 The doctor was right. Stella re-entered the 
 land of phantoms. This time her worst dream 
 was of a vast and sunless swamp — such a swamp 
 as that she had read about, far across the At- 
 lantic — the Great Dismal Swamp, where never 
 tree or flower flourished; a place of desolation; 
 impassable, exhaling poisonous odours, brooded 
 over by dark clouds, a semi-darkness worse than 
 night. 
 
 And she w^as wading in that swamp for ever 
 and for ever, weary to agony — the dull agony of 
 aching bones and burdened brain. Far, far away 
 a vanishing point in remotest distance, there was 
 a speck of light — the same speck she had seen 
 on the far earth when she was a star — and that 
 light was Lashmar. She was perpetually trying 
 to reach that distant point, weighed down for 
 ever by the sense of utter impossibility, yet 
 obliged to try. The agonising dream seemed to 
 endure for ages; long nights of repetition, in 
 which Betsy hovered over her charge with cup or
 
 14.0 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 teaspoon, forcing her doses of nourishment be- 
 tween the parched hot lips, with a persistence 
 that seemed sheer brutality; but that very tangible 
 presence of the buxom Betsy had no effect upon 
 the visionary world in which Stella dwelt. The 
 dim and distant light was always there, glimmer- 
 ing faintly across the wide, gray waste, in the 
 perpetual twilight. 
 
 Perhaps it was the faint gleam of the night- 
 light in the remotest corner of the room, which 
 suggested that distant ray shining across the dull 
 gray level of dreamland. 
 
 It was in the night that the goblin crew rode 
 rampant over that distracted brain. The days 
 passed for the most part in a kind of stupor: the 
 patient lying helpless, apathetic, recognising no 
 one, caring for nothing, in a state of semi-con- 
 sciousness which was neither sleeping nor waking. 
 
 From such a condition as this she was aroused 
 by the howling of a summer storm in the great 
 oaks, and the sharp rattle of the rain against the 
 casement. The sky was cold and gray. Stella 
 knew not if it were morning or afternoon. Me- 
 mory was a blank again. She had forgotten all 
 that had happened since her birthday, had for^
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 141 
 
 gotten the accident which had made that day 
 fatal. 
 
 This time Betsy was not at hand to be ques- 
 tioned. It was between four and five o'clock, 
 and Betsy had gone down to tea, had gone to 
 expatiate upon the storm to her fellow-servants, 
 who were all wont at such times to wish that 
 they lived in London, where thunder and light- 
 ning would seem comparatively harmless amidst 
 the cheerfulness and sense of protection afforded 
 by crowded streets and policemen. The thunder 
 and lightning were over, or Betsy would not have 
 left her charge. 
 
 Stella looked about the room wonderingly 
 slowly coming back from dreamland, slowly realis- 
 ing the facts of the external world. Yes, it was 
 her own room; there were all those ornaments 
 and knick-knacks which children speak of com- 
 prehensively as "pretty things." The silver 
 casket on her dressing-table, the scent bottles, 
 the china monsters, the bright coloured pilgrim 
 bottles from that legendary Eastern world, of 
 which she had heard and learnt so much — the 
 cradle of mankind — the Avell-filled bookshelves, 
 the dolls and doll's-house. But these last had 
 been degraded from their high estate to an ob-
 
 142 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 scure corner, things to be ashamed of, that one 
 could ever have been so babyish as to care much 
 about them. 
 
 Yes, it was her own room, that lightsome, airy 
 chamber, high up among the tree-tops and the 
 swallows. It was her nest, in which she had 
 been as free and happy as the birds of the air, 
 more tenderly cherished than ever nestling by 
 parent bird. 
 
 The door leading into the sitting-room was 
 half open, and there were people talking, she 
 had heard their voices amidst the rattle of the 
 rain and the bluster of the storm. 
 
 "Shall you send her away?" asked a manly 
 voice, rich and full, a voice that was not alto- 
 gether unfamiliar. It was like her benefactor's, 
 but stronger, fuller. 
 
 "No, I shall keep her here. I consider that 
 a sacred duty, for poor Hubert's sake. But I 
 shall try to repair his sad mistake in the manner 
 of rearing her. I shall bring her up as a child 
 of the lower classes ought to be brought up. I 
 shall train her to be useful, a bread-winner among 
 a class of bread-winners." 
 
 Too well did Stella know this second voice. 
 These were the sonorous tones of that terrible
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 143 
 
 personage whom she had met from time to time 
 in the corridors or in the gardens, and who had 
 always scowled at her, and passed her by in 
 haughty silence. She knew the face and figure 
 to which the voice belonged, the tall and stately 
 form, the strongly marked brows and aquiline 
 nose. 
 
 "Rather rough upon her, poor little wretch, 
 after having been so pampered." 
 
 "That is poor Hubert's fault, not mine," re- 
 plied her ladyship coldly. 
 
 "Well, it was one of those silly things which 
 your very clever men are apt to do," said the 
 other voice. "I took an intense dislike to the 
 brat from the hour poor Lash brought her home, 
 like some strayed mongrel, and not half so in- 
 teresting. If I were you I should clear her out 
 of the castle as soon as she is well enough to 
 budge; pack her off to one of those innumerable 
 institutions for rearing up beggar brats in the 
 fear of their spiritual pastors and masters upon 
 sound Conservative principles. You'll get rid of 
 a nuisance; and there'll be a better chance of 
 her making a good housemaid than if she is 
 allowed to stay here where she'll always remenn- 
 ber Lashmar's idiotic indulgence."
 
 144 ^^^ THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "I have told you that I mean to bring her up 
 under my own eye," replied her ladyship, in a 
 terrible voice. 
 
 She was a woman who could not brook con- 
 tradiction, would not endure to have her will 
 gainsaid or her wisdom questioned; least of all 
 could she endure such questioning from her own 
 son. She was a woman who loved to govern, 
 and to whom the idea of domineering even over 
 such a helpless waif as Boldwood's daughter was 
 very pleasant. 
 
 "I shall bring her up under my awn eye, she 
 repeated; "I shall see that she is taught properly, 
 and that above all she learns to forget her foolish 
 childhood, and to understand her position as a 
 friendless orphan, who must learn to earn her 
 daily bread." 
 
 "A friendless orphan!" repeated Stella, in a 
 faint whisper. Of whom were they talking? she 
 asked herself. Could it be of her? She remem- 
 bered how once when old Mr. Verner was ex- 
 patiating upon Lashmar's goodness he had told 
 her that were it not for that generous benefactor 
 she would have been a friendless orphan. 
 
 And now her ladyship was talking about a
 
 "at what goal may we meet?" 145 
 
 friendless orphan who had been brought up 
 fooUshly. 
 
 " She will have to begin a new life as soon as 
 she gets well." 
 
 "As soon as she gets well," repeated Stella, 
 Yes, it was of her they were talking. They had 
 got her into their power somehow, those two 
 enemies. They were going to alter her happy 
 life. They would take away her Greek grammar 
 perhaps, stop that new study of which she was 
 so proud, and which had seemed to bring her 
 nearer to Lashmar. He had talked to her of the 
 time when they would be able to read Homer 
 together. 
 
 Oh! where was Lashmar? Why did he not 
 come and stop their cruel talking? She clasped 
 her hands in an agony of despair. She called 
 out in a faint scream, too weak to cry aloud, as 
 it were struggling in a nightmare dream — 
 
 "Lord Lashmar, Lord Lashmar!" 
 
 A face — a bright young face, handsome as 
 Apollo's — looked in at the door, only for a flash. 
 It gave way in the next instant to the stern 
 countenance of the dowager. 
 
 "Are you awake, child?" she asked. 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. 10
 
 146 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "Please ask Lord Lashmar to come to me," 
 cried the girl piteously. 
 
 "What do you want with Lord Lashmar? Lie 
 down, child; you are too weak to sit up yet 
 awhile. I'll send Betsy to you." 
 
 "No, no, I don't want her. I want Lord 
 Lashmar. I shall go mad if I don't see him!" 
 
 The dowager seated herself in Betsy's vacant 
 chair by the bed, an awful figure, stern and 
 terrible as Fate itself. 
 
 She was clad from top to toe in black, densest 
 black, not that rich and glittering raiment in 
 which Stella had often seen her of old — a costly 
 combination of satin and brocade sparkling and 
 flashing with tremulous fringes of jet. This was 
 a gown of some dull fabric which reflected not a 
 ray of light. To her very chin Lady Lashmar 
 was swathed in black crape, and black crape is 
 to a child's eye of all fabrics the most hideous. 
 
 "You cannot see your benefactor. Lord Lash- 
 mar," said the stern voice. "You will never see 
 him again. Cannot you understand what this 
 black gown of mine means?" 
 
 "He is dead!" shrieked the child, and then 
 remembering that ominous word dropped un- 
 awares by Betsy, "It was his funeral,"
 
 "at what goal may we :.rcET?" 147 
 
 "Yes, my unhappy child, your benefactor was 
 killed in the accident from which you narrowly 
 escaped with your life. The loss for you is a 
 bitter one in the present, although it may be a 
 blessing to you in the future. My stepson's foolish 
 indulgence might have been your ruin, here and 
 hereafter." 
 
 Stella heard not a word of this little sermon. 
 She had cast herself on her pillow, and was 
 sobbing out her heart in the passionate, hopeless 
 grief of childhood. 
 
 Dead! She had never thought that he could 
 die. Dead! How often he had talked to her of 
 what would happen when he was an old man; 
 how she was to be the companion of his declin- 
 ing years, the compensation for all his losses. 
 
 Dead! Never more to look upon her with 
 those thoughtful eyes; never more to speak to 
 her in that low, tender voice; never more to 
 touch her with that hand whose gentle touch 
 upon her head had always seemed a benediction. 
 
 "My angel, my friend, my father!" she cried. 
 "Oh, God! be good to me, and let me die too." 
 
 That was her prayer at morning and nightfall, 
 for many a day to come. 
 
 10'
 
 148 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 
 
 July, with its roses and lilies, blossoming 
 limes, and long sultry days, and lingering sunsets 
 late into the dewy night, was over. It was August, 
 and though summer was still lovely in the land, 
 the summer evenings were shortening, the roses 
 were waning a little, as to the limitless profusion 
 of bloom; while here and there those flowers 
 which are the harbingers of autumn began to 
 show in the castle gardens: gaudy dahlias, old- 
 world hollyhocks, flaming sunflowers, staring at 
 the blue sky with their great round brown faces 
 in ragged yellow nightcaps, against a background 
 of gray stone wall. 
 
 Stella's new life had begun. It was verily a 
 new life; so entirely different from the old one 
 that it seemed to the child as if she had died 
 and been born again, in the same place, but with 
 another personality. 
 
 And yet though she still had her abode in
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 149 
 
 Lashmar Castle it could hardly be said that it 
 was the same place as that which had been her 
 home in the lifetime of Hubert, Lord Lashmar. 
 She lived in other rooms; she looked out of other 
 windows, at an utterly dissimilar prospect. She 
 had not entered the library, or those adjoining 
 rooms in which she had once been so happy 
 since her benefactor's death. The gardens about 
 which she had once roamed as freely as the 
 butterflies were now a closed world for her. She 
 had no more right to be there than the coach- 
 man's children, or the housekeeper's little niece: 
 and not one of those well-behaved little persons 
 would have presumed to enter her ladyship's 
 garden. 
 
 Stella lived in the servants' quarters now, and 
 looked out of windows which all opened upon 
 the stable-yard, a great stony desert, whose only 
 picturesque feature was the pump, with its stone 
 basin, round which a coachman, with the love 
 of the beautiful, had planted some nasturtiums. 
 Those nasturtiums were almost the only flowers 
 that Stella saw in that month of August. She was 
 learning to know her place — her place as allotted 
 and appointed by Lady Lashmar, and that placq 
 was the place of an under-housemaid,
 
 150 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 There were eleven housemaids at Lashmar 
 Castle. That had been the orthodox number as 
 long as the oldest inhabitant of Lashmar village 
 could remember. It was supposed that by no 
 less a staff could the castle be scrubbed and 
 swept and dusted as it should be. There were 
 three upper-housemaids, each of whom had 
 supreme command upon her particular floor. She 
 was, as it were, captain of that deck. Then came 
 the five second housemaids; two for the ground- 
 floor, with its spacious state apartments and 
 numerous sitting-rooms; two for the first floor, 
 and which included her ladyship's suite and the 
 new lord's suite, and all the important visitors' 
 rooms; and one for the upper story, which was 
 given over to rarely used bachelors' rooms and 
 rat-warrens. Lastly, there were three drudges 
 who fetched and carried water and coals, made 
 the fires and cleaned the grates, slaves who were 
 treated as the Israelites in Egypt before the 
 advent of Moses. 
 
 Betsy had been reduced to the ranks of the 
 eleven. She was one of the second housemaids, 
 and her province was the first floor, where she 
 was under the special supervision of her aunt 
 Barker, who had a room of her own in an obscure
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. I5I 
 
 corner behind her ladyship's suite, one of those 
 curious little rooms such as in Hampton Court 
 Palace are described as the King's Closet, or the 
 Queen's Oratory. Under Betsy's eye Stella was 
 to be trained to all the duties of an upper-house- 
 maid. She was not to go through the baser 
 drudgeries, the water-drawing and coal-carrying, 
 the black-lead brush and scouring paper. She 
 was to be spared that rude apprenticeship, out of 
 deference to the dead lord's fancy. Nay, should 
 she prove especially teachable, and handy with 
 her needle, she might eventually escape house- 
 work altogether and be admitted to the holy of 
 holies, personal attendance upon her ladyship. 
 
 "You are getting short of breath and un- 
 wieldy, Barker," said Lady Lashmar; "by the 
 time that child is seventeen or eighteen I shall 
 want somebody to run about for me." Barker 
 shook her head, and pursed up her lips. 
 
 "I don't think Miss Stella will ever suit you 
 in that way, my lady," she began. 
 
 "How often have I told you that she is not to 
 be called Miss Stella?" 
 
 "I don't think Stella will ever do for a ser\'ant, 
 my lady. His poor lordship spoilt her too much.
 
 152 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 She knows such a lot, and she frets day and 
 night about her Greek and Latin, over history 
 and geography, and poetry, and such like. She 
 starts up in the middle of the night sometimes 
 sobbing as if her heart would break, and saying 
 that she is forgetting everything his lordship 
 taught her. And then she'll go over a lot of 
 gibberish which she says is Greek or Latin, though 
 I'm sure it don't sound like anything half so 
 sensible. I don't believe she'll ever make a good 
 servant, my lady; her life has been begun the 
 wrong way." 
 
 "She is young enough to begin life again," 
 replied her ladyship sternly. "The greatest 
 blunder of the present day is the over-education 
 of the masses: a blunder which is producing a 
 race of young women who all want to be doctors 
 and lawyers instead of wives and mothers; and a 
 race of young men who would sooner starve in a 
 paradise of pen and ink than be prosperous 
 butchers and bakers, I look to you, Barker, to get 
 all foolish nonsense out of that girl's head. If I 
 hear any more of her fretting I shall send her to 
 the workhouse," 
 
 After this Barker could say no more. She 
 kne\y the ijron temper of that mistress whon; sh^
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 153 
 
 had sen-ed in all faithfulness and submission for 
 the last fifteen years. 
 
 Stella suffered her new life meekly enough, 
 but almost every hour of it was suffering. Reared 
 as she had been, amongst delicatest, most gra- 
 cious surroundings, by a man whose original re- 
 finement had been spiritualised by illness and 
 seclusion, every detail of this outer world of the 
 servants' hall and still-room jarred upon her sen- 
 sitive nerves. The loud voices, the everlasting 
 clatter, the quarrelling and jeering — jeering which 
 was meant for wit — all these revolted the keen 
 young spirit. Had she been a woman she might 
 have put on the armour of philosophy. She might 
 have retired within herself, lived her own life of 
 quietness and contemplation amidst the bluster of 
 these vulgar lives; but she was a child, and had 
 not learned stoicism; she was a child, and de- 
 pendent upon externals for her joy or sorrow, 
 and all things in her external life had been made 
 bitterness to her, at that time when her heart 
 wounds were still fresh. Under the happiest cir- 
 cumstances she would have been broken-hearted 
 by the loss of her friend and father; but as it 
 was, all the conditions of her life intensified her 
 ^ense of loss,
 
 154 <^^ THING NEEDFUI>. 
 
 She had been banished from those pretty 
 rooms in which she had lived for five joyous 
 years. All her cherished treasures, her bene- 
 factor's gifts of toys and trinkets and ornaments 
 had been taken away from her; and, worst loss 
 of all, her books had been taken also. Those 
 books which had been as gates opening into other 
 worlds, the books which Lashmar had taught her 
 to love and to understand. 
 
 The banishment from that Eden of her child- 
 hood had been effected by the dowager in the 
 briefest, most off-hand manner. So soon as Stella 
 was well enough to leave her room. Lady Lashmar 
 sent her to the still-room. She was to live there 
 with the upper-housemaids, and she was to sleep 
 in the second housemaids' dormitory. Having 
 pronounced this sentence, her ladyship locked the 
 outer door and put the key of the tower rooms 
 into her pocket. 
 
 "I shall arrange by-and-by what use we can 
 make of those two rooms," she said; "no doubt 
 they will be wanted when his lordship fills the 
 house for the shooting." 
 
 Hubert Lashmar had been no sportsman: and 
 there had not been a battue in the Lashmar pre- 
 serves since his father's time. Victorian had gone
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 1 55 
 
 out with a couple of spaniels and a keeper when 
 he happened to be at home in October: but for 
 the most part the pheasants had had no enemies 
 except the poachers. The servants were begin- 
 ning to perk themselves already at the idea of 
 big shooting parties and liberal vails. 
 
 So Stella was banished from her tower among 
 the tree-tops, her casements overlooking dale and 
 river, wood and hill-side. She was much too un- 
 happy to think about her possessions, her "pretty 
 things" as she had called them, so she made no 
 moan at this off-hand confiscation of her property. 
 It was afterwards, when she found herself sitting 
 in a corner of the still-room, leaning her head 
 against the wall, hearing the chatter of the maids 
 as it were afar off, it was then that she thought 
 of her books, and asked Betsy to fetch them for 
 her. 
 
 Good-natured Betsy was almost as down- 
 hearted as her charge at the sad change that had 
 come over both their lives; for Betsy, as Miss 
 Stella's personal attendant, had been somebody 
 in the household, and had done very much as 
 she liked. As a second housemaid she was no- 
 body, and subject to be ordered about by her su- 
 perior officer. She ran off to the tower, found it
 
 156 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 locked, and then went to her aunt Barker, as the 
 only safe means of communication with her lady- 
 ship. 
 
 "Might Miss Stella have her books out of the 
 tower room?" asked Barker an hour later, when 
 she was taking out her ladyship's dinner gown, 
 while Celestine dressed her ladyship's hair. 
 
 "Certainly not," replied the dowager deci- 
 sively. "Reading for a young person in her po- 
 sition is only another name for idleness. If she 
 read her Bible and her hymn book that will be 
 quite as much reading as she will have leisure 
 for. Middleham tells me that she has hardly an 
 idea of plain needlework." 
 
 Middleham was the chief of the housemaids, 
 the oldest servant at Lashmar, older even in ser- 
 vice than the housekeeper or the chef, both of 
 whom had grown old-fashioned in the same em- 
 ployment. Middleham was seven-and-forty, and 
 had lived at the castle since she was twelve. She 
 was an awful personage, with a bony figure and 
 gray hair. She could read a little, by spelling 
 out the difficult words; but she had forgotten how 
 to write, and she was proud of it. "I left school 
 when I was ten," she said, "nowadays the girls 
 go to school up to fourteen, and come away stuck'
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. I57 
 
 up minxes that look down upon their parents, 
 and are no more use in their homes than fine 
 ladies. First Standard indeed ! The only standard 
 in my day was a broom and a scrubbing-brush. 
 When a girl had learnt to be handy with those 
 she was a help to her parents." 
 
 Middleham was a superior needle -woman. 
 Those great bony hands of hers could do fine 
 stitching that looked as if done by fairy fingers. 
 She had sole charge of the rich stores of house 
 linen, finest that the looms of Belfast could pro- 
 duce; table linen into every piece of which the 
 armorial bearings of the Lashmars were woven. 
 Under the cold gray eye of Middleham, Stella 
 made her first essays in plain needlework. 
 
 "I declare the child hardly knows how to 
 hold her needle," said the head housemaid. 
 
 "Lord Lashmar did not like to see me work," 
 faltered Stella tearfully. 
 
 Middleham groaned aloud. 
 
 "You'll have to work now, and if you don't 
 learn to work Avell, you'll have to be sent to the 
 workhouse,'-' said Middleham, and then looked 
 round triumphantly as one who had made a pun. 
 The other housemaids all laughed dutifully. They 
 feared and hated Middleham, who was a fierce
 
 158 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 foe to followers, and all "walking out." It was 
 popularly supposed that she had never walked 
 out with anyone herself, that her innate grimness 
 had kept followers at a distance. That, like 
 Shakespeare's Royal Virgin, she had ever walked 
 in maiden meditation, fancy free: and it may be 
 observed, that at the time that lovely line was 
 penned, good Queen Bess must have been about 
 as grim a personage as Middleham. 
 
 Oh, how dull the life was! how dreary and 
 monotonous, despite its clatter! The great dinner 
 in the servants' hall, the steaming joints, the 
 monster pudding, the all-pervading smell of beer; 
 the male underlings all clustered at the end of 
 the table, having their own conversation, and their 
 own whispered jokelets, digging each other in the 
 ribs, exploding, with full mouths, into foolish, 
 spluttering laughter. Then the long afternoon; 
 sitting at work hemming a kitchen cloth, perhaps, 
 by the window, that looked into the stony yard, 
 where all the summer air was scented with stables. 
 How the child pictured the park and the river, 
 the loved and lovely river on which she and Lash- 
 mar had been wont to spend long summer days, 
 with books and sketching block — dreamy days, 
 idle days, sweet, sweet days! She could see the
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. I 59 
 
 shining wherry with its luxurious crimson cushions, 
 its sheepskin mat, its boxes and artful contrivances 
 for picnic; luncheon or afternoon tea. She won- 
 dered whether the new Lord Lashmar was enjoy- 
 ing himself in that boat on this exquisite after- 
 noon. She looked up at the summer sky, the 
 only thing of beauty which she could see from 
 her dungeon, a sky of deepest sapphire, with 
 fleecy cloudlets dancing gaily in the blue. 
 
 "I do declare you have not done six stitches 
 in as many minutes," said Middleham. "I have 
 been watching you." 
 
 The pale, pinched face reddened, and the 
 needle went a little quicker over the harsh fabric. 
 Middleham resumed her study of a bad place in 
 one of the best table cloths. These two had the 
 spacious still-room all to themselves this after- 
 noon. It was cleaning day on all the floors of 
 the castle, a universal scrubbing and polishing, 
 which kept the ten housemaids at work till tea- 
 time. It was only Middleham who could afford 
 to sit still after having given her orders. She 
 would walk round the ground-floor rooms by-and- 
 by, just before tea, and spy out grains of dust 
 overlooked in obscure comers, or pieces of furni- 
 ture that had not been properly polished.
 
 l60 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 At five o'clock a bell sounded, and the first 
 and second housemaids came swarming in to tea. 
 The upper servants had their meals in the house- 
 keeper's room- the drudges, under-housemaids, 
 scullery and kitchen and vegetable maids, herded 
 in a den of their own, a cool, stony room, off one 
 of the kitchens. Barker was free of housekeeper's 
 room and still-room; and she had the extra 
 privilege of having her tea carried up to her own 
 little nest, whenever she was so minded. 
 
 How Stella hated that noisy tea-hour, the 
 foolish jokes and laughter, the cruel chaff for 
 which she sometimes afforded the object, the 
 great metal pots which gave the tea a tinny 
 flavour, the mountains of thick bread-and-butter, 
 the fishy smell of periwinkles or shrimps, the 
 litter of cresses and other green-meat, without 
 which tea was unpalatable to the housemaids. 
 
 It was the hour at which they all unbent, 
 with elbows on the table, and tea poured into 
 saucers — the hour at which they talked and 
 laughed the loudest. They had all forgotten their 
 dead lord, and were full of anticipations about 
 the high jinks that would be held at the Castle 
 now Victorian was master. 
 
 "I don't suppose there'll be much of a change
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. l6l 
 
 yet awhile," said Barker, who happened to be 
 taking her tea in the still-room. "His lordship is 
 going away in a fortnight. He has been appointed 
 First Secretary of Legation at Ve-enna." 
 
 "You might have told us that before," retorted 
 Middleham, Avho was jealous of Barker's superior 
 opportunities. 
 
 "I only heard it this morning when I was 
 waiting on her ladyship. His lordship came into 
 her room with an open letter in his hand, and 
 showed it to her. 'I must be oif in a fortnight,' 
 says he. I could see that she was very vexed. 
 'That was all very well when you were a younger 
 son,' she says, 'but I don't see the necessity 
 for it now.' 'Do you suppose I want to see 
 the world any the less because I am called Lord 
 Lashmar?' says he. 'What a queer old mother 
 you are!' 
 
 "What a queer old mother!" echoed a chorus 
 of housemaids, with Homeric laughter. "Fancy 
 calling her ladyship a queer old mother. He's 
 a rare one for cheek, is Master Victorian. He's 
 your right sort for a lord; he'll stamp 'em down 
 wherever he goes." 
 
 "'Vienner 'as been the dream of my life,' he 
 says, and then goes whistling out of the room, 
 
 One Thins Needjul. I. II
 
 I 62 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 as light-hearted as you like, leaving her ladyship 
 blacker than thunder." 
 
 Stella sat amidst their babble, Avith no relish 
 for steaming tea in a thick crockery cup, and 
 with a loathing of shrimps and periwinkles. After- 
 noon tea with Lord Lashmar had been a poem. 
 The quaint old silver teapot — silver beaten so 
 thin and enriched with such delicate repousse 
 work — the semi-transparent cups, the dainty 
 cream-jug and toy sugar-tongs, the wafer biscuits 
 and bread-and-butter, the cool sweet atmosphere 
 of an exquisitely ordered room, the flowers, the 
 pictures, the books, the all-surrounding beauty: 
 and she had exchanged these things, and the 
 dear love that made them sweetest, for the com- 
 pany of these vulgar women who despised and 
 laughed at her. 
 
 Betsy was kind, and the others did not mean 
 to be unkind. They did not beat or pinch or 
 starve her; but they were powerless to com- 
 prehend the workings of that young soul. They 
 saw the red swollen eyelids, and called her a 
 cry-baby; they pointed the finger of derision at 
 her because she was unskilled and clumsy in 
 duties that were so easy to them; because she 
 could not hem a duster expeditiously, or polish
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. I 63 
 
 a mahogany table. And again and again came 
 the reproach against the dead. "What a pity 
 Lord Lashmar had brought her up to be such 
 a little fool!" 
 
 They had not spared her feelings in their 
 talk of the dead lord. They had freely discussed 
 the details of the accident — how his lordship 
 had been thrown head foremost on the hard 
 high-road, and had broken his neck. It was 
 instantaneous death, they said. And how Stella 
 had fallen more luckily upon the grassy border 
 of the road, and had been brought home un- 
 conscious with concussion of the brain, and then 
 before she awoke from her stupor, fever had set 
 in — symptomatic fever, the doctor called it — and 
 she had been very bad indeed. 
 
 But old Mr. Verner and the groom had 
 escaped easily; the groom with a few bruises and 
 a good shaking, and Mr. Verner, who fell on the 
 top of him, without a scratch. Stella asked what 
 had become of Mr. Verner, longing for him, as 
 for the only friend left her; but she was told 
 that he had left directly after the funeral, to go 
 home to his own people, as it was supposed. 
 There was not even so much comfort as this left 
 to her.
 
 164 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Night was worst of all. She slept in a little 
 bed in the spacious dormitory given up to the 
 five second housemaids. It was a large, bare 
 room, forming part of a special servants' wing 
 which had been added to the castle fifty years 
 before, and which the builder had made as un- 
 beautiful as in him lay; and builders have large 
 capabilities in that line. It was a long, white- 
 washed room, like the common room of a debtor's 
 prison. The windows looked into a stony well, 
 on the other side of which was the laundry. 
 There was not a tree nor a leaf within sight; 
 even ivy had refused to grow in that vault-like 
 atmosphere. And to keep up the prison-like idea 
 the windows were all guarded with iron bars, lest 
 peradventure the followers of the housemaids 
 should break in and elope with their ladies, like 
 the knights in border ballads. 
 
 Stella was sent to bed nightly at eight o'clock, 
 sent to bed in the sweet summer gloaming, while 
 the birds were singing so happily in the woods, 
 and the flowers were only just beginning to close. 
 Middleham was inexorable as to this hour of 
 departure. 
 
 "At eight o'clock you go, or I'll know the 
 reason why," and at eight o'clock Stella crept
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. ■ I 65 
 
 wearily up the shadowy staircase, and took off 
 her tear-stained black frock, and said her prayers 
 — long, tearful prayers — and laid herself down 
 upon the hard little bed. 
 
 Not to sleep. She was too unhappy to sleep 
 easily, and she knew that at half-past ten the five 
 would come, like a band of noisy fiends let loose 
 from Pandemonium, and would talk of their 
 Sunday clothes and their young men, and chaff 
 each other, and perhaps quarrel with each other 
 for a good hour, before slumber fell upon the 
 fold. She would lie with closed eyes, trying not 
 to hear, yet with those delicate ears of hers 
 listening involuntarily. They were good-natured, 
 honest girls for the most part; modest withal, ac- 
 cording to their lights; no more frivolous or 
 empty-headed than a band of school-girls in a 
 fashionable seminary; but their talk, with its 
 monotonous repetitions, its silly jokes, was torture 
 to the sensitive child. 
 
 The hourly suffering of her days, sleepless 
 nights, and loss of appetite soon had their effects, 
 Stella began to look very ill — worse than she had 
 looked even when she first got up from her bed 
 of fever. Betsy was anxious about her; took her
 
 1 66 ^ ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 aside and questioned her. Why did she look so 
 miserable? 
 
 Stella burst into tears, and unburdened her 
 soul. She was altogether unhappy. She hated 
 the still-room, she hated Middleham; but most of 
 all she hated the room where she slept, and the 
 chatter of the maids. 
 
 "I hardly ever sleep," she added piteously; 
 "I lie awake all night waiting to see the daylight 
 between the iron bars." 
 
 "That's very bad," said Betsy, "we must see 
 what can be done." 
 
 She went off to her aunt, and the two women 
 put their heads together. There was very little 
 use in appealing to her ladyship. Barker knew 
 the state of her feelings towards her stepson's 
 protegee. 
 
 There was a little room on the floor over the 
 servants' dormitories, a floor in the roof, which 
 was mostly given over to linen closets and box- 
 rooms, a room that had been occupied once by a 
 valet. It was very small, and had a sloping ceil- 
 ing; but the dormer window commanded a side- 
 long peep of the park — just about as much as 
 that fine view of the sea put forward by a hardened 
 lodging-house keeper — and Betsy, who knew her
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 167 
 
 charge better than anyone else, fancied that this 
 little room would be as a haven of rest to Stella. 
 James, the footman, who was a handy youth, 
 might put up a shelf or two for her, and by-and- 
 by perhaps Betsy would be able to get a few of 
 those books — lesson books, poetry books, story 
 books — for which the child's sickened heart 
 longed so sorely; the only possible consolation 
 where all human comfort was lost. 
 
 There were a neat little iron bedstead and 
 the necessary furniture, all of the plainest, barest, 
 most uninteresting order, as duly made and pro- 
 vided for a subject race; but when Betsy took the 
 child up to the little room under the tiles, and 
 told her that she could have it for her very own, 
 Stella burst into hysterical tears of delight. 
 
 "Oh, how good of you!" she cried; "how 
 sweet of you, Betsy! Somebody loves me still 
 then." 
 
 " Of course I love you, you foolish little thing; 
 whoever said I didn't? only I daren't disobey her 
 ladyship; but some day, perhaps, I shall be able 
 to get hold of a few of those books of yours that 
 you've been fretting about." 
 
 "Will you, dearest Betsy? What, my Latin 
 grammar, and the Greek one too; and my Virgil,
 
 l68 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 and the Greek Fairy Tales, and the Lady of the 
 Lake? That was his last Christmas present — such 
 a lovely book. They are all my very own, Betsy. 
 He gave them to me. Her ladyship is a thief if 
 she takes them away." 
 
 "No, no, Stella, you must not talk like that. 
 A little adopted thing like you, a poor little waif 
 and stray, can have* no real right to anything in a 
 great house like this. Only if poor Lord Lashmar 
 gave them to you it is natural that you should 
 fancy they are your own, and I'll see what I can 
 do," concluded Betsy vaguely. 
 
 She brought Stella half-a-dozen books that 
 night in her apron. The key of the tower rooms 
 had been given up to Middleham, in order that 
 those rooms might be duly swept and dusted; and 
 Betsy had got the key from that austere personage 
 by sheer artifice, and had made her raid upon 
 the books — Virgil, and two grammars, the Greek 
 Fairy Tales, and Chapman's Iliad, and a volume 
 of Wordsworth. The Lady of the Lake was a 
 richly illustrated quarto with splendid binding. 
 Betsy could not venture to remove so handsome 
 and ostensible a book, lest my lady should come 
 on a visit of inspection, and that keen eye of 
 hers should note the disappearance of the volume.
 
 TliE NEW CINDERELLA. l6g 
 
 The others were all shabby little books which had 
 seen hard usage. 
 
 Stella cried over these recovered treasures, in 
 her tiny room with her dormer casement looking 
 toward the tree-tops and the stars. Her mind 
 was refreshed and soothed by the peaceful soli- 
 tude of her poor little room. Here there was no 
 coarse laughter, there were no cruel taunts. She 
 could hear the owls hooting in the park, the dogs 
 baying in the stable-yard. That was all. She 
 seemed to be far away from everybody; and as 
 she was altogether fearless she loved her solitude. 
 
 And now this child of eleven years old set 
 herself with heroic patience to carry on unaided 
 and alone the education which had been so cruelly 
 interrupted by that stern foe to progress, Death. 
 With her books and pen and ink, and two or 
 three poor little ends of candle garnered for her 
 day by day, by the faithful Betsy, Stella sat late 
 into the night working at Greek and Latin; happy 
 even when her studies were dryest, at the thought 
 that she was carrying on the work her benefactor 
 had begun. 
 
 "When I see him in heaven I shall be able to 
 tell him what I have done," she said to herself. 
 
 Her theology was of the simple, confiding
 
 170 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 kind which has grown old-fashioned even for little 
 children. That fair future world was very real 
 to her ardent fancy. She could picture the wood- 
 land walks of a paradise where it was always 
 summer, and where she would meet Hubert 
 Lashmar with a strange light upon his face, like 
 the golden glory round the Infant-Saviour's head 
 in the famous Lashmar Raffaelle — that marvellous 
 picture which she had so often gazed upon by 
 her benefactor's side. 
 
 Those nightly studies, the reposeful solitude 
 of her remote little garret had a calming influence 
 upon her spirits. She was less unhappy now in 
 the day-time, having her books to look forward to 
 at night, knowing 'that she was not lapsing into 
 ignorance, not becoming like those young women 
 with whom she was obliged to live. She had 
 her day-dreams now as she sat in the still-room 
 window, inhaling odours of stables, and hemming 
 an everlasting procession of tea-cloths. She had 
 her dream of the day when she would be grown- 
 up, and well educated, and would be able to 
 Avrite books, like old Gabriel Verner, and when 
 she might earn enough money to have a tiny 
 cottage of her own upon the banks of the Avon, 
 and to have honest Betsy to live with her.
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 171 
 
 That was her chief day-dream. She had 
 fancies of stories that she might write — stories of 
 beautiful fatal creatures like Helen, or devoted 
 wives like Andromache, or wicked, treacherous 
 women like Clytemnestra. That busy brain of 
 hers had already begun to weave the multi- 
 coloured web of fiction, albeit her pen had not 
 yet essayed to give those dreamings a tangible 
 shape. 
 
 Lashmar had told her of an author — a woman 
 — who had reaped thousands and a lasting re- 
 nown by a simple story of village life, by reason 
 of her power to dive deep down into the mystery 
 of human nature, to fathom the strange depths of 
 the heart of man, just as Homer did in those dim 
 days when poetry began. She, Stella, sighed not 
 for thousands, only for that lowly little cottage by 
 the river, and a garden and summer-house, and 
 plenty of books, and candles to light the long 
 evenings, and kind Betsy for her companion, they 
 two alone together and happy. 
 
 Lord Lashmar, the new Lord, Victorian, had 
 left for Vienna without ever having looked on the 
 little serf who had once been his brother's darlincj. 
 He was very sorry to have lost "poor dear Lash," 
 as he called him: but he felt not the slightest
 
 172 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 interest in Lash's latest fad. Lash had always 
 been full of fads, poor dear boy. Of course, her 
 ladyship would do all that was best and wisest 
 for the child. 
 
 "You'll make a sort of semi-genteel waiting- 
 maid of her, I suppose," he said lightly; "have 
 her taught to clean your laces and make your 
 caps — whenever the day comes that you take to 
 caps." 
 
 "Perhaps that will not be till I am a grand- 
 mother, Victor," she answered, smiling fondly at 
 her beloved; "when you have a wife and children 
 I shall feel myself verily a dowager, and then I 
 suppose I must take to caps. By-the-by, dear, I 
 saw Clarice last week. They have come back to 
 the Hall." 
 
 "Indeed! Puffed up by her new dignity as 
 a presented young person, I suppose," answered 
 Lashmar. 
 
 "No, she was just as sweet as ever, quite 
 simple and childlike. I am told she was one of 
 the prettiest debutantes of the year. The news- 
 papers all said as much," 
 
 "The newspapers are always ready to puff a 
 girl whose father counts his fortune by hundreds 
 of thousands," sneered Lashmar. "I don't think
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. I 73 
 
 the Brumm people have quite made up their mind 
 whether Job Danebrook is worth one million or 
 half a dozen; but they are all agreed that his 
 father wheeled a barrow. Now I think both you 
 and I retain an old-fashioned prejudice in favour 
 of good blood." 
 
 "There is some very good blood in Clarice 
 Danebrook's veins, Victor. You forget that her 
 mother was a Montmorency." 
 
 "One thin trickle of blue blood cannot purify 
 the plebeian vat, mother. I know very well what 
 you are hinting at. Clarice is sweet, Clarice is 
 pretty, Clarice has been well brought up, and had 
 a genteel mother. She is, moreover, an only 
 daughter, and will inherit two or three millions. 
 She is one of those exceptionally good matches 
 which you may count upon your fingers. The 
 Lashmars are rich, but they might be richer; 
 would rise to a much higher note in the social 
 scale if they possessed those superfluous millions. 
 Fabulous wealth is the thing people worship 
 nowadays. It is not enough to be rich — a man 
 to be honoured and talked about must be in- 
 ordinately rich. Yes, I perfectly recognise the 
 truth of all that. But all the same I am not going 
 to be manoeuvred into a marriage with Clarice
 
 174 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Danebrook. You can trot her out by-and-by, if 
 you like: and if I fall in love with her I'll ask 
 her to marry me. If I don't I won't, were she 
 worth the wealth of Aladdin." 
 
 "Do you suppose I would ever wish you to 
 marry anyone you could not love?" said his mother, 
 masking her batteries. "I know you would only 
 choose the best and worthiest. You are too proud 
 to make one of those wretched matches by which 
 some of your order have degraded their rank of 
 late years. I should never fear anything of that 
 kind from you." 
 
 "Well, no, I am not quite an idiot," answered 
 Lashmar. 
 
 "As for Clarice, she is a sweet little thing, and 
 I am really fond of her," continued her ladyship 
 placidly; "but I don't think she is quite good 
 enough for you. She has wealth, but she has not 
 rank; and there is, as you say, always that unlucky 
 tradition of the wheelbarrow." 
 
 "Dear old mother, we always think alike," said 
 Victorian, bending down to kiss the dowager's 
 broad brow. 
 
 His eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter. 
 He knew her so well — knew that she had made 
 up her mind that he was to marry Clarice Dane-
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 1 75 
 
 brook and no other, knew that to this end she 
 had made much of the damsel, and been civil to 
 her very common-place mother, and her sternly 
 plebeian father. For no other than an interested 
 motive would the great Lady Pitland's daughter 
 have cultivated the society of a young person of 
 vulgar lineage; yea, albeit a thin streek of the 
 Montmorency blood had qualified the coarseness 
 of the Danebrooks. 
 
 Victorian laughed at his mother's manoeuvres, 
 laughed most of all at the idea that she should 
 think herself able to throw dust in his eyes; and 
 he held himself in reserve for the future. He 
 meant to do just what he liked with his life. He 
 would have held himself free to marrv a bee^ar- 
 maid, like King Cophetua, had he so pleased. 
 But he was not at all the kind of young man to 
 feel drawn towards beggar-maids. He was worldly 
 to the core, had been brought up to consider 
 everything from the worldling's standpoint. He 
 meant, when his time should come, to marry well, 
 brilliantly if possible, to make such a match as 
 should double his present importance in the world. 
 No, he did not think that Clarice was good enoueh. 
 Mere millions would not suffice. People would 
 want to be told who his wife was; and for that
 
 176 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 question to be answered fitly she should be the 
 daughter of a duke. 
 
 It was October when the new Lord Lashmar 
 came back to the Castle, with a chosen company 
 of bachelor friends, old comrades of Eton and 
 Oxford. His lordship came only for a flying visit, 
 to see his mother, to shoot the pheasants, and to 
 look about him a little. Lordship at one-and- 
 twenty could not be supposed to care for a long 
 residence beside that broad reach of the Avon 
 amidst the decay of autumn woods. When the 
 pheasants were thinned, Lashmar would be off 
 again, to Paris or Vienna, as the case might be. 
 He affected to hate London and London society. 
 It lacked the glitter and ease of Continental life. 
 He was not going to that dreary barrack in 
 Grosvenor Square until he was obliged; which 
 would not be before February, when Parliament 
 would re-open and he would go to take his seat 
 in the House of Lords. 
 
 The dowager was at Lashmar to receive her 
 son and his friends. She had not left the Castle 
 since her step-son's death. Her presence had 
 pervaded the mansion like a dark and brooding 
 cloud; or at least it seemed so to Stella, who 
 shivered even at the distant sound of that voice.
 
 TITE NEW CINDERELLA. I 77 
 
 Not once had they two met face to face since 
 the day when those cruel lips told the child of 
 her bereavement; but it was enough misery for 
 Stella to know that the stern ruler of the house 
 was within its walls, to hear her deep-toned voice 
 from afar. 
 
 Lady Lashmar was not alone when her son 
 arrived. She did not want his house to seem 
 empty and dismal after the brightness of his 
 continental surroundings. She had summoned 
 other two dowagers, one frisky, and one strong- 
 minded, to bear her company. The strong-minded 
 dowager. Lady Clan AUister, had two strong- 
 minded daughters, and these also were bidden. 
 Their presence made an excuse for having Clarice 
 Danebrook continually at the Castle. The wea- 
 ther was lovel)^ It was not too cold for lawn 
 tennis. A very feeble cousin of Miss Danebrook, 
 who was reading for his Divinity examination, 
 made a fourth. The dowagers had their books 
 and newspapers, their work-bags, and that ever- 
 lasting occupation of letter-writing which holds 
 all society in bondage. 
 
 The frivolous dowager was the famous Oriana, 
 Lady Hillborough, who had been young and a 
 fashionable beauty when William the Fourth was 
 
 One Thing AWdful. /. 12
 
 178 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 king. She still wore her hair exattly as she had 
 worn it at that period; but it was not the same 
 hair — she had worn out a good many of those 
 golden tresses, and had spent a small fortune at 
 Truefitt's since the sailor king had been laid in 
 the royal charnel house. She dressed as youth- 
 fully now as she had dressed then, and skipped 
 about a room as gaily, re-arranging the furniture 
 in that bright airy way of hers, famed for her ex- 
 quisite taste in the composition of those pictures 
 which fashionable drawing-rooms now offer to the 
 enlightened eye. 
 
 "My dear, you should have a group of large 
 palms at the other end of your room," she ex- 
 claimed, surveying Lady Lashmar's morning room 
 through her binoculars. "You have nothing to 
 break the straight line of your end wall. Yes, 
 of course, I know, those pictures of yours are 
 priceless, and the palms will hide them; but you 
 will get the idea of distance, vagueness, don't you 
 know. The effect will be much finer." 
 
 And then Lady Hillborough wheeled round 
 and surveyed Clarice coolly, deliberately, through 
 her glasses, which made her own eyes look as the 
 eyes of a giant to those who happened to see 
 them through those magnifying pebbles. Clarice
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 179 
 
 was standing by the window, wondering whether 
 she was to be presented to the new-comer, or to 
 be ignored, which she would have infinitely pre- 
 ferred. 
 
 "What a sweet child!" said Lady Hillborough 
 in a loud whisper, when she had stared for about 
 three minutes. "Introduce her to me." 
 
 Lady Lashmar obeyed, and Oriana took Clarice 
 by the hand, made another deliberate inspection 
 at nearer range, and then kissed the girl en- 
 thusiastically on both cheeks. 
 
 "I delight in pretty people," she exclaimed. 
 "Of course you know you are pretty, child. Some 
 people try to keep girls of your age from finding 
 out their own prettiness; but it's all wasted trouble. 
 If a girl were brought up on a desert island she 
 would know all about her good looks; she would 
 see herself reflected in some pool, like What's- 
 his-name, in the Greek story — Jonquil." 
 
 "I think you must mean Narcissus, Lady Hill- 
 borough," said one of the strong-minded Miss 
 MacAllisters. 
 
 "What does it matter, my dear, a narcissus 
 and a jonquil are much the same thing," an- 
 swered Oriana, Avho was not learned, and rarely 
 read anything except the newspapers. 
 
 12*
 
 l8o ONE THING NEEDFUL, 
 
 Lashmar and his friends arrived in time for 
 dinner. He had spent a couple of nights in 
 London, had arranged to meet his guests at the 
 station, and to bring them down with him. There 
 were two newly-fledged cavalry subalterns; a 
 younger son who was going in for a political 
 career, and fancied himself an embryo Canning; 
 another younger son who was preparing himself 
 for the family living; and a young man who was 
 nobody in particular, but who was much better 
 read, and more amusing than any of the other 
 four. 
 
 They were all young, and they were a noisy 
 crew. Clarice was afraid of them, and they were 
 afraid of the two strong-minded Miss MacAllisters, 
 who were intense politicians, and great upon the 
 Eastern Question, with the complexities whereof 
 they assailed the masculine mind at every oppor- 
 tunity. So there was a tacit avoidance of the 
 feminine society provided by her ladyship. 
 
 "I thought you would have liked to find some 
 nice girls here, Lashmar," she said to her son re- 
 proachfully, after he and his friends had been 
 out shooting all day, and in the smoking room 
 all the evening, while the Miss MacAllisters, who 
 scorned accomplishments as futile, had sat in
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. l8l 
 
 different corners of the drawing-room, one read- 
 ing Herbert Spenser, while the other devoured 
 Darwin , and ostentatiously ignoring Clarice 
 Danebrook's little bits of Chopin and dainty old 
 ballads. 
 
 "So I should, mother," answered Victorian 
 cheerily, "only I haven't seen any, except Clarice. 
 She's nice enough, but quite impossible to get on 
 with. She's so painfully shy." 
 
 "Her shyness would be got over in a very 
 short time if you'd only talk to her." 
 
 "Oh, I can't talk to a girl when it's uphill 
 work. The women in Vienna are so brilliant, so 
 easy to get on with. As for your MacAllister girls 
 I would as soon converse with a bluebook. One 
 of them asked me yesterday morning what we 
 were going to do with Cyprus, in the event of 
 Eastern complications? Such a girl as that ought 
 never to be allowed to set foot inside a country 
 house. In fact, Oriana is the only agreeable per- 
 son you have got about you. I have half a mind 
 to propose to Oriana, only I'm afraid there'd be 
 a sparsity of coin." 
 
 The dowager sighed with a vexed air, but 
 said no more. She had hoped that Lashmar, 
 fresh from the meretricious charms of fashionable
 
 l82 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Viennese beauty, would have been struck by 
 Clarice Danebrook's lily-like loveliness in all its 
 purity of early girlhood. She was only eighteen, 
 divinely fair, with features of most delicate mould, 
 and eyes of heavenly azure. It was hardly pos- 
 sible to imagine a more beautiful girl in that 
 particular style of beauty. There was not a flaw. 
 She was of superior height, exquisitely graceful, 
 with small hands and feet. Whatever coarseness 
 there might have been in the Danebrook mould 
 had been chastened by the judicious union with 
 the Montmorencys. Nobody would ever have sus- 
 pected Clarice of plebeian origin; and yet her father 
 had coarse, hairy hands, and feet of serviceable 
 breadth, sandy whiskers, and a potato nose. He 
 was an admirable man of business, a liberal 
 master, a staunch friend to the operatives whose 
 labour had created his millions; but he had never 
 tried or pretended to be a fine gentleman, though 
 he had been born after his father had made a 
 fortune, and had been educated at Rugby and 
 Oxford. 
 
 Clarice was very sweet, and Lashmar gradu- 
 ally awakened to an idea of her sweetness. He 
 began to leave his friends in the billiard-room, 
 or the smoking-room, of an evening, and to sit
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. I 83 
 
 by the piano listening to those quaint old ballads, 
 and those melodious bits plucked here and there 
 out of the heart of a sonata or a symphony. 
 Clarice was one of those musicians by instinct 
 rather than by training who wander from flower 
 to flower with a sweet capriciousness, stealing the 
 honey out of every blossom: now a joyous little 
 bit of Mozart, a rondo or a minuet; now an An- 
 dante, or an Adagio from one of Beethoven's 
 grandest sonatas; now one of Chopin's wild wail- 
 ing movements, half a dirge and half a war-cry. 
 
 "What a jolly lot you know," exclaimed Lash- 
 mar. "I wish you'd sing 'Barbara Allen' presently. 
 I was outside in the corridor last night when you 
 were singing it." 
 
 "Mill has a passage here which seems exactly 
 to hit our present complications," said Janie Mac- 
 Allister, looking up from her ponderous tome, 
 "I do wish you'd let me read it to you, Lord 
 Lashmar." 
 
 "Not for worlds. We should inevitably quarrel 
 if you did. I detest Mill." 
 
 "But surely at such a crisis as this " 
 
 "I don't care a straw about the crisis; we are 
 always at a crisis. I don't even know what it 
 means. I get dosed with European politics abroad
 
 184 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 till I am simply imbecile upon all political ques- 
 tions. I want 'Barbara Allen.'" 
 
 Clarice looked up and smiled at him, with her 
 sweet childish smile. The Miss MacAllisters had 
 been far from civil to her, and she did not love 
 them. They resented her inordinate wealth, and 
 disapproved of her beauty. A rich girl had no 
 right to be pretty. Lady Lashmar's favouritism 
 was also an offence. Clarice was petted and flat- 
 tered while they were only tolerated — they who 
 had cultivated their minds, and were able to enter 
 the arena of argument upon equal terms with the 
 sterner sex. The misfortune was that at Lashmar 
 Castle nobody wanted to argue with them, except 
 the foolish cousin, whose feeble brain they some- 
 times deigned to flood with their electric light. 
 He who had never been able to grasp any one 
 subject wondered at the wide range of these well- 
 read damsels, who despised Paley with the con- 
 tempt of long familiarity, and had Butler's Ana- 
 logy at their fingers' ends, while the Greek Testa- 
 ment Avas child's play to them, and they were 
 ready at a moment's warning to argue upon any 
 disputed passage. 
 
 Clarice sang her old ballads, and Lashmar 
 listened in a dreamy silence.
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 185 
 
 Yes, his mother was right. She was a very- 
 sweet girl — somewhat over-childish, perhaps, for 
 her eighteen years, but passing lovely. Ermine 
 robes and a coronet would not be too good for 
 that delicate beauty. He wondered whether he 
 was beginning to fall in love with her. 
 
 He fancied that she would be an easy con- 
 quest — for him. That shy and shrinking manner 
 of hers argued a foregone conclusion. She had 
 an awe-stricken way of looking up at him, as if 
 his presence thrilled her. But he held himself 
 in check, and did not mean to commit himself 
 yet awhile. They Vvcre both young enough to 
 wait. 
 
 One morning he let the shooters start without 
 him, and strolled across the park and through 
 the fields to the Hall, which was about a mile- 
 and-a-half from the Castle. He wanted to see 
 Clarice in the bosom of her family, to see whether 
 her surroundings were too terrible, the father too 
 suggestive of the original barrow. He had seen 
 very little of the Danebrooks in his boyhood. 
 This passion for Clarice was a new craze of her 
 ladyship's. 
 
 The Hall was everything which the Castle was 
 not. It had been built five-and-twenty years be-
 
 I 86 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 fore, ill the midst of a level expanse of meadow 
 land, which, during that quarter of a century, had 
 been in process of education into a park. But as 
 there had been very few old trees to begin with 
 the park was still barren: a waste of level turf 
 with new plantations dotted about at intervals. A 
 fine carriage drive went from the lodge gates to 
 the Hall door, assuredly the most uninteresting 
 drive in the county. 
 
 The Hall was an immense red brick house, in 
 the modern Gothic style, red brick with stone 
 facings. It was a very fine house, well propor- 
 tioned, in fairly good taste; but nothing that the 
 architect could do had been enough to subjugate 
 that terrible air of newness which is the bane of 
 such houses. There was a huge battlemented 
 tower, which stared over the surrounding country 
 and could be seen from afar for many miles; 
 and there were battlemented stables and battle- 
 mented terraces; and there were acres of well- 
 kept shrubberies, and a fish-pond, and fountains, 
 and spacious conservatories — in a word, there 
 was everything that money could buy. But money 
 cannot buy antiquity, unless it takes the past at 
 second hand. Clarice was very sorry that her 
 father had not bought a dear old crumbly house,
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 1 87 
 
 in the heart of an overgrown old park, instead of 
 building for himself this modern mansion, with all 
 its comfortable appliances, its brand-new luxuries 
 and conveniences, speaking-tubes and lifts, and 
 hot water pipes and scientific ventilators. Clarice 
 would rather have had one ghost than all those 
 speaking tubes; she would have preferred lichen- 
 covered stone walls to hot-water pipes and venti- 
 lators. Clarice fancied the house smelt of newly- 
 made wealth. It had been furnished at one fell 
 swoop by a great London firm, and although the 
 picturesque had been duly considered, it was the 
 modern picturesque, and lacked the mellow tones 
 of real old furniture. 
 
 Mrs. Danebrook had just come in from her 
 conservatories, where she snipped off the dead 
 leaves and damaged a few of the plants every 
 morning under the delusion that she was helping 
 the head gardener. She was very stout, and 
 could never steer herself through a conservatory 
 without knocking over a pot or two. She was a 
 large, placid woman, with small, regular features, 
 which must have once been like those of Clarice, 
 but which were now almost submerged in fat. 
 She was very fair, with the lily-like fairness of 
 her daughter, and she had flaxen hair, which her
 
 I 88 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 daughter had carried out in a richer and warmer 
 tint of golden brown. The daughter seemed to 
 Lashmar to be a refinement upon the mother; 
 but he told himself that as the mother was the 
 daughter might be five-and-twenty years hence. 
 
 He met his hostess in the hall, and she took 
 him to her morning room, where Clarice was 
 lolling in an easy chair by the window, reading 
 a novel, which was about the highest form of 
 literature wherewith the young lady ever nourished 
 her ripening mind. She rose in confusion at 
 sight of Lashmar, as if it had been a demi-god 
 entering suddenly; and the transparent skin was 
 flooded with a lovely blush. 
 
 "My mother sent me to ask you over to tennis, 
 this afternoon," said Lashmar, inventing a message 
 on the spur of the moment. 
 
 "Oh, but I was going in any case," faltered 
 Clarice; "dear Lady Lashmar asked me last 
 night." 
 
 "She was afraid you would forget all about it 
 to-day." 
 
 "There is no chance of her forgetting," said 
 the mother. "She is so fond of Lady Lashmar. 
 I feel quite jealous sometimes. I hardly see any-
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 1 89 
 
 thing of Clarice. But it is so nice for her to be 
 at the Castle." 
 
 Mrs. Danebrook, 7tee Montmorency, had an 
 exaggerated reverence for rank. In the days when 
 she had been a half-pay colonel's daughter, 
 struggling to keep up appearances upon the 
 narrowest means, she had always taken comfort 
 from the thought that she was descended from 
 princes. She had held her head high before 
 lodging-house keepers and small tradesmen; had 
 worn mended gloves and bonnets of doubtful 
 freshness with a proud complacency which over- 
 came the scorn of middle-class prosperity. And 
 when Providence smiled upon her fresh young 
 charms in the person of the broad-shouldered, 
 sandy-whiskered proprietor of the largest foundry 
 in Brumm, who met the young lady at the Still- 
 mington Hunt Ball and fell in love with her on 
 the spot, Viola Montmorency received the ad- 
 vances of the millionaire with the placid dignity 
 of a princess. Another girl in her position, con- 
 scious of shabby surroundings and an impecunious 
 father, might have disgusted her admirer by un- 
 wise encouragement. Viola stimulated his affec- 
 tion by a sweet reticence; and it was the colonel 
 who brought matters to a head, and anchored
 
 I go ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 the delighted youth. Jonathan Danebrook had 
 never had occasion to repent his precipitancy. 
 His wife had one of those exquisitely easy tempers 
 which are perhaps only a refined form of selfish- 
 ness, but which allow the wheels of daily life to 
 run as upon velvet. Mr. Danebrook indulged his 
 wife's every whim; but her whims were of the 
 mildest kind, and he had in compensation the 
 privilege of doing exactly what he liked under 
 all circumstances. Danebrook Hall was therefore 
 a kind of earthly paradise, in which the fair young 
 daughter moved like the spirit of youth and glad- 
 ness, while the mother represented the calm con- 
 tentment of maturity. 
 
 While Lashmar was dawdling in the morning 
 room, turning over a pile of new novels and dis- 
 cussing their contents with Clarice, Mr. Dane- 
 brook came in from his model farm, fresh and 
 breezy as the October morning itself, and bring- 
 ing with him that compound odour of pigsty and 
 stable which hovers about the person of amateur 
 agriculturists, and in which they apparently delight. 
 
 It was Lord Lashmar's first visit to the Hall, 
 and he was to Jonathan Danebrook as a prey, to 
 be dragged off at once and paraded through hot- 
 houses and stables, home farm and paddocks,
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. IQI 
 
 where the brood mares and their foals were one 
 of the features of the estate. Lashmar was fond 
 of horses, and did not mind the stables or the 
 brood mares. He would have submitted even to 
 the piggeries with a good grace if Clarice had 
 been of the party; but Clarice never accompanied 
 her father on these agricultural expeditions. She 
 detested pigs and poultry, cattle sheds and farm 
 yards. Those pretty little Louis Quatorze shoes 
 of hers had not been made for tripping over 
 cobbles, or across a ploughed field. There was 
 nothing of the typical squire's daughter about 
 her. She never hunted, and she only cared for 
 the one well-trained horse which she was able 
 to ride. She had never handled gun or fishing- 
 rod, and her only idea of a dog was a Russian 
 poodle. So Clarice stayed in the morning room 
 and went on with her novel while Lashmar was 
 inspecting horses and cows, pigs and poultry, 
 until, amidst the splendours of a very fine as- 
 semblage of cochin-chinas, he was agreeably 
 startled by the sound of a gigantic gong, which 
 might have been heard half a mile off. 
 
 "Lunch," cried Danebrook; "come along, 
 Lord Lashmar, I hope you're as huiigry as a 
 hunter after this long round."
 
 192 ONE THING NEEDFUL, 
 
 "Upon my word I think I ought to go back to 
 the Castle for kincheon," said Lashmar dubiously. 
 "Her ladyship likes to have me when I am not 
 out with the shooters. She'll take it unkindly 
 perhaps." 
 
 "No she won't, when you tell her where you've 
 been. Her ladyship has been uncommonly friendly 
 to my wife and daughter." 
 
 "Miss Danebrook is my mother's favourite," 
 replied Lashmar. "I never knew her take so 
 warmly to any young lady." 
 
 "And Clarice positively worships Lady Lash- 
 mar — quotes her in everything; nothing is right 
 unless it is modelled upon Lashmar Castle." 
 
 They went in to luncheon, and Lashmar, who 
 had rather despised Clarice for her stay-at-home 
 metropolitan habits, forgave her when he com- 
 pared her pure and delicate beauty with the 
 bronzed and weather-beaten countenance and 
 roughened hair of the average country -bred 
 damsel. 
 
 After luncheon Lashmar proposed that Clarice 
 should walk to the Castle with him, and although 
 Mrs. Danebrook would hardly have seen the fit- 
 ness of such a proposition from a commoner she 
 was willing to stretch the proprieties just a little
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. I 93 
 
 for the sake of a noble admirer, and to allow her 
 daughter to stroll across the fields unchaperoned. 
 So Lashmar and Clarice went across those rich 
 Middleshire pastures, as gaily as Phillis and 
 Strephon, in the sweet half-consciousness of dawn- 
 ing love, and were received most graciously by 
 her ladyship. 
 
 The Miss MacAllisters and their mother had 
 driven to meet the shooters, so there was only 
 Oriana at home, and that dear lady always slept 
 for two or three hours after luncheon, a siesta 
 which enabled her to be as fresh as a dihidaiite 
 all the evening, nay, far into the small hours, did 
 pleasure offer itself after midnight. 
 
 Lashmar and Clarice went off to the tennis 
 ground and began a set without delay. The lawn 
 was just under the windows of Lady Lashmar's 
 morning room, and she looked up from the news- 
 paper every now and then to watch them, pleased 
 at the ripening of her plan. Yes, the fact was 
 obvious. Lashmar was falling in love. No lesser 
 influence than love would have taken him to the 
 Hall; he who had always spoken slightingly of 
 the newly rich, who detested the magnates and 
 millionaires of Brumm. Clarice Daaebrook's 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. 1 3
 
 194 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 beauty and sweetness had conquered all his pre- 
 judices. 
 
 Clarice was indeed fair to look upon, with 
 the soft curly auburn hair fluttering on her low 
 white forehead, and the gracious lines of her 
 figure set off by the soft fold of her fawn-coloured 
 Indian silk frock, a frock of elegant simplicity, 
 just short enough to show the pretty little feet in 
 the bronze shoes and fawn-coloured stockings, a 
 frock whose Quakerish hue was relieved by a 
 broad sash of Indian red, tied carelessly upon 
 the left hip. The little toque hat was of the 
 same Indian red, subdued yet glowing, and ad- 
 mirably harmonising with the ivory fairness of 
 the wearer's skin. 
 
 They played two sets, and then went wan- 
 dering off towards the Italian garden, which was 
 at the other end of the castle, out of Lady Lash- 
 mar's ken. 
 
 It was upon this garden that the late Lord 
 Lashmar's rooms opened. Clarice loitered to look 
 in at one of the windows of the library. 
 
 "Oh, what a noble room!" she cried, peering 
 in at the spacious apartment, with its wall of 
 books facing her, crowned at intervals with white 
 marble busts which gleamed in the shadowy in-
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. 1 95 
 
 terior. The room seemed in half darkness as 
 seen from the bright clear light of the garden. 
 
 "Do you know I have never seen the famous 
 Lashmar library," she said, looking back at Lash- 
 mar. "I should so like to see it." 
 
 "Then you shall," he answered cheerily. 
 "Strange that her ladyship should never have 
 taken you in to look at the old Books of Hours 
 and such like valuable rubbish. But the room 
 has very sad associations for her, on account of 
 my poor brother. He almost spent his life in 
 that room." 
 
 "Yes, I know. How very good and sweet he 
 was — such a lovely, mournful face. I only saw 
 him two or three times, but I thought him so 
 nice. He spoke so kindly, he had such a beauti- 
 ful manner. What became of that pretty little 
 dark-eyed girl, he adopted? I saw her with him 
 one day; such an interesting little thing." 
 
 "Oh, she is still here, I believe, somewhere 
 in the housekeeper's quarters," Lashmar answered 
 carelessly. 
 
 "How strange that I have never happened to 
 see her!" 
 
 They went in at a glass door, which opened 
 into the late Lord Lashmar's sitting-room. Nothing 
 
 13*
 
 196 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 in this or any of his rooms had been altered since 
 his death. Her ladyship meant to have a general 
 turn-out of everything, and a complete re-arrange- 
 ment of these rooms later on, when the sharp 
 sad feeling of recent death should have worn 
 away. She was not altogether without feeling 
 upon the subject; although she had always wished 
 for Hubert's early death, as the best possible ar- 
 rangement Providence could make for everybody, 
 dear Hubert himself included. 
 
 Long life could not be a blessing in his case. 
 He would have only felt his afflicted condition 
 more keenly as the years rolled on. 
 
 Clarice looked at the room with a mournful, 
 awe-stricken air. It was so simply and prettily 
 furnished; such channing engravings and photo- 
 graphs of French and German pictures on the 
 walls; such novel and artistic china and bronzes 
 and quaint little ornaments of all kinds, scattered 
 upon the tables; such delightful reading-lamps 
 and reading-easels; such low, luxurious chairs; 
 above all, such a snug, homelike air. It was 
 difficult to realise that he by whom those things 
 had all been chosen, whose hand had cut the 
 leaves of yonder magazines with that elephant's 
 tusk, thrown carelessly across the books, as if he
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. I 97 
 
 had flung it there — difficult to realise that he had 
 been lying in his grave for months, and would 
 never look upon that place again. 
 
 The walls were lined half-way up with dwarf 
 book-cases, and in those were the books of 
 Hubert's own collecting. Clarice thought that 
 some of these were passing dry; but that they 
 were on the whole much better than those 
 valuable volumes which Lashmar afterwards 
 showed her in the great library. 
 
 He showed her the gems of the collection, in 
 a somewhat perfunctory manner, not caring much 
 about them himself, except as heirlooms, which 
 fed his pride of race and place. He was well 
 read for a young man; a keen critic of modern 
 books; had dipped into most things; but he had 
 not the collector's reverence for old books and 
 old bindings. Clarice looked at them with the 
 wide, wondering eyes of perfect ignorance. That 
 shabby little volume in Italian worth a thousand 
 pounds, just because there were only two of them 
 extant — this and one other. It seemed ridiculous. 
 She had been surprised the other day when her 
 father gave a thousand pounds for an Alderney 
 cow; but the Alderney was at least beautiful, 
 a sleek, pettable creature, with great pathetic
 
 198 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 eyes, while this little Italian book was distinctly 
 ugly. 
 
 Her eyes wandered from the book to the room, 
 which was lovely. Those marble busts, placed at 
 intervals along the richly-carved cornice of the 
 book-cases; the splendour of cut velvet curtains 
 shrouding the windows and making a semi-dark- 
 ness in the room; the two sculptured fire-places, 
 lofty and imposing — all these things impressed 
 Clarice. The Hall had been built and furnished 
 with a reckless expenditure, and yet there was 
 no room in it that gave this idea of dignity and 
 grandeur. "One must begin by being noble be- 
 fore one could have such surroundings," thought 
 Clarice, who worshipped rank. 
 
 Suddenly, in the midst of her contemplation 
 of the room, she gave a little start, and touched 
 Lashmar lightly on the wrist. 
 
 "What is that?" she whispered. 
 
 "That" was a small fragile figure, a little girl 
 in a black frock, sitting at the further end of the 
 room, perched high up on a library ladder, read- 
 ing a big volume, which it was as much as her 
 small hands and thin little arms could do to 
 hold in its place, hugged against her stooping 
 chest.
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA. IQQ 
 
 "By Jove!" exclaimed Lashmar, "it is the 
 very child you were talking of, poor Hubert's 
 protegee" and he went to the other end of the 
 room, followed by Clarice, and looked up with a 
 half-amused air at the queer little figure on the 
 step-ladder. 
 
 "What are you doing up there, Stella?" he 
 asked, not ill-naturedly. 
 
 The uncanny dark eyes looked down at him, 
 so large, so black, in comparison with the small 
 pale face; and then the thin black legs uncoiled 
 themselves from the steps, and the child came 
 down and faced her new master, still hugging 
 the quarto in her lean arms. She stood and 
 faced his lordship and the lovely young lady, 
 looking with those great solemn eyes of hers from 
 one to the other. 
 
 No longer a Reynolds's child, to be patronised 
 and admired by the dilettante Rector. Not by 
 any means a picturesque child in her present 
 apparel. Her ladyship had taken pains to pre- 
 vent any such foolishness under the new regime. 
 
 That thick straight fringe of hair, which had 
 given quaintness to the childish face, had been 
 carefully brushed away from the broad bare fore- 
 head, by command of her ladyship, who allowed
 
 200 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 no such meretricious grace as a "fringe" in any 
 of her dependents. The black stuff frock was 
 made with a Quaker plainness, tight and prim 
 and spare, and a holland apron carried out the 
 idea of dependence and servitude. A very plain 
 child assuredly in her present stage of being. 
 
 "What book is that?" asked Lashraar, point- 
 ing to the quarto. 
 
 "La Morte d' Arthur," she answered. 
 
 "What, can you read Old English?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "My brother taught you, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And pray, who gave you leave to come here 
 to read?" 
 
 "Nobody." 
 
 "Frank, at any rate. I suppose you know you 
 are doing wrong when you came here?" 
 
 "No," she answered doggedly. "I don't hurt 
 the books; I am not in anybody's way." 
 
 "Do you suppose her ladyship would approve 
 of your loafing here reading old books, instead of 
 learning to be useful?" 
 
 "I don't care what her ladyship thinks. I 
 don't care whether I please her or displease her. 
 She has been very unkind to me."
 
 THE NEW CINDERELLA, 20I 
 
 "Oh, but you must not say that," said Lash- 
 mar, waxing stern. "You have every reason to be 
 grateful to her ladyship; but for her, you would 
 be in the workhouse, perhaps." 
 
 "If she was kind I should be grateful," the 
 girl answered resolutely, unabashed, looking at 
 him boldly with those wondrous eyes. "She took 
 away all my books — the books Lord Lashmar 
 gave me!" 
 
 The dark eyes filled with tears, which were 
 hurriedly dashed away, as if the child were 
 ashamed of them. 
 
 "Poor little thing!" murmured Clarice; and 
 with a pretty pitiful air she patted the pale wet 
 cheek with her soft white hand. 
 
 But Cinderella slu"ank from the touch as if 
 she had been stung. 
 
 "Don't!" she cried angrily. 
 
 This last insolence provoked Lashmar's wrath. 
 
 "You are a very rude little girl," he exclaimed, 
 "and you must never come into this room again. 
 You have no right here or in any part of the 
 house except the servants' quarters. You will 
 have to be a servant by-and-by, and you must 
 learn to live contentedly among servants. How
 
 202 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 did you get into this room? The doors are 
 locked." 
 
 "I came as you came — through the glass door." 
 
 "You have been here often, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes, very often." 
 
 "You must never come again. Do you under- 
 stand?" 
 
 "I understand that you are a cruel man," she 
 answered defiantly, scowling at him, her heart 
 beating tempestuously with fury. "I am glad you 
 are only my dear Lord Lashmar's half-brother. 
 If you had been really his brother I should have 
 been very sorry to hate you — but you are not 
 his brother, and I don't care how much I hate 
 you." 
 
 She had been yearning for love and pity, 
 thinking that perhaps when the new master came 
 back he would be kind to her for his dead 
 brother's sake. She had been yearning for pity; 
 and yet she had recoiled from Miss Danebrook's 
 gentle touch as if from an adder. 
 
 "You are a very horrid little person, as un- 
 pleasant as you are ugly," said Lashmar, going to 
 the door and unlocking it, and throwing it wide 
 open; "and now march, if you please. Put down 
 that book, and make yourself scarce."
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH. 203 
 
 She had been hugging the quarto all this 
 time. She laid it slowly down on a table, and 
 as slowly walked out of the room, scowling to the 
 very last. 
 
 "I am afraid she is not a nice child," said 
 Clarice, shaking her head. 
 
 "She is a little demon, a veritable imp of 
 darkness. I think my brother must have liked 
 her on account of her outlandishness." 
 
 "Just as some people like a Dachshu)id," said 
 Clarice. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 A YOUNG PROUD WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL 
 
 WITH. 
 
 Stella went no more to the library. She had 
 stolen round one day by the garden when the 
 family was at luncheon and the coast clear, and 
 finding the glass door open had gone in and read 
 there for hours, safe in the solitude of locked 
 doors. No one had missed her, for she had of 
 late been allowed to carry her needle-work to her 
 own little room and to work there in peaceful 
 loneliness between dinner and tea time. Day after
 
 204 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 day she had crept stealthily round from the hall 
 door to that glass door in the late Lord Lashmar's 
 study, left open for a (ew hours daily to air the 
 rooms; and she had read to her heart's content, 
 roaming at will among strange tales of fairy land 
 and adventure, from Spenser to Sir Thomas 
 Malory and Sir John Mandeville; and never had 
 she been surprised until that afternoon when the 
 new Lord Lashmar caught her in the act. 
 
 She felt herself a detected criminal; and she 
 hated herself for the self-indulgence which had 
 brought this shame upon her. 
 
 "I ought to have remembered that they are 
 all /lis books now," she thought. She had always 
 thought of them before as belonging to her dead 
 friend: she had not fairly realised the transitory 
 character of all such possessions. They had been 
 Hubert's books, in her mind, and he had always 
 encouraged her to read — he would not have 
 grudged her the bliss of poring over those strange 
 old stories. 
 
 She saw no more of Lord Lashmar, though he 
 stayed at the castle till after Christmas, and 
 entertained d good many visitors. The coming 
 and going of guests occupied the servants much 
 more severely than the old dull routine of the
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH. 205 
 
 late lord's time, and gave Stella more leisure and 
 seclusion. Soon after Christmas, there came a 
 great improvement in her life, for Lady Lashmar 
 and her son went up to Grosvenor Square for the 
 season, taking with them the greater number of 
 the servants. Three housemaids, and a superan- 
 nuated housekeeper, who usually lived in one of 
 the lodges, were left in sole charge of the castle: 
 and one of those housemaids was Stella's faithful 
 friend, Betsy. 
 
 Under this new regime the child was free to 
 roam about the house as she pleased: but she 
 never re-entered the library. She would have 
 read her own books again and again to satiety 
 rather than she would have degraded herself by 
 entering that forbidden room after Lashmar's in- 
 sulting veto. 
 
 She had not forgotten one of his hard words. 
 It was not often that she looked in the glass; but 
 she never did so look without remembering that 
 he had told her she was as unpleasant as she 
 was ugly. Yes, no doubt she was ugly. The 
 glass confirmed that hard speech; and perhaps 
 the charge of unpleasantness was equally well 
 founded. One happy change came over her life 
 in this wintry season of the year, when she was
 
 206 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 free to roam obout the park or down by the 
 river, or across the bare, bleak fields to the vil- 
 lage, if she pleased. Her long imprisonment in 
 ugly, uninteresting rooms had made that newly 
 recovered liberty very precious to her. She was 
 perfectly fearless, cared not how far she went 
 alone, and Betsy was too busy to look after her, 
 and was always satisfied if she appeared punctually 
 at meal time. 
 
 She revisited all the spots which she had 
 known with Lord Lashmar. She went to the 
 boat-house and looked at his empty boats, under 
 linen coverings, ghastly, as if he were lying in 
 one of them dead. She Avandered along the river 
 bank, stopping to note this or that landmark, and 
 to remember how utterly happy she had been in 
 those vanished days. 
 
 Would she ever be happy again, she won- 
 dered? Never, surely, unless her father were to 
 come back from that far country whither he had 
 gone that night the house was burnt, the name 
 of which she did not know. She had often ques- 
 tioned Lord Lashmar, and he had evaded her 
 questions, not unkindly, but still firmly. 
 
 "You will know by-and-by, dear child," he 
 had said, and she had felt that there was some
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH. 207 
 
 mystery which concerned her absent father, and 
 that she must be patient. 
 
 If he would but come back now — now when 
 she felt so lonely, so sorely in need of love and 
 sweet companionship; some one to talk to her 
 and to teach her as Lashmar had done. 
 
 Comfort, of some kind, was nearer than she 
 thought. Coming through the little village street 
 one day she saw a familiar figure standing at the 
 gate of a cottage garden, gazing dreamily at the 
 old church tower nestling in a hollow just beyond 
 that sharp curve and sudden drop in the narrow 
 road where the village inn stood out conspicuously, 
 as if on the look-out for accidents to horses and 
 wheels. 
 
 A bent old figure, with bare head and long 
 gray hair and dim, pale eyes, aged by poring 
 over dry-as-dust books. Yes, it was the mild 
 companion of her happy childhood standing there, 
 a leaf out of that lovely past which contrasted so 
 strongly with her present desolation. 
 
 The girl ran to him and touched him on the 
 sleeve. 
 
 "Mr. Verner, dear Mr. Verner, I am so glad!" 
 she gasped breathlessly. 
 
 Slowly, and as if with an effort, the dim old
 
 208 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 eyes withdrew themselves from the church tower, 
 and gazed wonderingly upon the pale young face 
 looking eagerly upward. 
 
 "Why, Stella! Are you still at the Castle? 
 They told me you had been sent to school. Why 
 did not you come to see me before?" 
 
 "I was not allowed to go out till her ladyship 
 went away, and I did not know you were here. 
 They said you had gone to London." 
 
 "They were right, my child," answered the 
 old man, with a profound sigh; "I did go to 
 London. I was in London nearly four months. 
 A terrible place, child, a fearful place, when one 
 has lost the habit of cities, as I have. The din 
 of the crowded streets deafened me, the strange 
 faces made me feel distraught. It is a dreary 
 wilderness, Stella, for a man without friends; and 
 I had no friends in London — no, not one. I 
 thought I had many old college companions, old 
 pupils — men who had pretended to love me when 
 they were boys; but time had changed them into 
 strangers. All doors were closed against me, 
 very politely, Stella, but they were shut all the 
 same, and I was alone and old and stupid, in 
 that noisy wilderness of streets and squares, and
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITIL 20g 
 
 fine shops, and lighted theatres. A dreary desert 
 for the friendless and poor, Stella." 
 
 "But your book," faltered Stella, remembering 
 the old man's shrinking from the burden of 
 celebrity, "///«/ will win you new friends instead 
 of the old ones who may have forgotten you." 
 
 "No, Stella, there are no friends to learning 
 nowadays. Francis Bacon might wander in that 
 stony labyrinth, die of hunger there for want of 
 a helping hand. There are no Bacons wanted 
 nowadays; learning is out of date. It was to get 
 my book published that I went to London, Stella. 
 I carried my manuscript from publisher to publisher, 
 till I came to those that laughed in my face when 
 I mentioned Aristotle, and asked me if I thought 
 he was a likely kind of author to sell in penny 
 numbers, or his complete works at a shilling? I 
 was not to be beaten easily, Stella. I went to the 
 great men first; they were kind and courteous, 
 but told me the market was flooded with books 
 upon the great classics; that no work of that kind 
 had sold since Grote and Jowett; that my magnum 
 opus was so much labour wasted, except for the 
 pleasure I had felt in the progress of such an 
 honourable work. That is the kind of thing the 
 great publishers said to me. The small ones 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. I4
 
 2IO ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 openly laughed at me — politely or rudely, as the 
 nature of the creatures prompted. There was no 
 room in the world of letters for my great work 
 on Aristotle. I might publish the book at my 
 own cost if I liked, but it would involve an out- 
 lay of two or three hundred pounds. And I had 
 thought that the work would bring me wealth and 
 renown; I had shrunk from the glare and the dazzle 
 of my future fame. Dreams, Stella, all dreams! 
 The publishers awakened me: and now I know 
 that I am only a foolish old man, born into this 
 world too late to be of any use to himself or other 
 people." 
 
 "But you have your book still," said Stella, in 
 her grave, old-fashioned way — she had grown from 
 a child to a precocious woman in her solitary 
 studious life of the last eight months, had changed 
 curiously in so short a time — "and if it is a great 
 book, as Lord Lashmar said it was, you must be 
 very proud of it." 
 
 "I love it," faltered the old man, with an in- 
 voluntary glance at the window of the room that 
 held his treasure, — "I love it as if it were a child. 
 I am steadily going over all the old ground again, 
 page by page, annotating, improving. Perhaps, 
 years hence, when I am in the dust, a publisher
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH. 2 I I 
 
 may be found to print that book — the world may 
 discover that I have left it an imperishable legacy. 
 But let us talk of it no more. Come in doors, 
 and rest yourself, Stella; it is too cold to be 
 standing here so long." 
 
 He led the way into a cottage parlour, littered 
 with the chaotic lumber of a student's days and 
 nights — a table crowded with pamphlets and 
 papers, books piled in every available corner, 
 heaped upon the floor; dust, untidiness every- 
 where. The owner of the cottage had given up 
 the struggle for neatness, and had allowed her 
 eccentric lodger to have things in his own way. 
 He was not a troublesome lodger, needed but 
 little attendance, never grumbled at the cooking, 
 paid his way punctually; but his long night 
 watches were a source of fear to his landlady, lest 
 in long poring over those dry-as-dust old volumes 
 he should fall asleep and suffer the house to be 
 set on fire. 
 
 "Have you been living here long?" asked 
 Stella, looking at the chaos, and longing to put 
 things straight with dexterous womanly fingers. 
 
 "Only since last November. Lord Lashmar 
 has been good enough to give me a small pension, 
 which I accept without compunction, as I know
 
 212 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 tliat my dear pupil always intended to provide 
 for my old age. But how could he think that I 
 should outlive him — the old surviving the young? 
 Yes, Lord Lashmar has been kind enough to pro- 
 vide for me, and I like to live here, near the old 
 home and the old river we were all so fond of. 
 And you, child, how has it fared with you since 
 that fatal day?" 
 
 Stella was slow to answer. She struggled with 
 herself in silence for a little while, the dark brows 
 knitted in a frown; the crimson of passion kind- 
 ling in the wan cheeks; and then she burst into 
 tears. 
 
 The old man drew her towards him, gathered 
 her upon his knees, sheltered her wet cheek upon 
 his breast with almost maternal tenderness. 
 
 "My poor child! my poor child!" he murmured, 
 " death was very cruel to you and me that summer 
 day." 
 
 "Oh! if we had only died too! Why did not 
 God take us all together?" sobbed Stella: and 
 then in broken sentences she told Gabriel Verner 
 what her life had been like since he left the 
 Castle — a life spent among servants, in the bond- 
 age of menial servitude. 
 
 "She took away my books too," Stella went
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH. 213 
 
 on tearfully; "the books he gave me; my Greek 
 and Latin books; my book about the stars; and 
 Scott and Tennyson." 
 
 "Inexorable tyrant, to stifle that budding in- 
 tellect." 
 
 "But Betsy contrived to get some of them for 
 me. It was almost like stealing them, though 
 they were my own — as much my own as this 
 hand and arm. And I have gone on learning 
 my lessons, and writing exercises, though there 
 has been no one to tell me the faults." 
 
 "That need be so no longer, Stella. Come to 
 me every day, if they will let you, and I will go 
 on with your education. Yes," cried the scholar, 
 with sudden enthusiasm, "it shall be the delight 
 of my life to train this bright young mind. 
 You " — with the rapture of conferring an ineffable 
 boon, "you shall help me to annotate my book." 
 
 "I will!" said Stella, "and I will keep your 
 room tidy, if you will let me. I know how to 
 arrange books and papers, and keep them all in 
 nice order, without disturbing anything. I used 
 to tidy his papers when I was very, very little, 
 when I could hardly reach up to the table." 
 
 "Yes, dear, you were always a handy little 
 thing. I will go on with your education. Come
 
 214 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 to me as often as you can; come whenever they 
 will let you. I am not much of a gadabout. You 
 will almost always find me at home." 
 
 Stella thanked him with all her heart, cheered 
 and comforted by this new light. To take up the 
 thread of her education where Lashmar had 
 dropped it would seem almost a link with the 
 past, with the life that had been so sweet. It 
 would bring her nearer to the dead. She thought 
 of him always as watching over her from the 
 spirit world, regretting her degradation. And it 
 would please him to know that she was carrying 
 on her education with his dear old tutor. 
 
 She told Betsy everything; and Betty managed 
 that by hook or by crook she should have time 
 to go on with her education. All she had to do 
 was to satisfy Middleham; and of late her sewing 
 had been good enough even for that exacting 
 personage; and she had also shown herself very 
 deft and clever in putting the finishing touches 
 to best bedrooms and morning rooms, arranging 
 draperies, filling the flower vases, putting knick- 
 knacks and indescribable elegancies in just the 
 right places, instead of shoving things about 
 stupidly after the purblind manner of the ordinary 
 housemaid. Stella had spent many a morning at
 
 A WOMAN THAT HAS WILL TO SAIL WITH. 2X5 
 
 this work when the Castle was full of company, 
 and had won Middleham's blunt approval. 
 
 "I thought you were a fool, child, when I first 
 took you in hand," said the queen-mother of the 
 housemaids; "but I must say that I have found 
 you a teachable, handy little thing, and very 
 willing to take pains with your sewing; which is 
 more than I can say for those overgrown young 
 women from the village." 
 
 The all-powerful Middleham being thus con- 
 ciliated by patient service, life had been made 
 easier for Stella, even at the worst, than it had 
 been; but it was easiest of all for her now when 
 Middleham and her staff were in Grosvenor Square, 
 and the state rooms and best bedrooms were all 
 wrapped in shadow and silence. Under Betsy's 
 friendly rule Stella was able to spend the greater 
 part of her days with Gabriel Verner, and to learn 
 as much as he felt inclined to teach her. Nor 
 was this little; for it was a delight to the old man 
 to resume the habits of years gone by with so 
 docile, so receptive a pupil. 
 
 So day by day and every day, as the leaves 
 unfolded and the flowers came peeping forth in 
 the hedgerows and meadows — first, the season of 
 daffodils, and then the season of king-cups, and
 
 2l6 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 then the glad time of blue-bells, and onward even 
 to the first of the dog-roses — Stella lived her own 
 life, and learnt diligently in the great volume of 
 classic lore, till even those modern Middleshire 
 copses, that riverside of to-day, seemed peopled 
 with ideal forms: so interwoven became the fables 
 of the past with the realities of the present. And 
 every day the girl's care helped to make the old 
 student's life more pleasant, providing for and 
 forestalling his wants, supervising his modest 
 wardrobe, beautifying his cottage home, surround- 
 ing him with an atmosphere of womanly love and 
 watchfulness. 
 
 Lady Lashmar was in London, in Paris, in 
 Vienna, with her adored son, following him as a 
 satellite follows a planet — not with him, but 
 always near him. He had spoken in the House 
 of Lords, and his speech had attracted attention; 
 had been talked about as a wonderful speech for 
 so young an orator: and it had been said by 
 some of his party that Lord Lashmar was a young 
 man who would make his mark. 
 
 "Old Lady Pitland's grandson ought to have 
 something in him," said the old-fashioned section 
 of the party: and all Lady Lashmar's particular 
 friends prophesied that old Lady Pitland's grandson
 
 "as the days change men change too." 217 
 
 was to be one of the lights of the future, and as 
 political skies at this period were cloudy, lights 
 were wanted. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 "BUT AS THE DAYS CHANGE ]\IEN CHANGE TOO." 
 
 The years had come and gone, and strange 
 things had happened in the world of history and 
 politics: wars and treaties, invasions and expedi- 
 tions, changes in legislature, in science, in art. 
 New whims, new fancies, new theories had rippled 
 the river of time: but here at Lashmar Castle 
 there had been no stirring events by which to 
 distinguish the passing years. Life here had 
 been monotonously placid and tranquil, yet not 
 altogether happy. Lady Lashmar had drunk of 
 the cup of disappointment in those slow years. 
 Life had seemed to open with the buoyant rapture 
 of a wedding march, when Fate made her son 
 master of Lashmar Castle. She who was ac- 
 customed to rule had thought it the most natural 
 thing in the world that she should rule her only 
 son; not with open domination, but with delicate 
 diplomacy, with tenderest maternal management.
 
 2l8 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Bitter had been her disappointment when she 
 discovered that Lashmar was not so to be ruled. 
 He was not an undutiful son. He treated his 
 mother with affectionate consideration; but he was 
 bent upon living his own life, and that was 
 essentially a manly, independent life — a life of 
 travel and sport. Yachting, mountaineering, 
 salmon fishing in Canada, bear hunting in the 
 Rockies, deer-stalking in the Highlands, had taken 
 him far from his mother, and the possibility of 
 maternal guidance. Within the last two years he 
 had taken ardently to politics: but even political 
 life was a life of severance from her ladyship, 
 who was no longer in the vigour of health and 
 strength, no longer able to hold her own in the 
 turmoil of London society — a great deal faster 
 and more furious, more capricious, fickle, and 
 volatile than the society of Lady Pitland's time. 
 
 A great change had come over Lady Pitland's 
 daughter within the seven years that had passed 
 since Hubert, Lord Lashmar, had been laid in 
 the family vault yonder, under the old church at 
 the end of the park. The hand of affliction had 
 weighed heavily on that proud spirit. Lady Lash- 
 mar's health had given way; a slow and gradual 
 depression, indicative, as her physician blandly
 
 "AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO." 2ig 
 
 hinted, of some obscure inward malady, had crept 
 over that active mind, working slow and subtle 
 changes, until little by little, with a gradual trans- 
 formation hardly perceived by those who were 
 constantly about her, the Lady Lashmar of the 
 present had become an entirely different woman 
 from the Lady Lashmar of the past. The severe 
 lines of that handsome face had softened with 
 the premature whitening of those soft masses of 
 hair, which now recalled the Marie-Antoinette of 
 Delaroche's famous picture. Yet despite this 
 softer aspect the woman was at heart the same: 
 proud as Milton's Satan, but with the melancholy 
 pride of a disappointed life. 
 
 There had been times when she regretted her 
 dead stepson; regretted the old days in which 
 her influence had been paramount, and her boy, 
 as a younger son with his own way to make in 
 the world had been dependent upon the maternal 
 purse for all his pleasures and indulgences. She 
 had longed then for the day when he should 
 stand in his brother's place. That day had come; 
 and it had been the beginning of severance. Her 
 boy was no longer to be gratified by gifts from 
 the maternal hoard; he had no longer need of 
 the maternal influence and counsel in the difficult
 
 2 20 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 career of a younger son. He was his own master, 
 rich, titled, with very little incentive to the crea- 
 tion of a career. 
 
 For five years Lady Lashmar watched her son's 
 idle wanderings with disappointment and anxiety. 
 She began to fear that he was no better than other 
 young men to whom fortune has given too much, 
 and with whom ambition is a dead letter. She 
 was beginning to despair of him, when there 
 came a political crisis, and Lord Lashmar came 
 suddenly to the front. The Conservatives had 
 braced themselves together for a final effort against 
 a Liberal Government of five years' standing — a 
 Government which its enemies declared to have 
 afforded the most disastrous example of misrule 
 ever known in the history of parliamentary legis- 
 lature, and which its friends descanted upon 
 blandly as a reign of peace and prosperity, and, 
 as it were, a perpetual symposium of recumbent 
 lambs and lions. Much in this crisis turned upon 
 the acceptance or rejection of an important 
 measure in the House of Lords: and it was then 
 that Lashmar girded up his loins, and stood up 
 in his place among the graybearded tribunes, and 
 spoke as men seldom speak in that austere as- 
 sembly, spoke with the fire and freshness, the
 
 "as the days change men change too." 22 1 
 
 vigour and the strong feeling of inexperienced 
 youth. The speech took his fellow-peers by sur- 
 prise — all the more since the young peer had 
 never had that training in the Lower House with- 
 out which it is popularly supposed that no man 
 can ever be a good debater. Lashmar awoke next 
 morning to find himself a politician with a re- 
 putation. The bill went back to the Commons: 
 and Mr. Nestorius, smarting under the sense of 
 defeat, threw himself upon the country, just at 
 that critical hour when his popularity was on the 
 wane. Nothing can be more fatal than to dissolve 
 Parliament on an ebb tide. The Conservatives 
 came in with triumph; to their own exceeding 
 surprise. 
 
 All this had happened two years ago, and 
 now Lord Lashmar was a power in the Upper 
 House, and occupied a position of some im- 
 portance in the political and social world. He 
 was one of those young men of mark about whose 
 matrimonial views people speculate freely. Society 
 wondered when and whom he would marry. Who 
 was there good enough for him in these days of 
 lamentable decadence? This question generally 
 resolved itself into a discussion as to which of 
 the heiresses of the year would have most money;
 
 2 22 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 since it appeared obvious that Lord Lashmar 
 would require money. 
 
 Seven years had gone by since Clarice Dane- 
 brook had played tennis on the lawn under Lady 
 Lashmar's windows; and nothing had come of 
 her ladyship's hopes in that direction. Clarice 
 and Lord Lashmar had seen a good deal of each 
 other in the London season which followed those 
 quiet autumn days at the Castle. They had 
 waltzed many a waltz, had met in many a crush 
 upon the staircases of Belgravia and May Fair. 
 They had even ridden side by side in the Row, 
 Job Danebrook jogging quietly beside them on 
 his weight-carrier, thinking of his latest improve- 
 ments in machinery, or the possibility of a strike 
 amongst his operatives. 
 
 People had said that young Lord Lashmar 
 Avas anchored already. The worldly Avise had 
 lauded Lady Lashmar's good management. Just 
 what one would expect from a daughter of old 
 Lady Pitland. But nothing came of these rides 
 and these waltzes after all. Lashmar went back 
 to the Continent without having compromised 
 himself by one too-tender word. There had been 
 magnetic looks and gentle hand pressures, on the 
 impulse of the moment, when they two stood side
 
 "AS THE DAYS CHANGE MEN CHANGE TOO." 2 23 
 
 by side amidst the crowd, nestling together, as it 
 were, under the pressure of that silken throng, in 
 an atmosphere overcharged with the scent of gar- 
 denias and tuberoses. There had been looks 
 that had thrilled the simple Middleshire maiden; 
 but nothing had come of those tender glances 
 from dark gray eyes, under heavy brown brows. 
 
 Lord Lashmar had gone away, deeming that 
 it was too soon for him to avow himself He 
 was not quite sure. He wanted time. And 
 Clarice was assuredly too young to know her 
 own mind. Precipitancy in these matters is al- 
 ways dangerous, often fatal; but there is seldom 
 harm in delay. 
 
 He went, and he left Clarice lamenting, like 
 Ariadne at Naxos: and, like Ariadne, she found 
 a consoler. 
 
 She had been very fond of Lord Lashmar in 
 her mild, almost infantine, way: and she had set 
 her heart upon being a peeress. Perhaps she 
 worshipped him chiefly because he was a noble- 
 man of ancient race and high standing. She had 
 seen him from the first invested with that aureole 
 which her mother had taught her to revere — the 
 golden halo of hereditary rank. And now he was 
 gone, and she felt heart-broken, disappointed,
 
 2 24 CINE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 crushed. Her mother also was disappointed, and 
 did not conceal her feehngs. She told Clarice 
 that Lord Lashmar had behaved shamefully, and 
 that he was unworthy of a moment's thought. 
 Notwithstanding which Clarice thought of him 
 during almost every moment of the day and 
 many a wakeful hour of the night; until the ap- 
 pearance of a new admirer of still higher rank 
 afforded a spurious kind of consolation. 
 
 The new admirer was Lord Carminow, a mar- 
 quis, and one of the most dissipated young men 
 in London or Paris; a young man who, a year 
 before he met Clarice, had the reputation of being 
 industriously engaged in drinking himself to death; 
 but who was said to have pulled up, on the brink 
 of the precipice, as it were, and to be in a fair 
 way to reform. His hand was still very shaky, 
 and he was still obliged to put cayenne pepper 
 in his brandy: but he drank less brandy, and his 
 hand was less tremulous than it had been last 
 year. 
 
 Lord Carminow met Clarice and her family 
 at Schwalbach, whither Mr. and Mrs. Danebrook 
 had taken their daughter with the idea that iron 
 would revive her broken spirits. Lord Carminow 
 was there, also in quest of iron. The marquis
 
 "as the days change men change too." 225 
 
 and the maiden drank the waters together, and 
 sat side by side to hear the band play in the 
 gardens of the little casino. He was not an in- 
 tellectual young man, and brain and nerves were 
 alike shattered by long-established habits of in- 
 temperance. At an age when other men are in 
 the morning of life, he was old and broken. It 
 was a melancholy spectacle, piteous in the eyes 
 of Mrs. Danebrook, who never for a moment 
 forgot that the poor shaking hand belonged to a 
 marquis. She was infinitely sorry for him, sor- 
 rowful, yet not without hope; for she told herself 
 and all her intimate friends that if he could only 
 marry a girl who loved him, he would no doubt 
 become a new man. He was already on the right 
 road. All he needed was to have his footsteps 
 sustained by a faithful arm, his days cheered by 
 sweet companionship. 
 
 After three weeks' acquaintance he proposed 
 to Clarice Danebrook, and was accepted, with a 
 kind of haughty carelessness on the part of the 
 young lady, as if she took this coronet as her 
 due, and despised the giver; with rapture on the 
 part of the mother; but by the father with con- 
 siderable and even outspoken reluctance. 
 
 "I suppose the world will say that my little 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. 1 5
 
 2 26 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 girl is making a fine match!" said honest Job 
 Danebrook, "but unless you mend your habits, 
 Lord Carminow, she will be one of the most 
 miserable wives in London." 
 
 Carminow swore that his habits were already 
 mended; and that with Clarice for his wife there 
 could be no fear of relapse. The wedding took 
 place late in the autumn, much to Lady Lash- 
 mar's indignation. She had done all in her power 
 to deter Clarice; had told her in plainest language 
 what manner of life Lord Carminow had been 
 leading since he left Oxford, and even at Oxford; 
 but Clarice had made up her mind to be a 
 marchioness, and she was marble. 
 
 "He is very good-natured, and he is a gentle- 
 man," she said; "I can afford to take my chance. 
 I shall do all I can to reform him." 
 
 "Vou!" cried her ladyship, surveying her from 
 head to foot with a scathing look. "Poor baby! 
 you little know what you are undertaking." 
 
 Clarice took her chance, and enrolled herself 
 for ever among the marchionesses of England. 
 She endured three and a half years of a most 
 intolerable existence, before Lord Carminow 
 finished that business of drinking himself to 
 death, which he had begun so blithely at Christ
 
 "as the days change men change too." 227 
 
 Church, in the dawn of manhood, when many of 
 his fellow -commoners took toast -and -water for 
 their dinner beverage. He was gone, and Job 
 Danebrook was gone, and Clarice, Marchioness 
 of Carminow, was established at Danebrook Hall, 
 inordinately rich, and as lovely as in her earliest 
 girlhood. Mrs. Danebrook lived with her daughter, 
 and had been left very well off by the iron-master; 
 but Clarice was mistress in all things, and a 
 mistress on a very grand scale, modelling herself 
 upon the great Lady Pitland, about whose little 
 ways she had heard so much from Lady Lashmar. 
 
 There had been no issue of that unhappy 
 union, and a distant cousin of Lord Carminow 
 had succeeded to the marquisate — an elderly 
 man with a large family, who swooped down upon 
 the estate like a flight of vultures, devouring 
 everything. There was only a pittance of seven 
 thousand a year for the widowed Marchioness, an 
 insignificant addition to her own enormous in- 
 come. The new marchioness and her daughters 
 thought she ought not to have taken that pit- 
 tance. 
 
 And now in these days of her widoAvhood 
 Clarice was again almost as a daughter to Lady 
 Lashmar, who had much need of solace and 
 
 »5*
 
 2 28 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 society in her present depressed state of health; 
 need also of much attendance, wanting to be 
 waited upon with exemplary patience, altogether 
 a hard and difficult mistress. 
 
 She had three slaves, who were always in at- 
 tendance upon her — Barker, the patient and 
 homely maid of thirty years' service; Celestine, 
 the expert Abigail, with deft fingers and faultless 
 taste in the confection of a cap or the arrange- 
 ment of a drapery, were it only the sweeping 
 folds of an Indian shawl worn over an invalid's 
 shoulders. Lady Lashmar had taken to dress as 
 elderly women dress when they have renounced 
 the pomps and vanities of the world. She rarely 
 wore anything but black brocade or velvet, and 
 she wore a cap, and generally had her shoulders 
 draped with some rich shawl. She looked dis- 
 tinguished still; but she always looked old, and 
 she very often looked ill. 
 
 Her third attendant occupied a nondescript 
 position, was hardly a servant, though she was 
 treated quite as cavalierly as the lowest servant, 
 and was not quite a companion. She was a tall 
 and slender girl, with a pale olive complexion, a 
 small head crowned with ebon hair, and the most 
 wonderful dark eyes that were ever seen out of
 
 "as the days change men change too." 229 
 
 Andalusia. She was always dressed with a severe 
 simplicity, in a black cashmere gown, high to the 
 throat, with a small linen collar, and a long plain 
 skirt. This was as much a uniform with her as 
 it was with the housemaids, Avhose afternoon 
 gowns were just of the same colour and fashion; 
 yet no one would have taken her for anything 
 but a lady. There was a distinctive grace and 
 dignity in every line of the tall, straight figure. 
 The head had the imperial carriage of a Cleo- 
 patra. 
 
 This was Stella Boldwood, now nineteen years 
 of age, and promoted within the last two years to 
 the post of her ladyship's reader and amanuensis. 
 
 Not of her own accord, but very reluctantly, 
 had Lady Lashmar accepted her stepson's pro/eg^e 
 in this intimate familiarity. The girl had been 
 forced upon her by circumstances and the offi- 
 ciousness of her other dependents. The time had 
 come when she, who had been a great reader, 
 had begun to feel the fatigue of reading too 
 much for her broken nerves — the time had come 
 when a chronic languor made it an effort to her 
 to hold a book or follow the lines of a page. She 
 was only fit to recline in her easy chair and listen 
 while some subdued voice read aloud to her, and
 
 230 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 the accents of that voice must be those of refine- 
 ment. 
 
 Celestine was, of course, impossible for English 
 reading, and the twang of her original faubourg 
 made even her French detestable to her lady- 
 ship's sensitive ear. Barker was worse. The 
 doctor suggested Stella, whom he had seen very 
 often when sitting in the cottage parlour, where 
 he dropped in once or twice a week to chat with 
 old Gabriel Verner. He had attended the old 
 man every winter during sharp attacks of bronchitis, 
 and he had seen how Stella excelled as a nurse. 
 
 "I know something of the young lady," said 
 Mr. Stokes. 
 
 "Please don't call her a young lady, my good 
 Stokes," remonstrated her ladyship, "she has been 
 brought up among servants, as a servant. You 
 must remember how I disapproved of my poor 
 stepson's folly about that girl." 
 
 "You may bring up a fox in a litter of terriers, 
 but he'll be Reynard all the same at the end of 
 the chapter," said Mr. Stokes. "That girl is a 
 lady. She has good blood in her veins, I'll go 
 bail. And she got her early training from the 
 late Lord Lashmar, who was one of the most in- 
 tellectual men I ever had the honour to know.
 
 "as the days change mex change too." 231 
 
 You can't undo that, Lady Lashmar. You may 
 order the girl to handle a broom and twirl a 
 mop, and she may think it her duty to obey you, 
 but she is a lady all the same." 
 
 "I think all girls are ladies now-a-days," re- 
 torted the invalid impatiently. "A great -wave of 
 refinement has swept over our people. Even 
 country girls are no longer buxom and sturdy 
 and active. They are all pallid, and languid, 
 and lady-like, stuffed with science primers and 
 fine notions, and they want to do as little work 
 as possible. I suppose we must call this paragon 
 of yours a lady-help. I want some one to read 
 to me, but unfortunately I dislike that girl of 
 yours." 
 
 "Prejudice, Lady Lashmar, idle prejudice," 
 replied Mr. Stokes, who always said what he 
 liked to her ladyship. "Let her make a beginning, 
 and if you find her disagreeable you can send 
 her about her business." 
 
 "Of course," answered Lady Lashmar. "Per- 
 haps she may be rather more endurable than a 
 stranger. I abhor strangers." 
 
 So Stella was told one morning that her 
 mission would be to act as Lady Lashmar's
 
 232 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 reader and amanuensis until further notice; and 
 from that hour she was a slave. 
 
 Her life had been easy enough of late years, 
 easy even to pleasantness. The rule of the un- 
 compromising Middleham had been made very 
 light for her, when that autocratic personage found 
 that she was willing, industrious and conscientious, 
 and that whatever she did was well done. She 
 had been able, by early rising, to get her work 
 done before the one o'clock dinner; and then she 
 had been allowed to do what she liked with her 
 afternoons, always provided she reappeared at 
 the five o'clock tea, which of late she had taken 
 with Mrs. Barker in the little room upstairs, a 
 priceless privilege, since it spared her the gossip 
 and uncongenial joviality of the still-room. Little 
 by little the girl had drifted, as it were, into a 
 life of her own, apart from those servants whose 
 existence the dowager wished her to share. She 
 had been among them for a little while, but she 
 had never been one of them. As she grew into 
 girlhood the difference between her and them be- 
 came more sharply defined. They felt that she 
 could never be one of them, and her presence 
 became an embarrassment. They were very glad 
 that she preferred solitude to their friendly conj-
 
 "as the days change men change too." 2^^ 
 
 pany, and a quiet cup of tea in Barker's room to 
 their own noisy meal. She had always such old- 
 fashioned ways, they said. Strange that a child 
 should be such a blue-stocking. But of course 
 that was all the late Lord Lashmar's doing. He 
 had brought her up as no child ever was brought 
 up before. She had been dry-nursed upon 
 books. 
 
 As the years wore on Stella was almost happy. 
 The afternoon hours of every day were spent with 
 Gabriel Verner. He was old and feeble, and 
 sometimes very prosy; but he was a mine of in- 
 formation, he loved learning for learning's sake, 
 and he loved Stella. He carried on her education 
 from the point at which Lord Lashmar had left 
 off. He cultivated her love of the classics, read- 
 ing Homer and Virgil and Horace with her again 
 and again, dwelling on the passages he loved, in- 
 graining their beauties into the very mind of his 
 pupil. He taught her French and German, and 
 together they read the classics in both languages. 
 They had nothing to distract them from their 
 books, no visitors, no pleasures. In summer time 
 they sat in a quiet spot on the edge of the river, 
 a little nook below the towing path, out of every- 
 one's way, under a willow which Lashmar had
 
 234 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 loved. In winter they sat opposite each other 
 by the trimly kept hearth, like two old cronies. 
 
 It is wonderful how much reading may be got 
 through in seven years by a young enthusiast 
 and a veteran student, when the world has no 
 claims upon either, and offers no temptations to 
 youth or age. Stella had read more than many 
 fairly cultivated men of forty, when she was 
 suddenly called upon to do suit and service to 
 Lady Lashmar. From this time her regular studies 
 with Gabriel Verner were at an end, and those 
 gentle cares of hers which had made his old age 
 so easy had now to be performed under difficulties. 
 She could only steal away from the castle now 
 and then for a brief visit to her old friend , just 
 time enough to see to his comforts and to talk 
 to his landlady, who was kindly but stupid, and 
 whom Stella had been gradually training into 
 proper carefulness of her lodger. 
 
 "You do spoil the old gentleman so, miss," 
 remonstrated the good soul. 
 
 "Old people require a little spoiling, Mrs. 
 Chipp. But nobody could spoil Mr. Verner. He 
 is so good and so unselfish." 
 
 "Well, miss, nobody can deny that he is a 
 nice easy gentleman to get on with, and if I
 
 "as the days change men change too." 235 
 
 wasn't afraid of his setting the house on fire I 
 should say he was the best lodger I ever had; 
 much better than they young curates as most 
 people set such store by; and a permanence too, 
 which the best of curates never was." 
 
 "You must be more attentive to him than 
 ever, Mrs. Chipp, now that I am so seldom here," 
 urged Stella; and Mrs. Chipp promised that the 
 student should lack no fostering care. 
 
 It was with a rebellious heart that Stella 
 entered Lady Lashmar's morning room on the 
 first day of her new service. Mr. Stokes had 
 endeavoured to awaken her sympathy for the 
 stern dowager. He had hinted to her that the 
 disease from which Lady Lashmar suffered must 
 sooner or later be fatal , that all the rest of her 
 life must be spent under the shadow of affliction. 
 
 "She is very much to be pitied, poor soul," 
 said the kindly Stokes; "all the more so, per- 
 haps, because she is not the kind of woman to 
 invite pity." 
 
 Yet even after this appeal Stella felt nothing 
 but aversion as she stood, tall and straight as a 
 lily stalk, at the foot of her ladyship's sofa. 
 
 She was thinking of that summer afternoon 
 seven years ago when Lady Lashmar had sat be-
 
 2^6 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 side her bed, swathed in inky crape, stern, piti- 
 less, and had told her of her benefactor's death 
 — how all life and this bright world had changed 
 to darkness at the sound of that cruel voice. 
 Yes, it was the same face — cold, faultless, un- 
 beautiful, looking at her with disdainful eyes. 
 
 She had not been face to face with Lady 
 Lashmar since that dreadful day. She had lived 
 under her roof and eaten her bread, and had felt 
 the sting of her tyranny; btit the mistress of the 
 Castle had been no more visible to her than the 
 Mikado to the meanest of his subjects. And now 
 she looked at her oppressor thoughtfully in the 
 June sunlight, noting the changes time had 
 wrought. 
 
 Yes, it was the same countenance, in no wise 
 softened by affliction; but the hair was white, 
 and there were traces of suffering and of prema- 
 ture age. 
 
 "I require a person to read to me for some 
 hours daily, sometimes even late at night; and I 
 am told that you have contrived to educate your- 
 self with Mr. Verner's help, and that you know 
 how to read aloud. Is this so?" 
 
 "I have read aloud to Mr. Verner," the girl 
 answered quietly.
 
 "as the days change men change too." 237 
 
 "Often?" 
 
 "Habitually." 
 
 There was no waste of words on either side. 
 
 "Then you can begin at once. There are 
 my books" {pointing to a revolving bookstand 
 within reach of the sofa, a stand which held 
 about forty volumes). "Invalids are very capri- 
 cious, and require change of mental food. You 
 can begin with Charles Lamb, Elia's Essays — 
 that one upon old china, for instance. I am in a 
 lazy mood to-day, and would rather not be called 
 upon to think." 
 
 She was lying on a luxurious sofa, propped 
 up with pillows. She spent a considerable por- 
 tion of every day in this recumbent position, but 
 she was not confined to her sofa or to her room; 
 and when there was company at the Castle, or 
 when her son was at home, she generally dined 
 downstairs, and held her own with the old air of 
 supremacy which had been to her as a royal 
 robe. She was not easily to be beaten even by 
 bodily pain, or the vague languors of obscure 
 disease. She meant to make a good fight to 
 the end. 
 
 Stella seated herself in a low chair a little 
 way from the sofa, and began to read. She read
 
 238 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Lamb for an hour, and then she was told to lay 
 aside Lamb and to take up a volume of travels 
 in Bokhara, a new book which her ladyship had 
 just received; and when the travels wearied she 
 was told to resume the last poem by Browning, 
 at the page which her ladyship had marked. 
 
 She was allowed to read on like a machine. 
 She read for three hours without respite, and 
 then she was told that she might go. 
 
 "You read very well!" said her ladyship, 
 with cold approval; "I daresay I shall want you 
 again late in the evening. Stay, you can arrange 
 my pillows before you go." 
 
 Stella bent over the white Marie-Antoinette 
 head, and with light and careful touch adjusted 
 the heaped-up pillows, and then, without a word 
 of thanks from the invalid, she left the room. 
 
 As she went out by one door Barker entered 
 by another. 
 
 "Yes, I think she will do!" said Lady Lash- 
 mar. "She has a sympathetic voice, and reads 
 well. This is one of my bad days. Barker; I 
 shall not leave my room." 
 
 At nine in the evening Stella was summoned 
 again. The lamplit room with its profusion of 
 roses seemed a revelation of long- forgotten beauty
 
 "as the days change men change too," 239 
 
 and elegance, after the puritanical plainness of 
 the servant's quarters. The golden-brown brocade 
 curtains and clouds of Indian muslin draping the 
 fine old windows, the rich carmine of old Sevres 
 vases and candelabra, the Chippendale whatnots 
 crowded with richly bound books, the low chairs 
 and dainty little tables offering every possible 
 form of convenience for books, or flowers, or cup 
 and saucer; the old Indian screen and tall young 
 palms in Satsuma bowls. Such surroundings 
 were new to Stella, after the prim commonness 
 of the housekeeper's parlour, with its horsehair 
 sofa and pembroke table; and yet she felt more 
 at home here than in Mrs. Middleham's room. 
 
 Lady Lashmar looked wan and faded in the 
 lamplight, and the sickly white of her complexion 
 was accentuated by the rich dark tints in her 
 brown plush tea gown. A diamond and sapphire 
 brooch fastened her fichu of old English lace, 
 and the semi-transparent hands glittered with 
 costliest rings. There was here no intention of 
 letting down the pride of womanhood or station, 
 even under the grip of a fatal malady. 
 
 "You can go on with Balaustian!" she said. 
 
 Not a word more. No praise or thanks for 
 the afternoon's work; no invitation to take a cup
 
 240 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 of tea from the old silver salver, placed handily 
 on the delicious little tea-table beside her lady- 
 ship's sofa. Jonathan Boldwood's daughter was 
 to be treated only as a serf beneath that roof. 
 She had been reared there according to the laws 
 of slavery; and there is no reason that a slave 
 should be treated any better because he happens 
 to have cultivated his intellect. 
 
 She read till eleven, without any sign of 
 fatigue. She had so trained herself during those 
 long afternoons when she had sat on a stool at 
 the old student's feet, reading the authors he 
 loved; saving the poor old faded eyes. She had 
 read on unconscious of the passage of time, just 
 as she read now, absorbed by her own delight in 
 Browning's verse, with its undertones of deepest 
 thought. 
 
 At eleven Lady Lashmar dismissed her, with 
 briefest good-night. 
 
 Her duties as reader went on for months, 
 without variation. She spent at least half of 
 every day in Lady Lashmar's rooms, and was 
 often summoned late at night to sit beside her 
 ladyship's bed, and to read till three or four 
 o'clock in the morning. She performed her task 
 with a cold placidity which was agreeable to the
 
 "as the days change men change too." 241 
 
 highbred dowager, who detested fuss, and would 
 have been disgusted by servility or officiousness. 
 Later on Lady Lashmar allowed her slave to 
 write all her letters to indifferent persons, and 
 sometimes even a letter of friendship; but the 
 amanuensis was never employed in writing to her 
 ladyship's son. Those letters were always in the 
 mother's penmanship. 
 
 Stella had filled this office for nearly two 
 years, and had been of the utmost service to 
 Lady Lashmar. Yet the stern dowager had but 
 in the smallest measure relented of her original 
 aversion from her stepson's protegee. She used 
 her as a companion and slave, but she never 
 forgot that this thoughtful-looking girl with the 
 large dark eyes was Jonathan Boldwood's daugh- 
 ter, and that the venom of Radicalism ran in 
 those blue veins which showed in such delicate 
 tracery upon the slim white hands and on the 
 ivory pallor of the forehead. The old prejudice 
 still existed in full force, and the dowager in no- 
 wise relaxed her hauteur because Stella Bold- 
 wood had become useful to her. In her inmost 
 heart she was angry with the girl for the very 
 gifts which made her an invaluable companion. 
 She resented that force of character which had 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. 1 6
 
 242 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 enabled the child-dependent to rise superior to 
 her surroundings, and to make herself a lady in 
 manners and superior to most ladies in education. 
 She was angry at that native grace, which gave 
 elegance even to the black merino gown which 
 was the livery of servitude. Nothing could vul- 
 garise Stella, or reduce her to the level of her 
 ladyship's other dependents. Barker had one 
 day ventured to suggest that as the girl was now 
 virtually her ladyship's companion she should 
 have some prettier gowns — a black silk, for in- 
 stance, or at any rate, one of those fine French 
 alpacas which Celestine always wore, a material 
 which combined all the lustre and softness of 
 silk with the merit of never wearing out. But 
 Lady Lashmar replied angrily that the girl was 
 to wear such gowns as the housemaids' wore and 
 no other. 
 
 "She is quite vain enough as it is," said her 
 ladyship. "I believe she spends hours in dress- 
 ing that hair of hers, and training her eye- 
 brows." 
 
 This was a cruel attack upon Stella's pen- 
 cilled brows, whose bold clear line gave such 
 character to the low broad forehead. 
 
 Barker was indignant at this ungenerous
 
 "as the days change men change too." 243 
 
 treatment of a girl who sat up till two or three 
 o'clock in the morning three times a week on an 
 average to beguile the tedium of her ladyship's 
 wakeful nights. But Stella made no complaint 
 against the inevitable black merino gown. She 
 was glad when for the convenience of Lady Lash- 
 mar she was transferred to a pretty little bed- 
 chamber on the principal floor, close to Barker's 
 den, where she now took all her meals, and 
 which she was allowed to use as her own sitting- 
 room. She was thus removed entirely from all 
 association with the other servants: and Barker 
 was one of those kindly souls who with but the 
 slightest modicum of education have all the in- 
 stincts of good breeding. Stella had never re- 
 volted against the society of Barker, while Barker's 
 niece Betsy was always dear to her as the friend 
 of her childhood. 
 
 And now it was the end of September, and 
 Lord Lashmar and a little knot of distinguished 
 visitors were expected at the Castle, some intent 
 on the slaughter of the pheasants, others only de- 
 siring rest and respite after the fatigues of a Lon- 
 don season. 
 
 Among these latter was Mr. Nestorius, the 
 great party-leader, who having retired from poli- 
 
 i6*
 
 244 O^E THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 tical life finally, after the defeat of his Ministry, 
 now, like Dante's swimmer, looked back, breath- 
 less after striving with the waves, upon the raging 
 sea of politics from the calm shore of domesti- 
 city. 
 
 Nestorius had been a protege of Lady Pitland 
 when his brilliant career was in its dawn; and 
 the friendship with that wonderful old lady and 
 her family had never been interrupted, albeit 
 their political opinions were as the poles asunder. 
 And now that the politician's distinguished career 
 was a closed book, and that he had withdrawn 
 into the haven of private life, without the faintest 
 intention of ever refitting his damaged craft again 
 to encounter the buffets of ocean, it pleased Lady 
 Lashmar that the great man should enjoy some 
 portion of his well-earned leisure under her roof. 
 
 She talked of him beforehand more than of 
 any other of her guests, and arranged that the 
 very best of the best rooms should be given to 
 him. 
 
 "There are cases in which rank counts for 
 nothing," she said. "Mr. Nestorius must always 
 be first everywhere. He is not only great as a 
 statesman; he has won his laurels as a poet, and 
 the interpreter of classic poetry; and our respect
 
 "as the days change men change too." 245 
 
 is all the more due to him since he has retired 
 from office for ever — always a melancholy fact to 
 consider when a career has been so great, although 
 so mistaken." 
 
 "Is there no possibility of Mr. Nestorius re- 
 turning to public life, whenever the Liberals come 
 into power again?" asked Stella simply. 
 
 Lady Lashmar gave her a look which ought 
 to have frozen her. 
 
 "The Liberals have seen the last of their mis- 
 rule," she said. "The country has been taught a 
 lesson which it is not likely to forget." 
 
 "Yet history shows that people always do 
 forget," argued Stella. "Opinion follows opinion, 
 as wave follows wave; the world would stagnate 
 if it were otherwise." 
 
 "Pray do not argue. I do not care for Mr. 
 Verner's ideas at secondhand," said Lady Lashmar 
 haughtily. 
 
 She encouraged the girl to talk sometimes, 
 snubbed her mercilessly at other times, and was 
 never really kind. Yet it so happened that this 
 kind of life, slavery as it was, suited Stella's tem- 
 perament. Good books and gracious surround- 
 ings were at present her only idea of bliss in this 
 world: and as Lady Lashmar's companion she
 
 246 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 had these in abundance — the best of books, old 
 and new, elegant rooms to live in, and the right 
 to wander at will in gardens or park during her 
 brief intervals of leisure. For the rest she was 
 penniless, had no remuneration for her labour, 
 not even the wages of an under-housemaid; and 
 now that Mr. Nestorius and other great people 
 were bidden to the Castle, Stella knew that her 
 servitude would be in no way altered, that she 
 would see little or nothing of those great ones. 
 She sat at the little writing table in the window 
 of her ladyship's morning room, waiting for further 
 orders, while Lady Lashmar and the beautiful 
 widow. Lady Carminow, sat on each side of the 
 hearth, brightened by the glow of a small wood 
 fire, and discussed the expected visitors. 
 
 "Remember, you are on no account to desert 
 me while these people are in the house," said 
 Lady Lashmar, with an imperative air, almost as 
 a mother talking to a daughter. "I shall expect 
 you to take nearly all the trouble of receiving 
 them off my hands; you must be almost as the 
 mistress of the house." 
 
 "It will be very nice," answered Clarice, with 
 her slow, dreamy smile. "I adore Mr. Nestorius, 
 though I know he did his utmost to ruin this
 
 "as the days change men change too." 247 
 
 country when he was in power; but he is such an 
 orator, the finest I am told, since Lord Chatham; 
 and he is such a thoroughly poetical man, and 
 such a scholar! His translation of ^Eschylus is 
 quite too lovely. I am sure it must be ever so 
 much nicer than the original." 
 
 Stella's lips moved, and a little impulsive 
 movement disturbed the repose of her attitude. 
 She had discussed this translation of Mr. Nesto- 
 rius's with Gabriel Verner. They had gone over 
 it line by line and it had seemed to them that 
 the Agamemnon of Mr. Nestorius was a treason 
 against the Greek playwright, so fully had the 
 statesman given the reins to his own vivid ima- 
 gination; but it was not for her to give utterance 
 to her doubts in that room, or to air her know- 
 ledge of Greek before Lady Carminow. 
 
 "I am getting some new frocks on purpose 
 for your people," said Clarice, who was fonder of 
 millinery than of literature. 
 
 The only books she really enjoyed were French 
 novels, and the newest school of English poetry. 
 Her intellectual fibre had a certain limpness which 
 required to be shocked and startled into atten- 
 tion. She went to sleep over Tennyson or Brown- 
 ing, and George Eliot made her head ache.
 
 248 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "Who is making your frocks?" asked Lady 
 Lashmar, faintly interested. 
 
 "Mrs. Marshall." 
 
 "She is very good, but a desperate robber. 
 Her prices are iniquitous." 
 
 "But she drapes a gown so deliciously. There 
 is an indescribable something which is worth any 
 money she likes to charge. I never grumble at 
 her bills. I have even gone so far as to shake 
 hands with her when I have wanted a gown in a 
 desperate hurry." 
 
 "How long is it since you have seen Victo- 
 rian?" asked Lady Lashmar absently, as if her 
 thoughts had wandered ever so far from Mrs. 
 Marshall's bills. 
 
 "Oh! ages and ages; not since the spring. 
 Yes, once in the summer, at a crush at the For- 
 eign Office. We had five minutes together on the 
 stairs; five minutes that brought back the thought 
 of old times, before I married poor Lord Carmi- 
 now. I felt as if I were a girl again." 
 
 "You are not much more than a girl. He 
 was very attentive, I suppose?" 
 
 "Oh! he said some rather sweet things; but 
 sweet things are only the small change of society 
 nowadays. They mean no more than the crystal-
 
 "as the days change men change too." 249 
 
 lised violets one nibbles at dessert. Lord Lash- 
 mar is a great man, quite absorbed in politics." 
 
 "I hope he will never become a walking blue- 
 book like some of them!" said Lady Lashmar 
 vaguely. "I am proud that he should make his 
 mark in the world; but I should like to see his 
 domestic happiness secure before I die." 
 
 "Dearest Lady Lashmar, pray do not talk of 
 dying. You have a long life still before you, I 
 hope." 
 
 "I should be glad to hope so too, if I could, 
 Clarice; but I can't. I am obliged to adopt the 
 Horatian philosophy — abjure extended hopes, and 
 enjoy my life as much as I can in the present. I 
 want to see my son married, and married as I 
 should wish!" 
 
 "That is just the one thing you must not 
 hope for," answered Clarice, with a touch of 
 bitterness, as if that placid temper of hers were 
 faintly stirred by the memory of an old wrong. 
 "Men never marry to please their fathers and 
 mothers; and the sons who have had ideal fathers 
 and mothers are almost sure to marry badly. It 
 is only the men who have seen a cat-and-dog life 
 exemplified in their parents who are careful in 
 choosing their own wives,"
 
 250 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "It would break my heart if Victorian were to 
 marry beneath him." 
 
 "Oh! I don't suppose he will do that" said 
 Clarice, with supreme hauteur. "He will marry 
 in his own rank, I have no doubt. He has none 
 of those horrid low instincts which lead young 
 men to make friends of their stablemen and to 
 admire chorus-girls. But he may marry a woman 
 who has been more talked about than you would 
 like; although as so many women of fashion are 
 talked about nowadays that would hardly be 
 supposed to matter." 
 
 "It would matter very much to me, Clarice," 
 answered the dowager sternly, "I wonder you 
 can talk so lightly!" 
 
 "I only talk as other people talk. Things do 
 not count now as they used when my mother 
 was young and Prince Albert was alive. Is it 
 not strange that one good man's death seems to 
 have loosened all the bonds that held society 
 together? At least, mother says it is so. She 
 puts our moral decadence all down to the un- 
 timely death of the Prince Consort." 
 
 Stella was often a quiet hearer during such 
 conversations. Her presence counted for nothing. 
 Lady Lashmar and Clarice talked as freely before
 
 "as the days change men change too." 251 
 
 her as if she had been a footman. She was not 
 of their rank or of their world, and so was in a 
 manner non-existent. Lady Carminow would 
 honour her with a passing nod as she entered 
 the room — the most infinitesimal thing in nods — 
 and another as she left; but in the interval be- 
 tween entering and leaving the room the lovely- 
 widow appeared utterly unconscious of her ex- 
 istence. Lady Carminow, be it observed, was 
 more thoroughly a peeress than if she had been 
 born in the purple. The consciousness of her 
 exalted rank never left her. It was for this she 
 had suffered the slow agonies of union with a 
 man she loathed; for this she had shrunk shud- 
 dering from the ravings of delirium tremens, 
 endured the unspeakable horrors of habitual in- 
 temperance; and she was bent upon making the 
 utmost of the privilege she had won so dearly. 
 The once gentle and pliant Clarice had become 
 the haughtiest of women, but as she had still the 
 placid Montmorency temper — the constitutional 
 amiability of the lymphatic lily-complexioned 
 order of womankind — people managed to endure 
 her pride of rank, and even the oppressive sense 
 of her wealth. 
 
 Between Lady Carminow and Stella there
 
 252 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 was a silent antagonism. Neither had forgotten 
 that day in the library when Stella had shrunk 
 from Clarice's pitying touch as if it had been 
 the sting of an adder. There had been no 
 renewal of compassionate feeling on Lady Car- 
 niinow's side. She was jealous of those gifts 
 which made Stella such a valuable companion 
 for Lady Lashmar. She resented the girl's 
 superior cultivation, and spoke of her sneeringly 
 as a blue-stocking. 
 
 "She can read Greek and Latin. How very 
 absurd ! It is only a smattering, of course." 
 
 "Old Mr. Verner tells me that she knows 
 more than many a B.A.," said Lady Lashmar. 
 "My poor foolish stepson crammed her with 
 learning from the time she was able to read. 
 She has been nourished upon books." 
 
 "What a pity she cannot get a degree. I 
 wonder you don't send her to Girton or Nune- 
 ham. She would be more in her place there 
 than in this house." 
 
 "She is very useful to me. I could not pos- 
 sibly spare her." 
 
 "Oh, but companions can be got by the hun- 
 dred. You have only to choose from a column 
 of advertisements. There is a fresh column every
 
 "as the days change men change too." 253 
 
 morning in the Times. I have often looked, 
 thinking I should like to get some one for mother; 
 some one who would amuse her all day, and 
 take her quite off my hands, don't you know." 
 
 "Needy young women in want of homes may 
 be had in shoals, I have no doubt," answered 
 Lady Lashmar; "but it is not easy to get a really 
 good reader. Stella has a sympathetic voice, and 
 reads well. I could not do without her." 
 
 "She is not simpaiica with me," said Clarice, 
 languidly. "I am ' very sensitive about my sur- 
 roundings. I should not like your Stella in my 
 room after midnight. Those great black eyes 
 and that pale face would frighten me. I should 
 have an idea that I was going to be murdered." 
 
 Lady Lashmar smiled, as at the nonsense 
 talk of a beautiful child. She was very fond of 
 Clarice, whose loveliness gladdened her eye, and 
 whose intellectual inferiority was a perpetual 
 compliment to her understanding. She was hop- 
 ing great things from the coming October, which 
 would bring Victorian and Clarice together day 
 after day in the easy-going intercourse of a 
 country house. Her own breaking health would 
 be an excuse for leaving her son and the lovely 
 widow very much to their own devices. Lady
 
 2 54 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Carminow would take the place of the mistress 
 of the house, and Lashmar would have to consult 
 her about everything. Could he resist so much 
 beauty and sweetness? He had been proof 
 against those charms once: or he had shilly- 
 shallied and had lost his chance. If he had not 
 been proof, if it had been a case of shilly-shally 
 only, and he had been hard hit all the time, how 
 gladly would he seize the golden opportunity 
 which his mother had prepared for him! It is 
 true that he might have made opportunities for 
 himself during the years in which Lady Car- 
 minow had been a widow. But there are men 
 who will make no effort in these matters, who 
 require to have fortune flung into their laps. 
 And then Lashmar had been absorbed by 
 politics ever since that famous speech which had 
 helped to secure the majority that overthrew the 
 late Cabinet. 
 
 Lord Lashmar arrived, fresh from a yachting 
 excursion in the Hebrides, bronzed and bearded, 
 broad shouldered, muscular, the manliest of young 
 men, with a fresh open-air look about him, yet 
 intellectual withal. It was a fine face, as even 
 Stella was fain to confess to herself as she with-
 
 "as the days change men change too." 255 
 
 drew from the morning room after his lordship's 
 arrival, leaving mother and son together. 
 
 Yes, it was a fine face, but far from a pleasant 
 face," Stella thought. There was the haughty ex- 
 pression of his grandmother's old Northumbrian 
 race — the Fitz Rollos — who claimed to be de- 
 scended in a direct line from those Norsemen 
 who swooped like a flight of sea-birds on that 
 bleak coast in the dim beginning of English 
 history. 
 
 Stella had been told about those Norse rob- 
 bers of the long-ago, from whom it was such un- 
 speakable honour to be descended. Some innate 
 taint of Radicalism made her slow to perceive 
 the glory of such lineage; but she thought to-day 
 that Victorian, Lord Lashmar, had just the kind 
 of face which would have looked its best under a 
 Norseman's helmet, or at the prow of a piratical 
 craft, with roughened hair blown by the north 
 sea wind, and keen eyes looking landward, ready 
 for rapine and carnage, so soon as that light foot 
 should strike the shore. 
 
 She could fancy him holding his own valiantly 
 amongst the prosy old gentlemen in the House 
 of Lords. 
 
 He gave her a distant bow as she passed
 
 256 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 him, a salutation which she acknowledged with 
 an almost imperceptible bend of the long, slim 
 throat, while the look in those dark eyes of hers 
 expressed absolute dislike. She had not forgotten 
 his parting speech in the library seven years ago; 
 or the air with which he had flung open the door 
 and told her to "march." He would tell her to 
 march again perhaps, if she should happen to be 
 in his way at any time. This was the first time 
 they two had met face to face since that day. 
 
 He looked after her wonderingly till the 
 portiere fell behind her, and he and his mother 
 were alone. 
 
 "Your protegee has improved!" he said. "She 
 is not half so ugly as she was seven years ago." 
 
 "Pray don't call her my protegee. You know 
 she is a legacy from poor Hubert, an incubus 
 which his Quixotism has imposed upon me." 
 
 "But I take it she is useful to you, or you 
 would have sent her about her business before 
 now. She fetches and carries for those two lazy 
 old maids of yours — Barker and Celestine — I 
 suppose?" 
 
 "She reads very well; that is the only way in 
 which she is useful to me. And now, Victorian, 
 let us talk of yourself and of the future. I hope
 
 "as the days change men ch.\nge 'T^^o." 257 
 
 you are going to stay here all the winter — till the 
 House re-opens!" 
 
 "Would you like me to stay?" 
 
 "Of course I would, dearest. What have I to 
 live for but your society? Life is a blank when 
 you are away from me." 
 
 "That is hard, mother dear, when I have been 
 so much away! You make me feel that I have 
 been an undutiful son." 
 
 "No, no! you are not to be the slave of a too 
 exacting love. Mothers are even more tiresome 
 than wives. It was right that you should see the 
 world : but now that you have travelled, and have 
 seen so much, the time has come for settling 
 down quietly, for assuming your right position as 
 an English nobleman. All our greatest statesmen 
 have been men who spent their lives at home. 
 Our people are jealous of Continental influences, 
 and dislike Continental habits." 
 
 "My dear mother, I am not such a caterer for 
 popularity as to fashion my manners or my life 
 to please the mob; but I shall be glad to spend 
 more of my days with you now — now that I am 
 growing middle-aged." 
 
 He had hesitated before those concluding 
 words; saddened by the thought that the limit of 
 
 One Thins Needful. I. IJ
 
 !58 /. 
 
 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 those days which his mother and he were to 
 spend together was already marked by Fate, and 
 seemed to him now to lie within a definite 
 distance. There was no longer that vagueness of 
 prospect which makes the horizon of life seem 
 infinite. He could not flatter himself, in the face 
 of obvious decay, that his mother would live to 
 the green old age of Lady Pitland, who had ruled 
 the world of fashion at seventy, and had been a 
 power in her own little world till she was ninety. 
 
 "That is a good hearing!" said Lady Lash- 
 mar, with a smile which altered the whole cha- 
 racter of her face — the mother's adoring smile. 
 "And you will marry, I hope, very soon. No 
 anchor like a good wife." 
 
 "I am not in a hurry to be anchored," an- 
 swered Lashmar, laughing; "but I have a re- 
 ceptive mind and am ready to fall in love at 
 short notice now that politics are off my mind. 
 What have you here in the way of beauty, mother 
 mine?" 
 
 "The Bishop of Southborough is to be here 
 in a week or so, with his two daughters, pretty, 
 fresh young girls, and both musical. I should not 
 object to either as a daughter-in-law. Then there 
 is old Lord Banbury's daughter, the Diana of
 
 "as the days change men ckangc: too." 259 
 
 Northamptonshire, a frank open-hearted girl, and 
 a superb horsewoman. She comes with Mrs. 
 Mulciber, an old friend of mine." 
 
 "I am glad you haven't got Banbury himself. 
 He is a dreadful old driveller. Lady Sophia is a 
 good sort of girl, but she has made herself a great 
 deal too public, and is written about in the sport- 
 ing papers as if she were a jockey. I think one 
 of them called her 'Our Soph.' 'Our Soph's per- 
 formances with the Pytchley have been creating 
 the usual sensation,' or something of that kind. 
 I don't think you would like our Soph for a 
 daughter-in-law." 
 
 "Old Lord Banbury was a friend of your 
 grandfather!" 
 
 "Was he? Then he must have been one of 
 the few friends my grandfather was allowed to 
 choose for himself. Lady Pitland would never 
 have tolerated him on her list. Well, mother; 
 who else is coming? 
 
 "There is Mr. Nestorius. The rest are all 
 your own invitations." 
 
 "Oh! my invitations are rather ad capiandum, 
 given on the spur of the moment. There is Mr. 
 Ponsonby, the famous Q. C. and Conservative 
 Member — Ponsonby who saved Mrs. Brownrigg, 
 
 i7»
 
 26o ' ONL. THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 don't you know, in the starving case that made 
 such a sensation seven or eight years ago. Pon- 
 sonby began life as a Rad, but is now a High 
 Church Tory — swears by Laud, adores Pusey, and 
 weeps when the disestablishment of the Irish 
 Church is mentioned; attributes all our Irish 
 troubles to that destructive measure. I wonder 
 how he and Nestorius will get on under the same 
 roof?" 
 
 "They have been under the same roof before," 
 said her ladyship, 
 
 "Yes; but that was a bigger roof, and they 
 were not upon company manners." 
 
 "Mr. Nestorius is always charming. Whom 
 else have you asked?" 
 
 "Captain Vavasour, the society novelist, and 
 his wife; such a delightful little woman, airy, 
 fascinating, eccentric, audacious — just like one of 
 her husband's novels. I think she must sit to 
 him for all his heroines!" 
 
 "Perhaps she writes his books?" 
 
 "Not she! Aurelia is one of those delicious 
 creatures who never do anything for themselves; 
 not so much as to fill in a card of invitation, or 
 run up to the nursery to look at a sick baby. 
 Vavasour writes all her letters and fills in all her
 
 "as the days change men change too." 261 
 
 cards, and she sends her maid to ask after her 
 babies. She would not be half so graceful and 
 charming if she were not the quintessence of 
 selfishness. I once heard a woman ask her what 
 her gown cost. 'Haven't the least idea!' she an- 
 swered sweetly. 'I never ask what things are 
 going to cost lest I should be afraid to order 
 them.'" 
 
 "Then your Vavasours are in debt, I con- 
 clude." 
 
 " Enormously." 
 
 "I feel sure that I shall loathe this person." 
 
 "I doubt it. But please don't show your 
 aversion in any case. Don't freeze the poor little 
 thing with the pride of the Fitz RoUos. That 
 would be to break a butterfly upon a wheel." 
 
 "I don't suppose she would care. A woman 
 of that kind is always case-hardened. Did I tell 
 you that Lady Carminow will be here for a week 
 or two? She wanted to run in and out as she 
 used when she was a girl, but I have insisted 
 upon her sending over her trunks. She will help 
 to amuse Mr. Nestorius." 
 
 "No doubt. Mr. Nestorius is impressionable, 
 and a widower. Lady Carminow would make 
 him a capital wife."
 
 262 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 "My dear Lashmar, he is old enough to be 
 her father." 
 
 "Greatness is of no age. Nestorius at fifty is 
 more attractive than the common herd of young 
 men; and for a woman of Lady Carminow's am- 
 bitious temper he would be especially attractive. 
 She has secured her coronet. She has made 
 herself a marchioness, and no one can unmake 
 her. The next step would be to secure an ex- 
 prime minister for her husband and slave." 
 
 "That is all nonsense. Clarice is full of 
 romance." 
 
 "Her marriage with a notorious sot would 
 imply as much." 
 
 "It was a noble feeling which prompted that 
 unhappy union. She wanted to reclaim him." 
 
 "She wanted to be Lady Carminow. Don't 
 look so unhappy, mother. I like your favourite 
 well enough. I once almost thought myself in 
 love with her, but that was when I was young 
 and foolish." 
 
 "You need not be afraid of her fascinations 
 now," said Lady Lashmar, piqued at his manifest 
 indifference. "Clarice is much too well off as a 
 widow to wish to change her condition." 
 
 "Precisely. She is one of • those sensible
 
 "as the days change men change too." 263 
 
 women -who can estimate the value of everything. 
 She knew the value of a marquis's coronet: so 
 much for the strawberry-leaves, so much for the 
 pearls. She knows the exact value of her posi- 
 tion as Lord Carminow's childless widow. It is 
 not very much, bar the title. Take my word 
 for it, mother, she would marry again — to better 
 herself." 
 
 Lady Lashmar did not argue the point. She 
 was bent upon masking her batteries, if possible. 
 Men are such kittle cattle; and if Lashmar once 
 took it into his head that she was bent on match- 
 making he would set his face against Clarice and 
 all her charms. She would trust to the chapter 
 of accidents, and to Lady Carminow's beauty, 
 which was in its zenith. 
 
 That beauty came almost as a surprise on 
 Lashmar by-and-by, when Clarice sauntered into 
 the library at afternoon tea-time. He was un- 
 prepared for so much loveliness, albeit he had 
 talked with her last June for five minutes on the 
 stairs at the Foreign Office. That girlish loveli- 
 ness, svelte, flowing, alabaster fair, had expanded 
 into a royal beauty. Lady Carminow Avas much 
 less slim than she had been in her girlhood, but 
 her stoutness — if it must be called by so vulgar
 
 264 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 a word — was a Juno-like stoutness, and her loveli- 
 ness was enhanced by expansion. The alabaster 
 tint was still more dazzling, it had that trans- 
 parent brilliancy which Horace sings of. Her 
 golden-auburn hair was piled in a coronet above 
 the low classic brow. The turn of the neck was 
 statuesque in its perfection, the carriage of the 
 small head was full of unaffected dignity. The 
 plainly made gown of lustreless brown silk set off 
 the gracious figure with a noble simplicity. The 
 lovely wrist and hand looked all the lovelier 
 under a severely cut sleeve with a narrow cuff of 
 old Mechlin lace. 
 
 "How strange that we should meet for the 
 first time in this room," said Clarice, when she 
 and Lashmar had shaken hands, and she had 
 ensconced herself in the most comfortable of all 
 the comfortable chairs which were grouped about 
 the hearth and tea-table. "Do you remember that 
 afternoon when you showed me the wonderful 
 books, and when we found that poor little savage 
 sitting on a ladder?" 
 
 ^t) 
 
 "Indeed, I have not forgotten. I was reminded 
 of the fact this morning by the sight of my 
 brother's protegee. My mother tells me she has
 
 "as the days change men change too," 265 
 
 become a bidable young person, and very useful 
 to her as a reader." 
 
 Clarice shrugged her shoulders, and gave a 
 faint shiver. 
 
 "I should not like such a person about w/^," 
 she said; "but dear Lady Lashmar seems quite 
 taken with her of late." 
 
 Dear Lady Lashmar disavowed any such 
 friendly a feeling for the girl. "She is useful to 
 me," she explained; "I require some one to read 
 to me, and she reads well. That is all." 
 
 "I am always afraid of self-educated people," 
 said Clarice, "they are so arrogant, and so am- 
 bitious; almost always Radicals, thinking, poor 
 creatures, that book learning is the only thing 
 that counts, and forgetting their hopeless ignor- 
 ance of everything we know." 
 
 "And that naturally means everything worth 
 knowing," said Lashmar, smiling at her across 
 his teacup. 
 
 "Well, you will acknowledge that in society 
 manners and savoir-faire are of much more im- 
 portance than Latin and Greek," said Clarice, 
 with conviction. 
 
 "I see you are one of those people who think
 
 266 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 that the classics are the exclusive property of 
 half a dozen elderly gentlemen in the universities, 
 who seldom wash, and who could hardly muster 
 a hair brush among them," replied his lordship 
 laughingly. 
 
 Lashmar sipped his tea, and enjoyed the rest- 
 fulness of this lazy afternoon hour, when dressing 
 for dinner seems too far off to be thought of as 
 a burden. He has been the first to arrive; his 
 guests were expected by a later train; so he and 
 his mother and Lady Carminow had this delicious 
 interval all to themselves. 
 
 It was a new thing for him to take tea in 
 that grandiose old library, with its bossed ceiling, 
 rich in gold and vermilion, seeming to repeat the 
 colour of the Grolier bindings. Hitherto the room 
 in which Hubert, Lord Lashmar, had lived his 
 pensive unoffending life had been a sealed cham- 
 ber, dedicated to the memory of the dead, as it 
 were a tomb in the mansion of the living. But 
 within a week of her son's return Lady Lashmar 
 had made up her mind to re-open the library as 
 a general sitting-room — a pleasant place for after- 
 noon tea — a haven in the evening for elderly 
 people who love quiet, or for those unmusical 
 souls who care not for the modern sonata or the
 
 "as the days change ]Men change too." 267 
 
 modern ballad. It was Clarice who had talked 
 Lady Lashmar into this innovation. 
 
 "The library is quite the handsomest room in 
 the Castle, and you leave it, figuratively speaking, 
 to bats and owls," she said. "What is the good 
 of fine rooms if one does not use them? The 
 Lashmar library is the one great feature of this 
 house, and you don't even let people see it." 
 
 Lady Lashmar yielded; and it was Lady 
 Carminow who with her own fair hands, and the 
 aid of half a dozen housemaids, re-arranged the 
 room after the luxurious modern idea. She in- 
 troduced delicious little Alma Tadema-cum-Queen 
 Anne chairs and tables, things half Pompeian, 
 half old English. She made delightful corners 
 with old Lidian screens, seven leaved, golden, 
 beautiful; and she set groups of palms in richest 
 red pottery vases. She knew exactly where all 
 the prettiest things were to be had, and what to 
 order. The Genie of the Lamp was hardly more 
 expeditious in the art of furnishing. 
 
 Lashmar was delighted. 
 
 "What a sensible idea to use this big old 
 room for living in," said Lashmar, lolling back in 
 a nest of tawny plush, and looking round at the
 
 268 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 black and gold screens and vermilion tables and 
 palms and peacock's feathers. 
 
 "It was Lady Carminow's idea. You have 
 her to thank for the change." 
 
 "Then I do thank her, most cordially." 
 
 "Oh, but it is I who ought to be thankful," 
 cried Clarice. "I delight in arranging a room. 
 I am almost as officious as Lady Hillborough, 
 who cannot be half an hour in anyone's drawing 
 room without re-arranging all the chairs. Now, 
 Oriana has a genius for chairs; but if I have any 
 talent it is for corners. How do you like that 
 corner with the seven-leaved screen and the 
 palms?" 
 
 "It is simply perfection; a haven in which to 
 dream away wintry days, too blissful to regret the 
 summer; a nook for a flirtation, for a proposal 
 even. Young ladies on their promotion ought to 
 be very grateful to you, Lady Carminow." 
 
 "I am very fond of nice girls," murmured 
 Clarice, with an air of matronly superiority 
 worthy of a grandmother. 
 
 Afternoon tea lasted a long time upon this 
 particular occasion. It was dusk when the two 
 ladies closed their work-baskets and went off to 
 their own apartments, Lady Lashmar to secure
 
 "as the days change men change too." 269 
 
 an hour's rest before she put on velvet and 
 diamonds to receive her son's guests, who were 
 all to arrive in time for dinner; Clarice to waste 
 an hour pleasantly over Ohnet or Daudet, or the 
 milder Greville. 
 
 A few minutes before seven there came a 
 great clanging of doors, and the corridors echoed 
 with strange voices, whereby Lady Lashmar, 
 resting her wearied nerves as best she might, 
 knew that the people had all come. She could 
 not help listening for Mr. Nestorius's voice amidst 
 that Babel of mistresses and maids; and she 
 heard a few words uttered calmly by that melli- 
 fluous organ. Depth and smoothness were the 
 chief characteristics of the ex-minister's voice. 
 Soft, grave, and yet strong were those tones which 
 had ruled in the senate, which had touched the 
 hearts of women. Perhaps it was this voice which 
 had been the most powerful influence in Mr. 
 Nestorius's career. He had that fine flow of lan- 
 guage and those ever-musical tones which enable 
 a man to talk nonsense unchallenged, nay, rather 
 to make nonsense appear logic, or wit, as the 
 orator chose. 
 
 How reposeful, how soothing sounded that 
 voice amidst the chatter of the women and the
 
 270 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 haw-hawing of the men. Captain A^avasour was 
 making as much fuss as the noisiest of women, but 
 then, as he had to look after his wife's luggage 
 and his wife's poodle, as well as his own port- 
 manteau, there was some excuse for him. 
 
 "I Avonder how I shall get on with these 
 people," thought the dowager; "they are horribly 
 noisy, and their voices have a vulgar twang. 
 Thank heaven there is Clarice to take them off 
 my hands." 
 
 At ten minutes to eight she was in the draw- 
 ing-room, and the strangers were being duly pre- 
 sented to her, as she sat supported on one side 
 by Mrs. Mulciber, a spreading woman in a gray 
 satin gown, and by Lady Sophia Freemantle on 
 the other. 
 
 Lady Sophia was a tall, well-made young 
 woman, with the square shoulders which were 
 considered intolerable thirty years ago, but which 
 are permitted and even approved nowadays. She 
 was not handsome; she would have scorned to 
 be so. She had a healthy, brunette complexion 
 which had been buffeted by all the winds of 
 heaven, and shone on by the sun, until it had 
 acquired a permanent bronze and a harder con- 
 sistency than belongs to the cheek of beauty.
 
 "as the days change men change too." 271 
 
 She had regular features, a small, sharp nose, and 
 a determined mouth and chin; a mouth that had 
 grown resolute in encounters with obstinate 
 horses, refusing the same ditch thirty times on 
 end, to be beaten by Lady Sophia at the thirty- 
 first. She had a loud voice that had grown 
 strong in conversations carried on in the open 
 air, and often at longish distances — with labour- 
 ing men at the further side of a field, and some- 
 times with tramps and wayfarers just within hail; 
 discussions as to which way the hunted fox had 
 gone; or as to whether an animal lately seen was 
 or was not the hunted fox. There is always a 
 chance of being deluded by that social impostor 
 — the fox out for a quiet airing, and only distin- 
 guishable from the real hero by his smug respect- 
 able aspect and clean brush. 
 
 On horseback Lady Sophia looked better than 
 one woman in twenty, not only for her willowy 
 waist or the fit of her habit, but for the ad- 
 mirable pose of that slim, tall figure, and the 
 perfect adjustment of the rider to every move- 
 ment of the horse. In an evening gown Sophia 
 looked her worst, and she regarded the whole 
 question of evening gowns with supreme indif- 
 ference. Her dark red satin was at least three
 
 272 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 seasons old, as Lady Carminow's keen eye per- 
 ceived in an instant, and the colour was much 
 too near the carnation of the wearer's cheek to 
 be becoming. 
 
 Lady Carminow was at the other end of the 
 drawing-room, half buried in a gigantic chair, 
 and slowly fanning herself with a great ostrich 
 feather fan, while she listened to Mr. Nestorius. 
 She was looking divinely lovely. Her large, fair 
 bust and shoulders looked dazzling in their 
 Parian whiteness against the hedge-sparrow velvet 
 of her gown. Hedge-sparrow had been the 
 fashionable colour of last season. Women had 
 lived and moved and had their being only in 
 hedge-sparrow gowns. The colour was that of a 
 hedge-sparrow's egg, be it understood, not of the 
 sparrow himself, a turquoise blue with just the 
 faintest greenish tint, a colour which became 
 blondes to perfection; and as most women are 
 blondes nowadays, or make themselves so, the 
 hue had enjoyed a tremendous vogue. 
 
 If there was a particularly attractive woman 
 in a room it generally happened that Mr. Nes- 
 torius and she were together. He was said to be 
 a magnetic man, and it was an attribute of his 
 magnetism always to draw the nicest women about
 
 "as the days change men change too. 273 
 
 him. Pallid faces and thrilling tones have an 
 almost irresistible charm for women. Your healthy- 
 looking man, with a florid complexion or a harsh 
 voice, has hardly any chance. 
 
 It was within two minutes of the hour, and 
 Lady Lashmar was beginning to look angry, when 
 Mrs. Vavasour came gliding in, clad in a dragging 
 garment of limp lace and muslin, which might or 
 might not be a gown. There was that marked 
 disproportion between the lady and her clothes 
 which is so often seen nowadays as to be no 
 longer surprising. The lady was so exuberant, 
 and the gown so exiguous, that had it not been 
 for an immense garland of Marechal Niel roses, 
 which made a kind of flower-bed across the 
 ample bust. Lady Lashmar would have been in- 
 clined to order the new-comer out of the room. 
 
 As it was she acknowledged her son's intro- 
 duction somewhat stiffly, gave Mrs. Vavasour the 
 tips of her fingers, and only recognised the lady's 
 husband with a haughty inclination of her head: 
 for it was her ladyship's opinion that when a 
 married woman made a spectacle of herself, the 
 husband was more to blame than the wife. 
 
 In those circles in which j\Irs. Vavasour moved 
 it had been often said that she was utterly charni- 
 
 One Thing Needful. I. 1 8
 
 2 74 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 ing: but that a stranger required half an hour to 
 get accustomed to her. 
 
 She was certainly pretty; but that her beauty 
 was either made or marred by art was indisput- 
 able. The cloud of golden fluffiness which sur- 
 rounded her head, seeming almost too ethereal 
 for actual hair, the definite line of dark eyebrows, 
 and the lashes clogged with ebon dye, the porce- 
 lain whiteness and the rose-leaf bloom were all 
 from the same source; and a child of four years 
 old could scarcely have been innocent enough to 
 mistake the picture for reality. But the general 
 effect was considered good, and, as Mrs. Vava- 
 sour's reputation had never been clouded by the 
 breath of scandal, the lady was caressed and 
 courted, and her little ways were considered 
 charming. 
 
 Her manner was quite as artificial as her 
 complexion. She drawled out her delight at 
 making Lady Lashmar's acquaintance in the 
 latest slang, and with the latest abbreviations; 
 Lady Sophia contemplating her calmly with her 
 hawk's eyes all the time, as if she had been some 
 new specimen in that animal world of rats, weasels, 
 stoats, ferrets, polecats, and other unclean vermin 
 which Lord Banbury's daughter knew so in- 
 timately.
 
 "as the days change men ch.\nge too." 275 
 
 Mr. Nestoriiis was, of course, entitled to the 
 arm of his hostess, and Lady Carminow to that 
 of her host; Mr. Ponsonby, the barrister, took 
 Mrs. Vavasour, and good natured Mrs. Mulciber 
 put up with the Rector, who had been asked, as 
 it were, to open the shooting season with a good 
 old Anglican grace, short and unintelligible. 
 Captain Vavasour took in Lady Sophia. They 
 had travelled by the same train, and were as 
 friendly as if they had been brought up in the 
 nursery together, Sophia's experience of the hunt- 
 ing-field having given her all the ways of jolly 
 good fellowship; but this familiarity with the 
 fashionable novelist did not prevent her almost 
 ignoring his wife. 
 
 "I am afraid Mrs. Vavasour and I can't have 
 much in common," she said, ducking to get a 
 glimpse of that radiant lady athwart a grove of 
 silver trophies, in the way of racing cups and 
 candelabra. "She doesn't look as if she hunted," 
 inwardly adding, "not an outdoor make-up." 
 
 "And you do nothing else, I have heard," 
 replied the Captain. "Well, it is the highest kind 
 of fame to do one thing to perfection." 
 
 "I write a little in my humble way, but it is 
 always about hunting," said Lady Sophia. 
 
 "Then you are 'Spur-box,' of the 'Sunday 
 
 i8»
 
 276 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 Swash-buckler,'" cried Vavasour; "I have often 
 been told as much." 
 
 "Yes, I am 'Spur-box,'" admitted the lady, 
 looking modestly downward, overcome by the 
 thought of her own fame. "I rather enjoy writ- 
 ing for the paper. The editor pays me very well; 
 and there is only one thing I don't altogether 
 like. He insists that I should always pretend to 
 be tipsy when I am writing, or to have been 
 horribly tipsy over night." 
 
 "Oh! but that is de rigueur. It is part of 
 the policy of the paper. All the contributors are 
 supposed to exist in a state of chronic drunken- 
 ness. I need not tell you that they are some of 
 the soberest men in London, as temperate as you, 
 Lady Sophia!" 
 
 "It is rather good fun, pretending to be hope- 
 lessly obfuscated." 
 
 "What is supposed to be yoin- particular 
 vanity?" 
 
 "Soda and cura^oa. I consume gallons. I 
 am always talking of my little failings. Some- 
 times I go in for green chartreuse, with fatal re- 
 sults. But the editor wants me to drop liqueurs, 
 which, he says, have a snobbish tone that offends 
 his Radical subscribers. He wants me to take to 
 dog's-nose. What is dog's-nose?"
 
 "as the days ch.wTtE men change too." 277 
 
 "A compound of beer and gin, particularly- 
 affected by cabmen. What is supposed to be 
 your social status, as Spur-box?" 
 
 "Oh! it is awfully vague. I am as misty as 
 a mythological personage. I write from all the 
 great hunting centres. Sometimes I am at the 
 George at Grantham, where I seem to live in the 
 bar; for the editor will put in remarks of his own 
 about drinks, don't you know, and I hardly know 
 my own writing when I see it in print." 
 
 "I comprehend. He embellishes. That is 
 hardly fair!" 
 
 "I have told him so, but he says that there 
 must be a single mind directing the whole " 
 
 "Just so! as, according to poor old Anchises 
 when his son intervicAved him in the under-world, 
 there was at one time a single soul permeating 
 the human race — " 
 
 "Anchises must be dead!" said Sophia, who 
 only caught the classic and familiar name. "He 
 won the Derby when I was a little tot. I re- 
 member seeing the race from my father's drag. 
 It was the year Facile Princeps was favourite, 
 and came in a bad third. Anchises was a mealy 
 chestnut." 
 
 The conversation went on at this rate all 
 through dinner. Captain Vavasour hunted, and
 
 278 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 was fond of racing; was hand in glove with men 
 who kept racers, and had a good deal to say 
 about the turf. He knew old Lord Banbury's 
 history by heart; knew what to say, and what to 
 avoid saying. Lady Sophia did not usually like 
 writing men. She thought them conceited and 
 uninteresting; but the novelist charmed her. He 
 was in the middle of a capital story about Jack 
 Russell and the Exmoor staghounds when Lady 
 Carminow rose swan-like at the beck of her 
 hostess. 
 
 "What a bore!" exclaimed Sophia. "I shall 
 have to go with the lady-pack." 
 
 And with the lady-pack the fair Sophia de- 
 parted wondering whether she would find anyone 
 sociable enough to join her with a cigarette. She 
 carried her cigarette case in her pocket, even 
 when she was dressed for the evening; and, in 
 those pleasant houses where ladies were tolerated 
 in the billiard-room, she always smoked. This 
 was her first visit to Lashmar, and Mrs. Mulciber 
 had warned her that it was a severe house. 
 
 Lady Carminow settled herself in a comfort- 
 able arm-chair near Lady Lashmar's particular 
 corner, beside the wide old hearth. These two 
 talked apart and left the other three ladies to 
 their own devices. Sophia found the last Satur-
 
 "as the days change men change too." 279 
 
 day Review with a sporting article, and retired 
 behind that paper. Mrs. Vavasour shed her arti- 
 ficial radiance upon friendly Mrs. Mulciber, whom 
 she entertained with her opinions upon the plays 
 and operas of last season, a style of conversation 
 which could not have warmly interested a lady 
 who had not seen one of them. 
 
 But Mrs. Mulciber was one of those admirable 
 women who always appear to be interested, even 
 when they are inwardly sinking with weariness. 
 She was a delightful listener, had very little to 
 say herself, but said that little in a neat and 
 pleasant manner. She had made her way in the 
 world without advantages of birth or fortune, and 
 with very moderate abilities. Born and bred in 
 the middle classes, the daughter of a village 
 vicar, she had contrived to live all her life in the 
 very best circles, staying now at one country 
 house, now at another; now chaperoning an orphan 
 heiress; now keeping things straight for an aristo- 
 cratic household in which the mistress was a 
 dipso-maniac; anon looking after a widower's 
 young children, or helping in the dirty work of a 
 county election. She was everybody's confidante 
 and everybody's amanuensis. She wrote a magni- 
 ficent hand, and she was good at accounts. She 
 always read the newspapers, and knew everything
 
 280 ONE THING NEEDFUL. 
 
 that was going on in the world ; but her travelling 
 library consisted of only two books — a peerage 
 and a Bible. These she knew by heart, and here 
 her knowledge of literature ended. She had no 
 imagination, and never read novels. Her mind 
 required hard facts. Her notion of leisure was 
 to sit at a window working high art designs of 
 an angular ecclesiastical character upon brown 
 holland, and she was admirable in this wise as 
 the dragon of prudery in a country house full of 
 lovers. For the rest she knew all the latest re- 
 medies and palliatives for neuralgia, low spirits, 
 and insomnia, and was pleasantly officious in such 
 cases. Her headquarters for the last, three years 
 had been Banbury Manor, where she acted as a 
 deputy mother for Lady Sophia, whose real mo- 
 ther had run away with a colonel of dragoons at 
 the mature age of nine and thirty, much to the satis- 
 faction of old Lord Banbury, who had tyrannised 
 over her for nineteen weary years, and was be- 
 ginning to sicken of a worm which had never 
 turned. • 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.
 
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