Miss Leroy’s father was republican, and so was my grandfather. My grandfather and old Leroy were the only people in our town who refused to illuminate when a victory was gained over the French. Leroy’s windows were spared on the ground that he was not a Briton, but the mob endeavoured to show my grandfather the folly of his belief in democracy by smashing every pane of glass in front of his house with stones. This drew him and Leroy together, and the result was, that although Leroy himself never set foot inside any chapel or church, Miss Leroy was often induced to attend our meetinghouse in company with a maiden aunt of mine, who rather “took to her.” Now comes the forever mysterious passage in history. There was amongst the attendants at that meetinghouse a young man who was apprentice to a miller. He was a big, soft, quiet, plump-faced, awkward youth, very good, but nothing more. He wore on Sunday a complete suit of light pepper-and-salt clothes, and continued to wear pepper-and-salt on Sunday all his life. He taught in the Sunday-school, and afterwards, as he got older, he was encouraged to open his lips at a prayer-meeting, and to “take the service” in the village chapels on Sunday evening. He was the most singularly placid, even-tempered person I ever knew. I first became acquainted with him when I was a child and he was past middle life. What he was then, I am told, he always was; and I certainly never heard one single violent word escape his lips. His habits, even when young, had a tendency to harden. He went to sleep after his midday dinner with the greatest regularity, and he never could keep awake if he sat by a fire after dark. I have seen him, when kneeling at family worship and praying with his family, lose himself for an instant and nod his head, to the confusion of all who were around him. He is dead now, but he lived to a good old age, which crept upon him gradually with no pain, and he passed away from this world to the next in a peaceful doze. He never read anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was not at work or at chapel he slumbered. To the utter amazement of everybody, it was announced one fine day that Miss Leroy and he—George Butts—were to be married. They were about the last people in the world, who, it was thought, could be brought together. My mother was stunned, and never completely recovered. I have seen her, forty years after George Butts’ wedding-day, lift up her hands, and have heard her call out with emotion, as fresh as if the event were of yesterday, “What made that girl have George I can not think—but there!” What she meant by the last two words we could not comprehend. Many of her acquaintances interpreted them to mean that she knew more than she dared communicate, but I think they were mistaken. I am quite certain if she had known anything she must have told it, and, in the next place, the phrase “but there” was not uncommon amongst women in our town, and was supposed to mark the consciousness of a prudently restrained ability to give an explanation of mysterious phenomena in human relationships. For my own part, I am just as much in the dark as my mother. My father, who was a shrewd man, was always puzzled, and could not read the riddle. He used to say that he never thought George could have “made up” to any young woman, and it was quite clear that Miss Leroy did not either then or afterwards display any violent affection for him. I have heard her criticise and patronise him as a “good soul,” but incapable, as indeed he was, of all sympathy with her. After marriage she went her way and he his. She got up early, as she was wont to do, and took her Bible into the fields while he was snoring. She would then very likely suffer from a terrible headache during the rest of the day, and lie down for hours, letting the house manage itself as best it could. What made her selection of George more obscure was that she was much admired by many young fellows, some of whom were certainly more akin to her than he was; and I have heard from one or two reports of encouraging words, and even something more than words, which she had vouchsafed to them. A solution is impossible. The affinities, repulsions, reasons in a nature like that of Miss Leroy’s are so secret and so subtle, working towards such incalculable and not-to-be-predicted results, that to attempt to make a major and minor premise and an inevitable conclusion out of them would be useless. One thing was clear, that by marrying George she gained great freedom. If she had married anybody closer to her, she might have jarred with him; there might have been collision and wreck as complete as if they had been entirely opposed; for she was not the kind of person to accommodate herself to others even in the matter of small differences. But George’s road through space lay entirely apart from hers, and there was not the slightest chance of interference. She was under the protection of a husband; she could do things that, as an unmarried woman, especially in a foreign land, she could not do, and the compensatory sacrifice to her was small. This is really the only attempt at elucidation I can give. She went regularly all her life to chapel with George,
