“Bosh! There you are again!—the pains I took the other night again to make you comprehend what Free Trade meant. I knew you didn’t understand a word about it; and if you did understand, you wouldn’t believe me. You never take any notice of anything I say; but if Mrs. Bushel or any other blockhead tells you anything, you believe that directly.”
Priscilla’s eyes filled; she took out her handkerchief, and went upstairs. George sat still for a while, and then followed her. He found her sitting by the baby’s cradle, her head on her hands and sobbing. It touched him beyond measure to see how she retreated to her child; he went to her; his anger was once more forgotten, and once more he was reconciled with kisses and self-humiliation. The next morning, however, as he went to the square, the conversation of the night before returned to him. “What does it all mean?” he cried to himself. “Would to God it were either one thing or another! I could be happy if I really cared for her, and if I hated her downright I could endure it like any other calamity which cannot be altered; but this is more than I can bear!”
The Allens, father and mother, held anxious debate whether they should take any notice of the attack by their pastor, and in the end determined to do nothing. They considered, and rightly considered, that any action on their part would only make George’s position more difficult, and he was the first person to be considered.
Next Saturday there was some business to be done in London, and George went, this time by himself. On the Sunday morning he called on the Colemans, and found Zachariah at home, but Pauline away. Mr. Bradshaw, too, was not to preach that day. It was wet, and Zachariah and George sat and talked, first about the election, and then about other indifferent subjects. Conversation—even of the best, and between two friends—is poor work when one of the two suffers from some secret sorrow which he cannot reveal, and George grew weary. Zachariah knew what was the matter with him, and had known it for a long while, but was too tender to hint his knowledge. Nevertheless, remembering his own history, he pitied the poor boy exceedingly. He loved him as his own child, for his father’s sake, and loved him all the more for an experience so nearly resembling another which he recollected too well.
“How is it Mr. Bradshaw is not preaching today?” said George.
“He is ill; I am afraid he is breaking up; and latterly he has been worried by the small attacks made upon him by people who are afraid to say anything distinctly.”
“What kind of attacks?”
“Well, they insinuate that he is Arian.”
“What is that?”
Zachariah explained the case as well as he could, and George was much interested.
“Arian or not, I tell you one thing, Mr. Coleman, that Mr. Bradshaw, whenever I have heard him, seems to help me as Mr. Broad never does. I never think about what Mr. Broad says except when I am in chapel, and sometimes not then.”
“Bradshaw speaks from himself. He said a thing last Sunday which stuck by me, and would have pleased a country lad like you more than it did three parts of his congregation, who are not so familiar with country life as he is. He told us he was out for a holiday, and saw some men hoeing in a field—‘Hoeing the charlock,’ he said to himself; but when he came nearer he found they were hoeing turnips—hoeing up the poor plants themselves, which lay dying all around; hoeing them up to let the other plants have room to grow.
“I have known men,” added Zachariah after a pause, “from whose life so much—all love, for example—has been cut out; and the effect has been, not ruin, but growth in other directions which we should never have seen without it.”
Zachariah took down a little book from his shelf, and wrote George’s name in it.
“There, my boy, it is not much to look at, but I know nothing better, and keep it always in your pocket. It is the Imitation of Christ. You will find a good deal in it which will suit you, and you will say, as I have said a thousand times over it, that other people may write of science or philosophy, but this man writes about me.”
He put it on the table, and George opened it at the sentence, “He that can best tell how to suffer will best keep himself in peace. That man is conqueror of himself, and lord of the world, the friend of Christ, and the heir of heaven.” He turned over the leaves again—“He to whom the Eternal Word speaketh is delivered from a world of unnecessary conceptions.” Zachariah bent his head near him and gently expounded the texts. As the exposition grew George’s heart dilated, and he was carried beyond his troubles. It was the birth in him—even in him, a Cowfold ironmonger, not a scholar by any means—of what philosophers call the idea, that Incarnation which has ever been our Redemption. He said nothing to Zachariah about his own affairs, nor did Zachariah, as before observed, say anything to him; but the two knew one another, and felt that they knew one another as intimately as if George had imparted to his friend the minutest details of his unhappiness with his wife.
Towards the end of the afternoon Pauline returned, and inquired how the battle went in Cowfold.
“I am afraid we shall be beaten. Sometimes I don’t seem to care much about it.”
“Don’t care! Why not?”
“Oh, we talk and talk, father and I, and somehow people’s minds are made up without talking, and nobody ever changes. When we have our meetings, who is it who comes? Does Bushel come? Not a bit of it. We only get our own set.”
“Well,” said Zachariah, the
