On entering the drawing-room, Randal found the two ladies seated close together, in a position much more appropriate to the familiarity of their school-days than to the politeness of the friendship now existing between them. Mrs. Hazeldean’s hand hung affectionately over Carry’s shoulder, and both those fair English faces were bent over the same book. It was pretty to see these sober matrons, so different from each other in character and aspect, thus unconsciously restored to the intimacy of happy maiden youth by the golden link of some Magician from the still land of Truth or Fancy, brought together in heart, as each eye rested on the same thought; closer and closer, as sympathy, lost in the actual world, grew out of that world which unites in one bond of feeling the readers of some gentle book.
“And what work interests you so much?” asked Randal, pausing by the table.
“One you have read, of course,” replied Mrs. Dale, putting a book-mark embroidered by herself into the page, and handing the volume to Randal. “It has made a great sensation, I believe.”
Randal glanced at the title of the work. “True,” said he, “I have heard much of it in London, but I have not yet had time to read it.”
MRS. DALE.—“I can lend it to you, if you like to look over it to-night, and you can leave it for me with Mrs. Hazeldean.”
PARSON (approaching).—“Oh, that book!—yes, you must read it. I do not know a work more instructive.”
RANDAL.—“Instructive! Certainly I will read it then. But I thought it was a mere work of amusement,—of fancy. It seems so as I look over it.”
PARSON.—“So is the ‘Vicar of Wakefield;’ yet what book more instructive?”
RANDAL.—“I should not have said that of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ A pretty book enough, though the story is most improbable. But how is it instructive?”
PARSON.—“By its results: it leaves us happier and better. What can any instruction do more? Some works instruct through the head, some through the heart. The last reach the widest circle, and often produce the most genial influence on the character. This book belongs to the last. You will grant my proposition when you have read it.”
Randal smiled and took the volume.
MRS. DALE.—“Is the author known yet?”
RANDAL.—“I have heard it ascribed to many writers, but I believe no one has claimed it.”
PARSON.—“I think it must have been written by my old college friend, Professor Moss, the naturalist,—its descriptions of scenery are so accurate.”
MRS. DALE.—“La, Charles dear! that snuffy, tiresome, prosy professor? How can you talk such nonsense? I am sure the author must be young, there is so much freshness of feeling.”
MRS. HAZELDEAN (positively).—“Yes, certainly, young.”
PARSON (no less positively).—“I should say just the contrary. Its tone is too serene, and its style too simple, for a young man. Besides, I don’t know any young man who would send me his book, and this book has been sent me, very handsomely bound, too, you see. Depend upon it Moss is the loan—quite his turn of mind.”
MRS. DALE.—“You are too provoking, Charles dear! Mr. Moss is so remarkably plain, too.”
RANDAL.—“Must an author be handsome?”
PARSON.—“Ha! ha! Answer that if you can, Carry.” Carry remained mute and disdainful.
SQUIRE (with great naivete).—“Well, I don’t think there’s much in the book, whoever wrote it; for I’ve read it myself, and understand every word of it.”
MRS. DALE.—“I don’t see why you should suppose it was written by a man at all. For my part, I think it must be a woman.”
MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“Yes, there’s a passage about maternal affection, which only a woman could have written.”
PARSON.—“Pooh! pooh! I should like to see a woman who could have written that description of an August evening before a thunderstorm; every wild-flower in the hedgerow exactly the flowers of August, every sign in the air exactly those of the month. Bless you! a woman would have filled the hedge with violets and cowslips. Nobody else but my friend Moss could have written that description.”
SQUIRE.—“I don’t know; there’s a simile about the waste of corn-seed in hand-sowing, which makes me think he must be a farmer!”
MRS. DALE (scornfully).—“A farmer! In hobnailed shoes, I suppose! I say it is a woman.”
MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“A WOMAN, and A MOTHER!”
PARSON.—“A middle-aged man, and a naturalist.”
SQUIRE.—“No, no, Parson, certainly a young man; for that love-scene puts me in mind of my own young days, when I would have given my ears to tell Harry how handsome I thought her; and all I could say was, ‘Fine weather for the crops, Miss.’ Yes, a young man and a farmer. I should not wonder if he had held the plough himself.”
RANDAL (who had been turning over the pages).—“This sketch of Night in London comes from a man who has lived the life of cities and looked at wealth with the eyes of poverty. Not bad! I will read the book.”
“Strange,” said the parson, smiling, “that this little work should so have entered into our minds, suggested to all of us different ideas, yet equally charmed all,—given a new and fresh current to our dull country life, animated us as with the sight of a world in our breasts we had never seen before save in dreams: a little work like this by a man we don’t know and never may! Well, that knowledge is power, and a noble one!”
“A sort of power, certainly, sir,” said Randal, candidly; and that night, when Randal retired to his own room, he suspended his schemes and projects, and read, as he rarely did, without an object to gain by the reading.
The work surprised him by the pleasure it gave. Its charm lay in the writer’s calm enjoyment of the beautiful. It seemed like some happy soul sunning itself in the light of its own thoughts. Its power was so tranquil and even, that it was only a critic who could perceive how much force and vigour were necessary to sustain the wing that floated aloft with so imperceptible an effort. There was no one faculty predominating tyrannically over the others; all seemed proportioned in the felicitous symmetry of a nature rounded, integral, and complete. And when the work was closed, it left behind it a tender warmth that played round the heart of the reader and vivified feelings which seemed unknown before. Randal laid down the book softly; and for five minutes the ignoble and base purposes to which his own knowledge was applied stood before him, naked and unmasked.
“Tut!” said he, wrenching himself violently away from the benign influence, “it was not to sympathize with Hector, but to conquer with Achilles, that Alexander of Macedon kept Homer under his pillow. Such should be the true use of books to him who has the practical world to subdue; let parsons and women construe it otherwise, as they may!”
And the Principle of Evil descended again upon the intellect from which the guide of Beneficence was gone.
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