Читать книгу The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake - Graham Travers - Страница 14

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The great remain children to the last, and in this respect S. J.-B. was essentially one of the great. To the end of her life, for those who knew her well, she could be a delightful child. But it was about the time we are considering—the age of 20 to 21—that she may be said to have become a woman, or, more truly, to have put on her manhood. She was too busy at the time to describe or analyze in her diary the change that was taking place—“Oh,” she says, “the little space of time and paper! The mighty space of events ‘unheard’!”—she was in no way self-conscious about it; but there are indications, like straws on the surface of the water, that show in what direction the current was setting. One sees that she was beginning to look at life freshly and at first hand, that the old traditional dogmatism was falling away from her views of religion, of social questions, of the relation between the sexes. To be sure this old husk was being replaced by the even more acrid dogmatism of youth; but in that very acridity one feels the promise of growth, of the ripe wisdom of later years.

As far back as March 1859 one finds the following significant passage:

“Had a long argument with Miss Wodehouse today. Two points chiefly. 1. Are evil deeds, though always pernicious to the doer, sometimes beneficial to mankind? I affirming: she denying. 2. Is it our first duty to seek our own salvation? She denying.

I cannot tell why I am so unable to argue with her. She seems to get me into a maze. Yet I think she argues honestly. I sometimes shrink from ‘sacred’ subjects with her, yet she considers all equally sacred.

‘What is truth’ indeed? Yet am I not somewhat like ‘jesting Pilate’ who ‘would not stay for an answer’?”

“What is truth?” one finds her asking again and again, and she at least had one grand qualification for the search—the habit of treating truth with respect even in its humblest fragments.

Her Father, of course, was uneasy about her.

“I should like to see you much,” he writes, “but I feel that Sunday would be a heavy day for you here (as I don’t frequent popish mass houses or the like), so that if you could run down here on Monday evening. …”

And again:

“When I think of the (at best) half teaching you have, but that I confide in our gracious covenant head, I should tremble for you when I am gone. I have no doubt at all that Maurice is a most amiable man, but I believe that to this hour he has never come clear out of Unitarianism, and therefore does not see distinctly, nor, of course, teach scripturally, any one of those fundamental Christian truths (all connected together) original sin, Christ’s vicarious work atoning for sin and fulfiling the law, justification by faith, and salvation by grace. Read, darling, …”

The following “passage of arms” with a Norfolk cousin, a man some years older than herself, is interesting in this connection:

“Hastings, March 12/60.

My dear Sophy,

I left Brighton on Friday with something of a heavy heart. I saw I had grieved you where I had really no intention of doing so: that was painful to me and I must regret it. I express to you my strong regrets. But oh! tenthousandfold deeper was the sad conviction forced upon me, that the advance you have made—shall I vex you if I say honestly and openly—Romewards, since I last saw you was very great. I believe you are as yet unconscious of your own tendency. I told you so at Lyng. But in honesty I must tell you, my dear Sophy, I tremble for you. It is such awfully slippery ground. It is such a pleasant accommodation of religion to our fallen nature. It so feeds our impulsiveness and fortifies our natural religionism.

Will you forgive me if, with a cousin’s, I hope more than that, anxious love I beseech you to ‘consider your ways,’ and bring your soul before God in this matter. Pray don’t starve your soul on gilded husks while bread lies at your feet in your Father’s house.

I know more than one amiable creature who began as you have done, and has landed in Rome. …

Dear Sophy, don’t trust your head, much less your heart, much less any fallen man or imperfect church under the sun. Trust Jesus, Jesus only, Jesus wholly, Jesus exclusively.

I trust this note will not make you wrath against me. … Be sure of one thing, I banter no more, where feeling is evidently so deep. Henceforth I will try and pray fervently for your poor soul’s conversion to God.”

“March 14th./60.

My dear …

If I do not say that you have written me a most ridiculous letter, it will be more from respect to its motive than its matter—or purport. I know people can work themselves up to any exaggerated view of things, yet I can hardly believe that, if you have half the sense people say you have, you can on sober reconsideration really believe that there was the smallest ground for your tirade in my objection to hear a Church—a house of God at least, spoken of and criticised as if it were a right thing to visit it as you would a theatre, and remain a looker-on while others were worshipping. ‘Seeking occasion against’ men was not the characteristic of the followers of the Jesus whose name you reiterate so often. I believe this was the whole feeling with which I spoke, exactly as I should have done if it had been a Baptist Meeting-house you were commenting on—as I believe you would not have commented on a Baptist Meeting-house.

You may, if you please, take my word for it that I am not going over to Rome, among whose partisans, however, I must say that I have never—no, nor I think from any other denomination under the sun—heard the same virulent abuse of those who have at least ‘one Lord,’ if not ‘one faith and one baptism,’—that I have from the Puritan portion of our own Church: and I am sure no God and no Church was ever served by the one or the other. …

What I have written is probably ill conceived and worse expressed. Excuse all such deficiencies. If I have myself fallen into the error I protest against, I need more than excuse—forgiveness. I have not meant to be violent or uncourteous, but where I have felt strongly, I doubt not I have so spoken.

For your cousinly care and affection I thank you heartily, as I am ever

Your affectionate cousin,

S. L. J.-B.”

And not only in matters of thought and principle was she developing; she was beginning, too, to take her full share of responsibility as regards her fellow-creatures, entering into the meaning of brotherhood and citizenship. In addition to her work at Queen’s College, she undertook to teach bookkeeping gratuitously in connection with the Society for the Employment of Women, and had a class of children at Great Ormond Street. “I don’t know how I should like her,” said a candid critic, “but it is a pleasure to see anyone do anything so well as she does teach.”

Reference was made in a former chapter to her faculty for taking the side-issues of life too intensely. It may not be right to look on friendship as a side-issue—though many of the world’s workers are more or less forced so to regard it: in any case it is scarcely too much to say that—even when one takes into account the endless philanthropic interests and activities of her later years—friendship constituted for S. J.-B. the main work of life. If she had been paid for the sheer hard work she did simply as a friend, she would have been a very rich woman. She was always giving out, and from this time forward, she acted on the maxim, “Bis dat qui cito dat.” If she arrived home, dead-tired, to find a letter asking immediate advice or help, she would answer the letter then and there and carry her answer to the post. If a friend was passing through London, or coming to spend a few hours with her, she would piece out a laborious journey by bus between her classes to meet that friend at some far-off station and make things easy for her. If a fellow-student or a teacher seemed on the point of breaking down, S. J.-B. would write three or four letters and call on half-a-dozen people to arrange for a holiday, and, if necessary, for a substitute. “Then home very tired,” she writes to her Mother after such an experience, “but very content to write this account to you.” (As not infrequently happened, the invalid had found a refuge at 13 Sussex Square, and Mrs. Jex-Blake’s kind heart was set on an extension of the holiday.)

“I do not think I ever did so good a Lord’s Day work in my life—if, that is, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath Day—to save life, not to kill—or let kill. I think I am very like a life-boat—valueless in itself, yet useful enough in saving better things alive. That, indeed, its whole use and work.”

“I am sure all that driving and running about with me on Thursday made your eye and headache much worse,” writes Cousin Sarah, “but you are such a dear kind old pet—would half kill yourself for anybody.”

A former school friend writes at the same date:

“I feel I ought not to trouble you, occupied as you are, but, whenever I have asked you for anything, your kindness and sympathy have been so readily given that I always think of you when I hear of any wants.”

“Mama sends her very best love,” writes Miss M. J. Evans, “and Papa too. Oddly enough, both like you. How can they?—such a trumpery heartless girl!”

And one comes upon hundreds of tributes to the same effect.

Sometimes S. J.-B.’s willing assistance was of a kind that involved no small labour and anxiety. If a friend was shy and gifted and poor, capable of producing work not yet recognized as marketable, S. J.-B. was always ready to be the middleman. She would write round to well-to-do friends enlisting their interest, do up samples of the work for inspection, and (most serious of all!) undertake the responsibility of receiving the samples safe back again. “Put the responsibility on me,” she used to say cheerily in after life, “my shoulders are broad enough”; and there is no doubt she began to say this—if not in so many words—before the age of 20. People got into the way of trusting her to see a thing through, of assuming that it was her métier to be competent and to organize, of leaving to her the heavy end of the stick: and no doubt she enjoyed it all and learned much from it, though, when taken in addition to her regular work, it was terribly hard on her hasty temper and “irritable brain.”

“You must be very thankful to be a medium of helping so many,” writes her Mother—“a great honour, I consider it, pleasure without alloy.” But in the same letter she says, “Sad, sad weather for you to knock about in. Darling, don’t risk your health.”

“I would not and could not speak” (after parting from you), writes Ellie. “I wish I was not such a silly fool, but I could not help it and never can, if I have to leave you. … I wonder if you have wished for me, if it was only to scold and fight with; but what I wish most of all is that you would give up fighting. I would do anything for you if I could only make even a slight alteration. … I do with all my heart wish that you would try to keep in that temper of yours.”

Noble Ellie!—“Walks upright beside me, a companion, a guide, and gives me a hand.”

S. J.-B. rarely, if ever, expected her friends to do her the same kind of service; but, if they became very dear, she did demand—more or less unconsciously to herself—a definite quid pro quo. In her big masterful way she would proceed to absorb their lives into her own; to establish a subtle growing claim that was not easy to resist. She was splendidly loyal herself, and the loyalty she exacted in return, though at first glance an easier thing, involved more than she was in any degree aware of. As life went on people found it increasingly difficult to disagree with her: many simply ran away—se sauvaient, as the French say; and yet it was only when in the last resort one resisted her to the face for conscience sake in some matter very dear to her heart—that one really gauged the greatness of her nature.

All this is taking us somewhat ahead of the early friendships at Queen’s, but the frank recognition of this aspect of her character is essential to an adequate understanding of her life even in those days. A Queen’s College friend who, in the most admirable and magnanimous spirit had accepted what might be reckoned a heavy obligation to S. J.-B. and her Father, writes as follows:

“I wish to tell you (I could not before, but think it right now) that this … will be more of a personal advantage and enjoyment to me than anything else in the world. …

With all my heart I rejoice to acknowledge an immense obligation to you for your love to me at all times and for this particular way of showing it, but not that sort of obligation which shall in any way affect my words and doings with you for the future.”

If friendships are to be weighed, not counted, S. J.-B. was, even at this period, fortunate in her possession of them. The Norfolk cousins, the Cordery family, Miss Wodehouse, Miss Ada Benson, Miss Lucy Walker (afterwards Mrs. Unwin) who was her junior at Queen’s, Miss Martha Heaton (Mrs. Hilhouse) a fellow teacher—are the names that occur to one most readily. And at this time there came into her life a friendship that was destined to make a deeper impression on her than any of these—the deepest impression, in fact, of any in the whole of her life.

This is how it began:

“Jan. 26th. 1860. Just had a lesson in book-keeping from Miss [Octavia] Hill. Clever, pleasant girl—much nicer than I thought. Dined with me. What and how the deuce am I to pay her? £1 1s., I suppose. Dear old Patty Heaton! How fond I am of her, and what wonderfully good friends we are!”

“Jan. 27th. I am sure I am a good companion for her (Miss Heaton) if only in amusing her. I think laughing does her a deal of good—hearty fun. I rejoice in her exceedingly. And I hope for another sort of friend, or ally at least, in Miss Hill who came and taught me book-keeping yesterday evening. Nice, sensible, clever. Very good worker, I expect.”

In the published Life of Miss Octavia Hill, one cannot but observe how good this dawning friendship was for her also, how beneficient was the sunshine that it brought into her somewhat grey young life. On Feb. 5th, 1860, she writes to her sister:

“I am always thinking of you both, and longing to have you home again that you may really know all our doings and lives. Mine lately you would assuredly consider rather of the dissipated kind. I have been giving some book-keeping lessons to Miss J.-B. She is a bright, spirited, brave, generous young lady, living alone, in true bachelor style. It took me three nights to teach her, and she begged me to come to dinner each time. She has a friend who is killing herself by hard work to support her younger sisters. I gather she would gladly give her friend help, for she speaks most sadly of the ‘modern fallacy’ ‘that the money must be earned.’ She thinks it might be given when people are dear friends: she says they’ve given the most precious thing and what difference can a little money make?”^[16]

Almost from the first Miss Hill’s letters to S. J.-B. took a serious tone. On March 18th she writes:

“I wonder whether you will think me very impertinent if I say that I wonder you don’t see that, in turning away from so many important thoughts with a half joke, you are refusing God’s means of grace as much as in staying away from ordained services. It is no good my writing sermons, however. … I trust to live to see some one or some sorrow do for you what I cannot, to see such a peace as ‘passeth all understanding’ come over you, to see the thankful, perfect dedication of all your powers to His service for His sake. …

I too long for a nice quiet talk with you. I enjoy it so, and your magnificent energy does me such good.”

The talks were not always quiet. There are those still living who remember some animated discussions, for the two girls had stepped, as it were, out of totally different worlds. Here is a typical passage:

S. J.-B. (hotly), “I never heard the game laws attacked!”

O. H. (calmly), “I never heard them defended!”

In the Easter holidays of that year both Miss Heaton and Miss Hill were guests at 13 Sussex Square, and the friendship between the latter and S. J.-B. was greatly deepened.

“My dear loving strong child,” writes S. J.-B. in her diary after this visit. “I do love and reverence her. … Had a loving solemn letter (not altogether pleasing to me) on my telling her we had had a ‘row’ [at home]. Told her by return ‘Hang you,’ and bade her remember she was neither nurse nor parson.

Dear, dear child, though. Mother calls it beautiful letter.”

It was so characteristic of S. J.-B. to show that letter to her Mother!

On April 29th Miss Octavia Hill writes again to her sister:

“You dear old thing, I wish I had you here to give you a good rest and rousing, and refreshing. I am as merry as a grig. … Miss J.-B. and I are always doing things together—great companions I am with her. You know she’s teaching me Euclid. We went to see Holman Hunt’s picture, …”^[17]

And again we quote from S. J.-B.’s diary:

“May 17th, Whitsunday. A most delicious day at Hurst with Ruth^[18] and Octa. Went down together second-class by 6 train. … Told Octa about Wales—sitting in her room on the table, my heart beating like a hammer. That Carry wanted to go to Wales and I too, and most convenient about beginning of July, so … ‘Put off my visit?’ said Octa. ‘No, I was going to say (slowly) if you wish to see anything of me, you must come too, I think, and not put off the mountains till heaven.’ She sunk her head on my lap silently, raised it in tears, and then such a kiss!”

There is a happy letter about this Welsh tour:

“Bettws-Y-Coed,

July 26th/60.

Darling Mother,

We have decided rather in a hurry as there are to be no prizes, … to give a treat to all, which, however, Mr. Jones specially stipulates is not to be a school treat. … It is just coming off today. I ordered 60 lbs. of dough and etcs. from Catherine Owen—rather less rich than last year (that is, fewer eggs and less butter). It makes 88 lbs. altogether. But it was only settled on Monday, and as this is Thursday I am half afraid all may not know. But we have tried hard to send scouts everywhere. …

Please tell me as early as possible where you will be each day of the week beginning Sunday, August the 12th. Now don’t let Tom just prevent your remembering or caring^[19] to meet your little one. I do long to see you so. …

Weymouth St. July 30th. All over, darling, now, and such a happy time without a single blot I never remember in my life. Every thing has been better than any anticipation of it. We have done everything we wanted to do. We have been everywhere and have had no mischance, no annoyance of any kind. Octa looks five years younger, and as bright as a sunbeam. And I am in so thoroughly happy a state of mind as hardly to know myself. I really almost think I should be good-tempered now. We came home by Llangollen on Saturday, 40 miles coach and 194 miles rail. Not a bad journey for one day. We went up that morning to your high mound. The view was glorious. I took poor old Ellen Jones some squills for her cough, but she looks very ill indeed. She sent so very much love to you, and wished she had something to send you.

The treat came off excellently on Thursday. It was grand fun to see Octa playing with the children. At Hunt the Slipper once, she, pretending she had the shoe, held up her boot toe, saying, ‘See, here it is,’ or something like it. Grace Owen, who was seeking, seized hold of it as quick as light, crying ‘Let me have it then,’ pulled away, and capsized Octa entirely amid roars of laughing. Octa sprang up and chased her round and round the field till she caught and tickled her. It was quite one of the bits of fun of the evening. … The only contretemps was that poor little Hannah fell down and sprained her arm. However, Miss Hill’s surgical powers came in grandly, and I do not suppose Hannah is any the worse except for a few days inaction. Well, how strange it is to find this all over, and probably never to return. I cannot say I am glad our tour is over, for I do believe I was never so happy for so long in my whole life, but neither can I say I am sorry to see dear old London again—I am sure I could come back to no other place—as a place—with near so much pleasure. …

Just fancy Octavia’s energy—after that tremendous journey not reaching home till 10.30, she was off to Lincoln’s Inn at 7 a.m. the next morning for the early communion, and went again, and I with her in the afternoon. Her Mother and sister were so delighted with her account of all her doings, and a glorious one she gave certainly. I had tea with them last night. Goodbye, my darling, for the present. Not so very long now, I trust, before we meet.

Aug. 1st. Although this has been in a ‘Milan’ envelope all this time, I suppose I must now send it to Chamounix, as I foolishly forgot to post it yesterday.

Today quite forgotten to order any dinner, so just bought some cheese and strawberries.

Tell Carry John Davis has sent her a letter to complain of me, which was forwarded to me, and which I have answered. Goodbye darling.

Yours lovingly,

Soph.”

In August, when S. J.-B. and Miss Heaton were abroad together, Miss Hill writes:

“London feels strangely desolate, the lamps looked as they used to look, pitiless and unending as I walked home last night, and knew I could not go to you. … I don’t the least suppose you’ll go to Florence or see my sisters, but, if you should, pray take off your ‘spikes’ and remember … how much they love England, and everyone who is a friend of ours. I look forward to bright long days in which I shall learn always more about you, and watch with unending and unfathomable love and sympathy your upward growth, and we may look back together on our lives, as I do often on my own, and wonder how I could know and see so little, and wonder more how, knowing so little, I should be led continually to deeper truth.”

Here, one would have said, was the beginning of an ideal friendship, and so it might have proved—allowing, of course, for the necessary rubs between two such strong natures—had the two girls been alone in the world. But each of the two belonged to a family that in different ways exacted a great deal from each of its members, and particularly of the member involved in the present friendship. It is doubtful whether even the two girls could have made a success of living together, for the diary refers occasionally to “cataracts and breaks,” and on both sides there are letters of penitence for hot temper or “coldness and pride.” Moreover, Miss Hill loved peace more than do most, and, dearly as she loved S. J.-B., she was almost bound in time to find her “more stimulating than quotidian,” to quote a quaint phrase of Carlyle’s.

It is therefore with no small sinking of heart that one reads the following entry in S. J.-B.’s diary:

“Sept. 9th. Sunday [1860]. A plan on foot of my taking part of a house with the Hills and having Alice for a servant. That would be very jolly. But rents high about here—least £120.”

Certainly a similar sinking of heart took possession of Mr. and Mrs. Jex-Blake, and when they learned that the finding of a tenant for the drawing-room floor was an essential part of the scheme, it is not surprising that—short of stopping their daughter’s allowance which had been increased some time before—they did everything in their power to discourage the arrangement. They were well aware that, here as everywhere, the willing shoulders would take their full share of work and responsibility. The reader will be prepared for Mr. Jex-Blake’s point of view:

“Dearest Child,

You cannot surely mean to take a house and let lodgings in direct opposition to your dear Mother and me. It would be quite disgraceful and we never can consent to it. I will not believe, my dear child, with all our love for you, that you will so directly disobey us, or that Miss Hill, knowing our feelings on the subject, can be a party to it.

When you spoke of the other house, you said a lawyer was to look over the lease, and take care of the Hills, and I firmly believed, till the last few days, that you were to hire rooms. I had no more idea of your becoming a lodging-house keeper than of your keeping a shop. You cannot suppose that I would assist Miss Hill in such an exceedingly blameable transaction. I would with real pleasure assist her in all possible ways … but no Father or Mother who love their daughter, in your position, could consent to her joining in it. I trust, dearest child, you will give up all idea of such a thing, which, once done, you would repent as long as you lived.”

The response to this protest has not been preserved. On October 18th Miss Hill writes:

“My darling Child,

Thanks for all the trouble that you are taking about the houses, I am quite ashamed it should all fall to your share. Is Harley Street house quite out of the question? I received a letter from Mama, earnestly desiring that we should keep near the park; she would not at all like Bentinck Street. Don’t weary yourself with searching. I certainly will return on Thursday (probably much before) then we will look together again. … If it would secure the Harley Street house by all means let us pay all the taxes whatever they may be. I am writing in the dark. Goodbye, my own darling treasure.

I am,

Yours affectionately,

Octavia Hill.

Mama has an affection now for Harley Street.”

Finally, the house 14 Nottingham Place was taken, and rather more than the customary number of difficulties had to be worked through in connection with it. In addition to this, illness broke out in the house, and there were several invalids to be nursed.

The most forgiving of mothers writes after a visit to her daughter:

“It is all your own choice and doubtless right, but it sometimes grieves me to think how many discomforts you have, and how many indulgences I have—only it is not my doing that you have them not. I wish I did not think of you as worn and fagged. Do assure me that you go to bed as early as you can and get good rest.”

Fortunately youth and friendship make all things easy, or at least bearable. During S. J.-B.’s brief absence in December Miss Hill writes:

“Oh, child, your letters are such a delight, but I miss you so dreadfully. I wander like a lost thing about the house and long for you intensely. Every place seems so desolate. Every witness of your thought and active care of and for me contrasted vividly with Z’s odd procrastination till I almost felt unjust and unkind. And yet I ought to glory in your kindness and goodness, and in all that mighty and glorious energy that will help so many people in this sad world, if it is spared to us. Your room, the fire, the thought of all you had told me to provide for myself, fills my eyes with tears. I mean to spend a very quiet and happy Sunday.” And again, later—“Do you know I get on very much more easily with strangers than I used, all of which I owe to you. It is a great satisfaction to me: it pleases one’s friends to have their friends like one.”

Up to this point the friendship had been an almost unqualified gain, but, little by little, Miss Hill began to feel the strain of dividing herself—so to speak—between her family, her comrade and her work. In May 1861 she was called away by the illness of her friend, Miss Harris,^[20] and the change to an ideally peaceful life was just what she needed. Her own health had begun to suffer and she remained on at the Lakes for some months to gain strength. In her absence, S. J.-B. took on her own shoulders in great measure the responsibilities of householder. Hitherto her acquaintance with the other members of the Hill family had been slight, but a warm friendship now sprang up between her and the sister, Miranda, who often shared the meals made ready by the devoted Alice and served by her in her young mistress’ room. Few young people in the first glow of a new friendship have sufficient tact, self-control and knowledge of life to avoid all risk of wounding their elders, and such tact would scarcely be possible in a nature like S. J.-B.’s. Little rubs and frictions increased, and no doubt Octavia was the confidante of all. In July she writes:

“I hold myself prepared to come when it seems right, sure to be given strength to do my duty, but certainly not longing for anything that will bring me again into a world of contention. I can’t bear to think how pained you would be if you could know the strength of this feeling, for I know you would feel it a failure of love. I tell you all this because I am sure you will feel it in my letters, because I am sure such a cloud hurts less when frankly confessed, because I am sure such a friendship as yours and mine need not fear it, remaining untouched and immoveable, based on what can neither change nor know fear. … All my life long this dread and misery about even the slightest contention or estrangement has taken the form of misery, continually saying in itself, ‘I cannot bear it.’ Since physical strength has left me so far this wretched dread has increased tenfold. …

How delightfully kind and good you are to everybody. I can fancy I see you, brightly kind, good and energetic, going about among all the people, entertaining monitors, inviting my sisters to tea, giving club dinners, learning about examinations, arranging the play, talking to Miss Boucherett, delighting to plan work and holiday for them all. … When I have thought, as I often have, that it is probable that I may never have strength to work any more, you cannot think how I have clung to the thought of your ever ready and powerful help and care.”

Through all this tide of affection, one wonders whether S. J.-B. in any way realized the very genuine apprehension her friend felt about returning to the atmosphere of contention. The probability is that she did not realize it at all, or rather that she looked upon it as the expression of a transient mood caused by physical weakness. No doubt she made a generous resolve that “everything should be made easy for Octa” when she returned; but she did not realize how great was the need for resolve. She never saw her own personality from the outside; and of course hers was not the only “temperament” in the house. No member of the family could have been described as a mere cabbage.

We all know how friction increases when the machinery is out of gear: differences of opinion grew: Mr. and Mrs. Jex-Blake protested against the imprudence of accepting a banker’s reference only, in the case of a foreigner who was in terms for the rooms, and for once their daughter upheld their view with tenacity. Finally—though this not till October—the state of strain became so great that Octavia was summoned home.

One can sympathize profoundly with her in the difficult situation she was called upon to face. She knew by this time what the faults were on both sides, knew in particular that S. J.-B. was not a placid person; began to guess perhaps that explosions of temper were as essential to that generous nature as the thunderstorm is to a stretch of summer days. Meanwhile everyone was counting on her to solve the difficulty with a wave of her wand: and here was she, never very robust, weary with a long journey, called away from a congenial holiday to the intimate association with a thousand and one petty cares in addition to the special crisis that had summoned her home.

The extracts given above are a mere gleaning from many unpublished letters which bear witness to her devoted attachment to S. J.-B., but although her sympathy with her own mother was perhaps less fervent at this time than it afterwards became—she had a strong sense of filial affection and duty. Moreover she had her work in the world to do—invaluable work we know it proved—and she felt that she could only do it in an atmosphere of peace and quiet.

Assuredly it was not an easy situation to face. Looking back upon the whole story after more than half-a-century, one cannot but wish that she had simply compelled S. J.-B. to realize the truth—that she found herself unable to live and do her work unless she could have the peace that her soul loved, that—much as she had profited up to a certain point by the stimulating friendship of one so unlike herself—the time had come when she found that friendship too stimulating under present conditions. Surely—one fancies—some arrangement might have been arrived at by which so mutually beneficial a friendship might have been continued.

Miss Hill, however, decided otherwise. In the watches of that first night, after a long talk with her Mother (a talk that, in the nature of the case, can scarcely have emphasized S. J.-B.’s point of view), before she had even seen her friend, she resolved to forego even the semblance of an attempt to reconcile these conflicting claims. Something must go, and that something must not be the mother and sisters to whom she had devoted most of her ardent young life, the mother and sisters who depended on her wisdom and goodness more even than they knew.

It was one thing to make the great resolve: it was quite another to explain it to the friend whose one conscious desire was to make Octa’s life an easy one.

So she set her face like a flint, and, for the first time in the course of their friendship, she refused to see S. J.-B.’s side of the question at all. Peace must be secured at all costs, and, if peace was to be secured, this delightful exacting friendship must end. S. J.-B. might retain her rooms for the time as a matter of business—

But neither S. J.-B. nor her indignant Mother would listen to that.

Well, then, let it all go. The time for half measures—or so Miss Hill thought—was over. All intercourse must cease. “The relentless knife must cut sheer through.”

How much the effort cost her we gather from the extent to which she overdid the part. She was at the end of her tether, so to speak, and acting, doubtless, on an instinct of sheer self-preservation, she would allow no discussion of any kind. She set her face so flintily that S. J.-B. was driven in uttermost bewilderment to the conclusion that the complete withdrawal was due to some extraordinary aberration on the part of her friend—an aberration for which so noble a being could not be responsible, and which might therefore come to an end as suddenly as it had begun. A thousand times she had said to herself, “Everything will be right when Octavia comes!” And now, behold, Octavia was here, and it was no Octavia. It was a fairy changeling to whom the beautiful past was a thing unknown. The rupture was so complete that it was no rupture. It was a nightmare, an inexplicable darkness at noonday, something so contrary to all known laws of nature that it could not last. This hope, this attitude of expectancy, was encouraged by the extraordinarily tender and appreciative letters which, at intervals for some years, broke through Miss Hill’s reserve. In one of these letters, dated Nov. 5th, she writes: