mon means for their object. The good old Eng-
lish plan of district visiting, by which ladies can
have mercy on the bodies and souls of those
below them, without casting off the holy dis-
cipline which a home, even the most ungenial,
alone supplies, savored too much of mere " Protes-
tantism." It might be God's plan for Christian-
izing England just now, but that was no reason,
alas ! for its being their plan : they wanted some-
thing more "Catholic," more in accordance with
Church principles (for, indeed, is it not the
business of the Church to correct the errors of
Providence ! ) ; and what they sought they found
at once in a certain favorite establishment of the
vicar's, a Church-of-England btguinage, or quasi-
Protestant nunnery, which he fostered in a neigh-
boring city, and went thither on all high tides to
confess the young ladies, who were in all things
nuns, but bound by no vows, except, of course,
such as they might choose to make for themselves
in private.

Here they labored among the lowest haunts of
misery and sin, piously and self-denyingly enough,
sweet souls! in hope of "the peculiar crown,"



"Murder will out," and Love too 165

and a higher place in heaven than the relations
whom they had left behind them "in the world,"
and unshackled by the interference of parents,
and other such merely fleshly relationships,
which, as they cannot have been instituted by
God merely to be trampled under foot on the
path to holiness, and cannot well have instituted
themselves (unless, after all, the materialists are
right, and this world does grind of itself, except
when its Maker happens to interfere once every
thousand years), must needs have been instituted
by the devil. And so more than one girl in that
nunnery, and out of it, too, believed in her
inmost heart, though her "Catholic principles,"
by a happy inconsistency, forbade her to say
so.

In a moment of excitement, fascinated by the
romance of the notion, Argemone had proposed
to her mother to allow her to enter this beguinage,
and called in the vicar as advocate; which pro-
duced a correspondence between him and Mrs.
Lavington, stormy on her side, provokingly calm
on his: and when the poor lady, tired of raging,
had descended to an affecting appeal to his
human sympathies, entreating him to spare a
mother's feelings, he had answered with the same
impassive fanaticism, that "he was surprised at
her putting a mother's selfish feelings in compe-
tition with the sanctity of her child," and that
" had his own daughter shown such a desire for a
higher vocation, he should have esteemed it the
very highest honor;" to which Mrs. Lavington
answered, naively enough, that " it depended very
much on what his daughter was like." So he
was all but forbidden the house. Nevertheless



1 66 Yeast

he contrived, by means of this same secret corre-
spondence, to keep alive in Argemone's mind the
longing to turn nun, and fancied honestly that
he was doing God service, while he was pamper-
ing the poor girl's lust for singularity and self-
glorification.

But, lately, Argemone's letters had become
less frequent and less confiding; and the vicar,
who well knew the reason, had resolved to bring
the matter to a crisis.

So he wrote earnestly and peremptorily to his
pupil, urging her, with all his subtle and refined
eloquence, to make a final appeal to her mother,
and if that failed, to act "as her conscience
should direct her;" and enclosed an answer from
the superior of the convent, to a letter which
Argemone had in a mad moment asked him to
write. The superior's letter spoke of Argemone's
joining her as a settled matter, and of her room
as ready for her, while it lauded to the skies the
peaceful activity and usefulness of the establish-
ment. This letter troubled Argemone exceed-
ingly. She had never before been compelled to
face her own feelings, either about the nunnery
or about Lancelot. She had taken up the fancy
of becoming a Sister of Charity, not as Honoria
might have done, from genuine love of the poor,
but from "a sense of duty." Almsgiving and
visiting the sick were one of the methods of earn-
ing heaven prescribed by her new creed. She
was ashamed of her own laziness by the side of
Honoria's simple benevolence; and, sad though
it may be to have to say it, she longed to outdo
her by some signal act of self-sacrifice. She had
looked to this nunnery, too, as an escape, once



" Murder will out," and Love too 1 67

and for all, from her own luxury, just as people
who have not strength to be temperate take
refuge in teetotahsm ; and the thought of menial
services towards the poor, however distasteful to
her, came in quite prettily to fill up the little
ideal of a life of romantic asceticisms and mystic
contemplation, which gave the true charm in her
eyes to her wild project. But now just as a field
had opened to her cravings after poetry and art,
wider and richer than she had ever imagined
just as those simple childlike views of man and
nature, which she had learnt to despise, were
assuming an awful holiness in her eyes just as
she had found a human soul to whose regenera-
tion she could devote all her energies, to be
required to give all up, perhaps forever (and she
felt that if at all, it ought to be forever) ; it
was too much for her little heart to bear; and
she cried bitterly; and tried to pray, and could
not; and longed for a strong and tender bosom
on which to lay her head, and pour out all her
doubts and struggles ; and there was none. Her
mother did not understand hardly loved her.
Honoria loved her, but understood her even less
than her mother. Pride the pride of intellect,
the pride of self-will had long since sealed her
lips to her own family. . . .

And then, out of the darkness of her heart,
Lancelot's image rose before her stronger than
all, tenderer than all ; and as she remembered his
magical faculty of anticipating all her thoughts,
embodying for her all her vague surmises, he
seemed to beckon her towards him. She shud-
dered and turned away. And now she first be-
came conscious how he had haunted her thoughts



1 68 Yeast

in the last few months, not as a soul to be saved,
but as a living man his face, his figure, his
voice, his every gesture and expression, rising
clear before her, in spite of herself, by day and
night.

And then she thought of his last drawing, and
the looks which had accompanied it, unmistak-
able looks of passionate and adoring love. There
was no denying it she had always known that
he loved her, but she had never dared to confess
it to herself. But now the earthquake was come,
and all the secrets of her heart burst upward to
the light, and she faced the thought in shame
and terror. "How unjust I have been to him!
how cruel! thus to entice him on in hopeless
love!"

She lifted up her eyes, and saw in the mirror
opposite the reflection of her own exquisite
beauty.

"I could have known what I was doing! I
knew all the while! And yet it is so delicious
to feel that any one loves me ! Is it selfishness ?
It is selfishness, to pamper my vanity on an affec-
tion which I do not, will not return. I will not
be thus in debt to him, even for his love. I do
not love him I do not ; and even if I did, to
give myself up to a man of whom I know so little,
who is not even a Christian, much less a Church-
man ! Ay ! and to give up my will to any man !
to become the subject, the slave, of another
human being ! I, who have worshipped the belief
in woman's independence, the hope of woman's
enfranchisement, who have felt how glorious it
is to live like the angels, single and self-sus-
tained ! What if I cut the Gordian knot, and



" Murder will out," and Love too 1 69

here make, once for all, a vow of perpetual
celibacy ? "

She flung herself on her knees she could not
collect her thoughts.

"No," she said, "I am not prepared for this.
It is too solemn to be undertaken in this miser-
able whirlwind of passion. I will fast, and medi-
tate, and go up formally to the little chapel, and
there devote myself to God; and, in the mean-
time, to write at once to the superior of the
b/guines ; to go to my mother, and tell her once

for all What? Must I lose him? must I

give him up? Not his love I cannot give up
that would that I could ! but no ! he will love
me forever. I know it as well as if an angel told
me. But to give up him ! Never to see him !
never to hear his voice ! never to walk with him
among the beech woods any more! Oh, Arge-
mone ! Argemone ! miserable girl ! and is it come
to this? " And she threw herself on the sofa, and
hid her face in her hands. i

Yes, Argemone, it is come to this; and the
best thing you can do, is just what you are doing
to lie there and cry yourself to sleep, while the
angels are laughing kindly (if a solemn public,
who settles everything for them, will permit them
to laugh) at the rickety old windmill of sham-
Popery which you have taken for a real giant.

At that same day and hour, as it chanced,
Lancelot, little dreaming what the said windmill
was grinding for him, was scribbling a hasty and
angry answer to a letter of Luke's, which, per-
haps, came that very morning in order to put him
into a proper temper for the demolishing of
windmills. It ran thus:



170 Yeast

. " Ay, my good Cousin, so I expected

" Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem . . .

Pleasant and easy for you Protestants (for I will call you
what you are, in spite of your own denials, a truly con-
sistent and logical Protestant and therefore a Material-
ist) easy for you, I say, to sit on the shore, in cold,
cruel self-satisfaction, and tell the poor wretch buffeting
with the waves what he ought to do while he is choking
and drowning. . . . Thank Heaven, the storm has
stranded me upon the everlasting Rock of Peter ; but
it has been a sore trouble to reach it. Protestants, who
look at creeds as things to be changed like coats, when-
ever they seem not to fit them, little know what we
Catholic-hearted ones suffer. ... If they did, they
would be more merciful and more chary in the require-
ments of us, just as we are in the very throe of a new-
born existence. The excellent man, to whose care I
have committed myself, has a wise and a tender heart
... he saw no harm in my concealing from my father
the spiritual reason of my giving up my curacy (for I
have given it up), and only giving the outward, but
equally true reason, that I found it on the whole an
ineligible and distressing post. ... I know you will
apply to such an act that disgusting monosyllable of
which Protestants are so fond. He felt with me and for
me for my horror of giving pain to my father, and for
my wearied and excited state of mind ; and strangely
enough to show how differently, according to the
difference of the organs, the same object may appear to
two people he quoted in my favor that very verse
which you wrest against me. He wished me to show
my father that I had only changed my heaven, and not
my character, by becoming an Ultramontane-Catholic
. . . that, as far as his esteem and affection were founded



"Murder will out," and Love too 171

on anything in me, the ground of it did not vanish with
my conversion. If I had told him at once of my altered
opinions, he would have henceforth viewed every word
and action with a prejudiced eye. . . . Protestants are
so bigoted . . . but if, after seeing me for a month or
two the same Luke that he had ever known me, he were
gradually informed that I had all the while held that
creed which he had considered incompatible with such
a life as I hoped mine would be you must see the
effect which it ought to have. ... I don't doubt that
you will complain of all this. . . . All I can say is, that I
cannot sympathize with that superstitious reverence for
mere verbal truth, which is so common among Protes-
tants. ... It seems to me they throw away the spirit of
truth, in their idolatry of its letter. For instance,
what is the use of informing a man of a true fact but to
induce a true opinion in him? But if, by clinging to
the exact letter of the fact, you create a false opinion in
his mind, as I should do in my father's case, if by telling
him at once of my change, I gave him an unjust horror
of Catholicism, you do not tell him the truth. . . .
You may speak what is true to you, but it becomes an
error when received into his mind. ... If his mind is
a refracting and polarizing medium if the crystalline
lens of his soul's eye has been changed into tourmaline
or Labrador spar the only way to give him a true
image of the fact, is to present it to him already properly
altered in form, and adapted to suit the obliquity of his
vision ; in order that the very refractive power of his
faculties may, instead of distorting it, correct it, and
make it straight for him ; and so a verbal wrong in fact
may possess him with a right opinion. . . .

" You see the whole question turns on your Protestant
deification of the intellect. ... If you really believed,
as you all say you do, that the nature of man, and there-
fore his intellect among the rest, was utterly corrupt, you



172 Yeast

would not be so superstitiously careful to tell the truth
... as you call it ; because you would know that man's
heart, if not his head, would needs turn the truth into a
lie by its own corruption. . . . The proper use of reason-
ing is to produce opinion, and if the subject in which
you wish to produce the opinion is diseased, you must
adapt the medicine accordingly."

To all which Lancelot, with several strong
curses, scrawled the following answer:

"And this is my Cousin Luke ! Well, I shall believe
henceforward that there is, after all, a thousand times
greater moral gulf fixed between Popery and Tractarian-
ism, than between Tractarianism and the extremest Prot-
estantism. My dear fellow, I won't bother you, by
cutting up your charming ambiguous middle terms,
which make reason and reasoning identical, or your
theory that the office of reasoning is to induce opinions
(the devil take opinions, right or wrong I want facts,
faith in real facts !) or about deifying the intellect
as if all sound intellect was not in itself divine light a
revelation to man of absolute laws independent of him,
as the very heathens hold. But this I will do thank
you most sincerely for the compliment you pay us
Cismontane heretics. We do retain some dim belief
in a God even I am beginning to believe in be-
lieving in Him. And therefore, as I begin to suppose,
it is, that we reverence facts, as the work of God, His
acted words and will, which we dare not falsify ; which
we believe will tell their own story better than we can
tell it for them. If our eyes are dimmed, we think it
safer to clear them, which do belong to us, than to be-
devil, by the light of those very already dimmed eyes,
the objects round, which do not belong to us. Whether
we are consistent or not about the corruptness of man,
we are about the incorruptness of God ; and therefore



"Murder will out," and Love too 173

about that of the facts by which God teaches men : and
believe, and will continue to believe, that the blackest
of all sins, the deepest of all Atheisms, that which, above
all things, proves no faith in God's government of the
universe, no sense of His presence, no understanding of
His character, is a lie.

" One word more Unless you tell your father within
twenty-four hours after receiving this letter, I will. And
I, being a Protestant (if cursing Popery means Protes-
tantism), mean what I say."

As Lancelot walked up to the Priory that
morning, the Reverend Panurgus O'Blareaway
dashed out of a cottage by the roadside, and seized
him unceremoniously by the shoulders. He was
a specimen of humanity which Lancelot could not
help at once liking and despising; a quaint mix-
ture of conceit and earnestness, uniting the
shrewdness of a stockjobber with the frolic of
a schoolboy broke loose. He was rector of a
place in the west of Ireland, containing some
ten Protestants and some thousand Papists.
Being, unfortunately for himself, a red-hot
Orangeman, he had thought fit to quarrel with
the priest, in consequence of which he found
himself deprived both of tithes and congregation;
and after receiving three or four Rockite letters,
and a charge of slugs through his hat (of which
he always talked as if being shot at was the most
pleasant and amusing feature of Irish life), he
repaired to England, and there, after trying to
set up as popular preacher in London, declaim-
ing at Exeter Hall, and writing for all the third-
rate magazines, found himself incumbent of
Lower Whitford. He worked there, as he said
himself, "like a horse;" spent his mornings in



1 74 Yeast

the schools, his afternoons in the "cotfages;
preached four or five extempore sermons every
week to overflowing congregations ; took the lead,
by virtue of the "gift of the gab," at all "reli-
gious" meetings for ten miles round; and really
did a great deal of good in his way. He had an
unblushing candor about his own worldly ambi-
tion, with a tremendous brogue ; and prided him-
self on exaggerating deliberately both of these
excellences.

"The top of the morning to ye, Mr. Smith. Ye
haven't such a thing as a cegar about ye? I *ve
been preaching to school-children till me throat 's
as dry as the slave of a lime-burner's coat."

"I am very sorry; but, really, I have left my
case at home."

" Oh ! ah ! faix and I forgot Ye must n't be
smokin' the nasty things going up to the castle.
Och, Mr. Smith, but you're the lucky man!"

"I am much obliged to you for the compli-
ment," said Lancelot, gruffly; "but really I don't
see how I deserve it. "

" Desarve it ! Sure luck 's all, and that 's your
luck, and not your deserts at all. To have the
handsomest girl in the county dying for love of
ye " (Panurgus had a happy knack of blurting
out truths when they were pleasant ones).
"And she just the beautifulest creature that
ever spilte shoe-leather, barring Lady Philandria
Mountflunkey, of Castle Mountflunkey, Quane's
County, that shall be nameless."

"Upon my word, O'Blareaway, you seem to be
better acquainted with my matters than I am.
Don't you think, on the whole, it might be better
to mind your own business? "



"Murder will out,'* and Love too 175

" Me own business ! Poker o' Moses ! and
ain't it me own business ? Have n't ye spilte my
tenderest hopes? And good luck to ye in that
same, for ye 're as pretty a rider as ever kicked
coping-stones out of a wall ; and poor Paddy loves
a sportsman by nature. Och ! but ye 've got a
hand of trumps this time. Didn't I mate the
vicar the other day, and spake my mind to
him?"

"What do you mean?" asked Lancelot, with
a strong expletive.

"Faix, I told him he might as well Faugh a
ballagh make a rid road, and get out of that,
with his bowings and his crossings, and his
Popery made asy for small minds, for there was
a gun a-field that would wipe his eye, maning
yourself, ye Prathestant. "

"All I can say is, that you had really better
mind your own business, and I '11 mind my own."

"Och," said the good-natured Irishman, "and
it 's you must mind my business, and I'll mind
yours; and that 's all fair and aqual. Ye 've cut
me out intirely at the Priory, ye Tory, and so
ye 're bound to give me a lift somehow. Could n't
ye look me out a fine fat widow, with an illigant
little fortune? For what's England made for
except to find poor Paddy a wife and money?
Ah, ye may laugh, but I 'd buy me a chapel at
the West End : me talents are thrown away here
intirely, wasting me swateness on the desert air,
as Tom Moore says " (Panurgus used to attribute
all quotations whatsoever to Irish geniuses) ; " and
I flatter meself I 'm the boy to shute the Gospel
to the aristocracy. "

Lancelot burst into a roar of laughter, and



1 76 Yeast

escaped over the next gate: but the Irishman's
coarse 'hints stuck by him as they were intended
to do. " Dying for the love of me ! " He knew
it was an impudent exaggeration, but, somehow,
it gave him confidence; "there is no smoke,"
he thought, " without fire. " And his heart beat
high with new hopes, for which he laughed at
himself all the while. It was just the cordial
which he needed. That conversation determined
the history of his life.

He met Argemone that morning in the library,
as usual; but he soon found that she was not
thinking of Homer. She was moody and ab-
stracted; and he could not help at last saying:
" I am afraid I and my classics are de trop this
morning, Miss Lavington."

" Oh, no, no. Never that. " She turned away
her head. He fancied that it was to hide a tear.

Suddenly she rose, and turned to him with a
clear, calm, gentle gaze.

"Listen to me, Mr. Smith. We must part
to-day, and forever. This intimacy has gone
on too long, I am afraid, for your happiness.
And now, like all pleasant things in this miser-
able world, it must cease. I cannot tell you
why ; but you will trust me. I thank you for it
I thank God for it. I have learnt things from
it which I shall never forget. I have learnt, at
least from it, to esteem and honor you. You
have vast powers. Nothing, nothing, I believe,
is too high for you to attempt and succeed. But
we must part; and now, God be with you. Oh,
that you would but believe that these glorious
talents are His loan ! That you would but be a
true and loyal knight to Him who said ' Learn



"Murder will out," and Love too 177

of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye
shall find rest unto your souls ! ' Ay," she went
on, more and more passionately, for she felt that
not she, but One mightier than herself was
speaking through her, "then you might be great
indeed. Then I might watch your name from
afar, rising higher and higher daily in the ranks
of God's own heroes. I see it and you have
taught me to see it that you are meant for a
faith nobler and deeper than all doctrines and
systems can give. You must become the phi-
losopher, who can discover new truths the
artist who can embody them in new forms, while

poor I And that is another reason why we

should part. Hush ! hear me out. I must not
be a clog, to drag you down in your course. Take
this, and farewell; and remember that you onoe
had a friend called Argemone."

She put into his hands a little Bible. He took
it, and laid it down on the table.

For a minute he stood silent and rooted to the
spot. Disappointment, shame, rage, hatred, all
boiled up madly within him. The bitterest
insults rose to his lips " Flirt, cold-hearted
pedant, fanatic ! " but they sank again unspoken,
as he looked into the celestial azure of those
eyes, calm and pure as a soft evening sky. A
mighty struggle between good and evil shook his
heart to the roots; and, for the first time in his
life, his soul breathed out one real prayer, that
God would help him now or never to play the
man. And in a moment the darkness passed ; a
new spirit called out all the latent strength
within him j and gently and proudly he answered
her:

i vol. y



178 Yeast

" Yes, I will go. I have had mad dreams, con-
ceited and insolent, and have met with my
deserts. Brute and fool as I am, I have aspired
even to you! And I have gained, in the sun-
shine of your condescension, strength and purity.
Is not that enough for me ? And now I will
show you that I love you by obeying you.
You tell me to depart I go forever."

He turned away. Why did she almost spring
after him?

" Lancelot ! one word ! Do not misunderstand
me, as I know you will. You will think me so
cold, heartless, fickle. Oh, you do not know
you never can know how much I, too, have
felt ! "

He stopped, spell-bound. In an instant his
conversation with the Irishman flashed up before
him with new force and meaning. A thousand
petty incidents, which he had driven contempt-
uously from his mind, returned as triumphant
evidences ; and, with an impetuous determination,
he cried out :

"I see I see it all, Argemone ! We love
each other ! You are mine, never to be parted ! "

What was her womanhood, that it could stand
against the energy of his manly will ! The
almost coarse simplicity of his words silenced her
with a delicious violence. She could only bury
her face in her hands and sob out:

" Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot, whither are you forc-
ing me ? "

" I am forcing you no whither. God, the Father
of spirits, is leading you ! You, who believe in
Him, how dare you fight against Him? "

"Lancelot, I cannot I cannot listen to you



"Murder will out," and Love too 179