curtain. In the frank license
of narrative, years will have rolled away ere the curtain rise again.
Events that may influence a life often date from moments the most
serene, from things that appear as trivial and unnoticeable as the great
lady's visit to the basketmaker's cottage. Which of those lives
will that visit influence hereafter,--the woman's, the child's, the
vagrant's? Whose? Probably little that passes now would aid conjecture,
or be a visible link in the chain of destiny. A few desultory questions;
a few guarded answers; a look or so, a musical syllable or two,
exchanged between the lady and the child; a basket bought, or a promise
to call again. Nothing worth the telling. Be it then untold. View only
the scene itself as the curtain drops reluctantly. The rustic cottage,
its garden-door open, and open its old-fashioned lattice casements. You
can see how neat and cleanly, how eloquent of healthful poverty, how
remote from squalid penury, the whitewashed walls, the homely furniture
within. Creepers lately trained around the doorway; Christmas holly,
with berries red against the window-panes; the bee-hive yonder; a
starling, too, outside the threshold, in its wicker cage; in the
background (all the rest of the neighbouring hamlet out of sight), the
church spire tapering away into the clear blue wintry sky. All has an
air of repose, of safety. Close beside you is the Presence of HOME; that
ineffable, sheltering, loving Presence, which amidst solitude murmurs
"not solitary,"--a Presence unvouchsafed to the great lady in the palace
she has left. And the lady herself? She is resting on the rude gnarled
root-stump from which the vagrant had risen; she has drawn Sophy towards
her; she has taken the child's hand; she is speaking now, now listening;
and on her face kindness looks like happiness. Perhaps she is happy
that moment. And Waife? he is turning aside his weatherbeaten mobile
countenance with his hand anxiously trembling upon the young scholar's
arm. The scholar whispers, "Are you satisfied with me?" and Waife
answers in a voice as low but more broken, "God reward you! Oh, joy! if
my pretty one has found at last a woman friend!" Poor vagabond, he has
now a calm asylum, a fixed humble livelihood; more than that, he has
just achieved an object fondly cherished. His past life,--alas! what has
he done with it? His actual life, broken fragment though it be, is
at rest now. But still the everlasting question,--mocking