I am too rudely shaken in my most cherished convictions, I am too depressed and disheartened, to write more.
All good wishes go with you, dear Miss Roseberry, until we meet.
"Most truly yours, "HORACE HOLMCROFT."
IV. Extracts from the DIARY of THE REVEREND JULIAN GRAY.
FIRST EXTRACT.
...."A month to-day since we were married!
I have only one thing to say: I would cheerfully go through all that I have suffered to live this one month over again.
I never knew what happiness was until now.
And better still, I have persuaded Mercy that it is all her doing.
I have scattered her misgivings to the winds; she is obliged to submit to evidence, and to own that she can make the happiness of my life.
"We go back to London to-morrow.
She regrets leaving the tranquil retirement of this remote sea-side place—she dreads change.
I care nothing for it.
It is all one to me where I go, so long as my wife is with me."
SECOND EXTRACT.
"The first cloud has risen.
I entered the room unexpectedly just now, and found her in tears.
"With considerable difficulty I persuaded her to tell me what had happened.
Are there any limits to the mischief that can be done by the tongue of a foolish woman?
The landlady at my lodgings is the woman, in this case.
Having no decided plans for the future as yet, we returned (most unfortunately, as the event has proved) to the rooms in London which I inhabited in my bachelor days.
They are still mine for six weeks to come, and Mercy was unwilling to let me incur the expense of taking her to a hotel.
At breakfast this morning I rashly congratulated myself (in my wife's hearing) on finding that a much smaller collection than usual of letters and cards had accumulated in my absence.
Breakfast over, I was obliged to go out.
Painfully sensitive, poor thing, to any change in my experience of the little world around me which it is possible to connect with the event of my marriage, Mercy questioned the landlady, in my absence, about the diminished number of my visitors and my correspondents.
The woman seized the opportunity of gossiping about me and my affairs, and my wife's quick perception drew the right conclusion unerringly.
My marriage has decided certain wise heads of families on discontinuing their social relations with me.
The facts, unfortunately, speak for themselves.
People who in former years habitually called upon me and invited me—or who, in the event of my absence, habitually wrote to me at this season—have abstained with a remarkable unanimity from calling, inviting, or writing now.
"It would have been sheer waste of time—to say nothing of its also implying a want of confidence in my wife—if I had attempted to set things right by disputing Mercy's conclusion.
I could only satisfy her that not so much as the shadow of disappointment or mortification rested on my mind.
In this way I have, to some extent, succeeded in composing my poor darling. But the wound has been inflicted, and the wound is felt.
There is no disguising that result.
I must face it boldly.
"Trifling as this incident is in my estimation, it has decided me on one point already.
In shaping my future course I am now resolved to act on my own convictions—in preference to taking the well-meant advice of such friends as are still left to me.
"All my little success in life has been gained in the pulpit.
I am what is termed a popular preacher—but I have never, in my secret self, felt any exultation in my own notoriety, or any extraordinary respect for the means by which it has been won.
In the first place, I have a very low idea of the importance of oratory as an intellectual accomplishment.
There is no other art in which the conditions of success are so easy of attainment; there is no other art in the practice of which so much that is purely superficial passes itself off habitually for something that claims to be profound.
Then, again, how poor it is in the results which it achieves!
Take my own case.
How often (for example) have I thundered with all my heart and soul against the wicked extravagance of dress among women—against their filthy false hair and their nauseous powders and paints!
How often (to take another example) have I denounced the mercenary and material spirit of the age—the habitual corruptions and dishonesties of commerce, in high places and in low!
What good have I done?
I have delighted the very people whom it was my object to rebuke.
'What a charming sermon!'
'More eloquent than ever!'
'I used to dread the sermon at the other church—do you know, I quite look forward to it now.'
That is the effect I produce on Sunday.