by giving up your name? Wouldn’t she cling
to you the more, the more all the world was against
you?’ (’I would,’ said Fanny,
with tearful energy. ‘Fanny’ was,
of course, Mrs. William Bolton, and was the happy
mother of five nearly grown-up sons and daughters,
and certainly stood in no peril as to her own
or their possession of the name of Bolton. The
letter was being read aloud to her by her husband,
whose mind was also stirred in his sister’s
favour by the nature of the arguments used.) ’If
so,’ continued the writer, ’why shouldn’t
I be the same? I don’t believe a word
the people said. I am sure I am his wife.
And as, when he was taken away from me, he left
a house for his wife and child to live in, I shall
continue to live in it.
’All the same, I know
you mean to be good to me. Give my best love
to Fanny, and believe me your
affectionate sister,
‘Hester Caldigate.’
In every letter and stroke of the name as she wrote
it there was an assertion that she claimed it as her
own, and that she was not ashamed of it.
‘Upon my word,’ said Mrs. William Bolton,
through her tears, ’I am beginning to think
that she is almost right.’ There was so
much of conjugal proper feeling in this that the husband
could only kiss his wife and leave her without further
argument on the matter.
Burning Words
‘No power at all; none whatever,’ the
banker said, when he was next compelled to carry on
the conversation. This was immediately upon his
return home from Cambridge, for his wife never allowed
the subject to be forgotten or set aside. Every
afternoon and every evening it was being discussed
at all hours not devoted to prayers, and every morning
it was renewed at the breakfast-table.
‘That comes from Robert.’ Mr. Bolton
was not able to deny the assertion. ‘What
does he mean by “no power"?’
‘We can’t make her do it. The magistrates
can’t interfere.’
’Magistrates! Has it been by the interference
of magistrates that men have succeeded in doing great
things? Was it by order from the magistrates
that the lessons of Christ have been taught over all
the world? Is there no such thing as persuasion?
Has truth no power? Is she more deaf to argument
and eloquence than another?’
‘She is very deaf, I think,’ said the
father, doubting his own eloquence.
’It is because no one has endeavoured to awaken
her by burning words to a true sense of her situation
When she said this she must surely have forgotten
much that had occurred during those weary hours which
had been passed by her and her daughter outside there
in the hall. ‘No power!’ she repeated.
’It is the answer always made by those who are
too sleepy to do the Lord’s work. It was
because men said that they had no power that the grain
fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth.
It is that aversion to face difficulties which causes
the broad path to be crowded with victims. I,
at any rate, will go. I may have no power, but
I will make the attempt.’
