TWO WOMEN.

Br S. D. SPICER,

THE

PART I.

"Being so very wilful...”—Tennyson.

THE one strong, noble, beautiful. The other? Well, in the other you might soon discover the clay foot of the golden image that Wilfred Eldon had set up.

The one was called Mary.

The name of the other was Kate.

Names characteristic of both. For Mary was (as one of her name should be) steadfast, compassionate, trustful. Kate was a creature of many moods, tearful and smiling all at once, impulsive, uncontrollable. She was most often called "Kitty;" the other was always Mary.

Wilfred loved Kate with the fierce passion of a flame that flares up quick and dies out. The strong burning of a red-hot fire that will last when the flame has gone, this was not Wilfred's love for Kate. 66 Wilful," we who formed his home life called him. It was a forecast of the man.

Wilful! how well I remember the trouble he gave those best and dearest to him. And yet, as a mother loves most the child who has cost her most, so Wilfred's mother loved the wayward boy better than any one of the home flock who had never given her a moment's uneasiness. It is the prodigal in this life who most often gets the fatted calf. It was so with Wilful.

I used to know Wilfred Eldon well-indeed, I knew all the family his mother was my oldest friend. We had been friends as children. We had shared the same masters, the same classes, we had been "presented" together at the same drawing-room. When she married Lord Walter, I had just taken a cottage on a sweet Surrey common called Sunny Rest, and Lady Walter when she became a widow joined me there. That is, she took a little house close to my cottage,-the gardens only divided by a low wall where the ivy clung and a tall fir-tree made a shelter. I remember Master Wilful would get up into that tree and climb the wall into my garden, a sturdy creature just emancipated from petticoats, and the only whipping he ever got in those days was

administered by my hands for oft-repeated trampling on my garden borders.

I had been five years at Sunny Rest when Sarah Eldon came. The interrupted friendship of our girlhood was renewed and I look back now to those happy years as some of the brightest of my life. I had never wished to marry. I enjoyed to the full other people's children and made it my delight to be useful to them.

An "old maid" has a corner of her own that nobody else can fill, that is, if she is the happy, contented, warm-hearted creature she ought to be. But then, she must be an "old maid" from choice, not from compulsion.

Wilfred was the eldest of the little toddling creatures who used to come about my knees for sugar-plums and coax for stories on wet afternoons. What talks their mother and I used to have when the children were in bed, sitting "knees and nose into the fire" (I call it), or rambling in beautiful summer evenings along the sweet Surrey lanes.

Surely there are few things more lovely on God's earth than friendship-friendship coming out of the secret sympathy that binds two souls together. Do you say you do not believe in it between women? I have seen it a sacred thing unbroken till

death.

Our talk, Lady Walter's and mine, was most often about her children, their character, their future. What great things Wilfred was to do! How proud his mother was of him. And after all, the boy's career was to be only a disappointment, a failure with one exception, yes-there was an exception-I had forgotten Mary Meadows.

Well, when he was old enough Wilfred Eldon was sent to

school.

"He will be first in his class, and by-and-by head of the school," his mother said confidently, and then as the months slipped on, "it is only a private school, you know, boys haven't a chance; wait till he's at Eton, and you'll see!" And after a year or two Wilfred went to Eton. There were prizes enough there to win, but somehow Wilful, as we still called him, never succeeded in getting one. "He is so strong and full of life," said his mother, "how can you expect a high-spirited boy to be amongst the saps?' Wait till he is in the Boats, he'll get into the Eight and be Captain before long. With his great abilities and strength of purpose, for Wilfred can be determined, Elizabeth, you know, when he sets his mind to do a thing." (I did indeed know that he could be determined, but I called his determination obstinacy.) But neither among the "wet Bobs" or the "dry" did Wilfred Eldon carry off the prize.

His defeats sat lightly on him. He was always going to do better next time, and so handsome, imperturbable, unsuccessful Wilfred finished his school-days and went to Oxford.

The next thing that happened and the most natural was that he fell in love, as the expression is.

I was tying up my sunflowers, there had been a storm in the night and they were dreadfully blown about, when Lady Walter came to announce the great event.

"Oh, my dear Elizabeth, I've such news for you! do leave those stupid things alone and attend to me." For I had my tallest flower in my hand, fastening it up while she spoke. I felt a little aggrieved that my sunflowers which had been quite a show all the season should be so lightly spoken of. "One moment, Sarah," I said, "I will only just tie up this one, and

"But Wilful's engaged to be married! There, Elizabeth, there's my news; what do you say to that?" I was at her side in an instant on the path, and forgetful of my old garden-gloves, clasping her white hands and kissing her all at once.

"Come in out of the sun," I said, for she had run to me without hat or cloak, straight from her letters and the breakfasttable, and I drew her in at my open window, and we sat down together. I remember now the scent of the roses, some red and white roses on the table.

"Isn't it delightful?" cried my friend, wiping her eyes, where the tears of joy stood; "I think she is worthy of my boy!"

"Mary Meadows!" was my surprised exclamation, "I often have thought it might come to this, but I hardly dared hope so much for Wilfred."

I remember I exclaimed so much at the boy's good fortune that Wilfred's mother became a little offended. A princess would hardly have been worthy of him in his mother's eyes.

Sweet Mary Meadows! the rest of us all marvelled at Wilfred's luck in winning such a woman's love, but it was not "luck," for all God's creatures move by His direction, and human hearts are no exception to His rule.

When my friend left I sat lost in thought, and only awoke from my abstraction when the garden scissors on my lap fell to the floor, and then I started up and went back to my flowers. Wilfred and Mary seemed painted on the large green leaves, and amongst the yellow petals of my sunflowers. The sweet garden scents came cool and refreshing after the storm. Would Mary's life with Wilfred Eldon be like my garden? all sunshine and singing birds? this was what I asked for her. Somehow I found myself thinking more of her than of him.

I had known Mary Meadows all her young life. She was what I had once heard Wilfred himself call her, "the perfection of woman," but then I never expected heedless, thoughtless Wilfred to succeed in winning perfection. If there was a superiority in Mary Meadows above others, it was nothing tiresome, nothing superior in the sense in which that word is often rendered odious.

It was gentleness combined with strength of purpose and withal a great humility; "womanliness" described her best.

Mary Meadows was not beautiful in the strict sense of the term, but her eyes-dark, speaking eyes--showed the soul within, and a resolute mouth spoke her indomitable will; for the rest she was small, but you could not call her insignificant. Wherever you found her she was a presence in the place. A woman to lean on, a very tower of strength in difficult times, a true "helpmate" to the man who married her. Was I not justified in my opinion of Wilfred Eldon's great good fortune? Already, in the years gone by, her influence had kept him from boyish scrapes, and worse, I believe, for he had been accustomed to confide in her and to follow her advice. It had not been of her seeking, for there are strong natures that must exercise influence over others whether they will it or no. We shall never know this side of the grave the component parts of soul and body, or what goes to make up that wonderful magnetic power that one soul exercises over another, and that we call influence, for want of a better word.

We all know it exists, and we all experience it some time in our lives, for good or evil. Heaven send that in our case it be for good. Wilfred was as wax in Mary's hands, and could no more help himself than the needle can help the power of the magnet to draw it to itself.

The

Mary herself seemed unconscious of her great power. small artifice of meaner souls was no part of her nature, or she might long ago have taken the boy's heart and made it captive, as the cruel do every day, only to fling away afterwards, crushed and bleeding, as a trophy of her power. But when, at last, the time came when he told her of his love, she found her heart had already gone to him, it was no longer in her own keeping, and so Wilfred Eldon won a prize! And I, musing on all this, thought how many a noble head and heart has failed to take any out of life's lottery, and this man with his selfish indolence and wasted opportunities, was to be blessed, as few are blessed, with a good woman's love. I marvelled as I thought it all over amongst my sunflowers and the birds singing.

When first Lady Walter brought the news, there was a name my tongue did not frame, but in my heart I said, "Thank God it is not Kate Verity!"

Mary Meadows came to see me. She was very happy, very

The

content to be Wilfred's wife. We sat under the shadow of the house and watched the harvest moon, as I had often watched it, sail above the fir-trees and the big cedar on my lawn. cedar branches were soon all silvered, and you could see beyond, where the meadow lands stretched to the river, the corn cut and some sheaves standing, each sheaf with its own particular shadow clear and bright under the moon.

"You see I've known him so long," she said, “and I think I loved him long before he made me say I did. He got into my heart years ago, I did not know it myself, and he was there all the time." She gave a low happy laugh. "Dear old Wilful!" The river ran through the cornfields, a gossamer thread in a silver mist. "Let us go in," I said presently, "the dew is rising." "One minute more," she begged, and gave a sigh. Α shadow had come on her clear open brow, the Madonna brow I used to call it, likening it to one of Raphael's pictures I had seen. "What troubles you?" I asked. She looked at me with her honest, fearless eyes, and said, "Kate Verity!" She said it so simply, and without hesitation, though her voice trembled a little. I remained silent, not knowing what to say.

"He is such a boy," she went on after a moment, "you may smile, I know he is two years my senior, but somehow I have always felt myself to be the elder of the two-he is a baby in the hands of that designing woman."

"But Wilfred is yours by right now," I said eagerly. "Cannot you forbid him to She held up both hands, so small and white, in the twilight of the garden, as though to stop my further speech; I think only the soft witchery of the moonlit dusk would have made her speak of this, even to me.

"There is nothing to forbid," she said hurriedly, "I would not make the subject of so much importance-I would not have him think——" She threw back her small shapely head with a gesture that meant much.

"Have you said nothing to him?"

"Oh, he knows what I feel, what I have always felt about this intimacy. Long ago I warned him. I could not think then that he could ever be more to me than a dear young brother, to be advised and scolded too-for I never spared him in the old days, -I told him plainly of his folly, I could not bear to see him throw himself away. Her influence was always harmful, for one of his character especially. Miss Verity is not a bad woman, but

"But she is not a good friend for Wilfred," I said emphatically. She went on: "Lady Walter thinks the friendship, if it ever really existed, was broken off long ago. I would not undeceive her, but I warned Wilfred, just three years ago, that I would write and tell his mother if this sort of thing went on. I said, you cannot have us both; you must choose between your friends!' He had just come from Oxford, and his mother seemed to like to know that I could help him ever so little to good." The shadow went out of her face.

It

"I remember the day so well-the day of our conversation. was very hot, and he took me on the river, and we rowed as far as Cranley Elms. I scolded him first because he confessed he was not doing his best at his work, and he looked up in my face with