chair for support. To all else that Gilbert Monckton had said she had listened in a dull stupor. But now her intellect arose and grasped the full importance of the lawyer’s supplication. In a moment she understood that the one chance which of all other things upon this earth she had most desired, and which of all other things had seemed furthest removed from her, was now within her reach.
She might go back to Hazlewood. She might return as Gilbert Monckton’s wife. She did not stop to consider how much was involved in this. It was her nature to be ruled by impulse, and impulse only; and she had yet to learn submission to a better guidance. She could go back to Hazlewood. She would have returned there as a kitchen-maid, had the opportunity of so doing offered itself to her; and she was ready to return as Gilbert Monckton’s wife.
“My prayers have been heard,” she thought. “My prayers have been heard: Providence will give me power to keep my promise. Providence will set me face to face with that man.”
Eleanor Vane stood with her hands clasped upon the back of her chair, thinking of this, and looking straight before her, in utter unconsciousness of the earnest eyes that were fixed upon her face, while the lawyer waited breathlessly to hear her decision.
“Eleanor,” he cried, entreatingly, “Eleanor, I have been deceived once; do not let me be a woman’s dupe, now that there are streaks of grey amongst my hair. I love you, my dear. I can make you independent and secure; but I do not offer you a fortune or a position of sufficient magnitude or grandeur to tempt an ambitious woman. For God’s sake, do not trifle with me. If you love me now, or can hope to love me in the future, be my wife. But if any other image holds the smallest place in your heart—if there is one memory, or one regret, that can come between us, Eleanor, dismiss me from you unhesitatingly. It will be merciful to me—to you also, perhaps—to do so. I have seen a union in which there was love on one side, and indifference—or something worse than indifference—upon the other. Eleanor, think of all this, and then tell me, frankly, if you can after all be my wife.”
Eleanor Vane dimly comprehended that there was a depth of passionate feeling beneath the quiet earnestness of the lawyer’s manner. She tried to listen, she tried to comprehend; but she could not. The one idea which held possession of her mind, kept that mind locked against every other impression. It was not his love, it was not his name, or his fortune, that Gilbert Monckton offered her—he offered her the chance of returning to Hazlewood.
“You are very good,” she said. “I will be your wife. I will go back to Hazlewood.”
She held out her hand to him. No trace of womanly confusion, or natural coquetry, betrayed itself in her manner. Pale and absorbed she held out her hand, and offered up her future as a small and unconsidered matter, when set against the one idea of her life—the promise to her dead father.
THE WAR INSTINCT:
WHAT TO DO WITH IT.
We have heard less and less of “the material tendencies of the age” for some years past, as occasions came round for modern men to show that they are of the same make as their fathers. Without stopping to discuss the relative value of human faculties, desires, and passions, we may look for a moment at a few facts which may show whether there really is the change in men from one age to another which is supposed by persons who denounce their generation as materialistic and degenerate, or extol it as exalted above old barbarisms, and more lofty in its temper and aims than any race or people ever was before. The present state of the world affords pretty plain evidence that war does not cease because the Commercial Period of civilisation has set in; while, in the Military Period, during its whole rise, predominance, and decline, there was as thorough a commercial spirit at work in society as there is at present, though it was comparatively restricted in its exercise.
Ages and periods are short things in comparison with the constitution of Man; and all the faculties of Man work on, from century to century, through every form and fashion of civilisation. Thus, there were apt and eager traffickers (other than Jews) in the most quarrelsome times of the Middle Ages: a peaceable trading class grew up, meek and humble, while aristocracies were engrossed with the Crusades, or with their mutual feuds; till at length the enterprising, and brave, and generous, and ambitious faculties passed into the new pursuit, and found such exercise and scope that the world heard of Merchant-Princes, and saw the military dignity begin to falter and hesitate before that of wealth, when the wealth was obtained by adventure which supposed the acquisition of great and rare knowledge, and the exercise of the bold animal faculties, as well as of the intellect.
In the reverse case which we heard so much of up to ten years ago, there was the same real balance of faculties as that which we now thankfully recognise. Our philosophers and divines were immensely disgusted and angry at the degradation of the people of England, who had forgotten how to fight, and would submit to any treatment rather than endanger their “blood and treasure;” and who invited the world’s contempt and encroachments by the want of spirit and bodily helplessness of the citizens. The Crimean war and the Volunteers have done all that was necessary in the way of answer to such croakings in our case, as the response of the Free States of the American Union and the continuance of the war to this day have sufficed, in reply to the same reproach against the commercial people of the North. The Southerners were, by their own account, a military people, reconciled to no industry beyond that of superintending agricultural operations, and scornfully superior to commercial and manufacturing pursuits. They would rule or withdraw,—confident that the North would not fight, and that a trading people would yield everything for peace. The North, on the other hand, conscious of having yielded too far for the sake of