Oh that a preacher might arise and expound from the Book of books a religion with a God, a religion with a heart in it—­a Christian religion, which would abolish the cold legend whose centre is respectability, and which rears great buildings in which the rich recline on silken hassocks while the poor perish in the shadow thereof.

Through the hot dry summer, then the heartless winter and the scorching summer again which have spent themselves since Gertie’s departure, I have struggled hard to do my duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call me, and sometimes I have partially succeeded.  I have had no books or papers, nothing but peasant surroundings and peasant tasks, and have encouraged peasant ignorance—­ignorance being the mainspring of contentment, and contentment the bed-rock of happiness; but it is all to no purpose.  A note from the other world will strike upon the chord of my being, and the spirit which has been dozing within me awakens and fiercely beats at its bars, demanding some nobler thought, some higher aspiration, some wider action, a more saturnalian pleasure, something more than the peasant life can ever yield.  Then I hold my spirit tight till wild passionate longing sinks down, down to sickening dumb despair, and had I the privilege extended to job of old—­to curse God and die—­I would leap at it eagerly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

But Absent Friends are Soon Forgot

We received a great many letters from Gertie for a little while after she went up the country, but they grew shorter and farther between as time went on.

In one of grannie’s letters there was concerning my sister:  “I find Gertie is a much younger girl for her age than Sybylla was, and not nearly so wild and hard to manage.  She is a great comfort to me.  Every one remarks upon her good looks.”

From one of Gertie’s letters: 

Uncle Julius came home from Hong Kong and America last week, and brought such a lot of funny presents for every one.  He had a lot for you, but he has given them to me instead as you are not here.  He calls me his pretty little sunbeam, and says I must always live with him.

I sighed to myself as I read this.  Uncle Jay-Jay had said much the same to me, and where was I now?  My thoughts were ever turning to the people and old place I love so well, but Gertie’s letters showed me that I was utterly forgotten and unmissed.

Gertie left us in October 1897, and it was somewhere about January 1898 that all the letters from Caddagat were full to overflowing with the wonderful news of Harold Beecham’s reinstatement at Five-Bob Downs, under the same conditions as he had held sway there in my day.

From grannie’s letters I learnt that some old sweetheart of Harold’s father had bequeathed untold wealth to this her lost love’s son.  The wealth was in bonds and stocks principally, and though it would be some time ere Harold was actually in possession of it, yet he had no difficulty in getting advancements to any amount, and had immediately repurchased Five-Bob.