CHAPTER XIV.

APPROACHING UNSEEN.

In the years when William Smith was "a fair yellowhaired child, with great black eyes full of the new joy and wonder of life," another child's life began. A young Scotch physician had gone into Wales to push his fortunes, and there found a wife. She was of an old Welsh family, of higher social station than his, and her relatives were slow in becoming reconciled to her marriage with a young doctor without advantages of rank or wealth. But he had the force of brain and of character to win his way in the world, as he had won his wife. He practised his profession for some years in Chester, and finally settled in Wales, near Denbigh, in a lovely home which was named Dolhyfryd, "Happy Valley." Here in 1818 Lucy Caroline Cumming saw the light, and here she grew to womanhood. A sister and a brother completed the family, of which she was the youngest.

The mother, "a bright, energetic, delightful woman," loved in later years to talk of her Lucy's childhood. The young nature began early to show its quality, swift, vivid, and ardent. At eighteen months the child could repeat a great number of hymns, and at two years she could read in any ordinary book. Before she was ten, she read and delighted in a class of books of which Molière's plays, in the original, is mentioned as a specimen. When she was about ten, her taste ran to theological reading, and she used to discuss these topics with a friend of her own age, being herself a staunch Calvinist.

But this sort of precocity does not indicate the highest

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gifts with which the child had been dowered, as if by good spirits, at her birth. One might fancy that the mixture in her veins of Scotch and Welsh blood had given her all the intensity and tenacity of the one, the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, - together with the ardor and spontaneity of the more southern temperament. Above all she was rich in capacity to give and to inspire love, - a trait involving for herself possibilities almost unbounded of joy and pain, of hope and fear; while for others it bore throughout her life an unmixed fruitage of blessing.

Her mother, we are told, used to talk to her when she was a mere child as to a grown-up person, telling her all her troubles and anxieties. Every one loved her, and her old nurse told one secret of the charm in saying, “ You can come so near Miss Lucy!" She was on the friendliest terms with the poor families in the neighborhood; and it is related that in one of these, a child being dangerously ill, and she having known of it, when there came sudden relief to the child the father's first words were, "Run quick and tell Miss Lucy!"

She grew up into most attractive maidenhood, beautiful, brilliant, a young Diana in her spirit and her charms. From the age of sixteen she was the object of one devoted attachment after another. But the heart was not lightly to be won in its stronghold. The romances which followed each other did not touch her with their flame, not though she was sometimes sought with so true a passion that two men who failed to win her vowed to be faithful to her memory all their lives, and never married. More than once she acknowledged an attachment, and even a charm, in which there seemed the promise of a mutual happiness, but always the tie snapped instead of strengthening; something proved to be wanting that her fastidious taste, her exacting nature, required, and as she afterward said, "In those days I never met my master."

There was a young attendant in the family (whose father was in Dr. Cumming's service), a year younger than Lucy, and this Mrs. Jane Browne has written down some of her early recollections:

You ask me how long I remember her. It is from my earliest thoughts, and the love was never blighted. I am sure I can remember many things before I was four years old. I can never find words to describe how beautiful and noble and good they were [the mother and daughters]. Miss Lucy never said anything but what she meant; and how clever in everything painting, drawing, music, wax flowers. She did not often sing nor play the harp, but Mrs. Wrench [the sister] did, and such a beautiful voice! Miss Lucy was very clever in making experiments with Dr. Cumming, and gathered many fossils. How pleased I was to be waiting on them, seeking and fetching anything they wanted. I have now a small work-box she gave me when I was about eight years old. She gave me lessons and heard me read to her. I used to do their hair, and assist them to dress, and I never remember hearing a cross word from her, and if any one else did she always sided with me - it was always love for my short-comings. She always said, “I wish I had Jane's hair mine then curled all over, and I could not get any of it straight, and I wished I had hers, which was beautiful and worn in plaits. My dear Mrs. Cumming used to enjoy hearing what was passing between us. Mrs. Cumming was very charitable, and every needy one had only to apply to her and was never sent empty away. She took her daughters with her to visit the poor and sick, and I was an interpreter for those who could not speak English. I can remember Miss Lucy's learning to read Welsh, which I could not do then, that she might read the Bible to the aged and the sick. What a power

she had of discerning and devising everything in the right way! She was so just and her judgment so pure, and I can remember well the regard and reverence that was shown her when young in years, even by those who knew no respect of persons. never could discern in others what she possessed, nor knew any so angel-like or so handsome as they both were.

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Miss Annie Clough, another life-long friend, thus pictures her in early days:

It was a summer evening, and I had come from a busy life in Liverpool to pay a visit to Lucy Cumming in her beautiful home in the country, Dolhyfryd, about a mile from Denbigh. I found her in the garden with her mother and friends, and a favourite dog. She came forward to welcome me, and make me feel at home after my long journey. The long, low house, half cottage, half mansion, covered with creepers, and standing on a velvet lawn shaded by trees, looked very inviting and sheltering in the June sunshine. It lay folded round by hills clothed with lovely woods, a stream flowing through the grounds with a murmuring, soothing sound. After a while we walked by the stream and through the wood, talking of many things. We were both young, and each full of our dreams and visions of the future. Her life was then as a dream of joy and delight; mine was full of toil and anxiety, and yet the dreams were not wanting. Was it on this account that she was seeking me out as a friend, and trying to cheer me? We were so different that I felt half perplexed by her advances of friendship. We had been acquainted before, and she knew my family and my brothers very well, and was very sympathetic in all that concerned me. The next morning was partly spent in the drawingroom, which was upstairs, overlooking the lawn. It was full of curious quaint old furniture, a great collection of books, many of them rare. Mrs. Cumming, her mother, had her own occupations, to which she was much devoted. Her poultry and animals took up her time, and old Betty, the head servant and factotum, helped with the housekeeping. Dr. Cumming, the father, who was a philosopher full of improvements and inventions, was generally in his study, or working at the Denbigh Infirmary, which was his great interest and occupation. We had many walks and drives about the neighbourhood. Lucy's brightness, intelligence, and great interest in things in general gave a charm to our intercourse, but I still wondered why she wanted one so serious, and with such strict views of life, for a companion. But we parted friends, for her charm and her grace had won me.

Afterwards I met her in Chester. To this ancient city Lucy often went, and attended with friends at the balls, which in those days were resorted to by the county families about Chester; Lucy belonged by her mother's side to these families. I have seen her full of enjoyment and brightness, but sometimes her heart was not satisfied - still she was ever a bright ornament to the scene.

She was above the middle height, slender, and "carried herself like a queen." Her walk had a swan-like stateliness; and together with this dignity there was a sweetness and sympathy that made the shyest and most awkward person instantly at home with her. Yet her amiability was by no means indiscriminate, and she could be haughty and icily cold in manner. Her head was small and beautifully shaped, and she wore her masses of dark hair coiled around it. Her face was delicately oval; the

eyes dark gray, large, and intent. Her skin was very fair, and creamy white; the lips straight, thin, and firm, the teeth very white and even; a rather pointed little chin. "But no words can convey the charm of her face, the sparkle and brilliancy and bewitchingness of it."

A life-long friend, afterward Mrs. Ruck, thus describes her in early years : —

I shrink from writing about her, because it is like an attempt to perpetuate the beauty of a lovely flower, to paint the glories of a sunset, or to describe the subtle essence of some delicious odour. She knew how to run the gamut of feeling from grave to gay in such a way that one almost laughed and cried at the same time. In the early days of our friendship she was very orthodox in faith, and clung to the evangelical teaching of her youth. We had many a discussion on those points, because no one had ever been able to persuade me of the existence of a devil, or the truth of everlasting punishment. She knew the Bible almost by heart, and has told me that she acquired this knowledge by reading it for hours in a cave by the seaside when she was a child. Her marvellous gift of mem