This doctrine was too high for Mrs. Hankey; she could not attain to it, so she wisely took refuge in a side issue. "It was fortunate for you your eldest being a girl; if the Lord had thought fit to give me a daughter instead of three sons, things might have been better with me,"
she said, contentedly moving the burden of personal responsibility from her own shoulders to her Maker"s.
"Don"t say that, Mrs. Hankey. Daughters may be more useful in the house, I must confess, and less mischievous all round; but they can"t work as hard for their living as the sons can when you ain"t there to look after them."
"You don"t know what it is to live in a house full of nothing but men, with not a soul to speak to about all the queer tricks they"re at, many a time I feel like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island among a lot of savages."
"And I don"t blame you," agreed Mrs. Bateson sympathetically; "for my part I don"t know what I should have done when Caleb and the boys were troublesome if I couldn"t have pa.s.sed remarks on their behaviour to Lucy Ellen; I missed her something terrible when first she was married for that simple reason. You see, it takes another woman to understand how queer a man is."
"It does, Mrs. Bateson; you never spoke a truer word. And then think what it must be on your death-bed to have the room full of stupid men, tumbling over one another and upsetting the medicine-bottles and putting everything in its wrong place. Many a time have I wished for a daughter, if it was but to close my eyes; but the Lord has seen fit to withhold His blessings from me, and it is not for me to complain: His ways not being as our ways, but often quite the reverse."
"That is so; and I wish as He"d seen fit to mate Miss Elisabeth with Master Christopher, instead of letting her keep company with that Mr.
Tremaine."
Mrs. Hankey shook her head ominously. "Mr. Tremaine is one that has religious doubts."
"Ah! that"s liver," said Mrs. Bateson, her voice softening with pity; "that comes from eating French kickshaws, and having no mother to see that he takes a dose of soda and nitre now and then to keep his system cool. Poor young man!"
"I hear as he goes so far as to deny the existence of a G.o.d," continued Mrs. Hankey.
"All liver!" repeated Mrs. Bateson; "it often takes men like that; when they begin to doubt the inspiration of the Scriptures you know they will be all the better for a dose of dandelion tea; but when they go on to deny the existence of a G.o.d, there"s nothing for it but chamomile.
And I don"t believe as the Lord takes their doubts any more seriously than their wives take "em. He knows as well as we do that the poor things need pity more than blame, and dosing more than converting; for He gave "em their livers, and we only have to bear with them and return thanks to Him for having made ours of a different pattern."
"And what do the women as have doubts need, I should like to know?"
"A husband and children is the best cure for them. Why, when a woman has a husband and children to look after, and washes at home, she has no time, bless you! to be teaching the Lord His business; she has enough to do minding her own."
CHAPTER VIII
GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS
The world is weary of new tracks of thought That lead to nought-- Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain For mortal pain, Yet still above them all one Figure stands With outstretched Hands.
"Cousin Maria, do you like Alan Tremaine?" asked Elisabeth, not long after her return from Yorkshire.
"Like him, my dear? I neither like nor dislike persons with whom I have as little in common as I have with Mr. Tremaine. But he strikes me as a young man of parts, and his manners are admirable."
"I wasn"t thinking about his manners, I was thinking about his views,"
said the girl, walking across the room and looking through the window at the valley smiling in the light of the summer morning; "don"t you think they are very broad and enlightened?"
"I daresay they are. Young persons of superior intelligence are frequently dazzled by their own brilliance at first, and consider that they were sent into the world specially to confute the law and the prophets. As they grow older they learn better."
Elisabeth began playing with the blind-cord. "I think he is awfully clever," she remarked.
"My dear, how often must I beg you not to use that word _awfully_, except in its correct sense? Remember that we hold the English tongue in trust--it belongs to the nation and not to us--and we have no more right to profane England"s language by the introduction of coined words and slang expressions than we have to disendow her inst.i.tutions or to pollute her rivers."
"All right; I"ll try not to forget again. But you really do think Alan is clever, don"t you?"
"He is undoubtedly intelligent, and possesses the knack of appearing even more intelligent than he is; but at present he has not learned his own limitations."
"You mean that he isn"t clever enough to know that he isn"t cleverer,"
suggested Elisabeth.
"Well, my dear, I should never have put it in that way, but that approximately expresses my ideas about our young friend."
"And he is aw--I mean frightfully well off."
Miss Farringdon looked sternly at the speaker. "Never again let me hear you refer to the income of persons about whom you are speaking, Elisabeth; it is a form of ill-breeding which I can not for a moment tolerate in my house. That money is a convenience to the possessor of it, I do not attempt to deny; but that the presence or the absence of it should be counted as a matter of any moment (except to the man himself), presupposes a standpoint of such vulgarity that it is impossible for me to discuss it. And even the man himself should never talk about it; he should merely silently recognise the fact, and regulate his plan of life accordingly."
"Still, I have heard quite nice people sometimes say that they can not afford things," argued Elisabeth.
"I do not deny that; even quite nice people make mistakes sometimes, and well-mannered persons are not invariably well-mannered. Your quite nice people would have been still nicer had they realized that to talk about one"s poverty--though not so bad as talking about one"s wealth--is only one degree better; and that perfect gentle-people would refer neither to the one nor to the other."
"I see." Elisabeth"s tone was subdued.
"I once knew a woman," continued Miss Farringdon, "who, by that accident of wealth, which is of no interest to anybody but the possessor, was enabled to keep a butler and two footmen; but in speaking of her household to a friend, who was less richly endowed with worldly goods than herself, she referred to these three functionaries as "my parlourmaid," for fear of appearing to be conscious of her own superiority in this respect. Now this woman, though kind-hearted, was distinctly vulgar."
"But you have always taught me that it is good manners to keep out of sight any point on which you have the advantage over the people you are talking to," Elisabeth persisted. "You have told me hundreds of times that I must never show off my knowledge after other people have displayed their ignorance; and that I must not even be obtrusively polite after they have been obviously rude. Those are your very words, Cousin Maria: you see I can give chapter and verse."
"And I meant what I said, my dear. Wider knowledge and higher breeding are signs of actual superiority, and therefore should never be flaunted.
The vulgarity in the woman I am speaking about lay in imagining that there is any superiority in having more money than another person: there is not. To hide the difference proved that she thought there was a difference, and this proved that her standpoint was an essentially plebeian one. There was no difference at all, save one of convenience; the same sort of difference there is between people who have hot water laid on all over their houses and those who have to carry it upstairs.
And who would be so trivial and commonplace as to talk about that?"
Elisabeth, seeing that her cousin was in the right, wisely changed the subject. "The Bishop of Merchester is preaching at St. Peter"s Church, in Silverhampton, on St. Peter"s Day, and I have asked Alan Tremaine to drive me over in his dog-cart to hear him." Although she had strayed from the old paths of dogma and doctrine, Elisabeth could not eradicate the inborn Methodist nature which hungers and thirsts after righteousness as set forth in sermons.
"I should like to hear him too, my dear," said Miss Farringdon, who also had been born a Methodist.
"Then will you come? In that case we can have our own carriage, and I needn"t bother Alan," said Elisabeth, with disappointment written in capital letters all over her expressive face.
"On which day is it, and at what hour?"
"To-morrow evening at half-past six," replied the girl, knowing that this was the hour of the evening sacrifice at East Lane Chapel, and trusting to the power of habit and early a.s.sociation to avert the addition of that third which would render two no longer any company for each other.
Her trust was not misplaced. "It is our weekevening service, my dear, with the prayer-meeting after. Did you forget?"
Elisabeth endeavoured to simulate the sudden awakening of a dormant memory. "So it is!"
"I see no reason why you should not go into Silverhampton to hear the Bishop," said Miss Farringdon kindly. "I like young people to learn the faith once delivered to the saints, from all sorts and conditions of teachers; but I shall feel it my duty to be in my accustomed place."
So it came to pa.s.s, one never-to-be-forgotten summer afternoon, that Alan Tremaine drove Elisabeth Farringdon into Silverhampton to hear the Bishop of Merchester preach.
As soon as she was safely tucked up in the dog-cart, with no way of escape, Elisabeth saw a look in Alan"s eyes which told her that he meant to make love to her; so with that old, old feminine instinct, which made the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented for resisting Cupid"s darts.
It was a glorious afternoon--one of those afternoons which advertise to all the world how excellent was the lotus-eaters" method of dividing time; and although the woods had exchanged the fresh variety of spring for the dark green sameness of summer, the fields were gay with haymakers, and the world still seemed full of joyous and abundant life.
"Let"s go the country way," Elisabeth had said at starting; "and then we can come back by the town." So the two drove by Badgering Woods, and across the wide common; and as they went they saw and felt that the world was very good. Elisabeth was highly sensitive to the influences of nature, and, left to herself, would have leaned toward sentiment on such an afternoon as this; but she had seen that look in Alan"s eyes, and that was enough for her.