"Oh, you've no idea how obdurate clergymen are;" and then she went on,
seriously, to thank me for talking Glendenning out of his morbid mood.
With the frankness sometimes characteristic of her she said that if he
had released her, it would have made no difference--she should still
have felt herself bound to him; and until he should tell her that he no
longer cared for her, she should feel that he was bound to her. I saw no
great originality in this reproduction of my own ideas. But when Miss
Bentley added that she believed her mother herself would be shocked and
disappointed if they were to give each other up, I was aware of being in
the presence of a curious psychological fact. I so wholly lost myself in
the inquiry it invited that I let the talk flow on round me unheeded
while I questioned whether Mrs. Bentley did not derive a satisfaction
from her own and her daughter's mutual opposition which she could never
have enjoyed from their perfect agreement. She had made a certain
concession in consenting to the engagement, and this justified her to
herself in refusing her consent to the marriage, while the ingratitude
of the young people in not being content with what she had done formed a
grievance of constant avail with a lady of her temperament. From what
Miss Bentley let fall, half seriously, half jokingly, as well as what I
observed, I divined a not unnatural effect of the strained relations
between her and her mother. She concentrated whatever resentment she
felt upon Miss Bentley, insomuch that it seemed as though she might
altogether have withdrawn her opposition if it had been a question
merely of Glendenning's marriage. So far from disliking him, she was
rather fond of him, and she had no apparent objection to him except as
her daughter's husband. It had not always been so; at first she had an
active rancor against him; but this had gradually yielded to his
invincible goodness and sweetness.
"Who could hold out against him?" his betrothed demanded, fondly, when
these facts had been more or less expressed to us; and it was not the
first time that her love had seemed more explicit than his. He smiled
round upon her, pressing the hand she put in his arm; for she asked this
when they stood on our threshold ready to go, and then he glanced at us
with eyes that fell bashfully from ours.
"Oh, of course it will come right in time," said my wife when they were
gone, and I agreed that they need only have patience. We had all talked
ourselves into a cheerful frame concerning the affair; we had seen it in
its amusing aspects, and laughed about it; and that seemed almost in
itself to dispose of Mrs. Bentley's opposition. My wife and I decided
that this could not long continue; that by-and-by she would become tired
of it, and this would happen all the sooner if the lovers submitted
absolutely, and did nothing to remind her of their submission.