THE OLD AND THE NEW.
The weather was scorchingly hot and a thunderstorm brewing when the
girls sat down to their frugal lunch at mid-day. It was composed of
bread and butter and pickled fish, for which, under the circumstances,
they had not appetite enough. They trifled with the homely viands for
awhile, in a manner quite unusual with them, in whatever state of the
atmosphere; and then they said they would "make up" at tea time, if
weather permitted, and cleared the table. Eleanor was sent to lie down
in her room, Patty volunteered to read a pleasant novel to the invalid,
and Elizabeth put on her bonnet to pay her promised visit to Mrs.
Duff-Scott.
She found her friend in the cool music-room, standing by the piano, on
which some loose white sheets were scattered. The major sat on a sofa,
surveying the energetic woman with a sad and pensive smile.
"Are you looking over new music?" asked Elizabeth, as she walked in.
"O my dear, is that you? How good of you to venture out in this
heat!--but I knew you would," exclaimed the lady of the house, coming
forward with outstretched arms of welcome. "Music, did you say?--O
_dear_ no!" as if music were the last thing likely to interest her. "It
is something of far more importance."
"Yelverton has been here," said the major, sadly; "and he has been
sketching some plans for Whitechapel cottages. My wife thinks they are
most artistic."
"So they are," she insisted, hardly, "though I don't believe I used the
word; for things are artistic when they are suitable for the purpose
they are meant for, and only pretend to be what they are. Look at
this, Elizabeth. You see it is of no use to build Peabody houses in
these frightfully low neighbourhoods, where half-starved creatures are
packed together like herrings in a barrel--Mr. Yelverton has explained
that quite clearly. The better class of poor come to live in them, and
the poorest of all are worse off instead of better, because they have
less room than they had before. You _must_ take into consideration
that there is only a certain amount of space, and if you build model
lodgings here, and a school there, and a new street somewhere else, you
do good, of course, but you herd the poor street-hawkers and people of
that class more and more thickly into their wretched dens, where they
haven't enough room to breathe as it is--"
"I think I'll go, my dear, if you'll excuse me," interrupted the major,
humbly, in tones of deep dejection.
"And therefore," proceeded Mrs. Duff-Scott, taking no notice of her
husband, "the proper and reasonable thing to do--if you want to help
those who are most in need of help--is to let fine schemes alone. Mr.
Yelverton expects to come into a large property soon, and he means to
buy into those wretched neighbourhoods, where he can, and to build
for one-room tenants--for cheapness and low rents. He will get about
four per cent. on his money, but that he will use to improve with--I
mean for putting them in the way of sanitary habits, poor creatures.
He makes a great point of teaching them sanitation. He seems to think
more of that than about teaching them the Bible, and really one
can hardly wonder at it when one sees the frightful depravity and
general demoralisation that come of ignorance and stupidity in those
matters--and he sees so much of it. He seems to be always rooting
about in those sewers and dunghills, as he calls them--he is rather
addicted to strong expressions, if you notice--and turning things out
from the very bottom. He is queer in some of his notions, but he is a
good man, Elizabeth. One can forgive him his little crotchets, for the
sake of all the good he does--it must be incalculable! He shrinks from
nothing, and spends himself trying to better the things that are so bad
that most people feel there is nothing for it but to shut their eyes to
them--without making any fuss about it either, or setting himself up
for a saint. Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Duff-Scott, throwing a contemptuous
glance around her museum of precious curiosities, "how inconceivably
petty and selfish it seems to care for rubbish like this, when there
are such miseries in the world that we might lighten, as he does, if we
would only set ourselves to it in the same spirit."
_Rubbish!_--those priceless pots and plates, those brasses and ivories
and enamels, those oriental carpets and tapestries, those unique
miscellaneous relics of the mediæval prime! Truly the Cause of Humanity
had taken hold of Mrs. Duff-Scott at last.
She sat down in an arm-chair, having invited Elizabeth to take off
her hat and make herself as comfortable as the state of the weather
permitted, and began to wave a large fan to and fro while she looked
into vacant space with shining eyes.
"He is a strange man," she said musingly. "A most interesting,
admirable man, but full of queer ideas--not at all like any man I ever
met before. He has been lunching with us, Elizabeth--he came quite
early--and we have had an immense deal of talk. I wish you had been
here to listen to him--though I don't know that it would have been very
good for you, either. He is extremely free, and what you might call
revolutionary, in his opinions; he treats the most sacred subjects as
if they were to be judged and criticised like common subjects. He talks
of the religions of the world, for instance, as if they were all on
the same foundation, and calls the Bible our Veda or Koran--says they
are all alike inspired writings because they respectively express the
religious spirit, craving for knowledge of the mystery of life and the
unseen, that is an integral part of man's nature, and universal in
all races, though developed according to circumstances. He says all
mankind are children of God, and brothers, and that he declines to make
invidious distinctions. And personal religion to him seems nothing more
than the most rudimentary morality--simply to speak the truth and to
be unselfish--just as to be selfish or untrue are the only sins he
will acknowledge that we are responsible for out of the long catalogue
of sins that stain this unhappy world. He won't call it an unhappy
world, by the way, in spite of the cruel things he sees; he is the most
optimistic of unbelievers. It will all come right some day--and our
time will be called the dark ages by our remote descendants. Ever since
men and women came first, they have been getting better and higher--the
world increases in human goodness steadily, and will go on doing so as
long as it is a world--and that because of the natural instincts and
aspirations of human nature, and not from what we have always supposed
all our improvement came from--rather in spite of that, indeed."
Mrs. Duff-Scott poured out this information, which had been seething in
her active mind, volubly and with a desire to relieve herself to some
one; but here she checked herself, feeling that she had better have
left it all unsaid, not less for Elizabeth's sake than for her own. She
got up out of her seat and began to pace about the room with a restless
air. She was genuinely troubled. It was as if a window in a closed
chamber had been opened, letting in a too strong wind that was blowing
the delicate furniture all about; now, with the woman's instinctive
timidity and fear (that may be less a weakness than a safeguard), she
was eager to shut it to again, though suspecting that it might be
too late to repair the damage done. Now that she took time to think
about it, she felt particularly guilty on Elizabeth's account, who had
not had her experience, and was not furnished with her ripe judgment
and powers of discrimination as a preservative against the danger of
contact with heterodox ideas.
"I ought not to repeat such things," she exclaimed, vexedly, beginning
to gather up the plans of the Whitechapel cottages, but observing
only her companion's strained and wistful face. "The mere independent
hypotheses and speculations of one man, when no two seem ever to think
alike! I suppose those who study ancient history and literatures,
and the sciences generally, get into the habit of pulling things to
pieces--"
"Those who learn most _ought_ to know most," suggested Elizabeth.
"They ought, my dear; but it doesn't follow."
"Not when they are so earnest in trying to find out?"
"No; that very earnestness is against them--they over-reach themselves.
They get confused, too, with learning so much, and mixing so many
things up together." Mrs. Duff-Scott was a little reckless as to means
so long as she could compass the desired end--which was the shutting
of that metaphorical window which she had incautiously set (or left)
open.
"Well, he believes in God--that all men are God's children," the
girl continued, clinging where she could. "That seems like religion
to me--it is a good and loving way to think of God, that He gave His
spirit to all alike from the beginning--that He is so just and kind to
all, and not only to a few."
"Yes, he believes in God. He believes in the Bible, too, in a sort of
a way. He says he would have the lessons of the New Testament and the
life of Christ disseminated far and wide, but not as they are now, with
the moral left out, and not as if those who wrote them were wise enough
for all time. But, whatever his beliefs may be," said Mrs. Duff-Scott,
"they are not what will satisfy us, Elizabeth. You and I must hold fast
to our faith in Christ, dear child, or I don't know what would become
of us. We will let 'whys' alone--we will not trouble ourselves to try
and find out mysteries that no doubt are wisely withheld from us, and
that anyhow we should never be able to understand."
Here the servant entered with a gliding step, opened a little
Sutherland table before his mistress's chair, spread the æsthetic
cloth, and set out the dainty tea service. Outside the storm had burst,
and was now spending itself and cooling the hot air in a steady shower
that made a rushing sound on the gravel. Mrs. Duff-Scott, who had
reseated herself, leant back silently with an air of reaction after her
strong emotion in the expression of her handsome face and form, and
Elizabeth mechanically got up to pour out the tea. Presently, as still
in silence they began to sip and munch their afternoon repast, the girl
saw on the piano near which she stood a photograph that arrested her
attention. "What is this?" she asked. "Did he bring this too?" It was a
copy of Luke Fildes' picture of "The Casuals." Mrs. Duff-Scott took it
from her hand.
"No, it is mine," she said. "I have had it here for some time, in a
portfolio amongst others, and never took any particular notice of it. I
just had an idea that it was an unpleasant and disagreeable subject. I
never gave it a thought--what it really meant--until this morning, when
he was talking to me, and happened to mention it. I remembered that I
had it, and I got it out to look at it. Oh!" setting down her teacup
and holding it fairly in both hands before her--"isn't it a terrible
sermon? Isn't it heartbreaking to think that it is _true?_ And he says
the truth is understated."
Like the great Buddha, when he returned from his first excursion beyond
his palace gates, Elizabeth's mind was temporarily darkened by the new
knowledge of the world that she was acquiring, and she looked at the
picture with a fast-beating heart. "Sphinxes set up against that dead
wall," she quoted from a little printed foot-note, "and none likely to
be at the pains of solving them until the general overthrow." She was
leaning over her friend's shoulder, and the tears were dropping from
her eyes.
"They are Dickens's words," said Mrs. Duff-Scott.
"Why is it like this, I wonder?" the girl murmured, after a long,
impressive pause. "We must not think it is God's fault--that can't
be. It must be somebody else's fault. It cannot have been _intended_
that a great part of the human race should be forced, from no fault of
their own, to accept such a cruel lot--to be made to starve, when so
many roll in riches--to be driven to crime because they cannot help
it--to be driven to _hell_ when they _need not_ have gone there--if
there is such a place--if there is any truth in what we have been
taught. But"--with a kind of sad indignation--"if religion has been
doing its best for ever so many centuries, and this is all that there
is to show for it--doesn't that seem to say that _he_ may be right,
and that religion has been altogether misinterpreted--that we have all
along been making mistakes--" She checked herself, with a feeling of
dismay at her own words; and Mrs. Duff-Scott made haste to put away
the picture, evidently much disturbed. Both women had taken the "short
views" of life so often advocated, not from philosophical choice, but
from disinclination, and perhaps inability, to take long ones; and
they had the ordinary woman's conception of religion as exclusively
an ecclesiastical matter. This rough disturbance of old habits of
thought and sentiments of reverence and duty was very alarming; but
while Elizabeth was rashly confident, because she was inexperienced,
and because she longed to put faith in her beloved, Mrs. Duff-Scott
was seized with a sort of panic of remorseful misgiving. To shut that
window had become an absolute necessity, no matter by what means.
"My dear," she said, in desperation, "whatever you do, you must not
begin to ask questions of that sort. We can never find out the answers,
and it leads to endless trouble. God's ways are not as our ways--we
are not in the secrets of His providence. It is for us to trust Him
to know what is best. If you admit one doubt, Elizabeth, you will see
that everything will go. Thousands are finding that out now-a-days,
to their bitter cost. Indeed, I don't know what we are coming to--the
'general overthrow,' I suppose. I hope I, at any rate, shall not live
to see it. What would life be worth to us--_any_ of us, even the best
off--if we lost our faith in God and our hope of immortality? Just try
to imagine it for a moment."
Elizabeth looked at her mentor, who had again risen and was walking
about the room. The girl's eyes were full of solemn thought. "Not
much," she replied, gravely. "But I was never afraid of losing faith in
God."
"It is best to be afraid," replied Mrs. Duff-Scott, with decision.
"It is best not to run into temptation. Don't think about these
difficulties, Elizabeth--leave them, leave them. You would only
unsettle yourself and become wretched and discontented, and you would
never be any the wiser."
Elizabeth thought over this for a few minutes, while Mrs. Duff-Scott
mechanically took up a brass lota and dusted it with her handkerchief.
"Then you think one ought not to read books, or to talk to people--to
try to find out the ground one stands on----"
"No, no, no--let it alone altogether. You know the ground you ought to
stand on quite well. You don't want to see where you are if you can
feel that God is with you. Blessed are they that have not seen and
yet have believed!" she ended in a voice broken with strong feeling,
clasping her hands with a little fervent, prayerful gesture.
Elizabeth drew a long breath, and in her turn began to walk restlessly
up and down the room. She had one more question to ask, but the asking
of it almost choked her. "Then you would say--I suppose you think
it would be wrong--for one who was a believer to marry one who was
not?--however good, and noble, and useful he or she might be--however
religious _practically_--however blameless in character?"
Mrs. Duff-Scott, forgetting for the moment that there was such a person
as Mr. Yelverton in the world, sat down once more in an arm-chair,
and addressed herself to the proposition on its abstract merits. She
had worked herself up, by this time, into a state of highly fervid
orthodoxy. Her hour of weakness was past, and she was fain to put forth
and test her reserves of strength. Wherefore she had very clear views
as to the iniquity of an unequal yoking together with unbelievers, and
the peril of touching the unclean thing; and she stated them plainly
and with all her wonted incisive vigour.
When it was all over, Elizabeth put on her hat and walked back through
the pattering rain to Myrtle Street, heavy-hearted and heavy-footed, as
if a weight of twenty years had been laid on her since the morning.
"Patty," she said, when her sister, warmly welcoming her return,
exclaimed at her pale face and weary air, and made her take the sofa
that Eleanor had vacated, "Patty, let us go away for a few weeks, shall
we? I want a breath of fresh air, and to be in peace and quiet for a
little, to think things over."
"So do I," said Patty. "So does Nelly. Let us write to Sam Dunn to find
us lodgings."