CONCLUSION.
While Mrs. Westmoreland thus disports herself in the gay world, Mrs.
Brion pursues her less brilliant career in much peace and quietness.
When she and Paul came back to Australia, a bride and bridegroom, free
to follow their own devices unhampered by any necessity to consider the
feelings of relatives and friends, nothing would satisfy her but to go
straight from the ship to Mrs. M'Intyre's, and there temporarily abide
in those tobacco-perfumed rooms which had once been such forbidden
ground to her. She scoffed at the Oriental; she turned up her nose at
the Esplanade; she would not hear of any suites of apartments, no
matter how superior they might be. Her idea of perfect luxury was to
go and live as Paul had lived, to find out all the little details of
his old solitary life which aforetime she had not dared to inquire
into, to rummage boldly over his bookshelves and desk and cupboards,
which once it would have been indelicate for her to so much as look
at, to revel in the sense that it was improper no longer for her to
make just as free as she liked with his defunct bachelorhood, the
existing conditions of which had had so many terrors for her. When Paul
represented that it was not a fit place for her to go into, she told
him that there was no place in the world so fit, and begged so hard to
be taken there, if only for a week or two, that he let her have her
way. And a very happy time they spent at No. 7, notwithstanding many
little inconveniences. And even the inconveniences had their charm.
Then Mrs. Duff-Scott and Eleanor came out, when it was felt to be time
to say good-bye to these humble circumstances--to leave the flowery
carpet, now faded and threadbare, the dingy rep suite, and the smirking
Cenci over the mantelpiece, for the delectation of lodgers to whom
such things were appropriate; and to select a house and furnish it
as befitted the occupation of Miss Yelverton that was and her (now)
distinguished husband.
By good fortune (they did not say it was good fortune, but they thought
it), the old landlord next door saw fit to die at this particular
juncture, and No. 6 was advertised to be let. Mr. and Mrs. Brion at
once pounced upon the opportunity to secure the old house, which,
it seemed to them, was admirably suited to their present modest
requirements; and, by the joint exercise of Mrs. Duff-Scott's and
Patty's own excellent taste, educated in England to the last degree
of modern perfectibility, the purveyors of art furniture in our
enlightened city transformed the humble dwelling of less than a dozen
rooms into a little palace of esoteric delights. Such a subdued,
harmonious brightness, such a refined simplicity, such an unpretentious
air of comfort pervades it from top to bottom; and as a study of
colour, Mrs. Duff-Scott will tell you, it is unique in the Australian
colonies. It does her good--even her--to go and rest her eyes and her
soul in the contemplation of it. Paul has the bureau in his study (and
finds it very useful), and Patty has the piano in her drawing-room,
its keyboard to a retired corner behind a portière (draped where once
was a partition of folding doors), and its back, turned outwards,
covered with a piece of South Kensington needlework. In this cosy nest
of theirs, where Paul, with a new spur to his energies, works his
special lever of the great machine that makes the world go on (when
it would fain be lazy and sit down), doing great things for other men
if gaining little glory for himself--and where Patty has afternoon
teas and evenings that gather together whatever genuine exponents
of intellectual culture may be going about, totally eclipsing the
attractions of Mrs. Aarons's Fridays to serious workers in the fields
of art and thought, without in any way dimming the brilliancy of those
entertainments--the married pair seem likely to lead as happy a life
as can be looked for in this world of compromises. It will not be
all cakes and ale, by any means. The very happiest lives are rarely
surfeited with these, perhaps, unwholesome delicacies, and I doubt if
theirs will even be amongst the happiest. They are too much alike to be
the ideal match. Patty is thin-skinned and passionate, too ready to be
hurt to the heart by the mere little pin-pricks and mosquito bites of
life; and Paul is proud and crotchety, and, like the great Napoleon,
given to kick the fire with his boots when he is put out. There will
be many little gusts of temper, little clouds of misunderstanding,
disappointments, and bereavements, and sickness of mind and body; but,
with all this, they will find their lot so blessed, by reason of the
mutual love and sympathy that, through all vicissitudes, will surely
grow deeper and stronger every day they live together, that they will
not know how to conceive a better one. And, after all, that is the most
one can ask or wish for in this world.
Mrs. Duff-Scott, being thus deprived of all her children, and finding
china no longer the substantial comfort to her that it used to be,
has fulfilled her husband's darkest predictions and "gone in" for
philanthropy. In London she served a short but severe apprenticeship to
that noble cause which seeks to remove the curse of past ignorance and
cruelty from those to whom it has come down in hereditary entail--those
on whose unhappy and degraded lives all the powers of evil held
mortgages (to quote a thoughtful writer) before ever the deeds were
put into their hands--and who are now preached at and punished for the
crimes that, not they, but their tyrants of the past committed. She
took a lesson in that new political economy which is to the old science
what the spirit of modern religion is to the ecclesiasticism which
has been its unwilling mother, and has learned that the rich _are_
responsible for the poor--that, let these interesting debating clubs
that call themselves the people's parliaments say what they like, the
moral of the great social problem is that the selfishness of the past
must be met by unselfishness in the present, if any of us would hope to
see good days in the future.
"It will not do," says Mrs. Duff-Scott to her clergyman, who deplores
the dangerous opinions that she has imbibed, "to leave these matters to
legislation. Of what use is legislation? Here are a lot of ignorant,
vain men who know nothing about it, fighting with one another for what
they can get, and the handful amongst them who are really anxious for
the public good are left nowhere in the scrimmage. It is _we_ who must
put our shoulders to the wheel, my dear sir--and the sooner we set
about it the better. Look at the state of Europe"--she waves her hand
abroad--"and see what things are coming to! The very heart of those
countries is being eaten out by the cancer-growths of Nihilism and
all sorts of dreadful isms, because the poor are getting educated to
understand _why_ they are so poor. Look at wealthy England, with more
than a million paupers, and millions and millions that are worse than
paupers--England is comparatively quiet and orderly under it, and why?
Because a number of good people like Mr. Yelverton"--the clergyman
shakes his head at the mention of this wicked sinner's name--"have
given themselves up to struggle honestly and face to face with the
evils that nothing but a self-sacrificing and independent philanthropy
can touch. I believe that if England escapes the explosion of this
fermenting democracy, which is brewing such a revolution as the world
has never seen, it will be owing to neither Church nor State--unless
Church and State both mend their ways considerably--but to the
self-denying work that is being done outside of them by those who have
a single-hearted desire to help, to _really_ help, their wronged and
wretched fellow-creatures."
Thus this energetic woman, in the headlong ardour of her new
conversion. And (if a woman, ready to admit her disabilities as
such, may say so) it is surely better to be generous in the cause of
a possibly mistaken conviction of your own, than to be selfish in
deference to the opinions of other people, which, though they be the
product of the combined wisdom of all the legislatures of the world,
find no response in the instincts of your human heart. At any rate, I
believe we shall be brought to think so some day--that great Someday
which looms not far ahead of us, when, as a Cornish proverb puts it,
if we have not ruled ourselves by the rudder we shall be ruled by
the rock. And so Mrs. Duff-Scott works, and thinks, and writes and
(of course) talks, and bothers her husband and her acquaintances for
the public weal, and leads her clergyman a life that makes him wish
sometimes that he had chosen a less harassing profession; economising
her money, and her time, and all she has of this world's goods, that
she may fulfil her sacred obligations to her fellow-creatures and help
the fortunate new country in which she lives to keep itself from the
evil ways that have wrought such trouble and danger to the old ones.
And the man who set her to this good work pursues it himself, not in
haste or under fitful and feverish impulses of what we call enthusiasm,
but with refreshed energy and redoubled power, by reason of the great
"means" that are now at his disposal, the faithful companionship that
at once lightens and strengthens the labour of his hands and brain,
and the deep passion of love for wife and home which keeps his heart
warm with vital benevolence for all the world. Mr. Yelverton has
not become more orthodox since his marriage; but that was not to be
expected. In these days orthodoxy and goodness are not synonymous
terms. It is doubtful, indeed, if orthodoxy has not rather become the
synonym for the opposite of goodness, in the eyes of those who judge
trees by their fruits and whose ideal of goodness is to love one's
neighbour as one's self. While it is patent to the candid observer
that the men who have studied the new book of Genesis which latter-day
science has written for us, and have known that Exodus from the land of
bondage which is the inevitable result of such study, conscientiously
pursued, are, as a rule, distinguished by a large-minded justice and
charity, sympathy and self-abnegation, a regard for the sacred ties
of brotherhood binding man with man, which, being incompatible with
the petty meannesses and cruelties so largely practised in sectarian
circles, make their unostentatious influence to be felt like sweet and
wholesome leaven all around them. Such a man is Elizabeth's husband,
and as time goes on she ceases to wish for any change in him save that
which means progression in his self-determined course. It was not
lightly that he flew in the face of the religious traditions of his
youth; rather did he crawl heavily and unwillingly away from them, in
irresistible obedience to a conscience so sensitive and well-balanced
that it ever pointed in the direction of the truth, like the magnetic
needle to the pole, and in which he dared to trust absolutely, no
matter how dark the outlook seemed. And now that, after much search,
he has found his way, as far as he may hope to find it in this world,
he is too intently concerned to discover what may be ahead of him,
and in store for those who will follow him, to trouble himself and
others with irrelevant trifles--to indulge in spites and jealousies,
in ambitions that lead nowhere, in quarrels and controversies about
nothing--to waste his precious strength and faculties in the child's
play that with so many of us is the occupation of life, and like other
child's play, full of pinches and scratches and selfish squabbling
over trumpery toys. To one who has learned that "the hope of nature is
in man," and something of what great nature is, and what man should
be, there no longer exists much temptation to envy, hatred, malice,
and uncharitableness, or any other of the vulgar vices of predatory
humanity, not yet cured of its self-seeking propensities. He is
educated above that level. His recognition of the brotherhood of men,
and their common interests and high destiny, makes him feel for others
in their differences with him, and patient and forbearing with those
whose privileges have been fewer and whose light is less than his. He
takes so wide an outlook over life that the little features of the
foreground, which loom so large to those who cannot or will not look
beyond them, are dwarfed to insignificance; or, rather, he can fix
their just relation to the general design in human affairs, and so
reads them with their context, as it were, and by the light of truth
and justice spread abroad in his own heart--thus proving how different
they are in essential value from what they superficially appear. So
Mr. Yelverton, despite his constitutional imperiousness, is one of
the most tolerant, fine-tempered, and generous of men; and he goes on
his way steadily, bending circumstances to his will, but hurting no
one in the process--rather lifting up and steadying and strengthening
those with whom he comes in contact by the contagion of his bold spirit
and his inflexible and incorruptible honesty; and proving himself in
private life, as such men mostly do, a faithful exponent and practical
illustration of all the domestic virtues.
Elizabeth is a happy woman, and she knows it well. It seems to her
that all the prosperity and comfort that should have been her mother's
has, like the enormous wealth that she inherits, been accumulating
at compound interest, through the long years representing the lapsed
generation, for her sole profit and enjoyment. She strolls often
through the old plantation, where, in a remote nook, a moss-grown
column stands to mark the spot where a little twig, a hair's breadth
lack of space, was enough to destroy one strong life and ruin another,
and to entail such tremendous consequences upon so many people, living
and unborn; and she frequently drives to Bradenham Abbey to call on or
to dine with her step-uncle's wife, and sees the stately environment
of her mother's girlhood--the "beautiful rooms with the gold Spanish
leather on the walls," the "long gallery with the painted windows and
the slippery oak floor and the thirty-seven family portraits all in a
row"--which she contrasts with the bark-roofed cottage on the sea-cliff
within whose narrow walls that beautiful and beloved woman afterwards
lived and died. And then she goes home to Yelverton to her husband and
baby, and asks what she has done to deserve to be so much better off
than those who went before her?
And yet, perhaps, if all accounts were added up, the sum total of loss
and profit on those respective investments that we make, or that are
made for us, of our property in life, would not be found to differ
so very much, one case with another. We can neither suffer nor enjoy
beyond a certain point. Elizabeth is rich beyond the dreams of avarice
in all that to such a woman is precious and desirable, and happy in her
choice and lot beyond her utmost expectations. Yet not so happy as to
have nothing to wish for--which we know, as well as Patty, means "too
happy to last." There is that hunger for her absent sisters, which
tries in vain to satisfy itself in weekly letters of prodigious length,
left as a sort of hostage to fortune, a valuable if not altogether
trustworthy security for the safety of her dearest possessions.
THE END.