THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
_There is one that keepeth silence and is found wise._
Sister Cecilia received--nay, she almost welcomed--the news of Jem
Agar's death in an intensely Christian spirit. She looked upon it in
the light of a chastening-a sort of moral cold bath, unpleasant at the
time, but cleanly and refreshing in its effect. Intense goodness and
virtue of the jubby-jubby order seem frequently to produce this result.
Trouble--provided that it be not personal--is elevated to a position
which it was never intended to occupy by an all-seeing Providence. There
are some people who step into the troubles of others as into the
chastening bath above referred to, and splash about. They pretend to feel
deeply bereavements which cannot reasonably be expected to affect them,
and go about the world with a well-scrubbed air of conscious virtue,
saying in manner if not in words, “Look at me; my troubles compass me
about, but my innate goodness enables me to take them in the proper
spirit and to be cheerful despite all.”
This was precisely Sister Cecilia's attitude towards her small world of
Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom
over the whole neighbourhood.
“Ah!” she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true
feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her
whole heart. “These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of
Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin--strange to us now.”
“Yes, miss; that they be,” Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the
hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its
least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes
from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly
things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often
slightly aggravating.
At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her “poor boy.” The grave
seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons
of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all
sin, but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the
individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.
Jem never had in any sense of the word been her boy. His feelings for her
had passed from the distrust of childhood to the lofty contempt of a
schoolboy for all things preternaturally virtuous, finally settling down
into the more tolerant contempt of manhood. The dead, however, have
perforce to accept much affection which they scornfully refused in life.
“Poor Jem!” said Sister Cecilia to Mrs. Agar the day after that lady's
visit to Gray's Inn. “I always thought that perhaps he and dear Dora
would come to--to some understanding.”
She stirred her tea with patient, suffering head inclined at a resigned
angle.
“Do you think there _was_ any understanding between them?” inquired Mrs.
Agar.
“Well--I should not like to say.”
Which, being translated, meant that she would like to say, but did not
know.
It had always been a pet scheme of Mrs. Agar's that Dora should marry
Arthur; firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year
on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable
person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts--namely, money and
common-sense--Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the flaccid
hand of her son.
“I will try and find out,” said Sister Cecilia after a pause.
Mrs. Agar said nothing. She was meditating over this last stroke of fate
in favour of her scheme, and her thoughts were disturbed by that distrust
in the continuance of good fortune which usually spoils the enjoyment of
the unscrupulous in those good things which they have obtained for
themselves.
So Sister Cecilia took it for granted that she was doing the will of the
mistress of Stagholme when she wrote a note that same evening inviting
Dora to have tea with her the following afternoon.
At the hour appointed Dora arrived, and was duly shown into the little
cottage drawing-room, of which the decoration hovered between the
avowedly devout and the economo-aesthetic.
Sister Cecilia swept down upon her with a speechless emotion which, in
the nature of things (and Sister Cecilia), could not well be of long
duration.
“My dear,” she whispered, “God will give you strength to bear this awful
trial.”
Dora recovered her breath and re-arranged her crushed habiliments before
inquiring, with just sufficient feeling to save her from downright
rudeness, “What is the matter; has something else happened?”
Sister Cecilia drew back. She was vaguely conscious of having run
mentally against a brick wall. There was something new and unusual about
Dora which she could not understand--something, if she could only have
seen it, suggestive of the quiet, strong man in whose honour the whole
parish wore mourning. But Sister Cecilia was not a subtle woman. She had
had so little experience of the world, of men and of women, that she fell
easily into the error of thinking that they were all to be treated alike
and with equal success by little maxims culled from fourpenny-halfpenny
devotional books.
“No, dear,” she exclaimed; “I was referring to our terrible loss. My
heart has been bleeding for you--”
“It is very kind, I'm sure,” said Dora quietly; “I forgot that I had not
seen you since the news reached us.”
It is probable that her self-control cost her more than she suspected.
Her lips were drawn and dry. She wore a thick veil, which she carefully
abstained from lifting above the level of her eyes. “I am sure,” moaned
Sister Cecilia, “it has been a most trying time for us all. I wonder that
Mrs. Agar has borne up so bravely. Her health is wonderful, considering.”
Dora sat looking straight in front of her. She was withdrawing her gloves
slowly. Her face was that of a person whose mind was made up for the
endurance of an operation.
The twaddling voice, the characteristic reference to health, were
intensely aggravating. There are some women who talk of their own health
before the dead are buried. They do not seem to be able to separate grief
from bodily ill. Clad in crape, they rush to the seaside, and there,
presumably because grief affects their legs, they hire a man to wheel
themselves and Sorrow in a bath-chair. Why--oh, why! does bereavement
drive women into bath-chairs on the King's Road, or the Lees, or the Hoe?
“Wonderful!” said Dora.
Sister Cecilia, busying herself with the teapot, proceeded to blow her
own trumpet with the bare-facedness of true virtue.
“I have been with her constantly,” she said. “I think it is better for us
all to tell of our grief; I think that we are given speech for that
purpose. For although one may only be able to offer sympathy and perhaps
a little advice, it is always a relief to speak of one's sorrow.”
“I suppose it is,” admitted Dora from her strong-hold of reserve, “for
some people.”
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Sister Cecilia, all heedless of the sarcasm. For
extreme charity is proof against such. It covers other things besides a
multitude of sins. Wielded foolishly it runs amuck like a too luxuriant
creeper, and often kills commonsense. “And that is why I asked you to
come, dear. I thought that you might want to confide in some one--that
you might want to unburden your heart to one who feels for you as if this
sorrow were her own--”
“Only one piece of sugar, thank you,” interrupted Dora. “Thank you. No.
Bread and butter, please. It is very kind of you, Sister Cecilia. But,
you see, when I have any unburdening to do there is always mother, and if
I want any advice there is always father.”
“Yes, dear. But sometimes even one's parents are not quite the persons to
whom one would turn in times of grief.”
“Oh!” observed Dora, without much enthusiasm.
Unconsciously Sister Cecilia was doing the very best thing possible for
Dora, She was arousing in her the spirit of antagonism--hardening a
stricken heart, as it were, by a fresh challenge. She was teaching Dora
to fight for what we learn to deem most sacred--namely, the right to
monopolise our own thoughts and feelings. Sister Cecilia is not, one may
assume, the only good woman in the world who cannot draw a definite line
between sympathy and mere curiosity. With many the display of sympathy is
nothing but a half-conscious bait to attract a shoal of further details.
Self-reliance was lurking somewhere in this girl's character, but it had
never been developed by the pressure of circumstances. Reserve she had
seen practised by her father, but the actual advantages thereof were only
now beginning to be apparent to her. The body, we are told, adapts itself
to abnormal circumstances; so is it with the mind. Already Dora was
beginning, as they say at sea, to find her feet; to take that stand
amidst her environments which she was forced to hold, practically alone,
thereafter.
And Sister Cecilia, with that blind faith in a good motive which gives
almost as much trouble as actual vice, floundered on in the path she had
mapped out for herself.
“You know, dear,” she said, looking out of the window with a sentimental
droop of her thin, inquisitive lips, “I cannot help feeling that
this--this terrible blow means more to you than it does to us.”
“Why?” inquired Dora practically.
Sister Cecilia was silent, with one of those aggravating silences which
do not allow even the satisfaction of a flat contradiction. A meaning
silence is a coward's argument. She was beginning to feel slightly
nervous before this child, ignorant that childhood is not always a matter
of years and calendar months.
“Why?” asked Dora again.
Sister Cecilia looked rather bewildered.
“Well, dear, I thought perhaps--I always thought that my poor boy
entertained some feeling--you understand?”
“No,” replied Dora, borrowing for the moment her father's most crushing
deliberation of manner, “I cannot say I do. When you say your 'poor boy,'
are you referring to Jem?”
Sister Cecilia assented with a resigned nod worthy of the very earliest
martyr.
“Then, as every one has discovered so many virtues in him--quite
suddenly--we had better emulate one of them, and have at the least the
good feeling to hold our tongues about any feelings he may have
entertained. Do you not think so, Sister Cecilia?”
“Well, dear, I only thought to act as might be best for you,” said the
well-intentioned meddler, with the drawl of the professionally
misunderstood.
“I have no doubt of that,” returned Dora, with an equanimity which was
again strangely suggestive of Jem Agar. “But in future you will be
consulting my welfare much more effectively by refraining from action on
my behalf at all.”
“As you will, dear; as you will,” in the hopeless tone of age,
experience, and wisdom forced to stand idle while youth and folly rush
headlong down the hill.
“Yes,” returned Dora calmly; “I know that, thank you. And now, I think,
we had better change the subject.”
The subject was therefore changed; but Sister Cecilia, having, as it
were, whetted her appetite for details, was not at her ease with other
food for the mind, and presently Dora left.
The girl went back into her small world with a new knowledge gained--the
knowledge that in all and through all we are really quite alone. There
can be only one companion, and if that one be absent, there are only so
many talking-machines left to us. And many of us pass the whole of our
lives in conversation with them. So it is; and we know not why.
In a subtle way she felt stronger for this little tussle--a fight is
always exhilarating. She felt that from henceforth the memory of Jem was
hers, and hers alone, to defend and to cherish. It was not much of a
consolation. No. But then this is a world of small mercies, where some of
us get an hour or some mean portion of a day when we want a lifetime.