I
Peter might justly have complained that his birth was too calmly
received. For Peter's mother accepted him without demur. Women who nurse
themselves more thoroughly than they nurse their babies will
incredulously hear that Mrs. Paragon made little difference in her life
on Peter's account until within four hours of his coming. Nevertheless
Peter was a healthy baby, shapeless and mottled.
Mrs. Paragon was tall and fair, with regular features and eyes set well
apart. They looked at you candidly, and you were aware of their friendly
interest. They perfectly expressed the simplicity and peace of her
character. She was mild and immovable; with a strength that was felt by
all who dealt with her, though she rarely asserted it. She had the slow,
deep life of a mother.
Mr. Paragon was at all points contrasted. He was short, and already at
this time he was stout. He had had no teaching; but he was not an
ignorant man. He was naturally of an active mind; and he had read
extensively the literature that suited his habit of reflection.
Mr. Paragon was the son of a small tradesman, and had by the death of
his parents been thrown upon the London streets. After ten years he had
emerged as a managing clerk.
Had Mr. Paragon been well treated he might have reached his fortieth
year sunny and charitable, with a cheerful faith in people and
institutions. But living a celibate life, insufficiently fed, shabbily
clothed, and never doubting his mental superiority to prosperous
employers, he had naturally adopted extremely bitter views of the world.
Surmounting a shelf of Mr. Paragon's favourite books was a plaster bust
of Bradlaugh. The shelf itself included Tom Paine's _Rights of Man_,
Godwin's _Political Justice_, and the works of Voltaire in forty English
volumes. Mr. Paragon talked the language of Godwin's philosophic day.
Priests, kings, aristocracies, and governments were his familiar bogies.
He went every Sunday to a Labour church where extracts from Shelley and
Samuel Butler were read by the calendar; and he was a successful orator
of a powerful group of rebels among the railwaymen.
Mr. Paragon was more Falstaff than Cassius to the eye. There was
something a little ludicrous in Mr. Paragon, with legs well apart, hands
deep in his trousers, demonstrating that religion was a device of
government for the deception of simple men, and that property was theft.
Mrs. Paragon loved her husband, and ignored his opinions. He on his side
found rest after the bitterness of his early years in the shelter of
her wisdom. His anarchism became more and more an intellectual
indulgence. Gradually the edge was taken from his temper. He began to
enjoy his grievances now that they no longer pinched him. His charity,
in a way that charity has, extended with his circumference. He was
earning £4 a week, and he had in his wife a housekeeper who could make
£4 cover the work of £6. Mrs. Paragon did not, like many of her friends,
overtask an incompetent drudge at £10 a year. She saved her money, and
halved her labour. Ends met; and things were decently in order. Mr.
Paragon was happy; insured against reasonable disaster; with sufficient
energy and spirit left at the end of a day's work to take himself
seriously as a citizen and a man.
There were times when Mr. Paragon took himself very seriously indeed. On
the evening of the day when Mr. Samuel, curate of the parish, called to
urge Mrs. Paragon to have Peter christened, Mr. Paragon talked so
incisively that only his wife could have guessed how little he intended.
"No priests," he said. "That's final."
He looked in fierce dispute at Mrs. Paragon; but meeting her calm eyes,
looked hastily away at Peter, who was sleeping by the fire in a clothes
basket.
Mrs. Paragon was dishing up the evening meal; and Mr. Paragon saw that a
reasonably large pie-dish had appeared from the oven, from which arose a
browned pyramid of sliced potatoes. The kitchen was immediately filled
with a savour only to be associated with Mr. Paragon's favourite supper.
Mrs. Paragon ignored the eagerness with which he drew to the table.
Shepherd's pie is a simple thing, but not as Mrs. Paragon made it. Mr.
Paragon, as he spooned generously into the steaming dish, had forgotten
Mr. Samuel till Mrs. Paragon reminded him.
"Mr. Samuel," she said, "is only doing his duty."
Mr. Paragon washed down a large mouthful of pie with small beer. Another
mouthful was cooling upon the end of his fork.
"Who made it his duty?" he asked.
Mrs. Paragon never answered these rhetorical questions; and Mr. Paragon
added, after a mouthful:
"There are honest jobs."
"Yes, dear; but Mr. Samuel believes in christening."
"Perhaps he does. Mr. Samuel believes that the animals went in two by
two."
There was a long pause. Then Mrs. Paragon left the table to serve a
large suet pudding studded with raisins.
She dealt with it in silence. Mr. Paragon, as always on these occasions
when they were pulling different ways, felt as if he were trying to make
waves in a pool by blowing upon the surface. He could never more than
superficially ruffle the spirit of his wife. He was obscurely aware
that she had inexhaustible reserves.
The meal concluded without further conversation; but, when Mr. Paragon
had eaten more than was good for him, he began to feel that impulsive
necessity to be generous which invariably overtook him sooner or later
in his differences with Mrs. Paragon. He looked at her amiably:
"I see it like this," he said. "Mr. Samuel thinks he's right. But he's
not going to stuff it into my boy. I'm an independent man, and I think
for myself."
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Paragon. "I don't know whether Mr. Samuel is
right or wrong. I want to do the best for Peter."
Mr. Paragon looked sharply at his wife. She was sitting comfortably
beside the clothes basket, resting for the first time since seven
o'clock in the morning. There was not the remotest suggestion that she
was resisting him. Nevertheless Mr. Paragon was aware of a passive
antagonism. He was sure she wanted Peter to be christened; he was also
sure that none of his very reasonable views affected her in the least
degree.
He was right. Mrs. Paragon liked to hear her husband talk. But logic did
not count in her secure world. She knew only what she wanted and felt.
Calm and unutterable sense was all her genius; and Mr. Paragon felt,
rather than knew, that his books and opinions were feathers in the
scale.
"If Peter isn't christened," Mrs. Paragon softly pursued, "he'll be
getting ideas into his head. I want him to start like other boys. Let
him find out for himself whether Mr. Samuel's right or wrong. If you
keep Peter away from Church he'll think there's something wrong with
it."
"Something wrong with it!" exploded Mr. Paragon. "I'll tell you what's
wrong with it."
Mr. Paragon proceeded to do so at some length. Mrs. Paragon was quite
content to see Mr. Paragon spending his force. Mr. Paragon talked for a
long time, ending in firm defiance.
"I don't see a son of mine putting pennies into the plate for the
clergyman's Easter Holiday Fund," he noisily concluded. "When my son is
old enough to read Genesis, he'll be old enough to read the _Origin of
Species_ and the works of Voltaire."
Thereafter he sat for the rest of the evening by the kitchen fire
reading his favourite volume of the forty--the adventures of Candide and
of Pangloss.
But for a few moments the reading was interrupted, for Peter suddenly
woke and yelled for food. As Mrs. Paragon sat with the child, Mr.
Paragon had never felt more conscious of her serenity, of her immovable
strength, of her eternity. He watched her over the pages of his book.
When he again looked into the adventures of Candide they had lost
something of their zest. He wondered between the lines whether the
patriarch of Ferney would have written with quite so definite an
assurance and clarity if once he had looked into the eyes of Mrs.
Paragon.
A few days later Peter was christened at the local church.