If Duff Lindsay had apprehended that the reception of Miss Filbert by
the Simpsons would involve any strain upon the affection his friends
bore him, the event must have relieved him in no small degree. He was
soon made aware of its happy character and constantly kept assured.
Indeed, it seemed that whenever Mrs. Simpson had nothing else to do she
laid her pen to the task of telling him once again how cherished a
satisfaction they found in Laura and how reluctant they would be to lose
it. She wrote in that strain of facile sympathy which seems part of an
Englishwoman's education, and often begged him to believe that the more
she knew of their sweet and heavenly-minded guest the more keenly she
realised how dreary for him must have been the pang of parting and how
arid the months of separation. Mrs. Simpson herself was well acquainted
with these trials of the spirit. She and her husband had been divided by
those wretched thousands of miles of ocean for three years, one week,
and five days, all told, during their married life; she knew what it
meant. But if Duff could only see how well and blooming his beloved one
was--she had gained twelve pounds already--Mrs. Simpson was sure the
time of waiting would pass less heavily. For herself, it was cruel, but
she smiled upon the deferred reunion of hearts: she would keep Laura
till the very last day, and hoped to establish a permanent claim on her.
She was just the daughter Mrs. Simpson would have liked, so unspotted,
so pure, so wrapped in high ideals, and then the page would reflect
something of the adoring awe in which Mrs. Simpson would have held such
a daughter. It will be seen that Mrs. Simpson knew how to express
herself, but there was a fine sincerity behind the mask of words; Miss
Filbert had entered very completely into possession.
It had its abnormal side, the way she entered into possession.
Everything about Laura Filbert had its abnormal side, none the less
obvious because it was inward and invisible. Nature, of course, worked
with her--one might say that nature really did it, since in the end she
was practically unconscious, except for the hope that certain souls had
been saved, that anything of the sort had happened. She conquered the
Simpsons and their friends chiefly by the simple impossibility that they
should conquer her, walking immobile among them even while she admired
Mr. Simpson's cauliflowers and approved the quality of Mrs. Simpson's
house linen. It must be confessed that nothing in her surroundings spoke
to her more loudly or more subtly than these things. In view of what
happened, poor dear Alicia Livingstone's anticipation that the Simpsons
and their circle would have a radical personal effect upon Laura
Filbert, became ludicrous. They had no effect at all. She took no tint,
no curve. She appeared not to see that these precious things were to be
had for the assimilation. Her grace remained exclusively that of
holiness and continued to fail to have any relation to the common little
things she did and said.
The Simpsons were more plastic. Laura had been with them hardly a week
before Mrs. Simpson, with touching humility, was trying to remodel her
spiritual nature upon the form so fortuitously, if the word is
admissible, presented. The dear lady had never before realised, by her
own statement, how terribly her religious feelings were mingled with
domestic and social considerations, how firmly her spiritual edifice was
based upon the things of this world. She felt that her soul was
honeycombed--that was her word--with conventionality and false
standards, and she made confessions like these to Laura, sitting in the
girl's bedroom in the twilight. They were very soothing, these
confessions. Laura would take Mrs. Simpson's thin, veined, middle-aged
hand in hers and seem to charge herself for the moment with the
responsibility of the elder lady's case. She did not attempt to conceal
her pity or even her contempt for Mrs. Simpson's state of grace: she
made short work of special services and ladies' Bible classes. The world
was white with harvest, and Mrs. Simpson's chief activity was a
recreation society for shop-girls. But it was something, it was
everything, to be uneasy, to be unsatisfied, and they would uplift
themselves in prayer, and Laura would find words of such touching
supplication in which to represent the matter that the burden of her
friend and hostess would at once be lessened by the weight of tears.
Mrs. Simpson had never wept so much without perceived cause for grief as
since Laura arrived, and this alone would testify, such was the gentle
paradox of her temperament, how much she enjoyed Miss Filbert's
presence.
Laura's room was a temple, for which the gardener daily gave up his
choicest blooms, the tenderest interest watched upon her comings and
goings, and it was the joy of both the Simpsons to make little
sacrifices for her, to desert their beloved vicar on a Sunday evening,
for instance, and accompany her to the firemen's halls and skating rinks
lent to the publishing of the Word in the only manner from which their
guest seemed to derive benefit.
With all this, the Simpsons were sometimes troubled by the impression
that they could not claim to be making their angel in the house
completely happy. The air, the garden, the victoria, the turbot and the
whitebait, these were all that had been vaunted, and even to the modesty
of the Simpsons it was evident that the intimacy they offered their
guest should count for something. There were other friends, too, young
friends who tried to teach her to play tennis, robust and silent young
persons who threw shy, flushed glances at her in the pauses of the
games, and wished supremely, without daring to hint it, that she would
let fall some word about her wonderful romance--a hope ever renewed,
ever to be disappointed. And physically Laura expanded before their
eyes. The colour that came into her cheek gave her the look of a person
painted by Bouguereau. That artist would have found in her a model whom
he could have represented with sincerity. Yet something was missing to
her, her friends were dimly aware. Her desirable surroundings kindled
her to but a perfunctory interest in life: the electric spark was
absent. Mrs. Simpson relied strategically upon the wedding preparations
and hurried them on, announcing in May that it was quite time to think
about various garments of which the fashion is permanent, but the issue
was blank. No ripple stirred the placid waters, unless, indeed, we take
that way of describing Laura's calm demand, when the decision lay
between Valenciennes and Torchon for under-bodies, to hear whether Mrs.
Simpson had ever known Duff Lindsay to be anxious about his eternal
future. The girl continued to give forth a mere pale reflection of her
circumstances, and Mrs. Simpson was forced into the deprecation that
perhaps one would hardly call her a joyous Christian.
But for the Zenana Mission Society this impression of Miss Filbert might
have deepened. The committee of that body was almost entirely composed
of Mrs. Simpson's friends, and naturally came to learn much about her
guest. The matter was vastly considered, but finally Miss Filbert was
asked to speak at one of the monthly meetings the ladies held among
themselves to keep the society "in touch" with the cause. Laura brought
them, as one would imagine, surprisingly in touch. She made pictures for
them, letting her own eyelashes close deliberately while they stared.
She moved these ladies, inspired them, carried them away, and the fact
that none of them found themselves able afterward to quote the most
pathetic passages seemed rather to add to the enthusiasm with which they
described the address. The first result was a shower of invitations to
tea, occasions when Laura was easily led into monologue. Miss Filbert
became a cult of the evangelistic drawing-rooms, and the same kind of
forbearance was extended to her little traces of earlier social
experiences as is offered, in salons of another sort, to the
eccentricities of persons of genius. Very soon other applications had to
be met and considered, and Mrs. Simpson freely admitted that Laura would
not be justified in refusing to the Methodists and Baptists what she had
given elsewhere. She reasserted her platform influence over audiences
that grew constantly larger, and her world began to revolve again in
that great relation to the infinities which it was her life to perceive
and point out. Mrs. Simpson charged her genially with having been
miserable in Plymouth until she was allowed to do good in her own way,
and saw that she had beef-tea after every occasion of doing it. She
became, in a way, of public character, and a lady journalist sent an
account of her, with a photograph, to a well-known London fashion-paper.
Perhaps the strongest effect she made was as the voice of the Purity
Association, when she delivered an address, in the picturesque costume
she had abandoned, attacking measures contemplated by Government for the
protection of the health of the army in India. This was reported in full
in the local paper, and Mr. Simpson sent a copy to Duff Lindsay, who
received it, I regret to say, with an unmistakable imprecation. But
Laura rejoiced. Deprived of her tambourine she nevertheless rejoiced
exceedingly.