HONOR.
Having now gained a partial insight into Letty's new position, Mary
pondered what she could do to make life more of life to her. Not many
knew better than she that the only true way to help a human heart is to
lift it up; but she knew also that every kind of loving aid tends more
or less to that uplifting; and that, if we can not do the great thing,
we must be ready to do the small: if we do not help in little things,
how shall we be judged fit to help in greater? We must help where we
can, that we may help where we can not. The first and the only thing
she could for a time think of, was, to secure for Letty, if possible, a
share in her husband's pleasures.
Quietly, yet swiftly, a certain peaceful familiarity had established
itself between Hesper and Mary, to which the perfect balance of the
latter and her sense of the only true foundation of her position
contributed far more than the undefined partiality of the former. The
possibility of such a conversation as I am now going to set down was
one of the results.
"Do you like Mr. Helmer, ma'am?" asked Mary one morning, as she was
brushing her hair.
"Very well. How do you know anything of him?"
"Not many people within ten miles of Testbridge do not know Mr.
Helmer," answered Mary.
"Yes, yes, I remember," said Hesper. "He used to ride about on a
long-legged horse, and talked to anybody that would listen to him. But
there was always something pleasing about him, and he is much improved.
Do you know, he is considered really very clever?"
"I am not surprised," rejoined Mary. "He used to be rather foolish, and
that is a sign of cleverness--at least, many clever people are foolish,
I think."
"You can't have had much opportunity for making the observation, Mary!"
"Clever people think as much of themselves in the country as they do in
London, and that is what makes them foolish," returned Mary. "But I
used to think Mr. Helmer had very good points, and was worth doing
something for--if one only knew what."
"He does not seem to want anything done for him," said Hesper.
"I know one thing _you_ could do for him, and it would be no trouble,"
said Mary.
"I will do anything for anybody that is no trouble," answered Hesper.
"I should like to know something that is no trouble."
"It is only, the next time you ask him, to ask his wife," said Mary.
"He is married, then?" returned Hesper with indifference. "Is the woman
presentable? Some shopkeeper's daughter, I suppose!"
Mary laughed. "You don't imagine the son of a lawyer would be likely to
marry a shopkeeper's daughter!" she said.
"Why not?" returned Hesper, with a look of non-intelligence.
"Because a professional man is so far above a tradesman."
"Oh!" said Hesper. "--But he should have told me if he wanted to bring
his wife with him. I don't care who she is, so long as she dresses
decently and holds her tongue. What are you laughing at, Mary?"
Hesper called it laughing, but Mary was only smiling.
"I can't help being amused," answered Mary, "that you should think it
such an out-of-the-way thing to be a shopkeeper's daughter, and here am
I all the time, feeling quite comfortable, and proud of the shopkeeper
whose daughter I am."
"Oh! I beg your pardon," exclaimed Hesper, growing hot for, I almost
believe, the first time in her life, and therein, I fear, showing a
drop of bad blood from somewhere, probably her father's side of the
creation; for not even the sense of having hurt the feelings of an
inferior can make the thoroughbred woman of the world aware of the
least discomfort; and here was Hesper, not only feeling like a woman of
God's making, but actually showing it!--"How cruel of me!" she went on.
"But, you see, I never think of you--when I am talking to you--as--as
one of that class!"
Mary laughed outright this time: she was amused, and thought it better
to show it, for that would show also she was not hurt. Hesper, however,
put it down to insensibility.
"Surely, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, "you can not think the class to
which I belong in itself so objectionable that it is rude to refer to
it in my hearing!"
"I am very sorry," repeated Hesper, but in a tone of some offense: it
was one thing to confess a fault; another to be regarded as actually
guilty of the fault. "Nothing was further from my intention than to
offend you. I have not a doubt that shopkeepers are a most respectable
class in their way--"
"Excuse me, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary again, "but you quite mistake
me. I am not in the least offended. I don't care what you think of the
class. There are a great many shopkeepers who are anything but
respectable--as bad, indeed, as any of the nobility."
"I was not thinking of morals," answered Hesper. "In that, I dare say,
all classes are pretty much alike. But, of course, there are
differences."
"Perhaps one of them is, that, in our class, we make respectability
more a question of the individual than you do in yours."
"That may be very true," returned Hesper. "So long as a man behaves
himself, we ask no questions."
"Will you let me tell you how the thing looks to me?" said Mary.
"Certainly. You do not suppose I care for the opinions of the people
about me! I, too, have my way of looking at things."
So said Hesper; yet it was just the opinions of the people about her
that ruled all those of her actions that could be said to be ruled at
all. No one boasts of freedom except the willing slave--the man so
utterly a slave that he feels nothing irksome in his fetters. Yet,
perhaps, but for the opinions of those about her, Hesper would have
been worse than she was.
"Am I right, then, in thinking," began Mary, "that people of your class
care only that a man should wear the look of a gentleman, and carry
himself like one?--that, whether his appearance be a reality or a mask,
you do not care, so long as no mask is removed in your company?--that
he may be the lowest of men, but, so long as other people receive him,
you will, too, counting him good enough?"
Hesper held her peace. She had by this time learned some facts
concerning the man she had married which, beside Mary's question, were
embarrassing.
"It is interesting," she said at length, "to know how the different
classes in a country regard each other." But she spoke wearily: it was
interesting in the abstract, not interesting to her.
"The way to try a man," said Mary, "would be to turn him the other way,
as I saw the gentleman who is taking your portrait do yesterday trying
a square--change his position quite, I mean, and mark how far he
continued to look a true man. He would show something of his real self
then, I think. Make a nobleman a shopkeeper, for instance, and see what
kind of a shopkeeper he made. If he showed himself just as honorable
when a shopkeeper as he had seemed when a nobleman, there would be good
reason for counting him an honorable man."
"What odd fancies you have, Mary!" said Hesper, yawning.
"I know my father would have been as honorable as a nobleman as he was
when a shopkeeper," persisted Mary.
"That I can well believe--he was your father," said Hesper, kindly,
meaning what she said, too, so far as her poor understanding of the
honorable reached.
"Would you mind telling me," asked Mary, "how you would define the
difference between a nobleman and a shopkeeper?"
Hesper thought a little. The question to her was a stupid one. She had
never had interest enough in humanity to care a straw what any
shopkeeper ever thought or felt. Such people inhabited a region so far
below her as to be practically out of her sight. They were not of her
kind. It had never occurred to her that life must look to them much as
it looked to her; that, like Shylock, they had feelings, and would
bleed if cut with a knife. But, although she was not interested, she
peered about sleepily for an answer. Her thoughts, in a lazy fashion,
tumbled in her, like waves without wind--which, indeed, was all the
sort of thinking she knew. At last, with the decision of conscious
superiority, and the judicial air afforded by the precision of
utterance belonging to her class--a precision so strangely conjoined
with the lack of truth and logic both--she said, in a tone that gave to
the merest puerility the consequence of a judgment between contending
sages:
"The difference is, that the nobleman is born to ease and dignity and
affluence, and the--shopkeeper to buy and sell for his living."
"Many a nobleman," suggested Mary, "buys and sells without the
necessity of making a living."
"That is the difference," said Hesper.
"Then the nobleman buys and sells to make money, and the shopkeeper to
make a living?"
"Yes," granted Hesper, lazily.
"Which is the nobler end--to live, or to make money?" But this question
was too far beyond Hesper. She did not even choose to hear it.
"And," she said, resuming her definition instead, "the nobleman deals
with great things, the shopkeeper with small."
"When things are finally settled," said Mary--"Gracious, Mary!" cried
Hesper, "what do you mean? Are not things settled for good this many a
century? I am afraid I have been harboring an awful radical!--a--what
do they call it?--a communist!"
She would have turned the whole matter out of doors, for she was tired
of it.
"Things hardly look as if they were going to remain just as they are at
this precise moment," said Mary. "How could they, when, from the very
making of the world, they have been going on changing and changing,
hardly ever even seeming to standstill?"
"You frighten me, Mary! You will do something terrible in my house, and
I shall get the blame of it!" said Hesper, laughing.
But she did in truth feel a little uncomfortable. The shadow of dismay,
a formless apprehension overclouded her. Mary's words recalled
sentiments which at home she had heard alluded to with horror; and,
however little parents may be loved or respected by their children,
their opinions will yet settle, and, until they are driven out by
better or worse, will cling.
"When I tell you what I was really thinking of, you will not be alarmed
at my opinions," said Mary, not laughing now, but smiling a deep, sweet
smile; "I do not believe there ever will be any settlement of things
but one; they can not and must not stop changing, until the kingdom of
heaven is come. Into that they must change, and rest."
"You are leaving politics for religion now, Mary. That is the one fault
I have to find with you--you won't keep things in their own places! You
are always mixing them up--like that Mrs.--what's her name?--who will
mix religion and love in her novels, though everybody tells her they
have nothing to do with each other! It is so irreverent!"
"Is it irreverent to believe that God rules the world he made, and that
he is bringing things to his own mind in it?"
"You can't persuade me religion means turning things upside down."
"It means that a good deal more than people think. Did not our Lord say
that many that are first shall be last, and the last first?"
"What has that to do with this nineteenth century?"
"Perhaps that the honorable shopkeeper and the mean nobleman will one
day change places."
"Oh," thought Hesper, "that is why the lower classes take so to
religion!" But what she said was: "Oh, yes, I dare say! But everything
then will be so different that it won't signify. When we are all
angels, nobody will care who is first, and who is last. I'm sure, for
one, it won't be anything to me."
Hesper was a tolerable attendant at church--I will not say whether high
or low church, because I should be supposed to care.
"In the kingdom of heaven," answered Mary, "things will always look
what they are. My father used to say people will grow their own dresses
there, as surely as a leopard his spots. He had to do with dresses, you
know. There, not only will an honorable man look honorable, but a mean
or less honorable man must look what he is."
"There will be nobody mean there."
"Then a good many won't be there who are called honorable here."
"I have no doubt there will be a good deal of allowance made for some
people," said Hesper. "Society makes such demands!"