“To love as others love, and hate a little less.”
ERNEST HARTLY COLERIDGE.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Fordington, “I am not complaining. If it is
Providence (and we can hardly call it anything else) I will say nothing.
I must attend to the Mothers’ Meeting at Aslington, and there is no
necessity for us to go to the station, I have ordered the dog-cart. This
means that I shall have to take a fly. I am quite willing to do so,
Wilfred, though she is no relation of mine.” Her husband smiled gently,
he understood all (that if it had not been Providence, she would have
said), and he was grateful to Providence.
There are people who are completely managed by a system of catch-words,
and though very often we disagree with their meaning, we would not for
the world interfere with their result. Mrs. Fordington was one of those
persons. She was a very capable woman—that is to say, there were few
things she felt she could not manage, and the remainder she managed
without the faintest hesitation. “There is nothing,” she was fond of
saying, “like being quite sure.” One did not hear so much of Mr.
Fordington. He was a scholar, and there is so little to say about
scholars. He was also a deeply spiritual man.
“And when does Daphne come, my dear?” he asked her. Mrs. Fordington told
him, and then, finding that she had some minutes to spare, she decided
to use them profitably.
“Now, Wilfred,” she began, sitting down and drawing on her gloves, “I
should like to speak to you seriously about your niece. I have no
objection to giving her a home, but there must be no misunderstanding
her position here. Your brother John died leaving next to nothing. Yes!
I know what you are going to say, my dear—he gave his money to the
poor! Very true, and if you will allow me to say so, culpably silly. Had
his own daughter no more claim on him than gutter children, and are
people in the gutter any more important than people out of it? What,”
said Mrs. Fordington, “is there in the gutter to make people lose their
heads over it? John lost his, he spent his own money and Mary’s, then
after her death, not even his marriage with an exceedingly worldly woman
made any difference to his gutter money! _She_ burned the candle at the
other end. I don’t believe in extremes. I have often said, ‘Be moderate
and you’ll be safe! Start a crank and everything goes to swell it.’
Where would Daphne be now if it wasn’t for you?” The Vicar made no
attempt to create a destination for her.
“John knew I should look after her,” he said.
“Then,” said his wife, “it was about the only sensible thing he did
know.” Mr. Fordington did not try to defend his brother, not because no
defence was possible, but because there was none his wife would
understand. When he gave her a real reason, she suspected him of keeping
something back.
“Daphne must accommodate herself to her new position,” she went on. “She
must learn to live as the people of Overham do—the nice people, I mean,
of course. There is plenty of work for a well-regulated mind, and if she
has not yet regulated hers, I daresay I can help her.”
“We must win her heart first,” said Mr. Fordington, “before we undertake
to influence her mind, and I am not sure that I believe in influencing
anyone’s mind.”
“I wish you had not such a lax way of talking,” said his wife with a
sigh, “you might be Buddhist!”
“I think I see the cab,” said her husband, “I hope you will have a nice
time.”
“Aslington is a dreadful place,” said Mrs. Fordington, “the children
look very unhealthy, and most of them are cross-eyed. I cannot
understand the neglect with which these women treat their children. I
shall speak very plainly indeed. Home is a mere word without a good
mother.”
“That will come in,” said the Vicar, “very nicely.”
“Yes,” said his wife with pardonable pride, “I have inserted it in the
last paragraph.”
“Mother! mother! mother!” called a child’s voice from the lawn, but Mrs.
Fordington was looking over her notes: she did not mean to be unkind,
she was only absent-minded.
“Be a good girl, Dora,” she said, without looking up, and the cab drove
off.
“Oh! father dear,” said Dora, coming to the open window, “there was
promises for a drive, and mother didn’t see me at all, she said ‘Be a
good girl,’ and I are a good girl, already!” She was seven years old,
but small and delicate for her age, with eyes like her father’s. Dora
knew that _his_ promises were certain as the sun, but mother forgot hers
until the child almost wondered whether promises were as true as things
which happened. It is puzzling to find out, that what people say can
mean something different and even mean nothing at all, and it is better
not to find this out any sooner than can be helped.
“You shall drive to the station with me, to see Cousin Daphne,” said her
father, “only it seems to me you might have a clean frock on.” Dora’s
face brightened.
“You see,” she explained, “I was playing with the chickens, it is a kind
of game where you have to creep under the wires, and look for nests, and
one hen spluttered dirt all over me, an’ I said ‘you’re a ’orrid old
beast,’ and don’t you fink she was, father?”
“No,” said her father, “you came into her nursery and meddled with her
toys. If she had pecked your dollie, wouldn’t you have been angry?” Dora
hesitated.
“Dollie’s real,” she explained, “eggs is silly things what you eat for
breakfasts.”
“They are just as real to the hen,” her father explained, “as Dollie is
to you, and I daresay she would eat Dollie’s sawdust for breakfast if
she could.” Dora grew rather red.
“Only a _little_ of Dollie is sawdust,” she said; “_most_ of her’s
real!”
“The hen would say just the same about her egg,” said her father. “Why
did you call her a horrid beast, Dora?”
“That’s Jack’s name for things,” said Dora with some pride; “isn’t it a
nice name?”
“I think not,” said her father. “I should call her an estimable bird if
I were you.”
“That’s a very long name to remember,” said Dora thoughtfully. “Oh,
Daddy!” she suddenly exclaimed, “do you know that I had a dreadful
thought when I was with the hen?”
“What was it?” asked the Vicar gently.
“I thought about the very one that spluttered gravel,” said Dora, her
sensitive lips trembling, “that it looked rather—rather like mother,
father dear. Wasn’t it a very wicked thought?” There was a silence
between them. The daffodils were still dancing in the sunlight, but a
light April cloud was coming up over the Church tower. The Vicar watched
it a moment or two.
“I don’t think God would call it that,” he said at last, “but it was
certainly an undesirable reflection, and, do you know, I don’t think I
should go into the chicken-yard again, except when Jack feeds them?”
“Is that a punishment, daddy?” she asked with her eyes full of tears.
The Vicar shook his head.
“It is a precaution,” he said, “and a precaution is a safe thing which
prevents dangerous ones happening.”
“Like taking off wet shoes and saying ‘please’ before jam?” Dora
enquired.
“Very much like,” said her father. “Run and put on something pretty and
we will go for our drive if it doesn’t rain.” Dora looked sadly at the
cloud.
“It most always _does_ rain when I get a clean frock on and Jack does
the windows!” she said with a sigh.
“Then we will make up a new game if it does,” said the Vicar. The child
ran off happy. “We should not,” said Mr. Fordington to himself, “let
things make too much difference. An estimable bird,” he repeated
thoughtfully. Then he began to smile. He smiled very often. It was a
great help.