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 all, 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 has 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 lace 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 Light 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 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 a 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.