Mrs. Orton Beg was a sister of Mrs. Frayling's and an oracle to Evadne.
Mrs. Frayling was fair, plump, sweet, yielding, commonplace, prolific;
Mrs. Orton Beg was a barren widow, slender, sincere, silent, firm, and
tender. Mrs. Frayling, for lack of insight, was unsympathetic, Mrs. Orton
Beg was just the opposite; and she and Evadne understood each other, and
were silent together in the most companionable way in the world.
When Evadne went to her own room on the evening made memorable by the
twins' famous anthem, she was haunted by that word "ineffectual," which
Mrs. Orton Beg had used. "Ineffectual genius"--there was something
familiar as well as high sounding in the epithet; it recalled an idea with
which she was already acquainted; what was it? She opened her "Commonplace
Book," and sat with her pen in her hand, cogitating comfortably. She had
no need to weary her fresh young brain with an irritating pursuit of what
she wanted; she had only to wait, and it would recur to her. And presently
it came. Her countenance brightened. She bent over the book and wrote a
few lines, read them when she had blotted them, and was satisfied.
"I have it," she wrote. "Shelley = genius of the nineteenth
century--'Beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain.'--_Matthew Arnold_."
When she had done this she took up a book, went to the fire, settled
herself in an easy-chair, and began to read. The book was "Ruth," by Mrs.
Gaskell, and she was just finishing it. When she had done so she went back
to the table, and copied out the following paragraph:
"The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are
absorbed before they are aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred
has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time
comes--when an inward necessity for independent action arises, which is
superior to all outward conventionalities."
She stopped here, and pushed the volume away from her. It was the only
passage in it which she cared to remember.
She had lost the confidence of the child by this time, and become humbly
doubtful of her own opinion; and instead of summing up "Ruth" boldly, as
she would have done the year before, she paused now a moment to reflect
before she wrote with diffidence:
"The principal impression this book has made upon me is that Mrs. Gaskell
must have been a very lovable woman."
[Footnote: George Eliot thought so too, years before Evadne was born, and
expressed the thought in a letter in which she also prophesied that "Ruth"
would not live through a generation. The impression the book made upon
Evadne is another proof of prescience in the great writer.]
"The story seems to me long drawn out, and of small significance. It is
full of food for the heart, but the head goes empty away, and both should
be satisfied by a work of fiction, I think. But perhaps it is my own mood
that is at fault. At another time I might have found gems in it which now
in my dulness I have failed to perceive."
Somebody knocked at the door as she blotted the words.
"Come in, auntie," she said, as if in answer to an accustomed signal; and
Mrs. Orton Beg entered in a long, loose, voluminously draped white
wrapper.
Evadne drew an easy-chair to the fire for her.
"Sit down, auntie," she said, "and be cosey. You are late to-night. I was
afraid you were not coming."
Mrs. Orton Beg was in the habit of coming to Evadne's room every evening
when she was at Fraylingay, to chat, or sit silently sociable over the
fire with her before saying goodnight.
"Do I ever fail you?" she asked, smiling.
"No. But I have been afraid of the fatal fascination of that great fat
foreign prince. He singled you out for special attention, and I have been
jealous."
"Well, you need not have been, for he singled me out in order to talk
about you. He thinks you are a nice child. You interest him."
"Defend me!" said Evadne. "But you mistake me, dear aunt. It was not of
him I was jealous, but of you. The fat prince is nothing to me, and you
are a very great deal."
Mrs. Orton Beg's face brightened at the words, but she continued to look
into the fire silently for some seconds after Evadne had spoken, and made
no other visible sign of having heard them.
"I don't think I ought to encourage you to sit up so late," she said
presently. "Lady Adeline has just been asking me who it is that burns the
midnight oil up here so regularly."
"Lady Adeline must be up very late herself to see it," said Evadne. "I
suppose those precious twins disturb her. I wish she would let me take
entire charge of them when she is here. It would be a relief, I should
think!"
"It would be an imposition," said Mrs. Orton Beg. "But you are a brave
girl, Evadne. _I_ would not venture."
"Oh, they delight me," Evadne answered. "And I know them well enough now
to forestall them."
"When I told Lady Adeline that these were your rooms," her aunt pursued,
"she said something about a lily maid high in her chamber up a tower to
the east guarding the sacred shield of Lancelot."
"Singularly inappropriate," said Evadne. "For my tower is south and west,
thank Heaven."
"And there isn't a symptom of Lancelot," her aunt concluded.
"Young ladies don't guard sacred shields nowadays," said Evadne.
"No," answered her aunt, glancing over her shoulder at the open book on
the table. "They have substituted the sacred 'Commonplace Book'--full of
thought, I fancy."
"You speak regretfully, auntie; but isn't it better to think and be happy,
than to die of atrophy for a sentiment?"
"I don't think it better to extinguish all sentiment. Life without
sentiment would be so bald."
"But life with that kind of sentiment doesn't last, it seems, and nobody
is benefited by it. It is extreme misery to the girl herself, and she dies
young, leaving a legacy of lifelong regret and bitterness to her friends.
I should think it small comfort to become the subject for a poem or a
picture at such a price. And surely, auntie, sentiments which are silly or
dangerous would be better extinguished?"
Mrs. Orton Beg smiled at the fire enigmatically.
"But the poem or the picture may become a lasting benefit to mankind," she
suggested presently.
"Humph!" said Evadne.
"You doubt it?"
"Well, you see, auntie, there are two ways of looking at it. When you
first come across the poem or the picture which perpetuates the sentiment
that slew the girl, and beautifies it, you feel a glow all over, and fancy
you would like to imitate her, and think that you would deserve great
credit for it if you did. But when you come to consider, there is nothing
very noble, after all, in a hopeless passion for an elderly man of the
world who is past being benefited by it, even if he could reciprocate it.
Elaine should have married a man of her own age, and made him happy. She
would have done some good in her time so, and been saved from setting us a
bad example. I think it a sin to make unwholesome sentiments attractive."
"Then Lancelot does not charm you?"
"No," said Evadne thoughtfully. "I should have preferred the king."
"Ah, yes. Because he was the nobler, the more ideal man?"
"No, not exactly," Evadne answered. "But because he was the more
wholesome."
"My dear child, are you speaking literally?"
"Yes, auntie."
"Good Heavens!" Mrs. Orton Beg ejaculated softly. "The times _have_
changed."
"Yes, we know more now," Evadne answered tranquilly.
"You are fulfilling the promise of your youth, Evadne," her aunt remarked
after a thoughtful pause. "I remember reading a fairy tale of Jean
Ingelow's aloud to you children in the nursery long ago. I forget the name
of it, but it was the one into which 'One morning, oh, so early,' comes;
and you started a controversy as to whether, speaking of the dove, when
the lark said 'Give us glory,' she should have made answer, 'Give us
peace' or 'peas.' The latter, you maintained, as being the more natural,
and the most sensible."
"I must have been a horrid little prig in those days," said Evadne,
smiling. "But, auntie, there can be no peace without plenty. And I think I
would rather be a sensible realist than a foolish idealist. You mean that
you think me too much of a utilitarian, do you not?"
"You are in danger, I think."
"Utilitarianism is Bentham's _greatest happiness principle_, is it
not?" Evadne asked.
"Yes--greatest human happiness," her aunt replied.
"Well, I don't know how that can be dangerous in principle. But, of
course, I know nothing of such questions practically. Only I do seem to
perceive that you must rest on a solid basis of real advantages before you
can reach up to ideal perfection with any chance of success."
"You seem to be very wide awake to-night, Evadne," Mrs. Orton Beg
rejoined. "This is the first I have heard of your peculiar views."
"Oh, I am a kind of owl, I think, auntie," Evadne answered apologetically.
"You see, I never had anything to do in the schoolroom that I could not
manage when I was half asleep, and so I formed a habit of dozing over my
lessons by day, and waking up when I came to bed at night. Having a room
of my own always has been a great advantage. I have been secure all along
of a quiet time at night for reading and thought--and that is real life,
auntie, isn't it? I don't care to talk much, as a rule, do you? I like to
listen and watch people. But I always wake up at this time of the night,
and I feel as if I could be quite garrulous now when everybody else is
going to sleep. But, auntie, don't use such an ominous expression as
'peculiar views' about anything I say, _please_; 'views' are always
in ill odour, and peculiarities, even peculiar perfections, would isolate
one, and that I _do_ dread. It would be awful to be out of sympathy
with one's fellow-creatures, and have them look suspiciously at one; and
it would be no comfort to me to know that want of sympathy is the proof of
a narrow nature, and that suspicion is the inevitable outcome of ignorance
and stupidity. I don't want to despise my fellow-creatures. I would rather
share their ignorance and conceit and be sociable than find myself
isolated even by a very real superiority. The one would be pleasant
enough, I should think; the other pain beyond all bearing of it."
Mrs. Orton Beg's heart contracted with a momentary fear for her niece, but
she dismissed it promptly.
"The room to yourself has been a doubtful advantage, I fancy," she said.
"It has made you theoretical. But you will lose all that by and by. And in
the meantime, you must remember that in such matters we have small choice.
We are born with superior or inferior faculties, and must make use of
them, such as they are, to become inferior cooks or countesses or superior
ditto, as the case may be. But there are always plenty of one's own kind,
whichever it is, to consort with. Birds of a feather, you know. You need
not be afraid of being isolated."
"You are thinking of ordinary faculties, auntie. I was thinking of
extraordinary. But even with ordinary ones we are hampered. Birds of a
feather would flock together if they could, of course, but then they can't
always; and suppose, being superior, you find yourself forced to associate
with inferior cooks of your kind, what then?"
"Be their queen."
"Which, unless you were a queen of hearts, would really amount to being an
object of envy and dislike, and that brings us back to the point from
which we started."
"Evadne, you talk like a book; go to bed!" Mrs. Orton Beg exclaimed,
laughing.
"It is you who have made me talk, then," Evadne rejoined promptly, "and I
feel inclined to ask now, with all proper respect, what has come to you?
It must be the prince!"
"Yes, it must be the prince!" Mrs. Orton Beg responded, raising her
slender white hand to smother a yawn. "And it must be good-night, too--or
rather, good-morning! Just look at the clock. It is nearly three."