Anne Hilton was one of those women who have so little knowledge of the
practical thoughts of those round about them, that they pass their lives
half-disliked, partly respected, and mostly avoided. She had lived alone
now for two years, her father, whom she had nursed, having died of the
saddest human malady. He had ("as anyone might have had with such a
daughter," declared the neighbours), harboured a great contempt for
women, and though, being uninclined to tread the heights himself, he
feared his daughter's uprightness of character, he had never lost an
occasion of pouring scorn on her unpractical ways.
"Can you take it home for me, James?" would ask a neighbour, handing up
a case of eggs to the cart, where James sat preparing to leave the
market.
"There's no women in the cart," James would reply, and supposed he had
given the required assent.
The "round-about ways of doing things," which had been the butt of her
shrewd old father, had brought upon Anne a customary air of
half-readiness, so that going in suddenly, she might be found with her
bonnet on and her handkerchief on the table, but one perceived she was
still in her petticoat, and was making a pie for dinner. Meals, indeed,
she considered as things to be got out of the way, both her own, and, to
their expressed discomfort, those of other people. She herself often ate
them as she went about her work, pausing to take a spoonful from a plate
on the table or from the saucepan itself.
Taking the Scripture as the literal rule of the smallest details of her
life, she never wore a mixture of wool and cotton, as that was forbidden
to the Jews, nor would she wear any imitation of linen for the same
reason. In consequence, her clothes, which were of sound material, never
looked common, but always out-of-date.
She could be got (not that many people had tried to do so) to do nothing
quite like other people, not from perversity as some readily declared,
or a desire to "be different," but from inability to acquire the point
of view from which the most ordinary actions are done. She took no money
on Sunday, and this becoming known to her ne'er-do-well neighbours, they
made a point of forgetting to come for milk on Saturday.
"You must tell your mother I never sell milk on Sunday."
"Yes, Miss Hilton."
"I'll give you a little to go on with, but next week you must come for
it on Saturday."
And the child, having got what she wanted, would run off with the jug of
milk and the money which should have paid for it, to repeat exactly the
same offence the following week. Her reputation for queerness let her be
considered fair game, and so convinced is the ordinary person that
queerness is of necessity contemptible, that when she did anything which
was unusual, its reason was never examined, nor did the possibility that
it might be better done in that way occur to anybody. It was merely a
new evidence of her oddity.
But it was especially in those points in which she felt herself moved by
her religious convictions that she was most suspected. For in spite and
over all her eccentricities of belief, she was genuinely religious,
having the two great religious virtues, charity in judgment and sorrow
for the failures of others. But again she was "different," as it is
evident in this world that the failures of other people are entirely
their own fault, and to be gentle in judgment is more than other people
will be to you, and therefore unnecessary. So that, without being in
intention a reformer, she suffered the suspicion and dislike of the
reformer, being, in fact, however she might disguise it, "different"
from other people.
This constant clashing with the steadfast ideas of every one had in time
produced a timidity and secretiveness in the most ordinary actions,
though where she believed herself to be directed by the Spirit, she had
no lack of confidence and determination. If her movements could be kept
secret she would do her utmost to make them so. She would send the reply
to an invitation to tea half over the country before it reached its
destination. Yet she would often pray in the prayer-meeting, and had
been known to do unusually bold actions as a matter of course.
When it became known that she had written a letter to the son of Squire
Nuttall asking him to give up his dissipated habits, which were the
scandal of the country, no one was surprised, though many were shocked,
and the poorer tenants of the estate alarmed lest some indirect wrath
might fall upon them. When neither Squire nor son took the smallest
notice of the letter she was blamed universally as having gone too far,
as if this chorus of subterranean condemnation might somehow reach the
Squire, who would know that the rest of his tenants had no hand in the
matter nor sympathy with the writer.
On the contrary, though she was secretive with her near acquaintances,
she would become greatly communicative with a casual vendor of books, or
even a vagrant to whom she had given a cup of tea, that English
equivalent for a cup of cold water. She was so fearful of falling behind
in sympathy with sinners that she fell into the unusual error of
treating them better than the saints. She was fond of doing small
generosities, especially to children, who were half afraid of her but
who would eat the big Victoria plums she gave them (leading them
stealthily round to the back of the house to do so), and recognize that
in some sedate and mysterious way they had a friend.
She would send presents to young people whose conduct had pleased her,
gifts which always excited surprise and sometimes derision. Once she
sent the substantial gift of a sack of potatoes to a young husband and
wife, but the present became chiefly an amusing recollection, because,
not having string, she had sewed the sack with darning-wool, with the
result that it burst open on the station platform before it reached its
destination.
A number of books, some of an old-fashioned theology, had been left to
Anne by an aunt who had had a son a Methodist preacher. This aunt had
also left her a black silk dress, which Anne had received with the
joyful exclamation that she knew she was really a king's daughter. The
books she read ardently and critically, underlining and marking, and
with them also she embarrassed the vicar to whom she lent them. He,
being a kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his wife's
indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was
in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older
men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young
men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought _them_
absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads
were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was
overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any meanness or injustice,
which seemed to arouse in her a Biblical passion of righteous fury.
A small meanness in another depressed her as much as if she had done it
herself. Once she had walked five miles to deliver some butter and
returned utterly dejected, not alone from fatigue, but because she had
been offered nothing to eat or drink after her long tramp. It would have
been useless to point out to her that she had gone on a purely business
errand. It was one of those small meannesses of which she was herself
incapable, and a proportion of warmth had died out of her belief.
"You know my sister Jane's son?" said a farmer's wife, who had stopped
her trap at the cottage to pick up a lidded wisket in which some
earthenware had been packed. "He's getting a good-looking young man and
he's all for bettering himself. Well, he went and got his photo taken at
Drayton and brought them in to show his mother. She was making jam at
the time, and she's not an easy tongue at the best o' times. 'What's
that?' she says; 'you don't mean to say that's a likeness o' thee? It
looks fool enough.' She says she never saw 'em again, he went straight
out and burnt 'em."
"He chose the wrong minit," said her husband beside her. "If he knew as
much about women as _I_ do, for instance."
"Just you mind," said his wife, warningly. "Why, Miss Hilton, whatever's
the matter?" she added, catching sight of Anne's face.
"It is such a painful story," rejoined Anne. "I cannot bear to think of
the poor young man's discomfiture."
"Well, I never!" ejaculated the farmer, as they drove away. "She's very
good, but, my word, she's very peculiar."
"If she was _really_ very good she'd try not to _be_ so peculiar,"
retorted his wife, nettled at the failure of her story. "Did you ever
see such a figure, with her dress all unbuttoned at the back showing her
stays."
"She's not got a husband to fasten the middle buttons," said the farmer
slyly. "She can't very well ask the pig, you know."
"Well, no, she can't," said his wife, good-naturedly; "but she tries my
patience pretty often."
"That's not so hard as it sounds," said the farmer, looking innocently
in front of him.
"Now, then," said his wife, "who wanted a potato-pie for supper?"
"I expect it was our Joseph," said the farmer.
"Not it," retorted his wife.
"Well, myself, I prefer women who aren't so peculiar," said the farmer.
"Even if they're not so good," he added.
"Take care," replied his wife. "That potato-pie isn't in the oven yet!"