What Necessity Knows Part 57

"Are you sure of that, papa,--that I would not have received him?" It was exactly what she had been saying to herself for days; but, now that another said it, the sentiment involved seemed weak.

"I am aware"--his tone was resigned--"that your opinions are always more radical than I can approve. The extreme always seems to have, shall I say, some attraction for you; but still, my daughter, I believe you are not lacking in proper pride."

"I am too proud to think that for a good many days I have liked a man who was not fit for my liking. I prefer to believe that he is fit until I can have more conclusive proof to the contrary."

Captain Rexford walked some minutes in sterner silence. He had long ceased to regard Sophia as under his authority.

"Still I hope, my dear, the next time you see this young man--rudeness, of course, being impossible to you, and unnecessary--still I hope you will allow your manner to indicate that a certain distance must be preserved."

Her own sense of expediency had been urging this course upon her, but she had not been able to bring her mind to it.

"I should show myself his inferior if I could deliberately hurt him,"

she cried, with feeling. The trouble of a long debate she had been having with herself, her uncertainty what to feel or think, gave more emotion to her voice than she supposed.

"My dear daughter!" cried the father, with evident agitation.

Sophia instantly knew on what suspicion this sudden sympathy was bestowed. She was too indignant to deny the charge.

"Well, papa?"

"He is, no doubt, a worthy man; but"--he got no help from his daughter; she was walking beside him with imperious mien--"in short, my dear, I hope--indeed, if I could think that, under false pretences, he could have won--"

"He is the last man to seek to win anything under a false pretence." The coldness of her manner but thinly veiled her vehemence; but even in that vehemence she perceived that what proofs of her a.s.sertion she could bring would savour of too particular a recollection. She let it stand unproved.

"My dear child!" he cried, in affectionate distress, "I know that you will not forget that rank, birth--" He looked at her, and, seeing that she appeared intractable, exclaimed further, "It's no new thing that ladies should, in a fit of madness, demean themselves--young ladies frequently marry grooms; but, believe me, my dear Sophia"--earnestly--"no happiness ever came of such a thing--only misery, and vice, and squalor."

But here she laughed with irresistible mirth. "Young women who elope with grooms are not likely to have much basis of happiness in themselves. And you think me capable of fancying love for a man without education or refinement, a man with whom I could have nothing in common that would last beyond a day! What have I ever done, papa, that you should bring such, an accusation?"

"I certainly beg your pardon, my daughter, if I have maligned you."

"You _have_ maligned me; there is no 'if' about it."

"My dear, I certainly apologise. I thought, from the way in which you spoke--"

"You thought I was expressing too warm a regard for Mr. Alec Trenholme; but that has nothing whatever to do with what you have just been talking about; for, if he were a groom, if he chose to sweep the streets, he would be as far removed from the kind of man you have just had in your mind as you and I are; and, if he were not I could take no interest in him."

The gloom on Captain Rexford's brow, which had been dispelled by her laughter, gathered again.

"Separate the character of the man from his occupation," she cried.

"Grant that he is what we would all like in a friend. Separate him, too, from any idea that I would marry him, for I was not thinking of such a thing. Is there not enough left to distress me? Do you think I underrate the evil of the occupation, even though I believe it has not tainted him? Having owned him as a friend, isn't it difficult to know what degree of friends.h.i.+p I can continue to own for him?"

"My dear, I think you hardly realise how unwise it is to think of friends.h.i.+p between yourself and any such man; recognition of worth there may be, but nothing more."

"Oh, papa!"--impatiently--"think of it as you will, but listen to what I have to say; for I am in trouble. You were sorry for me just now when you imagined I was in love; try and understand what I say now, for I am in distress. I cannot see through this question--what is the right and what is the wrong."

"I do not think I understand you my dear," he said.

She had stopped, and leaned back on the roadside fence. He stood before her. All around them the yellow golden-rod and mullein were waving in the wind, and lithe young trees bent with their coloured leaves. Captain Rexford looked at his daughter, and wondered, in his slow way, that she was not content to be as fair and stately as the flowers without perplexing herself thus.

"Papa, pray listen. You know that night when I went to seek Winifred--you do not know, because I have not told you--but just before the old man died. When he stood there, looking up and praying that our Saviour would come again, there was not one of us who was not carried away with the thought of that coming--the thought that when it comes all time will be _present,_ not _past;_ and, papa, the clouds parted just a little, and we saw through, beyond all the damp, dark gloom of the place we were in, into a place of such perfect clearness and beauty beyond--I can't explain it, but it seemed like an emblem of the difference that would be between our muddy ways of thinking of things and the way that we should think if we lived always for the sake of the time when He will come--and it is very easy to talk of that difference in a large general way, and it does no good--but to bring each particular thing to that test is practical. Here, for instance, you and I ought to reconsider our beliefs and prejudices as they regard this man we are talking about, and find out what part of them, in G.o.d's sight, is pure and strong and to be maintained, and what part is unworthy and to be cast away. Is it easy, even in such a small matter as this?"

Captain Rexford took off his hat in tribute to his theme, and stood bareheaded. He looked what he was--a military man of the past and more formal generation, who with difficulty had adapted himself to the dress and habits of a farmer. He was now honestly doing his utmost to bring himself to something still more foreign to his former experience.

"To put it in a practical way, papa: if our Lord were coming to-morrow, how would you advise me to meet Alec Trenholme to-day?"

"Of course," began Captain Rexford, "in sight of the Almighty all men are equal."

"No, no," she pleaded, "by all that is true, men are not equal nor are occupations equal. Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. It is not as well to be stupid as to be wise, to be untaught as to be taught, to be ugly as to be beautiful; it is not as good to kill cattle as to till the soil, and it is not as good to be a farmer as to be a poet. It is just because moralists go too far, and say what is not true, that they fail. External things are of more importance to their Creator than they are even to us."

Captain Rexford brushed his hat with his sleeve. The thing that he was most anxious to do at that moment was to pacify his daughter.

"But if you feel this difference so keenly, Sophia, what then perplexes you?"

"I want to know how to deal with these differences, for the way we have been accustomed to deal with them is false. This case, where one brother is at the top of our little society and the other at the bottom, shows it. Not all false--there comes the difficulty" (her face was full of distress), "but largely false. If we have any spiritual life in us it is because we have heard the call that Lazarus heard in the tomb, but the opinions we will not let G.o.d transform are the graveclothes that are binding us hand and foot."

"My dear, I certainly think it right that we should live as much as possible as we should wish to have lived when we come to die, but I do not know that for that it is necessary to make a radical change in our views."

"Look you, dear father, if we were willing to step out of our own thoughts about everything as out of a hindering garment, and go forth in the thoughts in which G.o.d is willing to clothe us, we should see a new heaven and a new earth; but--but--" she sought her word.

"There may be truth in what you say" (his words showed how far he had been able to follow her), "but your views would lead to very revolutionary practices."

"Revolution! Ah, that takes place when men take some new idea of their own, like the bit, between their teeth, and run. But I said to live in His ideas--His, without Whom nothing was made that was made; Who caused creation to revolve slowly out of chaos" (she looked around at the manifold life of tree and flower and bird as she spoke); "Who will not break the reed of our customs as long as there is any true substance left in it to make music with."

"It sounds very beautiful, my dear, but is it practicable?"

"As practicable as is any holy life!" she cried. "We believe; if we do not live by a miracle we have no sort or manner of right to preach to those who do not believe."

Captain Rexford would have died for his belief in miracles, but he only believed in them at the distance of some eighteen hundred years or more.

"How would you apply this?" he asked, mildly indulgent.

"To the question of each hour as it comes. What, for instance, is the right way to act to Alec Trenholme?"

When she came to his name for some reason she left her standing-place, and they were now walking on side by side.

"Well, Sophia, you bring an instance, and you say, 'put it practically.'

I will do so. This village is badly in need of such a tradesman. Even the hotel, and other houses that can afford it, grumble at having to obtain their supplies by rail, and we are badly enough served, as you know. I have no idea that this young man has any notion of settling here, but, _suppose he did_" (Captain Rexford said his last words as if they capped a climax), "you will see at a glance that in that case any recognition of equality such as you seem to be proposing, would be impossible. It would be mere confusion."

"And why should he not settle here? Are we, a Christian community, unable to devise a way of treating him and his brother that would neither hurt their feelings nor our welfare, that would be equally consonant with our duty to G.o.d and our own dignity? Or must he go, because our dignity is such a fragile thing that it would need to be supported by actions that we could not offer to G.o.d?"

"You know, my dear, if you will excuse my saying so, I think you are pus.h.i.+ng this point a little too far. If it were possible to live up to such a high ideal--"

"I would rather die to-night than think that it was _impossible_."

"My dear" (he was manifestly annoyed now), "you really express yourself too strongly."

"But what use would it be to live?" She was going on but she stopped.

What use was it to talk? None.