SCENE.-Three weeks later. Breakfast table at Darkglade Vicarage, Mr. Aveland and Euphrasia reading their letters. Three little children eating bread and milk.
E. There! Mary has got the house at Brompton off her hands and can come for good on the 11th. That is the greatest possible comfort. She wants to bring her piano; it has a better tone than ours.
Mr. A. Certainly! Little Miss Hilda there will soon be strumming her scales on the old one, and Mary and Cis will send me to sleep in the evening with hers.
E. Oh!
Mr. A. Why, Phrasie, what's the matter?
E. This is a blow! Cicely is only coming to be bridesmaid, and then going back to board at Kensington and go on with her studies.
Mr. A. To board? All alone?
E. Oh! that's the way with young ladies!
Mr. A. Mary cannot have consented.
E. Have you done, little folks? Then say grace, Hilda, and run out till the lesson bell rings. Yes, poor Mary, I am afraid she thinks all that Cecilia decrees is right; or if she does not naturally believe so, she is made to.
Mr. A. Come, come, Phrasie, I always thought Mary a model mother.
E. So did I, and so she was while the children were small, except that they were more free and easy with her than was the way in our time. And I think she is all that is to be desired to her son; but when last I was in London, I cannot say I was satisfied, I thought Cissy had got beyond her.
Mr. A. For want of a father?
E. Not entirely. You know I could not think Charles Moldwarp quite worthy of Mary, though she never saw it.
Mr. A. Latterly we saw so little of him! He liked to spend his holiday in mountain climbing, and Mary made her visits here alone.
E. Exactly so. Sympathy faded out between them, though she, poor dear, never betrayed it, if she realised it, which I doubt. And as Cissy took after her father, this may have weakened her allegiance to her mother. At any rate, as soon as she was thought to have outgrown her mother's teaching, those greater things, mother's influence and culture, were not thought of, and she went to school and had her companions and interests apart; while Mary, good soul, filled up the vacancy with good works, and if once you get into the swing of that sort of thing in town, there's no end to the demands upon your time. I don't think she ever let them bore her husband. He was out all day, and didn't want her; but I am afraid they do bore her daughter, and absorb attention and time, so as to hinder full companionship, till Cissy has grown up an extraneous creature, not formed by her. Mary thinks, in her humility, dear old thing, that it is a much superior creature; but I don't like it as well as the old sort.
Mr. A. The old barndoor hen hatched her eggs and bred up her chicks better than the fine prize fowl. Eh?
E. So that incubator-hatched chicks, with a hot-bed instead of a hovering wing and tender cluck-cluck, are the fashion! I was in hopes that coming down to the old coop, with no professors to run after, and you to lead them both, all would right itself, but it seems my young lady wants more improving.
Mr. A. Well, my dear, it must be mortifying to a clever girl to have her studies cut short.
E. Certainly; but in my time we held that studies were subordinate to duties; and that there were other kinds of improvement than in model-drawing and all the rest of it.
Mr. A. It will not be for long, and Cissy will find the people, or has found them, and Mary will accept them.
E. If her native instinct objects, she will be cajoled or bullied into seeing with Cissy's eyes.
Mr. A. Well, Euphrasia, my dear, let us trust that people are the best judges of their own affairs, and remember that the world has got beyond us. Mary was always a sensible, right-minded girl, and I cannot believe her as blind as you would make out.
E. At any rate, dear papa, you never have to say to her as to me, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.'
IV. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
SCENE.-Darkglade Vicarage drawing-room.
Mrs. M. So, my dear, you think it impossible to be happy here?
C. Little Mamsey, why will you never understand? It is not a question of happiness, but of duty to myself.
Mrs. M. And that is-
C. Not to throw away all my chances of self-improvement by burrowing into this hole.
Mrs. M. Oh, my dear, I don't like to hear you call it so.
C. Yes, I know you care for it. You were bred up here, and know nothing better, poor old Mamsey, and pottering suits you exactly; but it is too much to ask me to sacrifice my wider fields of culture and usefulness.
Mrs. M. Grandpapa would enjoy nothing so much as reading with you. He said so.
C. Oxford half a century old and wearing off ever since. No, I thank you! Besides, it is not only physical science, but art.
Mrs. M. There's the School of Art at Holbrook.
C. My dear mother, I am far past country schools of art!
Mrs. M. It is not as if you intended to take up art as a profession.
C. Mother! will nothing ever make you understand? Nothing ought to be half-studied, merely to pass away the time as an accomplishment (uttered with infinite scorn, accentuated on the second syllable), just to do things to sell at bazaars. No! Art with me means work worthy of exhibition, with a market-price, and founded on a thorough knowledge of the secrets of the human frame.
Mrs. M. Those classes! I don't like all I hear of them, or their attendants.
C. If you will listen to all the gossip of all the old women of both sexes, I can't help it! Can't you trust to innocence and earnestness?
Mrs. M. I wish it was the Art College at Wimbledon. Then I should be quite comfortable about you.
C. Have not we gone into all that already? You know I must go to the fountain-head, and not be put off with mere feminine, lady-like studies! Pah! Besides, in lodgings I can be useful. I shall give two evenings in the week to the East End, to the Society for the Diversion and Civilisation of the Poor.
Mrs. M. Surely there is room for usefulness here! Think of the children! And for diversion and civilisation, how glad we should be of your fresh life and brightness among poor people!
C. Such poor! Why, even if grandpapa would let me give a lecture on geology, or a reading from Dickens, old Prudence Blake would go about saying it hadn't done nothing for her poor soul.
Mrs. M. Grandpapa wanted last winter to have penny readings, only there was nobody to do it. He would give you full scope for that, or for lectures.
C. Yes; about vaccination and fresh air! or a reading of John Gilpin or the Pied Piper. Mamsey, you know a model parish stifles me. I can't stand your prim school-children, drilled in the Catechism, and your old women who get out the Bible and the clean apron when they see you a quarter of a mile off. Free air and open minds for me! No, I won't have you sighing, mother. You have returned to your native element, and you must let me return to mine.
Mrs. M. Very well, my dear. Perhaps a year or two of study in town may be due to you, though this is a great disappointment to grandpapa and me. I know Mrs. Payne will make a pleasant and safe home for you, if you must be boarded.
C. Too late for that. I always meant to be with Betty Thurston at Mrs. Kaye's. In fact, I have written to engage my room. So there's an end of it. Come, come, don't look vexed. It is better to make an end of it at once. There are things that one must decide for oneself.
V. TWO FRIENDS
SCENE-Over the fire in Mrs. Kaye's boarding-house. Cecilia Moldwarp and Betty Thurston.
C. So I settled the matter at once.
B. Quite right, too, Cis.
C. The dear woman was torn every way. Grandpapa and Aunt Phrasie wanted her to pin me down into the native stodge; and Lucius, like a true man, went in for subjection: so there was nothing for it but to put my foot down. And though little mother might moan a little to me, I knew she would stand up stoutly for me to all the rest, and vindicate my liberty.
B. To keep you down there. Such a place is very well to breathe in occasionally, like a whale; but as to living
in them-
C. Just hear how they spend the day. First, 7.30, prayers in church. The dear old man has hammered on at them these forty years, with a congregation averaging 4 to 2.5.
B. You are surely not expected to attend at that primitive Christian hour! Cruelty to animals!
C. If I don't, the absence of such an important unit hurts folks' feelings, and I am driven to the fabrication of excuses. After breakfast, whatever is available trots off to din the Catechism and Genesis into the school-children's heads-the only things my respected forefather cares about teaching them. Of course back again to the children's lessons.
B. What children?
C. Didn't I explain? Three Indian orphans of my uncle's, turned upon my grandfather-jolly little kids enough, as long as one hasn't to teach them.
B. Are governesses unknown in those parts?
C. Too costly; and besides, my mother was designed by nature for a nursery-governess. She has taught the two elder ones to be wonderfully good when she is called off. 'The butcher, ma'am'; or, 'Mrs. Tyler wants to speak to you, ma'am'; or, 'Jane Cox is come for a hospital paper, ma'am.' Then early dinner, of all things detestable, succeeded by school needlework, mothers' meeting, and children's walk, combined with district visiting, or reading to old women. Church again, high tea, and evenings again pleasingly varied by choir practices, night schools, or silence, while grandpapa concocts his sermon.
B. Is this the easy life to which Mrs. Moldwarp has retired?
C. It is her native element. People of her generation think it their vocation to be ladies-of-all-work to the parish of Stickinthemud cum-Humdrum.
B. All-work indeed!
C. I did not include Sundays, which are one rush of meals, schools, and services, including harmonium.
B. No society or rational conversation, of course?
C. Adjacent clergy and clergy woman rather less capable of aught but shop than the natives themselves! You see, even if I did offer myself as a victim, I couldn't do the thing! Fancy my going on about the six Mosaic days, and Jonah's whale, and Jael's nail, and doing their duty in that state of life where it has pleased Heaven to place them.
B. Impossible, my dear! Those things can't be taught-if they are to be taught-except by those who accept them as entirely as ever; and it is absurd to think of keeping you where you would be totally devoid of all intellectual food!
SCENE.-Art Student and distinguished Professor a year later. Soirée in a London drawing-room. Professor Dunlop and Cecilia.
Prof. D. Miss Moldwarp? Is your mother here?
C. No; she is not in town.
Prof. D. Not living there?
C. She lives with my grandfather at Darkglade.
Prof. D. Indeed! I hope Mr. and Mrs. Aveland are well?
C. Thank you, he is well; but my grandmother is dead.
Prof. D. Oh, I am sorry! I had not heard of his loss. How long ago did it happen?
C. Last January twelvemonth. My aunt is married, and my mother has taken her place at home.
Prof. D. Then you are here on a visit. Where are you staying?
C. No, I live here. I am studying in the Slade schools.
Prof. D. This must have greatly changed my dear old friend's life!
C. I did not know that you were acquainted with my grandfather.
Prof. D. I was one of his pupils. I may say that I owe everything to him. It is long since I have been at Darkglade, but it always seemed to me an ideal place.
C. Rather out of the world.
Prof. D. Of one sort of world perhaps; but what a beautiful combination is to be seen there of the highest powers with the lowliest work! So entirely has he dedicated himself that he really feels the guidance of a ploughman's soul a higher task than the grandest achievement in science or literature. By the bye, I hope he will take up his pen again. It is really wanted. Will you give him a message from me?
C. How strange! I never knew that he was an author.
Prof. D. Ah! you are a young thing, and these are abstruse subjects.
C. Oh! the Fathers and Ritual, I suppose?
Prof. D. No doubt he is a great authority there, as a man of his ability must be; but I was thinking of a course of scientific papers he put forth ten years ago, taking up the arguments against materialism as no one could do who is not as thoroughly at home as he is in the latest discoveries and hypotheses. He ought to answer that paper in the Critical World.
C. I was so much interested in that paper.
Prof. D. It has just the speciousness that runs away with young people. I should like to talk it over with him. Do you think I should be in the way if I ran down?
C. I should think a visit from you would be an immense pleasure to him; and I am sure it would be good for the place to be stirred up.
Prof. D. You have not learnt to prize that atmosphere in which things always seem to assume their true proportion, and to prompt the cry of St. Bernard's brother-'All earth for me, all heaven for you.'
C. That was surely an outcome of the time when people used to sacrifice certainties to uncertainties, and spoil life for the sake of they knew not what.
Prof. D. For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.
Stranger. Mr. Dunlop! This is an unexpected pleasure!
C. (alone). Well, wonders will never cease. The great Professor Dunlop talking to me quite preachy and goody; and of all people in the world, the old man at Darkglade turning out to be a great physiologist!
VII. TWO OLD FRIENDS
SCENE.-Darkglade Vicarage study. Mr. Aveland and Professor Dunlop.
Prof. D. Thank you, sir. It has been a great pleasure to talk over these matters with you; I hope a great benefit.
Mr. A. I am sure it is a great benefit to us to have a breath from the outer world. I hope you will never let so long a time go by without our meeting. Remember, as iron sharpeneth iron, so doth a man's countenance that of his friend.
Prof. D. I shall be only too thankful. I rejoice in the having met your grand-daughter, who encouraged me to offer myself. Is she permanently in town?
Mr. A. She shows no inclination to return. I hoped she would do so after the last competition; but there is always another stage to be mounted. I wish she would come back, for her mother ought not to be left single-handed; but young people seem to require so much external education in these days, instead of being content to work on at home, that I sometimes question which is more effectual, learning or being taught.
Prof. D. Being poured-upon versus imbibing?
Mr. A. It may depend on what amount there is to imbibe; and I imagine that the child views this region as an arid waste; as of course we are considerably out of date.
Prof. D. The supply would be a good deal fresher and purer!
Mr. A. Do you know anything of her present surroundings?
Prof. D. I confess that I was surprised to meet her with Mrs. Eyeless, a lady who is active in disseminating Positivism, and all tending that way. She rather startled me by some of her remarks; but probably it was only jargon and desire to show off. Have you seen her lately?
Mr. A. At Christmas, but only for a short time, when it struck me that she treated us with the patronage of precocious youth; and I thought she made the most of a cold when church or parish was concerned. I hinted as much; but her mother seemed quite satisfied. Poor girl! Have I been blind? I did not like her going to live at one of those boarding-houses for lady students. Do you know anything of them?
Prof. D. Of course all depends on the individual lady at the head, and the responsibility she undertakes, as well as on the tone of the inmates. With some, it would be only staying in a safe and guarded home. In others, there is a great amount of liberty, the girls going out without inquiry whether, with whom, or when they return.
Mr. A. American fashion! Well, they say young women are equal to taking care of themselves. I wonder whether my daughter understands this, or whether it is so at Cecilia's abode. Do you know?
Prof. D. I am afraid I do. The niece of a fr
iend of mine was there, and left it, much distressed and confused by the agnostic opinions that were freely broached there. How did your grand-daughter come to choose it?
Mr. A. For the sake of being with a friend. I think Thurston is the name.
Prof. D. I know something of that family; clever people, but bred up-on principle, if it can be so called, with their minds a blank as to religion. I remember seeing one of the daughters at the party where I met Miss Moldwarp.
Mr. A. So this is the society into which we have allowed our poor child to run! I blame myself exceedingly for not having made more inquiries. Grief made me selfishly passive, or I should have opened my eyes and theirs to the danger. My poor Mary, what a shock it will be to her!
Prof. D. Was not she on the spot?
Mr. A. True; but, poor dear, she is of a gentle nature, easily led, and seeing only what her affection lets her perceive. And now, she is not strong.
Prof. D. She is not looking well.
Mr. A. You think so! I wonder whether I have been blind, and let her undertake too much.
Prof. D. Suppose you were to bring her to town for a few days. We should be delighted to have you, and she could see the doctor to whom she is accustomed. Then you can judge for yourself about her daughter.
Mr. A. Thank you, Dunlop! It will be a great comfort if it can be managed.
VIII. AUNT AND NIECE
SCENE.-In a hansom cab. Mrs. Holland and Cecilia.
Mrs. H. I wanted to speak to you, Cissy.
C. I thought so!
Mrs. H. What do you think of your mother?
C. Poor old darling. They have been worrying her till she has got hipped and nervous about herself.
Mrs. H. Do you know what spasms she has been having?
C. Oh! mother has had spasms as long as I can remember; and the more she thinks of them the worse they are. I have often heard her say so.
Mrs. H. Yes; she has gone on much too long overworking herself, and not letting your grandfather suspect anything amiss.
C. Nerves. That is what it always is.
Mrs. H. Dr. Brownlow says there is failure of heart, not dangerous or advanced at present, but that there is an overstrain of all the powers, and that unless she keeps fairly quiet, and free from hurry and worry, there may be very serious, if not fatal attacks.
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