CHAPTER XXIX.
PATTY CONFESSES
A little group of their male attendants stood in the lobby, while Mrs. Duff-Scott and the girls put on their wraps in the cloak-room. When the ladies reappeared, they fell into the order in which Paul, unseen in the shadows of the street, saw them descend the steps to the pavement.
"May I come and see you to-morrow morning?" asked Mr. Yelverton of Elizabeth, whom he especially escorted.
"Not – not to-morrow," she replied. "We shall be at Myrtle Street, and we never receive any visitors there."
"At Myrtle Street!" exclaimed the major, who also walked beside her. "Surely you are not going to run off to Myrtle Street to-morrow?"
"We are going there now," said she, "if we can get in. Mrs. Duff-Scott knows."
"Let them alone," said the chaperon, looking back over her shoulder. "If they have a fancy to go home they shall go. I won't have them persuaded." She was as reluctant to leave them at Myrtle Street as the major could be, but she carefully abstained, as she always did, from interfering with their wishes when nothing of importance was involved. She was wise enough to know that she would have the stronger hold on them by seeming to leave them their liberty.
They were put into the carriage by their attentive cavaliers, the major taking his now frequent box seat in order to accompany them; and Mr. Smith and Mr. Yelverton were left standing on the pavement. Arrived at Myrtle Street, it was found that the house was still open, and the girls bade the elder couple an effusively affectionate and compunctious good-night.
"And when shall I see you again?" Mrs. Duff-Scott inquired, with a carefully composed smile and cheerful air.
"To-morrow," said Elizabeth, eagerly; "to-morrow, of course, some of us will come." All three girls had a painful feeling that they were ungrateful, while under obligations to be grateful, in spite of their friend's effort to prevent it, as they stood a moment in the warm night at their street door, and watched the carriage roll away. And yet they were so glad to be on their own "tauri" to-night – even Eleanor, who had grown more out of tune with the old frugal life than any of them.
They were let in by the ground-floor landlady, with whom they chatted for a few minutes, arranging about the materials for their breakfast; then they went upstairs to their lonely little bedrooms, where they lit their candles and began at once to prepare for bed. They were dead tired, they said, and wanted to sleep and not to talk.
But a full hour after their separation for the night, each one was as wide awake as she had been all day. Elizabeth was kneeling on the floor by her bedside, still half-dressed – she had not changed her attitude for a long time, though the undulations of her body showed how far from passive rest she was – when Patty, clothed only in her night-gown, crept in, making no noise with her bare feet.
"Elizabeth," she whispered, laying her hand on her sister's shoulder, "are you asleep? – or are you saying your prayers?"
Elizabeth, startled, lifted up her head, and disclosed to Patty's gaze in the candle-light a pale, and strained, and careworn face, "I was saying my prayers," she replied, with a dazed look. "Why are you out of bed, my darling? What is the matter?"
"That is what I want to know," said Patty, sitting down on the bed. "What is the matter with us all? What has come to us? Nelly has been crying ever since I put the light out – she thought I couldn't hear her, but she was mistaken – sobbing and sniffing under the bedclothes, and blowing her nose in that elaborately cautious way – "
"Oh, poor, dear child!" interrupted the maternal elder sister, making a start towards the door.
"No, don't go to her," said Patty, putting out her hand; "leave her alone – she is quiet now. Besides, you couldn't do her any good. Do you know what she is fretting about? Because Mr. Westmoreland has been neglecting her. Would you believe it? She is caring about it, after all – and we thought it was only fun. She doesn't care about him, she couldn't do that – "
"We can't tell," interrupted Elizabeth. "It is not for us to say. Perhaps she does, poor child!"
"Oh, she couldn't," Patty scornfully insisted. "That is quite impossible. No, she has got fond of this life that we are living now with Mrs. Duff-Scott – I have seen it, how it has laid hold of her – and she would like to marry him so that she could have it always. That is what she has come to. Oh, Elizabeth, don't you wish we had gone to Europe at the very first, and never come to Melbourne at all!" Here Patty herself broke down, and uttered a little shaking, hysterical sob. "Everything seems to be going wrong with us here! It does not look so, I know, but at the bottom of my heart I feel it. Why did we turn aside to waste and spoil ourselves like this, instead of going on to the life that we had laid out – a real life, that we should never have had to be ashamed of?"
Elizabeth was silent for a few minutes, soothing her sister's excitement with maternal caresses, and at the same time thinking with all her might. "We must try not to get confused," she said presently. "Life is life, you know, Patty, wherever you are – all the other things are incidental. And we need not try to struggle with everything at once. I think we have done our best, when we have had anything to do – any serious step to take – since we came to Melbourne; and in Europe we could have done no more. It seemed right to please Mrs. Duff-Scott, and to accept such a treasure as her friendship when it came to us in what seemed such a providential way – did it not? It seemed so to me. It would have been ungenerous to have held out against her – and we were always a little given to be too proud of standing alone. It makes her happy to have us. I don't know what work we could have done that would have been more profitable than that. Patty" – after another thoughtful pause – "I don't think it is that things are going wrong, dear. It is only that we have to manage them, and to steer our way, and to take care of ourselves, and that is so trying and perplexing. God knows I find it difficult! So, I suppose, does everyone."
"You, Elizabeth? You always seem to know what is right. And you are so good that you never ought to have troubles."
"If Nelly is susceptible to such a temptation as Mr. Westmoreland – Mr. Westmoreland, because he is rich – she would not have gone far with us, in any case," Elizabeth went on, putting aside the allusion to herself. "Europe would not have strengthened her. It would have been all the same. While, as for you, my darling – "
"I – I!" broke in Patty excitedly. "I should have been happy now, and not as I am! I should have been saved from making a fool of myself if I had gone to Europe! I should have been worth something, and able to do something, there!"
"How can you tell, dear child? And why do you suppose you have been foolish? I don't think so. On the contrary, it has often seemed to me that you have been the sensible one of us all."
"O, Elizabeth, don't laugh at me!" wailed Patty, reproachfully.
"I laugh at you, my darling! What an idea! I mean it, every word. You see everything in a distorted and exaggerated way just now, because you are tired and your nerves are over-wrought. You are not yourself to-night, Patty. You will cheer up – we shall all cheer up – when we have had a good sleep and a little quiet time to think things over."
"No, I am not myself, indeed," assented Patty, with moody passion. "I am not myself at all – to be made to feel so weak and miserable!" She put her face down in her hands and began to cry with more abandonment at the thought of how weak she had become.
"But Patty, dearest, there must be something the matter with you," her motherly elder sister cried, much distressed by this abnormal symptom. "Are you feeling ill? Don't frighten me like this."
The girl laid her head upon her sister's shoulder, and there let herself loose from all restraint. "You know what is the matter," she sobbed; "you know as well as I do what is the matter – that it is Paul Brion who worries me so and makes me so utterly wretched."
"Paul Brion! He worry you, Patty —he make you wretched?"
"You have always been delicate and considerate, Elizabeth – you have never said anything – but I know you know all about it, and how spoiled I am, and how spoiled everything is because of him. I hate to talk of it – I can't bear even you to see that I am fretting about him – but I can't help it! and I know you understand. When I have had just one good cry," she concluded, with a fresh and violent burst of tears, "perhaps I shall get on better."
Elizabeth stared at the wall over her sister's head in dumb amazement, evidently not deserving the credit for perspicacity accorded to her. "Do you mean," she said slowly, "do you really mean – "
"Yes," sobbed Patty, desperate, for the moment dead to shame.
"Oh, how blind – how wickedly blind – how stupid – how selfish I have been!" Elizabeth exclaimed, after another pause in which to collect her shocked and bewildered faculties. "I never dreamt about it, my darling – never, for a single moment. I thought – I always had the settled impression that you did not like him."
"I don't like him," said Patty, fiercely, lifting herself up. "I love him – I love him! I must say it right out once, if I never speak another word," and she bent her head back a little, and stretched out her arms with an indescribable gesture as if she saw him standing before her. "He is a man – a real, true, strong man – who works, and thinks, and lives – lives! It is all serious with him, as I wanted it to be with me – and I might have been worthy of him! A little while ago we were so near to each other – so near that we almost touched– and now no two people could be farther apart. I have done him wrong – I have been a wicked fool, but I am punished for it out of all proportion. He flirt with a married woman! What could I have been dreaming of? Oh, how disgusting I must be to have allowed such an idea to come into my head! And yet it was only a little thing, Elizabeth, when you come to think of it relatively – the only time I ever really did him injustice, and it was only for a moment. No one can always do what is right and fair without making a mistake sometimes – it was just a mistake for want of thinking. But it has taken him from me as completely as if I had committed suicide, and was dead and buried and done with. It has made him hate me. No wonder! If he cared about me, I wouldn't be too proud to beg his pardon, but he doesn't – he doesn't! And so I must face it out, or else he will think I am running after him, and he will despise me more than he does already."
"But if he was doing no harm," said Elizabeth, soothingly, "he could not suppose that you thought he was."
"No," said Patty, "he will never think I was so disgusting as to think that of him. But it is as bad as if he did. That at least was a great, outrageous, downright wrong, worth fighting about, and not the pitiful shabby thing that it appears to him. For, of course, he thinks I did it because I was too grand to notice him while I was wearing a fine dress and swelling about with great people. It never occurred to me that it would be possible for him or anybody to suspect me of that," said Patty, proudly, drawing herself up; "but afterwards I saw that he could not help doing it. And ever since then it has been getting worse and worse – everything has seemed to point to its being so. Haven't you noticed? I never see him except I am with people who are above noticing him; and Mr. Smith – oh, what I have suffered from Mr. Smith to-night, Elizabeth! – has all this time been thinking I was going to marry him, and I can see now how it must have looked to other people as if I was. Just think of it!" – with a gesture of intense disgust. "As if any girl could stoop to that, after having had such a contrast before her eyes! No wonder he hates me and despises me – no wonder he looks at me as if I were the dirt beneath his feet. I wish I were," she added, with reckless passion; "oh, my dear love, I only wish I were!"
When she was about it, Patty cleansed her stuffed bosom thoroughly. It was not her way to do things by halves. She rhapsodised about her love and her lover with a wild extravagance that was proportionate to the strained reserve and restraint that she had so long put upon her emotions. After which came the inevitable reaction. The fit being over, she braced herself up again, and was twice as strong-minded and self-sufficient as before. When the morning came, and she and Elizabeth busied themselves with housework – Eleanor being relegated to the sofa with a sick headache – the girl who had dissolved herself in tears and given way to temporary insanity, as she chose herself to call it, so recently, was bright, and brusque, and cheerful, in spite of sultry weather; and not only did she pretend, even to her confidante, that the young man on the other side of the wall had no place in her thoughts, but she hardened her heart to adamant against him, for having been the cause of her humiliating lapse from dignity. It was quite a lucky chance, indeed, that she did not straightway go and accept the hand and fortune of Mr. Smith, by way of making reparation for the outrage committed vicariously by Paul Brion on her self-respect.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE OLD AND THE NEW
The weather was scorchingly hot and a thunderstorm brewing when the girls sat down to their frugal lunch at mid-day. It was composed of bread and butter and pickled fish, for which, under the circumstances, they had not appetite enough. They trifled with the homely viands for awhile, in a manner quite unusual with them, in whatever state of the atmosphere; and then they said they would "make up" at tea time, if weather permitted, and cleared the table. Eleanor was sent to lie down in her room, Patty volunteered to read a pleasant novel to the invalid, and Elizabeth put on her bonnet to pay her promised visit to Mrs. Duff-Scott.
She found her friend in the cool music-room, standing by the piano, on which some loose white sheets were scattered. The major sat on a sofa, surveying the energetic woman with a sad and pensive smile.
"Are you looking over new music?" asked Elizabeth, as she walked in.
"O my dear, is that you? How good of you to venture out in this heat! – but I knew you would," exclaimed the lady of the house, coming forward with outstretched arms of welcome. "Music, did you say? – O dear no!" as if music were the last thing likely to interest her. "It is something of far more importance."
"Yelverton has been here," said the major, sadly; "and he has been sketching some plans for Whitechapel cottages. My wife thinks they are most artistic."
"So they are," she insisted, hardly, "though I don't believe I used the word; for things are artistic when they are suitable for the purpose they are meant for, and only pretend to be what they are. Look at this, Elizabeth. You see it is of no use to build Peabody houses in these frightfully low neighbourhoods, where half-starved creatures are packed together like herrings in a barrel – Mr. Yelverton has explained that quite clearly. The better class of poor come to live in them, and the poorest of all are worse off instead of better, because they have less room than they had before. You must take into consideration that there is only a certain amount of space, and if you build model lodgings here, and a school there, and a new street somewhere else, you do good, of course, but you herd the poor street-hawkers and people of that class more and more thickly into their wretched dens, where they haven't enough room to breathe as it is – "
"I think I'll go, my dear, if you'll excuse me," interrupted the major, humbly, in tones of deep dejection.
"And therefore," proceeded Mrs. Duff-Scott, taking no notice of her husband, "the proper and reasonable thing to do – if you want to help those who are most in need of help – is to let fine schemes alone. Mr. Yelverton expects to come into a large property soon, and he means to buy into those wretched neighbourhoods, where he can, and to build for one-room tenants – for cheapness and low rents. He will get about four per cent. on his money, but that he will use to improve with – I mean for putting them in the way of sanitary habits, poor creatures. He makes a great point of teaching them sanitation. He seems to think more of that than about teaching them the Bible, and really one can hardly wonder at it when one sees the frightful depravity and general demoralisation that come of ignorance and stupidity in those matters – and he sees so much of it. He seems to be always rooting about in those sewers and dunghills, as he calls them – he is rather addicted to strong expressions, if you notice – and turning things out from the very bottom. He is queer in some of his notions, but he is a good man, Elizabeth. One can forgive him his little crotchets, for the sake of all the good he does – it must be incalculable! He shrinks from nothing, and spends himself trying to better the things that are so bad that most people feel there is nothing for it but to shut their eyes to them – without making any fuss about it either, or setting himself up for a saint. Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Duff-Scott, throwing a contemptuous glance around her museum of precious curiosities, "how inconceivably petty and selfish it seems to care for rubbish like this, when there are such miseries in the world that we might lighten, as he does, if we would only set ourselves to it in the same spirit."
Rubbish!– those priceless pots and plates, those brasses and ivories and enamels, those oriental carpets and tapestries, those unique miscellaneous relics of the mediæval prime! Truly the Cause of Humanity had taken hold of Mrs. Duff-Scott at last.
She sat down in an arm-chair, having invited Elizabeth to take off her hat and make herself as comfortable as the state of the weather permitted, and began to wave a large fan to and fro while she looked into vacant space with shining eyes.
"He is a strange man," she said musingly. "A most interesting, admirable man, but full of queer ideas – not at all like any man I ever met before. He has been lunching with us, Elizabeth – he came quite early – and we have had an immense deal of talk. I wish you had been here to listen to him – though I don't know that it would have been very good for you, either. He is extremely free, and what you might call revolutionary, in his opinions; he treats the most sacred subjects as if they were to be judged and criticised like common subjects. He talks of the religions of the world, for instance, as if they were all on the same foundation, and calls the Bible our Veda or Koran – says they are all alike inspired writings because they respectively express the religious spirit, craving for knowledge of the mystery of life and the unseen, that is an integral part of man's nature, and universal in all races, though developed according to circumstances. He says all mankind are children of God, and brothers, and that he declines to make invidious distinctions. And personal religion to him seems nothing more than the most rudimentary morality – simply to speak the truth and to be unselfish – just as to be selfish or untrue are the only sins he will acknowledge that we are responsible for out of the long catalogue of sins that stain this unhappy world. He won't call it an unhappy world, by the way, in spite of the cruel things he sees; he is the most optimistic of unbelievers. It will all come right some day – and our time will be called the dark ages by our remote descendants. Ever since men and women came first, they have been getting better and higher – the world increases in human goodness steadily, and will go on doing so as long as it is a world – and that because of the natural instincts and aspirations of human nature, and not from what we have always supposed all our improvement came from – rather in spite of that, indeed."
Mrs. Duff-Scott poured out this information, which had been seething in her active mind, volubly and with a desire to relieve herself to some one; but here she checked herself, feeling that she had better have left it all unsaid, not less for Elizabeth's sake than for her own. She got up out of her seat and began to pace about the room with a restless air. She was genuinely troubled. It was as if a window in a closed chamber had been opened, letting in a too strong wind that was blowing the delicate furniture all about; now, with the woman's instinctive timidity and fear (that may be less a weakness than a safeguard), she was eager to shut it to again, though suspecting that it might be too late to repair the damage done. Now that she took time to think about it, she felt particularly guilty on Elizabeth's account, who had not had her experience, and was not furnished with her ripe judgment and powers of discrimination as a preservative against the danger of contact with heterodox ideas.
"I ought not to repeat such things," she exclaimed, vexedly, beginning to gather up the plans of the Whitechapel cottages, but observing only her companion's strained and wistful face. "The mere independent hypotheses and speculations of one man, when no two seem ever to think alike! I suppose those who study ancient history and literatures, and the sciences generally, get into the habit of pulling things to pieces – "
"Those who learn most ought to know most," suggested Elizabeth.
"They ought, my dear; but it doesn't follow."
"Not when they are so earnest in trying to find out?"
"No; that very earnestness is against them – they over-reach themselves. They get confused, too, with learning so much, and mixing so many things up together." Mrs. Duff-Scott was a little reckless as to means so long as she could compass the desired end – which was the shutting of that metaphorical window which she had incautiously set (or left) open.
"Well, he believes in God – that all men are God's children," the girl continued, clinging where she could. "That seems like religion to me – it is a good and loving way to think of God, that He gave His spirit to all alike from the beginning – that He is so just and kind to all, and not only to a few."
"Yes, he believes in God. He believes in the Bible, too, in a sort of a way. He says he would have the lessons of the New Testament and the life of Christ disseminated far and wide, but not as they are now, with the moral left out, and not as if those who wrote them were wise enough for all time. But, whatever his beliefs may be," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, "they are not what will satisfy us, Elizabeth. You and I must hold fast to our faith in Christ, dear child, or I don't know what would become of us. We will let 'whys' alone – we will not trouble ourselves to try and find out mysteries that no doubt are wisely withheld from us, and that anyhow we should never be able to understand."
Here the servant entered with a gliding step, opened a little Sutherland table before his mistress's chair, spread the æsthetic cloth, and set out the dainty tea service. Outside the storm had burst, and was now spending itself and cooling the hot air in a steady shower that made a rushing sound on the gravel. Mrs. Duff-Scott, who had reseated herself, leant back silently with an air of reaction after her strong emotion in the expression of her handsome face and form, and Elizabeth mechanically got up to pour out the tea. Presently, as still in silence they began to sip and munch their afternoon repast, the girl saw on the piano near which she stood a photograph that arrested her attention. "What is this?" she asked. "Did he bring this too?" It was a copy of Luke Fildes' picture of "The Casuals." Mrs. Duff-Scott took it from her hand.
"No, it is mine," she said. "I have had it here for some time, in a portfolio amongst others, and never took any particular notice of it. I just had an idea that it was an unpleasant and disagreeable subject. I never gave it a thought – what it really meant – until this morning, when he was talking to me, and happened to mention it. I remembered that I had it, and I got it out to look at it. Oh!" setting down her teacup and holding it fairly in both hands before her – "isn't it a terrible sermon? Isn't it heartbreaking to think that it is true? And he says the truth is understated."
Like the great Buddha, when he returned from his first excursion beyond his palace gates, Elizabeth's mind was temporarily darkened by the new knowledge of the world that she was acquiring, and she looked at the picture with a fast-beating heart. "Sphinxes set up against that dead wall," she quoted from a little printed foot-note, "and none likely to be at the pains of solving them until the general overthrow." She was leaning over her friend's shoulder, and the tears were dropping from her eyes.
"They are Dickens's words," said Mrs. Duff-Scott.
"Why is it like this, I wonder?" the girl murmured, after a long, impressive pause. "We must not think it is God's fault – that can't be. It must be somebody else's fault. It cannot have been intended that a great part of the human race should be forced, from no fault of their own, to accept such a cruel lot – to be made to starve, when so many roll in riches – to be driven to crime because they cannot help it – to be driven to hell when they need not have gone there – if there is such a place – if there is any truth in what we have been taught. But" – with a kind of sad indignation – "if religion has been doing its best for ever so many centuries, and this is all that there is to show for it – doesn't that seem to say that he may be right, and that religion has been altogether misinterpreted – that we have all along been making mistakes – " She checked herself, with a feeling of dismay at her own words; and Mrs. Duff-Scott made haste to put away the picture, evidently much disturbed. Both women had taken the "short views" of life so often advocated, not from philosophical choice, but from disinclination, and perhaps inability, to take long ones; and they had the ordinary woman's conception of religion as exclusively an ecclesiastical matter. This rough disturbance of old habits of thought and sentiments of reverence and duty was very alarming; but while Elizabeth was rashly confident, because she was inexperienced, and because she longed to put faith in her beloved, Mrs. Duff-Scott was seized with a sort of panic of remorseful misgiving. To shut that window had become an absolute necessity, no matter by what means.
"My dear," she said, in desperation, "whatever you do, you must not begin to ask questions of that sort. We can never find out the answers, and it leads to endless trouble. God's ways are not as our ways – we are not in the secrets of His providence. It is for us to trust Him to know what is best. If you admit one doubt, Elizabeth, you will see that everything will go. Thousands are finding that out now-a-days, to their bitter cost. Indeed, I don't know what we are coming to – the 'general overthrow,' I suppose. I hope I, at any rate, shall not live to see it. What would life be worth to us —any of us, even the best off – if we lost our faith in God and our hope of immortality? Just try to imagine it for a moment."
Elizabeth looked at her mentor, who had again risen and was walking about the room. The girl's eyes were full of solemn thought. "Not much," she replied, gravely. "But I was never afraid of losing faith in God."
"It is best to be afraid," replied Mrs. Duff-Scott, with decision. "It is best not to run into temptation. Don't think about these difficulties, Elizabeth – leave them, leave them. You would only unsettle yourself and become wretched and discontented, and you would never be any the wiser."
Elizabeth thought over this for a few minutes, while Mrs. Duff-Scott mechanically took up a brass lota and dusted it with her handkerchief.
"Then you think one ought not to read books, or to talk to people – to try to find out the ground one stands on – "
"No, no, no – let it alone altogether. You know the ground you ought to stand on quite well. You don't want to see where you are if you can feel that God is with you. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed!" she ended in a voice broken with strong feeling, clasping her hands with a little fervent, prayerful gesture.
Elizabeth drew a long breath, and in her turn began to walk restlessly up and down the room. She had one more question to ask, but the asking of it almost choked her. "Then you would say – I suppose you think it would be wrong – for one who was a believer to marry one who was not? – however good, and noble, and useful he or she might be – however religious practically– however blameless in character?"
Mrs. Duff-Scott, forgetting for the moment that there was such a person as Mr. Yelverton in the world, sat down once more in an arm-chair, and addressed herself to the proposition on its abstract merits. She had worked herself up, by this time, into a state of highly fervid orthodoxy. Her hour of weakness was past, and she was fain to put forth and test her reserves of strength. Wherefore she had very clear views as to the iniquity of an unequal yoking together with unbelievers, and the peril of touching the unclean thing; and she stated them plainly and with all her wonted incisive vigour.
When it was all over, Elizabeth put on her hat and walked back through the pattering rain to Myrtle Street, heavy-hearted and heavy-footed, as if a weight of twenty years had been laid on her since the morning.
"Patty," she said, when her sister, warmly welcoming her return, exclaimed at her pale face and weary air, and made her take the sofa that Eleanor had vacated, "Patty, let us go away for a few weeks, shall we? I want a breath of fresh air, and to be in peace and quiet for a little, to think things over."