CHAPTER LII.
CONCLUSION
While Mrs. Westmoreland thus disports herself in the gay world, Mrs. Brion pursues her less brilliant career in much peace and quietness. When she and Paul came back to Australia, a bride and bridegroom, free to follow their own devices unhampered by any necessity to consider the feelings of relatives and friends, nothing would satisfy her but to go straight from the ship to Mrs. M'Intyre's, and there temporarily abide in those tobacco-perfumed rooms which had once been such forbidden ground to her. She scoffed at the Oriental; she turned up her nose at the Esplanade; she would not hear of any suites of apartments, no matter how superior they might be. Her idea of perfect luxury was to go and live as Paul had lived, to find out all the little details of his old solitary life which aforetime she had not dared to inquire into, to rummage boldly over his bookshelves and desk and cupboards, which once it would have been indelicate for her to so much as look at, to revel in the sense that it was improper no longer for her to make just as free as she liked with his defunct bachelorhood, the existing conditions of which had had so many terrors for her. When Paul represented that it was not a fit place for her to go into, she told him that there was no place in the world so fit, and begged so hard to be taken there, if only for a week or two, that he let her have her way. And a very happy time they spent at No. 7, notwithstanding many little inconveniences. And even the inconveniences had their charm. Then Mrs. Duff-Scott and Eleanor came out, when it was felt to be time to say good-bye to these humble circumstances – to leave the flowery carpet, now faded and threadbare, the dingy rep suite, and the smirking Cenci over the mantelpiece, for the delectation of lodgers to whom such things were appropriate; and to select a house and furnish it as befitted the occupation of Miss Yelverton that was and her (now) distinguished husband.
By good fortune (they did not say it was good fortune, but they thought it), the old landlord next door saw fit to die at this particular juncture, and No. 6 was advertised to be let. Mr. and Mrs. Brion at once pounced upon the opportunity to secure the old house, which, it seemed to them, was admirably suited to their present modest requirements; and, by the joint exercise of Mrs. Duff-Scott's and Patty's own excellent taste, educated in England to the last degree of modern perfectibility, the purveyors of art furniture in our enlightened city transformed the humble dwelling of less than a dozen rooms into a little palace of esoteric delights. Such a subdued, harmonious brightness, such a refined simplicity, such an unpretentious air of comfort pervades it from top to bottom; and as a study of colour, Mrs. Duff-Scott will tell you, it is unique in the Australian colonies. It does her good – even her – to go and rest her eyes and her soul in the contemplation of it. Paul has the bureau in his study (and finds it very useful), and Patty has the piano in her drawing-room, its keyboard to a retired corner behind a portière (draped where once was a partition of folding doors), and its back, turned outwards, covered with a piece of South Kensington needlework. In this cosy nest of theirs, where Paul, with a new spur to his energies, works his special lever of the great machine that makes the world go on (when it would fain be lazy and sit down), doing great things for other men if gaining little glory for himself – and where Patty has afternoon teas and evenings that gather together whatever genuine exponents of intellectual culture may be going about, totally eclipsing the attractions of Mrs. Aarons's Fridays to serious workers in the fields of art and thought, without in any way dimming the brilliancy of those entertainments – the married pair seem likely to lead as happy a life as can be looked for in this world of compromises. It will not be all cakes and ale, by any means. The very happiest lives are rarely surfeited with these, perhaps, unwholesome delicacies, and I doubt if theirs will even be amongst the happiest. They are too much alike to be the ideal match. Patty is thin-skinned and passionate, too ready to be hurt to the heart by the mere little pin-pricks and mosquito bites of life; and Paul is proud and crotchety, and, like the great Napoleon, given to kick the fire with his boots when he is put out. There will be many little gusts of temper, little clouds of misunderstanding, disappointments, and bereavements, and sickness of mind and body; but, with all this, they will find their lot so blessed, by reason of the mutual love and sympathy that, through all vicissitudes, will surely grow deeper and stronger every day they live together, that they will not know how to conceive a better one. And, after all, that is the most one can ask or wish for in this world.
Mrs. Duff-Scott, being thus deprived of all her children, and finding china no longer the substantial comfort to her that it used to be, has fulfilled her husband's darkest predictions and "gone in" for philanthropy. In London she served a short but severe apprenticeship to that noble cause which seeks to remove the curse of past ignorance and cruelty from those to whom it has come down in hereditary entail – those on whose unhappy and degraded lives all the powers of evil held mortgages (to quote a thoughtful writer) before ever the deeds were put into their hands – and who are now preached at and punished for the crimes that, not they, but their tyrants of the past committed. She took a lesson in that new political economy which is to the old science what the spirit of modern religion is to the ecclesiasticism which has been its unwilling mother, and has learned that the rich are responsible for the poor – that, let these interesting debating clubs that call themselves the people's parliaments say what they like, the moral of the great social problem is that the selfishness of the past must be met by unselfishness in the present, if any of us would hope to see good days in the future.
"It will not do," says Mrs. Duff-Scott to her clergyman, who deplores the dangerous opinions that she has imbibed, "to leave these matters to legislation. Of what use is legislation? Here are a lot of ignorant, vain men who know nothing about it, fighting with one another for what they can get, and the handful amongst them who are really anxious for the public good are left nowhere in the scrimmage. It is we who must put our shoulders to the wheel, my dear sir – and the sooner we set about it the better. Look at the state of Europe" – she waves her hand abroad – "and see what things are coming to! The very heart of those countries is being eaten out by the cancer-growths of Nihilism and all sorts of dreadful isms, because the poor are getting educated to understand why they are so poor. Look at wealthy England, with more than a million paupers, and millions and millions that are worse than paupers – England is comparatively quiet and orderly under it, and why? Because a number of good people like Mr. Yelverton" – the clergyman shakes his head at the mention of this wicked sinner's name – "have given themselves up to struggle honestly and face to face with the evils that nothing but a self-sacrificing and independent philanthropy can touch. I believe that if England escapes the explosion of this fermenting democracy, which is brewing such a revolution as the world has never seen, it will be owing to neither Church nor State – unless Church and State both mend their ways considerably – but to the self-denying work that is being done outside of them by those who have a single-hearted desire to help, to really help, their wronged and wretched fellow-creatures."
Thus this energetic woman, in the headlong ardour of her new conversion. And (if a woman, ready to admit her disabilities as such, may say so) it is surely better to be generous in the cause of a possibly mistaken conviction of your own, than to be selfish in deference to the opinions of other people, which, though they be the product of the combined wisdom of all the legislatures of the world, find no response in the instincts of your human heart. At any rate, I believe we shall be brought to think so some day – that great Someday which looms not far ahead of us, when, as a Cornish proverb puts it, if we have not ruled ourselves by the rudder we shall be ruled by the rock. And so Mrs. Duff-Scott works, and thinks, and writes and (of course) talks, and bothers her husband and her acquaintances for the public weal, and leads her clergyman a life that makes him wish sometimes that he had chosen a less harassing profession; economising her money, and her time, and all she has of this world's goods, that she may fulfil her sacred obligations to her fellow-creatures and help the fortunate new country in which she lives to keep itself from the evil ways that have wrought such trouble and danger to the old ones.
And the man who set her to this good work pursues it himself, not in haste or under fitful and feverish impulses of what we call enthusiasm, but with refreshed energy and redoubled power, by reason of the great "means" that are now at his disposal, the faithful companionship that at once lightens and strengthens the labour of his hands and brain, and the deep passion of love for wife and home which keeps his heart warm with vital benevolence for all the world. Mr. Yelverton has not become more orthodox since his marriage; but that was not to be expected. In these days orthodoxy and goodness are not synonymous terms. It is doubtful, indeed, if orthodoxy has not rather become the synonym for the opposite of goodness, in the eyes of those who judge trees by their fruits and whose ideal of goodness is to love one's neighbour as one's self. While it is patent to the candid observer that the men who have studied the new book of Genesis which latter-day science has written for us, and have known that Exodus from the land of bondage which is the inevitable result of such study, conscientiously pursued, are, as a rule, distinguished by a large-minded justice and charity, sympathy and self-abnegation, a regard for the sacred ties of brotherhood binding man with man, which, being incompatible with the petty meannesses and cruelties so largely practised in sectarian circles, make their unostentatious influence to be felt like sweet and wholesome leaven all around them. Such a man is Elizabeth's husband, and as time goes on she ceases to wish for any change in him save that which means progression in his self-determined course. It was not lightly that he flew in the face of the religious traditions of his youth; rather did he crawl heavily and unwillingly away from them, in irresistible obedience to a conscience so sensitive and well-balanced that it ever pointed in the direction of the truth, like the magnetic needle to the pole, and in which he dared to trust absolutely, no matter how dark the outlook seemed. And now that, after much search, he has found his way, as far as he may hope to find it in this world, he is too intently concerned to discover what may be ahead of him, and in store for those who will follow him, to trouble himself and others with irrelevant trifles – to indulge in spites and jealousies, in ambitions that lead nowhere, in quarrels and controversies about nothing – to waste his precious strength and faculties in the child's play that with so many of us is the occupation of life, and like other child's play, full of pinches and scratches and selfish squabbling over trumpery toys. To one who has learned that "the hope of nature is in man," and something of what great nature is, and what man should be, there no longer exists much temptation to envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness, or any other of the vulgar vices of predatory humanity, not yet cured of its self-seeking propensities. He is educated above that level. His recognition of the brotherhood of men, and their common interests and high destiny, makes him feel for others in their differences with him, and patient and forbearing with those whose privileges have been fewer and whose light is less than his. He takes so wide an outlook over life that the little features of the foreground, which loom so large to those who cannot or will not look beyond them, are dwarfed to insignificance; or, rather, he can fix their just relation to the general design in human affairs, and so reads them with their context, as it were, and by the light of truth and justice spread abroad in his own heart – thus proving how different they are in essential value from what they superficially appear. So Mr. Yelverton, despite his constitutional imperiousness, is one of the most tolerant, fine-tempered, and generous of men; and he goes on his way steadily, bending circumstances to his will, but hurting no one in the process – rather lifting up and steadying and strengthening those with whom he comes in contact by the contagion of his bold spirit and his inflexible and incorruptible honesty; and proving himself in private life, as such men mostly do, a faithful exponent and practical illustration of all the domestic virtues.
Elizabeth is a happy woman, and she knows it well. It seems to her that all the prosperity and comfort that should have been her mother's has, like the enormous wealth that she inherits, been accumulating at compound interest, through the long years representing the lapsed generation, for her sole profit and enjoyment. She strolls often through the old plantation, where, in a remote nook, a moss-grown column stands to mark the spot where a little twig, a hair's breadth lack of space, was enough to destroy one strong life and ruin another, and to entail such tremendous consequences upon so many people, living and unborn; and she frequently drives to Bradenham Abbey to call on or to dine with her step-uncle's wife, and sees the stately environment of her mother's girlhood – the "beautiful rooms with the gold Spanish leather on the walls," the "long gallery with the painted windows and the slippery oak floor and the thirty-seven family portraits all in a row" – which she contrasts with the bark-roofed cottage on the sea-cliff within whose narrow walls that beautiful and beloved woman afterwards lived and died. And then she goes home to Yelverton to her husband and baby, and asks what she has done to deserve to be so much better off than those who went before her?
And yet, perhaps, if all accounts were added up, the sum total of loss and profit on those respective investments that we make, or that are made for us, of our property in life, would not be found to differ so very much, one case with another. We can neither suffer nor enjoy beyond a certain point. Elizabeth is rich beyond the dreams of avarice in all that to such a woman is precious and desirable, and happy in her choice and lot beyond her utmost expectations. Yet not so happy as to have nothing to wish for – which we know, as well as Patty, means "too happy to last." There is that hunger for her absent sisters, which tries in vain to satisfy itself in weekly letters of prodigious length, left as a sort of hostage to fortune, a valuable if not altogether trustworthy security for the safety of her dearest possessions.