The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale. Midsummer Night's Dream.
The earlier proofs of the Mouse-trap were brought by Lance, who hadspent more time in getting them into shape than his wife approved, andthey were hailed with rapture by the young ladies on seeing themselvesfor the first time in print. As to Gerald, he had so long been bred--asit were--to journalism that, young as he was, he had caught the trick,and 'The Inspector's Tour' had not only been welcomed by the 'Censor',but portions had been copied into other papers, and there was a proposalof publishing it in a separate brochure. It would have made the fortuneof the Mouse-trap, if it had not been so contrary to its principles, andit had really been sent to them in mischief, together with The 'GirtonGirl', of which some were proud, though when she saw it in print, with alyre and wreath on the page, sober Mysie looked grave.
"Do you think it profane to parody Jane Taylor?" said Gerald.
"No, but I thought it might hurt some people's feelings, and discouragethem, if we laugh at the High School."
"Why, Dolores goes to give lectures there," exclaimed Valetta.
"Nobody is discouraged by a little good-humoured banter," said Gillian."Nobody with any stuff in them."
"There must be some training in chaff though," said Gerald, "or theydon't know how to take it."
"And in point of fact," said Dolores, "the upper tradesmen's daughterscome off with greater honours in the High School than do the younggentlewomen."
"Very wholesome for the young Philistines," said Gerald. "The daughtersof self-made men may well surpass in energy those settled on theirlees."
Gerald and Dolores were standing with their backs to the wall ofAnscombe Church, which Jasper Merrifield and Mysie were zealouslyphotographing, the others helping--or hindering.
"I thought upper tradesfolk were the essence of Philistines," returnedDolores.
"The elder generation--especially if he is the son of the energetic man.The younger are more open to ideas."
"The stolid Conservative is the one who has grown up while his fatherwas making his fortune, the third generation used to be the gentleman,now he is the man who is tired of it."
"Tired of it, aye!" with a sigh.
"Why you are a man with a pedigree!" she returned.
"Pedigrees don't hinder--what shall I call it?--the sense of beingfettered."
"One lives in fetters," she exclaimed. "And the better one likes one'shome, the harder it is to shake them off."
He turned and looked full at her, then exclaimed, "Exactly," and paused,adding, "I wonder what you want. Has it a form?"
"Oh yes, I mean to give lectures. I should like to see the world, andstudy physical science in every place, then tell the next about it. Iread all I can, and I think I shall get consent to give some elementarylectures at the High School, though Uncle Jasper does not half like it,but I must get some more training to do the thing rightly. I thought ofUniversity College. Could you get me any information about it?"
"Easily; but you'll have to conquer the horror of the elders."
"I know. They think one must learn atheism and all sorts of thingsthere."
"You might go in for physical science at Oxford or Cambridge."
"I expect that is all my father would allow. In spite of the colonies,he has all the old notions about women, and would do nothing Aunt Lilyreally protested against."
"You are lucky to have a definite plan and notion to work for. Now fatewas so unkind as to make me a country squire, and not only that, butone bound down, like Gulliver among the Liliputians, with all mannerof cords by all the dear good excellent folks, who look on that oldmediaeval den with a kind of fetish-worship, sprung of their havingbeen kept out of it so long, and it would be an utter smash of all theirhearts if I uttered a profane word against it. I would as soon be anancient Egyptian drowning a cat as move a stone of it. It is a lovelysort of ancient Pompeii, good to look at now and then, but not to bebound down to."
"Like Beechcroft Court, a fossil. It is very well there are suchplaces."
"Yes, but not to be the hope of them. It is my luck. If my eldest uncle,who had toiled in a bookseller's shop all his youth and reigned like alittle king, had not gone and got killed in a boating accident, therehe would be the ruling Sir Roger de Coverley of the county, a pillar ofChurch and State, and I should be a free man."
"Won't they let you go about, and see everything?"
"Oh yes, I am welcome to do a little globe-trotting. They are no fools;if they were I should not care half so much; but wherever I went, therewould be a series of jerks from my string, and not having an integumentof rhinoceros hide, I could not disregard them without a sore more rawthan I care to carry about. After all, it is only a globe, and one getsback to the same place again."
"Men have so many openings."
"I'm not rich enough for Parliament, and if I were, maybe it would beworse for their hearts," he said, with a sigh.
"There's journalism, a great power."
"Yes, but to put my name to all I could--and long to say--would be anequal horror to the dear folks."
"Yet you are helping on this concern."
"True, but partly pour passer le temps, partly because I really wantto hear 'The Outlaws Isle' performed, and all under protest that thewindmill will soon be swept away by the stream."
"Indeed, yes," cried Dolores. "They hope to regulate the stream. Theymight as well hope to regulate Mississippi."
"Well-chosen simile! The current is slow and sluggish, butirresistible."
"Better than stagnating or sticking fast in the mud."
"Though the mud may be full of fair blossoms and sweet survivals," saidGerald sadly.
"Oh yes, people in the old grooves are delightful," said Dolores, "butone can't live, like them, with a heart in G. F. S., like my AuntJane, really the cleverest of any of us! Or like Mysie, not stupid, butwrapped up in her classes, just scratching the surface. Now, if I wentin for good works I would go to the bottom--down to the slums."
"Slums are one's chief interest," said Gerald; "but no doubt it willsoon be the same story over and over, and only make one wish--"
"What?"
"That there could be a revolution before I am of age."
"What's that?" cried Primrose, coming up as he spoke. "A revolution?"
"Yes, guillotines and all, to cut off your head in Rotherwood Park,"said Gerald lightly.
"Oh! you don't really mean it."
"Not that sort," said Dolores. "Only the coming of the coquecigrues."
"They are in 'The Water Babies'," said Primrose, mystified.
Each of those two liked to talk to the other as a sort offellow-captive, solacing themselves with discussions over the 'Censor'and its fellows. Love is not often the first thought, even where itlurks in modern intellectual intercourse between man and maid; andthough Kitty Varley might giggle, the others thought the idea onlyworthy of her. Aunt Jane, however, smelt out the notion, and could notbut communicate it to her sister, though adding--
"I don't believe in it: Dolores is in love with Physiology, and theboy with what Jasper calls Socialist maggots, but not with each other,unless they work round in some queer fashion."
However, Lady Merrifield, feeling herself accountable for Dolores, wasanxious to gather ideas about Gerald from his aunt, with whom she wasbecoming more and more intimate. She was more than twenty years thesenior, and the thread of connection was very slender, but they suitedone another so well that they had become Lilias and Geraldine to oneanother. Lady Merrifield had preserved her youthfulness chiefly fromhaving had a happy home, unbroken by family sorrows or carkingcares, and with a husband who had always taken his full share ofresponsibility.
"Your nephew's production has made a stir," said she, when they foundthemselves alone together.
"Yes, poor boy." Then answering the tone rather than the words, "Isuppose it is the lot of one generation to be startled by the next.There is a good deal of change in the outlook."
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br /> "Yes," said Lady Merrifield. "The young ones, especially the youngest,seem to have a set of notions of their own that I cannot always follow."
"Exactly," said Geraldine eagerly.
"You feel the same? To begin with, the laws of youngladyhood--maidenliness--are a good deal relaxed--"
"There I am not much of a judge. I never had any young ladyhood, but Iown that the few times I went out with Anna I have been surprised, andmore surprised at what I heard from her sister Emily."
"What we should have thought simply shocking being tolerated now."
"Just so; and we are viewed as old duennas for not liking it. I shouldsay, however, that it is not, or has not, been a personal trouble withme. Anna's passion is for her Uncle Clement, and she has given up theseason on his account, though Lady Travis Underwood was most anxious tohave her; and as to Emily, though she is obliged to go out sometimes,she hates it, and has a soul set on slums and nursing."
"You mean that the style of gaieties revolts a nice-minded girl?"
"Partly. Perhaps such as the Travis Underwoods used to take part in,rather against their own likings, poor things, are much less restrainedfor the young people than what would come in your daughters' way."
"Perhaps; though Lady Rotherwood has once or twice in country-houses hadto protect her daughter, to the great disgust of the other young people.That is one development that it is hard to meet, for it is difficultto know where old-fashioned distaste is the motive, and where the realprinciple of modesty. Though to me the question is made easy, forSir Jasper would never hear of cricket for his daughters, scarcelyof hunting, and we have taken away Valetta and Primrose from thedancing-classes since skirt-dancing has come in; but I fear Val thinksit hard."
"Such things puzzle my sisters at Vale Leston. They are part of thesame spirit of independence that sends girls to hospitals or medicalschools."
"Or colleges, or lecturing. Dolores is wild to lecture, and I see noharm in her trying her wings at the High School on some safe subject, ifher father in New Zealand does not object, though I am glad it has notoccurred to any of my own girls."
"Sir Jasper would not like it?"
"Certainly not; but if my brother consents he will not mind it forDolores. She is a good girl in the main, but even mine have verydifferent ideals from what we had."
"Please tell me. I see it a little, and I have been thinking about it."
"Well, perhaps you will laugh, but my ideal work was Sunday-schools."
"Are not they Miss Mohun's ideal still?"
"Oh yes, infinitely developed, and so they are my cousinFlorence's--Lady Florence Devereux; but the young ones think thembehind the times. I remember when every girl believed her children theprettiest and cleverest in nature, showed off her Sunday-school as herpride and treasure, and composed small pink books about them, where thecatastrophe was either being killed by accident, or going to live in theclergyman's nursery. Now, those that teach do so simply as a duty andnot a romance."
"And the difficulty is to find those who will teach," said Geraldine."One thing is, that the children really require better teaching."
"That is quite true. My girls show me their preparation work, and I seemuch that I should not have thought of teaching the Beechcroft children.But all the excitement of the matter has gone off."
"I know. The Vale Leston girls do it as their needful work, not withtheir hearts and enthusiasm. I expect an enthusiasm cannot be expectedto last above a generation and perhaps a half."
"Very likely. A more indifferent thing; you will laugh, but myenthusiasm was for chivalry, Christian chivalry, half symbolic. Historywas delightful to me for the search for true knights. I had lists ofthem, drawings if possible, but I never could indoctrinate anybody withmy affection. Either history is only a lesson, or they know a greatdeal too much, and will prove to you that the Cid was a ruffian, and theBlack Prince not much better."
"And are you allowed the 'Idylls of the King'?"
"Under protest, now that the Mouse-trap has adopted Browning for weeklyreading and discussion. Tennyson is almost put on the same shelf withScott, whom I love better than ever. Is it progress?"
"Well, I suppose it is, in a way."
"But is it the right way?"
"That's what I want to see."
"Now listen. When our young men, my brothers--especially my very dearbrother Claude and his contemporaries, Rotherwood is the only oneleft--were at Oxford, they got raised into a higher atmosphere, and camehome with beautiful plans and hopes for the Church, and drew us upwith them; but now the University seems just an ordeal for faith to gothrough."
"I should think there was less of outward temptation, but more of subtletrial. And then the whole system has altered since the times you arespeaking of, when the old rules prevailed, and the great giants ofChurch renewal were there!" said Geraldine.
"You belong to the generation whom they trained, and who are now passingaway. My father was one who grew up then."
"We live on their spirit still."
"I hope so. I never knew much about Cambridge till Clement went there,but it had the same influence on him. Indeed, all our home had that onethought ever since I can remember. Clement and Lance grew up in it."
"But you will forgive me. These younger men either go very, very muchfurther than we older ones dreamt of, or they have flaws in theirfaith, and sometimes--which is the strangest difficulty--the vehementobservance and ritual with flaws beneath in their faith perhaps, ortheir loyalty--Socialist fancies."
"There is impatience," said Geraldine. "The Church progress has notconquered all the guilt and misery in the world."
"Who said it would?"
"None of us; but these younger ones fancy it is the Church's fault,instead of that of her members' failures, and so they try to walk in thelight of the sparks that they have kindled."
"Altruism as they call it--love of the neighbour without love of God."
"It may lead that way."
"Does it?"
"Perhaps we are the impatient ones now," said Geraldine, "in dislikingthe young ones' experiments, and wanting to bind them to our own views."
"Then you look on with toleration but with distrust."
"Distrust of myself as well as of the young ones, and trying not toforget that 'one good custom may corrupt the world,' so it may be aswell that the pendulum should swing."
"The pendulum, but not its axis--faith!"
"No; and of my boy's mainspring of faith I _do_ feel sure, and of hisreal upright steadiness."
Lady Merrifield asked no more, but could wait.
But is not each generation a terra incognita to the last? A questionwhich those feel most decidedly who stand on the border-land of both,with love and sympathy divided between the old and the new, clinging tothe one, and fearing to alienate the other.
CHAPTER XIV. -- BUTTERFLY'S NECTAR
The Long Vacation Page 14