From One Generation to Another Part 29

It is not the clever people who make all the epigrams; but sometimes those who merely live and feel, and are perhaps objects of ridicule. Mrs.

Glynde was one of these. She had unwittingly made an epigram. She had summed up life in five words--the time pa.s.ses somehow."

"And, dear," she went on, "it is not wise, perhaps it is not quite right, to turn one's back upon an alleviation which is offered. Arthur would be very kind to you. He is really fond of you, and perhaps the very fact of his not being clever or brilliant or anything like that might be a blessing in the future, for he would not expect so much."

"He would have to expect nothing," said Dora, speaking for the first time, "because I could give him nothing."

She spoke in rather an indifferent voice, and in the gloom her mother could not see her face. It was a singular thing that neither of them seemed to take Arthur Agar's feelings into account in the very smallest degree; and this must be accounted to them for wisdom.

Dora was, as her mother had said, very strong. She never gave way. Her delicate lips never quivered, but she took care to keep them close pressed. Only in her eyes was the pain to be seen, and perhaps that was why her mother did not dare to look.

"There is no hurry," she pleaded. "You need not decide now."

"But," answered Dora, "I have decided now, and he knows my decision."

"Perhaps after some time--some years?" suggested Mrs. Glynde.

"A great many years," put in Dora.

"If he asks you again--oh! I know it would be better, dear; better for you in every way. I do not say that you would be quite happy. But it would be a sort of happiness; there would be less unhappiness, because you would have less time to think. I do not say anything about the position and the wealth and such considerations, for they are not of much importance to a good woman."

"After a great many years," said Dora, in that calm and judicial voice which fell like ice on her mother's heart, "I will see--if he chooses to wait."

"Yes, but--" began Mrs. Glynde, but she did not go on. That which she was about to say would scarcely have been appropriate. But so far as the facts were concerned she might just as well have said it. For Dora knew as well as she did that Arthur Agar would not wait. Women are not blind to manifest facts. They know us, my brothers, better than we think. And they are not quite so romantic as we take them to be. Their love is a better thing than ours, because it is more practical and more defined.

They do not seek an ideal of their own imagination; but when something approaching to it crosses their path in the flesh they know what they want, and they do not change.

Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia, walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the remainder of womanhood. Good women--those mistaken females who move in an atmosphere of ostentatious good works--usually walk like this. Like this they enter the humble cot with a little soup and a lot of advice. Like this they smilingly step, where angels would fear to tread, upon feelings which they are incapable of understanding.

Mrs. Glynde got quietly up and left the room. As the door closed behind her Sister Cecilia's gently persuasive voice was heard.

"Dora! Dora dear!"

"Yes," replied the girl without any enthusiasm, rising and going to the window.

"Will you walk with me a little way across the fields? It is such a lovely evening."

"Yes, if you like."

And Dora pa.s.sed out of the open window.

"I am sorry," said Sister Cecilia after a few paces, "that you were not in church. We had such a bright service."

Dora, like some more of us, wondered vaguely where the adjective applied, especially on a gloomy evening without candles, but she said nothing.

"I stayed at home with mother," she explained practically. "The servants were all out." Sister Cecilia was not listening. She was gazing up at the sky, where a few stars were beginning to show themselves.

"One feels," she murmured with a sigh, "on such an evening as this, that, after all, nothing matters much."

"About the servants do you mean? They are going on better now."

"No, dear, about life. I mean that at times one feels that this cannot be the end of it all."

"Well, we ought to feel that, I suppose, being Christians."

"And some day we shall see the meaning of all our troubles," pursued Sister Cecilia. "It is so hard for us older ones, who have pa.s.sed through it, to stand by helpless, only guessing at the pain and anguish of it all, whereas, perhaps, we could help if we only knew. A little more candour, a little more confidence might so easily lead to mutual help and consolation."

"Possibly," admitted Dora, without any encouragement.

"I am so sorry for poor Arthur!" whispered Sister Cecilia, apparently to the evening shades.

Dora was silent. She knew how to treat Sister Cecilia. Jem had taught her that.

"It has been such a terrible blow. His letters to his mother are quite heartbroken."

Dora reserved her opinion of grown-up men who write heartbroken letters to their mothers.

"I know all about it," Sister Cecilia went on, quite regardless of the truth, as some good people are. "Dora, dear, I know all about it."

Silence, a silence which reminded Sister Cecilia of a sense of discomfiture which had more than once been hers in conversation with Jem.

"Have you nothing to tell me, dear?" she inquired. "Nothing to say to me?"

"Nothing," replied Dora pleasantly. "Especially as you know all about it."

"Will you never change your mind?" persuasively.

"No, I am not the sort of person to change my mind."

There was a little pause, and again Sister Cecilia whispered to the evening shades.

"I cannot help hoping that some day it may be different. It is not as if there were any one else--?"

Silence again.

"I dare say," added Sister Cecilia, after waiting in vain for an answer to her implied question, "that I am wrong, but I cannot help being in favour of a little more candour, a little mutual confidence."

"I cannot help feeling," replied Dora quietly, "that we are all best employed when we mind our own business."

"Yes, dear, I know. But it is very hard to stand idly by and see young people make mistakes which can only bring them sorrow. I want to tell you to think very deeply before you elect to lead the life of a single woman.

It is a life full of temptation to idleness and self-indulgence. There are many single women who, I am really afraid, are quite useless in the world. They only gossip and pry into their neighbours' affairs and make mischief. It is because they have nothing to do. I have known several women like that, and I cannot help thinking that they would have been happier if they had married. Perhaps they did not have the chance. One does not understand these things."

Sister Cecilia cast her eyes upwards toward the tree-tops to see if perchance the explanation was written there.

"Of course," she went on complacently, drawing down her bonnet-strings, "there are many useful lives of single women. Lives which the world would sadly miss should it please G.o.d to take them. Women who live, not for themselves, but for others; who go about the world helping their neighbours with advice and the fruits of their own experience; ever the first to go to the afflicted and to those who are in trouble. They do not receive their reward here, they are not always thanked. The ignorant are sometimes even rude. They have only the knowledge that they are doing good."

"That _must_ be a satisfaction," murmured Dora fervently.

"It is, dear; it is. But--you will excuse me, Dora dear, if I say this?--I do not think you are that sort of woman."

"No," answered Dora, "I don't think I am."