Nobody Part 84

"Far too big," said Mr. Dillwyn. "You see, when people's time is very valuable, they cannot afford to spend too much of it in running about after each other."

"What makes their time worth any more'n our'n?"

"They are making money so fast with it."

"And is _that_ what makes folks' time valeyable?"

"In their opinion, madam."

"I never could see no use in havin' much money," said the old lady.

"But there comes a question," said Dillwyn. "What is 'much'?"

"More'n enough, I should say."

"Enough for what? That also must be settled."

"I'm an old-fashioned woman," said the old lady, "and I go by the old-fashionedst book in the world. That says, 'we brought nothing into this world, and we can carry nothing out; therefore, having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.'"

"But, again, what sort of food, and what sort of raiment?" urged the gentleman pleasantly. "For instance; would you be content to exchange this delicious manufacture,--which seems to me rather like ambrosia than common food,--for some of the black bread of Norway? with no qualification of golden b.u.t.ter? or for Scotch oatmeal bannocks? or for sour corn cake?"

"I would be quite content, if it was the Lord's will," said the old lady. "There's no obligation upon anybody to have it _sour_."

Mr. Dillwyn laughed gently. "I can fancy," he said, "that you never would allow such a dereliction in duty. But, beside having the bread sweet, is it not allowed us to have the best we can get?"

"The best we can _make_," answered Mrs. Armadale; "I believe in everybody doin' the best he kin with what he has got to work with; but food ain't worth so much that we should pay a large price for it."

The gentleman's eye glanced with a scarcely perceptible movement over the table at which he was sitting. Bread, indeed, in piles of white flakiness; and b.u.t.ter; but besides, there was the cold ham in delicate slices, and excellent-looking cheese, and apples in a sort of beautiful golden confection, and cake of superb colour and texture; a pitcher of milk that was rosy sweet, and coffee rich with cream. The glance that took all this in was slight and swift, and yet the old lady was quick enough to see and understand it.

"Yes," she said, "it's all our'n, all there is on the table. Our cow eats our own gra.s.s, and Madge, my daughter, makes the b.u.t.ter and the cheese. We've raised and cured our own pork; and the wheat that makes the bread is grown on our ground too; we farm it out on shares; and it is ground at a mill about four miles off. Our hens lay our eggs; it's all from home."

"But suppose the case of people who have no ground, nor hens, nor pork, nor cow? they must buy."

"Of course," said the old lady; "everybody ain't farmers."

"I am ready to wish I was one," said Dillwyn. "But even then, I confess, I should want coffee and tea and sugar--as I see you. do."

"Well, those things don't grow in America," said Mrs. Armadale.

"And spice don't, neither, mother," observed Charity.

"So it appears that even you send abroad for luxuries," Mr. Dillwyn went on. "And why not? And the question is, where shall we stop? If I want coffee, I must have money to buy it, and the better the coffee the more money; and the same with tea. In cities we must buy all we use or consume, unless one is a butcher or a baker. May I not try to get more money, in order that I may have better things? We have got round to our starting-point."

"'They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,'" Mrs.

Armadale said quietly.

"Then where is the line?--Miss Lois, you are smiling. Is it at my stupidity?"

"No," said Lois. "I was thinking of a lunch--such as I have seen it--in one of the great New York hotels."

"Well?" said he, without betraying on his own part any recollection; "how does that come in? By way of ill.u.s.trating Mrs. Armadale, or me?"

"I seem to remember a number of things that ill.u.s.trate both," said Lois; "but as I profited by them at the time, it would be ungrateful in me to instance them now."

"You profited by them with pleasure, or otherwise?"

"Not otherwise. I was very hungry."

"You evade my question, however."

"I will not. I profited by them with much pleasure."

"Then you are on my side, as far as I can be said to have a side?"

"I think not. The pleasure is undoubted; but I do not know that that touches the question of expediency."

"I think it does. I think it settles the question. Mrs. Armadale, your granddaughter confesses the pleasure; and what else do we live for, but to get the most good out of life?"

"What pleasure does she confess?" asked the old lady, with more eagerness than her words. .h.i.therto had manifested.

"Pleasure in nice things, grandmother; in particularly nice things; that had cost a great deal to fetch them from n.o.body knows where; and pleasure in pretty things too. That hotel seemed almost like the halls of Aladdin to my inexperienced eyes. There is certainly pleasure in a wonderfully dainty meal, served in wonderful vessels of gla.s.s and china and silver, and marble and gold and flowers to help the effect. I could have dreamed myself into a fairy tale, often, if it had not been for the people."

"Life is not a fairy tale," said Mrs. Armadale somewhat severely.

"No, grandmother; and so the humanity present generally reminded me.

But the illusion for a minute was delightful."

"Is there any harm in making it as much like a fairy tale as we can?"

Some of the little courtesies and hospitalities of the table came in here, and Mr. Dillwyn's question received no answer. His eye went round the table. No, clearly these people did not live in fairyland, and as little in the search after it. Good, strong, sensible, practical faces; women that evidently had their work to do, and did it; habitual energy and purpose spoke in every one of them, and purpose _attained_. Here was no aimless dreaming or fruitless wishing. The old lady's face was sorely weather-beaten, but calm as a ship in harbour. Charity was homely, but comfortable. Madge and Lois were blooming in strength and activity, and as innocent apparently of any vague, unfulfilled longings as a new-blown rose. Only when Mr. Dillwyn's eye met Mrs. Barclay's he was sensible of a different record. He half sighed. The calm and the rest were not there.

The talk rambled on. Mr. Dillwyn made him self exceedingly pleasant; told of things he had seen in his travels, things and people, and ways of life; interesting even Mrs. Armadale with a sort of fascinated interest, and gaining, he knew, no little share of her good-will. So, just as the meal was ending, he ventured to bring forward the old subject again.

"You will pardon me, Mrs. Armadale," he began,--"but you are the first person I ever met who did not value money."

"Perhaps I am the first person you ever met who had something better."

"You mean--?" said Philip, with a look of inquiry. "I do not understand."

"I have treasure in heaven."

"But the coin of that realm is not current here?--and we are _here_."

"That coin makes me rich now; and I take it with me when I go," said the old lady, as she rose from the table.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.