Red Pottage Part 9

"I saw you correcting some one's ma.n.u.script last week," he said. "You were at it all day in the hay-field."

"That was different. I was asked to criticise the style and composition."

"Oh, well," said Mr. Gresley, "don't let us split hairs. I don't want an argument about it. If you'll come into my study at ten o'clock I'll get it off my hands at once."

"With pleasure," said Hester, looking at him with rueful admiration. She had tried a hundred times to get the better of him in conversation, but she had not yet succeeded.

"I have a message for you," continued Mr. Gresley, in restored good-humor. "Mrs. Loftus writes that she is returning to Wilderleigh at the end of the week, and that the sale of work may take place in the Wilderleigh gardens at the end of August. And--let me see, I will read what she says:

"'I am not unmindful of our conversation on the duty of those who go annually to London to bring a spiritual influence to bear on society'--("I impressed that upon her before she went up.")--'We had a most interesting dinner-party last week, nearly all celebrated and gifted persons, and the conversation was really beyond anything I can describe to you. I thought my poor brain would turn. I was quite afraid to join in. But Mr. Harvey--the great Mr. Harvey--told me afterwards I was at my best. One lady, Miss Barker, who has done so much for the East End, is coming down to Wilderleigh shortly for a rest. I am anxious you should talk to her. She says she has doubts, and she is tired of the Bible. By the way, please tell Hester, with my love, that she and Mr.

Harvey attacked _The Idyll of East London_, and showed it up entirely, and poor little me had to stand up for her against them all."

"She would never do that," said Hester, tranquilly. "She might perhaps have said, 'The writer is a friend of mine. I must stand up for her.'

But she would never have gone beyond saying it to doing it."

"Hester," exclaimed Mrs. Gresley, feeling that she might just as well have remained a spinster if she was to be thus ignored in her own house, "I can't think how you can allow your jealousy of Sybell Loftus, for I can attribute it to nothing else, to carry you so far."

"Perhaps it had better carry me into the garden," said Hester, rising with the others. "You must forgive me if I spoke irritably. I have a racking headache."

"She looks ill," said her brother, following Hester's figure with affectionate solicitude, as she pa.s.sed the window a moment later.

"And yet she does next to nothing," said the hard-worked little wife, intercepting the glance. "I always thought she wrote her stories in the morning. I know she is never about if the Pratt girls call to see her before luncheon. Yet when I ran up to her room yesterday morning to ask her to take Mary's music, as Fraulein had the headache"--(Mrs. Gresley always spoke of "the headache" and "the toothache")--"she was lying on her bed doing nothing at all."

"She is very unaccountable," said Mr. Gresley. "Still, I can make allowance for the artistic temperament. I share it to a certain degree.

Poor Hester. She is a spoiled child."

"Indeed, James, she is. And she has an enormous opinion of herself. For my part, I think the Bishop is to blame for making so much of her. Have you never noticed how different she is when he is here, so gay and talkative, and when we are alone she hardly says a word for days together, except to the children?"

"She talked more when she first came," said Mr. Gresley. "But when she found I made it a rule to discourage argument"--(by argument Mr. Gresley meant difference of opinion)--"she seemed gradually to lose interest in conversation. Yet I have heard the Bishop speak of her as a brilliant talker. And Lord Newhaven asked me last spring how I liked having a celebrity for a sister. A celebrity! Why, half the people in Middleshire don't even know of Hester's existence." And the author of "Modern Dissent" frowned.

"That was a hit at you, my dear," said Mrs. Gresley. "It was just after your pamphlet on 'Schism' appeared. Lord Newhaven always says something disagreeable. Don't you remember, when you were thinking of exchanging Warpington for that Scotch living, he said he knew you would not do it because with your feeling towards Dissent you would never go to a country where you would be a Dissenter yourself?"

"How about the proofs?" said Hester, through the open window. "I am ready when you are, James."

CHAPTER X

Wonderful power to benumb possesses this brother.

--EMERSON.

"Of course, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, leading the way to his study and speaking in his lesson-for-the-day voice, "I don't pretend to write"--("They always say that," thought Hester)--"I have not sufficient leisure to devote to the subject to insure becoming a successful author.

And even if I had I am afraid I should not be willing to sell my soul to obtain popularity, for that is what it comes to in these days. The public must be pandered to. It must be amused. The public likes smooth things, and the great truths--the only things I should care to write about--are not smooth, far from it."

"No, indeed."

"This little paper on 'Dissent,' which I propose to publish in pamphlet form after its appearance as a serial--it will run to two numbers in the _Southminster Advertiser_--was merely thrown off in a few days when I had influenza, and could not attend to my usual work."

"It must be very difficult to work in illness," said Hester, who had evidently made a vow during her brief sojourn in the garden, and was now obviously going through that process which the society of some of our fellow-creatures makes as necessary as it is fatiguing--namely, that of thinking beforehand what we are going to say.

Mr. Gresley liked Hester immensely when she had freshly ironed herself flat under one of these resolutions. He was wont to say that no one was pleasanter than Hester when she was reasonable, or made more suitable remarks. He perceived with joy that she was reasonable now, and the brother and sister sat down close together at the writing-table with the printed sheets between them.

"I will read aloud," said Mr. Gresley, "and you can follow me, and stop me if you think--er--the sense is not quite clear."

"I see."

The two long noses, the larger freckled one surmounted by a _pince-nez_, the other slightly pink, as if it had absorbed the tint of the blotting-paper over which it was so continually poised, both bent over the sheets.

Through the thin wall which separated the school-room from the study came the sound of Mary's scales. Mary was by nature a child of wrath, as far as music was concerned, and Fraulein--anxious, musical Fraulein--was strenuously endeavoring to impart to her pupil the rudiments of what was her chief joy in life.

"'Modern Dissent,'" read aloud Mr. Gresley, "by Veritas."

"_Veritas_!" repeated Hester. Astonishment jerked the word out of her before she was aware. She pulled herself hastily together.

"Certainly," said the author, looking at his sister through his gla.s.ses, which made the pupils of his eyes look as large as the striped marbles on which Mary and Regie spent their pennies. "Veritas," he continued, "is a Latin word signifying Truth."

"So I fancied. But is not _Truth_ rather a large name to adopt as a _nom de guerre_? Might it not seem rather--er--in a layman it would appear arrogant."

"I am not a layman, and I do not pretend to write on subjects of which I am ignorant," said Mr. Gresley, with dignity. "This is not a work of fiction. I don't imagine this, or fancy that, or invent the other. I merely place before the public, forcibly, and in a novel manner, a few great truths."

Mary was doing her finger exercises. C, C, C, with the thumb; D, D, D, with the first finger, Fraulein was repeating. "Won! two! free! Won!

two! free!" with a new intonation of cheerful patience at each repet.i.tion.

"Ah!" said Hester. "A few great truths. Then the name must be 'Veritas.'

You would not reconsider it?"

"Certainly not," said Mr. Gresley, his eye challenging hers. "It is the name I am known by as the author of 'Schism.'"

"I had momentarily forgotten 'Schism,'" said Hester, dropping her glance.

"I went through a good deal of obloquy about 'Schism,'" said Mr. Gresley with pride, "and I should not wonder if 'Modern Dissent' caused quite a ferment in Middleshire. If it does, I am willing to bear a little spite and ill-will. All history shows that truth is met at first by opposition. Half the country clergy round here are asleep. Good men, but lax. They want waking up. I said as much to the Bishop the other day, and he agreed with me; for he said that if some of his younger clergy could be waked up to a sense of their own arrogance and narrowness he would hold a public thanksgiving in the cathedral. But he added that he thought nothing short of the last trump would do it."

"I agree with him," said Hester, having first said the sentence to herself, and having decided it was innocuous.

The climax of the music lesson had arrived. "The Blue Bells of Scotland"--the sole _Clavier Stuck_ which Mary's rigidly extended little starfishes of hands could wrench out of the school-room piano--was at its third bar.

"Well," said Mr. Gresley, refreshed by a cheering retrospect. "Now for 'Modern Dissent.'"

A strenuous hour ensued.

Hester was torn in different directions, at one moment tempted to allow the most flagrant pa.s.sages to pa.s.s unchallenged rather than attempt the physical impossibility of interrupting the reader only to be drawn into a dispute with him, at another burning to save her brother from the consequences which wait on certain utterances.

Presently Mr. Gresley's eloquence, after various tortuous and unnatural windings, swept in the direction of a pun, as a carriage after following the artificial curves of a deceptive approach nears a villa. Hester had seen the pun coming for half a page, as we see the villa through the trees long before we are allowed to approach it, and she longed to save her brother from what was in her eyes as much a degradation as a _tu quoque_. But she remembered in time that the Gresleys considered she had no sense of humor, and she decided to let it pa.s.s. Mr. Gresley enjoyed it so much himself that he hardly noticed her fixed countenance.

Why does so deep a gulf separate those who have a sense of humor and those who, having none, are compensated by the conviction that they possess it more abundantly? The creva.s.se seems to extend far inland to the very heights and water-sheds of character. Those who differ on humor will differ on principles. The Gresleys and the Pratts belonged to that large cla.s.s of our fellow-creatures who, conscious of a genius for adding to the hilarity of our sad planet, discover an irresistible piquancy in putting a woman's hat on a man's head, and in that "verbal romping" which playfully designates a whiskey-and-soda as a gargle, and says "au reservoir" instead of "au revoir."

At last, however, Hester nervously put her hand over the next sheet, as he read the final words of the last.