Chapter XXV: An Idealist

When Agnes Burchell encountered Oswald Meredith, as has been recorded, she had but recently taken up her abode at the ‘House.’ She had gone there much against the will of her family, actuated by that discontent which many generations may have felt, but only the present generation has confessed and justified. Agnes was the eldest daughter of a very prosaic pair, born in a very prosaic household, and how it was that the ideal had caught her in its tenacious grip nobody knew. In the Rectory at the foot of the hill, noisy with children, greasy with bread and butter, between a fat father who prosed and a stout mother who grumbled, the girl had set her heart, from the very beginning of conscious sentiment in her, upon some more excellent way. How this was to be reached she had not been able to divine for years, and many pious struggles had poor Agnes against her own better desires, many attempts to subdue herself and to represent to herself that the things she had to do were her duty and the best things for her. Between exhortations to the service of God in its most spiritual sense, and exhortations to be contented ‘in that condition of life to which God had called her,’ her heart was rent and her life distracted. Was there, indeed, nothing better in the world than to cut the bread and butter, like Werther’s Charlotte, to darn the stockings, to listen to parish gossip and her mother’s standing grievance, which was that Cherry Beresford, an old maid, should be well off and drive about in her carriage, while she, the Rector’s wife, went painfully afoot--and her father’s twaddle about the plague of Dissenters and the wickedness of curates? Agnes tried very hard to accommodate herself to these circumstances of her lot. She tried to change the tone of the family talk, making herself extremely disagreeable to everybody in so doing. She tried to reduce the children to obedience and to bring order into the unruly house, and in so doing got herself soundly rated by everybody. Who was she that she should take upon her to be superior to her neighbours--to set them all right? The rest of the Burchells were very comfortable in their state of hugger-mugger, and that she should pretend a dislike to it aggravated them all deeply--while all the time she was informed, both in sermons and in good books, that to do the duty nearest to your hand was the most heroic Christian duty. Poor Agnes could not see her way to do any duty at all. There were three sisters over sixteen, more than could be employed upon the stockings and the bread and butter. Then she tried the parish, but found with humiliation that with neither soup, nor puddings, nor little bottles of wine, nor even tracts to carry about, her visits were but little prized. Louisa, her next sister, answered better in every way than she did: when Louisa was scolded she scolded back again in a filial manner, having the last word always. She boxed the children’s ears, and pushed them about, and read a novel--when she could get one--in an untidy room, with unkempt brothers and sisters round, and took no notice; neither the disobedience, nor the untidiness, nor even unjust reproof when it came her way having any particular effect upon her. Louisa did what she was obliged to do, and knew nothing about the ideal. But Agnes did not know what to make of herself. She was called by absurd nicknames of mock respect by the others--the ‘princess’ and ‘your royal highness,’ and so forth; and Mrs. Burchell seldom lost an opportunity of saying, ‘Agnes thinks she knows better, of course; but my old-fashioned ways are good enough for the rest of us.’ Thus year after year went over her young head, each one increasing her inappropriateness--the want of any fit place for her where she was. It was against the pride of the family that she should go out as a governess, and, indeed, she was not sufficiently educated herself to teach anyone else. She was at the very height of discomfort when there dawned upon her the prospect of doing something better in the ‘House,’ serving the poor, teaching the untaught. The Rectory was very full at the time, and her room was much wanted for an uncle who was coming to pay a visit; but yet, notwithstanding this great immediate convenience, there was much resistance made. Mr. Burchell’s Church politics were undecided. He was only entering upon the path of Ritualism, starting mildly under the guidance of a curate, with Saint’s-day services, and the beginning of a choir; and the name of a Sisterhood frightened him. As for Mrs. Burchell, her indignation knew no bounds. ‘Your duty is at home, you ungrateful girl, where your father and I have stinted ourselves to let you have everything that is comfortable. And now you go and leave me to work night and day among the children. I who have no strength for it----’ ‘There is Louisa, mamma,’ said Agnes; upon which Louisa cried with indignation, and asked if _everything_ was to be left upon her--and all the little boys and girls looked on from the corners with demure delight to watch the progress of the ‘shindy’ between Agnes and mamma. At last, however, after many scenes of this kind, Agnes was allowed to go free. She went to London, and set herself up with a modified uniform, and was as glad and triumphant as if it was the noblest vocation in the world which she had thus struggled into. Alas! it was not very long before the bonds of the prosaic earth again galled her, and the ideal seemed as far off as ever. Ignoble breakfasts and dinners and teas are as ignoble in a charitable ‘House’ as in an overcrowded Rectory; and here, too, there was gossip and unruliness, and want of discipline, and very poor success in the elevation of life out of its beggarly elements. To teach children their A B C is not an inspiriting occupation, even when the children are destitute and orphans. It was so hard to realise that they were so. The poor little wretches were just as tiresome and insubordinate as if they had been her own brothers and sisters: nothing of the sentiment of their position hung about them. And the Sisters were extremely business-like, and did their duty without a tinge of romance, as if they had been hired to do it. The awakening had been sharp for Agnes, but she had already got beyond the first stage, and was now fighting with her disappointment and arguing herself back into satisfaction. It was impossible to tell what a help to her was the breaking of little Emmy’s leg. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. She would have liked to nurse her altogether, but at least to go to her to the hospital, to cheer her, and whisper consolation--that was something; and when the child’s face brightened at her coming, Agnes, with a sudden throb of her heart, felt that at least for the moment here was the ideal for which she had sighed. Here was some real good of her. But for her nobody would have visited little Emmy: they would have been content to hear that she was doing well: that smile of half-celestial happiness upon the poor little sick face would never have reflected heaven but for Agnes. It was the first approach to contentment in her own occupation which she had ever felt. And she had to work all the harder to get herself this pleasure, which made her satisfaction still more warm.

But--whether it was right to talk to the stranger who was so very much interested in poor little Emmy afterwards!--was that a part of the ideal, too? To be sure he had a right to inquire--he had been present at the accident, and had carried the child in his arms to the hospital--how very kindly!--and talked with what understanding! and an enthusiasm which was balm to Agnes, and partially rekindled her own. That he should ask was quite natural; that he should walk with her back to the ‘House’ had seemed very natural, too. Quite natural--he did not look as if he thought it a thing even to apologize about, but went on, with quiet simplicity, going the same way as she did. Agnes felt that, as a young lady at home, it would have appeared perhaps a little odd that a stranger should have done this; but she reflected with a thrill, half of pleasure, half of annoyance, that the uniform of a Sister had its disadvantages as well as its advantages, and that while it protected her from all rudeness, it at the same time broke the ceremonial bonds of politeness, and left her open to be addressed with frank simplicity by all classes of people. She had thought it right to let him know that she was not a Sister, but only a teacher, but it had made no difference in him. Perhaps (she explained to herself) it was the fact that there were nothing but women at the ‘House,’ which gave a certain piquancy to this conversation with a man; for the clergy, in their cassocks, were but a kind of half and half, and talked just in the same tone as Sister Mary Jane about the business of the ‘House,’ and subscriptions, and the balance-sheet, and what the Vicar thought, which was the final test of everything. Why did she like this stranger so much better than the clergy? It was because his tone and his looks and what he said were a little variety, and breathed of the outside world and the wider horizon. To be sure, it had seemed to her a little while ago that everything noblest and highest was to be had within the ‘House,’ where so many consecrated souls were giving themselves up to the service of God and the poor. But being inside had modified the views with which she had contemplated the ‘House’ from without. The world itself, the wicked and foolish world, though no less foolish and wicked, had gained a certain interest. There was variety in it: it was perhaps more amusing than the ‘House.’ These thoughts filled the mind of Agnes as the door, which was always kept locked, was closed upon her. The horizon grew narrower as she came in--that was a natural effect, for of course four straight walls must cut out a great deal of sky--but the effect seemed greater than usual that day. She felt shut in; nothing could be easier than to unlock the door, though it looked so heavy--but there was a feeling of confinement somehow in the air. Agnes had to go into the severe Gothic room, with windows high in the wall, where the children were coming in to tea, while Mr. Oswald Meredith walked away in the free air as he pleased, holding his head high. She breathed a soft sigh unawares. Where was the ideal now? There came upon her a vision of the woods and the Hill, and the winding paths that led to it, and of the four winds that were always blowing there, and the leaves that answered to every breath. What a thing it would be to thread through the woods, as she had done so often, with the wind fresh in her face, chill but vigorous, breathing life and exhilaration! How one’s ideal shifts and changes about when one is twenty! The ‘House’ looked poor indeed in the weariful afternoon about the darkening, full of the odour of weak tea.

Things grew very serious, however, next week, when, exactly as it happened before, just as she came out of the hospital from her visit to Emmy, Mr. Oswald Meredith once more appeared. He was both sorry and glad in a breath--sorry to be too late for personal inquiries, glad to have been so fortunate as just to find her--the best authority about the child.

‘I felt sure you would be going to see her,’ he said. ‘Little Emmy is a lucky little girl. May I hear how she is getting on? though I scarcely deserve it for being so late.’

He turned as he spoke to walk with her, and what could Agnes do? She could not refuse to answer him, or show any prudery. He evidently (she said to herself) thought nothing of it; why should she appear to demur to anything so simple? Give a report about a suffering child? Anyone might do that--to anyone. And she told him that Emmy was making satisfactory progress, though she had been feverish and ill. ‘I was a little frightened, though the nurse said it was nothing. She wandered, and spoke so strangely for a little while. Poor little Emmy! She had a beautiful dream, and thought herself in heaven.’

‘While you were there?’ said Oswald, with a significance in the simple question which covered her face with a sudden blush. Then she blushed deeper still to think what foolish, unpardonable vanity this was--vanity the most extraordinary, the most silly! What he meant, _of course_, was a simple question, most natural--an inquiry about a fact, not any wicked compliment. How Agnes hated and despised herself for the warm suffusion of shy pleasure which she had felt in her heart and on her face!

‘Yes,’ she said, demurely; ‘but she soon roused up and came quite to herself. She had been in great pain, and they had given her something to deaden it, that was all.’

‘I quite understand,’ he said, with again that appearance of meaning more than he said. No doubt it was merely his way; and it was embarrassing, but not so disagreeable as perhaps it ought to have been. Agnes kept her head down, and slightly turned away, so that this stranger could not see the inappropriate blushes which came and went under the bonnet of the Sisterhood. Then there was a pause; and she wondered within herself whether it would be best to turn down a cross-street and feign an errand, which would take her out of the straight road to the ‘House’--evidently that was _his_ way--and by this means she might escape his close attendance. But then, to invent a fictitious errand would be unquestionably wrong; whereas, to allow a gentleman whom she did not know to walk along the public pavement, to which everybody had an equal right, by her side, was only problematically wrong. Thus Agnes hesitated, in a flutter, between two courses. So long as they were not talking it seemed more simple that he should be walking the same way.

‘What a strange world a hospital must be,’ he said. ‘I have been watching the people coming out’ (‘Then he was not late, after all,’ Agnes remarked to herself), ‘some of them pleased, some anxious, but the most part indifferent. Indifference always carries the day. Is that why the world goes on so steadily, whatever happens? Here and there is one who shows some feeling----’

‘It is because the greater part of the patients are not very ill,’ said Agnes, responding instantly to this challenge. ‘Oh, no, people are not indifferent. I know that is what is said--that we eat our dinners in spite of everything----’

‘And don’t we? or, rather, don’t they? Ourselves are always excepted, I suppose,’ said Oswald, delighted to have set afloat one of those abstract discussions which young talkers, aware of a pleasant faculty of turning sentences, love.

‘Why should ourselves be excepted?’ said Agnes, forgetting her shyness. ‘Why should it always be supposed that we who speak are better than our neighbours? Oh, I have seen so much of that! people who know only a little, little circle setting down all the rest of the world as wicked. Why? If I am unhappy when anyone I love is in trouble, that is a reason for believing that others are so too; not that others are indifferent----’

‘Ah,’ said Oswald, ‘to judge the world by yourself would be well for the world, but disappointing for you, I fear. I am an optimist, too; but I would not go so far as that.’

She gave him a sudden look, half-inquiring, half-impatient. ‘One knows more harm of one’s self than one can know of anyone else,’ she said, with the dogmatism of youth.

He laughed. ‘I see now why you judge people more leniently than I do. What quantities of harm _I_ must know that _you_ could not believe possible! What is life like, I wonder, up on those snowy heights so near the sky?--a beautiful soft psalm, with just a half-tone wrong here and there to show that it is outside heaven----’

‘Indeed, indeed, you are mistaken! I--I am not a Sister--you mistake me,’ said Agnes, in agitation. ‘It is only the dress----’

‘You are doing just what you condemn,’ he said; ‘setting me down as a superficial person able to judge only by the outside. I have superior pretensions. Is my friend Sister Mary Jane the Superior of the convent? But I suppose you don’t call it a convent? I have only known them in France.’

‘We call it only “the House”; but I have never been in France--never out of England at all. Is it not like going into a different world?’ Agnes took up this subject eagerly, to escape the embarrassment of the other; and fortunately the House itself was already in sight.

‘The very same world, only differently dressed. I suppose there is something harmonious in a uniform. All the nuns have a kind of beauty, not the pensive kind one expects; or perhaps it is the white head-dress and the calm life that give the Sisters such pretty complexions, and such clear eyes. Sister Mary Jane, for instance--you will allow that the Sisters are calm----’

‘But not indifferent!’ said Agnes, moved to an answering smile, as they reached the safe door of the House. She threw that smile at him as a farewell defiance as she went up to the locked door which opened to her with an alarming sound of keys turning, like the door of a true convent of romance, though it was in a London street. He lingered, but she did not look back. She was very thankful to reach that safe shelter, and find herself delivered from the doubtful privilege of his attendance. And yet somehow the afternoon darkened suddenly, the sky clouded over as she went in, and her heart sank she could not tell how. Why should her heart sink? She had scarcely got indoors before she was met by Sister Mary Jane, who asked for little Emmy with business-like brevity; then, just pausing for a reply, went on to talk of work, the subject which filled all her thoughts.

‘Go, please, and take care of the middle girls at relaxation; they are in St. Cecilia; and keep your eye on Marian Smith, who has already lost five marks for untidiness; and Araminta Blunt, who is in punishment for talking. And see that relaxation is ended, and they all begin learning their lessons at 6.30. I must take the elder girls myself for an hour before evensong. Have you had tea?’ said Sister Mary Jane. ‘No? Then go quickly, please, my dear, and have some. It is not cleared away yet. The infants have been rather unruly, and I mean to speak to the Vicar about it this evening. We want someone else to help with the infants. In St. Cecilia, yes. Make haste, my dear.’

Agnes went into the large room which was called the refectory--the banqueting-hall of the establishment--where the air was heavy with tea and bread and butter, and the long tables, partially cleared, still bore traces of the repast. It was a large room; the walls enlivened with Spiritual pictures, and rich with lines of coloured bricks unplastered. The servants of the House were not of a very superior class, as may be supposed, and to see them pushing about the cups and saucers, rattling down the heavy trays full of fragments, and hustling each other about the tables, was not exhilarating. How closed in and confined everything looked, how dreary the atmosphere, the evening so much more advanced than out of doors! Agnes tried to drink with contentment her lukewarm cup of tea, and to think with satisfaction of the middle girls who awaited her in St. Cecilia. But it was astonishing how difficult she felt it to do this. The summer afternoon skies, the soft breathing of the spring air, the long distances--though they were but lines of streets--and wide atmosphere--though it was tinged with London smoke--which lay outside these walls, had suggested sentiments so different. The sentiments which they would have suggested to Sister Mary Jane would have been quite unlike those that filled the mind of Agnes. She would have said it was a sweet evening, and hurried in to work. The smell of the tea did not sicken her, nor the sight of the used cups and the stains here and there on the cloth, where an unruly child (doomed to lose her marks for neatness) had pulled over her cup. She thought that to superintend the middle girls at relaxation was as pleasant an occupation as could be found--and that a walk through the streets was a weariness to the flesh. As for Mr. Oswald Meredith, except that it was very nice of him to have given such a good subscription to the House, she would not have considered him worthy a glance--her mind was busy about other things. She had to take the girls for an hour before evensong, and afterwards had to look over their exercises and inspect the books, and hear the reports of the teachers. Araminta Blunt, who was in punishment for talking, and Marian Smith, who had lost five marks for untidiness, were of more interest to her than all the ideals in the world. She was very kind to fanciful Agnes, as well as to everybody else, but she had no time to indulge in fancies for her own part. She gave her directions to one and another as she went along the passage. There was not a minute of her valuable time which she could afford to lose. Agnes thought of all this with a sigh as she went to St. Cecilia, where the middle girls awaited her. Would she ever be as satisfied with her work, as pleased with her surroundings, as Sister Mary Jane? And was it not her duty to endeavour to make herself so? For she could not say to herself as she had done at home that this was mere carelessness and apathetic resignation to the common course of events. Here, on the contrary, it was self-sacrifice that was the rule, and consecration to the service of the helpless. The poor girl was young; perhaps that was the chief drawback in her way. The softness of the skies, the speculative delights of conversation, the look of Oswald Meredith as he spoke of ‘the snowy heights so near the sky,’ what had these mere chance circumstances, which she had encountered unawares, to do with the serious life which she had herself selected as the best? And, alas! was St. Cecilia, with the girls at relaxation, anything like those ‘snowy heights?’ The little squabbles, the little fibs, the little jealousies which the children indulged in none the less for being in the interesting position of orphans, helpless and friendless children, with no father but God, jarred upon her more and more as this poetical imagination of her life came back to her mind. Surely he must be a poet. This was her concluding thought.