Chapter V: Two Friends

SCENE--OVER THE FIRE IN MRS. KAYE'S BOARDING-HOUSE. CECILIA MOLDWARP AND BETTY THURSTON.

C. So I settled the matter at once.

B. Quite right, too, Cis.

C. The dear woman was torn every way. Grandpapa and Aunt Phrasie wanted her to pin me down into the native stodge; and Lucius, like a true man, went in for subjection: so there was nothing for it but to put my foot down. And though little mother might moan a little to me, I knew she would stand up stoutly for me to all the rest, and vindicate my liberty.

B. To keep you down there. Such a place is very well to breathe in occasionally, like a whale; but as to living in them--

C. Just hear how they spend the day. First, 7.30, prayers in church. The dear old man has hammered on at them these forty years, with a congregation averaging 4 to 2.5.

B. You are surely not expected to attend at that primitive Christian hour! Cruelty to animals!

C. If I don't, the absence of such an important unit hurts folks' feelings, and I am driven to the fabrication of excuses. After breakfast, whatever is available trots off to din the Catechism and Genesis into the school-children's heads--the only things my respected forefather cares about teaching them. Of course back again to the children's lessons.

B. What children?

C. Didn't I explain? Three Indian orphans of my uncle's, turned upon my grandfather--jolly little kids enough, as long as one hasn't to teach them.

B. Are governesses unknown in those parts?

C. Too costly; and besides, my mother was designed by nature for a nursery-governess. She has taught the two elder ones to be wonderfully good when she is called off. 'The butcher, ma'am'; or, 'Mrs. Tyler wants to speak to you, ma'am'; or, 'Jane Cox is come for a hospital paper, ma'am.' Then early dinner, of all things detestable, succeeded by school needlework, mothers' meeting, and children's walk, combined with district visiting, or reading to old women. Church again, high tea, and evenings again pleasingly varied by choir practices, night schools, or silence, while grandpapa concocts his sermon.

B. Is this the easy life to which Mrs. Moldwarp has retired?

C. It is her native element. People of her generation think it their vocation to be ladies-of-all-work to the parish of Stickinthemud cum-Humdrum.

B. All-work indeed!

C. I did not include Sundays, which are one rush of meals, schools, and services, including harmonium.

B. No society or rational conversation, of course?

C. Adjacent clergy and clergy woman rather less capable of aught but shop than the natives themselves! You see, even if I did offer myself as a victim, I couldn't do the thing! Fancy my going on about the six Mosaic days, and Jonah's whale, and Jael's nail, and doing their duty in that state of life where it _HAS_ pleased Heaven to place them.

B. Impossible, my dear! Those things can't be taught--if they are to be taught--except by those who accept them as entirely as ever; and it is absurd to think of keeping you where you would be totally devoid of all intellectual food!

SCENE.--ART STUDENT AND DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR A YEAR LATER. SOIREE IN A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM. PROFESSOR DUNLOP AND CECILIA.

PROF. D. Miss Moldwarp? Is your mother here?

C. No; she is not in town.

PROF. D. Not living there?

C. She lives with my grandfather at Darkglade.

PROF. D. Indeed! I hope Mr. and Mrs. Aveland are well?

C. Thank you, _HE_ is well; but my grandmother is dead.

PROF. D. Oh, I am sorry! I had not heard of his loss. How long ago did it happen?

C. Last January twelvemonth. My aunt is married, and my mother has taken her place at home.

PROF. D. Then you are here on a visit. Where are you staying?

C. No, I live here. I am studying in the Slade schools.

PROF. D. This must have greatly changed my dear old friend's life!

C. I did not know that you were acquainted with my grandfather.

PROF. D. I was one of his pupils. I may say that I owe everything to him. It is long since I have been at Darkglade, but it always seemed to me an ideal place.

C. Rather out of the world.

PROF. D. Of one sort of world perhaps; but what a beautiful combination is to be seen there of the highest powers with the lowliest work! So entirely has he dedicated himself that he really feels the guidance of a ploughman's soul a higher task than the grandest achievement in science or literature. By the bye, I hope he will take up his pen again. It is really wanted. Will you give him a message from me?

C. How strange! I never knew that he was an author.

PROF. D. Ah! you are a young thing, and these are abstruse subjects.

C. Oh! the Fathers and Ritual, I suppose?

PROF. D. No doubt he is a great authority there, as a man of his ability must be; but I was thinking of a course of scientific papers he put forth ten years ago, taking up the arguments against materialism as no one could do who is not as thoroughly at home as he is in the latest discoveries and hypotheses. He ought to answer that paper in the CRITICAL WORLD.

C. I was so much interested in that paper.

PROF. D. It has just the speciousness that runs away with young people. I should like to talk it over with him. Do you think I should be in the way if I ran down?

C. I should think a visit from you would be an immense pleasure to him; and I am sure it would be good for the place to be stirred up.

PROF. D. You have not learnt to prize that atmosphere in which things always seem to assume their true proportion, and to prompt the cry of St. Bernard's brother--'All earth for me, all heaven for you.'

C. That was surely an outcome of the time when people used to sacrifice certainties to uncertainties, and spoil life for the sake of they knew not what.

PROF. D. For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.

STRANGER. Mr. Dunlop! This is an unexpected pleasure!

C. (ALONE). Well, wonders will never cease. The great Professor Dunlop talking to me quite preachy and goody; and of all people in the world, the old man at Darkglade turning out to be a great physiologist!