Part 56 (1/2)

”Yes, he _did_ say it. That handsome brother of his, to whom I lost my heart two weeks ago, does really--well, to put it plainly, knock animals on the head, you know, and sell them in chops, and--what do you call it, mamma?--the sirloin and brisket. 'How do you do, Mr. Trenholme? I want some meat for dinner--chops, I think.' Oh, how I should love to go and buy chops!”

Sophia was kneeling over a pile of work, folding it. She asked the boisterous girl for the cloth she had been sewing, and her voice was hard and impatient, as if she wished the talk at an end.

Mrs. Bennett arose and wrapped her cape about her thin shoulders, not without some air of majesty. There was a bitter angry expression upon her delicate face.

”All that I wish to say in this matter is, that _I_ never knew this before; others may have been in possession of these facts, but I was not.”

”If you had been, of course you would have honoured him the more for triumphing over difficulties,” answered the elder Miss Brown, with smooth sarcasm.

”Yes, certainly _that_, of course; but I should have thought him very unsuitably placed as an instructor of youth and--”

The right adjustment of the cape seemed to interrupt the speech, but others mentally supplied the ending with reference to Miss Bennett.

”Miss Rexford, being one of Princ.i.p.al Trenholme's oldest friends, is not taken by surprise.” Some one said this; Sophia hardly knew who it was.

She knelt upright by the packing basket and threw back her head.

”I met him often at my own uncle's house. My uncle knew him _thoroughly_, and liked him well.”

Most of the women there were sensibly commenting on the amount of work done, and allotting shares for the ensuing week. It would take a week at least to rouse them to the state of interest at which others had already arrived.

Her cape adjusted, Mrs. Bennett found something else to say. ”Of course, personally, it makes no difference to me, for I have always felt there was _something_ about Princ.i.p.al Trenholme--that is, that he was not--It is a little hard to express; one feels, rather than speaks, these things.”

It was a lie, but what was remarkable about it was that its author did not know it for one. In the last half-hour she had convinced herself that she had always suffered in Trenholme's presence from his lack of refinement, and there was little hope that an imagination that could make such strides would not soon discover in him positive coa.r.s.eness.

As the party dispersed she was able to speak aside to Sophia.

”I see how you look upon it,” she said. ”There is no difference between one trade and another, or between a man who deals in cargoes of cattle and one who sells meat in a shop.”--She was weakly excited; her voice trembled. ”Looking down from a higher cla.s.s, we must see that, although all trades are in a sense praiseworthy, one is as bad as another.”

”They seem to me very much on a level,” said Sophia. There was still a hard ring in her voice. She looked straight before her.

”Of course in this country”--Mrs. Bennett murmured something half-audible about the Browns. ”One cannot afford to be too particular whom one meets, but I certainly should have thought that in our pulpits--in our schools--”

She did not finish. Her thin mouth was settling into curves that bespoke that relentless cruelty which in the minds of certain people, is synonymous with justice.

It was a rickety, weather-stained chaise in which Mrs. Bennett and her daughter were to drive home. As Miss Bennett untied the horse herself, there was a bright red spot on either of her cheeks. She had made no remark on the subject on which her mother was talking, nor did she speak now. She was in love with Trenholme, that is, as much in love as a practical woman can be with a man from whom she has little hope of a return. She was not as pretty as many girls are, nor had she the advantages of dress and leisure by which to make herself attractive. She had hoped little, but in an honest, humble-minded, quiet way she had preferred this man to any other. Now, although she was as different from her mother as nature could make her, precepts with which her mind had been plied from infancy had formed her thought. She was incapable of self-deception, she knew that he had been her ideal man; but she was also incapable of seeing him in the same light now as heretofore.

Miss Bennett held the reins tight and gave her horse smart strokes of the whip. The spiritless animal took such driving pa.s.sively, as it jogged down the quiet road by the enclosure of the New College.

Unconscious that her words were inconsistent with what she had so lately said, Mrs. Bennett complained again. ”My nerves have received quite a shock; I am all in a tremble.” It was true; she was even wiping away genuine tears. ”Oh, my dear, it's a terribly low occupation. Oh, my dear, the things I have heard they do--the atrocities they commit!”

”I daresay what you heard was true,” retorted Miss Bennett, ”but it does not follow that they are all alike.” Without perceiving clearly the extent of the fallacy, she felt called upon to oppose the generalisations of a superficial mind.

So they pa.s.sed out of sight of Trenholme's house. Inside he sat at his desk, plunged again in the work of writing business letters. We seldom realise in what way we give out the force that is within us, or in what proportion it flows into this act or that. Trenholme was under the impression that what he had done that afternoon had been done without effort? The effort, as he realised it, had come days and weeks before.

Yet, as he worked through the hours that were left of that day's light, he felt a weariness of body and mind that was almost equivalent to a desire for death.

CHAPTER XVII.