Part 57 (1/2)
”Are you sure of that, papa,--that I would not have received him?” It was exactly what she had been saying to herself for days; but, now that another said it, the sentiment involved seemed weak.
”I am aware”--his tone was resigned--”that your opinions are always more radical than I can approve. The extreme always seems to have, shall I say, some attraction for you; but still, my daughter, I believe you are not lacking in proper pride.”
”I am too proud to think that for a good many days I have liked a man who was not fit for my liking. I prefer to believe that he is fit until I can have more conclusive proof to the contrary.”
Captain Rexford walked some minutes in sterner silence. He had long ceased to regard Sophia as under his authority.
”Still I hope, my dear, the next time you see this young man--rudeness, of course, being impossible to you, and unnecessary--still I hope you will allow your manner to indicate that a certain distance must be preserved.”
Her own sense of expediency had been urging this course upon her, but she had not been able to bring her mind to it.
”I should show myself his inferior if I could deliberately hurt him,”
she cried, with feeling. The trouble of a long debate she had been having with herself, her uncertainty what to feel or think, gave more emotion to her voice than she supposed.
”My dear daughter!” cried the father, with evident agitation.
Sophia instantly knew on what suspicion this sudden sympathy was bestowed. She was too indignant to deny the charge.
”Well, papa?”
”He is, no doubt, a worthy man; but”--he got no help from his daughter; she was walking beside him with imperious mien--”in short, my dear, I hope--indeed, if I could think that, under false pretences, he could have won--”
”He is the last man to seek to win anything under a false pretence.” The coldness of her manner but thinly veiled her vehemence; but even in that vehemence she perceived that what proofs of her a.s.sertion she could bring would savour of too particular a recollection. She let it stand unproved.
”My dear child!” he cried, in affectionate distress, ”I know that you will not forget that rank, birth--” He looked at her, and, seeing that she appeared intractable, exclaimed further, ”It's no new thing that ladies should, in a fit of madness, demean themselves--young ladies frequently marry grooms; but, believe me, my dear Sophia”--earnestly--”no happiness ever came of such a thing--only misery, and vice, and squalor.”
But here she laughed with irresistible mirth. ”Young women who elope with grooms are not likely to have much basis of happiness in themselves. And you think me capable of fancying love for a man without education or refinement, a man with whom I could have nothing in common that would last beyond a day! What have I ever done, papa, that you should bring such, an accusation?”
”I certainly beg your pardon, my daughter, if I have maligned you.”
”You _have_ maligned me; there is no 'if' about it.”
”My dear, I certainly apologise. I thought, from the way in which you spoke--”
”You thought I was expressing too warm a regard for Mr. Alec Trenholme; but that has nothing whatever to do with what you have just been talking about; for, if he were a groom, if he chose to sweep the streets, he would be as far removed from the kind of man you have just had in your mind as you and I are; and, if he were not I could take no interest in him.”
The gloom on Captain Rexford's brow, which had been dispelled by her laughter, gathered again.
”Separate the character of the man from his occupation,” she cried.
”Grant that he is what we would all like in a friend. Separate him, too, from any idea that I would marry him, for I was not thinking of such a thing. Is there not enough left to distress me? Do you think I underrate the evil of the occupation, even though I believe it has not tainted him? Having owned him as a friend, isn't it difficult to know what degree of friends.h.i.+p I can continue to own for him?”
”My dear, I think you hardly realise how unwise it is to think of friends.h.i.+p between yourself and any such man; recognition of worth there may be, but nothing more.”
”Oh, papa!”--impatiently--”think of it as you will, but listen to what I have to say; for I am in trouble. You were sorry for me just now when you imagined I was in love; try and understand what I say now, for I am in distress. I cannot see through this question--what is the right and what is the wrong.”
”I do not think I understand you my dear,” he said.
She had stopped, and leaned back on the roadside fence. He stood before her. All around them the yellow golden-rod and mullein were waving in the wind, and lithe young trees bent with their coloured leaves. Captain Rexford looked at his daughter, and wondered, in his slow way, that she was not content to be as fair and stately as the flowers without perplexing herself thus.
”Papa, pray listen. You know that night when I went to seek Winifred--you do not know, because I have not told you--but just before the old man died. When he stood there, looking up and praying that our Saviour would come again, there was not one of us who was not carried away with the thought of that coming--the thought that when it comes all time will be _present,_ not _past;_ and, papa, the clouds parted just a little, and we saw through, beyond all the damp, dark gloom of the place we were in, into a place of such perfect clearness and beauty beyond--I can't explain it, but it seemed like an emblem of the difference that would be between our muddy ways of thinking of things and the way that we should think if we lived always for the sake of the time when He will come--and it is very easy to talk of that difference in a large general way, and it does no good--but to bring each particular thing to that test is practical. Here, for instance, you and I ought to reconsider our beliefs and prejudices as they regard this man we are talking about, and find out what part of them, in G.o.d's sight, is pure and strong and to be maintained, and what part is unworthy and to be cast away. Is it easy, even in such a small matter as this?”