CHAPTER XIII. TWO SIDES OF A SHIELD AGAIN
The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale. Midsummer Night's Dream.
The earlier proofs of the Mouse-trap were brought by Lance, who had spent more time in getting them into shape than his wife approved, and they were hailed with rapture by the young ladies on seeing themselves for the first time in print. As to Gerald, he had so long been bred-as it were-to journalism that, young as he was, he had caught the trick, and 'The Inspector's Tour' had not only been welcomed by the 'Censor', but portions had been copied into other papers, and there was a proposal of publishing it in a separate brochure. It would have made the fortune of the Mouse-trap, if it had not been so contrary to its principles, and it had really been sent to them in mischief, together with The 'Girton Girl', of which some were proud, though when she saw it in print, with a lyre and wreath on the page, sober Mysie looked grave.
'Do you think it profane to parody Jane Taylor?' said Gerald.
'No, but I thought it might hurt some people's feelings, and discourage them, if we laugh at the High School.'
'Why, Dolores goes to give lectures there,' exclaimed Valetta.
'Nobody is discouraged by a little good-humoured banter,' said Gillian. 'Nobody with any stuff in them.'
'There must be some training in chaff though,' said Gerald, 'or they don't know how to take it.'
'And in point of fact,' said Dolores, 'the upper tradesmen's daughters come off with greater honours in the High School than do the young gentlewomen.'
'Very wholesome for the young Philistines,' said Gerald. 'The daughters of self-made men may well surpass in energy those settled on their lees.'
Gerald and Dolores were standing with their backs to the wall of Anscombe Church, which Jasper Merrifield and Mysie were zealously photographing, the others helping-or hindering.
'I thought upper tradesfolk were the essence of Philistines,' returned Dolores.
'The elder generation-especially if he is the son of the energetic man. The younger are more open to ideas.'
'The stolid Conservative is the one who has grown up while his father was making his fortune, the third generation used to be the gentleman, now he is the man who is tired of it.'
'Tired of it, aye!' with a sigh.
'Why you are a man with a pedigree!' she returned.
'Pedigrees don't hinder-what shall I call it?-the sense of being fettered.'
'One lives in fetters,' she exclaimed. 'And the better one likes one's home, the harder it is to shake them off.'
He turned and looked full at her, then exclaimed, 'Exactly,' and paused, adding, 'I wonder what you want. Has it a form?'
'Oh yes, I mean to give lectures. I should like to see the world, and study physical science in every place, then tell the next about it. I read all I can, and I think I shall get consent to give some elementary lectures at the High School, though Uncle Jasper does not half like it, but I must get some more training to do the thing rightly. I thought of University College. Could you get me any information about it?'
'Easily; but you'll have to conquer the horror of the elders.'
'I know. They think one must learn atheism and all sorts of things there.'
'You might go in for physical science at Oxford or Cambridge.'
'I expect that is all my father would allow. In spite of the colonies, he has all the old notions about women, and would do nothing Aunt Lily really protested against.'
'You are lucky to have a definite plan and notion to work for. Now fate was so unkind as to make me a country squire, and not only that, but one bound down, like Gulliver among the Liliputians, with all manner of cords by all the dear good excellent folks, who look on that old mediaeval den with a kind of fetish-worship, sprung of their having been kept out of it so long, and it would be an utter smash of all their hearts if I uttered a profane word against it. I would as soon be an ancient Egyptian drowning a cat as move a stone of it. It is a lovely sort of ancient Pompeii, good to look at now and then, but not to be bound down to.'
'Like Beechcroft Court, a fossil. It is very well there are such places.'
'Yes, but not to be the hope of them. It is my luck. If my eldest uncle, who had toiled in a bookseller's shop all his youth and reigned like a little king, had not gone and got killed in a boating accident, there he would be the ruling Sir Roger de Coverley of the county, a pillar of Church and State, and I should be a free man.'
'Won't they let you go about, and see everything?'
'Oh yes, I am welcome to do a little globe-trotting. They are no fools; if they were I should not care half so much; but wherever I went, there would be a series of jerks from my string, and not having an integument of rhinoceros hide, I could not disregard them without a sore more raw than I care to carry about. After all, it is only a globe, and one gets back to the same place again.'
'Men have so many openings.'
'I'm not rich enough for Parliament, and if I were, maybe it would be worse for their hearts,' he said, with a sigh.
'There's journalism, a great power.'
'Yes, but to put my name to all I could-and long to say-would be an equal horror to the dear folks.'
'Yet you are helping on this concern.'
'True, but partly pour passer le temps, partly because I really want to hear 'The Outlaws Isle' performed, and all under protest that the windmill will soon be swept away by the stream.'
'Indeed, yes,' cried Dolores. 'They hope to regulate the stream. They might as well hope to regulate Mississippi.'
'Well-chosen simile! The current is slow and sluggish, but irresistible.'
'Better than stagnating or sticking fast in the mud.'
'Though the mud may be full of fair blossoms and sweet survivals,' said Gerald sadly.
'Oh yes, people in the old grooves are delightful,' said Dolores, 'but one can't live, like them, with a heart in G. F. S., like my Aunt Jane, really the cleverest of any of us! Or like Mysie, not stupid, but wrapped up in her classes, just scratching the surface. Now, if I went in for good works I would go to the bottom-down to the slums.'
'Slums are one's chief interest,' said Gerald; 'but no doubt it will soon be the same story over and over, and only make one wish-'
'What?'
'That there could be a revolution before I am of age.'
'What's that?' cried Primrose, coming up as he spoke. 'A revolution?'
'Yes, guillotines and all, to cut off your head in Rotherwood Park,' said Gerald lightly.
'Oh! you don't really mean it.'
'Not that sort,' said Dolores. 'Only the coming of the coquecigrues.'
'They are in 'The Water Babies',' said Primrose, mystified.
Each of those two liked to talk to the other as a sort of fellow- captive, solacing themselves with discussions over the 'Censor' and its fellows. Love is not often the first thought, even where it lurks in modern intellectual intercourse between man and maid; and though Kitty Varley might giggle, the others thought the idea only worthy of her. Aunt Jane, however, smelt out the notion, and could not but communicate it to her sister, though adding-
'I don't believe in it: Dolores is in love with Physiology, and the boy with what Jasper calls Socialist maggots, but not with each other, unless they work round in some queer fashion.'
However, Lady Merrifield, feeling herself accountable for Dolores, was anxious to gather ideas about Gerald from his aunt, with whom she was becoming more and more intimate. She was more than twenty years the senior, and the thread of connection was very slender, but they suited one another so well that they had become Lilias and Geraldine to one another. Lady Merrifield had preserved her youthfulness chiefly from having had a happy home, unbroken by family sorrows or carking cares, and with a husband who had always taken his full share of responsibility.
'Your nephew's production has made a stir,' said she, when they found themselves alone together.
