“How much?”
“Three-halfpence.”
“Now, mind I give you twopence for yourself—mind I give it you. I do not approve of buying and selling on Sunday. We will settle about the other ha’porth another time.”
“All right, ma’am; if you like it that way, it’s no odds to me;” and Mrs. Coleman went her way upstairs really believing that she had prevented the commission of a crime.
Let those of us cast the stone who can take oath that in their own morality there is no casuistry. Probably ours is worse than hers, because hers was traditional and ours is self-manufactured.
Everything being at last in order, Mrs. Coleman, looking rather warm, but still very neat and very charming, sat at the head of the table, with her back to the fireplace; the Major was on her right, Jean on her left, Pauline next to him, and opposite to her Zachariah. Zachariah and his wife believed in asking a blessing on their food; but, curiously enough, in 1814, even amongst the strictest sort, it had come to be the custom not to ask it at breakfast or tea, but only at dinner; although breakfast and tea in those days certainly needed a blessing as much as dinner, for they were substantial meals. An exception was made in favour of public tea-meetings. At a public tea-meeting a blessing was always asked and a hymn was always sung.
For some time nothing remarkable was said. The weather was very hot, and Mrs. Coleman complained. It had been necessary to keep up a fire for the sake of the kettle. The Major promptly responded to her confession of faintness by opening the window wider, by getting a shawl to put over the back of her chair; and these little attentions she rewarded by smiles and particular watchfulness over his plate and cup. At last he and Jean fell to talking about the jubilee which was to take place on the first of the next month to celebrate the centenary of the “accession of the illustrious family of Brunswick to the throne”—so ran the public notice. There was to be a grand display in the parks, a sham naval action on the Serpentine, and a balloon ascent.
“Are you going, Caillaud?” said the Major. “It will be a holiday.”
“We,” cried Pauline—“we! I should think not. We go to rejoice over your House of Brunswick; and it is to be the anniversary of your battle of the Nile too! We go! No, no.”
“What’s your objection to the House of Brunswick? And as for the battle of the Nile, you are no friend to Napoleon.” So replied the Major, who always took a pleasure in exciting Pauline.
“The House of Brunswick! Why should we thank God for them; thank God for the stupidest race that ever sat upon a throne; thank God for stupidity—and in a king, Major? God, the Maker of the sun and stars—to call upon the nation to bless Him for your Prince Regent. As for the Nile, I am, as you say, no friend to Napoleon, but I am French. It is horrible to me to think—I saw him the other day—that your Brunswick Prince is in London and Napoleon is in Elba.”
“God, after all,” said the Major, laughing, “is not so hostile to stupidity, then, as you suppose.”
“Ah! don’t plague me, Major; that’s what you are always trying to do. I’m not going to thank the Supreme for the Brunswicks. I don’t believe He wanted them here.”
Pauline’s religion was full of the most lamentable inconsistencies, which the Major was very fond of exposing, but without much effect, and her faith was restored after every assault with wonderful celerity. By way of excuse for her we may be permitted to say that a perfectly consistent, unassailable creed, in which conclusion follows from premise in unimpeachable order, is impossible. We cannot construct such a creed about any man or woman we know, and least of all about the universe. We acknowledge opposites which we have no power to bring together; and Pauline, although she knew nothing of philosophy, may not have been completely wrong with her Supreme who hated the Brunswicks and nevertheless sanctioned Carlton House.
Pauline surprised Mrs. Zachariah considerably. A woman, and more particularly a young woman, even supposing her to be quite orthodox, who behaved in that style amongst the members of Pike Street, would have been like a wild seagull in a farmyard of peaceful, clucking, brown-speckled fowls. All the chapel maidens and matrons, of course, were serious; but their seriousness was decent and in order. Mrs. Coleman was therefore scandalised, nervous, and dumb. Jean, as his manner was when his daughter expressed herself strongly, was also silent. His love for her was a consuming, hungry fire. It utterly extinguished all trace, not merely of selfishness, but of self, in him, and he was perfectly content, when Pauline spoke well, to remain quiet, and not allow a word of his to disturb the effect which he thought she ought to produce.
The Major, as a man of the world, thought the conversation was becoming a little too metaphysical, and asked Mrs. Coleman gaily if she would like to see the fête.
“Really, I hardly know what to say. I suppose”—and this was said with a peculiar acidity—“there is nothing wrong in it? Zachariah, my dear, would you like to go?”
Zachariah did not reply. His thoughts were elsewhere. But at last the spirit moved in him:
“Miss Pauline, your Supreme Being won’t help you very far. There is no light save in God’s Holy Word. God hath concluded them all in unbelief that He might have mercy upon all. As
