“A good many things go against your theory. They say that there are no such wild speculators as women. It seems easy to them that a sort of miracle should happen; that something should come out of nothing.”
“They have not had my experience,” said Catherine. “But Edward and Harry are as steady as two churches; that is,” she added with a complacency which they all recollected afterwards, “Edward is the head; the other fortunately has the good sense not to attempt to think for himself.”
“Hester would have done that for him,” said Mrs. Morgan, in an undertone; but Catherine caught it and went on with heightened colour, for the idea that Hester—that girl!—might have had something to say in the government of the bank, struck her as if someone had given her a blow.
“Edward is the heart and soul of everything,” she said. “How fortunate it was for me that my choice fell upon that boy. I should say he had an old head on young shoulders, but that I don’t like the conjunction. He is young enough. He has always been accustomed to family life, and loves his home.”
“It is, no doubt,” said Captain Morgan, kindly, “that he has had the advantage of your own experience and teaching more than the other, Catherine.”
“That would be a delightful thought for me,” Miss Vernon said with a suffusion of pleasure in her eyes. “Perhaps there is some truth in it. I have done my best to share my lights, such as they are, with him; but he goes beyond me. And to think that I hesitated between Edward and Harry! I hope I am grateful to Providence that turned me to the best. The other family are following out their lot quite characteristically. Ellen’s husband has a good deal of worldly sense, which is wanting to that bit of a butterfly. He is trying hard to get her to make up to me. She has come to see me twice, full of pretty speeches about Algy’s great respect for me. Human nature,” said Catherine with a laugh, “is as good, nay, far better, than a play. How cunning it thinks it is, but in reality how very easy to see through.”
Here old Mrs. Morgan began to shake her head again, smiling always, but with an indulgent, gentle contradictoriness which was more near making Miss Vernon angry than anything she had encountered in this house before.
“What does she sit there for, like a Chinese idol?” said the captain. “She has a wonderful opinion of herself, that old woman. Human nature may be easy to see through, but it is very hard to understand, Catherine. What is that the Bible says about ‘deceitful above all things’? When you try to get hold of yourself, did you ever find a more slippery customer? There’s a kind of amusement in it, when you are up to all your own dodges.”
“Rowley, my dear!” said the old lady, surprised.
“It is true I am too old for slang: but one picks it up, and sometimes it is happy enough. I say when you are up to your own dodges; but that is difficult, and takes a great deal of time. To find yourself trotting forth the same old pretences that you did at twenty, attempting to throw the same sort of dust in your own eyes, is wonderful. There is a sort of artlessness in the artifice that is amusing, as you say; but it is only amusing when you are strong enough to get the upper hand.”
“When which of you gets the upper hand? for there seem to be two of you,” said Catherine, not so much amused in her own person as she made a pretence of being—for this was certainly not her view.
“To be sure,” said the old captain, “there are two of you, we all know that; and in most cases one of you a very silly fellow, taken in on every hand, while the other man sniggers in his sleeve. Of course I am speaking from my own side—ladies may be different from anything I know. But after all,” he went on, “I don’t think so; for I’ve been a woman myself, so to speak, through her, for sixty years—that is a long spell. I don’t see much difference, though in some things she has got to the last word sooner than I.”
“I think we mean different things,” said Catherine, rising; “that was not the view I was taking. Yours is better in the moral aspect, for I suppose it is more profitable to judge ourselves than others; but one cannot always be studying one’s self.”
There was a half-apology in her tone, and at the same time a half-impatience. She did not desire to be turned from the comedy which she had in her way enjoyed for years, seeing through, as she said, all the little world of dependents that hung about her, drawing out their weaknesses, perceiving the bitter grudge that lay under their exterior of smiles, and the thousand ways in which they made up to themselves for the humiliation of being in her debt—in order to turn to what might prove the less amusing contemplation of her own weaknesses, or recognise the element of evil in
