Chapter V: “O fancies that might be! Oh, facts that are!”

ROBERT BROWNING.

Mrs. Fordington was forced to take her girls’ Bible Class soon after dinner, leaving her niece still playing to the rest. Daphne played well, she played from her emotions. So music took it out of her—as indeed it does, from all those who have it _in_ them, and she soon became exhausted.

Her uncle and Mr. Ogden were absorbed in “flies.” She turned to the curate, “I wonder why you are here?” she said. “Tell me about it.”

The curate had decided at dinner that she was flippant, and not to be trusted; he was therefore surprised to find himself telling her, what he had told to no one—of a slight weakness in his lungs, and the necessity of good air for a year or two. He told her of his passionate love of humanity, with the ambition of a home somewhere in London, and the chance of a life-work among the hurried workers in strange places, so near, some of them, and yet so little understood by the world from which she came.

“Ah!” he said, “the monotony! think of it! One little piece of shoe perhaps—made and remade, minute after minute, through hours, and days, and years, through lives and generations! Lives, spent too, without privacy, without horizon, with neither light nor beauty, and the break in them! The terrible holidays! when their jaded spirits find in the re-action of gross self-indulgence the only joy that it is in their power to attain!

“They talk of ‘reversion to type,’ what kind of a type are we Englishmen making to send down its curse to posterity, to guard and keep the interests of our Empire? We do not go back to old types in our retrogression, for they were at least free from the complications of modern life. We form new and hideous possibilities; brains that have become machines, and machines in charge of depraved human passions.

“Not even a limited company can get rid of human nature—it can only poison it.

“Think of the bodies and souls of London districts! Have you watched them pour out of factories, or seen them stagger into the only free Homes open to them, at the street corner? We talk about the Church, and we have services on Sunday, and they don’t know—and could not practice if they did—the barest decencies of life.”

Daphne listened intently. She was quite used to people telling her what they felt. They generally did, for she was by nature sympathetic. That is to say, she voluntarily saw things from other people’s points of view, a faculty which has its dangers. She saw now, the grey multitude the curate pictured, and her heart met his in a passionate enthusiasm of pity. She hated the dress she was wearing. It had cost sixteen pounds. One might, she thought, have given it to them somehow, but of course she couldn’t stop wearing the dress.

“Oh!” she said, looking into the curate’s eyes, “how terribly selfish we are! We are so willing to give up other people’s things! I remember hearing an address in town on the East London Fund. The girl I went with cried terribly, and I made resolutions. Then we went to Fuller’s and bought some lovely chocolates and had tea. Wasn’t it horrible?”

The curate shrugged his shoulders.

“Your uncle’s is a very easy parish,” he said; “sometimes it makes me feel as if I were buying chocolates.”

“Yes,” she said, “but in two years——”

His eyes grew grave and happy. “If I am permitted in two years,” he said, “I shall think myself a most fortunate man.”

She felt irritated. He was throwing himself away. “My uncle is a very good man,” she said, “yet _he_ does not consider it necessary to work in the slums.”

“Mr. Fordington is married,” said the curate slowly. “That—is very different.”

Suddenly she knew that he was thinking of some girl, and that it was hard. “I understand,” she said gently; “so you won’t marry?”

“One must give up one’s life to one’s work,” he said.

“And one’s love?” said Daphne.

The curate glanced at her hurriedly. Then he looked away. The Vicar was happily examining his fishing gear with Mr. Ogden. Below them, in the parish room, the monotonous unwavering tones of Mrs. Fordington’s Bible-Class voice, were quite audible. “That belongs to one’s work, too,” he said finally.

“Ah! you poor, dear young man!” thought Daphne to herself, “are you so very sure?”

After they had gone, she asked her uncle, a little suddenly, if there were any nice girls in the parish.

“The Overham young ladies,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “play hockey very well in the winter, and they have tennis in the summer. I imagine your aunt would tell you, that they all teach in Sunday school, but I am not quite sure!”

“Good Heavens!” cried Daphne, “don’t they read, think, or work, have they no interests, no resources, no characters?”

“My dear!” said her uncle smiling outright now, “you are very impulsive. They are good, sensible, English girls. I daresay you would find them a little dull, a trifle local, too, perhaps. You see there is little excitement in a place like this, and a great paucity of young men.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” flashed Daphne angrily.

Her uncle laughed aloud. “Oh, yes, my dear! it has!” he said. “It has everything in the world to do with it!”

“Well,” said Daphne smiling unwillingly, “am I supposed to play tennis too?”

“You may play any game you like,” said her uncle with quick gravity, “Daphne dear—if you play fair.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Daphne blushing, but she knew perfectly well; and, as she kissed him good-night, she thought almost as much of his penetration as of his charity.

Mrs. Fordington found her husband alone. “Wilfred,” she said, “don’t tell me that you let her flirt with that young Mitchell?”

“My dear Emma,” said her husband, “Mitchell doesn’t know how to flirt, and Daphne has gone to bed.”

“I knew we should have trouble,” sighed his wife, “the moment I saw that low-necked dress.”

“My dear! you wear them yourself,” her husband pleaded.

“Yes, but they do not look the same on me,” she replied; “besides, she has three enormous trunks.” The Vicar was silent. His silences often baffled his wife, for she felt as if they did not come from her having convinced him—she did not dream they came from his being unable to talk down to her level. “I can’t understand you, Wilfred,” she said, “you always seem to evade my arguments.”

“My dear Emma,” he said, “they are unanswerable, and we are very late. I hope the girls’ class after your full afternoon did not tire you.”

“Well!” said Mrs. Fordington, not yet fully mollified, “whether I am tired or not, I hope I always do my duty.”

“I am quite sure you do,” said her husband; “I will just see if Dora is asleep before I go to bed.”

“You simply spoil that child, Wilfred,” said his wife, and she did not offer to go with him.