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HONOR.
Having now gained a partial insight into Letty's new position,
Mary pondered what she could do to make life more of life to her.
Not many knew better than she that the only true way to help a
human heart is to lift it up; but she knew also that every kind
of loving aid tends more or less to that uplifting; and that, if
we can not do the great thing, we must be ready to do the small:
if we do not help in little things, how shall we be judged fit to
help in greater? We must help where we can, that we may help
where we can not. The first and the only thing she could for a
time think of, was, to secure for Letty, if possible, a share in
her husband's pleasures.
Quietly, yet swiftly, a certain peaceful familiarity had
established itself between Hesper and Mary, to which the perfect
balance of the latter and her sense of the only true foundation
of her position contributed far more than the undefined
partiality of the former. The possibility of such a conversation
as I am now going to set down was one of the results.
"Do you like Mr. Helmer, ma'am?" asked Mary one morning, as she
was brushing her hair.
"Very well. How do you know anything of him?"
"Not many people within ten miles of Testbridge do not know Mr.
Helmer," answered Mary.
"Yes, yes, I remember," said Hesper. "He used to ride about on a
long-legged horse, and talked to anybody that would listen to
him. But there was always something pleasing about him, and he is
much improved. Do you know, he is considered really very clever?"
"I am not surprised," rejoined Mary. "He used to be rather
foolish, and that is a sign of cleverness--at least, many clever
people are foolish, I think."
"You can't have had much opportunity for making the observation,
Mary!"
"Clever people think as much of themselves in the country as they
do in London, and that is what makes them foolish," returned
Mary. "But I used to think Mr. Helmer had very good points, and
was worth doing something for--if one only knew what."
"He does not seem to want anything done for him," said Hesper.
"I know one thing you could do for him, and it would be no
trouble," said Mary.
"I will do anything for anybody that is no trouble," answered
Hesper. "I should like to know something that is no trouble."
"It is only, the next time you ask him, to ask his wife," said
Mary.
"He is married, then?" returned Hesper with indifference. "Is the
woman presentable? Some shopkeeper's daughter, I suppose!"
Mary laughed. "You don't imagine the son of a lawyer would be
likely to marry a shopkeeper's daughter!" she said.
"Why not?" returned Hesper, with a look of non-intelligence.
"Because a professional man is so far above a tradesman."
"Oh!" said Hesper. "--But he should have told me if he wanted to
bring his wife with him. I don't care who she is, so long as she
dresses decently and holds her tongue. What are you laughing at,
Mary?"
Hesper called it laughing, but Mary was only smiling.
"I can't help being amused," answered Mary, "that you should
think it such an out-of-the-way thing to be a shopkeeper's
daughter, and here am I all the time, feeling quite comfortable,
and proud of the shopkeeper whose daughter I am."
"Oh! I beg your pardon," exclaimed Hesper, growing hot for, I
almost believe, the first time in her life, and therein, I fear,
showing a drop of bad blood from somewhere, probably her father's
side of the creation; for not even the sense of having hurt the
feelings of an inferior can make the thoroughbred woman of the
world aware of the least discomfort; and here was Hesper, not
only feeling like a woman of God's making, but actually showing
it!--"How cruel of me!" she went on. "But, you see, I never think
of you--when I am talking to you--as--as one of that class!"
Mary laughed outright this time: she was amused, and thought it
better to show it, for that would show also she was not hurt.
Hesper, however, put it down to insensibility.
"Surely, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, "you can not think the
class to which I belong in itself so objectionable that it is
rude to refer to it in my hearing!"
"I am very sorry," repeated Hesper, but in a tone of some
offense: it was one thing to confess a fault; another to be
regarded as actually guilty of the fault. "Nothing was further
from my intention than to offend you. I have not a doubt that
shopkeepers are a most respectable class in their way--"
"Excuse me, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary again, "but you quite
mistake me. I am not in the least offended. I don't care what you
think of the class. There are a great many shopkeepers who are
anything but respectable--as bad, indeed, as any of the
nobility."
"I was not thinking of morals," answered Hesper. "In that, I dare
say, all classes are pretty much alike. But, of course, there are
differences."
"Perhaps one of them is, that, in our class, we make
respectability more a question of the individual than you do in
yours."
"That may be very true," returned Hesper. "So long as a man
behaves himself, we ask no questions."
"Will you let me tell you how the thing looks to me?" said Mary.
"Certainly. You do not suppose I care for the opinions of the
people about me! I, too, have my way of looking at things."
So said Hesper; yet it was just the opinions of the people about
her that ruled all those of her actions that could be said to be
ruled at all. No one boasts of freedom except the willing slave--
the man so utterly a slave that he feels nothing irksome in his
fetters. Yet, perhaps, but for the opinions of those about her,
Hesper would have been worse than she was.
"Am I right, then, in thinking," began Mary, "that people of your
class care only that a man should wear the look of a gentleman,
and carry himself like one?--that, whether his appearance be a
reality or a mask, you do not care, so long as no mask is removed
in your company?--that he may be the lowest of men, but, so long
as other people receive him, you will, too, counting him good
enough?"
Hesper held her peace. She had by this time learned some facts
concerning the man she had married which, beside Mary's question,
were embarrassing.
"It is interesting," she said at length, "to know how the
different classes in a country regard each other." But she spoke
wearily: it was interesting in the abstract, not interesting to
her.
"The way to try a man," said Mary, "would be to turn him the
other way, as I saw the gentleman who is taking your portrait do
yesterday trying a square--change his position quite, I mean, and
mark how far he continued to look a true man. He would show
something of his real self then, I think. Make a nobleman a
shopkeeper, for instance, and see what kind of a shopkeeper he
made. If he showed himself just as honorable when a shopkeeper as
he had seemed when a nobleman, there would be good reason for
counting him an honorable man."
"What odd fancies you have, Mary!" said Hesper, yawning.
"I know my father would have been as honorable as a nobleman as
he was when a shopkeeper," persisted Mary.
"That I can well believe--he was your father," said Hesper,
kindly, meaning what she said, too, so far as her poor
understanding of the honorable reached.
"Would you mind telling me," asked Mary, "how you would define
the difference between a nobleman and a shopkeeper?"
Hesper thought a little. The question to her was a stupid one.
She had never had interest enough in humanity to care a straw
what any shopkeeper ever thought or felt. Such people inhabited a
region so far below her as to be practically out of her sight.
They were not of her kind. It had never occurred to her that life
must look to them much as it looked to her; that, like Shylock,
they had feelings, and would bleed if cut with a knife. But,
although she was not interested, she peered about sleepily for an
answer. Her thoughts, in a lazy fashion, tumbled in her, like
waves without wind--which, indeed, was all the sort of thinking
she knew. At last, with the decision of conscious superiority,
and the judicial air afforded by the precision of utterance
belonging to her class--a precision so strangely conjoined with
the lack of truth and logic both--she said, in a tone that gave
to the merest puerility the consequence of a judgment between
contending sages:
"The difference is, that the nobleman is born to ease and dignity
and affluence, and the--shopkeeper to buy and sell for his
living."
"Many a nobleman," suggested Mary, "buys and sells without the
necessity of making a living."
"That is the difference," said Hesper.
"Then the nobleman buys and sells to make money, and the
shopkeeper to make a living?"
"Yes," granted Hesper, lazily.
"Which is the nobler end--to live, or to make money?" But this
question was too far beyond Hesper. She did not even choose to
hear it.
"And," she said, resuming her definition instead, "the nobleman
deals with great things, the shopkeeper with small."
"When things are finally settled," said Mary--"Gracious, Mary!"
cried Hesper, "what do you mean? Are not things settled for good
this many a century? I am afraid I have been harboring an awful
radical!--a--what do they call it?--a communist!"
She would have turned the whole matter out of doors, for she was
tired of it.
"Things hardly look as if they were going to remain just as they
are at this precise moment," said Mary. "How could they, when,
from the very making of the world, they have been going on
changing and changing, hardly ever even seeming to standstill?"
"You frighten me, Mary! You will do something terrible in my
house, and I shall get the blame of it!" said Hesper, laughing.
But she did in truth feel a little uncomfortable. The shadow of
dismay, a formless apprehension overclouded her. Mary's words
recalled sentiments which at home she had heard alluded to with
horror; and, however little parents may be loved or respected by
their children, their opinions will yet settle, and, until they
are driven out by better or worse, will cling.
"When I tell you what I was really thinking of, you will not be
alarmed at my opinions," said Mary, not laughing now, but smiling
a deep, sweet smile; "I do not believe there ever will be any
settlement of things but one; they can not and must not stop
changing, until the kingdom of heaven is come. Into that they
must change, and rest."
"You are leaving politics for religion now, Mary. That is the one
fault I have to find with you--you won't keep things in their own
places! You are always mixing them up--like that Mrs.--what's her
name?--who will mix religion and love in her novels, though
everybody tells her they have nothing to do with each other! It
is so irreverent!"
"Is it irreverent to believe that God rules the world he made,
and that he is bringing things to his own mind in it?"
"You can't persuade me religion means turning things upside
down."
"It means that a good deal more than people think. Did not our
Lord say that many that are first shall be last, and the last
first?"
"What has that to do with this nineteenth century?"
"Perhaps that the honorable shopkeeper and the mean nobleman will
one day change places."
"Oh," thought Hesper, "that is why the lower classes take so to
religion!" But what she said was: "Oh, yes, I dare say! But
everything then will be so different that it won't signify. When
we are all angels, nobody will care who is first, and who is
last. I'm sure, for one, it won't be anything to me."
Hesper was a tolerable attendant at church--I will not say
whether high or low church, because I should be supposed to care.
"In the kingdom of heaven," answered Mary, "things will always
look what they are. My father used to say people will grow their
own dresses there, as surely as a leopard his spots. He had to do
with dresses, you know. There, not only will an honorable man
look honorable, but a mean or less honorable man must look what
he is."
"There will be nobody mean there."
"Then a good many won't be there who are called honorable here."
"I have no doubt there will be a good deal of allowance made for
some people," said Hesper. "Society makes such demands!"
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