Part 35 (1/2)
”Surely, dear Mrs. Redmain,” said Mary, ”you can not think the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s. There are a great many shopkeepers who are anything but respectable--as bad, indeed, as any of the n.o.bility.”
”I was not thinking of morals,” answered Hesper. ”In that, I dare say, all cla.s.ses are pretty much alike. But, of course, there are differences.”
”Perhaps one of them is, that, in our cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s 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 embarra.s.sing.
”It is interesting,” she said at length, ”to know how the different cla.s.ses 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 n.o.bleman 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 n.o.bleman, 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 n.o.bleman 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 n.o.bleman 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 cla.s.s--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 n.o.bleman is born to ease and dignity and affluence, and the--shopkeeper to buy and sell for his living.”
”Many a n.o.bleman,” suggested Mary, ”buys and sells without the necessity of making a living.”
”That is the difference,” said Hesper.
”Then the n.o.bleman buys and sells to make money, and the shopkeeper to make a living?”
”Yes,” granted Hesper, lazily.
”Which is the n.o.bler end--to live, or to make money?” But this question was too far beyond Hesper. She did not even choose to hear it.