Part 5 (2/2)
As to his face--well, I liked it. It is dark, but frank and open, and he has a good mouth, which can be seen, because he is clean shaven, and his teeth are also good. But then in these degenerate days anyone who has attained middle life may have good teeth: it is all a matter of money.
I think it is the eyes that make the face, however. They are deep grey and remarkably luminous, and on this occasion they simply bubbled over with mischievousness. His smile was never very p.r.o.nounced, and always more or less satirical, but his eyes flashed and sparkled when he was roused, though they had looked kindly and even plaintive when he arrived, and before he was warmed. He is the sort of man who can do all his talking with his eyes.
A high forehead is surmounted by a ma.s.s of hair--once black, but rapidly turning grey--which he evidently treats as of no importance, for it lies, as the children say, ”anyhow.” But how old he is--I give it up.
He pa.s.sed his hand through his hair now, with a quick involuntary movement, as he turned to the squire.
”You may bracket the new woman and the woman with a mission together, but you can never make them one. That they have some things in common is nothing to the point. The new woman, as I understand her, has no mission, not even a commission. The new woman is Protest, embodied and at present skirted, but with a protest against the skirt. Her most longed-for goal is the Unattainable, and if by some chance she should reach it she would be dismayed and annoyed. Meantime, with the vision before her eyes of the table of the G.o.ds, she cries aloud that she is forced to feed on husks, and as she must hug something, hugs a grievance.”
”Philip Derwent,” interposed the vicar's wife, ”you are in danger of becoming vulgar.”
”Vulgarity, madam,” he rejoined, ”is in these days the brand of refinement. It is only your truly refined man who has the courage to be vulgar in polite society. No other dares to call a spade a spade or a lie a lie. Those who wish to be considered refined speak of the one as an 'agricultural implement' and of the other as a 'terminological inexact.i.tude.' But to return to our sheep who are clamouring for wolves' clothing----”
”Really, Philip!” protested the vicar's wife, pursing her lips more emphatically than ever.
”The latest incarnation of Protest, if I may so speak, takes the form of a demand for the suffrage, and is accompanied by much beating of drums and----”
”Smas.h.i.+ng of windows,” I ventured.
He bowed. ”And smas.h.i.+ng of windows. By and by they will get their desire.”
”And so have fulfilled their mission,” the squire smiled.
”By no means; they have no mission; they have simply a hunger, or rather a pain which goes away when their appet.i.te is stayed, and comes on again before the meal has been well digested. Then they go forth once more seeking whom or what they may devour.”
”Tell us of the woman with a mission,” I pleaded.
”Miss Holden is anxious to discover in what category she is to be cla.s.sed,” laughed the squire. ”You are treading on dangerous ground, Derwent. Let me advise you to proceed warily.”
”Mr. Evans, when a boy at school I learned the Latin maxim--'Truth is often attended with danger,' but I am sure Miss Holden will be merciful towards its humble votary.”
I smiled and he continued: ”The woman with a mission, Miss Holden, is an altogether superior creature. She may be adorable; on the other hand she may be a nuisance and a bore. Everything depends on the mission--and the woman.”
”A safe answer, Philip,” sneered the vicar's wife, and the squire smiled.
”There is no other safe way, madam, than the way of Truth, and I am treading it now. Even if the woman be a nuisance, even if the mission be unworthy, she who makes it hers may be enn.o.bled. Let us a.s.sume that she believes with all her heart that she has been sent into the world for one definite purpose--shall we say to work for the abatement of the smoke nuisance? That involves, amongst other things----”
”Depriving poor weak man of his chief solace--tobacco,” snapped the vicar's wife.
”Exactly. Now see how this strengthens her character, and calls out qualities of endurance and self-sacrifice. The poor weak man, her husband, deprived of his chief solace, tobacco, turns to peppermints, moroseness and bad language. His courtesy is changed to boorishness, his placidity to snappishness. All this is trying to his wife, but being a woman with a mission she regards these things philosophically as incidental to a transition period, and she bears her cross with ever-increasing gentleness and----”
”Drives her husband to the devil and herself into the widows'
compartment,” interrupted the vicar's wife, with disgust in her voice.
”Miss Holden, do you sing?”
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