"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 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 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.

"And," she said, resuming her definition instead, "the n.o.bleman 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.bleman will one day change places."

"Oh," thought Hesper, "that is why the lower cla.s.ses 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, n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE INVITATION.

When Letty received Mrs. Redmain's card, inviting her with her husband to an evening party, it raised in her a bewildered flutter--of pleasure, of fear, of pride, of shyness, of dismay: how dared she show her face in such a grand a.s.sembly? She would not know a bit how to behave herself! But it was impossible, for she had no dress fit to go anywhere! What would Tom say if she looked a dowdy? He would be ashamed of her, and she dared not think what might come of it!

But close upon the postman came Mary, and a long talk followed. Letty was full of trembling delight, but Mary was not a little anxious with herself how Tom would take it.