"Certainly."

"Then she ought not to complain of the loss of her liberty."

"Not of so much as is naturally involved in _marriage_, I allow."

"Then why draw back from your engagement to Gartley?"

"Because he requires me to turn away at once, and before any necessity shows itself, from the exercise of a higher calling yet."

"I am not aware of any higher calling."

"I am. G.o.d has given me gifts to use for my fellows, and use them I must till he, not man, stops me. That is my calling."

"But you know that of necessity a woman must give up many things when she accepts the position of a wife, and possibly the duties of a mother."

"The natural claims upon a wife or mother I would heartily acknowledge."

"Then of course to the duties of a wife belong the claims Society has upon her as a wife."

"So far as I yet know what is meant in your circle by such claims, I count them the merest usurpations: I will never subject myself to such--never put myself in a position where I should be expected to obey a code of laws not merely opposed to the work for which I was made, but to all the laws of the relations to each other of human beings as human beings."

"I do not quite understand you," said Miss Vavasor.

"Well, for instance," returned Hester, willing to give the question a general bearing, "a mother in your cla.s.s, according at least to much that I have heard, considers the duties she owes to society, duties that consist in what looks to me the merest dissipation and killing of time, as paramount even to those of a mother. Because of those 'traditions of men,' or fancies of fashionable women rather, she justifies herself in leaving her children in the nursery to the care of other women--the vulgarest sometimes."

"Not knowingly," said Miss Vavasor. "We are all liable to mistakes."

"But certainly," insisted Hester, "without taking the pains necessary to know for themselves the characters of those to whom they trust the children G.o.d has given to their charge; whereas to abandon them to the care of angels themselves would be to go against the laws of nature and the calling of G.o.d."

Miss Vavasor began to think it scarcely desirable to bring a woman of such levelling opinions into their quiet circle: she would be preaching next that women were wicked who did not nurse their own brats! But she would be faithful to Gartley!

"To set up as reformers would be to have the whole hive about our ears,"

she said.

"That may be," replied Hester, "but it does not apply to me. I keep the beam out of my own eye which I have no hope of pulling out of my neighhour's. I do not belong to your set."

"But you are about to belong to it, I hope."

"I hope not."

"You are engaged to marry my nephew."

"Not irrevocably, I trust."

"You should have thought of all that before you gave your consent.

Gartley thought you understood. Certainly our circle is not one for saints."

"Honest women would be good enough for me. But I thought I had done and said more than was necessary to make Gartley understand my ideas of what was required of me in life, and I thought he sympathized with me so far at least that he would be what help to me he could. Now I find instead of this, that he never believed I meant what I said, but all the time intended to put a stop to the aspiration of my life the moment he had it in his power to do so."

"Ah, my dear young lady, you do not know what love is!" said Miss Vavasor, and sighed again as if _she_ knew what love was. And in truth she had been in love at least once in her youth, but had yielded without word of remonstrance when her parents objected to her marrying three hundred a year, and a curacy of _fifty_. She saw it was reasonable: what fellowship can light have with darkness, or love with starvation? "A woman really in love," she went on, "is ready to give up everything, yes, my dear, _everything_ for the man she loves. She who is not equal to that, does not know what love is."

"Suppose he should prove unworthy of her?"

"That would be nothing, positively nothing. If she had once learned to love him she would see no fault in him."

"_Whatever_ faults he might have?"

"Whatever faults: love has no second thoughts."

"Suppose he were to show himself regardless of her best welfare--caring for her only as an adjunct to his display?"

"If she loved him, I only say _if she loved him_, she would be proud to follow in his triumph. His glory is hers."

"Whether it be real or not?"

"If he counts it so. A woman who loves gives herself to her husband to be moulded by him."

"I fear that is the way men think of us," said Hester, sadly; "and no doubt there are women whose behaviour would justify them in it. With all my heart I say a woman ought to be ready to die for the man she loves; that is a matter of course; she cannot really love him if she would not; but that she should fall in with all his thoughts, feelings, and judgments whatever, even such as in others she would most heartily despise; that she should act as if her husband and not G.o.d made her, and his whims, instead of the lovely will of him who created man and woman, were to be to her the bonds of her being--that surely no woman could grant who had not first lost her reason."

"You won't lose yours for love at least," concluded Miss Vavasor, who could not help admiring her ability, though she despised the direction it took. "I see," she said to herself, "she is one of the strong-minded who think themselves superior to any man. Gartley will be well rid of her--that is my conviction! I think I have done nearly all he could require of me."

"I tell you honestly," continued Hester, "I love lord Gartley so well that I would gladly yield my life to do him any worthy good."--"It is easy to talk," said Miss Vavasor to herself.--"Not that that is saying much," Hester went on, "for I would do that to redeem any human creature from the misery of living without G.o.d. I would even marry lord Gartley--I think I would, after what has pa.s.sed--if only I knew that he would not try to prevent me from being the woman I ought to be and have to be;--perhaps I would--I am not clear about it just at this moment: never, if I were married to him, would I be so governed by him that he should do that! But who would knowingly marry for strife and debate? Who would deliberately add to the difficulties of being what she ought to be, what she desired, and was determined, with G.o.d's help, to be! I for one will not take an enemy into the house of my life. I will not make it a hypocrisy to say, 'Lead us not into temptation.' I grant you a wife must love her husband grandly'--pa.s.sionately, if you like the word; but there is one to be loved immeasurably more grandly, yea _pa.s.sionately_, if the word means anything true and good in love--he whose love creates love. Can you for a moment imagine, when the question came between my Lord and my husband, I would hesitate?"

"'Tis a pity you were not born in the middle ages," said Miss Vavasor, smiling, but with a touch of gentle scorn in the superiority of her tone; "you would certainly have been canonized!"

"But now I am sadly out of date--am I not?" returned Hester, trying to smile also.

"I could no more consent to live in G.o.d's world without minding what he told me, than I would marry a man merely because he admired me."

"Heavens," exclaimed Miss Vavasor to what she called herself, "what an extravagant young woman! She won't do for us! You'll have to let her fly, my dear boy!"

What she said to Hester was,

"Don't you think, my dear, all that sounds a little--just a little extravagant? You know as well as I do--you have just confessed it--that the kind of thing is out of date--does not belong to the world of to-day. And when a thing is once of the past, it cannot be called back, do what you will. Nothing will ever bring in that kind of thing again.

It is all very well to go to church and that sort of thing; I should be the last to encourage the atheism that is getting so frightfully common, but really it seems to me such extravagant notions about religion as you have been brought up in must have not a little to do with the present sad state of affairs--must in fact go far to make atheists. Civilization will never endure to be priest-ridden."

"It is my turn now," said Hester, "to say that I scarcely understand you. Do you take G.o.d for a priest? Do you object to atheism, and yet regard obedience to G.o.d as an invention of the priests? Was Jesus Christ a priest? or did he say what was not true when he said that whoever loved any one else more than him was not worthy of him? Or do you confess it true, yet say it is of no consequence? If you do not care about what he wants of you, I simply tell you that I care about nothing else; and if ever I should change, I hope he will soon teach me better--whatever sorrow may be necessary for me to that end. I desire not to care a straw about anything he does not care about."

"It is very plain, at least," said Miss Vavasor, "that you do not love my nephew as he deserves to be loved--or as any woman ought to love the man to whom she has given her consent to be his wife! You have very different ideas from such as were taught in my girlhood concerning the duties of wives! A woman, I used to be told, was to fashion herself upon her husband, fit her life to his life, her thoughts to his thoughts, her tastes to his tastes."

Absurd indeed would have seemed, to any one really knowing the two, the idea of a woman like Hester fitting herself into the mould of such a man as lord Gartley!--for what must be done with the quant.i.ty of her that would be left over after his lordship's mould was filled! The notion of squeezing a large, divine being, like Hester, into the shape of such a poor, small, mean, worldly, time-serving fellow, would have been so convincingly ludicrous as to show at once the theory on which it was founded for the absurdity it was. Instead of walking on together in simple equality, in mutual honour and devotion, each helping the other to be better still, to have the woman, large and n.o.ble, come cowering after her pigmy lord, as if he were the G.o.d of her life, instead of a Satan doing his best to d.a.m.n her to his own meanness!--it is a contrast that needs no argument! Not the less if the woman be married to such a man, will it be her highest glory, by the patience of Christ, by the sacrifice of self, yea of everything save the will of G.o.d, to win the man, if he may by any means be won, from the misery of his self-seeking to a n.o.ble shame of what he now delights in.

"You are right," said Hester; "I do not love lord Gartley sufficiently for that! Thank you, Miss Vavasor, you have helped me to the thorough conviction that there could never have been any real union between us.

Can a woman love with truest wifely love a man who has no care that she should attain to the perfect growth of her nature? _He_ would have been quite content I should remain for ever the poor creature I am--would never by word, or wish, or prayer, have sought to raise me above myself! The man I shall love as I could love must be a greater man than lord Gartley! He is not fit to make any woman love him so. If she were so much less than he as to have to look up to him, she would be too small to have any devotion in her. No! I will be a woman and not a countess!--I wish you good morning, Miss Vavasor."

"If I am not to help him," she said to herself, "what is there in reason why I should marry him? His love, no doubt, is the best thing he has to give, but a poor thing is his best, and save as an advantage for serving him, not worth the having." What her love to him would have been three months after marrying him, I am glad to have no occasion to imagine.

She held out her hand. Miss Vavasor drew herself up, and looked a cold annihilation into her eyes. The warm blood rose from Hester's heart to her brain. Quietly she returned her gaze, nor blenched a moment. She felt as if she were looking a far off idea in the face--as if she were telling her what a poor miserable creature of money and manners, ambitions and expediencies she thought her. Miss Vavasor, unused to having such a full strong virgin look fixed fearless, without defiance, but with utter disapproval, upon her, quailed--only a little, but as she had never in her life quailed before. She forced her gaze, and Hester felt that to withdraw her eyes would give her a false sense of victory.

She therefore continued her look, but had no need to force it, for she knew she was the stronger. It seemed minutes where only seconds pa.s.sed.