if he should be late. He evidently had been to America and back in that short afternoon.

"Well, Mary, good-bye," he said; "one never knows whether we shall meet again. I'm getting an old man."

"Eh, Uncle Clegg, you're worth twenty dead ones yet," said Mrs.

Mesurier, rea.s.suringly.

"What a strange old gentleman!" said Mrs. Turtle, somewhat bewildered, as this family apparition left the room.

"Good-bye, Uncle Clegg," Esther was heard singing in the hall.

"Good-bye, be careful of the steps. Good-bye. Give our love to Aunt Esther."

Then the door would bang, and the whole house breathe a gigantic sigh of humorous relief.

(This was the kind of thing girls at home had to put up with!)

"Well, mother, did you ever see such a funny old person?" said Esther, on her return to the parlour.

"You mustn't laugh at him," Mrs. Mesurier would say, laughing herself; "he's a good old man."

"No doubt he's good enough, mother dear; but he's unmistakably funny,"

Esther would reply, with a whimsical thought of the family tree. Yes, they were a distinguished race!

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER FOURTEEN CONCLUDED

No, the Mesuriers had absolutely nothing to hope for from their relations,--nothing to look back upon, less to look forward to. Most families, however poor and even _bourgeois_, had some memories to dignify them or some one possible contingency of pecuniary inheritance.

At the very least, they had a ghost-story in the family. You seldom read the biographies of writers or artists without finding references, however remote, to at least one person of some distinction or substance.

To have had even a curate for an ancestor, or a connection, would have been something, some frail link with gentility.

Now if, instead of being a rough old sea-captain of a trading ship, Grandfather Mesurier had only been a charming old white-headed admiral living in London, and glad, now and again, to welcome his little country granddaughters to stay with him! He would probably have been very dull, but then he would have looked distinguished, and taken one for walks in the Park, or bought one presents in the Burlington arcade. At least old admirals always seemed to serve this indulgent purpose in stories. At all events, he would have been something, some possible link with an existence of more generous opportunities. Dot and Mat would then at least have seen a nice boy or two occasionally, and in time got married as they deserved to be, and thus escape from this little provincial theatre of Sidon. Who could look at Dot and think that anything short of a miracle--a miracle like Esther's own meeting with Mike--was going to find her a worthy mate in Sidon; and, suppose the miracle happened once more in her case, what of Mat and all the rest? To be the wife of a Sidonian town-councillor, at the highest,--what a fate!

Henry and she had often discussed this inadequate outlook for their younger sisters, quite in the manner of those whose positions of enlargement were practically achieved. The only thing to be done was for Henry to make haste to win a name as a writer, and Mike to make his fortune as an actor. Then another society would be at once opened to them all. Yes, what wonders were to take place then, particularly when Mike had made his fortune!--for the financial prospects of the young people were mainly centred in him. Literature seldom made much money--except when it wasn't literature. Henry hoped to be too good a writer to hope to make money as well. But that would be a mere detail, when Mike was a flourishing manager; for when that had come about, had not Henry promised him that he would not be too proud to regard him as his patron to the extent of accepting from him an allowance of, say, a thousand a year. No, he positively wouldn't agree to more than a thousand; and Mike had to be content with his promising to take that.

Meanwhile, what could girls at home do, but watch and wait and make home as pretty as possible, and, by the aid of books and pictures, reflect as much light from a larger world into their lives as might be.

On Henry's going away, the three girls had promptly bespoken the reversion of his study as a little sitting-room for themselves. Here they concentrated their books, and some few pictures that appealed to tastes in revolt against Atlantic liners, but not yet developed to the appreciation of those true cla.s.sics of art--to which indeed they had yet to be introduced. Such half-way masters as Leighton, Alma-Tadema, Sant, and d.i.c.ksee were as yet to them something of what Rossetti and Burne-Jones, and certain old Italian masters, were soon to become. In books, they had already learnt from Henry a truer, or at all events a more strenuous, taste; and they would grapple manfully with Carlyle and Browning, and presently Meredith, long before their lives had use or understanding for such tremendous nourishment.

One evening, as they were all three sitting cosily in Henry's study,--as they still faithfully called it,--Esther was reading "Pride and Prejudice" aloud, while Dot and Mat busied themselves respectively with "macrame" work and a tea-cosy against a coming bazaar. Esther's tasks in the house were somewhat ill.u.s.trated by her part in the trio this evening. Her energies were mainly devoted to "the higher nights" of housekeeping, to the aesthetic activities of the home,--arranging flowers, dusting vases and pictures, and so on,--and the lightness of these employments was, it is to be admitted, an occasionally raised grievance among the sisters. To Dot and Mat fell much more arduous and manual spheres of labour. Yet all were none the less grateful for the decorative innovations which Esther, acting on occasional hints from her friend Myrtilla Williamson, was able to make; and if it were true that she hardly took her fair share of bed-making and pastry-cooking, it was equally undeniable that to her was due the introduction of Liberty silk curtains and cushions in two or three rooms. She too--alas, for the mistakes of young taste!--had also introduced painted tambourines, and swathed the lamps in wonderful turbans of puffed tissue paper. Was she to receive no credit for these services? Then it was she who had dared to do battle with her mother's somewhat old-fashioned taste in dress; and whenever the Mesurier sisters came out in something specially pretty or fashionable, it was due to Esther.

Well, on this particular evening, she was, as we have said, taking her share in the housework by reading "Jane Austen" aloud to Dot and Mat; when the door suddenly opened, and James Mesurier stood there, a little aloof,--for it was seldom he entered this room, which perhaps had for him a certain painful a.s.sociation of his son's rebellion. Perhaps, too, the picture of this happy little corner of his children--a world evidently so complete in itself, and daily developing more and more away from the parent world in the front parlour--gave him a certain pang of estrangement. Perhaps he too felt as he looked on them that same dreary sense of disintegration which had overtaken the mother on Henry's departure; and perhaps there was something of that in his voice, as, looking at them with rather a sad smile, he said,--

"You look very comfortable here, children. I hope that's a profitable book you are reading, Esther."

"Oh, yes, father. It's 'Jane Austen,' you know."

"Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want a few words with Dorcas.

She can join you again soon."

So Dot, wondering what was in store for her, rose and accompanied her father to the front parlour, where Mrs. Mesurier was peacefully knitting in the lamplight.

"Dorcas, my dear," he said, when the door was closed, "your mother and I have had a serious talk this evening on the subject of your joining the church. You are now nearly sixteen, and of an age to think for yourself in such matters; and we think it is time that you made some profession of your faith as a Christian before the world."

The Church James Mesurier referred to was that branch of the English Nonconformists known as Baptists; and the profession of faith was the curious rite of baptism by complete immersion, the importance claimed for which by this sect is, perhaps, from a Christian point of view, made the less disproportionate by another condition attaching to it,--the condition that not till years of individual judgment have been reached is one eligible for the sacred rite. With that rationalism which religious sects are so skilful in applying to some unimportant point of ritual, and so careful not to apply to vital questions of dogma, the Baptists reasonably argue that to baptise an unthinking infant, and, by an external rite which has no significance except as the symbol of an internal decision, declare him a Christian, is nothing more than an idolatrous mummery. Wait till the child is of age to choose for him or herself, to understand the significance of the Christian revelation and the nature of the profession it is called upon to make; then if, by the grace of G.o.d, it chooses aright, let him or her be baptised. And for the manner of that baptism, if symbols are to be made use of by the Christian church,--and it is held wise among the Baptists to make use of few, and those the most central,--should they not be designed as nearly after the fashion set forth in the Bible itself as is possible? The "Ordinance" of the Lord's Supper--as it is called amongst them--follows the procedure of the Last Supper as recorded in the Gospels; should not, therefore, the rite of baptism be in its details similarly faithful to authority? Now in Scripture, as is well known, baptisms were complete immersions, symbolic alike of the washing away of sin, and also of the dying to this world and the resurrection to the Life eternal in Christ Jesus.

So much theology was bred in the bone of all the young Mesuriers; and the youngest of them could as readily have capitulated these articles of belief as their father, who once more briefly summarised them to-night for the benefit of his daughter. He ended with something of a personal appeal. It had been one of the griefs of his life that Henry and Esther had both refused to join their father's church, though Esther always dutifully attended it every Sunday morning; and it was thinking of them, though without naming them, that he said,--

"I met Mr. Trotter yesterday,"--Mr. Trotter was the local Baptist minister, and Dot remarked to herself that her father was able to p.r.o.nounce his name without the smallest suspicion that such a name, as belonging to a minister of divine mysteries, was rather ludicrous, though indeed Baptist ministers seemed always to have names like that!--"and he asked me when some of my young ladies were going to join the church. I confess the question made me feel a little ashamed; for, you know, my dear, out of our large family not one of you has yet come forward as a Christian."

"No, father," said Dot, at last.

"I hope, my dear, you are not going to disappoint me in this matter."

"No indeed, father," said Dot, whose nature was pliable and sympathetic, as well as fundamentally religious; "but I'm afraid I haven't thought quite as much about it as I should like to, and, if you don't mind, I should like to have a few days to think it out."

"Of course, my dear. That is a very right feeling; for the step is a solemn one, and should not be taken without reverent thought. You cannot do better than to talk it over with Mr. Trotter. If you have any difficulties, you can tell him; and I'm sure he would be delighted to help you. Isn't it so, mother? Well, dear," he continued, "you can run away now; but bear in mind what I have said, and I shall hope to hear that you have made the right choice before long. Kiss me, dear."

And so, with something of a lump in her throat, Dot returned to the interrupted "Jane Austen."

"Whatever did father want?" asked the two girls, looking up as she entered the room.

"What do you think?" said Dot. "He wants me to be baptised!"

CHAPTER XVII

DOT'S DECISION

Now, in thus appealing to Dot, her father had appealed to just the one out of all his children who was least likely to disappoint him. To Dot and Henry had unmistakably been transmitted the largest share of their father's spirituality. Esther was not actively religious, any more than she was actively poetic. Hers was one of those composite, admirably balanced natures which include most qualities and faculties, but no one in excess of another. Such make those engaging good women of the world, who are able to understand and sympathise with the most diverse interests and temperaments; as it is the characteristic of a good critic to understand all those various products of art, which it would be impossible for him to create. Thus Esther could have delighted a saint with her sympathetic comprehension, as she could have healed the wounds of a sinner by her comprehensive sympathy; but it was certain she would never be, in sufficient excess, spiritually wrought or sensually rebellious to be one or the other. She was beautifully, buoyantly normal, with a happy, expansive, enjoying nature, glad in the sunlight, brave in the shadow, optimistically looking forward to blithe years of life and love with Mike and her friends, and not feeling the necessity of being anxious about her soul, or any other world but this. She was not shallow; but she merely realised life more through her intelligence than through her feelings. To have become a Baptist would have offended her intelligence, without bringing any satisfaction to spiritual instincts not, in any event, clamorous.

As for Henry, it was not only activity of intelligence, but activity of spirituality, that made it impossible for him to embrace any such narrow creed as that proposed to him; and, for the present, that spiritual activity found ample scope for itself in poetry.

Dot's, however, was an intermediate case. With an intelligence active too, she united a spirituality torturingly intense, but for which she had no such natural creative outlet as Henry. With her loss of the old creed,--in discarding which these three sisters had followed the lead of their brother with a curious instinctiveness, almost, it would seem, independent of reasoning,--her spirituality had been left somewhat bleakly houseless, and she had often longed for some compromise by which she could reconcile her intelligence to the acceptance of some established home of faith, whose kindly enclosing walls should be more genially habitable to the soul than the cold, star-lit s.p.a.ces which Henry declared to be sufficient temple.

Perhaps Esther's commiseration of her sisters' narrow opportunities was, so far as it related to Dot, a little unnecessary, for indeed Dot's ambitions were not social. By nature shy and meditative, and with her religious bias, had she been born into a Catholic family, she might not improbably have found the world well lost in a sisterhood. The Puritan conscience had an uncomfortable preponderance in the deep places of her nature, and, far down in her soul, like her father, she would ask herself if pleasure could be the end of life--was there not something serious each of us could and ought to do, to justify his place in the world? Were we not all under some mysterious solemn obligation to do something, however little, in return for life?

Mat, on the other hand, had no such scruples. She was more like Esther in nature, with a touch of cynicism curling her dainty lip, arising, perhaps, from an early divination that she was to lack Esther's opportunities. Perhaps it was because she was the pessimist--the quite cheerful pessimist--of the family, that she was by far the cleverest and most industrious at the housework. If it was her fate to be Cinderella, she might as well make the best of it, with a cynical endurance and good-humour, and be Cinderella with a good grace. Probably the only gla.s.s slipper in the family had already fallen to Esther. Never mind, though her good looks might fade with being a good girl at home, year by year, what did it matter, after all? Nothing mattered in the end. And thus, out of a great indifference, Mat developed a great unselfishness; and if you could name one special angel in the house of the Mesuriers, she was unmistakably Mat.

In addition to her religious promptings, Dot had lately developed a great sympathy for her father. Standing a little aside from the conflict between him and Henry, she was able to divine something of the feelings of both; and she had now and again caught a look of loneliness on her father's face that made her ready to do almost anything to please him.

Of course the question was one for general consultation. She knew what Henry would say. It didn't much matter anyhow, he would say, but it was a pity. How was intellectual freedom to be won, if those who had seen the light should thus deliberately forego it, time after time, from such merely sentimental reasons? And when she saw Henry, that was just what he did say.