More Bywords Part 23

B. All-work indeed!

C. I did not include Sundays, which are one rush of meals, schools, and services, including harmonium.

B. No society or rational conversation, of course?

C. Adjacent clergy and clergy woman rather less capable of aught but shop than the natives themselves! You see, even if I did offer myself as a victim, I couldn't do the thing! Fancy my going on about the six Mosaic days, and Jonah's whale, and Jael's nail, and doing their duty in that state of life where it _HAS_ pleased Heaven to place them.

B. Impossible, my dear! Those things can't be taught--if they are to be taught--except by those who accept them as entirely as ever; and it is absurd to think of keeping you where you would be totally devoid of all intellectual food!

SCENE.--ART STUDENT AND DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR A YEAR LATER.

SOIREE IN A LONDON DRAWING-ROOM. PROFESSOR DUNLOP AND CECILIA.

PROF. D. Miss Moldwarp? Is your mother here?

C. No; she is not in town.

PROF. D. Not living there?

C. She lives with my grandfather at Darkglade.

PROF. D. Indeed! I hope Mr. and Mrs. Aveland are well?

C. Thank you, _HE_ is well; but my grandmother is dead.

PROF. D. Oh, I am sorry! I had not heard of his loss. How long ago did it happen?

C. Last January twelvemonth. My aunt is married, and my mother has taken her place at home.

PROF. D. Then you are here on a visit. Where are you staying?

C. No, I live here. I am studying in the Slade schools.

PROF. D. This must have greatly changed my dear old friend's life!

C. I did not know that you were acquainted with my grandfather.

PROF. D. I was one of his pupils. I may say that I owe everything to him. It is long since I have been at Darkglade, but it always seemed to me an ideal place.

C. Rather out of the world.

PROF. D. Of one sort of world perhaps; but what a beautiful combination is to be seen there of the highest powers with the lowliest work! So entirely has he dedicated himself that he really feels the guidance of a ploughman's soul a higher task than the grandest achievement in science or literature. By the bye, I hope he will take up his pen again. It is really wanted. Will you give him a message from me?

C. How strange! I never knew that he was an author.

PROF. D. Ah! you are a young thing, and these are abstruse subjects.

C. Oh! the Fathers and Ritual, I suppose?

PROF. D. No doubt he is a great authority there, as a man of his ability must be; but I was thinking of a course of scientific papers he put forth ten years ago, taking up the arguments against materialism as no one could do who is not as thoroughly at home as he is in the latest discoveries and hypotheses. He ought to answer that paper in the CRITICAL WORLD.

C. I was so much interested in that paper.

PROF. D. It has just the speciousness that runs away with young people. I should like to talk it over with him. Do you think I should be in the way if I ran down?

C. I should think a visit from you would be an immense pleasure to him; and I am sure it would be good for the place to be stirred up.

PROF. D. You have not learnt to prize that atmosphere in which things always seem to a.s.sume their true proportion, and to prompt the cry of St. Bernard's brother--'All earth for me, all heaven for you.'

C. That was surely an outcome of the time when people used to sacrifice certainties to uncertainties, and spoil life for the sake of they knew not what.

PROF. D. For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.

STRANGER. Mr. Dunlop! This is an unexpected pleasure!

C. (ALONE). Well, wonders will never cease. The great Professor Dunlop talking to me quite preachy and goody; and of all people in the world, the old man at Darkglade turning out to be a great physiologist!

VII. TWO OLD FRIENDS

SCENE.--DARKGLADE VICARAGE STUDY. MR. AVELAND AND PROFESSOR DUNLOP.

PROF. D. Thank you, sir. It has been a great pleasure to talk over these matters with you; I hope a great benefit.

MR. A. I am sure it is a great benefit to us to have a breath from the outer world. I hope you will never let so long a time go by without our meeting. Remember, as iron sharpeneth iron, so doth a man's countenance that of his friend.

PROF. D. I shall be only too thankful. I rejoice in the having met your grand-daughter, who encouraged me to offer myself. Is she permanently in town?

MR. A. She shows no inclination to return. I hoped she would do so after the last compet.i.tion; but there is always another stage to be mounted. I wish she would come back, for her mother ought not to be left single-handed; but young people seem to require so much external education in these days, instead of being content to work on at home, that I sometimes question which is more effectual, learning or being taught.

PROF. D. Being poured-upon versus imbibing?

MR. A. It may depend on what amount there is to imbibe; and I imagine that the child views this region as an arid waste; as of course we are considerably out of date.

PROF. D. The supply would be a good deal fresher and purer!

MR. A. Do you know anything of her present surroundings?

PROF. D. I confess that I was surprised to meet her with Mrs.

Eyeless, a lady who is active in disseminating Positivism, and all tending that way. She rather startled me by some of her remarks; but probably it was only jargon and desire to show off. Have you seen her lately?

MR. A. At Christmas, but only for a short time, when it struck me that she treated us with the patronage of precocious youth; and I thought she made the most of a cold when church or parish was concerned. I hinted as much; but her mother seemed quite satisfied.

Poor girl! Have I been blind? I did not like her going to live at one of those boarding-houses for lady students. Do you know anything of them?

PROF. D. Of course all depends on the individual lady at the head, and the responsibility she undertakes, as well as on the tone of the inmates. With some, it would be only staying in a safe and guarded home. In others, there is a great amount of liberty, the girls going out without inquiry whether, with whom, or when they return.