Out in the Forty-Five Part 5

"May be the one, and may be the other, my dear. It would hang a little on the heart you looked at, and a great deal on the one who looked at it. I dare say we should all get one lesson we need badly--we might learn to bear with each other. 'Tis so easy to think, 'Oh, she cannot understand me! she never had this pain or that sorrow.' Whereas, if you could see her as she really is, you would find she knew more about it than you did, and understood some other things beside, which were dark riddles to you. That is often a mountain to one which is only a molehill to another. And trouble is as it is taken. If there were no more troubles in this world than what we give each other in pure kindness or in simple ignorance, girls, there would be plenty left."

"Then you think there were troubles in Eden?" said Cecilia, mischievously.

"I was not there," said my Aunt Kezia. "After the old serpent came there were troubles enough, I'll warrant you. If Adam came off scot-free for saying, 'The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me,' Eve must have been vastly unlike her daughters."

I was quite unable to keep from laughing, but Cecilia did not seem to see anything to laugh at. She never does, when people say funny things; and she never says funny things herself. I cannot understand her. She only laughs when she does something; and, nine times out of ten, it is something in which I cannot see anything to laugh at--something which-- well, if it were not Cecilia, I should say was rather silly and babyish.

I never did see any fun in playing foolish tricks on people, and worrying them in all sorts of ways. Hatty just enjoys it; but I don't.

However, before anything else was said, Father came in, and a young gentleman with him, whom he introduced as Mr Anthony Parmenter, the Vicar's nephew (He turned out to be the Vicar's grand-nephew, which, I suppose, is the same thing.) I am sure he must have come from the South. He did not shake hands, nor profess to do it. He just touched the hand you gave him with the tips of his fingers, and then with his lips, as if you were a china tea-dish that he was terribly frightened of breaking. Cecilia seemed quite used to this sort of thing, but I did not know what he was going to do; and, as for my Aunt Kezia, she just seized his hand, and gave it a good old-fas.h.i.+oned shake, at which he looked very much put out. Then she asked him how the Vicar was, and he did not seem to know; and how long he was going to stay, and he did not know that; and when he came, to which he said Thursday, in a very hesitating way, as if he were not at all sure that it was not Wednesday or Friday. One thing he knew--that it was hawidly cold--there, that is just how he said it. I suppose he meant horribly. My Aunt Kezia gave him up after a while, and went on sewing in silence. Then Cecilia took him up, and they seemed to understand each other exactly. They talked about all sorts of things and people that I never heard of before; and I sat and listened, and so did my Aunt Kezia, only that she put in a word now and then, and I did not.

Before they had been long at it, f.a.n.n.y and Amelia came in from a walk, in their bonnets and scarves, and Mr Parmenter bowed over their hands in the same curious way that he did before. Amelia took it as she does everything--that is, in a languid, limp sort of way, as if she did not care about anything; but f.a.n.n.y looked as if she did not know what he was going to do to her, and I saw she was puzzled whether she ought to shake hands or not. Then f.a.n.n.y went away to take her things off, but Amelia sat down, and pulled off her scarf, and laid it beside her on the sofa, not neatly folded, but all huddled up in a heap, and there it might have stayed till next week if my Aunt Kezia (who hates Amelia's untidy ways) had not said to her,--

"My dear, had you not better take your things up-stairs?"

Amelia rose with the air of a martyr, threw the scarf on her arm, and carrying her bonnet by one string, went slowly up-stairs. When they came down together, my Aunt Kezia said to f.a.n.n.y,--

"My dear, you had better take a shorter walk another time."

"We have not had a long one, Aunt," said f.a.n.n.y, looking surprised. "We only went up by the Scar, and back by Ellen Water."

"I thought you had been much farther than that," says my Aunt Kezia, in her dry way. "Poor Emily [Note 1.] seemed so tired she could not get up-stairs."

f.a.n.n.y stared, and Amelia gave a faint laugh. My Aunt Kezia said no more, but went on running tucks: and Amelia joined in the conversation between Cecilia and Mr Parmenter. I hardly listened, for I was trying the new knitting st.i.tch which Flora taught me, and it is rather a difficult one, so that it took all my mind: but all at once I heard Amelia say,--

"The beauty of self-sacrifice!"

My Aunt Kezia lapped up the petticoat in which she was running the tucks, laid it on her knee, folded her hands on it, and looked full at Amelia.

"Will you please, Miss Emily Bracewell, to tell me what you mean?"

"Mean, Aunt?"

"Yes, my dear, mean."

"How can the spirit of that sweet poetical creature," murmured f.a.n.n.y, behind me, "be made plain to such a mere thing of fact as my Aunt Kezia?"

"Well," said Amelia, in a rather puzzled tone, "I mean--I mean--the beauty of self-sacrifice. I do not see how else to put it."

"And what makes it beautiful, think you?" said my Aunt Kezia.

"It is beautiful in itself," said Amelia. "It is the fairest thing in the moral world. We see it in all the a.n.a.logies of creation."

"My dear Emily," said my Aunt Kezia, "you may have learned Latin and Greek, but I have not. I will trouble you to speak plain, if you please. I am a plain English woman, who knows more about making s.h.i.+rts and salting b.u.t.ter than about moral worlds and the a.n.a.logies of creation. Please to explain yourself--if you understand what you are talking about. If you don't, of course I wouldn't wish it."

"Well, a comparison, then," answered Amelia, in a slightly peevish tone.

"That will do," said my Aunt Kezia. "I know what a comparison is.

Well, let us hear it."

"Do we not see," continued Amelia, with kindling eyes, "the beauty of self-sacrifice in all things? In the patriot daring death for his country, in the mother careless of herself, that she may save her child, in the physician braving all risks at the bedside of his patient? Nay, even in the lower world, when we mark how the insect dies in laying her eggs, and see the fresh flowers of the spring arise from the ashes of the withered blossoms of autumn, can we doubt the loveliness of self-sacrifice?"

"How beautiful!" murmured f.a.n.n.y. "Do listen, Cary."

"I am listening," I said.

"Charming, Madam!" said Mr Parmenter, stroking his mustachio.

"Undoubtedly, all these are lessons to those who have eyes to see."

I did not quite like the glance which was shot at him just then out of Cecilia's eyes, nor the look in his which replied. It appeared to me as if those two were only making game of Amelia, and that they understood each other. But almost before I had well seen it, Cecilia's eyes were dropped, and she looked as demure as possible.

"Some folk's eyes don't see things that are there," saith my Aunt Kezia, "and some folk's eyes are apt to see things that aren't. My Bible tells me that G.o.d hath made everything beautiful in its season. Not out of its season, you see. Your beautiful self-sacrifice is a means to an end, not the end itself. And if you make the means into the end, you waste your strength and turn your action into nonsense. Take the comparisons Amelia has given us. Your patriot risks death in order to obtain some good for his country; the mother, that she may save the child; the physician, that he may cure his patient. What would be the good of all these sacrifices if nothing were to be got by them? My dears, do let me beg of you not to be caught by claptrap. There's a deal of it in the world just now. And silly stuff it is, I a.s.sure you.

Self-sacrifice is as beautiful as you please when it is a man's duty, and as a means of good; but self-sacrifice for its own sake, and without an object, is not beautiful, but just ridiculous nonsense."

"Then would you say, Aunt Kezia," asked Amelia, "that all those grand acts of mortification of the early Christians, or of the old monks, were worthless and ridiculous? They were not designed to attain any object, but just for discipline and obedience."

"As for the early Christians, poor souls! they had mortifications enough from the heathen around them, without giving themselves trouble to make troubles," said my Aunt Kezia. "And the old monks, poor misguided dirty things! I hope you don't admire them. But what do you mean by saying they were not means to an end, but only discipline? If that were so, discipline was the end of them. But, my dear, discipline is a sharp-edged tool which men do well to let alone, except for children.

We are p.r.o.ne to make sad blunders when we discipline ourselves. That tool is safer in G.o.d's hands than in ours."

"But there is so much poetry in mortification!" sighed Amelia.

"I am glad if you can see it," said my Aunt Kezia. "I can't. Poetry in cabbage-stalks, eaten with all the mud on, and ditch water scooped up in a dirty pannikin! There would be a deal more poetry in needles and thread, and soap and water. Making verses is all very well in its place; but you try to make a pudding of poetry, and you'll come badly off for dinner."

"Dinner!" said Amelia, contemptuously.

"Yes, my dear, dinner. You dine once a day, I believe."

"Dear, I never care what I eat," cried Amelia. "The care of the body is entirely beneath those who have learned to prize the superlative value of the mind."

My Aunt Kezia laughed. "My dear," said she, "if you were a little older I might reason with you. But you are just at that age when girls take up with every silly notion they come across, and carry it ever so much farther, and just make regular geese of themselves. 'Tis a comfort to hope you will grow out of it. Ten years hence, if we are both alive, I shall find you making pies and cutting out bodices like other sensible women. At least I hope so."

"Never!" cried Amelia. "I never could demean myself to be just an every-day creature like that!"

"I am sorry for your husband," said my Aunt Kezia, bluntly, "and still more for yourself. If you set up to be an uncommon woman, the chances are that instead of rising above the common, you will just sink below it, into one of those silly things that spend their time sipping tea and flirting fans, and making men think all women foolish and unstable. And if you do that--well, all I have to say is, may G.o.d forgive you!--Cary, I want some jumb.a.l.l.s for tea. Just go and see to them."

So away I went to the kitchen, and heard no more of the talk. But what was I to do? I knew how to eat jumb.a.l.l.s very well indeed, but how to make them I knew no more than Mr Parmenter's eyegla.s.s. She forgets, does my Aunt Kezia, that I have lived all my life in Carlisle, where Grandmamma would as soon have thought of my building a house as making jumb.a.l.l.s.

"Maria," said I, "my Aunt Kezia has sent me to make jumb.a.l.l.s, and I don't know how, not one bit!"

"Don't you, Miss Cary?" said Maria, laughing: "well, I reckon I do.

Half a pound of b.u.t.ter--will you weigh it yourself, Miss?--and the same of white sugar, and a pound of flour, and three ounces of almonds, and three eggs, and a little lemon peel--that's what you'll want." [Note 2.]

We were going about the b.u.t.tery, as she spoke, gathering up and weighing these things, and putting them together on the kitchen table. Then Maria tied a big ap.r.o.n on me, which she said was f.a.n.n.y's, and gave me a little pan in which she bade me melt the b.u.t.ter. Then I had to beat the sugar into it, and then came the hard part--breaking the eggs, for only the yolks were wanted. I spoiled two, and then I said,--

"Maria, do break them for me! I shall never manage this business."

"Oh yes, you will, Miss Cary, in time," says she, cheerily. "It comes hard at first, till you're used to it. Most things does. See now, you pound them almonds--I have blanched 'em--and I'll put the eggs in."

So we put in the yolks of eggs, and the almonds, and the flour, and the lemon peel, till it began to smell uncommon good, and then Maria showed me how to make coiled-up snakes of it on the baking-tin, as jumb.a.l.l.s always are: and I washed my hands, and took off f.a.n.n.y's ap.r.o.n, and went back into the parlour.