The Vicar's Daughter by George MacDonald (classic novels TXT) 📖

the breed."

"Even that would not suffice," said Lady Bernard. "There would always be a deposit from the higher classes sufficient to keep up the breed. But, Mr. Morley, I did not say wild beasts: I only said beasts. There is a great difference between a tiger and a sheep-dog."

"There is nearly as much between a Seven-Dialsrough and a sheep-dog."

"In moral attainment, I grant you," said Mr. Blackstone; "but in moral capacity, no. Besides, you must remember, both what a descent the sheep-dog has, and what pains have been taken with his individual education, as well as that of his ancestors."

"Granted all that," said Mr. Morley, "there the fact remains. For my part, I confess I don't see what is to be done. The class to which you refer goes on increasing. There's this garrotting now. I spent a winter at Algiers lately, and found even the suburbs of that city immeasurably safer than any part of London is now, to judge from the police-reports. Yet I am accused of inhumanity and selfishness if I decline to write a check for every shabby fellow who calls upon me pretending to be a clergyman, and to represent this or that charity in the East End!"

"Things are bad enough in the West End, within a few hundred yards of Portland Place, for instance," murmured Miss Clare.

"It seems to me highly unreasonable," Mr. Morley went on. "Why should I spend my money to perpetuate such a condition of things?"

"That would in all likelihood be the tendency of your subscription," said Mr. Blackstone.

"Then why should I?" repeated Mr. Morley with a smile of triumph.

"But," said Miss Clare, in an apologetic tone, "it seems to me you make a mistake in regarding the poor as if their poverty were the only distinction by which they could be classified. The poor are not all thieves and garroters, nor even all unthankful and unholy. There are just as strong and as delicate distinctions too, in that stratum of social existence as in the upper strata. I should imagine Mr. Morley knows a few, belonging to the same social grade with himself, with whom, however, he would be sorry to be on any terms of intimacy."

"Not a few," responded Mr. Morley with a righteous frown.

"Then I, who know the poor as well at least as you can know the rich, having lived amongst them almost from childhood, assert that I am acquainted with not a few, who, in all the essentials of human life and character, would be an honor to any circle."

"I should be sorry to seem to imply that there may not be very worthy people amongst them, Miss Clare; but it is not such who draw our attention to the class."

"Not such who force themselves upon your attention certainly," said Miss Clare; "but the existence of such may be an additional reason for bestowing some attention on the class to which they belong. Is there not such a mighty fact as the body of Christ? Is there no connection between the head and the feet?"

"I had not the slightest purpose of disputing the matter with you, Miss Clare," said Mr. Morley-I thought rudely, for who would use the word disputing at a dinner-table? "On the contrary, being a practical man, I want to know what is to be done. It is doubtless a great misfortune to the community that there should be such sinks in our cities; but who is to blame for it?-that is the question."

"Every man who says, Am I my brother's keeper? Why, just consider, Mr. Morley: suppose in a family there were one less gifted than the others, and that in consequence they all withdrew from him, and took no interest in his affairs: what would become of him? Must he not sink?"

"Difference of rank is a divine appointment,-you must allow that. If there were not a variety of grades, the social machine would soon come to a stand-still."

"A strong argument for taking care of the smallest wheel, for all the parts are interdependent. That there should be different classes is undoubtedly a divine intention, and not to be turned aside. But suppose the less-gifted boy is fit for some manual labor; suppose he takes to carpentering, and works well, and keeps the house tidy, and every thing in good repair, while his brothers pursue their studies and prepare for professions beyond his reach: is the inferior boy degraded by doing the best he can? Is there any reason in the nature of things why he should sink? But he will most likely sink, sooner or later, if his brothers take no interest in his work, and treat him as a being of nature inferior to their own."

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Morley, "but is he not on the very supposition inferior to them?"

"Intellectually, yes; morally, no; for he is doing his work, possibly better than they, and therefore taking a higher place in the eternal scale. But granting all kinds of inferiority, his nature remains the same with their own; and the question is, whether they treat him as one to be helped up, or one to be kept down; as one unworthy of sympathy, or one to be honored for filling his part: in a word, as one belonging to them, or one whom they put up with only because his work is necessary to them."

"What do you mean by being 'helped up'?" asked Mr. Morley.

"I do not mean helped out of his trade, but helped to make the best of it, and of the intellect that finds its development in that way."

"Very good. But yet I don't see how you apply your supposition."

"For an instance of application, then: How many respectable people know or care a jot about their servants, except as creatures necessary to their comfort?"

"Well, Miss Clare," said Judy, addressing her for the first time, "if you had had the half to do with servants I have had, you would alter your opinion of them."

"I have expressed no opinion," returned Miss Clare. "I have only said that masters and mistresses know and care next to nothing about them."

"They are a very ungrateful class, do what you will for them."

"I am afraid they are at present growing more and more corrupt as a class," rejoined Miss Clare; "but gratitude is a high virtue, therefore in any case I don't see how you could look for much of it from the common sort of them. And yet while some mistresses do not get so much of it as they deserve, I fear most mistresses expect far more of it than they have any right to."

"You can't get them to speak the truth."

"That I am afraid is a fact."

"I have never known one on whose word I could depend," insisted Judy.

"My father says he has known one," I interjected.

"A sad confirmation of Mrs. Morley," said Miss Clare. "But for my part I know very few persons in any rank on whose representation of things I could absolutely depend. Truth is the highest virtue, and seldom grows wild. It is difficult to speak the truth, and those who have tried it longest best know how difficult it is. Servants need to be taught that as well as everybody else."

"There is nothing they resent so much as being taught," said Judy.

"Perhaps: they are very far from docile; and I believe it is of little use to attempt giving them direct lessons."

"How, then, are you to teach them?"

"By making it very plain to them, but without calling their attention to it, that you speak the truth. In the course of a few years they may come to tell a lie or two the less for that."

"Not a very hopeful prospect," said Judy.

"Not a very rapid improvement," said her husband.

"I look for no rapid improvement, so early in a history as the supposition implies," said Miss Clare.

"But would you not tell them how wicked it is?" I asked.

"They know already that it is wicked to tell lies; but they do not feel that they are wicked in making the assertions they do. The less said about the abstract truth, and the more shown of practical truth, the better for those whom any one would teach to forsake lying. So, at least, it appears to me. I despair of teaching others, except by learning myself."

"If you do no more than that, you will hardly produce an appreciable effect in a lifetime."

"Why should it be appreciated?" rejoined Miss Clare.

"I should have said, on the contrary," interposed Mr. Blackstone, addressing Mr. Morley, "if you do less-for more you cannot do-you will produce no effect whatever."

"We have no right to make it a condition of our obedience, that we shall see its reflex in the obedience of others," said Miss Clare. "We have to pull out the beam, not the mote."

"Are you not, then, to pull the mote out of your brother's eye?" said Judy.

"In no case and on no pretence, until you have pulled the beam out of your own eye," said Mr. Blackstone; "which I fancy will make the duty of finding fault with one's neighbor a rare one; for who will venture to say he has qualified himself for the task?"

It was no wonder that a silence followed upon this; for the talk had got to be very serious for a dinner-table. Lady Bernard was the first to speak. It was easier to take up the dropped thread of the conversation than to begin a new reel.

"It cannot be denied," she said, "whoever may be to blame for it, that the separation between the rich and the poor has either been greatly widened of late, or, which involves the same practical necessity, we have become more aware of the breadth and depth of a gulf which, however it may distinguish their circumstances, ought not to divide them from each other. Certainly the rich withdraw themselves from the poor. Instead, for instance, of helping them to bear their burdens, they leave the still struggling poor of whole parishes to sink into hopeless want, under the weight of those who have already sunk beyond recovery. I am not sure that to shoot them would not involve less injustice. At all events, he that hates his brother is a murderer."

"But there is no question of hating here," objected Mr. Morley.

"I am not certain that absolute indifference to one's neighbor is not as bad. It came pretty nearly to the same thing in the case of the priest and the Levite, who passed by on the other side," said Mr. Blackstone.

"Still," said Mr. Morley, in all the self-importance of one who prided himself on the practical, "I do not see that Miss Clare has proposed any remedy for the state of things concerning the evil of which we are all agreed. What is to be done? What can I do now? Come, Miss Clare."

Miss Clare was silent.

"Marion, my child," said Lady Bernard, turning to her, "will you answer Mr. Morley?"

"Not, certainly, as to what he can do: that question I dare not undertake to answer. I can only speak of what principles I may seem to have discovered. But until a man begins to behave to those with whom he comes into personal contact as partakers of the same nature, to recognize, for instance, between himself and his