It is bad to take the law if you can manage any other way--it breeds so much ill blood.""Nonsense, Beatrice," said her sister sharply. "Father is quite right.
There's only one way to deal with them, and that is to seize their goods. I believe you are socialist about property, as you are about everything else. You want to pull everything down, from the Queen to the laws of marriage, all for the good of humanity, and I tell you that your ideas will be your ruin. Defy custom and it will crush you.
You are running your head against a brick wall, and one day you will find which is the harder."Beatrice flushed, but answered her sister's attack, which was all the sharper because it had a certain spice of truth in it.
"I never expressed any such views, Elizabeth, so I do not see why you should attribute them to me. I only said that legal proceedings breed bad blood in a parish, and that is true.""I did not say you expressed them," went on the vigorous Elizabeth;"you look them--they ooze out of your words like water from a peat bog. Everybody knows you are a radical and a freethinker and everything else that is bad and mad, and contrary to that state of life in which it has pleased God to call you. The end of it will be that you will lose the mistresship of the school--and I think it is very hard on father and me that you should bring disgrace on us with your strange ways and immoral views, and now you can make what you like of it.""I wish that all radicals were like Miss Beatrice," said Geoffrey, who was feeling exceedingly uncomfortable, with a feeble attempt at polite jocosity. But nobody seemed to hear him. Elizabeth, who was now fairly in a rage, a faint flush upon her pale cheeks, her light eyes all ashine, and her thin fingers clasped, stood fronting her beautiful sister, and breathing spite at every pore. But it was easy for Geoffrey who was watching her to see that it was not her sister's views she was attacking; it was her sister. It was that soft strong loveliness and the glory of that face; it was the deep gentle mind, erring from its very greatness, and the bright intellect which lit it like a lamp; it was the learning and the power that, give them play, would set a world aflame, as easily as they did the heart of the slow-witted hermit squire, whom Elizabeth coveted--these were the things that Elizabeth hated, and bitterly assailed.
Accustomed to observe, Geoffrey saw this instantly, and then glanced at the father. The old man was frightened; clearly he was afraid of Elizabeth, and dreaded a scene. He stood fidgeting his feet about, and trying to find something to say, as he glanced apprehensively at his elder daughter, through his thin hanging hair.
Lastly, Geoffrey looked at Beatrice, who was indeed well worth looking at. Her face was quite pale and the clear grey eyes shone out beneath their dark lashes. She had risen, drawing herself to her full height, which her exquisite proportions seemed to increase, and was looking at her sister. Presently she said one word and one only, but it was enough.
"/Elizabeth./"
Her sister opened her lips to speak again, but hesitated, and changed her mind. There was something in Beatrice's manner that checked her.
"Well," she said at length, "you should not irritate me so, Beatrice."Beatrice made no reply. She only turned towards Geoffrey, and with a graceful little bow, said:
"Mr. Bingham, I am sure that you will forgive this scene. The fact is, we all slept badly last night, and it has not improved our tempers."There was a pause, of which Mr. Granger took a hurried and rather undignified advantage.
"Um, ah," he said. "By the way, Beatrice, what was it I wanted to say?
Ah, I know--have you written, I mean written out, that sermon for next Sunday? My daughter," he added, addressing Geoffrey in explanation--"um, copies my sermons for me. She writes a very good hand----"Remembering Beatrice's confidence as to her sermon manufacturing functions, Geoffrey felt amused at her father's /na?ve/ way of describing them, and Beatrice also smiled faintly as she answered that the sermon was ready. Just then the roll of wheels was heard without, and the only fly that Bryngelly could boast pulled up in front of the door.
"Here is the fly come for you, Mr. Bingham," said Mr. Granger--"and as I live, her ladyship with it. Elizabeth, see if there isn't some tea ready," and the old gentleman, who had all the traditional love of the lower middle-class Englishman for a title, trotted off to welcome "her ladyship."Presently Lady Honoria entered the room, a sweet, if rather a set smile upon her handsome face, and with a graceful mien, that became her tall figure exceedingly well. For to do Lady Honoria justice, she was one of the most ladylike women in the country, and so far as her personal appearance went, a very perfect type of the class to which she belonged.
Geoffrey looked at her, saying to himself that she had clearly recovered her temper, and that he was thankful for it. This was not wonderful, for it is observable that the more aristocratic a lady's manners are, the more disagreeable she is apt to be when she is crossed.
"Well, Geoffrey dear," she said, "you see I have come to fetch you. Iwas determined that you should not get yourself drowned a second time on your way home. How are you now?--but I need not ask, you look quite well again.""It is very kind of you, Honoria," said her husband simply, but it was doubtful if she heard him, for at the moment she was engaged in searching out the soul of Beatrice, with one of the most penetrating and comprehensive glances that young lady had ever enjoyed the honour of receiving. There was nothing rude about the look, it was too quick, but Beatrice felt that quick as it might be it embraced her altogether. Nor was she wrong.