“SILENCE IS GOLDEN,” BUT “A SOFT ANSWER TURNETH AWAY WRATH.”
“Cissy Weller never answers back. You may say the spitefullest things to her, and they disappear like a wave on the sand.”
It was a lovely May afternoon, and Mabel Bruce was returning home between two of her schoolfellows. The three girls had been sauntering leisurely along in the shades of some tall trees, but as Mabel said these words they turned aside to take a nearer cut across some fields, and, the weather being unusually warm for the time of year, they stopped to rest for a few minutes before striking through the broad sunlight, perching themselves in various attitudes upon the stile.
“No; Cissy never answers back,” repeated Mabel, poking in the hawthorn-bush with her sunshade and then bending over her books to readjust the strap in which she was carrying them; “she would be easier to deal with if she did. She’s a splendid sample of Christian patience,” she added, with a sneer.
“‘Patience on a monument, smiling at grief,’” jeered Merry. “She wears a sour enough face over it. For my own part, I hate dumb people. One might as well have to do with posts!”
“Perhaps it is a virtue to be a ‘post,’ sometimes,” suggested the other girl—Eva Daventry, by name. “You wouldn’t care to have a post start up and strike you on the head if you chanced to run into it. That’s what smart-tongued people do. ‘Speech is silvern,’ sometimes; but ‘Silence is golden.’”
Eva Daventry was a more gentle-faced girl than the others, and was often ridiculed for her sentimental, poetic way of viewing things. Even as she said this, she was looking out towards the distant hills, as though her thoughts were far beyond the level of her companions’ comprehension—as indeed they were; for Eva had begun to enter upon a higher life, of which, as yet, neither Mabel nor Merry knew anything.
“Just like one of Eva’s sayings,” cried the latter, with a careless laugh. “I wonder what dried-up old sage invented that absurd axiom! One might as well talk about a cypher being of more value than a unit. Why weren’t we all born dumb?”
“I know who wasn’t!” exclaimed a voice that seemed for the moment to come out of the sky itself; and almost before the girls could turn, Hubert Daventry had swung himself down from one of the larger boughs, and was descending the trunk.
Mabel and Merry sprang to the ground with a startled air, but Eva kept her seat, looking up into her brother’s face with an admiring glance. They were “only” brother and sister, and thought a great deal of each other.
“Now, I’ve got something worth looking at in my pocket,” said Hubert, eyeing the girls with an expression of amusement as he reached terra firma, “and I’ll vouchsafe the first peep to the one who knows how to give ‘the smartest answer.’ Girls have all got tongues, you know. That’s a settled question, so there’s no crying off; it’s simply a matter of competition. Come, now!”
But neither Mabel nor Merry responded to the challenge. It was evident that Hubert had overheard their remarks about Cissy, and it is a speaking fact that, however much girls may indulge in backbiting when by themselves, they inevitably “feel small” if they chance to be caught at it by their boy friends. They know that it is small, and they are ashamed of it. Mabel glanced at Merry, and Merry at Mabel, and both looked down and were silent. Hubert occupied the interval in brushing the green from his clothes.
“Come, now!” repeated he, “the prize is to be fairly won! I can’t in honesty include Eva in the competition after her last remark. When people affect contempt for any particular gift, you may make pretty sure they don’t possess it. It lies between you two.”
“I, for one, don’t want to examine the lining of your pockets!” exclaimed Mabel, saucily.
“I assure you, I didn’t contemplate turning them inside out for inspection,” returned Hubert, mischievously. “What’s in will come out without such strong measures.”
“Of course!” exclaimed Merry. “He has been robbing a nest. I wouldn’t see the poor little creatures for the world. They must be nearly suffocated. It’s cruel, horrible, inhuman, to tear them from their mother just for the sake of torturing them to death!”
“How sharp some people’s ears are!” laughed Hubert, provokingly. “When little birds do take to singing for their supper they make a good deal of noise; but perhaps I’m a trifle deaf. Do you hear them, ’Va?”
“Oh, you are a teaze!” exclaimed Eva, jumping down. “I don’t believe it’s anything alive at all. But it’s high time we pursued our ‘winding way.’ Which direction are you going to take, Hu?”
“I propose doing myself the honour to constitute myself your protector,” returned Hubert, with mock ceremony, “in case you should have rough work with any ‘animated posts’ by the way.”
Mabel and Merry inwardly objected to this arrangement, fearful of Hubert’s sarcastic mood. They could see that he despised their littleness, and they were both dreadfully uncomfortable. But it was too late to go round by the road after delaying so long, so there was no help, and the four went up the field together, Hubert teasing rather unmercifully all the way, until their path divided, when he drew from his pocket and exhibited two insignificant-looking eggs, which he had secured for his collection.
“What’s the matter with Cissy Weller?” he asked, as he walked on with Eva, after calling a parting injunction to the other girls to fight shy of “animated posts.”
“Oh. Cissy is always getting into hot water with the girls,” explained Eva; “through sheer blundering, you know, for she’s a good creature at heart; only she has always had a governess at home, and doesn’t understand the ways of school life, some of which are decidedly unchristian, to my thinking,” added Eva, confidentially. “Then the girls get regularly mad, and do all they can to lash her into a fury. But it is of no use, as they said just now; Cissy never answers back, and it generally ends in her getting sent to Coventry. Poor Cissy! that hurts her more than anything, I believe; she looks so miserable over it. And the strange part of the whole thing is, that if she were to ‘show spirit,’ one or two battles would settle the matter, and they would learn to ‘respect’ her. Hubert, if hot words can do so much, why is silence ‘golden?’”
“Because, in scriptural phrase, angry words ‘stir up strife,’” replied Hubert.
“Why weren’t we all ‘born dumb,’ then?” quoted Eva. “Oh, Hubert, I do wish I could answer them when they say things like that! You could silence them in a minute; but my thoughts travel so slowly. I know it is more Christian not to retort; but I ought to be able to give a reason for what I believe, when other people say such odd things. After all, what use is there in having tongues, if we mayn’t use them in self-defence?”
“In order that we may use them for a better purpose,” answered Hubert, after a few minutes’ reflection. “I thought you had floored me, but I see it now. ‘Speech is silvern,’ and ‘silence is golden;’ but ‘a soft answer turneth away wrath.’ Although Cissy might gain apparent victories by retorting, she would in reality only draw upon herself greater antagonism, whilst, on the other hand, her silence both irritates them and makes them think her craven-spirited. If she were great enough to show her superiority by explaining, or apologising for her blunders, she would very soon put to rout all their hostility and win their hearts: that is, unless girls are made of very different stuff from boys. But this sort of greatness is only to be arrived at in one way,” he added, gravely. “Perhaps you could help her to find out how.”
Eva understood her brother’s meaning, for they often had these confidential talks on serious subjects.
“‘Take my yoke upon you and learn of me,’” she repeated, softly. “I had not thought of trying to help her.”
Hubert was right. An angry retort often provokes the bitterest enmity and does irreparable harm, and silence irritates by its likeness to contempt, but a gentle word is like oil on troubled waters. It is the coin by means of which we may purchase that which neither silver nor gold can buy—the love of an enemy; and more, by thus driving the demon from a human heart we may be the means, in God’s hands, of converting a sinner from the error of his ways. “And if,” said Christ, “he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.”
F. E. Burch.