“Most excellent David, from early days of the earth downwards, the woman was ever the most unreasonable of all God’s creatures. She wants the impossible, she wants the perfection of things, which is not of this world. Instead of rejoicing, this foolish person complains.”
“Complains?”
“Oh, well, it seems the carpenter is now disinclined for work. I endeavoured to explain to her that the morbid reason for his love of hammering no longer exists. The good fellow is placid and content and an agreeable companion. But the absurd female is tearing her hair! ‘What,’ said I, ‘he has not struck you once since Saturday week, and you do not rejoice?’ ‘Rejoice!’ she screams. ‘And he’s not struck a nail either.’ ‘If this happy effect continues,’ I assured her, ‘you will be able to keep the remainder of your teeth.’ ‘I’ll have nothing to put between them if it does,’ she responds. In vain I represented to her, mulier—in short, that I, having done my part, it was now hers to utilise these new dispositions for her own ends. She must beguile him back to his everyday duties with tender smiles and womanly wiles—the female’s place in nature being to play this part towards the ruder male. But it was absolutely impossible to get her so much as to listen to me! She vowed that she had lost all patience—which was indeed very patent—that she had even clouted him (as she expressed it), without producing any other result than a smile at her. ‘Grins,’ says she, ‘like a zany!’ and with the want of logic of her sex, utterly fails to perceive what a triumphant attestation she is making to the efficacy of my plant.”
“It is extremely droll,” said David.
“Of course it will at once strike you,” pursued the old student, “that the obvious course was to induce the dissatisfied lady to partake of the soothing lotion herself. But, would you believe it? She became more violently abusive than ever at the bare suggestion!”
“Indeed,” said Ellinor, interrupting, “not only did she decline to make any acquaintance herself with the remedy, but she brought back the jar, with all that was left of our infusion, and vowed that she was well punished for dealing with the Devil and his daughter. You know, cousin David, I fear that I am rapidly gaining something of a reputation for black art! I do not mind, of course. Only,” she faltered a little, “a child ran from me in the village this morning. I was sorry for that.”
David’s face grew scornful. Popularity was so poor a thing in his eyes, that popular hate was not, he deemed, worth even a passing thought. But Ellinor, who could not look upon the world from a tower and whose self-allotted tasks lay, of necessity, much among the humble many, had not this lofty indifference. She knew she had already more enemies than friends. And she knew also to what she owed the sowing of this hostility—not to her association with her father, whose eccentric experiments in pharmacy on the whole worked to the benefit, and gave an extraordinary zest to the lives, of the village community—not to Madam Tutterville’s texts; for, indeed, that good lady was so subjugated by her niece’s housekeeperly qualifications that she elected for the nonce to be blind to the daughter’s abetting of the father’s pursuits. Well did Ellinor know to whom it was she owed her growing ill-repute.
Yet the cloud in her sky, no bigger at first than a woman’s hand, was growing, she felt, and was sufficient already to cast a shadow. And now, as she sat in such perfect content this summer night between her father and her cousin, her duty and her love, and felt herself a centre of peace and harmony, the mere passing remembrance of Margery sufficed to make her heart contract.
With the thought of Margery, the recollection of her commission leaped up in her mind. She laid the letter on her knee, gazing down at its whiteness a moment or two before she could overcome her extraordinary repugnance to deliver it.
Meanwhile Master Simon was flowing happily on again, quite oblivious of the fact that neither David, whose gaze had once more turned starward, nor his daughter, absorbed in inner reflection, were paying the least heed to his discourse.