"Those busy subtle pronouns, I and Me,
Unsought and unexpected they appear;
No barriers heed they, and no laws revere;
But wind and penetrate, with dexterous force,
Through all the cracks and crannies of discourse."
JANE TAYLOR.
JEAN, in her neat grey dress, and grey hat with grey ostrich feathers, sat near the window of the dull sitting-room, looking into the dull street. She was waiting for Oswald; waiting, not impatiently, but with a certain forlorn wistfulness. When she and Oswald made an appointment, a tacit understanding was always included that he would keep the appointment, should nothing more agreeable intervene, but that she would keep it in the face of all obstacles. So he could always be sure of Jean, and she could never be sure of Oswald.
All the same, Jean trusted him through thick and thin. She trusted him because she loved him. Trust founded on love is but a rickety structure, compared with that more solid erection, love founded on trust.
Mr. Trevelyan had again an engagement which could not be set aside, and he went, in displeasure at Oswald's non-appearance.
"It is too bad," he said. "Mind, Jean—if Jem or anybody looks in, and offers to take you anywhere, don't refuse."
But of course, she would refuse. She would have sat till Domesday, looking for Oswald, sooner than have risked being absent when he did come.
This brother and sister, springing from the same stock, growing out of the same ground, surrounded by the same influences, had shot their branches in very different directions. In Oswald, self reigned supreme, and principle bowed before self-pleasing. He had indeed a certain Trevelyan hardihood and recklessness of danger; and in battle he would have rushed to the forefront without a thought of peril. But in everyday life, his personal comfort was a prime consideration; he liked an easy-chair existence, except during the intervals when amusement demanded exertion; and he spent a good deal of thought upon the pleasures of the palate.
Training can do much, but it cannot do everything. It is a mighty force for good or for evil; yet it has no power to change the actual texture of the substance on which it works. It can shape, subdue and modify, to almost any extent; but it cannot transform lead into gold, canvas into cambric.
A gardener has extraordinary power over plant-life, power to check or encourage growth; power to shape and modify. He can bring to splendour one attribute or another; he can let this or that part of a flower die out or become an abortion. But with all his cunning, he can never change a sunflower into a rose, or a cabbage into an oak. Each plant keeps untouched to the end its individuality.
Practically, no two persons, even of one family, ever can have precisely the same training, since variations are inevitable. In this case, not only had Jean always stayed at home, while Oswald went to school; but also Jean had been the worshipper, Oswald the worshipped; Jean had always yielded her will, Oswald had always gained his.