Now he once more sat stiff as a poker, still measuring with his eyes the distance between the steps. He even made a mental note of the number of a constable who had watched the feat, in order to have a witness to appeal to if his account of it should be received with scepticism at the stables.
Mrs. Warden allowed the poor-law inspector to hand her into the carriage. She asked him to call upon her the following day, and gave him her address.
“To Advocate Abel’s!” she cried to the coachman. The fat gentleman lifted his hat with a mealy smile, and the carriage rolled away.
As they gradually left the poor quarter of the town behind, the motion of the carriage became smoother, and the pace increased. And when they emerged upon the broad avenue leading through the villa quarter, the sleek pair snorted with enjoyment of the pure, delicate air from the gardens, and the immovable one indulged, without any sort of necessity, in three masterly cracks of his whip.
Mrs. Warden, too, was conscious of the delight of finding herself once more in the fresh air. The experiences she had gone through, and, still more, what she had heard from the inspector, had had an almost numbing effect upon her. She began to realize the immeasurable distance between herself and such people as these.
She had often thought there was something quite too sad, nay, almost cruel, in the text: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”
Now she understood that it could not be otherwise.
How could people so utterly depraved ever attain an elevation at all adequate to the demands of a strict morality? What must be the state of these wretched creatures’ consciences? And how should they be able to withstand the manifold temptations of life?
She knew only too well what temptation meant! Was she not incessantly battling against a temptation—perhaps the most perilous of all—the temptation of riches, about which the Scriptures said so many hard things?
She shuddered to think of what would happen if that brutish man and these miserable women suddenly had riches placed in their hands.