“And you are so strong-minded, Nora, that you do not care about finery yourself?”
“Fred, that’s ill-natured. You know very well what my feelings are. You are sharp enough to understand them without any further explanation. I do like finery, quite well enough, as you’ll find out to your cost some day. And if ever you scold me for extravagance, I shall tell you about this.”
“It’s downright Quixotism.”
“Quixotism leads to nothing, but this will lead to twenty pounds’ worth of soup,—and to something else too.”
When he pressed her to explain what that something else was, she declined to speak further on the subject. She could not tell him that the satisfaction she desired was that of giving up something,—of having made a sacrifice,—of having thrown into the treasury her two mites,—two mites off her own back, as she had said to her aunt, and out of her own mouth. He had taxed her with indifference to a woman’s usual delight in gay plumage, and had taxed her most unjustly. “He ought to know,” she said to herself, “that I should not take all this trouble about it, unless I did care for it.” But, in truth, he did understand her motive thoroughly, and half approved them. He approved the spirit of self-abandonment, but disapproved the false political economy by which, according to his light, that spirit was accompanied. “After all,” said he, “the widow would have done better to have invested her small capital in some useful trade.”
“Oh, Fred;—but never mind now. I have your consent, and now I’ve only got to talk over my aunt.”
So saying, she left her lover to turn over in his mind the first principles of that large question of charity.
“The giving of pence and halfpence, of scraps of bread and sups of soup, is, after all, but the charity of a barbarous, half-civilised race. A dog would let another dog starve before he gave him a bone, and would see his starved fellow-dog die without a pang. We have just got beyond that, only beyond that, as long as we dole out sups of soup. But charity, when it shall have made itself perfect, will have destroyed this little trade of giving, which makes the giver vain and the receiver humble. The charity of the large-hearted is that which opens to every man the profit of his own industry; to every man and to every woman.” Then having gratified himself with the enunciation of this fine theory, he allowed his mind to run away to a smaller subject, and began to think of his own wedding garments. If Nora insisted on carrying out this project of hers, in what guise must he appear on the occasion? He also had ordered new clothes. “It’s just the sort of thing that they’ll make a story of in Chestnut Street.” Chestnut Street, as we all know, is the West End of Philadelphia.
When the morning came of the twelfth of January,—the morning that was to make Nora Field a married woman, she had carried her point; but she was not allowed to feel that she had carried it triumphantly.
Her uncle had not forbidden her scheme, but had never encouraged it. Her lover had hardly spoken to her on the subject since the day on which she had explained to him her intention.