Rankin was kneeling before her, holding out a pair of rubbers. At this remark he sat back on his heels, and began: “My great-aunt said that there was a man in her town who had such a terrible temper that his wife was in perfect terror of him, and finally actually died of fear. Everybody was paralyzed with astonishment when, two or three years after, one of the nicest girls in town married him. People told her she was crazy, but she just smiled and said she guessed she could get along with him all right. Everything went well for a week or two, and then one day he said the tea was cold and not fit for a pig to drink, and threw the cup on the floor. She threw hers down and broke it all to smash. He stared and glared, and threw his plate down. She set her lips and banged her own plate on the hearth. He threw his knife and fork through the window. She threw hers after, and added the water-pitcher for good measure.”
Lydia’s astonishment at this point was so heartfelt that the raconteur broke off, laughed, and ended hastily, “I spare you the rest of the dinner-service. The upshot of it was that every dish in the house was smashed and not a word spoken. Then the man called for his carriage (he was a rich man—that sort usually is), drove to the nearest china-store, bought a new set, better than the old, took it back, and lived in peace and harmony with his wife ever after. And here is the smallest pair of rubbers I can find, and I shall have to tie these on!”
Lydia watched the operation in silence. As he finished it and rose to his feet again, “What was that all about?” she inquired simply.
“Compromise,” he answered. “There are occasions when it doesn’t do any good.”
“Does it do such a lot of good to go off in the woods by yourself and do your own cooking?” asked Lydia with something of her father’s shrewd home-thrusting accent. “What would happen if everybody did that?”
Rankin laughed. “Everybody’d have a good time, for one thing,” he answered, adding, more seriously, “The house of Rimmon may be all right for some people, but my head isn’t clear enough.”
Lydia looked frankly at a loss. She did not belong to the alert, quickly “bluffing” type of young lady. “Rimmon?” she asked.
“He’s in the Bible.”
“That’s a good reason why I’ve never heard of him,” she said ruefully.
“All I meant by him was that people who conform outwardly to a standard they don’t really believe in, are in danger of getting most awfully mixed up. And certainly they don’t stand any chance of convincing anybody else that there’s anything the matter with the standard. What’s needed isn’t to upset everything in a heap, but to call people’s attention to the fact that things could be a lot better than they are. And that’s hard to do. And who ever called more people’s attention to that fact than an impractical, unbalanced nobleman who took to cobbling shoes for the peace of his soul? There wasn’t a particle of sense to what Tolstoi did, but—” He stopped, hesitating in an uncertainty that Lydia understood with a touching humility.