“I would die to help on that!” she said in a low voice.
“Will you live for it?” asked Donovan, with his rare, beautiful smile. “Live, and do something more than endure the Lady Carolines and Mr. Cuthberts?”
Few things are more inspiriting that the realization that we are called to some special work which will need our highest faculties, our untiring exertions which will demand all that is good in us, and will make growth in good imperative. With the peacefulness of that country Sunday was interwoven a delicious perception that hard, beautiful work lay beyond. Erica wandered about the shady Mountshire woods with Gladys and the children, and in the cool restfulness, in the stillness and beauty, got a firm hold on her lofty ideal, and rose about the petty vexations and small frictions which had been spoiling her life at Greyshot.
The manor grounds were always thrown open to the public on Sunday, and a band in connection with one of the temperance societies played on the lawn. Donovan had been much persecuted by the Sabbatarians for sanctioning this; but, though sorry to offend any one, he could not allow what he considered mistaken scruples to interfere with such a boon to the public. Crowds of workingmen and women came each week away from their densely packed homes into the pure country; the place was for the time given up to them, and they soon learned to love it, to look upon it as a property to which they had a real and recognized share.
Squire Ward, who owned the neighboring estate, grumbled a good deal at the intrusion of what he called the “rabble” into quiet Oakdene.
“That's the worst of such men as Farrant,” he used to say. “They begin by rushing to one extreme, and end by rushing to the other. Such a want of steady conservative balance! He's a good man; but, poor fellow, he'll never be like other people, never!”
Mrs. Ward was almost inclined to think that he had been less obnoxious in the old times. As a professed atheist, he could be shunned and ignored, but his uncomfortably practical Christianity had a way of shaking up the sleepy neighborhood, and the neighborhood did not at all like being shaken!
CHAPTER XXIX. Greyshot Again
To what purpose do you profess to believe in the unity of
the human race, which is the necessary consequence of the
unity of God, if you do not strive to verify it by
destroying the arbitrary divisions and enmities that still
separate the different tribes of humanity? Why do we talk
of fraternity while we allow any of our brethren to be
trampled on, degraded or despised? The earth is our
workshop. We may not curse it, we are bound to sanctify it.
... We must strive to make of humanity one single family.
Mazzini