'Oh stay, the maiden cried, and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast.'
Surely, that is all but indecency. In fact, I wrote at once to the master and drew his attention to the passage, requesting that my boy might never be asked to repeat such a poem. The force of my objection was not at once admitted, strange to say; but in the end I gained my point."
Mr. Vialls screwed up his lips and frowned at the table-cloth, but said nothing.
"Our task nowadays," pursued the Mayor, with confidence, "is to preserve the purity of home. Our homes are being invaded by dangerous influences we must resist. The family should be a bulwark of virtue—of all the virtues—holiness, charity, peace."
He lingered on the last word, and his gaze became abstracted.
"Very true, very true indeed!" cried the clergyman. "For one thing, how careful a parent should be with regard to the periodical literature which is allowed to enter his house. This morning, in a home I will not mention, my eye fell upon a weekly paper which I should have thought perfectly sound in its teaching; yet, behold, there was an article of which the whole purport was to excuse the vices of the lower classes on the ground of their poverty and their temptations. Could anything be more immoral, more rotten in principle? There is the spirit we have to contend against—a spirit of accursed lenity in morals, often originating in so-called scientific considerations! Evil is evil—vice, vice—the devil is the devil—be circumstances what they may. I do not care to make mention of such monstrous aberrations as, for instance, the attacks we are occasionally forced to hear on the law of marriage. That is the mere reek of the bottomless pit, palpable to all. But I speak of subtler disguises of evil, such as may recommend themselves to persons well-intentioned but of weak understanding. Happily, I persuaded my friends to discontinue their countenance of that weekly paper, and I shall exert myself everywhere to the same end."
They rose at length, and went to the drawing-room. There Glazzard succeeding in seating himself by Miss Mumbray, and for a quarter of an hour he talked with her about art and literature. The girl's face brightened; she said little, but that little with very gracious smiles. Then Mr. Vialls approached, and the tete-a-tete was necessarily at an end.
When he was at length alone with his wife, the Mayor saw what was in store for him; in fact, he had foreseen it throughout the evening.
"Yes," began the lady, with flashing eyes, "this is your Mr. Glazzard! He encourages Serena in her shameful behaviour! I overheard him talking to her."
"You are altogether wrong, as usual," replied Mr. Mumbray, with his wonted attempt at dignified self-assertion. "Glazzard distinctly disapproves of Bawlzac, and everything of that kind. His influence is as irreproachable as that of Mr. Vialls."