There was a little laughter, in which Tony joined, and the vicar said, “Excellent! He deserved it. Please don’t stop. Miss Harding.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Hester. “Once Nettie gets started she generally, as she would express it, goes straight through.”
“Yes,” said Nettie, “I quite often do. I’m not in the least afraid, like you, of being thought sentimental. In fact, we are fond of telling people what we think in my country. Still, I’m not sure about those limitations. The gates should open to everybody, even business men and heiresses—but I don’t want to go trespassing while the vicar’s here.”
The vicar nodded. “I claim you as an ally,” he said, “The idea you have taken up is not, however, exactly a novel one.”
“Well,” said Nettie, “what I feel is this. The old loyal spirit is living still—because it belongs to all time and can never die. It’s with us now in these days of steam engines and magazine rifles. Those old-time men wore their labels—the monk’s girdle, the red-cross shield, the palmer’s shell, and some, according to the pictures, the nimbus too; but can’t modern men, even those who play poker, which is a game of nerve as well as chance, and smoke green cigars, be as good as they? Now, I don’t like a man to be ostensibly puritanical and ascetic—unless, of course, he’s a clergyman.”
There was a little laughter, and the vicar shook his head. “I’m afraid they don’t all come under that category,” he said.
“Still, there are men who never did a mean thing or counted the cost when they saw what was expected of them. Can’t one fancy their passing the gates of that fairyland the easier because they are stained with the dust of the strife, and reaching out towards communion with the spirits of those old loyal folk who went before them—they, and the women they believe in?”
There was a moment’s silence. Nettie’s face was a trifle flushed, and a faint gleam showed in Violet Wayne’s gray eyes.
“I think,” said the vicar reflectively, “you might go further and say—with all angels and archangels! We will take it that fairyland is only a symbol.”
Tony, however, laughed indolently. “One would feel tempted to wonder whether there are many men who never did a mean thing.”