‘No,’ said Gerald, ‘not if their betters are really better. It always appears to me that the persons who complain most loudly about the loss of respect are the persons who least deserve to be respected.’
‘I always find the poor so very respectful and so very grateful,’ said Miss Venniker. ‘It is so little that one can do for them, and they seem to value a kind word so much.’
‘Respect,’ answered Gerald, in rather a low tone, ‘is not a feeling that can be manufactured at will. It springs up naturally where goodness deserves it. No doubt the poor and uneducated may make mistakes, they often look up to the wrong people; but they are only too eager to show respect where it is justly evoked.’
‘What a great deal of harm,’ Miss Venniker continued, ‘a bad prince or even a bad nobleman must do!’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Gerald, ‘he makes it so difficult to be loyal; he injures the people by drying up the spring of loyalty that rises in their hearts.’ He paused a moment, and then added, ‘Why, if the aristocracy were all (as the word implies) a ruling class of the best citizens, there is nothing that they might not do; they would have the whole country at their feet.’
‘That is what mamma has often said to me,’ Miss Venniker replied.
‘If people were all like Lady Venniker,’ said Gerald earnestly, ‘there would be no more any discord of classes; I think the world would become as the heaven that the saints have dreamt of.’
The flush of pleasure that passed upon Miss Venniker’s face was her only answer.
Lady Venniker, when her health allowed, delighted in visiting the homes of the poor. Her daughter was always her companion. No visitors were so welcome as they. It seemed natural for them to be there. The poor felt a part of their sufferings to be charmed away when they saw Lady Venniker’s sweet pale face at the wicket-gate. As a rule she did not quit the carriage when her daughter entered the cottages bearing some little present, it might be, of food or clothing, or a message of sympathy more valuable than all else; but the cottagers would come out of their humble homes and cluster around her carriage, and sometimes a sick child would be lifted from its bed to the window to catch a glimpse of ‘the good lady’s’ smile and would go back to bed, feeling better for having seen her. But there were times, too, when Lady Venniker could not refrain from sitting, at whatever personal cost, by the bedside of suffering. It was so when the illness was prolonged or painful or drew near to death, or when she was the only person whose presence could bring relief. Lord Venniker, at her desire, had built a small cottage hospital where the sick poor could be nursed in critical hours. One poor girl, lying in the hospital, who was sentenced to undergo an operation, said to the nurse that she could bear it better if Lady Venniker would hold her hand; and Lady Venniker, hearing her wish, came and sat by her and held her hand in hers until her fears and pains were over. Such was her example of the gracious noble influence that a beautiful soul, high in rank but higher in nature, may display. What wonder that her ladyship was loved and almost worshipped in Helmsbury? It was winter time for the poor folk at Helmsbury whenever she was away; she did not go away now, but in old days, when she was a bride, she had gone to London for the season; it was always spring when she returned, even if the snow was lying on the ground.
Ethel Venniker, as the dispenser of her mother’s charities, had acquired, perhaps, a graver view of life than would be thought wholly natural to her years. Or rather her character (at least, in the eyes of Gerald Eversley) was such a union of lightheartedness and seriousness, of merry frolicsome humour playing upon a surface of deep reverential gravity, as is, in a sense, the perfection of a true womanly nature. She did not shrink from talking, though she was unwilling to talk often, of the sad side of life. She was fond of music and dancing; the theatre, on the rare occasions when she went to it, was an inspiration to her; but she had known the spectacle of death. Her religious feeling was simple and profound. Above all, she had learnt from her mother that rank or wealth was itself a responsibility and, unless utilised to holy ends, a spiritual danger. ‘I used to think,’ was one of Lady Venniker’s favourite remarks, ‘that our Lord’s words about the difficulty of a rich man entering into the kingdom of Heaven were a hard saying, but as I have grown older and have seen more of the world, I have come to realise the truth of them.’