“Well, now, about babies——” William was still pursuing his argument when we went in to dinner.
“Dear me, William,” said Mrs. Henry tightly. William waved her aside with his knife. “Now I think, for my part,” he said in loud, burly tones, “that it doesn’t matter who the father is——”
“You needn’t wait, Janet, we’ll ring,” said Mrs. Henry.
William paid the girl the graceful compliment of waiting until the door closed behind her, and then added, “So long as the thing is a fact, it doesn’t matter a hang how it became so. The question is, there’s a baby; that’s all that is of interest to us, isn’t it, so long as it is strong and well?”
“Henry, dear, do you care for more beetroot?” said his wife, and then there was silence.
“Then there’s another silly thing you women do to confound issues and obscure points,” continued William. “When some one comes to the place—some poor girl newly married—and you are asked to call on her, the first thing you ask is, ‘And—er—who was she?’ Now what the devil does it matter who she was? Who is she? you might perhaps ask if you want to know, though it is not of much importance. All you want to find out, to my thinking, is just this: is she, or is she not?”
“Is she, or is she not what, William?” his sister asked almost impatiently. “I don’t follow you.”
“Good Lord! is she what! That’s just it. Is she anything, my dear girl; is she anything with human blood, and bones, and a presentable face in front of it, or is she simply a mass of slowly decaying matter, endowed with the gift of moving from one chair to another? That’s the very thing I want to know.”
“What girl in particular were you speaking of, William?” said Mrs. Henry with forced patience. “If I know to whom you refer, perhaps I shall be able to tell you whether she is—what did you say? decaying? or not. Cheese, Henry?”
We were destined to see a good deal of William. He was trying to run some scheme or other in the neighbourhood, and he went into rooms for a time. He was asked out a good deal at first, but not so much later on. To me he became a sort of Eulenspiegel, and I delighted to hear of his progress in the town. But I believe that was not the light in which he regarded himself; he quite intended to be a serious reformer. One good thing he did; he stimulated industry in the neighbourhood. Ladies almost invariably took up a piece of knitting or work of some kind when he came near them, and men would go off to their studies, saying, “I’ll leave you to have a chat with my wife while I just finish a bit of work.” It interested him more than anything to find out what were the various landmarks in their past lives to which other people attached importance. There were some, he discovered, who thought that what they called “sound principles” were of importance, and when he pressed them to describe by what process a principle became sound, they nearly always said that it was sound if the best men held it. It took him many an hour’s hard work running the old ladies of Millport to ground on the point who the best men were. They dodged and doubled, burrowed and soared, fluttering, on to fences, which gave way under them when they sat for a moment to take breath. They took sanctuary in all sorts of funny little temples, which they had built, from time to time, of precepts gathered here and there. I remember seeing Mrs. Beehive flee, breathless, into one of these, and remain for a long time, while William stood, so to speak, baying at the door. It was the temple of “Woman being a good influence over man.”