There was not a picture hanging on his walls, not a horse in his stables, not a cow in his meadows, not a tree about his place that Dolly did not hate with the detestation born of utter weariness and mental exhaustion.
And in this case she had no choice but to suffer patiently. Antonia Halling had not been at Homewood three months before Mrs. Mortomley would have given her entire fortune to see her depart. Her friends filled the house. She herself simply deposed Dolly; and Dolly, though no saint, loved peace far too well to fight for the possession of a throne she knew she must ultimately re-ascend.
When Mr. Dean married Antonia, but not before. Judge, therefore, how anxious Dolly was to stand well with Mr. Dean; but she failed in her endeavour.
Mr. Dean "could not see anything in her." "She was not his style." "Her manners might please some people, apparently they did, but they did not recommend themselves to him." "Of course the fortune she had left her was one not be despised by a man in Mr. Mortomley's position, but he was doubtful whether a managing, steady, careful, sensible woman might not have proved a better-dowered wife than the one he had chosen."
For all of which remarks—that sooner or later reached her ears—Dolly cared not a groat. Slowly, however, it dawned upon her by degrees she never could recall—by a process as gradual as that which is effected when night is changed to day—that Mr. Dean and men like him not merely disapproved of her, which was nothing and to be expected, but looked down upon her husband, which was much and astounding.
By imperceptible degrees she arrived at the knowledge of the fact. More rapidly she grasped the reason, and came at the same time to a vague comprehension of the cause why between her soul and the souls of Mr. Dean and men and women like him, there lay an antagonism which should for ever prevent their knitting into one.
All Christianity, all genius, all talent, all cleverness, all striving after an ideal, all industry; all patience, all bearing and forbearing, they held not as things in themselves intrinsically good, but as good only so far as they were available for money getting.
Unless the sermon, or the book, or the invention, or the philanthropy or the hard work, or the vague yet passionate yearnings after a higher life which shy and self-contained natures possess and keep silence concerning—produced money, and a large amount of it, too—they despised those products of the human mind.
They had made their money or their fathers had done so before them, and having made it they were to speak justly as they themselves could state their case, willing to subscribe to charities and missions, and put down their fifties, their hundreds, and their thousands at public meetings, and even to send anonymous donations when they thought such a style of giving might approve itself to God.
But of that swift untarrying generosity which gives and forgets itself has given—of that Christian feeling which seeing a brother in need relieves him and omits to debit the Almighty with a dole—Mr. Dean and his fellows having no knowledge, they accounted Mortomley foolish because he had not considered himself first and the man who had need second.