But this could not last. She was young, nature soon rallied in her, and she had seen things and done things during the last two years which forbade her to accept such a limited horizon as satisfied most of the women of that day. Unlike them, she had viewed the world from more than one standpoint; through the grille of a convent school, from the grimy windows of a back-street in Paris; again, as it moved beneath the painted ceilings of a French salon. And now, as it presented itself in this retired house.
Therefore she could not view things as those saw them whose standpoint had never shifted. She had suffered, she still had twinges—for who, with her experience, could be sure that the path would continue easy? And so to her Mr. Colet’s sermon had made a strong appeal.
It left the word which Mr. Colet had taken for his text sounding in her ears. Borne upward on the eloquence which earnestness had lent to the young preacher, she looked down on a world in torment, a world holding up piteous hands, craving, itself in ignorance, the help of those who held the secret, and whose will might make that secret sufficient to save. Love! To do to others as she would have others do to her! With every day, with every hour, with every minute to do something for others! Always to give, never to take! Above all to give herself, to do her part in that preference of others to self, which could alone right these mighty wrongs, could find work for the idle, food for the hungry, roofs for the homeless, knowledge for the blind, healing for the sick! Which could save all this world in torment, and could
“Build a Heaven in Hell’s despair!”
It was a beautiful vision, and in this her first glimpse of it, Mary’s fancy was not chilled by the hard light of experience. It seemed so plain that if the workman had his master’s profit at heart, and the master were as anxious for the weal of his men, the interests of the two would be one. Equally plain it seemed that if they who grew the food aimed at feeding the greatest number, and they who ate had the same desire to reward the grower, if every man shrank from taking advantage of other men, if the learned lived to spread their knowledge, and the strong to help the weak, if no man wronged his neighbor, but
“Each for another gave his ease,”
then it seemed equally plain that love would indeed be lord of all!
Later, she might discover that it takes two to make a bargain; that charity does bless him who gives but not always him who takes; even, that cheap bread might be a dear advantage—that at least it might have its drawbacks.
But for the moment it was enough for Mary that the vision was beautiful and, as a theory, true. So that, gazing upward at the faded dimity of her tester, she longed to play her part in it. That world in torment, those countless hands stretched upward in appeal, that murmur of infinite pain, the cry of the hungry, of the widow, of men sitting by tireless hearths, of children dying in mill and mine—the picture wrought on her so strongly, that she could not rest. She rose, and though the hoar frost was white on the grass and the fog of an autumn morning still curtained the view, she began to dress.
Perhaps the chill of the cold water in which she washed sobered her. At any rate, with the comb in one hand and her hair in the other, she drifted down another line of thought. Lord Audley—how strange was the chance which had again brought them together! How much she owed him, with what kindness had he seen to her comfort, how masterfully had he arranged matters for her on the boat. And then she smiled. She recalled Basset’s ill-humor, or his—jealousy. At the thought of what the word implied, Mary colored.