The grocer’s weak eyes honored a ministering angel.
“Exactly, madam. Permit me—”
He edged through the door with a nervous clearing of the throat, blinked as the wind blew a cloud of dust across the road, and escorted my Lady Bountiful to her carriage.
“What address, madam?”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Mainprice, the coachman knows.”
And Mr. Mainprice stood on the curb for fully ten seconds, watching Dr. Steel’s brougham bear this most charming lady upon her round of Christian kindness and pity.
It is wise in this world to cultivate a reputation for philanthropy, though like the priestly dress it may be a mere sanctity of the surface. Few people are honest enough to be open egotists, and to attain our ends it is necessary to skilfully bribe our neighbors’ prejudices. Though self-interest is the motive power that keeps the world from flagging, it is neither discreet nor cultured to blatantly acknowledge such a truth, for without a certain measure of hypocrisy life would be a sorry scramble. That man should be taught to love his neighbor as himself is both admirable and inspiring, and yet no one who respects his banking account could ever seriously accept so unbusiness-like a theory. There was more shrewd, honest, and unflinching truth-telling in Hobbes than in the vaporings of a flimsy sentimentalism.
Now Mrs. Betty had no more love for a washerwoman sick with a carbuncle on her neck than she had for an old and mildewed boot. Poverty and the inevitable sordidness thereof were more than distasteful to her, and yet she was so far sound in her worldly philosophy as to dissemble her distaste for expediency’s sake. It is never foolish to be suspected of generosity. And in Roxton, where the ladies counted one another’s yearly record as to hats, it was necessary to assume some sort of benignant attitude towards the heathen or the poor. Betty Steel, as the leading physician’s wife, recognized the power of judicious and moral self-advertisement. She had lived down her mischievous desire to shock the good people who paid her husband’s pleasant bills. No doubt she derived some delicate satisfaction from playing the fair lady in her furs, and from conferring favors on her humbler neighbors. The sense of superiority is always pleasant. That man is a liar who describes himself as utterly indifferent to obloquy or favor.
Mrs. Betty stopped at a florist’s shop on her way and bought three bundles of Scilla flowers. The golden blooms made a kind of splendor beside her sable coat. Colonel Feveril, Roxton’s most antique dandy, passed as she returned towards her brougham, and the brisk sweep of the soldier’s hat saved her the trouble of remembering her mirror.
At the top of one of the alleys leading to the river, Dr. Steel’s wife disembarked upon her errand of mercy. A small boy whipping a top on the narrow sidewalk served as a porter for the carrying of her jellies. One or two greasy heads were poked out of the pigeon-holes of windows. Mrs. Betty, demure and sweet as any Dorcas, knocked at the door of No. 5.