“I can hardly imagine James writing anything great,” said Mr Hutton, yielding to some crudeness in fraternal comment.
“Ah, my dear, you never imagined him a dean until you saw him one,” said Mrs Hutton.
“He did not make himself a dean,” said Mr Hutton, deprecating the judgment of the actual agents implied.
“Well — peace be to him — and to ourselves, for the time,” said Mrs Hutton. “I have had enough of him for one day. I wonder what he would feel if he could hear us. I should think his left ear must be burning.”
“Oh, I have never known James anything but sublimely complacent,” said Mr Hutton, indicating the unlikelihood of his brother’s suffering this discomfort; and speaking as though he considered a tendency to discontent some moral tribute — a view which would have added to his own self-regard.
Mrs Hutton laughed; and walking to the window, began to watch her children in the garden — two little daughters at play under the eye of a nurse, and a baby boy, to whose mind there seemed nothing wanting in the exercise of staggering as a source of indefinite amusement; from time to time bestowing some advice, voiced with rather unnecessary sharpness, upon the nurse’s handling of her charge. The Reverend Cleveland took up his pen, and drew some sermon paper towards him with some austerity of mien.
Sophia Hutton was a woman of five- or six-and-forty, with the manner of carrying years which shows maturity a seemlier thing than youth. When there was added to this gift a generous dower of brunette comeliness and a gentle dignity of bearing, she appeared to the Reverend Cleveland — in the fuller bloom of ten years earlier — a fitting mistress for the stately home which preferment was to bring. For this she seemed to herself no less a fitting mistress; but confinement to a home for which she was less adapted had cost her feelings milder conflict. There was a certain discernment in her survey of things, which saved her a too disturbing perplexity on the Bishop’s philosophy in viewing the Reverend Cleveland in a merely beneficed condition. Moreover, the maidenhood attending an imperious youth having outlasted the youth, she did not compare the lot of mistress of a sufficient household only with that of the mistress of a stately one, but also with a lot where mistresship played no part. The attractions of linking her portion with the Reverend Cleveland’s had not been enhanced in her eyes by the son and daughter by an earlier marriage. The father, whose home she ordered, had himself taken a second wife; and though her late esteem of stepmothers had not been flattering to the class, she found that their sway appeared less repellent regarded as wielded than obeyed.
As you watch her, do you mark the something of tone and gesture which touches some familiar chord — such a chord as is touched when, after the remembrance of your friend is dim, you come upon his son grown to a similar manhood? Listen to her tones, as she leans from the window with some words to her children on her lips — to that note which holds a latent peevishness as though in wait for a purpose. Yes, it is Mrs Blackwood to whom she is bound by the bond of kin. Ten years earlier, in the days ensuing on bereavement, when the heart is grateful for pitiful human fellowship, and human fellowship is kind, the Reverend Cleveland had passed some time with his good-hearted and genial, if dissenting and emphatic, neighbour. He had met Sophia, the elder sister of his wife, and had induced her to assume the lost relation to himself. In this step she was influenced partly by reasons given, and partly by a genuine, if not a fervid, affection and esteem for the Reverend Cleveland Hutton.
The resemblance between Mrs Blackwood and Mrs Hutton went deeper than what is meant by “a strong family likeness;” and consists of a film of suggestions insistent on the stranger’s eyes, but unheeded by those which have long seen it transparent. They were sisters in the fullest sense — clearly of the same stock and strain. They were, in a word, in that stage of affinity where, with human creatures as with other complex things, contact is another word for clashing. For it happens with character as colours, that, though different examples may make a grateful whole, two shades of the same are likely in touching to offend. Mrs Hutton had the quickness of feeling and intelligence which marked Mrs Blackwood, and greater depth in both; though hardly sufficient to warrant her contempt of her sister’s shallowness. Mrs Blackwood’s tendency to jealousy and peevishness had also its place in her sister, and was also rooted to further depth; though under this head the latter did not insist upon the difference. The strain of kindliness which nature had implanted in both — perhaps with a firmer and more generous hand in Mrs Hutton — had grown in Mrs Blackwood under the influence of Mr Blackwood, and her own endeavour to live her religion in her dealings, into a consistent effort to attain to charity which might almost claim the name. In Mrs Hutton it had found itself in conflict with a talent for hitting on the foibles of her kind with a causticity which passed for wit, and a mingling of wit itself; had found the struggle for supremacy vain; and now held to a suppressed existence. Mrs Hutton had a greater dignity of presence and a truer culture than Mrs Blackwood, and did not fail to recognise the latter’s deficiency; not seldom entertaining the Reverend Cleveland by mimicry of her sister “speaking” at a temperance meeting, or talking for display with gesticulation.
Now, as a person of observation, and knowledge of human nature in its subtler aspects, for example, as acted upon by difference in religious views and sameness of blood, are you disposed to dark surmise on the relations of the houses of Blackwood and Hutton; or wondering how long it had been since relations between them existed? In this thing you may take heart. Their ground of intercourse never presented clefts on its surface, though the ensuing stratum was at times volcanic. As far as the masters of the families went, the intercourse was so entirely on the surface, that this covered eruptiveness did not affect it. Mr Blackwood combated Mr Hutton’s leanings to ritual, and urged him to stronger influence on the side of temperance, in unfaltering defiance of years and lack of result, affording to himself enjoyment unutterable, and only moderate annoyance to the latter, whose feelings were not so impervious to blunting influence. He regarded his mission as a high and significant one, and reported the degree of his success to the doctor in a serious spirit. The Reverend Cleveland enjoyed at his pleasure his neighbour’s masculine fellowship; and maintained towards him an easy goodwill; whose basis in his view of himself as a man of erudition of the more abstruse and higher order, as opposed to the doctor’s practical knowledge, did not render it strong to the inconvenient extent of showing him an unsuitable subject for Mrs Hutton’s mimicry.
Of the intercourse between Mrs Hutton and Mrs Blackwood an equally easy account can hardly be given. The local view of them was as an affectionate pair of sisters; and it was a current remark how “nice” it was, that they should spend their married life so near each other. But their intercourse was not confined to the safe, if easily exhaustible, sphere of the surface; and in its more perilous province sustained upheavals which would have threatened the exposed exterior, had not they been of that subtle kind to which open notice is forbidden. For example, when they met one day in the village, they expressed content that their ways coincided, and in making their farewells showed a cordial affection, which, however rarefied, was not in the least degree transparent. But if we suppose it was transparent, our knowledge will go further; for in a very few minutes the jar had come, the note of discord been struck. It was Mrs Blackwood who struck it. She neglected to show enthusiasm over an account by Mrs Hutton of a eulogy in a church paper of one of the Reverend Cleveland’s pamphlets; and when Mrs Hutton was goaded to exaggerate the terms, made it known that she had read the paragraph, and corrected her sister’s version. This was more than could be supported by flesh and blood — from flesh and blood of kindred substance; and hence the sisters’ dialogue was charged with hidden currents. It became a series of thrusts with verbal weapons seemingly innocent, but carrying each its poisoned point. Before they parted, Mrs Hutton had observed with candour and humility, that she recognised now how bigoted she had once been in her views upon Wesleyanism, and of how much higher a type church-people really were; and that intercourse with a university man made one so different, that it was quite an effort to associate with people of another order. Mrs Blackwood had let fall the casual opinions, that no woman who did not marry before thirty knew marriage in its truest sense; and that Dolores was clearly a great comfort to her father — of course she brought back the old days to him.