Meanwhile she noticed that Lady Val had been suddenly captured by one of the grandest of the Bonaventurian female intruders, who wore a travelling-robe of black velvet over-scrawled by amazing hieroglyphics in purple and white of the most fantastic monsters to ward off all danger of bad luck; and by scrutinising this robe while its wearer’s volubility absorbed her mother’s attention, she derived a certain curious satisfaction which proved to herself though her brother would not have believed it that she had a real taste of her own for beautiful shapes and rare colours and artful designs.
John was now giving Tilton a long and extremely complicated discourse on the importance of never allowing his pious opinions about unusual yet perfectly natural events, such as falling stars, whirlpools, cloud-bursts, earthquakes, tidal waves, and the like, to interfere with his daily observation of the ways and characteristics of the persons with whom he had to live, or to let these same theological opinions terrify him with apprehensions about the future of the world.
“Where Science and Philosophy are concerned,” John was now assuring his brother, “it is as bad for the authorities to interfere as it is for the brutal ignorance of the common herd! What I hold is—”
“How John does love to say ‘I hold’,’ ‘thought his little sister, “but I expect he’s right or Peleg wouldn’t look so pleased and mother wouldn’t look as if she didn’t even notice the exquisitely designed robe that lady’s got on!”
“I hold,” went on John, “that no vulgar prejudice and no high-placed authority has the right to meddle in any of these things.”
“You are unfair, John,” cried Tilton indignantly. “Isn’t he, Mother? Do speak, Mother — Pardon me, Lady”—this was addressed to the wearer of the pictured robe, but Tilton went steadily on addressing his mother—“Do tell him, Mother, please do, how unfair he is! Do make him see! What I say is really quite plain and simple. When there’s a possibility of wicked and vicious undermining with clever human reason of the long-ago revealed doctrines of the Church, doctrines that God himself—”
“O do for heaven’s sake shut up, Tilton!” interrupted John. “Aren’t you ashamed to put all this conventional rigmarole, all this hollow superficial humbug, into the head of Lil-Umbra? You agree with me, don’t you, Peleg? Since you’ve lived in this country you have seen, haven’t you, the cruel harm done to original scholarship and original thinking by the blind and obstinate tyranny of self-interest? You, as a Mongol, Peleg, must have seen among Asiatics of every sort this same terrible wrong being done to enlightened and uninhibited human thought by the tyranny of custom, tradition, habit, and common usage, blindly supported by the stupid self-interest of the particular persons who happen to be in power and who use their power to suppress the least stirring of new thought. You do agree with me, don’t you, Peleg?”
The gigantic Tartar looked so embarrassed and uncomfortable under the impact of this direct personal appeal that Lil-Umbra was unable to contain her feelings. “I’m not backing up Tilton against you, John,” she cried in a clear but not shrill voice; and then, as she noticed a slight movement of Lady Val’s stately figure in her direction, she dropped her hold upon Peleg’s mantle, straightened her figure, held her head high, and surveyed her excited brothers with an almost judicial impartiality.
The press of people pushing and hustling as they jostled one another in the two streams of outgoers and incomers within those great carved doors between kitchen and dining-hall, seemed, at least to the mind of the super-sensitized young John, actually to be pausing at that moment in the swirl of their movement to listen to the words of the young girl who was holding her head so high. “No, I’m not taking the side of either of you,” she went on, “but I feel ever so strongly, John, that this mental argument you’re using now doesn’t altogether — I know there’s a great deal in it: don’t misunderstand me, I implore you! — but I also know that there are things to be remembered and thought of, that you, John, neither remember nor think of! There’s a great deal in what you say, John dear; more, I expect, than I realize myself: but there’s also a lot to be said on the other side — O! a terrible lot! — and this other side is so appallingly mixed up with our feelings that it’s oddly painful, John dear, yes! oddly and queerly painful, to bring it out fully enough to be able to defend it. It’s because they’re such hard things to say and so mixed up with all our deepest feelings, John, that it’s difficult for Tilton to express all that he has in his mind — whereas it’s easy for you to express all you have in your mind — because, don’t you see, dear John, the things you’re talking about are clear and definite? They are supposed to be much harder to understand than our emotions and feelings; but in reality they are — and I know I am right in this! — ever so much easier! For in real truth, John, my brother, the ideas we make up in our minds can be followed by our minds; the feelings we have in our hearts are put there by Nature and they begin and end in darkness and mystery. It’s not that I don’t know very well where it is that you have picked up your view of things, John, and I know it is a fount of true wisdom. But there are things that a saintly great man like this Bonaventura — and you must remember that Bonaventura was consecrated for his work by Saint Francis himself who must have thought highly of him and must have predicted for him a wonderful future. So we have to remember when we are—”
“Be a good girl now,” broke in her mother, who by this time had escaped from the lady with the hieroglyphic gown, “and go upstairs to Nurse. Your dear Father may be back any minute; and he’ll want to see you at your best at breakfast because I have invited the whole lot of these good people to this meal with us. I have just now been talking to the Countess of Corbière-Cantorac of Caen and she tells me that the Blessed Bonaventura himself has sworn he will be here if his horses don’t fail him; though at the moment he’s visiting a leper’s hamlet near Ilchester. If your Father’s late, we’ll have to keep all these people entertained and amused as best we can. He wouldn’t like it for us to begin before he came.”
Any sagacious onlooker who had the intelligence to ponder on the under-currents of this scene would have already decided that Lady Val, in spite of the competent appearance of worldly poise that she managed to display, was not far from some kind of nervous collapse. Nor would that onlooker have been mistaken. The poor woman actually was on the verge of such a breakdown.
“O why, why, why,” she kept asking herself in the depths of her soul, “did our ancient family of Dormaquil ever allow itself to be betrayed by a romantic idiot like me into handing over Roque to a crazy breed like these Abyssums?”
What particularly disturbed her at this moment was the awkward and unconventional isolation of her three children along with that Tartar-Jew, Peleg. They are simply, she told herself, showing off their clever theories to each other, and totally forgetting their duty to the immemorial hospitality and prestige of the Manor of Roque. They ought to be moving about among this crowd with the graciousness of a proper family; whereas Tilton, I can see, is longing to go straight out to his half-built shrine and Lil only wants to put John in his place and show herself as clever as he is!
She turned away from the three of them for a moment and hurriedly examined the faces of the crowd. She soon realized that there were, sprinkled among the visitors or pilgrims from the other side of the channel, several of the richest freemen of the Manor; and she even fancied she saw a couple of serfs in their Sunday clothes. She had already noticed among the Manor officials what looked to her like the whole Sygerius family, except the old grandfather who was no doubt, as he always was, polishing and sharpening and cleaning the weapons in the armoury. This old gentleman had been the Reeve or Bailiff of the Manor for a quarter of a century, and his name was Heber, while the name of his son and successor was Randolph. Old Heber’s wife had died years ago, but the wife of Randolph, whose name was Madge, was full of youthful liveliness and daring, as was indeed the whole Sygerius family including both Toby, Randolph’s eldest son, and Toby’s wife, an extremely pretty girl whose name was Kate, but who from childhood had had the nickname of Crumb.