A Little Journey in the World | Page 9

pink in her cheeks. This flush did not
suggest youth, but rather ripeness, the tone that comes with the lines
made in the face by gentle acceptance of the inevitable in life. In her
quiet and self-possessed manner there was a little note of graceful
timidity, not perhaps noticeable in itself, but in contrast with that

unmistakable air of confidence which a woman married always has,
and which in the unrefined becomes assertive, an exaggerated notion of
her importance, of the value added to her opinions by the act of
marriage. You can see it in her air the moment she walks away from the
altar, keeping step to Mendelssohn's tune. Jack Sharpley says that she
always seems to be saying, "Well, I've done it once for all." This
assumption of the married must be one of the hardest things for single
women to bear in their self-congratulating sisters.
I have no doubt that Georgiana Forsythe was a charming girl, spirited
and handsome; for the beauty of her years, almost pathetic in its dignity
and self-renunciation, could not have followed mere prettiness or a
commonplace experience. What that had been I never inquired, but it
had not soured her. She was not communicative nor confidential, I
fancy, with any one, but she was always friendly and sympathetic to the
trouble of others, and helpful in an undemonstrative way. If she herself
had a secret feeling that her life was a failure, it never impressed her
friends so, it was so even, and full of good offices and quiet enjoyment.
Heaven only knows, however, the pathos of this apparently undisturbed
life. For did a woman ever live who would not give all the years of
tasteless serenity, for one year, for one month, for one hour, of the
uncalculating delirium of love poured out upon a man who returned it?
It may be better for the world that there are these women to whom life
has still some mysteries, who are capable of illusions and the sweet
sentimentality that grows out of a romance unrealized.
Although the recent books were on Miss Forsythe's table, her tastes and
culture were of the past age. She admired Emerson and Tennyson. One
may keep current with the news of the world without changing his
principles. I imagine that Miss Forsythe read without injury to herself
the passionate and the pantheistic novels of the young women who
have come forward in these days of emancipation to teach their
grandmothers a new basis of morality, and to render meaningless all the
consoling epitaphs on the mossy New England gravestones. She read
Emerson for his sweet spirit, for his belief in love and friendship, her
simple Congregationalist faith remaining undisturbed by his philosophy,
from which she took only a habit of toleration.

"Miss Debree has gone to church," she said, in answer to Mr. Lyon's
glance around the room.
"To vespers?"
"I believe they call it that. Our evening meetings, you know, only begin
at early candlelight."
"And you do not belong to the Church?"
"Oh, yes, to the ancient aristocratic church of colonial times," she
replied, with a little smile of amusement. "My niece has stepped off
Plymouth Rock."
"And was your religion founded on Plymouth Rock?"
"My niece says so when I rally her deserting the faith of her fathers,"
replied Miss Forsythe, laughing at the working of the Episcopalian
mind.
"I should like to understand about that; I mean about the position of
Dissenters in America."
"I'm afraid I could not help you, Mr. Lyon. I fancy an Englishman
would have to be born again, as the phrase used to be, to comprehend
that."
While Mr. Lyon was still unsatisfied on this point, he found the
conversation shifted to the other side. Perhaps it was a new experience
to him that women should lead and not follow in conversation. At any
rate, it was an experience that put him at his ease. Miss Forsythe was a
great admirer of Gladstone and of General Gordon, and she expressed
her admiration with a knowledge that showed she had read the English
newspapers.
"Yet I confess I don't comprehend Gladstone's conduct with regard to
Egypt and Gordon's relief," she said.
"Perhaps," interposed my wife, "it would have been better for Gordon

if he had trusted Providence more and Gladstone less."
"I suppose it was Gladstone's humanity that made him hesitate."
"To bombard Alexandria?" asked Mr. Lyon, with a look of asperity.
"That was a mistake to be expected of a Tory, but not of Mr. Gladstone,
who seems always seeking the broadest principles of justice in his
statesmanship."
"Yes, we regard Mr. Gladstone as a very great man, Miss Forsythe. He
is broad enough. You know we consider him a rhetorical phenomenon.
Unfortunately he always 'muffs' anything he touches."
"I