The Judgment of Eve | Page 2

delicate pitch when flirtation becomes a decorative art, and Aggie
would have esteemed it vulgar. But Aggie was very superior and
fastidious. She wanted things that no young man in Queningford would
ever be able to offer her. Aggie had longings for music, better than
Queningford's best, for beautiful pictures, and for poetry. She had come
across these things at school. And now, at five-and-twenty, she couldn't
procure one of them for herself. The arts were not encouraged by her
family, and she only had an "allowance" on condition that she would
spend it honorably in clothes. Of course, at five-and-twenty, she knew
all the "pieces" and songs that her friends knew, and they knew all hers.

She had read all the romantic fiction in the lending library, and all the
works of light popular science, and still lighter and more popular
theology, besides borrowing all the readable books from the vicarage.
She had exhausted Queningford. It had no more to give her.
Queningford would have considered that a young lady who could do all
that had done enough to prove her possession of brains. Not that
Queningford had ever wanted her to prove it; its young men, at any rate,
very much preferred that she should leave her brains and theirs alone.
And Aggie had brains enough to be aware of this; and being a very
well-behaved young lady, and anxious to please, she had never
mentioned any of her small achievements. Nature, safeguarding her
own interests, had whispered to Aggie that young ladies who live in
Queningford are better without intellects that show.
Now, John Hurst was sadly akin to the young men of Queningford, in
that he was unable to offer her any of the things which, Aggie felt,
belonged to the finer part of her that she dared not show. On the other
hand, he could give her (beside himself), a good income, a good house,
a horse to ride, and a trap to drive in. To marry him, as her mother
pointed out to her, would be almost as good as "getting in with the
county." Not that Mrs. Purcell offered this as an inducement. She
merely threw it out as a vague contribution to the subject. Aggie didn't
care a rap about the county, as her mother might have known; but,
though she wouldn't have owned it, she had been attracted by John's
personal appearance. Glancing out of the parlor window, she could see
what a gentleman he looked as he crossed the market-place in his tweed
suit, cloth cap, and leather gaiters. He always had the right clothes.
When high collars were the fashion, he wore them very high. His rivals
said that this superstitious reverence for fashion suggested a revulsion
from a past of prehistoric savagery.
Mr. Gatty, on the other hand, had a soul that was higher than any collar.
That, Aggie maintained, was why he always wore the wrong sort.
There was no wrong thing Mr. Gatty could have worn that Aggie
would not have found an excuse for; so assiduously did he minister to
the finer part of her. He shared all her tastes. If she admired a picture or

a piece of music or a book, Mr. Gatty had admired it ever since he was
old enough to admire anything. She was sure that he admired her more
for admiring them. She wasn't obliged to hide those things from Mr.
Gatty; besides, what would have been the use? There was nothing in
the soul of Aggie that Mr. Gatty had not found out and understood, and
she felt that there would be no limit to his understanding.
But what she liked best about him was his gentleness. She had never
seen any young man so gentle as Mr. Gatty.
And his face was every bit as nice as John's. Nicer, for it was
excessively refined, and John's wasn't. You could see that his head was
full of beautiful thoughts, whereas John's head was full of nothing in
particular. Then, Mr. Gatty's eyes were large and spiritual; yes, spiritual
was the word for them. John's eyes were small, and, well, spiritual
would never be the word for them.
Unfortunately, John had been on the field first, before the unique
appearance of Mr. Gatty, and Aggie felt that she was bound in honor to
consider him. She had been considering him for some time without any
compulsion. But when things began to look so serious that it really
became a question which of these two she would take, she called in her
mother to help her to decide.
Mrs. Purcell was a comfortable, fat lady, who loved the state of peace
she had been born in, had married into, and had never lost. Aggie was
her eldest daughter, and she was a