The Judgment of Eve | Page 3

or Eliza. They were well enough, poor girls, but as long as Aggie was there they couldn't help looking plain. But as for deciding between John Hurst and Mr. Gatty, Mrs. Purcell couldn't do it. And when Aggie said, in her solemn way, "Mother, I think it's coming; and I don't know how to choose between them," her mother had nothing to say but:
"You must use your own judgment, my dear."
"My own judgment? I wonder if I really have any? You see, I feel as if I liked them both about the same."
"Then just say to yourself that if you marry John Hurst you'll have a big house in the country, and if you marry Mr. Gatty you'll have a little one in town, and choose between the houses. That'll be easy enough."
Secretly, Mrs. Purcell was all for John Hurst, though he couldn't be considered as exactly Aggie's equal in station. (They were always saying how like a gentleman he looked, which showed that that was the last thing they had expected of him. But in Queningford one does as best one can.) For all John's merits, she was not going to force him on Aggie in as many words. Mrs. Purcell deeply desired her daughter's happiness, and she said to herself: "If Aggie marries either of them, and it turns out unhappily, I don't want her to be able to say I over-persuaded her. If her poor father were alive, he'd have known how to advise her."
Then, all of a sudden, without anybody's advice, John was eliminated, too. It was not Aggie's doing. In fact, he may be said to have eliminated himself. It happened in this way:
Mr. Hurst had been taking tea with Aggie one market-day. The others were all out, and he had the field to himself. She always remembered just how he looked when he did it. He was standing on the white mohair rag in the drawing-room, and was running his fingers through his hair for the third time. He had been telling her how he had first taken up sheep-farming in Australia, how he'd been a farm-hand before that in California, how he'd always set his mind on that one thing--sheep-farming--because he had been born and bred in the Cotswolds. Aggie's dark-blue eyes were fixed on him, serious and intent. That flattered him, and the gods, for his undoing, dowered him with a disastrous fluency.
He had a way of thrusting out his jaw when he talked, and Aggie noted the singular determination of his chin. It was so powerful as to be almost brutal. (The same could certainly not be said of Mr. Gatty's.)
Then, in the light of his reminiscences, a dreadful thought came to her.
"John," she said, suddenly, "did you ever kill a pig?"
[Illustration: "'John,' she said, suddenly, 'did you ever kill a pig?'"]
He answered, absently, as was his way when directly addressed.
"A pig? Yes, I've killed one or two in California."
She drew back in her chair; but, as she still gazed at him, he went on, well pleased:
"I can't tell you much about California. It was in Australia I learned sheep-farming."
"So, of course," said Aggie, frigidly, "you killed sheep, too?"
"For our own consumption--yes."
He said it a little haughtily. He wished her to understand the difference between a grazier and a butcher.
"And lambs? Little lambs?"
"Well, yes. I'm afraid the little lambs had to go, too, sometimes."
"How could you? How could you?"
"How could I? Well, you see, I just had to. I couldn't shirk when the other fellows didn't. In time you get not to mind."
"Not to mind?"
"Well, I never exactly enjoyed doing it."
"No. But you did it. And you didn't mind."
She saw him steeped in butcheries, in the blood of little lambs, and her tender heart revolted against him. She tried to persuade herself that it was the lambs she minded most; but it was the pig she minded. There was something so low about killing a pig. It seemed to mark him.
And it was marked, stained abominably, that he went from her presence. He said to himself: "I've dished myself now with my silly jabber. Damn those lambs!"
Young Arthur Gatty, winged by some divine intuition, called at the Laurels the next afternoon. The gods were good to young Arthur, they breathed upon him the spirit of refinement and an indestructible gentleness that day. There was no jarring note in him. He rang all golden to Aggie's testing touch.
When he had gone a great calm settled upon her. It was all so simple now. Nobody was left but Arthur Gatty. She had just got to make up her mind about him--which would take a little time--and then--either she was a happy married woman or, said Aggie, coyly, a still happier old maid in Queningford forever.
It was surprising how little the alternative distressed her.

II
It