'I don't make any such efforts,' said Falconer.
Some of my lady-readers will probably be remarking to themselves, 'How disagreeable of him! I can't endure the man.' If they knew how Falconer had to beware of the forwardness and annoyance of well-meaning women, they would not dislike him so much.But Falconer could be indifferent to much dislike, and therein I know some men that envy him.
When he saw, however, that Lady Georgina was trying to swallow a lump in her throat, he hastened to add,'I have only relations with individuals--none with classes.'
Lady Georgina gathered her failing courage.'Then there is the more hope for me,' she said.'Surely there are things a woman might be useful in that a man cannot do so well--especially if she would do as she was told, Mr.Falconer?'
He looked at her, inquiring of her whole person what numen abode in the fane.She misunderstood the look.
'I could dress very differently, you know.I will be a sister of charity, if you like.'
'And wear a uniform?--as if the god of another world wanted to make proselytes or traitors in this! No, Lady Georgina, it was not of a dress so easily altered that I was thinking; it was of the habit, the dress of mind, of thought, of feeling.When you laid aside your beautiful dress, could you avoid putting on the garment of condescension, the most unchristian virtue attributed to Deity or saint? Could you--I must be plain with you, Lady Georgina, for this has nothing to do with the forms of so-called society--could your temper endure the mortifications of low opposition and misrepresentation of motive and end--which, avoid intrusion as you might, would yet force themselves on your perception? Could you be rudely, impudently thwarted by the very persons for whom you were spending your strength and means, and show no resentment? Could you make allowances for them as for your own brothers and sisters, your own children?'
Lady Georgina was silent.
'I shall seem to glorify myself, but at that risk I must put the reality before you.--Could you endure the ugliness both moral and physical which you must meet at every turn? Could you look upon loathsomeness, not merely without turning away in disgust, and thus wounding the very heart you would heal, but without losing your belief in the Fatherhood of God, by losing your faith in the actual blood-relationship to yourself of these wretched beings? Could you believe in the immortal essence hidden under all this garbage--God at the root of it all? How would the delicate senses you probably inherit receive the intrusions from which they could not protect themselves? Would you be in no danger of finding personal refuge in the horrid fancy, that these are but the slimy borders of humanity where it slides into, and is one with bestiality? I could show you one fearful baboon-like woman, whose very face makes my nerves shudder: could you believe that woman might one day become a lady, beautiful as yourself, and therefore minister to her? Would you not be tempted, for the sake of your own comfort, if not for the pride of your own humanity, to believe that, like untimely blossoms, these must fall from off the boughs of the tree of life, and come to nothing at all--a theory that may do for the preacher, but will not do for the worker: him it would paralyze?--or, still worse, infinitely worse, that they were doomed, from their birth, to endless ages of a damnation, filthy as that in which you now found them, and must probably leave them? If you could come to this, you had better withhold your hand; for no desire for the betterment of the masses, as they are stupidly called, can make up for a lack of faith in the individual.If you cannot hope for them in your heart, your hands cannot reach them to do them good.They will only hurt them.'
Lady Georgina was still silent.Falconer's eloquence had perhaps made her ashamed.
'I want you to sit down and count the cost, before you do any mischief by beginning what you are unfit for.Last week I was compelled more than once to leave the house where my duty led me, and to sit down upon a stone in the street, so ill that I was in danger of being led away as intoxicated, only the policeman happened to know me.Twice I went back to the room I had left, crowded with human animals, and one of them at least dying.It was all I could do, and I have tolerable nerve and tolerable experience.'
A mist was gathering over Lady Georgina's eyes.She confessed it afterwards to Miss St.John.And through the mist he looked larger than human.
'And then the time you must spend before you can lay hold upon them at all, that is with the personal relation which alone is of any real influence! Our Saviour himself had to be thirty years in the world before he had footing enough in it to justify him in beginning to teach publicly: he had been laying the needful foundations all the time.Not under any circumstances could I consent to make use of you before you had brought yourself into genuine relations with some of them first.'
'Do you count societies, then, of no use whatever?' Lady Georgina asked, more to break the awkwardness of her prolonged silence than for any other reason.
'In as far as any of the persons they employ fulfil the conditions of which I have spoken, they are useful--that is, just in as far as they come into genuine human relations with those whom they would help.In as far as their servants are incapable of this, the societies are hurtful.The chief good which societies might effect would be the procuring of simple justice for the poor.That is what they need at the hands of the nation, and what they do not receive.
