The Soul of a Bishop. Herbert George Wells

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СКАЧАТЬ has told you that I have disgraced myself," she began.

      "No," said the bishop, weighing it. "No. But you seem to have been indiscreet, little Norah."

      "I got excited," she said. "They began turning out the other women—roughly. I was indignant."

      "You didn't go to interrupt?" he asked.

      She considered. "No," she said. "But I went."

      ​He liked her disposition to get it right. "On that side," he assisted.

      "It isn't the same thing as really meaning, Daddy," she said.

      "And then things happened?"

      "Yes," she said to the fire.

      A pause followed. If they had been in a law-court, her barrister would have said, "That is my case, my lord." The bishop prepared to open the next stage in the proceedings.

      "I think, Norah, you shouldn't have been there at all," he said.

      "Mother says that."

      "A man in my position is apt to be judged by his family. You commit more than yourself when you commit an indiscretion. Apart from that, it wasn't the place for a girl to be at. You are not a child now. We give you freedom—more freedom than most girls get—because we think you will use it wisely. You knew—enough to know that there was likely to be trouble."

      The girl looked into the fire and spoke very carefully. "I don't think that I oughtn't to know the things that are going on."

      The bishop studied her face for an instant. It struck him that they had reached something very fundamental as between parent and child. His modernity showed itself in the temperance of his reply.

      ​"Don't you think, my dear, that on the whole your mother and I, who have lived longer and know more, are more likely to know when it is best that you should begin to know—this or that?"

      The girl knitted her brows and seemed to be reading her answer out of the depths of the coals. She was on the verge of speaking, altered her mind and tried a different beginning.

      "I think that every one must do their thinking—his thinking—for—oneself," she said awkwardly.

      "You mean you can't trust——?"

      "It isn't trusting. But one knows best for oneself when one is hungry."

      "And you find yourself hungry?"

      "I want to find out for myself what all this trouble about votes and things means."

      "And we starve you—intellectually?"

      "You know I don't think that. But you are busy. … "

      "Aren't you being perhaps a little impatient, Eleanor? After all—you are barely eighteen. … We have given you all sorts of liberties."

      Her silence admitted it. "But still," she said after a long pause, "there are other girls, younger than I am, in these things. They talk about—oh, all sorts of things. Freely. …

      "You've been awfully good to me," she said ​irrelevantly. "And of course this meeting was all pure accident."

      Father and daughter remained silent for awhile, seeking a better grip.

      "What exactly do you want, Eleanor?" he asked.

      She looked up at him. "Generally?" she asked.

      "Your mother has the impression that you are discontented."

      "Discontented is a horrid word."

      "Well—unsatisfied."

      She remained still for a time. She felt the moment had come to make her demand.

      "I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville—and work. I feel—so horribly ignorant. Of all sorts of things. If I were a son I should go——"

      "Ye—es," said the bishop and reflected.

      He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage people; he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of matters, and the memory of these utterances hampered him.

      "You could read here," he tried.

      "If I were a son, you wouldn't say that."

      His reply was vague. "But in this home," he said, "we have a certain atmosphere. … "

      He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and response from the hardier male.

      Her hesitation marked the full gravity of her reply. ​"It's just that," she said. "One feels——" She considered it further. "As if we were living in a kind of magic world—not really real. Out there——" she glanced over her shoulder at the drawn blind that hid the night. "One meets with different sorts of minds and different—atmospheres. All this is very beautiful. I've had the most wonderful home. But there's a sort of feeling as though it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikes and doubts and questionings——"

      She stopped short at questionings, for the thing was said.

      The bishop took her meaning gallantly and honestly.

      "The church of Christ, little Norah, is built upon a rock."

      She made no answer. She moved her head very slightly so that he could not see her face, and remained sitting rather stiffly and awkwardly with her eyes upon the fire.

      Her silence was the third and greatest blow the bishop received that day. …

      It seemed very long indeed before either of them spoke. At last he said: "We must talk about these things again, Norah, when we are less tired and have more time. … You have been reading books. … When Caxton set up his printing-press he thrust a new power between church and disciple and father and child. … And I am tired. We must talk it over a little later."

      ​The girl stood up. She took her father's hands. "Dear, dear Daddy," she said, "I am so sorry to be a bother. I am so sorry I went to that meeting. … You look tired out."

      "We must talk—properly," said the bishop, patting one hand, then discovering from her wincing face that it was the sprained one. "Your poor wrist," he said.

      "It's so hard to talk, but I want to talk to you, Daddy. It isn't that I have hidden things. … "

      She kissed him, and the bishop had the odd fancy that she kissed him as though she was sorry for him. …

      It occurred to him that really there could be no time like the present for discussing these "questionings" of hers, and then his fatigue and shyness had the better of him again.

      § 11

      The papers got hold of Eleanor's share in the suffragette disturbance. The White Blackbird said things about her.

      It СКАЧАТЬ