cases of conscience—ethics of ill-temper.
confirmations were not very frequent in our little village at this time. about once in three years the bishop came to us. he came when i was twelve years old. opinions were divided as to whether i was old enough, but i decided the matter by saying i would rather wait till the next opportunity.
"i may be more fit by that time," was my thought, and it was probably not unlike some of mr. rampant's self-communings.
the time came, and the bishop also; i was fifteen.
i do not know why, but nobody had proposed that philip should be confirmed at twelve years old. fifteen was thought to be quite early enough for him, and so it came about that we were confirmed together.
i am very thankful that, as it happened, i had aunt isobel to talk to.
"you're relieved from one perplexity at any rate," [168]said she, when i had been speaking of that family failing which was also mine. "you know your weak point. i remember a long talk i had, years ago, with mrs. rampant, whom i used to know very well when we were young. she said one of her great difficulties was not being able to find out her besetting sin. she said it always made her so miserable when clergymen preached on that subject, and said that every enlightened christian must have discovered one master passion amongst the others of his soul. she had tried so hard, and could only find a lot, none much bigger or much less than the others. some vanity, some selfishness, some distrust and weariness, some peevishness, some indolence, and a lapful of omissions. since she married," continued my aunt, slowly pulling her thick black eyelashes, after a fashion she had, "i believe she has found the long-lost failing. it is impatience with mr. rampant, she thinks."
i could not help laughing.
"however, isobel, we may be sure of this, people of soft, gentle temperaments have their own difficulties with their own souls which we escape. perhaps in the absence of such marked vices as bring one to open shame one might be slower to undertake vigorous self-improvement. you and i have no difficulty in seeing the sin lying at our door."
[169]"n—no," said i.
"well, have you?" said aunt isobel, facing round. "bless me," she added impetuously, "don't say you haven't if you have. never let any one else think for you, child!"
"if you'll only have patience and let me explain—"
"i'm patience its very self!" interrupted my aunt, "but i do hate a no that means yes."
my patience began to evaporate.
"there are some things, aunt isobel, you know, which can't be exactly squeezed into no and yes. but if you don't want to be bothered i won't say anything, or i'll say yes or no, which ever you like."
and i kicked the shovel. (my aunt had shoved the poker with her slipper.) she drew her foot back and spoke very gently:
"i beg your pardon, my dear. please say what you were going to say, and in your own way."
there is no doubt that good-humour—like bad—is infectious. i drew nearer to aunt isobel, and fingered the sleeve of her dress caressingly.
"you know, dear aunt isobel, that i should never think of saying to the rector what i want to say to you. and i don't mean that i don't agree to whatever he tells us about right and wrong, but still i think if one can be quite convinced in the depths [170]of one's own head, too, it's a good thing, as well as knowing that he must be right."
"certainly," said aunt isobel.
"to begin with, i don't want you to think me any better than i am. when we were very very little, philip and i used to spit at each other, and pull each other's hair out. i do not do nasty or unladylike things now when i am angry, but, aunt isobel, my 'besetting sin' is not conquered, it's only civilized."
"i quite agree with you," said aunt isobel; which rather annoyed me. i gulped this down, however, and went on:
"the sin of ill-temper, if it is a sin," i began. i paused, expecting an outburst, but aunt isobel sat quite composedly, and fingered her eyelashes.
"of course the rector would be horrified if i said such a thing at the confirmation-class," i continued, in a dissatisfied tone.
"don't invent grievances, isobel, for i see you have a real stumbling-block, when we can come to it. you are not at the confirmation-class, and i am not easily horrified."
"well, there are two difficulties—i explain very stupidly," said i with some sadness.
"we'll take them one at a time," replied aunt isobel with an exasperating blandness, which fortunately stimulated me to plain-speaking.
[171]
"everybody says one ought to 'restrain' one's temper, but i'm not sure if i think one ought. isn't it better to have things out? look at philip. he's going to be confirmed, and then he'll go back to school, and when he and another boy quarrel, they'll fight it out, and feel comfortable afterwards. aunt isobel, i can quite understand feeling friendly after you've had it out, even if you're the one who is beaten, if it has been a fair fight. now restraining your temper means forcing yourself to be good outside, and feeling all the worse inside, and feeling it longer. there is that utterly stupid little schoolroom-maid, who is under my orders, that i may teach her. aunt isobel, you would not credit how often i tell her the same thing, and how politely she says 'yes, miss!' and how invariably she doesn't do it after all. i say, 'you know i told you only yesterday. what is the use of my trying to teach you?' and all kinds of mild things like that; but really i quite hate her for giving me so much trouble and taking so little herself, and i wish i might discharge her. now, if only it wasn't wrong to throw—what are those things hot-tempered gentlemen always throw at their servants?"
"don't ask me, my dear; ask mr. rampant."
"oh, he throws everything. bootjacks—that's it. now, if only i might throw a bootjack at her, it would waken her up, and be such a relief to my feelings, [172]that i shouldn't feel half so unforgiving towards her all along. then as to swearing, aunt isobel—"
"swearing!" ejaculated my aunt.
"of course swearing is very wrong, and all profane-speaking but i do think it would be a help if there was some innocent kind of strong language to use when one feels strongly."
"if we didn't use up all our innocent strong language by calling things awful and horrible that have not an element of awe or horror in them, we should have some left for our great occasions," said aunt isobel.
"perhaps," said i, "but that's not exactly what i mean. now do you think it would be wrong to invent expletives that mean nothing bad? as if mr. rampant were to say, 'cockatoos and kingfishers! where are my shooting-boots?' for you know i do think it would make him more comfortable to put it in that way, especially if he had been kept waiting for them."
i paused, and aunt isobel turned round.
"let us carry your idea well forward, isobel. bootjacks and expletives would no doubt be a relief to the thrower when hurled at servants or some one who could not (or from principle would not) retaliate, and the angry feelings that propelled them might be shortened by 'letting off the steam,' so to speak. [173]but imagine yourself to have thrown a bootjack at philip to relieve your feelings, and philip (to relieve his) flinging it back at you. this would only give fresh impetus to your indignation, and whatever you threw next would not be likely to soothe his."
"please don't!" said i. "aunt isobel, i could never throw a hatchet again."
"you are bold to promise to stop short anywhere when relieving passionate feelings by indulgence has begun on two sides. and, my dear, matters are no better where the indulgence is in words instead of blows. in the very mean and undignified position of abusing those who cannot return your abuse it might answer; but 'innocent strong language' would cease to be of any good when it was returned. if to 'cockatoos and kingfishers! where are my shooting-boots?' an equally violent voice from below replied, 'bats and blackbeetles! look for them yourself!' some stronger vent for the steam of hot temper would have to be found, and words of any kind would soon cease to relieve the feelings. isobel, i have had long and hard experience, and your ideas are not new ones to me. believe me, child, the only real relief is in absolute conquest, and the earlier the battle begins, the easier and the shorter it will be. if one can keep irritability under, one may escape a struggle to the death with passion. i am not cramming [174]principles down your throat—i say as a matter of personal practice, that i do not know, and never hope to find a smoother or a shorter way. but i can say also—after victory comes peace."
i gave a heavy sigh.
"thank you, aunt isobel, i will try; but it makes my second difficulty all the worse. i can fancy that i might possibly learn self-control; i can fancy by main force holding my tongue, or compelling it to speak very slowly and civilly: but one can't force one's feelings. aunt isobel, if i had been very much insulted or provoked, i might keep on being civil for years on the outside, but how i should hate! you can't prevent yourself hating. people talk about 'forgive and forget.' if forgiving means doing no harm, and forgetting means behaving quite civilly, as if nothing had happened, one could. but of course it's nonsense to talk of making yourself really forget anything. and i think it's just as absurd to talk of making yourself forgive, if forgiveness means feeling really kindly and comfortable as you did before. the very case in which i am most sure you are right about self-control is one of the worst the other way. i ought to be ashamed to speak of it—but i mean the hatchet-quarrel. if i had been very good instead of very wicked, and had restrained myself when philip pulled all my work to pieces, and [175]jeered at me for being miserable, i couldn't have loved him again as i did before. forgive and forget! one would often be very glad to. i have often awoke in the morning and known that i had forgotten something disagreeable, and when it did come back i was sorry; but one's memory isn't made of slate, or one's heart either, that one can take a wet sponge and make it clean. oh dear! i wonder why ill-tempered people are allowed to live! they ought to be smothered in their cradles."
aunt isobel was about to reply, but i interrupted her.
"don't think me humble-minded, aunt isobel, for i'm not. sometimes i feel inclined to think that ill-tempered people have more sense of justice and of the strict rights and wrongs of things—at least if they are not very bad," i interpolated, thinking of mr. rampant—"than people who can smile and look pleasant at everything and everybody like lucy lambent, who goes on calling me darling when i know i'm scowling like a horned-owl. nurse says she's the 'sweetest tempered young lady she ever did know!' aunt isobel, what a muddle life is!"
"after some years of it," said my aunt, pulling her lashes hard, "i generally say, what a muddle my head is! life is too much for it."
"i am quite willing to put it that way," sighed i, [176]laying my muddle-head on the table, for i was tired. "it comes to much the same thing. now—there is my great difficulty! i give in about the other one, but you can't cure this, and the truth is, i am not fit to go to a confirmation-class, much less to the holy communion."
"isobel," said my aunt, folding her hands on her lap, and bending her very thick brows on the fire, "i want you to clearly understand that i speak with great hesitation, and without any authority. i can do nothing for you but tell you what i have found myself in my struggles."
"thank you a thousand times," said i, "that's what i want. you know i hear two sermons every sunday, and i have a lot of good books. mrs. welment sends me a little book about ill-temper every christmas. the last one was about saying a little hymn before you let yourself speak whenever you feel angry. philip got hold of it, and made fun of it. he said it was like the recipe for catching a sparrow by putting salt on its tail, because if you were cool enough to say a hymn, there would then be no need for saying it. what do you think, aunt isobel?"
"my dear, i have long ago given up the idea that everybody's weak points can all be strengthened by one plaster. the hymn might be very useful in [177]some cases, though i confess that it would not be in mine. but prayer is; and i find a form of prayer necessary. at the same time i have such an irritable taste, that there are very few forms of devotion that give me much help but the prayer-book collects and jeremy taylor. i do not know if you may find it useful to hear that in this struggle i sometimes find prayers more useful, if they are not too much to the sore point. a prayer about ill-temper might tend to make me cross, when the effort to join my spirit with the temptation-tried souls of all ages in a solemn prayer for the church universal would lift me out of the petty sphere of personal vexations, better than going into my grievances even piously. i speak merely of myself, mind."
"thank you," i said. "but about what i said about hating. aunt isobel, did you ever change your feelings by force? do you suppose anybody ever did?"
"i believe it is a great mistake to trouble one's self with the spiritual experiences of other people when one cannot fully know their circumstances, so i won't suppose at all. as to what i am sure of, isobel, you know i speak the truth."
"yes," said i; it would have been impertinence to say more.
"i have found that if one fights for good [178]behaviour, god makes one a present of the good feelings. i believe you will find it so. even when you were a child, if you had tried to be good, and had managed to control yourself, and had not thrown the hatchet, i am quite sure you would not have hated philip for long. perhaps you would have thought how much better philip used to behave before your father and mother died, and a little elder-sisterly, motherly feeling would have mixed with your wrath at seeing him with his fat legs planted apart, and his shoulders up, the very picture of wilful naughtiness. perhaps you might have thought you had repulsed him a little harshly when he wanted to help, as you were his chief playmate and twin sister."
"please don't," said i. "how i wish i had! indeed i don't know how i can ever speak of hating one of the others when there are so few of us, and we are orphans. but everybody isn't one's brother. and—oh, aunt isobel, at the time one does get so wild, and hard, and twisted in one's heart!"
"i don't think it is possible to overrate the hardness of the first close struggle with any natural passion," said my aunt earnestly; "but indeed the easiness of after-steps is often quite beyond one's expectations. the free gift of grace with which god perfects our efforts may come in many ways, but i [179]am convinced that it is the common experience of christians that it does come."
"to every one, do you think?" said i. "i've no doubt it comes to you, aunt isobel, but then you are so good."
"for pity's sake don't say i am good," said my aunt, and she kicked down all the fire-irons; and then begged my pardon, and picked them up again.
we were silent for awhile. aunt isobel sat upright with her hands folded in her lap, and that look which her large eyes wear when she is trying to see all the sides of a question. they were dilated with a sorrowful earnestness when she spoke again.
"there may be some souls," she said, "whose brave and bitter lot it is to conquer comfortless. perhaps some terrible inheritance of strong sin from the father is visited upon the son, and, only able to keep his purpose pure, he falls as fast as he struggles up, and still struggling falls again. soft moments of peace with god and man may never come to him. he may feel himself viler than a thousand trumpery souls who could not have borne his trials for a day. child, for you and for me is reserved no such cross and no such crown as theirs who falling still fight, and fighting fall, with their faces zionwards, into the arms of the everlasting father. 'as one whom his mother comforteth' shall be the healing of their wounds."
[180]
there was a brisk knock at the door, and philip burst in.
"look here, isobel, if you mean to be late for confirmation-class i'm not going to wait for you. i hate sneaking in with the benches all full, and old bartram blinking and keeping your place in the catechism for you with his fat forefinger."
"i am very sorry, philip dear," said i; "please go without me, and i'll come on as quickly as i can. thank you very much for coming to remind me."
"there's no such awful hurry," said philip in a mollified tone; "i'll wait for you down-stairs."
which he did, whistling.
aunt isobel and i are not demonstrative, it does not suit us. she took hold of my arms, and i laid my head on her shoulder.
"aunt isobel, god help me, i will fight on to the very end."
"he will help you," said aunt isobel.
i could not look at her face and doubt it. oh, my weak soul, never doubt it more!
