However, I am willing to do my part now. I wonder when you Milton men intend to live. All your lives seem to be spent in gathering together the materials for life.' 'By living, I suppose you mean enjoyment.' 'Yes, enjoyment,--I don't specify of what, because I trust. we should both consider mere pleasure as very poor enjoyment.' 'I would rather have the nature of the enjoyment defined.' 'Well! enjoyment of leisure--enjoyment of the power and influence which money gives. You are all striving for money. What do you want it for?' Mr. Thornton was silent. Then he said, 'I really don't know. But money is not what I strive for.' 'What then?' 'It is a home question. I shall have to lay myself open to such a catechist, and I am not sure that I am prepared to do it.' 'No!' said Mr. Hale; 'don't let us be personal in our catechi**. You are neither of you representative men; you are each of you too individual for that.' 'I am not sure whether to consider that as a compliment or not. I should like to be the representative of Oxford, with its beauty and its learning, and its proud old history. What do you say, Margaret; ought I to be flattered?' 'I don't know Oxford. But there is a difference between being the representative of a city and the representative man of its inhabitants.' 'Very true, Miss Margaret. Now I remember, you were against me this morning, and were quite Miltonian and manufacturing in your preferences.' Margaret saw the quick glance of surprise that Mr. Thornton gave her, and she was annoyed at the construction which he might put on this speech of Mr. Bell's.
Mr. Bell went on-- 'Ah! I wish I could show you our High Street--our Radcliffe Square. I am leaving out our colleges, just as I give Mr. Thornton leave to omit his factories in speaking of the charms of Milton. I have a right to abuse my birth-place. Remember I am a Milton man. Mr. Thornton was annoyed more than he ought to have been at all that Mr.
Bell was saying. He was not in a mood for joking. At another time, he could have enjoyed Mr. Bell's half testy condemnation of a town where the life was so at variance with every habit he had formed; but now, he was galled enough to attempt to defend what was never meant to be seriously attacked. 'I don't set up Milton as a model of a town.' 'Not in architecture?' slyly asked Mr. Bell. 'No! We've been too busy to attend to mere outward appearances.' 'Don't say mere outward appearances,' said Mr. Hale, gently. 'They impress us all, from childhood upward--every day of our life.' 'Wait a little while,' said Mr. Thornton. 'Remember, we are of a different race from the Greeks, to whom beauty was everything, and to whom Mr. Bell might speak of a life of leisure and serene enjoyment, much of which entered in through their outward senses. I don't mean to despise them, any more than I would ape them. But I belong to Teutonic blood; it is little mingled in this part of England to what it is in others; we retain much of their language; we retain more of their spirit; we do not look upon life as a time for enjoyment, but as a time for action and exertion. Our glory and our beauty arise out of our inward strength, which makes us victorious over material resistance, and over greater difficulties still. We are Teutonic up here in Darkshire in another way. We hate to have laws made for us at a distance. We wish people would allow us to right ourselves, instead of continually meddling, with their imperfect legislation. We stand up for self-government, and oppose centralisation.' 'In short, you would like the Heptarchy back again. Well, at any rate, I revoke what I said this morning--that you Milton people did not reverence the past. You are regular worshippers of Thor.' 'If we do not reverence the past as you do in Oxford, it is because we want something which can apply to the present more directly. It is fine when the study of the past leads to a prophecy of the future. But to men groping in new circumstances, it would be finer if the words of experience could direct us how to act in what concerns us most intimately and immediately;which is full of difficulties that must be encountered; and upon the mode in which they are met and conquered--not merely pushed aside for the time--depends our future. Out of the wisdom of the past, help us over the present. But no! People can speak of Utopia much more easily than of the next day's duty; and yet when that duty is all done by others, who so ready to cry, "Fie, for shame!"' 'And all this time I don't see what you are talking about. Would you Milton men condescend to send up your to-day's difficulty to Oxford? You have not tried us yet.' Mr. Thornton laughed outright at this. 'I believe I was talking with reference to a good deal that has been troubling us of late; I was thinking of the strikes we have gone through, which are troublesome and injurious things enough, as I am finding to my cost. And yet this last strike, under which I am smarting, has been respectable.' 'A respectable strike!' said Mr. Bell. 'That sounds as if you were far gone in the worship of Thor.' Margaret felt, rather than saw, that Mr. Thornton was chagrined by the repeated turning into jest of what he was feeling as very serious. She tried to change the conversation from a subject about which one party cared little, while, to the other, it was deeply, because personally, interesting.
She forced herself to say something. 'Edith says she finds the printed calicoes in Corfu better and cheaper than in London.' 'Does she?' said her father. 'I think that must be one of Edith's exaggerations.
Are you sure of it, Margaret?' 'I am sure she says so, papa.' 'Then I am sure of the fact,' said Mr. Bell. 'Margaret, I go so far in my idea of your truthfulness, that it shall cover your cousin's character.
I don't believe a cousin of yours could exaggerate.' 'Is Miss Hale so remarkable for truth?' said Mr. Thornton, bitterly. The moment he had done so, he could have bitten his tongue out. What was he?