Our Friend the Charlatan | Page 5

the vicar's wife.
"As silly a letter as ever I read!" she exclaimed, throwing aside the poor
little sheet of cheap note-paper with its illiterate gratitude. "Oh, here's
something from Lady Susan--pooh! Another baby. What do I care
about her babies! Not one word about Dyce-- not one word. Now,
really!"
"I don't remember what you expected," remarked the vicar, mildly.
Mrs. Lashmar paid no heed to. him. With a resentful countenance, she
had pushed the letters aside, and was beginning her meal. Amid all the
so-called duties which she imposed upon herself--for, in her own way,
she bore the burden of the world no less than did the Rev. Philip--Mrs.
Lashmar never lost sight of one great preoccupation, the interests of her
son. He, Dyce Lashmar, only child of the house, now twenty-seven
years old, lived in London, and partly supported himself as a private
tutor. The obscurity of this existence, so painful a contrast to the hopes
his parents had nourished, so disappointing an outcome of all the
thought that had been given to Dyce's education, and of the not
inconsiderable sums spent upon it, fretted Mrs. Lashmar to the soul; at
times she turned in anger against the young man himself, accusing him
of ungrateful supineness, but more often eased her injured feelings by
accusation of all such persons as, by any possibility, might have aided
Dyce to a career. One of these was Lady Susan Harrop, a very remote
relative of hers. Twice or thrice a year, for half-a-dozen years at least,
Mrs. Lashmar had urged upon Lady Susan the claims of her son to
social countenance and more practical forms of advancement; hitherto
with no result--save, indeed, that Dyce dined once every season at the
Harrops' table. The subject was painful to Mr. Lashmar also, but it
affected him in a different way, and he had long ceased to speak of it.
"That selfish, frivolous woman!" sounded presently from behind the
coffee-service, not now in accents of wrath, but as the deliberate
utterance of cold judgment. "Never in all her life has she thought of
anyone but herself. What right has such a being to bring children into
the world? What can be expected of them but meanness and
hypocrisy?"
Mr. Lashmar smiled. He had just broken an imperfect tooth upon a

piece of toast, and, as usual when irritated, his temper became ironic.
"Sweet are the uses of disappointment," he observed. "How it clears
one's vision!"
"Do you suppose I ever had any better opinion of Lady Susan?"
exclaimed his wife.
It was a principle of Mr. Lashmar's never to argue with a woman. Sadly
smiling, he rose from the table.
"Here's an article you ought to read," he said, holding out the weekly
paper. "It's fall of truth, well expressed. It may even have some bearing
on this question."
The vicar went about his long day's work, and took with him many
uneasy reflections. He bad not thought of it before breakfast, but now it
struck him that much in that pungent article on the men of to-day might
perchance apply to the character and conduct of his own son. "A habit
of facile enthusiasm, not perhaps altogether insincere, but totally
without moral value . . . convictions assumed at will, as a matter of
fashion, or else of singularity . . . the lack of stable purpose, save only
in matters of gross self-interest . . . an increasing tendency to verbose
expression . . . an all but utter lack of what old-fashioned people still
call principle. . . ." these phrases recurred to his memory, with
disagreeable significance. Was that in truth a picture of his son, of the
boy whom he had loved and watched over and so zealously hoped for?
Possibly he wronged Dyce, for the young man's mind and heart had
long ceased to be clearly legible to him. "Worst, perhaps, of all these
frequent traits is the affectation of--to use a silly word--altruism. The
most radically selfish of men seem capable of persuading themselves
into the belief that their prime motive is to 'live for others.' Of truly
persuading themselves--that is the strange thing. This, it seems to us, is
morally far worse than the unconscious hypocrisy which here and there
exists in professors of the old religion; there is something more
nauseous about self-deceiving 'altruism' than in the attitude of a man
who, thoroughly worldly in fact, believes himself a hopeful candidate
for personal salvation." Certain recent letters of Dyce appeared in a
new light when seen from this point of view. It was too disagreeable a
subject; the vicar strove to dismiss it from his mind.
In the afternoon, he had to visit a dying man, an intelligent shopkeeper,
who, while accepting the visit as