The Elect Lady | Page 8

and his
daughter to succeed. He was at the time the head of a flourishing school
in a large manufacturing town; and it was not without some regret,
though with more pleasure, that he yielded his profession and retired to
Potlurg.
Greatly dwindled as he found the property, and much and long as it had
been mismanaged, it was yet of considerable value, and worth a wise
care. The result of the labor he spent upon it was such that it had now
for years yielded him, if not a large rental, one far larger at least than

his daughter imagined. But the sinking of the school-master in the laird
seemed to work ill for the man, and good only for the land. I say
seemed, because what we call degeneracy is often but the unveiling of
what was there all the time; and the evil we could become, we are. If I
have in me the tyrant or the miser, there he is, and such am I--as surely
as if the tyrant or the miser were even now visible to the wondering
dislike of my neighbors. I do not say the characteristic is so strong, or
would be so hard to change as by the revealing development it must
become; but it is there, alive, as an egg is alive; and by no means
inoperative like a mere germ, but exercising real though occult
influence on the rest of my character. Therefore, except the growing
vitality be in process of killing these ova of death, it is for the good of
the man that they should be so far developed as to show their existence.
If the man do not then starve and slay them they will drag him to the
judgment-seat of a fiery indignation.
For the laird, nature could ill replace the human influences that had
surrounded the school-master; while enlargement both of means and
leisure enabled him to develop by indulgence a passion for a peculiar
kind of possession, which, however refined in its objects, was yet but a
branch of the worship of Mammon. It suits the enemy just as well, I
presume, that a man should give his soul for coins as for money. In
consequence he was growing more and more withdrawn, ever filling
less the part of a man--which is to be a hiding-place from the wind, a
covert from the tempest. He was more and more for himself, and
thereby losing his life. Dearly as he loved his daughter, he was, by slow
fallings away, growing ever less of a companion, less of a comfort, less
of a necessity to her, and requiring less and less of her for the good or
ease of his existence. We wrong those near us in being independent of
them. God himself would not be happy without His Son. We ought to
lean on each other, giving and receiving--not as weaklings, but as
lovers. Love is strength as well as need. Alexa was more able to live
alone than most women; therefore it was the worse for her. Too
satisfied with herself, too little uneasy when alone, she did not know
that then she was not in good enough company. She was what most
would call a strong nature, nor knew what weaknesses belong to, and
grow out of, such strength as hers.

The remoter scions of a family tree are not seldom those who make
most account of it; the school-master's daughter knew more about the
Fordyces of Potlurg, and cared more for their traditions, than any who
of later years had reaped its advantages or shared its honors. Interest in
the channel down which one has slid into the world is reasonable, and
may be elevating; with Alexa it passed beyond good, and wrought for
evil. Proud of a family with a history, and occasionally noted in the
annals of the country, she regarded herself as the superior of all with
whom she had hitherto come into relation. To the poor, to whom she
was invariably and essentially kind, she was less condescending than to
such as came nearer her own imagined standing; she was constantly
aware that she belonged to the elect of the land! Society took its
revenge; the rich trades-people looked down upon her as the
school-master's daughter. Against their arrogance her indignation
buttressed her lineal with her mental superiority. At the last the pride of
family is a personal arrogance. And now at length she was in her
natural position as heiress of Potlurg!
She was religious--if one may be called religious who felt no
immediate relation to the source of her being. She felt bound to defend,
so far as she honestly could, the doctrines concerning God and His
ways transmitted by the elders of her people; to this much,