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.