"Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavour,
Let the great meaning ennoble it ever,
Droop not o'er efforts expended in vain,
Work, as believing, that labour is gain."
Queen Isabel, &c. by S. M.
The sturdy recusant against Myrtlewood croquet continued to be Rachel
Curtis, and yet it was not a testimony against the game so much as real
want of time for it. She was always full of occupation, even while her
active mind craved for more definite and extended labour; and when she
came upon the field of strategy, it was always either with some business
before her, or else so late that the champions were only assisting their
several lags to bring the battle to an end.
If there had been a will there would have been a way, but, as she said,
she saw enough to perceive that proficiency could only be attained at
the cost of much time and study, and she did not choose to be inferior
and mediocre. Also, she found occupations open to her elsewhere that
had long been closed or rendered unpleasant. Mr. Touchett had become
wonderfully pacific and obliging of late, as if the lawn tactics
absorbed his propensities for offence and defence, he really seemed
obliged for one or two bits of parish work that she attended to;
finding that between him and his staff of young ladies they were getting
omitted. Somehow, too, an unaccountable blight was passing over the
activity of those curatolatresses, as Rachel had been wont to call them;
they were less frequently to be met with popping out of the schools and
cottages, and Rachel, who knew well all the real poor, though refusing
the bonds of a district, was continually detecting omissions which she
more often supplied than reported. There was even a smaller sprinkling
at the weekly services, and the odd thing was that the curate never
seemed to remark or be distressed by the change, or if any one spoke
of the thin congregation he would say, winter was the Avonmouth season,
which was true enough, but the defaulters were mostly his own peculiar
followers, the female youth of the professional and mercantile
population.
Rachel did not trouble herself about the cause of all this, indeed she
was too much occupied with the gradual gliding into somewhat of her
original activity and importance in the field thus left open to her.
None the less, however, did she feel the burden of life's problems; the
intercourse she had enjoyed with Colonel Keith had excited her for a
time, but in the reaction, the old feelings returned painfully that the
times were out of joint; the heavens above became obscure and misty as
before, the dark places of the earth looked darker than ever, and those
who lived at ease seemed to be employed either in sport upon the outside
of the dungeon where the captives groaned, or in obstructing the way of
those who would fain have plunged in to the rescue.