There was one woman in Saltire who aspired to a higher philosophy than that of a monthly nurse. To Judith Strong nothing was more repugnant than the subjection of a brother’s character to the tyranny of trivial tongues. For the prevalent physical estimate of marriage she had a superlative loathing, nor did she love the rustic oracles and their lore.
Judith Strong was one of those rare women blessed with superb instincts, instincts angel-winged towards heaven. Her spiritual rosary was strung with no sordid stones. Her aspirations were of the highest, her ideals begotten of the blood of Christ. She had that power peculiar to women who are great of soul, the power of seeing beyond the curtain of the present and of gazing prophetic into eternal truth. Men might deceive her; women never.
Now Ophelia Gusset was a physical being, a mere houri; a rampant, worldly, yet lovely egotist. She believed in a life of sensations. While fanatics struggled on cloud-solemn Sinai to take the tablets from the Eternal Hands, this fair and complacent pagan garlanded the golden calf, and stared into the mirror of pleasure to satiate her soul. Nor was it a matter for amazement that Judith Strong thought of her future sister with forebodings and repugnance.
There are men whose destinies are balanced upon a woman’s influence; Gabriel Strong was such a man. His sister knew that he was too sensitive to the sensuous waves of life, too easily intoxicated by poetic exaltation of the senses. Like many imaginative men, his fancies, wine-radiant bacchanals, overleaped his reason. Wisdom walked not at his right hand, but pursued him afar off. A unique woman’s love, or a Jesuitical discipline, were the two powers either of which could have steeled his manhood. He needed some ineffably tender and all-wise Beatrice to absorb his soul. As it was, he was to partner a crude Cressida in the perilous path of spiritual evolution. When the mob applauded and gabbled of gold and honor, Judith lifted the curtain covering the hot egotism of this woman’s soul, and found no saving balm there, but a scourge.
As for John Strong, his paternal satisfaction had waxed ecstatic over the fulfilment of his prophecies. He beamed on all creation, even as a man who had received a baronetcy, a seat in Parliament, or some Titanic legacy. So beneficent and seraphic was his humor that Mr. Mince seized the auspicious season, and ventured to persuade him to reseat Saltire church and to retile the floor of the chancel.