Vashti Lansing had nothing of the simpering school-girl about her, and none of the fear which makes women reticent sometimes when speech would be golden.
It has been said that to know the Bible and Shakespeare is to have a good English vocabulary. Vashti did not know Shakespeare, but she knew her Bible thoroughly. Her speech, unweakened by the modern catch-words which, if expressive, are yet extraneous and dangerous growths, had all the trenchant force of the old Anglo-Saxon, with much in it too of imagery and beauty; for she did not fear to use such metaphors as nature or life suggested. Steeped in the stern Mosaic law, she knew well the stately periods of its prophets. The gentle Christ-creed of forgiveness did not find favour in her sight. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was a judgment which she said only timorous souls feared. She read with grim delight the tales of the kings, with their feet upon their captives’ necks; an evil sympathy with their triumph lighted her eyes with wicked light. What a spouse she would have been for one of these cruel kings! she thought sometimes. And she applied a relentless utilitarian philosophy to life. The weakest go to the wall and the strong triumph. She accepted that with the stoicism which springs from conscious strength, but in her system she rather confused strength with righteousness. She watched the movings of life about her with cold, curious eyes, and yet her philosophy of life was but an expanded egotism. She comprehended only those sets of actions which might have taken place had she given free rein to her own inclinations; she judged of all motives by the repressed impulses of her own bosom. She scrutinized others unsparingly, prying into the most sacred griefs, the most holy joy without shame or remorse, and she did not spare herself more than others.
The dim, terrifying impulses and visions which girls put behind them, shudderingly and uncomprehendingly, hiding them away with the other spectres which people the realm of the unknown, until such time as life’s meanings shall be expounded in a sacred mystery play of sense and spirit, she marshalled forth into the light of day and considered calmly and cynically.