miss mackenzie remained quiet in her room for two days after her return before she went out to see anybody. these last christmas weeks had certainly been the most eventful period of her life, and there was very much of which it was necessary that she should think. she had, she thought, made up her mind to refuse her cousin's offer; but the deed was not yet done. she had to think of the mode in which she must do it; and she could not but remember, also, that she might still change her mind in that matter if she pleased. the anger produced in her by lady ball's claim, as it were, to her fortune, had almost evaporated; but the memory of her cousin's story of his troubles was still fresh. "i have a hard time of it sometimes, i can tell you." those words and others of the same kind were the arguments which had moved her, and made her try to think that she could love him. then she remembered his bald head and the weary, careworn look about his eyes, and his little intermittent talk, addressed chiefly to his mother, about the money-market,—little speeches made as he would sit with the newspaper in his hand:
"the confederate loan isn't so bad, after all. i wish i'd taken a few."
"you know you'd never have slept if you had," lady ball would answer.
all this miss mackenzie now turned in her mind, and asked herself whether she could be happy in hearing such speeches for the remainder of her life.
"it is not as if you two were young people, and wanted to be billing and cooing," lady ball had said to her the same evening.
miss mackenzie, as she thought of this, was not so sure that lady ball was right. why should she not want billing and cooing as well as another? it was natural that a woman should want some of it in her life, and she had had none of it yet. she had had a lover, certainly, but there had been no billing and cooing with him. nothing of that kind had been possible in her brother walter's house.
and then the question naturally arose to her whether her aunt had treated her justly in bracketing her with john ball in that matter of age. john ball was ten years her senior; and ten years, she knew, was a very proper difference between a man and his wife. she was by no means inclined to plead, even to herself, that she was too young to marry her cousin; there was nothing in their ages to interfere, if the match was in other respects suitable. but still, was not he old for his age, and was not she young for hers? and if she should ultimately resolve to devote herself and what she had left of youth to his children and his welfare, should not the sacrifice be recognised? had lady ball done well to speak of her as she certainly might well speak of him? was she beyond all aptitude for billing and cooing, if billing and cooing might chance to come in her way?
thinking of this during the long afternoon, when susanna was at school, she got up and looked at herself in the mirror. she moved up her hair from off her ears, knowing where she would find a few that were grey, and shaking her head, as though owning to herself that she was old; but as her fingers ran almost involuntarily across her locks, her touch told her that they were soft and silken; and she looked into her own eyes, and saw that they were bright; and her hand touched the outline of her cheek, and she knew that something of the fresh bloom of youth was still there; and her lips parted, and there were her white teeth; and there came a smile and a dimple, and a slight purpose of laughter in her eye, and then a tear. she pulled her scarf tighter across her bosom, feeling her own form, and then she leaned forward and kissed herself in the glass.
he was very careworn, soiled as it were with the world, tired out with the dusty, weary life's walk which he had been compelled to take. of romance in him there was nothing left, while in her the aptitude for romance had only just been born. it was not only that his head was bald, but that his eye was dull, and his step slow. the juices of life had been pressed out of him; his thoughts were all of his cares, and never of his hopes. it would be very sad to be the wife of such a man; it would be very sad, if there were no compensation; but might not the sacrificial duties give her that atonement which she would require? she would fain do something with her life and her money,—some good, some great good to some other person. if that good to another person and billing and cooing might go together, it would be very pleasant. but she knew there was danger in such an idea. the billing and cooing might lead altogether to evil. but there could be no doubt that she would do good service if she married her cousin; her money would go to good purposes, and her care to those children would be invaluable. they were her cousins, and would it not be sweet to make of herself a sacrifice?
and then—reader! remember that she was no saint, and that hitherto very little opportunity had been given to her of learning to discriminate true metal from dross. then—she thought of mr samuel rubb, junior. mr samuel rubb, junior, was a handsome man, about her own age; and she felt almost sure that mr samuel rubb, junior, admired her. he was not worn out with life; he was not broken with care; he would look forward into the world, and hope for things to come. one thing she knew to be true—he was not a gentleman. but then, why should she care for that? the being a gentleman was not everything. as for herself, might there not be strong reason to doubt whether those who were best qualified to judge would call her a lady? her surviving brother kept an oilcloth shop, and the brother with whom she had always lived had been so retired from the world that neither he nor she knew anything of its ways. if love could be gained, and anything of romance; if some active living mode of life could thereby be opened to her, would it not be well for her to give up that idea of being a lady? hitherto her rank had simply enabled her to become a stumfoldian; and then she remembered that mr maguire's squint was very terrible! how she should live, what she should do with herself, were matters to her of painful thought; but she looked in the glass again, and resolved that she would decline the honour of becoming mrs ball.
on the following morning she wrote her letter, and it was written thus:
7 paragon, littlebath, january, 186—.
my dear john,
i have been thinking a great deal about what you said to me, and i have made up my mind that i ought not to become your wife. i know that the honour you have proposed to me is very great, and that i may seem to be ungrateful in declining it; but i cannot bring myself to feel that sort of love for you which a wife should have for her husband. i hope this will not make you displeased with me. it ought not to do so, as my feelings towards you and to your children are most affectionate.
i know my aunt will be angry with me. pray tell her from me, with my best love, that i have thought very much of all she said to me, and that i feel sure that i am doing right. it is not that i should be afraid of the duties which would fall upon me as your wife; but that the woman who undertakes those duties should feel for you a wife's love. i think it is best to speak openly, and i hope that you will not be offended.
give my best love to my uncle and aunt, and to the girls, and to jack, who will, i hope, keep his promise of coming and seeing me.
your very affectionate cousin,
margaret mackenzie.
"there," said john ball to his mother, when he had read the letter, "i knew it would be so; and she is right. why should she give up her money and her comfort and her ease, to look after my children?"
lady ball took the letter and read it, and pronounced it to be all nonsense.
"it may be all nonsense," said her son; "but such as it is, it is her answer."
"i suppose you'll have to go down to littlebath after her," said lady ball.
"i certainly shall not do that. it would do no good; and i'm not going to persecute her."
"persecute her! what nonsense you men do talk! as if any woman in her condition could be persecuted by being asked to become a baronet's wife. i suppose i must go down."
"i beg that you will not, mother."
"she is just one of those women who are sure to stand off, not knowing their own minds. the best creature in the world, and really very clever, but weak in that respect! she has not had lovers when she was young, and she thinks that a man should come dallying about her as though she were eighteen. it only wants a little perseverance, john, and if you'll take my advice, you'll go down to littlebath after her."
but john, in this matter, would not follow his mother's advice, and declared that he would take no further steps. "he was inclined," he said, "to think that margaret was right. why should any woman burden herself with nine children?"
then lady ball said a great deal more about the ball money, giving it as her decided opinion that margaret owed herself and her money to the balls. as she could not induce her son to do anything, she wrote a rejoinder to her niece.
"my dearest margaret," she said, "your letter has made both me and john very unhappy. he has set his heart upon making you his wife, and i don't think will ever hold up his head again if you will not consent. i write now instead of john, because he is so much oppressed. i wish you had remained here, because then we could have talked it over quietly. would it not be better for you to be here than living alone at littlebath? for i cannot call that little girl who is at school anything of a companion. could you not leave her as a boarder, and come to us for a month? you would not be forced to pledge yourself to anything further; but we could talk it over."
it need hardly be said that miss mackenzie, as she read this, declared to herself that she had no desire to talk over her own position with lady ball any further.
"john is afraid," the letter went on to say, "that he offended you by the manner of his proposition; and that he said too much about the children, and not enough about his own affection. of course he loves you dearly. if you knew him as i do, which of course you can't as yet, though i hope you will, you would be aware that no consideration, either of money or about the children, would induce him to propose to any woman unless he loved her. you may take my word for that."
there was a great deal more in the letter of the same kind, in which lady ball pressed her own peculiar arguments; but i need hardly say that they did not prevail with miss mackenzie. if the son could not induce his cousin to marry him, the mother certainly never would do so. it did not take her long to answer her aunt's letter. she said that she must, with many thanks, decline for the present to return to the cedars, as the charge which she had taken of her niece made her presence at littlebath necessary. as to the answer which she had given to john, she was afraid she could only say that it must stand. she had felt a little angry with lady ball; and though she tried not to show this in the tone of her letter, she did show it.
"if i were you i would never see her or speak to her again," said lady ball to her son.
"very likely i never shall," he replied.
"has your love-making with that old maid gone wrong, john?" the father asked.
but john ball was used to his father's ill nature, and never answered it.
nothing special to our story occurred at littlebath during the next two or three months, except that miss mackenzie became more and more intimate with miss baker, and more and more anxious to form an acquaintance with miss todd. with all the stumfoldians she was on terms of mitigated friendship, and always went to mrs stumfold's fortnightly tea-drinkings. but with no lady there,—always excepting miss baker,—did she find that she grew into familiarity. with mrs stumfold no one was familiar. she was afflicted by the weight of her own position, as we suppose the queen to be, when we say that her majesty's altitude is too high to admit of friendships. mrs stumfold never condescended—except to the bishop's wife who, in return, had snubbed mrs stumfold. but living, as she did, in an atmosphere of flattery and toadying, it was wonderful how well she preserved her equanimity, and how she would talk and perhaps think of herself, as a poor, erring human being. when, however, she insisted much upon this fact of her humanity, the coachmaker's wife would shake her head, and at last stamp her foot in anger, swearing that though everybody was of course dust, and grass, and worms; and though, of course, mrs stumfold must, by nature, be included in that everybody; yet dust, and grass, and worms nowhere exhibited themselves with so few of the stains of humanity on them as they did within the bosom of mrs stumfold. so that, though the absolute fact of mrs stumfold being dust, and grass, and worms, could not, in regard to the consistency of things, be denied, yet in her dustiness, grassiness, and worminess she was so little dusty, grassy, and wormy, that it was hardly fair, even in herself, to mention the fact at all.
"i know the deceit of my own heart," mrs stumfold would say.
"of course you do, mrs stumfold," the coachmaker's wife replied. "it is dreadful deceitful, no doubt. where's the heart that ain't? but there's a difference in hearts. your deceit isn't hard like most of 'em. you know it, mrs stumfold, and wrestle with it, and get your foot on the neck of it, so that, as one may say, it's always being killed and got the better of."
during these months miss mackenzie learned to value at a very low rate the rank of the stumfoldian circle into which she had been admitted. she argued the matter with herself, saying that the coachbuilder's wife and others were not ladies. in a general way she was, no doubt, bound to assume them to be ladies; but she taught herself to think that such ladyhood was not of itself worth a great deal. it would not be worth the while of any woman to abstain from having some mr rubb or the like, and from being the lawful mother of children in the rubb and mackenzie line of life, for the sake of such exceptional rank as was to be maintained by associating with the stumfoldians. and, as she became used to the things and persons around her, she indulged herself in a considerable amount of social philosophy, turning over ideas in her mind for which they, who saw merely the lines of her outer life, would hardly have given her credit. after all, what was the good of being a lady? or was there any good in it at all? could there possibly be any good in making a struggle to be a lady? was it not rather one of those things which are settled for one externally, as are the colour of one's hair and the size of one's bones, and which should be taken or left alone, as providence may have directed? "one cannot add a cubit to one's height, nor yet make oneself a lady;" that was the nature of miss mackenzie's argument with herself.
and, indeed, she carried the argument further than that. it was well to be a lady. she recognised perfectly the delicacy and worth of the article. miss baker was a lady; as to that there was no doubt. but, then, might it not also be very well not to be a lady; and might not the advantages of the one position be compensated with equal advantages in the other? it is a grand thing to be a queen; but a queen has no friends. it is fine to be a princess; but a princess has a very limited choice of husbands. there was something about miss baker that was very nice; but even miss baker was very melancholy, and miss mackenzie could see that that melancholy had come from wasted niceness. had she not been so much the lady, she might have been more the woman. and there could be no disgrace in not being a lady, if such ladyhood depended on external circumstances arranged for one by providence. no one blames one's washerwoman for not being a lady. no one wishes one's housekeeper to be a lady; and people are dismayed, rather than pleased, when they find that their tailors' wives want to be ladies. what does a woman get by being a lady? if fortune have made her so, fortune has done much for her. but the good things come as the natural concomitants of her fortunate position. it is not because she is a lady that she is liked by her peers and peeresses. but those choice gifts which have made her a lady have made her also to be liked. it comes from the outside, and for it no struggle can usefully be made. such was the result of miss mackenzie's philosophy.
one may see that all these self-inquiries tended rubb-wards. i do not mean that they were made with any direct intention on her part to reconcile herself to a marriage with mr samuel rubb, or that she even thought of such an event as probable. he had said nothing to her to justify such thought, and as yet she knew but very little of him. but they all went to reconcile her to that sphere of life which her brother tom had chosen, and which her brother walter had despised. they taught her to believe that a firm footing below was better than what might, after a life's struggle, be found to be but a false footing above. and they were brightened undoubtedly by an idea that some marriage in which she could love and be loved was possible to her below, though it would hardly be possible to her above.
her only disputant on the subject was miss baker, and she startled that lady much by the things which she said. now, with miss baker, not to be a lady was to be nothing. it was her weakness, and i may also say her strength. her ladyhood was of that nature that it took no soil from outer contact. it depended, even within her own bosom, on her own conduct solely, and in no degree on the conduct of those among whom she might chance to find herself. she thought it well to pass her evenings with mr stumfold's people, and he at any rate had the manners of a gentleman. so thinking, she felt in no wise disgraced because the coachbuilder's wife was a vulgar, illiterate woman. but there were things, not bad in themselves, which she herself would never have done, because she was a lady. she would have broken her heart rather than marry a man who was not a gentleman. it was not unlady-like to eat cold mutton, and she ate it. but she would have shuddered had she been called on to eat any mutton with a steel fork. she had little generous ways with her, because they were the ways of ladies, and she paid for them from off her own back and out of her own dish. she would not go out to tea in a street cab, because she was a lady and alone; but she had no objection to walk, with her servant with her if it was dark. no wonder that such a woman was dismayed by the philosophy of miss mackenzie.
and yet they had been brought together by much that was alike in their dispositions. miss mackenzie had now been more than six months an inhabitant of littlebath, and six months at such places is enough for close intimacies. they were both quiet, conscientious, kindly women, each not without some ambition of activity, but each a little astray as to the way in which that activity should be shown. they were both alone in the world, and miss baker during the last year or two had become painfully so from the fact of her estrangement from her old friend miss todd. they both wished to be religious, having strong faith in the need of the comfort of religion; but neither of them were quite satisfied with the stumfoldian creed. they had both, from conscience, eschewed the vanities of the world; but with neither was her conscience quite satisfied that such eschewal was necessary, and each regretted to be losing pleasures which might after all be innocent.
"if i'm to go to the bad place," miss todd had said to miss baker, "because i like to do something that won't hurt my old eyes of an evening, i don't see the justice of it. as for calling it gambling, it's a falsehood, and your mr stumfold knows that as well as i do. i haven't won or lost ten pounds in ten years, and i've no more idea of making money by cards than i have by sweeping the chimney. tell me why are cards wicked? drinking, and stealing, and lying, and backbiting, and naughty love-making,—but especially backbiting—backbiting—backbiting,—those are the things that the bible says are wicked. i shall go on playing cards, my dear, till mr stumfold can send me chapter and verse forbidding it."
then miss baker, who was no doubt weak, had been unable to answer her, and had herself hankered after the flesh-pots of egypt and the delights of the unregenerated.
all these things miss baker and miss mackenzie discussed, and miss baker learned to love her younger friend in spite of her heterodox philosophy. miss mackenzie was going to give a tea-party,—nothing as yet having been quite settled, as there were difficulties in the way; but she propounded to miss baker the possibility of asking miss todd and some few of the less conspicuous toddites. she had her ambition, and she wished to see whether even she might not do something to lessen the gulf which separated those who loved the pleasures of the world in littlebath from the bosom of mr stumfold.
"you don't know what you are going to do," miss baker said.
"i'm not going to do any harm."
"that's more than you can say, my dear." miss baker had learnt from miss todd to call her friends "my dear."
"you are always so afraid of everything," said miss mackenzie.
"of course i am;—one has to be afraid. a single lady can't go about and do just as she likes, as a man can do, or a married woman."
"i don't know about a man; but i think a single woman ought to be able to do more what she likes than a married woman. suppose mrs stumfold found that i had got old lady ruff to meet her, what could she do to me?"
old lady ruff was supposed to be the wickedest old card-player in all littlebath, and there were strange stories afloat of the things she had done. there were stumfoldians who declared that she had been seen through the blinds teaching her own maid piquet on a sunday afternoon; but any horror will get itself believed nowadays. how could they have known that it was not beggar-my-neighbour? but piquet was named because it is supposed in the stumfoldian world to be the wickedest of all games.
"i don't suppose she'd do much," said miss baker; "no doubt she would be very much offended."
"why shouldn't i try to convert lady ruff?"
"she's over eighty, my dear."
"but i suppose she's not past all hope. the older one is the more one ought to try. but, of course, i'm only joking about her. would miss todd come if you were to ask her?"
"perhaps she would, but i don't think she'd be comfortable; or if she were, she'd make the others uncomfortable. she always does exactly what she pleases."
"that's just why i think i should like her. i wish i dared to do what i pleased! we all of us are such cowards. only that i don't dare, i'd go off to australia and marry a sheep farmer."
"you would not like him when you'd got him;—you'd find him very rough."
"i shouldn't mind a bit about his being rough. i'd marry a shoe-black to-morrow if i thought i could make him happy, and he could make me happy."
"but it wouldn't make you happy."
"ah! that's just what we don't know. i shan't marry a shoe-black, because i don't dare. so you think i'd better not ask miss todd. perhaps she wouldn't get on well with mr maguire."
"i had them both together once, my dear, and she made herself quite unbearable. you've no idea what kind of things she can say."
"i should have thought mr maguire would have given her as good as she brought," said miss mackenzie.
"so he did; and then miss todd got up and left him, saying out loud, before all the company, that it was not fair for him to come and preach sermons in such a place as that. i don't think they have ever met since."
all this made miss mackenzie very thoughtful. she had thrown herself into the society of the saints, and now there seemed to be no escape for her; she could not be wicked even if she wished it. having got into her convent, and, as it were, taken the vows of her order, she could not escape from it.
"that mr rubb that i told you of is coming down here," she said, still speaking to miss baker of her party.
"oh, dear! will he be here when you have your friends here?"
"that's what i intended; but i don't think i shall ask anybody at all. it is so stupid always seeing the same people."
"mr rubb is—is—is—?"
"yes; mr rubb is a partner in my brother's house, and sells oilcloth, and things of that sort, and is not by any means aristocratic. i know what you mean."
"don't be angry with me, my dear."
"angry! i am not a bit angry. why should i be angry? a man who keeps a shop is not, i suppose, a gentleman. but then, you know, i don't care about gentlemen,—about any gentleman, or any gentlemen."
miss baker sighed, and then the conversation dropped. she had always cared about gentlemen,—and once in her life, or perhaps twice, had cared about a gentleman.
yes; mr rubb was coming down again. he had written to say that it was necessary that he should again see miss mackenzie about the money. the next morning after the conversation which has just been recorded, miss mackenzie got another letter about the same money, of which it will be necessary to say more in the next chapter.
