Chapter Eight.
Rules and Ribbons.
“No fond belief can day and night
From light and darkness sever;
And wrong is wrong, and right is right,
For ever and for ever.”
Last evening, as we were drawing our chairs up for a chat round the fire in our chamber, who should walk in but my Aunt Kezia.
“Nay, I’ll not hold you long,” saith she, as I arose and offered my seat. “I come but to give a bit of good counsel to my nieces here. Miss Annas, my dear, it will very like not hurt you too.”
“I shall be very glad of it, Mrs Kezia,” said Annas.
“Well,”—saith my Aunt, and broke off all at once. “Eh, girls, girls! Poor unfledged birds, fluttering your wings on the brim of the nest, and pooh-poohing the old bird behind you, that says, ‘Take care, my dears, or you will fall!’ She never flew out of the nest, did she?—she never preened her wings, and thought all the world lay before her, and she could fly as straight as any lark of them all, and catch as many flies as any swallow? Ay, nor she never tumbled off into the mire, and found she could not fly a bit, and all the insects went darting past her as safe as if she were a dead leaf? Eh, my lassies, this would be a poor world, if it were all. I have seen something of it, though you thought not, likely enough. But flowers are flowers, and dirt is dirt, whether you find them on the banks of the Thames or of Ellen Water. And I have not dwelt all my life at Brocklebank: though if I had, I should have seen men and women, and they are much alike all the world over.”
I could not keep it in, and out it came.
“Please, Aunt Kezia, don’t be angry, but what is become of Cecilia Osborne?”
“I dare say you will know, Cary, before I do. She went to London, I believe.”
“Oh, I don’t want to see her, Aunt Kezia.”
“Then you are pretty sure to do it.”
“But why did she not—” I was afraid to go on.
“Why did she not keep her word? You can ask her if you want to know. Don’t say I wanted to know, that’s all. I don’t.”
“But how was it, Aunt Kezia?” said I, for I was on fire with curiosity. Flora made an attempt to check me.
“You are both welcome to know all I know,” said my Aunt: “and that is, that she spent one evening at the Fells with us, and the Hebblethwaites and Mr Parmenter were there: the next day we saw nothing of her, and on the evening of the third there came a little note to me—a dainty little pink three-cornered note, all over perfume—in which Miss Cecilia Osborne presented her compliments to Mrs Kezia Courtenay, and begged to say that she found herself obliged to go to London, and would have set out before the note should reach me. That is as much as I know, and more than I want to know.”
“And she did not say when she was coming back?”
“Not in any hurry, I fancy,” said my Aunt Kezia, grimly.
“Going to stop away altogether?”
“She’s welcome,” answered my Aunt, in the same tone.
“Then who will live at Fir Vale?” asked Flora.
“Don’t know. The first of you may that gets married. Don’t go and do it on purpose.”
Annas seemed much diverted. I wanted very much to know how Father had taken Cecilia’s flight, but I did not feel I could ask that.
“Any more questions, young ladies?” saith my Aunt Kezia, quizzically. “We will get them done first, if you please.”
“I beg your pardon, Aunt,” said I. “Only I did want to know so much.”
My Aunt Kezia gave a little laugh. “My dear, curiosity is Eve’s legacy to her daughters. You might reasonably feel it in this instance. I should almost have thought you unfeeling if you had not. However, that business is all over; and well over, to my mind. I am thankful it is no worse. Now for what I want to say to you. I have been turning over in my mind how I might say to you what would be likely to do you good, in such a way that you could easily bear it in mind. And I have settled to give you a few plain rules, which you will find of service if you follow them. Now don’t you go saying to yourselves that Aunt Kezia is an old country woman who knows nothing of grand town folks. As I was beginning to say when you interrupted me, Cary—there, don’t look abashed, child; I am not angry with you—manners change, but natures don’t. Dress men and women how you will, and let them talk what language you please, and have what outside ways you like, they are men and women still. Wherever you go, you will find human nature is unchanged; and the Devil that tempts men is unchanged; and the God that saves them is unchanged. There are more senses than one, lassies, in which the things that are seen are temporal; but the things that are not seen are eternal.”
My Aunt Kezia began to feel in her bag—that great print bag with the red poppies and blue cornflowers, and the big brass top, by which I should know my Aunt Kezia was near if I saw it in the American plantations, or in the moon, for that matter—and out came three little books, bound in red sheepskin. Such pretty little books! scarcely the size of my hand, and with gilded leaves.
“Now, girls,” she said, “I brought you these for keepsakes. They are only blank paper, as you see, and you can put down in them what you spend, or what you see, or any good sayings you meet with, or the like—just what you please: but you will find my rules written on the first leaf, so you can’t say you had not a chance to bear them in mind. Miss Annas, my dear, I hope I don’t make too free, but you see I did not like to leave you out in the cold, as it were. Will you accept one of them? They are good rules for any young maid, though I say it.”
“How kind of you, Mrs Kezia!” said Annas. “Indeed I will, and value it very much.”
I turned at once—indeed, I think we all did—to my Aunt Kezia’s rules. They were written, as she said, on the first page, in her neat, clear handwriting, which one could read almost in the dark. This is what she had written.
“Put the Lord first in everything.
“Let the approval of those who love you best come second.
“Judge none by the outside, till you have seen what is within.
“Never take compliment for earnest.
“Never put off doing a right or kind thing.
“If you doubt a thing being right, it is safe not to do it.
“If you know a thing to be right, go on with it, though the world stand in your way.
“‘If sinners entice thee, consent thou not.’
“‘If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.’ Never wait to confess sin and be forgiven.
“In all that is not wrong, put the comfort of others before your own.
“Think it possible you may be mistaken.
“Test everything by the Word of God.
“Remember that the world passeth away.”
Flora was the first of us to speak.
“Thank you, indeed, Aunt Kezia for taking so much trouble for us. If we govern ourselves by your rules, we can hardly go far wrong.”
I tried to say something of the same sort, but I am afraid I bungled it.
“I cannot tell when we shall meet again, my lassies,” saith my Aunt Kezia. “Only it seems likely to be some time first. Of course, if things fall out ill, and Mrs Desborough counts it best to remove from London, or to send you elsewhere, you must be ruled by her, as you cannot refer to your father. Remember, Cary—your grandmother and uncle will stand to you in place of father and mother while you are with them. Your father sends you to them, and puts his authority into their hands. Don’t go to think you know better—girls so often do. A little humility and obedience won’t hurt you, and you need not be afraid there will ever be too much of them in this world.”
“But, Aunt!” said I, in some alarm, “suppose Grandmamma tells me to do something which I know you would not allow?”
“Follow your rule, Cary: set the Lord always before you. If it is anything which He would not allow, then you are justified in standing out. Not otherwise.”
“But how am I to know, Aunt?” It was a foolish question of mine, for I might have known what my Aunt Kezia would say.
“What do you think the Bible was made for, Cary?”
“But, Aunt, I can’t go and read through the Bible every time Grandmamma gives me an order.”
“You must do that first, my dear. The Bible won’t jump down your throat, that is certain. You must be ready beforehand. You will learn experience, children, as the time goes on—ay, whether you choose or no. But there are two sorts of experience—sweet and bitter: and ‘they that will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock.’ Be ruled by the rudder, lassies. It is the wisest plan.”
My Aunt Kezia said more, but it does not come back to me as that does. And the next morning we said good-bye, and went out into the wide world.
I cannot profess to tell the whole of our journey. We slept the first night at Kendal—and a cold bleak journey it was, by Shap Fells—the second at Bolton, the third at Bakewell, the fourth at Leicester, the fifth at Bedford, and on the Saturday evening we reached London.
I believe Annas was very much diverted at some of my speeches during the journey. When I cried, after we had passed Bolton, and were going over a moor, that I did not know there was heather in the South, she said, “You have been a very short time in coming to the South, Cary.”
“What do you mean, Annas?” said I.
“Only that a Midland man would think we were still in the North,” said she.
“What, is this not the South?” said I. “I thought everything was South after we passed Lancaster.”
“England is a little longer than that,” said Annas, laughing. “No, Cary: we do not get into the Midlands on this side of Derby, nor into the South on this side of Bedford.”
So I had to wait until Friday before I saw the South. When I did, I thought it very flat and very woody. I could scarcely see anything for trees; only (Note 2.) there were no hills to see. And how strange the talk sounded! They seemed to speak all their u’s as if they were e’s, and their a’s the same. Annas laughed when I said that “take up the mat” sounded in the South like “teek ep the met.” It really did, to me.
“I suppose,” said Flora, “our words sound just as queer to these people.”
“O Flora, they can’t!” I cried.
Because we say the words right; and how can that sound queer?
It was nearly six o’clock when the chaise drew up before the door of my Uncle Charles’s house in Bloomsbury Square. These poor Southerners think, I hear, that Bloomsbury Square is one of the wonders of the world. The world must be very short of wonders, and so I said.
“O Cary, you are a bundle of prejudices!” laughed Annas.
Flora—who never can bear a word of disagreement—turned the discourse by saying that Mr Cameron had told her Bloomsbury came from Blumond’s bury, the town of some man called Blumond.
And just then the door opened, and I felt almost terrified of the big, grand-looking man who stood behind it. However, as it was I who was the particularly invited guest, I had to jump down from the chaise, after a boy had let down the steps, and to tell the big man who I was and whence I came: when he said, in that mincing way they have in the South, as if they must cut their words small before they could get them into their mouths, that Madam expected me, and I was to walk up-stairs. My heart went pit-a-pat, but up I marched, Annas and Flora following; and if the big man did not call out my name to another big man, just the copy of him, who stood at the top of the stairs, so loud that I should think it must have been heard over half the house. I felt quite ashamed, but I walked straight on, into a grand room all over looking-glasses and crimson, where a circle of ladies and gentlemen were sitting round the fire. We have not begun fires in the North. I do think they are a nesh (Note 3.) lot of folks who live in the South.
Grandmamma was at one end of the circle, and my Aunt Dorothea at the other. I went straight up to Grandmamma.
“How do you, Grandmamma?” said I. “This is my cousin, Flora Drummond, and this is our friend, Annas Keith. Fa— Papa, I mean, and Aunt Kezia, sent their respectful compliments, and begged that you would kindly allow them to tarry here for a night on their way to the Isle of Wight.”
Grandmamma looked at me, then at Flora, then at Annas, and took a pinch of snuff.
“How dusty you are, my dear!” said she. “Pray go and shift your gown. Perkins will show you the way.”
She just gave a nod to the other two, and then went back to her discourse with the gentleman next her. Those are what Grandmamma calls easy manners, I know: but I think I like the other sort better. My Aunt Kezia would have given the girls a warm grasp of the hand and a kiss, and told them they were heartily welcome, and begged them to make themselves at home. Grandmamma thinks that rough and coarse and country-bred: but I am sure it makes me feel more as if people really were pleased to see me.
I felt that I must just speak first to my Aunt Dorothea; and she did shake hands with Flora and me, and courtesied to Annas. Then we courtesied to the company, and left the room, I telling the big man that Grandmamma wished Perkins to attend us. The big man looked over the banisters, and said, “Harry, call Perkins.” When Perkins came, she proved, as I expected, to be Grandmamma’s waiting-maid; and she carried us off to a little chamber on the upper floor, where was hardly room for anything but two beds.
Flora, I saw, seemed to feel strange and uncomfortable, as if she were somewhere where she had no business to be; but Annas behaved like one to the manner born, and handed her gloves to Perkins with the air of a princess—I do not mean proudly, but easily, as if she knew just what to do, and did it, without any feeling of awkwardness.
We had to wait till the trunks were carried up, and Perkins had unpacked our tea-gowns; then we shifted ourselves, and had our hair dressed, and went back to the withdrawing room. Perkins is a stranger to me, and I was sorry not to see Willet, Grandmamma’s old maid: but Grandmamma never keeps servants long, so I was not surprised. I don’t believe Willet had been with her above six years, when I left Carlisle.
Annas sat down on an empty chair in the circle, and began to talk with the lady nearest to her. Flora, apparently in much hesitation, took a chair, but did not venture to talk. I knew what I had to do, and I felt as if my old ways would come back if I called them. I sat down near my Aunt Dorothea.
“That friend of yours, Cary, is quite a distinguished-looking girl,” said my Aunt Dorothea, in a low voice. “Really presentable, for the country, you know.”
I said Annas came of a high Scots family, and was related to Sir James De Lannoy, of the Isle of Wight. I saw that Annas went up directly in my Aunt Dorothea’s thermometer.
“De Lannoy!” said she. “A fine old Norman line. Very well connected, then? I am glad to hear it.”
Flora, I saw, was getting over her shyness—indeed, I never knew her seem shy before—and beginning to talk a little with her next neighbour. I looked round, but could not see any one I knew. I took refuge in an inquiry after my Uncle Charles.
“He is very well,” said my Aunt Dorothea. “He is away somewhere—men always are. At the Court, I dare say.”
How strange it did sound! I felt as if I had come into a new world.
“I hope that is not your best gown, child?” said my Aunt Dorothea.
“But it is, Aunt—my best tea-gown,” I answered.
“Then you must have a better,” replied she. “It is easy to see that was made in the country.”
“Certainly it was, Aunt. Fanny and I made it.”
My Aunt Dorothea shrugged her shoulders, gave me a glance which said plainly, “Don’t tell tales out of school!” and turned to another lady in the group.
At Brocklebank we never thought of not saying such things. But I see I have forgotten many of my Carlisle habits, and I shall have to pick them up again by degrees.
When we went up to bed, I found that Grandmamma had asked Annas to stay in London. Annas replied that her father had given her leave to stay a month if she wished it and were offered the chance, and she would be very pleased: but that as Flora was her guest, the invitation would have to include both. Grandmamma glanced again at Flora, and took another pinch of snuff.
“I suppose she has some Courtenay blood in her,” said she. “And Drummond is not a bad name—for a Scotswoman. She can stay, if she be not a Covenanter, and won’t want to pray and preach. She must have a new gown, and then she will do, if she keep her mouth shut. She has a fine pair of shoulders, if she were only dressed decently.”
“I am glad,” said I, “for I know what that means. Grandmamma likes Annas, and will like Flora in time. Don’t be any shyer than you can help, Flora; that will not please her.”
“I do not think I am shy,” said Flora; “at least, I never felt so before. But to-night— Cary, I don’t know what it looked like! I could only think of a great spider’s web, and we three poor little flies had to walk straight into it.”
“I wonder where Duncan and Angus are to-night,” said Annas; “I hope no one is playing spider there.”
Flora sighed, but made no answer.
Our new gowns had to be made in a great hurry, for Grandmamma had invited an assembly for the Thursday night, and she wished Flora and me to be decently dressed, she said. I am sure I don’t know how the mantua-maker managed it, for the cloth was only bought on Monday morning; I suppose she must have had plenty of apprentices. The gowns were sacques of cherry damask, with quilted silk petticoats of black trimmed with silver lace. I find hoops are all the mode again, and very large indeed—so big that when you enter a door you have to double your hoop round in front, or lift it on one side out of the way. The cap is a little scrap of a thing, scarce bigger than a crown-piece, and a flower or pompoon is stuck at the side; stomachers are worn, and very full elbow-ruffles; velvet slippers with high heels. Grandmamma put a little grey powder in my hair, but when Flora said she was sure that her father would disapprove, she did not urge her to wear it. But she did want us both to wear red ribbons mixed with our white ones. I did not know what to do.
“I did not know Mrs Desborough was a trimmer,” said Annas, in the severest tone I ever heard from her lips.
“What shall we do?” said I.
“I shall not wear them,” said Flora. “Mrs Desborough is not my grandmother; nor has my father put me in her care. I do not see, therefore, that I am at all bound to obey her. For you, Cary, it is different. I think you will have to submit.”
“But only think what it means!” cried I.
“It means,” said Annas, “that you are indifferent in the matter of politics.”
“If it meant only that,” I said, “I should not think much about it. But surely it means more, much more. It means that I am disloyal; that I do not care whether the King or the Elector wins the day; or even that I do care, and am willing to hide my belief for fashion’s or money’s sake. This red ribbon on me is a lie; and an acted lie is no better than a spoken one.”
My Aunt Dorothea came in so immediately after I had spoken that I felt sure she must have heard me.
“Dear me, what a fuss about a bit of ribbon!” said she. “Cary, don’t be a little goose.”
“Aunt, I only want to be true!” cried I. “It is my truth I make a fuss about, not my ribbons. I will wear a ribbon of every colour in the rainbow, if Grandmamma wish it, except just this one which tells falsehoods about me.”
“My dear, it is so unbecoming in you to be thus warm!” said my Aunt Dorothea. “Enthusiasm is always in bad taste, no matter what it is about. You will not see half-a-dozen ladies in the room in white ribbons. Nobody expects the Prince to come South.”
“But, Aunt, please give me leave to say that it will not alter my truthfulness, whether the Prince comes to London or goes to the North Pole!” cried I. “If the Elector himself—”
“’Sh-’sh!” said my Aunt Dorothea. “My dear, that sort of thing may be very well at Brocklebank, but it really will not do in Bloomsbury Square. You must not bring your wild, antiquated Tory notions here. Tories are among the extinct animals.”
“Not while my father is alive, please, Aunt.”
“My dear, we are not at Brocklebank, as I told you just now,” answered my Aunt Dorothea. “It may be all very well to toast the Chevalier, and pray for him, and so forth—(I am sure I don’t know whether it do him any good): but when you come to living in the world with other people, you must do as they do.—Yes, Perkins, certainly, put Miss Courtenay a red ribbon, and Miss Drummond also.—My dear girls, you must.”
“Not for me, Mrs Charles, if you please,” said Flora, very quietly: “I should prefer, if you will allow it, to remain in this room.”
My Aunt Dorothea looked at her, and seemed puzzled what to do with her.
“Miss Keith,” said she, “do you wear the red?”
“Certainly not, Madam,” replied Annas.
“Well!” said my Aunt Dorothea, shrugging her shoulders, “I suppose we must say you are Scots girls, and have not learnt English customs.—You can let it alone for Miss Drummond, Perkins.—But that won’t do for you, Cary; you must have one.”
“Aunt Dorothea, I will wear it if you bid me,” said I: “but I shall tell everybody who speaks to me that my red ribbon is a lie.”
“Then you had better have none!” cried my Aunt Dorothea, petulantly. “That would be worse than wearing all white. Cary, I never knew you were so horribly obstinate.”
“I suppose I am older, Aunt, and understand things better now,” said I.
“Dear, I wish girls would stay girls!” said my Aunt Dorothea. “Well, Perkins, let it alone. Just do up that lace a little to the left, that the white ribbon may not show so much. There, that will do.—Cary, if your Grandmamma notices this, I must tell her it is all your fault.”
Well, down-stairs we went, and found the company beginning to come. My Aunt Dorothea, I knew, never cares much about anything to last, but I was in some fear of Grandmamma. (By the way, I find this house is Grandmamma’s, not my Uncle Charles’s, as I thought.) There was one lady there, a Mrs Francis, who was here the other evening when we came, and she spoke kindly to us, and began to talk with Annas and Flora. I rather shrank into a corner by the window, for I did not want Grandmamma to see me. People were chattering away on all sides of me; and very droll it was to listen first to one and then to another.
I was amusing myself in this way, and laughing to myself under a grave face, when all at once I heard three words from the next window. Who said “By no means!” in that soft velvet voice, through which ran a ripple of silvery laughter? I should have known that voice in the desert of Arabia. And the next moment she moved away from the window, and I saw her face.
We stood fronting each other, Cecilia and I. That she knew me as well as I knew her, I could not doubt for an instant. For one moment she hesitated whether to speak to me, and I took advantage of it. Dropping the lowest courtesy I could make, I turned my back upon her, and walked straight away to the other end of the room. But not before I had seen that she was superbly dressed, and was leaning on the arm of Mr Parmenter. Not, also, before I caught a fiery flash gleaming at me out of the tawny eyes, and knew that I had made an enemy of the most dangerous woman in my world.
But what could I have done else? If I had accepted Cecilia’s hand, and treated her as a friend, I should have felt as though I were conniving at an insult to my father.
At the other end of the room, I nearly ran against a handsome, dark-haired girl in a yellow satin slip, who to my great astonishment said to me,—
“Well played, Miss Caroline Courtenay! I have been watching the little drama, and I really compliment you on your readiness and spirit. You have taken the wind out of her Ladyship’s sails.”
“Hatty!” I cried, in much amazement. “Is it you?”
“Well, I fancy so,” said she, in her usual mocking way. “My beloved Cary, do tell me, have you brought that delicious journal? Do let me read to-night’s entry!”
“Hatty!” I cried all at once. “You—”
“Yes, Madam?”
If she had not on my best purple scarf—my lost scarf, that my Aunt Kezia could not find! But I did not go on. I felt it was of no earthly use to talk to Hatty.
“Seen it before, haven’t you?” said Hatty, in her odious teasing way. “Yes, I thought I had better have it: mine is so shabby; and you are only a little Miss—it does not matter for you. Beside, you have Grandmamma to look after you. You shall have it again when I have done with it.”
I had to bite my tongue terribly hard, but I did manage to hold it. I only said, “Where are you staying, Hatty?”
“At Mrs Crossland’s, in Charles Street, where I shall be perfectly delighted to see my youngest sister.”
“Oh! Not with the Bracewells?”
“With the Bracewells, certainly. Did you suppose they had pitch-forked me through the window into Mrs Crossland’s drawing-room?”
“But who is Mrs Crossland?”
“A friend of the Bracewells,” said Hatty, with an air of such studied carelessness that I began to wonder what was behind it.
“Has Mrs Crossland daughters?” I asked.
“One—a little chit, scarce in her teens.”
“Is there a Mr Crossland?”
“There isn’t a Papa Crossland, if you mean that. There is a young Mr Crossland.”
“Oh!” said I.
“Pray, Miss Caroline, what do you mean by ‘Oh’?” asked Hatty, whose eyes laughed with fun.
“Oh, nothing,” I replied.
“Oh!” replied Hatty, so exactly in my tone that I could not help laughing. “Take care, her Ladyship may see you.”
“Hatty, why do you call Cecilia ‘her Ladyship’?”
“Well, it doesn’t know anything, does it?” replied Hatty, in her teasing way. “Only just up from the country, isn’t it? Madam, Mr Anthony Parmenter as was (as old Will says) is Sir Anthony Parmenter; and Miss Cecilia Osborne as was, is her Ladyship.”
“Do you mean to say Cecilia has married Mr Parmenter?”
“Oh dear, no! she has married Sir Anthony.”
“Then she jilted our father for a title? The snake!”
“Don’t use such charming language, my sweetest; her Ladyship might not admire it. And if I were you, I would make myself scarce; she is coming this way.”
“Then I will go the other,” said I, and I did.
To my astonishment, as soon as I had left her, what should Hatty do but walk up and shake hands with Cecilia, and in a few minutes they and Mr Parmenter were all laughing about something. I was amazed beyond words. I had always thought Hatty pert, teasing, disagreeable; but never underhand or mean. But just then I saw a good-looking young man join them, and offer his arm to Hatty for a walk round the room; and it flashed on me directly that this was young Mr Crossland, and that he was a friend of Mr—I mean Sir Anthony—Parmenter.
When we were undressing that night, I said,—
“Annas, can a person do anything to make the world better?”
“What person?” asked she, and smiled.
“Well, say me. Can I do anything?”
“Certainly. You can be as good as you know how to be.”
“But that won’t make other people better.”
“I do not know that. Some other people it may.”
“But that will be the people who are good already. I want to mend the people who are bad.”
“Then pray for them,” said Annas, gravely.
Pray for Cecilia Osborne! It came upon me with a feeling of intense aversion. I could not pray for her!
Nor did I think there would be a bit of good in praying for Hatty. And yet—if she were getting drawn into Cecilia’s toils—if that young Mr Crossland were not a good man—I might pray for her to be kept safe. I thought I would try it.
But when I began to pray for Hatty, it seemed unkind to leave out Fanny and Sophy. And then I got to Father and my Aunt Kezia; and then to Maria and Bessy; and then to Sam and Will; and then to old Elspie; and then to Helen Raeburn, and my Uncle Drummond, and Angus, and Mr Keith, and the Laird, and Lady Monksburn—and so on and on, till the whole world seemed full of people to be prayed for.
I suppose it is so always—if we only thought of it!
Grandmamma never noticed my ribbons—or rather my want of them.
It really is of no use my trying to keep to dates. I have begun several times, and I cannot get on with it. That last piece, dated the 23rd, took me nearly a week to write; so that what was to-morrow when I began, was behind yesterday before I had finished. I shall just go right on without any more pother, and put a date now and then when it is very particular.
Grandmamma has an assembly every week,—Tuesday is her day (Note 1.)—and now and then an extra one on Thursday or Saturday. I do not think anything would persuade her to have an assembly, or play cards, on a Friday. But on a Sunday evening she always has her rubber, to Flora’s horror. It does not startle me, because I remember it always was so when I lived with her at Carlisle: nor Annas, because she knew people did such things in the South. I find Grandmamma usually spends the winter at the Bath: but she has not quite made up her mind whether to go this year or not, on account of all the tumults in the North. If the royal army should march on London (and Annas says of course they will) we may be shut up here for a long while. But Annas says if we heard anything certain of it, she and Flora would set off at once to “the island”, as she always calls the Isle of Wight.
Last Tuesday, I was sitting by a young lady whom I have talked with more than once; her name is Newton. I do not quite know how we got on to the subject, but we began to talk politics. I said I could not understand why it was, but people in the South did not seem to care for politics nearly so much as I was accustomed to see done. Half the ladies in the room appeared to be trimmers; and many more wore the red ribbon alone. Such people, with us, would never be received into a Tory family.
“We do not take things so seriously as you,” said she, with a diverted look. “That with us is an opinion which with you is an enthusiasm. I suppose up there, where the sun never shines, you have to make some sort of noise and fuss to keep yourselves alive.”
“‘The sun never shines!’” cried I. “Now, really, Miss Newton! You don’t mean to say you believe that story?”
“I am only repeating what I have been told,” said she. “I never was north of Barnet.”
“We are alive enough,” said I. “I wonder if you are. It looks to me much more like living, to make beds and boil puddings and stitch shirts, than to sit on a sofa in a satin gown, flickering a fan and talking rubbish.”
“Oh, fie!” said Miss Newton, laughing, and tapping me on the arm with her fan. “That really will not do, Miss Courtenay. You will shock everybody in the room.”
“I can tell you, most whom I see here shock me,” said I. “They seem to have no honour and no honesty. They think white and they wear red, or the other way about, just as it happens. If the Prince were to enter London on Monday, what colour would all these ribbons be next Tuesday night?”
“The colour of yours, undoubtedly,” she said, laughing.
“And do you call that honesty?” said I. “These people could not change their opinions and feelings between Monday and Tuesday: and to change their ribbons without them would be simply falsehood.”
“I told you, you take things so seriously!” she answered.
“But is it not a serious thing?” I continued. “And ought we to take serious things any way but seriously? Miss Newton, do you not see that it is a question of right—not a question of taste or convenience? Your allegiance is not a piece of jewellery, that you can give to the person you like best; it is a debt, which you can only pay to the person to whom you owe it. Do you not see that?”
“My dear Miss Courtenay,” said Miss Newton, in a low voice, “excuse me, but you are a little too warm. It is not thought good taste, you know, to take up any subject so very decidedly as that.”
“And is right only to be thought a matter of taste?” cried I, quite disregarding her caution. “Am I to rule my life, as I do my trimmings, by the fashion-book? We have not come to that yet in the North, I can assure you! We are a sturdy race there, Madam, and don’t swallow our opinions as we do pills, of whatever the apothecary likes to put into them. We prefer to know what we are taking.”
“Do excuse me,” said Miss Newton, with laughter in her eyes, and laying her hand upon my arm; “but don’t you see people are looking round?”
“Let them look round!” cried I. “I am not ashamed of one word that I have spoken.”
“Dear Miss Courtenay, I am not objecting to your words. Every one, of course, has his opinions: yours, I suppose, are your father’s.”
“Not a bit of it!” cried I; “they are my own!”
“But young ladies of your age should not have strong opinions,” said she. She is about five years older than I am.
“Will you tell me how to help it?” said I. “I must go through the world with my eyes shut, if I am not to form opinions.”
“Oh yes, moderately,” she replied.
“Shut my eyes moderately?” I asked; “or, form opinions moderately?”
“Both,” answered Miss Newton, laughing.
“Your advice is worse than wasted, my dear Miss Newton,” said a voice behind us. “That young person will never do anything in moderation.”
“You know better, Hatty!” said I.
“And, as your elder sister, my darling, let me give you a scrap of advice. Men never like contentious, arguing women. Don’t be a little goose.”
I don’t know whether I am a goose or a duck, but I am afraid I could have done something to Hatty just then which I should have found agreeable, and she would not. That elder-sister air of hers is so absurd, for she is not eighteen months older than I am; I can stand it well enough from Sophy, but from Hatty it really is too ridiculous. But that was nothing, compared with the insult she had offered, not so much to me, as through me to all womanhood. “Men don’t like!” Does it signify three halfpence what they like? Are women to make slaves of themselves, considering what men fancy or don’t fancy? Men, mark you! Not, your father, or brother, or husband: that would be right and reasonable enough: but, men!
“Hatty,” I said, after doing battle with myself for a moment, “I think I had better give you no answer. If I did, and if my words and tones suited my feelings, I should scream the house down.”
She burst out laughing behind her fan. I walked away at once, lest I should be tempted to reply further. I am afraid I almost ran, for I came bolt against a gentleman in the corner, and had to stop and make my apologies.
“Don’t run quite over me, Cary, if it suit you,” said somebody who, I thought, was in Cumberland.
Note 1. The assemblies on a lady’s visiting day required no invitations. The rooms were open to any person acquainted with members of the family.
Note 2. Southerners are respectfully informed that the use of only for but is a Northern peculiarity.
Note 3. Sensitive, delicate.