Chapter Twenty Four.
Warnings.
Maria Young’s lodging at the farrier’s had one advantage over many better dwellings;—it was pleasanter in Winter than in Summer. There was little to find fault with in the tiny sitting-room after candles were lighted. The fire burned clear in the grate; and when the screen was up, there were no draughts. This screen was quite a modern improvement. When Fanny and Mary Grey had experienced the pleasure of surprising Sophia with a token of sisterly affection, in the shape of a piece of India-rubber, and their mother with a token of filial affection, in the form of a cotton-box, they were unwilling to stop, and looked round to see whether they could not present somebody with a token of some other sort of affection. Sophia was taken into their counsels; and she, being aware of how Miss Young’s candle flared when the wind was high, devised this screen. The carpenter made the frame; Sydney covered it with canvas and black paper for a ground; and the little girls pasted on it all the drawings and prints they could muster. Here was the Dargle, an everlasting waterfall, that looked always the same in the sunny-coloured print. There was Morland’s Woodcutter, with his tall figure, his pipe, his dog, and his faggot, with the snow lying all around him. Two or three cathedrals were interspersed; and, in the midst of them, and larger than any of them, a silhouette of Mr Grey, with the eyelash wonderfully like, and the wart upon his nose not to be mistaken. Then there was Charles the First taking leave of his family; and, on either side of this, an evening primrose in water-colours, by Mary, and a head of Terror, with a square mouth and starting eyes, in crayon, by Fanny. Mrs Grey produced some gay border which the paper-hanger had left over when the attics were last furnished; and Sydney cut out in white paper a huntsman with his whip in the air, a fox, a gate, and two hounds. Mr Grey pleaded, that, having contributed his face, he had done all that could be expected of him: nevertheless, he brought home one day, on his return from market, a beautiful Stream of Time, which made the children dance round their screen. It was settled at first that this would nobly ornament the whole of one side; but it popped into Sydney’s head, just as he was falling asleep one night, how pretty it would be to stick it round with the planets. So the planets were cut out in white, and shaded with Indian ink. There was no mistaking Saturn with his ring, or Jupiter with his moons. At length, all was done, and the cook was glad to hear that no more paste would be wanted, and the little girls might soon leave off giggling when Miss Young asked them, in the schoolroom, why they were jogging one another’s elbows. Mr Grey spared one of his men to deposit the precious piece of handiwork at Miss Young’s lodging; and there, when she went home one cold afternoon, she found the screen standing between the fire and the door, and, pinned on it, a piece of paper, inscribed, “A Token of friendly Affection.”
This was not, however, the only, nor the first, gift with which Maria’s parlour was enriched. Amidst all the bustle of furnishing the Hopes’ house, Margaret had found time to plan and execute a window-curtain for her friend’s benefit; and another person—no other than Philip Enderby—had sent in a chaise-longue, just the right size to stand between the fire and the table. It had gone hard with Maria to accept this last gift; but his nephew and nieces were Philip’s plea of excuse for the act; and this plea cut her off from refusing: though in her heart she believed that neither the children nor ancient regard were in his thoughts when he did it, but rather Margaret’s affection for her. For some time, this chaise-longue was a couch of thorns; but now affairs had put on a newer aspect still, and Maria forgot her own perplexities and troubles in sympathy with her friend.
There was nothing to quarrel with in the look of the chaise-longue, when Margaret entered Maria’s room in the twilight, in the afternoon of the appointed Thursday.
“Reading by fire-light?” said Margaret.
“I suppose I am: but it had not occurred to me—the daylight went away so softly. Six o’clock, I declare! The days are lengthening, as we say every year. But we will have something better than firelight, if you will be so kind as to set those candles on the table.”
The time was long put when Maria thought of apologising for asking her friend to do what her lameness rendered painful to herself. Margaret laid aside her bonnet and cloak behind the screen, lighted the candles, put more coals on the fire, and took her seat—not beside Maria, but in a goodly armchair, which she drew forward from its recess.
“Now,” said she, “we only want a cat to be purring on the rug to make us a complete winter picture. The kettle will be coming soon to sing on the hob: and that will do nearly as well. But, Maria, I wonder you have no cat. We have set up a cat. I think I will send you a kitten, some day, as a token of neighbourly affection.”
“Thank you. Do you know, I was positively assured lately that I had a cat? I said all I could in proof that I had none; but Mrs Tucker persisted in her inquiries after its health, notwithstanding.”
“What did she mean?”
“She said she saw a kitten run into the passage, and that it never came out again: so that it followed of course that it must be here still. One day, when I was in school, she came over to satisfy herself; and true enough, there had been a kitten. The poor thing jumped from the passage window into the yard, and went to see what they were about at the forge. A hot horse-shoe fell upon its back, and it mewed so dolefully that the people drowned it. So there you have the story of my cat, as it was told to me.”
“Thank you, it is a good thing to know. But what does Mrs Grey say to your setting up a cat?”
“When she heard Mrs Tucker’s first inquiries, she took them for an imputation, and was vexed accordingly. ‘Miss Young!’ said she, ‘You must be mistaken, Mrs Tucker. Miss Young cannot afford to keep a kitten!’”
“Oh, for shame!” said Margaret, laughing. “But what is the annual expense of a kitten—can you tell us? I am afraid we never considered that.”
“Why, there is the breast of a fowl, once a year or so, when your cook forgets to shut the larder-door behind her. Cats never take the drumsticks when there is a breast, you are aware. You know best how Mr Hope looks, when the drumsticks and side bones come to table, with an empty space in the middle of the dish where the breast ought to have been.”
“I will tell you, the first time it happens.” And Margaret sank into an absent fit, brought on by the bare suggestion of discontent at home. Hester had made her uncomfortable, the last thing before she left the house, by speaking sharply of Maria, without any fresh provocation. Undisciplined still by what had happened so lately, she had wished Maria Young a hundred miles off. Margaret meditated and sighed. It was some time before Maria spoke. When she did, she said:
“Margaret, do not you think people had better not persuade themselves and their very intimate friends that they are happy when they are not?”
“They had better not think, even in their own innermost minds, whether they are happy or not, if they can help it.”
“True: but there are times when that is impossible—when it is far better to avoid the effort. Come—I suspect we may relieve each other just now, by allowing the truth. I will own, if you will, that I am very unhappy to-night. Never mind what it is about.”
“I will, if you will,” replied Margaret, faintly smiling.
“There now, that’s right! We shall be all the better for it. We have quite enough of seeming happy, God knows, beyond these doors. We can talk there about kittens and cold fowl. Here we will not talk at all, unless we like; and we will each groan as much as we please.”
“I am sorry to hear you speak so,” said Margaret, tenderly. “Not that I do not agree with you. I think it is a terrible mistake to fancy that it is religious to charm away grief, which, after all, is rejecting it before it has done its work; and, as for concealing it, there must be very good reasons indeed for that, to save it from being hypocrisy. But the more I agree with you, the more sorry I am to hear you say just what I was thinking. I am afraid you must be very unhappy, Maria.”
“I’m in great pain to-night; and I do not find that pain becomes less of an evil by one’s being used to it. Indeed, I think the reverse happens; for the future comes into the consideration.”
“Do you expect to go on to suffer this same pain? Can nothing cure it? Is there no help?”
“None, but in patience. There are intermissions, happily, and pretty long ones. I get through the summer very well; but the end of the winter—this same month of February—is a sad aching time; and so it must be for as many winters as I may have to live. But I am better off than I was. Last February I did not know you. Oh, Margaret, if they had not brought you up from under the ice, the other day, how different would all have been to-night!”
“How strange it seems to think of the difference that hung on that one act!” said Margaret, shivering again at the remembrance of her icy prison. “What, and where, should I have been now? And what would have been the change in this little world of ours? You would have missed me, I know; and on that account I am glad it ended as it did.”
“And on no other?” asked Maria, looking earnestly at her friend.
“My sister would have grieved sadly at first—you do not know what care she takes of me—how often she is thinking of my comfort. And Edward is fond of me too: I know he is; but they live for each other, and could spare every one else. You and Morris would have been my mourners, and you two are enough to live for.”
“To say nothing of others who may arise.”
“I hope nothing more will arise in my life, Maria. I want no change. I have had enough of it.”
“You think so now. I understand your feeling very well. But yet I can fancy that when you are twice as old as you are—when a few grey hairs peep out among all that brown—when this plump little hand grows thin, and that girlish figure of yours looks dignified and middle-aged, and people say that nobody thought when you were young that you would turn out a handsome woman—I can fancy that when all this has happened, you may be more disposed to look forward, and less disinclined to change, than you feel at this moment. But there is no use in saying so now. You shake your head, and I nod mine. You say, ‘No,’ and I say, ‘Yes,’ and there is an end of it.”
“Where will you be then, I wonder?”
“I do not wish to know, nor even to inquire of my own judgment. My health is very bad—worse than you are aware of. I cannot expect to be able to work always; some of my present pupils are growing very tall; and no strangers will take me if I do not get much better; which is, I believe, impossible. The future, therefore, is all a mystery; and so let it remain. I am not anxious about that.”
“But I am.”
“Here comes tea. Now you will be doing a finer thing in making us a good cup of tea, than in settling my future ever so satisfactorily—seeing that you cannot touch it with so much as your little finger. The tea is wholly in your power.”
“You look forward to other people’s grey hair and sedateness of face, though you will not to your own.”
“Mere grey hair is as certain as futurity itself; and I will allow you to prophesy that much for me or for anybody.”
“Why should we not prophesy about your pupils too? They seem to be improving very much.”
“They certainly are; and I am glad you have lighted upon the pleasantest subject I ever think about. Oh, Margaret, you do not know what encouragement I have about some of those children! Their lot is and will be a hard one, in many respects. It will be difficult for them to grow kindly, and liberal, and truthful, with such examples as they have before their eyes. They advance like the snail on the wall, creeping three inches on in the day, and falling back two at night. They get out of a pretty mood of mind in the morning, and expand and grow interested in things out of Deerbrook; and then, in the evening, the greater part of this is undone, and they go to bed with their heads full of small, vile notions about their neighbours.”
“And when they grow too wise to have their heads so filled, their hearts will be heavy for those who are not rising like themselves.”
“That is unavoidable, and they must bear the sorrow. We must hope that they will disperse from Deerbrook, and find their way into a more genial society than they can ever know here. I must keep the confidence of my children sacred even from you, Margaret: but you may believe me when I tell you, that if you knew all that we have to say to one another, you would find some of these children animated with really noble thoughts, and capable of really generous acts.”
“‘Some of them.’ Mary, in particular, I venture to conjecture to be in your thoughts.”
“Yes: Mary in particular; but she had always a more gentle and generous temper than her sisters. Fanny, however, is improving remarkably.”
“I am delighted to hear it, and I had begun to suspect it. Fanny, I observe, lays fewer informations than she did; and there is more of thought, and less of a prying expression, in her face. She is really growing more like Mary in countenance. The little Rowlands—the younger ones—seem simple enough; but Matilda, what a disagreeable child she is!”
“The most that can be done with her is to leave her only a poor creature—to strip her of the conceit and malice with which her mother would overlay her feeble intellect. This sounds deplorably enough; but, as parents will not speak the plain truth to themselves about their charge, governesses must. There is, perhaps, little better material in Fanny: but I trust we may one day see her more lowly than she can at present relish the idea of being, and with energy enough to improve under the discipline of life, when she can no longer have that of school. She and Mary have been acknowledging to-day a fine piece of experience. Mr Grey is pleased with their great Improvement in Latin. He finds they can read, with ease and pleasure, some favourite classical scraps which he used to talk about without exciting any interest in them. They honestly denied having devoted any more time to Latin than before, or having taken any more pains; and no new methods have been tried. Here was a mystery. To-day they have solved it. They find that all is owing to their getting up earlier in the morning to teach those little orphans, the Woods, to read and sew.”
“Not a very circuitous process,” said Margaret; “love and kind interest, energy and improvement—whether in Latin or anything else. But what did you mean just now about truth? What should make the Greys otherwise than truthful?”
“Oh, not the Greys! I was thinking of the other family when I said that. But that is a large subject: let us leave it till after tea. Will you give me another cup?”
“Now; shall we begin upon our large subject?” said she, as the door closed behind the tea-tray and kettle, and Margaret handed her her work-bag.
“I am aware that I asked for it,” replied Margaret; “but it is a disagreeable topic, and perhaps we had better avoid it.”
“You will take me for a Deerbrook person, if I say we will go into it, will not you?”
“Oh, no: you have a reason, I see. So, why should not the little Rowlands be truthful?”
“Because they have so perpetual an example of falsehood before them at home. I have made some painful discoveries there lately.”
“Is it possible you did not know that woman long ago?”
“I knew her obvious qualities, which there is no need to specify: but the depth of her untruth is a new fact to me.”
“Are you sure of it, now?”
“Quite sure of it in some particulars, and strongly suspecting it in others. Do not tell your sister anything of what I am going to say, unless you find it necessary for the direction of her conduct. Let your disclosures be rather to Mr Hope. That is settled, is it? Well, Mrs Rowland’s ruling passion just now is hatred to your household.”
“I suspected as much. But—the untruth.”
“Wait a little. She dislikes you, all and severally.”
“What, my brother?”
“Oh, yes; for marrying into the Grey connection so decidedly. Did you ever hear that before?”
Margaret laughed; and her friend went on—
“This capture and imprisonment of her mother (for the poor old lady is not allowed to see whom she pleases) is chiefly to get her from under Mr Hope’s care. I fancy, from her air, and from some things she has dropped, that she has some grand coup-de-theâtre in reserve about that matter; but this is merely suspicion: I will now speak only of what I know to exist. She is injuring your brother to an extent that he is not, but ought to be, aware of.”
“What does she say? She shudders at his politics, I know.”
“Yes; that might be ignorance merely, and even conscientious ignorance: so we will let that pass. She also hints, very plainly and extensively, that your brother and sister are not happy together.”
“She is a wicked woman,” said Margaret, with a deep sigh. “I half suspected what you tell me, from poor George’s errand that unhappy day.”
“Right. Mr Rowland’s irony was intended to stop his wife’s insinuations before the children. She says the most unwarrantable things about Mrs Grey’s having made the match—and she intimates that Hester has several times gone to bed in hysterics, from Mr Hope having upbraided her with taking him in.”
“What is to be done?” cried Margaret, throwing down her work.
“Your brother will decide for himself whether to speak to Mr Rowland, or to let the slander pass, and live it down. Our duty is to give him information; and I feel that it is a duty. And now, have you been told anything about Mr Hope’s practice of dissection?”
Margaret related what she had heard on the bank of the river, and Hope’s explanation of it.
“He knows more than he told you, I have no doubt,” replied Maria. “The beginning of it was, your brother’s surgery-pupil having sent a great toe, in a handsome-looking sealed packet, to some lad in the village, who happened to open it at table. You may imagine the conjectures as to where it came from, and the revival of stories about robbing churchyards, and of prejudices about dissection. Mrs Rowland could not let such an opportunity as this pass by; and her neighbours have been favoured with dark hints as to what has been heard under the churchyard wall, and what she herself has seen from her window in sleepless nights. Now, Mr Hope must take notice of this. It is too dangerous a subject to be left quietly to the ignorance and superstitions of such a set of people as those among whom his calling lies. No ignorance on earth exceeds that of the country folks whom he attends.”
“But they worship him,” cried Margaret.
“They have worshipped him; but you know, worship easily gives place to hatred among the extremely ignorant; and nothing is so likely to quicken the process as to talk about violating graves. Do not be frightened; I tell you this to prevent mischief, not to prophesy it. Mr Hope will take what measures he thinks fit: and I shall tell Mr Rowland, tomorrow morning, that I am the source of your information. I was just going to warn him to-day that I meant to speak to you in this way; but I left it till to-morrow, that I might not be prevented.”
“Dear Maria, this will cost you your bread.”
“I believe not; but this consideration belongs to that future of time on which, as I was saying, we cannot lay our little fingers. The present is clear enough—that Mr Hope ought to know his own case.”
“He shall know it. But, Maria, do you mean that Mrs Rowland talks of all these affairs before her children?”
“When Mr Rowland is not present to check it. And this brings me to something which I think ought to be said, though I have no proof to bring. Having found of late what things Mrs Rowland can say for a purpose—how variously and how monstrously untrue—and seeing that all her enterprises are at present directed against the people who live in a pleasant little corner-house—”
“But why? You have not yet fully accounted for this enmity.”
“I have not, but I will now. I think she joins your name with her brother’s, and that she accordingly hates you now as she once hated Hester. But mind, I am not sure of this.”
“But how—? Why—?”
“You will divine that I have changed my opinion about Mr Enderby’s being engaged to Miss Bruce, since you asked me for my judgment upon it. I may very possibly be mistaken: but as Mr Enderby lies under censure for forming and carrying on such an arrangement in strange concealment from his most intimate friends, I think it due to him at least to put the supposition that he may not be guilty.”
Margaret could not speak, though a thousand questions struggled in her heart.
“I am aware,” continued Maria, “with what confidence she has everywhere stated the fact of this engagement, and that Mrs Enderby fully believes it. But I have been struck throughout with a failure of particularity in Mrs Rowland’s knowledge. She cannot tell when her brother last saw Miss Bruce, nor whether he has any intention of going to Rome. She does not know, evidently, whether he was engaged when he was last here; and I cannot get rid of the impression, that his being engaged now is a matter of inference from a small set of facts, which will bear more than one interpretation.”
“Surely she would not dare—.” Margaret paused.
“It is a bold stroke (supposing me right), but she would strike boldly to make a quarrel between her brother and his friends in the corner-house: and if the device should fail at last, she has the intermediate satisfaction of making them uncomfortable.”
“Horrid creature!” said Margaret, feeling, however, that she would forgive all the horridness for the sake of finding that Mrs Rowland had done this horrid thing.
“We must not forget,” said Maria, “that there is another side to the question. Young men have been known to engage themselves mysteriously, and without sufficient respect to the confidence of intimate friends.”
“This must be ascertained, Maria;” and again Margaret stopped short with a blush of shame.
“By time, Margaret; in no other way. I cannot, of course, speak to Mr Rowland, or any one, on so private an affair of the family; nor, under the circumstances, can Mr Hope stir in it. We must wait; but it cannot be for long. Some illumination must reach Deerbrook soon—either from Mr Enderby’s going to Rome, or coming here to see his mother.”
“Mrs Rowland said he would come here, she hoped, for his wedding journey.”
“She did say so, I know. And she has told plenty of people that her brother is delighted that Mrs Enderby is settled with her; whereas some beautiful plants arrived this morning for Mrs Enderby’s conservatory, by his orders (the Rowlands have no conservatory you know). The children were desired not to mention the arrival of these plants to grandmamma; and Mrs Rowland wrote by return of post—I imagine to inform him for the first time of his mother’s removal.”
Margaret thought these things were too bad to be true.
“I should have said so, too, some time ago: and as I cannot too earnestly repeat, I may be wrong now. But I have done my duty in giving you reason for suspending your judgment of Mr Enderby. This being done, we will talk of something else.—Now, do not you think there may be some difficulty in preserving my pupils from a habit of untruth?”
“Yes, indeed.”
But the talking of something else did not operate so well as it sounded. The pauses were long after what had passed. At length, when Margaret detected herself in the midst of the speculation, “if he is not engaged to Miss Bruce, it does not follow—,” she roused herself, and exclaimed—
“How very good it is of you, Maria, to have laid all this open to me!”
Maria hung her head over her work, and thought within herself that her friend could not judge of the deed. She replied—
“Thank you! I thought I should get some sympathy from you in the end, to repay me for the irksomeness of exposing such a piece of social vice as this poor lady’s conduct.”
“Yes, indeed, I ought to have acknowledged it before, as I feel it; but you know there is so much to think over! it is so wonderful—so almost inconceivable!”
“It is so.”
“Is it quite necessary, Maria—yes, I see it is necessary that you should speak to Mr Rowland to-morrow? You are bound in honesty to do so; but it will be very painful. Can we not help you? Can we not in some way spare you?”
“No, you cannot, thank you. For Mr Rowland’s sake, no one must be by; and none of you can testify to the facts. No; leave me alone. By this time to-morrow night it will be done. What knock is that? No one ever knocks on my account. Surely it cannot be your servant already. It is only now half-past eight.”
“I promised Hester I would go home early.”
“She cannot want you half so much as I do. Stay another hour.”
Margaret could not. Hester made a point of her returning at this time. When the cloaking and final chat were done, and Margaret was at the door, Maria called her. Margaret came skipping back to hear her friend’s whisper.
“How is your wretchedness, Margaret?”
“How is yours?” was Margaret’s reply.
“Much better. The disburdening of it is a great comfort.”
“And the pain—the aching?”
“Oh, never mind that!”
Margaret shook her head; she could not but mind it—but wish that she could take it upon herself sometimes. She had often thought lately, that she should rather enjoy a few weeks of Maria’s pain, as an alternative to the woe under which she had been suffering; but this, if she could have tried the experiment, she would probably have found to be a mistake. When she saw her friend cover her eyes with her hand, as if for a listless hour of solitude, she felt that she had been wrong in yielding to her sister’s jealousy of her being so much with Maria; and she resolved that, next time, Maria should appoint the hour for her return home.
When Maria was thus covering her eyes with her hand, she was thinking— “Now, half this task is over. The other half to-morrow—and then the consequences!”
When Margaret entered the drawing-room at home, where her brother was reading aloud to Hester, he exclaimed—
“We beat all Deerbrook for early visiting, I think. Here are you home; and I dare say Mr Tucker has still another pipe to smoke, and the wine is not mulled yet at the Jameses.”
“It is quite time Margaret was giving us a little of her company, I am sure,” said Hester. “You forget how early she went. If it was not for the school, I think she and Maria would spend all their time together. I have every wish not to interfere: but I cannot think that this friendship has made Maria less selfish.”
“It would, I dare say, my dear, but that there was no selfishness to begin upon. I am afraid she is very unwell, Margaret?”
“In much pain, I fear.”
“I will go and see if I can do her any good. You can glance over what we have read, and I shall be back in a quarter of an hour, to go on with it.”
“I wonder you left Maria, if she is so poorly.”
“I determined that I would not, another time; but this time I had promised.”
“Pray, do not make out that I am any restraint upon your intercourse with Maria. And yet—it is not quite fair to say that, either.”
“I do not think it is quite fair.”
“But you should warn me—you should tell me, if I ask anything unreasonable. When are you going again? An old patient of my husband’s has sent us a quarter of a chest of very fine oranges. We will carry Maria a basketful of oranges to-morrow.”