"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.