CHAPTER XXI.
MRS. HAZARD SMATTER.
The two houses were now at open war, at least the female part of them. Jay was forbidden, without any secresy, to go into his neighbor's grounds, Gabrielle was in an ecstasy of gossip all the while, and brought Flora news, true and false, continually. She spied through the hedge, and found the new servants and her high-minded cousins ready to receive a report of all she discovered, i.e., if it were reported in a whisper. Mr. Andrews seemed to have given up all attempts to reconcile the contending parties. He never went to the Varians' now, nor made any effort to exchange neighborly courtesies.
Missy was very bitter and unhappy, about these days. She knew what all Yellowcoats was saying about Mr. Andrews and his cousin, for they said that to her openly. And she surmised what they did not say openly to her, to wit: that the cause of her own unhappy looks was her disappointment in the matter. How can one help unhappy looks? One can help unhappy words; one can do all sorts of things that are meant to mean happy acts, but how to keep the cloud off one's face at all hours and moments, is an art yet in the bowels of time. Missy knew she looked unhappy, and she knew she could not dissemble it. She knew, by this time, that she was jealous, and jealous not only in the matter of Jay. She knew that, deride him as she might, the silent widower was an object of interest to her. She did not yet acknowledge to herself that she cared for him, but she did acknowledge that it was important to her that he cared for her, that he gave her a certain sort of admiration. Alas! she felt a doubt now whether he gave her even a small degree of respect. For who can respect a jealous woman? And she had been jealous, even before she saw her rival, or knew more of her than that she might be her rival.
There is nothing kills self-respect like jealousy. Missy hated and despised herself from the moment that she knew she was jealous. She felt herself no longer mistress of her words and actions. Begin the morning with the best resolutions in the world, before noon she would have said or done something that upset them all. She had such evil thoughts of others, such an eating, burning discontent with herself. She remembered her childish days, when her jealousy of her stepfather made her a little fiend. "I was brought up on it, I learned it with my alphabet,—it is not my fault, it is my fate," she said to herself with bitterness.
It was very fortunate perhaps, as she could dissemble so ill, that the two houses saw so little of each other. Flora was not of a jealous nature, and it seemed as if she had very little to be jealous about. She was having it all her own way apparently, and she longed to flaunt her triumphs in her rival's face. That was the one thing that she felt she was not succeeding in. She could not be sure Missy knew it, every time she went out to drive with Mr. Andrews, and that took away half the pleasure. Miss Rothermel kept herself so much out of reach of criticism it was unsatisfactory. Pure speculation grew tiresome. It was the longing of Flora's heart to have another meeting, and to display Mr. Andrews, but Missy baulked her. At church it could have been accomplished, but most unhappily Mr. Andrews wouldn't go to church (at least with them). His amiable and accomplished cousins could make him do a good deal, but they couldn't make him do that. Neither could they make him talk about his neighbors nor laugh at any of their sarcasms.
About this time, Miss Varian had a friend to stay with her. Mrs. Varian was always rather shy of her sister's friends; they were apt to be unusual people. This one, however, Mrs. Varian remembered in her youth, and had no doubt would be of an unobjectionable kind. Mrs. Hazard Smatter had been an inoffensive New York girl, not considered to carry very heavy guns, but good-looking and good-natured. That was the last Miss Varian knew of her. In the revolution of years she turned up again, now a middle-aged woman, with feeble gray hair, and misgivings about revealed religion. She had married a Bostonian, and that had been too much for her. She despised her former condition so much as not to desire to allude to it. She was filled with lofty aspirations and cultivated herself. There was nothing that she did not look into, though it was doubtful whether she saw very much when she did look. Having begun rather late, she had to hurry a good deal to know all that was to be known about History, Science, Art, Theology, and Literature; and as these rivers of human thought are continually flowing on, and occasionally altering their channels, it was perhaps excusable that while she kept up, she sometimes lost her breath, and was a little unintelligible. If it had only been one river, but there was such a lot of them, and of course a person of culture can't ignore even a little boiling spring that has just burst out. There's no knowing what it may develop into; one must watch its course, and not let it get ahead of one. Taking notes on the universe is hard work, and Mrs. Hazard Smatter felt that her gray hair was so to be accounted for. It was her one feminine weakness, the one remnant of her pre-cultured state, that led her to call it premature.
What with dress reform, and want of taste, she was not a woman to reproach with personal vanity. She was rather a little person. She had pale blue eyes somewhat prominent; a high forehead, which retreated, and a small chin, which did, too. She attributed these defects to her place of nativity, and drew many inferences about the habits and mental peculiarities of her ancestors, which wouldn't have pleased them if they'd known about it. She had a very candid mind, and of course no family pride, and it was quite surprising to hear her talk on this subject.