‘Maria!’ Miss Cherry was speechless with horror and dismay. She managed to get out this ejaculation, and no more. But the old lady was less easily moved. She put on the spectacles to which she had taken quite lately, and looked into her visitor’s face.
‘Here is an odd thing now,’ she said, ‘a very odd thing. I am willing to suppose you are an innocent sort of woman, Maria Burchell. You never did anything very bad—for one thing, you have never been tempted—and yet you are ready to believe any evil, at the first word, of another woman whom you know nothing in the world about. It is the oddest thing I know. If you had been a wicked person, one could have understood it. But a clergyman’s wife, as you say, in a quiet country place, out of the way of temptation—why, you ought to think well of everybody! You ought to be the sort of person who could be taken in, who would not believe harm of anyone, an innocent woman like you!’
‘Am I an innocent woman?’ said Mrs. Burchell, shaking her head, with a sad smile. The distinction, if flattering to her moral character, was derogatory to her dignity. ‘Ah, how little we know each other! and what is called charity is so often mere laxness of principle. I hope I know the depravity of my own heart.’
‘In that case, my dear, there’s nothing more to be said,’ said Miss Charity, briskly, ‘only that you ought not to come here under false pretences, taking us all in, and looking respectable, as you do. But, however bad you may be, Mrs. Meredith is not bad. I don’t know much about the husband; perhaps they don’t get on together very well. Perhaps it is health. She lives here, and he lives there—that is all I know; but she is a better woman than I am; that I’ll answer for. How she can put up with that fool of a nephew of mine, I can’t tell. He is very learned, I grant, and a fellow of half the societies. Well, and so your boy said——? What is the woman crying for, I would like to know?’
‘Oh!’ wept Mrs. Burchell, ‘I never thought to have lived to be so spoken to; and by an old friend. Oh, Cherry! you that have known me from a girl, how can you sit still and do your knitting, and hear me talked to so?’
‘She does not mean it,’ said Miss Cherry, softly, ‘dear Maria! She has been ill. She can’t help being a little irritable.’
‘Stuff!’ said Miss Charity. ‘She brought it on herself. Go away, Cherry; if I were irritable, it is you who would feel it first. Now, Maria, don’t be more of a fool than you can help. What did the boy say?’
Miss Cherry went back to her knitting, with a suppressed sigh. It was very true that it was she who paid the penalty first; but to see anybody crying troubled the kind soul. She gave a kind little pat as she passed to Mrs. Burchell’s fat shoulders. She was knitting a huge white shawl in thick wool, to keep the old lady warm, and her own slight person was half lost in its folds.
But there was not very much more to be got from Mrs. Burchell. The boy had not, indeed, said any more, nor so much as she had reported. He had been betrayed by the sore state of his feelings, poor Roger, to give a very slight sketch of his uncomfortable Sunday—how he did not think the lady to whom Mr. Beresford talked so earnestly, who had a husband, and yet had no husband—who asked people to dinner on Sunday, and who—but Roger did not say this—had two sons who interfered so uncomfortably with his own inclinations—was at all a good friend for Cara. This was the extent of Roger’s confidence, and he regretted bitterly having given it before the evening was out; for it is one thing to disburden your heart of a grievance, and quite another to have that grievance enlarged and embittered by constant reference and repetition. He heard so much of it before he left the Rectory that evening that he was furious with himself for having betrayed his wound, and felt ashamed of it, and guilty so far as Cara was concerned. Therefore, Mrs. Burchell was rather glad of the personal offence which concealed the fact that she had very little to say. It had given a great zest to her visit that she had Roger’s news to tell; but there was much less detail than she could have desired, so she dropped into her own personal grievance about Agnes, who had insisted on going to the mission-house to teach, when there was plenty to do at home; but neither of the ladies entered warmly into it, Agnes being a greater favourite with them than her mother. When she was gone, however, Miss Charity fell into a musing. Age had crept a little, just a little, upon her. She was no longer the vigorous woman, of no particular age, whom Dr. Maxwell had commended as a type of womankind. Winter is unfavourable to the human frame when it approaches seventy. With a soft, perpetual summer, never blazing, as it is in the south, and chequered by no chilly gales, would it be necessary that threescore and ten should be man’s limit, or that we should ever die? Miss Charity felt the unkindly influence of the winter. When summer came back she would be all right again—or so, at least, she thought.
‘It as amazing, the ill people have in their thoughts,’ she said, at last. ‘That woman, with her “laxness of principle” and her depraved heart, and her indignation, to be taken at her word! Now, Cherry, that was an inoffensive girl enough. When she was Maria Thompson there was no particular harm in her. I believe we ought all to die at twenty. What a deal of mischief it would save the world.’