CHAPTER XVIII.

MARY AND G.o.dFREY.

Everything went very tolerably, so far as concerned the world of talk, in the matter of Letty's misfortunes. Rumors, it is true--and more than one of them strange enough--did for a time go floating about the country; but none of them came to the ears of Tom or of Mary, and Letty was safe from hearing anything; and the engagement between her and Tom soon became generally known.

Mrs. Helmer was very angry, and did all she could to make Tom break it off--it was so much below him! But in nothing could the folly of the woman have been more apparent than in her fancying, with the experience of her life before her, that any opposition of hers could be effectual otherwise than to the confirmation of her son's will. So short-sighted was she as to originate most of the reports to Letty's disadvantage; but Tom's behavior, on the other hand, was strong to put them down; for the man is seldom found so faithful where such reports are facts.

Mrs. Wardour took care to say nothing unkind of Letty. She was of her own family; and, besides, not only was Tom a better match than she could have expected for her, but she was more than satisfied to have G.o.dfrey's dangerous toy thus drawn away beyond his reach. As soon as ever the doctor gave his permission, she went to see her; but, although, dismayed at sight of her suffering face, she did not utter one unkind word, her visit was so plainly injurious in its effects, that it was long before Mary would consent to a repet.i.tion of it.

Letty's recovery was very slow. The spring was close at hand before the bloom began to reappear--and then it was but fitfully--in Letty's cheek. Neither her gayety nor her usual excess of timorousness returned. A certain sad seriousness had taken the place of both, and she seemed to look out from deeper eyes. I can not think that Letty had begun to perceive that there actually is a Nature shaping us to its own ends; but I think she had begun to feel that Mary lived in the conscious presence of such a power. To Tom she behaved very sweetly, but more like a tender sister than a lover, and Mary began to doubt whether her heart was altogether Tom's. From mention of approaching marriage, she turned with a nervous, uneasy haste. Had the insight which the enforced calmness of suffering sometimes brings opened her eyes to anything in Tom? The doubt filled Mary with anxiety. She thought and thought, until--delicate matter as it was to meddle with, and small encouragement as G.o.dfrey Wardour had given her to expect sympathy--she yet made up her mind to speak to him on the subject--and the rather that she was troubled at the unworthiness of his behavior to Letty: gladly would she have him treat her with the generosity essential to the idea she had formed of him.

She went, therefore, one Sunday evening, to Thornwick, and requested to see Mr. Wardour.

It was plainly an unwilling interview he granted her, but she was not thereby deterred from opening her mind to him.

"I fear, Mr. Wardour," she said, "--I come altogether without authority--but I fear Letty has been rather hurried in her engagement with Mr. Helmer. I think she dreads being married--at least so soon."

"You would have her break it off?" said G.o.dfrey, with cold restraint.

"No; certainly not," replied Mary; "that would be unjust to Mr. Helmer.

But the thing was so hastened, indeed, hurried, by that unhappy accident, that she had scarcely time to know her own mind."

"Miss Marston," answered G.o.dfrey, severely, "it is her own fault--all and entirely her own fault."

"But, surely," said Mary, "it will not do for us to insist upon desert.

That is not how we are treated ourselves."

"Is it not?" returned G.o.dfrey, angrily. "My experience is different. I am sure my faults have come back upon me pretty sharply.--She _must_ marry the fellow, or her character is gone."

"I am unwilling to grant that, Mr. Wardour. It was wrong in her to have anything to say to Mr. Helmer without your knowledge, and a foolish thing to meet him as she did; but Letty is a good girl, and you know country ways are old-fashioned, and in itself there is nothing wicked in having a talk with a young man after dark."

"You speak, I dare say, as such things arc regarded in--certain strata of society," returned G.o.dfrey, coldly; "but such views do not hold in that to which either of them belongs."

"It seems to me a pity they should not, then," said Mary. "I know nothing of such matters, but, surely, young people should have opportunities of understanding each other. Anyhow, marriage is a heavy penalty to pay for such an indiscretion. A girl might like a young man well enough to enjoy a talk with him now and then, and yet find it hard to marry him."

"Did you come here to dispute social customs with me, Miss Marston?"

said G.o.dfrey. "I am not prepared, nor, indeed, sufficiently interested, to discuss them with you."

"I will come to the point at once," answered Mary; who, although speaking so collectedly, was much frightened at her own boldness: G.o.dfrey seemed from his knowledge so far above her, and she owed him so much.--"Would it not be possible for Letty to return here? Then the thing might take its natural course, and Tom and she know each other better before they did what was irrevocable. They are little better than children now."

"The thing is absolutely impossible," said G.o.dfrey, and haughtily rose from his chair like one in authority ending an interview. "But," he added, "you have been put to great expense for the foolish girl, and, when she leaves you, I desire you will let me know--"

"Thank you, Mr. Wardour!" said Mary, who had risen also. "As you have now given a turn to the conversation which is not in the least interesting to me, I wish you a good evening."

With the words, she left the room. He had made her angry at last. She trembled so that, the instant she was out of sight of the house, she had to sit down for dread of falling.

G.o.dfrey remained in the room where she left him, full of indignation.

Ever since that frightful waking, he had brooded over the injury--the insult, he counted it--which Letty had heaped upon him. A great tenderness toward her, to himself unknown, and of his own will unbegotten, remained in his spirit. When he pa.s.sed the door of her room, returning from that terrible ride, he locked it, and put the key in his pocket, and from that day no one entered the chamber. But, had he loved Letty as purely as he had loved her selfishly, he would have listened to Mary pleading in her behalf, and would have thought first about her well-being, not about her character in the eyes of the world.

He would have seen also that, while the breath of the world's opinion is a mockery in counterpoise with a life of broken interest and the society of an unworthy husband, the mere fact of his mother's receiving her again at Thornwick would of itself be enough to reestablish her position in the face of all gainsayers. But in G.o.dfrey Wardour love and pride went hand in hand. Not for a moment would he will to love a girl capable of being interested, if nothing more, in Tom Helmer. It must be allowed, however, that it would have been a terrible torture to see Letty about the place, to pa.s.s her on the stair, to come upon her in the garden, to sit with her in the room, and know all the time that it was the test of Tom's worth and her constancy. Even were she to give up Tom, satisfied that she did not love him, she could be nothing more to him, even in the relation in which he had allowed her to think she stood to him. She had behaved too deceitfully, too heartlessly, too ungratefully, too _vulgarly_ for that! Yet was his heart torn every time the vision of the gentle girl rose before "that inward eye,"

which, for long, could no more be to him "the bliss of solitude"; when he saw those hazel depths looking half anxious, half sorrowful in his face, as, with sadly comic sense of her stupidity, she listened while he explained or read something he loved. But no; nothing else would do than act the mere honest guardian, compelling them to marry, no matter how slight or transient the shadow the man had cast over her reputation!

Mary returned with a sense of utter failure.

But before long she came to the conclusion that all was right between Tom and Letty, and that the cause of her anxiety had lain merely in Letty's loss of animal spirits.

Now and then Mary tried to turn Tom's attention a little toward the duty of religion: Tom received the attempt with gentle amus.e.m.e.nt and a little _badinage_. It was all very well for girls! Indeed, he had made the observation that girls who had no religion were "strong-minded,"

and that he could not endure! Like most men, he was so well satisfied with himself, that he saw no occasion to take trouble to be anything better than he was. Never suspecting what a n.o.ble creature he was meant to be, he never saw what a poor creature he was. In his own eyes he was a man any girl might be proud to marry. He had not yet, however, sunk to the depth of those who, having caught a glimpse of n.o.bility, confess wretchedness, excuse it, and decline to allow that the n.o.ble they see they are bound to be; or, worse still, perhaps, admit the obligation, but move no inch to fulfill it. It seems to me that such must one day make acquaintance with _essential_ misery--a thing of which they have no conception.

Day after day Tom pa.s.sed through Turnbull and Marston's shop to see Letty. Tom cared for n.o.body, else he would have gone in by the kitchen-door, which was the only other entrance to the house; but I do not know whether it is a pity or not that he did not hear the remarks which rose like the dust of his pa.s.sage behind him. In the same little sitting-room, where for so many years Mary had listened to the slow, tender wisdom of her father, a clever young man was now making love to an ignorant girl, whom he did not half understand or half appreciate, all the time he feeling himself the greater and wiser and more valuable of the two. He was unaware, however, that he did feel so, for he had never yet become conscious of any _fact_ concerning himself.

The whole Turnbull family, from the beginnings of things self-const.i.tuted judges of the two Marstons, were not the less critical of the daughter, that the father had been taken from her. There was grumbling in the shop every time she ran up to see Letty, every one regarding her and speaking of her as a servant neglecting her duty. Yet all knew well enough that she was co-proprietor of business and stock, and the elder Turnbull knew besides that, if the lawyer to whose care William Marston had committed his daughter were at that moment to go into the affairs of the partnership, he would find that Mary had a much larger amount of money actually in the business than he.

Of all matters connected with the business, except those of her own department, Mary was ignorant. Her father had never neglected his duty, but he had so far neglected what the world calls a man's interests as to leave his affairs much too exclusively in the hands of his partner; he had been too much interested in life itself to look sharply after anything less than life. He acknowledged no _worldly_ interests at all: either G.o.d cared for his interests or he himself did not. Whether he might not have been more attentive to the state of his affairs without danger of deeper loss, I do not care to examine or determine; the result of his life in the world was a grand success. Now, Mary's feeling and judgment in regard to _things_ being identical with her father's, Turnbull, instructed by his greed, both natural and acquired, argued thus--unconsciously almost, but not the less argued--that what Mary valued so little, and he valued so much, must, by necessary deduction, be more his than hers--and _logically_ ought to be _legally_. So servants begin to steal, arguing that such and such things are only lying about, and n.o.body cares for them.

But Turnbull, knowing that, notwithstanding the reason on his side, it was not safe to act on such a conclusion, had for some time felt no little anxiety to secure himself from investigation and possible disaster by the marriage of Mary to his son George.

Tom Helmer had now to learn that, by his father's will, made doubtless under the influence of his mother, he was to have but a small annuity so long as she lived. Upon this he determined nevertheless to marry, confident in his literary faculty, which, he never doubted, would soon raise it to a very sufficient income. Nor did Mary attempt to dissuade him; for what could be better for a disposition like his than care for the things of this life, occasioned by the needs of others dependent upon him! Besides, there seemed to be nothing else now possible for Letty. So, in the early summer, they were married, no relative present except Mrs. Wardour, Mrs. Helmer and G.o.dfrey having both declined their invitation; and no friend, except Mary for bridesmaid, and Mr. Pycroft, a school and college friend of Tom's, who was now making a bohemian livelihood in London by writing for the weekly press, as he called certain journals of no high standing, for groom's man. After the ceremony, and a breakfast provided by Mary, the young couple took the train for London.

CHAPTER XIX.

MARY IN THE SHOP.

More than a year had now pa.s.sed from the opening of my narrative. It was full summer again at Testbridge, and things, to the careless eye, were unchanged, and, to the careless mind, would never change, although, in fact, nothing was the same, and nothing could continue as it now was. For were not the earth and the sun a little colder? Had not the moon crumbled a little? And had not the eternal warmth, unperceived save of a few, drawn a little nearer--the clock that measures the eternal day ticked one tick more to the hour when the Son of Man will come? But the greed and the fawning did go on unchanged, save it were for the worse, in the shop of Turnbull and Marston, seasoned only with the heavenly salt of Mary's good ministration.

She was very lonely. Letty was gone; and the link between Mr. Wardour and her not only broken, but a gulf of separation in its place. Not the less remained the good he had given her. No good is ever lost. The heavenly porter was departed, but had left the door wide. She had seen him but once since Letty's marriage, and then his salutation was like that of a dead man in a dream; for in his sore heart he still imagined her the confidante of Letty's deception.

But the shadow of her father's absence swallowed all the other shadows.

The air of warmth and peace and conscious safety which had hitherto surrounded her was gone, and in its place cold, exposure, and annoyance. Between them her father and she had originated a mutually protective atmosphere of love; when that failed, the atmosphere of earthly relation rushed in and enveloped her. The moment of her father's departure, malign influences, inimical to the very springs of her life, concentrated themselves upon her: it was the design of John Turnbull that she should not be comfortable so long as she did not irrevocably cast in her lot with his family; and, the rest in the shop being mostly creatures of his own choice, by a sort of implicit understanding they proceeded to make her uncomfortable. So long as they confined themselves to silence, neglect, and general exclusion, Mary heeded little their behavior, for no intercourse with them, beyond that of external good offices, could be better than indifferent to her; but, when they advanced to positive interference, her position became indeed hard to endure. They would, for instance, keep watch on her serving, and, as soon as the customer was gone, would find open fault with this or that she had said or done. But even this was comparatively endurable: when they advanced to the insolence of doing the same in the presence of the customer, she found it more than she could bear with even a show of equanimity. She did her best, however; and for some time things went on without any symptom of approaching crisis. But it was impossible this should continue; for, had she been capable of endless endurance, her persecutors would only have gone on to worse. But Mary was naturally quick-tempered, and the chief trouble they caused her was the control of her temper; for, although she had early come to recognize the imperative duty of this branch of self-government, she was not yet perfect in it. Not every one who can serve unboundedly can endure patiently; and the more gentle some natures, the more they resent the rudeness which springs from an opposite nature; absolutely courteous, they flame at discourtesy, and thus lack of the perfection to which patience would and must raise them. When Turnbull, in the narrow s.p.a.ce behind the counter, would push his way past her without other pretense of apology than something like a sneer, she did feel for a moment as if evil were about to have the victory over her; and when Mrs. Turnbull came in, which happily was but seldom, she felt as if from some sepulchre in her mind a very demon sprang to meet her. For she behaved to her worst of all. She would heave herself in with the air and look of a vulgar d.u.c.h.ess; for, from the height of her small consciousness, she looked down upon the shop, and never entered it save as a customer. The daughter of a small country attorney, who, notwithstanding his unneglected opportunities, had not been too successful to accept as a husband for his daughter such a tradesman as John Turnbull, she arrogated position from her idea of her father's position; and, while bitterly cherishing the feeling that she had married beneath her, obstinately excluded the fact that therein she had descended to her husband's level, regarding herself much in the light of a princess whose disguise takes nothing from her rank. She was like those ladies who, having set their seal to the death of their first husbands by marrying again, yet cling to the t.i.tle they gave them, and continue to call themselves by their name.

Mrs. Turnbull never bought a dress at the shop. No one should say of her, it was easy for a snail to live in a castle! She took pains to let her precious public know that she went to London to make her purchases.

If she did not mention also that she made them at the warehouses where her husband was a customer, procuring them at the same price he would have paid, it was because she saw no occasion. It was indeed only for some small occasional necessity she ever crossed the threshold of the place whence came all the money she had to spend. When she did, she entered it with such airs as she imagined to represent the consciousness of the scion of a county family: there is one show of breeding vulgarity seldom a.s.sumes--simplicity. No sign of recognition would pa.s.s between her husband and herself: by one stern refusal to acknowledge his advances, she had from the first taught him that in the shop they were strangers: he saw the rock of ridicule ahead, and required no second lesson: when she was present, he never knew it.

George had learned the lesson before he went into the business, and Mary had never required it. The others behaved to her as to any customer known to stand upon her dignity, but she made them no return in politeness; and the way she would order Mary, now there was no father to offend, would have been amusing enough but for the irritation its extreme rudeness caused her. She did, however, manage sometimes to be at once both a little angry and much amused. Small idea had Mrs.

Turnbull of the diversion which on such occasions she afforded the customers present.

One day, a short time before her marriage, delayed by the illness of Mr. Redmain, Miss Mortimer happened to be in the shop, and was being served by Mary, when Mrs. Turnbull entered. Careless of the customer, she walked straight up to her as if she saw none, and in a tone that would be dignified, and was haughty, desired her to bring her a reel of marking-cotton. Now it had been a principle with Mary's father, and she had thoroughly learned it, that whatever would be counted a rudeness by _any_ customer, must be shown to _none_. "If all are equal in the sight of G.o.d," he would say, "how dare I leave a poor woman to serve a rich?

Would I leave one countess to serve another? My business is to sell in the name of Christ. To respect persons in the shop would be just the same as to do it in the chapel, and would be to deny him."

"Excuse me, ma'am," said Mary, "I am waiting on Miss Mortimer," and went on with what she was about. Mrs. Turnbull flounced away, a little abashed, not by Mary, but by finding who the customer was, and carried her commands across the shop. After a moment or two, however, imagining, in the blindness of her surging anger, that Miss Mortimer was gone, whereas she had only moved a little farther on to look at something, she walked up to Mary in a fury.

"Miss Marston," she said, her voice half choked with rage, "I am at a loss to understand what you mean by your impertinence."