The Two Marys. Oliphant Margaret
with that he kissed me quite suddenly and trembling, and went off again to the mantel-shelf, and stared up at Peter and John by the Beautiful gate.
For my part I sat quite still, as if the lightning had struck me. What ought I to do? I did not realise at first what had happened. I was struck dumb. I knew that I ought to do or say something, and I could not tell what. My lips stuck together – I could not now even open my mouth; and there he stood waiting. I suppose if I had possessed my wits at that moment I would have gone and kissed him or something. Even, I suppose, if I had stormed at him it would have been less idiotic – but I could say nothing; I was bewildered. I sat staring into the air with my mouth open, over my blue print.
At last he made an impatient movement, and I think said something to me, which roused me out of my stupefaction. Then – I do not know what impulse it was that moved me – I asked all at once, frightened, feeling I ought to say something, “What is her name, papa?”
“Mary Martindale,” he said.
CHAPTER II
I REMEMBER quite distinctly how people talked. They did not think I observed or listened, for I had always been a dreamy sort of girl, and never had attended much to what was said about me. At least so everybody thought. They said I had always to be shaken or pulled when anything was wanted of me, to make me listen – which is true enough, I believe; but nevertheless I was not half so absent as people thought at any time, and heard a great deal that I was not supposed to hear. And now my senses were all shaken up and startled into being. How well I recollect hearing old Mrs Tufnell and Mrs Stephens talking in the quiet front drawing-room in the Square, while I was in the little room behind, taking no notice, as they thought. They had given me a book and got rid of me, and though they all pretended to deplore my dreamy ways, I think on the whole it was rather a relief to get rid of a quick, inquisitive, fifteen-year-old girl, and to be able to talk in peace. It was twilight of the summer evening and we had taken tea, and the two ladies were seated at one of the windows looking out upon the Square. The windows had long, full, white curtains, hanging and fluttering from the roof to the carpet. They were seated against that soft white background in their black silk dresses, for Mrs Tufnell was old, and Mrs Stephens was a widow and always wore black. It was like a picture: and I, not being so happy as I used to be, sat with my book and read and listened both together. You may think this is nonsense; but I could do it. I see them now approaching their caps to each other, with little nods and shakes of their heads and the white curtains fluttering softly behind them. Mrs Tufnell was a great patroness of papa’s, and always went to St Mark’s regularly, and Mrs Stephens was our very nearest neighbour, living next door.
“I hope it will turn out the best thing that could happen for her,” said Mrs Tufnell, nodding her head at me. They would not say any more lest they should attract my attention. “She has been greatly neglected, and left alone a great deal too much, – and I hear she is accomplished. Dear, dear, who would have thought that he, of all men in the world, would have taken such a step.”
“I don’t quite see that,” said Mrs Stephens; “he is a young man still, and nobody could suppose he would always be contented with his child’s company: besides, she is so cool and indifferent, as if she never thought it possible anything could happen: and I am sure she never did anything to make herself necessary or agreeable – ”
“Poor child!”
“You may say ‘poor child!’ but yet I blame her. A girl of fifteen is a woman to all intents and purposes. She ought to have seen that there was a great deal in her power by way of making him comfortable and herself pleasant. It’s rather hard to say the plain downright truth about it, you know, he being a clergyman and all that. Of course, when there is a young family one can say it is for their sake; but in this case there’s no possible excuse – he only wanted a wife, that’s all. I don’t blame him; but it’s a coming down – it’s a disturbance of one’s ideal – ”
“I don’t know much about ideals,” said Mrs Tufnell; “what surprises me is, if the man wanted to marry, why he didn’t marry long ago, when the child was young and he had an excellent excuse. As for being a clergyman, that’s neither here nor there. Clergymen are always marrying men, and it’s no sin to marry.”
“It disturbs one’s ideal,” said Mrs Stephens; and, though Mrs Tufnell shrugged her shoulders, I, sitting behind over my book, agreed with her. Oh the inward humiliation with which one sees one’s father in love! – I suppose it would be still worse to see one’s mother, but then, I never had a mother. I blushed for him a great deal more than he blushed for himself, and he did blush for himself too. If he was happy, it was a very uneasy, disturbed sort of happiness. He took me to see her – to Spicer’s; and he went often himself and sat in the parlour behind the shop, and suffered, I am sure, as much as ever a man who is having his own way could suffer. Mrs Tufnell, who was a thoroughly kind old lady, at length came to his aid, and invited Miss Martindale to stay with her the rest of the time, and to be married from her house, which was a thing which even I was grateful for. And the night before the wedding-day the old lady kissed me and said, “Things will turn out better than you suppose, dear. It is hard upon you, but things will turn out better than you suppose.”
I am not sure that this is ever a very effectual kind of comfort, but to me it was exasperating. Had I been told that things would turn out worse than I supposed, I should have liked it. It seemed to me that nothing could be half bad enough for this overturn of all plans and thoughts and life. For you must recollect that it was my life that was chiefly to be overturned. Papa liked it, I supposed, and it was his own doing – but the change was not so great to him as to me. All the little offices of authority I used to have were taken from me – my keys, which I was proud of keeping – my bills and tradesmen’s books, which I had summed up since ever I can remember. I was turned out of my room, and sent upstairs to the spare room beside Ellen. In the parlour I was never alone any more, and not even my favourite corner was mine any longer. I had no more walks with papa, swinging back from his arm. She had his arm now. She made the tea, and even darned his stockings. I was nothing in the house, and she everything. If you suppose that a girl bears this sort of dethronement easily, I am here to witness to the contrary. I did not take it easily; but the thing that went to my heart most was, I think, that she was called Mary, like me. For the first few days when I heard papa call Mary I used to run to him and find her before me, and get sent away, sometimes hastily (one time I ran in and found them sitting together, he with his arm round her waist. I wonder he was not ashamed of himself, at his age!); and another time with a joke which made me furious: “It was my other Mary I wanted,” he said, looking as vain and foolish as – as – . I never saw anybody look so foolish. My father! It humbled me to the very ground. And then I took to never answering to the name at all, which sometimes made papa angry when it was really me he wanted. I soon came to know very well which of us he meant by the sound of his voice, but I never let him know that I did so. His voice grew soft and round as if he were singing when he called her. When he called me, it was just, I suppose, as it always had been; but I had learned the other something now, the different accentuation, and I resented the want of it, though I knew that it never had belonged to me.
All this time I have not spoken of her, though she was the cause of all. When I saw her first, in the grocer’s back shop, working at frocks for the little Spicers, I could not believe my eyes. Though I had already begun to hate her as supplanting me with my father, I could not but acknowledge how very strange it was to see her there. She had on a very plain black alpaca dress, and she sat in the back parlour, amid all that smell of hams and cheese, with a sewing-machine before her; and yet she looked like a princess. She was tall and very slight, like a flower, and her head bowed a little on its stem like the head of a lily. She was pale, with dark eyes and dark hair. I believe she was very handsome – not pretty, but very handsome, almost beautiful, I have heard papa say. I allow this, to be honest, though I cannot say I ever saw it. She had a pathetic look in her eyes which sometimes felt as if it might go to one’s heart. But, fortunately, she always looked happy when I saw her – absurdly happy, just as my poor foolish father did – and so I never was tempted to sympathise with her. I do not understand how anybody but an angel could sympathise with another person who was very happy and comfortable while she (or he) was in trouble. This was our situation