Miss Mackenzie Part 22

Miss Mackenzie had never before seen Mrs Stumfold since her first visit of ceremony, except in that lady's drawing-room, and was surprised when she heard the name announced. It was an understood thing that Mrs Stumfold did not call on the Stumfoldians unless she had some great and special reason for doing so,--unless some erring sister required admonishing, or the course of events in the life of some Stumfoldian might demand special advice. I do not know that any edict of this kind had actually been p.r.o.nounced, but Miss Mackenzie, though she had not yet been twelve months in Littlebath, knew that this arrangement was generally understood to exist. It was plain to be seen by the lady's face, as she entered the room, that some special cause had brought her now. It wore none of those pretty smiles with which morning callers greet their friends before they begin their first gentle attempts at miscellaneous conversation.

It was true that she gave her hand to Miss Mackenzie, but she did even this with austerity; and when she seated herself,--not on the sofa as she was invited to do, but on one of the square, hard, straight-backed chairs,--Miss Mackenzie knew well that pleasantness was not to be the order of the morning.

"My dear Miss Mackenzie," said Mrs Stumfold, "I hope you will pardon me if I express much tender solicitude for your welfare."

Miss Mackenzie was so astonished at this mode of address, and at the tone in which it was uttered, that she made no reply to it. The words themselves had in them an intention of kindness, but the voice and look of the lady were, if kind, at any rate not tender.

"You came among us," continued Mrs Stumfold, "and became one of us, and we have been glad to welcome you."

"I'm sure I've been much obliged."

"We are always glad to welcome those who come among us in a proper spirit. Society with me, Miss Mackenzie, is never looked upon as an end in itself. It is only a means to an end. No woman regards society more favourably than I do. I think it offers to us one of the most efficacious means of spreading true gospel teaching. With these views I have always thought it right to open my house in a spirit, as I hope, of humble hospitality;--and Mr Stumfold is of the same opinion.

Holding these views, we have been delighted to see you among us, and, as I have said already, to welcome you as one of us."

There was something in this so awful that Miss Mackenzie hardly knew how to speak, or let it pa.s.s without speaking. Having a spirit of her own she did not like being told that she had been, as it were, sat upon and judged, and then admitted into Mrs Stumfold's society as a child may be admitted into a school after an examination. And yet on the spur of the moment she could not think what words might be appropriate for her answer. She sat silent, therefore, and Mrs Stumfold again went on.

"I trust that you will acknowledge that we have shown our good will towards you, our desire to cultivate a Christian friendship with you, and that you will therefore excuse me if I ask you a question which might otherwise have the appearance of interference. Miss Mackenzie, is there anything between you and my husband's curate, Mr Maguire?"

Miss Mackenzie's face became suddenly as red as fire, but for a moment or two she made no answer. I do not know whether I may as yet have succeeded in making the reader understand the strength as well as the weakness of my heroine's character; but Mrs Stumfold had certainly not succeeded in perceiving it. She was accustomed, probably, to weak, obedient women,--to women who had taught themselves to believe that submission to Stumfoldian authority was a sign of advanced Christianity; and in the mild-looking, quiet-mannered lady who had lately come among them, she certainly did not expect to encounter a rebel. But on such matters as that to which the female hierarch of Littlebath was now alluding, Miss Mackenzie was not by nature adapted to be submissive.

"Is there anything between you and Mr Maguire?" said Mrs Stumfold again. "I particularly wish to have a plain answer to that question."

Miss Mackenzie, as I have said, became very red in the face. When it was repeated, she found herself obliged to speak. "Mrs Stumfold, I do not know that you have any right to ask me such a question as that."

"No right! No right to ask a lady who sits under Mr Stumfold whether or not she is engaged to Mr Stumfold's own curate! Think again of what you are saying, Miss Mackenzie!" And there was in Mrs Stumfold's voice as she spoke an expression of offended majesty, and in her countenance a look of awful authority, sufficient no doubt to bring most Stumfoldian ladies to their bearings.

"You said nothing about being engaged to him."

"Oh, Miss Mackenzie!"

"You said nothing about being engaged to him, but if you had I should have made the same answer. You asked me if there was anything between me and him; and I think it was a very offensive question."

"Offensive! I am afraid, Miss Mackenzie, you have not your spirit subject to a proper control. I have come here in all kindness to warn you against danger, and you tell me that I am offensive! What am I to think of you?"

"You have no right to connect my name with any gentleman's. You can't have any right merely because I go to Mr Stumfold's church. It's quite preposterous. If I went to Mr Paul's church"--Mr Paul was a very High Church young clergyman who had wished to have candles in his church, and of whom it was a.s.serted that he did keep a pair of candles on an inverted box in a closet inside his bedroom--"if I went to Mr Paul's church, might his wife, if he had one, come and ask me all manner of questions like that?"

Now Mr Paul's name stank in the nostrils of Mrs Stumfold. He was to her the thing accursed. Had Miss Mackenzie quoted the Pope, or Cardinal Wiseman or even Dr Newman, it would not have been so bad.

Mrs Stumfold had once met Mr Paul, and called him to his face the most abject of all the slaves of the scarlet woman. To this courtesy Mr Paul, being a good-humoured and somewhat sportive young man, had replied that she was another. Mrs Stumfold had interpreted the gentleman's meaning wrongly, and had ever since gnashed with her teeth and fired great guns with her eyes whenever Mr Paul was named within her hearing. "Ribald ruffian," she had once said of him; "but that he thinks his priestly rags protect him, he would not have dared to insult me." It was said that she had complained to Stumfold; but Mr Stumfold's sacerdotal clothing, whether ragged or whole, prevented him also from interfering, and nothing further of a personal nature had occurred between the opponents.

But Miss Mackenzie, who certainly was a Stumfoldian by her own choice, should not have used the name. She probably did not know the whole truth as to that pa.s.sage of arms between Mr Paul and Mrs Stumfold, but she did know that no name in Littlebath was so odious to the lady as that of the rival clergyman.

"Very well, Miss Mackenzie," said she, speaking loudly in her wrath; "then let me tell you that you will come by your ruin,--yes, by your ruin. You poor unfortunate woman, you are unfit to guide your own steps, and will not take counsel from those who are able to put you in the right way!"

"How shall I be ruined?" said Miss Mackenzie, jumping up from her seat.

"How? Yes. Now you want to know. After having insulted me in return for my kindness in coming to you, you ask me questions. If I tell you how, no doubt you will insult me again."

"I haven't insulted you, Mrs Stumfold. And if you don't like to tell me, you needn't. I'm sure I did not want you to come to me and talk in this way."

"Want me! Who ever does want to be reproved for their own folly? I suppose what you want is to go on and marry that man, who may have two or three other wives for what you know, and put yourself and your money into the hands of a person whom you never saw in your life above a few months ago, and of whose former life you literally know nothing. Tell the truth, Miss Mackenzie, isn't that what you desire to do?"

"I find him acting as Mr Stumfold's curate."

"Yes; and when I come to warn you, you insult me. He is Mr Stumfold's curate, and in many respects he is well fitted for his office."

"But has he two or three wives already, Mrs Stumfold?"

"I never said that he had."

"I thought you hinted it."

"I never hinted it, Miss Mackenzie. If you would only be a little more careful in the things which you allow yourself to say, it would be better for yourself; and better for me too, while I am with you."

"I declare you said something about two or three wives; and if there is anything of that kind true of a gentleman and a clergyman, I don't think he ought to be allowed to go about as a single gentleman. I mean as a curate. Mr Maguire is nothing to me,--nothing whatever; and I don't see why I should have been mixed up with him; but if there is anything of that sort--"

"But there isn't."

"Then, Mrs Stumfold, I don't think you ought to have mentioned two or three wives. I don't, indeed. It is such a horrid idea,--quite horrid! And I suppose, after all, the poor man has not got one?"

"If you had allowed me, I should have told you all, Miss Mackenzie.

Mr Maguire is not married, and never has been married, as far as I know."

"Then I do think what you said of him was very cruel."

"I said nothing; as you would have known, only you are so hot. Miss Mackenzie, you quite astonish me; you do, indeed. I had expected to find you temperate and calm; instead of that, you are so impetuous, that you will not listen to a word. When it first came to my ears that there might be something between you and Mr Maguire--"

"I will not be told about something. What does something mean, Mrs Stumfold?"

"When I was told of this," continued Mrs Stumfold, determined that she would not be stopped any longer by Miss Mackenzie's energy; "when I was told of this, and, indeed, I may say saw it--"

"You never saw anything, Mrs Stumfold."

"I immediately perceived that it was my duty to come to you; to come to you and tell you that another lady has a prior claim upon Mr Maguire's hand and heart."

"Oh, indeed."

"Another young lady,"--with an emphasis on the word young,--"whom he first met at my house, who was introduced to him by me,--a young lady not above thirty years of age, and quite suitable in every way to be Mr Maguire's wife. She may not have quite so much money as you; but she has a fair provision, and money is not everything; a lady in every way suitable--"

"But is this suitable young lady, who is only thirty years of age, engaged to him?"

"I presume, Miss Mackenzie, that in speaking to you, I am speaking to a lady who would not wish to interfere with another lady who has been before her. I do hope that you cannot be indifferent to the ordinary feelings of a female Christian on that subject. What would you think if you were interfered with, though, perhaps, as you had not your fortune in early life, you may never have known what that was."

This was too much even for Miss Mackenzie.

"Mrs Stumfold," she said, again rising from her seat, "I won't talk about this any more with you. Mr Maguire is nothing to me; and, as far as I can see, if he was, that would be nothing to you."

"But it would,--a great deal."

"No, it wouldn't. You may say what you like to him, though, for the matter of that, I think it a very indelicate thing for a lady to go about raising such questions at all. But perhaps you have known him a long time, and I have nothing to do with what you and he choose to talk about. If he is behaving bad to any friend of yours, go and tell him so. As for me, I won't hear anything more about it."