Miss Mackenzie Part 5

Again he paused, but Miss Mackenzie feeling that she had been ill-treated and trapped into a difficulty at her last reply, resolutely remained silent.

"I defy any man or woman to be happy here," said Mr Maguire, looking at her with one eye and at the corner of the wall with the other in a manner that was very terrible to her. "But we may be cheerful,--we may go about our work singing psalms of praise instead of songs of sorrow. Don't you agree with me, Miss Mackenzie, that psalms of praise are better than songs of sorrow?"

"I don't sing at all, myself," said Miss Mackenzie.

"You sing in your heart, my friend; I am sure you sing in your heart.

Don't you sing in your heart?" Here again he paused.

"Well; perhaps in my heart, yes."

"I know you do, loud psalms of praise upon a ten-stringed lute. But Stumfold is always singing aloud, and his lute has twenty strings."

Here the voice of the twenty-stringed singer was heard across the large room asking the company a riddle.

"Why was Peter in prison like a little boy with his shoes off?"

"That's so like him," said Mr Maguire.

All the ladies in the room were in a fever of expectation, and Mr Stumfold asked the riddle again.

"He won't tell them till we meet again; but there isn't one here who won't study the life of St Peter during the next week. And what they'll learn in that way they'll never forget."

"But why was he like a little boy with his shoes off?" asked Miss Mackenzie.

"Ah! that's Stumfold's riddle. You must ask Mr Stumfold, and he won't tell you till next week. But some of the ladies will be sure to find it out before then. Have you come to settle yourself altogether at Littlebath, Miss Mackenzie?"

This question he asked very abruptly, but he had a way of looking at her when he asked a question, which made it impossible for her to avoid an answer.

"I suppose I shall stay here for some considerable time."

"Do, do," said he with energy. "Do; come and live among us, and be one of us; come and partake with us at the feast which we are making ready; come and eat of our crusts, and dip with us in the same dish; come and be of our flock, and go with us into the pleasant pastures, among the lanes and green hedges which appertain to the farm of the Lord. Come and walk with us through the Sabbath cornfields, and pluck the ears when you are a-hungered, disregarding the broad phylacteries. Come and sing with us songs of a joyful heart, and let us be glad together. What better can you do, Miss Mackenzie? I don't believe there is a more healthy place in the world than Littlebath, and, considering that the place is fashionable, things are really very reasonable."

He was rapid in his utterance, and so full of energy, that Miss Mackenzie did not quite follow him in his quick transitions. She hardly understood whether he was advising her to take up an abode in a terrestrial Eden or a celestial Paradise; but she presumed that he meant to be civil, so she thanked him and said she thought she would.

It was a thousand pities that he should squint so frightfully, as in all other respects he was a good-looking man. Just at this moment there seemed to be a sudden breaking up of the party.

"We are all going away," said Mr Maguire. "We always do when Mrs Stumfold gets up from her seat. She does it when she sees that her father is nodding his head. You must let me out, because I've got to say a prayer. By-the-bye, you'll allow me to walk home with you, I hope. I shall be so happy to be useful."

Miss Mackenzie told him that the fly was coming for her, and then he scrambled away into the middle of the room.

"We always walk home from these parties," said Miss Baker, who had, however, on this occasion, consented to be taken away by Miss Mackenzie in the fly. "It makes it come so much cheaper, you know."

"Of course it does; and it's quite as nice if everybody does it. But you don't walk going there?"

"Not generally," said Miss Baker; "but there are some of them who do that. Miss Trotter always walks both ways, if it's ever so wet."

Then there were a few words said about Miss Trotter which were not altogether good-natured.

Miss Mackenzie, as soon as she was at home, got down her Bible and puzzled herself for an hour over that riddle of Mr Stumfold's; but with all her trouble she could not find why St Peter in prison was like a little boy with his shoes off.

CHAPTER V

Showing How Mr Rubb, Junior, Progressed at Littlebath

A full week had pa.s.sed by after Mrs Stumfold's tea-party before Mr Rubb called again at the Paragon; and in the meantime Miss Mackenzie had been informed by her lawyer that there did not appear to be any objection to the mortgage, if she liked the investment for her money.

"You couldn't do better with your money,--you couldn't indeed," said Mr Rubb, when Miss Mackenzie, meaning to be cautious, started the conversation at once upon matters of business.

Mr Rubb had not been in any great hurry to repeat his call, and Miss Mackenzie had resolved that if he did come again she would treat him simply as a member of the firm with whom she had to transact certain monetary arrangements. Beyond that she would not go; and as she so resolved, she repented herself of the sherry and biscuit.

The people whom she had met at Mr Stumfold's had been all ladies and gentlemen; she, at least, had supposed them to be so, not having as yet received any special information respecting the wife of the retired coachbuilder. Mr Rubb was not a gentleman; and though she was by no means inclined to give herself airs,--though, as she a.s.sured herself, she believed Mr Rubb to be quite as good as herself,--yet there was, and must always be, a difference among people. She had no inclination to be proud; but if Providence had been pleased to place her in one position, it did not behove her to degrade herself by a.s.suming a position that was lower. Therefore, on this account, and by no means moved by any personal contempt towards Mr Rubb, or the Rubbs of the world in general, she was resolved that she would not ask him to take any more sherry and biscuits.

Poor Miss Mackenzie! I fear that they who read this chronicle of her life will already have allowed themselves to think worse of her than she deserved. Many of them, I know, will think far worse of her than they should think. Of what faults, even if we a.n.a.lyse her faults, has she been guilty? Where she has been weak, who among us is not, in that, weak also? Of what vanity has she been guilty with which the least vain among us might not justly tax himself? Having been left alone in the world, she has looked to make friends for herself; and in seeking for new friends she has wished to find the best that might come in her way.

Mr Rubb was very good-looking; Mr Maguire was afflicted by a terrible squint. Mr Rubb's mode of speaking was pleasant to her; whereas she was by no means sure that she liked Mr Maguire's speech. But Mr Maguire was by profession a gentleman. As the discreet young man, who is desirous of rising in the world, will eschew skittles, and in preference go out to tea at his aunt's house--much more delectable as skittles are to his own heart--so did Miss Mackenzie resolve that it would become her to select Messrs Stumfold and Maguire as her male friends, and to treat Mr Rubb simply as a man of business. She was denying herself skittles and beer, and putting up with tea and an old aunt, because she preferred the proprieties of life to its pleasures.

Is it right that she should be blamed for such self-denial? But now the skittles and beer had come after her, as those delights will sometimes pursue the prudent youth who would fain avoid them. Mr Rubb was there, in her drawing-room, looking extremely well, shaking hands with her very comfortably, and soon abandoning his conversation on that matter of business to which she had determined to confine herself. She was angry with him, thinking him to be very free and easy; but, nevertheless, she could not keep herself from talking to him.

"You can't do better than five per cent," he had said to her, "not with first-cla.s.s security, such as this is."

All that had been well enough. Five per cent and first-cla.s.s security were, she knew, matters of business; and though Mr Rubb had winked his eye at her as he spoke of them, leaning forward in his chair and looking at her not at all as a man of business, but quite in a friendly way, yet she had felt that she was so far safe. She nodded her head also, merely intending him to understand thereby that she herself understood something about business. But when he suddenly changed the subject, and asked her how she liked Mr Stumfold's set, she drew herself up suddenly and placed herself at once upon her guard.

"I have heard a great deal about Mr Stumfold," continued Mr Rubb, not appearing to observe the lady's altered manner, "not only here and where I have been for the last few days, but up in London also. He is quite a public character, you know."

"Clergymen in towns, who have large congregations, always must so be, I suppose."

"Well, yes; more or less. But Mr Stumfold is decidedly more, and not less. People say he is going in for a bishopric."

"I had not heard it," said Miss Mackenzie, who did not quite understand what was meant by going in for a bishopric.

"Oh, yes, and a very likely man he would have been a year or two ago.

But they say the prime minister has changed his tap lately."

"Changed his tap!" said Miss Mackenzie.

"He used to draw his bishops very bitter, but now he draws them mild and creamy. I dare say Stumfold did his best, but he didn't quite get his hay in while the sun shone."

"He seems to me to be very comfortable where he is," said Miss Mackenzie.

"I dare say. It must be rather a bore for him having to live in the house with old Peters. How Peters sc.r.a.ped his money together, n.o.body ever knew yet; and you are aware, Miss Mackenzie, that old as he is, he keeps it all in his own hands. That house, and everything that is in it, belongs to him; you know that, I dare say."

Miss Mackenzie, who could not keep herself from being a little interested in these matters, said that she had not known it.

"Oh dear, yes! and the carriage too. I've no doubt Stumfold will be all right when the old fellow dies. Such men as Stumfold don't often make mistakes about their money. But as long as old Peters lasts I shouldn't think it can be quite serene. They say that she is always cutting up rough with the old man."

"She seemed to me to behave very well to him," said Miss Mackenzie, remembering the carriage of the tea-cup.

"I dare say it is so before company, and of course that's all right; it's much better that the dirty linen should be washed in private.

Stumfold is a clever man, there's no doubt about that. If you've been much to his house, you've probably met his curate, Mr Maguire."