Out in the Forty-Five Part 31

I suppose it is so always--if we only thought of it!

Grandmamma never noticed my ribbons--or rather my want of them.

It really is of no use my trying to keep to dates. I have begun several times, and I cannot get on with it. That last piece, dated the 23rd, took me nearly a week to write; so that what was to-morrow when I began, was behind yesterday before I had finished. I shall just go right on without any more pother, and put a date now and then when it is very particular.

Grandmamma has an a.s.sembly every week,--Tuesday is her day [Note 1.]-- and now and then an extra one on Thursday or Sat.u.r.day. I do not think anything would persuade her to have an a.s.sembly, or play cards, on a Friday. But on a Sunday evening she always has her rubber, to Flora's horror. It does not startle me, because I remember it always was so when I lived with her at Carlisle: nor Annas, because she knew people did such things in the South. I find Grandmamma usually spends the winter at the Bath: but she has not quite made up her mind whether to go this year or not, on account of all the tumults in the North. If the royal army should march on London (and Annas says of course they will) we may be shut up here for a long while. But Annas says if we heard anything certain of it, she and Flora would set off at once to "the island", as she always calls the Isle of Wight.

Last Tuesday, I was sitting by a young lady whom I have talked with more than once; her name is Newton. I do not quite know how we got on to the subject, but we began to talk politics. I said I could not understand why it was, but people in the South did not seem to care for politics nearly so much as I was accustomed to see done. Half the ladies in the room appeared to be trimmers; and many more wore the red ribbon alone.

Such people, with us, would never be received into a Tory family.

"We do not take things so seriously as you," said she, with a diverted look. "That with us is an opinion which with you is an enthusiasm. I suppose up there, where the sun never shines, you have to make some sort of noise and fuss to keep yourselves alive."

"'The sun never shines!'" cried I. "Now, really, Miss Newton! You don't mean to say you believe that story?"

"I am only repeating what I have been told," said she. "I never was north of Barnet."

"We are alive enough," said I. "I wonder if you are. It looks to me much more like living, to make beds and boil puddings and st.i.tch shirts, than to sit on a sofa in a satin gown, flickering a fan and talking rubbish."

"Oh, fie!" said Miss Newton, laughing, and tapping me on the arm with her fan. "That really will not do, Miss Courtenay. You will shock everybody in the room."

"I can tell you, most whom I see here shock me," said I. "They seem to have no honour and no honesty. They think white and they wear red, or the other way about, just as it happens. If the Prince were to enter London on Monday, what colour would all these ribbons be next Tuesday night?"

"The colour of yours, undoubtedly," she said, laughing.

"And do you call that honesty?" said I. "These people could not change their opinions and feelings between Monday and Tuesday: and to change their ribbons without them would be simply falsehood."

"I told you, you take things so seriously!" she answered.

"But is it not a serious thing?" I continued. "And ought we to take serious things any way but seriously? Miss Newton, do you not see that it is a question of right--not a question of taste or convenience? Your allegiance is not a piece of jewellery, that you can give to the person you like best; it is a debt, which you can only pay to the person to whom you owe it. Do you not see that?"

"My dear Miss Courtenay," said Miss Newton, in a low voice, "excuse me, but you are a little too warm. It is not thought good taste, you know, to take up any subject so very decidedly as that."

"And is right only to be thought a matter of taste?" cried I, quite disregarding her caution. "Am I to rule my life, as I do my tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, by the fashion-book? We have not come to that yet in the North, I can a.s.sure you! We are a st.u.r.dy race there, Madam, and don't swallow our opinions as we do pills, of whatever the apothecary likes to put into them. We prefer to know what we are taking."

"Do excuse me," said Miss Newton, with laughter in her eyes, and laying her hand upon my arm; "but don't you see people are looking round?"

"Let them look round!" cried I. "I am not ashamed of one word that I have spoken."

"Dear Miss Courtenay, I am not objecting to your words. Every one, of course, has his opinions: yours, I suppose, are your father's."

"Not a bit of it!" cried I; "they are my own!"

"But young ladies of your age should not have strong opinions," said she. She is about five years older than I am.

"Will you tell me how to help it?" said I. "I must go through the world with my eyes shut, if I am not to form opinions."

"Oh yes, moderately," she replied.

"Shut my eyes moderately?" I asked; "or, form opinions moderately?"

"Both," answered Miss Newton, laughing.

"Your advice is worse than wasted, my dear Miss Newton," said a voice behind us. "That young person will never do anything in moderation."

"You know better, Hatty!" said I.

"And, as your elder sister, my darling, let me give you a sc.r.a.p of advice. Men never like contentious, arguing women. Don't be a little goose."

I don't know whether I am a goose or a duck, but I am afraid I could have done something to Hatty just then which I should have found agreeable, and she would not. That elder-sister air of hers is so absurd, for she is not eighteen months older than I am; I can stand it well enough from Sophy, but from Hatty it really is too ridiculous. But that was nothing, compared with the insult she had offered, not so much to me, as through me to all womanhood. "Men don't like!" Does it signify three halfpence what they like? Are women to make slaves of themselves, considering what men fancy or don't fancy? Men, mark you!

Not, your father, or brother, or husband: that would be right and reasonable enough: but, men!

"Hatty," I said, after doing battle with myself for a moment, "I think I had better give you no answer. If I did, and if my words and tones suited my feelings, I should scream the house down."

She burst out laughing behind her fan. I walked away at once, lest I should be tempted to reply further. I am afraid I almost ran, for I came bolt against a gentleman in the corner, and had to stop and make my apologies.

"Don't run quite over me, Cary, if it suit you," said somebody who, I thought, was in c.u.mberland.

Note 1. The a.s.semblies on a lady's visiting day required no invitations. The rooms were open to any person acquainted with members of the family.

Note 2. Southerners are respectfully informed that the use of only for but is a Northern peculiarity.

Note 3. Sensitive, delicate.

CHAPTER NINE.

DIFFICULTIES.

"And 't was na for a Popish yoke That bravest men came forth To part wi' life and dearest ties, And a' that life was worth."

JACOBITE BALLAD.

"Ephraim Hebblethwaite!" I cried out.

"I believe so," he said, laughing.

"Where did you come from?"

"From a certain place in the North, called Brocklebank."

"But what brought you to London?" I cried.

"What brought me to London?" he repeated, in quite a different tone,--so much softer. "Well, Cary, I wanted to see something."