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MARY IN THE SHOP.
More than a year had now passed 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 space 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 duchess; 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 title 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! before they
did what was irrevocable. They are little better than children
now."
"The thing is absolutely impossible," said Godfrey, 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.
Godfrey 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 passed 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 Godfrey 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 pass 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
amusement 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 noble 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 nobility,
confess wretchedness, excuse it, and decline to allow that the
noble 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 passed through Turnbull and Marston's shop to
see Letty. Tom cared for nobody, 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 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 assumes--simplicity. No sign of recognition would pass
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
God," 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."
"I am sorry you should think me impertinent," answered Mary. "You
saw yourself I was engaged with a customer, and could not attend
to you."
"Your tone was insufferable, miss!" cried the grand lady; but
what more she would have said I can not tell, for just then Miss
Mortimer resumed her place in front of Mary. She had no idea of
her position in the shop, neither suspected who her assailant
was, and, fearing the woman's accusation might do her an injury,
felt compelled to interfere.
"Miss Marston," she said--she had just heard Mrs. Turnbull use
her name--"if you should be called to account by your employer,
will you, please, refer to me? You were perfectly civil both to
me and to this--" she hesitated a perceptible moment, but ended
with the word "_lady_," peculiarly toned.
"Thank you, ma'am," said Mary, with a smile, "but it is of no
consequence."
This answer would have almost driven the woman out of her reason
--already, between annoyance with herself and anger with Mary, her
hue was purple: something she called her constitution required a
nightly glass of brandy-and-water--but she was so dumfounded by
Miss Mortimer's defense of Mary, which she looked upon as an
assault on herself, so painfully aware that all hands were
arrested and all eyes fixed on herself, and so mortified with the
conviction that her husband was enjoying her discomfiture, that,
with what haughtiness she could extemporize from consuming
offense, she made a sudden vertical gyration, and walked from the
vile place.
Now, George never lost a chance of recommending himself to Mary
by siding with her--but only after the battle. He came up to her
now with a mean, unpleasant look, intended to represent sympathy,
and, approaching his face to hers, said, confidentially:
"What made my mother speak to you like that, Mary?"
"You must ask herself," she answered.
"There you are, as usual, Mary!" he protested; "you will never
let a fellow take your part!"
"If you wanted to take my part, you should have done so when
there would have been some good in it."
"How could I, before Miss Mortimer, you know!"
"Then why do it now?"
"Well, you see--it's hard to bear hearing you ill used! What did
you say to Miss Mortimer that angered my mother?"
His father heard him, and, taking the cue, called out in the
rudest fashion:
"If you think, Mary, you're going to take liberties with
customers because you've got no one over you, the sooner you find
you're mistaken the better."
Mary made him no answer.
On her way to "the villa," Mrs. Turnbull, spurred by spite, had
got hold of the same idea as George, only that she invented where
he had but imagined it; and when her husband came home in the
evening fell out upon him for allowing Mary to be impertinent to
his customers, in whom for the first time she condescended to
show an interest:
"There she was, talking away to that Miss Mortimer as if she was
Beenie in the kitchen! County people won't stand being treated as
if one was just as good as another, I can tell you! She'll be the
ruin of the business, with her fine-lady-airs! Who's she, I
should like to know?"
"I shall speak to her," said the husband. "But," he went on, "I
fear you will no longer approve of marrying her to George, if you
think she's an injury to the business!"
"You know, as well as I do, that is the readiest way to get her
out of it. Make her marry George, and she will fall into my
hands. If I don't make her repent her impudence then, you may
call me the fool you think me."
Mary knew well enough what they wanted of her; but of the real
cause at the root of their desire she had no suspicion. Recoiling
altogether from Mr. Turnbull's theories of business, which were
in flat repudiation of the laws of Him who alone understands
either man or his business, she yet had not a doubt of his
honesty as the trades and professions count honesty. Her father
had left the money affairs of the firm to Mr. Turnbull, and she
did the same. It was for no other reason than that her position
had become almost intolerable, that she now began to wonder if
she was bound to this mode of life, and whether it might not be
possible to forsake it.
Greed is the soul's thieving; where there is greed, there can not
be honesty. John Turnbull, it is true, was not only proud of his
reputation for honesty, but prided himself on being an honest
man; yet not the less was he dishonest--and that with a
dishonesty such as few of those called thieves have attained to.
Like most of his kind, he had been neither so vulgar nor so
dishonest from the first. In the prime of youth he had had what
the people about him called high notions, and counted quixotic
fancies. But it was not their mockery of his tall talk that
turned him aside; opposition invariably confirmed Turnbull. He
had never set his face in the right direction. The seducing
influence lay in himself. It was not the truth he had loved; it
was the show of fine sentiment he had enjoyed. The distinction of
holding loftier opinions than his neighbors was the ground of his
advocacy of them. Something of the beauty of the truth he must
have seen--who does not?--else he could not have been thus moved
at all; but he had never denied himself even a whim for the
carrying out of one of his ideas; he had never set himself to be
better; and the whole mountain-chain, therefore, of his notions
sank and sank, until at length their loftiest peak was the maxim,
Honesty is the best policy--a maxim which, true enough in
fact, will no more make a man honest than the economic aphorism,
The supply equals the demand, will teach him the niceties
of social duty. Whoever makes policy the ground of his honesty
will discover more and more exceptions to the rule. The career,
therefore, of Turnbull of the high notions had been a gradual
descent to the level of his present dishonesty and vulgarity;
nothing is so vulgarizing as dishonesty. I do not care to follow
the history of any man downward. Let him who desires to look on
such a panorama, faithfully and thoroughly depicted, read
Auerbach's "Diethelm von Buchenberg."
Things went a little more quietly in the shop after this for a
while: Turnbull probably was afraid of precipitating matters, and
driving Mary to seek counsel--from which much injury might arise
to his condition and prospects. As if to make amends for past
rudeness, he even took some pains to be polite, putting on
something of the manners with which he favored his "best
customers," of all mankind in his eyes the most to be honored.
This, of course, rendered him odious in the eyes of Mary, and
ripened the desire to free herself from circumstances which from
garments seemed to have grown cerements. She was, however, too
much her father's daughter to do anything in haste.
She might have been less willing to abandon them, had she had any
friends like-minded with herself, but, while they were all kindly
disposed to her, none of the religious associates of her father,
who knew, or might have known her well, approved of her. They
spoke of her generally with a shake of the head, and an
unquestioned feeling that God was not pleased with her. There are
few of the so-called religious who seem able to trust either God
or their neighbor in matters that concern those two and no other.
Nor had she had opportunity of making acquaintance with any who
believed and lived like her father, in other of the Christian
communities of the town. But she had her Bible, and, when that
troubled her, as it did not a little sometimes, she had the
Eternal Wisdom to cry to for such wisdom as she could receive;
and one of the things she learned was, that nowhere in the Bible
was she called on to believe in the Bible, but in the living God,
in whom is no darkness, and who alone can give light to
understand his own intent. All her troubles she carried to him.
It was not always the solitude of her room that Mary sought to
get out of the wind of the world. Her love of nature had been
growing stronger, notably, from her father's death. If the world
is God's, every true man ought to feel at home in it. Something
is wrong if the calm of the summer night does not sink into the
heart, for the peace of God is there embodied. Sometime is wrong
in the man to whom the sunrise is not a divine glory for therein
are embodied the truth, the simplicity, the might of the Maker.
When all is true in us, we shall feel the visible presence of the
Watchful and Loving; for the thing that he works is its sign and
symbol, its clothing fact. In the gentle conference of earth and
sky, in the witnessing colors of the west, in the wind that so
gently visited her cheek, in the great burst of a new morning,
Mary saw the sordid affairs of Mammon, to whose worship the shop
seemed to become more and more of a temple, sink to the bottom of
things, as the mud, which, during the day, the feet of the
drinking cattle have stirred, sinks in the silent night to the
bottom of the clear pool; and she saw that the sordid is all in
the soul, and not in the shop. The service of Christ is help. The
service of Mammon is greed.
Letty was no good correspondent: after one letter in which she
declared herself perfectly happy, and another in which she said
almost nothing, her communication ceased. Mrs. Wardour had been
in the shop again and again, but on each occasion had sought the
service of another; and once, indeed, when Mary alone was
disengaged, had waited until another was at liberty. While Letty
was in her house, she had been civil, but, as soon as she was
gone, seemed to show that she held her concerned in the scandal
that had befallen Thornwick. Once, as I have said, she met
Godfrey. It was in the fields. He was walking hurriedly, as
usual, but with his head bent, and a gloomy gaze fixed upon
nothing visible. He started when he saw her, took his hat off,
and, with his eyes seeming to look far away beyond her, passed
without a word. Yet had she been to him a true pupil; for,
although neither of them knew it, Mary had learned more from
Godfrey than Godfrey was capable of teaching. She had turned
thought and feeling into life, into reality, into creation. They
speak of the creations of the human intellect, of the
human imagination! there is nothing man can do comes half so near
the making of the Maker as the ordering of his way--except one
thing: the highest creation of which man is capable, is to will
the will of the Father. That has in it an element of the
purely creative, and then is man likest God. But simply to do
what we ought, is an altogether higher, diviner, more potent,
more creative thing, than to write the grandest poem, paint the
most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue, build the
most worshiping temple, dream out the most enchanting commotion
of melody and harmony. If Godfrey could have seen the soul of the
maiden into whose face his discourtesy called the hot blood, he
would have beheld there simply what God made the earth for; as it
was, he saw a shop-girl, to whom in happier circumstances he had
shown kindness, in whom he was now no longer interested. But the
sight of his troubled face called up all the mother in her; a
rush of tenderness, born of gratitude, flooded her heart. He was
sad, and she could do nothing to comfort him! He had been royally
good to her, and no return was in her power. She could not even
let him know how she had profited by his gifts! She could come
near him with no ministration! The bond between them was an
eternal one, yet were they separated by a gulf of unrelation. Not
a mountain-range, but a stayless nothingness parted them. She
built many a castle, with walls of gratitude and floors of
service to entertain Godfrey Wardour; but they stood on no
foundation of imagined possibility.
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