Miss Mackenzie Part 29

"But the Act of Parliament will make the railway company pay for them, won't it, John?"

Then he went on to explain to her that she was in luck's way, "as usual," said the poor fellow, thinking of his own misfortunes, and that she would greatly increase her income by the sale. Indeed, it seemed to her that she would regain pretty nearly all she had lost by the loan to Rubb and Mackenzie. "How very singular," thought she to herself. Under these circ.u.mstances, it might, after all, be possible that she should marry Mr Maguire, if she wished it.

When Mr Ball had told his business he did not stay much longer. He said no word of his own hopes, if hopes they could be called any longer. As he left her, he just referred to what had pa.s.sed between them. "This is no time, Margaret," said he, "to ask you whether you have changed your mind?"

"No, John; there are other things to think of now; are there not?

And, besides, they will want here all that I can do for them."

She spoke to him with an express conviction that what was wanted of her by him, as well as by others, was her money, and it did not occur to him to contradict her.

"He might have asked to see me, I do think," said Mrs Tom, when John Ball was gone. "But there always was an upsetting pride about those people at the Cedars which I never could endure. And they are as poor as church mice. When poverty and pride go together I do detest them.

I suppose he came to find out all about us, but I hope you told him nothing."

To all this Miss Mackenzie made no answer at all.

CHAPTER XV

The Tearing of the Verses

Things went on in Gower Street for three or four weeks in the same way, and then Susanna was fetched home from Littlebath. Miss Mackenzie would have gone down herself but that she was averse to see Mr Maguire. She therefore kept on her Littlebath lodgings, though Mrs Tom said much to her of the wasteful extravagance in doing so. It was at last settled that Mr Rubb should go down to Littlebath and bring Susanna back with him; and this he did, not at all to that young lady's satisfaction. It was understood that Susanna did not leave the school, at which she had lately been received as a boarder; but the holidays had come, and it was thought well that she should see her father. During this time Miss Mackenzie received two letters from Mr Maguire. In the first he pleaded hard for an answer to his offer.

He had, he said, now relinquished his curacy, having found the interference of that terrible woman to be unendurable. He had left his curacy, and was at present without employment. Under such circ.u.mstances, "his Margaret" would understand how imperative it was that he should receive an answer. A curacy, or, rather, a small inc.u.mbency, had offered itself among the mines in Cornwall; but he could not think of accepting this till he should know what "his Margaret" might say to it.

To this Margaret answered most demurely, and perhaps a little slily.

She said that her brother's health and affairs were at present in such a condition as to allow her to think of nothing else; that she completely understood Mr Maguire's position, and that it was essential that he should not be kept in suspense. Under these combined circ.u.mstances she had no alternative but to release him from the offer he had made. This she did with the less unwillingness as it was probable that her pecuniary position would be considerably altered by the change in her brother's family which they were now expecting almost daily. Then she bade him farewell, with many expressions of her esteem, and said that she hoped he might be happy among the mines in Cornwall.

Such was her letter; but it did not satisfy Mr Maguire, and he wrote a second letter. He had declined, he said, the inc.u.mbency among the mines, having heard of something which he thought would suit him better in Manchester. As to that, there was no immediate hurry, and he proposed remaining at Littlebath for the next two months, having been asked to undertake temporary duty in a neighbouring church for that time. By the end of the two months he hoped that "his Margaret"

would be able to give him an answer in a different tone. As to her pecuniary position, he would leave that, he said, "all to herself."

To this second letter Miss Mackenzie did not find it necessary to send any reply. The domestics in the Mackenzie family were not at this time numerous, and the poor mother had enough to do with her family downstairs. No nurse had been hired for the sick man, for nurses cannot be hired without money, and money with the Tom Mackenzies was scarce. Our Miss Mackenzie would have hired a nurse, but she thought it better to take the work entirely into her own hands. She did so, and I think we may say that her brother did not suffer by it. As she sat by his bedside, night after night, she seemed to feel that she had fallen again into her proper place, and she looked back upon the year she had spent at Littlebath almost with dismay. Since her brother's death, three men had offered to marry her, and there was a fourth from whom she had expected such an offer.

She looked upon all this with dismay, and told herself that she was not fit to sail, under her own guidance, out in the broad sea, amidst such rocks as those. Was not some humbly feminine employment, such as that in which she was now engaged, better for her in all ways? Sad as was the present occasion, did she not feel a satisfaction in what she was doing, and an a.s.surance that she was fit for her position?

Had she not always been ill at ease, and out of her element, while striving at Littlebath to live the life of a lady of fortune? She told herself that it was so, and that it would be better for her to be a hard-working, dependent woman, doing some tedious duty day by day, than to live a life of ease which prompted her to longings for things unfitted to her.

She had brought a little writing-desk with her that she had carried from Arundel Street to Littlebath, and this she had with her in the sick man's bedroom. Sitting there through the long hours of night, she would open this and read over and over again those remnants of the rhymes written in her early days which she had kept when she made her great bonfire. There had been quires of such verses, but she had destroyed all but a few leaves before she started for Littlebath.

What were left, and were now read, were very sweet to her, and yet she knew that they were wrong and meaningless. What business had such a one as she to talk of the sphere's tune and the silvery moon, of bright stars s.h.i.+ning and hearts repining? She would not for worlds have allowed any one to know what a fool she had been--either Mrs Tom, or John Ball, or Mr Maguire, or Miss Todd. She would have been covered with confusion if her rhymes had fallen into the hands of any one of them.

And yet she loved them well, as a mother loves her only idiot child.

They were her expressions of the romance and poetry that had been in her; and though the expressions doubtless were poor, the romance and poetry of her heart had been high and n.o.ble. How wrong the world is in connecting so closely as it does the capacity for feeling and the capacity for expression,--in thinking that capacity for the one implies capacity for the other, or incapacity for the one incapacity also for the other; in confusing the technical art of the man who sings with the unselfish tenderness of the man who feels! But the world does so connect them; and, consequently, those who express themselves badly are ashamed of their feelings.

She read her poor lines again and again, throwing herself back into the days and thoughts of former periods, and telling herself that it was all over. She had thought of encouraging love, and love had come to her in the shape of Mr Maguire, a very strict evangelical clergyman, without a cure or an income, somewhat in debt, and with, oh! such an eye! She tore the papers, very gently, into the smallest fragments. She tore them again and again, swearing to herself as she did so that there should be an end of all that; and, as there was no fire at hand, she replaced the pieces in her desk. During this ceremony of the tearing she devoted herself to the duties of a single life, to the drudgeries of ordinary utility, to such works as those she was now doing. As to any society, wicked or religious,--wicked after the manner of Miss Todd, or religious after the manner of St Stumfolda,--it should come or not, as circ.u.mstances might direct. She would go no more in search of it. Such were the resolves of a certain night, during which the ceremony of the tearing took place.

It came to pa.s.s at this time that Mr Rubb, junior, visited his dying partner almost daily, and was always left alone with him for some time. When these visits were made Miss Mackenzie would descend to the room in which her sister-in-law was sitting, and there would be some conversation between them about Mr Rubb and his affairs. Much as these two women disliked each other, there had necessarily arisen between them a certain amount of confidence. Two persons who are much thrown together, to the exclusion of other society, will tell each other their thoughts, even though there be no love between them.

"What is he saying to him all these times when he is with him?"

said Mrs Tom one morning, when Miss Mackenzie had come down on the appearance of Mr Rubb in the sick room.

"He is talking about the business, I suppose."

"What good can that do? Tom can't say anything about that, as to how it should be done. He thinks a great deal about Sam Rubb; but it's more than I do."

"They must necessarily be in each other's confidence, I should say."

"He's not in my confidence. My belief is he's been a deal too clever for Tom; and that he'll turn out to be too clever--for me, and--my poor orphans." Upon which Mrs Tom put her handkerchief up to her eyes. "There; he's coming down," continued the wife. "Do you go up now, and make Tom tell you what it is that Sam Rubb has been saying to him."

Margaret Mackenzie did go up as she heard Mr Rubb close the front door; but she had no such purpose as that with which her sister-in-law had striven to inspire her. She had no wish to make the sick man tell her anything that he did not wish to tell. In considering the matter within her own breast, she owned to herself that she did not expect much from the Rubbs in aid of the wants of her nephews and nieces; but what would be the use of troubling a dying man about that? She had agreed with herself to believe that the oilcloth business was a bad affair, and that it would be well to hope for nothing from it. That her brother to the last should hara.s.s himself about the business was only natural; but there could be no reason why she should hara.s.s him on the same subject. She had recognised the fact that his widow and children must be supported by her; and had she now been told that the oilcloth factory had been absolutely abandoned as being worth nothing, it would not have caused her much disappointment. She thought a great deal more of the railway company that was going to buy her property under such favourable circ.u.mstances.

She was, therefore, much surprised when her brother began about the business as soon as she had seated herself. I do not know that the reader need be delayed with any of the details that he gave her, or with the contents of the papers which he showed her. She, however, found herself compelled to go into the matter, and compelled also to make an endeavour to understand it. It seemed that everything hung upon Samuel Rubb, junior, except the fact that Samuel Rubb's father, who now never went near the place, got more than half the net profits; and the further fact, that the whole thing would come to an end if this payment to old Rubb were stopped.

"Tom," said she, in the middle of it all, when her head was aching with figures, "if it will comfort you, and enable you to put all these things away, you may know that I will divide everything I have with Sarah."

He a.s.sured her that her kindness did comfort him; but he hoped better than that; he still thought that something better might be arranged if she would only go on with her task. So she went on painfully toiling through figures.

"Sam drew them up on purpose for you, yesterday afternoon," said he.

"Who did it?" she asked.

"Samuel Rubb."

He then went on to declare that she might accept all Samuel Rubb's figures as correct.

She was quite willing to accept them, and she strove hard to understand them. It certainly did seem to her that when her money was borrowed somebody must have known that the promised security would not be forthcoming; but perhaps that somebody was old Rubb, whom, as she did not know him, she was quite ready to regard as the villain in the play that was being acted. Her own money, too, was a thing of the past. That fault, if fault there had been, was condoned; and she was angry with herself in that she now thought of it again.

"And now," said her brother, as soon as she had put the papers back, and declared that she understood them. "Now I have something to say to you which I hope you will hear without being angry." He raised himself on his bed as he said this, doing so with difficulty and pain, and turning his face upon her so that he could look into her eyes. "If I didn't know that I was dying I don't think that I could say it to you."

"Say what, Tom?"

She thought of what most terrible thing it might be possible that he should have to communicate. Could it be that he had got hold, or that Rubb and Mackenzie had got hold, of all her fortune, and turned it into unprofitable oilcloth? Could they in any way have made her responsible for their engagements? She wished to trust them; she tried to avoid suspicion; but she feared that things were amiss.

"Samuel Rubb and I have been talking of it, and he thinks it had better come from me," said her brother.

"What had better come?" she asked.

"It is his proposition, Margaret." Then she knew all about it, and felt great relief. Then she knew all about it, and let him go on till he had spoken his speech.

"G.o.d knows how far he may be indulging a false hope, or deceiving himself altogether; but he thinks it possible that you might--might become fond of him. There, Margaret, that's the long and the short of it. And when I told him that he had better say that himself, he declared that you would not bring yourself to listen to him while I am lying here dying."

"Of course I would not."

"But, look here, Margaret; I know you would do much to comfort me in my last moments."

"Indeed, I would, Tom."

"I wouldn't ask you to marry a man you didn't like,--not even if it were to do the children a service; but if that can be got over, the other feeling should not restrain you when it would be the greatest possible comfort to me."

"But how could it serve you, Tom?"