Adeline Mowbray Part 20

'Mr Glenmurray would marry me to-morrow, if I chose.'

'Indeed! Well, if master is inclined to make an honest woman of you, you had better take him at his word, I think.'

'Gracious heaven!' cried Adeline, 'what an expression! Why will you persist to confound me with those deluded women who are victims of their own weakness?'

'As to that,' replied Mary, 'you talk too fine for me; but a fact is a fact--are you or are you not my master's wife?'

'I am not.'

'Why then you are his mistress, and a kept lady to all intents and purposes: so what signifies argufying the matter? I lived with a kept madam before; and she was as good as you, for aught I know.'

Adeline, shocked and disappointed, told her she might leave the room.

'I am going,' pertly answered Mary, 'and to seek for a place; but I must beg that you will not own you are no better than you should be, when a lady comes to ask my character; for then perhaps I should not get any one to take me. I shall call you Mrs Glenmurray.'

'But I shall not call _myself_ so,' replied Adeline. 'I will not say what is not true, on any account.'

'There now, there's spite! and yet you pretend to call yourself a gentlewoman, and to be better than other kept ladies! Why, you are not worthy to tie the shoestrings of my last mistress--she did not mind telling a lie rather than lose a poor servant a place; and she called herself a married woman rather than hurt me.'

'Neither she nor you, then,' replied Adeline gravely, 'were sensible of what great importance a strict adherence to veracity is, to the interests of society. I am;--and for the sake of mankind I will always tell the truth.'

'You had better tell one innocent lie for mine,' replied the girl pertly. 'I dare to say the world will neither know nor care anything about it: and I can tell you I shall expect you will.'

So saying she shut the door with violence, leaving Adeline mournfully musing on the distress attending on her situation, and even disposed to question the propriety of remaining in it.

The inquietude of her mind, as usual, showed itself in her countenance, and involved her in another difficulty: to make Glenmurray uneasy by an avowal of what had pa.s.sed between her and Mary was impossible; yet how could she conceal it from him? And while she was deliberating on this point, Glenmurray entered the room, and tenderly inquired what had so evidently disturbed her.

'Nothing of any consequence,' she faltered out, and burst into tears.

'Could "nothing of consequence" produce such emotion?' answered Glenmurray.

'But I am ashamed to own the cause of my uneasiness.'

'Ashamed to own it to me, Adeline? To be sure, you have a great deal to fear from my severity!' said he, faintly smiling.

Adeline for a moment resolved to tell him the whole truth; but fearful of throwing him into a degree of agitation hurtful to his weak frame, she, who had the moment before so n.o.bly supported the necessity of a strict adherence to truth, condescended to equivocate and evade; and turning away her head, while a conscious blush overspread her cheek, she replied, 'You know that I look forward with anxiety and uneasiness to the time of my approaching confinement.'

Glenmurray believed her; and overcome by some painful feelings, which fears for himself and anxiety for her occasioned him, he silently pressed her to his bosom; and, choked with contending emotions, returned to his own apartment.

'And I have stooped to the meanness of disguising the truth!' cried Adeline, clasping her hands convulsively together: 'surely, surely, there must be something radically wrong in a situation which exposes one to such a variety of degradations!'

Mary, meanwhile, had gone in search of a place; and having found the lady to whom she had been advised to offer herself, at home, she returned to tell Adeline that Mrs Pemberton would call in half an hour to inquire her character. The half-hour, an anxious one to Adeline, having elapsed, a lady knocked at the door, and inquired, in Adeline's hearing for Mrs Glenmurray.

'Tell the lady,' cried Adeline immediately from the top of the staircase, 'that Miss Mowbray will wait on her directly.' The footman obeyed, and Mrs Pemberton was ushered into the parlour: and now, for the first time in her life, Adeline trembled to approach a stranger; for the first time she was going to appear before a fellow-creature, conscious she was become an object of scorn, and, though an enthusiast for virtue, would be considered as a votary of vice. But it was a mortification which she must submit to undergo; and hastily throwing a large shawl over her shoulders, to hide her figure as much as possible, with a trembling hand she opened the door, and found herself in the dreaded presence of Mrs Pemberton.

Nor was she at all re-a.s.sured when she found that lady dressed in the neat, modest garb of a strict Quaker--a garb which creates an immediate idea in the mind, of more than common rigidness of principles and sanct.i.ty of conduct in the wearer of it. Adeline curtsied in silence.

Mrs Pemberton bowed her head courteously; then, with a countenance of great sweetness, and a voice calculated to inspire confidence, said, 'I believe thy name is Mowbray; but I came to see Mrs Glenmurray; and as on these occasions I always wish to confer with the princ.i.p.al, wouldst thou, if it be not inconvenient, ask the mistress of Mary to let me see her?'

'I am myself the mistress of Mary,' replied Adeline in a faint voice.

'I ask thine excuse,' answered Mrs Pemberton, re-seating herself: 'as thou art Mrs Glenmurray, thou art the person I wanted to see.'

Here Adeline changed colour, overcome with the consciousness that she ought to undeceive her, and the sense of the difficulty of doing so.

'But thou art very pale, and seemest uneasy,' continued the gentle Quaker--'I hope thy husband is not worse?'

'Mr Glenmurray, but not my husband,' said Adeline, 'is better to-day.'

'Art thou not married?' asked Mrs Pemberton with quickness.

'I am not.'

'And yet thou livest with the gentleman I named, and art the person whom Mary called Mrs Glenmurray!'

'I am,' replied Adeline, her paleness yielding to a deep crimson, and her eyes filling with tears.

Mrs Pemberton sat for a minute in silence; then rising with an air of cold dignity, 'I fear thy servant is not likely to suit me,' she observed, 'and I will not detain thee any longer.'

'She can be an excellent servant,' faltered out Adeline.

'Very likely--but there are objections.' So saying she reached the door: but as she pa.s.sed Adeline she stopped, interested and affected by the mournful expression of her countenance, and the visible effort she made to retain her tears.

Adeline saw, and felt humbled at the compa.s.sion which her countenance expressed: to be an object of pity was as mortifying as to be an object of scorn, and she turned her eyes on Mrs Pemberton with a look of proud indignation: but they met those of Mrs Pemberton fixed on her with a look of such benevolence, that her anger was instantly subdued; and it occurred to her that she might make the benevolent compa.s.sion visible in Mrs Pemberton's countenance serviceable to her discarded servant.

'Stay, madam,' she cried, as Mrs Pemberton was about to leave the room, 'allow me a moment's conversation with you.'

Mrs Pemberton, with an eagerness which she suddenly endeavoured to check, returned to her seat.

'I suspect,' said Adeline, (gathering courage from the conscious kindness of her motive,) 'that your objection to take Mary Warner into your service proceeds wholly from the situation of her present mistress.'

'Thou judgest rightly,' was Mrs Pemberton's answer.

'Nor do I wonder,' continued Adeline, 'that you make this objection, when I consider the present prejudices of society.'

'Prejudices!' softly exclaimed the benevolent Quaker.

Adeline faintly smiled, and went on--'But surely you will allow, that in a family quiet and secluded as ours, and in daily contemplation of an union uninterrupted, faithful, and virtuous, and possessing all the sacredness of marriage, though without the name, it is not likely that the young woman in question should have imbibed any vicious habits or principles?'

'But in contemplating thy union itself, she has lived in the contemplation of vice; and thou wilt own, that, by having given it an air of respectability, thou hast only made it more dangerous.'

'On this point,' cried Adeline, 'I see we must disagree--I shall therefore, without further preamble, inform you, madam, that Mary, aware of the difficulty of procuring a service, if it were known that she had lived with a kept mistress, as the phrase is,' (here an indignant blush overspread the face of Adeline,) 'desired me to call myself the wife of Glenmurray: but this, from my abhorrence of all falsehood, I peremptorily refused.'

'And thou didst well,' exclaimed Mrs Pemberton, 'and I respect thy resolution.'

'But my sincerity will, I fear, prevent the poor girl's obtaining other reputable places; and I, alas! am not rich enough to make her amends for the injury which my conscience forces me to do her. But if you, madam, could be prevailed upon to take her into your family, even for a short time only, to wipe away the disgrace which her living with me has brought upon her--'

'Why can she not remain with thee?' asked Mrs Pemberton hastily.