Miss Mackenzie. Anthony TrollopeЧитать онлайн книгу.
party, and up to that time she had not enjoyed much of the society of that very social place. Indeed, in these pages have been described with accuracy all the advancement which she had made in that direction. She had indeed returned Miss Todd's call, but had not found that lady at home. In doing this she had almost felt herself to be guilty of treason against the new allegiance which she seemed to have taken upon herself in accepting Mrs. Stumfold's invitation; and she had done it at last not from any firm resolve of which she might have been proud, but had been driven to it by ennui, and by the easy temptation of Miss Todd's neighbouring door. She had, therefore, slipped out, and finding her wicked friend to be not at home, had hurried back again. She had, however, committed herself to a card, and she knew that Mrs. Stumfold would hear of it through Miss Baker. Miss Baker's visit she had not returned, being in doubt where Miss Baker lived, being terribly in doubt also whether the Median rules of fashion demanded of her that she should return the call of a lady who had simply come to her with another caller. Her hesitation on this subject had been much, and her vacillations many, but she had thought it safer to abstain. For the last day or two she had been expecting the return of Mr. Rubb, junior—keeping herself a prisoner, I fear, during the best hours of the day, so that she might be there to receive him when he did come; but though she had so acted, she had quite resolved to be very cold with him, and very cautious, and had been desirous of seeing him solely with a view to the mercantile necessities of her position. It behoved her certainly to attend to business when business came in her way, and therefore she would take care to be at home when Mr. Rubb should call.
She had been to church twice a day on each of the Sundays that she had passed in Littlebath, having in this matter strictly obeyed the hints which Mr. Stumfold had given for her guidance. No doubt she had received benefit from the discourses which she had heard from that gentleman each morning; and, let us hope, benefit also from the much longer discourses which she had heard from Mr. Stumfold's curate on each evening. The Rev. Mr. Maguire was very powerful, but he was also very long; and Miss Mackenzie, who was hardly as yet entitled to rank herself among the thoroughly converted, was inclined to think that he was too long. She was, however, patient by nature, and willing to bear much, if only some little might come to her in return. What of social comfort she had expected to obtain from her churchgoings I cannot quite define; but I think that she had unconsciously expected something from them in that direction, and that she had been disappointed.
But now, at nine o'clock on this appointed evening, she was of a certainty and in very truth going into society. The card said half-past eight; but the Sun had not yoked his horses so far away from her Tyre, remote as that Tyre had been, as to have left her in ignorance that half-past eight meant nine. When her watch showed her that half-past eight had really come, she was fidgety, and rang the bell to inquire whether the man might have probably forgotten to send the fly; and yet she had been very careful to tell the man that she did not wish to be at Mrs. Stumfold's before nine.
"He understands, Miss," said the servant; "don't you be afeard; he's a-doing of it every night."
Then she became painfully conscious that even the maid-servant knew more of the social ways of the place than did she.
When she reached the top of Mrs. Stumfold's stairs, her heart was in her mouth, for she perceived immediately that she had kept people waiting. After all, she had trusted to false intelligence in that matter of the hour. Half-past eight had meant half-past eight, and she ought to have known that this would be so in a house so upright as that of Mrs. Stumfold. That lady met her at the door, and smiling—blandly, but, perhaps I might be permitted to say, not so blandly as she might have smiled—conducted the stranger to a seat.
"We generally open with a little prayer, and for that purpose our dear friends are kind enough to come to us punctually."
Then Mr. Stumfold got up, and pressed her hand very kindly.
"I'm so sorry," Miss Mackenzie had uttered.
"Not in the least," he replied. "I knew you couldn't know, and therefore we ventured to wait a few minutes. The time hasn't been lost, as Mr. Maguire has treated us to a theological argument of great weight."
Then all the company laughed, and Miss Mackenzie perceived that Mr. Stumfold could joke in his way. She was introduced to Mr. Maguire, who also pressed her hand; and then Miss Baker came and sat by her side. There was, however, at that moment no time for conversation. The prayer was begun immediately, Mr. Stumfold taking this duty himself. Then Mr. Maguire read half a chapter in the Bible, and after that Mr. Stumfold explained it. Two ladies asked Mr. Stumfold questions with great pertinacity, and these questions Mr. Stumfold answered very freely, walking about the room the while, and laughing often as he submitted himself to their interrogations. And Miss Mackenzie was much astonished at the special freedom of his manner—how he spoke of St. Paul as Paul, declaring the saint to have been a good fellow; how he said he liked Luke better than Matthew, and how he named even a holier name than these with infinite ease and an accustomed familiarity which seemed to delight the other ladies; but which at first shocked her in her ignorance.
"But I'm not going to have anything more to say to Peter and Paul at present," he declared at last. "You'd keep me here all night, and the tea will be spoilt."
Then they all laughed again at the absurd idea of this great and good man preferring his food—his food of this world—to that other food which it was his special business to dispense. There is nothing which the Stumfoldian ladies of Littlebath liked so much as these little jokes which bordered on the profanity of the outer world, which made them feel themselves to be almost as funny as the sinners, and gave them a slight taste, as it were, of the pleasures of iniquity.
"Wine maketh glad the heart of woman, Mrs. Jones," Mr. Stumfold would say as he filled for the second time the glass of some old lady of his set; and the old lady would chirrup and wink, and feel that things were going almost as jollily with her as they did with that wicked Mrs. Smith, who spent every night of her life playing cards, or as they had done with that horrid Mrs. Brown, of whom such terrible things were occasionally whispered when two or three ladies found themselves sufficiently private to whisper them; that things were going almost as pleasant here in this world, although accompanied by so much safety as to the future in her own case, and so much danger in those other cases! I think it was this aptitude for feminine rakishness which, more than any of his great virtues, more even than his indomitable industry, made Mr. Stumfold the most popular man in Littlebath. A dozen ladies on the present occasion skipped away to the tea-table in the back drawing-room with a delighted alacrity, which was all owing to the unceremonious treatment which St. Peter and St. Paul had received from their pastor.
Miss Mackenzie had just found time to cast an eye round the room and examine the scene of Mr. Stumfold's pleasantries while Mr. Maguire was reading. She saw that there were only three gentlemen there besides the two clergymen. There was a very old man who sat close wedged in between Mrs. Stumfold and another lady, by whose joint dresses he was almost obliterated. This was Mr. Peters, a retired attorney. He was Mrs. Stumfold's father, and from his coffers had come the superfluities of comfort which Miss Mackenzie saw around her. Rumour, even among the saintly people of Littlebath, said that Mr. Peters had been a sharp practitioner in his early days;—that he had been successful in his labours was admitted by all.
"No doubt he has repented," Miss Baker said one day to Miss Todd.
"And if he has not, he has forgotten all about it, which generally means the same thing," Miss Todd had answered.
Mr. Peters was now very old, and I am disposed to think he had forgotten all about it.
The other two gentlemen were both young, and they stood very high in the graces of all the company there assembled. They were high in the graces of Mr. Stumfold, but higher still in the graces of Mrs. Stumfold, and were almost worshipped by one or two other ladies whose powers of external adoration were not diminished by the possession of husbands. They were, both of them, young men who had settled themselves for a time at Littlebath that they might be near Mr. Stumfold, and had sufficient of worldly wealth to enable them to pass their time in semi-clerical pursuits.
Mr. Frigidy, the elder, intended at some time to go into the Church, but had not as yet made sufficient progress in his studies to justify