MRS. MORTOMLEY IS ADVISED FOR HER GOOD.
"My dear, you never mean to tell me Richard Halling's son and daughter
are _here_ for an indefinite period." It was Mrs. Werner who,
dressed in a light summer muslin, which trailed behind her over
the grass, addressed this remark to Mrs. Mortomley attired in deep
mourning--barathea and crape trailing behind her likewise.
"Yes, they are," said Dolly indifferently. "For how long a time they are
to be here I have not the faintest idea. It makes no difference to me.
They go their way and I go mine. Antonia dresses herself to receive her
_fiancé_ and goes to stay with his sister. Rupert lounges about, plays
the piano, bribes Lenore to sit still like an angel. They do not
interfere with me and I do not interfere with them. There is nothing to
make a song about in the matter."
"Dolly," said her friend, "You will go your own way once too often."
Dolly opened her eyes as wide as she could, and asked, "Whose way would
you have me go."
"I would have you take a woman's place and assume a wife's
responsibilities."
"Good gracious!" and Dolly plumped down on the grass.
"Leonora, you utter dark sayings, be kind enough to explain your words
of wisdom in plain English."
There was a garden chair close at hand, and Mrs. Werner took advantage
of it to lessen the distance between herself and her friend. Being a
small, short, slight, lithe woman, Dolly could pose her person anywhere.
Being tall, stately, a lady "with a presence," Mrs. Werner would as soon
have thought of dropping on the grass as of climbing a tree.
"Do you remember Dassell?" she asked softly.
"Do I remember Dassell," repeated Dolly, and her brown eyes had a
far-away look in them as she answered, "You might have shaped your
singular question better, Nora; ask me if I shall ever forget it, and
then I shall answer you in the words of Moultrie's, 'Forget Thee,' which
really does go admirably to the air of Lucy Neal; I wish you would try
how well."
"Dolly do be serious for five minutes, if you can. Do you never long for
the old quiet life again."
"No I do not," answered Mrs. Mortomley promptly. "It was very well while
it lasted; good, nice, peaceful, what you will, but I could no more go
back to that than I could to a rattle and coral and bells. I have gone
forward--I have passed that stage. We must go forward, we must travel
from stage to stage till the end, whether we like the journey or not. My
journey has been very pleasant, so far."
"Has it been satisfactory?" asked Mrs. Werner.
"Has yours?" retorted Dolly; then, without waiting for a reply, went on:
"We have all our ideal life, and the real must differ from it. We have
our ideal husbands, as our husbands have had their ideal wives, and the
real are never like the ideal. Well, what does it matter? We would not
marry our ideals now if we could, so what is the use of thinking about
them. Has my life been satisfactory? you ask. Yes, I think so. I am not
very old now. I am five-and-twenty, Leonora, four years younger than
you, and yet I think if the whole thing were stopped this minute, if God
himself said to me now, you have had your share of happiness, you have
eaten all the feasts set out for you too fast, you must walk out of the
sunshine and make way for some one else, I could not grumble even
mentally; I have had my innings, Nora, let the future bring what it
will."
"You little heathen!"
"Perhaps you are right," said Dolly philosophically, "Perhaps it is
heathenish to love ease and pleasure and luxury, as I love them all;
but, Lenny, you know I never had high aims; I should detest working for
my living, or being a clergyman's wife and having to visit all sorts of
miserable people, or going about as a Sister of Charity, or setting-up
for a philanthropist, or a social reformer, '_Chacun à son goût_,' and
it certainly would not be my _goût_ to make myself less happy than I
am."
"But, Dolly, do not you think you owe a duty to your husband?"
"Of course I do, if you like to word your sentence in so disagreeable a
manner, but I am not aware that I fail in my duty towards him. You do
not think it necessary, I suppose, that I should make his shirts, or
darn his socks so long as there are people to be found glad to earn a
little money by drudging at such things. He has a comfortable home, and
everything in it that he wants so far as I know. I never nag him as I
hear many excellent wives nag their husbands. We never exchange an angry
word. If I want anything, he says 'Very well, get it.' If he wants
anything, I say 'Very well, do it.' Upon my word, Leonora, I cannot
imagine what it is you wish, unless that I should begin to make myself
disagreeable."
"That is exactly what I do wish," said Mrs. Werner. "Instead of treating
your husband like a spoiled child whose way is on no account to be
crossed, I would have you talk with him, reason, advise, consult."
"Good gracious!" interrupted Dolly "what is there to consult about; what
we shall have for dinner, or the shape of his next new hat? There, don't
be cross, Nora," she added, penitently as Mrs. Werner turned her head
away with an impatient gesture. "Tell me what it is you want me to do,
condescend to particulars, and don't generalize as is your habit, and I
will be as attentive as even you could desire."
"You ought never to have allowed those people to come here," said Mrs.
Werner emphatically.
"Archibald brought them home with him, and it would surely not have been
pretty manners for me to tell them to go back again."
"If you had ever been in any useful sense a helpmeet to Mr. Mortomley he
would not have thought of billeting them at Homewood. Any other woman
than you, Dolly, would have taught him prudence and carefulness and
wisdom. I wonder your long experience of the miseries of a small income
has resulted in nothing except perfect indifference to pecuniary
affairs."
"You mistake," answered Dolly; "it has taught me to feel unspeakably
thankful for a large income."
"Then why do you not take care of it?" asked her friend.
"I do not think I spend so much money as you," retorted Mrs. Mortomley.
"Perhaps not; but Mr. Werner's business is a much better one than your
husband's, and we spend the greater part of our income in trying to
increase his influence and extend his connexion."
"Oh!" said Dolly, and no form of words could do justice to the contempt
she managed to convey by her rendering of that simple ejaculation.
"It is quite true," persisted Mrs. Werner, answering her tone, not her
words.
"No doubt you think so," retorted Dolly, "but I do not. For instance,
how should you know whether Mr. Werner's business is a better one than
ours or not?"
It was not often Mrs. Mortomley claimed the colour manufactory for her
own, but when it was attacked she flung personal feeling into the
defence.
"Henry says so," was the convincing reply.
"Henry," with a momentary pause on the name intended to mark the word as
a quotation, "Henry may know what he makes himself, but I cannot
understand how he can tell what we make," and Dolly folded her hands
together in her lap and waited for the next aggressive move.
"I think, my dear, City men have ways and means of ascertaining these
things."
"Very likely," said Mrs. Mortomley, "for I think, my dear, City men are
usually a set of ill-natured gossiping old women."
"Do not be cross, Dolly," suggested her friend.
"I shall be cross if I choose, Leonora," said Mrs. Mortomley. "It is
enough to make any one cross. What right has Mr. Werner--for it is Mr.
Werner, I know, who has really spoken to me through your mouth--what
right has he, I repeat, to dictate to us how we shall spend our money.
If he likes to have horrid, tiresome, vulgar, prosy people at his
house--when he might get pleasant people--that is his affair. I do not
interfere with him--(only I will not go to your parties)--but he has no
sort of claim to dictate to us, and I will not bear it, Nora, I will
not."
"Dolly, dear, I was only speaking for your good--"
"I do not want good spoken to me," interrupted Mrs. Mortomley.
"And it is not for your good," went on Mrs. Werner calmly, "that you
should have Antonia and Rupert quartered here. If your husband had given
them say a couple of hundred pounds a year, they would have thought far
more of his generosity, and it would have cost you less than half what
it will do now, besides being wiser in every way."
"Had not you better lay that statement before him yourself?" asked
Dolly.
"If I were his wife I should unhesitatingly," was the reply.
"Well, I am his wife and I will not," declared Dolly. "If he likes to
have them in the house I cannot see why he should not, so long as they
do not make their proximity disagreeable to me; and I am not likely to
let them do that, am I, Nora?"
"So long as you have your house filled with company, and are out at
parties continually, perhaps not."
"Leonora," began Mrs. Mortomley, "you are the only friend I ever had in
my life. I am never likely to have another; but sooner than submit to
this eternal lecturing I would rather kiss and say good-bye now, than go
on to an open quarrel. Why can we not agree to differ; why cannot Mr.
Werner leave my husband to manage his own affairs, and you leave me to
order my way of life as seems most satisfactory to me? You think you are
doing great things for your husband because, at his desire, you invite
City notables and their wives to dinner, and perhaps you may be. All I
can say is, I should not be doing Archie any service by inviting them
here. I do not know whether rich City snobs and snobesses hate
_you_--perhaps not as there is a real live lord, not a Lord Mayor,
amongst your relatives--but they hate me. If I had never come in contact
with one of them it might have spared us some enemies; and I never mean
so long as I live to come in contact with another, except those who are
unavoidable, such as Antonia's elderly young man, for instance. There is
nothing I can do or wear or say right in their eyes. I feel this. I know
it. They detest me because I am different from them, and they do not
think, as I was not a lady of fortune or a lord's niece, I have any
right to be different. I do not know why oil should impute it as a sin
to water, that it is water and not oil, but these people who cannot mix
with me and with whom I cannot mix, do impute it to me as a sin that I
am myself and not them. There is the case in a nutshell, Mrs. Werner,
and I fail to see why you and I should quarrel over it."
"But, Dolly, do you think it prudent to have so many guests here in whom
it is impossible for your husband to take an interest?"
"If they do not interest they amuse him," was the reply. "And I think
anything which brings him out of his laboratory even for a few hours
must be advantageous to him mentally and physically. I do not believe,"
continued Dolly, warming with her subject, "in men living their lives in
the City, or else amongst colours and chemicals. When we come to compare
notes in our old age, Leonora, I wonder which faith, yours or mine, will
be found to have contained temporal salvation."
Mrs. Werner looked down on the slight figure, at the eager upturned
face, and then speaking her thoughts and that of many another person
aloud, said,
"I cannot fancy you old, Dolly. I think if you live to be elderly you
will be like the Countess of Desmond, who was killed by a fall from a
cherry-tree in her hundred and fortieth year."
Mrs. Mortomley's laugh rang out through the clear summer air.
"Do you know," she said, "the same thought has perplexed me; only it was
different. I can imagine myself old; a garrulous great-grandmother, good
to Lenore's grandchildren, a white-haired, lively, pleasant old lady,
fond of the society of young people; but, oh! Nora, I cannot picture
myself as middle-aged. I fail to imagine the ten years passage between
thirty-five and forty-five, between forty-five and fifty-five. If I
could go to sleep for twenty years like Rip van Winkle, and reappear
on the scene with grey hair and a nice lace cap, I should understand the
_rôle_ perfectly; but the middle passage, I tell you fairly, the
prospect of that fills me with dismay."
"And yet I also am only six years distant from the point which you
kindly mark as the entrance to middle age, and can contemplate the
prospect with equanimity."
"Queens never age," observed Dolly, "they only acquire dignity; ordinary
mortals get crooked and battered and wrinkled and--ugly. I am afraid I
shall get very ugly; grow fat, probably; fond of good living, and drink
porter for luncheon."
"How can you be so absurd?" exclaimed Mrs. Werner.
"Nora," said Dolly solemnly, "I have, little as you may think it, very
serious thoughts at times about my future. I would give really and truly
ten pounds--and you know if I had the income of a Rothschild I should
still be in want of that particular ten pounds--but I would, indeed,
give that amount if any one could tell me how I should spend the twenty
years stretching between thirty-five and fifty-five."
"I do not imagine the most daring gipsy could say the line of your life
would be cut short."
"Oh! no, I shall reach the white hair and the lace cap and the great
grandmother stage; but how? that is the question."
"My dear, leave these matters to God."
"I must, I suppose," said Dolly resignedly.