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! 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.