ISABEL MARLAY.
Isabel Marlay was not the niece of our friend Squire Plausaby, but of his
first wife. Plausaby, Esq., had been the guardian of her small
inheritance in her childhood, and the property had quite mysteriously
suffered from a series of curious misfortunes: the investments were
unlucky; those who borrowed of the guardian proved worthless, and so did
their securities. Of course the guardian was not to blame, and of course
he handled the money honestly. But people will be suspicious even of the
kindest and most smoothly-speaking men; and the bland manner and
innocent, open countenance of Plausaby, Esq., could not save him from the
reproaches of uncharitable people. As he could not prove his innocence,
he had no consolation but that which is ever to be derived from a
conscience void of offense.
Isabel Marlay found herself at an early age without means. But she had
never seen a day of dependence. Deft hands, infallible taste in matters
of dress, invincible cheerfulness, and swift industry made her always
valuable. She had not been content to live in the house of her aunt, the
first Mrs. Plausaby, as a dependent, and she even refused to remain in
the undefined relation of a member of the family whose general utility,
in some sort, roughly squares the account of board and clothes at the
year's end. Whether or not she had any suspicions in regard to the
transactions of Plausaby, Esq., in the matter of her patrimony, I do not
know. She may have been actuated by nothing but a desire to have her
independence apparent. Or, she may have enjoyed--as who would
not?--having her own money to spend. At any rate, she made a definite
bargain with her uncle-in-law, by which she took charge of the sewing in
his house, and received each year a hundred dollars in cash and her
board. It was not large pay for such service as she rendered, but then
she preferred the house of a relative to that of a stranger. When the
second Mrs. Plausaby had come into the house, Mr. Plausaby had been glad
to continue the arrangement, in the hope, perhaps, that Isa's good taste
might modify that lady's love for discordant gauds.
To Albert Charlton, Isa's life seemed not to be on a very high key. She
had only a common-school education, and the leisure she had been able to
command for general reading was not very great, nor had the library in
the house of Plausaby been very extensive. She had read a good deal of
Matthew Henry, the "Life and Labors of Mary Lyon" and the "Life of
Isabella Graham," the "Works of Josephus," "Hume's History of England,"
and Milton's "Paradise Lost." She had tried to read Mrs. Sigourney's
"Poems" and Pollok's "Course of Time," but had not enjoyed them much. She
was not imaginative. She had plenty of feeling, but no sentiment, for
sentiment is feeling that has been thought over; and her life was too
entirely objective to allow her to think of her own feelings. Her
highest qualities, as Albert inventoried them, were good sense, good
taste, and absolute truthfulness and simplicity of character. These were
the qualities that he saw in her after a brief acquaintance. They were
not striking, and yet they were qualities that commanded respect. But he
looked in vain for those high ideals of a vocation and a goal that so
filled his own soul. If she read of Mary Lyon, she had no aspiration to
imitate her. Her whole mind seemed full of the ordinary cares of life.
Albert could not abide that anybody should expend even such abilities as
Isa possessed on affairs of raiment and domestic economy. The very tokens
of good taste and refined feeling in her dress were to him evidences of
over-careful vanity.
But when his mother and Katy had gone out on the morning after he had
overheard Smith Westcott expound his views on the matter of marriage,
Charlton sought Isa Marlay. She sat sewing in the parlor, as it was
called--the common sitting-room of the house--by the west window. The
whole arrangement of the room was hers; and though Albert was neither an
artist nor a critic in matters of taste, he was, as I have already
indicated, a man of fine susceptibility. He rejoiced in this
susceptibility when it enabled him to appreciate nature. He repressed it
when he found himself vibrating in sympathy with those arts that had, as
he thought, relations with human weakness and vanity; as, for instance,
the arts of music and dress. But, resist as one may, a man can not fight
against his susceptibilities. And those who can feel the effect of any
art are very many more than those who can practice it or criticise it. It
does not matter that my Bohemian friend's musical abilities are slender.
No man in the great Boston Jubilee got more out of Johann Strauss, in
his "Kunstleben," that inimitable expression of inspired vagabondage,
than he did. And so, though Albert Charlton could not have told you what
colors would "go together," as the ladies say, he could, none the less,
always feel the discord of his mother's dress, as now he felt the beauty
of the room and appreciated the genius of Isa, that had made so much out
of resources so slender. For there were only a few touch-me-nots in the
two vases on the mantel-piece; there were wild-flowers and
prairie-grasses over the picture-frames; there were asparagus-stalks in
the fireplace; there was--well, there was a _tout-ensemble_ of coolness
and delightfulness, of freshness and repose. There was the graceful
figure of Isabel by the window, with the yet dewy grass and the distant
rolling, boundless meadow for a background. And there was in Isabel's
brown calico dress a faultlessness of fit, and a suitableness of color--a
perfect harmony, like that of music. There was real art, pure and
refined, in her dress, as in the arrangement of the room. Albert was
angry with it, while he felt its effect; it was as though she had set
herself there to be admired. But nothing was further from her thought.
The artist works not for the eyes of others, but for his own, and Isabel
Marlay would have taken not one whit less of pains if she could have been
assured that no eye in the universe would look in upon that
frontier-village parlor.
I said that Charlton was vexed. He was vexed because he felt a weakness
in himself that admired such "gewgaws," as he called everything relating
to dress or artistic housekeeping. He rejoiced mentally in the
superiority of Helen Minorkey, who gave her talents to higher themes. And
yet he felt a sense of restfulness in this cool room, where every color
was tuned to harmony with every other. He was struck, too, with the
gracefulness of Isa's figure. Her face was not handsome, but the good
genius that gave her the feeling of an artist must have molded her own
form, and every lithe motion was full of poetry. You have seen some
people who made upon you the impression that they were beautiful, and yet
the beauty was all in a statuesque figure and a graceful carriage. For it
makes every difference how a face is carried.
The conversation between Charlton and Miss Marlay had not gone far in the
matter of Katy and Smith Westcott until Albert found that her instincts
had set more against the man than even his convictions. A woman like
Isabel Marlay is never so fine as in her indignation, and there never was
any indignation finer than Isa Marlay's when she spoke of the sacrifice
of such a girl as Katy to such a man as Westcott. In his admiration of
her thorough-going earnestness, Albert forgave her devotion to domestic
pursuits and the arts of dress and ornamentation. He found sailing with
her earnestness much pleasanter than he had found rowing against it on
the occasion of his battle about the clergy.
"What can I do, Miss Marlay?" Albert did not ask her what she could do.
A self-reliant man at his time of life always asks first what he
himself can do.
"I can not think of anything that anybody can do, with any hope of
success." Isa's good sense penetrated entirely through the subject, she
saw all the difficulties, she had not imagination or sentiment enough to
delude her practical faculty with false lights.
"Can not _you_ do something?" asked Charlton, almost begging.
"I have tried everything. I have spoken to your mother. I have spoken to
Uncle Plausaby. I have begged Katy to listen to me, but Katy would only
feel sorry for him if she believed he was bad. She can love, but she
can't think, and if she knew him to be the worst man in the Territory she
would marry him to reform him. I did hope that you would have some
influence over her."
"But Katy is such a child. She won't listen if I talk to her. Any
opposition would only hurry the matter. I wish it were right to blow out
his brains, if he has any, and I suppose the monkey has."
"It is a great deal better, Mr. Charlton, to trust in Providence where we
can't do anything without doing wrong."
"Well, Miss Marlay, I didn't look for cant from you. I don't believe that
God cares. Everything goes on by the almanac and natural law. The sun
sets when the time comes, no matter who is belated. Girls that are sweet
and loving and trusting, like Katy, have always been and will always be
victims of rakish fools like Smith Westcott. I wish I were an Indian, and
then I could be my own Providence. I would cut short his career, and make
what David said about wicked men being cut off come true in this case, in
the same way as I suppose David did in the case of the wicked of his day,
by cutting them off himself."
Isabel was thoroughly shocked with this speech. What good religious girl
would not have been? She told Mr. Charlton with much plainness of speech
that she thought common modesty might keep him from making such
criticisms on God. She for her part doubted whether all the facts of the
case were known to him. She intimated that there were many things in
God's administration not set down in almanacs, and she thought that,
whatever God might be, a _young_ man should not be in too great a hurry
about arraigning Him for neglect of duty. I fear it would not contribute
much to the settlement of the very ancient controversy if I should record
all the arguments, which were not fresh or profound. It is enough that
Albert replied sturdily, and that he went away presently with his vanity
piqued by her censures. Not that he could not answer her reasoning, if it
were worthy to be called reasoning. But he had lost ground in the
estimation of a person whose good sense he could not help respecting, and
the consciousness of this wounded his vanity. And whilst all she said was
courteous, it was vehement as any defense of the faith is likely to be;
he felt, besides, that he had spoken with rather more of the _ex
cathedra_ tone than was proper. A young man of opinions generally finds
it so much easier to impress people with his tone than with his
arguments! But he consoled himself with the reflection that the _average_
woman--that word average was a balm for every wound--that the average
woman is always tied to her religion, and intolerant of any doubts. He
was pleased to think that Helen Minorkey was not intolerant. Of that he
felt sure. He did not carry the analysis any farther, however; he did not
ask why Helen was not intolerant, nor ask whether even intolerance may
not sometimes be more tolerable than indifference. And in spite of his
unpleasant irritation at finding this "average" woman not overawed by his
oracular utterances, nor easily beaten in a controversy, Albert had a
respect for her deeper than ever. There was something in her anger at
Westcott that for a moment had seemed finer than anything he had seen in
the self-possessed Miss Minorkey. But then she was so weak as to allow
her intellectual conclusions to be influenced by her feelings, and to be
intolerant.
I have said that this thing of falling in love is a very complex
catastrophe. I might say that it is also a very uncertain one. Since we
all of us "rub clothes with fate along the street," who knows whether
Charlton would not, by this time, have been in love with Miss Marlay if
he had not seen Miss Minorkey in the stage? If he had not run against
her, while madly chasing a grasshopper? If he had not had a great
curiosity about a question in botany which he could only settle in her
company? And even yet, if he had not had collision with Isa on the
question of Divine Providence? And even after that collision I will not
be sure that the scale might not have been turned, had it not been that
while he was holding this conversation with Isa Marlay, his mother and
sister had come into the next room. For when he went out they showed
unmistakable pleasure in their faces, and Mrs. Plausaby even ventured to
ask: "Don't you like her, Albert?"
And when the mother tried to persuade him to forego his visit to the
hotel in the evening, he put this and that together. And when this and
that were put together, they combined to produce a soliloquy:
"Mother and Katy want to make a match for me. As if _they_ understood
_me_! They want me to marry an _average_ woman, of course. Pshaw! Isabel
Marlay only understands the 'culinary use' of things. My mother knows
that she has a 'knack,' and thinks it would be nice for me to have a wife
with a knack. But mother can't judge for _me_. I ought to have a wife
with ideas. And I don't doubt Plausaby has a hand in trying to marry off
his ward to somebody that won't make too much fuss about his accounts."
And so Charlton was put upon studying all the evening, to find points in
which Miss Minorkey's conversation was superior to Miss Marlay's. And
judged as he judged it--as a literary product--it was not difficult to
find an abundant advantage on her side.