Chapter 44

CHOOSING A WIFE.

She did not open her Bible to go on with the investigation Mr. Dillwyn had broken off. Now that he had just been with her in proper person, an instinct of scared modesty fled from the question whether or no he were a man whom a Christian woman might marry. What was it to her? Lois said to herself; what did it concern her, whether such a marriage were permissible or no? Such a question would never come to her for decision. To Madge, perhaps? But now the other question did ask for consideration;--Why she winced at the idea that it might come to Madge? Madge did not share her sister's scruple; Madge had not made the promise Lois had made; if Mr. Dillwyn asked her, she would accept him, Lois had little doubt. Perhaps he would ask her; and why, why did Lois wish he would not? For she perceived that the idea gave her pain. Why should it give her pain? For herself, the thing was a fixed fact; whatever the Bible said--and she knew pretty well what it said--for _her_, such a marriage was an impossibility. And why should she think about it at all? nobody else was thinking about it. Fra Angelico's angel came back to her mind; the clear, unshadowed eyes, the pure, glad face, the separateness from all earth's passions or pleasures, the lofty exaltation above them. So ought she to be. And then, while this thought was warmest, came, shutting it out, the image of Mr. Dillwyn at the music party; what he was doing there, how he would look and speak, how Madge would enjoy his attentions, and everything; and Lois suddenly felt as if she herself were very much alone. Not merely alone now, to-night; she had chosen this, and liked it; (did she like it?)--not now, but all through her life. It suddenly seemed to Lois as if she were henceforth to be always alone. Madge would no doubt marry--somebody; and there was no home, and nobody to make home for Lois. She had never thought of it before, but now she seemed to see it all quite clearly. Mrs. Barclay's work had been, to separate her, in a certain way, from her family and her surroundings. They fitted together no longer. Lois knew what they did not know; she had tastes which they did not share, but which now were become part of her being; the society in which she had moved all her life till two years, or three years, ago, could no longer content her. It was not inanimate nature, her garden, her spade and her wheelbarrow, that seemed distasteful; Lois could have gone into that work again with all her heart, and thought it no hardship; it was the mental level at which the people lived; the social level, in houses, tables, dress, and amusements, and manner; the aesthetic level of beauty, and grace, and fitness, or at least the perception of them. Lois pondered and revolved this all till she began to grow rather dreary. Think of the Esterbrooke school, and of being alone there! Rough, rude, coarse boys and girls; untaught, untamed, ungovernable, except by an uncommon exertion of wisdom and will; long days of hard labour, nights of common food and sleep, with no delicate arrangements for either, and social refreshment utterly out of the question. And Madge away; married, perhaps, and travelling in Europe, and seeing Fra Angelico's paintings. Then the angel's face recurred to Lois, and she pulled herself up. The angel's face and the painter's history both confronted her. On one hand, the seraphic purity and joy of a creature who knew no will but God's will; on the other hand, the quiet, patient life, which had borne such fruits. Four hundred years ago, Fra Angelico painted; and ever since his work had been bearing witness to God's truth and salvation; was even at that minute teaching and admonishing herself. What did it signify just _how_ her own work should be done, if only it were like work? What matter whether rough or smooth, alone or in company? Where the service is to be done, there the Master puts his servant; what the service is, he knows; for the servant, all that he has to take care of is, that step by step he follow where he is led, and everywhere, and by all means in his power, that he show forth Christ to men. Then something like that angel's security would be with him all the way, and something like that angel's joy be at the end of it. The little picture had helped and comforted Lois amazingly, and she went to bed with a heart humbled and almost contented.

She went, however, in good time, before Madge could return home; she did not want to hear the outflow of description and expatiation which might be expected. And Madge indeed found her so seemingly sleepy, that she was forced to give up talking and come to bed too. But all Lois had gained was a respite. The next morning, as soon as they were awake, Madge began.

"Lois, we had a grand time last night! You were so stupidly asleep when I came home, I couldn't tell you. We had a beautiful time! O Lois, Mrs. Burrage's house is just magnificent!"

"I suppose so."

"The floors are all laid in patterns of different coloured woods--a sort of mosaic--"

"Parquetry."

"What?--I call it mosaic, with centre-pieces and borders,--O, elegant! And they are smooth and polished; and then carpets and rugs of all sorts are laid about; and it's most beautiful. She has got one of those Persian carpets she was telling about, Lois."

"I dare say."

"And the walls are all great mirrors, or else there is the richest sort of drapery--curtains, or hangings; and the prettiest painted walls. And O, Lois, the flowers!--"

"Where were they?"

"Everywhere! On tables, and little shelves on the wall--"

"Brackets."

"O, well!--shelves they _are_, call them what you like; and stands of plants and pots of plants--the whole place was sweet with the smell, and green with the leaves, and brilliant with the flowers--"

"Seems to have been brilliant generally."

"So it was, just _brilliant_, with all that, and with the lights, and with the people."

"Were the people brilliant too?"

"And the playing."

"O,--the playing!"

"Everybody said so. It wasn't like Mrs. Barclay's playing."

"What was it like?"

"It looked like very hard work, to me. My dear, I saw the drops of sweat standing on one man's forehead;--he had been playing a pretty long piece," Madge added, by way of accounting for things. "I never saw anything like it, in all my life!"

"Like what?--sweat on a man's forehead?"

"Like the playing. Don't be ridiculous."

"It is not I," said Lois, who meanwhile had risenn and was getting dressed. Madge was doing the same, talking all the while. "So the playing was something to be _seen_. What was the singing?"

Madge stood still, comb in hand. "I don't know!" she said gravely. Lois could not help laughing.

"Well, I don't," Madge went on. "It was so queer, some of it, I did not know which way to look. Some of it was regular yelling, Lois; and if people are going to yell, I'd rather have it out-of-doors. But one man--I think he thought he was doing it remarkably well--the goings up and down of his voice--"

"Cadences--"

"Well, the cadences if you choose; they made me think of nothing but the tones of the lions and other beasts in the menagerie. Don't you know how they roar up and down? first softly and then loud? I had everything in the world to do not to laugh out downright. He was singing something meant to be very pathetic; and it was absolutely killing."

"It was not all like that, I suppose?"

"No. There was some I liked. But nothing one-half so good as your singing a hymn, Lois. I wish you could have been there to give them one. Only you could not sing a hymn in such a place."

"Why not?"

"Why, because! It would be out of place."

"I would not go anywhere where a hymn would be out of place."

"That's nonsense. But O, how the people were dressed, Lois! Brilliant! O you may well say so. It took away my breath at first"

"You got it again, I hope?"

"Yes. But O, Lois, it _is_ nice to have plenty of money."

"Well, yes. And it is nice _not_ to have it--if the Lord makes it so."

"Makes _what_ so? You are very unsympathetic this morning, Lois! But if you had only been there. O Lois, there were one or two fur rugs--fur skins for rugs,--the most beautiful things I ever saw. One was a leopard's skin, with its beautiful spots; the other was white and thick and fluffy--I couldn't find out what it was."

"Bear, maybe."

"Bear! O Lois--those two skins finished me! I kept my head for a while, with all the mosaic floors and rich hangings and flowers and dresses,--but those two skins took away the little sense I had left. They looked so magnificent! so luxurious."

"They are luxurious, no doubt."

"Lois, I don't see why some people should have so much, and others so little."

"The same sort of question that puzzled David once."

"Why should Mrs. Burrage have all that, and you and I have only yellow painted floors and rag carpets?"

"I don't want 'all that.'"

"Don't you?"

"No."

"I do."

"Madge, those things do not make people happy."

"It's all very well to say so, Lois. I should like just to try once."

"How do you like Mrs. Burrage?"

Madge hesitated a trifle.

"She is pleasant,--pretty, and clever, and lively; she went flying about among the people like a butterfly, stopping a minute here and a minute there, but I guess it was not to get honey but to give it. She was a little honeyfied to me, but not much. I don't--think"--(slowly) "she liked to see her brother making much of me."

Lois was silent.

"He was there; I didn't tell you. He came a little late. He said he had been here, and as he didn't find us he came on to his sister's."

"He was here a little while."

"So he said. But he was so good, Lois! He was _very_ good. He talked to me, and told me about things, and took care of me, and gave me supper. I tell you, I thought madam his sister looked a little askance at him once or twice. I _know_ she tried to get him away."

Lois again made no answer.

"Why should she, Lois?"

"Maybe you were mistaken."

"I don't think I was mistaken. But why should she, Lois?"

"Madge, dear, you know what I told you."

"About what?"

"About that; people's feelings. You and I do not belong to this gay, rich world; we are not rich, and we are not fashionable, and we do not live as they live, in any way; and they do not want us; why should they?"

"We should not hurt them!" said Madge indignantly.

"Nor be of any use or pleasure to them."

"There isn't a girl among them all to compare with you, as far as looks go."

"I am afraid that will not help the matter," said Lois, smiling; but then she added with earnest and almost anxious eagerness,

"Madge, dear, don't think about it! Happiness is not there; and what God gives us is best. Best for you and best for me. Don't you wish for riches!--or for anything we haven't got. What we have to do, is to live so as to show forth Christ and his truth before men."

"Very few do that," said Madge shortly.

"Let us be some of the few."

"I'd like to do it in high places, then," said Madge. "O, you needn't talk, Lois! It's a great deal nicer to have a leopard skin under your feet than a rag-carpet."

Lois could not help smiling, though something like tears was gathering.

"And I'd rather have Mr. Dillwyn take care of me than uncle Tim Hotchkiss."

The laughter and the tears came both more unmistakeably. Lois felt a little hysterical. She finished dressing hurriedly, and heard as little as possible of Madge's further communications.

It was a few hours later, that same morning, that Philip Dillwyn strolled into his sister's breakfast-room. It was a room at the back of the house, the end of a suite; and from it the eye roved through half-drawn _portieres_ and between rows of pillars, along a vista of the parquetted floors Madge had described to her sister; catching here the glitter of gold from a picture frame, and there a gleam of white from a marble figure, through the half light which reigned there. In the breakfast-room it was bright day; and Mrs. Burrage was finishing her chocolate and playing with bits of dry toast, when her brother came in. Philip had hardly exchanged greetings and taken his seat, when his attention was claimed by Mrs. Burrage's young son and heir, who forthwith thrust himself between his uncle's knees, a bat in one hand, a worsted ball in the other.

"Uncle Phil, mamma says her name usen't to be Burrage--it was your name?"

"That is correct."

"If it was your name once, why isn't it your name now?"

"Because she changed it and became Burrage."

"What made her be Burrage?"

"That is a deep question in mental philosophy, which I am unable to answer, Chauncey."

"She says, it's because she married papa."

"Does not your mother generally speak truth?"

Young Philip Chauncey seemed to consider this question; and finally waiving it, went on pulling at a button of his uncle's coat in the energy of his inquiries.

"Uncle Phil, you haven't got a wife?"

"No."

"Why haven't you?"

"An old cookery book says, 'First catch your hare.'"

"Must you catch your wife?"

"I suppose so."

"How do you catch her?"

But the answer to this most serious inquiry was met by such a burst of laughter on the part of both the older persons in the room, that Phil had to wait; nothing daunted, however, returned to the charge.

"Uncle Phil, if you had a wife, what would her name be?"

"If ever I have one, Chauncey, her name will be--"

But here the speaker had very nearly, in his abstraction, brought out a name that would, to say the least, have astonished his sister. He caught himself up just in time, and laughed.

"If ever I have one, her name will be mine."

"I did not know, last night, but you had chosen the lady to whom you intended to do so much honour," his sister observed coolly, looking at him across her chocolate cup.

"Or who I hoped would do me so much honour. What did you think of my supposed choice?" he asked with equal coolness.

"What could I think, except that you were like all other men--distraught for a pretty face."

"One might do worse," observed Philip, in the same tone, while that of his sister grew warmer.

"Some men,--but not you, Philip?"

"What distinguishes me from the mass?"

"You are too old to be made a fool of."

"Old enough to be wise, certainly."

"And you are too fastidious to be satisfied with anything short of perfection; and then you fill too high a position in the world to marry a girl who is nobody."

"So?"--said Philip, using, which it always vexed his sister to have him do, the half questioning, half admiring, wholly unattackable German expression. "Then the person alluded to seemed to you something short of perfection?"

"She is handsome," returned his sister; "she has a very handsome face; anybody can see that; but that does not make her your equal."

"Humph!--You suppose I can find that rare bird, my equal, do you?"

"Not there."

"What's the matter with her?"

"She is simply nobody."

"Seems to say a good deal," responded Philip. "I do not know just _what_ it says."

"You know as well as I do! And she is unformed; unused to all the ways of the world; a mere novice in society."

"Part of that is soon mended," said Philip easily. "I heard your uncle, or Burrage's uncle, old Colonel Chauncey, last night declaring that there is not a girl in the city that has such manners as one of the Miss Lothrops; manners of 'mingled grace and dignity,' he said."

"That was the other one."

"That was the other one."

"_She_ has been in New York before?"

"Yes."

"That was the one that Tom Caruthers was bewitched with?"

"Have you heard _that_ story?" said Mr. Dillwyn dryly.

"Why shouldn't I hear it?"

"No reason, that I know. It is one of the 'ways of the world' you referred to, to tell everything of everybody,--especially when it is not true."

"Isn't that story true?"

"It has no inherent improbability. Tom is open to influences, and--" He stopped.

"I know it is true; for Mrs. Caruthers told me herself."

"Poor Tom!"--

"It was very good for him, that the thing was put an end to. But _you_--you should fly at higher game than Tom Caruthers can strike, Philip."

"Thank you. There was no occasion for your special fear last night. I am in no danger there. But I know a man, Jessie,--a man I think much of, too,--who _is_ very much drawn to one of those ladies. He has confessed as much to me. What advice shall I give him? He is a man that can please himself; he has abundant means, and no ties to encumber him."

"Does he hold as high a position as you?"

"Quite."

"And may pretend to as much?"

"He is not a man of pretensions. But, taking your words as they mean, I should say, yes."

"Is it any use to offer him advice?"

"I think he generally hears mine--if he is not too far gone in something."

"Ah!--Well, Philip, tell him to think what he is doing."

"O, I _have_ put that before him."

"He would make himself a great goose."

"Perhaps I ought to have some arguments wherewith to substantiate that prophecy."

"He can see the whole for himself. Let him think of the fitness of things. Imagine such a girl set to preside over his house--a house like this, for instance. Imagine her helping him receive his guests; sitting at the head of his table. Fancy it; a girl who has been accustomed to sanded floors, perhaps, and paper window-shades, and who has fed on pumpkins and pork all her life."

Mr. Dillwyn smiled, as his eye roved over what of his sister's house was visible from where he sat, and he remembered the meal-times in Shampuashuh; he smiled, but his eye had more thought in it than Mrs. Burrage liked. She was watching him.

"I cannot tell what sort of a house is in question in the present case," he said at length. "Perhaps it would not be a house like this."

"It _ought_ to be a house like this."

"Isn't that an open question?"

"No! I am supposing that this man, your friend-- Do I know him?"

"Do you not know everybody? But I have no permission to disclose his name."

"And I do not care for it, if he is going to make a _mesalliance;_ a marriage beneath him. Such marriages turn out miserably. A woman not fit for society drags her husband out of it; a woman who has not refined tastes makes him gradually coarse; a woman with no connections keeps him from rising in life; if she is without education, she lets all the best part of him go to waste. In short, if he marries a nobody he becomes nobody too; parts with all his antecedents, and buries all his advantages. It's social ruin, Philip! it is just ruin."

"If this man only does not prefer the bliss of ruining himself!"--said her brother, rising and lightly stretching himself. Mrs. Burrage looked at him keenly and doubtfully.

"There is no greater mistake a man can make, than to marry beneath him," she went on.

"Yes, I think that too."

"It sinks him below his level; it is a weight round his neck; people afterwards, when he is mentioned say,--'_He married such a one, you know;_' and, '_Didn't he marry unfortunately?_'--He is like depreciated coin. It kills him, Philip, politically."

"And fashionably."

"O, fashionably! of course."

"What's left to a man when he ceases to be fashionable?"

"Well, of course he chooses a new set of associates."

"But if Tom Caruthers had married as you say he wanted to marry, his wife would have come at once into his circle, and made one of it?"

"Provided she could hold the place."

"Of that I have no doubt."

"It was a great gain to Tom that he missed."

"The world has odd balances to weigh loss and gain!" said Philip.

"Why, Philip, in addition to everything else, these girls are _religious;_--not after a reasonable fashion, you know, but puritanical; prejudiced, and narrow, and stiff."

"How do you know all that?"

"From that one's talk last night. And from Mrs. Wishart."

"Did _she_ say they were puritanical?"

"Yes. O yes! they are stiff about dancing and cards; and I had nearly laughed last night at the way Miss--what's her name?--opened her eyes at me when I spoke of the theatre."

"She does not know what the theatre is," said Philip.

"She thinks she does."

"She does not know the half."

"Philip," said Mrs. Burrage severely and discontentedly, "you are not agreeing with me."

"Not entirely, sister."

"You are as fond of the theatre, or of the opera, as anybody I know."

"I never saw a decent opera in my life."

"Philip!"

"Nor did you."

"How ridiculous! You have been going to the opera all your life, and the theatre too, in half a dozen different countries."

"Therefore I claim to know of what I speak. And if I had a wife--" he paused. His thoughts made two or three leaps; the vision of Lois's sweet, pure dignity came before him, and words were wanting.

"What if you had a wife?" asked his sister impatiently.

"I would rather she would be anything but a 'fast' woman."

"She needn't be 'fast'; but she needn't be precise either."

There was something in Philip's air or his silence which provoked Mrs. Burrage. She went on with some heat, and defiantly.

"I have no objection to religion, in a proper way. I always teach Chauncey to make the responses."

"Make them yourself?"

"Of course."

"Do you mean them?"

"Mean them!"--

"Yes. Do you mean what you say? When you have said, 'Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners'--did you feel guilty? or miserable?"

"Miserable!"--

"Yes. Did you feel miserable?"

"Philip, I have no idea what you are driving at, unless you are defending these two precise, puritanical young country-women."

"A little of that," he said, smiling, "and a little of something else."

He had risen, as if to go. His sister looked at him, vexed and uncertain. She was proud of her brother, she admired him, as almost people did who knew Mr. Dillwyn. Suddenly she changed her tactics; rose up, and coming to him laid both her hands on his shoulders so that she could raise herself up to kiss him.

"Don't _you_ go and be foolish!" she said. "I will forgive your friend, Philip, but I will not forgive you!"