Margaret Oliphant - The Two Marys

However, after that letter I could not do anything more. If she thought it was a mistake for us to live together, of course it was a mistake. And I had my pride too. “I always felt it was a doubtful experiment,” Mrs Tufnell said when people wondered, “and it did not answer – that was all.” And this is how it was settled and ended – ended, I suppose, for ever. Mrs Tufnell is very good to me, and as long as she lives I am sure of a home. Perhaps I may tell you her story one of these days; for she has a story, like most people. She tells me I am still very young, and may yet have a life of my own; but in the meantime the most I can do is to take an interest in other people’s lives.

I HAD not intended to carry on any further a history which is chiefly about myself; but events are always occurring which change one’s mind from day to day, and alter one’s most fixed resolutions. I do not pretend to understand people who make unchangeable decisions, and certainly I am not one of them. Besides, common fairness requires that I should allow Mrs Peveril to have the same privilege as myself, and tell things her own way. I could not have imagined, had I not seen it, the difference there was between the aspect of things to her and to me. I suppose it is true after all that everybody has his or her own point of view, which is different from all others. Of course we realise this fact quite clearly in a great poem like “The Ring and the Book;” but to recognise it in one’s own small affairs has somehow a much stranger, more surprising effect. What an odd difference it would make in the world if we could all see ourselves now and then with other people’s eyes! I confess that the girl in her story, who was Mr Peveril’s daughter, is very much unlike the girl in mine – and yet the same somehow, as may be traced out with a little trouble. This is humbling, but it is for one’s good, I suppose. When you look at yourself in a mirror, you have so much interest in yourself that your defects don’t strike you – you can’t help being the first figure – the most important; but to feel that all along you are not important at all – anything but the first figure, a mere shadow, scarcely noticed! it has a very odd effect – sometimes laughable, sometimes rather the reverse; but this was what now happened to me.

I must add, however, that a long time passed over before I could even think that Mrs Peveril might have something to say on her side. It was not because of the rupture between Mr Durham and myself, and the sudden conclusion of that dream and all that it seemed likely to bring with it. No doubt these things embittered all my feelings about her; but yet I was reasonable enough to come to see that it was not her fault – that she had kept out of the way with all her might – and that after all she could not foresee that another complication might arise between him and me. She could not of course foresee this; and even if she had foreseen it, what could she have done? I think it shows I was not unfair in my judgment, for a girl of seventeen, to say that I soon came to see that. But though I did not blame her, of course I was embittered against her, and took refuge in being very angry with her on other grounds. That she should have said our living together was a mistake was the chief of these. Why was it a mistake? Did she mean to say it was my fault? If it was simply her fault, as I felt sure it was, why did she call it a mistake? Why not say plainly out, “I was wrong, and so we got into trouble?” How easy it seems to be for people to acknowledge themselves in the wrong! but not so easy for one’s self, somehow. I never met anybody who liked doing it, though I have met with so many who ought to have done it, and to whom it would have been so simple – so easy, I thought; but that never seemed to be their opinion. Mrs Tufnell, who is in some things a very odd old lady, says it never is anybody’s fault. “There was never any quarrel yet,” she will say, “but there were two in it – there was never any misunderstanding but two were in it. There is no such thing as absolute blame on the one side and innocence on the other. Even in your affairs, Mary, my dear – ” But this I never can see nor allow. How could I be to blame? Only seventeen, and knowing so little of the world, and expecting everybody to be good and true, and say just what they thought. When a man said he was fond of me, how was I to put up with his having been fond of somebody else? And when a woman professed to be thinking of me, was it natural that I could be pleased to know she had been thinking of herself? I could not help behaving just as I did. It was the only natural, the only possible way; but for them, they ought to have known better, they ought to have thought of me. On the whole that is the thing that hurts one – that goes to one’s heart. People think of themselves first – when they ought to be thinking of you, they think of themselves first. I suppose it is the same all over the world.

The way in which I first heard Mary’s story was simple enough. After years of a dull sort of quiet life at Mrs Tufnell’s – who was very good to me, and very kind, but who, of course, could give to me, a girl, only what she, an old woman, had to give – the quietest life, without excitement or change of any kind – she had a bad illness. It was not an illness of the violent kind, but of what, I suppose, is more dangerous to an old woman, a languishing, slow sickness, which looked like decay more than disease. The doctors said “breaking up of the constitution,” or at least the servants said so, who are less particular than the doctors, and shook their heads and looked very serious. I was less easily alarmed than anyone else, for it seemed to me a natural thing that an old lady should be gently ill like that, one day a little better and the next a little worse, without any suffering to speak of. It was not until after she was better that I knew there had been real danger, but she must have felt it herself. The way in which her sense of her precarious condition showed itself was anxiety for me. I remember one evening sitting in her room by the fire with a book; she was in bed, and I had been reading to her, and now she was dozing, or at least I thought so. Things appear (it is evident) very differently to different people. I was extremely comfortable in that nice low easy-chair by the fire. It was a pretty room, full of pictures and portraits of her friends, so full that there was scarcely an inch of the wall uncovered. The atmosphere was warm and soft, and the tranquil repose and ease of the old lady in the bed somehow seemed to increase the warmth and softness and kindly feeling. She was an additional luxury to me sitting there by the fire with my novel. If any fairy had proposed to place her by my side as young and as strong as myself, I should have rejected the proposal with scorn. I liked her a great deal best so – old, a little sick, kind, comfortable, dozing in her bed. Her very illness – which I thought quite slight, rather an excuse for staying in this cosy room and being nursed than anything else – heightened my sense of comfort. She was not dozing, as it happened, but lying very still, thinking of dying – wondering how it would feel, and planning for those she should leave behind her. I knew nothing of these thoughts, no more than if I had been a thousand miles away: and fortunately neither did she of mine. I was roused from my comfortable condition by the sound of her voice calling me. I rose up half reluctantly from the bright fire, and the little table with the lamp and my book, and went and sat by her in the shade where I could not see the fire; but still the sentiment of comfort was predominant in me. I gave my old lady her mixture, which it was time for her to take, and advised her to go to sleep.