Margaret Oliphant - The Two Marys

“I don’t know much about ideals,” said Mrs Tufnell; “what surprises me is, if the man wanted to marry, why he didn’t marry long ago, when the child was young and he had an excellent excuse. As for being a clergyman, that’s neither here nor there. Clergymen are always marrying men, and it’s no sin to marry.”

“It disturbs one’s ideal,” said Mrs Stephens; and, though Mrs Tufnell shrugged her shoulders, I, sitting behind over my book, agreed with her. Oh the inward humiliation with which one sees one’s father in love! – I suppose it would be still worse to see one’s mother, but then, I never had a mother. I blushed for him a great deal more than he blushed for himself, and he did blush for himself too. If he was happy, it was a very uneasy, disturbed sort of happiness. He took me to see her – to Spicer’s; and he went often himself and sat in the parlour behind the shop, and suffered, I am sure, as much as ever a man who is having his own way could suffer. Mrs Tufnell, who was a thoroughly kind old lady, at length came to his aid, and invited Miss Martindale to stay with her the rest of the time, and to be married from her house, which was a thing which even I was grateful for. And the night before the wedding-day the old lady kissed me and said, “Things will turn out better than you suppose, dear. It is hard upon you, but things will turn out better than you suppose.”

I am not sure that this is ever a very effectual kind of comfort, but to me it was exasperating. Had I been told that things would turn out worse than I supposed, I should have liked it. It seemed to me that nothing could be half bad enough for this overturn of all plans and thoughts and life. For you must recollect that it was my life that was chiefly to be overturned. Papa liked it, I supposed, and it was his own doing – but the change was not so great to him as to me. All the little offices of authority I used to have were taken from me – my keys, which I was proud of keeping – my bills and tradesmen’s books, which I had summed up since ever I can remember. I was turned out of my room, and sent upstairs to the spare room beside Ellen. In the parlour I was never alone any more, and not even my favourite corner was mine any longer. I had no more walks with papa, swinging back from his arm. She had his arm now. She made the tea, and even darned his stockings. I was nothing in the house, and she everything. If you suppose that a girl bears this sort of dethronement easily, I am here to witness to the contrary. I did not take it easily; but the thing that went to my heart most was, I think, that she was called Mary, like me. For the first few days when I heard papa call Mary I used to run to him and find her before me, and get sent away, sometimes hastily (one time I ran in and found them sitting together, he with his arm round her waist. I wonder he was not ashamed of himself, at his age!); and another time with a joke which made me furious: “It was my other Mary I wanted,” he said, looking as vain and foolish as – as – . I never saw anybody look so foolish. My father! It humbled me to the very ground. And then I took to never answering to the name at all, which sometimes made papa angry when it was really me he wanted. I soon came to know very well which of us he meant by the sound of his voice, but I never let him know that I did so. His voice grew soft and round as if he were singing when he called her. When he called me, it was just, I suppose, as it always had been; but I had learned the other something now, the different accentuation, and I resented the want of it, though I knew that it never had belonged to me.

All this time I have not spoken of her, though she was the cause of all. When I saw her first, in the grocer’s back shop, working at frocks for the little Spicers, I could not believe my eyes. Though I had already begun to hate her as supplanting me with my father, I could not but acknowledge how very strange it was to see her there. She had on a very plain black alpaca dress, and she sat in the back parlour, amid all that smell of hams and cheese, with a sewing-machine before her; and yet she looked like a princess. She was tall and very slight, like a flower, and her head bowed a little on its stem like the head of a lily. She was pale, with dark eyes and dark hair. I believe she was very handsome – not pretty, but very handsome, almost beautiful, I have heard papa say. I allow this, to be honest, though I cannot say I ever saw it. She had a pathetic look in her eyes which sometimes felt as if it might go to one’s heart. But, fortunately, she always looked happy when I saw her – absurdly happy, just as my poor foolish father did – and so I never was tempted to sympathise with her. I do not understand how anybody but an angel could sympathise with another person who was very happy and comfortable while she (or he) was in trouble. This was our situation now. She had driven me out of everything, and she was pleased; but I was cross from morning till night, and miserable, feeling that I scarcely minded whether I lived or died. Her smiles seemed to insult me when we sat at table together. She looked so much at her ease; she talked so calmly, she even laughed and joked, and sometimes said such merry, witty things, that it was all I could do to keep from laughing too. It is painful to be tempted to laugh when you are very much injured and in a bad temper. Reading was forbidden now at meals, and neither papa nor I ever ventured to prop up a book beside us while we ate. I suppose it was a bad custom; yet my very heart revolted at the idea of changing anything because she wished it. And then she tried to be “of use” to me, as people said. She made me practise every day. She gave me books to read, getting them from the library, and taking a great deal of trouble. She tried to make me talk French with her; but to talk is a thing one cannot be compelled to do, and I always had it in my power to balk that endeavour by answering Oui or Non to all her questions. But the worst of it all was that I had no power to affect either her or papa, whatever I might do to make myself disagreeable. I suppose they were too happy to mind. When I was sulky, it was only myself I made miserable, and there is very little satisfaction in that.

I cannot but say, however, looking back, that she was kind to me, in her way. She was always good-natured, and put up with me and tried to make me talk. She was kind: but they were not kind. As soon as my father and she got together they forgot everything. They sat and talked together, forgetting my very existence. They went out walking together. Sometimes even he would kiss her, without minding that I was there; and all this filled me with contempt for his weakness. I could not support such nonsense – at his age, too! I remember one day rushing to Mrs Stephens’ to get rid of them and their happiness. She was well off, and I don’t really know why she lived in such a street as ours. She kept two servants all for herself, and had a nice drawing-room on the first-floor very beautifully furnished, as I then thought, where she sat and saw all that was going on. Without Mrs Stephens I think I should have died. I used to rush to her when I could bear it no longer.

“What is the matter, Mary?” she would say, looking up from her Berlin work. She had a daughter who was married – and she was always working chairs for her, and footstools, and I don’t know what.

“Nothing,” said I, sitting down on the stool by her wool-basket and turning over the pretty colours; and then, after I had been silent for a minute, I said, “They have gone out for a walk.”

“It is very natural, my dear; you must not be jealous. It might be a question, you know, whether you liked your papa to marry; but now that he is married, it is his duty to be attentive to his wife.”