The Clever Woman of the Family

Both parties poured out their grievances to the same auditor, for Mr. Touchett regarded Ermine Williams as partly clerical, and Rachel could never be easy without her sympathy. To hear was not, however, to make peace, while each side was so sore, so conscious of the merits of its own case, so blind to those of the other. One deemed praise in its highest form the prime object of his ministry; the other found the performance indevotional, and raved that education should be sacrificed to wretched music. But that the dissension was sad and mischievous, it would have been very diverting; they were both so young in their incapacity of making allowances, their certainty that theirs was the theory to bring in the golden age, and even in their magnanimity of forgiveness, and all the time they thought themselves so very old. “I am resigned to disappointments; I have seen something of life.”—“You forget, Miss Williams, that my ministerial experience is not very recent.”

There was one who would have smoothed matters far better than any, who, like Ermine, took her weapons from the armoury of good sense; but that person was entirely unconscious how the incumbent regarded her soft eyes, meek pensiveness, motherly sweetness, and, above all, the refined graceful dignity that remained to her from the leading station she had occupied. Her gracious respect towards her clergyman was a contrast as much to the deferential coquetry of his admirers as to the abruptness of his foe, and her indifference to parish details had even its charm in a world of fussiness; he did not know himself how far a wish of hers would have led him, and she was the last person to guess. She viewed him, like all else outside her nursery, as something out of the focus of her eye; her instinct regarded her clergyman as necessarily good and worthy, and her ear heard Rachel railing at him; it sounded hard, but it was a pity Rachel should be vexed and interfered with. In fact, she never thought of the matter at all; it was only part of that outer kind of dreamy stage-play at Avonmouth, in which she let herself he moved about at her cousin’s bidding. One part of her life had passed away from her, and what remained to her was among her children; her interests and intelligence seemed contracted to Conrade’s horizon, and as to everything else, she was subdued, gentle, obedient, but slow and obtuse.

Yet, little as he knew it, Mr. Touchett might have even asserted his authority in a still more trying manner. If the gentle little widow had not cast a halo round her relatives, he could have preached that sermon upon the home-keeping duties of women, or have been too much offended to accept any service from the Curtis family; and he could have done without them, for he had a wide middle-class popularity; his manners with the second-rate society, in which he had been bred, were just sufficiently superior and flattering to recommend all his best points, and he obtained plenty of subscriptions from visitors, and of co-operation from inhabitants. Many a young lady was in a flutter at the approach of the spruce little figure in black, and so many volunteers were there for parish work, that districts and classes were divided and subdivided, till it sometimes seemed as if the only difficulty was to find poor people enough who would submit to serve as the corpus vile for their charitable treatment.

For it was not a really poor population. The men were seafaring, the women lacemaking, and just well enough off to make dissent doubly attractive as an escape from some of the interfering almsgiving of the place. Over-visiting, criticism of dress, and inquisitorial examinations had made more than one Primitive Methodist, and no severe distress had been so recent as to render the women tolerant of troublesome weekly inspections. The Curtis sisters were, however, regarded as an exception; they were viewed as real gentlefolks, not only by their own tenants, but by all who were conscious of their hereditary claims to respect; they did not care whether hair were long or short, and their benefits were more substantial and reliable than could be looked for from the casual visitors and petty gentry around, so that sundry houses that were forbidden ground to district visitors, were ready to grant them a welcome.

One of these belonged to the most able lacemaker in the place, a hard-working woman, who kept seven little pupils in a sort of cupboard under the staircase, with a window into the back garden, “because,” said she, “they did no work if they looked out into the front, there were so many gapsies;” these gapsies consisting of the very scanty traffic of the further end of Mackarel Lane. For ten hours a day did these children work in a space just wide enough for them to sit, with the two least under the slope of the stairs, permitted no distraction from their bobbins, but invaded by their mistress on the faintest sound of tongues. Into this hotbed of sprigs was admitted a child who had been a special favourite at school, an orphan niece of the head of the establishment. The two brothers had been lost together at sea; and while the one widow became noted for her lace, the other, a stranger to the art, had maintained herself by small millinery, and had not sacrificed her little girl to the Moloch of lace, but had kept her at school to a later age than usual in the place. But the mother died, and the orphan was at once adopted by the aunt, with the resolve to act the truly kind part by her, and break her in to lacemaking. That determination was a great blow to the school visitors; the girls were in general so young, or so stupefied with their work, that an intelligent girl like Lovedy Kelland was no small treasure to them; there were designs of making her a pupil teacher in a few years, and offers and remonstrances rained in upon her aunt. But they had no effect; Mrs. Kelland was persuaded that the child had been spoilt by learning, and in truth poor Lovedy was a refractory scholar; she was too lively to bear the confinement patiently; her mind was too much awake not to rebel against the dulness, and her fingers had not been brought into training early enough. Her incessant tears spoilt her thread, and Mrs. Kelland decided that “she’d never get her bread till she was broke of her buke;” which breaking was attempted by a summary pawning of all poor Lovedy’s reward books. The poor child confided her loss to her young lady teacher at the Sunday school; the young lady, being new, young, and inflammable, reproached Mrs. Kelland with dishonesty and tyranny to the orphan, and in return was nearly frightened out of her wits by such a scolding as only such a woman as the lace mistress could deliver. Then Mr. Touchett tried his hand, and though he did not meet with quite so much violence, all he heard was that she had “given Lovedy the stick for being such a little tod as to complain, when she knew the money for the bukes was put safe away in her money-box. She was not going to the Sunday schule again, not she, to tell stories against her best friends!” And when the next district visitor came that way, the door was shut in her face, with the tract thrown out at the opening, and an intimation in Mrs. Kelland’s shrill voice, that no more bukes were wanted; she got plenty from Miss Curtis.

These bukes from Miss Curtis were sanatory tracts, which Rachel was constantly bestowing, and which on Sundays Mrs. Kelland spelt through, with her finger under the line, in happy ignorance whether the subject were temporal or spiritual, and feeling herself in the exemplary discharge of a Sunday duty. Moreover, old feudal feeling made Rachel be unmolested when she came down twice a week, opened the door of the blackhole under the stairs, and read aloud something religious, something improving, and a bit of a story, following it up by mental arithmetic and a lesson on objects, which seemed to Mrs. Kelland the most arrant nonsense in the world, and to her well-broken scholars was about as interesting as the humming of a blue-bottle fly; but it was poor Lovedy’s one enjoyment, though making such havoc of her work that it was always expiated by extra hours, not on her pillow, but at it.

These visits of Rachel were considered to encourage the Kelland refractoriness, and it was officially intimated that it would be wise to discontinue them, and that “it was thought better” to withdraw from Mrs. Kelland all that direct patronage of her trade, by which the ladies had enabled her to be in some degree independent of the middle-men, who absorbed so much of the profit from the workers. Grace and Rachel, sufficiently old inhabitants to remember the terrible wreck that had left her a struggling widow, felt this a hard, not to say a vindictive decision. They had long been a kind of agents for disposing of her wares at a distance; and, feeling that the woman had received provocation, Grace was not disposed to give her up, while Rachel loudly averred that neither Mr. Touchett nor any of his ladies had any right to interfere, and she should take no notice.

“But,” said Grace, “can we run counter to our clergyman’s direct wishes?”

“Yes, when he steps out of his province. My dear Grace, you grew up in the days of curatolatry, but it won’t do; men are fallible even when they preach in a surplice, and you may be thankful to me that you and Fanny are not both led along in a string in the train of Mr. Touchett’s devotees!”

“I wish I knew what was right to do,” said Grace, quietly, and she remained wishing it after Rachel had said a great deal more; but the upshot of it was, that one day when Grace and Fanny were walking together on the esplanade, they met Mr. Touchett, and Grace said to him, “We have been thinking it over, and we thought, perhaps, you would not wish us not to give any orders to Mrs. Kelland. I know she has behaved very ill; but I don’t see how she is to get on, and she has this child on her hands.”

“I know,” said Mr. Touchett, “but really it was flagrant.”

“Oh,” said Lady Temple, gently, “I dare say she didn’t mean it, and you could not be hard on a widow.”

“Well,” said Mr. Touchett, “Miss Brown was very much put out, and—and—it is a great pity about the child, but I never thought myself that such strong measures would do any good.”

“Then you will not object to her being employed?”

“No, not at all. From a distance, it is not the same thing as close at home; it won’t be an example.”

“Thank you,” said Grace; and “I am so glad,” said Lady Temple; and Mr. Touchett went on his way, lightened of his fear of having let his zealous coadjutors oppress the hard-working, and far more brightened by the sweet smile of requital, but all the time doubtful whether he had been weak. As to the victory, Rachel only laughed, and said, “If it made Grace more comfortable, it was well, except for that acknowledgment of Mr. Touchett’s jurisdiction.”

A few days after, Rachel made her appearance in Mackerel Lane, and announced her intention of consulting Ermine Williams under seal of secrecy. “I have an essay that I wish you to judge of before I send it to the ‘Traveller.’”

“Indeed!” said Ermine, her colour rising. “Would it not be better—”

“Oh, I know what you mean, but don’t scruple on that score. At my age, with a mother like mine, it is simply to avoid teasing and excitement that I am silent.”

“I was going to say I was hardly a fair—”

“Because of your different opinions? But those go for nothing. You are a worthy antagonist, and enter into my views as my mother and sister cannot do, even while you oppose them.”

“But I don’t think I can help you, even if—”

“I don’t want help; I only want you to judge of the composition. In fact, I read it to you that I may hear it myself.”

Ermine resigned herself.

“‘Curatolatry is a species—‘”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Curatolatry. Ah! I thought that would attract attention.”

“But I am afraid the scholars would fall foul of it.”

“Why, have not they just made Mariolatry?”

“Yes; but they are very severe on hybrids between Latin and Greek.”

“It is not worth while to boggle at trifles when one has an expressive term,” said Rachel; “if it turns into English, that is all that is wanted.”

“Would it not be rather a pity if it should turn into English? Might it not be hard to brand with a contemptuous name what does more good than harm?”

“That sickly mixture of flirtation and hero worship, with a religious daub as a salve to the conscience.”

“Laugh it down, and what do you leave? In Miss Austen’s time silly girls ran to balls after militiamen, now, if they run to schools and charities more for the curate’s sake than they quite know, is not the alternative better?”

“It is greater humbug,” said Rachel. “But I knew you would not agree, at least beforehand, it is appreciation that I want.”

Never did Madame de Genlis make a cleverer hit than in the reading of the Genius Phanor’s tragedy in the Palace of Truth. Comically absurd as the inconsistency is of transporting the lecture of a Parisian academician into an enchanted palace, full of genii and fairies of the remotest possible connexion with the Arab jinn, the whole is redeemed by the truth to nature of the sole dupe in the Palace of Truth being the author reading his own works. Ermine was thinking of him all the time. She was under none of the constraint of Phanor’s auditors, though she carried a perpetual palace of truth about with her; she would not have had either fears or compunctions in criticising, if she could. The paper was in the essay style, between argument and sarcasm, something after the model of the Invalid’s Letters; but it was scarcely lightly touched enough, the irony was wormwood, the gravity heavy and sententious, and where there was a just thought or happy hit, it seemed to travel in a road-waggon, and be lost in the rumbling of the wheels. Ermine did not restrain a smile, half of amusement, half of relief, at the self-antidote the paper contained; but the smile passed with the authoress as a tribute to her satire.

“In this age,” she said, “we must use those lighter weapons of wit, or no one will attend.”

“Perhaps,” said Ermine, “if I approve your object, I should tell you you don’t use them lightly.”

“Ah! but I know you don’t approve it. You are not lay woman enough to be impartial, and you belong to the age that was trying the experiment of the hierarchy modified: I to that which has found it will not do. But at least you understand my view; I have made out my case.”

“Yes, I understand your view; but—”

“You don’t sympathize. Of course not; but when it receives its full weight from the printer’s bands, you will see that it will tell. That bit about the weak tea fumes I thought of afterwards, and I am afraid I did not read it well.”

“I remember it; but forgive me if I say first I think the whole is rather too—too lengthy to take.”

“Oh, that is only because manuscript takes long to read aloud. I counted the words, so I can’t be mistaken, at least I collated twenty lines, and multiplied; and it is not so long as the Invalid’s last letter about systematic reading.”

“And then comes my question again, Is good to come of it?”

“That I can’t expect you to see at this time; but it is to be the beginning of a series, exposing the fallacies of woman’s life as at present conducted; and out of these I mean to point the way to more consistent, more independent, better combined exertion. If I can make myself useful with my pen, it will compensate for the being debarred from so many more obvious outlets. I should like to have as much influence over people’s minds as that Invalid for instance, and by earnest effort I know I shall attain it.”

“I—I—” half-laughing and blushing, “I hope you will, for I know you would wish to use it for good; but, to speak plainly, I doubt about the success of this effort, or—or if it ought to succeed.”

“Yes, I know you do,” said Rachel. “No one ever can judge of a manuscript. You have done all I wished you to do, and I value your sincerity. Of course I did not expect praise, since the more telling it is on the opposite side, the less you could like it. I saw you appreciated it.”

And Rachel departed, while Rose crept up to her aunt, asking, “Aunt Ermine, why do you look so very funny? It was very tiresome. Are not you glad it is over?”

“I was thinking, Rose, what a difficult language plain English is sometimes.”

“What, Miss Rachel’s? I couldn’t understand one bit of her long story, except that she did not like weak tea.”

“It was my own that I meant,” said Ermine. “But, Rose, always remember that a person who stands plain speaking from one like me has something very noble and generous in her. Were you here all the time, Rosie? I don’t wonder you were tired.”

“No, Aunt Ermine, I went and told Violetta and Augustus a fairy tale out of my own head.”

“Indeed; and how did they like it?”

“Violetta looked at me all the time, and Augustus gave three winks, so I think he liked it.”

“Appreciated it!” said Aunt Ermine.