CHAPTER XXVI
JOYCE, being so untrained, had, however, but a poor account to give of her intercession. The Colonel could do nothing without Elizabeth, and his promise to consult his wife and see what steps could be taken did not convey much comfort to the parson’s wife. She listened to Joyce’s account of the manner in which she had fulfilled her commission with a lengthening face. At the end she jumped up and gave the girl a kiss which took Joyce very much by surprise. To this inexperienced Scotch peasant-girl the ways of the English were extravagant and full of demonstration, as are to English persons the manners of ‘foreigners’ in general, both being disposed to believe that to show so much was rather an indication that there was little feeling to show.
‘I am sure you meant it as well as possible,’ she said, ‘but you should have seized an opportunity and spoken to the dear Colonel when there was nobody there. Oh, I am sure you are as good as gold—and perhaps if they will really get up a movement—— But I’ve been promised that so often, I have not much faith in it. I thought you might just whisper a word to your dear father, who thinks all the world of you, and the thing would have been done.’ ‘It is the women,’ continued this oracle, ’as I told you before, who hold back. If we had only the men to deal with, it would be much easier to manage. But the women calculate and reckon up, and they say, “It will be a loss of so much on the year’s income;” or “There is so and so I wanted to buy; if I let him give the money away, I shall have to do without it.” That is how they go on. Whereas the men don’t think; they just put their hands in their pockets, and the thing’s done—or it isn’t done,’ she added, with a sudden smile, looking up in Joyce’s face. ‘Never mind,’ she continued, ‘don’t let us make ourselves unhappy about it. Come and see what I am doing.’ She returned to the corner from which she had sprung up on Joyce’s entrance. ‘Come and I’ll show you my workshop, and how I keep the pot boiling,’ she cried.
The room was divided into two, a larger and a smaller portion, with folding-doors, as is usual in such small habitations; but these doors were always open, and Mrs. Sitwell’s corner was at the farther end, commanding the whole space. Joyce saw with amazement a quantity of small photographs ranged upon the ornate but rather shabby little desk at which her friend worked, and which was covered with sheets of paper, each containing a piece of writing and a number. Mrs. Sitwell took up one of the photographs and handed it to Joyce.
‘Now tell me,’ she said, ‘what would you think was the character of that gentleman, supposing that you were going to marry him, or to make him your friend, or to engage him as your butler? What would you think of him from his face?’
‘I think,’ said Joyce, bewildered, ‘that I should not be—very fond of him: but I don’t know why.’
‘Oh, you dreadful little critic! why shouldn’t you be fond of him, as you say? He is quite nice-looking—better than half the men you see. Now here is what he really is,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, lifting one of the pieces of paper and handing it to Joyce, who read with amazement: ‘No. 310.—This face is that of a man full of strength and character. The brow shows great resolution, the eyes much courage and judgment. The mouth is sensitive, and the nose expresses shrewdness and caution. He will be very decided in action, but never rash; very steady in his affections, but slow in forming any ties. There is a great but suppressed love of art and music in the lines about his eyes.’
‘Well, dear, do not stare at me so; don’t you think, now you look at him again, that it’s all true? or perhaps you would like this one better.’ The second was the photograph of a simpering girl, in that peculiar combination of stare and simper which only photographs give. ‘Now, don’t commit yourself,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, with a laugh. ‘Look at the account of all her perfections before you say anything. “No. 603.—Ethelinda is a young lady of many qualities. Her eyes show great sweetness of disposition. She will be very true, and when she gives her heart, will give it altogether. The lips show a highly sensitive and nervous disposition, feeling too strongly for her own peace. There are also signs of much musical power, and of great constancy in love."’
Joyce put down these two extraordinary literary compositions with something like consternation. ‘It is perhaps stupid of me,’ she said, ‘not to understand.’
‘Oh no; it is not stupid at all. Perhaps you have never seen the Pictorial? It has quite a great circulation, and is very popular. This is a new branch of the answers to correspondents that made the Family Herald such a success. Don’t you know the Answers to Correspondents in the Family Herald? Oh, you must indeed have been brought up out of the world! But the Pictorial is quite in advance of that. If you send your photograph to the editor, you receive next week a description of your character from Myra. Now Myra is me.’
‘Then those—are going into a newspaper,’ said Joyce, looking at the pieces of written paper with a mingling of curiosity and shame.
‘Those—are going into the Pictorial, and they are going to give a great deal of pleasure to various people, and to put a little money into my pocket, which wants it very much,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘Now, what is there to object to in that?’
‘Indeed,’ said Joyce, ‘I was not thinking of objecting. I was only taken by surprise.’
‘Ah!’ cried Mrs. Sitwell, with a little moisture enhancing the keen sparkling of her eyes, ‘that is what you all say, you well-off people, who never knew what it was to want a sovereign! You are surprised at the way we poor unfortunates have to take to make a little money. Why, I would simply do anything for a little money—anything that was not wrong, of course. You don’t know what money means to us. It means clothes for the children and a nursemaid to take care of them, and good food, which they require, and a hundred little things, which you people who never were in want of them never think of.’
‘But I was not accustomed to be rich. I know what it means to have nothing. No,’ Joyce added hurriedly, ‘perhaps that is not true; for when I had nothing I wanted nothing, and that must be the same thing as having everything. I find no difference,’ she said.
‘Then you don’t know anything about it, just the same. The dreadful thing is to have nothing and want a great many things—and this is the case of so many of us. How could we live upon poor Austin’s little pay? People think a clergyman ought to have private means—but where are we to get the private means? We have a little something in my family, but my mother has it for her life. I don’t want my mother to die, who is always so kind to the children, that I may get my little share. It would only be a few hundred pounds, after all. And Austin’s people thought they did enough for him when they gave him his education, as they call it—sending him to Oxford to learn expensive habits. A great deal too much is made of education,’ said the parson’s wife. ‘I don’t think I shall take any trouble about education for my children. They get on better without it, in my opinion.’
This dreadful assertion made Joyce gasp with horror. Not take any trouble about education!—which was the only thing in all the world to take trouble about. But she did not trust herself to say anything, and indeed Mrs. Sitwell did not leave her time.
‘But they shall be comfortable and have things as nice as possible while they are babies,’ cried the parson’s wife; ‘and when I found out that I could do this, I was as pleased as Punch. One goes upon rules, you know—it is not all guess-work; and my opinion is, there is a great deal in it. Austin says that supposing these people had everything in their favour, no bad influences or anything of that kind, then what I find in their faces would be true. Let me see, now. Let me read yours. You have a great deal that is very nice in you, dear. You are of a most generous disposition. You would give anything in the world that you had to give. But you are apt to get frightened, and not to follow it out. And you are musical—I can see it in your eyes.’
‘Indeed, I don’t know anything at all about music.’
‘That has nothing to do with it,’ said Mrs. Sitwell. ‘You would have been if you had known. And you are very sensitive, dear. You put meanings upon what people say, and take offence, or the reverse, when none is meant. You are full of imagination; but you haven’t much courage. You love people very much, or you dislike them very much. You are devoted to them, or else you can’t endure them.’
‘I don’t think I ever do that,’ said Joyce sedately, taking it all with great gravity.
‘Oh, of course you have been modified by education, as Austin says. Nobody is just as nature made them; but that is what you would be if you had been left alone, you know. I’ll write it all out for you when I have a little time. Give me back Ethelinda and No. 310. I have a kind of idea these two simpletons are going to be married, and they want each to know a little more of the other—that is, you know, they want the prophet to agree with them; and say this is the sweetest girl that ever was—and that is the nicest man. And you may be sure that the better you speak of any one, the more you will agree with what they think of themselves. When you say they are musical and intellectual, and all that, they think how wonderful that you should understand them so well! though they may be the stupidest of people that ever were seen.’
‘But——’ Joyce said, with timidity.
‘I don’t want any buts. You would never let any one do anything if you were to carry a “but” with you everywhere. If you heard me say to Sir Sam the soap-boiler what excellent taste he had, and how beautiful his house was, you would think it was wrong perhaps, and put in that “but” of yours. But why? Gillow, who did it all, is supposed to have excellent taste, and poor dear Sir Sam thinks it perfection. And it pleases him to be told so. Why shouldn’t I please him? If I were of his way of thinking, I would admire it too; and don’t you see, when you sympathise with a man, and want to please him, you are of his way of thinking—for the moment,’ the little lady added. ‘Now just wait a minute till I finish off my people,’ she said.
Joyce sat in a bewilderment which had become almost perennial in her mind, and watched the woman of business before her. Mrs. Sitwell took up photograph after photograph, examining each with every appearance of the most conscientious care. She would put down the little portrait, and write a few sentences, looking at it from time to time as a painter might look at his model,—then pausing, biting her lips as if some contradictory feature puzzled her, would take it up again and follow its lines, sometimes with the end of her pen, sometimes with the point of her finger, knitting her brows in the deepest deliberation. ‘I wish people wouldn’t be so much alike,’ she said. ‘I wish they wouldn’t all show the same traits of character. I can’t make all the ladies affectionate and musical, and all the men determined and plucky, can I?—but that’s what they expect, you know. Now here’s one,’ she cried, selecting a photograph, ‘upon whom I shall wreak my rage. She shall be everything she wouldn’t like to be; that will make the others laugh who have got off so much better. I’ll put it as nicely as I can, but she won’t like it. Listen!—“The brows denote much temper, verging upon the sullen, against which I warn Arabella to be on her guard. There is a tendency to envy in the lines of the nose; the thinness of the lips shows an inclination to the use of language which might develop into scolding in later life. The eyes show insensibility to love, which might make her very cruel to her admirers if she has any. Arabella ought to take great care to obtain a proper command of herself, so as to keep these dangerous qualities under. There is a strength in all the lines, which probably will assure her success if she tries; but she will have much to struggle against. There is something in the form of her chin which I suspect to mean love of money, if not avarice; and there seem some traces of greed about the mouth, but of these last I am not quite sure.” There! what do you think of that as a foil? It will make the others more delighted than ever with their own good qualities.’
‘And do you see all that in the face?’
‘Look!’ cried Mrs. Sitwell, placing the photograph before Joyce with a triumphant movement. It was a heavy, unattractive face, such as hang by dozens in the frames of poor photographers, and are accepted by the subjects with that curious human humility which mingles so strangely with human vanity, and teaches us to be complacent about anything which is our own. The parson’s wife snatched it back and threw it among the little heap on the table. ‘Now I have done for to-day,’ she said; ‘and you know you are going with me round my district. Don’t look so miserable about Arabella; I have sacrificed her to the satisfaction of the others—the greatest happiness of the greatest number, don’t you know? But all the same, it’s all there—every word’s true. I’ve no more doubt she’s a nasty, ill-speaking, ill-tempered toad, than I have that you are the nicest girl I know—only it doesn’t always do to say it. If there were many unfavourable ones, inquirers would fall off. I give them one now and then to show what I can do when I think proper. Come along. We’ll take a look at the children first, and then we’ll go—and forget that there ever was a cheap photograph done. Oh, how I loathe them all!’ Mrs. Sitwell said.
They went upstairs accordingly to see the children, of whom there were three, the youngest being a baby of some seven or eight months old. ‘They are not fit to be seen,’ said the nursemaid, who was maintained by those photographs.
‘They have got their nursery overalls on, and not very much underneath,’ said their mother. ‘We keep our swell things for swell occasions. But look at those legs!’ Joyce was not deeply learned in babies’ legs, her experience lying among elder children. But there are few women to whom the round, soft, infantine limbs—‘the flesh of a little child,’ as the Old Testament writer says, when he wants to describe perfect health and freshness—have not a charm, and she was able to admire and praise to the mother’s full content. ‘Little Augustine—we give him his full name to distinguish him from his father, and also because of the church—is really wonderfully clever, though I say it that shouldn’t,’ said Mrs. Sitwell; ‘and little May is the most perfect little mother! You should see her taking care of baby! Do you know, I was at my Characters two days after that boy was born. I couldn’t afford to lose a week! I sat up in bed and did them. Don’t you think it was clever of me?’ she said, with a laugh, as they went downstairs—‘and never did me the least harm.’ The rapid succession of aspects in which this little person disclosed herself took away Joyce’s breath. Her mind was of slower action than that of her new friend. She had not been able to settle with herself what she thought of the photographs and the Pictorial and the sacrifice of the ugly Arabella, when her companion flashed round upon her in the capacity of the devoted and admiring mother, which softened her sharp voice, and lit up her face with love and sweetness.
Joyce had further surprising experiences to go through in the district, to which she now accompanied the parson’s wife, and where everything was new to her. She thought within herself, if the minister’s wife had fluttered into her granny’s cottage in the same way and stirred up everything, that the reception Janet would have given her would have been far from agreeable. Yet probably the minister’s wife had more means of help than Mrs. Sitwell, and the poor women whom she visited more actual money in the shape of wages than Janet had ever possessed. Joyce felt herself retire with a shiver, feeling that quick resentment must follow, when the charitable inquisitor put questions of a more than usually intimate character—but no such result appeared. And there could be no doubt about the practical advantage and thorough sympathy of the visitor. She had a basket in her hand, out of which came sundry little gifts, and her suggestions were boundless. ‘I have some old frocks of my boy’s that would just do for that little man. Are you sure you can mend them and make them up for him?’
‘Well, ma’am, I could try,’ the poor woman would say, with a curtsey.
‘Oh, I don’t believe in trying unless you know how to do it,’ said the parson’s wife; ‘come up to my house at six, and bring the child, and I’ll fit them on him, and show you how. You ought to go to the mothers’ meeting, where they will show you how to cut out and put things together. It would be so useful to you with all your children.’ ‘Well, Mrs. Smith,’ she ran on, darting in next door, ‘I hope things are going on all right with you. Now he’s taken the pledge, you ought to be so much more comfortable. But, dear me! you are in as great a muddle as ever.’
‘He’s took the pledge, but he’s not kep’ it,’ said the woman sullenly.
‘I don’t wonder, if he has only a house like this to come home to. Why, if I were in a cotton gown and a big apron like you, I’d have it all spick and span in an hour. I wish I could turn to this moment,’ cried the little lady, quivering with energy, ‘and show you what sort of a place a man should come home to. Poor Mr. Smith, I don’t wonder he’s broken the pledge. Why, that poor child makes my heart ache. When did it have its face washed?’
‘I haven’t the heart to begin,’ said Mrs. Smith, subsiding into feeble crying— ‘I’m that ill and weak. And I don’t never get on with anything.’
‘Poor thing! is that so? I thought you couldn’t be well, you’re so helpless. I’ll send the mission woman tomorrow morning to put all straight for you, and you’d better go to the doctor tomorrow and let’s get at the bottom of it. If you’re ill we must get you set right. I’ll come and see what the doctor says, and I’ll send you something down for the man’s supper. But for goodness’ sake wash the baby’s face and get the place swept up a little before he comes in. That can’t hurt you. Come, you mustn’t lose heart—we’ll see you through it,’ said the parson’s wife.
There could not be a better parson’s wife, Joyce acknowledged, strange though to her the type was. She petted and humoured the sick children as if she had been their mother. She sat by a bedridden woman and listened to a long rambling story about her illness and all its details, with every appearance of interest and unquestionable patience. And when the round was got through, she skipped out of the last house with the satisfaction of a child to have got its task over. ‘Now let’s have a run down to the river to see the boats, and then home to tea. You are going to stay with us for tea? I want a good fast nice walk to blow all the cobwebs out of my head.’
‘But you must be tired. And it must make your heart sore.’
‘You say that sore in such a pathetic way,’ said Mrs. Sitwell, laughing and mimicking Joyce with her soft, low-toned, Scotch voice—an action which Joyce only detected after a minute or two, and which made her flush with a troubled sense of being open to ridicule. The sensation of being laughed at was also a thing to which she was entirely unaccustomed. ‘But you can’t help them unless you see what they want,’ the parson’s wife went on. ‘And as half of them will cheat you if they can, and you must find out the truth from your own observation, not from what they tell you, you must simply put your heart in your pocket, and think nothing of its being sore. And as for being tired, I’m never tired, I have so many different things to do. If they were the same, I should die of it. We are going to have some fun to-night—we are going to have “Angels ever Bright and Fair” to meet you. Oh! don’t you know what I mean by “Angels ever Bright and Fair”? I mean Mr. Bright, our curate. He is the best little man in the world, and he is so pleased you agree with him, only putting it so much more nicely.’ Then the little mimic changed her tone, and was more Bright than Mr. Bright himself. ‘He shall sing that song of his for you, and he will try to make a little mild love to you, and it will all be great fun. But first let us go on to the bridge and have a look at the boats.’