Miss Mackenzie. Anthony Trollope

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СКАЧАТЬ pressed her hand very kindly.

      "I'm so sorry," Miss Mackenzie had uttered.

      "Not in the least," he replied. "I knew you couldn't know, and therefore we ventured to wait a few minutes. The time hasn't been lost, as Mr. Maguire has treated us to a theological argument of great weight."

      Then all the company laughed, and Miss Mackenzie perceived that Mr. Stumfold could joke in his way. She was introduced to Mr. Maguire, who also pressed her hand; and then Miss Baker came and sat by her side. There was, however, at that moment no time for conversation. The prayer was begun immediately, Mr. Stumfold taking this duty himself. Then Mr. Maguire read half a chapter in the Bible, and after that Mr. Stumfold explained it. Two ladies asked Mr. Stumfold questions with great pertinacity, and these questions Mr. Stumfold answered very freely, walking about the room the while, and laughing often as he submitted himself to their interrogations. And Miss Mackenzie was much astonished at the special freedom of his manner—how he spoke of St. Paul as Paul, declaring the saint to have been a good fellow; how he said he liked Luke better than Matthew, and how he named even a holier name than these with infinite ease and an accustomed familiarity which seemed to delight the other ladies; but which at first shocked her in her ignorance.

      "But I'm not going to have anything more to say to Peter and Paul at present," he declared at last. "You'd keep me here all night, and the tea will be spoilt."

      Then they all laughed again at the absurd idea of this great and good man preferring his food—his food of this world—to that other food which it was his special business to dispense. There is nothing which the Stumfoldian ladies of Littlebath liked so much as these little jokes which bordered on the profanity of the outer world, which made them feel themselves to be almost as funny as the sinners, and gave them a slight taste, as it were, of the pleasures of iniquity.

      "Wine maketh glad the heart of woman, Mrs. Jones," Mr. Stumfold would say as he filled for the second time the glass of some old lady of his set; and the old lady would chirrup and wink, and feel that things were going almost as jollily with her as they did with that wicked Mrs. Smith, who spent every night of her life playing cards, or as they had done with that horrid Mrs. Brown, of whom such terrible things were occasionally whispered when two or three ladies found themselves sufficiently private to whisper them; that things were going almost as pleasant here in this world, although accompanied by so much safety as to the future in her own case, and so much danger in those other cases! I think it was this aptitude for feminine rakishness which, more than any of his great virtues, more even than his indomitable industry, made Mr. Stumfold the most popular man in Littlebath. A dozen ladies on the present occasion skipped away to the tea-table in the back drawing-room with a delighted alacrity, which was all owing to the unceremonious treatment which St. Peter and St. Paul had received from their pastor.

      Miss Mackenzie had just found time to cast an eye round the room and examine the scene of Mr. Stumfold's pleasantries while Mr. Maguire was reading. She saw that there were only three gentlemen there besides the two clergymen. There was a very old man who sat close wedged in between Mrs. Stumfold and another lady, by whose joint dresses he was almost obliterated. This was Mr. Peters, a retired attorney. He was Mrs. Stumfold's father, and from his coffers had come the superfluities of comfort which Miss Mackenzie saw around her. Rumour, even among the saintly people of Littlebath, said that Mr. Peters had been a sharp practitioner in his early days;—that he had been successful in his labours was admitted by all.

      "No doubt he has repented," Miss Baker said one day to Miss Todd.

      "And if he has not, he has forgotten all about it, which generally means the same thing," Miss Todd had answered.

      Mr. Peters was now very old, and I am disposed to think he had forgotten all about it.

      The other two gentlemen were both young, and they stood very high in the graces of all the company there assembled. They were high in the graces of Mr. Stumfold, but higher still in the graces of Mrs. Stumfold, and were almost worshipped by one or two other ladies whose powers of external adoration were not diminished by the possession of husbands. They were, both of them, young men who had settled themselves for a time at Littlebath that they might be near Mr. Stumfold, and had sufficient of worldly wealth to enable them to pass their time in semi-clerical pursuits.

      Mr. Frigidy, the elder, intended at some time to go into the Church, but had not as yet made sufficient progress in his studies to justify him in hoping that he could pass a bishop's examination. His friends told him of Islington and St. Bees, of Durham, Birkenhead, and other places where the thing could be done for him; but he hesitated, fearing whether he might be able to pass even the initiatory gates of Islington. He was a good young man, at peace with all the world—except Mr. Startup. With Mr. Startup the veracious chronicler does not dare to assert that Mr. Frigidy was at peace. Now Mr. Startup was the other young man whom Miss Mackenzie saw in that room.

      Mr. Startup was also a very good young man, but he was of a fiery calibre, whereas Frigidy was naturally mild. Startup was already an open-air preacher, whereas Frigidy lacked nerve to speak a word above his breath. Startup was not a clergyman because certain scruples impeded and prevented him, while in the bosom of Frigidy there existed no desire so strong as that of having the word reverend attached to his name. Startup, though he was younger than Frigidy, could talk to seven ladies at once with ease, but Frigidy could not talk to one without much assistance from that lady herself. The consequence of this was that Mr. Frigidy could not bring himself to love Mr. Startup—could not enable himself to justify a veracious chronicler in saying that he was at peace with all the world, Startup included.

      The ladies were too many for Miss Mackenzie to notice them specially as she sat listening to Mr. Maguire's impressive voice. Mr. Maguire she did notice, and found him to be the possessor of a good figure, of a fine head of jet black hair, of a perfect set of white teeth, of whiskers which were also black and very fine, but streaked here and there with a grey hair—and of the most terrible squint in his right eye which ever disfigured a face that in all other respects was fitted for an Apollo. So egregious was the squint that Miss Mackenzie could not keep herself from regarding it, even while Mr. Stumfold was expounding. Had she looked Mr. Maguire full in the face at the beginning, I do not think it would so much have mattered to her; but she had seen first the back of his head, and then his profile, and had unfortunately formed a strong opinion as to his almost perfect beauty. When, therefore, the defective eye was disclosed to her, her feelings were moved in a more than ordinary manner. How was it that a man graced with such a head, with such a mouth and chin and forehead, nay, with such a left eye, could be cursed with such a right eye! She was still thinking of this when the frisky movement into the tea-room took place around her.

      When at this moment Mr. Stumfold offered her his arm to conduct her through the folding doors, this condescension on his part almost confounded her. The other ladies knew that he always did so to a newcomer, and therefore thought less of it. No other gentleman took any other lady, but she was led up to a special seat—a seat of honour as it were, at the left hand side of a huge silver kettle. Immediately before the kettle sat Mrs. Stumfold. Immediately before another kettle, at another table, sat Miss Peters, a sister of Mrs. Stumfold's. The back drawing-room in which they were congregated was larger than the other, and opened behind into a pretty garden. Mr. Stumfold's lines in falling thus among the Peters, had fallen to him in pleasant places. On the other side of Miss Mackenzie sat Miss Baker, and on the other side of Mrs. Stumfold stood Mr. Startup, talking aloud and administering the full tea-cups with a conscious grace. Mr. Stumfold and Mr. Frigidy were at the other table, and Mr. Maguire was occupied in passing promiscuously from one to the other. Miss Mackenzie wished with all her heart that he would seat himself somewhere with his face turned away from her, for she found it impossible to avert her eyes from his eye. But he was always there, before her sight, and she began to feel that he was an evil spirit—her evil spirit, and that he would be too many for her.

      Before anybody else was СКАЧАТЬ