Mary Monson

“ The face of Mary Monson was now fully exposed; it being customary to cause female witnesses to remove their hats, in order that the jurors may observe their countenances. And what a countenance it was! Feminine, open, with scarce a trace of the ordinary passions about it, and illuminated from within, as we have already intimated. The girl might have been twenty, though she afterwards stated her age to be a little more than twenty-one—perhaps the most interesting period of a female’s existence. ”

“ It’s a pity that so handsome and so agreeable a young lady should be hanged, Mr. Dunscomb!”
“Timms, you are as shrewd a fellow, in your own way, as I know. Your law does not amount to any great matter, nor do you take hold of the strong points of a case very often; but you perform wonders with the weaker. In the way of an opinion on facts, I know few men more to be relied on. Tell me, then, frankly, what do you think of the guilt or innocence of Mary Monson?” ”

“ We believe in animal magnetism; and cannot pretend to say what is the secret cause of the powerful sympathy that is so often suddenly awakened between persons of different 125sexes, and, in some instances, between those who are of the same sex; but Mary Monson, by that species of instinct that teaches the female where she has awakened an interest livelier than common, and possibly where she has not, was certainly already aware that John Wilmeter did not regard her with the same cool indifference he would have felt towards an ordinary client of his uncle’s. ”

“ As for Mary Monson, she quailed a little before the severe eye of Dunscomb; but education, the accidents of life, and possibly a secret principle of her peculiar temperament, united to stimulate her to maintain her original ground.
“I know not what may be the particular notions of Miss Updyke,” returned this singular being, “but I can feel my own longings. They are all for independence. Men have not dealt fairly by women. Possessing the power, they have made all the laws, fashioned all the opinions of the world, in their own favour. Let a woman err, and she can never rise from her fall ”

“ During the interval between the occurrence of the scene in court that has just been related, and the appearance of Dunscomb at Biberry, the community was rapidly taking sides on the subject of the guilt or innocence of Mary Monson. The windows of the gaol were crowded all day; throngs collecting there to catch glimpses of the extraordinary female, who was rightly enough reported to be living in a species of luxury in so unusual a place, and who was known to play on an instrument that the popular mind was a good deal disposed to regard as sacred. ”

“ Mary Monson trembled a little when sworn; but she had evidently braced her nerves for the trial. Women are very capable of self-command, even in situations as foreign to their habits as this, if they have time to compose themselves, and to come forward under the influence of resolutions deliberately formed. ”

“ Then you think we shall have up-hill work with the defence?”
“Dreadful!—I’ve never known a cause so generally tried out of doors as this. What makes the matter more provoking, Mary Monson might have had it all her own way, if she had been so minded; for, at first, she was popularity itself with all the neighbours. Folks nat’rally like beauty, and elegance, and youth; and Mary has enough of each to make friends anywhere.”
“What! with the ladies?” said Dunscomb, smiling. “Surely not with your sex, Mrs. Gott?” ”

“ If I go to the senate, I intend to introduce a bill to prevent any but citizens getting married. If foreigners want wives, let them be naturalized!”
“You talk like a simpleton! Another reason why you should not think of Mary Monson is that you are unsuited to be her husband?”
“In what particular, I beg leave to ask?”
“Oh! in several. You are both too sharp, and would quarrel about your wit, in the very first month,” returned Mrs. Gott, laughing. “Take my advice, Timms, and cast your eyes on some Duke’s county young woman, who has a natur’ more like your own.” ”

“ Women can listen acutely at such moments; but it commonly exceeds 169their powers to speak. The friends understood each other, as Sarah well knew, and she continued her remarks precisely as if the other had answered them.
“Michael Millington brings strange accounts of Jack’s behaviour at Biberry! He says that he seems to do nothing, think of nothing, talk of nothing, but of the hardship of this Mary Monson’s case.”
“I’m sure it is cruel enough to awaken the pity of a rock,” said Anna Updyke, in a low tone; “a woman, and she a lady, accused of such terrible crimes—murder and arson!” ”

“ There’s that in Mary Monson that can carry anything she pleases. Folks now think her proud and consequential, because she will not just stand at one of the grates and let them look at her a little.”
“I am afraid, Mrs. Gott, your husband has taught you a greater respect for those you call ‘the people,’ than they deserve to receive at your hands.”
“Gott is dreadfully afraid of them——”
“And he is set apart by the laws to see them executed on these very people,” interrupted Dunscomb, with a sneer; “to levy on their possessions, keep the peace, enforce the laws ”

“ He had that sort of regard for Timms which proceeds from a community in practices, and was disposed to regret that a man with whom he had been so long connected, either as an associate or an antagonist, should marry a woman of the pursuits that he firmly believed marked the career of Mary Monson.
397The gentlemen of the bar are no more to be judged by appearances than the rest of mankind. They will wrangle, and seem to be at sword’s points with each other, at one moment ”

“ Forward and backward all in one; that is the way she loves to be wooed. She is a woman, remember that.”
“I must just let my heart speak,” said Anthony, “I cannot twist and turn.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mary, “that is what I mean; but mind that it is your heart.”
They went on talking a little longer; when suddenly the trumpets pealed out again. Mary rose with a look of consternation.
“I must fly,” she said, “her Grace will be starting for the pit directly; and I must be there. Do you follow, Mr. Anthony; I will speak to a servant in the court about you.” ”

“ Mason, "a stupid, awkward country girl Mary is not, and never will be. In point of intellect she is far superior to her sister, and possesses more graceful and lady-like manners. Instead of Ella's being ashamed of her, I fancy it will be just the reverse, unless your daughter's foolish vanity and utter selfishness is soon checked. Pardon me for being thus plain, but in the short time Mary has been with me, I have learned to love her, and my heart already warms towards her as towards a daughter, and I cannot calmly hear her spoken of so contemptuously." ”

“ It is one of my eccentricities, I suppose—like training my cats to perform to the music of my harp. But, if I were your old friend, instead of being only your friend of a few days, I would leave you no peace—I would beg and entreat and persist, as only a woman can persist—until I had made Mary’s gift as close a companion of yours, as your mother’s portrait in the locket there at your watch-chain. While the flag is with you, Mary’s influence is with you; Mary’s love is still binding you by the dear old tie; and Mary and you, after years of separation, will meet again! ”

“ It is useless to feign that we do not understand one another—anything you wish—come back to her Faith perhaps; treat my father better. She—she loves you, I think; and yet dare not—"
"On Ralph's account," put in Beatrice serenely.
"Yes; how did you know? It is on Ralph's account. She cannot forgive that. Can you say anything to her, do you think? Anything to explain? You understand—"
"I understand."
"I do not know how I dare say all this," went on Mary blushing furiously, "but I must thank you too for what you have done for my sister. It is wonderful. I could have done nothing." ”

“ Do not anticipate trouble, Mr. Monson. The realities are fearful enough.’
I smiled at her beseeching look. ‘Lucky for your sister,’ said I, ‘that you are on board. She arrives without a stitch saving what she stands up in, and here she finds your wardrobe, the two-score conveniences of the lady’s toilet table, and a maid on top of it all, with pins and needles and scissors, bodkins and tape—bless me! what a paradise after the “’Liza Robbins.”’ And then I told her how the ‘Shark’ was lost, giving her the yarn as I had it from Finn. ‘Anyway,’ said I, ‘Lady Monson is rescued. ”

“ Under her son’s roof—after the death of his wife—she reigned a supreme power; priding herself alike on her close attention to her domestic duties, and on her privileged communications with angels and spirits. She would hold long colloquys with the spirit of her dead husband before anybody who happened to be present—colloquys which struck the simple spectators mute with terror. To her mystic view, the love union between Mary and me was something too sacred and too beautiful to be tried by the mean and matter-of-fact tests set up by society. ”

“ MARY. It’s only reasons I want. You can give those here.
LEONARD. Mother, talk to her.
MRS. TIMBRELL. You’ve startled me, Mary. It seems very dreadful.
MARY. I’m sorry Ma’am.
TIMBRELL. [To LEONARD.] Confound you, sir, are you going to let your wife go like this?
LEONARD. [He knows in his heart that MARY will not be shaken and his efforts to retain her seem perfunctory.] What do I do? What’s the right thing? Must I call out Truefit? Or assassinate him? Is there such a person? He sounds to me like a myth or a symbol or something. Mary, will you swear that there is a George Truefit? ”

“ The very streets and lanes of Testbridge looked like paradise to Mary in Lon-don. But she never wished herself in the shop again, although almost every night she dreamed of the glad old time when her father was in it with her, and when, although they might not speak from morning to night, their souls kept talking across crowd and counters, and each was always aware of the other's supporting presence.
Longing, however, is not necessarily pain—it may, indeed, be intensest bliss; and, if Mary longed for the freedom of the country, it was not to be miserable that she could not have it. ”

“ And now Mary is as hard as I ever was. Still, the good that lies in that girl of mine----"
"I know it," Ralph cried. "Mary's is, in reality, a beautiful nature. But the fires will go out one by one if the cinders are not cleared away, so that by the time Mary comes to middle age she will be a cold and distant woman with none to love her. This is why I have practically turned her out of house and home. Her proper pride will not permit her to be dependent upon anyone; you may offer her a home here, but she will never accept it. She will elect to go, out into the world and get her own living." ”

“ Mary fancies she detects a slight deprecatory tone in the way he says 'this place.'
'Yes, I suppose it is very different. Horridly dirty, isn't it?
'Not more dirty than a prosperous manufacturing city must inevitably be, and within a mile all round there is the loveliest scenery you can imagine. Our place is about a mile from the city, so the dirt will not annoy you; and you will meet such pleasant people there that you will not mind the smoke. I am sure, Mary, you will come away quite in love with Limeton, and prefer it to this prim old place.'
'Prefer it to Mapleton? ”

“ I think sometimes that people like you are just as intelligent as we are but you’re timid, you daren’t let your thoughts stray, you have secrets from yourselves. Well, mother, I shall have to look to you now Mary’s gone.
MRS. TIMBRELL. I can do nothing for you. You’ve ceased to be a child.
LEONARD. To him—to my father—Yes. Not to you.
MRS. TIMBRELL. Yes. You know too much. You can only pretend to be my child.
LEONARD. I’m to be alone, then. Mary, I shall be quite alone.
MARY. I daresay you’ll pick up somebody.
LEONARD. You’ve no sentiment at all.
MARY. I must go. Good-bye, ma’am. ”

“ For his imagination was all aflame at the thought of Mary. Not only had he been kindled again and again in the old days by poor Anthony's talk, until the woman seemed to him half-deified already; but man after man had repeated the same tale, that she was, in truth, that which her lean cousin of England desired to be thought—a very paragon of women, innocent, holy, undefiled, yet of charm to drive men to their knees before her presence. ”

“ LEONARD. What is it you’re thinking about, Mary. There’s something inscrutable in you. It seems to me that we’re just as uncomfortable as ever. Mother, let’s have a little motherliness or something. I don’t know how it is but I want cheering up. I came from the station most penitentially in a growler—an ancient fourwheeler. It made me think of your father, Mary. How is that good man? Got a job all right? By-the-bye, there’s an extraordinary upset at our place. ”

“ Constance was curled up on Mary's couch, resting after her journey. "I am so happy, Mary. No woman knows anything about it, until she has had it for herself. A man's strength is so wonderful—and Gordon's care of me—oh, Mary, if there were only another man in the world for you like Gordon I should be perfectly content."
It was a fervent gentle echo of Aunt Frances' demand upon her, and Mary suppressing her raging jealousy of the man who had stolen her sister, asked somewhat wistfully, "Can you talk about me, for a minute, and forget that you have a husband?" ”