Miss Mackenzie

“ He first asked for Miss Mackenzie, and was told that she was not staying there. Was he thereupon to leave his card and go away? He had told himself that in this pursuit of the heiress he would probably be called upon to dare much, and if he did not begin to show some daring at once, how could he respect himself, or trust to himself for future daring? So he boldly asked for Mrs Mackenzie, and was at once shown into the parlour. ”

“ But now Miss MacKenzie seemed to thaw a little. “I once had dreams of being a professional, but nothing less than being among the stars would have satisfied me. I wished to occupy the same position as a pianist that you fill as a singer, but,” with a touch of bitterness in her voice, “I realized in time that I did not have the qualities. My technique is unassailable, of course, but I lack something in emotion, in poetic imagination, as you will soon discover.”
“Ah, then you are going to be good enough to play for me?” cried Rose, delighted. ”

“ Mariana's solitude in the moated grange was as nothing to hers. In granges, and such like rural retreats, people expect solitude; but Miss Mackenzie had gone to Littlebath to find companionship. Had she been utterly disappointed, and found none, that would have been bad; but she had found it and then lost it. Mariana, in her desolateness, was still waiting for the coming of some one; and so was Miss Mackenzie waiting, though she hardly knew for whom. For me, if I am to live in a moated grange, let it be in the country. ”

“ But God's will be done; God's will be done. I think I had better go now, Mr Rubb. There will be no use in my going to her upstairs again. Tell her from me, with my love, that she shall hear from me when I have seen the lawyer. I will try to come to her, but perhaps I may not be able. Good-bye, Mr Rubb."
"Good-bye, Miss Mackenzie. I hope we shall see each other sometimes."
"Perhaps so. Do what you can to support her. She will want all that her friends can do for her." ”

“ What is a woman worth without it? Don't be angry, Margaret, but I say a woman is worth nothing without it, and Sir John will agree with me if he knows anything about the matter. But, Margaret, why don't you make him buy something? He can't refuse you if you ask him."
If Miss Mackenzie could thereby have provided for all the negro soldiers' orphans in existence, I do not think that she could at that moment have solicited him to make a purchase. ”

“ Then Mr Maguire got up, saying that he should probably do himself the pleasure of calling on Miss Mackenzie at the Cedars, and went his way.
"I wonder what he's after," said Mrs Mackenzie, as soon as the door was shut.
"Perhaps he came to tell her to bear it all with Christian resignation," said Miss Colza; "they always do come when anything's in the wind like that; they like to know everything before anybody else."
"It's my belief he's after her money," said Mrs Mackenzie.
"With such a squint as that!" said Mary Jane; "I wouldn't have him though he was made of money, and I hadn't a farthing." ”

“ They who expect their social hours to be happy hours will be grievously disappointed."
"Are you not happy at Mrs Stumfold's?"
"At Mrs Stumfold's? Yes;—sometimes, that is; but even there I always seem to want something. Miss Mackenzie, has it never occurred to you that the one thing necessary in this life, the one thing—beyond a hope for the next, you know, the one thing is—ah, Miss Mackenzie, what is it?"
"Perhaps you mean a competence," said Miss Mackenzie.
"I mean some one to love," said Mr Maguire. ”

“ As he spoke he looked with all the poetic vigour of his better eye full into Miss Mackenzie's face, and Miss Mackenzie, who then could see nothing of the other eye, felt the effect of the glance somewhat as he intended that she should feel it. When a lady who is thinking about getting married is asked by a gentleman who is frequently in her thoughts whether she does not want some one to love, it is natural that she should presume that he means to be particular ”

“ But Miss Baker, though she manifestly did despise her, promised her some little aid. Miss Todd knew everything and everybody. Might Miss Baker tell Miss Todd? If there was anything wrong, Miss Todd would ferret it out to a certainty. Miss Mackenzie, hanging down her head, said that Miss Baker might tell Miss Todd. Miss Baker, when she left Miss Mackenzie, turned at once into Miss Todd's house, and found her friend at home.
"It surprises me that any woman should be so foolish," said Miss Baker.
"Come, come, my dear, don't you be hard upon her. We have all been foolish in our days. ”

“ Lady Mackenzie, whose husband has ever so many thousands a year, no doubt does it very well. Money, which cannot do everything,—which, if well weighed, cannot in its excess perhaps do much,—can do some things. It will buy diamonds and give grand banquets. But paste diamonds, and banquets which are only would-be grand, are among the poorest imitations to which the world has descended.
"So you really go to Littlebath to-morrow," Mr Rubb said to Miss Mackenzie, when they were again together in the drawing-room. ”

“ Mrs Stumfold had frowned, and the retired coachbuilder's wife had at once snubbed the culprit, and Mr Maguire had openly expressed himself to be uneasy.
"Dearest Miss Mackenzie," he had said, with charitable zeal, "if there has been anything wrong, just beg her pardon, and you will find that everything has been forgotten at once; a more forgiving woman than Mrs Stumfold never lived." ”

“ As the discreet young man, who is desirous of rising in the world, will eschew skittles, and in preference go out to tea at his aunt's house—much more delectable as skittles are to his own heart—so did Miss Mackenzie resolve that it would become her to select Messrs Stumfold and Maguire as her male friends, and to treat Mr Rubb simply as a man of business. She was denying herself skittles and beer, and putting up with tea and an old aunt, because she preferred the proprieties of life to its pleasures. Is it right that she should be blamed for such self-denial? ”

“ Then Miss Mackenzie had to explain that Mr Rubb was not staying with her,—that he had come down about business, and that he was staying at some inn.
"An excellent man of business; I'm sure," said Mr Maguire. "By-the-bye, Miss Mackenzie, if it be not improper to ask, have you any share in the business?" ”

“ Come and sing with us songs of a joyful heart, and let us be glad together. What better can you do, Miss Mackenzie? I don't believe there is a more healthy place in the world than Littlebath, and, considering that the place is fashionable, things are really very reasonable. ”

“ One says he has thrown off all decorum and the other declares himself to be a mass of iniquity. What are two poor old ladies like you and I to do in such company?"
Miss Mackenzie, when she heard Mr Maguire declare himself to be a running sore, was even more angry with him than with Mr Rubb. He, at any rate, should have known better. ”

“ A chilly wind rustled in the hedgerows and blew the white dust in clouds behind the wagonette. Michael became his silent self again and was now filled with apprehensions. All that had seemed so easy to attain was now complicated by the unknown. He would have been glad of Miss Carthew’s company. The green-shaded lamp and creaking harmonium of the seaside lodgings were a dismal end to all that loveliness of wind and silver so soon finished. ”

“ Then they sat leaning against the gate, she idly plucking sun-faded primroses, he brooding upon the nearness of her hand. In such universal placidity it could not be wrong to hold that hand wasting itself amid small energies. Without looking into her eyes, without turning his gaze from the great tranquil water before him, Michael took her hand in his so lightly that save for the pulsing of his heart he scarcely knew he held it. So he sat breathless, enduring pins and needles, tolerating the uncertain pilgrimage of ants rather than move an inch and break the yielding spell which made her his. ”

“ She showed no symptom of wonder at anything, and listened to the disquisitions of Miss Mackenzie and the matron as to the proper adjustment of parts—"bias," "straights," "gathers," "fells," "gussets" and "seams," a whole new language as it unrolled its complexities before her—with complacent indifference.
At last, all the web of cotton being cut up, the time came to go. Miss Mackenzie buttoned up her sealskin coat, and pulling on a pair of warm gloves beckoned Baubie, who rose with alacrity: "Where do your father and mother live?"
"Kennedy's Lodgings, in the Gressmarket, mem." ”

“ They say he's looking out for a wife too, only she must not have a father living, as Mrs Stumfold has. It's astonishing how these parsons pick up all the good things that are going in the way of money." Miss Mackenzie, as she heard this, could not but remember that she might be regarded as a good thing going in the way of money, and became painfully aware that her face betrayed her consciousness.
"You'll have to keep a sharp look out," continued Mr Rubb, giving her a kind caution, as though he were an old familiar friend. ”

“ Every one of you might make progress if you tried. But there is only one of you all who works. That is Miss Mackenzie."
But, all too soon, Rosalind's ten pounds melted away, until they had all gone. And, as there was no more where they had come from, Rosalind's lessons must also come to an end!
"Oh! Mother, can't you do anything to help Rosie?" Nannie cried in piteously beseeching accents the night before Rosalind was to go to the studio for the last time.
"Nannie," answered Mrs. Mackenzie reproachfully, "don't you think I would if I could?"
"Daddy, can you do nothing?" Nannie implored. ”

“ Mr. Mackenzie was something in the city, and had not apparently hit upon a good thing, for there was not much money to spare in the house at Putney. I rather fancy that he was managing clerk to a tea-warehouse, but am not sure upon that point. Mrs. Mackenzie had been a governess, but of course she had not started life as a teacher of small children; no, she had come into the world in an upper room of a pretty country vicarage, where the olive branches grew like stonecrop, and most visitors were in the habit of reminding the vicar of certain lines in the hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm. ”

“ Jenny, when she looked at him full, was aware less of his eyes than of her own, which seemed to her to be kindling in the dry sparks that were radiated by his; and even as she felt scorched by the brain which was thus expressed, her own eyes would melt, as it were, to meet appropriately the liquid softness that succeeded. His lips were never remarkably red, and as the evening advanced they adopted the exact shade of his complexion, which from paleness took on the lifeless monotone of color that is seen in the rain-soaked petal of a pink rose. ”

“ Even Miss Colza's tongue had been silent, and Mr Rubb had found himself unable to carry on any further small talk with Miss Mackenzie. The minds of men and women become so tuned to certain positions, that they go astray and won't act when those positions are confused. Almost every man can talk for fifteen minutes, standing in a drawing-room, before dinner; but where is the man who can do it for an hour? ”

“ He mingled with the slow pace of the men and women on the promenade. They were going backward and forward like flies, meeting for a moment in a quick buzz of colloquy and continuing after a momentary pause their impersonal and recurrent progress. Michael was absorbed in this ceaseless ebb and flow of motion where the sidelong glances of the women, as they brushed his elbow in the passing crowd, gave him no conviction of an individual gaze. ”

“ In this I think she was right; in modern London it does not do for the lion to lie down with the lamb, or for earthenware pipkins to try sailing down the stream with the iron pots. In "Upper Bohemia," owing to the haziness of her right of entry, Mrs. Mackenzie was quite an important person; in the city, owing to various circumstances--shortness of money, most of all--Mrs. Mackenzie was nowhere.
Mrs. Mackenzie had not followed the example of her father and mother with regard to the size of her family; she had only three children, two girls and a boy--Rosalind, Wilfrid, and Nannie. ”

“ Wooed by his friendliness, Jenny began to dance in perfect time, marking with little feet the slow rhythm of the tune.
In scarlet serge dress and cap of scarlet stockinette, she danced to the tinsel melody. Unhampered by anything save the need for self-expression, she expressed the joyousness of a London morning as her feet took the paving-stones all dappled and flecked with shadows of the tall plane tree at the end of Hagworth Street. She was a dainty child, with silvery curls and almond eyes where laughter rippled in a blue so deep you would have vowed they were brown. ”

“ With a light tread she went up stairs: she would not have her mother know that she had overheard the remark made to her father—her mother could not know all, only herself and Don Mackenzie knew her cruel secret; he would never tell, not even Roger, and she could sooner die than let the words pass her lips to any human creature. Girls had gone through terrible things before; but no girl ever had gone through this; no girl could, unless she were like herself, and no girl was like herself, so impetuous, so headlong, so frank that frankness became a sin. ”