Good Mrs Hypocrite/Chapter 1
The Macphersons were a family in no way remarkable.
They were not rich or famous. Their women had been dowered with no special charms; and their men folk had never achieved greatness, nor, for that matter, had it "been thrust upon them."
The world in general was none the better for their existence — or an exalted idea of their own importance, which, perhaps, is a Scotch failing when "forbears," are irreproachable.
The Macpherson "forbears" were, of course — that. They had farmed their own acres, and reared their family in the national belief in porridge, and the kirk, and sound doctrine. They had also done their duty in the matter of whisky and had quarreled often and bitterly with their neighbors, with each other, and the various branches of uncles, aunts, and cousins, that marriage had brought into the family.
Catherine Macpherson was one of the direct descendants.
She was the youngest of a family of brothers and sisters, born and reared in the Old House, as it was called. She had found herself an insignificant unit in a family large enough to make "porridge," an important item in the housekeeping, and quarrelsome enough to render a small house somewhat too lively at times for individual comfort.
Catherine herself was gifted with a fair share of the Macpherson temper, always a notable thing at best, and the said share grew with her growth and increased with her stature, until it threatened to become the most striking force in her mental de- velopment. When she was nineteen, a long indulgence in this same temper had left its effects in a visible imprint of lines about the eyes and mouth, which certainly did not improve her by no means prepos- sessing appearance. The said appearance owed little to Nature, and less to her own ideas of setting it off. The latter consisted in incasing her stiff angular figure in huge crinolines, and wearing her hair in "natural" ringlets.
Her brothers and sisters were by this time scattered abroad and "doing for themselves." The eldest had gone to Australia, at that time a possible El Dorado for adventurous spirits. Some of her sisters had married, and the youngest brother was in a solicitor's office in Edinburgh.
Catherine, therefore, had the home very much to herself, her father having given himself up to the increasing demands on his system for "wee drappies," and her mother having worried, and worked, and fretted herself into a state of chronic ill- health. The youngest daughter, therefore, ruled the household, and managed the one servant, and visited, advised, and generally bothered the tenants on the farms, and, strange to say, won for herself neither praise nor liking, for all her expenditure of time and trouble.
It is a curious fact that an aggressive manner will prejudice people against the very best intentions, and poor Catherine had come into the world handicapped in the race for favor by this unenviable weight. She rubbed every one the wrong way. She had an unlucky knack of treading on the corns of prejudice, and trampling on the delicate growths of love, and charity, and kindliness.
There was no "soft" place in her nature; it was essentially one of aggravation and discontent. Like a female Ishmael, her hand seemed against every one and every one's hand against her; and thus equipped, she started on the journey of life with a grim determination to do the best for herself on every step of that journey.
From the age of nineteen to that of twenty-five she lived at the Old' House, and quarreled with and managed its domestic affairs, to the great trial and bitterness of her parents and the one domestic, whom she ruled with a rod of iron and an array of texts. Even in those days of comparative youth, Catherine Macpherson had found out the benefit of "doctrine" as a weapon in the hand of the weak.
She sat under a minister whose spiritual teaching was drawn from ancient wells of knowledge, and who had wrestled with the Scriptures to such good effect, that he had learnt to hurl them right and left at every argument that met him.
Catherine admired this ability with all the ardor of a would-be disciple. She set herself to imitate it with commendable success. Her store of texts waxed and increased. She conned them in the morning what time she combed her lank, mouse-colored ringlets round her finger and used them during the day as reproof or scorn dictated. She found them of immense service at her father's death-bed, though they brought no comfort to his departing soul, and when her mother followed him to the grave a year later, she marveled that no outspoken testimony of her virtues as a daughter and a Christian ever reached her ears. But neither friend nor relative gave her praise openly, and maybe it was as well she did not hear private opinion on her merits to the effect that she was "ower fond o' ruling folk, and, no doubt, had harried and fashed the puir auld mither into her grave lang before her time."
At twenty-five, therefore, Catherine Macpherson took stock of herself, her possessions, and her chances, and debated what her next course should be.
With regard to herself, her personal appearance left much to be desired. She was not in the least "comely." Even her own favorable opinion led her to distrust that dull-colored hair, those sharp, hard features, that large, ill-tempered mouth, and the incipient mustache which had given her many an hour's uneasiness. Added to this was a figure totally devoid of any grace or roundness or femininity; tall, thin, angular, and gaining nothing from an inherent want of taste in dress.
Indeed, Catherine Macpherson felt that she owed Nature no thanks, for any gifts or graces such as her sex were fairly entitled to, and even texts failed to console her for the utter absence of coloring, fea- ture, or grace, which so peculiarly distinguished her style of beauty.
True, she had the Macpherson eye. It was a cold blue eye, and deeply set in the head, under heavy brows. It rarely grew soft and tender, and in Catherine's case was not unduly beautified by length of lash, or gentleness of expression. The Macpherson eye varied with the Macpherson temperament. Where it found no ideality or beauty, it expressed none, thus displaying all the qualities of an honest purpose, and scorning to be self-delusive.
It seemed to have reached the climax of coldness, and hardness, and impenetrability, in Catherine's case, and, through all her pride in its possession, there hovered in the background a doubt as to whether it did not lack something — a something she had seen in others of her race, but to which she could give no name.
However, such as she was, and with a certain pride in her very uncomeliness, and hardness, and rigorous principles, Catherine Macpherson determined to see what life had in store for her.
The Old House, and its acres of land, and its grouse moor and farmsteads, went by right of entail to her eldest brother. He, however, had no desire to leave Australia yet awhile, and had given instructions to let the place if a tenant could be found. By the same mail came a letter to his sister asking her to come out to Sydney and stay for a while with his wife and himself.
"You have no means to keep yourself," he wrote, "and you'll have to earn your bread some fashion. There's a better chance of doing it here than in the old country. I'll pay half your passage money; I know you've enough for the rest, and I think you'll be able to get a good place as governess or something of that sort. Perhaps you'll marry; there's few enough women here, and a grand chance of squatters and such like, eager and willing enough to take wives."
The Macpherson eye gleamed with a hard, steely glitter over those last words. To marry, to have a house of her own, servants to rule, a husband to manage, bairns, perhaps, to "skelp." All this flashed before Catherine Macpherson in prismatic colors of hope.
Not once even in these imaginings did a softer feeling mingle — no thought of love given and returned — of tender hands at her breast — of little voices lisping her name. No, this would have seemed just " daft nonsense " to Catherine Macpher- son. Sentiment had no place in any cor- ner of her heart, and of love as a precursor to marriage she never even thought.
She read that letter twice, then got to- gether an outfit, composed mainly of her mother's store of linen and her mother's altered gowns, and took her passage in a sailing vessel that left the very next week for Melbourne.
Every life — even the most prosaic — has probably its shred or glimpse of romance.
To Catherine Macpherson that voyage out brought hers. It took the shape of the first mate on board the Caledonia who walked the decks with her, and talked, and even jested with the austere young spinster, in the intervals afforded by a four months' voyage, in such a fashion as assuredly no male creature hitherto had had the courage to do.
But this was Robert Forbes's way, and he could no more help it than many a maid and matron could help succumbing to it.
He teased Catherine Macpherson out of much of her primness, joked at her fashion of hair-dressing until she even abolished the long-cherished ringlets, and succeeded in making her believe that he had fallen in love with her long before the vessel reached Melbourne.
But the fair Catherine nailed him to his colors, insisted on promise and vow, and finally parted from him with an assurance that he had her "word," and that she would willingly wait until he came to claim her.
Robert Forbes never intended to do anything so unpalatable — or disastrous. He let her go, and from that hour gave her neither sign nor word of his existence. She lived on at Sydney for several years, waiting and watching for this tardy lover to reappear. He never did, and another space of time swept Catherine on to the debatable ground of thirty, and she found herself more ill-favored, gaunt and hard- hearted than ever. Her temper had grown worse. She quarreled with her brother and his wife, with her nephews and nieces, with her brother's friends, with the lady who had engaged her as governess (in spite of lack of accomplishments), and, in fact, with every one with whom she came in contact.
Her appearance anywhere was as that of the stormy petrel, so far as storms were concerned. She found it impossible to live peaceably with any one, and to set them "by the ears " was as necessary to her as food and drink. No single suitor offered himself for her hand. Perhaps her temper found too eloquent an exponent in her face. Perhaps the rivalry of hirsute adornment deterred them. But, from whatever cause, she was left unwooed and unwed, even in that land of eager wooers and easily-won husbands. She tried her hand several times at governessing, and made many a child's life a burden, and did her best to break many a tender little heart by rigorous discipline, hard tasks, and cruel treatment. Sometimes she was found out. Then there would be a scene, a display of the Macpherson temper and tongue, and dismissal.
Suddenly she grew tired of Australia, and remembered certain relatives in the old country, whom it behoved her to visit and renew acquaintance with. She packed up her traps, bade good-by to her brother James and his family, who were delighted to see the last of her, and turned up unexpectedly in Edinburgh at the house of a married sister.
At this stage of her existence, Catherine Macpherson's history seemed to become of that monotonous kind that "repeats itself." She went from one relative to another on visits of various length, that always ended disastrously. Then she would fling a score or two of texts at their heads, shake the dust of their dwelling from off her No. 7 boots, and try her luck with another.
At last, she essayed a noble independence of spirit, and took a situation as companion to an old Scotch doctor and his wife. The wife was nearly deaf, and the doctor nearly blind, so she suited them fairly well.
She read papers, and journals, and books of all sorts to the old man, and showed his wife new and intricate stitches in fancy work, and made terrible things in wool by way of adorning the prim drawing-room, and took special interest in a "missionary-basket," for which she cut out the harshest and stiflest calico and flannel into garments for young heathens, whom, fortunately, a kindly climate made independent of her gifts.