Borderland

Roger Camm, in the meantime, had carried himself, with his roll of music in his hand, to see his betrothed at her father’s house, and was having a less delightful time of it, perhaps, than Michael pictured to himself.

The Dixon ménage had in no way fallen off, either in substantial internal comfort or in outward vulgarity and pretentiousness. Mrs. Dixon was even more bent upon rising in the world than her husband: he still adhered to the legitimate means by which a man may get on, by steady attention to his business and judicious retail impositions, which, when counted up at the end of the year, generally amounted to a nice little wholesale sum. Mrs. Dixon had, however, advanced in breadth of view as years had passed. She held by the doctrine that children were bound to help their parents, and she looked to Ada to help them in pushing the family fortunes.

Mr. Dixon was what himself and his neighbours called a warm man, but he was cautious about bragging of his comfortableness and his competence. He looked the brag instead of speaking it. He had exalted views as to his own position and importance, but they were tempered by a strong mixture of the strictest and sternest common sense.

Ada had returned to them just before she was seventeen, nearly two years ago, a finished young lady, playing the piano, singing, drawing (from anything but nature), and with a smattering of execrable French. She had a thousand airs and graces, a fine contempt for her father’s business, and a meritorious sense of shame whenever it was mentioned in her hearing, and she was exceedingly and undeniably pretty.

There had been great discussions as to the part Ada was to take in the establishment when she left school. Mr. Dixon fell in with the wifely resolve that their child should never go behind the counter—he quite understood that she was neither designed nor finished for anything of the kind. But his transports in other respects fell short of those of his consort.

‘I don’t see,’ he observed, after Ada had been a few months at home, ‘that she does much that’s useful, or ever goes into the kitchen, or makes a pudding’ (infallible criterion of feminine value and worth to a certain order of masculine mind), ‘or her own clothes; and yet she often seems to me to have a deal of time on her hands that she doesn’t quite know what to do with; and as for money, she has no notion of the value of it. It’s awful.’

‘And how should she, I should like to know?’ asked Mrs. Dixon, indignantly. ‘A child like her! She’ll learn fast enough. And then I expect her to marry well. I don’t know who ought to if she ought not.’

‘You have to marry very high up indeed to have no need ever to think of money or housekeeping.’

‘I shall teach her what’s necessary, of course. And you wrong her, Dixon, when you say she does no dressmaking. I’m sure she’s most industrious. The time she spends in her room, altering things, and trying them on—both hats and bonnets, and dresses too. If you could see her, you’d say no more.’

‘Perhaps I should be too much astonished,’ said Dixon, with a gleam of his native Yorkshire shrewdness. ‘There’s such a thing as thinking too much of dress, and I’m afraid our Ada——’

‘Drat the man!’ said Mrs. Dixon, very sharply. ‘Will nothing satisfy him? First he grumbles that she doesn’t do her dressmaking, and then he grumbles that she does. It’s just like a man. Either they are up in the clouds, or they are down in the depths, or——’

‘That’s the shop,’ said Mr. Dixon, feigning to hear the bell, and alertly running away.

‘Can’t he see?’ Mrs. Dixon said, within herself, when she was left alone. ‘Ada will marry a gentleman, of course. She’s as pretty as she can be, and a wonderful taste in dress, and a perfect lady in manners, and with Miss Wynter for her friend, and constantly going up to see her. Miss Wynter sees the best of society. Besides, I’ve seen the gentlemen look at her, many a time. Didn’t I hear Mr. Gilbert Langstroth, the very last time he was here, say to her, quite respectfully, “Why, Miss Dixon, I wondered what beauty had taken up her winter quarters in Bradstane”? And Dixon pretending that Mr. Langstroth is always sneering at people, and that he would never have said such a thing to any lady, or anywhere where it could be taken seriously! And him that sees such high society in London! And Mr. Askam—didn’t he say to me, “How’s your lovely daughter, Mrs. Dixon? I hear she’s turning all the young men’s heads”? It’s true Mr. Askam has a free and easy way with him, and they say he means no good by any girl he pays compliments to; but then it was me he spoke to—not Ada. Straws show which way the wind’s blowing, and I say there’s no knowing what may happen.’

Time passed, and neither of the gentlemen whom Mrs. Dixon had thought of became more marked in their attentions. Nay, what with Ada’s magnificence, and the scarcity of matches worthy her consideration, there were even mortifications in store for the maternal ambition. It was a distinct if not an acknowledged mortification when Mary Metcalfe, a quiet-looking girl, with three sisters under her—such a family of them,—a girl with no beauty to boast of, and not a scrap of fashionable education; a girl Ada’s own age to a day, and who had once been her playfellow—got engaged to one of the most well-to-do young farmers in all the country round. Not that Ada would have listened for a moment to any farmer but a gentleman-farmer, and of course young Simpson would never have had the audacity to ask her. (Whether from bashfulness or other reason, it is quite certain that young Simpson never did ask her.) And yet, it was distinctly mortifying to sit in one’s pew, and hear Mr. Johnson read out the banns of James Simpson and Mary Metcalfe. No one grudged Mary a good husband, poor girl; but Ada—it really seemed as if, in the proper order of things, Ada should have come first.

While the coming gentleman of high degree tarried, Roger Camm appeared upon the scene, and very soon made it manifest that he had the audacity, not only to love, but to declare himself. Ada, to Mrs. Dixon’s severe disappointment, was much pleased, charmed, nay, self-complacent. Mrs. Dixon alone was really against the match, saying many disparaging things of the suitor’s appearance, position, and prospects, and of everything connected with him; and persisting, with the tenacity of a weak and vain woman about her favourite object, that if they would only wait, Ada would do much better.

Mr. Dixon was very firm.

‘Ada could not do much better,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have wished a better husband for her: he’s strong, and he’s clever, and he knows what he is about. They trust him absolutely, his employers do. He’s making an uncommonly good thing out of those jute factories down the river, and if he isn’t a partner in the concern within a few years, my name is not Simon Dixon. I wouldn’t force the girl, but she tells me she wants him, and if so she shall have him; and thankful I am for her to do so well. So let’s hear no more about it.’

No more was said about it, openly; but Mrs. Dixon rebelled in secret. She knew Dixon too well to oppose him overtly, but she thought to herself that Ada and Roger were not married yet. She disliked him heartily: his awkward gait, his rough ways; his habit of laughing at her notions about gentility; the queer, rude things he said. And, above all, he galled her by insisting upon calling himself a working man, and telling Ada how she was going to be a working man’s wife.

‘As if I brought her up for that!’ the mother indignantly thought. He was just a bear, she felt, and about as fit as a bear to marry their Ada.

The engagement had now been going on for six months, and the marriage, it was thought, should not take place for another year. Roger did not rebel against this. Loving Ada with his whole soul, and as unselfishly as man could love, he yet saw very clearly that her love for him was not as his love for her. He was sure that gentleness, and kindness, and the educating influence of companionship and gradually growing sympathy, would teach her this love—as he had said to Michael, he had to educate her in some things (in the very art or nature of unselfish love, could he but have known it); and with a kind of sublime patience and sublime blindness, which might have been ridiculous if they had not been utterly pure of selfishness, he calmly set himself to wait out the year that had yet to elapse, and another after it, if necessary, and in that time to teach Ada to love him as he loved her. The process was not an exhilarating one; the effort was based upon the assumption of an impossibility—the assumption, namely, that such love can be taught. But Roger did not know this.

Just now he and Ada had found a pastime in which both had something in common. They were rehearsing songs for a concert at which the amateur talent of the neighbourhood was to display itself for the benefit of the church schools, and incidentally for the pride and delight of its own soul and the edification of the neighbourhood at large. This great event always took place in the month of December, and on this occasion Ada was for the first time to appear on the platform. She was to sing in a duet with her patroness, Miss Wynter, and Roger was to play the accompaniment for them.

Despite this congenial occupation, Roger and his betrothed this evening had several differences of opinion. Ada was excited about her visit to Balder Hall, related every incident that had occurred, and every word that had been spoken there after her own arrival upon the scene; dwelling upon them with persistency—describing minutely Miss Askam’s appearance, voice, and gestures, and especially her graciousness in coming and standing by her, Ada Dixon, while she sang. Also Magdalen’s dress, and Otho’s long conversation with her, and the new-fashioned table-covers which Miss Wynter had on her small tea-table. All this was inexpressibly galling to Roger, who hated what he called ‘that lot,’ with an uncompromising scorn. He would have had Ada stand as coolly aloof from them as he did himself, but she would not. Balder Hall and its inmates and visitors were to him the abode of a false woman, unworthy of consideration, and the rendezvous of her intimates. To Ada, on the contrary, Balder Hall was the fairy palace where, to speak metaphorically, the roofs were of gold and the windows of diamonds; the woman in it was her ideal of beauty, elegance, fashion, and superiority in general, and the woman’s friends and acquaintances were other bright apparitions belonging to the same enchanted sphere. She was very eloquent to-night, partly because she wished to provoke Roger, partly because her mind was quite filled with the afternoon’s entertainment. He could, as he said, get neither rhyme nor reason from her, and when he returned to the Red Gables, earlier than usual, there was a cloud on his brow.