Part 31 (1/2)

”Oh!” answered Mary, with a smile, ”one must be careful how one takes liberties with married people. A certain mysterious change seems to pa.s.s over some of them; they are not the same somehow, and you have to make your acquaintance with them all over again from the beginning.”

”I shouldn't think such people's acquaintance worth making over again,”

said Letty.

”How can you tell what it may be worth?” said Mary, ”--they are so different from what they were? Their friends.h.i.+p may now be one that won't change so easily.”

”Ah! don't be hard on me, Mary. I have never ceased to love you.”

”I am _so_ glad!” answered Mary. ”People don't generally take much to me--at least, not to come _near_ me. But you can _be_ friends without _having_ friends,” she added, with a sententiousness she had inherited.

”I don't quite understand you,” said Letty, sadly; ”but, then, I never could quite, you know. Tom finds me very stupid.”

These words strengthened Mary's suspicion, from the first a probability, that all was not going well between the two; but she shrunk from any approach to confidences with _one_ of a married pair.

To have such, she felt instinctively, would be a breach of unity, except, indeed, that were already, and irreparably, broken. To encourage in any married friend the placing of a confidence that excludes the other, is to encourage that friend's self-degradation. But neither was this a fault to which Letty could have been tempted; she loved her Tom too much for it: with all her feebleness, there was in Letty not a little of childlike greatness, born of faith.

But, although Mary would make Letty tell nothing, she was not the less anxious to discover, that she might, if possible, help. She would observe: side-lights often reveal more than direct illumination. It might be for Letty, and not for Mrs. Redmain, she had been sent. He who made time in time would show.

”Are you going to be long in London, Mary?” asked Letty.

”Oh, a long time!” answered Mary, with a loving glance.

Letty's eyes fell, and she looked troubled.

”I am so sorry, Mary,” she said, ”that I can not ask you to come here!

We have only these two rooms, and--and--you see--Mrs. Helmer is not very liberal to Tom, and--because they--don't get on together very well--as I suppose everybody knows--Tom won't--he won't consent to--to--”

”You little goose!” cried Mary; ”you don't think I would come down on you like a devouring dragon, without even letting you know, and finding whether it would suit you!--I have got a situation in London.”

”A situation!” echoed Letty. ”What can you mean, Mary? You haven't left your own shop, and gone into somebody else's?”

”No, not exactly that,” replied Mary, laughing; ”but I have no doubt most people would think that by far the more prudent thing to have done.”

”Then I don't,” said Letty, with a little flash of her old enthusiasm.

”Whatever you do, Mary, I am sure will always be the best.”

”I am glad I have so much of your good opinion, Letty; but I am not sure I shall have it still, when I have told you what I have done.

Indeed, I am not quite sure myself that I have done wisely; but, if I have made a mistake, it is from having listened to love more than to prudence.”

”What!” cried Letty; ”you're married, Mary?”

And here a strange thing, yet the commonest in the world, appeared; had her own marriage proved to Letty the most blessed of fates, she could not have shown more delight at the idea of Mary's. I think men find women a little incomprehensible in this matter of their friends'

marriage: in their largerheartedness, I presume, women are able to hope for their friends, even when they have lost all hope for themselves.

”No,” replied Mary, amused at having thus misled her. ”It is neither so bad nor so good as that. But I was far from comfortable in the shop without my father, and kept thinking how to find a life, more suitable for me. It was not plain to me that my lot was cast there any longer, and one has no right to choose difficulty; for, even if difficulty be the right thing for you, the difficulty you choose can't be the right difficulty. Those that are given to choosing, my father said, are given to regretting. Then it happened that I fell in love--not with a gentleman--don't look like that, Letty--but with a lady; and, as the lady took a small fancy to me at the same time, and wanted to have me about her, here I am.”

”But, surely, that is not a situation fit for one like you, Mary!”

cried Letty, almost in consternation; for, notwithstanding her opposition to her aunt's judgment in the individual case of her friend, Letty's own judgments, where she had any, were mostly of this world. ”I suppose you are a kind of--of--companion to your lady-friend?”