University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
ISABEL MARLAY.

ISABEL MARLAY was not the niece of our
friend Squire Plausaby, but of his first wife.
Plausaby, Esq., had been the guardian of her small
inheritance in her childhood, and the property had
quite mysteriously suffered from a series of curious
misfortunes: the investments were unlucky; those who borrowed
of the guardian proved worthless, and so did their securities.
Of course the guardian was not to blame, and of course he
handled the money honestly. But people will be suspicious
even of the kindest and most smoothly-speaking men; and the
bland manner and innocent, open countenance of Plausaby, Esq.,
could not save him from the reproaches of uncharitable people.
As he could not prove his innocence, he had no consolation
but that which is ever to be derived from a conscience void
of offence.

Isabel Marlay found herself at an early age without means.
But she had never seen a day of dependence. Deft hands,
infallible taste in matters of dress, invincible cheerfulness,
and swift industry made her always valuable. She had not
been content to live in the house of her aunt, the first Mrs.
Plausaby, as a dependent, and she even refused to remain

in the undefined relation of a member of the family whose
general utility, in some sort, roughly squares the account of
board and clothes at the year's end. Whether or not she
had any suspicions in regard to the transactions of Plausaby,
Esq., in the matter of her patrimony, I do not know. She may
have been actuated by nothing but a desire to have her independence
apparent. Or, she may have enjoyed—as who would
not?—having her own money to spend. At any rate, she made
a definite bargain with her uncle-in-law, by which she took
charge of the sewing in his house, and received each year a
hundred dollars in cash and her board. It was not large pay
for such service as she rendered, but then she preferred the
house of a relative to that of a stranger. When the second
Mrs. Plausaby had come into the house, Mr. Plausaby had been
glad to continue the arrangement, in the hope, perhaps, that
Isa's good taste might modify that lady's love for discordant
gauds.

To Albert Charlton, Isa's life seemed not to be on a very
high key. She had only a common-school education, and the
leisure she had been able to command for general reading was
not very great, nor had the library in the house of Plausaby
been very extensive. She had read a good deal of Matthew
Henry, the “Life and Labors of Mary Lyon” and the “Life of
Isabella Graham,” the “Works of Josephus,” “Hume's History
of England,” and Milton's “Paradise Lost.” She had tried to
read Mrs. Sigourney's “Poems” and Pollok's “Course of Time,”
but had not enjoyed them much. She was not imaginative.
She had plenty of feeling, but no sentiment, for sentiment is
feeling that has been thought over; and her life was too entirely
objective to allow her to think of her own feelings. Her

highest qualities, as Albert inventoried them, were good sense,
good taste, and absolute truthfulness and simplicity of character.
These were the qualities that he saw in her after a
brief acquaintance. They were not striking, and yet they
were qualities that commanded respect. But he looked in
vain for those high ideals of a vocation and a goal that so filled
his own soul. If she read of Mary Lyon, she had no aspiration
to imitate her. Her whole mind seemed full of the ordinary
cares of life. Albert could not abide that anybody should expend
even such abilities as Isa possessed on affairs of raiment
and domestic economy. The very tokens of good taste and
refined feeling in her dress were to him evidences of over-careful
vanity.

But when his mother and Katy had gone out on the morning
after he had overheard Smith Westcott expound his views
on the matter of marriage, Charlton sought Isa Marlay. She
sat sewing in the parlor, as it was called—the common sitting-room
of the house—by the west window. The whole arrangement
of the room was hers; and though Albert was neither
an artist nor a critic in matters of taste, he was, as I have
already indicated, a man of fine susceptibility. He rejoiced in
this susceptibility when it enabled him to appreciate nature.
He repressed it when he found himself vibrating in sympathy
with those arts that had, as he thought, relations with human
weakness and vanity; as, for instance, the arts of music and
dress. But, resist as one may, a man can not fight against his
susceptibilities. And those who can feel the effect of any art
are very many more than those who can practice it or criticise
it. It does not matter that my Bohemian friend's musical abilities
are slender. No man in the great Boston Jubilee got more

out of Johann Strauss, in his “Kunstleben,” that inimitable expression
of inspired vagabondage, than he did. And so, though
Albert Charlton could not have told you what colors would
“go together,” as the ladies say, he could, none the less, always
feel the discord of his mother's dress, as now he felt the beauty
of the room and appreciated the genius of Isa, that had made
so much out of resources so slender. For there were only a
few touch-me-nots in the two vases on the mantel-piece; there
were wild-flowers and prairie-grasses over the picture-frames;
there were asparagus-stalks in the fireplace; there was—well,
there was a tout-ensemble of coolness and delightfulness of freshness
and repose. There was the graceful figure of Isabel by
the window, with the yet dewy grass and the distant rolling,
boundless meadow for a background. And there was in Isabel's
brown calico dress a faultlessness of fit, and a suitableness
of color—a perfect harmony, like that of music. There
was real art, pure and refined, in her dress, as in the arrangement
of the room. Albert was angry with it, while he felt its
effect; it was as though she had set herself there to be admired.
But nothing was further from her thought. The artist works
not for the eyes of others, but for his own, and Isabel Marlay
would have taken not one whit less of pains if she could have
been assured that no eye in the universe would look in upon
that frontier-village parlor.

I said that Charlton was vexed. He was vexed because he
felt a weakness in himself that admired such “gewgaws,” as
he called everything relating to dress or artistic housekeeping.
He rejoiced mentally in the superiority of Helen Minorkey,
who gave her talents to higher themes. And yet he felt a
sense of restfulness in this cool room, where every color was

tuned to harmony with every other. He was struck, too, with
the gracefulness of Isa's figure. Her face was not handsome,
but the good genius that gave her the feeling of an artist must
have molded her own form, and every lithe motion was full of
poetry. You have seen some people who made upon you the
impression that they were beautiful, and yet the beauty was
all in a statuesque figure and a graceful carriage. For it makes
every difference how a face is carried.

The conversation between Charlton and Miss Marlay had
not gone far in the matter of Katy and Smith Westcott until
Albert found that her instincts had set more against the man
than even his convictions. A woman like Isabel Marlay is
never so fine as in her indignation, and there never was any
indignation finer than Isa Marlay's when she spoke of the
sacrifice of such a girl as Katy to such a man as Westcott. In
his admiration of her thorough-going earnestness, Albert forgave
her devotion to domestic pursuits and the arts of dress
and ornamentation. He found sailing with her earnestness
much pleasanter than he had found rowing against it on the
occasion of his battle about the clergy.

“What can I do, Miss Marlay?” Albert did not ask her
what she could do. A self-reliant man at his time of life always
asks first what he himself can do.

“I can not think of anything that anybody can do, with
any hope of success.” Isa's good sense penetrated entirely
through the subject, she saw all the difficulties, she had not
imagination or sentiment enough to delude her practical faculty
with false lights.

“Can not you do something?” asked Charlton, almost
begging.

“I have tried everything. I have spoken to your mother.
I have spoken to Uncle Plausaby. I have begged Katy to
listen to me, but Katy would only feel sorry for him if she
believed he was bad. She can love, but she can't think, and
if she knew him to be the worst man in the Territory she
would marry him to reform him. I did hope that you would
have some influence over her.”

“But Katy is such a child. She won't listen if I talk to
her. Any opposition would only hurry the matter. I wish it
were right to blow out his brains, if he has any, and I suppose
the monkey has.”

“It is a great deal better, Mr. Charlton, to trust in Providence
where we can't do anything without doing wrong.”

“Well, Miss Marlay, I didn't look for cant from you. I
don't believe that God cares. Everything goes on by the almanac
and natural law. The sun sets when the time comes,
no matter who is belated. Girls that are sweet and loving and
trusting, like Katy, have always been and will always be victims
of rakish fools like Smith Westcott. I wish I were an Indian,
and then I could be my own Providence. I would cut short
his career, and make what David said about wicked men being
cut off come true in this case, in the same way as I suppose
David did in the case of the wicked of his day, by cutting
them off himself.”

Isabel was thoroughly shocked with this speech. What
good religious girl would not have been? She told Mr. Charlton
with much plainness of speech that she thought common
modesty might keep him from making such criticisms on
God. She for her part doubted whether all the facts of the
case were known to him. She intimated that there were

many things in God's administration not set down in almanacs,
and she thought that, whatever God might be, a young man
should not be in too great a hurry about arraigning Him for
neglect of duty. I fear it would not contribute much to the
settlement of the very ancient controversy if I should record
all the arguments, which were not fresh or profound. It is
enough that Albert replied sturdily, and that he went away
presently with his vanity piqued by her censures. Not that
he could not answer her reasoning, if it were worthy to be
called reasoning. But he had lost ground in the estimation of
a person whose good sense he could not help respecting, and
the consciousness of this wounded his vanity. And whilst all
she said was courteous, it was vehement as any defense of the
faith is likely to be; he felt, besides, that he had spoken with
rather more of the ex cathedra tone than was proper. A young
man of opinions generally finds it so much easier to impress
people with his tone than with his arguments! But he consoled
himself with the reflection that the average woman—that
word average was a balm for every wound—that the average
woman is always tied to her religion, and intolerant of any
doubts. He was pleased to think that Helen Minorkey was
not intolerant. Of that he felt sure. He did not carry the
analysis any farther, however; he did not ask why Helen was not
intolerant, nor ask whether even intolerance may not sometimes
be more tolerable than indifference. And in spite of his unpleasant
irritation at finding this “average” woman not overawed
by his oracular utterances, nor easily beaten in a controversy,
Albert had a respect for her deeper than ever. There
was something in her anger at Westcott that for a moment
had seemed finer than anything he had seen in the self-possessed
Miss Minorkey. But then she was so weak as to allow her
intellectual conclusions to be influenced by her feelings, and
to be intolerant.

I have said that this thing of falling in love is a very complex
catastrophe. I might say that it is also a very uncertain
one. Since we all of us “rub clothes with fate along the
street,” who knows whether Charlton would not, by this time,
have been in love with Miss Marlay if he had not seen Miss
Minorkey in the stage? If he had not run against her, while
madly chasing a grasshopper? If he had not had a great
curiosity about a question in botany which he could only settle
in her company? And even yet, if he had not had collision
with Isa on the question of Divine Providence? And even
after that collision I will not be sure that the scale might not
have been turned, had it not been that while he was holding
this conversation with Isa Marlay, his mother and sister had
come into the next room. For when he went out they showed
unmistakable pleasure in their faces, and Mrs. Plausaby even
ventured to ask: “Don't you like her, Albert?”

And when the mother tried to persuade him to forego his
visit to the hotel in the evening, he put this and that together.
And when this and that were put together, they combined to
produce a soliloquy:

“Mother and Katy want to make a match for me. As if
they understood me! They want me to marry an average
woman, of course. Pshaw! Isabel Marlay only understands
the `culinary use' of things. My mother knows that she has
a `knack,' and thinks it would be nice for me to have a wife
with a knack. But mother can't judge for me. I ought to
have a wife with ideas. And I don't doubt Plausaby has a

hand in trying to marry off his ward to somebody that won't
make too much fuss about his accounts.”

And so Charlton was put upon studying all the evening, to
find points in which Miss Minorkey's conversation was superior
to Miss Marlay's. And judged as he judged it—as a literary
product—it was not difficult to find an abundant advantage
on her side.