Good Mrs Hypocrite

Front matter

Good Mrs. Hypocrite

A Study in Self-righteousness

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.

Chapter 2

It was while in Edinburgh, and staying under the roof of Dr. Scott, that the great event of Catherine Macpherson's life happened.

At that time a great wave of religious feeling was sweeping over the country. It had taken its rise in America, and then flowed in a triumphant stream throughout Great Britain.

It was largely concerned with mission meetings, outdoor services, the playing of portable harmoniums, and the singing of hymns, set to popular tunes. It may or may not have done good. It claimed to be "awakening." So far as noise went, it certainly was. However, it caught up young and old in its froth of enthusiasm, and swept them safely to the shores of salvation. Among those captured converts was Catherine Macpherson. She had "got religion," and trumpeted everywhere the glorious news that she was "saved."

In this new phase of her existence, she became rather more of a nuisance to all who knew her than she had yet contrived to be. She erected a pinnacle of self-excellence, and set herself upon it, and called on every one to behold her, and talked "texts " more violently than ever, and pored over dry volumes of theology, and expounded the Scriptures, in her own fashion, to the great edification of herself and others like her, and the discomfiture of less perfect and assured mortals.

Such an intolerable affliction did she now become that even the blind doctor could not stand her, and, in a fit of sarcastic petulance, he told her that a heaven peopled by such " saints," as she chose to call herself, would be a place calculated to make most people look with no unfavorable eye on its much abused neighbor.

This speech was too trying for even the Macpherson temper. A hailstorm of texts. made the poor old doctor mournfully envious of his wife, placidly knitting a woolen comforter for his neck throughout the controversy. But Catherine left there and then, having " said her say," and taken good care to get her salary paid to the last farthing.

When next heard of she had joined a Christian sisterhood — an institution founded by a rich old maiden lady for such of her sex as loved good work, and did not shrink from giving time, money, and ability, to the poor, and suffering in the great world of London.

This sisterhood, headed by an excellent, but narrow-minded, deaconess, and supported by a branch army of minor deaconesses, sisters, and nurses, afforded to an unbiased mind the noble spectacle of an army of women working together of their own free will for the benefit of the unfortunate. It amalgamated with the Salvation Army, with all classes of Methodists, street preachers, and outdoor missions. It did hospital work in the East End, and proselytized in the West. It preached and sang and lectured in season and out of season, and to Catherine Mac- pherson it seemed the very noblest and most self-denying work that any saved and zealous Christian could possibly undertake. So she undertook it.

There was a good deal of renunciation required in the matter of hair-dressing and clothing. No religious community has ever yet combined what is pleasing to the eye with — principles. So the new convert had to dress her hair in severe bands, to gown herself in stiff black garments, to wear a bonnet that made even a pretty face look plain, and a plain one simply hideous.

But it was all for a good object, and the mortifying of the old Adam in unregenerate souls.

Catherine Macpherson's soul soared above the petty scruples of female vanity. She joined the sisterhood, adopted their strange garb, banded her hair severely on either side of her face, used a depilatory, and became a female missionary to the unchristian savages of the East End.

• • • • •

It may be possible for a community of men to dwell together in brotherly love. It is rarely, if ever, possible for a community of women.

The "Book of Convent Life," were it allowed to be published, would furnish many striking illustrations of this fact. As it is, the little that has leaked out, in the confessions of recalcitrant novices and refractory nuns, shows plainly that a sisterhood is not quite the little "heaven on earth" its superiors and founders would have the world believe.

The special sisterhood to which Catherine Macpherson belonged was a somewhat mixed and refractory one. It was not ignorant of jealousy and animosity — it held spiteful loves as well as time-serving friendships. It rang with mean squabbles and petty plottings, as well as with psalms of penitence and hymns of praise. It gave the head deaconess a world of trouble to manage, and offered to visiting clergy and helpful curates a striking proof of the reality of Christian professions.

It is hardly necessary to say that that particular branch of the sisterhood to which Catherine Macpherson belonged was soon set in flames on all sides by the new fire-brand who had flung herself into its midst. While professing humility and obedience, that estimable virgin had no intention of obeying any authority but her own.

This led to complications. Bickerings, and squabblings, equally dishonorable to piety and profession, were of constant occurrence. But Catherine found texts even for this defensive attitude, and the deaconess could only display her authority by a reprimand, and the suggestion that she should take her zeal and her Christian principles to another section of the institution.

As the moon in its orbit, so Catherine Macpherson moved through a varied circle of works and services, leaving behind her everywhere the ill-savor of her moral obliquity. She was always right — always strictly just in her dealings — always a self-denying Christian, martyred by the ill-will or opinions of others! No one could shake her belief in her own inestimable virtues. Besides, was she not saved?

Matters became too serious to ignore; and for peace sake the head deaconess at last gave Catherine Macpherson an appointment in an out-of-the-way district. It was connected with a mission in the neighborhood of Barnes. It gave her an independent position and two rooms to herself; a good deal of reading and teaching and harmonium practise; a class of adults to pray and sing with; and a fair amount of district visiting, which her soul loved. For there was no task so delightful to Catherine Macpherson as that of harrowing her neighbor's vineyard with the plowshare of her own rabid religious convictions. She worried and badgered the poor, the sick, and the dying, as only a narrow-minded and self-righteous zealot can worry and persecute. Through all the phases of her varied life, her career had been signalized by a want of tact or delicacy in every duty she undertook. It was too late now to learn, or even to adopt, these virtues. She had grown so used to deliberately deceiving herself that it would have needed almost a miracle to open her eyes to that faculty of self-knowledge, of which her national poet so eloquently sings.

Bven an archangel would have had a hard task to persuade Catherine Macpherson that she was not a saved and saintly Christian, sure of her "calling and election," and doubly sure of a place prepared for her in the kingdom to come.

She spent ten years in "good works" of this sort — years which had turned her into an old woman, with iron-gray locks, and a gnarled and wrinkled face. Her form was still spare and angular; her eyes still cold as steel, but sharp as needles at detecting the "mote" in her neighbor's eye; her mouth still wore that habitual expression of ill-temper; and her manner was even more aggressive than of yore. She was a sour, bitter, discontented woman, and, as such, she was suddenly called upon to prove her principles, and vindicate her faith.

The real story of her life was to begin when that of most of her sex is well-nigh over. She was, in fact, close on fifty when a "call" of another sort came to her, and she flung missions and schools and harmonium practises to the winds, and abandoned forever the Christian Workers' Mission.

The "call" made itself heard in this wise.

Her eldest brother had returned from Australia some years before, broken down in health and poor in pocket. His sons were both dead; his daughters had married. Catherine had a vague idea that the husband of the eldest was some "foreign person" — a papist, no doubt; but she lived abroad, and neither aunt nor nieces had met since those early days in Australia.

It was this eldest niece who now wrote to say that she had been recalled to England by the death of her mother. That her father was in a weak mental condition, demanding incessant care; that she was unable herself to live with him at present, and disliked the idea of leaving him in the hands of strangers. In this dilemma the thought of her aunt occurred to her. She wrote asking that lady to favor her with an interview, in which she would explain her plans and wishes, with a hope they might suit the convenience of both parties.

Catherine Macpherson read this letter carefully and slowly. Then she folded it up, and sat with her hands crossed on her lap, and took counsel with her heart as to the "expediency" of the course she saw before her. By expediency she meant the exact manner in which it might suit herself, and the amount of personal advantage it offered.

Then she clothed herself in her long cloak and sister's bonnet, left her class to take care of itself, and set off to the regions of Bayswater to see her niece, Madame Weimar, and hear fuller particulars than her letter had contained.

Chapter 3

It was nearly dark, and a foggy November evening, when Catherine Macpherson found herself at her destination.

She was cold and tired; the fog had got down her throat and into her eyes. Her boots were muddy, and her skirts splashed and draggled. She was in a bad temper, and her very ring of the bell had a defiant clang and challenge about it.

"Is Mrs. Weimar in?" she demanded, as the door opened, and a neat maid-servant showed herself at the entrance.

She had no intention of bestowing on her niece the foreign title of "Madame." Everything foreign, from a title to a toy, savored of the "Scarlet Woman" and the "Seven Hills" to the mind of Catherine Macpherson.

Being informed that her niece was in, she followed the servant into the dining- room, which opened out of the small entrance-hall. Here, sitting before a dull fire and looking as desolate and melancholy as itself, was a small, fair person, in a plain, black gown. She rose as the door opened, and looked somewhat doubtfully at her visitor.

"Weil, Margaret, don't you know me?" snapped the good lady; "I'm your Aunt Catherine."

"Oh, I — I beg your pardon. . . . You see it is so long since I saw you," stammered Margaret Weimar, and she held out her hands, and received a frosty peck on her cheek by way of greeting.

Then she drew an armchair up to the fire, and stirred the dull coals to a blaze.

"It was good of you to come so soon," she said, trying to bring back to her mind some memory of this austere and terrible- looking person. " I have been in great trouble and anxiety. My mother's illness was very dreadful, and then I had to come over from Germany suddenly and leave my children."

"How many have you?" asked Catherine Macpherson sharply. " I was never told anything about your marriage. I only know it was some foreign man you got."

"My husband is German," said her niece, coloring softly. "I have three children," she added.

"Hoot-toots!" cried Aunt Macpherson, lapsing into Scotch, as was her way if excited or displeased "Three, is it ? Mair papists, I'm thinking. I hope you do your duty by them, for all you're living in a foreign land where there's no respecting the Sabbath at all, so I hear. And your gudeman, what sort is he, and what's his business!"

"He is an artist," said Margaret Weimar.

"A what?" demanded her aunt.

"An artist. He paints pictures, you know. He is very clever, quite celebrated in Köln, where we live."

"Gude sakes!" gasped Catherine Macpherson. "A painter, and a foreigner, and a papist. Was ever the like of it? It's my opinion, Margaret, that you've done but ill for yourself and your family marrying in such a fashion. There's aye a rod for a fule's back, says the Scriptures, and I doubt not ye hae made your own."

Margaret Weimar began to think that Aunt Macpherson was a very extraordinary person indeed. This frank speaking was certainly not pleasant.

From any one, not a relative, it would have savored of downright rudeness; but Margaret had yet to learn that to a Christian and a relative a very large margin must be allowed.

"I don't know what you mean," she said coldly. " My husband is not a papist, as you call it. He is a Protestant like myself, and as for being a fool, I married him because I loved him and esteemed him, not because he was well off."

"Hoot-toots!" said Aunt Macpherson again." Ye talk like a schoolgirl. I wouldn't be sure, now I come to think of it, that ye weren't always a foolish romantic lassie, aye poring over books and poetry and the like. And this is what they've brought ye to! 'I said to the ungodly, set not up your horn and speak not with a stiff neck.'"

"Don't you think,! suggested Margaret, "that we had better get to the business which brought you here. There is very little use in discussing my affairs — and they really do not concern you in any way. You never gave any sign of remembering my existence from the day you left Sydney until the present moment."

"The Lord knoweth the ways of the godly," replied Aunt Macpherson. "I have had my 'call,' child, and my work has been given unto me ; and I have labored in and out of season; yea, I have not feared to admonish and reprove, for so the Lord has bidden me. And now — what is it you want with me?" she added abruptly.

" It will take some time to explain," said Margaret. " Can I offer you tea or wine or anything? and won't you take off your cloak?"

"I never take wine," said Aunt Macpherson. " It is a snare of the Evil One. 'Behold, the cup is red, and their feet that go thither do stumble.' But I will have a cup of tea, and remove my cloak, as you suggest."

She rose, and unhooked the garment, and walked over to the couch and laid it down. During her walk to and from her chair she had an opportunity of noticing that the carpet was Brussels, and the furniture solid and handsome.

" My brother has a fairly gude establish- ment, I'm thinking," she observed, as she returned to her seat.

" Everything in this house belonged to my mother," answered her niece. " I must explain to you that on their return from Australia they came here to live so as to be near her mother. She was very well off, and furnished this house, and made it a present to her daughter, on condition that it should all come to me, her eldest grandchild. By my mother's death, therefore, I have the lease of this house and everything in it ; but I promised her that as long as my father lived he should have the use of it, unless he should prefer to come abroad and live with me. But he won't do that. He is somewhat prejudiced and obstinate."

"It ill-becometh a child to speak disrespectfully of a parent," interrupted Aunt Macpherson severely.

"Oh, I meant no disrespect, I simply stated a fact ; and surely when a child is grown up. Aunt Catherine, it has as much right to criticise a parent as a parent has ever had to punish or control it. I don't approve of arbitrary distinctions. We must exercise our own judgment on occasions."

" In a meek and God-fearing spirit only," said Aunt Catherine.

"Well, well," said her niece impatiently, "we won't argue about the spirit. I say again that as my father won't leave England or this house, of which, by the bye, there is nearly a seven years' lease to run, and I cannot live here with him — "

"What is the reason o' that, may I inquire?"