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Acting for the Best

Edith Nesbit

By ranjitPublished 2 years ago 8 min read
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I HAVE no patience with people who talk that kind of nonsense about marrying for love and the like. For my part I don't know what they mean, and I don't believe they know it themselves. It's only a sort of fashion of talking. I never could see what there was to like in one young man more than another, only, of course, you might favour some more than others if they was better to do. My cousin Mattie was different. She must set up to be in love, and walk home from church with Jack Halibut Sunday after Sunday, the long way round, if you please, through the meadows; and he used to buy her scent and ribbons at the fair, and send her a big valentine of lacepaper, and satin ribbons and things, though Lord knows where he got the money from--honest, I hope--for he hadn't a penny to bless himself with. When my uncle found out all this nonsense, being a man of proper spirit, he put his foot down, and says he-- 'Mattie, my girl, I would be the last to say anything against any young man you fancied, especially a decent chap like young Halibut, if his prospects was anything like as good as could be expected, but you can't pretend poor Jack's are, him being but a blacksmith's man, and not in regular work even. Now, let's have no waterworks,' he went on, for Mattie had got the corner of her apron up and her mouth screwed down at the corners. 'I've known what poverty is, my girl, and you shan't never have a taste of it with my consent.' 'I don't care how poor I be, father,' said Mattie, 'it's Jack I care about.' 'There's a girl all over,' says uncle, for he was a sensible man in those days. 'The bit I've put by for you, lass, it's enough for one, but it's not enough for two. And when young Halibut can show as much, you shall be cried in church the very next Sunday. But, meantime, there must be no kisses, no more letters, and no more walking home from churches. Now, you give me your word--and keep it I know you will--like an honest girl.' So Mattie she gave him her word, though much against her will; and as for Jack, I suppose, man-like, he didn't care much about staying in the village after there was a stop put to his philandering and kissing and scent and so on. So what does he do, but he ups and offs to America (assisted emigration) 'to make his fortune,' says he. And never word nor sign did we hear of him for three blessed years. Mattie was getting quite an old maid, nigh on two-and-twenty, and I was past nineteen, when one morning there come a letter from Jack. My father and mother were dead this long time, so I lived with uncle and Mattie at the farm. What offers I had had is neither here nor there. At any rate, whatever they were, they weren't good enough. But Mattie might have been married twice over if she had liked, and to folks that would have been quite a catch to a girl like her getting on in years. She might have had young Bath for one, the strawberry grower; and what if he did drink a bit of a Saturday? He was taking his hundreds of pounds to the Bank every week in canvas bags, as all the world knew. But no, she must needs hanker after Jack, and that's why I say it's such nonsense. Well, when the letter come, I was up to my elbows in the jam-making-- raspberry and currant it was,--and Mattie, she was down in the garden getting the last berries off the canes. My hands were stained up above the wrist with the currant juice, so I took the letter up by the corner of my apron and I went down the garden with it. 'Mattie,' I calls out, 'here's a letter from that good-for-nothing fellow of yours.' She couldn't see me, and she thought I was chaffing her about him, which I often did, to keep things pleasant. 'Don't tease me, Jane,' she says, 'for I do feel this morning as if I could hardly bear myself as it is.' And as she said it I came out through the canes close to her with the letter in my hand. But when she see the letter she dropped the basket with the raspberries in it (they rolled all about on the ground right under the peony bush, for that was a silly, old-fashioned garden, with the flowers and fruit about it anyhow), and I had a nice business picking them up, and she threw her arms round my neck and kissed me, and cried like the silly little thing she was, and thanked me for bringing the letter, just as if I had anything to do with it, or any wish or will one way or another; and then she opened the letter, and seemed to forget all about me while she read it. I remember the sun was so bright on the white paper that I could scarce see to read it over her shoulder, she not noticing me, nor anything else, any more. It was like this-- 'DEAR MATTIE,--This comes hoping to find you well, as it leaves me at present. 'I don't bear no malice over what your father said and done, but I'm not coming to his house. 'Now Mattie, if you have forgot me, or think more of some other chap, don't let anything stand in the way of your letting me know it straight and plain. But if you do remember how we used to walk from church, and the valentine, and the piece of poetry about Cupid's dart that I copied for you out of the poetry-book, you will come and meet me in the little ash copse, you know where. I may be prevented coming, for I've a lot of things to see to, and I am going to Liverpool on Thursday, and if we are to be married you will have to come to me there, for my business won't bear being left, and I must get back to it. But if so I will put a note in your prayer-book in the church. So you had best look in there on your way up on Wednesday evening. 'I am taking this way of seeing you because I don't want there to be any unpleasantness for you if you are tired of me or like some other chap better. 'I mean to take a wife back with me, Mattie, for I have done well, and can afford to keep one in better style than ever your father kept his. Will you be her, dear? So no more at present from your affectionate friend and lover, JACK HALIBUT.' I am quicker at reading writing than Mattie, and I had finished the letter and was picking up the raspberries before she come to the end, where his name was signed with all the little crosses round it. 'Well?' says I, as she folded it up and unbuttoned two buttons of her dress to push it inside. 'Well,' says I, 'what's the best news?' 'He's come home again,' she says. And I give you my word she did look like a rose as she said it. 'He's come home again, Jane, and it's all right, and he likes me just as much as ever he did, God bless him.' Not a word, you see, about his having made his fortune, which I might never have known if I hadn't read the letter which I did, acting for the best. Not that I think it was deceitfulness in the girl, but a sort of fondness that always kept her from noticing really important things. 'And does he ask you to have him?' says I. 'Of course he does,' she says; 'I never thought any different. I never thought but what he would come back for me, just as he said he would-- just as he has.' By that I knew well enough that she had often had her doubts. 'Oh, well!' says I, 'all's well that ends well. I hope he's made enough to satisfy uncle--that's all.' 'Oh yes, I think so,' says Mattie, hardly understanding what I was saying. 'I didn't notice particular. But I suppose that's all right.' She didn't notice particular! Now, I put it to you, Was that the sort of girl to be the wife of a man who had got on like Jack had? I for one didn't think so. If she didn't care for money why should she have it, when there was plenty that did? And if love in a cottage was what she wanted, and kisses and foolishness out of poetry-books, I suppose one man's pretty much as good as another for that sort of thing. So I said, 'Come along in, dear, and we will get along with the jammaking, and talk it all over nicely. I'm so glad he's come back. I always say he would, if you remember.'

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