“There’s far too much of this,” said Mr. Ogilvie, who prided himself a little on his power to stop all female disturbances and toassert his authority. “Janet, you’ll let the girl alone. And, Effie, you’ll see that you don’t set up your face and answer back, for it is a thing I will not allow. Dear me, is that tea not coming? I will have to go away without it if it is not ready. I should have thought, with all the women there are in this house, it might be possible to get a cup of tea.”
“And that is true indeed,” said his wife, “but they will not keep the kettle boiling. The kettle should be always aboil in a well-cared-for house. I tell them so ten times in a day. But here it is at last. You see you are late, George; you have kept your master waiting. And Effie——”
But Effie had disappeared. She had slid out of the room under cover of old George and his tray, and had flown upstairs through the dim passages to her own room, where all was dark. There are moments where the darkness is more congenial than thelight, when a young head swims with a hundred thoughts, and life is giddy with its over-fulness, and a dark room is a hermitage and place of refuge soothing in its contrast with all that which is going through the head of the thinker, and all the pictures that float before her (as in the present case—or his) eyes. She had escaped like a bird into its nest: but not without carrying a little further disturbance with her.
The idea of Fred had hitherto conveyed nothing to her mind that was not flattering and soothing and sweet. But now there was a harsher side added to this amiable and tender one. She had led him on. She had given him false hopes and made him believe that she cared for him. Had she made him believe that she—cared for him? Poor Fred! He had himself put it in so much prettier a way. He was to try to please her, as if she had been the Queen. To try to please her! and she on her side was to try—to like him.That was very different from those harsh accusations. There was nothing that was not delightful, easy, soothing in all that. They had parted such friends. And he had called her darling, which no one had ever called her before.
Her heart took refuge with Fred, who was so kind and asked for so little, escaping from her stepmother with her flood of questions and demands, and her father with his dogmatism. His word; he had given his word. Did he think that was to pledge her? that she was to be handed over to any one he pleased, because he had given his word? But Fred made no such claim—he was too kind for that. He was to try to please her; that was different altogether.
And then Effie gradually forgot the episode downstairs, and began to think of the dark trees tossed against the sky, and the road through the wood, and the look of her young lover’s eyes which she had not ventured to meet, and all the things he said which she did not remember. She did not remember the words, and she had not met the look, but yet they were both present with her in her room in the dark, and filled her again with that confused, sweet sense of elevation, that self-pleasure which it would be harsh to call vanity, that bewildered consciousness of worship. It made her head swim and her heart beat. To be loved was so strange and beautiful. Perhaps Fred himself was not so imposing. She had noticed in spite of herself how the wind had blown the tails of his coat and almost forced him on against his will. He was not the hero of whom Effie, like other young maidens, had dreamed. But yet her young being was thrilled and responsive to the magic in the air, and touched beyond measure by that consciousness of being loved.
Fred came next morning eager and wistfuland full of suppressed ardour, but with a certain courage of permission and sense that he had a right to her society, which was half irksome and half sweet. He hung about all the morning, ready to follow, to serve her, to get whatever she might want, to read poetry to her, to hold her basket while she cut the flowers—the late flowers of October—to watch while she arranged them, saying a hundred half-articulate things that made her laugh and made her blush, and increased every moment the certainty that she was no longer little Effie whom everybody had ordered about, but a little person of wonderful importance—a lady like the ladies in Shakespeare, one for whom no comparison was too lofty, and no name too sweet.
It amused Effie in the bottom of her heart, and yet it touched her: she could not escape the fascination. And so it came about that without any further question, without going any farther into herself, orperceiving how she was drawn into it, she found herself bound and pledged for life.
Engaged to Fred Dirom! She only realized the force of it when congratulations began to arrive from all the countryside—letters full of admiration and good wishes; and when Doris and Phyllis rushed upon her and took possession of her, saying a hundred confusing things. Effie was frightened, pleased, flattered, all in one. And everybody petted and praised her as if she had done some great thing.
“Andwhen is it going to be?” Miss Dempster said.
The ladies had come to call in their best gowns. Miss Beenie’s was puce, an excellent silk of the kind Mrs. Primrose chose for wear—and Miss Dempster’s was black satin, a little shiny by reason of its years, but good, no material better. These dresses were not brought out for every occasion; but to-day was exceptional. They did not approve of Effie’s engagement, yet there was no doubt but it was a great event. They had been absent from home for about three weeks, so that their congratulations came late.
“I don’t know what you mean by it; there is nothing going to be,” said Effie, very red and angry. She had consented, it was true, in a way; but she had not yet learnt to contemplate any practical consequences, and the question made her indignant. Her temper had been tried by a great many questions, and by a desire to enter into her confidence, and to hear a great deal about Fred, and how it all came about, which her chief friend Mary Johnston and some others had manifested. She had nothing to say to them about Fred, and she could not herself tell how it all came about; but it seemed the last drop in Effie’s cup when she was asked when it was to be.
“I should say your father and Mrs. Ogilvie would see to that; they are not the kind of persons to let a young man shilly-shally,” said Miss Dempster. “It is a grand match, and I wish ye joy, my dear. Still, I would like to hear a little more about it: formoney embarked in business is no inheritance; it’s just here to-day and gone to-morrow. I hope your worthy father will be particular about the settlements. He should have things very tight tied down. I will speak to him myself.”
“My sister has such a head for business,” Miss Beenie said. “Anybody might make a fool of me: but the man that would take in Sarah, I do not think he is yet born.”
“No, I am not an easy one to take in,” said Miss Dempster. “Those that have seen as much of the ways of the world as I have, seldom are. I am not meaning that there would be any evil intention: but a man is led into speculation, or something happens to his ships, or he has his money all shut up in ventures. I would have a certain portion realized and settled, whatever might happen, if it was me.”
“And have you begun to think of yourthings, Effie?” Miss Beenie said.
At this Miss Effie jumped up from her chair, ready to cry, her countenance all ablaze with indignation and annoyance.
“I think you want to torment me,” she cried. “What things should I have to think of? I wish you would just let me be. What do I know about all that? I want only to be let alone. There is nothing going to happen to me.”
“Dear me, what is this?” said Mrs. Ogilvie coming in, “Effie in one of her tantrums and speaking loud to Miss Dempster! I hope you will never mind; she is just a little off her head with all the excitement and the flattery, and finding herself so important. Effie, will you go and see that Rory is not troubling papa? Take him up to the nursery or out to the garden. It’s a fine afternoon, and a turn in the garden would do him no harm, nor you either, for you’re looking a little flushed. She is just the most impracticable thing Iever had in my hands,” she added, when Effie, very glad to be released, escaped out of the room. “She will not hear a word. You would think it was just philandering, and no serious thought of what’s to follow in her head at all.”
“It would be a pity,” said Miss Dempster, “if it was the same on the other side. Young men are very content to amuse themselves if they’re let do it; they like nothing better than to love and to ride away.”
“You’ll be pleased to hear,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, responding instantly to this challenge “that it’s very, very different on the other side. Poor Fred, I am just very sorry for him. He cannot bring her to the point. She slips out of it, or she runs away. He tells me she will never say anything to him, but just ‘It is very nice now—or—we are very well as we are.’ He is anxious to be settled, poor young man, and nothing can bemore liberal than what he proposes. But Effie is just very trying. She thinks life is to be all fun, and no changes. To be sure there are allowances to be made for a girl that is so happy at home as Effie is, and has so many good friends.”
“Maybe her heart is not in it,” said Miss Dempster; “I have always thought that our connection, young Ronald Sutherland——”
“It’s a dreadful thing,” cried Miss Beenie, “to force a young creature’s affections. If she were to have, poor bit thing, another Eemage in her mind——”
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Ogilvie, provoked. She would have liked to shake them, the old cats! as she afterwards said. But she was wise in her generation, and knew that to quarrel was always bad policy. “What Eemage could there be?” she said with a laugh. “Effie is just full of fancies, and slips through your fingers whenever you would bring her to look at anything in earnest;but that is all. No, no, there is no Eemage, unless it was just whim and fancy. As for Ronald, she never gave him a thought, nor anybody else. She is like a little wild thing, and to catch her and put the noose round her is not easy; but as for Eemage!” cried Mrs. Ogilvie, exaggerating the pronunciation of poor Miss Beenie, which was certainly old fashioned. The old ladies naturally did not share her laughter. They looked at each other, and rose and shook out their rustling silken skirts.
“There is no human person,” said Miss Dempster, “that is beyond the possibility of a mistake; and my sister and me, we may be mistaken. But you will never make me believe that girlie’s heart is in it. Eemage or no eemage, I’m saying nothing. Beenie is just a trifle romantic. She may be wrong. But I give you my opinion; that girlie’s heart’s not in it: and nothing will persuade me to the contrary. Effie is adelicate bit creature. There are many things that the strong might never mind, but that she could not bear. It’s an awful responsibility, Mrs. Ogilvie.”
“I will take the responsibility,” said that lady, growing angry, as was natural. “I am not aware that it’s a thing any person has to do with except her father and me.”
“If you take it upon that tone—Beenie, we will say good-day.”
“Good-day to ye, Mrs. Ogilvie. I am sure I hope no harm will come of it; but it’s an awfu’ responsibility,” Miss Beenie said, following her sister to the door. And we dare not guess what high words might have followed had not the ladies, in going out, crossed Mr. Moubray coming in. They would fain have stopped him to convey their doubts, but Mrs. Ogilvie had followed them to the hall in the extreme politeness of a quarrel, and they could not do this under her very eyes. Uncle John perceived, withthe skilled perceptions of a clergyman, that there was a storm in the air.
“What is the matter?” he said, as he followed her back to the drawing-room. “Is it about Effie? But, of course, that is the only topic now.”
“Oh, you may be sure it’s about Effie. And all her own doing, and I wish you would speak to her. It is my opinion that she cares for nobody but you. Sometimes shewillmind what her Uncle John says to her.”
“Poor little Effie! often I hope; and you too, who have always been kind to her.”
“I have tried,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, sitting down and taking out her handkerchief. She appeared to be about to indulge herself in the luxury of tears: she looked hard at that piece of cambric, as though determining the spot which was to be applied to her eyes—and then she changed her mind.
“But I know it is a difficult position,” she said briskly. “I think it very likely, in Effie’s place, that I should not have liked a stepmother myself. But then you would think she would be pleased with her new prospects, and glad to get into her own house out of my way. If that was the case I would think it very natural. But no. I am just in that state about her that I don’t know what I am doing. Here is a grand marriage for her, as you cannot deny, and she has accepted the man. But if either he or any one of us says a word about marriage, or her trousseau, or anything, she is just off in a moment. I am terrified every day for a quarrel: for who can say how long a young man’s patience may last?”
“He has not had so very long to wait, nor much trial of his patience,” said Uncle John, who was sensitive on Effie’s account, and ready to take offence.
“No; he has perhaps not had long to wait. But there is nothing to wait for. Hisfather is willing to make all the settlements we can desire: and Fred is a partner, and gets his share. He’s as independent as a man can be. And there’s no occasion for delay. But she will not hear a word of it. I just don’t know what to make of her. She likes him well enough for all I can see; but marriage she will not hear of. And if it is to be at the New Year, which is what he desires, and us in November now—I just ask you how are we ever to be ready when she will not give the least attention, or so much as hear a word about her clothes?”
“Oh, her clothes!” said Mr. Moubray, with a man’s disdain.
“You may think little of them, but I think a great deal. It is all very well for gentlemen that have not got it to do. But what would her father say to me, or the world in general, or even yourself, if I let her go to her husband’s house with a poor providing, or fewer things than other brides?Whose fault would everybody say that was? And besides it’s like a silly thing, not like a reasonable young woman. I wish you would speak to her. If there is one thing that weighs with Effie, it is the thought of what her Uncle John will say.”
“But what do you want me to say?” asked the minister. His mind was more in sympathy with Effie’s reluctance than with the haste of the others. There was nothing to be said against Fred Dirom. He was irreproachable, he was rich, he was willing to live within reach. Every circumstance was favourable to him.
But Mr. Moubray thought the young man might very well be content with what he had got, and spare his Effie a little longer to those whose love for her was far older at least, if not profounder, than his. The minister had something of the soreness of a man who is being robbed in the name of love.
Love! forty thousand lovers, he thought, reversing Hamlet’s sentiment, could not have made up the sum of the love he bore his little girl. Marriage is the happiest state, no doubt: but yet, perhaps a man has a more sensitive shrinking from transplanting the innocent creature he loves into that world of life matured than even a mother has. He did not like the idea that his Effie should pass into that further chapter of existence, and become, not as the gods, knowing good and evil, but as himself, or any other. He loved her ignorance, her absence of all consciousness, her freedom of childhood. It is true she was no longer a child; and she loved—did she love? Perhaps secretly in his heart he was better pleased to think that she had been drawn by sympathy, by her reluctance that any one should suffer, and by the impulse and influence of everybody about her, rather than by any passion on her own side, into these toils.
“What do you want me to say?” He was a little softened towards the stepmother, who acknowledged honestly (she was on the whole a true sort of woman, meaning no harm) the close tie, almost closer than any other, which bound Effie to him. And he would not fail to Mrs. Ogilvie’s trust if he could help it; but what was he to say?
Effie was in the garden when Uncle John went out. She had interpreted her stepmother’s commission about Rory to mean that she was not wanted, and she had been glad to escape from the old ladies and all their questions and remarks. She was coming back from the wood with a handful of withered leaves and lichens when her uncle joined her. Effie had been seized with a fit of impatience of the baskets of flowers which Fred was always bringing. She preferred her bouquet of red and yellow leaves, which every day it was getting more difficult tofind. This gave Mr. Moubray the opening he wanted.
“You are surely perverse,” he said, “my little Effie, to gather all these things, which your father would call rubbitch, when you have so many beautiful flowers inside.”
“I cannot bear those grand flowers,” said Effie, “they are all made out of wax, I think, and they have all the same scent. Oh, I know they are beautiful! They are too beautiful, they are made up things, they are not like nature. In winter I like the leaves best.”
“You will soon have no leaves, and what will you do then? and, my dear, your life is to be spent among these bonnie things. You are not to have the thorns and the thistles, but the roses and the lilies, Effie; and you must get used to them. It is generally a lesson very easily learnt.”
To this Effie made no reply. After a while she began to show that the late autumnleaves, if not a matter of opposition, were not particularly dear to her—for she pulled them to pieces, unconsciously dropping a twig now and then, as she went on. And when she spoke, it was apparently with the intention of changing the subject.
“Is it really true,” she said, “that Eric is coming home for Christmas? He said nothing about it in his last letter. How do they know?”
“There is such a thing as the telegraph, Effie. You know why he is coming. He is coming for your marriage.”
Effie gave a start and quick recoil.
“But that is not going to be—oh, not yet, not for a long time.”
“I thought that everybody wished it to take place at the New Year.”
“Not me,” said the girl. She took no care at all now of the leaves she had gathered with so much trouble, but strewed the ground with them as if for a procession to pass.
“Uncle John,” she went on quickly and tremulously, “why should it be soon? I am quite young. Sometimes I feel just like a little child, though I may not be so very young in years.”
“Nineteen!”
“Yes, I know it is not very young. I shall be twenty next year. At twenty you understand things better; you are a great deal more responsible. Why should there be any hurry?Heis young too. You might help me to make them all see it. Everything is nice enough as it is now. Why should we go and alter, and make it all different? Oh, I wish you would speak to them, Uncle John.”
“My dear, your stepmother has just given me a commission to bring you over to their way of thinking. I am so loth to lose you that my heart takes your side: but, Effie——”
“To lose me!” she cried, flinging awaythe “rubbitch” altogether, and seizing his arm with both her hands. “Oh no, no, that can never be!”
“No, it will never be: and yet it will be as soon as you’re married: and there is a puzzle for you, my bonnie dear. The worst of it is that you will be quite content, and see that it is natural it should be so: but I will not be content. That is what people call the course of nature. But for all that, I am not going to plead for myself. Effie, the change has begun already. A little while ago, and there was no man in the world that had any right to interfere with your own wishes: but now you know the thing is done. It is as much done as if you had been married for years. You must now not think only of what pleases yourself, but of what pleases him.”
Effie was silent for some time, and went slowly along clinging to her uncle’s arm.At last she said in a low tone, “But he is pleased. He said he would try to please me; that was all that was said.”
Uncle John shook his head.
“That may be all that is said, and it is all a young man thinks when he is in love. But, my dear, that means that you must please him. Everything is reciprocal in this world. And the moment you give your consent that he is to please you, you pledge yourself to consider and please him.”
“But he is pleased. Oh! he says he will do whatever I wish.”
“That is if you will do what he wishes, Effie. For what he wishes is what it all means, my dear. And the moment you put your hand in his, it is right that he should strive to have you, and fight and struggle to have you, and never be content till he has got you. I would myself think him a poor creature if he thought anything else.”
There was another pause, and then Effiesaid, clasping more closely her uncle’s arm, “But it would be soon enough in a year or two—after there was time to think. Why should there be a hurry? After I am twenty I would have more sense; it would not be so hard. I could understand better. Surely that’s very reasonable, Uncle John.”
“Too reasonable,” he said, shaking his head. “Effie, lift up your eyes and look me in the face. Are you sure that you are happy, my little woman? Look me in the face.”
“No, Beenie,” said Miss Dempster solemnly, “her heart is not in it. Do you think it is possible at her age that a young creature could resist all the excitement and the importance, and the wedding presents and the wedding clothes? It was bad enough in our own time, but it’s just twice as bad now when every mortal thinks it needful to give their present, and boxes are coming in every day for months. That’s a terrible bad custom: it’s no better than the penny weddings the poor people used to have. But to think a young thing would be quite indifferent to all that, if everything was natural, is more than I can understand.”
“That’s very true,” said Miss Beenie, “and all her new things. If it was nothing but the collars and fichus that are so pretty nowadays, and all the new pocket-handkerchiefs.”
“It’s not natural,” the elder sister said.
“And if you will remember, there was a wonderful look about the little thing’s eyes when Ronald went away. To be sure there was Eric with him. She was really a little thing then, though now she’s grown up. You may depend upon it that though maybe she may not be conscious of it herself, there is another Eemage in her poor bit little heart.”
“Ye are too sentimental, Beenie. That’s not necessary. There may be a shrinking without that. I know no harm of young Dirom. He’s not one that would ever take my fancy, but still there’s no harm in him. The stepmother is just ridiculous. She thinks it’s her that’s getting the elevation.There will never be a word out of her mouth but Allonby if this comes to pass. But the heart of the little thing is not in it. She was angry; that was what her colour came from. It was no blush, yon; it was out of an angry and an unwilling mind. I have not lived to my present considerable age without knowing what a girl’s looks mean.”
“You are not so old as you make yourself out. A person would think you were just a Methusaleh; when it is well known there is only five years between us,” said Miss Beenie in an aggrieved tone.
“I always say there’s a lifetime—so you may be easy in your mind so far as that goes. I am just as near a Methusaleh as I’ve any desire to be. I wonder now if Mrs. Ogilvie knows what has happened about Ronald, and that he’s coming home. To be a well-born woman herself, she has very little understanding about inter-marriages and that kind of thing. It’s more than likely that she doesn’t know. And to think that young man should come back, with a nice property though it’s small, and in a condition to marry, just when this is settled! Bless me! if he had come three months ago! Providence is a real mystery!” said Miss Dempster, with the air of one who is reluctant to blame, but cannot sincerely excuse. “Three months more or less, what were they to auld Dauvid Hay? He was just doited; he neither knew morning nor evening: and most likely that would have changed the lives of three other folk. It is a great mystery to me.”
“He will maybe not be too late yet,” said Miss Beenie significantly.
“Woman, you are just without conscience,” cried her sister. “Would that be either right or fair? No, no, they must just abide by their lot as it is shaped out. It would be a cruel thing to drop that poor lad nowfor no fault of his—just because she did not know her own mind. No, no, I have Ronald’s interest much at heart, and I’m fond in a way of that bit little Effie, though she’s often been impertinent—but I would never interfere. Bless me! If I had known there was to be so little satisfaction got out of it, that’s a veesit I never would have paid. I am turning terrible giddy. I can scarcely see where I’m going. I wish I had stayed at home.”
“If we had not just come away as it were in a fuff,” said Miss Beenie, “you would have had your cup of tea, and that would have kept up your strength.”
“Ay,if,” said Miss Dempster. “That’s no doubt an argument for keeping one’s temper, but it’s a little too late. Yes, I wish I had got my cup of tea. I am feeling very strange; everything’s going round and round before my eyes. Eh, I wish I was at my own door!”
“It’s from want of taking your food. You’ve eaten nothing this two or three days. Dear me, Sarah, you’re not going to faint at your age! Take a hold of my arm and we’ll get as far as Janet Murray’s. She’s a very decent woman. She will soon make you a cup of tea.”
“No, no—I’ll have none of your arm. I can just manage,” said Miss Dempster. But her face had grown ashy pale. “We’re poor creatures,” she murmured, “poor creatures: it’s all the want of—the want of—that cup o’ tea.”
“You’ll have to see the doctor,” said Miss Beenie. “I’m no more disposed to pin my faith in him than you are; but there are many persons that think him a very clever man——”
“No, no, no doctor. Old Jardine’s son that kept a shop in—— No, no; I’ll have no doctor. I’ll get home—I’ll——”
“Oh,” cried Miss Beenie. “I will justrun on to Janet Murray’s and bid her see that her kettle is aboil. You’ll be right again when you’ve had your tea.”
“Yes, I’ll be—all right,” murmured the old lady. The road was soft and muddy with rain, the air very gray, the clouds hanging heavy and full of moisture over the earth. Miss Beenie hastened on for a few steps, and then she paused, she knew not why, and looked round and uttered a loud cry; there seemed to be no one but herself on the solitary country road. But after a moment she perceived a little heap of black satin on the path. Her first thought, unconscious of the catastrophe, was for this cherished black satin, the pride of Miss Dempster’s heart.
“Oh, your best gown!” she cried, and hurried back to help her sister out of the mire. But Miss Beenie soon forgot the best gown. Miss Dempster lay huddled up among the scanty hawthorn bushes of the brokenhedge which skirted the way. Her hand had caught against a thorny bramble which supported it. She lay motionless, without speaking, without making a sign, with nothing that had life about her save her eyes. Those eyes looked up from the drawn face with an anxious stare of helplessness, as if speech and movement and every faculty had got concentrated in them.
Miss Beenie gave shriek after shriek as she tried to raise up the prostrate figure. “Oh, Sarah, what’s the matter? Oh, try to stand up; oh, let me get you up upon your feet! Oh, my dear, my dear, try if ye cannot get up and come home! Oh, try! if it’s only as far as Janet Murray’s. Oh, Sarah!” she cried in despair, “there never was anything but you could do it, if you were only to try.”
Sarah answered not a word, she who was never without a word to say; she did not move; she lay like a log while poor Beenieput her arms under her head and laboured to raise her. Beenie made the bush tremble with spasmodic movement, but did no more than touch the human form that lay stricken underneath. And some time passed before the frightened sister could realize what had happened. She went on with painful efforts trying to raise the inanimate form, to drag her to the cottage, which was within sight, to rouse and encourage her to the effort which Miss Beenie could not believe her sister incapable of making.
“Oh, Sarah, my bonnie woman!—oh, Sarah, Sarah, do you no hear me, do you not know me? Oh, try if ye cannot get up and stand upon your feet. I’m no able to carry you, but I’ll support you. Oh, Sarah, Sarah, will you no try!”
Then there burst upon the poor lady all at once a revelation of what had happened. She threw herself down by her sister with a shriek that seemed to rend the skies. “Oh,good Lord,” she cried, “oh, good Lord! I canna move her, I canna move her; my sister has gotten a stroke——”
“What are you talking about?” said a big voice behind her; and before Miss Beenie knew, the doctor, in all the enormity of his big beard, his splashed boots, his smell of tobacco, was kneeling beside her, examining Miss Dempster, whose wide open eyes seemed to repulse him, though she herself lay passive under his hand. He kept talking all the time while he examined her pulse, her looks, her eyes.
“We must get her carried home,” he said. “You must be brave, Miss Beenie, and keep all your wits about you. I am hoping we will bring her round. Has there been anything the matter with her, or has it just come on suddenly to-day?”
“Oh, doctor, she has eaten nothing. She has been very feeble and pale. She never would let me say it. She is very masterful;she will never give in. Oh that I should say a word that might have an ill meaning, and her lying immovable there!”
“There is no ill meaning. It’s your duty to tell me everything. She is a very masterful woman; by means of that she may pull through. And were there any preliminaries to-day? Yes, that’s the right thing to do—if it will not tire you to sit in that position——”
“Tire me!” cried Miss Beenie—“if it eases her.”
“I cannot say it eases her. She is past suffering for the moment. Lord bless me, I never saw such a case. Those eyes of hers are surely full of meaning. She is perhaps more conscious than we think. But anyway, it’s the best thing to do. Stay you here till I get something to carry her on——”
“What is the matter?” said another voice, and Fred Dirom came hastily up. “Why,doctor, what has happened—Miss Dempster?”—he said this with an involuntary cry of surprise and alarm. “I am afraid this is very serious,” he cried.
“Not so serious as it soon will be if we stand havering,” cried the doctor. “Get something, a mattress, to put her on. Man, look alive. There’s a cottage close by. Ye’ll get something if ye stir them up. Fly there, and I’ll stay with them to give them a heart.”
“Oh, doctor, you’re very kind—we’ve perhaps not been such good friends to ye as we might——”
“Friends, toots!” said the doctor, “we’re all friends at heart.”
Meantime the stir of an accident had got into the air. Miss Beenie’s cries had no doubt reached some rustic ears; but it takes a long time to rouse attention in those regions.
“What will yon be? It would be somebody crying. It sounded awfu’ like somebody crying. It will be some tramp about the roads; it will be somebody frighted at the muckle bull——” Then at last there came into all minds the leisurely impulse—“Goodsake, gang to the door and see——”
Janet Murray was the first to run out to her door. When her intelligence was at length awakened to the fact that something had happened, nobody could be more kind. She rushed out and ran against Fred Dirom, who was hurrying towards the cottage with a startled face.
“Can you get me a mattress or something to carry her upon?” he cried, breathless.
“Is it an accident?” said Janet.
“It is a fit. I think she is dying,” cried the young man much excited.
Janet flew back and pulled the mattress off her own bed. “It’s no a very soft one,” she said apologetically. Her man had come out of the byre, where he was ministering to a sick cow, an invalid of vast importancewhom he left reluctantly; another man developed somehow out of the fields from nowhere in particular, and they all hurried towards the spot where Miss Beenie sat on the ground, without a thought of her best gown, holding her sister’s head on her breast, and letting tears fall over the crushed bonnet which the doctor had loosened, and which was dropping off the old gray head.
“Oh, Sarah, can ye hear me? Oh, Sarah, do you know me? I’m your poor sister Beenie. Oh if ye could try to rouse yourself up to say a word. There was never anything you couldna do if ye would only try.”
“She’ll not try this time,” said the doctor. “You must not blame her. There’s one who has her in his grips that will not hear reason; but we’ll hope she’ll mend; and in the meantime you must not think she can help it, or that she’s to blame.”
“To blame!” cried Beenie, with that acute cry. “I am silly many a time; but she isnever to blame.” In sight of the motionless figure which lay in her arms, Miss Beenie’s thoughts already began to take that tinge of enthusiastic loyalty with which we contemplate the dead.
“Here they come, God be thanked!” said the doctor. And by and by a little procession made its way between the fields. Miss Dempster, as if lying in state on the mattress, Beenie beside her crying and mourning. She had followed at first, but then it came into her simple mind with a shiver that this was like following the funeral, and she had roused herself and taken her place a little in advance. It was a sad little procession, and when it reached the village street, all the women came out to their doors to ask what was the matter, and to shake their heads, and wonder at the sight.
The village jumped to the fatal conclusion with that desire to heighten every event which is common to all communities: andthe news ran over the parish like lightning.
“Miss Dempster, Rosebank, has had a stroke. She has never spoken since. She is just dead to this world, and little likelihood she will ever come back at her age.” That was the first report; but before evening it had risen to the distinct information—“Miss Dempster, Rosebank, is dead!”
Fred Dirom had been on his way to Gilston, when he was stopped and ordered into the service of the sick woman. He answered to the call with the readiness of a kind heart, and was not only the most active and careful executor of the doctor’s orders, but remained after the patient was conveyed home, to be ready, he said, to run for anything that was wanted, to do anything that might be necessary—nay, after all was done that could be done, to comfort Miss Beenie, who almost shed her tears upon the young man’s shoulder.
“Eh,” she said, “there’s the doctor we have aye thought so rough, and not a gentleman—and there’s you, young Mr. Dirom, that Sarah was not satisfied with for Effie; and you’ve just been like two ministering angels sent out to minister to them that are in sore trouble. Oh, but I wonder if she will ever be able to thank you herself.”
“Not that any thanks are wanted,” cried Fred cheerfully; “but of course she will, much more than we deserve.”
“You’ve just been as kind as—I cannot find any word to say for it, both the doctor and you.”
“He is a capital fellow, Miss Dempster.”
“Oh, do not call me Miss Dempster—not such a thing, not such a thing! I’m Miss Beenie. The Lord preserve me from ever being called Miss Dempster,” she cried, with a movement of terror. But Fred neither laughed at her nor her words. He was very respectful of her, full of pity and almost tenderness, not thinking of how much advantage to himself this adventure was to prove. It ran over the whole countryside next day, and gained “that young Dirom” many a friend.
And Effie, to whom the fall of Miss Dempster was like the fall of one of the familiar hills, and who only discovered how much she loved those oldest of friends after she began to feel as if she must lose them—Effie showed her sense of his good behaviour in the most entrancing way, putting off the shy and frightened aspect with which she had staved off all discussion of matters more important, and beginning to treat him with a timid kindness and respect which bewildered the young man. Perhaps he would rather even now have had something warmer and less (so to speak) accidental: but he was a wise young man, and contented himself with what he could get.
Effie now became capable of “hearingreason,” as Mrs. Ogilvie said. She no longer ran away from any suggestion of the natural end of all such engagements. She suffered it to be concluded that her marriage should take place at Christmas, and gave at last a passive consent to all the arrangements made for her. She even submitted to her stepmother’s suggestions about the trousseau, and suffered various dresses to be chosen, and boundless orders for linen to be given. That she should have a fit providing and go out of her father’s house as it became a bride to do, with dozens of every possible undergarments, and an inexhaustible supply of handkerchiefs and collars, was the ambition of Mrs. Ogilvie’s heart.
She said herself that Miss Dempster’s “stroke,” from which the old lady recovered slowly, was “just a providence.” It brought Effie to her senses, it made her see the real qualities of the young man whom she had not prized at his true value, and whose superiority as the best match in the countryside, she could not even now be made to see. Effie yielded, not because he was the best match, but because he had shown so kind a heart, and all the preparations went merrily forward, and the list of the marriage guests was made out and everything got ready.
But yet for all that, there was full time for that slip between the cup and the lip which so often comes in, contrary to the dearest expectations, in human affairs.
Theslip between the cup and the lip came in two ways. The first was the arrival from India—in advance of Eric who was to get the short leave which his stepmother thought such a piece of extravagance, in order to be present at the marriage of his only sister—of Ronald Sutherland, in order to take possession of the inheritance which had fallen to him on the death of his uncle.
It was not a very great inheritance—an old house with an old tower, the old “peel” of the Border, attached to it; a few farms, a little money, the succession of a family sufficiently well known in the countryside, but which had never been one of the greatfamilies. It was not much certainly. It was no more to be compared with the possessions in fact and expectation of Fred Dirom than twilight is with day; but still it made a great difference.
Ronald Sutherland of the 111th, serving in India with nothing at all but his pay, and Ronald Sutherland of Haythorn with a commission in her Majesty’s service, were two very different persons. Mrs. Ogilvie allowed that had old David Hay been so sensible as to die three years previously, she would not have been so absolutely determined that Ronald’s suit should be kept secret from Effie; but all that was over, and there was no use thinking of it. It had been done “for the best”—and what it had produced was unquestionably the best.
If it had so happened that Effie had never got another “offer,” then indeed there might have been something to regret; but as, on the contrary, she had secured the best matchin the county, her stepmother still saw no reason for anything but satisfaction in her own diplomacy. It had been done for the best; and it had succeeded, which is by no means invariably the case.
But Mrs. Ogilvie allowed that she was a little anxious about Ronald’s first appearance at Gilston. It was inevitable that he should come; for all the early years of his life Gilston had been a second home to him. He had been in and out like one of the children of the house. Mrs. Ogilvie declared she had always said that where there were girls this was a most imprudent thing: but she allowed at the same time that it is difficult to anticipate the moment when a girl will become marriageable, and had better be kept out of knowing and sight of the ineligible, so long as that girl is a child. Consequently, she did not blame her predecessor, Effie’s mother, for permitting an intimacy which at six was innocentenough, though it became dangerous at sixteen.
“Even me,” she said candidly, “I cannot throw my mind so far forward as to see any risks that little Annabella Johnston can run in seeing Rory every day—though sixteen years hence it will be different; for Rory, to be sure, will never be an eligible young man as long as his step-brother Eric is to the fore—and God forbid that anything should happen to Eric,” she added piously.
On this ground, and also because Ronald had the latest news to give of Eric, it was impossible to shut him out of Gilston, though Mrs. Ogilvie could not but feel that it was very bad taste of him to appear with these troubled and melancholy airs, and to look at Effie as he did. It was not that he made any attempt to interfere with the settlement of affairs. He made the proper congratulations though in a very stiff and formal way, and said he hoped that they would be happy.But there was an air about him which was very likely to make an impression on a silly, romantic girl.
He was handsomer than Fred Dirom—he was bronzed with Indian suns, which gave him a manly look. He had seen a little service, he was taller than Fred, stronger, with all those qualities which women specially esteem. And he looked at Effie when she was not observing—oh, but Mrs. Ogilvie said: “It is not an easy thing to tell when a girl is not observing!—for all that kind of thing they are always quick enough.”
And as a matter of fact, Effie observed keenly, and most keenly, perhaps, when she had the air of taking no notice. The first time this long, loosely clothed, somewhat languid, although well-built and manly figure had come in, Effie had felt by the sudden jump of her heart that it was no ordinary visitor. He had been something like a second brother when he went away, Eric’s invariablecompanion, another Eric with hardly any individual claim of his own: but everything now was very different. She said to herself that this jump of her heart which had surprised her so much, had come when she heard his step drawing near the door, so that it must be surely his connection with Eric and not anything in himself that had done it; but this was a poor and unsatisfactory explanation.
After that first visit in which he had hoped that Miss Effie would be very happy, and said everything that was proper, Effie knew almost as well as if she had been informed from the first, all that had passed: his eyes conveyed to her an amount of information which he was little aware of. She recognized with many tremors and a strange force of divination, not only that there had been things said and steps taken before his departure of which she had never been told, but also, as well as if it had beenput into words, that he had come home, happy in the thought of the fortune which now would make him more acceptable in the eyes of the father and stepmother, building all manner of castles in the air; and that all these fairy fabrics had fallen with a crash, and he had awakened painfully from his dream to hear of her engagement, and that a few weeks more would see her Fred Dirom’s wife.
The looks he cast at her, the looks which he averted, the thrill imperceptible to the others which went over him when he took her hand at coming and going, were all eloquent to Effie. All that she had felt for Fred Dirom at the moment when the genuine emotion in him had touched her to the warmest sympathy, was nothing like that which penetrated her heart at Ronald’s hasty, self-restrained, and, as far as he was aware, self-concealing glance.
In a moment the girl perceived, with amingled thrill of painful pleasure and anguish, what might have been. It was one of those sudden perceptions which light up the whole moral landscape in a moment, as a sudden flash of lightning reveals the hidden expanse of storm and sea.
Such intimations are most often given when they are ineffectual—not when they might guide the mind to a choice which would secure its happiness, but after all such possibilities are over and that happy choice can never be made. When he had gone away Effie slid out of sight too, and sought the shelter of her room, that little sanctuary which had hid so many agitations within the last few weeks, but none so tremendous as this. The discovery seemed to stun her. She could only sit still and look at it, her bosom heaving, her heart beating loudly, painfully like a funeral toll against her breast.
So, she said to herself,thatmight havebeen; andthiswas. No, she did not say it to herself: such discoveries are not made by any rational and independent action of mind. It was put before her by that visionary second which is always with us in all our mental operations, the spectator, “qui me resemblait comme mon frère,” whom the poet saw in every crisis of his career. That spiritual spectator who is so seldom a counsellor, whose office is to show the might-have-beens of life and to confound the helpless, unwarned sufferer with the sight of his mistakes when they are past, set this swiftly and silently before her with the force of a conviction. This might have been the real hero, this was the true companion, the mate congenial, the one in the world for Effie. But in the moment of beholding she knew that it was never to be.
And this was not her fault—which made it the more confusing, the more miserable. When it is ourselves who have made the mistake that spoils our lives, we have, at least, had something for it, the gratification of having had our own way, the pleasure of going wrong. But Effie had not even secured this pleasure. She would be the sufferer for other people’s miscalculations and mistakes. All this that concerned her so deeply she had never known. She faced the future with all the more dismay that it thus appeared to her to be spoiled for no end, destroyed at once for herself and Ronald and Fred. For what advantage could it be to Fred to have a wife who felt that he was not her chief good, that her happiness was with another? Something doubly poignant was in the feeling with which the poor girl perceived this.
Fred even, poor Fred, whom she approved and liked and sympathized with and did all but love—Fred would be nonethe better. He would be wronged even in having his heart’s desire conceded to him, whereas—it all came before Effie with another flash of realization—Fred would never have thought of her in that way had she been pledged to Ronald. They would have been friends—oh! such good friends. She would have been able to appreciate all his good qualities, the excellence that was in him, and no close and inappropriate relationship could have been formed between the two who were not made for each other.
But now all was wrong! It was Fred and she, who might have been such excellent friends, who were destined to work through life together, badly matched, not right, not right, whatever might happen. If trouble came she would not know how to comfort him, as she would have known how to comfort Ronald. She would not know how to help him. How was it shehad not thought of that before? They belonged to different worlds, not to the same world as she and Ronald did, and when the first superficial charm was over, and different habits, different associations, life, which was altogether pitched upon a different key, began to tell!
Alarm seized upon Effie, and dismay. She had been frightened before at the setting up of a new life which she felt no wish for, no impulse to embrace; but she had not thought how different was the life of Allonby from that of Gilston, and her modest notions of rustic gentility from the luxury and show to which the rich man’s son had been accustomed. Doris and Phyllis and their ways of thought, and their habits of existence, came before her in a moment as part of the strange shifting panorama which encompassed her about. How was she to get to think as they did, to accustom herself to their ways of living?She had wondered and smiled, and in her heart unconsciously criticised these ways: but that was Fred’s way as well as theirs. And how was she with her country prejudices, her Scotch education, her limitations, her different standard, how was she to fit into it? But with Ronald she would have dwelt among her own people—oh, the different life! Oh, the things that might have been!
Poor Ronald went his way sadly from the same meeting with a consciousness that was sharp and confusing and terrible. After the first miserable shock of disappointment which he had felt on hearing of Effie’s engagement, he had conversed much with himself. He had said to himself that she was little more than a child when he had set his boyish heart upon her, that since then a long time had passed, momentous years: that he had changed in many ways, and that she toomust have changed—that the mere fact of her engagement must have made a great difference—that she had bound herself to another kind of existence, not anything he knew, and that it was not possible that the betrothed of another man could be any longer the little Effie of his dreams.
But he had looked at her, and he had felt that he was mistaken. She was his Effie, not that other man’s: there was nothing changed in her, only perfected and made more sweet. Very few were the words that passed between them—few looks even, for they were afraid to look at each other—but even that unnatural reluctance said more than words. He it was who was her mate, not the stranger, the Englishman, the millionaire, whose ways and the ways of his people were not as her ways.
And yet it was too late! He could neither say anything nor do anything toshow to Effie that she had made a mistake, that it was he, Ronald, whom Heaven had intended for her. The young man, we may be sure, saw nothing ludicrous in this conviction that was in his mind; but he could not plead it. He went home to the old-fashioned homely house, which he said to himself no wife of his should ever make bright, in which he would settle down, no doubt, like his old uncle, and grow into an old misanthrope, a crotchety original, as his predecessor had done. Poor old uncle David! what was it that had made him so? perhaps a fatal mistake, occurring somehow by no fault of his—perhaps a little Effie, thrown away upon a stranger, too—
“What made you ask him to his dinner, though I made you signs to the contrary?” said Mrs. Ogilvie to her husband, as soon as, each in a different direction, the two young people had disappeared. “You mighthave seen I was not wanting him to his dinner; but when was there ever a man that could tell the meaning of a look? I might have spared my pains.”
“And why should he not be asked to his dinner?” said Mr. Ogilvie. “You go beyond my understanding. Ronald Sutherland, a lad that I have known since he wasthathigh, and his father and his grandfather before him. I think the woman is going out of her wits. Because you’re marrying Effie to one of those rich upstarts, am I never to ask a decent lad here?”
“You and your decent lads!” said his wife; she was at the end of her Latin, as the French say, and of her patience too. “Just listen to me, Robert,” she added, with that calm of exasperation which is sometimes so impressive. “I’m marrying Effie, since you like to put it that way (and it’s a great deal more than any of herrelations would have had the sense to do), to the best match on all this side of Scotland. I’m not saying this county; there’s nobody in the county that is in any way on the same footing as Fred. There is rank, to be sure, but as for money he could buy them all up, and settlements just such as were never heard of. Well, that’s what I’m doing, if you give me the credit of it. But there’s just one little hindrance, and that’s Ronald Sutherland. If he’s to come here on the ground of your knowing him since he wasthathigh, and being Eric’s friend—that’s to say, like a son of the house—I have just this to say, Robert, that I will not answer for Effie, and this great match may not take place after all.”
“What do you mean, you daft woman? Do you mean to tell me there has been any carrying on, any correspondence——”
“Have some respect to your own child,Robert, if not to your wife. Am I a woman to allow any carrying on? And Effie, to do her justice, though she has very little sense in some respects, is not a creature of that kind; and mind, she never heard a word of yon old story. No, no, it’s not that. But it’s a great deal worse—it’s just this, that there’s an old kindness, and they know each other far better than either Effie or you or me knows Fred Dirom. They are the same kind of person, and they have things to talk about if once they begin. And, in short, I cannot tell you all my drithers—but I’m very clear on this. If you want that marriage to come off, which is the best match that’s been made in Dumfriess-shire for generations, just you keep Ronald Sutherland at arm’s length, and take care you don’t ask him here to his dinner every second day.”
“I am not so fond of having strangersto their dinner,” said Mr. Ogilvie, with great truth. “It’s very rarely that the invitation comes from me. And as for your prudence and your wisdom and your grand managing, it might perhaps be just as well, on the whole, for Effie if she had two strings to her bow.”
Mrs. Ogilvie uttered a suppressed shriek in her astonishment. “For any sake! what, in the name of all that’s wonderful, are you meaning now?”
“You give me no credit for ever meaning anything, or taking the least interest, so far as I can see, in what’s happening in my own family,” said the head of the house, standing on his dignity.
“Oh, Robert, man! didn’t I send the young man to you, and would not listen to him myself! I said her father is the right person: and so you were, and very well you managed it, as you always do when you will take the trouble. But whatis this about a second string to her bow?”
Mr. Ogilviese faisait prier. He would not at first relinquish the pride of superior knowledge. At last, when his wife had been tantalized sufficiently, he opened his budget.
“The truth is, that things, very queer things, are said in London about Dirom’s house. There is a kind of a hint in the money article of theTimes. You would not look at that, even if we got theTimes. I saw it yesterday in Dumfries. They say ‘a great firm that has gone largely into mines of late’—and something about Basinghall Street, and a hope that their information may not be correct, and that sort of thing—which means more even than it says.”
“Lord preserve us!” said Mrs. Ogilvie. She sat down, in her consternation, upon Rory’s favourite toy lamb, which utteredthe squeak peculiar to such pieces of mechanism. Probably this helped to increase her annoyance. She seized it with impatient warmth and flung it on the floor.
“The horrible little beast!—But, Robert, this may be just a rumour. There are plenty of firms that do business in mines, and as for Basinghall Street, it’s just a street of offices. My own uncle had a place of business there.”
“You’ll see I’m right for all that,” said her husband, piqued to have his information doubted.
“Well, I’ll see it when I do see it; but I have just the most perfect confidence—What is this, George? Is there no answer? Well, you need not wait.”
“I was to wait, mem,” said George, “to let the cook ken if there was nobody expected to their dinner; for in that case, mem, there was yon birds that was quite good, that could keep to another day.”
“Cook’s just very impatient to send me such a message. Oh, well, you may tell her that there will be nobody to dinner. Mr. Dirom has to go to London in a hurry,” she said, half for the servant and half for her husband. She turned a glance full of alarm, yet defiance, upon the latter as old George trotted away.
“Well, what do you say to that?” cried Mr. Ogilvie, with a mixture of satisfaction and vexation.
“I just say what I said before—that I’ve perfect confidence.” But nevertheless a cloud hung all the rest of the day upon Mrs. Ogilvie’s brow.