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The Clyde was forded by man and horse where ships now ride at anchor; but the rush of trade, not quite so deep and rapid fifty years since as now, yet strong and swift, the growth of centuries, was hurrying, jostling, trampling onward in Jamaica Street and Buchanan Street and their busy thoroughfares. Within our quarter, however, were stillness and dimness, the cold, lofty, classic repose of the noble college to which a professor's house was in immediate vicinity.
The room, large, low-roofed, with small, peaked windows, had not been built in modern times. The furniture was almost in keeping: roomy settees, broad, plain, ribbed-back chairs, with faded worked covers, the task of fingers crumbled into dust, heavy bookcases loaded with proportionably ponderous or curiously quaint volumes, and mirrors, with their frames like coffins covered with black velvet and relieved by gilding.
The only fresh and fragrant thing in the room—ay, or in the house, where master and mistress and servants were old and withered—was a young girl seated on a window-seat, her hands lightly crossed, watching the white clouds in the July sky, white, though nothing else is so in Glasgow, where the air is heavy with perpetual smoke and vapour.
That girl, too broad-browed and large-eyed for mere youthful beauty, but with such an arch, delicate, girlish mouth and chin as betokened her a frank, unsophisticated, merry child after all, was Leslie Bower, the young daughter and only child of an erudite and venerated professor.
Leslie had no brothers and no sisters, and in a sense she had neither father nor mother, for Professor Bower was the son, husband, and father of his books, and he had so mighty a family of these, ancient and modern, that he had very little time or attention to spare for ties of the flesh. He was a mild, absent, engrossed old man, flashing into energy and genius in his own field of learning, but in the world of ordinary humanity a body without a soul.
Professor Bower married late in life a timid, shrinking English wife, who, removed from all early ties, and never mingling in Glasgow society, lapsed into a stillness as profound as his own.
Dr. Bower took little notice of his child; what with duties and studies, he had no leisure; he read in his slippered morning gown, he read at meals, he read by his evening lamp; probably, if Mrs. Bower would have confessed it, he kept a volume under his pillow. No wonder he was a blear-eyed, poking, muttering old man, for he was much more interested in Hannibal than in Bonaparte, and regarded Leslie, like the house, the yearly income, the rector, the students, the janitors, as one of many abstract facts with which he troubled himself as little as possible.
Mrs. Bower cared for Leslie's health and comfort with scrupulous nervous exactness, but she was incapable of any other demonstration of regard. She was as shy and egotistical as poor Louis XVI., and perhaps it would have demanded as tragic a domestic revolution to have stirred her up to lively tenderness. Leslie might have been as dubious as Marie Antoinette of the amount of love entertained for her by her nearest kin, but curiously, though affectionate and passionate enough to have been the pure and innocent child of some fiery Jocobin, she had not vexed herself about this mystery. One sees every day lush purple and rose-flowered plants growing in unaccountable shade; true, their associates are pale and drooping, and the growth of the hardier is treacherous, and may distil poison, but the evil principle is gradual, and after conditions have been confirmed and matured.
The stronger portion of Leslie's nature, which required abundant and invigorating food, was slow of development; the lighter side flourished in the silent, dull house, where nothing else courted the sunbeam. In her childhood and girlhood, Leslie had gone out to school, and although always somewhat marked and individual in character, she had companions, friends, sufficient sympathy and intercourse for an independent, buoyant nature at the most plastic period of its existence. This stage of life was but lately left behind; Leslie had not long learnt that now she was removed from classes and masters, and must in a great measure confine her acquaintances to those who returned her visits at her father's house; and as visitors put mamma and papa about, and did not suit their habits, she must resign her little world, and be almost as quiet and solitary as her elders. Leslie had just begun to sigh a little for the old thronged, bustling class-rooms which she had lightly esteemed, and was active by fits and starts in numerous self-adopted occupations which could put former ones out of her head, and fill up the great blanks in her time and thoughts, for she was not inclined to sit down under a difficulty, and instinctively battled with it in a thousand ways.
Thus Leslie had her flower-painting—few natural flowers she saw, poor girl—card boxes, worsted vases, eggshell baskets, embroidery pieces, canary bird, and books—the last greedily devoured. She did not assist her mother, because although their household was limited, Mrs. Bower's quiet, methodical plans were perfect, and she gently declined all interference with her daily round. Neither didLeslie work for her father, because the professor would as soon have employed her canary bird. She was not thoughtful and painstaking for the poor, because, though accustomed to a species of almsgiving, she heard nothing, saw nothing of nearer or higher association with her neighbours. Yet there was capacity enough in that heart and brain for good or for evil.
So Leslie sat there, pausing in her sewing, and gazing idly at the sky, with a girl's quick pensiveness and thick-coming fancies, as she mused.
How blue it was yonder! What glorious clouds! yet the world below was rather stupid and tiresome, and it was hard to say what people toiled so arduously for. There were other lands and other people: should she ever see them? Surely, for she was quite young. She wished they could go in summer 'down the water,' out of this din and dust, to some coast village or lonely loch between lofty purple mountains, such as she had seen when with Mrs. Elliot; papa might spare a few weeks, people no richer did; they had no holidays, and it was so hot and close, and always the same. But she supposed she must be contented, and would go away to cool and compose herself in the crypt of their own cathedral. How grand it was; how solemn the aisles and arches on every side, like forest trees; and then the monuments—what stories she invented for them! St. Mungo's Well! St. Mungo, austere, yet beneficent; with bare feet, cowled head, scarred back, and hardest of all, swept and garnished heart, with his fruitful blessing, 'Let Glasgow flourish.' What would St. Mungo think now of the city of the tree, the fish, and the bell?
This hoar, venerable, beautiful feat of art was to the imprisoned Glasgow girl as St. Paul's to such another isolated imaginative nature.
There was a knock at the street-door; a very decided application of the queer, twisted knocker. Leslie roused herself: not a beggar's tap that; none of the janitors; and this was not Dr. Murdoch's or Dr. Ware's hour: the girl was accurate in taps and footsteps. Some one was shown in; a man's voice was heard greeting "Dr. Bower," before the study door was closed. Leslie started up with pleased surprise,—"Hector Garret of Otter! he will come upstairs to see us; he will tell us how the country is looking; he will bring news from Ferndean," and for the next hour she sat in happy, patient expectation.
Mrs. Bower, a fair, faded, grave woman, came into the room, and sat down with her needlework in the other window.
"Mamma," exclaimed Leslie, "do you know that Hector Garret of Otter is downstairs with papa?"
"Yes, Leslie."
"He never fails to ask for us; don't you think we'll see him here by-and-by?"
"I do not know; it depends upon his engagements."
"I wonder what brings him to Glasgow just now; he must find it so much more agreeable at home," with a little sigh.
"Leslie, I don't think you have anything to do with that."
"No, certainly; Hector Garret and I are two very different persons."
"Leslie!"
"Well, mamma."
"I wish you would not say Hector Garret; it does not sound proper in a girl like you."
"I suppose it does not. He must have been a grown-up man when I was a child. I have caught the habit from papa, but I have not the least inclination to use the name to his face."
"I should think not, Leslie;" and the conversation dropped.
Presently the stranger entered deliberately; a tall, fair, handsome man of eight-and-thirty or forty, with one of those cold, intellectual, statuesque faces in which there is a chill harmony, and which are types of a calm temperament, or an extinct volcano. Perhaps it was that cast of countenance which recommended him to the Bowers; yet Leslie was dark, bright, and variable.
The visitor brought a gift in his hand—a basket of flowers and summer fruit, of which Leslie relieved him, while she struggled in vain to look politely obliged, and not irrationally elated.
"So kind of you to trouble yourself! Such a beautiful flower—wild roses and hawthorn too—I like so much to have them, though they wither very soon. I dare say they grew where
'Fairies lightOn Cassilis Downans dance.'
(Burns was becoming famous, and Leslie had picked up the lines somewhere.) And the strawberries, oh, they must be from Ferndean."
The bearer nodded and smiled.
"I knew it by instinct," and Leslie began eating them like a tempted child, and stained her pretty lips. "Those old rows on each side of the summer-house where papa first learnt his lessons—I wonder if there are jackdaws there still: won't you have some?"
"No, thank you. What a memory you have, Miss Bower!"
"Ferndean is my Highland hill. When papa is very stiff and helpless from rheumatism, he talks of it sometimes. It is so long ago; he was so different then."
Mr. Garret and Mrs. Bower exchanged a few civil words on his journey, the spring weather, the state of the war, like two taciturn people who force their speeches; then he became Leslie's property, sat down beside her, watched her arranging her flowers, helped her a little, and spoke now and then in answer to her questions, and that was sufficient.
Hector Garret was particularly struck this evening with the incongruity of Leslie's presence in the Professor's dry, silent, scholastic home, and with her monotonous, shaded existence, and her want of natural associations and fitting companionship. He pondered upon her future; he was well acquainted with her prospects; he knew much better than she did that the money with which his father had bought up the mortgages on Ferndean, and finally the estate itself, was drained and scattered long ago, and that the miserable annuity upon which the Professor rested peacefully as a provision for his widow and child, died with the former. It was scarcely credible that a man shouldbe so regardless of his own family, but the echo of the mystic, sublime discourses of the Greek porches, the faint but sacred trace of the march of vast armies, and the fall of nations, caused Leslie to dwindle into a mere speck in the creation. Of course she would be provided for somehow: marry, or make her own livelihood. Socrates did not plague himself much about the fate of Xantippe: Seneca wrote from his exile to console his mother, but the epistles were for the benefit of the world at large, and destined to descend to future generations of barbarians.
What a frank, single-hearted young girl she seemed to Hector Garret—intelligent, capable of comprehending him in a degree, amusing him with her similes and suggestions; pretty, too, as one of those wild roses or pinks that she prized so highly, though she wore a sober, green, flowered silk dress. He should like to see her in a white gown. He supposed that was not a convenient town wear. Pope had unmasked women, but he could not help thinking that a fresh, simple, kind young girl would be rather a pleasant object of daily encounter. She would grow older, of course. That was a pity; but still she would be progressing into an unsophisticated, cordial, contented woman, whom servants would obey heartily—to whom children would cling. Even men had a gush of tenderness for these smiling, unobtrusive, humble mothers; and best so in the strain and burden of this life.
Leslie knew nothing of these meditations. She only understood Hector Garret as a considerate friend, distinguished personally, and gifted mentally—for her father set great store upon him—but, unlike the gruff or eager servants to whom she was accustomed, condescending to her youth and ignorance, and with a courtesy the nearest to high-breeding she had ever met. She was glad to see Hector Garret, even if he did not bring a breath of the country with him. She parted from him with a sense of loss—a passing sadness that hung upon her for an hour or two, like the vapour on the river, which misses the green boughs and waving woods, and sighs sluggishly past wharfs and warehouses.
It was a still greater surprise to Leslie when Hector Garret came again the next evening. He had never been with them on two successive days before. She supposed he had gone back to Ayrshire, although he had not distinctly referred to his speedy return. But he was here, and Leslie entertained him as usual.
"Should you not like to see Ferndean?" inquired Hector Garret.
"Don't speak of it," Leslie cautioned him, soberly; "it would be far too great happiness for this world."
"Why, what sort of dismal place do you think the world?"
"Too good a place for you and me," Leslie answered evasively, and with a touch of fun.
"But this is the very season for Ferndean and Otter, when the pasture is gay as a garden, and you can have boating every day in the creeks, more sheltered than the moorland lochs."
The tears came into Leslie's eyes.
"I think it is unkind of you, Mr. Garret, to tempt me with such pictures," she answered, half pettishly.
"I mean to be kind," he responded quickly. "I may err, but I can take refuge in my intentions. You may see Ferndean and Otter, if you can consent to go there, and dwell there as a grave man's friend and wife."
Leslie started violently, and the blood rushed over her face.
"I beg your pardon, Sir, but you don't mean it?"
"I do mean it, Leslie, as being the best for both of us; and I ask you plainly and directly to marry me: if you agree, I hope and trust that you will never regret it."
Leslie trembled very much. She said afterwards that she pinched her arm to satisfy herself that she was awake, but she was not quite overcome.
"I was never addressed so before. I do not know what to say. You are very good, but I am not fit."
He interrupted her—not with vows and protestations, but resolutely and convincingly.
"I am the best judge of your fitness,—but you must judge for yourself also. I am certain of your father's and mother's acquiescence, so I do not mention them. But do not hurry; take time, consult your own heart; consider the whole matter. I will not press for your decision. I will wait days, weeks. I will go down to Otter in the meantime, if you prefer it. But if you do say yes, remember, dear Leslie, you confer upon me the greatest boon that a woman can bestow on a man, and I think I am capable of appreciating it."
He spoke with singular impartiality, but without reassuring his hearer. Leslie looked helplessly up to him, excited and distressed.
He smiled a little, and sighed a brief sigh.
"You are not satisfied. You are too candid and generous. You wish me to take my refusal at once. You feel that I am too old, too dull to presume—"
"Oh, no, no," Leslie exclaimed, seeing herself convicted of terrible selfishness and conceit, while her heart was throbbing even painfully with humility and gratitude. "You have done me a great honour, and if you would not be disappointed—if you would bear with me—if you are not deceiving yourself in your nobleness—I should be so happy to go to Ferndean."
He thanked her eloquently, and talked to her a little longer, kindly and affectionately, and then he offered to seek her father; and left her to her agitated reflections. What a fine, dignified man he looked! Could it be possible that this was her lot in life? And the very sun which had risen upon her planning a walk with Mary Elliot next week, was yet streaming upon her poor pots of geraniums on the dusty window-sill. She quitted her seat, and began to walk quickly up and down.
"Leslie, you are shaking the room." Mamma had been in the further window with her sewing all the time.
Leslie stole behind the brown window-curtain, fluttering her hand among the folds.
"Leslie, you are pulling that curtain awry."
"I cannot help it, mamma."
"Why not, child? Are you ill?"
"Yes—no, mamma. I don't know what to think—I can't think. But Hector Garret has asked me to be his wife."
Mrs. Bower's needle dropped from her fingers. She stared at her daughter. She rose slowly.
"Impossible, Leslie," she observed.
Leslie laughed hysterically.
"Yes, indeed. It was very strange, but I heard every word."
"Are you certain you are not mistaken?"
Mrs. Bower had never so cross-examined her daughter in her life; but Leslie was not disturbed or vexed by her incredulity.
"Quite certain. I know it was only yesterday that you scolded me for taking liberties with his name; but he was perfectly serious, and he has gone to tell papa."
Mrs. Bower gazed wistfully on Leslie, and a faint red colour rose in her cheek, while she interlaced her fingers nervously.
"Leslie," she asked again, in a shaking voice, "do you know what you are doing?"
Leslie looked frightened.
"Is it so very terrible, mamma? I should possibly have married some day—most girls mean to do it; and only think of Ferndean and Otter. Besides, there is nobody I could like so well as Hector Garret, I am quite sure, although I little guessed he cared so much for me;" and Leslie's eye's fell, and a sunny, rosy glow mantled over her whole face, rendering it very soft and fair.
"I see it is to be, Leslie. May it be for your welfare, my dear;" and her mother stooped abruptly, and kissed the young, averted cheek.
Leslie was awed. She dreaded that her father would beequally moved, and then she did not know how she could stand it. But she might have spared herself the apprehension; for when the Professor shuffled in he sat down as usual, fumbled for his spectacles, looked round with the most unconscious eye, observed that "Ware" had that day exceeded in his lecture by twenty minutes—"a bad practice," (Dr. Bower was himself notoriously unpunctual,) and took not the slightest notice of any event of greater importance, until Leslie's suspense had been so long on the rack that it began to subside into dismay, when glancing up for a moment, he observed parenthetically, as he turned a page—"Child! you have my approval of a union with Hector Garret—an odd fancy, but that is no business of ours,"—dropped his eyes again on his volume, and made no further allusion to the subject for the rest of the evening—no, nor ever again, of his own free will. Hector Garret assailed him on preliminaries, his wife patiently waylaid and besieged him for the necessary funds, acquaintances congratulated him—he was by compulsion drawn more than once from roots and æsthetics; but left to himself, he would have assuredly forgotten his daughter's wedding-day, as he had done that of her baptism.
Leslie recovered from the stunning suddenness of her fate, and awoke fully to its brightness. To go down to Ayrshire and dwell there among hills and streams, and pure heather-scented air, like any shepherdess; to be the nearest and dearest to Hector Garret:—already the imaginative, warm-hearted girl began to raise him into a divinity.
Leslie was supremely content, she was gay and giddy even with present excitement; with the pretty bustle ofbeing so important and so occupied—she whose whole time lately had been vacant and idle—so willing to admire her new possessions, so openly elated with their superiority, and not insensible to the fact that all these prominent obtrusive cares were but little superfluous notes of the great symphony upon which she had entered, and whose infinitely deeper, fuller, higher tones she would learn well, by-and-by.
Leslie Bower was the personification of joy, and no one meddled with her visions. Hector Garret was making his preparations at Otter; and when Leslie sang as she stitched, and ran lightly up and down, only the servants in the kitchen laid their heads together, and confided to each other that "never did they see so daffin' a bride; Miss Leslie should ken that a greetin' bride's a happy bride!" But no one told Leslie—no one taught her the tender meaning of the wise old proverb—no one warned her of the realities of life, so much sadder, so much holier, purer, more peaceful than any illusion. Her mother had relapsed into her ordinary calmness, rather wounding Leslie's perceptions when she allowed herself to think of it, for she did not read the lingering assiduity that was so intent it might have been employed upon her shroud. And there was no one else—no; Leslie was quite unaware that her gladness was ominous.
Only the shadow of a warning crossed Leslie's path of roses, and she disregarded it. Her confidence in Hector Garret and in life remained unbounded.
Leslie had gone to the best known of her early companions, her cup brimming over in the gracious privilege ofbegging Mary Elliot to be her bridesmaid. The Elliots had been kind to her, and had once taken her to their cheerful country-house; and now Mary was to witness the ceremony, and Hector Garret had said that she might, if she pleased, pay Leslie a long visit at Otter.
Mary Elliot was a little older, a little more experienced in womanly knowledge than Leslie.
"How strange it sounds that you should be married so soon, Leslie, from your old house, where we thought you buried. We believed that you must lead a single life, unless your father made a pet of one of his students: and then you must have waited until he left college."
"It is the reverse. I have no time to lose," nodded Leslie; "only Hector Garret is not old-looking. I don't believe that he has a grey hair in his head. He is a far handsomer man than Susan Cheyne's sister's husband."
"I know it; he was pointed out to me in the street. Is he very fond of you, Leslie?"
"I suppose—a little, or he would not have me."
"Does he flatter you, pretend that you are a queen, say all manner of fine things to you? I should like to be enlightened."
"No, no, Mary; real men are not like men in books—and he is not foolish."
"But it is not foolish in a lover. They are all out of their senses—blinded by admiration and passion."
"Perhaps; but Hector Garret is a clever man, only he speaks when he is spoken to, and does not forget you when out of sight. And do you know, I have been used to clever people, and decidedly prefer to look up to a man?"
"What does he call you, Leslie?"
"Why, Leslie, to be sure, or Miss Bower. You would not have him say Mrs. Garret yet?" And Leslie covered her face and laughed again, and reddened to the tips of her fingers.
"Not 'Bonnie Leslie,' 'Jewel,' 'Angel,'" jested Mary, thrilling at the echo of a certain low, fluttered voice, that had sounded in her own ears and would wilfully repeat, "Winsome Mary," "Little Woman," "Witch!"
"No," Leslie replied, with honest frankness, "that would be speaking nonsense; and if Hector Garret thinks nonsense that is bad enough."
"Do you remember how we talked sometimes of our husbands?"
"Yes, I do. They were all to be heroes."
"And you were to be courted on bended knees. Yes, Leslie, solicited again and again; and when you yielded at last, it should be such an act of grace that the poor fellow would be half mad with delight."
"I was mad myself. I was full of some song or bit of poetry. I tell you again, Mary, if you have not found it out for yourself, real life is not like a book. Hector Garret is not the man to beg and implore, and wait patiently for a score of years. I wish you saw how he manages his strong horse. He sits, and does not yield a hair's breadth. Though it paws and rears, he just holds its head tight and pats its neck. Now, I want him to check and guide me. I have been left a great deal to myself. Papa and mamma are not young, and it appears to me that a single child is not enough to draw out the sympathies of a staid, silentcouple. They have been very kind to me all my life, and I ought to be glad that they will not miss me much. But although it was wrong, I have often felt a little forlorn, and been tempted to have bad, discontented thoughts all by myself. However, that is over, and I hope I'm going to be a good and sensible woman now. And, Mary, I am so anxious to have your opinion upon my crimson pelisse, because mamma does not profess to be a judge; and I cannot be certain that it is proper merely on a mantua-maker's word and my own taste. I would like to do Hector Garret credit; not that I can really do so in any eyes but his own."
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Hector Garret had his girl wife at Otter, and very sunny her existence was for the lustrum of that honeymoon. It was almost sufficient for her to be at liberty, fairly installed in her castle in the air, a country home. And its lord and master was generous and indulgent, and wasted, he did not care to say how many days, in displaying to her the green ruinousness of Ferndean—in climbing the hills and hunting out the widest views for her—in taking her out in his boat, and rowing her in sunshine and shade, enjoying her wonder and exultation most benevolently. In a short time he left her to herself, for he had much property, to whose numerous details he attended with rigid conscientiousness, and he had been a student from his youth, and sat almost as much as Dr. Bower in his library, although it was an airier and more heterogeneously fitted-up sanctuary. Lesliewas perfectly satisfied; in fact, while the novelty around her was fresh, she preferred to wander about at her leisure, and find out places for herself, because Hector Garret was always hurrying her, and she was trying so hard to be clever, active, and amiable. Ah, that slight strain already perceptible, that growth of ignorance, misconception, and extravagant reverence—what fruit would it bear?
Otter was a rambling white house in a green meadow opening to the sea. Its salient points were its size and age. The slowest-growing shrubs in its pleasance were tough, seamed, branched and bowed with time. There were few trees in the neighbourhood except at forsaken Ferndean; but there were slow swelling hills crowned with heather closing in the valley over which Otter presided with the dignified paternal character of the great house of strath, or glen. Leslie smiled when she first heard the natives of the district term the grey or glittering track that bounded the western horizon, "The Otter Sea," but very soon she fell into the use of the same name, and was conscious of feeling far more interest in the boats and ships that crossed that limited space, than in those which she saw from the hilltops spread far and wide over a great expanse broken only by the misty Irish coast-line. Indeed, Hector Garret explained to her that he had seignorial claims over that strip of waves—that the seaweed, and, after certain restrictions, the fragments of wreck cast upon its sands, were his property, quite as much as if he had waved his banner over it, like the gallant Spaniard, in the name of his Most Catholic Majesty.
Leslie had variety in her locality; the beach, with itshuge boulders and inspiring music; the fields and "uplands airy," with their hedge wealth of vetch, briar, and bramble; the garden, the ancient walled garden, at whose antiquities Hector Garret laughed.
Leslie played sad pranks in the early season of her disenthralment. She wandered far and near, and soiled her white gowns, to the despair of the Otter servant who did up the master's shirts and managed the mistress's clear-starching, but who never dreamt, in those days of frills, robes, and flounces, of styling herself a laundress. Leslie filled her apron with mosses and lichens: she stole out after the reapers had left the patch of oats which was not within sight of the house, and gathered among the sheaves like a Ruth. She grew stout and hardy, and, in spite of her gipsy bonnet, as brown as a berry under this out-of-door life, until no one would have known the waxen-faced city girl; and many a time when Hector Garret left his study in the dusk and found his way to the drawing-room, he discovered her asleep from very weariness, with her head laid down on her spindle-legged work-table, and the white moonbeams trying to steal under her long eyelashes. He would tread softly, and stand, and gaze, but he never stooped and kissed her cheek in merry frolic, never in yearning tenderness.
Such was Leslie's holiday; let her have it—it ended, certainly. The black October winds began to whistle in the chimneys and lash the Otter sea into foam; the morning mists were white and dense on the hills, and sometimes the curtain never rose the whole day; the burns were hoarse and muddy, the sheep in fold, the little birds silent. Leslie loved the prospect still, even the wild grey clouds rent and whirled across the sky, the watery sun, and the ragged, wan, dripping verdure; but it made her shiver too, and turn to her fireside, where she would doze and yawn, work and get weary in her long solitary hours. Hector Garret was patient and good-humoured; he took the trouble to teach her any knowledge to which she aspired; but he was so far beyond her, so hopelessly superior, that she was vexed and ashamed to confess to him her ignorance, and it was clear that when he came up to her domain in the evening he liked best to rest himself, or to play with her in a fondling, toying way. After the first interminable rainy day which she had spent by herself at Otter, when he entered and proceeded in his cool, rather lazy fashion to tap her under the chin, to inquire if she had been counting the rain drops, to bid her try his cigar, she felt something swelling in her throat, and answered him shortly and crossly; but when she found that he treated her offended air as the whim of a spoilt child, and was rather the more amused by it, she determined that he should not be entertained by her humours. Perilous entertainment as it was, Leslie could not have afforded it; her wilderness tamed her so that she welcomed Hector Garret eagerly, submitted to be treated as a child, exerted herself to prattle away gaily and foolishly when her heart was a little heavy and her spirits languid.
Leslie saw so little of her husband—perhaps it was the case with all wives; her father and mother were as much apart—but Leslie did not understand the necessity. She did not like her life to be selfish, smooth, and aimless, except for her own fancies, as it had been from the first. She wanted to share Hector Garret's cares and his work which he transacted so faithfully. She wished he thought her half as worth consulting as his steward. She had faith in woman's wit. She had a notion that she herself was quick and could become painstaking. She tried entering his room once or twice uninvited, but he always looked so discontented, and when she withdrew so relieved, that she could not persevere in the attempt.
When Hector Garret went shooting or fishing, Leslie would have accompanied him gladly, would have delighted in his trophies, and carried his bag or his basket, like any gillie or callant of the Highlands or Lowlands, if he would have allowed it; but his excursions were too remote and fatiguing, and beyond the strength that was supposed consistent with her sex and nurture.
Little fool! to assail another's responsibilities and avocations when her own were embarrassing her sufficiently. Her household web had got warped and entangled in her careless, inexperienced hands, and vexed and mortified her with a sense of incapacity and failure—an oppression which she could not own to Hector Garret, because there was no common ground, and no mutual understanding between them. When Leslie came to Otter she found the housekeeping in the hands of an Irish follower of the Garrets—themselves of Irish origin; and Hector Garret presented Bridget Kennedy to his wife as his faithful and honoured servant, whom he recommended to a high place in her regard. Bridget Kennedy displayed more marked traces of race than her master, but it was the Celtic natureunder its least attractive aspect to strangers, proud, passionate, fanciful, and vindictive. She was devoted to her master, and capable of consideration for Leslie on his account—though jealous of her entrance upon the stage of Otter; but she evinced this reflected interest by encroachments and tyranny, a general determination to adhere doggedly to her own ways, and to impose them upon her mistress.
Leslie began by admiring Bridget, as she did everything else at Otter. Leslie would have propitiated the mayor of the palace with kind words and attentions, but when she was snapped up in her efforts, she drew back with a girl's aptness to be affronted and repelled. Next Leslie began to angrily resist Bridget's unbecoming interference with her movements, and design of exercising authority and control over the child whom the master had chosen to set over his house; but her fitful impulses were met and overruled by stubborn and slenderly veiled fierceness. Leslie was not weak, but she was undisciplined; and she who had been the young Hotspur of the most orderly and pacific of families, learnt to tremble at the sound of Bridget's crutch in the lobbies, and her shrill voice rating the servants who flew to do her bidding.
In proportion as Leslie cowered at her subordinate, the subordinate was tempted to despise her and lord it over her.
Hector Garret was blind to this contention. For his own part, he humoured Bridget or smiled at her asperities, as suited him; and it is probable that if he had been appealed to, he would have adopted his old favourite's side,and censured Leslie as touchy, inconsiderate, perhaps a little spiteful. But he never was made umpire, for Leslie had all the disadvantage of a noble temper in an unseemly struggle. Bridget plagued Leslie, but Leslie would not injure Bridget,—no, not for the world. The imperious old woman was Hector Garret's friend; he had said that he had known no firmer friend than Bridget Kennedy. She had closed his father's eyes, she had stood by himself in sickness and sorrow (for all his strength and self-command, Hector had known sickness and sorrow—that was a marvel to Leslie)—Bridget might clutch her rights to the end, what did it signify? only a little pique and bitterness to an interloper.
Leslie had ceased to credit that she would ever become the wise, helpful woman that she had once warmly desired to see herself. Her own defects were now familiar and sorely disheartening to her, and she had grown aware that she could not by inspiration set and preserve in smooth, swift motion the various wheels of Otter, not even if—unlooked for and undesired sequel!—she received express permission to dance upon the head of old Bridget.
Leslie had fancied once, when Hector Garret told her how few neighbours lived within visiting distance, that she should not want society: but the solitude was matter of regret, especially when it proved that of the few families who exchanged rare intercourse, some of better birth than breeding scarcely held the daughter of the disinherited laird and Glasgow scholar as their equal in social rank, or a spouse worthy of the master of Otter, or indeed entitled to their special esteem.
The only house without any pretension within sight of Otter was situated at the other extremity of the bay, on a peninsula projecting far into the sea. It had been built in the days when each mansion was a fortalice, and when safety from enemies was of more moment than the convenience of friends.
This Earlscraig was now little more than a grim, grey turret, seldom occupied; the companion body of the building had been destroyed nearly a score of years before by a fire—the tragedy of the country-side, as it consummated the ruin of an old family—and in its horrors a lady of the house perished miserably. So the sight of its cold cluster of chimneys, wind-rocked walls, and scorched and crumbling vestiges of sudden destruction, far from adding to the cheerfulness of the landscape, was a blot on its rural prosperity.
The homes of humbler friends were foreign thresholds to Leslie; the reserved, engrossed, dignified master of Otter crossed them with a freer step. Leslie could but address her servants, and venture to intermeddle bashfully with their most obvious concerns. She had neither tongue nor eye for more distant and difficult dependants.
But Leslie was not dying of ennui or spleen, or miserable and with a nameless fathomless misery. She was only disenchanted—conscious of feeling a great deal older than she had done six months since. How could she have been so credulous, so vain! Verily, every path of roses has its panoply of thorns.
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One winter night Leslie, in her deep chair, observed Hector Garret turning over the leaves of an old pocket-book. Hector; catching her eye, offered it to her with a "See, Leslie, how my father chronicled the fashions"—he never did suppose her susceptible of very grave interests.
In the dearth of other amusements Leslie pored over the ancient diary, and found more suggestive paragraphs than the entry indicated: "Abel Furness has sent me a waistcoat an inch and a half shorter, and a pair of clouded silk hose for the black ditto, ordered." There were—"Three pounds English to my boy Hector, to keep his pocket during his stay at Ardhope." "A crown to Hector as fee for fishing out the black stot that broke its neck over the rocks." "A letter from Utrecht from my son Hector; a fair hand and a sensible diction." "Forty pounds over and above paid to please Hector on the bond over the flax-fields of Ferndean." "A small stipend secured to my thriftless kinsman, Willie Hamilton, by the advice and with the aid of my son Hector." "To Earlscraig with Hector:" this notice was repeated many times, until the record closed abruptly with the tremulous thanksgiving—"My dear son and heir, Hector, recovered of his malady by the blessing of God."
Very plainly lay the life-clue of that silent heart, traced in the faded ink of those yellowing pages. How old men cherished their offspring! What did Hector Garret think of those mute but potent witnesses of aregard that he could know no more on earth? She knew he prized the book, for she had seen it carefully deposited in one of the private drawers in his study. She opened it at the beginning, and slipping her fingers into its gilded pockets, discovered a folded paper. It contained merely a sprig of heather, and written on the enclosure—"From my dear wife, Isobel; her first gift." Two dates were subjoined, with thirty years' interval—that of the receipt of the token, and that of the inscription of the memorandum.
With flushing cheeks Leslie sat, and spread out the crushed, brittle spikes, so fondly won, so dearly held. She was sure Hector had not one leaf, riband, or ring which she had given him. Once when he was gayer than his wont, and plagued her with his jesting petting, she took up the scissors and cut off a lock of his hair. He did not notice the theft till it was accomplished, and then he stood half-thoughtful, half-contemptuous. He had not a hair of hers, but of course the whole head was his; his father had judged otherwise.
This earlier Hector Garret—she had heard Bridget enlarge upon his merits. "A fine man, like the master, but frank and light of heart until he lost the lady—ay, a real lady! grand and gladsome—the old lady of Otter." Leslie longed for a vision of those old occupants of her place and her husband's; to have a vivid experience of how they looked, spoke, and lived; to see them in spirit—in their morning good wishes, their noonday cares, their evening cheer, their nightly prayers? Was their union only apparent? were they severed by a dim, shapeless,insurmountable barrier, for ever together, yet for ever apart?
These shades lingered and abode with Leslie in her lonely vigils, ere she distinguished whether their language was that of warning or reproach. She studied their material likenesses—the last save one in the picture-gallery—honest faces, bright with wholesome vigour; their son Hector's was a finer physiognomy, but the light had left lip and eye, and Leslie missed it as she gazed wistfully at these shadows, and compared them with their living representative.
A stranger came to Otter: that was an unfrequent event, even when the spring was advancing, and the boats which had been drawn up for the winter were again launched in the cove, and the brown nets hung anew to dry on the budding whins and gowans—the April gowans converting the haugh into a "lily lea." Their nearest neighbour, only an occasional resident among them, lounged over with his whip, dog-call, and dogs, and entered the drawing-room at Otter, to be introduced for the first time to its mistress. Leslie's instincts were hospitable, and they were by no means strained by exercise; but she did not like this guest; she felt an involuntary repugnance to him, although he was very courteous to her—with an elaborate, ostentatious homage that astonished and confused her. He was a man of Hector Garret's age, but, even in his rough coat, with marked remains of youthful foppishness and pretension. He was a tall man, with beard and moustache slightly silvered; his aquiline features were sharpened and drawn; his boldsearching eyes sunken. He was a gentleman, even an accomplished and refined gentleman in manner and accent—and yet there was about him a nameless coarseness, the brutishness of self-indulgence and low aims and ends, which no polish could efface or conceal.
Leslie, notwithstanding her slight knowledge of life, apprehended this, and shrank from the man; but he addressed Hector Garret with the ease of an intimate associate—and Hector Garret, with his pride and scrupulousness, suffered the near approach, and only winced when the stranger accosted Leslie, complimented Leslie, put himself coolly on the footing of future friendship with the lady of the house.
The day wore on, and still the visitor remained, entertaining himself, and discoursing widely, but for the most part on practices and motives strange at Otter.
"So you've married, after all, Hector," he said, suddenly, as they sat together in the twilight: "well, I excuse you," with a laugh and a touch on the shoulder.
The words were simple enough, but they tingled in Leslie's ears like insolence, and Hector Garret, so hard to rouse, bit his lips while he answered indifferently—"And when does your time come, Nigel? Are the shadows not declining with you?"
"Faith, they're so low, that there's not light left for the experiment; besides, French life spoils one for matrimony here, at least so poor Alice used to say—'no galling bonds on this side of the Channel'—the peacefulcouvent grille, or a lightmariage de convenanceamong the pleasant southerns;—not that they are so pleasant as they were formerly either."
Hector Garret got up and walked to one of the window recesses, his brow knit, his teeth set.
Leslie rose to steal from the room.
"Nay, stay, madam," urged the bland, brazen intruder; "don't rob us so soon of a fair, living apology forfades souvenirs."
But "Go, Leslie, we will not detain you," Hector Garret exclaimed, impatiently; and Leslie hurried to her own chamber in a tumult of surprise and indignation, and vexed suspicion. Mysteries had not ceased; and what was this mystery to which Hector Garret deigned to lend himself in disparaging company with a sorry fine gentleman?
Bridget Kennedy was there before her, making a pretence of fumbling in the wardrobe, her head shaking, her lips working, her eyes blazing with repressed rage and malice.
"Is he there, madam, still?" she demanded, impetuously. "Is he torturing and maddening Master Hector with his tones and gestures? He!—he that ought to crouch among the bent grass and fern sooner than pass the other on the high road. Borrowing and begging, to lavish on his evil courses: he who could not pay us—not in red gold, but with his heart's blood—the woe he wrought. They had guileful, stony hearts, the Boswells, before they ever took to foreign lightness and wickedness: and evil to him who trafficked with them in life or death."
"Who is he, Bridget? I do not know him; I cannot understand," gasped Leslie.
"Don't ask me, madam—you, least of all."
"Tell me, Bridget, tell me," implored the girl, frightened, yet exasperated, catching the old woman's withered hands, and holding them fast.
"Don't ask me, madam," reiterated Bridget, sternly. "Better not."
"I will know; what do you mean? Oh, you hurt me, you hurt me! I will ask Hector Garret himself. I cannot bear this suspense!"
"Child, do you choose what you can bear? Beware!" menaced the nurse; then, as Leslie would have broken from her—
"Have it, then! He is the brother of that Alice Boswell who perished in the burning of Earlscraig nigh twenty years ago."
"Poor lady, Bridget," Leslie said, with a bewildered, excited sob. "Poor unhappy lady; but what has that to do with him, with me? I understand no better. Help me, Bridget Kennedy—a woman, like myself. I will not let you go."
"Madam, what good will it serve? It is small matter now:" then half reluctantly, half with that possession with which truth fills its keeper, slowly and sadly she unfolded the closed story. "What had Master Hector to do with Alice Boswell? He had to do with her as a man has to do with his heart's desire, his snare, his pitfall."
"He loved her, Bridget; he would have wedded her. I might never have been his—that is all."
"Love, marriage!" scornfully; "I know not that he spoke the words, but he lay at her feet. Proud as Master Hector was, she might have trodden on his neck; cool asMaster Hector seems to others, he was fire to her. I have seen him come in from watching her shadow, long hours below her window, in the wind and rain, and salt spray. I have known him when he valued her glove in his bosom more than a king's crown—blest, blest if he had but a word or a glance. But it is long gone by, madam. Master Hector has gained wisdom and gravity, and is the head of the house; and for fair Miss Alice, she has gone to her place. Yes, she was a beauty, Miss Alice; she could play on stringed instruments like the heavenly harpers, and speak many tongues, and work till the flowers grew beneath her fingers. She learnt to wile men's souls from their bodies, if nothing more, in the outlandish parts where she was bred."
"So fair, so gifted—did she care for him in return, Bridget? Did she love him as he loved her?" asked a faint voice.
"What need you mind, madam?" sharply. "It is ill speaking harsh words of the dead. Did I not say she had gone to her place? God defend you from such a passage. Let her rest. Sure she cared for him, as she cared for aught else save herself. She scattered smiles and favours on scores. He knew at last what she took, and what she gave, if he did not guess it always."
"Why did he not save her, Bridget? die with her!"
"Madam," bitterly, "he did what man could do. They say he was more like a spirit than a mortal; but if he was to lose his love, how could even Master Hector fight against his Maker? He was fain to follow her; he dallied with death for weeks and months. Those were felldays at Otter, but the Lord restored him, and now he is himself again, and no woman will ever move Master Hector more."
There was silence in the room for a space. At last Bridget broke it: "Do you want anything more with me, madam, or shall I go?"
Haughty as Bridget Kennedy was, she spoke hesitatingly, almost pitifully. She had stabbed that young thing, sitting pale and cold before her; and no sooner was the deed done than her strong, deep nature yearned over her victim as it had never done to Hector Garret's girl wife, in the first rosy flush of her thoughtless gladness.
"Nothing more." The words were low and heavy, and when Bridget left her, Leslie raised her hands and linked them together, and stretched them out in impotence of relief.
What was this news that had come to her as from a far country?—this blinding light, this burst of knowledge that had to do with the very springs of a man's nature, this fountain so full to some, so empty to others? She had been deceived, robbed. Hector Garret was Alice Boswell's—in life and death, Alice Boswell's.
This love, which she had known so slightly, measured so carelessly—oh, light, shallow heart!—had been rooted in his very vitals, had constrained him as a conqueror his captive, had been the very essence of the man until it spent itself on Alice Boswell's wild grave. He had come to her with a lie in his right hand, for he was bound and fettered in heart, or else but the blue, stiff corpse of a man dead within; he had betrayed her woman's right, herbest, dearest, truest right, her call to love and be loved. Another might have wooed her as he had wooed Alice Boswell; to another she might have been the first, the only one! she knew now why she was no helpmeet, no friend for him; why his hand did not raise her to his eminence, his soul's breath did not blow upon hers, and create vigour, goodness, and grace to match his own. Deep had not cried unto deep: heart had not spoken to heart: the dry bones, the vacant form, the empty craving, were her portion; and out of such unnatural hollowness have arisen, once and again, deadly lust and sin.
Why had none stepped in between her and this cruel mockery and temptation? "Mother, mother, how could you be false to your trust? Were you, too, cheated and bereft of your due? left a cold, shrinking woman, withering, not suddenly, but for a whole lifetime?"
Leslie sat long weighing her burden, until a tap at the door and Bridget Kennedy's voice disturbed her. "Earlscraig is gone, madam; Master Hector is sitting alone with his thoughts in your room. May be, he is missing his cup of tea, or, if you please, madam, his lady's company that he is used to at this hour."
Leslie rose mechanically, walked out, and entered her drawing-room. What did he there, his eyes fixed on the broken turret of Earlscraig, defined clearly on the limited horizon, his memory hovering over the fate of fair Alice Boswell?
Was it horrible to be jealous of a dead woman? to wish herself in that ever-present grave, sacred to him as the holiest, though no priest blessed it, no house of God threwover it the shadow of the finger pointed to heaven—the cross that bore a world's Saviour? But that swift and glowing passage from life and light and love, such as his to darkness, forgetfulness—eternity. How could she have faced it? Bridget, her old enemy, had prayed she might be delivered from it, whatever her trials.
"Nigel Boswell is gone at last; he was an old playfellow, and fortune and he have been playing a losing game ever since," he said, in unsuspecting explanation, as he joined her where she sat in her favourite window.
She did not answer him; she was stunned, and sat gazing abstractedly on the wallflowers rendering golden the mossy court wall, or far away on the misty Otter sea. She thought he had relapsed into his reveries, was with the past, the spring-tide of his life, the passion of his early manhood, while she was a little school-girl tripping demurely and safely along the crowded Glasgow streets. If she had looked up at him she would have seen that he was observing her curiously—wondering where his young wife had acquired that serious brow, those fixed eyes.
"What are you thinking of, Leslie?"
"Nothing; I cannot tell," hastily and resolutely.
"That sounds suspicious." He put his hand on her head, as he had a habit of doing, but she recoiled from him.
"A shy little brain that dreads a finger of mine on its soft covering must discover its secrets. Are they treasures, Leslie?"
Oh, blind, absent, reckless man, what treasure-keeper kept such ward!
Lightly won, was lightly held.
Leslie struggled with her oppression for several dull feverish days; then, driven by her own goading thoughts, her sense of injury, her thirst for justice and revenge, she left the house and wandered out on the beach to breathe free air, to forget herself in exertion, fatigue, stupor. It was evening, dark with vapour—gloomy, with a rising gale, and the sea was beginning to mutter and growl. Leslie sat shivering by the water's edge, fascinated by the sympathy of nature with her bitter hopelessness. A voice on the banks and meadows, even in the chill night air, whispered of spring advancing rapidly, with buds and flowers, with sap, fragrance, and warmth, and the tender grace of its flood of green; but here, by the waves, a passing thunder-cloud, a stealthy mist, a whistling breeze, darkened the scene, and restored barren, dismal winter in a single hour. The night drooped down without moon or star, and still Leslie sat listless, drowsy with sorrow, until as she rose she sank back sick and giddy; and then the idea of premature death, of passing away without a sign, of hiding her pain under the silent earth that has covered so many sins and sorrows, first laid hold of her.
The notion was not fairly welcome: she was young; her heart had been recently wrung; she had been listless and disappointed—but she had loved her few isolated engagements, her country life, her household dignity, the protection of her husband. She could not divest herself of these feelings at once. She feared the great unknown into which she should enter; but still death did not appal her as it might have done: it was something to be scanned, waited for, and submitted to, as a true sovereign.
The cold wind pierced her through and through; the rain fell; she could not drag herself from the shelving rock, though the tide was rising. She felt frozen, her limbs were like lead, and her mind was wandering, or lapsing into unconsciousness.
She did not hear a call, an approaching foot; but her sinking pulses leapt up with sudden power and passion when Hector Garret stooped over her, and endeavoured to raise her.
"Here, Bridget, she is found! Leslie, why have you remained out so late? You have been sleeping; you have made yourself ill. How can you be so rash, so imprudent? It is childish—wrong. You have made us anxious—distressed us. Poor old Bridget has stumbled further in search of you, this squally night, than she has ventured on the sunniest morning for many a year."
He was excited, aggrieved; he upbraided her. He had sympathy for old Bridget's infirmities; he knew nothing of his wife's misery.
Leslie resisted him as she had done since that day, slipped from his clasp, strove to steady herself, and to walk alone in her weakness. Bridget put her feeble arm around her.
"Lean on me, madam, and I will lean on you, for I am frail, and the road is rough, and the wind is blowing fresh, besides the darkness." "I knew that would quiet her," she muttered. "Poor old Bridget indeed! said Master Hector. Poor colleen! misled, misguided. Cruel makes cruel. St. Patrick could not save himself from the hard necessity."
Hector Garret was content since he saw Leslie safe; he accused her of captiousness and nervousness, but it was the waywardness and perversity of illness. He had tried her simple nature with too much alienation from her kind; she had grown morbid on the baneful diet, tutored though she had been to self-dependence. He had been to blame; but her merry temper would come back, and the rose to her cheek, and the spring to her foot, with other ties, other occupations—dearer, more sufficient.
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"How is the poor child, Bridget Kennedy? Does she fare as she should do?"
"The child is as fine a child, Master Hector, as if she had been a boy, and a Garret, on both sides of the house, and will thrive if her mother will let her. There are mothers that would hinder their bairns in the death-rattle, and there are others that so watch their little ones that the angels of God are displaced from their cradles; and the weary human care haunts and harasses the infant, and stops its growth."
"I am not learned in these matters, Bridget. You brought me up; I trust you to rear my children."
"None shall rear them but their mother, Master Hector; none shall come between her and them. I have ruled long at Otter, but I dare not dispute with her there."
"Settle it as you like. I did not mean them—I was not thinking of them at all. I asked for their mother. You have experience. Is she well—happy as she should be?"
"I wish you would not provoke such mistakes, Master Hector," said Bridget, pettishly; "I wish you would find some other name for your wife. You should know best, but is it suitable to term the nursling and the parent by the same title? I am a foolish old woman, but it seems strange to me. Your father did not confound them."
"Ah! I dare say not. We will find a Christian name for the new comer, and end the Comedy of Errors, since you dislike it, and Leslie too, doubtless; for women are nice on these points."
"Leslie, what shall we call the baby?" inquired Hector Garret the next time he stood by his wife's side, wishing to divert her by a pleasant difficulty, and to vary the expression of those large eyes—larger now than ever—which, he knew not why, fascinated him by the intensity of their gaze. "I cause Bridget to blunder oddly between you two; so set her at rest by fixing as soon as you can the momentous question."
"I have fixed," answered Leslie, quietly.
"I commend your foresight; a man, now, would have left the alternative open to the last."
"Mrs. Garret's first daughter must be named after Mrs. Garret's mother," declared Bridget, authoritatively.
"No," said Leslie, hastily; "I have named her after myself—if you do not object," she added, with a flush, half shame, half pride.
"I? Oh, no; do as you will. It will not solve Bridget's puzzle; but I am content. Leslie is a bonnie name."
Leslie compressed her lip.
"My mother's name is bonnier," she said, abruptly; "my mother's name is Alice."
He started, and gazed at her keenly while she continued, falteringly, but with a stubborn will in her speech:—
"I wish my baby to be mine in everything, particularly as she is a girl. I am neither wise nor clever, nor strong now. I fear I am often peevish; but you will excuse me, because I am a weak, ignorant woman. Such defects are not fatal in a mother; hundreds have overcome them for their children. I trust that I will be, if not what a better woman might have been, at least more to my child than any other can be. Her mother!—so holy a tie must confer some peculiar fitness. Yes; my baby is mine, and must lie on my knees, and learn to laugh in my poor face. And so I wish her to have my name also, that there may be a complete union between us."
Hector Garret knew now what intelligence had reached his wife, and while the old wound burnt afresh, the shyness of his still but sensitive nature, the pride of the grave strong man, were offended and injured. But with regard to his wife he was only conscious of the petulant, unreasonable, unkind surface; he did not sound her deep resentment and jealousy; he did not dream of the anguish of the secret cry whose outward expression struck upon his vexed ears; he did not hear her inner protest: "I will not have my baby bear his love's name, recall her to him, be a memorial of her—be addressed with fondness as much for the sake of old times as for her own, the innocent!—be brought up to resemble Alice, trained to followin her footsteps, until, if I died, my child would be more Alice Boswell's than mine. Never, never!"
Hector Garret little knew Leslie Bower; slowly he arrived at the discovery. First a troubled suspicion, then a dire certainty. Not the transparent, light-hearted, humble girl, whom a safe, prosperous country home, an honourable position, a kindly regard, left more than satisfied—happy: but the visionary, enthusiastic woman, confiding, but claiming confidence for confidence; tender and true, but demanding like sincerity, constancy, purity, and power of devotion. Had he but known her the first! But a man's fate lies in one woman. Had he but left her in her girlish sweetness and gaiety; had he never approached her with his cold overtures—his barren, artificial expediency and benevolence! She erred in ignorance and inexperience; but he against the bitter fruit of knowledge, in wilful tampering with truth—reluctantly, misgivingly—selfishly cozening his conscience, hardening himself in unbelief, applying salve to the old vital stab to his independence. He had erred with an egotistical and presumptuous conceit of protecting and defending the young full life which would have found for itself an outlet, and flown on rapid, free, and rejoicing, had he only refrained from diverting its current into a dull, dark, long-drained channel, where it was dammed up, or oozed out sluggishly, gloomily, despairingly—without natural spring-time, sunshine, abundance, gladness, until lost in the great sea.
He had viewed but the soft silken bud, whose deep cup was drunk with dew,—its subtle, spicy fragrance pervading, lingering after the leaves were drooping and the bloom fled, but its rich, royal hues were yet to come. In his blind coarse blundering, he had mistaken the bud for the flower, the portal for the church; he had entered with heedless, profane foot, and blighted the blossom and rifled the altar. For the leaves had been unclosed, the gates unbarred under his neglect; and Leslie, with a noble woman's frankness, generosity, and meekness—that true meekness which oftenest cleaves and melts the ringing metal of a high spirit—Leslie had begun to love him, to fix her heart upon him, to grow to him—stolid, sardonic statue that he was!—until that shock exposed his flaws and wrenched her from her hold. Better to be thus rudely dissevered, perhaps, than to waste her womanliness, puny and pale from its vague bald nourishment, on a fraud and a farce.
Hector Garret awoke from his delusion, from his scholarly reveries, his active enterprise. "He that provideth not for his own house is worse than an infidel." So he watched Leslie: he saw her rise up with her thoughtful face, very individual it appeared now, and go up and down carrying her baby. He was aware that she was appropriating it as her treasure; that she was saying to herself some such words—"Silver and gold have I none, but this is my pearl beyond price; she will be enough for me; she must be so; I will make her so. She and I will waste no more silly tears on hard, changeable men. They are not like us, little daughter; they pass us by, or they love us once with fierce desire; and when satiated or balked, they turn to us again to please their eye, flatter their ear, vary their leisure; to anatomize and torture likeother favourites of an hour. We will have none of them, save to do our duty. We will live for each other."
Not that she deprived him of his rights as a father; she was too magnanimous to be unjust, and she would not have balked that puppet, to whose service she consecrated herself, of one privilege which any pangs of hers could purchase.
She presented their child to him with a serious stateliness, as if it was so very solemn a ceremony that its performance emancipated her from ordinary emotion; she came and consulted him on the small questions that concerned its welfare with the same absorbing care. If he came near her when she bore the child in her arms, she offered it to him immediately: she was righteous as well as valiant—yes, very valiant. He contemplated her stedfastness with wonder. After the blow which overcame her, when a compensation was given her—a blessing to atone for the gall in her cup, she accepted it and cherished it, and set herself to be grateful for it and worthy of it immediately. The fortitude which, after the involuntary, inevitable rebellion, would permit no more idle repining, the decent pride that hid its own disease and bore it bravely, even the sternness that set its teeth against reaction—he recognised them all; it was studying the reflection of his own lofty features in the fragile, quivering flesh of a girl.
What is often proposed, rarely practised, Leslie did. She changed her ways: with what travail of spirit, what heart-sickness she alone could tell. It is no common slight or safe influence that causes a revulsion in the wholebodily system; it is no skin-deep puncture that bleeds inwardly; it is no easy lesson that the disciple lays to heart; but Leslie surmounted and survived it. She had escaped her responsibilities, and slumbered at her post. She would do so no longer. She belonged now, after little Leslie, to her household, and its members might yet be the better for her, and Hector Garret should respect—not pity her. She vindicated her matronhood suddenly and straightforwardly, but with a sedateness and firmness that was conclusive of her future power; she had much to acquire, but she would gain something every day and every hour, until Otter should own no abler mistress. Then for her child, she would teach herself that she might instruct her daughter, so that if she proved inquiring and meditative like her father, she need not soon weary of her simple mother, and turn altogether to a more enlightened and profound instructor. Surely there was some knowledge that a woman could best store up and dispense, some gift wherein the vigorous and well-trained man did not bear the universal palm? Leslie strove to cultivate her talents; for these, in her position, there was scarcely a choice of fields, but she had eminently the power of observation, and her sharpened motives supplied the defects of her early education. Leslie became a naturalist—the most original and untrammelled of naturalists, for she proceeded upon that foundation of anecdotal and experimental acquaintance with herb and tree, insect, bird, and beast, and even atmospheric phenomena, whose unalloyed riches are peculiar to rustic and isolated genius.