‘She’d need to,’ said Tom, ‘but I don’t suppose girls mind. You come out now and have a game. Will she let you? If she won’t, just steal away—— ’
‘Oh, Tom,’ cried Janet again, ‘how can you speak of mother so? She never stops any fun, never—when there is any,’ the girl added after a pause.
Lady Car was at the other end of the room, seated in the recess of a broad windowwhich looked over the wide landscape. She had been waiting for Janet, who had asked her assistance in some work she was doing—trumpery work such as disturbed all Carry’s prejudices. Janet was painting flowers upon some little three-legged stools for a bazaar, and though she only copied the ‘patterns,’ she required in the execution some hints from her mother, who had once made considerable progress in the study of art. Janet was entirely unaware that Lady Car’s dreamy landscapes, which were full of distance and suggestion if nothing else, were in any way superior to her ‘patterns,’ and had made her call for aid with the frankest confidence that what she was doing was excellent art. And Carry had prepared the palette from which the dahlias and red geraniums were to be painted with as much care as if it had been wanted by Raphael. When she saw the two, after their whispered conversation at the door, suddenly disappear, perhaps she was not altogether sorry. It is possible that the painting of the stools was ‘sap’ to themother also. She smiled at them with a little wave of her hand and shake of her head as they passed the window, in mild allusion to the abandoned work; but perhaps she was as much relieved as Janet was. She laid back her head upon the dim-coloured satin of her chair, and watched the two young creatures with their racquets, Janet carrying in her apron a supply of balls for their game. Seventeen and a half, fifteen and a half—in the bloom which was half infantile, half grown up, all fresh about them, nothing as yet to bring in black care. They were not handsome, but Tom had a sturdy manliness and strength, and Janet, her mother thought, looked everything that was simple and trustworthy—a good girl, not clever—but very good-natured and kind; and Tom not at all a bad boy—rough a little, but that was mere high spirits and boyish exuberance. They were neither of them clever. She said to herself, with a faint smile, how silly she had been!
How she had worshipped talent—no, nottalent, genius—and had hoped that they would surely have had some gleam of it—the two whom she had brought into the world. They had been surrounded with beautiful things all their lives. When other people read foolish nursery stories to their children she had nourished them upon the very best—fables and legends which were literature as well as story—yet Janet liked the patterns for her stools better than all the poems and pictures, and Tom never opened a book if he could help it. And what matter? she said to herself, with that faint smile of self-ridicule. The children were none the worse for that. Her fantastic expectations, her fantastic disappointment, what did they matter? She was altogether a most fantastic woman—everybody had said it all her life, and she recognised fully the truth of the accusation now. Who should be so happy as she? Her husband so kind, always with her, thinking of everything that would make her happy. Her children so good (really so good!), nice, well-conditioned—Tom somanly, Janet all that a girl should be, very, very different indeed from Carry as a girl. But what a good thing that was; Janet would have no silly ideal, would desire no god to come from the skies, would not torment herself and every one about her with fantastic aspirations. She would love some good honest young fellow when her time came, and would live the common life, the common happy life, as the family at Easton were doing now. Edward, gone over to Codalton to the county club—the natural resource of a man in the country; the brother and sister playing tennis on the lawn—the boy expecting to get into the boats, the girl delighted with a new pattern for her stools. And no cloud anywhere, no trouble about settling them in life, no embarrassment about money or anything else. How happy a family! Everything right and pleasant and comfortable. As Carry lay back in her chair, thinking all these happinesses over, her eyes ran over with sudden tears—for satisfaction surely and joy.
When the tea-tray came in the youngones appeared with it, very hungry, and ready for the good things which covered the little table. Lady Car watched them consume the cakes with the same smile which had puzzled Beaufort. ‘Would you really like so very much,’ she said with a little hesitation, a lingering in her voice, ‘to go to the—Towers for the next holidays, Tom?’
‘Should I like!’ cried the boy, jumping up with his mouth full of bread and butter. ‘Why, mother, better than anything in the world!’
‘Oh mother!’ Janet cried, with a glow upon her face. She had passed the bread-and-butter stage, and was cutting herself a hunk of cake. The knife fell out of her hand from excitement and pleasure.
‘Shall you both like it so very much? Then,’ said Lady Car, sitting straight up with a look of pale resolution in her face which did not seem called for by such a simple determination, ‘then, children, you shall go——’
‘Hurrah!’ cried Tom, ‘that’s the jolliestthing I’ve heard for long; that’s exactly what I want! I want to know it,’ he cried; ‘I do want to know it before I go there and settle down.’
Lady Car turned her eyes upon him with a wonderful, inquiring look. Nothing, indeed, could be more natural. Yet to hear that someone would go there, not for holidays, but to settle down, oppressed poor Carry’s soul. She faded into whiteness, as if she were fainting. It seemed to her that his father looked over Tom’s shoulder—the father whom the boy was so like—his living image, as people said. Not so tall and strong, but with the features and the eyes and the aspect, which poor Carry had so feared.
‘Beau!’ cried both the young people in one voice. ‘Oh, I believe it’s his doing, Tom!’ ‘He must have a hand in it, Jan!’ ‘Beau, next holidays we are going to the Towers. Mother says so. We are going next holidays to the Towers.’
‘Your mother is full of sense,’ said Beaufort, who had just come in. ‘I knew that she would see it to be the right thing to do.’
Poor Carry! She felt as if she could not bear it, this sacrifice of all her own feelings and wishes. She said to herself that she could not do it; that before the time came she must die! And perhaps there was a forlorn hope that this was what would happen in her heart as she sat and saw her husband and her children rejoicing over the tea-table—most naturally, most justly, she knew; at least it was but natural and just so far as the children were concerned.
She had to give great orders and make many arrangements about the opening up of the house. It was so long since it had been shut up. Tom had been only six, and now he was seventeen and a half. She wrote to her sister Edith and to Edith’s husband, John Erskine, as well as to the factor on the estate and the servants who were in charge. And there were a number of things sent from town ‘to make it habitable.’ To make it habitable! She could not help the feelingthat this was whathewould have liked least of all, when she remembered the wonderful costly catafalques of furniture of which he had been so proud, and the decorations that would make poor Edward miserable. Edward did not mind the fact that it washismoney which made Easton so comfortable; but to put up with his wardrobes and sideboards—that was a different matter. Even in her humiliation and in the much greater troubles she had to occupy her, she could not help a shudder to think of Edward in the midst of all those showy relics of the past. Eleven years had not dimmed her own recollection of her old surroundings. She remembered with an acute recollection, which was pain, where everything stood, and sent detailed directions as to how all was to be altered. ‘Dear Edith, do see that everything is changed. Don’t let anything look as it used to do. It would kill me if the rooms were left as they were,’ she wrote to her sister. ‘Do—do see that everything is changed.’
Perhaps it was by dint of having thus exhausted all feeling and forestalled all emotion that when she did find herself at the Towers at last, it was almost without sentiment of any kind. Edith had carried out herconsignevery well, and she was standing under the mock mediæval doorway to receive her sister when Lady Car drove up. The sisters had not met for a long time—not for several years, and the meeting in itself did much to break the spell. Carry awoke with wonder and a little relief to find herself next morning in her old home, and to feel that she did not mind. Torrance did not meet her at his own hearth; he did not look at her from the mirror; he did not follow her about the corridor. She was very much relieved after all her imaginary anguish to feel that the reality was less dreadful than she had feared.
And it was something to see the children so truly happy. The quiet little Janet, who said so little, was quite roused out of herself. She became almost noisy, rushing with Tom from the top of the tower to the very cellars,going over everything. Her voice mingled shrill in the hurrah! with which Tom contemplated the flag of which he had dreamed, the sign of his own domination in this house of his fathers, which was to the boy as if it had been the shrine of the noblest of races. ‘I see now,’ he said, ‘that rag at Easton was all sham, but this is the real thing.’ ‘This is the real thing,’ said Janet decisively, ‘the other was only nonsense.’ They had not been twenty-four hours in the place before they had seen, and as they said recognised, everything. All their upbringing in scenes so different, all the associations of their lives, seemed to go for nothing. They were intoxicated with pleasure and pride. A couple of young princes restored to their kingdom could not have accepted their grandeur with a more undoubting sense that they had at last recovered their rights.
The house soon filled with visitors and company, guests who came for sport, and guests who came for curiosity, and the great county people who were friends of theLindores, and the smaller people who were friends of Torrance. And with both sets of these visitors Carry could not help seeing—or perhaps she only imagined it—that though her husband and herself were treated with great courtesy, it was Tom who was looked to with the chief interest. He was the future possessor of all. Though she had entire sway in the house as she never had before, yet she was nothing but a shadow, as she had always been. And the children in their haste to enjoy would have liked if possible to ignore her too. As for Tom, he got altogether beyond her control. When he was not shooting, taking upon himself premature airs of the master, he was riding about the country as his father had done, going to all kinds of places, making acquaintances everywhere. He came home on several occasions, after a day of roaming, with wild eyes, half-falling, half-leaping off his horse, making his entrance audible by all the tumult of rough excitement, calling loudly to the servants, discharging oaths at them for imaginary delay.The first time this happened, Lady Car only suspected it with alarm, which everybody about stilled as best they could, getting the young culprit out of the way. ‘The matter? there is nothing the matter?’ Beaufort said, coming to her, a little pale, but with a laugh. ‘Tom has lost his temper. He is vexed with himself for being late for dinner. I’ll have a talk with him by-and-by.’ ‘Is that all, Edward?’ she said. ‘What should it be more?’ her husband replied. But on another occasion, as evil luck would have it, Tom made his entrance just as the party, a large one, in which his place was vacant, was sweeping across the hall to dinner, and his mother, who came last, had the full advantage of that spectacle. Her son, standing all bespattered, unsteady, his dull eyes fierce with angry light. ‘Hallo, mother! I’m a bit late. Never mind. I’ll come as I am,’ he cried, steadying himself, beating his muddy boot with his whip. Lady Car threw an anguished look at the new butler, who stood splendid and indifferent at the door. There was noteven an old servant full of resource to coax the foolish wretched boy away.
She had to go in and sit down smiling at the head of her table, and entertain her guests, not knowing any minute whether the boy might not burst in and make his shame visible to all. In the midst of the sounds of the dinner-table, the talk, and the ring of the knives and forks, and the movements of the servants, other sounds seemed to reach her ear of loud voices and noise outside. She had to bear it all and make no sign, but talk that her neighbours on each side might not notice, with what was almost noisiness for Carry. Perhaps, though it seems more horrible at such a crisis to be in the midst of the compulsory make-belief of society, it is better for the sufferer. She kept up, and never winced till the dinner was over, and the endless hour in the drawing-room after, and all the guests gone, those who were from the neighbourhood to their homes, those who were in the house to their rooms. Then, and only then, did she dare to breathe, to give way to thedevouring anxiety in her mind. She had bidden her husband ‘Go, go!’ to the smoking-room, or anywhere with the last guests, and she was alone. The whole house had been changed; the old furniture displaced, all its associations altered: and yet in that moment everything came back again, the catafalques of old, the vulgar splendour, the old dreary surroundings. Her boy! Her boy! She thought she saw his father come out before her, as she had feared to see him all these years, saying with his old brutal laugh, ‘Yourboy! none of yours. Mine! mine!’
Beaufortbehaved very well at this crisis of domestic history. He shook off his usual languor and became at once energetic and active. What he said to Tom remains undisclosed, but he ‘spoke to’ the boy with great force, and even eloquence, representing to him the ruin entailed by certain bad habits, which—more than other vices, probably worse in themselves—destroy a man’s reputation and degrade him among his fellows. Though he was himself a man over-refined in his ways, he was clever enough to seize the only motives which were likely to influence the ruder nature of his stepson. And then he went to poor Carry, who in this home of evil memories sat like a ghost surrounded by the recollections of the past, and seeing for ever beforeher eyes the disordered looks and excited eyes of her boy. He was not, alas! the son of her dreams, the child whom every mother hopes for, who is to restore the ideal of what a man should be. Many disappointments had already taught Lady Car that her son had little of the ideal in him, and nothing, or next to nothing, of herself; but still he was her son: and to think of him as the rude and violent debauchee of the country-side seemed more than she could bear. Beaufort came in upon her miserable seclusion like a fresh breeze of comfort and hope. This was so far from his usual aspect that the effect was doubled. Tender he always was, but to-day he was cheerful, hopeful, full of confidence and conscious power. ‘There must be no more of this,’ he cried. ‘Come, Carry, have a little courage. Because the boy has been a fool once—or even twice—that is not to say that there is anything tragical in it, or that he is abandoned to bad habits. It is probably scarcely his fault at all—a combination of circumstances. Nobody’s fault, indeed. Somesilly man, forgetting he was a boy, persuading him out of supposed hospitality to swallow something his young head could not stand. How was the boy in his innocence to know that he could not stand it? It is a mere accident. My love, you good women are often terribly unjust and sweeping in your judgments. You must not from one little foolish misdemeanour judge Tom.’
‘Oh, Edward!’ she cried, ‘judge him! my own boy! All that I feel is that I would rather have died than seen that look, that dreadful look, in my child’s face.’
‘Nonsense, Carry. That is what I call judging him. You should never have seen it, but as for rather dying—— Would Tom be the better for it if he lost his mother, the best influence a boy can have——?’
She shook her head: but how to tell her husband of the spectre who had risen before her in the house that was his, claiming the son who was his, his heir and not Carry’s, she did not know. Influence! she had been helpless by the side of the father, and in thedepths of that dreadful experience Carry foresaw that the son, so like him, so moulded upon that man whom she had feared to the bottom of her heart, and alas! unwillingly hated, had now escaped her too. There are moments which are prophetic, and in which the feeblest vision sees clear. He had escaped her influence, if, indeed, he had ever acknowledged any influence of hers. As a child he had been obliged to obey her, and even as a youth the influence of the household—that decent, tranquil, graceful household at Easton—which henceforward Tom would compare so contemptuously with his own ‘place,’ and the wealth which was soon to be his—had kept him in a fashion of submission. But Tom had always looked at his mother with eyes in which defiance lurked: there had never been in them anything of that glamour with which some children regard their mother, finding in her their first ideal. It had always been a weariness to Tom to be confined to the restraint of her society. When they were children even, he and his sister had schemedtogether to escape from it. She was dimly aware that even Janet—— These things are hard for a mother to realise, but there are moments when they come upon her with all the certainty of fate. Her influence! She could have laughed or wept. As it was with the father, so would it be with the son. For that moment at least poor Carry’s perceptions were clear.
But what could she say? She said nothing; not even to Beaufort could she disclose that miserable insight which had come to her. Your own children, how can you blame them to another, even if that other is your husband? how say that, though so near in blood and every tie, they are alien in soul? how disclose that sad intuition? Carry never said a word. She shook her head; not even perhaps to their own father could she have revealed that discovery. A mother’s part is to excuse, to pardon, to bear with everything, even to pretend that she is deceived and blinded by the partiality of love, never to disclose the profound and unutterable discouragementwith which she has recognised the truth. She shook her head at Beaufort’s arguments, leaving him to believe that it was only a woman’s natural severity of judgment against the sins with which she had no sympathy. And by-and-by she allowed herself to be comforted. He thought that he had brought her back to good sense and the moderation of a less exacting standard, and had convinced her that a boyish escapade, however blamable, was not of the importance she imagined. He thought he had persuaded her not to be hard upon Tom, not to reproach him, to pass it over as a thing which might be trusted to his good sense not to occur again. Carry did not enter into any explanations. She had by this time come to understand well enough that she must not expect anyone to divine what was in her heart.
Meanwhile Janet, who was vaguely informed on the matter, and knew that Tom was in disgrace, though not very clearly why, threw herself into his defence with all the fervour that was in her nature. She wentand sat by him while he lingered over a late breakfast with all the ruefulness of headache. ‘Oh, Tom, what have you done?’ she said. ‘Oh, why didn’t you come in time for dinner? Oh, where were you all the afternoon? We were looking for you everywhere, Jock and I.’ Jock was an Erskine cousin, the eldest of the tribe.
‘What does it matter to you where I was?’ said the sullen boy.
‘Tom! everything about you matters to me,’ said Janet, ‘and for one thing we couldn’t make up our game.’
‘Oh, that humbugging game. Do you think I’m a baby or a girl? I hate your tennis. It isn’t a game for a man.’
‘Quantities and quantities of gentlemen play. Beau plays. Why, the officers play,’ cried Janet, feeling that nothing more was to be said.
Tom could not refuse to acknowledge such authority. ‘Well, then, it isn’t a game for me, playing with girls and children. A gallop across country, that’s what I like, and to seeall father’s old friends, and to hear what they thought of him. By Jove, Janet, father was a man! not one to lounge about in a drawing-room like old Beau;’ here the boy’s heart misgave him a little. ‘Beau’s kind enough,’ he said; ‘he doesn’t look at a fellow as if—as if you had murdered somebody. But if father had lived——’
‘I wonder——’ Janet said, but she did not go any further. Her light eyes, wondering under her black brows, were round with a question which something prevented her from putting. The possibility of her father having lived confused all her thoughts. She had an instinctive sense of the difficulties conveyed in that suggestion. She changed the subject by saying unadvisedly, ‘How bad you look, Tom! Were you ill last night?’
He pushed her away with a vigorous arm. ‘Shut up—you!’ he cried.
‘You are always telling me to shut up; but I know you were to have taken in Miss Ogilvie to dinner—that pretty Miss Ogilvie—and when you did not come, it put them allout. I heard Hampshire telling Nurse. He said something about “your boozing Mr. Tom,” and Nurse fired up. But afterwards she cried—and mother has been crying this morning; and then you look so bad. Do tell me if you were ill, Tom.’
He did not reply for some time, and then he burst out: ‘Mother’s such a bore with her crying! Does she think I’m to be a baby all my life?’
‘Do you know,’ said Janet, ‘you’re very much like that portrait of father in the hall—that great big one with the horse? Mother looks frightened when she passes it. He does look a little fierce, as if he would have scolded dreadfully,’ the girl added, with the air of making an admission.
‘I would rather have been scolded by him,’ cried the boy—‘No, he wouldn’t have scolded, he would have known better. A man like that understands fellows. Jan, we’re rather badly off, you and me, with only a woman to look after us, andthatBeau.’
‘Do you call mother a woman? You might be more civil,’ said Janet: but she did not contradict this assertion, which was not made for the first time. She, too, had always thought that the ideal father, the vague impersonation of kindness and understanding, who would never mock like Beau, nor look too grave like mother, was something to sigh for, in whose guard all would have gone well. But the portrait in the hall had daunted Janet. She had felt that those black brows could frown and those staring eyes burn beyond anything that her softly nurtured childhood had known. She would not betray herself by a word or even a thought if she could help it, but it could not be denied that her heart sank. ‘I wish,’ she said, quickly, ‘you’d leave off breakfasting, Tom, and come out with me for a walk. What is the good of pretending? One can see you don’t want anything to eat.’
‘Walk!’ said Tom. ‘You can get that little sap to walk with you. I’ve got to meet a fellow—Blackmore’s his name—away on the other side of the moor at twelve. Just ringthe bell, Jan. In five minutes I must have Bess at the door.’
‘It’s twelve o’clock now. Don’t go to-day. Besides, mother——’
‘What has mother to do with it?’ cried Tom, starting up. ‘I’m going, if it was only to spite mother, and you can tell her so. Do you think I’m tied to mother’s apron-string? Oh, is it you, Beau? I—am going out for a ride.’
‘So am I,’ said Beaufort, entering. ‘I thought it likely that would be your intention, so I ordered your horse when I ordered mine. Where did you say you were going? I caught somebody’s name as I came in.’
‘He said he was—a friend of my father’s,’ said Tom, sullenly.
‘Ah! it is easy for a man to say he is the friend of another who cannot contradict him. Anyhow, we can ride together so far. What’s the matter? Aren’t you ready?’ Beaufort said.
‘He has not finished his breakfast,’ said Janet, springing to Tom’s defence.
‘Oh, nonsense! at twelve o’clock!’ said Beaufort, with a laugh. And presently, notwithstanding the youth’s reluctance, he was carried off in triumph. Janet, much marvelling, followed them to the door to see them mount. She stood upon the steps, following their movements with her eyes, dimly comprehending, divining, with her feminine instincts half awakened. Tom’s sullen, reluctant look was more than ever like the portrait, which Janet paused once more to look at as she went back through the hall. She stood looking for a long time at the heavy, lowering face. It was a fine portrait, which Torrance had boasted of in his time, the money it had cost filling him with ill-concealed pride. It was the first thing which had shaken Janet in her devotion to the imaginary father who had been the god of her childhood. Tom was not so big; he was not tall at all, not more than middle height, though broadly and heavily made. It was very like Tom, and yet there was something in it which made the girl afraid. As she stood gazing with more andmore uncertainty upon the pictured face, Lady Car came quickly into the hall—almost running—in evident anxiety and concern. She stopped suddenly as Janet turned round, casting a half-frightened, shuddering look from the picture to the girl before it. There was something like an apology in her nervous pause.
‘I—thought Tom was here,’ she said.
‘He has gone out riding—with Beau.’
‘With Beau?’ Lady Car breathed something that sounded like ‘Thank God!’
‘Is there anything wrong—with Tom?’ said Janet, gazing round upon her mother with defiance in her eyes.
‘Wrong? I hope not. They say not. Oh, God forbid!’ Lady Car put her hands together. She was very pale, with a little redness under her eyes.
‘Then, mother, if there’s nothing wrong, why do you look like that?’
‘Like that?’ Lady Car attempted a little laugh. ‘Like what, my dear?’ She added, with a long-drawn breath, ‘It is my foolishanxiety; everybody says it is foolish. It isplus forte que moi.’
‘I wish you would not speak French. Tom,’ said Janet, ‘is well enough, though he doesn’t look well. He ate no breakfast; and he looked as if he would like to take my head off. Isn’t Tom—very like father?’ she added, in a low voice.
They were standing at the foot of the picture, a full-length, which overbore them as much in reality as imagination, and made the woman and the girl look like pigmies at his feet. Carry gave a slight shiver in spite of herself.
‘Yes,’ she said faintly; ‘and, my dear—so are you too.’
Janet met her mother’s look with a stolid steadiness. She saw, half sorry, half pleased, Lady Car’s eyes turn from the picture to her own face and back again. She had very little understanding of her mother, but a great deal of curiosity. She thought to herself that most mothers were pleased with such a resemblance—so at least Janet had read in books.She supposed her own mother did not care for it—perhaps disliked it because she had married again.
‘You never told us anything about father,’ she said, ‘but Nurse does a great deal. She told me how he—was killed. Was that the horse?’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Car, with a trembling which she could not conceal.
‘Is it because you are sorry that you are so nervous?’ said Janet, with those dull, light eyes fixed upon her, which were Torrance’s eyes.
‘Janet!’ cried her mother, ‘do not ask me about it.’ She said, in a low, hurried voice, ‘Is it not enough that it was the most terrible thing that ever happened? I cannot go back upon it.’
‘But afterwards,’ said the girl, impelled by she knew not what—some influence of vague exasperation, which was half opposition to her mother, and half disappointment to find the dead father, the tutelary divinity of this house to which she had been eager to come, sodifferent from her expectations—‘afterwards—you married Beau.’
‘Janet!’ Lady Car cried again, but this time the shock brought back her dignity and self-control. ‘I don’t know what has got possession of you, my dear, to-day. You forget yourself—and me. You are not the judge of my actions, nor will I justify myself before you.’ She added, after a time, ‘Both Tom and you are very like your father. After a while he will be master here, and you perhaps mistress till he marries. Your father—might have been living now’ (poor Carry grew pale and shuddered even while she pointed her moral)—‘if he had not been such a hard rider, so—so careless, thinking he could go anywhere. Do you wonder that I am anxious about Tom? You will have to learn to do what you can to restrain him, to keep him from those wild rides, to keep him——’ Lady Car’s voice faltered, the tears came to her eyes. ‘I believe it is common,’ she said, ‘that a young man, such as he is growing to be, should not mind his mothermuch. Sometimes, people tell me, they mind their sisters more.’
‘Tom does not mind me a bit,’ said Janet, ‘oh, not a bit—and he will never marry. He does not like girls.’
‘Perhaps he will change his mind,’ said Carry, with a faint smile. ‘Boys often do. Will you remember what I have said, dear, if you should ever be mistress here?’
‘But how can I be mistress? Where will you be? Why should there be any change?’
‘The house is Tom’s, not mine. And I shall be at my own house at Easton—if I am living.’
‘Oh,’ said Janet. Carry, though a little roused in her own defence, almost quailed before the look in the girl’s eyes. ‘You will be happier then,’ she said, with the air of an assailant hurling a stone at his victim; ‘for you will be all by yourself—with Beau.’
‘Go upstairs, Janet: I can have no more of this!’
‘I will not,’ she cried; ‘you said it was Tom’s house, not yours. He would not let mebe sent away out of his hall, from father’s picture, for—anyone—if he were here.’
Carry raised her eyes and saw him standing behind his child. There seemed a dull smile of triumph in his painted eyes. ‘You thought they were yours—but they are mine,’ Torrance seemed to say. Both of them! their father’s in every nerve and fibre—nothing to do with her.
Apartfrom these painful struggles with her children which were quite new to Lady Car, there were many things that pained her in her residence at the Towers.
First of all there was her nearest neighbour, her dearest friend, her only sister Edith; the dearest companion of her life, who had stood by her in all her troubles, and to whom she had given a trembling support in her struggle, more successful than poor Carry’s against the husband her father had chosen for her. Edith had succeeded at last in marrying her only love, which was a poor marriage for an Earl’s daughter. They had, indeed, finally, both of them, made poor marriages; but what a contrast between them! Carry living ignobly with the husband of her choice upon Torrance’s money, the result of her humiliation; while Edith was at the head of a happy, frugal family, carefully ordered, with little margin for show or pleasure, but yet in all the plenitude of cheerful life, without a recollection to rankle, or any discord or complication in all her candid existence. Her father had not been able to force the will of Edith. She had not loved her John any better than poor Carry had loved in her early tender youth the lover of all her dreams, the Edward Beaufort who was now her husband; but Carry had not been able to resist the other husband, the horrible life. Even in that Edith had so much, so much the advantage over her sister! And then—oh, wonder to think of it—— John—John, from whom nothing had been expected, except that he should show himself, as he had always done, the good fellow, the honest gentleman, the true friend he was, whether by development of his own respectable mind or by the influence of Edith (though she was never clever like Carry), or by the united force of both, John had long been one of themost important men in the district, member for his county, trusted and looked up to both by his constituency at home and the people at head-quarters, who took his advice, it was said, on Scotch affairs more than anyone’s; whereas Edward—— Carry had long made that poignant comparison in her heart, but to see them together now bowed her to the ground with a secret humiliation which she could never acknowledge—not to her sister, who also in the old days had put so much faith in Beaufort’s genius; not to Edward himself—oh no, to humiliate him. He did not seem to feel the contrast at all himself, or, if he did perceive it, he thought it apparently to be to his own advantage, speaking now and then of the narrowness of practical men, of the deadening influence of politics, and of how completely John Erskine’s interest was limited to matters of local expediency and questions before Parliament. ‘And he used to have his share of intelligence,’ said all unconscious the useless man, whose failure his wife felt so passionately. Then, as if this were not enough,there was Jock, little Jock, who was younger than Janet, only fourteen, but already at Eton like Tom, and holding a place above that of the seventeen-year-old big lower boy. The reader must understand that this history is not of to-day, and that in those times big lower boys were still possible, though it is so no longer. Tom was only a lower boy, and little Jock might have fagged his cousin, had it not been that Jock was in college, on the foundation, saving the money which was not too plentiful at Dalrulzian. ‘A Tug!’ Tom had cried with contempt intensified by the sense of something in his mother’s eyes, the comparison which made her heart sick. Little Jock at fourteen, so far above the boy who was almost a man: John Erskine, in his solid good sense, so much more important a man than Edward with his geniusmanqué. It went to Carry’s heart.
It is difficult to feel that sense of humiliation, that overwhelming consciousness of the superiority of another family, however closely connected, to our very own, without a littlegrudge against the happy, the worthy, the fortunate. Carry loved her sister tenderly, and Edith’s happiness was dear to her; but the sight of that happiness before her eyes was more than the less fortunate sister could bear. She could not look upon Edith’s bright boy, with his candid countenance, without thinking with a deeper pang of Tom’s lowering brows, and that horrible look of intoxication which she had seen in his face; nor could she see her brother-in-law busy and cheerful with his public work, his table piled with letters, blue-books, all the paraphernalia of business, without thinking of Beaufort’s dilettante ease, his dislike of being appealed to, his ‘Oh, I know nothing of business!’ Why did he know nothing of business; why was he idle, always idle, good for nothing, while others—oh, with not half his powers!—were working for the country? It was still Carry’s desperate belief that no one had half his powers—yet sometimes she said to herself that, had he been stupid as some were, she could have borne it, but that it was the wasteof these higher qualities which she could not bear. Even this little refuge of fancy was taken from her on the occasion of a meeting about some county movement, to which her husband was called as the guardian of young Tom, and where he had to make a speech much against his will. His speech was foolish, tedious, and ignorant—how indeed should he know about the affairs of a Scotch county?—while John Erskine held the matter and the attention of the hearers in his hand. ‘I thought Lady Car’s new husband had been a very clever man,’ she heard, or fancied she heard, someone say as the people dispersed. Perhaps she only fancied she heard it, caught it in a look. And how they applauded John Erskine, who did so well!—oh, she knew he did well, the master of his subject and of the people’s sympathies; whereas what information could poor Edward have, what common interest with all these people? Poor Edward! Carry’s heart contracted with an ineffable pang to think she could have called him so.
She loved Edith all the same—oh, yes! how could she fail to love her only sister, the person most near to her in all the world? But yet she shrank from seeing Edith, and felt at the sound of her happy voice as if she, Carry, must fly and hide herself in some dark and unknown place, and could not bear the contact of the other, who had the best of everything, and in whose path all was bright. To sympathise with one’s neighbour’s blessedness, when all that makes her happy is reversed in one’s own lot, is hard, the hardest of all the exercises of charity. Carry said to herself that she was glad and thankful that all was so well with Edith; but to hide her own face, to turn to the wall, not to be the witness of it, was the best thing to do. To look on at all, with the aching consciousness of failure on her own part, and smile over her own trouble at Edith’s happiness, was more than she was able to do: yet this was what she did day after day. And she read in Edith’s eyes that happy woman’s opinion of Tom, her verdict upon Beaufort, and her disappointment in Janet. Though Edith said nothing, Carry knew all that she could have said, and even heard over intervening miles, and through stone walls, how her sister breathed with a sigh her melancholy name. Poor Carry! Her heart fainted within her to realise everything, yet she did it, and covered her face and covered her ears not to hear and see that pity, which she could neither have heard nor seen by any exercise of ordinary faculties. But the mind by other means both sees and hears.
‘Edward,’ she said to her husband suddenly one day, ‘we must leave this place. I cannot bear it any more!’
He turned round upon her with a look of astonishment. ‘Leave this place! But why, my love?’ he said. His surprise was quite genuine. He had not then, during the whole of her martyrdom, acquired the faintest insight into her mind.
‘There is no reason,’ she said hastily, ‘only that I cannot—I cannot bear it any more.’
‘But is not that a little unreasonable, Carry? Why should you go away? It is only the middle of September. Tom does not go back to school for ten days at least—and after that——’
‘Edward, I hate the place. You knew that I hated the place.’
‘Yes, my love; and felt that it was not quite like my Carry to hate any place, especially the place which must be her son’s home.’
‘I never wanted to come,’ she said, ‘and now that we have proved—how inexpedient it was——’
‘Don’t say so, dear. I have told you my opinion already. The best women are unjust to boys in these respects. I don’t blame you. Your point of view is so different. On the contrary, we should have brought Tom here long ago. He ought to have learned as a child that there were men calling themselves his father’s friends who were not fit company for him. I think he has learned that lesson now, and to force him away from a place heis fond of, as if to show him that you could not trust him——’
‘It is not for Tom,’ she said; ‘Edward, cannot you understand? it is for myself.’
‘You are not the sort of woman to think of yourself when Tom’s interests are at stake. We ought to stay even after he is gone, to make all the friends we can for him. For my own part, I like the place very well,’ Beaufort said. ‘And then there is your sister so near at hand. You must try to forget the little accident that has disgusted you, Carry. Think of the pleasure of having Edith so near at hand—and that excellent fellow John—though he’s too much of an M.P.’
It was with purpose that Beaufort laughed, with that gentle and friendly ridicule of his brother-in-law, to carry her thoughts away from the accident—from Tom’s escapade, which he thought was the foundation of Carry’s trouble. And what could she say more? She did not, could not, tell him that Tom’s look had reminded her of another, and that Torrance himself, standing in full lengthin the hall, claiming its sovereignty, master of all that was within, kept the miseries of her past life and her unsatisfied heart too terribly before her. Of that she could say nothing to her husband, nor of Janet’s rebellion, nor above all of what was intolerable in Edith’s gentle society, the sense of her superior happiness, her pity for poor Carry! He might have divined what it was which made the house intolerable to her; but if he did not, how could she say it? Thus Lady Car gradually achieved the power of living on, of smiling upon all who surrounded her with something in her eyes which nobody comprehended, but which some few people were vaguely aware of, though they comprehended it not.
‘Poor Carry!’ Lady Edith said, in the very tone which Lady Car heard in her heart: but it was said in John Erskine’s library at Dalrulzian, with the windows closed, five miles away.
‘Why poor Carry?’ asked her husband; ‘if you were to ask her, she would say shewas a happy woman, happy beyond anything she could have hoped. When I think of her with that brute Torrance—where is she now, but in such different circumstances.’
‘Oh, John, the circumstances are different; Edward is very nice: but—— ’
‘But what?’
‘Carry is not like you and me,’ said Edith, shaking her head.
‘No: perhaps so much the better for us. She is fanciful and poetical and nervous, not easy to satisfy; but the comparison—must be like heaven after hell.’
Edith continued to shake her head, but said no more. What was there to say? She could not perhaps have put it into words had she tried, and how get John to understand it?—a man immersed in public business, fearing that soon he should need a private secretary, which was an expense quite unjustified by his means. She patted him on the shoulder as she stood behind his chair, and said, ‘Poor John, have you all these letters to answer?’
‘Every one,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘You are in a compassionate humour to-day. Suppose you answer a few of them for me, instead of saying poor John.’
This was so easy! If she had not been so busy with the children she was the best of private secretaries! Alas! there was nothing to be done for poor Carry in the same simple way. Nor in any way, Edith reflected, as she sat down at her husband’s table: a sympathetic sister must not even venture to show that she was compassionate. She must conceal the consciousness of his father’s look in Tom Torrance’s face, and of the fact that Beaufort’s book had never been written, and that his name was altogether unknown to the world save as that of Lady Caroline Torrance’s second husband. Oh, poor Carry! Edith said again. But this time only in the depths of her own heart, not to John.
The only other person who saw the change in Lady Car’s look was Janet, who had defied her mother. The girl was in high rebellion still. She spent her life as much asshe could with Tom, seconding powerfully, without being aware of it, the watchful supervision of Beaufort, who, if he had failed her in so many respects, was anxiously and zealously acting for Lady Car in her son’s interests. Janet seized upon her brother on every occasion when it was possible. She managed to ride with him, to walk with him, to occupy his attention as nobody else could have done. It is true that Tom had no delicacy on the subject of Janet, and sent her away with a push of his elbow when she bored him, without the least hesitation; but in her vehemence and passion she did not bore him for the short period of his holidays which remained. She had told him of her rebellion with a thrill of excitement which shook her from head to foot. The crisis was the greatest that had ever happened in her life. She could not forget it, not a word that had passed nor a look. Tom had contemplated her with an admiration mingled with alarm when he first heard the tale of her exploit. ‘You cheeked mother!’ He hadscarcely done more himself, though he was a man and the master of all: and Janet was only a little girl, of no account at all. But her fervour, her passion seized hold upon him, and as it occupied herself in the overwhelming way with which a family conflict occupies the mind, Janet became as the sharer of an exciting secret to Tom. They watched their mother’s looks and every word she said in the light of that encounter. Neither of them was capable of believing that it had passed from Lady Car’s mind, while still they dwelt upon it, making it the theme of long conversations. ‘I say, do you think she’ll say anything to me?’ Tom asked, with some anxiety.
‘I don’t know; but if she does you’ll stand by me, won’t you, Tom?’
‘Oh, I say!’ Tom replied. ‘Beau would make a fuss if I said anything to mother. He has a way of speaking that makes you feel small somehow.’
‘Small? You! When you are the master! Why, mother said so, though she was so cross.’
‘Oh yes, of course I’m the master,’ said Tom. ‘But you should hear Beau when he gets on about a gentleman, don’t you know? What’s a gentleman? A man that has a place of his own and lots of money, and no need to do anything unless he likes—if that’s not a gentleman, I don’t know what is.’
‘And does Beau say—something different?’ Janet asked, with a little awe.
‘Oh, all kinds of nonsense; that it’s not what you have but what you do, and all that. Never take a good glass—well, that’s what Blackmore, father’s friend, calls it—a good glass—nor say a rude word—and all that sort of thing. By Jove! Jan, if it’s all true they say, father was a jolly fellow, and no mistake.’
‘Do you mean that he did—that?’
Tom gave vent to a large laugh. ‘Did—what? Oh, I can’t tell you all he did. He rode like anything; flew over every fence and every ditch that nobody else would take, and enjoyed himself. That’s what he did—till he married, which spoils all a man’s fun.’
‘Oh, Tom!’
‘Well, it does—you have to give up—ever so many things, and live like an old woman. I shan’t marry, I can tell you, Jan, not for years.’
‘Then I shall stop with you, Tom, and keep the house.’
‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ said Tom; ‘I shall have too many fellows coming and going to do with a girl about the place.’
‘But you must have some one to keep house. Mother said so! She is not going to have me at Easton—that I am sure of; and if I am not to keep house for you, Tom, what shall I do?’ said Janet, with symptoms of coming tears.
Then Tom did what the men of a family generally do when a foolish sister relies upon them. He promptly threw her over. ‘You should not have cheeked mother,’ he said.
Nextday the brother and sister went out riding by themselves. The game had been but poorly preserved during Lady Car’s sway, and had not been of great importance at any time, so that Tom’s time was by no means absorbed by the shooting to be had, and Janet had begged for one long ride with him before he went back to school. It was a bright September afternoon, the air crisp with an autumnal chill, enough to make the somewhat sluggish blood thrill in the veins of the boy and girl, who were so like each other and had a certain attachment to each other—more strong, as was natural, on Janet’s side than on Tom’s. Lady Car had come out to the door to see them ride away. ‘Take care of Janet,’ she had said. Beaufort’s warning look, and her own consciousness, very different fromthat of Beaufort, that what she said would not bear the least weight, prevented her from saying more. But perhaps she looked more as she followed them with anxious eyes. ‘Don’t, Carry,’ her husband said as he drew her into the house—‘don’t show any distrust of the boy.’
‘Distrust?’ she said. ‘I don’t think he cares what I show.’
‘My love! don’t think so badly of the children.’
‘Oh, no; I don’t think badly of them. They are so young, they don’t know; but it is true all the same. They don’t mind how I look, Edward: which must be my blame and not theirs,’ she added, with a faint smile; ‘how should it be theirs? It is only part of the failure. Some people make no impression on—anyone. They are ineffective, like what you say of a wall-paper or a piece of furniture.’
‘These are strange things to say,’ said Beaufort, gravely.
‘Silly things,’ said Lady Car. ‘If you arenot busy, let us take a stroll about the gardens. I have not been out to-day.’
She knew he was not busy, and she had given over even wishing him to be so. Desire grows faint with long deception and disappointment; but he was always kind—ready to stroll in the gardens or anything she pleased.
‘What did mother think I was going to do with you? Take you round by the Red Scaur and break your neck?’ Tom said to Janet.
‘Oh!’ cried Janet to Tom, with wide-open eyes; then added in a low tone, ‘that was where father was killed. I have never been there.’
‘And I’m not going to take you there. It’s all shut up ever since. But I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Jan. We’ll have a long spin—as far as Blackmore’s farm.’
‘Blackmore’s farm! That is the place——’
He gave a loud laugh.
‘Well, and what then? A thing may happen once and not again. They were tremendous friends of father’s. I don’t mean friends like—like the Erskines and so forth.Blackmore’s not a gentleman, but he’s a rattling good fellow. And you should just see his stables. There’s one hunter I’d buy in a minute if I had my liberty. It’s ten miles, or perhaps a little more. Perhaps you’re not up to that.’
‘Oh, yes, I’m quite up to it. But I wonder if we should go—it gets dark so soon—and perhaps mother——’
‘Oh, bother mother!’ cried the boy. ‘We can’t at our age be always stopping to consider what an old lady thinks.’
‘Mother’s not an old lady, Tom.’
‘She’s a great deal older than we are, or she couldn’t be our mother. Come, Jan, are you game for a long spin? It’s almost the last time these holidays. Hurrah, then, off we go!’ And off they went in a wild career, Janet following breathless, gasping, her dark hair flying behind her, her hat often in danger, wherever he led. She would not allow that she had any fear; but it was a long ride, and the way was confused by the cross cuts which Tom knew only imperfectly, and whichmade it longer, besides leading them over moors and across fields which excited their horses and kept the young riders at a full strain, to which Janet’s immature powers were quite unaccustomed. She was dreadfully dishevelled and shaken to pieces upon their arrival at the large rough establishment to which her brother had already paid many visits, and where they were received by a chorus of innumerable dogs and lounging men whose appearance was very alarming to Janet. They looked like keepers, she thought, or grooms, not like people who would naturally be greeted as friends, which was what Tom was doing, shaking hands with the big and bearded master of the house and the younger man, presumably his son, and calling out salutations in as good an imitation of the broad country dialect as he could accomplish to the others. Janet was aware that her own aspect was very wild, and she was very tired; but she clung to her saddle when that big gamekeeper approached with a mixture of pride and shame. ‘So this is your sister,Maister Tom? Charlie, cry on your mother,’ cried the man; ‘the mistress will be here in a moment, missie. Let me lift ye down.’
‘No, no,’ Janet said, ‘we can’t wait long. We must soon go back, it will be dark. Oh, Tom, we must get back.’
‘Nonsense, Jan! Now I’ve got here I mean to stay awhile. And Blackmore’s awfully jolly; he’ll take you through the stables. Come, jump down.’
‘Cry upon your mother, Charlie,’ said Blackmore again. ‘The young leddy thinks we’re a’ men folk here, and she’s frichtened. But ye must not be frichtened, my bonnie doo. Hey, Marget, where’s the mistress? And the powney’s a’ in a lather. Pit your hand upon my shoulder if you’ll no let me lift ye down.’
When Janet saw a woman appear at the door hurrying out in a cap and a white apron, she allowed herself to be lifted from her horse, feeling all the time as if she had fallen into some strange adventures such as were described in books, not anything that would happen to girls like herself in common life.She did not know that she might not be detained, locked up somewhere, forced to sign something, or to come under some fatal obligation as happened to the heroines of some old-fashioned novels which she had found in the library at the Towers. The mist of fatigue and alarm in her eyes made her even more confused than it was natural she should be in so new and unexpected a scene. And the rough and dingy house, the clamour of the dogs, the heavy steps of the man who followed her in, the sense of her own dishevelled and disorderly condition, and of the distance from home, quite overcame poor Janet. ‘Oh, Tom, let us go home,’ she cried, in an agony of compunction and fear.
‘Is it Miss Torrance from the Towers? Dear me, but it’s a long ride for her—over long—and a wild road. But you must rest a little now you’re here, and I’ll get you a cup of tea,’ said the woman of the house. She was a fresh-coloured, buxom woman, not at all like a brigand’s housekeeper, and she smiled upon Janet with encouraging kindly looks.‘I’m real glad to see your sister, Maister Tom; but you’re a thoughtless laddie to bring her so far, and her not accustomed to rough riding. Marget, is the kettle boiling—for the young leddie must have some tea?’
‘And you can bring in the hot water, and a’ the rest of it,’ said Blackmore, ‘for us that are no so fond of tea—eh, Maister Tom? After your ride a good glass will do ye nae harm.’
Janet sat still and gazed while these hospitable preparations were going on. The large table was covered with oilcloth, not unconscious of stains. And the men gathered round one side upon which a tray with ‘the hot water’ and a black bottle and a strange array of glasses, big and little, had been placed. This seemed the first thing thought of in the house; for Marget, the big servant-woman (everything was big), brought the tray, pushing open the door with it as she bore it in in front of her before the order had been given. And presently the fumes of the hot ‘toddy’ filled the room, pungent and strong, making Janet feel faint and sick. The men flung themselvesinto chairs or stood about, filling the other end of the room—a small, rough, dark crowd, with Tom in the midst. They were all very ‘kind’ to Tom, patting him on the shoulder, addressing him by name, filling his glass for him, while Janet, alone at the end of the table, looked on alarmed. The mistress was bringing out from a cupboard cups and saucers, a basin of sugar, and other preparations for tea.
‘It would do the little miss far more good to taste a glass o’ my brew, and put some colour into her cheeks,’ said the master of the house.
‘Haud your tongue, goodman, and leave the young lady to me. Tak’ you care what you’re about. You’ll get both yoursel’ and other folk into trouble if you dinna pay attention.’
‘Toots! a glass will harm naebody,’ Blackmore said.
‘I want my sister to see that mare,’ said Tom—‘that mare, you know, Blackmore, that you said you’d keep for me. I want her tosee the stables. I told her all about you, and that you were tremendous friends——’
‘Ah, laddie!’ said Blackmore, ‘the sight of you brings many a thing back. Many and many’s the time that your father——’
‘I told her so,’ said Tom with his glass in his hands. ‘Here’s to all of you. And I mean to stick to father’s friends.’
‘Tom!’ cried Janet with a start. The smell of the whisky, the crowd of men, the loud voices and sound of their feet upon the floor, scarcely deadened by the thin carpet, scared her altogether. ‘Oh, Tom,’ she said, ‘I’m too tired to see anything. Let us get home—oh, let us get home!’ and overcome by excitement and confusion, Janet began to cry.
‘My bonnie dawtie,’ said the mistress, ‘wait till ye get your tea.’
‘Oh, let us get home,’ cried Janet; ‘it will soon be dark. I’m frightened to ride after it is dark. All those dreadful roads! Oh, Tom, let us get home—oh, Tom, let us get home!’
‘Maister Tom,’ said the mistress, ‘it’s true she says. It’s not fit for a bit thing like her to be gallopin’ a’ those uncivilised roads in the dark. Charlie shall put in one of the horses in the dog-cart and drive her hame.’
‘That will I,’ said Charlie, rising with a great deal of noise. He was the best looking of the young men, and he put down his steaming glass with alacrity. ‘I’ll put in Spanker, and she’ll gang like the wind.’
‘Ye’ll have to be very canny with her, for she’s awfu’ fresh,’ said another of the men.
‘Don’t be a fool, Jan,’ cried the boy; ‘she’ll ride home fast enough. And I’m not going to have it; do you hear, Charlie? What’s the good of making a fuss? I’m not going to have it,’ he cried, stamping his foot. ‘Do you want to get me into a row? Why, I as good as gave my word——’
He stopped short himself, and they all paused. Janet too, hastily choking the sob in her throat, gazed at him with a startled look.
‘Maybe it was never to come back herethat ye gave your word, Mr. Tom?’ said Blackmore rising up; ‘I would guess that by the looks of ye. Well, ye’ll keep your word, my young man; at least, ye’ll as near keep it as is possible now. Charlie, out with the cairt, man! what are ye waiting for? and take the young lady hame. It was nane of her own will, that’s clear, that brought her here. Ye can say that; if it was his fault, it’s clear that it was nane of hers. Ye had better take him on behint, and we’ll send the horses back the morn.’
‘By Jove,’ shouted Tom, ‘I’ll not be taken on behind! I’ll ride my own horse or I’ll not stir a step—and catch me ever coming out with her again,’ he cried with an oath which made the heart which was beating so wildly in Janet’s breast drop down, down to her shoes. But when she found herself in the dog-cart by Charlie Blackmore’s side, wrapped up warm, and flying like the wind, behind Madam Spanker who was so fresh, Janet’s sensations turned into a consciousness ofbien-êtrewhich was very novel and very sweet. She had been persuadedto take the cup of tea. She had even eaten a bit of scone with fresh butter and marmalade, which was very good. A warm shawl was wrapped round her shoulders; and the delicious sensation of repose and warmth over her tired limbs, while yet sweeping at so great a pace over the country, with the wind in her face and the long darkling roads flying past, was delightful to Janet. The sound of Tom’s horse’s hoofs galloping, now behind, now in advance, added to the sense of supreme comfort and pleasure. She had been so tired, and the prospect of riding back had been so terrible. She felt as if flying through the air, which caressed her cheek, as, warmly tucked in by Charlie Blackmore’s side, she was carried home. Charlie was very ‘kind’—almost unnecessarily kind. He spoke loud in her ear, with intonations at which Janet wondered vaguely, finding them very pleasant. He told her a great many things about himself, how he had never intended to stay at home ‘among the beasts’: how he had been a session at college and meant to go back again: how hehad once hoped to be something very much better than a horse-couper like his father, and how to-day all his ambition had come back. Swept along so lightly, so smoothly, with such ease, with such warmth and comfort, almost leaning against Charlie Blackmore’s strong shoulder, with his voice in her ear, and the sweetness of the wind in her face, Janet felt herself held in a delightful trance almost like sleep, yet which was not sleep, or how could she have felt the pleasure that was in it? It was only when the drive was almost over, and the mare made a whirl into the avenue, scarcely to be held in till the gates were opened, and, flying after that momentary enforced pause like an arrow under the dark waving of the trees, that her heart suddenly sprang up with a sickening throb at the thought of what mother would say. Janet had been in a sort of paradise. She came down now in a moment to all the anguishes of earth. She broke in upon something Charlie Blackmore was saying with the utmost inattention and inconsequence. ‘Can youhear Tom?’ she said. ‘Oh, where is he? Tom, Tom!’
‘He is just behint us; don’t be frightened. He is all safe,’ said Charlie, casting a glance behind.
The mare made a start at this moment, and, straining at the curb, bounded on again. Someone had come out upon the road almost under her nose—a dark figure, which just eluded the wheel, and from which came a voice almost echoing Janet’s—
‘Is that Tom?’
‘Oh, it’s me, Beau,’ cried Janet wildly, ‘and Tom’s behind.’ She was carried on so quickly that half the words were lost.
‘Was that your stepfather? They will be anxious about ye. I would say’—Charlie made a little pause to secure her attention—‘I would say you were passing near our place, never thinking ye had come so far, and that my mother came out to ye, seeing ye so tired, and bid me to bring you hame in the cairt—that’s what I would say.’
‘Say!’ cried Janet, fully roused up. ‘Doyou mean that I should tell mother that? But it would be a lie.’
‘’Deed, and so it would,’ said the young man with a shamefaced laugh. ‘But to make an excuse for yourself is aye pardonable, do ye no think? And then it would save Mr. Tom. Be you sure now my father knows he’s given his word against it, he shall never be asked into our house more.’
‘Oh,’ said Janet, ‘I could not say anything I had made up. When the moment comes and mother looks at me, I can only say—what has happened.’
‘But nothing has happened,’ said Charlie. ‘Except,’ he added, ‘one thing, that I’ll maybe tell you about some day. But that has happened to me, and not to you. Miss Janet, you’ll not forget me clean altogether?’
‘Oh, how should I forget you,’ cried Janet with a sob, ‘when I know I shall get into such dreadful trouble as I never was in before in all my life! Oh, mother!’
The girl had thrown off her wraps and tumbled down from the dog-cart, almostbefore it had stopped, into the middle of the group on the steps, which consisted of Lady Car, wrapped in a great shawl, her sister, and half the servants in the house.
‘Janet! Oh, where have you been? And where is Tom? What has happened?—tell me,’ cried Lady Car, taking her daughter by the arms and gazing into her eyes with an agonised question. The arrival of the cart at such headlong speed seemed to give a sort of certainty to all the fears that had been taking shape among the watchers.
‘Oh, Mozer!’ Janet cried, her childish outcry coming back in the extremity of her apprehension and consciousness. But Charlie Blackmore, with his wits about him, called out from the cart, ‘There’s nothing wrong. Mr. Tom he’s just behind. They’ve ridden owre far and wearied themselves. Mr. Tom he’s just behind. But my mare’s fresh—she’ll no’ stand. Let go her head, dash ye! Do ye hear? She’ll no stand.’
The little incident of the mare whirling round, the gravel flying under her feet, thegroom recoiling backwards, turning an unintentional summersault upon the grass, made a pause in which everybody took breath.
‘Thank God!’ cried Lady Car, ‘if that’s all. Is that all? You are not concealing anything, dear?’
Janet stood in the hall when she had managed to twist out of her mother’s hold. Her eyes had a wild sparkle in them, dazzled from the night; her hair was hanging dank about her shoulders; her hat tied on with Mr. Blackmore’s handkerchief. She looked dazed, speechless, guilty, with fear in her face and in her soul. She looked as if she might be—have had the habit of being—struck and beaten, standing trembling before her mother, who had never harmed a fly in all her gentle life.
‘Mother, we went too far; and then the—woman came out—the—the lady, and said I was too tired. He was to drive me home.’
‘Well! and that was all? God be thanked there has been no accident! But where is Tom?’
‘Mr. Tom is just coming up the avenue, my lady,’ said one of the men.
‘Then all is right, and there was really nothing to be afraid of,’ said Lady Car, with an agitated laugh.
Was Janet to be let off so easily? She stood watching her mother with uneasy alarm, while all attention was diverted to Tom, who jumped off his horse in a similar pale suspicion and fear, but with brows more lowering and eyes half shadowed by the eyelids. Tom had made up his mind as he came along what he was to do. He did not wait for the outburst of scolding which he expected. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said, with a gleam of his shadowed eyes to where Beaufort was coming in behind him. ‘She had made up her mind she would see the mare, and I had to take her. I knew it was too far.’
Janet stood aghast with her mouth open taking in every word. A cry of protest rose up in her breast, which she had just comprehension enough to stifle. ‘Never mind justnow, my boy,’ said Beaufort; ‘all’s well that ends well: but you have given your mother a great fright. You can tell me after how it was.’