No hope—no hope! let calm lips say, No hope,To whom hope never was; but as for me,This possible is life—And if you say it is impossible,Yet up, up to your highest cliffs of iceI go to light my watchfire—so perchance,As he may see it from afar. No hope!There never is but hope where there is love.—Old Play.
No hope—no hope! let calm lips say, No hope,To whom hope never was; but as for me,This possible is life—And if you say it is impossible,Yet up, up to your highest cliffs of iceI go to light my watchfire—so perchance,As he may see it from afar. No hope!There never is but hope where there is love.—Old Play.
No hope—no hope! let calm lips say, No hope,To whom hope never was; but as for me,This possible is life—And if you say it is impossible,Yet up, up to your highest cliffs of iceI go to light my watchfire—so perchance,As he may see it from afar. No hope!There never is but hope where there is love.—Old Play.
Land! our voyage is just ending, and softly before us in the dawn of the morning rise the shores of India; the mighty, impotent, fabulous, golden East.
But I was in no mood to indulge in the pleasant excitement and curiosity of a stranger. My anxiety, like other torments, became intolerable as it approached its end, and in feverish haste I hurried to seek the Mr Churchill who had written to me of Hew.
He was a civilian, with something of that stiff, well-drilled military look, which such officials acquire from their contact, I suppose, with their warlike brethren. He was a middle-aged man of indefinite years, endowed largely with the grave politeness of tone and manner which belongs to your sober, retired major or captain; perfectly urbane, and not without its considerable mixture of kindliness, but presenting to a stranger an unimpressible blank of courteous gravity, which to your shy man is, in most cases, an invincible barrier. I was very much agitated—I told Mr Churchill my name. He looked politely puzzled and at a loss. “He was not aware—” I interrupted him with a statement of my errand, and an anxious inquiry for Hew.
The polite, grave man was melted; the muscles of his face moved. “Ah, poor Murray!” he said, in a tone which told me there was no more to hope.
And so it was. Every exertion had been made to ascertain the fate of my unfortunate friend, and it was now certain, Mr Churchill said, that all hope or chance that he survived was at an end. Nothing had been left undone, for in Bombay Hew had many friends; but there could be no doubt that he had fallen by the hands of these assassins, and now lay in some unknown desert grave. It was now certain, there could be no doubt. I eagerly asked if this was all; if they had no positive information of Hew’s death.
Mr Churchill did not comprehend the extreme agitation of my grief. He thought me excited in my intense anxiety, and became again as blankly polite as before. They had no positive information; but the want of it, to those who knew India, was quite enough, he said, and all further search was hopeless.
I was not sufficiently indifferent to be content with this. I left him to seek Hew’s servant, and to make another desperate effort to discover his fate. The man Doolut was a Parsee, and professed attachment to his master too extravagantly to satisfy me, but I took him into my service and immediately began my search.
How long I remained engaged in it, and the travels and perils, and vain hopes, and blank disappointments, which I passed through while pursuing it, I cannot record. I become faint again, as I recall that time, when day by day the deferred hope sickened my very soul within me—I failed; most sadly and utterly failed; yet though the shadows of some thirty years have darkened over Hew Murray’s fate, and increased its mystery, I cannot think of it yet without a flicker of hope, a throbbing sickness of desire, that has well-nigh power to send me forth on the vain quest again. Living or dead, in earth or in heaven, Hew Murray, no man has ever filled your place in your old companion’s heart; and though I have had darkness enough in my own life to make me think an early deliverance from these earthly cares a blessing, yet would I give almost all that remains to me to know that you yet lived and breathed upon this lower world—to hope that I might look upon your face and hear the voice of your brotherhood again!
For years after that I wandered about the face of the earth, in all lands and countries, a solitary man; snatching here and there the solace of congenial companionship for a brief space, but only passing forth again to be forgotten. Murrayshaugh and Lucy I never could discover though Ihave lingered on the outskirts of many a little French and German town, vainly endeavouring to find some trace of them. Once only have I had any communication with the family, and that was immediately after Hew’s mysterious disappearance, when a few hurried blotted incoherent words came to me from Lucy, bidding me pity her in her misery; she had no one in the wide world, she said, to tell it to but me—and then in her generous gentleness, as if the words of her complaint had burst from her unawares, she essayed to comfort me, and spoke of consolation and hope. Hope and consolation! yes, so wonderful is the fabric of this humanity, that there is no sky too dark for those stars; and our sorrows lie softly on us when they have grown old with us, and become a part of our lives.
With Charlie Graeme I had no more intercourse. He took guilt to himself and never attempted to renew our former intimacy—but the sin that he had clogged his course withal, found him out ere it was far spent. He married the daughter of a Glasgow merchant reputed to be rich, whose great pretensions collapsed immediately after Charlie became connected with his family. This wife had the expensive tastes of her class, I have heard, but it happens singularly that all unsuccessful men have wives with extravagant tastes, so I give little credence to that rumour: however it happened, or whatever were the procuring causes, it is certain that Charlie Graeme, with all his gifts, was in a very short time a shipwrecked man. He died young, in poverty, and debt, and discomfort—his helpless wife did not long survive him, and they left one child—a boy—on the world’s hands and mine.
This child I left, during his infancy, under the care of a servant of his mother’s, and some ten years ago I had him sent to a school in Aberdeenshire, a private place of respectable standing conducted by a pragmatical Aberdeenish man, called Monikie, who was with us at college. The boy’s name is Halbert, our most famous family name. He must have nearly arrived at man’s estate, but I have never seen him.
I am drawing near the end of my course. I earnestly desire to have my mind preserved from the resentment and pain of being again brought into immediate contact with those who have so deeply injured me, or with their representatives. For this reason I have never seen HalbertGraeme, and am firmly resolved not to see him. The lad shall have full justice; I will refuse him no needful help in any profession he may choose; but though he is the last representative of our ancient name, he shall not be the heir of Mossgray. I have given Monikie all freedom in providing for him, in a way becoming his father’s son—but he is not mine. I do this with no feeling of revenge towards the dead, but I cannot adopt or cherish the son of Charlie Graeme.
And Lilias—I have heard that she too has one child—a girl called by her own name—but these also I cannot dare ever to look upon. Edward Maxwell is dead; he has lived the life of a weakling, and his widow remains in England where he died. I have learned now, in my old age, to think of the Lilias of my imagination as of one who died in the early fragrance of youth, and almost to dream that her gentle, shadowy presence hovers near me, in the twilight of summer nights, when the stately flowers which bear her name shine like gleams of moonlight in the dim borders of my garden. I can bear the neighbourhood of these lilies now; their pensive beauty soothes me; but though the softening shadows of memory and years have enshrined this lily of my youth, in that radiance of tender melancholy with which we surround those who have gone down early to peaceful graves, I yet cannot and dare not enter the presence of that Lilias who has made me a solitary, joyless man. Let me be kept from them and from their children. I cannot endure the pain which their very names inflict upon me—I must always avoid and shun them. I wish them well—all health, and peace, and happiness be with them, and a brighter lot than mine; but let me be left with my dreams; the sole remaining companions, which are with me in my old age, and were with me in my youth.
Walter Johnstone is the only surviving member of our joyous boyish party. He is struggling still in the Maelstrom of care and business, maintaining his place well, as I hear, among his compeers, and training, as he can, a large family of sons and daughters. He still retains Greenshaw, but never visits it; for Walter’s wife and children are fashionables in their degree, and think it expedient, as my good friend Mrs Oswald tells me, to leave the gentle enchantment of distance and ignorance about the very minute property from which their father acquires the landed designation towhich we attach a considerable share of importance in Scotland.
Greenshaw is let to strangers—I hear it is greatly altered; but I avoid it in my limited walks, the last association of deadly pain it has having obliterated in my mind all the former ones of youthful joy and sunshine. It is not in my way indeed, for the water and I travel together—I seldom leave the green line of its banks; I pursue its windings up and down with constant interest and pleasure. We never weary of each other; those ripples which I have heard all my life have an articulate tongue to me—they are connected with all the gladness I have dreamt, with all the grief I have undergone; and there are creeks and sunny promontories there which recall the shining thread of youthful visions till I can almost think I am weaving them again—
“My eyes are filled with childish tears,My heart is idly stirred,For the same sound is in my earsAs in those days I heard.”
“My eyes are filled with childish tears,My heart is idly stirred,For the same sound is in my earsAs in those days I heard.”
“My eyes are filled with childish tears,My heart is idly stirred,For the same sound is in my earsAs in those days I heard.”
Thisspell of local association has always been strong upon me. As I pass along the banks of my ancient and well-beloved companion, the wan water, the changes of my life rise up before me, each with its separate scene and dwelling-place—these dells and pensive glens—these broad glades, and grouped brotherhoods of old trees—they are peopled with the things that have been; they bear upon them, as upon so many several pages, the story of my life.
And so I dwell among them, and at my pleasure am again a solitary child, a dreaming youth, a stricken man—I feel myself of kin to myself in all these changes. Swiftly these years have carried me over the world’s broad highway, but with this white hair upon my head I am still the child to whose first dreams this water murmured its plaintive symphony. I know myself little wiser, and in nothing more thoughtful. It is the things around us that change—it is not we.
For I confess myself as credulous still of ideal generosity and truth, as I was when I had counted only twenty summers. I have not been able yet to tutor myself to suspicion—the vision splendid has not quite departed—I cannot put the lustre of that celestial light, which once apparelled all things, away out of my eyes, even when those eyes are old; and Nature inher grave nobleness is not less, but more dear now, when I remember that I shall soon bid her good even, to enter into the presence of her Lord and mine. New heavens and a new earth—I cannot sever my human heart from mine own land; and who shall say that those noble countries, casting off all impurity in the fiery trial that awaits them, shall not be our final heaven?
I love to think that it may be so; I love to think that the Lord, in His humanity, looks tenderly upon the mortal soil on which He sojourned in His wondrous life, and that here, perchance, in these very lands, made holy by His grace and power, our final rest shall be. It may be but a fancy; but it comes upon me with gentle might, like the whispered comfort of an angel. A new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness—a glorified humanity which, remaining human, is mortal no longer! with the judgment, and the condemnation, and the wars of the Lord over-past, and the earth and the heaven one fair broad country, and Himself over all, blessed for ever. These are the old man’s dreams; and they shed new glory over the pleasant places in which my lines have fallen—
“Oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves!Forbode not any severing of our loves!Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might.I only have relinquished one delight,To live beneath your more habitual sway.I love the brooks that down their channels fret,Even more than when I tripped, lightly as they;The innocent brightness of a new-born dayIs lovely yet—The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober colouring from an eyeThat hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality.”
“Oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves!Forbode not any severing of our loves!Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might.I only have relinquished one delight,To live beneath your more habitual sway.I love the brooks that down their channels fret,Even more than when I tripped, lightly as they;The innocent brightness of a new-born dayIs lovely yet—The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober colouring from an eyeThat hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality.”
“Oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves!Forbode not any severing of our loves!Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might.I only have relinquished one delight,To live beneath your more habitual sway.I love the brooks that down their channels fret,Even more than when I tripped, lightly as they;The innocent brightness of a new-born dayIs lovely yet—The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober colouring from an eyeThat hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality.”
END OF BOOK I.
There was a hardness in his cheek,There was a hardness in his eye.—Peter Bell.
There was a hardness in his cheek,There was a hardness in his eye.—Peter Bell.
There was a hardness in his cheek,There was a hardness in his eye.—Peter Bell.
“I beg you will not misunderstand me, Mrs Oswald; I vow to you that this girl shall never cross my threshold, and if William persists in his folly he must choose between her and me; for assuredly he shall not keep his place with both. I tell you her father was a fool and a weakling, and you know the injury he did me. My mind is made up; before I receive this girl (I care nothing for her own good qualities—they do not concern me in the slightest) as my daughter, I will disown my son. If he wants to prolong her poverty, and to make himself a servant all his life, let him persist in his madness; and if you encourage him further in it, the consequences lie with yourselves. I have toiled and laboured to enrich him, and if he thwarts me thus, he shall rue it!”
The speaker was a wiry, dark man, about the middle height, with a face in which you could read habitual obstinacy. It had redeeming qualities; you could see how a great enough matter might elevate the constitutional pertinacity into brave determination, and the eyes were intelligent and clear; but the rigid muscles of his mouth wore their sternest expression to-day, and a cloud lowered darkly upon his face. He was standing with his back to the fire in a good-sized, comfortable dining-room, the front windows of which looked out upon the Main Street of Fendie. The house was withdrawn a little from the line of the neighbouring buildings, in modest dignity, and bore over its portico and stone pillars the important title “Bank;” and the obstinate gentleman in the dining-room within was Mr George Oswald, at that time the sole representative of banking interests in the borough of Fendie.
The very emphatic speech which we have already recorded, was addressed to his wife, who sat opposite to him. She was very calmly engaged with her sewing, though her face was sufficiently grave to show that her husband’s words were not mere empty breath. When he had concluded, she raised her head.
“I cannot see what necessity there is for making any vows to me, George. If you are determined not to hear what I say, and what William says about this very sweet and innocent girl, of course you must have your own way, as you always have; but as for your vows—you know that is quite unnecessary.”
“I know no such thing!” said Mr Oswald, imperiously. “You fancy I will forget by and by, and that you may renew this subject again; but I protest to you, Jane, that neither your son nor you shall ever move me on this point—that—”
“George,” interrupted his wife, “I hear Hope coming down-stairs; pray do not let her be a party to this discussion. I am reluctant that she should even know how you regard the Buchanans, for Hope is inclined to have an opinion of her own, and to express it more freely perhaps than she should at her years. Let us drop this subject, I beg; I promise youIwill not renew it.”
The cloud passed from the banker’s face—his stern mouth relaxed. It was the young voice without, singing so gaily as its owner came bounding down-stairs, “Hame, hame, hame! oh, it’s hame fain wad I be—” that chased the mist from his face and from his mind. He was kind enough in all his relationships, if somewhat exacting and rigid; but he was indulgent to an extent, which only the stern and vehement nature can reach, of all the whims and caprices of his favourite child.
Hope Oswald was fourteen, and had been for two or three years at a famous educational establishment in Edinburgh. Her father looked with natural satisfaction on the houses and lands which his industry had acquired, read with satisfaction his own name high in the list of bank shareholders in his own private office; was pleased when he saw “George Oswald, Esq., of Fendie,” figuring in his local newspaper as connected with some county or borough reform, or public good-work; but the banker’s eye looked never so proud as when a metropolitan broad-sheet informed him how, at the examination of the famed establishment in Edinburgh, “Miss Hope Oswald, Fendie,” had carried off prize on prize. The stern man read the half-yearly list of school-girl honours with secret exultation. It was a matter of genuine happy pride to him; and Mrs Oswald smiled within herself, as year after year her husband expressed in joyous terms his wonder, that the name of Miss Adelaide Fendie of Mount Fendie, the daughter oftheir aristocratic neighbour “up the water” did never by any chance make its appearance among this honoured number, while “our Hope” had won almost as many distinctions as there were distinctions to win.
But Hope was weary of gaining prizes, and longed exceedingly to return home; so she was granted an interregnum. Six blithe holiday months were to pass before she returned to Edinburgh, and on this same day she had arrived in Fendie.
The age of awkwardness had scarcely commenced with Hope. She had not begun to be self-conscious, and in consequence escaped the inevitable physical attendant of that unpleasant mental state. She did not yet think of people seeing her when she danced about through the rooms and passages, and ran races in the garden, and waded secretly in the water; nor of people hearing her, as she went about everywhere, singing aloud in the exuberance of her joy. She was only a girl yet: she scarcely felt the budding woman begin to stir within her healthful breast.
So the dining-room door swung open, wider than it needed to do, and Hope came in with a bound. She had hazel eyes and auburn hair, and an animated blithe face, whose claims to beauty, if it had any, no one ever thought of deciding. She was tolerably tall and tolerably stout, and exceedingly firm, and active, and vigorous. The “Misses” in Edinburgh whispered among themselves, that Hope had a predilection for masculine games, and was as strong as a boy; but Hope denied the slander stoutly, affirming that its solitary foundation was one unlucky slide, and two or three snowballs, in both of which the stupid and docile Adelaide Fendie, whom no one thought of blaming, was as much implicated as she.
Hope was rather talkative; she had a great deal to say about her Edinburgh experiences, and both the father and the mother were good listeners; the sterner parent however being by far the most indulgent now.
“And what did your friends say when you came away, Hope?” asked Mr Oswald; “was there much lamentation?”
“They were all very sorry,” said Hope, “and they all wished they were coming too; only big Miss Mansfield that’s going to India, she did not care, for she thinks we are only girls and she’s a woman, and she’s always speaking about Calcutta—as if anybody was caring for Calcutta!—and littleMary Wood would hardly let me go, mamma—she wanted to come too. Will you let her come at the vacation, mother?—for when all the rest go away, Mary has to stay with Miss Swinton, because she has no friends.”
“But Miss Swinton is very kind, is she not?” said Mrs Oswald.
“Miss Swinton is always good to everybody,” said Hope promptly, “but when little Mary sees us all going away, and nobody coming for her, she greets—”
“Shegreets, Hope!” said Mr Oswald, holding up his hand in reproof.
“Well, father,” said the brave Hope, “it is a far better word than cries:—cries! as if folk had only cut their finger! and Miss Swinton says our tongue is as good a tongue as the English, and we need not think shame of it.”
Mr Oswald submitted to be defeated, well-pleased and smiling—
“And what does Miss Swinton do at the vacations, Hope?” asked her mother.
“I don’t know, mother; sometimes she stays at home, sometimes she goes away to some of those places that the Glasgow girls are always talking about—Rothesay, or somewhere about the Clyde. She was there with Miss Buchanan last year; and oh, mamma, I had almost forgotten—how isourHelen Buchanan? I must go to see her to-day.”
The banker’s brow contracted suddenly. His wife was wary, and a good politician; she took no notice of Hope’s unsuitable inquiry.
“Miss Swinton went to stay with one of the young ladies, did she? does she do that often, Hope?”
“Sometimes, mother; they are all so fond of her—and I don’t think she has ever been in the south country. Perhaps she would come to Fendie, if you were to ask her, mother, and bring little Mary Wood.”
“Well we shall see,” said Mrs Oswald; “and what about Adelaide Fendie, Hope?”
“Oh, Adelaide Fendie is coming home; the school is not good enough for her; and they’re going to have a governess at Mount Fendie, for her, and Victoria, and little Fred—Poor governess! I am very sorry for her, I am sure, whoever she is. I would far rather keep a school like—”
Mrs Oswald interposed hastily, “Is it some one from Edinburgh, Hope?”
“No, indeed, mamma. Only somebody from England that Mrs Heavieliegh knows; and I almost hope she will be as stupid as they are, for if she is not, they will kill her. I would not live at Mount Fendie for all the world; and no one can teach Adelaide anything, except to do Berlin work, and thump, thump upon the piano.”
“Come, Hope, this is too bad,” said her smiling father. “I hope you can thump upon the piano to some purpose yourself. We must hear you to-night, you know.”
“I don’t care about it, father,” said Hope; “it is very dreary, except folk will just let me play my own tunes; but then there’s these awful waltzes and things, that were never made for anything but people’s fingers. Adelaide could play them for days, father; but they make me dizzy; for there’s nothing but noise in them.”
“I am afraid you are quite giddy enough already, Hope,” said Mr Oswald.
“Miss Swinton says I am sensible,” said Hope, with offended dignity. “Miss Swinton says she can trust me with the little ones better than Miss Mansfield,—and Miss Mansfield’s seventeen!”
The father and mother laughed; but Miss Swinton’s testimony to Hope’s good sense pleased them nevertheless.
“Adelaide is coming home in a week,” said Hope, “and she said the new governess would be at the Mount before her. I am to go up every day, Adelaide says, if you will let me, mother; and I would like to go sometimes, but not so often; and I want to go to Mossgray, to see old Mrs Mense, and the Laird; and up to Friarsford to Maggie Irving, and down to the Waterfoot to see the Flower of Fendie; but first of all—”
“That will do, Hope,” said her mother, fearful that the interdicted name might fall from Hope’s gay lips again; “but I think you might show us those drawings of yours that you used to write so much about:—you can arrange your visits to-morrow.”
“But I want to go into Fendie to-night, mother,” urged Hope, “to see—”
“We cannot part with you to-night, Hope,” said Mrs Oswald; “and now go and bring your drawings and let your father see them.”
Hope obeyed. Mr Oswald began to walk about the room, almost inclined to be angry with his daughter; thispertinacious attachment to the one person in Fendie whom he tabooed, and the constant recurrence of her name, annoyed him greatly; and the banker had a consciousness that his wife and his son William were much more likely to submit, so far as external action went, to his stern will, than was the much privileged girl-daughter, who appeared fully as much inclined to sway him as he was to sway her, and did it as effectually. The grave and painful constraint with which William curbed a will as strong as his father’s, raised in the banker’s mind an angry feeling of antagonism; but the frank resistance of Hope was much less easily managed. Mr Oswald began to feel an involuntary “drither” as to his success in this part of the contest—a dubious consciousness that Hope might be too many for him.
The exhibition of drawings did not succeed. Hope perceived that there was something wrong, and with eager girlish curiosity could not rest till she had fathomed it. William was strangely grave and taciturn, she thought; she seized the earliest opportunity of questioning him.
By the dining-room fireside, the brother and sister sat in the twilight alone. Hope took advantage of the propitious moment.
“William, is there anything the matter?”
William stirred the fire thoughtfully and sighed. The light threw a gleam upon his face, and made it look very grey and grim, as his sister thought. Hope was not inclined to wait for his tardy answer; she plunged into the middle of thequestio vexata.
“William, I want to know about Helen Buchanan.”
William started.
“Hush, Hope—do not speak of her, I beg.”
“Why?” said Hope. “I like her better than anybody else in Fendie: why should I not speak of her?”
There was no point on which Hope and her taciturn brother agreed so perfectly. He smiled a momentary smile, and then answered gravely,—
“Because you do like her better than any one else in Fendie, you must not speak of her, Hope—and especially recollect that her name must not be mentioned before my father, unless you wish to hear her spoken of with anger and disrespect, which I am sure you do not.”
If I may not speak, I pray,All the words I have to say,Where shall I go hide them?Nought say I ’gainst words of thine,Do not listen, father mine—So you need not chide them.—Song.
If I may not speak, I pray,All the words I have to say,Where shall I go hide them?Nought say I ’gainst words of thine,Do not listen, father mine—So you need not chide them.—Song.
If I may not speak, I pray,All the words I have to say,Where shall I go hide them?Nought say I ’gainst words of thine,Do not listen, father mine—So you need not chide them.—Song.
Hope Oswaldwas very much puzzled. She could by no means understand why this perfectly unreasonable interdict should be put upon her free and unfettered speech, and was not in any degree inclined to submit to it. She resolved to be at the bottom of the mystery.
Mr Oswald and William were no sooner fairly lodged in the office the next morning than Hope began her investigation. Mrs Oswald sat sewing again; she had an old-fashioned horror of idleness.
“Mother,” said Hope, “I want you to tell me what ails Helen Buchanan?”
“Hush, my dear!” said her mother.
“But why should I hush, mamma? and why am I never to speak about Helen? William told me the very same; and it’s too bad—as if you could not trust me!”
“What makes you think there is anything to trust you with, Hope?” said Mrs Oswald.
“Oh, I know—because you will not let me speak, and say always, hush! hush! Mother, do tell me: what is the matter with Helen?—what ails her?”
“Nothing ails her, Hope—she is perfectly well.”
Hope became very impatient.
“But you know you don’t mean that, mamma; thereissomething wrong; and would it not be better to tell me than to be always saying ‘hush!’”
Mrs Oswald smiled.
“It is not always so easy to tell, Hope:—for instance, why do you call me ‘mamma’ one moment, and ‘mother’ the next?”
“Oh, that is easy,” said Hope; “because the girls at school say mamma, and it sounds best there; and when I comehome, William says mother, and it is home-like and—and the right word; but I forget sometimes, and mix them at first. So now, mother, if you please, tell me about Helen Buchanan.”
“You are a very pertinacious girl,” said Mrs Oswald; “but remember, Hope, if I tell you this, that you must be very prudent and sensible, and never mention it again.”
“I will be very prudent and sensible, mother,” promised Hope, with a reservation.
Mrs Oswald hesitated still: the impatient Hope volunteered to thread her mother’s refractory needle, and urged her petition still more warmly. A slight fugitive smile crossed the good mother’s face—then she became very grave.
“Helen’s father died long ago; he used to be very fond of you when you were a baby, Hope; but you cannot remember him.”
“Oh, yes! was he not very thin and pale, mother, with a white high forehead, like Mossgray?—I do mind him.”
“Hush, Hope! you are interrupting me now. He was a very delicate, gentle man, this poor Mr Buchanan; but he was not at all like Mossgray, and when he died, your father and he were not good friends.”
“Yes, mother, I know that,” said the disappointed Hope; “but is that all?”
“Wait a little; do not be so impatient!” said Mrs Oswald. “And foolish people said that your father’s sternness killed this delicate man. I believe Mrs Buchanan thinks so still.”
Hope started.
“Then Helen will not be friends with us because my father was poor Mr Buchanan’s enemy:—is that it, mother?”
“No, Hope, that is not it. Helen knows that her father was a weak man, and Helen is a wise, good girl, and would not do anything so foolish; but Helen is only a poor schoolmistress, Hope, and your brother William, you know, will be rich.”
“Oh, mamma!” exclaimed Hope, clapping her hands as the conjunction of these two names threw sudden light upon the mystery, “are they going to be married?”
“I very much fear you are not the sensible person you call yourself,” said her mother; “your father will not let them be married, Hope.”
Hope’s bright face became suddenly blank.
“Mother, there is nobody like Helen Buchanan in all Fendie! why will my father not let them be married?”
“Because her father did him wrong, Hope; and because she is poor.”
“Because she is poor!—Helen is a gentlewoman, mother!—and because her father did wrong! But that is not Helen’s fault. If my father did wrong, no one would blame William or me.”
“Take care, Hope; you are treading on dangerous ground,” said Mrs Oswald; “and though it is not Helen’s fault, your father has made up his mind, and William must submit.”
“But, mother,” said Hope doubtfully, “William is old—William is a man.”
“And what then?”
“I don’t know,” said Hope, hesitating; “perhaps it would be quite wrong, but—mother, is William always to do what my father bids him?”
“And why should he not, Hope?” said Mrs Oswald; “does it alter his duty that he is old?”
“I don’t know, mother,” said Hope again; “but if my grandfather were living now, my father would not always ask him before he did anything, as I ask you; and perhaps William is right, and perhaps—mother, what would my father do if William disobeyed him?”
“I believe he would never speak to him again,” said Mrs Oswald.
Hope shrank back and looked afraid.
“And all that he has, Hope, he would take from William and give to you.”
“To me, mother? that would not do William any harm,” said Hope, looking up brightly; “though if my father would notspeakto him—but he would, mother—he could not help it.”
“My dear, I have known your father longer than you have,” said Mrs Oswald; “and besides, Hope, Helen Buchanan would not consent if your father did not consent; she is as firm as he is.”
“Then it is all because everybody is proud, mother,” said Hope, turning away disconsolately, “and would rather make other folk unhappy than give up their own will.”
“There are some things in the world, Hope,” said MrsOswald, “that are of more importance than even making people happy.”
“I know, mother,” said Hope: “it is best to berightalways, whether we are happy or not; but this is not right, I am sure—my father does not know—there is nobody in Fendie like Helen Buchanan!”
Mrs Oswald sighed.
“You must not speak so of your father, Hope, he knows what is right better than you do.”
Hope looked sceptical; those frank instinctive impulses of the young heart, which had no complicated mesh of secret motives to hinder its prompt out-going, were perhaps better guides after all than the groping, worldly wisdom of elder minds; wisdom whose wary steps are supposed to be guided by the caution of clear-sightedness, when it is only the timid caution of the blind.
“But I may go to see Helen Buchanan, may I not, mother?” asked Hope, after a pause.
“Surely, Hope; I have no wish to restrain you, and your father will not, I dare say, unless you speak of her again before him, as you did yesterday; and you must be cautious of that, for it only aggravates your father’s prejudice and vexes William, without doing any good.”
“And am I not to speak about Helen at all?” said Hope.
“No, my dear, not now. I do not forbid you praising Helen as frankly as you blame Adelaide Fendie—and you must restrain that last propensity of yours a little, Hope—but do it cautiously and warily, and let me see something of this wisdom and good sense which Miss Swinton has discovered. You see I trust you, Hope.”
Hope drew herself up.
“I will be very careful, mother, no fear, but may I go to see Helen now?”
“Helen will be busy now, Hope.”
“Well, then, come to the Waterside, mother; I want to see Mossgray, and I want to see Maggie Irving. Come!”
The indulgent mother laid aside her work and went.
Friarsford was a farm-house standing on a little eminence at some distance from the Water, and Maggie Irving was the farmer’s daughter. She was a year older than Hope Oswald, and one of her Fendie intimates. The house was only a little out of the direct road to Mossgray, and MrsOswald and her daughter turned up the winding by-way to make their first visit there.
Matthew Irving of Friarsford was wealthy and had some ambition. He was exceedingly desirous to give his children good education, and with the masculine part of them he had succeeded tolerably well, thanks to the academy of Fendie; but the hapless Maggie was less fortunate. She was the only daughter; especial pains, and care, and labour had been expended upon her training, and the father and mother, exulting over their accomplished girl, thought the process a perfectly satisfactory and successful one.
Maggie had been sent to the house of a relative in one of the busy towns of Lancashire to learn English, and she had learnt it to perfection. Maggie had a piano, and could play you against time, all manner of inarticulate music. Maggie could draw, as three or four copies made from French lithographs—patterns, as Maggie and her mother called them—hung there, elaborately framed, upon the walls, to testify.
Moreover, Hope Oswald’s quick movements had swept upon the ground a couple of handsome specimens of knitting, displayed upon the arm and cushions of the sofa, before Hope had been ten minutes in the lightsome cheerful apartment, which was the comfortable parlour once, but had now obtained brevet rank as drawing-room. As Maggie hastened to arrange them, she pointed out the stitch to her visitor, and offered to show her the various stock she had. Hope was dismayed; never girl of fourteen was more innocent of stitches than she, and this branch of her friend’s acquirements had very little interest for her. It was not so with Mrs Irving, a comfortable, kindly, vulgar woman, who was very proud of her daughter’s accomplishments, and eager to exhibit them.
“Miss Hope will give you a tune, Maggie,” she said; “and you can let her hear how you come on yoursel. She’s very good at it, Mrs Oswald, though she hasna had the same advantages as Miss Hope.”
Hope started in alarm.
“On, don’t let us have any music, Mrs Irving!—I mean, I shall be very glad to hear Maggie, but I don’t like playing.”
Mrs Irving thought the young lady only coy.
“Hout, Miss Hope! a’body that’s very good at it makes that excuse, ye ken; and I’m sure ye must aye be getting new tunes in Edinburgh.”
“But I don’t like new tunes,” pleaded Hope.
“Oh, Miss Oswald!” said the astonished Maggie, in gentle reproof.
Hope was offended; Maggie Irving called her Miss Oswald; Maggie Irving had nothing to talk about, after so long a separation, but stitches and new tunes! Their friendship was at an end. Hope walked indignantly to the piano, and played her favourite air of “Hame, hame, hame!”
“It’s a bonnie bit simple thing that,” said Mrs Irving, looking proudly at her own accomplished performer, as she took her place at the instrument, by the side of which Hope and her mother were reluctantly compelled to sit for a dull half hour, listening to jingling pieces of music, whose brief moment of fashion was long ago over, and which had never had anything but fashion to recommend them.
But Mrs Irving was delighted, and Maggie was exceedingly complacent. Alas, poor Maggie! her fingers were highly educated; her mind was fallow. The thorough training of Hope’s Edinburgh school these good folk in Fendie could not reach; but they could reach the superficials, and they were contented.
“Well, Hope,” said Mrs Oswald, in answer to a burst of wonder and disappointment, when they had left Friarsford and its accomplishments behind them; “you remember how you used to resist and be disobedient when your father said that Matthew Irving’s daughter was no companion for you.”
“But, mother,” said Hope solemnly, “Adelaide Fendie is just the same—and Adelaide ought to be a lady, if being anybody’s daughter would make her one; but she is not, for all that.”
“Adelaide is only a girl like yourself, Hope.”
“But she is not a gentlewoman, mamma; and she talks about stitches and tunes like Maggie Irving—and I’m sure I don’t know what’s the use of them.”
Hope could not forget her disappointment; there was only one consolation in it. In the midst of all these twinkling artificial lights, the star of Helen Buchanan rose clearer and clearer. Helen was a gentlewoman; and what did it matter that she was poor?
“Yonder is Mossgray!” exclaimed Hope, as they approached the house; “yonder he is, up among the trees, and he has got something like a letter in his hand. Do you see him, mother?”
The bank of the wan Water sloped upward into gentle braes, a little beyond the house of Mossgray, and the laird was certainly there, walking among the trees, with a step altogether unlike his usual meditative, slow pace. Hope Oswald was an especial favourite with Mr Graeme of Mossgray, and he liked her mother; but Mrs Oswald had too much regard and sympathy for the old man to intrude on his retirement.
“We will go in and see Mrs Mense, Hope,” she said; “Mossgray seems occupied just now. You will see him another day.”
The large old-fashioned kitchen had a separate entrance to itself. The mass of buildings altogether bore evident testimony to the different periods of their erection, and looked, as their owner said, a natural growth of the homesoil in which the grey walls and rude, dark, massy tower seemed so firmly rooted. A large garden descended from the most modern front of the house to the water, where it was deeply fringed with willows. The clipt, fantastic trees of a generation which admired such clumsy gambols of art were scattered through it, and there was a sun-dial, and many prim flower-beds; but the cherished lilies of Mossgray were not in these stiffly-angled enclosures; their fresh green leaves were beginning to shoot up in the freer borders—those borders on which they gleamed in the dim summer evenings, like errant rays of the moon.
Mrs Mense was a very old woman now, and invalided. She sat in a great elbow-chair by the fireside, spinning feebly sometimes, and sometimes giving counsel, by no means feebly, to her self-willed niece, the housekeeperde facto. The establishment was a very limited one; besides Janet, and the miscellaneous personage known as “Mossgray’s man,” there was only one other servant in the house.
“Eh, Miss Hope, is this you?” said Mrs Mense, “and your mamma nae less, minding the auld wife as she aye does. Effie, ye tawpie, get chairs to the ladies—or are ye gaun ben, Mrs Oswald, to wait for Mossgray?”
“Mossgray is out, I see,” said Mrs Oswald. “No, Hope came to see you, Mrs Mense; we will sit down beside you awhile. That will do, Effie.”
“And look till her how she’s grown!” exclaimed the old woman, “and stout wi’t. Ye’re no gaun to let down our credit, Miss Hope. Ye’ll let the Edinburgh folk see what guid bluid isin thir southland parts. Effie, gar Janet gie ye the wee cheeny luggie fu’ o’ cream. Ye mind it, Miss Hope? it belangs mair to you than to onybody about Mossgray.”
“But, Mrs Mense,” said Hope, “you did not call Crummie’s calf after me, as you said you would.”
“My dear lamb! ye wadna have had me to ca’ the muckle langleggit haverel of a beast after you, and you a winsome young lady? Na, I ken better manners—and forbye Mossgray said it was nae compliment. But I’ll tell ye what, Miss Hope, there’s a new powny—the bonniest creature!—and ye’se get the naming o’t, gin ye like.”
“Where is it?—wait till I see it, mamma!” cried Hope, starting up. Hope had, like most country girls, an especial liking for youthful animals.
“Ye maun hae your cream first,” said the housekeeper, as Effie approached with the china luggie, in which, from time immemorial, Hope had received a draught of rich cream on her every visit to Mossgray. Hope hardly took time to taste it; she was too eager to see the “new powny.”
“Did you see the laird, Mem?” said Mrs Mense, with some appearance of anxiety, as Mrs Oswald waited for her daughter’s return.
“We saw him on the knowe,” said Mrs Oswald; “but did not disturb him, as he seemed occupied. I fancy that is one of his favourite spots, Mrs Mense.”
“Na—I’m meaning I dinna ken,” said the old woman; “but he’s gotten some letter the day that’s troubled him—I canna bide to see him fashed, and he’s just unco easy putten about. Janet, div ye hear the clock? it’s twa chappit, and the dinner no to the fire!”
“I ken what I’m doing, auntie,” returned the impatient Janet.
“Ye dinna ken onything very wise then,” said the dethroned monarch of the kitchen; “it’s a bonnie-like thing that the laird, honest man, maun wait for his dinner, aboon a’ the rest o’ his troubles! I heard him travelling up and down in his ain study-room in the tower, after thae weary letters came in. What gars folk write when they’ve naething but ill-tidings to tell about, I wad like to ken? and syne out to the Waterside as he aye does when he’s troubled—I canna bide, as I was saying, to see him fashed, for—”
“Oh, Mrs Mense!” exclaimed Hope, bounding in, “be sure and tell Mossgray that he is not to call the pony anything till I come back again. Mamma, come and see it; it’s like as if its coat was all sprinkled with snow—I think I will call it Spunkie; but that’s not a bonnie name. Mind, Mrs Mense, that nobody is to give it its name but me.”
Mrs Mense promised, and after some further lamentation about her master’s supposed trouble, resumed so keenly the dinner controversy with Janet, that her visitors withdrew. It was yet too early to visit Helen Buchanan, so Hope, expatiating on the beauty of the pony, returned with her mother, home.