Robert grinned from ear to ear, and came back again in a very few minutes.
"Cook's busy and cannot come." He stood and looked at her.
Grace made no answer.
"I am to take any message," he said, longing to raise some little disturbance.
"If she does not choose to come for orders I shall give none," she said after a moment with a visible accession to her dignity, and Robert reluctantly departed.
The sisters began unpacking their things, and Grace's spirits rose when they had made their room more like the only home they had ever known.
That evening, when dinner was over, Grace began upon the subject of her duties to Mr. Sandford.
"I do not want to lead a useless life," she began, having well thought over her speech beforehand, but finding it terribly difficult to say it to him now, while his grey eyes, keen, hard, and cold, looked at her unflinchingly, "I want to be useful."
"Indeed?"
"Yes," she said, gaining more courage, "I intend taking a great deal of trouble and getting things right, and being really useful, I do not intend to eat the bread of idleness."
"Are you thinking of being a governess?"
A cold-water douche would hardly have been a greater shock to her.
"I meant I wanted to be useful here."
"Oh! You wanted to be useful. In what way?"
Poor Grace!
"I thought you would like me to order dinner, and—look after things."
"Have you had any experience? I thought you had always been at school. Did you order the dinners there?"
There was something almost insolent in his tone, and Grace through all the thick skin of her self-love, which generally prevented her seeing or feeling any intended slight, winced.
She rallied her courage, however, and said, "As we are with you and it is usual for a lady to be the mistress of the house, I thought...."
John Sandford threw himself back in his chair and laughed out loud. He was immensely tickled by this girl's assumption. His sense of humour—rarely touched—was reached by it; the situation seemed to him to have all the elements of the ridiculous in it, and his laugh was an unaccustomed and noisy laugh—under no control. An angry flush rose on Grace's face, Margaret saw it, and, as usual, threw herself into the breach—
"Grace only meant to do what she thought was her duty," she said bravely, "and it is unkind of you to treat her so—and, my dear Grace don't mind," and she rose and threw her arms round her.
"You are right, my girl," said Mr. Sandford, looking at her with increased respect. "It's a pity your sister does not take a leaf out of your book. 'Those who don't walk on tiptoes need never come down on their heels,' a homely saying but a true one;" then turning to Grace, against whom he felt no softening influence, he said drily, "I am obliged to you for offering to make yourself the mistress of my house, and of not wishing to eat the bread of idleness, and all the rest of it. It all sounds very fine, but if I wanted a mistress—which I do not, being provided with one already—I should not choose an inexperienced girl under twenty, for the post. However, I have to tell you it is not necessary. My sister, Mrs. Dorriman, comes to-morrow, to be the mistress of this house; without her or some one like her, I could not have asked you here; and when she comes, it is my wish that you look up to her and obey her in all things."
Here was a thunder-clap. The girls looked at each other in dismay. His sister! she would then be a feminine edition of himself! All the poor children's dreams of having their time to themselves, and of being to all intents and purposes free, fell to the ground; the shock made Grace silent and Margaret's eyes filled with tears.
"I hope you quite understand," Mr. Sandford said roughly, pleased by the effect he had produced, "I have not reached my time of life to be worried and troubled by female rows and disturbances—and, if you cannot make up your mind to swallow your pride and knock under, you will have to find out some other way of eating bread, whether of idleness or the reverse."
With the scowl that clouded his face whenever he was angry he looked at Grace, resolutely keeping his face away from Margaret, whose glance had a strange influence over him, and, pushing back his chair, he rose and walked out of the room.
Grace rose also. She was pale and defiant, not in the mood to tolerate even Margaret's caresses, she went to their own room; and, chilly though it was, she threw open the window, feeling as though she was suffocating. For the first time in all her life she had been spoken to rudely and insolently, and made to feel her dependence. Fate was indeed cruel: why was she left to the mercy of the world and Mr. Sandford? She would not stay with him—to be bullied and hectored and ordered about by him and his sister. She would go—but where?
The spasm of pain, of rage, and of indignation, surged through her—for the first time in all her life her vanity and her self-love had been sorely wounded. She was suffering acutely, and just at that moment when she was railing against her fate and every one connected with it a letter from her old school-mistress was put into her hands. She read it and shrank as she did so, the fond words in which so much affectionate flattery was mixed, struck her almost as though written in mockery, she was not to allow her present life of splendour to make her idle: she had such great gifts, she was to use them; she was not to allow vanity about her personal appearance to disfigure her mind; though queen-like in appearance she was to walk humbly, &c. &c.
She sat down, staring at her surroundings. What splendour was there in the four-post bed with its moreen curtains and the hideous carpet which was the exact opposite of all she had been taught to like? She did not pursue the thought, and it never dawned upon her that her great gifts and her queen-like grace were equally untrue. She accepted everything, and no one can blame her for so doing, but no greater cruelty could have been done her than the false standard and over-estimation of herself given her, so completely enshrouding her, that one day the awakening would be terrible to her.
Her sister's innocent pleasure over the letter and the hearty way in which she endorsed the flattery, made her once more a comfort to her, and once again she turned towards her and spoke.
"What are we to do about this woman, this sister, this Mrs. Dorriman, Madge?"
Margaret laughed softly.
"You will get the better of them all in time," she said; "you make every one do as you like; every one admires you so much; you are so clever, darling, and so beautiful. I am quite sure you will marry a duke."
Grace smiled; she was beginning to forget the wound she had received, and her sister's consolations were very sweet to her. She went to bathe her face and said, laughingly,
"Unfortunately no dukes are in sight here; and Margaret," she said suddenly, with a little shudder, "I feel as if in this dreary place no one will ever come."
"That is nonsense, darling," Margaret said quietly; "the prince always comes just when great distress is there, just when the princess needs him."
A turn in the cabbage-garden, revealed a few coloured leaves and some late flowers mixed with the "useful" vegetables; these were better than nothing, and the girls gathered them and then went through the town, attracting, of course, a good deal of attention in that out-of-the-way place, where few gentry ever came.
Grace went home not altogether unhappy. One or two clerks and several of the shop people had followed her and her sister with admiring glances, and, in the absence of all else, this was acceptable.
She returned to the house in good-humour, and walked more daintily than ever, meeting Mr. Sandford at the front door. He had come home earlier than usual to receive his sister. He was satisfied to see she was not sulky; if she had been he had made up his mind to put it down, and her too, at once.
Grace was, however, soon in her own room, getting ready for the encounter she dreaded. From the first Mrs. Dorriman should be taught the place she was to have; outwardly she might be mistress, order dinner, and keep the servants in their places, but, as regarded interference with her and Margaret, it was not to be, and she was thirsting to make this evident to her and settle it all at once.
As usual she was rehearsing the words and the manner in which she should speak when Mr. Sandford called her. He had his own notion of what was respectful to his sister, and before she had time to make a stand or say a word she had intended to say he was hurrying her downstairs with no very gentle grip upon her arm, having made up his mind that, as the proper thing to do was to go downstairs to the front door to receive Mrs. Dorriman, there she should go.
The carriage was not in sight even, but he had seen the train come in; and as Grace, standing beside him at the open hall-door, felt the cold wind blowing in upon her, she added this to the other wrongs, and almost hated him.
The last afternoon of her stay at Inchbrae had come. Mrs. Dorriman, under the impression she was working very hard, carried several things upstairs that ought to have remained down, and wandered about helplessly, a terrible sense of having an enormous deal to do and to arrange pressing upon her; mixed with that ever constant and depressing feeling which distinguished her, of not being up to the mark. Can anything be more dreadful than a consciousness that strength isnotthere whatever "the day" may be? and is it not as much a sin to crush and murder a spirit as to destroy a body? and her spirit had been crushed. She sat down upstairs in the favourite corner from where she could see the river rushing into the sea; she took her Bible from a hope of finding comfort—but her spirits were so fluttered that she read the words without taking in their sense.
The river suggested to her, as it does to all—the resistlessness of fate—she was inexpressibly affected by this new and terrible disappointment. After having known so little happiness she had got into so quiet a haven; and once more, after feeling safe and happy, she was dragged out into the rough waves of life to commence a battle again. It crossed her mind that there might be some appeal—some one might help her to avert this; she was a widow and no longer a girl; how was it that she was so much in her brother's hands? Could Mr. Macfarlane not unravel it. She had a secret dread giving up her husband's papers—perhaps something might be found in them that might harm his memory, and since his death she thought so much more tenderly of him, and remembered him with so much more affection than she had done during his life, in spite of her contempt for his abilities.
But still she blamed him for not having kept her safe out of this position of dependence which had been her great hope when she had married him. She forgave him now his want of success, but that—it was so hard and it was so unfair to her.
She was deep in these thoughts when she was roused by the crunching of the gravel under her window, and she went down to the room looking so bare and desolate, stripped of its flowers, its quaint bits of china, of everything that made it homelike—to receive Mr. and Mrs. Macfarlane. Mrs. Macfarlane was a cheerful and a pleasant woman, but was much too warm-hearted to be overpoweringly and oppressively cheerful when it would have been hard for another to respond. She had the tact of a kind-hearted woman, which is a much more reliable thing than the tact acquired from the constant friction of society.
In a few moments they were all three having tea, the fire was making up for other deficiencies, and, though Jean made an apology about the best cups, no one had thought of anything as missing. Mrs. Dorriman had been very greatly troubled about the papers; she herself had never dared to go into them thoroughly as we know—she was afraid of seeing something in those records that might distress her, about her husband. But for this dread, she felt sometimes curious to know how these papers affected her brother, and she did not know what to do about them. She did not dare take them with her because she knew that if she did her brother would soon make himself master of them; she could not lock them up as the place was sold, and when she thought of that she always had a lump in her throat.
All the time she was drinking her tea she was wondering what to do, and longing to consult Mr. Macfarlane about it, kept back by her overpowering timidity.
He himself came to the rescue: he asked her if she wished to leave anything behind, and said he and his wife would be glad to take charge of anything for her.
He was quite astonished at her gratitude, which seemed so far beyond the slight service he offered her. She thanked him with tears in her eyes—there was some china and——
Mrs. Macfarlane's shrewd eyes saw that in some way this offer meant more than appeared, and she rose with Mrs. Dorriman to go and see how much room the things would take, and how best to take them over.
Mrs. Dorriman stood before the boxes holding the household treasures, her colour coming and going, and her evident hesitation and uncertainty quite pitiable to see. Her friend looked at her in amazement—she saw tears standing in her eyes, and she laid her hand softly upon hers, and said, "It is all very painful for you, you will feel better when it is over."
"It is all pain—it is not that——" and poor Mrs. Dorriman's tears overflowed. Then, as the sound of Mr. Macfarlane's carriage announcing her impending departure struck her ear, she stooped suddenly and drew out a box which she was unable to lift, and she said in an agitated whisper, "I do not know what they are, or what secrets they hold, I am afraid of looking—my brother wants those papers—Mrs. Macfarlane they were my husband's, they are mine. You will never give them up?"
"I will never give them up, save at your own expressed wish."
"It is safer for my brother not to know that you have them. He is not sure they exist, but he is very anxious—so anxious to find them that I know they are of consequence to him."
"But, dear Mrs. Dorriman, why not look through them? An evil guessed at, is worse than one confronted."
"You do not know—I am afraid. No! I cannot look at them—a day may come—Mrs. Macfarlane, if you knew all. In looking I may do my husband injury. I cannot do it—I have not courage."
"You may on the contrary find out much that puzzled people at the time of his death. No one understands how he managed to lose all his money;" and then being a discreet woman she stopped short—she must not say a word to set Mrs. Dorriman against her brother.
"Do you think it might do good?" the poor woman said, with a flash in her eyes—a ray of hope—that gleamed there for a moment and faded again. "No!" she repeated, "I cannot do it now. I cannot risk it."
Mrs. Macfarlane felt she had no right to urge her to pursue any course of action, when she was ignorant of the real history of her past, and could not foresee the consequences; but she went to summon her husband.
Mr. Macfarlane was not quite so willing as his wife to throw himself into the situation. Her warm heart often led her to take responsibilities his caution would rather have done without.
As usual, his reluctance did away with any doubts still lingering in Mrs. Dorriman's mind; the moment a thing is difficult or unattainable it becomes desirable.
He accepted the trust, however, and then suddenly said, "Are your marriage settlements in your brother's hands?"
"My marriage settlements? I never had any that I know of," she answered, helplessly.
"Never had any marriage settlements?" He could hardly believe her.
"No, at least I never knew of any. I suppose I should know all about anything affecting me in that way."
"I suppose so." He mused for a moment. The same thought that had occurred to his wife came to him in a still stronger shape. He must say nothing that would raise her suspicions about her brother, or that in any way would make her going to his house more painful than it evidently was.
"I strongly advise you, Mrs. Dorriman, to read through those papers. They may throw a great deal of light upon your position. You may be in a better, a far better position, than you think."
"I cannot," she said, in a low voice. "I am afraid. I may some day bring myself to do so, but I cannot do it now. Will you keep them for me? Oh, do! and never letanyone, never let my brother know you have them. Some day if I am in great difficulty, and cannot see my way, I will ask you to read them."
She stopped for a moment, and then, turning towards them with a passion they had hardly credited her with, she said, with tears rolling over her face, "You do not know, how can you! But I was so hard. I could not forgive my husband for his want of success. He loved me dearly, and I—I had no love to give him. Then when he died I forgave him, and he knew it; but I never thought of this, that I was to be dependent again and lose my home and all.... I am beginning to think hardly of him again. I am afraid of seeing something in those papers ... something that may make me hate...."
She paused, broken down by the overpowering emotion that had taken possession of her, and Mr. Macfarlane was moved, and went over to her and took her hand. "Forgive me," he said, "I will urge you no more; but before taking this with me," he added, laying his hand upon the box, "we will seal it up together." He got some packing-paper and some rope, and he made her seal it up with her own seal. She obeyed him quietly; her sudden and unwonted burst of emotion having left her calmer, quieter, and paler than usual.
When she had parted from these real friends she felt as though she was losing all she cared for; in her repressed life so little affection had ever come to her, save and except that her husband had given her.
The papers were safe and out of her hands. This was a fact she dwelt on with great satisfaction when the last sound of the carriage broke through the quiet. Mrs. Dorriman went out. She was going up the hills to say farewell to the old people to whom her going was a real grief, and before going went to give Jean orders to prepare something against her return, and something for the following day.
Jean was looking full of importance, and her mistress, well accustomed to her ways, knew that she had something to tell, had something to reveal, and that she intended to be questioned. "What are you going to do, my poor Jean, when we part to-morrow? You have not yet told me."
"We are not going to part here," said Jean, a look of triumph on her face.
"No," said Mrs. Dorriman, who felt this coming parting sorely. "I supposed you would go to the station and see me off. I am glad of that."
"Further than that," said Jean, emphatically.
Mrs. Dorriman looked up at her. What did she mean?
"I am going all the way to Renton itself," said Jean, in a tone of determination.
"But my dear Jean—my brother...."
"Your brother's not mine, and I have nothing to do with him, nor he with me. I'm going to the town of Renton, and I've got a situation there; do you suppose I would let you go where I could never see you—or you me? No! no! I settled it first in my own mind and then I arranged it with other people, and the same train that takes you takes me, and my kist's just away with your things, in the same cart."
Mrs. Dorriman could not speak, but the forlorn woman kissed the ruddy face before her—half her trouble seemed lightened—and Jean, touched and awkward under so strange a demonstration, patted her back with a hard and hearty hand and disappeared from her mistress's eyes.
Mrs. Dorriman walked up the river-side with a happier heart than she had had lately. With one friend near her in the shape of Jean she felt as though nothing mattered quite so much; she needed some comfort. With all the enthusiastic love for the beauty of the home she was leaving for ever, she was also leaving the little self-made duties that had become pleasant to her. She had to face the sorrow of those who had become her friends; she could promise them nothing from a distance—she had nothing of her own; she did not suppose her brother would continue to give her an income; she must guard against making promises she could not fulfil.
The same words met her all round, "What a pity you're going! It's we that will miss you, my dear. Oh, what is it for? Is it for company's sake?"
They could not get over it, her hands were shaken till they tingled again. When she was going home one of the eldest of the old women stood out from her doorway like an old prophetess. Her grey hair was smoothed back under hermutch, her black eyes sparkled, and her wrinkled face showed up white in the gloaming.
She was the daughter of a man famous in his day, a man who had had the gift of second sight, and though she had not inherited his gift she was looked up to, she had so many of her father's sayings at her fingers' ends, and she had much of his manner.
"Come here," she said, "and set ye down." Mrs. Dorriman could not do this, but she asked her to go towards home with her. It was getting late, and the light was fading fast. Christie was attached to Mrs. Dorriman especially because she and her forbears had lived near the old home on old Mr. Sandford's property, and she had a great deal to say about the way the sale of the place had been predicted and foreseen long years before by her father.
This evening, not unnaturally, she was full of it all. "I mind weel," she began in the solemn tone appropriate to the subject, "hearing my father tell what he saw, and he knew he had seen what meant evil to the place and to the Laird, and he grieved about it, indeed he did."
"Was that when he saw a light?" asked Mrs. Dorriman.
"It was a light and it was not a light, my dear, it was something of fire."
"Tell me about it again, Christie. I get confused about it sometimes."
"You see, my dear, the common folks, some of them have ghosts and see spirits, and so on, but the gentry, the real old gentry, they have a different kind of ghost, there arethings that happen—you'll understand."
At all events, Mrs. Dorriman understood what Christie meant to express, and even at that moment and time of unhappiness the idea presented to her of the superior ghosts bestowed upon the gentry made her smile.
"Well, Christie, it may be so," she said, "but the idea is new to me."
"It is not new to us, and it was not new to my father. I do not mean that spirits are different, though we all know that spirits take different shapes; but when the head of a house goes, or any misfortune comes nigh him, there will be strange things seen. My father saw these things—it has not been given to me to see them—perhaps so is best. My father had many dark hours, those that have these gifts must go through great anguish. I have seen him sitting up at night and looking wild—wild. I have heard him say strange things. It was awful...."
"And about this fire?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, a little anxious to get home now the darkness was making the footpath difficult to see.
"Ah," said Christie, "many and many a time I have heard that story. He was in his house, the house high up the hill under the wood, and was restless; the hour was coming upon him, and he could not breathe. He threw open the door and stepped out in the darkness. You'll mind the steep hill that went up to the house, and how the old house itself stood up away from everything?"
Mrs. Dorriman made a gesture of assent. The recollection of her old home, and the way in which it had been sold to the first bidder, was inexpressibly bitter to her. She was depressed and sad, and felt as though she had small need of other and painful memories, on this, her last evening here.
"From the east and the west, from the north and the south, gathered darkness—so black was the night that not a thing was to be seen—the hill where your father's house stood was but a shadow, and the lights in the windows shone out with a wonderful power.
"The heavens were in gloom from a gathering storm, and the wind was howling up and down, and up and down—none but my father, who understood things, would have stood as he stood and faced it. Then the clouds opened, and a great ball of fire came down; it broke over the house, my dear, over the house, and divided itself into three pieces—only three; and a piece went on the east corner, and one flame touched the south and one the north, and only the one corner, the one from the west, was left untouched, and that meant a great deal, and then the fire met and fell on the house itself." Christie's voice was so impressive, her manner so solemn, that Mrs. Dorriman, though the story was one she had often heard before, felt as though she was hearing it for the first time.
"What did it mean?" she asked breathlessly.
"It meant, my dear, what happened. Your father lost the lady (she came from the south), and that was one misfortune, and a very great one; then he lost his suit—the law-suit about some land in the North. Then he died himself, poor man, and that was the third thing—and the house was sold."
"So the misfortunes were complete?" and Mrs. Dorriman pressed forward a little and shivered. It was impossible not to be uncomfortably impressed by Christie—her tall figure and commanding gestures looming large beside her in the ever-increasing darkness.
"Not complete, my dear—not ended. No, that was what my father always said, he talked often and often about it, that is why it is written upon my brain. All he said came true, and why should this not come true? He saw it all to the end and he read it, and he was meant to read it." She dropped her voice in saying this, and once more was silent.
The two came to the little gate and bridge that spanned the burn and led to Mrs. Dorriman's place. She turned and took Christie's hand: "I feel it is the end," she said, speaking with that sob in the voice which is more pathetic than weeping; "you know this place is gone from me, and that I shall never, never see it again!"
"Yes, you will," said Christie, firmly; "my father said what I will tell you now—though I was not to speak of it to all. That night I told you of—when the fire-ball divided and fell—there was one corner of the house untouched; and when the fire and its great redness died away, he saw a silvery light rise, and it came from that corner and spread and spread like a flood of moonlight over everything, and the light was just above where you lay, my dear, a baby not many weeks old, and I shall live to see you do as you please, and live here or there, or in the old house, at your pleasure."
She raised Mrs. Dorriman's hands to her lips, kissed them fervently, and, uttering an impassioned prayer in Gaelic, she left her and moved up the hill. Mrs. Dorriman went home; she blamed herself for taking comfort from words which were the wild visions of a superstitious woman, but she did take comfort. By nature easily impressed, easily held up and as easily lowered by passing influences—the conversation with Christie had filled her with a sort of courage.
To live as she pleased and where she pleased, to go back to the old home, every corner of which was so dear to her! Such a dream filled her with unreasonable happiness; she threw out her hands as though she was throwing off a burden, and she said softly, though aloud: "I will believe it! I do believe it! it will help me!"
Jean announced the dinner, and was pleased to see her mistress looking brighter and happier than she had looked since she knew that she had to leave Inchbrae. Her satisfaction was extreme, for the thought, not very unnaturally, came to her, that the fact of her going with her mistress was sufficient to account for it, and she scrupulously performed the small services required of her with an increased attention. She always felt as though she had charge of her mistress—now she felt as though in some way that charge was increased.
The morning was unpromising. The wind was high, and the rain, only for that reason, was not a downpour, but blew in fitful gusts against "all corners of the house at once," Jean declared. She was meditating the possibility of putting off the journey, and spoke to Mrs. Dorriman about it.
Mrs. Dorriman was standing irresolutely at one of the windows when a dogcart appeared in the short avenue, and in another moment two men dismounted, rang the bell, and walked into the little hall.
Jean with all the air of outraged dignity appeared upon the scene, and was greeted by these words,
"We have come to take possession for the new proprietor; send some one to take the horse round and get some breakfast ready immediately."
Jean would not trust herself to speak; she went past them straight up to Mrs. Dorriman's room. She found her mistress pale but composed, dressed for her journey with her bonnet on. She began to speak but was hushed by an uplifted hand.
"Come, Jean, we will go," she said.
The noise of the two descending the wooden staircase brought the men into the hall, and Mrs. Dorriman's pale composure awed them a little.
Before they had time to speak she spoke to them.
"Sir," she said, turning to the elder of the two men, "you are here by my brother's orders, not mine. I am leaving just now, but I protest against the sale of this place, which is mine, and I intend one day returning to it."
With a slight bend of her head she went out into the rain, and before the two men could recover themselves she was seated in a waggonette which had been ready for some time, and, accompanied by Jean, was soon whirling along the road; her heart so hot with indignation that the pain and sorrow of going away was merged in that feeling.
At the station were the Macfarlanes with many a thoughtful gift for poor Mrs. Dorriman, and it was not till the train steamed out of the station, not till the last wave of the friendly hands grew dim in the distance, that the poor woman's fortitude gave way, and that, seated alone with no prying eye upon her, she wept, and the soreness of her heart grew better as the tension gave way to this feminine luxury.
The journey was troublesome more than long, there were two or three changes, and at one station two travellers got in accompanied by a bright-eyed middle-aged woman. At first Mrs. Dorriman was too much wrapped up in her own sad thoughts to take heed of what was passing, but she was at length roused by hearing her brother's name mentioned.
"John Sandford is coming out in a new light," said the lady, laughing and showing a row of pretty teeth. "Fancy his adopting two girls!"
"I am sorry for the girls. Who are they?" asked the elder of the two men.
"I have not an idea—but I should think he had some strong reason for going out of his usual way."
"I am very sorry for the girls too," laughed the lady, who looked as though she had never had any acquaintance with sorrow herself.
"They are probably in some way a charge upon him. John Sandford's not a man to do anything for nothing, it's not in him."
Mrs. Dorriman knew she ought to say something, but she literally had not the courage to throw such discomfiture among them.
"He's had a nasty illness, and the doctor thinks he may have more attacks of the kind. He does not think him the strong man he looks."
"Then perhaps he is doing some act of charity as a compromise with Providence," said the lady; "just as some men who have never been charitable or even just leave their wealth to some charity, as a sort of make-up."
So her brother was ill! This, perhaps, was why he had sent for her. But the two girls, who could they be? These two new ideas so suddenly presented to her made Mrs. Dorriman oblivious to all that was going on. She would have young girls with her and so she would not be alone, and none but those who have tried it, know how depressing long-continued loneliness is, especially to one who (like Mrs. Dorriman) was by temperament, one of the women who cling to others, and to whom acting and thinking for herself was perpetual grief and pain.
From the bewilderment of this future, which looked so much brighter to her with those figures in the foreground, she was once more roused by hearing, this time, not her brother's but her own name mentioned.
"About Mrs. Dorriman; no one really knows the rights of that story. Dorriman was as good a man as ever lived, and he had heaps of money when Sandford lost his. How it all changed hands is more than any one knows, but Dorriman died poor, and Sandford lives rich. One day the truth may get known."
"The widow lives, does she not? I think some one said so," and the lady smiled as though there was something amusing in the fact of Mrs. Dorriman's existence.
Poor Mrs. Dorriman, shrinking from it and yet impelled by a sense of right to speak, feeling that she ought to have spoken before, now leaned forward and said in her sweet, clear, timid voice, "I am sorry; I should have told you before. I am Mrs. Dorriman. I am going to my brother Mr. Sandford's house."
Then, with a heightened colour, she leaned back again.
The three talkers, who were a neighbouring manufacturer, his wife, and a friend, were naturally taken aback and made profuse apologies to her.
Then the lady, a Mrs. Wymans, said, with her usual smile,
"It was really your own fault; it was really very wrong of you to let us talk, really wrong. I hope we have not said anything bad."
And Mrs. Dorriman made no answer. She gave a slight bow, feeling too heart-sore and too unhappy to speak. Yes, how did all that money change hands? How was it that she was left so poor and allowed to drift wherever her brother chose to make her drift? For the hundredth time this question, which she now heard asked in a careless voice by a stranger, started up before her. Was it true that one day she would know? This last conversation drove the words of Christie into the background for a time, and when she arrived at the station she was in a whole whirl of mingled feelings, in which doubt and grief and indignation and hope all seemed struggling together.
Jean, helpful and alert, saw her into a cab and her luggage arranged on it and then bravely said,
"Only for to-day. I will be down seeing you to-morrow."
Then the tie between her and her mistress seemed quite broken as she lost sight of her, and, sitting down upon her kist, heedless of the curious looks of the "fremd folk" she had come amongst, good-hearted, brave Jean burst into bitter tears andwouldcry, she said, to herself. Yes, now Mrs. Dorriman was not there to see it she would cry, it would do her good.
She was sitting on her big box—the kist that contained all her worldly wealth—the tears streaming down her face and her pocket-handkerchief crammed into her mouth, when a porter came to her, too busy to be fully sympathetic, and yet with a certain gruff friendliness that was very comforting to her.
"And where are you bound for, my bonny woman?" he said, wisely ignoring her tears; "are you going to bide in the toon or are you going on by another train?"
Jean, called back to self-command, rose, and, fumbling in the bosom of her gown, where she kept her birth certificate, her money, her keys, and other valuables, drew out, after some false attempts, the address of the place she was going to, and, in a short space of time, her kist was put upon a hurly and she was following it thither.
In the meantime, had the four people who were now to meet known anything about each other's thoughts they would have been spared something upon the one hand, and on the other they would have seen cause for much greater anxiety.
Mr. Sandford knew nothing—but he feared a great deal, and when he saw the fly appearing he was surprised himself at the sensations he was conscious of.
Afraid of nothing as a rule, it was quite incomprehensible to him that he should feel uncomfortable; his sister had always been afraid of him, what was changed?
Why did one momentary look in her face so disturb him? It must be that his illness was still affecting him.
Grace and her sister saw it come with different feelings. Grace was resolved to take her stand from the first, and Margaret was so much occupied with her anxieties for her sister that she forgot to have any anxieties for herself; and into this small group of people, intensely interested, and full of suppressed excitement, came the slight pale woman, herself conscious of so much conflicting emotion that she had not much room for acute observation.
"So you are here," said John Sandford, as he gave her his hand. Kissing between these two had never been in fashion; and then in a manner that he meant to be imposing, but which only succeeded in being pompous, he pushed the two girls towards her.
"There," he said, "go and welcome her; Mrs. Dorriman, my wards, Grace and Margaret Rivers."
Grace held out her hand, with an air which was entirely lost upon Mrs. Dorriman, who was conscious only of one overpowering wish, to go to her room and cry without being observed.
She was composed because she had in years gone by learned self-control—any exhibition of feeling seemed only to place her at her brother's level of sarcasm.
Margaret, stirred to the depths of her kind and unselfish heart, gave an appealing look at her sister, and then bending timidly she kissed the pale cheek and said something in a kindly manner about resting and a cup of tea.
Mrs. Dorriman was surprised and moved at the girl's action, and allowed herself to be taken upstairs and looked after in her own room with a feeling akin to gratitude.
The evidence of friendship offered just when she was feeling so forlorn came to her as a ray of sunshine. The house, so bare and so desolate-looking in its exterior, had struck her painfully as she went up to it. Her last home, with its wooded knolls and a lovely background of hills, was vividly present to her.
Why, if her brother did not want money, had he sold the place? Surely he must have had some liking for a home where so many generations had lived and died, and, as her eye took in the ugly garden and the closely-built streets at a stone's throw only of his gate, her wonder increased.
She was conscious of a perfect sinking of the heart when she thought that here must probably all the rest of her days be spent.
Christie's words rushed into her mind, and then came the meeting at the hall-door, and Margaret's sweetness.
Yes; that was a real comfort to her, and no caress ever was bestowed with greater results; the drop of kindness just when she so needed kindness sank into her heart. Whatever the days might hold for her in the future, this would always be gratefully remembered.
Poor Margaret, having left her, went to congratulate Grace, as she did herself, upon so pleasant a surprise. Instead of the disagreeable and authoritative woman they had pictured to themselves, here was a gentle and timid lady, whom it would be easy to love. Full of this relief, she found Grace in their own room.
She was leaning against the shutters, and her eyes were fixed upon the town. Margaret knew by instinct that she was ruffled.
"Anything wrong?" she asked, brightly, going up to her, and laying her hand affectionately upon her shoulder.
Grace made no reply, but she gave a little shrug, and dislodged her sister's hand.
"What is wrong, Gracie?" asked Margaret anxiously; "what have I done? Are you vexed with me, dear?"
"Vexed with you! oh, dear no! but you really are very dull, Margaret. You make life here difficult for me."
"I make life more difficult for you!" And Margaret coloured, partly from a just sense of Grace's unfairness, and partly because she was indignant as well as hurt.
"How can I put that Mrs. Dorriman in her place, when my sister, my own sister, makes such a fuss about her?"
"It never occurred to me that she was a person you would think of putting in her place."
"That is just what I complain of."
"She seems to me so gentle and so timid. I think it will be more difficult for her to take up a position than you think. I cannot fancy her ever saying anything to you you may not like."
"If she does, I will soon let her know my opinion about her; but you heard what Mr. Sandford said, and I mistrust these quiet women. I feel as though she might be as obstinate as possible. Did you notice, her upper lip?"
"You are so much cleverer than I am, darling, and so much quicker. No; I only saw that she felt coming here very much, she looked ready to cry."
"Well, Margaret, if you think yourself wiser than I am, I give it up. As I said before—making a fuss about her at the very outset makes my part very much more difficult; and after all your violent professions it seems hard that on the very first opportunity you fail me, and take up a line of your own."
Poor Margaret! Though it was not the first time that Grace had accused her of swerving in her allegiance to her, it was the first time such an accusation had been made on such serious grounds.
Very real tears stood in her soft eyes as she held out her hand to her sister and said—
"What do you wish me to do? What can I do to please you?"
"To please me! Nothing; only for your own sake, Margaret, for the sake of being a little consistent, you need not gush over her, and pretend to like her, before you know whether she is for us or against us."
She turned away, and began to change her dress, her head held high, not yet forgiving. Margaret felt as though the luxury of tears would be a relief, but she thought she would make one more effort to win back her sister's cordiality.
"I am sure," she began, while her lip quivered nervously, "I mean nothing. I was sorry for her, and showed I felt sorry, but I think I shall hate her if her coming is to make differences between us."
"It need not make any difference if you are only true to me," said Grace, firmly. "Leave her alone and watch me, and you can do what I do."
"I never can," pleaded Margaret. "And oh! Grace, sometimes, when you are disdainful, I feel as if I must go and console. You don't know how hard it is for people when you draw yourself up and say something cutting. I always feel so sorry for whoever it is."
"You are a little goose," said Grace melting a little at this tribute to her power, "you exaggerate everything about me."
But she did not think so.
She threw her arms round her sister now with a protecting gesture she herself was unconscious of, and hurried to get ready for dinner, in a way that Grace Rivers hardly would have done some days before. At any rate, she had learnt one lesson—not to be late for anything Mr. Sandford was connected with.
The two girls went into the drawing-room only as dinner was announced by an insignificant little bell, and Mr. Sandford marched off with his sister.
Placing her at the head of the table, he said in his most pompous manner, "It is my wish that you act as mistress of my house, and that all should consider you in that light," and he glared round as though many were there to hear this, and not only two girls who already understood this.
Mrs. Dorriman, conscious of an action antagonistic to his wishes, sat silent, feeling as though she were a traitor; never was there any one more acutely self-tormenting, more sensitive about anything she did, than this poor lady. She was perpetually worrying herself about trifles she might, or should, have done or left undone, and this was no trifle; though she little thought that her presence in her brother's house, and her being uprooted from her little home, was due to the colour and agitation that had betrayed to her brother that she had knowledge of the papers he wished to possess.
She roused herself after a time and was then for the first time conscious of Margaret's changed manner.
All the sweetness and kindness which had so cheered her advent, and lessened the pain of her arrival, had gone, and was replaced by a cold indifference—which was Margaret's only possible way of being unlike herself.
Poor Mrs. Dorriman imagined that she was in some way in fault, and blamed herself for her abstraction, but her efforts were quite unavailing—the girl's one anxiety was to prove her loyalty and allegiance to her sister. She was conscious of a dawning feeling of affection for the little woman who sat looking pale and sweet opposite Mr. Sandford's massive figure. She had felt her clinging arms round her, and the feeling had been of comfort and sympathy, but Grace decreed otherwise, and Grace's word was her law.
Never, perhaps, sat four people together whose thoughts were of so different a nature; when four people live together, generally, there is, at any rate a bond of union, some interest, in which, however much they diverge in their thoughts towards it, forms, at last, something in common—here there was nothing!
Mr. Sandford, at other times an acute observer, noticed nothing to-night. The face of his sister opposite to him affected him strangely. No one had so faced him since his wife had died, and he was so busy looking through the long vista of years, and seeing the one creature he had ever loved, looking back at him from the past, that he ate mechanically and did not speak.
At length he roused himself and addressed Mrs. Dorriman, "I hope you will bring things into better order," he said abruptly; "if the cook cannot do better than this, you must change her. I look to you. I'm not a dainty man, but I pay for the best and I intend having the best."
"And I will do my best," said Mrs. Dorriman, gently.
"You should know about things. I do not know how it was done, but there was some comfort in the old place, and I suppose you had something to do with that."
"Of course I did see about things. I do not know if they were very comfortable."
"They were," he said, emphatically, "and you will find they want stirring up in this house. The morning I was taken ill there was not one soul out of bed. I rang and rang and only a wretched girl answered. You must alter all that. I expect you to keep everyone and everything in order, and in good order too; and," he added—looking round, not at the girls but well above their heads—"if any one gives trouble, they go!"
Mrs. Dorriman felt her heart sink. The old manner, the old hard-handed way of laying down the law, brought to her mind times when in almost these very words she had read changes distasteful and unfortunate for her; something of that helpless feeling of her childhood came to her, when she had been left to struggle on without care or affection, when her nurse had been banished, and she had to put on her clothes, and perform for herself all that, till then, had been done by kindly hands. For, though we live to forgive many wrongs, and time mercifully softens our regrets, and blunts the edge of our sensibilities, there are two things we may learn to forgive, but we never learn to forget—a wrong done to us in childhood, when we were too helpless and too young to protect ourselves, and a wound to our self-love in later life.
There was a prolonged silence, which became at length a noticeable one. Then Grace, feeling that it lay with her to show how little the purport of Mr. Sandford's words affected her, said in a light tone,
"Do you ever see people here, Mr. Sandford?"
"See people!" he echoed; "you can see plenty of people whenever you look out of the window. See people! why it would be a pleasanter place if there were not so many to see."
"Of course I do not mean in that sense," said Grace, with dignity; "I mean, do people call here?"
"I have no doubt plenty of people will call now," he said, with mock solemnity, which for the moment took her in, as he gave an old-fashioned bow in her direction.
Grace bridled a little; her influence was beginning to make itself felt even on this rough man, she thought.
"I am not sure that the callers are just in your line," he said, after a momentary pause. "Some are I doubt beneath your level, and some I fancy a good bit above it."
"No one can be above Grace's level," exclaimed Margaret, "she is so clever, and——"
"Tut, tut," he said, "I wish every one had so good a trumpeter, but Grace is nothing very wonderful—I have not seen any proof of her cleverness. Come now, Margaret, what can she do? Can she sew a seam, knit a stocking, turn her hand to any useful thing, eh?"
"Grace could do everything of the kind if she chose."
"Then she had better try; it's worse to have talents and let them lie idle than to be born with none."
"If it is necessary," said Grace, still speaking in a measured tone. "I think I could do these things. I do not think knitting a stocking requires a great deal of intellect I must say."
"But it requires industry, and I think you are not industrious; however, my sister, Mrs. Dorriman there, will arrange what you are to do," and, rising in his usual abrupt fashion, he left the room, leaving Grace in a state of mind which is difficult to describe.
Next day, breakfast over, Mrs. Dorriman went to see the cook, outwardly calm but inwardly with very great trepidation.
She herself was one of those quiet people who have a genius for household management, and she was blessed with that happy absence of irritability and anxiety to domineer, which wins its own way without any violent commotion.
Mrs. Chalmers, for some years so completely her own mistress, was as ready to go off into a blaze as a well-laid fire. She had quite made up her mind to one thing, that if she was interfered with she would go. She valued her place or rather had valued it because she was entirely her own mistress, free to get up and go out and come in without any let or hindrance from any one. She did not mind having these people, for the extra work fell more upon her underling than upon herself, but interference she would not have.
She had put on her best cap and apron, ready to be summoned, and she would then and there give out her mind—perhaps resign her place; but, instead of being summoned, Mrs. Dorriman came down, looking so quiet and yet so evidently resolved to do what she felt to be right and with such a friendly air and so much politeness, that Mrs. Chalmers's unaccustomed knees bent, and before she had time to take her stand she was talking respectfully to Mrs. Dorriman and evidently anxious to please her.
Mrs. Dorriman was shown all the lower part of the house. What a contrast she thought it to the wide passages and large rooms of the old home. She gave her meed of praise, made Mrs. Chalmers propose the dinner, made a few suggestions, and went upstairs, leaving Mrs. Chalmers comfortably satisfied that she need not give up her place—indeed, anxious to surpass herself and please the new mistress.
Such is the charm of manner, even down to those who do not in the least understand why they are charmed or in what way it affects them.
Mrs. Dorriman's next step was one which required much more courage. She felt that Margaret at sixteen could not have completed her education, to use the stereotyped phrase—for when is our education complete? She called the girl to her and began, in the low voice which, to a close observer, would have betrayed effort and a great shyness, to speak to her about her work and her idle hours.
"You are young to have left school; too young to give up steady work," she said gently; "shall we talk it over together?"
"Grace knows so much. Grace can help me," said Margaret, terribly inclining to this kindly woman and held back by her sister's words.
"Has Grace any plan? Suppose you call her," said Mrs. Dorriman gently.
"Grace," she began, "about Margaret; are you going to read with her, have you made any plan? Because she is too young, and, indeed, you are too young, to leave off all work."
"I think, as I was at the top of my classalways," said Grace, bristling up, "that you may safely leave this question to me. I think it so much better, Mrs. Dorriman, to make you understand at once that neither Margaret or I will stand any interference."
"I am afraid, without what you call interference, I cannot do my duty," said Mrs. Dorriman, quietly, but with a flush of colour in her pale face that rose and died away again immediately. "What do you do in the mornings? We do not know each other, my dear Grace; we are to live together; will it not be for our mutual comfort and happiness if we agree to try and like each other?"
Grace was a little moved by this appeal, but she was unused to be put in the wrong and could not accept the situation gracefully.
"There is nothing but that horrid old piano with jingling keys. I cannot play upon it, or I should play to you."
Mrs. Dorriman went towards it, opened it, and struck a few chords; they responded with harsh discords. She let the lid down with a little sigh, music was to her a second nature.
"No, you cannot play upon that," she said, "but books. What books have you both read? Do you like reading?"
Grace and Margaret looked at each other. A few pages of history each, read as a task; a few biographies of excellent people as Sunday reading; a few poetical extracts learned by heart: this was the sum total of their knowledge—all else in their empty minds a barren waste.
"If you will help me to unpack my books, we may perhaps find something we might like to read together," said Mrs. Dorriman; "and if you would like to prove to my brother that you are industrious," she added, laughing a little, "we can easily get some wool and produce a stocking."
Margaret looked a little eagerly at her sister; she was just at the age when she missed the regularity of the school life, and when time hung heavily upon her hands. The new feeling of interest and occupation held out by Mrs. Dorriman was very pleasant and gave her the first home-feeling she had in that house.
But a glance at Grace again threw her back, and she said with some hesitation that it would be nice to unpack the books, and appealed to Grace for some sign of consent.
Grace, however, was in no mood to be pleased with any suggestion of poor Mrs. Dorriman's, and, muttering something about having something to do in her own room, she went off alone there, in stately silence and a very bad temper.
Mrs. Dorriman led the way to her room upstairs; where, by her wish, her heavy luggage had been placed, and the lids were unscrewed, and they set to work doing their spiriting gently but very slowly, as the girl opened many volumes, and desired to know the history of each. But she knew too little to be interested, really interested, in anything. Grace would have concealed her ignorance and merely passed everything over, but Margaret was more natural, and Mrs. Dorriman was by turns amazed and amused. The girl seemed to have heard of no one, and to know so little on every conceivable subject that, every now and again, her questions were absolutely ridiculous.
A rare edition of Spenser, exquisitely bound, was handled reverently by Mrs. Dorriman. It had been a favourite book of her father's, and Mr. Dorriman had had it rebound for her.
"What is that?" asked Margaret, very innocently; "oh, I see, the man who wrote in what is called black-letter writing."
"My dear," said the amazed Mrs. Dorriman, "surely you cannot have been taught that."
"Well, there is something funny about his writing, so that trying to read it was no use."
"I hope to convince you of the contrary," said Mrs. Dorriman with suppressed merriment; not for worlds would she have hurt the girl's feelings by laughing at her, and Margaret went away.
Then she seemed to see herself with certainly more education, but very ignorant still at the age of seventeen, thrown so much upon herself and her own resources for all amusements and happiness—turning to these books, and losing herself in silent delight as one treasure after another opened to her enraptured eyes.
Her husband, himself fond of reading and anxious to win her love in any way, had spent a great deal in filling her library with books. She had editions which were priceless of various old authors, and the most perfect possible collection of poetical works, including many of those tender French poets from whom in these days it is so easy to borrow without detection, so completely are they out of date and forgotten; and, who living lives apart from their fellows, seem to have kept their old words and chivalrous sentiments pure and free from the worldliness and the grossness of their time.
But she was recalled to the present by Grace's voice, and then she looked round to see where she could put her books. There was but one little bookshelf in her room. She filled that and then went into the drawing-room to see what could be done there.
She found Margaret in tears, and Grace looking flushed and defiant.
But she had resolved to take no notice of anything not immediately directed to herself, and Grace left the room.
Relieved by not being asked for any explanation, Margaret threw herself now again into the matter. The bookshelves, standing almost empty, were soon comfortably filled, and then Mrs. Dorriman, who had a happy gift of arrangement, moved the tables and chairs about, made a comfortable corner for her brother, and gave a look of home to the room which it had sorely needed, by which time the morning had passed away.
In the afternoon Mrs. Dorriman wished to go and see how Jean fared; but she did not want to be out of the way if the girls wanted to go out with her.
Before she rose to find them, however, she heard the hall-door shut, and she saw them walking down the avenue.
"They might have said something to me," she thought, but she understood immediately that this was another protest made by Grace against any "interference."
She went off herself, not sorry to be alone, feeling the squalor of the narrow streets through which she passed—like all people who are easily impressed by the absence of any beauty in life. She felt for the poor human beings who toiled so hard for such a bare and unlovely existence. The grey houses with their dirty, ill-kept doors, and the "common stairs," upon which went so many weary feet. In front, a bit of trodden-down mud and a black stream, in which dirty ducks and dirtier children paddled. Her spirits sank lower and lower. At length she arrived at the address she had got from Jean, and was asked to "walk up the stair" by a shock-headed girl, without any attempt at tidiness, "busy," and evidently imagining that in that fact lay excuse enough for all disregard of appearance.
Jean, clean, trim, but with eyes that told their own tale of weeping, was scrubbing a floor; unaccustomed to such treatment, the shutters and woodwork all glistened, and the floor was nearly finished. It was one of the rooms, part kitchen, part bedroom, which you obtain in towns where overcrowding is the rule. The window was small and high up—worse than this, it could not open.
"And is this your situation? This the place you were coming to, my poor dear Jean?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, in faltering tones.
"'Deed, my dear, I may just say, without vanity, I could get mony a situation; but I am here working housekeeper to two lads—kin to myself, my dear. No one to hurry me or hinder me, and little to do. So little, I'll be often down bothering you."
She spoke lightly, afraid of giving way. The sight of Mrs. Dorriman brought back all her own misgivings of the day before; when she had found herself in an airless room, with nothing but filth and dirt around her, and not a "kent face" near her.
But Mrs. Dorriman must never know that she had made a sacrifice to be near her; and with a fair attempt at a laugh she said—
"You know, my dear, I was always ill to command. Better this than be under a mistress who might be a harder mistress than ever you were to do with."
Mrs. Dorriman could not speak. She looked round the room to see in what way she could help to make things comfortable. She resolved that something should be done to the windows, and she noted other things. But the feeling uppermost in her mind was, that it would not be for long. Jean and herself—they would at no distant day wend their way back to the hill-side together.
"And are you happy? Are you comfortable, my dear?" asked Jean, "How is it with you?"
"I am comfortable, Jean, and have all to make me comfortable; but, like you, I miss the great purple hills, the life and light of the sea, the freedom and brightness of Inchbrae."
"And yet you speak cheerfully, my dear;" and the poor woman looked wistfully at her former mistress.
"I speak cheerfully, Jean," and Mrs. Dorriman rose and laid her hand caressingly upon the old woman's shoulder, "because, Jean, the darkest and longest day comes to an end; you and I will go back to the light and the sunshine. We shall go back, Jean, there again."
"But the place is sold; it has passed into the hands of a stranger," said the old woman, wondering.
"We shall go back," said Mrs. Dorriman, firmly. "Yes, Jean, that hope keeps me from despair; that conviction comforts me. We shall go back to Inchbrae once more," and so saying she left her.