"I can remember some; he was very kind; and he said something about making me happy and about living where I liked in London, or anywhere, and giving me luxuries. I hated his saying all that, and I said so. I said it was like a bribe."
"It was not nice," said Grace slowly, "he ought not to have said it. And yet—oh, Margaret!" she exclaimed, fervently, "think how near we have been to the realization of our dreams! To leave this hateful place—which is choking me, and making me wretched—to go away, to live in the centre of all that is worth living for!"
Margaret was perfectly overwhelmed at this discovery. Grace was disappointed; she wished her to marry this man, whom she had laughed at, and turned into the bitterest ridicule, ever since she had seen him, and had seen that he was not in the least like the expected prince who was to rescue her!
The poor child could not get over it. She stood still clasping her; but she felt as though her world had crumbled to pieces at her feet. She was roused from the deepest and cruellest pain by feeling Grace's tears dropping fast upon her. Grace was weeping, and she was the cause of her tears. She struggled with a feeling of indignation also. A sense of being unfairly and unjustly put in the wrong, made her less hurt than angry after a moment. It seemed as though in a supreme moment of her life her sister had failed her.
"Grace," she said, after a long silence seemed to have made her voice startling, "if this had come to you, would you have done it?"
"How can I tell?" said Grace. "Nothing comes to me, it seems."
"But you can imagine—you can put yourself in my place."
"No, I cannot! We are so different—you and I."
"And yet we used to think alike, up till now, Grace. I have always seen the wisdom of your thoughts; you surely cannot counsel me to marry a man who has never appeared to me in any but a ridiculous light."
"No, I do not counsel it," said Grace; "but I cannot help seeing that this was a chance for us both, and that it has gone."
Margaret shivered.
"It is getting cold," she said, abruptly, "and I am tired."
She kissed her sister with a long, lingering kiss. It was as if she were bidding farewell to the sister she had known, so much had her words jarred upon her heart and hurt her.
Grace slept. Through the uncurtained window, with no blind between her and the bright stars she so loved to look upon, Margaret lay awake.
She was only conscious at first of a vivid and keen disappointment. All Grace's cutting speeches about this man's inferiority were fresh in her memory, and now—she thought it possible! Then she thought of all their high expectations when they left school, and of the way in which Grace had been made a sort of leader among them. Grace, who had never really worked, who only did things when she felt inclined, whose work was, as often as not, done for her, and who took all for granted, as due to her personal influence—why had she the position she took up? Softer thoughts succeeded these; during their long stay at school how often Grace had defended her from the oppression of others. How often she had used her influence in her behalf; how often stood out till she had obtained some concession for her.
Loving words and caresses, the numberless little actions that knit sisters together, floated before her. The times without number when she had been filled with pride; and how proud she was of Grace. If she could be seen; if only the world could see her, she would have it at her foot—so she had always thought, so she thought still. Then as a flash came the thought, "Could I do it?" She thought of all it might give Grace; of the many things she might have in her power; and she began to feel once more bewildered; her brain was getting weary; her eyes were closing, and her lips framed the words, "I cannot do it," as she sank into slumber.
The stars looked down upon her innocent face—ruffled with the first real care or sorrow it had ever known—they faded as the day strengthened; and then came the blaze of early morning, and the long shafts of light everywhere, and her seventeenth birthday had come.
She met Mr. Drayton that day with an overwhelming sense of consciousness, but she was reassured by his manner, perhaps she had exaggerated—all unwittingly—to Grace and to herself his despair and his passion, for he met her with a smile in which there was nothing to be seen save good-will, and he congratulated her upon having reached so advanced an age in something of his old manner; then he produced his birthday-gift, a ring, deep-set with stones, and with a half-laughing reference to her uncle, Mr. Sandford, for permission, put it into her hand. She took it unwillingly, feeling afraid that in taking it she was in some way giving him cause to think she might change, and she felt no change was possible for her. But she was obliged to accept it and to put it on, and, on the whole, the day passed off well. Mr. Sandford looked anxiously for some indication of any liking between Mr. Drayton and Grace, and was disappointed afresh to see none.
Mr. Drayton was obliged to go, and his going put an end to all hopes about an investment, and the disappointment in two quarters made itself felt in the home party, but was skilfully veiled by Mrs. Dorriman, whose duty it seemed generally to be to stand in the breach and turn all storms and disagreeables aside.
These things, however, once more made Mr. Sandford think of the past. The interest in the present and the anxiety he had felt to arrange matters had driven the past further from him.
Poor Mrs. Dorriman, as she caught her brother's eyes fixed upon her, little thought how he was weighing her in the balance, wondering whether she would show herself more pliable now in the matter of those papers and how best he could talk to her about them.
She herself had put the subject away from her when she first entered his house. She had a confused notion that even thinking of them was treachery whilst under his roof; having done this the companionship of Margaret and the small round of household duties filled up her time and her thoughts; she strove hard to do her duty, and she did it well, giving nothing a divided attention. By degrees the papers and their possible contents became as a forgotten tale. She had the consciousness that they were there, but they were not before her mind now.
Something might have been uttered by Mr. Sandford, had not his attention been drawn to Grace. She had spoken some words that had roused even gentle Mrs. Dorriman to indignation, for the words had reference to Jean.
"Her illness was nothing much," she was saying, "and she gained her point. She got poor Mrs. Chalmers out of it and stepped into her shoes. I liked Mrs. Chalmers myself."
"It is very unfair to say this of Jean," said Mrs. Dorriman, with a heightened colour; "she never meddled or interfered, and I never asked her to stay; she stayed because Mrs. Chalmers left suddenly and we had no one else."
"Yes, my dear Mrs. Dorriman, butwhydid she leave suddenly? There are two sides to every question," said Grace, with her little air of superiority, caring nothing really about the question, but in rather a state of irritation, and arguing merely because she had no other way of venting her ruffled feelings. She was unreasonably cross, first because Mr. Drayton was not what she had expected, and then because something might have come of his visit and nothing had come, and she saw before her the monotony of days, and nothing, no excitement, nothing in sight. Her spirits were low and when this was the case she was always cross.
"What are you driving at?" exclaimed Mr. Sandford angrily; "what do you know about it?"
"Only that that Highland woman, Mrs. Dorriman's servant, managed to get Mrs. Chalmers out of the house. I suppose I may have an opinion on the subject?" said Grace, her colour rising and her temper also.
"You have no business to say anything of the kind," thundered Mr. Sandford, too angry to restrain his voice, sending terror into the timid soul of his sister and making Margaret turn pale, while she instinctively rose and stood by Grace; "Mrs. Chalmers ventured to be insolent tomeand she left, as all people may expect to do who venture to show insolence to me or mine."
"Ifyouhave an opinion I may have mine," persisted Grace, too much roused herself to feel afraid of him.
"You may have an opinion but you are not entitled to express it in my house," he answered, still more irritated by her manner; "you can wait for that till you have a house of your own, a thing which appears to me very problematical, since no man would care to have an upsetting, conceited young woman as a wife with no fortune, or looks, or any single recommendation."
Grace was pale with anger. Margaret turned upon him like a young lioness.
"How can you say such unkind, such untrue things?" she exclaimed passionately. "Oh! Grace, my darling, do not heed him."
"I do not heed him," said Grace, magnificently, wounded and stung beyond belief, and quivering with passion, "but I want to know why you keep us in your house, hating us so evidently—we will not stay, we will go. You offered us a home, and now you speak as though we were a burden. We will go, Margaret."
"Speak for yourself, I offered you a home for the sake of one I loved. I did not know you then. When I saw what you were, I still kept that home open to you for the sake of your sister; you put yourself above her in everything, you have made her believe you her superior in all things, but she is worth a dozen of you, and so every man in his senses will think as they know you."
Grace was in tears by this time, and Margaret tried to get her to go out of the room, but she was struggling forwards, she would not go till she had said something, and she meant the last word to be very cutting.
"Brother," said Mrs. Dorriman, imploringly, "you are wrong; you are saying things now in the heat of passion that you will be sorry for afterwards. It is hard to be obliged to eat the bread of dependence, and to have it cast up to you."
"It is her own fault," he said, angrily; "she gives herself airs and graces as though she were above the ground she treads upon. It makes me ill the way she goes on, and she must hear it!"
"Spare her now."
"Oh! I'll spare her, but she has to lower her head; even Drayton would have nothing to say to her, though I did my best, and praised her up to the skies when I spoke to him."
"That is more than enough!" sobbed Grace, as with Margaret clinging to her she rushed to her own room, and the sisters sobbed out their misery in each other's arms.
But crying would not help them; they resolved to leave the house, to go far from this,wherethey did not exactly know; they did not know any one except their school-mistress, and having left her with flying colours it seemed terrible to them to have to go back and face the wonder and the pity they would meet with.
They were both so young and so inexperienced. They sat thinking, not wholly miserable now because they were conscious of a sort of excitement and they were together.
Grace at that moment could not help thinking what a small beginning generally leads to large conclusions—this beginning had been so very, very trifling.
She had been walking up and down one day to obtain the amount of exercise she conceived necessary to her well-being, the day had been damp and she kept to the gravel in front of the house.
Jean, who was at the open window, to use her own expression, trying to get strong, was talking in her rich guttural voice to Mrs. Dorriman, who was in the room, though out of sight, and was watching her.
Conscious of observation—though only the observation of an old woman—Grace, who was proud of her way of moving, stepped forwards and backwards with still more daintiness than usual. She heard Jean say—
"What gars Miss Rivers walk yon way, hippity hop from ane side till another?"
And then in a moment she answered her own question—
"Ou, aye, the gravel's hard; and she'll have corns."
Grace retreated, with a feeling of hatred against her. This little affront was the cause of her impertinence to Mrs. Dorriman, and all that had followed.
Nothing could be done that night, and when the long chilly evening came to an end the sisters crept into bed. They had come to no resolution, they only intended to go away; but it may be noted that in this emergency Grace's superiority failed to assert itself—it was Margaret to whom she turned; Margaret, who, barely beyond childhood, was to think for both.
The last thing Mr. Sandford wanted was to have the difficulty solved in any way derogatory to the position he had taken up, of befriending two girls who had no real claim upon him. If they left his house, all Renton would hear of it, and put their own conclusion upon it.
Like all men who act and speak in a passion he was very angry if he was taken at his word. He found it so easy to forget his harsh sayings, that he never could understand that other people should have any difficulty in doing so.
He had wished to wound Grace and bring her down, and then was annoyed by her retreat. Mrs. Dorriman had so often smarted from his tyranny in old days that she could fully understand and sympathise with the girls; and the incessant rudeness of Grace to herself did not prevent her feeling for her.
Mr. Sandford had implied, and almost said, that he had offered Grace, so to speak, to Mr. Drayton, who would have none of her. She was womanly enough to resent the insult for Grace, as representing girlhood, and she was so indignant with her brother about this that she, for the time, lost all sense of dread. He would not come upstairs, but he sent to request her to go to him to his own room, where he was sitting sending long puffs of smoke across the room. He saw her glance at his pipe, and laid it down—the act in itself spoke of a changed feeling towards her. She keenly remembered in old days how persistently he had made her write for him and talk to him, while the fumes of his pipe had made her feel so ill she could hardly do either.
"Well! what is to be done?" he began, looking at her keenly underneath his shaggy brows.
"I am sure I do not know," she answered, helplessly.
"Well, you had better think. What is the use of being a woman if you cannot arrange things?"
And Mrs. Dorriman thought; and then spoke out her thoughts—a thing new to her when her brother was in question.
Mrs. Dorriman, like most shy people, spoke quickly when she had anything to say that cost her an effort, and she said rather abruptly, though with a little deprecating air, "You see, you were wrong—you must feel that now."
"I feel nothing of the kind, and I do not see it, either. This is a new tone for you to take with me."
"It is a right tone just now, you asked me to help to see what could be done. Grace can never forgive what you said—never."
"Why not?"
"Was there any truth in it? Did you really speak to Mr. Drayton about her?"
Mr. Sandford sat looking straight before him. He could not quite remember at first how it had been. Had Mr. Drayton spoken first, or had he mentioned Grace to him in the first instance? Then he remembered, "Drayton spoke of Margaret. He said something about her admiringly. I did not want him to have any notion of Margaret—I did not know how far it might go. I wished him to like Grace, and I did say something. Yes, that is true. He would not see it, and I am not surprised; but, at any rate, he led up to it, he spoke first."
"Then it is not quite so bad for her. I may tell them this?"
"You may tell them anything you like."
"I only wish to tell them the truth."
"Just as you please."
"Brother!" and Mrs. Dorriman leaned forward a little, and her gentle face flushed a little, "these children are living here with you by your wish; you must not make it hard for them."
"Saul among the prophets! Why, you are coming out in quite a new light."
Mrs. Dorriman shrank back again. She might have answered him and said that for these girls she had more courage than for herself, but she knew the wisdom of silence and she held her peace.
"What do you think they will do?" He asked the question with assumed indifference.
"I think they will go away. They are both high-spirited girls. Margaret feels it so much—she feels any slight offered to Grace more even than Grace does herself; she is perfectly devoted to her sister."
"You must prevent their going—at any rate in this way," he said, not looking at her, but looking straight into the fire.
"How can I prevent it?" said the poor woman, helplessly; she felt as though life was very hard to her.
He did not answer her, but went on looking straight before him.
Then an inspiration came to her. "If I went with them somewhere, after a time perhaps they would come back."
"That would do," he said, slowly.
"It would cost something," she said, always nervous when money matters were in question, and looking at him anxiously.
"You can have any money you want," he said, carelessly. "When would you go?"
"We should have to go at once—to-morrow. I am quite sure the girls will want to be off at daylight." She thought to herself that had she been so insulted she would not have waited till daylight. "I think it will be better to go as soon as possible, and Jean will take care of you."
"I am not afraid of myself, thank you; it is only going back to the days before you came."
She said no more, but wishing him good-night she went upstairs. To-morrow gave but little time for any preparation, and then she had to arrange where she could go with the girls. In this matter she could be guided perhaps by their wishes. She called Jean, who generally sat up for her, and told her in concise words what was to happen.
Jean was fairly taken aback, not unnaturally her first thought was about herself. "Is it me, ma'am, that is going to be left to look after Mr. Sandford? I shall never be able to get on with him."
"Yes you will, dear Jean, you please him already, he is always saying how well everything is done."
"Oh, I'm not afeard for him when he's in a good way," said Jean, stoutly, "but what will I do when he getsrampagious? I'll be feared of my life of him then."
"Oh, Jean, do not make difficulties," said poor Mrs. Dorriman; "it is hard enough, and in the wide world I do not know where I am going with these girls!"
"That's bad," said Jean, sympathising fully with the position of affairs; "it's a hard case to go to an unkent place, with other people's children too!" She made no more difficulties, she put everything ready, but she strongly advised Mrs. Dorriman to prevent the girls going early. "Go at a reasonable hour, and why not?" she insisted. "What is the good of setting people's tongues wagging? they'll aye be speaking whether or no, but no harm comes if the things they say have no legs to stand on."
The early morning roused Grace and Margaret, and they went to the window and looked out.
The night had been bright, and, though the moon had not been visible, there had been that soft starlight which is so mysterious and beautiful. With a vague hope of seeing a fine morning which would inspirit them they drew near, and gazed blankly at the scene before them.
A grey, leaden-coloured sky, a hopeless, pitiless rain, mud everywhere, and everything cheerless, drooping, and miserable.
Tears came into Grace's eyes, and she and Margaret clung together for a moment.
"We must go," said Margaret, to whom nothing else seemed possible.
"I suppose we must," said Grace, looking blankly before her.
Their spirits sank. Margaret, moving softly so as to disturb no one, dragged out first one then another of their boxes. She was resolved to go on with the preparations. She had been more deeply wounded than even Grace by those words of Mr. Sandford's about Mr. Drayton; and then came this terrible thought—washisoffer the consequence of something said by Mr. Sandford? If so, how doubly glad she was all had ended as it had. Grace, always easily influenced by the aspect of things, was in a terrible state of depression.
She turned her head round once or twice and watched Margaret, but she never offered to help her. She did so hate discomfort! and the prospect of going out and facing the dirt and rain and cold broke her down. Her spirit had forsaken her, and sitting there with a plaid thrown over her she cried miserably.
Margaret was too much occupied to notice that her sister's face was persistently turned away from her. She was kneeling facing the door, while with hands trembling a little from cold and partly from agitation she was putting into the bottom of the boxes their heaviest possessions. She would not take time to think of the future, of where they should go, or what they were to do. To get away—that was her thought, to be far from this hateful position for Grace, to shield her from all chance of hearing anything so hard again....
Noiselessly she went on, and mechanically, trying how the little old work-box took up least room, placing it sideways and lengthways with that carefulness regarding detail which is often the outcome of great excitement, when she was startled by a knock at the door.
The sisters involuntarily drew together—Grace having dashed the tears away from her face. It was Jean, a tray in her hands and some hot tea for them. She took the whole thing in at a glance, saw the look of depression in Grace's face, and Margaret's expression of resolution.
"My bairns," said the good woman, "if without offence to you I may call you so—I heard you moving; work is ill on an empty stomach, and the morning cold. Take up your tea, it will do ye good. And now," she went on as the girls took her advice, "what is it all about?"
"Mr. Sandford has cruelly insulted us," said Margaret, reddening, "and we are going away."
"And where will ye go?"
"I—we do not know—but wemustgo away from here," both the young voices chimed in.
"Well, it's no my place to preach—an insult's ill to put up with—but Mrs. Dorriman has one of her headaches, and I've to ask you to go and see her at a reasonable hour, ye ken. I trust she's sleeping now. She's been saer put about. She's going away too."
"Going away—Mrs. Dorriman is going away! then," said Margaret, "she has taken our part."
The sisters looked at each other.
"And did you ever know Mrs. Dorriman take any part but the part of the weakest?" asked Jean. "See how she stood by me—not but that your case and my case are two different ones—yes, bairns, they are very different. Mr. Sandford may have a rough tongue, I'm no denying it—whiles I myself am afraid of him—but you're no exactly kin till him, and he offered you a home, and has been good to you in many ways. It's no my business to preach," insisted Jean, "but I think it's an ill return to him to set all the tongues wagging about him. Go! of course you can go, but you can leave his house decently, and not in a mad-like way, particularly as you do not seem to be expected anywhere else."
"He said very terrible things last night," said Margaret, "and we must go."
"I'm not saying anything against it," said Jean, coolly, "but you cannot go till you have seen my lady, and you cannot see her till a reasonable hour. She is going too, and she is going on your account, and you owe her that much. See," she continued, looking at Grace, who was knocked up and ill now from the agitation and want of sleep. "Your sister is ill—go back to bed, my bairns," she said, "and I'll bring you something by-and-bye, and you must see Mrs. Dorriman before you go away—before you make any plans."
Grace was too glad to lie down, never very strong; she was suffering now, and Margaret, vexed at heart, saw that Jean was right. Grace ill, it would be cruel to make her move,—cruel, if not impossible. She was herself too much excited to go back to bed. She went on when Jean left the room, arranging her things in the open boxes, moving quietly, as Grace, worn out with her crying and the emotions of the morning, sank into sleep.
As Margaret watched her, and noticed the swelled eyelids and look of unhappiness, she blamed herself for not having thought of her grief and sorrow before. Nothing she thought then would be too hard for her, no sacrifice too great for her to make on her behalf. She knelt down beside her sleeping sister and offered up her innocent and earnest morning prayer, and she went on making quite a solemn vow to make her happiness her chief object in life, never to think of herself, but to put Grace before her always.
She rose comforted, as we receive comfort from a great resolve—the decision seems to bring its own strength with it.
Turning to the window she saw that the day was more hopeless than ever; rain in the country pattering on the green leaves brings with it a refreshing and not altogether a melancholy sound; the effect of a heavy rain is to wash the grass into brilliancy, and leave glittering traces for the first sun-rays to turn into beautiful prismatic effects; but rain in the outskirts of a town where every pathway is of coal-dust and the mud is black from the same cause—when the rain brings down with it dirt and blacks and insoluble portions of the grimy smoke—is a dreary and wretched thing. Only those who do not live in their surroundings, whose imagination lifts them up and beyond these influences, or are too busy to heed them, are not weighed down by them.
She was startled to see a cab coming up to the house. She looked out, and with indescribable feelings in which relief was uppermost she saw Mr. Sandford and some luggage drive off towards the station.
It was breakfast time, and just as she was turning to go downstairs, and went to see if Grace was still sleeping, Mrs. Dorriman came to the door and Grace started up.
Margaret met her with a little misgiving. She only knew the fact as Jean had told it to her. Mrs. Dorriman was also going away, and on their account, and obeying her first impulse she said to her, "Is it true, you are going away also? Are you vexed with us? But you know we cannot stay."
"Children," said Mrs. Dorriman, and her soft sweet voice imposed silence upon them both, "you took my brother up wrongly. Mr. Drayton spoke first, and the sting is gone I think, then—had it not been so I could understand, and I can feel for you; but my brother said I might tell you the truth, and this is the truth. But he sees, and I see, that the life here is not suited to you—you cannot expect my brother to change his habits and his home for you. His business is here and here his home must be. But he has given me leave, he has given me the means, to go with you somewhere for a time. I think this wise—we will go somewhere and have a change and begin in a new way when we come back. The first question is where do you wish to go?"
Grace and Margaret heard this speech with an emotion and thrill of gratitude. Grace felt as though she had never done Mrs. Dorriman justice. To go somewhere, anywhere away from this, and yet not have to regret it—to go as she had thought it impossible to go! Words failed her, and it was Margaret who thanked Mrs. Dorriman, and who expressed something of the relief and gratitude they both felt.
Mrs. Dorriman was not insensible to the charm of Margaret's affection; but she was not a woman given to much demonstration. She closed the question at present by telling Grace to lie still. She would send her her breakfast, and, taking Margaret with her, they went downstairs. It was to a woman of her temperament a very strange bewilderment now, to have the world to choose from, and not know where to go.
One plan after another was discussed by her and Margaret between the demolition of one scone and the attack upon another. The question was not settled, but Margaret felt thankful in her heart of hearts, giving Mrs. Dorriman credit for the whole arrangement of the difficulty.
When Grace, refreshed, though still pale and bearing traces of agitation, in spite of her sleep, joined them, the great matter was again talked over.
"We cannot go from here," said Mrs. Dorriman, with unwonted firmness, "till we have settled where we are to go, and are sure of rooms."
"Will not that take very long?" asked Margaret.
"Once we agree about the place—writing and hearing in reply will take little time—we can telegraph," said Mrs. Dorriman, with a certain pride in her unlimited powers. She had, never of her own free will, sent a telegram in all her life.
Then a brilliant idea came to Margaret. "Let us go South, and try one place first; if we do not like it we can try another."
Grace was enchanted.
"And now," said Margaret, who seemed to be taking up a new position that morning, "We owe you so much; what do you like best?"
"Oh, my dear!" said poor Mrs. Dorriman, her long self-repression giving way, and surprising the girl by her glistening eyes and brilliant flash of colour, "give me the sea and the hills;" and though, as half ashamed of having shown her craving for both these things, she added, hastily, "Put me out of it, my dear; never mind me. I can be happy anywhere." Their first move was soon decided upon now. To one of the lovely bays at the mouth of the Clyde they resolved to go, and with hearts fluttering with excitement, at one moment studying the Railway Guide, at another a map, they decided to go to Lornbay, and then hastily resumed their packing. Three days came and went swiftly, and satisfactory answers having been received about rooms in the best hotel, Mrs. Dorriman, not without various doubts as to her fitness for this great responsibility, found herself alone with the girls, leaving Renton with all its varied experiences behind them in its murky vale of smoke.
It often happens that the realization of a wish brings with it a certain fear as to whether the intensity of the wish has been altogether full of wisdom, particularly is this the case when we are conscious of having thought of ourselves, to the exclusion of any other consideration.
Of the trio who were whirling to the mouth of the Clyde, Grace was the most disturbed and the one least able to enjoy the change of scene, the one upon whose spirit lay the shadow of a reproach.
She was conscious of having from the first placed herself in a position of antagonism to Mr. Sandford. She had intended him to recognise her merits, and to allow her to influence him as she had influenced those school-companions to whom she had been as a superior being. But she had forgotten to take into account his temper, his prejudices, and his passions; and, though she now recognised that she had failed, she blamed his obtuseness, and not her own powers, for the failure.
Margaret was evidently much to him; she was nothing, and the one person who had come there, though he fell far short of being a prince, had utterly also failed to see in her any attraction.
This also she imagined was due to some fault in him and not in her. Margaret had a way of effacing herself, of putting herself so completely out of the question, that Grace's vanity was almost excusable. Reared in the belief of her possessing many gifts, flattered by the small world around her, it would require a much severer blow to her pride than Mr. Sandford's rudeness and Mr. Drayton's blindness, before she learnt how wide a difference exists between the value we put upon ourselves and the value placed upon us by outsiders who are not biassed or prejudiced in any way in our favour. To the indifferent world poor Grace would simply be an ordinary-looking girl who gave herself airs. But she had this still to learn.
The beauty of the late spring was filling every copse and valley through which they passed. Everywhere was the budding forth of those tender hues which bring a sense of quiet refreshment to the eye; on every sheltered bank the primroses were gazing at the passers-by like faint stars from their deep leafy beds. The mountain torrents here and there were quivering with excitement as they raced down the hill-sides bubbling over with the joy of having escaped from the imprisonment of the winter's frosts. When the train stopped they could hear the twittering and singing of birds; all these things of everyday occurrence and of no importance in everyday life, perhaps; but to these three, who had felt the great want of the fresh beauty of country life, and had passed some months without any of these cheering influences, they came as a breath of Paradise.
Grace began to respect Mrs. Dorriman when they changed stations, and she saw the quiet practical way in which everything was arranged. Then they sped on their way along the banks of the Clyde, and an exclamation burst from Margaret's lips. Mrs. Dorriman's eyes were moist. The sea came in sight where the river widened; the evening light was falling over it all touching with a golden gleam the ripple of the water. Some yachts were lying at anchor. Away to the South rose faint blue hills as on the West. Even Grace, too much self-absorbed as a rule to be passionately alive to natural beauty, felt it all, as she had never in all her life felt any scenery before. The movement and life all framed in this exquisite scene thrilled her. She forgot herself, her hopes, her ambitions, and all else, and, unconsciously holding Margaret's hand, she found herself giving back an answering and a sympathetic clasp.
The bustle of arrival came as a break to the high-strung feelings of Mrs. Dorriman. She had not been to this place since the days of her girlhood; when her father had gone for change and she had accompanied him. Can any one look at the scenes of their youth and compare the still-remembered visions of those days with the blank reality of their lives? All seems unchanged, everything seems to have stood still. We remember the gnarled trunk of that tree, its very boughs seem hardly to have lost a twig; the same wild flowers grow under and around the great grey stones, where so often we gathered them, with supple limbs that sprang across the burn as lightly as any roedeer. Now we stoop stiffly, our suppleness is gone from us, and we are afraid of even the stepping-stones; they are still there, but we are woefully changed. Mrs. Dorriman was not old enough for so painful a contrast, and her activity was still stirring her to action, but the elasticity of her spirit was gone. She could still feel things keenly, but her powers of enjoyment had gone; she feared more than she hoped, she had lost the freshness of her feelings; she was saddened and subdued, the habit of her mind was depression, she expected evil and not good. Nothing for so long had come to her in the way of pleasure, that she had ceased to think happiness could come to her at all, and she drifted on in her life without any aim, only trying to do what was right. Even heaven seemed to her a vague and far-away dream, which was not to her a positive joy because of that uncomfortable distaste we have alluded to about her husband's perpetual companionship.
But when their informal but comfortable meal was over and they had separated for the night she stood long looking down on the moving lights upon the water; the black hulls of the larger ships sent dark shadows in vivid contrast to the moonlight rays, the boats flying about with their twinkling lights; the splash of oars came up to her in the stillness; every now and again a hoarse cry rang out as boats hailed each other, snatches of song came up on the light wind that fanned her face. She could hear the cheerful unrestrained laughter ringing out. Over all, the moon shone down resplendent, and the soft wind, hurrying from the south, was warm and pure, tasting of the sea over which it had come so many many miles.
It was one of those times in her life when her whole nature protested against unhappiness. She understood but vaguely (we generally do understand it vaguely) what would give her happiness, but she craved for a higher and a fuller life; the perpetual repression, the subjection of her very ideas to a stronger mind, chafed her, and as she clasped her hands the thought that at the moment comforted her was that here she could have freedom—here it would be more like home.
How long she stood there! The lights went out as the boats came in-shore, the sounds died away, the feeling of being free seemed to show her all at once how much she really feared her brother, and then slowly rose before her once more the thought of those papers.
This problem always filled her with pain, the same dread of still further learning to distrust her husband, the same irresolution came over her, she turned round quickly and shut the window, shutting away that painful remembrance with a resolute determination not to think of it just now, and putting it away from her with all her power. Even as she prayed she was conscious of that something she would not think of, as a secret sin may be covered up and concealed in a corner of our mind (knowing that it is seen) and passed over, while we confess every other.
The morning broke exquisitely fine, light clouds enhanced the sunshine. The girls, with few regrets in their past lives, came to breakfast with "shining morning faces" full of the happiness of a delightful change and all the pleasantest expectations of what the world held for them there. Grace was radiant; Margaret's more composed face reflected her sister's expression. They went out, hurrying Mrs. Dorriman's slower movements with a naturalness and impatience she did not dislike as they seemed so near her; and they looked about them with the full enjoyment of girls who had never seen anything of life, except in the serried ranks of schoolgirl's fashion, and who now stopped to look at every shop window in the long street running round the bay, alternating this close attention by watching the boats, upon the other hand, glide to and fro.
Mrs. Dorriman was very nearly as much taken up as they were, and entered fully into their pleasure. She was not superior to the charms of caps, which she wore with a mental protest, having great quantities of hair, but which she thought frightful, and which, she was always trying to improve upon.
They had just turned away from an array of these necessary evils when she noticed a lady coming towards them leaning on the arm of a very tall young man. She was walking very slowly, and evidently was using his arm from no conventional sense, but as really requiring it.
As she drew nearer she fixed her eyes inquiringly on Mrs. Dorriman's face, made a hurried pause—moved on—turned back, and said in a voice of inquiry, "Annie Sandford?"
"Lady Lyons! Yes—I was Annie Sandford—I am Mrs. Dorriman."
"And these?" inquired Lady Lyons, turning with languid grace to Grace and Margaret.
"Miss Rivers and her sister," said Mrs. Dorriman, who never knew exactly how to put their connection with her brother concisely, and determined to explain it at her leisure.
"Oh," said Lady Lyons, evidently requiring some further explanation now, at the present moment.
"My brother's wards—he is their guardian."
"Oh!" again said Lady Lyons, but this time in another manner; she thought she understood.
Then she introduced her son, and he dropped behind and talked to the girls. Lady Lyons slipped her hand under Mrs. Dorriman's arm and they walked on together.
"Delightful," began young Lyons, turning impartially to each sister in turn, "to find unexpected acquaintances in this dull little place."
"We only came last night, we do not think it dull," they said in a breath. Grace adding, for fear of his looking down upon her, "we have not had time to find it dull."
"What have you seen, so far?" he asked; adding in a breath, "not that there is anything really to see."
"We have seen —— caps," said Grace laughing.
He laughed with full understanding, and quoted "The ruling passion...."
Margaret felt annoyed, and could not quite see why she should be annoyed. Still her innate loyalty made her dislike even a covert sneer, and looking at him full in the face she said, "What is there to see here that you think interesting?"
He laughed merrily; "How severe you are,—very severe. Some people like the sea, others go into raptures about the hills; it depends upon whether you like nature or human nature. There is no choice here, there is only the sea and the hills, always the hills."
"We think the place lovely," said Margaret, "and we have seen so little, only school and then Renton. Renton is such a smoky place."
"But Renton Place is a fine place," he rejoined. "I have all my life heard of Mr. Sandford as being a millionnaire."
Margaret laughed. "We used to think it would be a fine place standing in a large park. I believe we thought (Grace and I) that there would even be deer there, but it is quite different—a square house, a short avenue, and the town just outside the gates."
Mr. Lyons looked puzzled. "How strange!" he began, when Grace interrupted him. "All very rich men have whims," she said, in a tone quite unlike any Margaret had ever heard her use before. "Mr. Sandford's whim is to live close to Renton, where he coins money, I believe."
"It will be all the better for those who succeed him," the young man said, looking more attentively at Grace than he had done as yet.
"Yes," said Margaret, in her straightforward way, "but that is a question that does not interest us."
"My dear Margaret, you should not make these very positive assertions," said Grace; "you know nothing, really. My sister is very young, Mr. Lyons, and young girls always draw their own conclusions, often without anything really to go upon."
Mr. Lyons laughingly said her youth was very self-evident. "How beautiful is youth!" he exclaimed, with mock solemnity, and Mrs. Dorriman was startled to hear them all on such a familiar footing already.
She and her friend parted with enthusiasm. Poor Lady Lyons really out of health, and having many, many troubles to bear, was unfeignedly pleased to meet Mrs. Dorriman again; and Mrs. Dorriman, while conscious of much short-coming in the matter of friendship, as she could look back only upon acquaintanceship, and nothing more, was much flattered to find herself of so much importance to another.
At the dreary school where Mrs. Dorriman had been educated; Lady Lyons, then an older, stronger, and handsomer girl than herself, had been.
Mrs. Dorriman could not remember that they had been friends, but now the old familiarity made them more than acquaintances, and they met with that common ground of "old times" which bridges over so much.
As they neared their hotel a man was standing on the steps and lifted his hat. It was Mr. Drayton.
Nothing reconciles one to a place so much as finding one's self not wholly left out in the cold as regards acquaintances.
Beautiful scenery, except to some exceptional souls, does not take the place of all human companionship. The interchange of thought with one's own species is an especial necessity when the small home duties that usually fill up time at home, are taken from one.
Mrs. Dorriman, who paid great attention to all the details of household matters, and had a pleasant sense of ably fulfilling those duties, would have felt stranded had she been left at Lornbay without any one of her own age and standing to talk to and nothing to do. Even in the matter of caps it was a pleasure to find an appreciative listener, and Lady Lyons, a woman whose range of interest was limited to the fluctuations of her own health and the welfare of her son, could listen and give intelligent attention.
Mrs. Dorriman was fulfilling her brother's wish in remaining at the hotel. She was filled with great doubts as to the goodness of the food, and resisted all attempts to inveigle her into preferring disguised dishes. She had a horror of anything made up except when she knew who had the task in hand; and her occupation was gone now she had to accept the dinners as they were, and had nothing to do with the ordering of them. She would have infinitely preferred lodgings (which she had never had), and had visions of wholly ideal landladies, and great powers of interference.
Once her spirits became accustomed to the scenes around her, she would have felt dull missing her Inchbrae occupations, had it not been for Lady Lyons. Lady Lyons had seen a great deal more of the world than Mrs. Dorriman; but seeing the world does not always imply fuller understanding. It is quite possible to see a great deal and take in nothing. Lady Lyons was a woman who had arranged her ideas before she left the paternal nest, and, partly from ill-health, partly from a limited understanding, she was narrow-minded and prejudiced, and everything was measured by her own standard, and that was as small as it could be.
Her character acted fatally upon her son. She had been left a widow young (with a moderate fortune and this only son). People went into ecstacies over the way in which she gave up her life to her son, which meant that he never went to school. He was educated upon her lines—under her own eye. She was desperately afraid of the wickedness of the world, schools were full of iniquity, therefore he never went to school. Companions he had none. She was afraid of his knowing boys with school experiences. Paul Lyons was content, knowing nothing better. He grew up narrow, selfish, and consequential, his world bounded by his mother and himself, with no developed intelligence, no nobility of thought, no aims, no aspirations, thinking himself in all ways superior to other men, and interested in nothing outside his little molehill.
Then came one brief terrible experience.
Lady Lyons, worse than usual in health, was ordered to a watering-place in the South of France, and to winter in Nice.
She knew nothing of the world; and of course Paul, who had never stood upon his own feet anywhere, was equally ignorant. Before he had been many days in the little place he had been taken in hand by the worst possible class of men; and at Nice he got into every conceivable scrape, lost money all round at Monaco, was fleeced and put into all sorts of disgraceful positions by those who told him they would make a man of him; and found himself terribly in debt, ill, and threatened with all sorts of penalties before he had been six weeks in the place.
Lady Lyons, gently obtaining the air in a Bath-chair, which, with a strong misgiving about the means of locomotion, she encumbered herself with, dreamed on in blissful ignorance.
She had given her son "principles," she thought, and she imagined that to be enough.
Paul was forced to get money from her, but he told her very little; indeed, the poor lady always talked of Paul as having been robbed, and in talking of his adventures spoke as though he had been an unblemished knight who had been robbed because his principles were too good to allow him to win, and on these occasions, though the young man would colour, so much grace was left in him, he would make a grimace when she was not looking, expressive of her foolish innocence and belief in him.
This beginning once made, he went down-hill rapidly. Once a young man reared in ignorance of the world conceives sin to be a sign of manliness, his fate is sealed.
Before he was utterly ruined, however, he was pulled up short by a long and terrible fever he was very long of recovering from. Lady Lyons, who, though a feeble, narrow-minded mother, was an affectionate one—the strain of anxiety was too much for her, and his recovery was followed by her having a paralytic stroke.
When poor Lady Lyons recovered she was feebler than before, and her son learnt, almost for the first time, that her income was almost entirely derived from a pension (her husband, a K.C.B., and an Indian General, this was secured to her); and that when she died the little place in Cumberland, and a few thousand pounds, upon which he had already given heavy bonds, was all he had to look to.
It was too late to begin a profession; he knew too little to be able to pick up anything. There was but one course open to him, and this was to marry some one with money. He had a tall figure, and was good-looking, though he had a weak face, and he was convinced himself that when he saw some one that "fetched" him, and that he was inclined to throw the handkerchief to, it would be picked up with enthusiasm. There are some men who think in this way.
When Lady Lyons came to Lornbay, hoping to derive benefit from its balmy air, Paul Lyons of course came with her. His best trait was his affection for his mother, though he despised her ignorance of the world, and was openly indignant with her having kept him in leading-strings all his life, and not having given him "a chance with other fellows."
Lady Lyons used to argue feebly with him about this. "See, my dear Paul, how much nicer and better you are than other young men," she would say, with a sigh. "Schools teach boys so much wickedness," and Paul would shrug his shoulders, and say something ambiguous which puzzled her.
This was the young man whom fate and Mrs. Dorriman introduced to Grace and Margaret Rivers. Every day now there was some walk undertaken, or some little expedition made in which Paul Lyons joined.
Lady Lyons had that motherly feeling that Paul, being her son, was such a safe and pleasant companion for every one. She was quite amused that Mrs. Dorriman considered it necessary to act as chaperon. "It is only Paul," she would say, with a little laugh.
"But he is not 'only Paul' to us; he is a young man and no relation. I do not want to be ridiculous, but I have the responsibility, and I want to do what is right."
This little speech about the responsibility forged another link in the chain of events, though Mrs. Dorriman spoke in innocence of making any chain. It is not given to us always to know when we are making history.
"My dear Paul," said Lady Lyons, when the mother and son were yawning through the remains of an evening shortly afterwards, "I think I have made a discovery; those two girls, the Rivers girls, are either rich or going to be very rich. That is why poor dear Mrs. Dorriman makes such a fuss about them, and herds them about so."
"I made that discovery long ago, mother," and Paul laughed. "The difficulty in my mind is, are they going to be even, or is one going to be heiress, and the other have a poor competency."
"My dear Paul, you will have to be careful; how clever you are! I never thought of that." And this new idea made Lady Lyons hold her knitting so carelessly that she dropped some stitches, a fact (as usual) she never discovered till she had done a good bit, when she was intensely surprised to see a very large hole, and could not imagine how it got there.
"I don't know about being clever, mother, the girls make no secret of it tome."
"My dear Paul! is it as far on as that?" and Lady Lyons looked up at him from her sofa with a truly admiring maternal look.
"I don't know what you mean by as far as that," said Paul, inserting his first finger with immense difficulty between his tight masher collar and his much harassed throat; "but they talk in a way I cannot help understanding. Old Sandford is coining money and saving money, that means something like wealth to his heirs or heiresses."
"It does indeed," said Lady Lyons, with sparkling eyes. "Paul, it is so strange, but when you were quite a tiny baby your poor old nurse used always to say you were born to marry a rich lady. How often I laughed at her—and now it will come true. My dear boy!"
"I think you are going too far now, mother; I feel a long way behind you. I cannot find out anything about any definite promise. We do not know anything about Mr. Sandford."
"I know a great deal about him," said Lady Lyons, eagerly. "Mrs. Dorriman talks so much about him; not that perhaps she has really told me much," she added, with a sense of having held out false hopes; Mrs. Dorriman's confidences about her brother being, she now remembered, entirely about frivolous matters, his fondness of old-fashioned dishes, and so on, and his dislike to others.
"Of course, mother, I shall be careful not to lead either of the young ladies to fancy I am in earnest till I know something definite."
"Of course not, my dear," said Lady Lyons, absently. Then suddenly a look of intelligence came into her face. "Oh! my dear Paul, how stupid I am. I remember quite distinctly now, Mrs. Dorriman answered some remark I made about Margaret's looks, and said, 'I admire her very much, and I am sure my brother does, he never takes his eyes off her. He says she is the image of his wife, and like her in disposition; that is why he is so devoted to her.' I remember her words so well now; but I can easily talk about it again and get her to tell me something more."
"I think she told you enough," laughed her son, and he walked up to the window humming a tune, and his mother, after trying in vain to get him to talk to her, soon grew sleepy and went to bed.
Long after she left he paced the room; then he lit his candle and prepared to go to bed also. There was a smile upon his face, which lingered till he was fairly in bed. Then he murmured something to himself, "I am glad it is Margaret," he said, and turned round and went to sleep.
In the meantime the girls were happy, though Grace was a little restless. To go out walking, to meet two or three people, to eat and drink and sleep, was not enough for her; she wanted something more, she had a perfect craving for excitement. This was not the life she had dreamed of. But for Paul Lyons it would be worse, but between her and Paul had arisen a kind of perpetual give-and-take in words which satisfied her since it occupied all his time. Margaret was nowhere as regarded this, and Grace was happy in having the one cavalier within reach entirely at her service.
Indeed, Margaret, with the unnecessary frankness of a girl, piqued him by her open and undisguised sentiments of not only indifference, but dislike.
There is an instinct in unspoiled girlhood which is often an unerring guide. Margaret disliked Paul Lyons from the first; the ready change of tone, the slighting observations at every moment about Mrs. Dorriman's tastes, which Grace thought so natural and so witty, displeased her. She thought him worse than he was. His manner to his mother was so careless, and he so openly scoffed at her views, that she did not give him credit for the hours he spent beside her when she was ill, or for the affection he had for her. She thought him hateful. She had a high idea of what a man should be, and her limited experience had not been happy. One great relief was the fact that, save and except that one meeting on the steps of the hotel, Mr. Drayton remained invisible. Indeed when they met in this spasmodic and unpremeditated way he was waiting for a steamer to take him many miles in another direction, and had gone, determined, however, to return at the earliest possible opportunity.
After the conversation with his mother, Paul began to take much greater pains to recommend himself to Margaret. He was like most of us—attracted towards her by seeing her what he would wish to be. She had so much of what he lacked. She was quiet, reserved, singularly fearless on those rare occasions of asserting herself, and so openly disapproved when he said or did anything giving the lie to his professions, that he caught himself feeling ashamed of himself. Under the gaze of her pure and unclouded eyes he felt unworthy, and she awoke in him the desire for something better. He began to look back with disgust and weariness on the portions of his life when he had fancied he had seen life and lived; a better and truer manliness became visible to him.
She was much younger, but so much wiser, he thought; he, by degrees, fell from profound admiration into despair, and then rebounded from despair to hope as she was kind to him, and found himself hopelessly in love, before he well knew what he was about.
The sincerity of his love was proved by its real humility. What had he to offer this young brave who had talked so glibly about throwing his handkerchief? When his mother prattled to him of his perfections he felt bitterly humiliated. The serene grace of Margaret's manner, the limitless indifference as to his presence or his coming or going, was a terrible mortification to him, and he could go nowhere for consolation. His mother's sole idea of consolation he knew would be flattery, and he had learned to hate it.
Margaret's intense devotion to her sister was to him something beautiful and wonderful, though he could not at times resist enlightening her about her own superiority, only to regret it since his doing so made Margaret cold to him and angry with him.
"You make an idol of your sister," he said to her, one day; "you think her so beautiful. You are much more fair, and far, far more lovely."
"You should not say these things even to me," said Margaret, seriously, "though I know you cannot help trying to flatter me—it is your way of making conversation, I think."
"I wish you only knew how thoroughly in earnest I am," he said, passionately. "You cannot realize how much better I feel when with you; what a good influence you have over me. This is not flattery."
"It sounds very much like it," said Margaret, turning her grave young face towards him, and allowing a little smile to light up her eyes.
"Now you are laughing at me," he said, in a hurt tone. "How can I make you believe me?"
"Here comes your mother," said Margaret, much too unconscious of his meaning to be in the least embarrassed. "You have done your best to amuse me, and if you have failed it must be my own fault—not yours."
She turned lightly from him and he watched her with wrathful looks. Why did she always turn his speeches aside, and treat him as of no consequence? What was it that caused him so completely to fail with her? Why was it she was so different from other girls?
Grace, for instance, accepted his speeches (in which he was conscious of no meaning) as her due, with evident satisfaction. She believed everything he said to her, implicitly; and when, as sometimes happened, he showed something of his real strong devotion for Margaret to appear, she accepted it as if it were an indirect compliment to herself. Her vanity was of the open and undisguised order, and so completely enveloped her, that no sarcasm could wound, no snub hurt her; and he was often sarcastic, and often unintentionally snubbed her, and repented, till he saw that both were equally lost upon her.
What a delightful thing it must be to live encased in an armour of this kind; to be impervious to those friendly and unfriendly hits the world at large thinks good for poor humanity.
Grace had not much acquaintance with the world, but the few people she knew never could touch her, and Mr. Paul Lyons was sometimes astonished and sometimes amused to see how she sailed through her life, delighting in the idea that every one round shared her own supreme belief in her superiority.
How hard he tried to get Margaret to believe in him a little—forced to confess, time after time, that he had failed. She was always the same, sweet, cold, and utterly indifferent.
Lady Lyons' efforts to obtain information from Mrs. Dorriman were equally failures in another direction. What could she tell, being herself in utter ignorance of her brother's position?
A woman who had had any experience of the world must have seen through the mother's transparent efforts to know something tangible. Mrs. Dorriman did not, in the least, take it in. She talked placidly enough upon the various topics brought forward by her friend; but she was a perfectly truthful person; she could not invent, she had no imagination, and, therefore, she could neither suppose anything or suggest anything.
"It must be such a comfort, my dear Anne, to have a very rich brother to fall back upon," said Lady Lyons to her one day, watching her face a little eagerly as she spoke.
"I suppose so," said Mrs. Dorriman, dubiously, reflecting that, when she was in need of anything, it was always very hard to ask him for it.
"What an immense thing for those girls, unless, indeed, he were to marry."
Mrs. Dorriman looked up, much puzzled by her friend's tone.
"I suppose it is a good thing for them," she said, slowly. "I never think my brother will marry again; he did so love his wife—poor thing!"
"Very nice, very proper," said Lady Lyons, "and, for the girls' sake, let us hope this frame of mind may continue. I am sure, my dear Anne, for their sakes, you would throw your influence against such a step. At his time of life——"
"He is not an old man," said Mrs. Dorriman, very hastily, "and, as for influence—my dear, if my brother wished to marry any one I should probably hear nothing about it till he introduced his wife to me. When he makes up his mind he acts," said Mrs. Dorriman, thinking with a little shiver of her own marriage and other things.
"I am not sure that I think that quite nice in a man," and Lady Lyons unclasped a narrow bracelet that she wore, and clasped it with great care; anxious not to look too much interested, and longing to know more, all the same.
"My brother is not dependent upon women's society; he never has been. His own mother died young, and then he went away—I never was much to him."
"Poor man! But now, my dear Anne, you should humanize him a little. If once he grows accustomed to having you and the girls, he will miss you all, and he will miss the girls whenever they marry."
Mrs. Dorriman did not answer. Yes, he would miss Margaret—he was anxious to keep her.
Like all people with a motive, Lady Lyons was very much afraid of her motive being discovered; and she hesitated now, impelled by her great desire to be able to guide her son, and to find out, before it was too late, something definite about "those Rivers girls."
"The girls are I suppose so well off that his marrying or remaining unmarried can hardly affect them," she said, taking up her knitting again, and narrowly watching Mrs. Dorriman's placid face.
"Oh dear no!" said that poor little lady, taken by surprise, "my brother has helped them very much—they really owe him a great deal."
"Ah! then he is sure to provide for them," said Lady Lyons, "comfortably, especially for Margaret."
Mrs. Dorriman looked up at her a little startled. Had she said anything?
"We know nothing. He is fond of Margaret. He was fond——" She stopped short, she could not say that this move, originated by Grace and followed up by Margaret, had hurt and offended him. She knew he was offended, but all that passed belonged to the sanctity of home. She felt guilty in some way. Reticent and reserved generally, how came she to have allowed Lady Lyons to touch upon these matters? With a little movement of her head and shoulders, expressive of resolution, she faced Lady Lyons and said calmly:
"I would prefer not discussing my brother's intentions, which I do not know. I know really nothing, and conjecture is useless."
"We will not discuss his intentions," said Lady Lyons, with a cheerfulness she did not feel; "a man who has shown himself so good and so kind is not likely to throw these poor girls penniless upon the world—I can safely prophesy that Margaret will be his heiress." She smiled at Mrs. Dorriman, who had no answering smile to give back. She was startled and vexed with herself. She had no right to speak about her brother. She was confident that his actions would be governed entirely by the feeling of the moment. He liked Margaret; if Margaret offended him, his liking would not save her from the effects of his displeasure. She was beginning to understand him, to see that everything had to be subservient to his will, that the greatest and strongest trait in his character was his love of power.
After this conversation, Lady Lyons lost no time in giving her son warning.
"Nothing is settled," she said. "It may be Margaret, but he is a younger man than I thought, and he may marry; my dear boy, you must do nothing rashly."
He turned the subject with a laugh, in which to speak the truth there was not much merriment. His passion for Margaret was at any rate sincere, and with his frequent opportunities of meeting it became utterly impossible for him to conceal his feelings from her.
Before she could stop him, he was hurriedly telling her his story, looking in her face, which showed vexation and regret, but no passion, no love, no response to his devotion.
He read his answer there, and his despair moved her. She was grieved and dismayed; to her he had always seemed so inconsequent, such a trifler, how could she ever have believed that he was capable of so strong a love?
But her great comfort through it all was the very foundation he put himself upon; he would be guided in all things by her, she would be his good genius, his conscience. He would always do as she wished. She would be his guardian angel! This made refusal easier.
She shrank from his outstretched hands.
"I cannot," she said. "I cannot! It is impossible. I can never never give you the love you ask."
"You think so now, Margaret—I may call you Margaret—you are so young you do not know; will you not try, can you not let me hope?"
"Do you not see," she said, with the soft rebuke in her eyes that an angel might have had, "that love must come? And there is something else."
"Will you not tell me?" he spoke in a lower voice.
"I shall offend you."
"You cannot offend me."
"When I love—if I love—it must be a man," she said, and her face glowed, "a man who does not require the guidance of a weak girl, but who does what he has to do from a high sense of right, who has high aims, who is above me in all things."
"This is folly!" he exclaimed angrily; "you would ruin all my happiness from some vague and ideal sense of right. You will never meet with this ideal. All men will look up to you, beautiful Margaret. You will never find one above you."
"Perhaps not," she said, "but then I will never love."
They parted, she grieved but firm, and he miserable and dispirited. He felt the truth of much that she said, and was sufficiently in love to think her just while he deemed her cruel.
"Had my mother acted differently," he thought, with bitterness, "had she made me play a man's part!" and then a blush of shame rose to his face. "Why blame her? Was this worthy?" He strode off and sought in rapid motion to still his disappointment. No one must ever know, and Margaret was so young. At some future time, perhaps.
Thus it happened that when poor Lady Lyons gave him her well-meant caution his laugh was full of bitterness.
She noticed, however, and took great credit to herself for having so influenced him that her son avoided Margaret; and not in the least understanding, simply thinking that he was following her advice, she thought that his avoidance was perhaps too marked. Mother-like she must interfere a little, he should draw back but not so pointedly as to make going forward impossible; supposing....
"You are a dear, good boy," she said fondly to him in the evening, when, with a book before him and his gloomy eyes fixed on the fire, he was sitting, dreading her observation of his countenance; "you are always so good in following your poor old mother's advice. I see you leave the Rivers girls alone. You must not overdo it, dear. If there is money—if it would not be an imprudence it would not be a bad thing, and then, you know, they might resent your having given themquiteup. Could you not keep friends without——"
"Without what, mother?" he asked, in a hoarse voice which startled her a little.
"I am hunting for a word, my dear," she answered candidly; "I want a word to express my meaning and that would not sound too strong."
Paul laughed ironically.
"Hunt on, mother, and when you have found the word you can tell me again."
"It is so tiresome of you to laugh, but what I want to say is, that there would be no harm in your paying a certain amount of attention, always providing you did notquitecommit yourself."
"And if the girl got fond of me," asked Paul, looking at her with glowing eyes, "what then, if I had not committed myself?"
"My dear Paul! No well-brought-up girl would think of getting fond of you, would be in love with you, till you had said something. At least," said Lady Lyons, drawing herself up and looking very virtuous, "in my younger days girls would have thought it very wrong."
"Now it strikes me, mother, that this idea of yours is very cold-blooded and cruel; does your love for me so blind you that you cannot see this?"
"I am cold-blooded and cruel! Oh, Paul, what have I done," said the poor woman helplessly, "that you should call me bad names like this?"
"I called your idea cruel and it is cruel," said Paul hotly, "you do not think of what you advise me to do. Heaven knows there is nothing in me to win a good girl's love, but you advise me to try and do so, and yet, while in act I am saying I love you and begging her to love me in return, I may feel free and be free because inwordI have said nothing. I call it shameful, mother!" He rose and walked hurriedly up and down the room, then, softening at the sight of her distress, he bent down and kissed her. "Forgive me if I seem harsh and unkind, but I am very unhappy, most miserable," and, sitting down again, he laid his face upon his arms.