But as he set out on his homeward walk, his eyes caught that great house of Tinto, which from Dunearn was the central object in the landscape—an immense house, seated on a high platform of rock, dominating the river and the whole country, with scarcely wood enough about it to afford any shadow; an ostentatious pile of building, with that spot of audacious red against the grey sky—the flag always flying (set him up! Miss Barbara said) when the master was at home, which was, so to speak, the straw which broke the camel's back, the supreme piece of vanity which the county could not tolerate. Pat Torrance to mount a flag upon his house to mark his presence! What more could Sacred Majesty itself do? John Erskine felt as if some malicious spirit had thrown a stone at him out of the clouds as his eye was caught by that flaunting speck of red. He felt all the local intolerance of the man, without a claim but his money to crow thus over his neighbours. And then he thought of Carry Lindores and her poetry and enthusiasm. That was how the Earl disposed of his daughters. A thrill ran through John's frame, but it was a thrill of defiance. He raised his stick unawares and waved it, as if at the big bully who thus scorned him from afar.
Lady Caroline Torrance was in her morning-room with her children when her husband came to tell her of his visit to Dalrulzian. He had kept it for twenty-four hours, in order to have an opportunity of telling it at his leisure, and making it as disagreeable to her as possible; for indeed he was fully convinced in his own mind that John had been the man about whom his broken-hearted bride had made a confession to him. The confession had not disarmed or moved him to generosity: not that his delicacy was wounded by the thought of his wife's engagement to some one else before she saw him—no such fantastical reason moved him; but that he was furious at the thought that this unseen personage still remained agreeable to her, and that in secret she could retire upon the recollection of some one whom she had once preferred, or perhaps did now prefer, to himself. This was insupportable to him. He did not care very much for filling her heart himself; but he meant that she should belong to him utterly, and not at all, even in imagination or by a passing thought, to anybody else. Lady Car's morning-room was the last of a gorgeous but faded suite of rooms opening off the drawing-room, from which it was separated by heavy velvet curtains. Everything was heavy and grand even in this sanctuary, where it was supposed the lady of the house was to find her refuge when no longer on duty, so to speak—no longer bound to sit in state and receive her visitors. It was furnished like the rest, with gilded chairs, a table of Florentine mosaic, and curtains of ruby velvet, looped and puckered into what the upholsterer of the late Mrs Torrance's time thought the most elegant and sumptuous fashion. The gilding was a little tarnished, the velvet faded; but still it was too fine for anything less than a royal habitation. It is supposed that princesses, being used to it, like to knock their elbows against ormolu ornaments, and to put down their thimbles and scissors (if they ever use such vulgar implements) upon marble; but poor Lady Car did not. She was chilly by nature, and she never had got over her horror of these additional chillinesses. The Florentine marble made her shiver. It was far too fine to have a cover over it, which she had ventured once to suggest, to her husband's horror. "What! cover it up, as if it were plain mahogany—a thing that was worth no one could tell how much!" So she gave it up, and shivered all the more. It was a chilly day of May, which the fresh foliage outside, and a deceitful sun not strong enough to neutralise the east wind, made only a little less genial, and Lady Car sat very close to the fire, in a chair as little gilt as could be found, and with a little table beside her covered with a warm and heavy cover, as if to make up for the naked coldness of the rest. The room had three large windows, looking, from the platform upon which the house stood, over the wide country—a great landscape full of greening fields and foliage, and an infinite blue and white sky, the blue somewhat pale but very clear, the clouds mounting in Alpine peaks into the far distance and lying along the horizon in long lines. The windows, it need not be said, were plate-glass, so that an impression of being out of doors and exposed to the full keenness of the breeze was conveyed to the mind. How often had poor Lady Car sat and shivered, looking over that wistful sweep of distance in her loneliness, and knowing that no one could ever come out of it who would bring joy to her or content! She had never been beautiful, the reader is aware. She was plain now, in the absence of all that sunshine and happiness which beautifies and brightens homely faces. And yet her face was not a homely face. The master of Tinto had got what he wanted—a woman whose appearance could never be overlooked, or whom, any one could undervalue. Her air was full of natural distinction though she had no beauty. Her slight, pliant figure, like a long sapling bending before every breeze, had a grace of gentle yielding which did not look like weakness; and her smile, if perhaps a little timid, was winning and gracious. But her nose and her upper lip were both too long, and the pretty wavering colour she had possessed in her youth was gone altogether. Ill-natured people called her sallow; and indeed, though it is not a pretty word, it was not, at this stage of her existence, far from the truth.
Her two children were playing beside her on the carpet. Poor lady! here was perhaps the worst circumstance in her hard lot. As if it were not enough to be compelled to take Pat Torrance for her husband, it had been her melancholy fate to bring other Torrances, all his in temper and feature, into the world. This is an aggravation of which nobody would have thought. In imagination we are all glad to find a refuge for an unhappy wife in her children, whom instinctively we allot to her as the natural compensation—creatures like herself and belonging to her, although the part in them of the obnoxious father cannot be ignored. But here the obnoxious father was all in all; even the baby of two years old on the rug at her feet, the little girl who by all laws ought to have been like her mother, showed in her little dark countenance as small relationship to Lady Caroline as to any stranger. They were their father's children: they had his black hair, a peculiarity which sometimes is extremely piquant and attractive in childhood, giving an idea of unusual development; but, on the other hand, sometimes is—not. Little Tom and Edie were of those to whom it is not attractive, for they had heavy fat cheeks, and the same light, large, projecting eyes which were so marked a feature in their father's face. Poor Lady Car thought they fixed their eyes upon her with a cynical gaze when she tried to sing to them—to tell them baby-stories. She tried her best, but that was perhaps too fine for these children of a coarser race. They scrambled down from her lap, and liked better to roll upon the floor or break with noisy delight the toys which were showered upon them, leaving the poor young mother to gaze and wonder, and feel as much rebuffed as if these two infants of two and three had been twenty years older. They screamed with delight when their father tossed them up in his arms, but they escaped from their mother's knee when she would have coaxed them to quiet. Poor Lady Car! they were a wonder and perplexity to her. She was half afraid of them though they were her own.
Torrance had come in from the woods, which he had been inspecting with his forester, and perhaps something had crossed him in this inspection, for he was a tyrant by nature, and could not tolerate a contrary opinion; whereas the officials, so to speak, of a great estate in Scotland, are much given to opinions, and by no means to be persuaded to relinquish them. The forester had objected to something the master suggested, and the agent had taken the forester's part. The master of Tinto came in fuming. To give in was a thing intolerable to him, and to give in to his own servant! But here was another servant whom he need not fear bullying, who could not throw up her situation and put him to inconvenience, who was forced to put up with as much indignity as he chose to put upon her. This thought gave his mind a welcome relief; he strode along through all the gilded rooms with a footstep which meant mischief. Lady Caroline heard it afar off, and recognised the sound. What could it be now? Her mind ran hurriedly over the recent occurrences of the day, to think what possible offence she could have given him. Nothing—or at least she could think of nothing. It did not require a very solid reason for the transference to her shoulders of the rage which he did not think it expedient to bestow upon some one else. He came in kicking out of the way the toys with which the children were playing.
"These monkeys," he said, "would ruin a Jew if they grow up the way you are breeding them, my lady. That cost a pound or two yesterday, and now it's all in bits. If your family could stand such extravagance, mine can't. Tom, my lad, if you break your fine toys like this, I'll break your head. But it's not the children's fault," he added, "it's the way they're bred."
"It is very wrong of Tommy," said poor Lady Car, "but you laughed and clapped your hands yesterday when I found fault."
"I won't have the boy's spirit broken—that's another thing. Breeding's an affair of day by day; but it can't be expected that you should take such trouble, with your head full of other things."
"What other things?" cried Lady Car. "Oh, Pat, have a little pity! What else have I to think of? I may not understand the children, but they are my only thought."
Here he gave a mocking, triumphant laugh. "No, I daresay you don't understand them. They're of my side of the house," he said. It was a pleasure to him, but not an unalloyed pleasure, for he would have liked to secure in his daughter at least some reflection of her mother's high-bred air, which had always been her attraction in his eyes. "As for other things," he added, "there's plenty: for instance, I have just been visiting your old friend."
"My old friend?" Lady Caroline looked at him with wondering eyes.
"Oh, that is the way, is it? pretend you don't understand! I went expressly for your sake. You see what a husband I am: not half appreciated—ready to please his wife in every sort of way. I don't think much of your taste though: under size," said Torrance, with a laugh,—"decidedly under size."
Lady Car looked at him with a momentary elevation of her slender, drooping throat. The action was one that had a certain pride in it, and this was what her husband specially admired in her. But she did not understand him, nor was there any secret in her gentle soul to be found out by innuendoes. She shook her head gently, and drooped it again with her habitual bend.
"I do not know what you mean. It must be some mistake," she said.
"It is no mistake, Lady Car. That's not my way to make mistakes. It suits you not to know. That makes me all the more certain. Oh, I'm not afraid of you. We're not in Italy or any of these places. And you're a great deal too proud to go wrong: you're too cold, you have not got it in you."
Lady Caroline raised her head again, but this time in sheer surprise. "Pat," she said, faltering, "all I know is, that you mean to insult me. I know nothing but that. What is it? Do not insult me before the children."
"Pshaw! how should the children understand?"
"Not what you mean; but neither do I understand that. The children know as well as I do that you mean to hurt me. What is it?—what have I done?"
"By Jove!" he said, looking at her, "to see you there with your white face, one would think you never had done anything but good all your life. You look as if butter would not melt in your mouth. Not the sort of woman to look down upon her husband and count him a savage, and keep thinking of a nice, smooth, soft-spoken——You would never tell me his name, and I was a fool, and didn't insist upon it; but now he has come back to be your ladyship's neighbour, and see you every day."
She did not answer immediately. She looked at him with a curious light stealing into her soft grey eyes, raising her head again. Then she said slowly, "I think you must mean Mr Erskine of Dalrulzian. If so, you have made a great mistake. I think he is younger than I am. He was not much more than a boy when I knew him. He never was anything—but an acquaintance."
"It's likely you'll get me to believe that," cried Torrance, scornfully. He jumped up from his seat, and came and stood in front of the fire, with his back to it, brushing against her dress, so close to her that she had to draw back out of his way. "An acquaintance! There are different meanings to that word. I've been to see him on your account, my lady. I've asked him to come here. Oh, I'm not afraid of you, as I tell you. You're too cold and too proud to go wrong. You shall see him as much as you like—I have every confidence in you—see him, and talk to him, and tell him what you think of your husband. It will be a nice sentimental amusement for you; and as for me, I'll always be by to look on."
He laughed as he spoke, angrily, fiercely, and glared down upon her from under his eyelids with a mixture of fury and satisfaction. She pushed her chair back a little with a shiver, drawing away her dress, upon which he had placed his foot.
"If it was as you suppose," she said, trembling, "what misery you would be planning for me! It makes me cold indeed to think of such cruelty. What! you would put me in such a strait! You would force me into the society of one——Oh, Pat, surely you are doing yourself wrong! You could not be so cruel as that!"
He laughed again, striding across the fireplace, ever encroaching more upon her corner. His face had grown red with wrath. He was not without feeling, such as it was, and this which he supposed his wife's acknowledgment that his cruel device could indeed wound her, gave himself a start of self-reproach and alarm, though there was pleasure in the power he felt he had acquired of causing pain.
"Ah, I've caught you, have I? I've caught you at last!" he cried, with a tone of triumph.
"You could not do it!" cried Lady Caroline, her pale face flushed. "No! do not say you made such a cruel plan—no, no!—to entrap the poor woman who is your wife—alas! who never did you harm—to rend her heart in two, and make her life more miserable. No, no! do not tell me you have this cunning as well as—all the rest; do not tell me! You would not do it, you could not do it. There is no such cruelty in man."
"It's a satisfaction," he cried, his face burning and glowing, "to think I have you in my grip, Lady Car."
She breathed quick and hard, pushed back in her corner, gazing up at him with a look from which a stronger tremor had taken all the timidity. It was some time before she could speak. "Do not think," she said, "that I am afraid of you. I am only horrified to think—but I might have known. Mr Erskine, by whom you think you can make me more unhappy, is nothing to me—nothing, nothing at all, nothing at all! He is not the gentleman I thought it right to tell you about—no, no! a very different person. I do not want to see him, because I should not like—old friends to know; but Mr Erskine is nothing to me—nothing!"
Whether he would have been convinced by the vehemence with which she said this alone, cannot be known—for at that moment the carefully festooned velvet curtains were disturbed in the regulated folds which nobody at Tinto had ever ventured to alter, and Edith suddenly appeared with an anxious and pale countenance. She had heard the raised voices as she approached, and her sister's "nothing to me, nothing!" had been quite distinct to her as she came in. She could not imagine what it was that could have excited poor Carry so much, and Edith had a nervous dislike of any scene. She could not draw back, having with difficulty sent away the servant who was conducting her punctiliously to her sister's presence, and she felt herself compelled to face the quarrel, which was evidently a serious one. Edith was fastidious and sensitive, with all the horror of a girl who had never seen anything like domestic contention or the jars of family life. Lord Lindores and his wife had not always agreed since his recent elevation—indeed they had disagreed bitterly and painfully on the most serious questions; but such a thing as a quarrel had been unknown in their household. To Edith it seemed such an offence against good taste and all the courtesies of life, as nothing could excuse—petty and miserable, as well as unhappy and wrong. She was annoyed as well as indignant to be drawn into it thus against her will. Carry had hitherto concealed with all her might from her young sister the state of conflict in which she lived. Her unhappiness she did not hide; but she had managed to keep silent in Edith's presence, so that the girl had never been an actual witness of the wranglings of the ill-matched pair. But poor Lady Car for once was moved out of her usual precautions. She was too much excited even to remember them. She appealed to her sister at once, hailing her appearance with eagerness, and without pausing to think.
"Edith," she cried, "you have come in time. Tell Mr Torrance that Mr Erskine, who has just come home, was not a—special friend of mine. You can speak, for you know. Mr Torrance says—he thinks——" here Lady Car came to herself, perceiving the disturbed looks of her sister, and remembering her own past reserve. She paused, and forced herself into a miserable smile. "It is not worth while entering into the story," she said; "it does not—matter much. It is only a mistake, a—a difference of opinion. You can tell Mr Torrance——"
"I don't want any information," said Torrance, sulkily. He, too, felt embarrassed by the sudden introduction of Edith into the discussion. He moved away from the fire with a rude attempt at civility. Edith, in her youthful absolutism, and want of toleration or even understanding of himself, overawed him a little. She was not, he thought, nearly so aristocratic in appearance as his wife; but he was slightly afraid of her, and had never been at his ease in her presence. What was the opinion of this little chit to him? He asked himself the question often, but it did not divest him of that vague perception of his own appearance in her eyes, which is the most mortifying of all reflections. No caricature made of us can be so disconcerting. Just so Haman must have seen himself, a wretched pretender, through the eyes of that poor Jew in the gate. Torrance saw himself an exaggerated boor, a loud-speaking, underbred clown, in the clear regard, a little contemptuous, never for a moment overawed by him, of Edith Lindores. He had perhaps believed his wife's denial in respect to John Erskine while they were alone, but he believed her entirely when she called Edith to witness. He was subdued at once—he drew away from before the fire with sulky politeness, and pushed forward a chair. "It's a cold day," he said. The quarrel died in a moment a natural death. He hung about the room for a few minutes, while Edith, to lessen the embarrassment of the situation, occupied herself with the children. As for Lady Car, she had been too much disturbed to return at once to the pensive calm which was her usual aspect. She leant back in her chair, pushed up into the corner as she had been by her husband's approach, and with her thin hands clasped together. Her breath still came fast, her poor breast heaved with the storm—she said nothing to aid in the gradual restoration of quiet. The spell being once broken, perhaps she was not sorry of the opportunity of securing Edith's sympathy. There is a consolation in disclosing such pangs, especially when the creator of them is unbeloved. To tell the cruelties to which she was subject, to pour out her wrongs, seemed the only relief which poor Carry could look forward to. It had not been her will to betray it to her sister; but now that the betrayal had taken place, it was almost a pleasure to her to anticipate the unburdening of her heart. All that she desired for the moment was that he would go away, that she might be free to speak. The words seemed bursting from her lips even while he was still there. Perhaps Torrance himself had a perception of this; but then he did not believe that his wife had not a hundred times made her complaint to Edith before. And thus there ensued a pause which was not a pleasant one. Neither the husband nor the wife spoke, and Edith's agitated discourses with the children were the only sounds audible. They were not prattling, happy children, capable of making a diversion in such circumstances; and Edith was not so fond of the nephew and niece, who so distinctly belonged to their father, as she ought to have been. The situation was relieved by a summons to Torrance to see some one below. He went away reluctantly, jealously, darting a threatening look at his wife as he looked back. Edith was as much alarmed for what was coming as Torrance was. She redoubled her attentions to the children, hoping to avert the disclosure which she, too, saw was so near.
"It is their time to—go back to the nursery," said Carry, with a voice full of passion, ringing the bell; and the children were scarcely out of hearing when the storm burst forth: "I have borne a great deal, oh, a great deal—more, far more, than you can ever know; but think, think! what he intended for me. To invite John Erskine here, thinking he was—some one else; to bring us into each other's company day after day; to tempt me to the old conversations, the old walks. Don't contradict me—he said so: that I might feel my misery, and drink my cup to the last dregs."
"Carry, Carry! you must be mistaking him; he could not wish that; it would be an insult—it would be impossible."
"That is why it pleases him," cried the poor wife; "he likes to watch and make sure that I suffer. If I did not suffer, it would do him no good. He says I am too proud and too cold to—go wrong, Edith! That is how he speaks to your sister; and he wishes to show me—to show me, as if I did not know—what I have and what I have lost!"
"Carry, you must not. Oh, don't let us even think of what is past now!"
"It is easy for you to say so. I have tried—oh, how I have tried!—never to think of the past—even now, even to-day. Think, only think! Because he supposedthat, he went expressly to see John Erskine, to ask him to come here, planning to torture me,—no matter to him, because he was sure I was too proud to go wrong. He wanted to watch the meeting—to see how we would look at each other, what we would say, how we would behave ourselves at such a moment. Can you believe it, Edith? Was there ever anything in a book, in the theatre, so cruel, so terrible? Do you suppose one can help, after that, thinking of the past, thinking of the future too?—for suppose it had been—Edward——Oh no, no! I don't want to name his name; but suppose it had been—he. Another time it may be he. He may come to visit John Erskine. We may meet in the world; and then I know—I know what is before me. This man—oh, I cannot call him by any name!—this man, whom I belong to, who can do what he pleases with my life—I know now what his pleasure will be,—to torture me, Edie!—for no purpose but just to see me suffer—in a new way. He has seen me suffer already—oh, how much!—and he isblasé! he wants something more piquant, a newer torture, a finer invention to get more satisfaction out of me. And you tell me I must not think of the past!"
"Carry, Carry!" cried Edith, trembling; "what can I say? You ought not to bear it. Come home; come back to us. Don't stay with him, if this is how you feel about him, another day."
Carry shook her head. "There is no going back," she said; "alas! I know that now, if never before. To go back is impossible: my father would not allow it; my mother would not approve it. I dare not myself. No, no, that cannot be. However dreadful the path may be, all rocks or thorns, and however your feet may be torn and bleeding—forward, forward one must go. There is no escape. I have learned that."
There was a difference of about six years between them—not a very great period; and yet what a difference it made! Edith had in her youthful mind the certainty that there was a remedy for every evil, and that what was wrong should not be permitted to exist. Carry knew no remedy at all for her own condition, or indeed, in the reflection of her own despair, for any other. Nothing was to be done that she knew of; nothing could do any good. To go back was impossible. She sat leaning back in her chair, clasping her white thin hands, looking into the vacant air,—knowing of no aid, but only a little comfort in the mere act of telling her miseries—nothing more; while Edith sat by her, trembling, glowing, impatient, eager for something to be done.
"Does mamma know?" the girl asked, after a pause.
Carry did not move from her position of quiet despair. "Do you think," she said, "it is possible that mamma, who has seen so much, should not know?"
To this Edith could make no reply, knowing how often the subject had been discussed between her mother and herself, with the certainty that Carry was unhappy, though without any special explanation to each other of the manner of her unhappiness.
"But if my father were to speak to him, Carry? My father ought to do it; it was he who made you—it was he who——"
"No one can say anything; no one can do anything. I am sorry I told you, Edie; but how could I help it? And it does me a little good to speak. I must complain, or I should die."
"Oh, my poor Car, my poor Car!" Edith cried, throwing herself upon her knees beside her sister. Die! she said, within herself; would it not be better—far better—to die? It was living that seemed to her impossible. But this was another of the sad pieces of knowledge which Carry had acquired: that you cannot die when you please, as the young and untried are apt to suppose—that mortal anguish does not always kill. It was Edith who was agitated and excited, seeking eagerly for a remedy—any remedy—even that heroic and tragical one; but Carry did not feel that even in that there was any refuge for her now.
This was by no means John Erskine's fault. He was as innocent of it, as unconscious of it, as any man could be; but Edith, an impatient girl, felt a sort of visionary rage against him, in which there was a certain attraction too. It seemed to her as if she must go and tell him of this sad family secret, though he had so little to do with it. For was not he involved, and his coming the occasion of it? If she could but have accused him, confided in him, it would have given her mind a certain relief, though she could not well tell why.
After the strange scene in which she had been made a party to her sister's wretchedness, it was inevitable that Edith should return to Lindores so completely occupied with this subject that she could think of nothing else. It was some time before she could get her mother's ear undisturbed; but as soon as they were alone, after various interruptions which the girl could scarcely bear, she poured forth her lamentable story with all the eloquence of passion and tears. Edith's whole soul was bent upon some remedy.
"How can there be any doubt on the subject? She must come home—she must go away from him. Mother! it is sacrilege, it is profanation. It is—I don't know any word bad enough. She must come away——"
Lady Lindores shook her head. "It is one of the most terrible things in the world; but now that it is done, she must stand to it. We can do nothing, Edith——"
"I cannot believe that," cried the girl. "What! live with a man like that,—live with himlike that—always together, sharing everything—and hate him? Mother! it is worse wickedness than—than the wicked. It is a shame to one's very nature. And to think it should be Carry who has to do it! But no one ought to be compelled to do it. It ought not to be. I will speak to papa myself if no one else will—it ought not to be——"
Again Lady Lindores shook her head. "In this world, in this dreadful world," she said, "we cannot think only of what is right and wrong—alas! there are other things to be taken into consideration. I think till I came home I was almost as innocent as you, Edith. Your father and I were very much blamed when we married. My people said to me, and still more his people said to him, that we should repent it all our lives; but that once having done it, we should have to put up with it. Well, you know what it used to be. I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I found it very easy to put up with. It was a strange sort of wandering life——"
"Oh, how much happier than now!" cried Edith. "Oh, poor little Rintoul! poor uncle! if they had but lived and flourished, how much better for us all!"
"I would not say that," said Lady Lindores. "I think now that when we were all so happy your father felt it. He did not say anything, but I am sure he felt it. See how different he is now! Now he feels himself in his right place. He has room for all his talents. Edith, do not put on that look, my dear child."
Edith's face was soft and young; but as her mother spoke, it hardened into an expression which changed its character entirely. Her upper lip closed down tight upon the other; her eyes widened and grew stern. Not her father himself, not the old ancestors on the panels, looked more stern than this girl of twenty. She did not say anything, but the change in her face was answer enough.
"Edith! you must not form such strong opinions; you must not make yourself the judge——"
"Then I must not be a human creature, mamma; and that I am, grown up, and obliged to think for myself. Sometimes I wish I did not. If I could only believe that all that was done was well, as some people do. Here all is wrong—all is wrong! It ought not to have been at all, this marriage,—and now—it ought not to continue to be——"
"My darling!" said Lady Lindores, appealing to her child with piteous eyes, "I am to blame too. I ought to have resisted more strongly; but it is hard, hard—to set one's self against one's husband, whom one has respected, always respected, and who has seemed to know best."
Edith's face did not relax. "Let us not talk of that," she said. "It makes one's heart sick. I think every one was wrong. Neither should you have done it, mamma—forgive me! nor should Carry have done it. She ought never, never, to have consented. I could not believe till the last moment that it was possible. Some one should have stopped it. I hoped so till the last moment; but when once it was done, as you say, one thought at least that he loved her. Why did he want to marry her if he did not love her? But he can't love her, since he behaves so. No love at all, either on one side or the other; and yet the two bound together for their lives. Was there ever anything so horrible? It ought not to be! It ought not to be!"
Lady Lindores took her daughter in her arms to soothe her; but Edith, drying the hot tears from her eyes, was almost impatient of her mother's caresses. What were caresses? Well enough, sweet in their way, but setting nothing right that was wrong. Yes, it was true the mother should not have permitted it, any more than the daughter should have done it. Two human creatures, grown up (as Edith repeated to herself), able to judge—they ought not to have allowed themselves to be swept away by the will of another. This was how the resolute girl put it. Her father she gave up—she would not judge him, therefore she preferred not to think of him at all. He had done it determinedly, and of distinct purpose; but the others who submitted, who allowed themselves to be forced into ill-doing, were they less to blame? All this she had gone over at the time of Carry's marriage, and had suppressed and forced it away from her. But now the current turned again. She withdrew herself from her mother's arms. Here was the most hideous thing in the world existing in their sight, her sister at once the victim and the chief actor in it, and all that could be given her in her eager attempt to set things right was a kiss! It seemed to Edith that the shame on her cheeks, the fire in her eyes, dried up her tears. She turned away from Lady Lindores. If she should be doomed too, by her father's will, would her mother have no better help to give her than a kiss? But when this idea passed through the girl's mind, she tossed back her head with an involuntary defiance. Never should such a doom come upon her. Heaven and earth could not move her so far. Obedience! This was such obedience as no one of God's creatures had any right to render to another—neither wife to husband, nor to her parents any child!
After this there was a long pause in the conversation between the mother and daughter. Lady Lindores divined Edith's thoughts. She understood every shade of the repugnance, disgust, disapproval, that the young upright spirit, untouched as yet by the bonds and complications of life, was passing through. And she shrank a little from Edith's verdict, which she acknowledged to be true. But what could she have done, she asked herself? Who would have approved her had she opposed her husband's wishes, encouraged her daughter to keep to a foolish engagement made under circumstances so totally different, and to refuse a match so advantageous? She had done everything she could; she had remonstrated, she had protested: but when Carry herself gave in, what could her mother, in the face of the universal disapproval of the world, at the risk of an absolute breach with her husband, do? But none of these things did Edith take into account—Edith, young and absolute, scorning compromises, determined only that what was right should be done, and nothing else. Lady Lindores withdrew too, feeling her caress rejected, understanding even what Edith was saying in her heart. What was a kiss when things so much more important were in question? It was perfectly true. She felt the justice of it to the bottom of her heart, and yet was chilled and wounded by the tacit condemnation of her child. She went to her work, which was always a resource at such a moment, and there was a silence during which each had time to regain a little composure. By-and-by, when the crisis seemed to have passed, Lady Lindores spoke.
"We must have young Erskine here," she said, almost timidly. "Your father has asked him; and in the circumstances, as we saw so much of him before, it is quite necessary. I think, as this unpleasant suggestion has been made—now, Edith, do not be unreasonable, we must do what we can in this world, not what we would,—as this has taken place, I will ask Carry and her husband to meet him. It will show Mr Torrance at least——"
"Mother!" Edith burst out—"mother! I tell you of a thing which is wickedness, which is a horror to think of, and you speak of asking people to dinner! Do you mean to turn it all into ridicule?—oh, not me, that would not matter—but all purity, all fitness? To ask them to—meet him——"
"My dear, my dear!" cried Lady Lindores, half weeping, half angry, appealing and impatient at once. She did not know what to say to this impracticable young judge. "We cannot resort to heroic measures," she cried. "It is impossible. We cannot take her away from him, any more than we can make of him a reasonable man. Carry herself would be the first to say no—for the children's sake, for the sake of her own credit. All we can do is to make the best of what exists. Mr Torrance must be shown quietly how mistaken he is—how much he is in the wrong."
"Mr Torrance! I would show him nothing, except how much I scorn him," Edith cried. "A man who dares to torture my sister—a man—who is not worthy to take her name into his lips, with his insolent doubts and his 'Lady Car,' which I cannot endure to hear!"
"But who is her husband, alas! I cannot bear to hear it either; but what can we do? We can take no notice of his insolent doubts; but we must prove, all the same, to all the world——"
"Mother! But if it did so happen—who can tell?—that it had been—poor Edward?"
"Hush!" cried her mother, almost fiercely; and then she added, "God forbid, Edith—God forbid!"
But who could have divined that such preliminaries were necessary to procure the assembling of the little party which met a few evenings later at Lindores, just on the eve of the departure of the family to London for their short enjoyment of the season? John Erskine had been told that it would be merely a family party—his old friends, as Lady Lindores, with kind familiarity and a smile so genial and so charming that the young man must have been a wizard had he seen anything beneath it, assured him. It never occurred to him to think of anything beneath. The Earl had been as cordial, as friendly, as could be desired; and though it gave him a disagreeable sensation to meet, when he entered the room, the stare of Torrance, whose big light eyes seemed to project out of his face to watch the entrance of the stranger, yet he speedily forgot this in the pleasure with which he found himself greeted by the others. Carry walked across the room with a gentle dignity, which yet was very unlike the shy brightness of her old girlish aspect, and held out to him a thin hand. "I think you scarcely remember me," she said, with a soft pathetic smile. She was not, as many women would have been, confused by the recollection that her husband was there jealously watching her looks and her tones: this consciousness, instead of agitating her, gave her a kind of inspiration. In other circumstances, the very sight of one who had been a witness of her brief romance might have disturbed her, but she was steeled against all tremors now.
John could scarcely make her any reply. The change in her was so great that he was struck dumb. Her girlish freshness was gone, her animation subdued, the intellectual eagerness quenched in her eyes. A veil of suffering and patience seemed to fall about her, through which she appeared as at a distance, in another sphere. "Indeed," he said, hesitating, "I should scarcely have known you," and murmured something about his pleasure in seeing her—at which she smiled again sadly, saying nothing more. This was all their greeting. Edith stood by with an unusually high colour, and a tremor of agitation in her frame, which he perceived vaguely with surprise, not knowing what it could mean; and then the little incident was over, half of the company seeing nothing whatever in it but a mere casual encounter of old acquaintances. Besides the family, there were present the girl whom John Erskine began within himself to call "that everlasting Miss Barrington," and the minister of the parish, a man carefully dressed in the costume adopted during the last generation by the Anglican priesthood, who was one of the "new school," and had the distinction of having made himself very alarming to his presbytery as, if not a heretic, yet at least "a thinker," given to preaching about honest doubt, and trifling with German philosophy. These two strangers scarcely afforded enough of variety to change the character of the family party. Torrance devoted himself to his dinner, and for some time spoke but little. Lady Caroline occupied herself with Dr. Meldrum with something of her old eagerness. It was evident that he was her resource, and that vague views upon the most serious subjects, which everybody else thought high-flown, found some sympathy in this professional thinker, who was nothing if not heretical. As for John, he was wholly occupied by Lady Lindores, who talked to him with a fluency which was almost feverish.
"We shall find you here when we come back," she said, "with all your arrangements made? And I hope Rintoul will return with us. Certainly he will be here in August, and very thankful to find a neighbour like you, Mr Erskine, with whom he will have so much in common."
"That's a compliment to the rest of us," said Torrance, who sat on the other side. "Rintoul, I suppose, doesn't find much in common with us ignorant clowns in the county,"—this he said without looking at any one, with his head bent over his plate.
"I did not say so. Rintoul is not so much with us as I could wish—he has his duty to attend to. To be sure, they get a great deal of leave; but you young men have so many places to go to nowadays. You spend so very little time at home. I wonder if it is a good thing or the reverse," said Lady Lindores, with a little sigh. "A mother may be pardoned for not admiring the new way, when our sons come home, not for us, but for the shooting."
"I think I am scarcely able to judge," said John: "home—perhaps was a little different to me: my mother has so many claiming a share in her. And now my home is here in Dalrulzian, which is merely a house, not a home at all," he said with something between a laugh and a sigh.
"You must marry," Lady Lindores said; "that is what the county expects of you. You will disappoint all your neighbours if you do not accomplish this duty within a year. The question is, whether the lady is already found, or whether we are to have the gratification of seeing you go through all the preliminaries, which is a great amusement, Mr Erskine; so I hope you have your choice still to make."
It was accident, of course, which directed her eyes to Nora, who sat by Torrance—accident only; for a kind woman, who was herself a mother, would not have willingly done anything to light up the sudden colour which flamed over the girl's face. Nora felt as if she could have sunk into the earth. As for John, it seemed almost an insult to her that he should look at her coldly across the table with studious unconsciousness.
"I am afraid I cannot undertake to furnish amusement for the county," he said, "in that way—and Dalrulzian is not big enough for two people. I had no idea it was so small. It is a bachelor's box, a lodge, a sort of chambers in the country, where one can put up a friend, but nothing more."
Here Nora found a way out of her embarrassment. "Indeed," she cried, "you wrong Dalrulzian, Mr Erskine. We found it sufficient for our whole family, and the most delightful place to live in. You are not worthy of Dalrulzian if you talk of it so."
"I think Erskine is quite right," said Torrance, between two mouthfuls; "it's a small little bit of a place."
"So is Lindores," the Countess said, eagerly; "there are quantities of small rooms, but no sort of grandeur of space. We must go to Tinto for that. You have not yet seen Tinto, Mr Erskine? We must not be jealous, for our old nests are more natural. If we were all rich enough to build sets of new rooms like a little Louvre, there would be none of the old architecture left."
"You are speaking about architecture, Lady Lindores," said Dr Meldrum. He had just returned from his first expedition "abroad," and he was very willing to enlighten the company with his new experiences: besides, just then Lady Caroline was pressing him very hard upon a point which he did not wish as yet to commit himself upon. "Stone and lime are safer questions than evolution and development," he said, turning to her, in an undertone.
"Safer perhaps, but not so interesting. They are ended and settled—arrange them in what form you please, and they stand there for ever," said Lady Caroline, with brightening eyes; "but not so the mind: not so a single thought, however slight it may be. There is all the difference between life and death."
"My dear Lady Caroline! you will not call the Stones of Venice dead—or St Peter's, soaring away into the skies? Though they are but collections of stones, they are as living as we are."
"I begin to recognise her again," said John, innocent of all reason why he should not fix his attention upon poor Carry, as her pale face lighted up. He felt too pitiful, too tender of her, to speak of her formally by her new title. "She used to look like that in the old days."
"Yes," said Lady Lindores, with a sigh. "Poor Carry! visionary subjects always pleased her best."
Torrance had raised his head from his plate, and was lending an eager ear. "It's confoundedly out of place all that for a woman," he said. "What has she to do with politics, and philosophy, and nonsense? She has plenty to think of in her children and her house."
Lady Lindores made him a little bow, but took no further notice. She was exasperated, and scarcely under her own control; but Nora, on the other side, was glad to have the chance of breaking her lance on some one. If Pat Torrance was not worth her steel, there was at least another opposite whose opinions she had no clue to, whom she would have liked to transfix if that had been possible. "It does us poor girls good to have the benefit of a gentleman's real opinion," she said. "Would you like Lady Caroline to make your puddings? It is so good to know what is expected of us—in all ranks."
"Why not?" said Torrance, over his plate. "A woman's business is to look after her house—that was always considered the right thing. I hope you are not one of the strong-minded ones, Miss Barrington. You had much better not. No man ever looks at them."
"And what a penalty that would be!" cried Nora, with solemnity.
"You wouldn't like it, that I'll promise you. I tell you, they are all the ugly ones. I once saw a lot of them, one uglier than the other—women that knew no man would ever look at them. They were friends of Lady Car's, you may be sure, all chattering twenty to the dozen. They want to get into Parliament—that is at the bottom of it all; and then they would make a pretty mess—for us to set right."
"But, Mr Torrance, you could not set it right, for you are not in Parliament any more than I am," said Nora, pointedly. He gave her a look out of his big eyes which might have killed her had looks such power. The Earl had complained that his son-in-law was not amenable in this matter. But nobody knew that it was a very sore point with the wealthy squire, whom no one had so much as thought of for such a dignity. Much poorer, less important persons than himself, had been suggested, had even sat for the county. But Torrance of Tinto, conscious that he was the only man among them who could afford to throw away a few thousands without wincing—of him nobody had thought. He had declaimed loudly on many occasions that nothing would induce him to take the trouble; but this slight had rankled at his heart.
"Mr Torrance would not like London life," Lady Lindores said, coming to his aid; "turning night into day is hard upon those who are accustomed to a more natural existence."
"You speak as if I had never been out of the country," said her ungracious son-in-law. "I know that's the idea entertained of me in this house: but it's a mistake. I've seen life just as much as those who make more fuss about it."
"And you, Mr Erskine, have you seen life?" said Lady Lindores, turning to him with, a smile.
"Very little," said John—"in London at least."
"It's a wonderful idea to me, though most people seem to hold it," said Dr Meldrum, coming in, in a pause of that conversation with Lady Caroline, which sometimes alarmed him by its abstractness and elevation, "that life is only to be seen in London, or in Paris, or some of those big centres. Under correction, Lady Lindores, and not to put my small experience above the more instructed——"
"That is an alarming beginning," cried Edith. "Dr Meldrum means to show us how ignorant we all are."
"That's what I never can show any one in this house," said the minister, with old-fashioned politeness; "but my opinion is, that life in a great metropolis is the most conventional—ay, you'll acknowledge that—the most contracted, the most narrow, the most——Well, well, if you'll not let a man speak——"
The hubbub of contradiction and amusement made the party more genial, more at ease, than it had yet been.
"If you make that out, Doctor, you will give us something new to think of," the Earl said.
And poor Lady Caroline, who found in the good minister her chief intellectual resource, prepared to listen to his argument with all the attention of a hearer who believes fully in the abilities of her guide. "I think I can see what Dr Meldrum means," she said.
"I am sure you will see what I mean," the Doctor said, gratefully. "In the first place, it's far too big to make society general—you'll allow that? Well, then, the result is, that society, being so vast, breaks itself up into little coteries. It's liker a number of bits of villages just touching each other, like a long thread of them, every one with its own little atmosphere. That's just London to me. You meet the same people as if you were in a village; then go out of that clique to another, and you meet the same people again, but another set. There was one day," said the minister, with a certain pride, "that I was very dissipated. I went out to my lunch, and then to a party in the afternoon, and then to my dinner, and to two places at night. It was a great experience. Well, if you'll believe me, I was wearied with seeing the same faces, in a great society like London, the chief place in the world. There was scarcely one I did not meet three times in the course of that day. In the country here, you could not do more. There's as much variety as that in Dunearn itself."
"I see what Dr Meldrum means," said Carry. "No doubt it was a special society into which he had been introduced, and people were asked to meet him because they were distinguished—because they were people whom it was a pleasure to meet."
"That's a great compliment to me, but I cannot take it to myself. They were, many of them, persons that it was no pleasure to meet. Some with titles, and, so far as I could see, little more. Some that were perhaps rich—I hope so, at least, for they were nothing else."
"This is cynicism," said Lord Lindores; "and I, who have lived in the opinion that Dr Meldrum was the most benignant, the most tolerant of men——"
"One can understand entirely," repeated Lady Caroline, standing by her friend, "what he means. I have thought so myself. The same faces, the same ideas, even the same words that mean so little——"
"I didn't know you were so well up in London society, Lady Car," said her husband, who had been trying for some time to strike into themêlée, and whose lance was specially aimed at her of all the talkers. And then there was a general flutter of talk, instinctive, all round the table; for when a man stretches across to say something disagreeable to his wife, everybody present is upon their honour to quench the nascent quarrel. The ladies left the table soon after; and the conversation of the men did not afford the same risks, for after one or two contradictions, which the Earl put aside with well-bred ease and a slight but unanswerable contempt, Torrance sank into sulky silence, taking a great deal of wine. At such moments a little poetic justice and punishment of his sins towards his daughter was inflicted even upon Lord Lindores.
"Do you like him, Nora?"
This is a question that means nothing in most cases, nor would it have meant anything now save for Nora's special sense of having been presented to John Erskine in something like the light of a candidate for his favour.
"I don't think I like him at all," she said, with some petulance. "He looks at us all as if we were natives of an undiscovered country. He is very cautious, not intending to make us proud by too much notice. Oh, it is different with you. You knew him before—you are not one of the barbarous people. As for me, I am jaundiced, I am not a fair judge; because he is determined, whatever happens, that not a single glass bead, not a cowrie or a bangle, or whatever you call them, will he give to me."
"That is not what he means, Nora. He is a little bewildered. Fancy coming into an entirely new place, which you know nothing about, and realising all at once that you belong to it, and that here is your place in the world. That happened to us too. I sympathise with him. We felt just the same when we came to Lindores."
"But you were not afraid of the natives, Edith. Young men, however," said Nora, with an air of grave impartiality, "are to be pitied in that way; they think themselves so dreadfully important. If they speak to a girl, they suppose immediately that they may be putting false hopes into her head and making her think—and then that frightens them. Well, it is natural it should frighten them. Suppose that Mr Erskine, by merely speaking civilly to me, should run the risk of breaking my heart—is not that something to be afraid of? for he is quitenice, I am sure, and would not, if he could help it, break any girl's heart."
"You are talking nonsense, Nora. How did you get so much acquaintance with the conceits of young men?"
"I see them through the boys. Jamie and Ned are like a pair of opera-glasses; you can see through them what that kind of creature thinks."
"I am sure," said Edith, with some heat, "Rintoul is not like that."
"Oh, I was not thinking of Lord Rintoul," cried Nora, precipitately. She blushed, and Edith observed it, making her own conclusions. And thereupon she on her side had something to say.
"Rintoul, when he was only Robin, was a delightful brother. He never was clever—even I was cleverer than he was; and Carry, of course, was always ever so far above us both. But now that he is Rintoul, he is a little changed. One is fond of him, of course, all the same. But it is different; he has ideas—of money, of getting on in the world, of people making good marriages, and that sort of thing. I think we have had enough of that in our family," Edith added, with a sigh; "but Rintoul has got corrupted. To be heir to anything seems to corrupt people somehow. It is not so very much: but he has got ideas—of what his rank demands—that sort of thing. Because there is a title, he must marry for money. Well, perhaps not quite so broad as that: but he must not marry where there is no money. I cannot put up with it," Edith cried.
And it was true that she could not put up with it. Yet there was a certain intention, too, even in this little outburst. One girl cannot chatter with another without meanings, without secret intimations of dangers in the way. Nora's countenance clouded over, the blush on her cheek grew deeper; but she laughed, putting a little force on herself.
"Is not that quite right? I have always been taught so. Not to marry for money. That is putting it a great deal too broadly, as you say—but only when you are going to marry, that it should not be a penniless person. It is so much better for both parties, mamma always says."
"I wonder if you mean to conform to the rule?" her friend asked, with an impulse half of mockery, half of curiosity.
"I don't mean to conform to any rule," said Nora. "One has to wait, you know, when one is a girl, till somebody is kind enough to fall in love with one; and then you are allowed to say whether you will have him or no. Don't you remember what Beatrice says?—'It is my cousin's duty to make courtesy and say, "Father, as it please you,"' only with that little reservation, 'Let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another courtesy——'"
"It is worse than that," said Edith, very gravely. "You say some things are hard upon young men; but oh, how much, much harder upon girls! It is in town that one feels that. There was something, after all, to be said for Carry marrying in the country, without going through the inspection of all these men. If I speak to any one or dance with any one who would be a good match, they will say immediately that mamma has got her eye upon him—that she is trying to catch him for me—that she means to make up a marriage. My mother," cried Edith, with an inference in the very emphasis with which she uttered the word; "as if she were not more romantic than I am a hundred times, and more intolerant of scheming! The fatal thing is," added the girl, with her serious face, "that, if a crisis should come, mamma would give in. Against her conscience she will try to find reasons for doing what my father wishes, whether it is right or wrong."
"But isn't it a woman's duty to do what her husband wishes?" said Nora. "I have always heard that, too, at home."
These two young women belonged to their period. They considered the subject gravely, willing to be quite impartial; but neither she who suggested that conjugal obedience was a duty, nor she who objected to it in her mother's case, felt the question to be in the least beyond discussion.
"It is in the Bible," said Edith—"one cannot deny that; still there must be distinctions. A woman who is grown up, and a reasonable creature, cannot obey like a slave. It is still more distinct that a child should obey its parents; but at my age, it is not possible I could just do everything I am told, like a little girl. If papa were to order me to do as poor Carry did, I should not think twice; I should refuse, plainly. If it is wrong, I cannot help it; it could not be so wrong as to obey. I would not do it,—nothing in the world," cried the girl, in her ardour striking her hands together, "would make me do it; and with far more reason a mother should—judge for herself. You will never convince me otherwise," Edith said, holding her head high.
Nora pondered, but made no reply. She had never arrived at any great domestic question on which the rules of her life had been out of accord with her happiness. She had never thought of orders from one or the other of her parents, insisted upon against her will. They had never compelled her to do anything, so far as she could remember. And indeed, cruel parents are little known to the children of the present day. She would not have believed in them but for this great and evident instance of Carry Lindores. The Earl was no tyrant either. He had never been known in the character until that temptation came in his way. Had he forced his daughter to compliance? Nobody could say so. He had not locked her in her room, or kept her on bread and water, or dragged her to the altar, according to old formulas. He had insisted, and she had not been strong enough to stand out. Was it not her fault rather than his? Open as a nineteenth-century mind is bound to be to all sides of the question, Nora was not sure that there was not something to be said for the father too—which was a great instance of candour in a representative of youth.
"I do not understand being forced to do anything," she said, contemplatively. "How is it when you areforced? One might yield of one's own will. If I was asked to do anything—I think anything—for the sake of my father and mother, I should do it, whatever it was."
"Almost anything," Edith said, correcting her friend; "but notthat, for instance—certainly not that."
"I don't know what you mean bythat" said Nora, petulantly; though indeed this was not exactly true. Both speaker and listener knew that it was not exactly true, and no explanation followed. The girls had been wandering in the woods which covered the sloping bank on the summit of which the castle stood. Its turrets were visible far above them, among the green of the early foliage. The trees were still thinly but brightly clad, the leaves not wholly unclosed, the beeches just loosening their spring finery out of its brown sheath. The river was still some way below. They were seated full in the afternoon sunshine, which was not warm enough to incommode them, upon a knoll covered half with grass, half with moss, through which penetrated here and there the brownness of the twisted roots, and of bits of rock and boulder. All about in the hollows, under every projection, at the root of every tree, nestling in the crevices of the brown banks, and on the edges of the rocks, were clumps of primroses, like scatterings of palest gold. The river made a continuous murmur in the air; the birds were busy overhead in all their sweet afternoon chatter, flitting about from branch to branch, paying their visits, trying over their notes. It was only through a checkered screen of leaves that the sky was visible at all, save in this little opening, where all was light and brightness, the centre of the picture, with these two young figures lending it interest. They were not either of them beauties to make a sensation in a London season, but they were both fair enough to please any simple eye—two fair and perfect human creatures in their bloom, the very quintessence of the race, well-bred, well-mannered, well-educated, well-looking, knowing a little and thinking a little, and perhaps, according to the fashion of the time, believing that they knew less and thought more than was at all the case. Both Edith and Nora despised themselves somewhat for knowing no Latin, much less any Greek. They thought the little accomplishments they possessed entirely trivial, and believed that their education had been shamefully neglected—which was an unnecessary reproach to their parents, who had done the best they could for the girls, and had transmitted to them at least an open and bright intelligence, which is more pleasant than learning. On the other hand, these young things believed that they had inspirations unknown to their seniors, and had worked out unaided many problems unsolved by their fathers and mothers—which perhaps was also a mistaken view. They liked to raise little questions of delicate morality, and to feel that there were more things in heaven and earth than had been thought of in any previous philosophy. They were a little alike even in appearance; the one a little fairer than the other—not any piquant contrast of blue eyes with brown, after the usual fashion of artistic grouping. They might even have been mistaken for sisters, as they sometimes were—a mistake which pleased them in their enthusiasm for each other.
Both these girls had been affected more or less by the intellectual tastes of poor Lady Caroline, whom they devoutly believed to be a genius, though wanting (as persons of genius are supposed generally to be) in some ordinary qualities which would have been good for her. Their speculations, their loves and likings, especially in the matter of books, were more or less moulded by her; and they copied out her verses, and thought them poetry. Perhaps in this respect Nora, who was the more intellectual, was at the same time the less independent of the two. Edith was in all things the representative of the positive, as they were all fond of saying—the realist, the practical person. Such was the prettyargotof this thoughtful circle. But on the whole, as they sat there together musing and talking as became their visionary age, the eye could not have lighted upon, nor the heart been satisfied with, any spectacle more pleasant than that of these two slim and simple girls exchanging their thoughts in the temperate spring sunshine, among the spring buds and flowers. A little silence had fallen upon them: they were sitting idly together, each one following out her own thoughts—thoughts which bore somehow, who could doubt, upon the opening life before them, and were more than mere thinkings, dreams, and anticipations all in one—when suddenly there drifted across their path a very simple, very ordinary embodiment of fate, yet distinctly such, a young man in fishing costume, with his basket over his shoulder, coming towards them by the winding path from the river. The sound of his step in the silence of the woods—which were not silent at all, yet thrilled to the first human sound as if all the rest of creation were not worth reckoning—caught their attention at once. They saw him before he was aware of their presence, and recognised him with a slight sensation. It is to be doubted whether the sudden apparition of a pretty girl flitting across the vision of two young men would not have produced a greater emotion for the moment, but it would have been of a different kind. Both Nora and Edith recognised in the approach of the new-comer the coming in of a new influence—a something which, for aught they knew, might be of far more importance in their lives than all the echoes of the woods or influences of the fresh spring skies. The character of the scene changed at once with his appearance. Its tranquillity lessened; it became dramatic, opening up an opportunity for all the complications of life. Nora was the one whom these romantic possibilities affected the most, for she was the most imaginative, seeing a story in everything. Since that morning at Miss Barbara's house in Dunearn, she had withdrawn from the contemplation of John Erskine as in any way capable of affecting herself. For a moment she had been offended and vexed with fate; but that feeling had passed away, and Nora now looked upon him with a philosophical eye with a reference to Edith, not to herself. From all she had ever seen or heard, it did not appear likely to Nora that two girls and a young man could go on meeting familiarly, constantly, as it was inevitable they should do, without something more coming of it than is written in the trivial records of every day. Perhaps young men, being more immediately active agents of their own fate, are less likely to think of the dramatic importance of any chance meeting. John did not think about the future at all, nor had he made any calculation as to what was likely to result from continual meetings. He was pleased, yet half annoyed at the same time, his heart giving a jump when he recognised Edith, but falling again when he saw "that eternal Miss Barrington" beside her. "Am I never to see her by herself?" he muttered, half angrily. But next moment he came forward, quickening his pace; and after a little hesitation, to see whether it were permissible, he threw himself at their feet, making the pretty picture perfect.
"Have you caught any fish, Mr Erskine? But isn't it too bright?"
"I have not been trying to catch any fish. These things," said John, laying down his rod and loosening his basket from his shoulder, "are tributes paid to the genius of the place. I don't want to kill the trout. I daresay they are of more use, and I am sure they have more right to be where they are, than I."
"Who can have a better right than you?" said Nora, always moved by the idea of the home from which she had felt herself ousted to make room for this languid proprietor. "You are the real owner of the place."
"I am a fish out of water—as yet," said the young man: he added the last words in deference to the eager remonstrances and reproaches which were evidently rushing to their lips.
"You had better come with us to town. Would you be in your element there? Men seem to like that do-nothing life. It is only we girls that are rising up against it. We want something to do."
"And so do I," said John, ruefully. "Tell me something. Nobody that I can see wants me here. Old Rolls, perhaps; but his approval is not enough to live for—is it? He would make out a code for me with very little trouble. But imagine a poor fellow stranded in a fresh country—altogether new to me, Miss Barrington, notwithstanding my forefathers—no shooting, no hunting, nothing to do. You may laugh, but what is to become of me—especially when you go away?" he said, turning to Edith, with a little heightening colour. This acted sympathetically, and brought a still brighter flush to Edith's face. Nora looked on in a gentle, pensive, grandmotherly sort of way, observing the young people with benignity, and saying to herself that she knew this was how it would be—because it isnotso suitable, and Lord Lindores will never consent, she added, with a private reflection aside upon the extreme perversity of human affairs.
"No shooting, no hunting, no——Then you will be happy, Mr Erskine, in September."
"Happier. But I don't want to wait so long. I should prefer to be happy now."
"In the way of amusement, Mr Erskine means, Edith. That is all boys——I beg your pardon—I was thinking of my brothers. That is all gentlemen mean when they speak of something to do."
"Well—unless I had a trade, and could make shoes or chairs, or something. The people are all too well off, too well educated, to want me. They condescend to me as a foolish individual without information or experience. They tell me my family has always been onthe right sidein politics, with a scornful consciousness that I don't know very well what they mean by the right side. My humble possessions are all in admirable order. There are not even any trees to cut down. What am I to do? Visit the poor? There are no poor——"
"Oh, Mr Erskine!" cried both the girls in a breath.
"I poveri vergognosi, who require to be known and delicately dealt with, perhaps—fit subjects for your delicate hands, not for mine."
"If you begin talking of delicate hands, you defeat us altogether: the age of compliments is over," said Edith, with some heat; while Nora cast a furtive glance at the hands both of herself and her friend. They were both sufficiently worthy of the name—ladies' hands which had known no labour, neither in themselves nor their progenitors. Edith's were the better shaped—if the tapering Northern fingers are to be considered better than the blunter Greek—but Nora's the whiter of the two. This reflection was quite irrelevant; yet how much of our thinkings would be silenced if all that was irrelevant was put out of account?
"I mean no compliment. Suppose that I were to go into the nearest village and offer charity—that would be my brutal way of proceeding. What would they do to me, do you think? Pitch me into the river! tar and feather me! No; if there is anything to be done in that way, it must be done with knowledge. It is in vain you mock me with reproaches for doing nothing—I am a man out of work."
"So long as they do not ask for money," said Nora, demurely, "mamma says every man should be helped to get work. And then we ask, what is his trade?"
"Ah! that is the question,—if the wretch hasn't got one?"
"It is very difficult in that case. Then he must take to helping in the garden, or harvest-work, or—I don't know—hanging on (but that is so very bad for them) about the house."
"Clearly that is what I am most fit for. Do you remember how you used to engage me reading aloud? They all made sketches except myself, Miss Barrington. Beaufort—do you recollect what capital drawings he made? And I read—there's no telling how many Tauchnitz volumes I got through: and then the discussions upon them. I wonder if you recollect as well as I do?" said John to Edith, with a great deal of eager light in his eyes.
Nora had a great mind to get up and walk away. She was not at all offended, nor did she feel left out, as might have happened. But she said to herself calmly, that it was a pity to spoil sport, and that she was not wanted the least in the world.
"I remember very well; but there are reasons," said Edith, dropping her voice, and bending a little towards him, "why we don't talk of that much. Oh, it does not matter to me! but mamma and Car—have a—feeling. Don't say anything to them of these old times."
"So long as I may talk of them now and then—to you," said John, in the same undertone. He was delighted to have this little link of private recollections between them; and the pleasure of it made his eyes and his countenance glow. At this Nora felt actually impelled to do what she had only thought of before. She rose and wandered off from them on pretence of gathering some primroses. "How lovely they are! and nobody sees them. Will you lend me your basket, Mr Erskine, to carry some home?" She took it up with a smile, bidding them wait for her. She felt gently benignant, protecting, patronising, like a quite old person. Why should not they have their day? Edith, too, rose hastily, following her friend's example, as if their easy repose was no longer practicable. She had a sense, half delightful, half alarming, of having suddenly got upon very confidential terms with John Erskine. She rose up, and so did he. But it would have been foolish to copy Nora's whim and gather primroses, or even to follow her, as if they were afraid of each other. So Edith stood still, and John by her side.
"I cannot forget that summer," he said, in the same low tone, which was now totally unnecessary, there being nobody at hand to overhear.
"I remember it too," said Edith, softly, "almost better than any other. It was just before—anything happened: when we were so poor. I have my little grey frock still that I used to wear—that I went everywhere in. What expeditions we had—Car and I! I daresay you thought us very wild, very untamed. That was what mamma always used to say."
"I thought you," John began hurriedly—then stopped, with a little unsteady laugh. "You might object if I put it into words. It was my first awakening," he added a moment after, in a still lower tone.
Edith gave him a curious, half-startled glance. She thought the word a strange one. Awakening! What was the meaning of it? But he said no more; and they stood together in the sweet silence, in that confusion of delightful sound which we call silence, because our human voices and noises have nothing to do with its harmony. There were birds singing, one would have said, on every twig, pouring forth their experiences with a hundred repetitions, flitting from one branch to another telling their several tales. On every side were mysterious depths of shadow, cool hollows, and long withdrawing vistas—a soft background, where nature tenderly looked on and watched, around that centre of life and brightness and reawakening. It was a scene for any painter: the brown banks and spring foliage, all breathing new life; the sunny opening all full of the warmth of the present sunshine; Nora a pretty attendant figure on the grass among the trees, all flushed with light and shadow, stooping to gather handfuls of primroses, while the others stood diffident, charmed, shy of each other, lingering together. It seemed to John the new world in which all life begins again; but to Edith it was only a confusing, bewildering, alarming sort of fairy land, which all her instincts taught her it was right to flee from. "Look at Nora with her basket full," she cried, hurriedly, "and we doing nothing! Let us go and help her."