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Title: The Ladies Lindores, Vol. 1 (of 3)

Author: Mrs. Oliphant

Release date: December 8, 2014 [eBook #47591]
                Most recently updated: December 18, 2015

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADIES LINDORES, VOL. 1 (OF 3) ***




Produced by Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan & the online
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                      THE LADIES LINDORES

                        BY MRS OLIPHANT


    IN THREE VOLUMES
    VOL. I.

    WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
    EDINBURGH AND LONDON
    MDCCCLXXXIII

    _ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 'BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE'_


    "TWO OF THE SWEET'ST COMPANIONS IN THE WORLD."
                                            --_Cymbeline_.




THE LADIES LINDORES.




CHAPTER I.


The mansion-house of Dalrulzian stands on the lower slope of a hill,
which is crowned with a plantation of Scotch firs. The rugged outline of
this wood, and the close-tufted mass of the tree-tops, stand out against
the pale East, and protect the house below and the "policy," as the
surrounding grounds are called in Scotland; so that though all the winds
are sharp in that northern county, the sharpest of all is tempered. The
house itself is backed by lighter foliage--a feathery grove of birches,
a great old ash or two, and some tolerably well-grown, but less
poetical, elms. It is a house of distinctively local character, with the
curious, peaked, and graduated gables peculiar to Scotch rural
architecture, and thick walls of the roughest stone, washed with a
weather-stained coat of yellow-white. Two wings, each presenting a
gabled end to the avenue, and a sturdy block of building retired between
them,--all strong, securely built, as if hewn out of the rock, formed
the homely house. It had little of the beauty which a building of no
greater pretensions would probably have had in England. Below the wings,
and in front of the hall-door, with its two broad flat stone steps,
there was nothing better than a gravelled square, somewhat mossy in the
corners, and marked by the trace of wheels; but round the south wing
there swept a sort of terrace, known by no more dignified name than that
of "The Walk," from which the ground sloped downwards, broken at a lower
level by the formal little parterres of an old-fashioned flower-garden.
The view from the Walk was of no very striking beauty, but it had the
charm of breadth and distance--a soft sweep of undulating country, with
an occasional glimpse of a lively trout-stream gleaming here and there
out of its covert of crags and trees, and a great, varied, and
ever-changing world of sky,--not a prospect which captivated a stranger,
but one which, growing familiar day by day and year by year, was
henceforth missed like something out of their lives by the people who,
being used to it, had learned to love that silent companionship of
nature. It was the sort of view which a man pauses, not to look at but
to see, even when he is pacing up and down his library thinking of John
Thomson's demand for farm improvements, or, heavier thought, about his
balance at his bankers: and which solaces the eyes of a tired woman,
giving them rest and refreshment through all the vicissitudes of life.
People sought it instinctively in moods of reflection, in moments of
watching, at morning and at twilight, whenever any change was going on
in that great exhaustless atmosphere, bounded by nothing but the pale
distance of the round horizon,--and when was it that there was no change
in that atmosphere?--clouds drifting, shadows flying, gleams of light
like sudden revelations affording new knowledge of earth and heaven.

On the day on which the reader is asked first to visit this house of
Dalrulzian, great things were happening in it. It was the end of one
_régime_ and the beginning of another. The master of the house, a young
man who had been brought up at a distance, was coming home, and the
family which had lived in it for years was taking its leave of the
place.

The last spot which they visited and on which they lingered was the
Walk. When the packing was over, the final remnants gathered up, the
rooms left in that melancholy bareness into which rooms relapse when the
prettinesses and familiarities of habitation have been swept away, the
remaining members of the family came out with pensive faces, and stood
together gazing somewhat wistfully upon the familiar scene. They had
looked on many that were more fair. They were going to a landscape of
greater beauty further south--brighter, richer, warmer in foliage and
natural wealth; but all this did not keep a certain melancholy out of
their eyes. The younger of the party, Nora Barrington, cried a little,
her lip quivering, a big tear or two running over. "It is foolish to
feel it so much," her mother said. "How is it one feels it so much? I
did not admire Dalrulzian at all when we came."

"Out of perversity," said her husband; but he did not smile even at the
cleverness of his own remark.

Nora regarded her father with a sort of tender rage. "It is all very
well for you," she said; "one place is the same as another to you. But I
was such a little thing when we came here. To you it is one place among
many; to me it is home."

"If you take it so seriously, Nora, we shall have you making up to young
Erskine for the love of his house."

"Edward," cried Mrs Barrington in a tone of reproof, "I feel disposed to
cry too. We have had a great many happy days in it. But don't let old
Rolls see you crying, Nora. Here he is coming to say good-bye. When do
you expect Mr Erskine, Rolls? You must tell him we were sorry not to see
him; but he will prefer to find his house free when he returns. I hope
he will be as happy at Dalrulzian as we have been since we came here."

"Wherefore would he no' be happy, mem? He is young and weel off: and
you'll no' forget it's his own house."

Rolls had stepped out from one of the windows to take farewell of the
family, whom he was sorry to lose, yet anxious to get rid of. There was
in him the satisfied air of the man who remains in possession, and whose
habits are unaffected by the coming and going of ephemeral beings such
as tenants. The Barringtons had been at Dalrulzian for more than a dozen
years; but what was that to the old servant who had seen them arrive and
saw them go away with the same imperturbable aspect? He stood relieved
against the wall in his well-brushed black coat, concealing a little
emotion under a watchful air of expectancy just touched with impatience.
Rolls had condescended more or less to the English family all the time
they had been there, and he was keeping up his _rôle_ to the last,
anxious that they should perceive how much he wanted to see them off the
premises. Mrs Barrington, who liked everybody to like her, was vexed by
this little demonstration of indifference; but the Colonel laughed. "I
hope Mr Erskine will give you satisfaction," he said. "Come, Nora, you
must not take root in the Walk. Don't you see that Rolls wishes us
away?"

"Dear old Walk!" cried Nora; "dear Dalrulzian!" She rolled the _r_ in
the name, and turned the _z_ into a _y_ (which is the right way of
pronouncing it), as if she had been to the manner born; and though an
English young lady, had as pretty a fragrance of northern Scotland in
her voice as could be desired. Rolls did not trust himself to look at
this pretty figure lingering, drying wet eyes, until she turned round
upon him suddenly, holding out her hands: "The moment we are off, before
we are down the avenue, you will be wishing us back," she cried with
vehemence; "you can't deceive _me_. You would like to cry too, if you
were not ashamed," said the girl, with a smile and a sob, shaking the
two half-unwilling hands she had seized.

"Me cry! I've never done that since I came to man's estate," cried Rolls
indignantly, but after a suspicious pause. "As for wishing you back,
Miss Nora, wishing you were never to go,--wishing you would grow to the
Walk, as the Cornel says----" This was so much from such a speaker, that
he turned, and added in a changed tone, "You'll have grand weather for
your journey, Cornel. But you must mind the twa ferries, and no' be late
starting,"--a sudden reminder which broke up the little group, and made
an end of the scene of leave-taking. It was the farewell volley of
friendly animosity with which Rolls put a stop to his own perverse
inclination to be soft-hearted over the departure of the English
tenants. "He could not let us go without that parting shot," the
"Cornel" said, as he put his wife into the jingling "coach" from the
station, which, every better vehicle having been sent off beforehand,
was all that remained to carry them away.

The Barringtons during their residence at Dalrulzian had been received
into the very heart of the rural society, in which at first there had
sprung up a half-grudge against the almost unknown master of the place,
whose coming was to deprive them of a family group so pleasant and so
bright. The tenants themselves, though their turn was over, felt
instinctively as if they were expelled for the benefit of our intruder,
and entertained this grudge warmly. "Mr Erskine might just as well have
stayed away," Nora said. "He can't care about it as we do." Her mother
laughed and chid, and shared the sentiment. "But then it's 'his ain
place,' as old Rolls says." "And I daresay he thinks there is twice as
much shooting," said the Colonel, complacently: "I did, when we came.
He'll be disappointed, you'll see." This gave him a faint sort of
satisfaction. In Nora's mind there was a different consolation, which
yet was not a consolation, but a mixture of expectancy and curiosity,
and that attraction which surrounds an unconscious enemy. She was going
to make acquaintance with this supplanter, this innocent foe, who was
turning them out of their home because it was his home--the most
legitimate reason. She was about to pay a series of visits in the
country, to the various neighbours, who were all fond of her and
reluctant to part with her. Perhaps her mother had some idea of the
vague scheme of match-making which had sprung up in some minds, a plan
to bring the young people together; for what could be more suitable than
a match between John Erskine, the young master of Dalrulzian, who knew
nothing about his native county, and Nora Barrington, who was its
adopted child, and loved the old house as much as if she had been born
in it? Mrs Barrington, perhaps, was not quite unconscious of this plan,
though not a word had been said by any of these innocent plotters. For
indeed what manner of man young Erskine was, and whether he was worthy
of Nora, or in the least likely to please her, were things altogether
unknown to the county, where he had not been seen for the last dozen
years.

Anyhow he was coming as fast as the railway could carry him, while Nora
took leave of her parents at the station. The young man then on his way
was not even aware of her existence, though she knew all about him--or
rather about his antecedents; for about John Erskine himself no one in
the neighbourhood had much information. He had not set foot in the
county since he was a boy of tender years and unformed character, whose
life had been swallowed up in that of an alien family, of pursuits and
ideas far separated from those of his native place. It almost seemed,
indeed, as if it were far from a happy arrangement of Providence which
made young John Erskine the master of this small estate in the North; or
rather, perhaps, to mount a little higher, we might venture to say that
it was a very embarrassing circumstance, and the cause of a great deal
of confusion in this life that Henry Erskine, his father, should have
died when he did. Whatever might be the consequences of that step to
himself, to others it could scarcely be characterised but as a mistake.
That young man had begun to live an honest, wholesome life, as a Scotch
country gentleman should; and if he had continued to exist, his wife
would have been like other country gentlemen's wives, and his child,
brought up at home, would have grown like the heather in adaptation to
the soil. But when he was so ill advised as to die, confusion of every
kind ensued. The widow was young, and Dalrulzian was solitary. She lived
there, devoutly and conscientiously doing her duty, for some years. Then
she went abroad, as everybody does, for that change of air and scene
which is so necessary to our lives. And in Switzerland she met a
clergyman, to whom change had also been necessary, and who was "taking
the duty" in a mountain caravansary of tourists. What opportunities
there are in such a position! She was pensive and he was sympathetic. He
had a sister, whom she invited to Dalrulzian, "if she did not mind
winter in the North;" and Miss Kingsford did not mind winter anywhere,
so long as it was for her brother's advantage. The end was that Mrs
Erskine became Mrs Kingsford, to the great though silent astonishment of
little John, now eleven years old, who could not make it out. They
remained at Dalrulzian for a year or two, for Mr Kingsford rather liked
the shooting, and the power of asking a friend or two to share it. But
at the end of that time he got a living--a good living; for events,
whether good or evil, never come singly; and, taking John's interests
into full consideration, it was decided that the best thing to be done
was to let the house. Everybody thought this advisable, even John's old
grand-aunt in Dunearn, of whom his mother was more afraid than of all
her trustees put together. It was with fear and trembling that she had
ventured to unfold this hesitating intention to the old lady. "Mr
Kingsford thinks"--and then it occurred to the timid little woman that
Mr Kingsford's opinion as to the disposal of Henry Erskine's house might
not commend itself to Aunt Barbara. "Mr Monypenny says," she added,
faltering; then stopped and looked with alarm in Miss Erskine's face.

"What are you frightened for, my dear? Mr Kingsford has a right to his
opinion, and Mr Monypenny is a very discreet person, and a capital man
of business."

"They think--it would be a good thing for--John;--for, Aunt Barbara, he
is growing a big boy,--we must be thinking of his education----"

"That's true," said the old lady, with the smile that was the grimmest
thing about her. It was very uphill work continuing a laboured
explanation under the light of this smile.

"And he cannot--be educated--here."

"Wherefore no? I cannot see that, my dear. His father was educated in
Edinburgh, which is what I suppose you mean by _here_. Many a fine
fellow's been bred up at Edinburgh College, I can tell you; more than
you'll find in any other place I ever heard of. Eh! what ails you at
Edinburgh? It's well known to be an excellent place for schools--schools
of all kinds."

"Yes, Aunt Barbara. But then you know, John:--they say he will have such
a fine position--a long minority and a good estate--they say he should
have the best education that--England can give."

"You'll be for sending him to that idol of the English," said the old
lady, "a public school, as they call it. As if all our Scotch schools
from time immemorial hadn't been public schools! Well, and after
that----"

"It is only an idea," said little Mrs Kingsford, humbly--"not settled,
nor anything like settled; but they say if I were to let the house----"

Aunt Barbara's grey eyes flashed; perhaps they were slightly green, as
ill-natured people said. But she fired her guns in the air, so to speak,
and once more grimly smiled. "I saw something very like all this in your
wedding-cards, Mary," she said. "No, no, no apologies. I will not like
to see a stranger in my father's house; but that's nothing, that's
nothing. I will not say but it's very judicious; only you'll mind the
boy's an Erskine, and here he'll have to lead his life. Mind and not
make too much of an Englishman out of a Scotch lad, for he'll have to
live his life here."

"Too much of an Englishman!" Mr Kingsford cried, when this conversation
was reported to him. "I am afraid your old lady is an old fool, Mary.
How could he be too much of an Englishman? Am _I_ out of place here?
Does not the greater breeding include the less?" he said, with his grand
air. His wife did not always quite follow his meaning, but she always
believed in it as something that merited understanding; and she was
quite as deeply convinced as if she had understood. And accordingly the
house was let to Colonel Barrington, who had not a "place" of his own,
though his elder brother had, and the Kingsfords "went South" to their
rectory, with which John's mother in particular was mightily pleased. It
was in a far richer country than that which surrounded Dalrulzian,--a
land flowing with milk and cheese, if not honey,--full of foliage and
flowers. Mrs Kingsford, having been accustomed only to Scotland, was
very much elated with the luxuriant beauty of the place. She spoke of
"England" as the travelled speak of Italy,--as if this climate of ours,
which we abuse so much, was paradise. She thought "the English" so
frank, so open, so demonstrative. To live in "the South" seemed the
height of happiness to her. Innocent primitive Scotch gentlewomen are
prone to talk in this way. Mr Kingsford, who knew better, and who
himself liked to compare notes with people who winter in Italy, did what
he could to check her exuberance, but she was too simple to understand
why.

John, her son, did not share her feelings at first. John was generally
confused and disturbed in his mind by all that had happened. He had not
got over his wonder at the marriage, when he was carried off to this new
and alien home. He did not say much. There was little opening by which
he could communicate his feelings. He could not disapprove, being too
young; and now that Mr Kingsford was always there, the boy had no longer
the opportunity to influence his mother as, young as he was, he had
hitherto done--"tyrannise over his mother," some people called it. All
that was over. Much puzzled, the boy was dropped back into a properly
subordinate position, which no doubt was much better for him; but it was
a great change. To do him justice, he was never insubordinate; but he
looked at his mother's husband with eyes out of which the perplexity
never died. There was a permanent confusion ever after in his sense of
domestic relationships, and the duty he owed to his seniors and
superiors; for he never quite knew how it was that Mr Kingsford had
become the master of his fate, though a certain innate pride, as well as
his love of his mother, taught him to accept the yoke which he could not
throw off. Mr Kingsford was determined to do his duty by John. He vowed
when he gave the somewhat reluctant, proud little Scotsman--feeling
himself at eleven too old to be kissed--a solemn embrace, that he would
do the boy "every justice." He should have the best education, the most
careful guardianship; and Mr Kingsford kept his word. He gave the boy an
ideal education from his own point of view. He sent him to Eton, and,
when the due time came, to Oxford, and considered his advantage in every
way; and it is needless to say, that as John grew up, the sensation of
incongruity, the wonder that was in his mind as to this sudden
interference with all the natural arrangements of his life, died away.
It came to be a natural thing to him that Mr Kingsford should have
charge of his affairs. And he went home to the rectory for the holidays
to find now and then a new baby, but all in the quiet natural way of use
and wont, with no longer anything that struck him as strange in his
relationships. And yet he was put out of the natural current of his
life. Boy as he was, he thought sometimes, not only of special corners
in the woods, and turns of the stream, where he nibbled as a boy at the
big sports, which are the life of men in the country--but above all, of
the house, the landscape, the great sweep of land and sky, of which,
when he shut his eyes, he could always conjure up a vague vision. He
thought of it with a sort of grudge that it was not within his
reach--keen at first, but afterwards very faint and slight, as the boy's
sentiments died away in those of the man.

Meanwhile it was an excellent arrangement, who could doubt, for John's
interest--instead of keeping up the place, to have a rent for it; and he
had the most excellent man of business, who nursed his estate like a
favourite child; so that when his minority was over, and Colonel
Barrington's lease out, John Erskine was in a more favourable position
than any one of his name had been for some generations. The estate was
small. When his father died, exclusive of Mrs Erskine's jointure, there
was not much more than a thousand a-year to come out of it; and on
fifteen hundred a-year his father had thought himself very well off, and
a happy man. In the meantime, there had been accumulations which added
considerably to this income, almost making up the sum which Mrs
Kingsford enjoyed for her life. And John had always been treated at the
rectory as a golden youth, happily exempted from all the uncertainty and
the need of making his own way, which his stepfather announced, shaking
his head, to be the fate of his own boys. Her eldest son, who was in
"such a different position," was a great pride to Mrs Kingsford, even
when it seemed to her half an injury that her other children should have
no share in his happiness. But indeed she consoled herself by
reflecting, an eldest son is always in a very different position; and no
elder brother could have been kinder--voluntarily undertaking to send
Reginald to Eton, "which was a thing we never could have thought of with
no money," as soon as he came of age; and in every way comporting
himself as a good son and brother.

There were, however, points in this early training which were bad for
John. He acquired an exaggerated idea of the importance of this position
of his. He was known both at school and college as a youth of property,
the representative of a county family. These words mean more at Eton and
Oxford than they require to do at Edinburgh or St Andrews. And in these
less expensive precincts, Erskine of Dalrulzian would have been known
for what he was. Whereas in "the South" nobody knew anything about the
dimensions of his estate, or the limits of his income, and everybody
supposed him a young north-country potentate, with perhaps a castle or
two and unlimited "moors,"--who would be an excellent fellow to know as
soon as he came into his own. This was John's own opinion in all these
earlier days of youth. He did not know what his income was; and had he
known, the figures would not have meant anything particular to him. A
thousand a-year seems to imply a great deal of spending to a youth on an
allowance of three hundred; and he accepted everybody's estimate of his
importance with pleased satisfaction. After all the explanations which
followed his coming of age, he had indeed a touch of disenchantment and
momentary alarm, feeling the details to be less splendid than he had
expected. But Mr Monypenny evidently considered them anything but
insignificant--and a man of his experience, the youth felt, was bound to
know. He had gone abroad in the interval between leaving Oxford and
coming "home" to take possession of his kingdom. He was not dissipated
or extravagant, though he had spent freely. He was a good specimen of a
young man of his time--determined that everything about him should be
in "good form," and very willing to do his duty and be _bon prince_ to
his dependants. And he anticipated with pleasure the life of a country
gentleman, such as he had seen it in his mother's neighbourhood, and in
several houses of his college friends to which he had been invited.
Sometimes, indeed, it would occur to him that his recollections of
Dalrulzian were on a less extensive scale; but a boy's memory is always
flattering to a home which he has not seen since his earliest years.
Thus it was with a good deal of pleasant excitement that he set out from
Milton Magna, his stepfather's rectory, where he had gone to see his
mother and the children for a week or two on his return from the
Continent. The season was just beginning; but John, full of virtue and
hope, decided that he would not attempt to indulge in the pleasures of
the season. Far better to begin his real life, to make acquaintance with
his home and his "people," than to snatch a few balls and edge his way
through a few crowded receptions, and feel himself nobody. This was not
a thing which John much liked. He had been somebody all his life. Easter
had been early that year, and everything was early. He stayed in town a
week or two, saw all that was going on at the theatres, got all the last
information that was to be had at the club on parliamentary matters,
waited a day more "to see the pictures," and then set off on his
homeward way. He had everything a young man of fortune requires, except
a servant, for his habits were independent. He had been "knocking
about," and there was no room at the rectory for such an appendage. So
he took his own ticket, and himself saw his multifarious portmanteaus
placed in the van which was to go "through." There were a great many
mingled elements in his pleasure,--the satisfaction of "coming to his
kingdom;" the pleasure of renewing old associations, and taking his
natural place; the excitement of novelty--for it would all be as new to
him, this home which he had not seen for a dozen years, as if he had
never been there before. From thirteen to five-and-twenty, what a
difference! He began to look about him with a new sensation as the
morning rose after that long night-journey, and he felt himself
approaching home.




CHAPTER II.


Old Rolls had been butler at Dalrulzian since John Erskine was a child.
He had "stayed on" after Mrs Erskine's second marriage with reluctance,
objecting seriously to a step-master at all, and still more to one that
was an "English minister;" but the house had many attractions for him.
He liked the place; his sister was the cook, a very stationary sort of
woman, who had the greatest disinclination to move. She was a sort of
human cat, large and smooth and good-natured, almost always purring,
satisfied with herself and all who were moderately good to her; and, as
was natural, she made the butler very comfortable, and was extremely
attentive to all his little ways. When Colonel Barrington took the
house, Rolls once more expressed his determination to leave. "What for?"
said the placid Bauby; "the gentleman was keen to have a' the
servants--a' the servants that would bide." "A' the servants! there's so
many of us," said Rolls, derisively. There was indeed only himself, the
cook, and one housemaid; the other, who had charge of John in his
earlier days, and still was attached to him more or less, had gone with
the family--and so, of course, had Mrs Kingsford's maid. "We'll mak' a
grand show in the servants' hall--we're just a garrison," Rolls said.
"We're plenty for a' the work there is the now," said the mild woman,
"and they'll bring some with them. What ails ye to bide? You're real
well aff--and me that kens exactly how you like your meat. Where would
you be studied as I study you? You may just be thankful it's in your
power." "It was with the Erskines I took service," said Rolls. "I'm no
sure that I could put up with strangers, and them just travelling
English. Besides, I've never been clear that service is my vocation. A
kent family is one thing, a foreign master another. Him and me would
very likely no get on--or them and me would no get on. All went very
well in the last reign. Hairy Erskine was a gentleman, like all his
forebears before him; but how am I to tell who is this Cornel, or
whatever they ca' him--a man I never heard tell of before? I'll give
them over the keys, and maybe I'll wait till they're suited, but nobody
can ask me to do more."

"Hoot, Tammas!" said his sister: which was the highest height of
remonstrance she ever reached. Notwithstanding this, however, year after
year Rolls had "stayed on." He was very distinct in pointing out to
"the Cornel" the superiority of his native masters, and the disadvantage
to Scotland of having so many of the travelling English taking up the
houses of the gentry; but he was an excellent servant, and his qualities
in this way made up for his defects in the other--if, indeed, those
defects did not tell in his favour; for a Scotch servant who is a
character is, like a ghost, a credit to any old and respectable house.
The Barringtons were proud of old Rolls. They laid temptations in his
way and made him talk whenever they had visitors; and his criticisms on
the English, and the opinions which he freely enunciated on all
subjects, had often kept the party in amusement. Rolls, however, had not
been able to defend himself against a certain weakness for the children,
specially for Nora, who was very small when the family came to
Dalrulzian, and whom he had brought up, as he flattered himself,
regretting much all the time that she was not an Erskine and
natural-born daughter of the house. Rolls did not by any means see the
departure of the Barringtons unmoved, notwithstanding that he hurried
them away. He stood for a long time looking after the "coach," which was
a sort of rude omnibus, as it jolted down the avenue. The old servant
stood in the clear morning air, through which every creak of the
jingling harness and every jolt of the wheels sounded so distinctly,
and the voice of Jock Beaton apostrophising his worn-out horse, and
watched the lingering departure with feelings of a very mingled
description. "There's _feenis_ put to that chapter," he said to himself
aloud. "We're well rid of them." But he lingered as long as the yellow
panels could be seen gleaming through the trees at the turn of the road,
without any of the jubilation in his face which he expressed in his
words. At that last turn, just when the "coach" reached the highroad,
something white was waved from the window, which very nearly made an end
of Rolls. He uttered something which at first sounded like a sob, but
was turned into a laugh, so to speak, before it fell into that tell-tale
air which preserved every gradation of sound. "It's that bit thing!"
Rolls said, more sentimental than perhaps he had ever been in his life.
His fine feeling was, however, checked abruptly. "You're greetin'
yourself, Tammas," said a soft round voice, interrupted by sobs, over
his shoulder. "Me greetin'!"--he turned round upon her with a violence
that, if Bauby had been less substantial and less calm, would have
driven her to the other end of the house; "I'm just laughin' to see the
nonsense you women-folk indulge in: but it's paardonable in the case of
a bit creature like Miss Nora. And I allow they have a right to feel it.
Where will they find a bonnie place like Dalrulzian, and next to nothing
in the way of rent or keeping up? But I'm thankful mysel' to see the
nest cleared out, and the real man in it. What are you whimpering about?
It's little you've seen of them, aye in your kitchen." "Me seen little
of them!" cried Bauby, roused to a kind of soft indignation; "the best
part of an hour with the mistress every day of my life, and as kind a
sympathising woman! There'll be nae leddy now to order the dinners--and
that's a great responsibility, let alone anything else." "Go away with
your responsibility. I'll order your dinners," said Rolls. "Well," said
Bauby, not without resignation, "to be a servant, and no born a
gentleman, you've aye been awfu' particular about your meat." And she
withdrew consoled, though drying her eyes, to wonder if Mr John would be
"awfu' particular about his meat," or take whatever was offered to him,
after the fashion of some young men. Meat, it must be explained, to
Bauby Rolls meant food of all descriptions--not only that which she
would herself have correctly and distinctly distinguished as "butcher's
meat."

The house was very empty and desolate after all the din and bustle. The
furniture had faded in the quarter of a century and more which had
elapsed since Harry Erskine furnished his drawing-room for his bride.
That had not been a good period for furniture, according to our present
lights, and everything looked dingy and faded. The few cosy articles
with which the late tenants had changed its character had been removed;
the ornaments and prettinesses were all gone. The gay limp old chintzes,
the faded carpet, the walls in sad want of renewal, obtruded themselves
even upon the accustomed eye of Rolls. The nest might be cleared, but it
looked a somewhat forlorn and empty nest. He stood upon the threshold of
the drawing-room, contemplating it mournfully. A little of that "cheeney
and nonsense" which he had been highly indignant with Mrs Barrington for
bringing, would have been of the greatest consequence now to brighten
the walls; and a shawl or a hat thrown on a chair, which had called
forth from old Rolls many a grumble in the past, would have appeared to
him now something like a sign of humanity in the desert. But all that
was over, and the old servant, painfully sensible of the difference in
the aspect of the place, began to grow afraid of its effect upon the
young master. If, after all, John should not be "struck with" his home!
if, terrible to think of, he might prefer some house "in the South" to
Dalrulzian! "But it's no possible," said Rolls to himself. He made a
survey of all the rooms in the new anxiety that dawned upon him. The
library was better; there were a good many books on the shelves, and it
had not to Rolls the air of desertion the other rooms had. He lighted a
fire in it, though it was the first week in May, and took great pains to
restore by it an air of comfort and habitation. Then he took a walk
down the avenue in order to make a critical examination of the house
from a little distance, to see how it would look to the new-comer. And
Rolls could not but think it a most creditable-looking house. The
fir-trees on the top of the hill threw up their sombre fan of foliage
against the sky; the birches were breathing forth a spring
sweetness--the thin young foliage softly washed in with that tenderest
of greens against the darker background, seemed to appeal to the
spectator, forbidding any hasty judgment, with the promise of something
beautiful to come. The ash-trees were backward, no doubt, but they are
always backward. In the wood the primroses were appearing in great
clusters, and the parterres under the terrace were gay with the same.
Rolls took comfort as he gazed. The avenue was all green, the leaves in
some sunny corners quite shaken out of their husks, in all bursting
hopefully. "It's a bonnie place," Rolls said to himself, with a sigh of
excitement and anxiety. Bauby, who shared his feelings in a softened,
fat, comfortable way of her own, was standing in the doorway, with her
little shawl pinned over her broad chest, and a great white apron
blazing in the light of the morning sun. She had a round face, like a
full moon, and a quantity of yellow hair smoothed under the white cap,
which was decorously tied under her chin. She did not take any of the
dignity of a housekeeper-cook upon her, but she was a comfortable
creature to behold, folding her round arms, with the sleeves rolled up a
little, and looking out with a slight curve, like a shadow of the pucker
on her brother's brows, in her freckled forehead. She was ready to cry
for joy when Mr John appeared, just as she had cried for sorrow when the
Barringtons went away. Neither of these effusions of sentiment would
disturb her greatly, but they were quite genuine all the same. Rolls
felt that the whiteness of her apron and the good-humour of her face lit
up the seriousness of the house. He began to give her her instructions
as he advanced across the open space at the top of the avenue. "Bauby,"
he said, "when ye hear the wheels ye'll come, and the lasses with you;
and Andrew, he can stand behind; and me, naturally I'll be in the front:
and we'll have no whingeing, if _you_ please, but the best curtsey you
can make, and 'We're glad to see you home, sir,' or something cheery
like that. He's been long away, and he was but a boy when he went. We'll
have to take care that he gets a good impression of his ain house."

"That's true," said Bauby. "Tammas, I've heard of them that after a long
absence have just taken a kind o' scunner----"

"Hold your tongue with your nonsense. A scunner at Dalrulzian!" cried
Rolls; but the word sank into the depths of his heart. A scunner--for
we scorn a footnote--is a sudden sickening and disgust with an object
not necessarily disagreeable--a sort of fantastic prejudice, which there
is no struggling against. But Rolls repeated his directions, and would
not allow himself to entertain such a fear.

It was not, however, with any sound of wheels, triumphal or otherwise,
that young Erskine approached his father's house. It was all new and
strange to him; the hills--the broad and wealthy carses through which he
had passed--the noble Firth, half sea half river, which he had crossed
over in his way,--all appeared to him like landscapes in a dream, places
he had seen before, though he could not tell how or when. It was
afternoon when he reached Dunearn, which was the nearest place of any
importance. He had chosen to stop there instead of at the little country
station a few miles farther on, which was proper for Dalrulzian. This
caprice had moved him, much in the same way as a prince had sometimes
been moved to wander about _incognito_, and glean the opinions of his
public as to his own character and proceedings. Princes in fiction are
fond of this diversion; why not a young Scotch laird just coming into
his kingdom, whose person was quite unknown to his future vassals? It
amused and gently excited him to think of thus arriving unknown, and
finding out with what eyes he was looked upon: for he had very little
doubt that he was important enough to be discussed and talked of, and
that the opinions of the people would throw a great deal of light to him
upon the circumstances and peculiarities of the place. He was curious
about everything,--the little grey Scotch town, clinging to its
hillside--the freshness of the spring colour--the width of the wistful
blue sky, banked and flecked with white clouds, and never free, with all
its brightness, from a suspicion of possible rain. He thought he
recollected them all like things he had seen in a dream; and that sense
of travelling _incognito_ and arriving without any warning in the midst
of a little world, all eagerly looking for his arrival, but which should
be innocently deceived by his unpretending appearance, tickled his fancy
greatly. He was five-and-twenty, and ought to have known better; but
there was something in the circumstances which justified his excitement.
He skimmed lightly along the quiet country road, saying to himself that
he thought he remembered the few clusters of houses that were visible
here and there, one of them only big enough to be called a village,
where there was "a merchant's" shop, repository of every kind of ware,
and a blacksmith's smithy. Two or three times he stopped to ask the way
to Dalrulzian out of pure pleasure in the question! for he never lost
sight of that line of fir-trees against the horizon, which indicated
his native hill; but after he had put this question once or twice, it
must be added that young Erskine's satisfaction in it failed a little.
He ceased to feel the excitement of his _incognito_, the pleasure of
entering his dominions like a young prince in disguise. The imagination
of the women at the village doors, the chance passengers on the way,
were not occupied with the return of John Erskine; they were much more
disposed to think and talk of the others who had no right, it seemed to
him, to occupy their thoughts.

"Dalrulzian! you'll find nobody there the day," said a countryman whom
he overtook and accosted on the road. "The family's away this morning,
and a great loss they will be to the country-side."

"The family!" said John, and he felt that his tone was querulous in
spite of himself. "I did not understand that there was a family."

"Ay was there, and one that will be missed sore; both gentle and simple
will miss them. Not the real family, but as good, or maybe better," the
man said, with a little emphasis, as if he meant offence, and knew who
his questioner was.

The young man reddened in spite of himself. This was not the kind of
popular report which in his _incognito_ he had hoped to hear.

"The laird is what they call in Ireland an absentee," said his
companion. "We're no minding muckle in Scotland if they're absentees or
no; they can please themsels. But there's nae family of the
Erskines--nothing but a young lad; and the Cornel that's had the house
was a fine, hearty, weel-spoken man, with a good word for everybody; and
the ladies very kind, and pleasant, and neighbour-like. Young Erskine
must be a young laird past the ordinar if he can fill their place."

"But, so far as I understand, the estate belongs to him, does it not?"
Erskine asked, with an involuntary sharpness in his voice.

"Oh ay, it belongs to him; that makes but sma' difference. Ye're no
bound to be a fine fellow," said the roadside philosopher, with great
calmness, "because ye're the laird of a bit sma' country place----"

"Is it such a small place?" cried the poor young prince _incognito_,
appalled by this revelation. He felt almost childishly annoyed and
mortified. His companion eyed him with a cool half-satirical gaze.

"You're maybe a friend of the young man? Na, I'm saying nae ill of the
place nor of him. Dalrulzian's a fine little property, and a' in good
order, thanks to auld Monypenny in Dunearn. Maybe you're from Dunearn?
It's a place that thinks muckle of itself; but nae doubt it would seem
but a poor bit town to you coming from the South?"

"How do you know I come from the South?" said John.

"Oh, I ken the cut of ye fine," said the man. "I'm no easy deceived. And
I daur to say you could tell us something about this new laird. There's
different opinions about him. Some thinks him a lad with brains, that
could be put up for the county and spite the Earl. I've no great
objection mysel to the Earl or his opinions, but to tak' another man's
nominee, if he was an angel out of heaven, is little credit to an
enlightened constituency. So there's been twa-three words. You'll no
know if he has ony turn for politics, or if he's a clever lad, or----"

"You don't seem to mind what his politics are," said the unwary young
man.

His new friend gave him another keen glance. "The Erskines," he answered
quietly, "are a' on the right side."

Now John Erskine was aware that he did not himself possess political
opinions sufficiently strenuous to be acknowledged by either side. He
agreed sometimes with one party, sometimes with another, which,
politically speaking, is the most untenable of all positions. And so
ignorant was he of the immediate traditions of his family, that he could
not divine which was "the right side" on which the Erskines were sure to
be. It was not a question upon which his mother could have informed
him. As Mr Kingsford's wife, an orthodox Church of England clergywoman,
she was, of course, soundly Conservative, and thought she hated
everything that called itself Liberal--which word she devoutly believed
to include all kinds of Radical, revolutionary, and atheistical
sentiments. John himself had been a good Tory too when he was at Eton,
but at Oxford had veered considerably, running at one time into extreme
opinions on the other side, then veering back, and finally settling into
a hopeless eclectic, who by turns sympathised with everybody, but agreed
wholly with nobody. Still it was whimsical not even to know the side on
which the Erskines were declared with so much certainty to be. It
pleased him at least to find that they had character enough to have
traditionary politics at all.

"You must excuse me as a stranger," he said, "if I don't quite know what
side you regard as the--right side."

His friend looked at him with a sarcastic gaze--a look John felt which
set him down not only as devoid of ordinary intelligence, but of common
feeling. "It's clear to see you are not of that way of thinking," he
said.

As he uttered this contemptuous verdict they came opposite to a gate,
guarded by a pretty thatched cottage which did duty for a lodge. John
felt his heart give a jump, notwithstanding the abashed yet amused
sensation with which he felt himself put down. It was the gate of
Dalrulzian: he remembered it as if he had left it yesterday. A woman
came to the gate and looked out, shielding her eyes with her hand from
the level afternoon sun that shone into them. "Have you seen anything of
our young master, John Tamson?" she said. "I'm aye thinking it's him
every sound I hear."

"There's the road," said the rural politician, briefly addressing John;
then he turned to the woman at the gate. "If it's no him, I reckon it's
a friend. Ye had better pit your questions here," he said.

"John Thomson," said John, with some vague gleam of recollection. "Are
you one of the farmers?" The man looked at him with angry, the woman
with astonished, eyes.

"My freend," said John Thomson, indignantly, "I wouldna wonder but you
have plenty of book-learning; but you're an ignorant young fop for a'
that, if you were twenty times the laird's freend."

John for his part was too much startled and amused to be angry. "Am I an
ignorant young fop?" he said. "Well, it is possible--but why in this
particular case----"

"Noo, noo," said the woman, who left the lodge, coming forward with her
hands spread out, and a tone of anxious conciliation. "Dear bless me!
what are you bickering about? He's no a farmer, but he's just as decent
a man--nobody better thought of for miles about. And, John Tamson, I'm
astonished at you! Can you no let the young gentleman have his joke
without taking offence like this, that was never meent?"

"I like nae such jokes," said John Tamson, angrily; and he went off
swinging down the road at a great pace. John stood looking after him for
a moment greatly perplexed. The man did not touch his hat nor the woman
curtsey as they certainly would have done at Milton Magna. He passed her
mechanically without thinking of her, and went in at his own gate--not
thinking of that either, though it was an event in his life. This little
occurrence had given an impulse in another direction to his thoughts.

But the woman of the lodge called after him. She had made a slightly
surprised objection to his entrance, which he did not notice in his
preoccupation. "Sir, sir!" she cried--"you're welcome to walk up the
avenue, which is a bonnie walk; but you'll find nobody in the house. The
young laird, if it was him you was wanting to see, is expected every
minute; but there's no signs of him as yet--and he canna come now till
the four o'clock train."

"Thank you. I'll walk up the avenue," said John, and then he turned
back. "Why did you think I was making a joke? and why was your friend
offended when I asked if he was one of the farmers?--it was no insult, I
hope."

"He's a very decent man, sir," said the woman; "but I wouldna just take
it upon me to say that he was my freend."

"That's not the question!" cried John, exasperated--and he felt some
gibe about Scotch caution trembling on the tip of his tongue; but he
remembered in time that he was himself a Scot and among his own people,
and he held that unruly member still.

"Weel, sir," said the woman, "if ye will ken--but, bless me! it's easy
to see for yourself. The farmers about here are just as well put on and
mounted and a' that as you are. John Tamson! he's a very decent man, as
good as any of them--but he's just the joiner after a', and a cotter's
son. He thought you were making a fool of him, and he's not a man to be
made a fool o'. We're no so civil-like--nor may be so humble-minded, for
anything I can tell--as the English, sir. Baith the Cornel and his lady
used to tell me that."

It was with a mixture of irritation and amusement that John pursued his
way after this little encounter. And an uncomfortable sensation, a
chill, seemed to creep over his mind, and arrest his pleasurable
expectations as he went on. The avenue was not so fine a thing as its
name implied. It was not lined with noble trees, nor did it sweep across
a green universe of parks and lawns like many he had known. It led
instead up the slope of the hill, through shrubberies which were not
more than copsewood in some places, and under lightly arching trees not
grand enough or thick enough to afford continuous shade. And yet it was
sweet in the brightness of the spring tints, the half-clothed branches
relieved against that variable yet smiling sky, the birds in
full-throated chorus, singing welcome with a hundred voices,--no
nightingales there, but whole tribes of the "mavis and the merle,"
north-country birds and kindly. His heart and mind were touched alike
with that half-pathetic pleasure, that mixture of vague recollections
and forgetfulness, with which we meet the half-remembered faces, and put
out our hands to meet the grasp of old friends still faithful though
scarcely known. A shadow of the childish delight with which he had once
explored these scanty yet fresh and friendly woods came breathing about
him: "The winds came to me from the fields of sleep." He felt himself
like two people: one, a happy boy at home, familiar with every corner;
the other a man, a spectator, sympathetically excited, faltering upon
the forgotten way, wondering what lay round the next curve of the road.
It was the strangest blending of the known and the unknown.

But when John Erskine came suddenly, as he turned the corner of that
great group of ash-trees, in sight of his house, these vague sensations,
which were full of sweetness, came to an end with a sharp jar and shock
of the real. Dalrulzian was a fact of the most solid dimensions, and
dispersed in a moment all his dreams. He felt himself come down suddenly
through the magical air, with a sensation of falling, with his feet upon
the common soil. So that was his home! He felt in a moment that he
remembered it perfectly,--that there had never been any illusions about
it in his mind,--that he had known all along every line of it, every
step of the gables, the number of the little windows, the slopes of the
grey roof. But it is impossible to describe the keen sense of
disenchantment which went through his mind as he said this to himself.
It was not only that the solid reality dispersed his vision, but that it
afforded a measure by which to judge himself and his fortunes, till now
vaguely and pleasantly exaggerated in his eyes. It is seldom indeed that
the dim image of what was great and splendid to us in our childhood does
not seem ludicrously exaggerated when we compare it with the reality. He
who had felt himself a young prince in disguise, approaching his domains
_incognito_, in order to enjoy at his leisure the incense of universal
interest, curiosity, and expectation! John Erskine blushed crimson
though nobody saw him, as he stood alone at the corner of his own
avenue and recognised the mistake he had made, and his own unimportance,
and all the folly of his simple over-estimate. Fortunately, indeed, he
had brought nobody with him to share in the glories of his entry upon
his kingdom. He thanked heaven for that, with a gasp of horror at the
thought of the crowning ridicule he had escaped. It was quite hard
enough to get over the first startling sensation of reality alone.

And yet it was the same house upon which the Barringtons had looked back
so affectionately a few hours before--which the county regarded with
approval, and which was visited by the best families. It would be hard
to say what its young master had expected,--a dream-castle, a habitation
graceful and stately, a something built out of clouds, not out of old
Scotch rubble-work and grey stone. It was not looking its best, it must
be added. The _corps du logis_ lay in gloom, thrown into shade by the
projecting rustic gable, upon the other side of which the setting sun
still played; the yellowish walls, discoloured here and there by damp,
had no light upon them to throw a fictitious glow over their
imperfections. The door stood open, showing the hall with its faded
fittings, gloomy and unattractive, and, what was more, deserted, as if
the house had been abandoned to dreariness and decay--not so much as a
dog to give some sign of life. When the young man, rousing himself with
an effort, shook off the stupor of his disappointment and vexation, and
went on to the open door, his foot on the gravel seemed to wake a
hundred unaccustomed echoes: and nobody appeared. He walked in
unchallenged, unwelcomed, going from room to room, finding all equally
desolate. Was there ever a more dismal coming home? When he reached the
library, where a little fire was burning, this token of human life quite
went to the young fellow's heart. He was standing on the hearth very
gloomy, gazing wistfully at the portrait of a gentleman in a periwig
over the mantelpiece, when the door was pushed open and old Rolls
appeared with his coat off, carrying a basket of wood. Rolls was as much
startled as his master was disappointed, and he was vexed to be seen by
a stranger in so unworthy an occupation. He put down his basket and
glanced at his shirt-sleeves with confusion. "I was expecting nobody,"
he said in his own defence. "And wha may ye be," he added, "that comes
into the mansion-house of Dalrulzian without speering permission, or
ringing a bell, or chapping at a door?" John smiled at the old man's
perplexity, but said nothing. "You'll be a friend of our young
master's?" he said, tentatively; then after an interval, in a voice with
a quiver in it, "Your no meaning, sir, that you're the laird himself?"

"For want of a better," said John, amused in spite of himself. "And
you're old Rolls. I should have known you anywhere. Shake hands, man,
and say you're glad to see me. It's like a house of the dead."

"Na, sir, no such things; there's no death here. Lord bless us! wha was
to think you would come in stealing like a thief in the night, as the
Bible says?" said Rolls, aggrieved. He felt that it was he who was the
injured person. "It was all settled how you were to be received as soon
as the wheels were heard in the avenue,--me on the steps, and the women
behind, and Andrew,--the haill household, to wit. If there's any want of
respect, it's your ain fault. And if you'll just go back to the avenue
now and give us warning, I'll cry up the women in a moment," the old
servant said.




CHAPTER III.


That night dispersed illusions from the mind of John Erskine which it
had taken all his life to set up. He discovered in some degree what his
real position was, and that it was not a great one. He got rid of many
of his high notions as he walked about the pleasant, comfortable, but
somewhat dingy old house, which no effort of the imagination could make
into a great house. He made acquaintance with the household. Mrs Rolls
the cook, who curtseyed and cried for pleasure at the sight of him, and
two smiling, fair-haired young women, and old Andrew the gardener--a
quite sufficient household for the place, he felt, but very different
from the army of servants, all so noiseless, punctilious, carefully
drilled, whom he had seen at country-houses, with which he had fondly
hoped his own might bear comparison. What a fool he had been! These good
honest folk have little air of being servants at all. Their respect was
far less than their interest in him; and their questions were more like
those of poor relatives than hired attendants. "I hope your mammaw is
well, Mr John," Bauby the cook had said. "Let the master alone with your
Mr Johns," Rolls had interrupted; "he's come to man's estate, and you
must learn to be more respectful. The women, sir, are all alike; you can
never look for much sense from them." "Maybe you're right, Tammas," said
Bauby; "but for all that I cannot help saying that its an awfu' pleasure
to see Mr John, that was but that height when I saw him last, come home
a braw gentleman like what I mind his father." John could do nothing but
stand smiling between them, hearing himself thus discussed. They made it
very clear that he had come home where he would be taken ample care
of--but how different it was from his thoughts! He thought of the
manor-house at Milton Magna, and laughed and blushed at the ridiculous
comparisons he had once made. It was a keen sort of self-ridicule, sharp
and painful. He did not like to think what a fool he had been. Now he
came to think of it, he had quite well remembered Dalrulzian. It was not
his youthful imagination that was to blame, but a hundred little
self-deceits, and all the things that he had been in the habit of
hearing about his own importance and his Scotch property. His mother had
done more than any one else to deceive him, he thought; and then he
said to himself, "Poor mother!" wondering if, perhaps, her little
romance was all involved in Dalrulzian, and if it was a sacred place to
her. To think that the Kingsford household was prose, but the early life
in which she had been Harry Erskine's wife and little John's mother, the
poetry of her existence, was pleasant to her son, who was fond of his
mother, though she was not clever, nor even very sensible. John thought,
with a blush, of the people whom he had invited to Dalrulzian under that
extraordinary mistake--some of his friends at college, young fellows who
were accustomed to houses full of company and stables full of horses.
There was nothing in the stables at Dalrulzian but the hired horse which
had been provided by Rolls in a hired dogcart to bring him up from the
station; and as he looked round upon the room in which he sat after
dinner, and which was quite comfortable and highly respectable, though
neither dignified nor handsome, poor John burst into a laugh, in which
there was more pain than amusement. He seemed to himself to be stranded
on a desert shore. What should he do with himself, especially during the
long summer, when there could be no hunting, no shooting,--the summer
which he had determined to occupy, with a fine sense of duty, in making
acquaintance with his house and his surroundings, and in learning all
his duties as a country gentleman and person of importance? This thought
was so poignant, that it actually touched his eyelids with a sense of
moisture. He laughed--but he could have cried. There would turn out, he
supposed, to be about three farms on this estate of his; and Scotch
farmers were very different people from the small farmers of the South.
To talk about his tenants would be absurd. Three pragmatical Scotchmen,
much better informed in all practical matters at least than himself, and
looking down upon him as an inexperienced young man. What a fool he had
been! If he had come down in August for the shooting,--if there was any
shooting,--and let his friends understand that it was a mere
shooting-box--a "little place in Scotland," such as they hired when they
came to the moors,--all would have been well. But he had used no
disparaging adjectives in speaking of Dalrulzian. He had called it "my
place" boldly, and had believed it to be a kind of old castle--something
that probably had been capable of defence in its day. Good heavens! what
a fool he had been!

He had thought he would be glad to get to bed, and felt pleased that he
was somewhat tired with his journey; but he found that, on the contrary,
the night flew by amidst these thoughts,--fathomless night, slow and
dark and noiseless. Rolls had made repeated attempts to draw him into
conversation in what that worthy called the fore-night; but by ten
o'clock or so, the house was as still as death, not a sound anywhere,
and the hours passed over him while he sat and thought. A little fire
crackled and burned in the grate, with little _pétillements_ and bursts
of flame. There were a good many books on the shelves; that was always
something: and Mrs Rolls had given him an excellent dinner, which he
ought to have considered also as a very great alleviation of the
situation. John scarcely knew what hour it was when, starting suddenly
up in the multitude of his thoughts, he threw open the window which
looked upon the Walk, and gazed out moodily upon the night. The night
was soft and clear, and the great stretch of the landscape lay dimly
defined under a half-veiled poetic sky, over which light floating
vapours were moving with a kind of gentle solemnity. There was not light
enough to distinguish the individual features of the scene, save here
and there a pale gleam of water, a darkness of wood, and the horizon
marked by that faint silvery edge which even by night denotes the limit
of human vision. The width, the freshness, the stillness, the dewy
purity of the air, soothed the young man as he stood and looked out.
What was he, a human unit in the great round of space, to be so
disconcerted by the little standing-ground he had? He felt abased as he
gazed, and a strange sense of looking out upon his life came over him.
His future was like that--all vague, breathing towards him a still world
full of anticipations, full of things hidden and mysterious--his, and
yet not his, as was the soil and the fields. He could mortgage it as he
could his estate, but he could not sell it away from him, or get rid of
what was in it, whether it carried out his foolish expectations or not.
Certainly the sight of this wide scenery, in which he was to perform his
part, did him good, though he could not see it. He closed the window,
which was heavy, almost with violence, as he came back to the
ascertained,--to the limited walls with their books, the old-fashioned
original lamp, and crackling fire.

But this sound was very unusual in the house in the middle of the night.
Bauby, whose room was next her brother's, knocked upon the wall to rouse
him. "D'ye hear that, Tammas? There's somebody trying to get into the
house." Her voice came to Rolls faintly muffled by the partition
between. He had heard the noise as well as she, but he did not think fit
to answer save by a grunt. Then Bauby knocked again more loudly.
"Tammas! Man, will ye no put on your breeks and go down and see what it
is?" Rolls, for his part, was already in the midst of a calculation. So
much plate as there was in the house he had brought up with him to his
room. "They cannot steal tables and chairs," he said to himself; "and as
for the young laird, if he's not able to take care of himself, he'll be
none the better of me for a defender." Audibly he answered, "Hold your
tongue, woman. If the master likes to take the air in the sma' hours,
what's that to you or me?" There was a pause of dismay on Bauby's part,
and then a faint ejaculation of "Lord bless us! take the air!" But she
was less easily satisfied than her brother. When John went up-stairs
with his candle, he saw a light glimmering in the gallery above, and a
figure in white, far too substantial to be a ghost, leaning over the
banisters. "Eh, sir! is it you, Mr John?" Bauby said. "I was feared it
was robbers;" and then she added in her round, soft, caressing voice,
"but you mustna take the air in the middle of the night: you'll get your
death of cold, and then, what will your mammaw say to me, Mr John?" John
shut himself up in his room, half laughing, half affronted. It was many
years since he had been under the sway of his "mamma" in respect to his
hours and habits; and nothing could be more droll than to go back to the
kind annoyance of domestic surveillance just at the moment when his
manhood and independence were most evident. He laughed, but the
encounter brought him back, after he had been partly freed from it, to
a consciousness of all his limitations once more.

But things were better in the morning. Unless you have something bitter
to reproach yourself with, or some calamity impending over you, things
are generally better in the morning. John looked about him with more
hopeful eyes. He had an excellent, a truly Scotch, breakfast, which, at
five-and-twenty, puts a man in good-humour with himself; and there were
one or two features about Dalrulzian which, in the morning sunshine,
looked more encouraging. The stables were tolerably good, made
habitable, and furnished with some of the latest improvements by Colonel
Barrington; and "the policy" was in admirable order,--the turf
faultless, the shrubberies flourishing, the trees--well, not like the
trees at Milton Magna, but creditable performances for the North. John's
countenance cleared as he inspected everything. Rolls led or followed
him about with great importance, introducing and explaining. Had he been
an English butler, John would have dismissed him very summarily to his
pantry; but it was part of the natural _mise en scène_ to have a Caleb
Balderstone attached to an old Scotch house. He was half proud of this
retainer of the family, though he threatened to be something of a bore;
even Bauby, and her care for his health, and her sense of
responsibility to his "mammaw," was tolerable in this light. When one is
born a Scotch laird, one must accept the natural accompaniments of the
position; and if they were sometimes annoying, they were at least
picturesque. So John put up with Rolls, and "saw the fun" of him with a
kind of feeling that Dalrulzian was a Waverley novel, and he himself the
hero. He had been seeing things so much through the eyes of his
problematical visitors, that he was glad to see this also through their
eyes. To them, these servants of his would be altogether
"characteristic," and full of "local colour." And then the subtle
influence of property began to affect the young man and modify his
disappointment. "A poor thing, sir, but mine own," he said to himself.
These were "my plantations" that crested the hill; the fishing on the
river was said to be excellent, and belonged to Dalrulzian; the moorland
on the eastern side of the hill was "my moor." Things began to mend.
When he went back again after his examination to the room from which he
had started, John found a luncheon spread for him, which was not
inferior to the breakfast, and Rolls, in his black coat, having resumed
the butler, and thrown off the factotum, but not less disposed to be
instructive than before.

"You may as well," young Erskine said, eating an admirable cutlet,
"tell me something about my neighbours, Rolls."

"I'll do that, sir," said Rolls, with cordiality; and then he made a
pause. "The first to be named is no to call a neighbour; but I hope,
sir, you'll think far mair of her than of any neighbour. She's your ain
best blood, and a leddy with a great regard for Dalrulzian, and not
another friend so near to her as you. It came from Dalrulzian, and it'll
come back to Dalrulzian with careful guiding," said Rolls, oracularly;
"not to say that blood's thicker than water, as the auld Scots byword
goes."

This address gave John some sense of perplexity; but after an interval
he discovered what it meant. "It is my old Aunt Barbara of whom you are
speaking," he said. "Certainly, I shall see her first of all."

"She is an excellent lady, sir; careful of her money. It will be real
good for the estate when----But, bless me! I wadna have you to be
looking forward to what may never come,--that is to say, that auld Miss
Barbara, being real comfortable, sir, in this life, will not go out of
it a moment sooner than she can help: and for a' that we ken o' heaven,
I wouldna blame her; for, grand as it may be, it will aye be a strange
place. There's nobody more thought upon in the county than Miss Barbara
Erskine at Dunearn. Weel, sir, and the neighbours. There's the Earl of
Lindores first of a'. We maun give him the paw, as the French say.
Maybe you've met with some of the family in London? You'll see plenty
and hear plenty of them here. The Earl he is a very pushing man. He
would like to take the lead in a' the county business; but there's many
of the gentry that are not exactly of that opinion. And my lady
Countess, she's of the booky kind, with authors, and painters, and that
kind of cattle aye about the place. I'm not that fond of thae instructed
leddies. Weemen are best no to be ower clever, in my poor opinion. Young
Rintoul, that's the son, is away with his regiment; I ken nothing of
him: and there's two young leddies----"

"Now I remember," said John. "You are the most concise of chroniclers,
Rolls. I like your style. I once knew some of the Lindores
family--cousins, I suppose. There were young ladies in that family too.
I knew them very well." Here he paused, a smile stealing about the
corners of his mouth.

"I ken nothing about their relations," said Rolls. "It was an awfu'
melancholy story; but it's an ill wind that blaws nobody good. The late
Earl was liked by everybody. But I'm saying nothing against this family.
One of the young daughters is married, poor thing! The other one at
hame, my Lady Edith, is a bonnie bit creature. She was great friends
with _oor_ young lady. But if you were to ask my opinion, sir--which is
neither here nor there," said Rolls, in insinuating tones--"I would say
there was not one that was fit to hold the candle to Miss Nora. We had
our bits of tiffs, the Cornel and me. There were some things he would
never see in a proper light; but they were much thought o', and saw a'
the best company. When you let a place, it's a grand thing to have
tenants that never let down the character of the house."

"You mean the Barringtons," said John. He was not much interested in
this subject. They had been unexceptionable tenants; but he could
scarcely help regarding them with a little jealousy, almost dislike, as
if they had been invaders of his rights.

"And they were awfu' fond of it," said Rolls, watching his young
master's countenance. "Miss Nora above a'. You see she's grown up at
Dalrulzian. It was all they could do to get her away from the Walk this
last morning. I thought she would have grown till't. If you and Miss
Nora was ever to meet," the old servant added, in his most engaging
tones, "I cannot but believe you would be real good--freends----"

"I see you have provided for every contingency," said the young laird,
with a laugh. His Caleb Balderstone, he said to himself, was almost
better, if that was possible, than Scott's. But John's mind had been
set afloat on a still more pleasant channel, and he let the old man
maunder on.

"It's true she's English," said Rolls; "but that matters nothing in my
opinion, on what they call the side of the distaff. I'll no say but it's
offensive in a man: putting up so long with the Cornel and his ways of
thinking, I'm no a bad authority on that. But weemen are a different
kind of creatures. A bit discrepancy, if ye may so call it--a kind of a
different awkcent, so to speak, baith in the soul and the tongue, is
just a pleasant variety. It gives new life to a family sometimes, and
mends the breed, if you'll no think me coarse. A little of everything is
good in a race. And besides being so good and so bonnie, Miss Nora will
have a little siller of her ain, which spoils nothing. Not one of your
great fortunes, but just a little siller--enough for their preens and
rubbitch--of her ain."

Here, however, the pleasant delusion with which Nora's humble champion
was delighting himself was suddenly dispersed by a question which proved
his young master to be thinking nothing about Nora. "I used to know some
of the Lindores family," John repeated, "a brother of the Earl. I wonder
if they ever come here?"

"I ken nothing about their relations, sir," said Rolls, promptly. "It's
thought the Earl's awfu' ambitious. They're no that rich, and he has an
eye to everything that will push the family on. There's one of them
marriet, poor thing!"

"I am afraid you are a fierce old bachelor," said John, rising from the
table; "this is the second time you have said 'poor thing.'"

"That's my Lady Caroline, sir," said Rolls, with a grave face, "that's
married upon Torrance of Tinto, far the richest of all our neighbour
gentlemen. You'll no remember him? He was a big mischievous callant when
you were but a little thing, begging your pardon, sir, for the freedom,"
said the old servant, with a little bow of apology; but the gravity of
his countenance did not relax. "It's not thought in the country-side
that the leddy was very fain of the marriage--poor thing!"

"You are severe critics in the country-side. One must take care what one
does, Rolls."

"Maybe, sir, that's true; they say public opinion's a grand thing:
whiles it will keep a person from going wrong. But big folk think
themselves above that," Rolls said. And then, having filled out a glass
of wine, which his master did not want; he withdrew. Rolls was not quite
satisfied with the young laird. He betook himself to the kitchen with
his tray and a sigh, unburdening himself to Bauby as he set down the
remains of the meal on the table. "I wouldna wonder," he said, shaking
his head, "if he turned out mair English than the Cornel himsel'."

"Hoot, Tammas!" said Bauby, always willing to take the best view,
"that's no possible. When ye refleck that he was born at Dalrulzian, and
brought up till his thirteenth year----"

"Sic bringing up!" cried old Rolls; "and a step-faither that never could
learn so much as to say the name right o' the house that took him in!"

Meanwhile John, left alone with his own thoughts, found a curious vein
of new anticipations opened to him by the old man's talk. The smile that
had lighted on the corners of his mouth came back and settled there,
betraying something of the maze of pleased recollections, the amused yet
tender sentiment, which these familiar yet half-forgotten names had
roused again. Caroline and Edith Lindores! No doubt they were family
names, and the great young ladies who were his neighbours were the
cousins of those happy girls whom he remembered so well. The Lindores
had been at a Swiss mountain inn where he and some of his friends had
lived for six weeks under pretence of reading. They had made friends on
the score of old family acquaintance "at home;" and he never remembered
so pleasant a holiday. What had become of the girls by this time? Carry,
the eldest, was sentimental and poetical, and all the young men were of
opinion that Beaufort the young University Don, who was at the head of
the party, had talked more poetry than was good for him with that gentle
enthusiast. Beaufort had gone to the Bar since then, and was said to be
getting on. Had they kept up their intercourse, or had it dropped, John
wondered, as his own acquaintance with the family had dropped? They were
poor people, living abroad for economy and education, notwithstanding
that Mr Lindores was brother to an earl. Surely sometimes the Earl must
invite his relations, or at least he would be sure to hear of them, to
come within the circle of their existence again. Young Erskine had
almost forgotten, to tell the truth, the existence of the Lindores; yet
when they were thus recalled to him, and the possibility of a second
meeting dawned on his mind, his heart gave a jump of pleasure in his
bosom. On the instant there appeared before him the prettiest figure in
short frocks, with an aureola of hair about the young head--a child, yet
something more than a child. Edith had been only sixteen, he remembered;
indeed he found that he remembered everything about her as soon as her
image was thus lightly called back. What might she be now, in her
grown-up condition? Perhaps not so sweet, perhaps married--a contingency
which did not please him to think of. And what if he should be on the
eve of seeing her again!

The smile of pleasure, of amusement, even of innocent vanity with which
in this airy stage a young man contemplates such a possibility, threw a
pleasant light over his face. He went out with that smile half hidden
under his fair moustache, which gave it a kind of confidential character
between him and himself so to speak. As he had nothing else to do, it
occurred to him to take a walk on the road to Dunearn, where he had seen
the French-Scotch _tourelles_ of Lindores Castle through the trees the
day before, and "take a look at" the place--why, he did not know--for no
particular reason, merely to amuse himself. And as he went down the
avenue, that old episode came back to him more and more fully. He
remembered all the little expeditions, the little misadventures, the
jokes, though perhaps they were not brilliant. Carry lingering behind
with Beaufort, talking Shelley, with a flush of enthusiasm about her:
Edith always foremost, chidden and petted, and made much of by
everybody, with her long hair waving, and those fine little shoes which
he had tied once--thick mountain shoes--but such wonderful Cinderella
articles! All these recollections amused him like a story as he went
down the avenue, taking away his attention from external things; and it
was not till he was close upon the gate that he was aware of the
presence of two ladies, who seemed to have paused on their walk to speak
to Peggy Burnet, the gardener's wife, who inhabited the lodge. His ear
was caught by his own name, always an infallible means of rousing the
most careless attention. He could not help hearing what Peggy was
saying, for her voice was somewhat high-pitched, and full of rural
freedom. "Oh ay, my leddy; the young maister, that's Mr John, that's the
laird, came hame yestreen," Peggy was saying, "before he was expectit.
The carriage--that's the bit dogcart, if you can ca' it a carriage, for
there's nothing better left, nor so much as a beast to draw it that we
can ca' oor ain--was sent to the station to meet him. When, lo! he comes
linking along the road on his ain twa legs, and no so much as a bag or a
portmanty behind him, and asks at the gate, Is this Dalrulzian? kenning
nothing of his ain house! And me, I hadna the sense to think, This is
him; but just let him in as if he had been a stranger. And no a creature
to take the least notice! Mr Rolls was just out o' himsel, with
vexation, to let the young maister come hame as if he had been ony
gangrel body; but it couldna be called my fault."

"Surely it could not be your fault; if he wanted a reception, he should
have come when he was expected," said a softer voice, with a little
sound of laughter. Surely, John thought, he had heard that voice before.
He hurried forward wondering, taking off his hat instinctively. Who were
they? Two ladies, one elder, one younger, mother and daughter. They
looked up at him as he approached. The faces were familiar, and yet not
familiar. Was it possible? He felt himself redden with excitement as he
stood breathless, his hat off, the blood flushing to the very roots of
his hair, not able to get out a word in his surprise and pleasure. They
on their side looked at him smilingly, not at all surprised, and the
elder lady held out her hand. "After so long a time you will scarcely
know us, Mr Erskine," she said; "but we knew you were expected, and all
about you, you see."

"Know you?" cried John, almost speechless with the wonder and delight.
"Mrs Lindores! The thing is, can I venture to believe my eyes? There
never was such luck in the world! I think I must be dreaming. Who would
have expected to meet you here, and the very first day?"

Peggy Burnet was much disturbed by this greeting. She pushed forward,
making an anxious face at him. "Sir! sir! you maun say my leddy," she
breathed, in a shrill whisper, which he was too much excited to take any
notice of, but which amused the ladies. They cast a laughing look at
each other. "Didn't you know we were here?" the mother said. "Then we
had the advantage of you. We have been speculating about you for weeks
past--whether you would be much changed, whether you would come at once
to Lindores to renew old acquaintance----"

"That you may be sure I should have done," said John, "as soon as I knew
you were there. And are you really at Lindores? living there? for good?
It seems too delightful to be true."

They were both changed. And he did not know why they should look at each
other with such a laughing interchange of glances. It made him somewhat
uncomfortable, though his mind was too full of the pleasure of seeing
them to be fully conscious of it. It was Edith, as was natural, who was
most altered in appearance. She had been a tall girl, looking more than
her age; and now she was a small, very young woman. At that period of
life such changes happen sometimes; but the difference was delightful,
though embarrassing. Yes, smaller, she was actually smaller, he said to
himself,--"as high as my heart," as Orlando says: yet no longer little
Edith, but an imposing stately personage at whom he scarcely ventured to
look boldly, but only snatched shy glances at, abashed by her soft
regard. He went on stammering out his pleasure, his delight, his
surprise, hardly knowing what he said. "I had just begun to hope that
you might come sometimes, that I might have a chance of seeing you," he
was saying; whereupon Edith smiled gravely, and her mother gave a
little laugh aloud.

"I don't believe he knows anything about it, Edith," she said.

"I was sure of it, mamma," Edith replied; while between them John stood
dumb, not knowing what to think.




CHAPTER IV.


The explanation which was given to John Erskine on the highroad between
Dalrulzian and Lindores, as it is still more important to us than to
him, must be here set forth at more length. There are some happy writers
whose mission it is to expound the manners and customs of the great. To
them it is given to know how duchesses and countesses demean themselves
in their _moments perdus_, and they even catch as it flies that airy
grace with which the chit-chat of society makes itself look like
something of consequence. Gilded _salons_ in Belgravia, dainty boudoirs
in Mayfair, not to speak of everything that is gorgeous in the rural
palaces, which are as so many centres of light throughout England--are
the scenery in which they are accustomed to enshrine the subjects of
their fancy. And yet, alas! to these writers when they have done all,
yet must we add that they fail to satisfy their models. When the elegant
foreigner, or what is perhaps more consonant with the tastes of the
day, the refined American, ventures to form his opinion of the habits of
society from its novels, he is always met with an amused or indignant
protestation. As if these sort of people knew anything about society!
Lady Adeliza says. It is perhaps as well, under these circumstances, to
assume a humility, even if we have it not; and indeed the present writer
has always been shy of venturing into exalted regions, or laying profane
hands upon persons of quality. But when a family of rank comes in our
way by necessity, it would be cowardice to recoil from the difficulties
of the portraiture. Should we fail to represent in black and white the
native grace, the air noble, the exalted sentiments which belong by
right to members of the aristocracy, the reader will charitably impute
the blame rather to the impression made upon our nerves by a superiority
so dazzling than to any defect of goodwill. Besides, in the present
case, which is a great aid to modesty, the family had been suddenly
elevated, and were not born in the purple. Lady Lindores was a commoner
by birth, and not of any very exalted lineage--a woman quite within the
range of ordinary rules and instincts; and even Lady Edith had been Miss
Edith till within a few years. Their honours were still new upon them:
they were not themselves much used to these honours any more than their
humble chronicler; with which preface we enter with diffidence upon the
recent history of the noble house of Lindores.

The late earl had been a man unfortunate in his children. His sons by
his first marriage had died one after another, inheriting their mother's
delicate health. His second wife had brought him but one son, a likely
and healthy boy; but an accident, one of those simplest risks which
hundreds are subject to, and escape daily, carried this precious boy off
in a moment. His father, who had been entirely devoted to him, died
afterwards of a broken heart, people said. The next brother, who was in
India with his regiment, died there almost at the same time, and never
knew that he had succeeded to the family honours. And thus it was that
the Honourable Robert Lindores, a poor gentleman, living on a very
straitened income, in a cheap French town, with his wife and daughters,
and as little expecting any such elevation as a poor curate expects to
be made Archbishop of Canterbury, became Earl of Lindores and the head
of the family, without warning or preparation. It does not perhaps
require very much preparation to come to such advancement; and the new
earl was to the manner born. But Mrs Lindores, who was a woman full of
imagination, with nerves and ideas of her own, received a considerable
shock. She had no objection to being a countess; the coronet, indeed,
was pleasant to her as it is to most people. She liked to look at it on
her handkerchiefs: there is no such pretty ornament. But it startled her
mind and shook her nerves just at first. And it made a great, a very
great, change in the family life. Instead of strolling about as they had
done for years, with one maid for the mother and daughters, and a shabby
cheap French servant, who was valet and factotum; going to all kinds of
places; living as they liked; and though, with many a complaint, getting
a great deal of pleasure out of their lives: there was an immediate
shaking of themselves together--a calling in of stray habits and
fancies,--a jump into their new place, as of an inexperienced and
half-alarmed rider, not at all sure how he was to get on with his
unaccustomed steed. This at least was the mood of Lady Lindores. The
Earl knew all about it better than she did. Even to be merely the
"honourable" had fluttered her senses a little; and it had never
occurred to her that anything further was possible. The family was
poor--still poor, even when thus elevated as it were to the throne; but
the poverty of the Honourable Robert was very different from that of the
right honourable Earl. In the one case it was actual poverty, in the
other only comparative. To be sure it was, when one had time to think,
distressing and troubling not to have money enough to refurnish the
Castle (the taste of the late lord had been execrable) and make many
improvements which were quite necessary. But that was very different
from not having money enough to possess a settled home of your own
anywhere, which had been their previous condition. The Earl took his
measures without a moment's delay. He dismissed the servants who had
followed them in their poverty, and engaged others in London, who were
more proper to the service of a noble family. They travelled quite
humbly, indeed, in their old half-Bohemian way, until they reached
London, and then all at once cast their slough. The ladies put on their
clothes, which they had stopped to procure in Paris, and suddenly
blossomed out (though in deep mourning) into the likeness of their rank.
It was a thing to make the steadiest heart beat. Young Robin was at
Chatham, a lieutenant in a marching regiment--a young nobody, pleased to
be noticed even by the townsfolk; and lo! in a moment, this
insignificant lieutenant became Lord Rintoul. It was like a
transformation scene; he came to meet his people when they passed
through London, and they could scarcely speak to each other when they
met in their mutual wonder. "Poor little Rintoul, all the same, poor
little beggar!" Robin Lindores said. To think of the poor boy, cut off
in a moment, whose death had purchased them all these honours, affected
the young people with a strange awe, and almost remorseful pain. They
felt as if somehow, without knowing it, they had been the cause of that
terrible sudden removal of all the hopes that had rested on their little
cousin's head. Lady Lindores herself declared that she dared not think
of her predecessor, the mother of that poor boy, "the dowager," alas!
poor lady. The dowager was younger than her successor in the family
honours, having been a second wife. They were all silent with respectful
awe when her name was mentioned; but the Earl said pshaw! and thought
this superfluous. He was more used to it; he had been born in the
purple, and now that he had come, though unexpectedly, to his kingdom,
he knew how to fill that exalted place.

The Earl was a man of a character which never, up to this time, had been
estimated as it deserved. He had been quite an easy-going sort of person
in his former estate. In his youth he was said to have been extravagant.
Since his marriage--which had been an imprudent marriage, in so far that
he might perhaps have got a richer wife had he tried, but which was wise
so far that the income upon which they lived chiefly came from that
wife--he had let himself go quietly enough upon the current, there being
no motive to struggle against it. The very best that they could make of
it was simply to "get along;" and get along they did without putting
any force upon their inclinations. He was always able to secure his
comforts, such as were indispensable; and as he liked the easier routine
of a wandering life, he did not object, as he said, to make a sacrifice
for the education of his children and their amusement, by living in
places where the pleasures were cheap and there was no dignity to keep
up. He had in this sense been very complying, both as a husband and a
father, and had allowed himself to be guided, as his family thought, by
their wishes quite as much, at least, as by his own. He had not in these
days been in the least a severe father, or shown marks of a worldly
mind. What was the use? The girls were too young as yet to have become
valuable instruments of ambition, and he had not learnt to think of them
as anything but children. But when this extraordinary change came in
their existence, the easy _dilettante_--whose wants were limited to a
few graceful knick-knacks, an elegant little meal, good music, when
procurable, and a life undisturbed by vulgar cares--altered his very
nature, as his family thought. Hitherto his wife and his girls had done
everything for him, aided by the ubiquitous, the handy, the
all-accomplished Jean or François, who was half-a-dozen men in
one--cook, valet, footman, pattern man-of-all-work. They arranged the
rooms in every new place they went to, so that the fact that these
rooms were those of a hotel or lodging-house should be masked by
familiar prettinesses, carried about with them. They gave a careful
supervision to his meals, and arranged everything, so that papa should
get the best out of his limited existence, and none of its troubles. And
as there was nothing against Mr Lindores--no bad repute, but with an
honourable at his name--every English club, every _cercle_, was open to
him. He always dressed carefully; now and then he helped a wealthier
friend to a bargain in the way of art. He saw a great deal of society.
On the whole, perhaps, for a man without ambition, and upon whom neither
the fate of his children nor the use of his own life pressed very
heavily, he got as much satisfaction out of his existence as most men;
and so might have lived and died, no man knowing what was really in him,
had not poor young Rintoul broken his neck over that fence, and drawn
his father with him into the grave. From the moment when the letter,
placed calmly by Mr Lindores's plate at breakfast, as though it meant
nothing particular, had its black seals broken, he was another man. How
distinctly they all recollected that scene!--a lofty French room, with
bare white walls and long large windows, the green Persians closed to
keep out the sunshine, one long line of light falling across the
polished floor, where one of these shutters had got unfastened; the
spacious coolness in the midst of heat, which is characteristic of such
houses, like the atmosphere in M. Alma Tadema's pictures; the
white-covered table with its flowers and pretty arrangements; the girls
in their white cool dresses; and François lifting the small silver cover
from his master's favourite dish. All the composure and quiet of this
interior had been broken in a moment. There had been a sudden stifled
cry, and Mr Lindores, pushing the table from him, disordering the
dishes, over-setting his heavy chair as he sprang to his feet, had
finished reading his letter standing upright, trembling with excitement,
his face flushed and crimson. "What is it?" they had all cried. "Robin?"
Naturally, the son who was away was the first thought of the women. For
a minute the father had made no reply, and their anxiety was beyond
words. Then he put down the letter solemnly, and went to his wife and
took her hand. "There is nothing wrong with Robin," he said; "but it
comes by trouble to others, if not to us. My dear, you are the Countess
of Lindores." It was some minutes before the real meaning of this
communication penetrated their astonished minds; and the first proof of
understanding which the new Lady Lindores gave was to cover her face and
cry out, "Oh, poor boy! oh, poor Jane, poor Jane!" with a pang at her
heart. It was not all grief for the other--could any one expect
that?--but the poignant state of emotion which this strange terrible
good fortune caused her, had a sharpness of anguish in it for the
moment. The girls went away hushed and silenced, unable to eat their
breakfasts, to find some black ribbons instead of the bright ones they
wore. They wept a few tears as they went to their rooms over poor young
Rintoul; but they had known very little of the boy, and the strange
excitement of the change soon crept into their veins. Lady Caroline and
Lady Edith! instead of the humble Miss Lindores. No wonder that it went
to their heads.

And from that moment the new Earl was a different man. He threw off all
his languor, took everything into his own hands. Those little economies
which it had been so necessary to insist upon yesterday were now absurd,
notwithstanding that the Earls of Lindores were far from
rich--comparatively. The family came home rapidly, as has been said;
pausing in Paris to get their dresses, to dismiss the faithful servants
of their poverty, who would be of no use, the Earl decided, in the
change of circumstances. He behaved very well, everybody said, to poor
Lady Lindores, his brother's young widow, who had thus been left at once
widowed and childless. He showed "every consideration;" would not allow
her to be hurried; waited her convenience and her pleasure in every
way. But, naturally, that poor lady was glad to take refuge with her own
family in her desolation; and within a few months, the wandering
exile-family, familiar with all the cheap watering-places and centres of
genteel emigration on the Continent, were settled in the greatness of
their new position, as if they had never known any less elevated
circumstances. There was a great deal of excitement in the change; and
though it was sad at first, no doubt there was a pleasure in hearing
Robin addressed by the name of Rintoul, and accustoming themselves to
their ladyships. But yet, when all was over, it was not perhaps to the
girls so great an improvement as it appeared on the old life. They were
not dull--oh no--but still there was a great deal less to do and to see
than there used to be; and though they felt, as their mother said, that
girls with so many resources ought to be occupied and happy wherever
they went, still the calm of the Castle was very different from the stir
and movement to which they had been used.

Up to this time, however, nothing had happened to them except that which
was determined by another will than theirs, the inevitable result of
other events. But they had not been long settled in their new and
elevated life when it became apparent that other changes had happened
which were not evoked by any external fate, and which were yet more
profoundly to affect their life. That Swiss holiday had been more
important to Carry than any one out of the family knew. It had ended in
a kind of vague engagement, only half sanctioned, yet only half opposed
by her family, and which it was possible, had Mr Beaufort been rich
enough to marry, would not have been opposed at all. Had he possessed
income enough or courage enough to make the venture, the result in all
likelihood would, years before, have been out of the reach of evil fate;
but while it remained only an engagement, Mr Lindores had refused his
official sanction to it. And it had seemed to Carry, in whose mind the
first conscious thought after the news of this extraordinary change was
to communicate it to Edward, that from that very day her father's aspect
had changed towards her. He had met her running out to the post with her
letter in the afternoon, and had given a suspicious glance at it, and
stopped her, telling her it was not fit she should go out on a day so
serious. Not a word had been said for weeks and even months after, but
she knew very well that things were not as before. All reference to
Beaufort was somehow stopped; even her mother managed to arrest upon her
lips all mention of her lover. She was herself too timid to open the
subject, and gradually a chill certainty that he was to be ignored and
pushed aside out of her life, came upon the poor girl. How it was that
further dangers dawned upon her, it would be hard to tell; but it is
certain that she had divined a something--a tightening coil about her
helpless feet, a design upon her freedom and happiness--before the
family had been long at Lindores. One of the consequences of their great
honour and increased stateliness of living was, that the two sisters
were partially separated, as they felt, from each other. They no longer
occupied the same room as they had done all their lives. They had now
what with their foreign habits they called an _appartement_--a suite of
rooms set apart for them; and as Edith was full of curiosity and
excitement about the new life, and Carry was discouraged and depressed,
and felt it odious to her, they fell a little apart without any mutual
intention or consciousness. It was in the beginning of their first
winter, when the dark days were closing in, that this semi-estrangement
first became apparent to the younger sister. She awoke all at once to
the consciousness that Carry was pale; that she shut herself up very
much, and more than ever devoted herself to her writing; that she
composed a great many little poems (for she was the genius of the
family), and often had a suspicion of redness about her eyes. This
discovery was instantaneous. Edith had never been awakened to any but
the most simple troubles of life, and it had not occurred to her to
imagine that there was anything beneath the headache which her sister so
often took refuge in. But her mind, when it began to act, was rapid and
keen. It became apparent to her that she had been losing sight of Carry,
and that Carry was not happy. The progress from one step to another of
her solicitude for her sister was rapid as lightning. She remembered
everything in a moment, though these causes of sorrow had been
altogether out of her thoughts before. She remembered that not a word
had been said of Mr Beaufort for months; that Carry had ceased
altogether to speculate as to anything that might happen in the future;
that all this was as a closed book between them nowadays. As soon as she
arrived at this conviction, Edith found herself ready to interfere for
good or evil. She went into the room where Carry was writing her little
poetries, with something of the effect of a fresh light wind, carrying
refreshment, but also a little disturbance, with her. She stooped over
her sister with a caressing arm round her neck, and plunged at once into
the heart of the subject. It was a still, dull afternoon of early
winter, and nobody was by. "Carry," she said, all at once--"Carry, it is
so long since we have said anything to each other! I wanted to ask you
about--Edward!" Upon this, for all answer, Carry fell a-crying, but
after a while sobbed forth, "I will never give him up!"

"Give him up!" cried Edith, surprised. She had what her mother called a
positive nature, much less romantic, much less sensitive, than her
sister. The idea of giving up had never entered her mind. "Give him
up!--no, of course not. I never thought of such a thing; but I am afraid
it will be harder than ever with papa."

"Oh, Edith, it will be _impossible_," Caroline said. And then the two
sisters looked at each other--the one astonished, indignant, full of
resistance; the other pale, drooping, without vigour or hope.

"What does impossible mean?" said the younger, not with any affectation
or grandiloquence; for probably she had never heard of any heroic
utterance on the subject. "You mean very, very hard. So it will be. I
have wanted to speak to you since ever we came here. I want to know what
he says himself, and if papa has said anything, and what mamma thinks.
We don't seem to live together now," she added, with a clouded
countenance. "It's always, 'Oh, Lady Caroline has gone out,' or, 'Her
ladyship is in the library with my lord,' It seemed very nice at first,
but I begin to hate ladyships and lordships with all my heart."

"So do I," said Caroline, with a sigh.

"If you marry a man without a title, couldn't you give it up? Perhaps
one wouldn't like that either, now," said the girl, candidly. "It was
far, _far_ nicer, far more natural, in the old days; but perhaps one
wouldn't like to go back."

"I suppose not," said Carry, drearily. She was not a beautiful girl, as
in her romantic position she ought to have been. Her nose was too large;
her complexion deficient; her eyes were grey, sweet, and thoughtful, but
not brilliant or shining. Her figure had the willowy grace of youth, but
nothing more imposing. She had a very sweet radiant smile when she was
happy; this was the chief attraction of her face: but at present she was
not happy, and her pale gentle countenance was not one to catch the
general eye.

"But I hope you are going to make a stand, Carry," said the energetic
little Edith. "You won't, surely--you can't be so _lâche_ as to give in?
_I_ would not!--not if it cost me my life!"

"Ah, if it was a question of one's life! but no one wants your life,"
said Carry, shaking her head. "No one will touch us, or lock us up, or
any of these old-fashioned things. If they only would! The poets say 'I
could die for you,' as if that was difficult! Oh no, it is far harder,
far harder to live."

"Carry! you have been thinking a great deal about it, then?"

"What else could I think about? Since the first moment papa looked at me
that day--you remember that day?--I knew in a moment what he meant. He
gave me just one glance. You know he never said that he would consent."

Edith's youthful countenance gathered a sympathetic cloud. "Papa has
been so changed ever since," she said.

"He never would allow that he had consented even before,--and while we
were all poor, what did it matter? So long as he does not ask me to----"

"To what?" Edith asked, with a wondering perception of the shudder which
ran over her sister's slight figure. "Are you cold, Car?"

"To--marry some one else," cried poor Caroline, with a heavy sigh,--so
heavy that it was almost a groan.

Edith sprang to her feet with indignant vehemence. "_That_ is not
possible; nobody could be so cowardly, so cruel, as that," she said,
clasping her hands together. "Carry, you speak as if papa was a bad man;
you slander him; it is not true, it is not true!"

"He would not think it cruel," said Caroline, shaking her head sadly.
"He would not mean any harm; he would say to himself that it was for my
good."

Her despondency quenched the passion and energy of the younger girl.
Carry's drooping head and heavy eyes were enough to damp even the
liveliest courage. "Are you thinking of--any one in particular?" Edith
said in hushed and tremulous tones.

Carry put out her hands as if to push some spectre away. "Oh, don't ask
me, don't ask me; I don't know; I can't tell you," she cried.

What could Edith say? she was appalled. The fresh inexperienced heart
received a first lesson in the mysterious evils of life. She who had
fretted and chafed so at the partial separation that had arisen between
them, she was glad of a pretext to leave her sister. She could scarcely
believe this to be possible, and yet so it was. Nor did she wish to run
to her mother with her discovery, to appeal to her against Carry's
misconception, against the monstrous character of the suggestion
altogether, as would have been her first impulse in any other case. No;
she was convinced of the reality of it, little as she desired to be
convinced. A gleam of painful light seemed to fall across the new tenor
of their life. She thought for a moment that she saw the very earth,
solid and unyielding, break into dangerous pits and chasms before her
feet. The pain of this discovery was two-fold--both poignant, yet one
worse than the other. To think that her father, whom she had hitherto
loved and trusted, not with any excess of devotion, but yet with an
honest confidence that he would ask nothing wrong, nothing unreasonable
from his children, should thus threaten to become a domestic tyrant, an
enemy of truth, was terrible; but still more terrible was the conviction
which overwhelmed the girl that Carry, with all her imagination and
feeling--Carry, the poet of the family, the first one to have a romance
and a lover--would not have strength to resist any attempted coercion.
Oh, if it had only been me! Edith said to herself, clenching her hands
tight. But then she had no Edward, no romance--she was fancy free: even
were it possible to force her into any connection she disliked (which
Edith did not think it would be), at all events she could not be made
false to another. But Carry--Carry, who was all heart--to force her to
deny that heart would be doubly cruel. Little Edith woke out of her
careless youth to see this wonderful and great danger at her very side,
with all that bewilderment of feeling which attends the first disclosure
of the evils in life. She could not believe it, and yet she knew it was
true. She remembered tones in her father's voice, lights in his eyes,
which she never seemed to have understood before. Was this what they
meant? that when his time and opportunity came, he would be a tyrant, a
remorseless and unfaltering ruler, suffering no rebellion? Edith
trembled a little. Perhaps she, too, might fall under that despotism one
day. But she did not feel afraid for herself. Oh, if it had only been
me! she said, ungrammatical, as excitement generally is. It would be
hard to say what ground she had for her self-confidence. Carry was the
genius of the family, and little Edith only the youngest, the household
pet, whom nobody regarded as in a position to make decisions or form
opinions for herself. Why was it to her eyes that this sudden insight
had been given? It is not usually a happy gift. Blessed are they, we may
rather say, who can deceive themselves--whose eyes are made blind, and
not more fatally clear, by love. Edith hastened out of doors, out of
sight or speech of any one, to try if she could escape from this
revelation which had opened upon her, so much against her will. It was a
misty dull day, with a great deal of moisture in the air--moisture which
seemed to communicate itself to Edith's eyes, and get into her throat.
She hastened down the path which wound through the birches, the poetical
"birks of Lindores," to the river lying far below, and already sending a
soft sound of running water to soothe her. About half-way down was a
great beech-tree, round which a seat had been placed. Here there was a
view, not of the wide champaign, like that at Dalrulzian, but of a
portion of the highroad, just where it began to mount the hill towards
the Castle. On the other side lay the river, visible at the foot of the
bank, and running somewhat strong and wild under the cliffs on the
opposite side, which threw it into deep shadow. But it was not the
river, though so much the more beautiful of the two, it was the highroad
which attracted Edith's attention. As she stood looking out upon it,
some one passed, riding slowly along, but turning his head to catch the
first glimpse of the Castle. His appearance seemed to throw a sudden
light upon her thoughts. He was a heavy, large man, upon a powerful
black horse,--an apparition big enough to be identified, even at that
distance. The ladies had all been very free in their remarks upon this
representative of their county neighbours. They had not given him a very
encouraging reception, yet he had repeated his visits, too stolid, they
had thought, to perceive that he was not wanted. As Edith stood and
gazed at him, with the blood curdling about her heart, it flashed upon
her that her father had given no countenance to their criticisms. He had
told them that Mr Torrance was one of the richest commoners in Scotland,
and Tinto such a house as any one might be proud to possess. She had
paid little attention to these words at the time, but they seemed to
repeat themselves in the very air now. It was a day of revelation to
Edith. She saw all that it meant, and foresaw all it was coming to, with
a gleam of terrible insight. Oh no, no! she moaned to herself in a kind
of helpless protest against fate.




CHAPTER V.


Mr Torrance of Tinto was the representative of an old county family, but
he would not have been the richest commoner in Scotland if he had been
no more than this. A variety of other circumstances, however, had
combined to bring about this effect, and elevate a man who was no
better, at the best that could be said for him, than a rude
yeoman-sportsman at soul, into a person of the greatest local importance
and almost national notability. The previous Torrance of Tinto, a man of
some rough practical power, had allied himself to some degree in
business, and to a much greater degree in life, with a great railway
contractor--one of the men who, coming from nothing, have made colossal
fortunes, and found admittance for their children, if not for
themselves, into the foremost ranks of society. Mr Torrance married this
man's daughter, and all the money which the original navvy had quarried
out of the bowels of the earth, or gathered from its surface, went to
increase the lands and the power of Tinto, where this daughter, his only
child, a woman with the magnificent ideas of expenditure which enormous
wealth so naturally brings along with it, disposed herself to reign like
a princess, making her husband's old house the centre of a new palace,
fit for a duke at least. The old man, her father, always thrifty and
sparing in his own person, would have her stinted in nothing; and
perhaps, had she lived long, her husband would have had little enough
left him of the huge fortune which she had brought into the family. But
fortunately (for the family), after she had alarmed him beyond measure
by unbounded expenditure for a few years, and had completed the new
house and filled it with costly furniture, in all of which her father
encouraged her, the death of both within a year of each other relieved
the owner of Tinto of his fears, and left him free to complete the
training of his son as he pleased. He made him much such a man as he had
himself been, but without the brains, which are not transmitted so
easily as money. Patrick Torrance had indeed been sent to Oxford to have
the regulation mark stamped upon him as an educated man: but those were
days in which so much as this meant was easier than now; and it is not
very hard even now, as may be seen. He came back more horsey, more doggy
than he had been before, if possible,--a man without an intellectual
taste or higher instinct, bored to death, as he himself avowed, with the
grand house, full of pictures, and statues, and marble, and porcelain,
which the taste of his mother had accumulated. Never was such a
magnificent place in the quietude of such a homely country. The daughter
of the railway man was as extreme in her taste for art as the daughter
of one of her father's navvies might have been in dress. There was not a
wall, not a passage or staircase, that was not laden with decoration.
Great artists had designed the chimney-pieces and cornices. The velvet,
the satin, the embroidery, were all the most costly, and, according to
the lights of that period, the most correct that money could buy. The
old man, whose money had bought all this, went about the gorgeous rooms
rubbing his hands with a continual chuckle of satisfaction so long as he
lived; and the poor woman who had created the luxurious house swept
through in dresses to correspond, with satisfaction not less than if she
had been a daughter of the Medici,--who, to be sure, made their money in
business too. But when that fine Renaissance lady died, and all her
friends were scattered, and the place fell back into the possession of
the commonplace country laird and his boy, coming in ruddy from the
fields or damp from the hill, afraid to tread in their shooting boots
on the luxurious carpets or throw themselves down in the satin chairs,
the incongruity of the establishment was manifest to every eye. Mr
Torrance, the father, had been deeply impressed by the cost of
everything his wife had bought and planned. He had been horrified and
indignant in the first instance; but when it had been proved that he had
no power to resist, and that the money must be expended for all these
luxuries, he had taken what satisfaction he could from the price. "Do
you know what she gave for that?" he would say; "it's all dash'd
extravagance. I cannot away with it; but it was her doing, and as she
had plenty, she had to please herself." It was in this way that he spoke
of his wife. And when she died, the splendid house she had built was
shut up,--not from sentiment, but because the set of rooms still
remaining, which belonged to the old house of Tinto, was much more in
harmony with the habits of the master of the house.

Now that he too was dead, his son followed his example in preferring the
old den of the race. But he had more appreciation of the dignity of
owning a house such as no one in the country could "hold a candle" to.
The fine decorations had not all stood the neglect of twenty years, but
still there was enough of magnificence to overawe the district; and
Patrick Torrance had enough of his mother's blood in him to enjoy the
consciousness of so much luxury and costliness. He lived in the old
library, which was low and dingy, and looked out upon the dark bit of
shrubbery behind the house and the road that led to the stables; but
periodically he threw the grand empty rooms open, and had a great
dinner-party or a ball, which excited all the gentry for miles round. It
would be vain to say that there was not on these occasions more
excitement than was natural solely in view of a great entertainment.
While society is constituted as it is, it will not be possible that a
great matrimonial prize, such as Mr Patrick Torrance unquestionably was,
should thus be shown, as open to public competition, without a certain
excitement. If a great post worth thousands a-year could be won by the
most attractive and brilliant appearance in a ball-room, what a flutter
there would be among the golden youth of society! and the master of
Tinto was more valuable than most of the very finest appointments. He
was as good as a Viceroyship of India without the necessity of
expatriation. Consequently it is not to be supposed that the young
ladies of the neighbourhood could prepare for their appearance in these
gilded if somewhat tarnished halls of his without a good deal of
agitation, or that the mothers, or even the fathers of possible
competitors, could escape some share of the same excitement. Some of the
girls, let us do them the justice to say, were as much alarmed lest Pat
Torrance, as he was called, should cast his big projecting eyes upon
them, as others were anxious for that notice. He was not in himself much
adapted to please a maiden's eye. He was very dark, strongly bearded,
with large eyes _à fleur de tête_ and somewhat bloodshot. His friends
maintained that he had "a good figure," and it certainly was tall and
strong. His voice was as large as his person, and somewhat hoarse--a
deep bass, which made a vibration in the air. He was an excellent shot,
and hunted indefatigably, though it was beginning to be said,
notwithstanding his youth, that Pat was too heavy for distinction in the
hunting-field. With all these qualities he had an eye to his interest,
rich though he was; and, though not clever, was said to be very
fortunate in his investments, and to keep a careful hand over his money.
Now and then he would be lavish, outdoing all that was known in these
parts in the way of extravagance; but for the most part he lived as his
father had done before him, in the old rooms of the old mansion-house of
Tinto, where not a carpet or a curtain had been removed since the time
of his grandfather. There was perhaps a touch of humour, somehow struck
out by the contact of the two races, which made the contrast of these
two manners of living pleasant to his fancy and to his rude and
elementary pride; or perhaps it was mere instinct, and had no meaning
in it at all--the habits of the limited and uncultured countryman,
diversified by that delight in an occasional "blow out," which is the
compensation of the navvy for his rude toils. There was no doubt that
from the time of his father's death, which occurred when he was about
twenty-eight, Pat Torrance had made up his mind to marry. And he had
inspected all the marriageable girls in the country with a serious
intention which disgusted some and amused others, and filled a few with
breathless hope. In the latter class were ladies of very different
pretensions indeed, from Miss Webster of Thrums, who was the greatest
rider in the country, and never wanting when anything was going on, down
to the bold, handsome, black-eyed daughter of the landlord of the Bear
at Dunearn, which was the inn Mr Torrance used when he went into the
county town. He was just as likely, people thought, to make such a match
as any other; his style of courtship was more in harmony with a bar-room
than a drawing-room. This conviction made the balls at Tinto less
exciting to the feminine community generally as time went on; but still
there is never any telling what caprice may sway a sultan's choice.

And alas! it is a fact that, whether by their own will or by that of
their parents, Pat Torrance might have married almost any lady in the
county. He was not himself to them, but such a cluster of worldly
advantages as scarcely any mortal woman could resist. He was, as we have
said, far beyond in value the best of the appointments for which they
could not, and their brothers could try. He meant a fine position, a
magnificent house, a great fortune. To be sure there was a drawback to
this, which only a few acknowledged. When Mrs Sempill pointed out to her
daughter Agnes, whom he had honoured with some passing notice, that in
case she married him she would have "everything that heart could
desire--at least everything that money could buy,"--Agnes, who was a
clever girl, put forth a condition. "I should have just as much as Pat
Torrance thought proper of the things that money can buy," the young
woman said, with sudden insight. I am afraid, however, that Agnes
Sempill would have married him all the same, her family being so poor,
if he had put himself at her disposal. But he did not, and she was glad.
Indeed he made himself of all the greater importance in the county that
he came to no decision, but went on giving his balls three or four times
a-year, and examining with a critical eye every girl who appeared on the
horizon, every new _débutante_. And he was asked everywhere in those
days. His importance was fully recognised.

This was the condition in which things were when the new family came to
the Castle. Mr Torrance was one of the first callers, partly because his
pride as at once the head of an old family and the richest man in the
county made him eager to assert his position with the new Earl as a
leader of the local society--a position which not even the chances their
daughters might have of sharing it would have prevailed on the other
county magnates to permit him,--and partly because of the new candidates
for his favour who were to be found in the family of Lindores.
Notwithstanding the prevalent idea that Bessie Runciman at the Black
Bear in Dunearn had just as good a chance for the prize as any
competitor, nothing could be further from the fact or the intentions of
the hero. His determination all along had been to procure himself a wife
who should be in harmony, not so much with himself as with the grandeur
of his house and what he believed to be his position; and the hunting
lady and the publican's daughter had been equally out of the question.
For himself, he might have liked either of them well enough; but as a
matter of fact, it was not too much refinement, but not refinement
enough, which this rude squire found among his country neighbours. None
of them was fine enough for Tinto. He wanted somebody who would be at
home in the grand rooms overloaded with decoration--who would be, if
possible, superior to the killing splendour which made himself feel so
small. And no woman yet had impressed Pat as sufficiently magnificent
for this purpose. He wanted some one more imposing,--a lady of Tinto who
might, as he desired in his heart, receive the Prince of Wales on
occasion, or even the Queen herself. When he paid his first visit to
Lindores, the Earl alone received him, and he had no chance of
inspecting the daughters of the house; but he had met them as he rode
home again, coming back from their drive in the little pony-carriage, of
which they had just become possessed. Edith, new to all these delights,
was driving her sister; and her bright little face, full of life and
smiles, turned curiously upon him as he stood aside on his big black
horse to let them pass. But that was not what caught his eye. Beside her
was a pale and gentle countenance, unlike anything which had hitherto
been presented to his notice. Pat's heart, if he had a heart, or the big
pulse that did service for it, gave a bound as he looked. It seemed to
him at the first glance that this new face was more aristocratic, more
distinguished, for not being pretty. The lilies and roses of the other
were familiar to him. Bright eyes and fine complexions were by no means
rare in the county. They were to be found everywhere, in the cottages as
well as in the castles. He was not impressed by them. The smiles and
animation were common things; but Lady Caroline with her gentle
paleness, her slim form pliant and bending,--even her nose, which was a
little too long, was the impersonation of refinement and rank, and fine
superiority. His imagination, if he had an imagination, took fire. He
thought he could see her moving about with languid grace through his
fine _salons_, far more fine than they, lending them an air of delicacy
and importance which they had never possessed before. He felt himself to
be "struck" by Lady Caroline as he never had been "struck" till now.
That was rank, he said to himself admiringly. To be sure, rank was what
he had wanted; he had never realised it before, but now he perceived it
as plain as daylight. He had been wiser than he was aware of in his
fastidiousness; and now he saw suddenly presented before him the very
object of which he had been in search. Lady Caroline Torrance!--that was
what it was.

This chance meeting, and the instant conviction that followed, had taken
place some time before the interview between the sisters which we have
described. How it was that the suitor communicated his wishes to the
Earl, or the Earl to poor Carry, it is impossible to tell--or if,
indeed, up to this time, any communication had been made on the subject.
Most likely there had been no communication; but the proposal, which
turned the light into darkness for Carry, was in the air, overshadowing
everything. Her father saw it in the dark face of Pat Torrance, and she
surmised it in her father's eyes. Before a word had been said she knew
her fate, struggling dumbly against it like a creature fascinated and
magnetised in the grip of a monster, but without any possibility or hope
of escape. There was something more terrible in this silent certainty
than there would have been in any conflict. She felt herself sucked in
as to a whirlpool, overpowered,--all her forces taken from her in the
giddy rush with which the days and hours were carrying her on,
irresistible, to that climax. It was this fatal consciousness which made
her cry out, "I will never give him up;" which was the cry, not of
resolution, but of despair. All that she could do in her sick and
failing soul was to grasp at and cling to the weeds on the bank, while
the current carried her wildly on, plucking them out of her hands.
Edith, who was of so different a nature, stood by appalled, astonished,
not knowing how to account for her sister's helplessness. She was
positive, as her mother said, not visionary, incapable either of
divining what was going to happen or of yielding to it. Why Carry could
not simply make up her mind to refuse, to stand fast, to resist
whatever powers might be brought to bear upon her, was a thing which
Edith could not understand.

And stranger still, Lady Lindores had not even found it out. She
disliked Mr Torrance, and made no secret of her dislike. "If that is
your type of a Scotch laird, I cannot say I like the species," she said,
eliciting a soft, "Oh, mamma!" from Edith, who remembered very well a
statement of an entirely contrary character which her mother had once
made. "If young Erskine is a type of a young Scotch laird, I am disposed
to fall in love with the class," was what Lady Lindores had then said.
Edith remembered it distinctly, but gave her tongue a little malicious
bite, and would not recall it to her mother's mind; for was not young
Erskine coming back? But Lady Lindores's feeling about Torrance was more
than passive. She took care to let him see that he was not a favourite
in the house. She wondered audibly, even after the eyes of Edith had
been opened, what that odious man wanted here; and indeed did all but
refuse to ask him to a _dîner intime_, at which her husband desired his
presence. "Torrance of Tinto," she cried, with a cloud on her face; "why
Torrance of Tinto? He has already dined here. Why should we have him
again?"

"Why not?" said the Earl, with a still deeper shadow on his face. Lady
Lindores saw very clearly when her attention was aroused; but she was a
high-minded woman, slow to be awakened to suspicion, and scorning to
think evil. It seemed to her an evidence of a poor nature to suppose any
one else capable of an act you would not have done yourself.

"Why not? I think that jumps at the eyes," she said. It was Lady
Lindores's weakness to employ idioms which, being translated idioms,
sounded very strange to ordinary ears. This was so far comprehensible
because she had lived abroad the greater part of her life, and she
thought the polyglot chatter which is so common, especially among the
English abroad, vulgar; so she translated her French, and thought it
less objectionable. "That jumps at the eyes," she said; "he is not a
friend of the house--only a recent acquaintance--and he has dined here
already. Why have him again? He is not an attractive person. You cannot
care for him, Robert; and he is no favourite with the girls."

"The girls must learn to receive the people I approve of," said the
Earl, "or we shall quarrel. You must make them aware of that."

"Quarrel! for the sake of Mr Torrance! That is carrying clanship a great
way."

"There is no clanship in it. You ought to know better, my dear. Your
English fallacies are quite out of place here. If I had a clan (which I
have not--we are purely Norman, not Celtic at all), Pat Torrance could
have had as little to do with it as John Smith."

"My dear Robert," said Lady Lindores, for she had not learned to address
her husband by his title, "you take it very seriously. I meant your
kindness for your own people. But for a kind prejudice, which I admire
and respect, for your old neighbours, you never would put up with a
being like this Tinto, as they call him,--a rich fox-hunter, with the
mind of a ploughman."

"You will oblige me, Mary," said her husband, coldly, "by restraining
your opinion--at all events until you have a better right to express it.
What do you know of Pat Torrance? I should very much prefer that you did
not commit yourself on the subject. You might regret it after."

"Commit myself!--regret it!" Lady Lindores gazed at her husband with
consternation. She had absolutely no guide to what he could mean; but as
he stood to his point and would not yield, and as one must certainly
yield when such a question arises, she found herself unwillingly obliged
to give in. She was behind her children in comprehension, strange as it
seems to say so. Lady Lindores had not been unfavourable to Beaufort's
claims when first he made his suit to Carry; but she had been perhaps a
little disappointed in him as the years passed on. He had not shown the
energy, the determination, which a man in such circumstances ought to
show. He had made no passionate effort to obtain his bride, such as
Carry's mother felt her child was worth. And it was a long time now
since Lady Lindores had taken any notice of the lingering engagement
which her husband had never positively sanctioned, but which had
lingered on for a year or two, coming to nothing. She had thought it
best not to interfere. Perhaps Mr Beaufort might think it his duty to
release Carry, now that her position was so much changed. The mother did
not feel that she could ask him to do so; but if anything had happened
to the tardy lover--had he been ill, or died, or proved fickle, she
would have felt that Providence was interfering on their behalf. In the
meantime, she thought it the best policy to say nothing about it. And it
was this reticence which she intended for wisdom, which prevented any
explanation between them, and kept her ignorant of what even Edith knew.
It did not occur to her to connect her child, so delicate and refined,
with the rough and coarse squire, whom she could not tolerate. How her
husband could put up with him Lady Lindores could not conceive. He
certainly meant something by it, she thought; but what did he mean? Was
it some scheme of tactics in respect to the next election? which
already, she knew, gave Lord Lindores great concern. Perhaps the Earl,
who had a devouring ambition, now that he found an opening for it,
thought it well to have the richest man in the county under his
influence. This was all that she had yet divined. "Your father insists
upon having that Mr Torrance," she said to the girls. "What he can see
in him, I cannot imagine. But that does not look at us. We are not
called upon to make martyrs of ourselves for papa's political friends."

Carry looked up eagerly as her mother spoke. "Political!" she said, with
a quiver of hopeful eagerness in her voice. "Is that the reason?" This
eager tone and broken question would have made Lady Lindores wonder had
she not been full of the subject from her own point of view.

"What else?" she said. "You cannot suppose a man like your father can
find anything else in Mr Torrance to attract him. Politics are very
entrancing, but, like necessity, they bring you acquainted with strange
bedfellows. Papa thinks, no doubt, that he ought to turn his influence
to account."

"Oh, if that is the reason!" said Carry, clasping her hands together,
with something like an ecstasy of prayer and thankfulness in her face.
Lady Lindores, though she thought the emotion excessive--but then Carry
was always visionary--understood that her daughter's delicate soul had
been wounded by her father's regard for so unattractive a person. She
patted her child upon the cheek tenderly.

"You must not consider yourself responsible for all the things we do in
the prosecution of our several parts," she said. "I feel, for my own
part, that I take a great deal too much notice of old Gardener. I am
getting much too fond of him. This is more innocent, I allow, than your
father's fancy for Mr Torrance; for I don't insist on asking old
Gardener to dinner."

"That I never should object to!" cried Carry, kissing her mother with
sudden enthusiasm. She was cheered beyond measure by the comparison, and
by Lady Lindores's absolute ignorance of any other pretension on the
part of Torrance. Perhaps she had been deceiving herself, and
attributing to her father intentions that had never entered his mind.
Carry was too thankful to think that this might be how it was. But
Edith, the clear-sighted, avoided her sister's eye. She made no comment
on what her mother said. Edith felt that, however others might be
deceived, she _knew_.




CHAPTER VI.


Alas! it was not very long before everybody knew. The demeanour of Pat
Torrance at the dinner, to which Lady Lindores had been so reluctant to
ask him, gave much occasion for thought to the other guests who knew the
man and his ways. These said to each other that Pat had put his foot in
it at last--that he had made his choice, and thrown his handkerchief at
almost the only woman in the county, who was not sure to respond to it.
Nothing could have been colder or more repellent than Lady Caroline was
to this great matrimonial prize--the idol whom they all bowed down to,
though some with minds which rebelled against the rude and ungodlike
divinity. Among these interested lookers-on were some who rejoiced to
see that he was likely to be made "to see his place" and submit to the
humiliation of refusal; and some who, conscious that in their own
families there were worshippers who would not have refused to bow down,
were angry with poor Carry for "setting up" to be so much better than
her neighbours. The most sagacious of these, however, reserved their
judgment. There was something in the demonstration with which the Earl
brought Pat forward and patted him on the back--something, too, of pain
in poor Lady Carry's mild eyes, which made these more profound observers
pause. The Lindores were poor. There were two daughters to provide for;
and it was not a matter to be settled so easily, or which the parents
would allow to turn entirely on a young girl's fancy. And then she was
not even pretty, and she had got into the twenties--not a mere girl,
with all the world before her. The wise would not give any opinion on
the subject. They shook their heads and refused to commit themselves.
But this was exactly what Pat Torrance did. He was so satisfied that
here at last he had got everything he wanted, that he displayed his
decision in Carry's favour from the first day. He made a spectacle of
himself to the whole county, looking on with the keenest attention; and
oh, how pleased society would have been in the district had he been once
for all made an example of, made a fool of, as they said,--held up to
public scorn and ridicule as a rejected suitor! As the wooing went on,
the desire for such a consummation--the anticipation of it--grew daily
in intensity; and it was not very long doubtful. One of the usual great
balls was given at Tinto, which was specially in honour of the
new-comers, and took place as soon as they were out of their mourning.
It was evidently a crisis in the life of the master of the house, and to
the greater part of the guests all the interest of a highly exciting
drama was mingled with the milder impulses of amusement. Lady Caroline,
everybody said, had never looked less well. She was very pale;--it was
even said that freckles, caused by her sinful exposure of her face to
all the elements during the summer, diminished the sheen of her
ordinarily white forehead--her nose was longer than ever. But all this
only increased, to her admirer, the charm of her presence. She was
independent of beauty. Though she was very simply dressed--too simply
for a lady of rank--yet the air with which she moved about these fine
rooms was (Pat thought) such as no one else who had ever been there had
possessed. She was superior to them, as she was superior to the lilies
and the roses, the wreathed smiles and shining eyes of the other girls.
He followed her about with demonstrations of devotion which no one could
mistake. He would have danced with nobody but her, in the most marked
abandonment of all his duties as host, would she have permitted him.
Even when he danced with others his eyes followed her, and the only talk
he vouchsafed to his partners was about Lady Car, as he called her, with
offensive familiarity and a sort of intoxication. As for poor Lady
Caroline herself, it was apparent to every one that she retreated
continually into out-of-the-way corners--hiding herself behind the old
maids and dowagers, who were never left out of such gatherings, and
liked to come and look on and criticise the girls, and tell how things
had been done in their day. Several of these old ladies, distressed to
see a girl not dancing, had betrayed poor Carry's hiding-place by their
kind efforts to get her a partner; and the result had been two or three
times that she was thus delivered over into the very clutches of the
wolf.

"Mr Patrick," one of those kind ladies said, rising from her seat and
taking hold of his arm as he prowled about, wondering where Carry could
have disappeared to, "do you no think it's discreditable to the county
that a young leddy newly come among us, and a person of rank--and, what
is better, a sweet young creature--should be left sitting down the whole
night and get no dancing?"

It was on this occasion that Miss Barbara Erskine won the heart of the
persecuted girl. She said to her in a strong whisper which went through
Carry's ear like a--skewer (the simile is undignified, but suits the
fact)--"My dear, there's that eediot, Jean Sempill, drawing attention to
you. If you want to get out of the way, slip away behind me; there's a
door there that leads into the corridor, and so you can get back to
your mother. Stay by your mother--that's your safest way." Thus Carry
was delivered for the moment. But, alas! her mother could not protect
her effectually. When Pat Torrance came boldly up with his dark face
glowing, and his projecting eyes ready, as a spectator remarked, to jump
out of his head, and said, "This is our dance," what could any one do
for her? Lady Lindores had become alarmed, not knowing what to make of
Carry's agitation; but even a mother in these circumstances can do so
little. "I am afraid she is tired, Mr Torrance," Lady Lindores said; but
Carry's arm was already in his. She had not presence of mind even to
take the advantage of such an excuse.

When he brought her back, however, to her mother's side, nobody could
have helped seeing that something had happened. Poor Carry was as white
as her dress: she seemed scarcely able to hold herself upright, and sank
down by her mother's side as if she neither saw nor heard anything that
was going on round her. On the other hand, Pat Torrance was crimson, his
eyes were rolling in his head. He said almost roughly--"You were right,
Lady Lindores. Lady Car is tired; but I make no doubt she will be
herself again to-morrow." It was a curious speech to make, and there was
a tone of threatening and anger in his somewhat elevated voice which
roused the liveliest displeasure in the mind of Lady Lindores; but he
was gone before she could say anything. "What is the matter?" she said,
taking her daughter's hand. "Rouse yourself, Carry; everybody is
staring. What has happened?" "Oh, nothing, nothing! Oh, mamma, let us go
home," the poor girl cried. Her lips, her very eyelids, trembled. She
looked as if she were about to faint. Lady Lindores was glad to see her
husband approaching; but he too had a threatening and stern look. She
called him to her, and begged him to ask for the carriage. "Carry is
quite ill," she said. "If you will stay with Edith, I can send it back
for you;--but poor Car has looked like a ghost all night." "She has
looked much more like a fool--as she is," said her father, between his
set teeth; but at last he consented that she should be taken home,
seeing the state of collapse in which she was. He took her down-stairs,
supporting her on his arm, which was necessary, as she could scarcely
walk; but when they skirted the dance, in which the master of the house
was performing, talking loudly and laughing with forced merriment all
the time the Earl, though he was a well-bred man, could not help giving
his daughter's arm a sharp pressure, which hurt her. "I might have known
you would behave like a fool," he said in a low undertone, which nobody
but Carry could hear. She wavered for a moment, like a young tree in
the wind, but clung to him and hurried past replying nothing. Lady
Lindores following, formed her own conclusions, though she did not hear
what her husband said. She took her child into her arms when they were
safe in the carriage, rolling along the dark roads in the dimness of the
summer night, and Carry cried and sobbed on her mother's breast. "I
understand that you have refused him," Lady Lindores said. "But what
then? Why should you be so wretched about it, Carry? It is a kind of
vanity to be so sorry for the man. You may be sure Mr Torrance will get
over it, my love."

Then Carry managed to stammer forth the real source of her terror. She
was not thinking of Mr Torrance, but of papa. What would he say to her?
would he ever forgive her? And then it was Lady Lindores's turn to be
amazed. "My darling, you must compose yourself," she said; "this is
greater nonsense than the other. Papa! What can it matter to your
father? _He_ will never force your inclinations; and how can this coarse
bumpkin interest such a man as he is?" She became almost angry at the
sight of Carry's tears. "Allow me to know your father a little better
than you do," she cried. "Mr Torrance! who is Mr Torrance? I can't
believe that he would favour such a suitor for a moment. But supposing
that he did so,--supposing he thought, as people are apt to do, that
money covers a multitude of sins--your father is not a worldly-minded
man, Carry; he is ambitious, but not for money,--supposing just for the
sake of argument----Anyhow, my dear, that could only be if the man
happened to please you in his own person. We might like the match better
because the pretender was rich, nothing more. Can you really think that
papa would be a tyrant to you,--that he would compel you to marry any
one? Carry, my love, you have got an attack of the nerves; it is your
good sense that has given way."

Carry wept abundantly while her mother thus talked to her, and the
agitation which she had so long shut up in her heart calmed down. Every
word Lady Lindores said was perfectly reasonable, and to have
represented her kind father to herself as a domestic tyrant was
monstrous, she felt; but yet--she could not tell her mother all the
trifling circumstances, the tones, the looks which had forced that
conviction upon her. But she was willing, very willing, to allow herself
to be persuaded that it was all a mistake, and to accept the gentle
reproof and banter with which Lady Lindores soothed her excitement. "To
refuse a man is always disagreeable," she said, philosophically,
"especially as one must always feel one is to blame in letting him come
the length of a proposal, and self-esteem whispers that he will find it
hard to console himself. No, my Carry, no; don't distress yourself too
much. I don't want to be cynical; but men of Mr Torrance's type soon
console themselves. Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for
love."

"It is not that, it is not that," Carry protested among her tears.

But her mother would hear of nothing more alarming. "It is a wrong to
your father to think he would take up the cause of such a man," she
said, indignantly; "and I should have been horribly disappointed in you,
Carry, if you had thought of him for a moment." Carry was so soothed, so
comforted, so almost happy in her trouble, that the inmost doors of her
heart opened to her mother. "Whatever he had been, oh, mother, do you
think I could forget Edward?" she said. His name had not been mentioned
between them for months before.

"Edward," said Lady Lindores, shaking her head; and then she kissed the
pleading expectant face, which she could only feel, not see. "He should
have showed more energy, Carry. Had he been worthy of you, he would not
have left this question unsettled till now."

"What could he do?" cried Carry, roused out of her prostration; "he
could not invent business for himself." Again Lady Lindores shook her
head; but by this time they had reached their own door, and in the
fervour of her defence and championship of her lover, Carry got out of
the carriage a very different creature from the prostrate and fainting
girl who had been put into it at Tinto. She went with her mother to her
room, feverish and anxious to plead the cause of Edward. Lady Lindores
was a romantic woman, who believed in love, and had taught her children
to do the same. But she was disappointed that her daughter's lover had
not been inspired by his love; that he had not found success, and
secured his own cause beyond the power of evil fortune. Arguing against
this adverse opinion, and defending Edward on every question, Carry
recovered her courage and her composure. She felt able to fight for him
to her last gasp when she left her mother, shaking her head still, but
always well disposed to every generous plea; for the moment she had
forgotten all the nearer dangers which had seemed so terrible to her an
hour before.

Lady Lindores sat up in her dressing-gown till her husband and Edith
came back. He was very gloomy, she excited and breathless, with a
feverish sparkle in her eyes, which her mother noticed for the first
time. She wondered if little Edith was in the secret too--that secret
which she had herself scarcely thought of till to-night; and her
husband's aspect filled her with strange anxieties. Was it possible that
she, who had known them so long, her husband for all the most important
time of his life, her child since her first breath, should have
discoveries to make in them now? The thought was painful to her, and she
tried to dismiss it from her mind. "Carry is better," she said, with an
attempt to treat the subject lightly. "It was the glare of these rooms,
I suppose. They are very handsome, but there was too much heat and too
much light."

"I hope it is the last time we shall have any such scenes from Carry,"
said the Earl. "You ought to speak to her very seriously. She has been
behaving like a fool."

"Dear Robert," said Lady Lindores, "it is trying to a girl of any
feeling to have a proposal made to her in a ball-room, and I daresay Mr
Torrance was rude and pressing. It is exactly what I should have
expected of him."

"Since when," said the Earl, sternly, "have you studied Mr Torrance so
closely as to divine what may be expected of him?"

"Robert! I have not studied him at all, nor do I attempt to divine.
Carry's agitation, her fright, her panic, if I may call it so----"

"Were simply ridiculous, ridiculous!" cried Lord Lindores. "I always
thought her sentimental, but I never suspected her to be a fool."

"Carry is no fool," cried her mother, indignantly; "you know very well
she has both spirit and sense, and more than sense. She is not a common
girl. She ought not to be treated as one. And this man, this fox-hunter,
this vulgar laird----"

"As he will probably be your son-in-law, you will do well to avoid
epithets," Lord Lindores said.

"My son-in-law!" said his wife, in a suppressed shriek. "But Carry has
refused him," she added, with relief.

"To-night--being flurried, and not knowing her own mind; but she will
know better to-morrow."

"Robert! for heaven's sake, when she has been so distressed by this most
hateful proposal, you surely will not suffer it to be repeated!"

"Why should it be a hateful proposal?" he said.

"Why?" Lady Lindores did not know how to answer; if he did not see it,
if it did not jump at his eyes, as she said to herself, what explanation
would make it clearer? She tried to smile and approach him on another
side. "Dear Robert," she said, tremulously--"to think of you taking the
part of such a man! He must have some fine qualities, I am sure, or you
never could have endured the outside of him, or his manners, or his
talk. He is so unlike you, so unlike anything the girls have ever been
taught to care for." If this was flattery, surely it may be forgiven to
the anxious mother. She was anxious too, as a wife, that her husband
should not come down from the pedestal on which it had been her pride to
keep him for so many years.

"That is all very well," he said, impatiently; "but I never set myself
up as a model of what my children were to like. Yes; he has fine
qualities, golden qualities. Do you know that he is the richest commoner
in Scotland, Lady Lindores?"

"I know," she said, with quick offence, the tears starting suddenly to
her eyes, "that my name is Mary, and that I hate this wretched title,
which I shall never get used to, and never tolerate if my husband calls
me by it. We are all, all, put asunder, all changed, and finding each
other out since we came here."

This little outburst was partly real and partly a half-conscious art to
find an outlet for her excitement. Her husband was more touched by it
than if it had been more serious. The complaint was fantastic, yet it
was one which love might be excused for making. "My love," he said, "of
course I meant nothing unkind. There have been times when I called you
Mrs Lindores in jest, as I did just now. But, seriously, you must see
what I am thinking of--you must give me your support. We are poor. If
Rintoul is to take the position to which he is entitled after me----"

"You mean Robin? I tell you I hate those new names!" she cried.

"This is foolish, Mary. If he is to enter upon life when his time comes
weighted with a heavy provision for his sisters--consider; there is poor
Jane. She is quite young; she may outlive us all: and if I were to die,
there would be two jointures besides Car and Edith."

"Let me be struck off the list," cried Lady Lindores. "I will never be a
burden on my son. Robert, God forgive you; for a distant evil like this,
would you bring that man into our family, and force an unwilling
marriage on your child? But no, no; I am doing you wrong; your thoughts
have never gone so far."

The Earl made no reply. His face was like a thunder-cloud, lowering and
heavy--a darkness from which, at any moment, fire and flame might burst
forth.

"No, no," said the mother. "I understand what you have thought. I did so
once myself when--you remember--young Ashestiel came in our way. I
thought if they would but take to each other; if they would only see
what a natural harmony they would make! Yes, yes, I remember, I was
provoked beyond measure that they would not see it; and when he went
away, I did not know how to contain myself. I was angry with my innocent
Carry for not caring. I understand you, Robert. If by any chance her
fancy had been taken by this young millionaire; but dear, how could it?
You would yourself have thought less of Carry had she liked such a man.
Acknowledge: he is not much better than a boor--with, perhaps, a boor's
virtues."

She looked up when she had got so far, and stopped in sheer amazement at
the sight of her husband's face. She had never seen any indication
before of what she now found in it. Rage with difficulty smothered; a
determined intention to follow his own way; an uneasy shame turning to
bitterness and passion. His voice was quite hoarse with the effort to
contain himself. "I thought," he said, "that at least you were not one
of the silly women who speak of things they don't understand. But I was
mistaken. You will rather encourage a foolish girl in a piece of
unworthy romance, than show her her duty--her duty! But neither you nor
she, by ---- shall hold me up to ridicule! She shall take this husband I
choose for her, or by ----" Here he became aware how much he was
committing himself. He stopped, gazed at her defiantly for a moment,
then began to pace up and down the room in great confusion. "The short
and the long of it is," he said, "that I can't suffer Carry, for a
girlish prejudice, to throw away such a position. He might be the first
man in the county," Lord Lindores said. "He has twice as much as we
have, and no title to keep up; no encumbrance of any kind. She might be
a sort of princess. I cannot allow all this to be thrown away for a mere
fancy. If she does not like him, she must learn to like him. What would
she have? He is not a _petit maître_, certainly; but he is a man, every
inch of him--his family good, his health good, a magnificent house; what
could any woman want more? She will have everything that heart can
desire."

Lady Lindores made no immediate reply. All this was so new to her--a
revelation of things unthought of. It took away her breath; it took away
her courage. Is there any shock, any pang that life can give, equal to
that of suddenly perceiving a touch of baseness, a failure of honour, a
lower level of moral feeling, in those who are most dear to us? This is
what shatters heaven and earth, and shakes the pillars of existence to
the beholder. It filled this woman with a sudden despair impossible to
describe. She tried to speak, and her very voice failed her. What was
the use of saying anything? If he thought thus, could anything that was
said affect him? Despair made her incapable of effort. She was like
Hamlet, paralysed. At the end she managed to falter forth a word of
protestation. "There are some," she said, faintly, "who are content with
so much less, Robert--and yet how much more!--you and I among the
rest."

"A woman always answers with a personal example," he said.

And Lady Lindores was dumb. She did not know what to say to the new man
who stood beside her, in the familiar aspect of her husband, expressing
sentiments which never before had come from the lips of Robert Lindores.
He had been self-indulgent in the old days--perhaps a little
selfish--accepting sacrifices which it was not right for him to accept.
But there had been a hundred excuses for him; and she and the girls had
always been so ready, so eager, to make those sacrifices. It had been
the pleasure of their lives to make his as smooth, as graceful, as
pleasant as possible. There was no question of anything of this kind
now. He who had been dependent on their ministrations for half the
comfort of his life, was now quite independent of them, the master of
everybody's fate,--judging for them, deciding for them, crushing their
private wishes. Lady Lindores was confused beyond measure by this
discovery. She put her hand to her head unconsciously, as if it must be
that which was wrong. A vague hope that things might not look so
terrible in the morning came into her mind. It was very late, and they
were all tired and worn with the agitation of the evening. "I think I am
not in a condition to understand to-night," she said, drearily. "It will
be better, perhaps, to put off till to-morrow."

"It is a pity you sat up," he said coldly; and thus the strange
conference ended. It was already morning, the blue light stealing in
through the closed shutters. Things, as well as faces, look ghastly in
this unaccustomed light. Lady Lindores drew the curtains closer to shut
it out, and lay down with her head aching, turning her face to the wall.
There are circumstances in which the light of heaven is terrible; and
darkness, darkness, oblivion of itself, the only things the soul cares
for. But though you can shut out the light, you cannot shut out thought.
There was not much rest that night in Lindores. The Earl himself had a
consciousness of the strange discovery of him which his wife had made;
and though he was defiant and determined to subdue all opposition, yet
he was hurt and angry all the same that his Mary should think less well
of him. He seemed to himself of late to have done a great deal for her
and her children. No idea of the elevation she had now reached had been
in her mind when they married. There were three brothers then between
him and the title, besides the children of the elder. And now that
things had so come about, as that Mary was actually Countess of
Lindores, he could not but feel that he had done a great deal for her.
Yet she was not grateful. She looked at him with those scrutinising,
alarmed eyes. She turned away from him with painful wonder; with--there
was no doubt of it--disapproval. And yet all he wanted was the
advancement of the family--the real good of his daughter. Who could
doubt what his motive was? or that it was for Carry's good to have a
noble establishment, a fortune that a princess might envy? Could there
be any comparison between that and the marriage with a poor barrister,
upon which, in her first folly, she had set her heart? It was
unreasonable beyond measure, ungrateful, that his quite legitimate
determination, judging for the real advantage of his daughter, should be
thus looked upon by Lady Lindores.

But it would be vain to attempt to describe the struggle that followed:
that domestic tragedy would have to be told at length if told at all,
and it included various tragedies; not only the subjugation of poor
Carry, the profanation of her life, and cruel rending of her heart, but
such a gradual enlightening and clearing away of all the lovely
prejudices and prepossessions of affection from the eyes of Lady
Lindores, as was almost as cruel. The end of it was, that one of these
poor women, broken in heart and spirit, forced into a marriage she
hated, and feeling herself outraged and degraded, began her life in
bitterness and misery with a pretence of splendour and success and good
fortune which made the real state of affairs still more deplorable; and
the other, feeling all the beauty of her life gone from her, her eyes
disenchanted, a pitiless cold daylight revealing every angle once hid by
the glamour of love and tender fancy, began a sort of second existence
alone. If Torrance had been determined before to have Lady Caroline for
his wife, he was far more determined after she had put his pride to the
humiliation of a refusal, and roused all the savage in him. From the
night of the ball until the moment of the wedding, he never slackened in
his pursuit of the shrinking unhappy girl, who, on her side, had
betrayed her weakness to her sister on the first mention of the hateful
suitor. Edith was disenchanted too, as well as her mother. She
comprehended none of them. "I would not do it," she said simply, when
the struggle was at its bitterest; "why do you do it?" Rintoul, for his
part, when he appeared upon the scene, repeated Edith's positivism in a
different way. "I think my father is quite right," he said. "What could
Carry look for? She is not pretty; she is twenty-four. You ought to take
these things into consideration, mother. She has lost her chance of any
of the prizes; and when you have here the very thing, a man rolling in
money--and not a tradesman either, which many girls have to put up
with--it is such a chance as not one in a thousand ever gets. I think
Car ought to be very grateful to papa." Lady Lindores listened with a
gasp--Robin too! But she did not call him Robin for a long time after
that day. He was Rintoul to her as to the rest of the world, his
father's heir, very clearly alive to the advantage of having, when his
time came, no provision for his sister hanging like a millstone round
his neck. His sympathy and approval were delightful to his father.
"Women are such queer cattle, you never know how to take them," the
experienced young man said. A man is not in a crack regiment for
nothing. He had more knowledge of the world than his father had. "I
should have thought my mother would have been delighted to settle Carry
so near home."

Thus it was a very strange divided house upon the eve of this marriage.
To add to the confusion, there was great squabbling over the
settlements, which Pat Torrance, eager though he was to secure the
bride, whom his pride and self-will, as well as what he believed to be
his love, had determined to have at all costs, was by no means so
liberal about as the Earl thought necessary. He fought this out step by
step, even venturing to hint, like the brute he was, that it was no
beauty or belle whom he was marrying, and cutting down the requirements
of her side in the most business-like way. Lady Lindores had been
entirely silenced, and looked after the indispensable matters of her
daughter's _trousseau_ without a trace of the usual cheerful bustle
attending wedding preparations; while Carry seemed to live in a dream,
sometimes rousing up to make an appeal to her father's pity, but mostly
in a sort of passive state, too heart-broken to be excited about
anything. Edith, young and curious, moved about in the midst of it all
in the activity of her independence, as yet touched by none of these
things. She was a sort of rebellion impersonated, scarcely comprehending
the submission of the others. While Carry wept she stood looking on, her
face flushed, her eyes brilliant. "I would not do it," she said. These
words were constantly on her lips.

"How could you help doing it?" poor Carry cried, turning upon her in the
extremity of her despair. "Oh, have a little pity upon me, Edie! What
can I do? I would sooner die. If there is anything you can think
of--anything! But it is all past hope now. Papa will not even listen to
me. Rintoul tells me I am a fool. He----" but here Carry's voice was
broken with a shudder. She could not speak of her bridegroom but with a
contraction of her heart.

"I don't know what I should do, but I should not do this," said Edith,
surveying her sister from the height of untried resolution. "Nobody can
force you to say Yes instead of No; nobody can make you do a thing you
are determined not to do. Why do you do it? you can't want not to do it
at the very bottom of your heart."

Carry gave her a look of anguish which brought the girl to her knees in
compunction and remorse. "Oh, forgive me, Car! but why, _why_ do you do
it?" she cried. Lady Lindores had come softly in to give her child her
good-night kiss. It was within a few days of the wedding. She stood and
looked at the group with tears in her eyes--one girl lying back white,
worn, and helpless in her chair; the other, at her feet, glowing with
courage and life.

"Speak to her, mamma," cried Edith, "as long as there is any hope."

"What can I say?" said the mother; "everything has gone too far now. It
would be a public scandal. I have said all that I could. Do not make my
poor child more unhappy. Carry, my darling, you will do your duty
whatever happens: and everything becomes easier when it is duty----"

"But how is it duty?" said rebellious Edith. "I would not do it!" she
cried, stamping her foot on the floor.

"Edith, Edith! do not torture your sister. It is easy to say such
things, but how are you to do them? God knows, I would not mind what I
did if it was only me. I would fly away with her somewhere--escape from
them all. But what would happen? Our family would be rent asunder. Your
father and I"--Lady Lindores's voice quivered a little--"who have been
always so united, would part for ever. Our family quarrels would be
discussed in public. You, Edith--what would become of you? Your
prospects would all be ruined. Carry herself would be torn to pieces by
the gossips. They would say there must be some reason. God knows, I
would not hesitate at any sacrifice."

"Mamma, do not say anything more; it is all over. I know there is
nothing to be done," said Carry, faintly. As for Edith, she could not
keep still; her whole frame was tingling. She clenched her small fists,
and dashed them into the air.

"I would not do it! I would just refuse, refuse! I would not do it! Why
should you do it?" she cried.

But between these two there was no talking. The younger sister flew to
her own room, impelled by her sense of the intolerable, unable to keep
still. She met her brother by the way, and clutched him by the arm, and
drew him with her within her own door. "I would not do it, if I were
Carry," she said, breathless. "You might drag me to church, if you
liked, but even there I would not consent. Why, why does she do it?"
Edith cried.

"Because," said Rintoul the experienced, "she is not such a fool as she
looks. She knows that after the first is over, with plenty of money and
all that, she will get on first-rate, you little goose. Girls like
something to make a fuss about."

"Oh, it is a great deal you know about girls!" cried Edith, giving him a
shake in the violence of her emotion. But he only laughed, disengaging
himself.

"We'll see what you'll do when it comes to your turn," he said, and he
went off along the passage whistling. It did not matter to him that his
sister was breaking her heart. But why, why, oh why does she do it?
Edith dozed and woke again half-a-dozen times in the night, crying this
out into the silence. To refuse, surely one could do that. Papa might
scold, there might be scenes and unhappiness, but nothing could be so
unhappy as this. She was incapable of understanding how there could be
any difficulty in the case.

The marriage took place, however, in spite of these convulsions, and
several years had elapsed since that event. It was an old affair when
John Erskine, newly arrived, and full of curiosity and interest, had
that encounter with Lady Lindores and her daughter at his own gate,
where something of the outline of this story was communicated to
him--the facts of it at least. The ladies did not linger upon Carry's
marriage in their narrative. He was told of it briefly as an event long
over, and to which everybody had got accustomed. And so it was. The most
miserable of events settle down into the routine of life when a few
years have elapsed. Carry herself long ago had accepted her fate,
trying to persuade herself that an unhappy marriage was nothing out of
the common, and taking such comfort as was possible in poetry and
intellectual musings. Her husband, who neither knew nor cared for
anything above his own rude external world, yet felt her poetry to
enhance the delicacy of her being, and to raise Lady Car more and more
to that height of superiority which was what he had sought in her--was
all the better satisfied with his bargain, though all the more separated
from any possible point of junction with her. The neighbourhood was very
well aware of all the circumstances; and though Lady Lindores entered
into no explanations, yet there was a sigh, and a tone in her voice, as
she spoke of her daughter, which suggested sorrow. But to tell the
truth, young John Erskine, suddenly finding such friends at his very
door, suddenly readmitted into the old intimacy, and finding the dull
country life to which he had been looking forward flash into sunshine
and pleasure, made few inquiries into this darker chapter of the family
history; and in reality cared for nothing much but to convince himself
that the Lindores family were really his next neighbours; that they were
quite willing to receive him on the old footing; and that, demurely
walking along the same road on the other side of her mother, saying
little but touching the entire atmosphere with a sense of her presence,
was Edith Lindores. Perhaps, had he actually been by her side, the
sensation being more definite would have been less entrancing. But her
mother was between them, animated and pleased by the meeting, ready to
tell him all that had happened, and to hear his account of himself, with
friendly interest; while beyond her ample figure and draperies, the line
of a grey dress, the occasional flutter of a ribbon, the putting forth
of a small foot, made the young man aware of the other creature wrapped
in soft silence and maidenly reserve, whom he could image to himself all
the more completely that he saw no more of her. He scarcely heard her
voice as they walked along thus near yet separated; but a great many
things that Lady Lindores said were confused by the sound upon the road
of her daughter's step--by the appearance of that bit of ribbon, with
which the sunny wind did not hesitate to play, floating out in advance
of her, catching the young man's eye. Thus all at once, on the very
first day after his return, another new existence began for John Erskine
on the road between Dalrulzian and Lindores.




CHAPTER VII.


There are few things in human affairs more curious than the structure of
what is called society, wherever it is met with, whether in the most
primitive of its developments or on the higher levels. The perpetual
recurrence of a circle within which the sayings and doings of certain
individuals are more important than anything else in earth or heaven,
and where the conversation persistently rolls back, whatever may be its
starting-point, to what this or that little knot of people are doing, to
the eccentricities of one and the banalities of another, to some
favourite individual scene of tragedy or comedy which forms the centre
of the moral landscape--is always apparent to the observer, whether his
observations are made in Kamtchatka or in London, among washerwomen or
princesses. But under no circumstances is this so evident as to a
new-comer in a region where all the people know each other. The novelty
and freshness of his impressions perhaps make him congratulate himself
for a moment that now at last he has got into a society fresh and
original, with features of its own; but half-a-dozen meetings are enough
to prove to him that he has only got into another round, a circle as
little extended, as much shut up in its own ring, as all the rest. This
was what John Erskine found, with a little amusement and a little
disgust, almost as soon as he got settled in his unknown home. Any
addition to their society was interesting to the country folks,
especially in May, when there is not much doing--when those who can
indulge themselves in the pleasures of the season have gone to London,
and those who cannot are bound to bring forth their philosophy and prove
that they enjoy the country in the early summer, even though there is
nothing to do. But a young man unencumbered and alone, with all his life
before him, and all his connections to form, is perhaps of all others
the most interesting human creature who can come into a new sphere. All
the world is curious about him--both those whose lives he may influence,
and those to whom he can contribute nothing but the interest, perhaps of
a new drama, perhaps only of a new face. He who will enact his own story
publicly before the eyes of his neighbours, falling in love, wooing,
marrying, or, still better, carrying on these processes with
interruptions of non-success and threatenings of postponement, what a
godsend he is! and perhaps scarcely less he who brings in darker
elements into the placid tenor of the general history, and ruins himself
for our instruction, while we all look on with bated breath. To the
country-side in general, John Erskine, while as yet unknown, was a new
hero. He was the beginning of a romance with all the more fascination in
it that the most interested spectator for a long time could form but
little idea how it was to turn. As soon as he was known to be at home,
his neighbours came down upon him from all quarters with friendly
greetings, invitations, offers of kindness on all sides. The first to
appear was Sir James Montgomery, a sunburnt and cheerful old soldier,
whose small estate of Chiefswood "marched" on one side with Dalrulzian,
and who was disposed to be very friendly. He came in beaming with smiles
over all his brown jovial countenance, and holding out a large cordial
hand.

"Well, young man, so this is you at last. You're heartily welcome home.
I've been long away myself, and you've never been here, but we're old
neighbours for all that, and I take it upon me to call myself an old
friend."

"You are very kind," John said, suffering his hand to be engulfed in
that kind, warm, capacious grasp. The old soldier held him at arm's
length for a moment, looking at him with friendly eyes.

"I remember your grandfather well," he said; "not so much of your
father, for he came to man's estate, and died, poor lad, when I was
away; but I see some features of the old man in you, my young friend,
and I'm glad to see them. You'll seldom meet with a better man than your
grandfather. He was very kind to me as a young lad at the time I got my
commission. They were ill able to afford my outfit at home, and I'm much
mistaken if old Dalrulzian did not lend a helping hand; so mind you, my
lad, if young Dalrulzian should ever want one--a day in harvest, as the
proverb goes----"

"You are very kind, sir," said John Erskine again: he was touched, but
half amused as well. It seemed so unlikely that he should require the
old general's helping hand. And then they talked of the country, and of
their previous lives and diverse experiences. Sir James was one of those
primitive men, much more usual a generation ago than now, whose
knowledge of life, which to his own thinking was profound and extensive,
left out the greater part of what in our days is known as life at all.
He knew Scotland and India, and nothing more. He was great in expedients
for dealing with the natives on one hand, and full of a hundred stories
of village humour, fun, and pawkiness on the other. To hear him laugh
over one of these anecdotes till the tears stood in his clear, warm blue
eyes, which were untouched by any dimness of time, was worth all the
witticisms ever printed; and to see him bend his fine old brows over the
characteristics of his old subjects in India, and the ameliorations of
character produced by British rule, firmness, and justice, was better
than philosophy. But with that which young John Erskine knew as life he
had no acquaintance. Save his own country and the distant East, the
globe was wrapped in dimness to him. He had passed through London often,
and had even transacted business at the Horse Guards, though an Indian
officer in those days had little to do with that centre of military
authority; but he had a mingled awe and horror of "town," and thought of
the Continent as of a region of temptation where the devil was far more
apparent than in other places, and sought whom he might devour with much
more openness and less hindrance than at home. And when our young man,
who flattered himself a little on his knowledge of society and the
world, as he understood the phrase, unfolded himself before the innocent
patriarch, their amazement at each other was mutual. Old Sir James
contemplated John in his knowledge with something of the same amused
respect which John on his side felt for him in his ignorance. To each
there was in the other a mixture of a boy and a sage, which made them
each to each half absurd and half wonderful. An old fellow, who must
have seen so much to have seen so little! and a mere bit of a lad, Sir
James said to himself, who knew nothing about India or anything serious,
yet had seen a vast deal, and had very just notions, and spoke like a
man of the world when you came to talk to him! It was thus the senior
who did most justice to the junior, as is usually the case.

"I am afraid," Sir James said, "that you'll find our country-side but
dull after all you've seen. We're pleased with ourselves, as most
ignorant people are; we think we're good enough company on the whole,
but music, or the play, or art, or that kind of thing, you'll find us
wanting in. I'm afraid they find us very wanting at Lindores; but as for
a kind welcome, whenever you like and however you like, and a good
Scotch dinner, and sometimes a dance, if that will content you in the
way of company----"

"I should be hard to please if that would not content me," said John. "I
hope you will give me the chance."

"That we will--that we will," said Sir James, heartily; and then he
added, "we have no young people about us--Lady Montgomery and me. Our
two children are as far from children now as their father and mother.
They are both in India, and their families grown up and gone out to
them. So we have nothing young of our own about the house; but don't go
too fast, we're not without attraction. In a week, I think, we're
expecting a visitor that will make the place bright--Miss
Barrington--Nora Barrington; you'll have heard of her by this time.
She's a great favourite in the country. We are all keen to have her and
to keep her. I'm not afraid that a young man will find us dull when
we've Nora in the house."

Here John, who had become suspicious of the name of this girl whom
everybody insisted on recommending to him, eagerly protested that he
should want no foreign attraction to the house in which the kind old
general was.

"Foreign! No, she's not foreign," said Sir James; "far from that. A
bonnie English girl, which, after a bonnie Scotch lassie, is by far the
best thing going. We must stand up for our own first," said the old
soldier, laughing; "but nothing foreign--nothing foreign: if you want
that, you'll have to go to Lindores."

John felt--he could scarcely tell why--slightly irritated by these
references to Lindores. He said, somewhat elaborately, "They are the
only people I really know in the county. I met them long ago--on the
Continent."

"Ah!--ay; that's just what I say--for anything foreign, you'll have to
go to the Castle," said Sir James, a little doubtfully. "But," he added,
after a moment's pause, "I hope you'll take to us and your own country,
and need no 'foreign aid of ornament,' eh? You must forgive me. I'm an
old fellow, and old-fashioned. In my time it used to be thought that
your French and Italians were--well, no better than they should be.
Germans, they tell me, are a more solid race; but I know little
difference--I know little difference. You'll say that's my ignorance,"
said this man of prejudice, beaming upon his companion with a smile in
which there was a little deprecation, but a great deal of simple
confidence. It was impossible not to condone the errors of a censor so
innocent.

"If you knew them, you would not only see a great deal of difference,
but I think you would like them a great deal better than you suppose,"
John said.

"Very likely--very likely," cried Sir James. It occurred to him suddenly
that if his young friend had indeed, poor lad, been brought up among
those "foreign cattle," an unfavourable opinion of them might hurt his
feelings; and this was the last thing the old man would have done--even
to a foreigner in person, much less to a son of the soil temporarily
seduced by the wiles of strangers. And then he repeated his formula
about being an old fellow and old-fashioned. "And you'll mind to expect
nothing but broad Scotch at Chiefswood," he cried, laughing and waving
his hand as he rode away, after the hearty invitation with which every
visitor ended. "You'll get the other at Lindores."

And the door had scarcely closed upon this new acquaintance when the
Earl made his appearance, with the smile of an old friend, quite willing
to acknowledge old relationships, but not too familiar or enthusiastic
in his claim. He was no longer the languid gentleman he had been in the
old wandering days, but had the fresh colour and active step of a man
who lived much out of doors. "The scene is very different," he said,
with kindness but dignity. "We are all changed more or less; but the
sentiments are the same." He said this with something of the air of a
prince graciously renewing acquaintance with a friend of his exile. "I
hope we shall see you often at the Castle. We are your nearest
neighbours; and when you have been as long here as we have, you will
have learned to shudder at the words. But it is a relief to think it is
you who will now fill that _rôle_." Could a benevolent nobleman say
more? And it was only after a good deal of friendly talk that Lord
Lindores began to speak of the county business, and the advantage it
would be to him to have support in his attempts to put things on a
better footing.

"Nothing can be more _arriéré_," he said. "We are behind in everything;
and the prejudices I have to struggle with are inconceivable. I shall
have you now, I hope, on my side: we are, I believe, of the same
politics."

"I scarcely know what my politics are," said John. "Some one told me the
other day that the Erskines are always on the right side; and, if you
will not be disgusted, I am obliged to confess that I don't know what
was meant. I know what it would be at Milton Magna. I imagine dimly just
the opposite here."

The Earl smiled benignly on the young inquirer. "The Erskines have
always been Liberal," he said. "I know there is no counting upon you
young men. You generally go too far on one side or the other: if you are
not Tories, you are Radicals. My Liberalism, _bien entendu_, does not go
that length--no Radicalism, no revolutionary sentiments. In short, at
present my politics mean county hospitals and drainage more than
anything else." Then he paused, and added somewhat abruptly, "I don't
know if you ever thought of Parliament--as a career for yourself?"

At this John's pulses gave a sudden jump, and the blood rushed to his
cheeks. Had he thought of it? He could scarcely tell. As something he
might come to, when he had learned the claims of life upon him, and the
circumstances of the country, which as yet he barely knew--as an object
to look forward to, something that might ennoble his future and afford
him the finest occupation that a man can have, a share in the government
of his country--yes; no doubt he had thought of it--at a time when he
thought more highly of Dalrulzian and of his own pretensions. But the
demand was very sudden, and he had all the modesty of youth.
"Parliament!" he faltered forth. "I--don't know that I have thought of
it. I fear I know too little of politics--I have too little
experience----" And here he paused, expecting nothing less than that he
should be kindly urged to think better of it, and persuaded that it was
his duty to serve his generation so.

"Ah," said the Earl, "you give me just the assurance I wanted. I need
not hesitate to tell you, in that case, that my great desire is to push
Rintoul for the county. If you had thought of it yourself, it would have
been a different matter; but otherwise everything points to him,--his
position, our circumstances as the natural leaders, and the excellent
chance he would have with all parties--better than any one else, I
believe. You could be of the utmost use to us, Erskine, if it does not
interfere with any plans of your own."

Now John had no plans; but this sudden check, after the sudden
suggestion which roused all his ambition, was too much like a dash of
cold water in his face to be pleasant to him. But he had time to
collect himself while Lord Lindores was speaking, and to call up a sort
of smile of assent, though it gave him a twinge of ludicrous pain. It
was poetic justice. He had faltered and said No, in order to be
encouraged and made to say Yes, and his vanity and false modesty, he
thought, had got their reward. And all this for Rintoul! He remembered
Rintoul well enough when he was not Rintoul at all, but Robin
Lindores--a poor little lieutenant in a marching regiment. And now he
was in the Guards, and the heir of an earldom. The change of position
was so great, that it took away John's breath. In the days of their
former acquaintance, there could not have been the smallest doubt which
was the more important personage--young Lindores, who had nothing at
all, or John Erskine, with a good estate which everybody accepted as
much better than it was. But now he had gone down, and the other up. All
this went through his mind ruefully, yet not without a sense of
amusement in his own discomfiture. He had not much confidence in his own
abilities or enlightenment, but it was not much to brag of that he had
more of both than young Lindores. However, he had nothing to do in this
sudden concatenation but to listen respectfully yet ruefully as the Earl
went on, who seemed to have grasped him, present and future, in his
hands.

"It is a wonderful comfort to be able to calculate upon you," he said.
"My son-in-law--for of course you have heard of Carry's marriage--would
have a great deal of influence if he chose to exert it; but he has his
own notions--his own notions. You will understand, when you make his
acquaintance, that though a sterling character, he has not had all the
advantages that might have been wished, of acquaintance with men and
knowledge of the world. But you, my dear Erskine, you know something of
life. By the by," he said, as he rose to go away, "Lady Lindores charged
me to engage you to come to us to-morrow. We are going away to town, but
not for more than a month. The ladies insist that they must see you
before they go. We all look forward to seeing a great deal of you," the
Earl added, with that manner which was always so fascinating. "Between
you and me, our dear neighbours are a set of prejudiced old rustics," he
said, with a confidential smile, as he went out; "but it will be strange
if you and I together cannot make them hear reason." Could anything be
more flattering to a young man? And it was the father of Edith who
grasped his hand thus warmly--who associated him with himself in a
conjunction so flattering. John forgot the little wrench of theoretical
disappointment--the ludicrous ease with which he had been made to give
place to Rintoul. After all, something must be sacrificed, he allowed,
to the heir of an important family--and the brother of Edith Lindores!

But this was not his last visitor on this eventful afternoon. The Earl
had scarcely disappeared when Rolls once more threw open the door of the
library, in which John usually sat, and announced with much solemnity Mr
Torrance of Tinto. The man whom the Earl, though vouching for him as "a
sterling character," had allowed to be wanting in knowledge of the
world, came striding in with that air of taking up all the space in the
room and finding it too small for him, which wealth and a vulgar mind
are so apt to give. That John should dislike him instinctively from the
moment he set eyes upon him, was nothing remarkable; for was not he the
owner of the most obnoxious house in the neighbourhood? the man to whom
Carry Lindores had been sacrificed? John Erskine felt, as he rose to
meet the new-comer, a sense of the shabbiness and smallness of his own
house, such as, even in the first evening of disenchantment, had
scarcely affected him so strongly before. When his visitor cast round
him that bold glance of his big, projecting, light-blue eyes, John saw
through them the insignificance of the place altogether, and the
humility of his own position, with a mortification which he could
scarcely subdue. Torrance was tall and strong--an immense frame of a
man, with very black hair and dark complexion, and something
insufferably insolent, audacious, cynical, in those large, light eyes,
_à fleur de tête_. His insolence of nature was sufficiently evident; but
what John did not see was the underlying sense of inferiority which his
new visitor could not shake off, and which made him doubly and angrily
arrogant, as it were, in his own defence. It galled him to recognise
better manners and breeding than his own--breeding and manners which
perhaps he had found out, as John did the inferiority of his
surroundings, through another's eyes. But Torrance's greeting was made
with great show of civility. He had heard much of John as a friend of
the family at Lindores, he said.

"Not but what I should have called, anyhow," he explained, "though Tinto
really belongs to the other side of the county, and Dalrulzian is rather
out of the way for me; but still civility is civility, and in the
country we're a kind of neighbours. I hope you like it, now you are
here?"

"Pretty well," was all that John said.

"It's a nice little place. Of course you knew what it was--not one of
the great country places; but it stands well, and it looks fine at a
distance. Few places of its size look better when you're a good bit
away."

This tried the young man's patience, but he did his best to smile. "It
is well enough," he said; "I expected no better. It is not imposing like
Tinto. Wherever one goes, it seems to me impossible to get out of sight
of your big house."

"Yes, it's an eyesore to half the county; I'm well aware of that," said
Torrance, with complacency. "There's far more of it than is any good to
me. Lady Car--I hear you knew Lady Car before we were married," he said,
fixing John almost threateningly with those light eyes--"fills it now
and then; and when I was a bachelor, I've seen it pretty full in
September; but in a general way it's too big, and a great trouble to
keep up."

"I hope Lady Caroline is quite well?" John said, with formal gravity.

"She is well enough. She is never what you call quite well. Women get
into a way of ailing, I think, just as men get into a way of drinking.
You were surprised to hear she was married, I suppose?" he asked
abruptly, with again the same threatening, offensive look, which made
John's blood boil.

"I was surprised--as one is surprised by changes that have taken place
years before one hears of them; otherwise it is no surprise to hear that
a young lady has married. Of course," John added, with serious malice,
"I had not the advantage of knowing you."

Torrance stared at him for a moment, as if doubtful whether to take
offence or not. Then he uttered, opening capacious jaws, a fierce
laugh.

"I am very easy to get on with, for those that know me," he said, "if
that's what you mean. We're a model couple, Lady Car and I: everybody
will tell you that. And I don't object to old friends, as some men do.
Let them come, I always say. If the difference is not in favour of the
present, it's a pity--that's all I say."

To this John, not knowing what answer to make, replied only with a
little bow of forced politeness, and nothing more.

"I suppose they were in a very different position when you used to know
them?" said Torrance; "in a poor way enough--ready to make friends with
whoever turned up?"

"It would be very bad policy on my part to say so," said John, "seeing
that I was one of the nobodies to whom Lady Lindores, when she was Mrs
Lindores, was extremely kind--as it seems to me she always is."

"Ah, kind! that's all very well: you weren't nobody--you were very
eligible--in those days," said Torrance, with a laugh, for which John
would have liked to knock him down; but there were various hindrances to
this laudable wish. First, that it was John's own house, and civility
forbade any aggression; and second, that Tinto was much bigger and
stronger than the person whom, perhaps, he did not intend to
insult--indeed there was no appearance that he meant to insult him at
all. He was only a coarse and vulgar-minded man, speaking after his
kind.

"The fact is, if you don't mind my saying so, I'm not very fond of my
mamma-in-law," said Torrance. "Few men are, so far as I know: they put
your wife up to all sorts of things. For my part, I think there's a sort
of conspiracy among women, and mothers hand it down to their daughters.
A man should always part his wife from her belongings when he can. She's
a great deal better when she has nothing but him to look to. She sees
then what's her interest--to please him and never mind the rest. Don't
you think I'm complaining--Lady Car's an exception. You never catch
_her_ forgetting that she's Lady Caroline Torrance and has her place to
fill. Doesn't she do it, too! She's the sort of woman, in one way,
that's frightened at a fly--and on the other the queen wouldn't daunt
her; that's the sort of woman I like. She's what you call a grand
damm--and no mistake. Perhaps she was too young for that when you knew
her; and had nothing then to stand on her dignity about."

Here John, able to endure no longer, rose hastily and threw open the
window. "The weather gets warm," he said, "though it is so early, and
vegetation is not so far behind in Scotland as we suppose."

"Behind! I should like to know in what we're behind!" cried his guest:
and then his dark countenance reddened, and he burst into another laugh.
"Perhaps you think I'm desperately Scotch," he said; "but that's a
mistake. I'm as little prejudiced as anybody can be. I was at Oxford
myself. I'm not one of your local men. The Earl would like me to take
his way and follow his lead, as if I were a country bumpkin, you know.
That's his opinion of every man that has stuck to his own country and
not wandered abroad; and now he finds I have my own way of thinking, he
doesn't half like it. We can think for ourselves down in the country
just as well as the rest of you." After he had given vent to these
sentiments, however, Torrance got up with a half-abashed laugh. "If you
come over to Tinto, Lady Car and I will be glad to see you. We'll show
you some things you can't see every day--though we are in an
out-of-the-way corner, you're thinking," he said.

"I have already heard of the treasures of Tinto," said John, glad that
there was something civil to say.

Pat Torrance nodded his head with much self-satisfaction. "Yes, we've
got a thing or two," he said. "I'm not a connoisseur myself. I know
they've cost a fortune--that's about all I'm qualified to judge of. But
Lady Car knows all about them. You would think it was she and not I they
belonged to by nature. But come and judge for yourself. I'm not a man
to be suspicious of old friends."

And here he laughed once more, with obvious offensive meaning; but it
took John some time to make out what that meaning could be. His visitor
had been for some time gone, fortunately for all parties, before it
burst upon him. He divined then, that it was he who was supposed to have
been poor Carry's lover, and that her husband's object was the
diabolical one of increasing her misery by the sight of the man whom she
had loved and forsaken. Why had she forsaken Beaufort for this rude
barnyard hero? Was it for the sake of his great house, which happily was
not visible from Dalrulzian, but which dominated half the county with
gingerbread battlements, and the flag that floated presumptuous as if
the house were a prince's? Had Carry preferred mere wealth, weighed by
such a master, to the congenial spirit of her former lover? It fretted
the young man even to think of such a possibility. And the visitors had
fretted him each in some special point. They neutralised the breadth of
the external landscape with their narrow individuality and busy bustling
little schemes. He went out to breathe an air more wholesome, to find
refuge from that close pressure of things personal, and circumscribed
local scenery, in the genial quietness and freshness of the air outside.
How busy they all were in their own way, how intent upon their own
plans, how full of suspicion and criticism of each other! Outside all
was quiet--the evening wind breathing low, the birds in full chorus.
John refreshed himself with a long walk, shaking off his discouragement
and partial disgust. Peggy Burnet was at her door, eager to open the
gate for him as he passed. She had just tied a blue handkerchief about
the pot containing her "man's" tea, which her eldest child was about to
carry. As he sauntered up the avenue, this child, a girl about ten, tied
up so far as her shoulders were concerned in a small red-tartan shawl,
but with uncovered head and bare legs and feet, overtook him, skimming
along the road with her bundle. She admitted, holding down her head
shyly, that she was little Peggy, and was carrying her father his tea.
"He's up in the fir-wood on the top of the hill. He'll no' be back as
long as it's light."

"But that is a long walk for you," said John.

"It's no' twa miles, and I'm fond, fond to get into the woods," said
Peggy. She said "wudds," and there was a curious sing-song in the speech
to John's unaccustomed ears. When she went on she did not curtsey to him
as a well-conditioned English child would have done, but gave him a
merry nod of her flaxen head, which was rough with curls, and sped away
noiseless and swift, the red shawl over her shoulders, which was
carefully knotted round her waist and made a bunch of her small person,
showing far off through the early greenness of the brushwood. When she
had gone on a little, she began to sing like a bird, her sweet young
voice rising on the air as if it had wings. It was an endless song that
Peggy sang, like that of Wordsworth's reaper--

    "Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
    As if her song could have no ending."

It went winding along, a viewless voice, beyond the house, along the
slopes, away into the paleness of the hill-top, where the tall
pine-trunks stood up like columns against the light. It was like the
fresh scent of those same pines--like the aromatic peat-smoke in the
air--a something native to the place, which put the troubles and the
passions he had stumbled against out of the mind of the young laird. He
was reconciled somehow to Scotland and to nature by little Peggy's love
for the "wudds," and the clear ringing melody of her endless song.




CHAPTER VIII.


In the midst of all the attentions paid him by his neighbours and the
visitors who followed each other day by day, there was one duty which
John Erskine had to fulfil, and which made a break in the tide of
circumstances which seemed to be drifting him towards the family at
Lindores, and engaging him more and more to follow their fortunes. When
a life is as yet undecided and capable of turning in a new direction, it
is common enough, in fact as well as in allegory, that a second path
should be visible, branching off from the first, into which the
unconscious feet of the wayfarer might still turn, were the dangers of
the more attractive way divined. There is always one unobtrusive turning
which leads to the safe track; but how is the traveller to know that,
whose soul is all unconscious of special importance in the immediate
step it takes? John Erskine contemplated his _rapprochement_ to the
Lindores with the greatest complacency and calm. That it could contain
any dangers, he neither knew nor would have believed: he wanted nothing
better than to be identified with them, to take up their cause and be
known as their partisan. Nevertheless Providence silently, without
giving him any warning, opened up the other path to him, and allowed him
in ignorance to choose. If he had known, probably it would not have made
the least difference. Young heroes have never in any known history
obeyed the dictates of any monitor, either audible or inaudible, who
warned them against one connection and in favour of another.
Nevertheless he had his chance, as shall be seen. The morning after his
first dinner at the Castle, which had been the reopening of a delightful
world to him, he decided that he had put off too long his visit to his
only relative, and set off through the soft May sunshine, for it was
beautiful weather, to pay his respects to his old aunt at Dunearn.

The house of Miss Barbara Erskine at Dunearn opened direct from the
street. It was one of the same class of homely Scotch houses to which
Dalrulzian itself belonged; but whereas Dalrulzian, being a
mansion-house, had two gables, Miss Barbara's Lodging, as she liked it
to be called, had but one, stepping out into the broad pathway, not
paved, but composed of sand and gravel, which ran along one side of the
South Street. This gable was broad enough to give considerable size to
the drawing-room which filled the upper story, and which had windows
every way, commanding the street and all that went on in it, which was
not much. The house was entered by an outside stair, which gave
admission to the first floor, on which all the rooms of "the family"
were, the floor below being devoted to the uses of the servants, with
the single exception of the dining-parlour, which was situated near the
kitchen for the convenience of the household. Behind there was a large
fragrant old-fashioned garden full of sweet-smelling flowers,
interspersed with fruit-trees, and going off into vegetables at the
lower end. Notwithstanding that it was so far north, there were few
things that would not grow in this garden, and it was a wilderness of
roses in their season. Except one or two of the pale China kind--the
monthly rose, as Miss Barbara called it, which is so faithful and blows
almost all the year round--there were no roses in May; but there was a
wealth of spring flowers filling all the borders, and the air was
faintly sweet as the old lady walked about in the morning sunshine
enjoying the freshness and stir of budding life. She was a portly old
lady herself, fresh and fair, with a bright complexion, notwithstanding
seventy years of wear and tear, and lively hazel eyes full of vivacity
and inquisitiveness. She was one of the fortunate people who take an
interest in everything, and to whom life continues full of excitement
and variety to the end. She walked as briskly as though she had been
twenty years younger, perhaps more so; for care does not press upon
seventy as upon fifty, and the only burden upon her ample shoulders was
that of years. She had a soft white Indian shawl wrapped round her, and
a hood with very soft blue ribbons tied over her cap. She liked a pretty
ribbon as well as ever, and was always well dressed. From the garden,
which sloped downwards towards the river, there was an extensive view--a
prospect of fields and scattered farmhouses spreading into blue
distance, into the outline of the hills, towards the north; at the right
hand the tower of Dunearn Church, which was not more handsome than
church towers generally are in Scotland; and to the left, towards the
setting sun, a glimpse of Tinto arrogantly seated on its plateau. Miss
Barbara, as she said, "could not bide" the sight of Tinto House. She had
planted it out as well as she could; but her trees were perverse, and
would separate their branches or die away at the top, as if on purpose
to reveal the upstart. On this particular morning of early May, Miss
Barbara was not alone: she had a young lady by her side, of whose name
and presence at this particular moment the country was full. There was
not a house in the neighbourhood of any pretensions which she was not
engaged to visit; and there was scarcely a family, if truth must be
told, which was not involved more or less in an innocent conspiracy on
her behalf, of which John Erskine, all unconscious, was the object. His
old aunt, as was befitting, had the first chance.

"You need not ask me any more questions," Miss Barbara was saying, "for
I think you know just as much about the family, and all the families in
the country-side, as anybody. You have a fine curiosity, Nora; and take
my word for it, that's a grand gift, though never properly appreciated
in this world. It gives you a great deal of interest in your youth, and
it keeps you from wearying in your old age--though that's a far prospect
for you."

"My mother says I am a gossip born," said Nora, with her pretty smile.

"Never you trouble your head about that--take you always an interest in
your fellow-creatures. Better that than the folk in a novelle. Not but
what I like a good novelle myself as well as most things in this life.
It's just extending your field. It's like going into a new
neighbourhood. The box is come from the library this morning," said Miss
Barbara in a parenthesis.

"Oh yes, I opened it to have a peep. There is 'Middlemarch' and one of
Mr Trollope's, and several names I don't know."

"No 'Middlemarch' for me," said Miss Barbara, with a wave of her hand.
"I am too old for that. That means I've read it, my dear,--the way an
experienced reader like me can read a thing--in the air, in the
newspapers, in the way everybody talks. No, that's not like going into a
new neighbourhood--that is getting to the secrets of the machinery, and
seeing how everything, come the time, will run down, some to ill and
harm, but all to downfall, commonplace, and prosiness. I have but little
pleasure in that. And it's pleasure I want at my time of life. I'm too
old to be instructed. If I have not learned my lesson by this time, the
more shame to me, my dear."

"But, Miss Barbara, you don't want only to be amused. Oh no: to have
your heart touched, sometimes wrung even--to be so sorry, so anxious
that you would like to interfere--to follow on and on to the last moment
through all their troubles, still hoping that things will take a good
turn."

"And what is that but amusement?" said the old lady. "I am not fond of
shedding tears; but even that is a luxury in its way--when all the time
you are sure that it will hurt nobody, and come all right at the end."

"Lydgate does not turn out all right at the end," said Nora, "nor
Rosamond either; they go down and down till you would be glad of some
dreadful place at last that they might fall into it and be made an end
of. I suppose it is true to nature," said the girl, with a solemnity
coming over her innocent face, "that if you don't get better you should
go on getting worse and worse--but it is dreadful. It is like what one
hears of the place--below."

"Ay, ay, we're not fond nowadays of the place--below; but I'm afraid
there must be some truth in it. That woman has found out the secret, you
see." Miss Barbara meant no disrespect to the great novelist when she
called her "that woman." There was even a certain gratification in the
use of the term, as who should say, "Your men, that brag so much of
themselves, never found this out"--which was a favourite sentiment with
the old lady. "That's just where she's grand," Miss Barbara continued.
"There's that young lad in the Italian book--Teeto--what d'ye call him?
To see him get meaner and meaner, and falser and falser, is an awful
picture, Nora. It's just terrible. It's more than I can stand at my age.
I want diversion. Do ye think I have not seen enough of that in my
life?"

"People are not bad like that in life," said Nora; "they have such small
sins,--they tell fibs--not big lies that mean anything, but small
miserable little fibs; and they are ill-tempered, and sometimes cheat a
little. That is all. Nothing that is terrible or tragical----"

Here the girl stopped short with a little gasp, as if realising
something she had not thought of before.

"What is it, my dear?" said Miss Barbara.

"Oh--only Tinto showing through the trees: is that tragedy? No, no.
Don't you see what I mean? don't you see the difference? He is only a
rough, ill-tempered, tyrannical man. He does not really mean to hurt or
be cruel: and poor Lady Car, dear Lady Car, is always so wretched;
perhaps she aggravates him a little. She will not take pleasure in
anything. It is all miserable, but it is all so little, Miss Barbara;
not tragedy--not like Lear or Hamlet--rather a sort of scolding, peevish
comedy. You might make fun of it all, though it is so dreadful; and that
is how life seems to me--very different from poetry," said Nora, shaking
her head.

"Wait," said Miss Barbara, patting her on the shoulder, "till the play
is played out and you are farther off. The Lord preserve us! I hope I'm
not a prophet of evil; but maybe if you had known poor Lear fighting
about the number of his knights with that hard-faced woman Regan, for
instance (who had a kind of reason, you'll mind, on her side: for I make
no doubt they were very unruly--that daft old man would never keep them
in order), you would have thought it but a poor kind of a squabble. Who
is this coming in upon us, Nora? I see Janet at the glass door looking
out.

"It is a gentleman, Miss Barbara. He is standing talking. I think he
means to come out here."

"It will be the minister," said the old lady, calmly. "He had far better
sit down in the warm room, and send us word, for he's a delicate
creature--no constitution in him--aye cold and coughs, and----"

"Indeed it is not Mr Stirling. He is quite young and--and good-looking,
I think. He won't listen to Janet. He is coming here. Miss Barbara,
shall I run away?"

"Why should you run away? If it's business, we'll go in; if it's
pleasure----Ah! I've seen your face before, sir, or one like it, but I
cannot put a name to it. You have maybe brought me a letter? Preserve us
all! will it be John Erskine come home to Dalrulzian?"

"Yes, aunt Barbara, it is John Erskine," said the young man. He had his
hat in one hand, and the sun shone pleasantly on his chestnut locks and
healthful countenance. He did not perhaps look like a hero of romance,
but he looked like a clean and virtuous young Englishman. He took the
hand which Miss Barbara held out to him, eagerly, and, with a little
embarrassment, not knowing what else to do, bent over it and kissed
it--a salutation which took the old lady by surprise, and, being so
unusual, brought a delicate colour to her old cheek.

"Ah, my man! and so you're John Erskine? I would have known you
anywhere, at the second glance if not at the first. You're like your
father, poor fellow. He was always a great favourite with me. And so
you've come back to your ain at last? Well, I'm very glad to see you,
John. It's natural to have a young Erskine in the country-side. You'll
not know yet how you like it after all this long absence. And how is
your mother, poor body? She would think my pity out of place, I don't
doubt; but I'm always sorry for a young woman, sore hadden down with a
sma' family, as we say here in the North."

"I don't think she is at all sorry for herself," said John, with a
laugh, "but it must be allowed there is a lot of them. There are always
heaps of children, you know, in a parson's house."

"And that is true; it's a wonderful dispensation," said Miss Barbara,
piously, "to keep us down and keep us humble-minded in our position in
life. But I'm real glad to see you, and you must tell me where you've
come from, and all you've been doing. We'll take a turn round the garden
and see my flowers, and then we'll take you in and give you your
luncheon. You'll be ready for your luncheon after your walk; or did you
ride? This is Miss Nora Barrington, that knows Dalrulzian better than
you do, John. Tell Janet, my dear, we'll be ready in an hour, and she
must do her best for Mr John."

While this greeting went on, Nora had been standing very demurely with
her hands crossed looking on. She was a girl full of romance and
imagination, as a girl ought to be, and John Erskine had long been
something of a hero to her. Nora was in that condition of spring-time
and anticipation when every new encounter looks as if it might produce
untold consequences in the future, still so vague, so sweet, so unknown.
She stood with her eyes full of subdued light, full of soft excitement,
and observation, and fun; for where all was so airy and uncertain, there
was room for fun too, it being always possible that the event, which
might be serious or even tragic, might at the same time be only a
pleasantry in life. Nora seemed to herself to be a spectator of what was
perhaps happening to herself. Might this be hereafter a scene in her
existence, like "the first meeting between"--say Antony and Cleopatra,
say Romeo and Juliet? Several pictures occurred to her of such scenes.
At one time there were quite a number of them in all the
picture-galleries. "First meeting of Edward IV. with Elizabeth
Woodville:" where all unconscious, the fair widow kneels, the gallant
monarch sees in his suppliant his future queen. All this was fun to
Nora, but very romantic earnest all the same. The time might come when
this stranger would say to her--"Do you remember that May morning in old
aunt Barbara's garden?" and she might reply--"How little we imagined
_then_!" Thus Nora, with a shy delight, forestalled in the secret
recesses of her soul the happiness that might never come, and yet made
fun of her own thoughts all in the same breath. John's bow to her was
not half so graceful or captivating as his salutation to Miss Barbara,
but that was nothing; and she went away with a pleasant sense of
excitement to instruct Janet about the luncheon and the new-comer. Miss
Barbara's household was much moved by the arrival. Janet, who was the
housekeeper, lingered in the little hall into which the garden-door
opened, looking out with a curiosity which she did not think it
necessary to disguise; and Agnes, Miss Barbara's own woman, stood at the
staircase-window, half-way up. When Nora came in, those two personages
were conversing freely on the event.

"He's awfu' like the Erskines; just the cut of them about the shouthers,
and that lang neck----"

"Do you ca' that a lang neck? nae langer than is very becoming. I like
the head carried high. He has his father's walk," said Agnes, pensively;
"many's the time I've watched him alang the street. He was the
best-looking of all the Erskines; if he hadna marriet a bit handless
creature----"

"Handless or no' handless," said Janet, "matters little in that
condition o' life."

"Eh, but it mattered muckle to him. He might have been a living man this
day if there had been a little mair sense in her head. She might have
made him change his wet feet and all his dreeping things when he came in
from the hillside. It was the planting of yon trees that cost bonnie
Johnny Erskine his life. The mistress was aye of that opinion. Eh, to
think when ye have a man, that ye shouldna be able to take care of him!"
said Agnes, with a sort of admiring wonder. She had never attained that
dignity herself. Janet, who was a widow, gave a glance upward at the
pensive old maiden of mingled condescension and contempt.

"And if ye had a man, ye would be muckle made up wi' him," she said.
"It's grand to be an auld maid, for that--that ye aye keep your faith in
the men. This ane'll be for a wife, too, like a' the rest. I could gie
him a word in his ear----"

"It will be something for our young misses to think about. A fine young
lad, and a bonnie house. He'll have a' our siller, besides his ain,--and
that will be a grand addition----"

"If he behaves himsel'!" said Janet, "The mistress is a real sensible
woman. You'll no' see her throw away her siller upon a prodigal, if he
were an Erskine ten times over."

"And wha said he was a prodigal?" cried Agnes, turning round from the
landing upon her fellow-servant, who was at once her natural opponent
and bosom friend. Nora was of opinion by this time that she had listened
long enough.

"Miss Barbara says that her nephew will stay to luncheon, Janet. You are
to do your best for him. It is Mr Erskine, from Dalrulzian," Nora said,
with most unnecessary explanation. Janet turned round upon her quietly,
yet with superior dignity.

"By this time of day, Miss Nora," said Janet, "I think I ken an Erskine
when I see him; and also, when a visitor enters this door at twelve
o'clock at noon, that he'll stay to his lunch, and that I maun do my
best."

"It is not my fault," cried the girl, half amused, half apologetic. "I
tell you only, Janet, what Miss Barbara said. Perhaps it was to get rid
of me, to send me indoors out of the way."

"Naething more likely," said the housekeeper. "She canna be fashed with
strangers when her ain are at her hand."

"Woman!" cried Agnes, from the landing, "how dare you say sae of my
mistress? You'll never mind, Miss Nora. Come up here, my bonnie young
leddy, and you'll have a grand sight of him among the trees."

"Ay, glower at him," said Janet, as she went away. "You wouldna be so
muckle ta'en up with them if ye kent as much about men as me."

"Na, you'll pay no attention," said Agnes anxiously; "it's no' real
malice--just she thinks she has mair experience. And so she has mair
experience--the only marriet woman in the house. There's your mamma,
with a bonnie family, takes nothing upon her, no more than if she was a
single person; but Janet has it a' her ain way. Stand you here, Miss
Nora, at this corner, and you'll have a grand sight of him. He's behind
the big bourtree-bush; but in a moment--in a moment----"

"I don't want to see Mr Erskine," said Nora, laughing. "I have seen him;
most likely I shall see him at lunch. He is just like other
people,--like dozens of gentlemen----"

"Eh, but when you think that you never ken what may happen--that _yon_
may be the man, for all we ken!"

When Agnes thus put into words the idea which had (she would not deny it
to herself) glanced through Nora's own mind, she was so hypocritical as
to laugh, as at a great piece of absurdity--but at the same time so
honest as to blush.

"I believe you are always thinking of--that sort of thing," she said.

"Awfu' often, Miss Nora," said Agnes, unabashed,--"especially when
there's young folk about; and after a', is there onything that's sae
important? There's me and the mistress, we've stood aloof from a' that;
but I canna think it's been for oor happiness. Her--it was her ain
doing; but me--it's a very strange thing to say: I've kent many that
were far from my superiors--as far as a person can judge--that have had
twa-three offers; but me, I never had it in my power. You'll think it a
very strange thing, Miss Nora?"

"I know," said Nora; "and you so pretty. It is quite extraordinary."
This was the reply that Agnes expected to her favourite confession. She
was pretty still at fifty,--slim and straight, with delicate features,
and that ivory complexion which we associate with refinement and good
blood; and the old waiting-woman knew how to _faire valoir_ her fine
person and features. She was dressed delicately in a black gown, with a
white kerchief of spotless net--like a lady, everybody said. She shook
her head with a smile of melancholy consciousness.

"It's no' looks that does it," she said; "it's----Well, I canna tell.
It's when you ken how to humour them and flatter them. But bless me,
there's Janet, a woman that never flattered man nor woman either! I
canna understand it,--it's beyond me. But you mustna follow the
mistress, Miss Nora. She's a happy woman enough, and a bonnie woman for
her age, coming up there under her ain trees,--just look at her. But if
that young lad had been her son, instead of just a distant cousin----"

"Oh, but boys give a great deal of trouble," said Nora, seriously. "Dear
Miss Barbara, I like her best as she is."

"But you manna follow her example, my bonnie leddy,--you manna follow
her example. Take a pattern by your ain mammaw. I ca' her a happy woman,
young yet, and a good man, and a bonnie posie of bairns. Eh! I ca' her a
happy woman. And takes nothing upon her!" said Agnes,--"nothing upon
her. You'll come up the stair, Miss Nora, and look at yoursel' in the
glass. Oh no, there's nothing wrang with your bonnie hair. I like it
just so,--a wee blown about in the mornin' air. Untidy! bless me, no'
the least untidy! but just--give a look in the glass, and if you think
another colour would be more becoming, I have plenty ribbons. Some folk
thinks yellow's very artistic; but the mistress canna bide yellow. She's
owre fair for it, and so are you."

"Why should I change my ribbon? It is quite tidy," said Nora, almost
with indignation, standing before Miss Barbara's long cheval-glass.
Agnes came and stood behind her, arranging her little collar and the
draperies of her dress with caressing hands. And to tell the truth, Nora
herself could not shut out from her mind an agreeable consciousness that
she was looking "rather nice;--for me," she added, in her own mind. The
morning breeze had ruffled an incipient curl out of the hair which she
had brushed, demure and smooth, over her forehead in the morning. It was
a thing that nobody suspected when she was fresh from her toilet, but
the wind always found out that small eccentricity, and Nora was not
angry with the wind. Her ribbon was blue, and suited her far better than
the most artistic yellow. All was fresh and fair about her, like the
spring morning. "Na; I wouldna change a thing," Agnes said, looking at
her anxiously in the glass, where they made the prettiest picture, the
handsome old maid looking like a lady-in-waiting, her fine head
appearing over the girl's shoulder,--a lady-in-waiting anxiously
surveying her princess, about to meet for the first time with King
Charming, who has come to marry her. This was the real meaning of the
group.

Nora did not change her ribbon or her own appearance in any way, but she
gave a glance to the table set out for luncheon, and renewed the flowers
on it, watching all the while the other group which passed and repassed
the large round window of the dining-room, their voices audible as they
talked. Miss Barbara had taken John's arm, which was a proof that he had
found the way to her favour; and she was evidently asking him a hundred
questions. Snatches of their talk about his travels, about his plans,
something which she could not make out about the Lindores, caught the
ear of Nora. They saw her seated near the window, so there could be no
reason why she should stop her ears. And Nora thought him "very
nice"--that all-useful adjective. She could scarcely help letting her
imagination stray to the familiar place which she had known all her
life--her "dear Dalrulzian," which she had lamented so openly, which now
she felt it would no longer be decorous to lament. He looked very like
it, she thought. She could see him in imagination standing in the kindly
open door, on the Walk, looking the very master the place wanted. Papa
had been too old for it. It wanted a young man, a young----Well--she
laughed and coloured involuntarily--of course a young wife too. In all
likelihood _that_ was all settled, the young wife ready, so that there
was no reason to feel any embarrassment about it. And so he knew the
Lindores! She would ask Edith all about him. There was no doubt he was a
very interesting figure in the country-side, "something for the misses
to think about," as Agnes said, though it was somewhat humiliating to
think that "that dreadful man at Tinto" had roused a similar excitement.
But the oftener John Erskine passed the window, the more he pleased Nora
Barrington. He was "very nice," she was sure. How kind and careful he
was of Miss Barbara! How frank and open his countenance! his voice and
his laugh so natural and cheerful! Up to this time, though Nora's
imagination had not been utterly untouched, she was still free of any
serious inclination, almost if not entirely fancy-free. It could not be
denied that when the new Rintoul became known in the country-side, he,
too, had been the object of many prognostications. And he had been, she
felt, "very nice" to Nora. Though he had pretensions far above hers, and
was not in the least likely to ally himself to a family without fortune,
his advances had been such as a girl cannot easily overlook. He was the
first who had paid Nora "attention," and awakened her to a consciousness
of power. And she had been flattered and pleased, being very young. But
Nora now felt herself at that junction of the two roads, which, as has
been said, is inevitable in the experience of every young soul. She was
standing in suspense, saying to herself, with a partial sense of
treachery and guilt, that Mr Erskine was still more nice than Lord
Rintoul. John Erskine of Dalrulzian; there was something delightful in
the very name. All this, it is true, was entirely visionary, without
solid foundation of any kind; for they had exchanged nothing but two shy
bows, not a word as yet--and whether he would be as "nice" when he
talked, Nora did not know.

Her decision afterwards, made with some mortification, was, that he was
not nearly so nice when he talked. He showed no wish to talk to her at
all, which was an experience quite out of Nora's way. She sat and
listened, for the most part, at this simple banquet, growing angry in
spite of herself, and altogether changing her opinion about Lord
Rintoul. If she had been a little girl out of the nursery, John Erskine
could scarcely have taken less notice of her. Miss Barbara and he
continued their talk as if Nora had no existence at all.

"I always thought it a great pity that you were brought up so far from
home," the old lady said. "You know nothing about your own place, or the
ways of the country-side. It will take you a long time to make that up.
But the neighbours are all very kind, and Lindores, no doubt, will be a
great resource, now there's a young family in it. Fortunately for you,
John, you're not grand enough nor rich enough to come into my lord's
plans."

"Has my lord plans? For county hospitals and lunatic asylums. So he
told me; and he wants my help. To hear even so much as that astonished
me. When I knew him he was an elegant hypochondriac, doing nothing at
all----"

"He does plenty now, and cares much, for the world and the things of the
world," said Miss Barbara. "I think I have divined his meaning; but
we'll wait and see. You need not sit and make those faces at me, Nora. I
know well enough _they_ are not to blame. A woman should know how to
stand up for her own child better than that; but she was just struck
helpless with surprise, I say nothing different. Speak of manœuvring
mothers! manœuvring fathers are a great deal worse. I cannot away with a
man that will sacrifice his own flesh and blood. Fiegh! I would not do
it for a kingdom. And the son, you'll see, will do the same. Hold you
your tongue, Nora. I know better--the son will do the very same. He will
be sold to some grocer's daughter for her hogsheads. Perhaps they're
wanted; two jointures to pay is hard upon any estate, and a title will
always bring in money when it's put up for sale in a judicious way. But
you must have your wits about you now, if you have any dealings with
your elegant hypochondriac, John, my man. You're too small--too small
for him; but if you had fifty thousand a-year, you would soon--soon be
helpless in his hands----"

"Oh, Miss Barbara," cried Nora, "you are unjust to Lord Lindores.
Remember how kind he has been to us, and we have not fifty thousand, nor
fifty hundred a-year."

"You're not a young man," said Miss Barbara; "but John, take you care of
dangling about Lindores. I am not naming any names; but there may be
heartaches gotten there--nothing more for a man of your small means. Oh
ay! perhaps I ought to hold my tongue before Nora; but she will be well
advised if she takes care too; and besides, she knows all about it as
well as I do myself."

"I hope," said John, courteously--for he saw that Nora's composure was
disturbed by these last warnings, and he was glad of a chance to change
the subject--"I hope I may be so fortunate as to see Colonel Barrington
before he leaves the country. He has done so well by Dalrulzian, I
should like to thank him for his care."

This made Nora more red than before. She could not get over that foolish
idea that Dalrulzian was far more to her than to this stranger, who
could not care for it as she did. She felt that his thanks were an
offence. "Papa has gone, Mr Erskine," she said, with unusual
stateliness. "I am left behind to pay some visits. Everybody here has
been so good to us."

"That means we are all fond of her bit bright face," said Miss Barbara;
"but we'll say no more on that subject, Nora. Human nature's selfish in
grain. The like of me will take no trouble for lad or lass that is not
sweet to see, and a comfort to the heart."

"I never heard such a pretty apology for selfishness before," said John.
And Miss Barbara took his compliment in good part. But he and Nora made
no further approach to each other. Those praises of her made him draw
back visibly, she thought, and embarrassed herself beyond bearing. To be
praised before an unsympathetic, silently protesting audience--can
anything be more humiliating? Nora was conscious of something like
dislike of John Erskine before he went away.

And yet his state of feeling was natural enough. He believed that the
young lady, so dangerously suitable for him, the very wife he wanted,
was being thrust upon him on every side, and the thought revolted him.
No doubt he thought, if she were conscious of it, it must be revolting
to her too; and in such a case the highest politeness was to be all but
rude to her, to show at once and conclusively that schemes of the kind
were hopeless. This sentiment was strengthened in the present case by
the irritation caused by Miss Barbara's warning about Lindores, and the
heartache which was all that a man of his means was likely to get there.
He laughed at it, yet it made him angry. He who had been always used to
feel himself a person of importance--he for whom, even now, the whole
country was taking the trouble to scheme--to have himself suddenly
classified with other small deer as quite beneath the consideration of
the Lindores family, too small for my lord's plans! It was scarcely
possible to imagine anything more irritating. After all, a Scotch lord
was no such grand affair; and John could not be ignorant that, five
years ago, neither father nor mother would have repulsed him. Now! but
the doubt, the risk, did not induce the young man to be wise--to put
Lady Edith out of his imagination, and turn his thoughts to the other,
just as pretty, if that were all, who was manifestly within his reach.
What a pity that young people are so slow to see reason in such matters,
that they will never take the wiser way! Thus John had his opportunity
offered to him to escape from a world of troubles and embarrassments
before he had committed himself to that dangerous path; and distinctly
refused, and turned his back upon it, not knowing--as indeed at the real
turning-point of our fortunes we none of us know.

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.




CHAPTER IX.


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 supposed _that_, 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 is _blasé_! 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.




CHAPTER X.


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 him _like 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 the
_mêlée_, 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.




CHAPTER XI.


"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 quite _nice_, 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 are _forced_? 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 not _that_,
for instance--certainly not that."

"I don't know what you mean by _that_" 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
pretty _argot_ of 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 is _not_ so 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."

"Happi_er_. 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 on _the right side_
in 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."




CHAPTER XII.


It was a rainy morning when the Lindores went away. They were not rich
enough to command all the delights of the London season, and had no
house in town, nor any position to keep up which demanded their
presence. The Earls of Lindores were merely Scotch lords. They had no
place in Parliament, no importance in the realm. Hitherto a succession
of unobtrusive but proud country gentlemen, not fond of appearing where
their claims were not fully recognised, had borne the name, and
contented themselves with their dignity at home, which no one
questioned, if perhaps it was never very reverentially regarded. It was
enough to them to make a visit to London now and then, to comment upon
the noise and bigness of town, to attend a levee and a drawing-room, and
to come home well pleased that they had no need to bind themselves to
the chariot-wheels of fashion. The late Earl had been entirely of this
mind; and the consequence was, that nobody in these busy circles which
call themselves Society knew anything about the Lindores. But the
present bearer of these honours was of a very different intention. It
galled him to be so little though he was so much--the representative of
a great race (in his own thinking), and yet nobody, made of no account
among his own class. Perhaps Lord Lindores thought all the more of his
position that it had not come to him in easy natural succession, but by
right of a great family catastrophe, and after his life had been long
settled on a different and much humbler basis. It is certain that he had
no mind to accept it as his predecessors had done. He meant to vindicate
a position for himself, to assert his claim among the best. What he
intended in his heart was to turn his old Scotch earldom into a British
peerage by hook or crook, and in the meantime to get himself elected a
representative peer of Scotland, and attain the paradise of hereditary
legislatorship by one means or another. This was his determination, and
had been so from the moment when the family honours came to him. In the
very afternoon of the solemn day when he heard of the death of his
brother, and his own entirely unlooked-for elevation, this is what he
resolved upon. He had withdrawn to his own room to be alone--to consider
the wonderful revolution which had taken place, and, if he could, to
expend a tear upon the three ended lives which had opened up that
position to him--when this intention first rose in his mind. As a matter
of fact, he had been sad enough. The extinction of these lives, the
transference to himself of the honours which, for aught he knew, might
be taken from him to-morrow, was too startling to be otherwise than sad.
He had retired within himself, he had compelled himself to think of the
poor boy Rintoul dead in his bloom, of the heart-broken father who had
followed him to the grave, and to represent to himself, with all the
details most likely to move the heart, that terrible scene. And he had
been satisfied to feel that he was sad,--that the natural woefulness of
this spectacle had moved him enough even to counterbalance the tremor
and elation of this extraordinary turn of fortune. But his very sadness
and overwhelming sense of a visible fate working in the history of his
family, gave him an impulse which was not ungenerous. On the instant,
even while he solicited the moisture in his eyes to come the length of a
tear, the thought leapt into his mind that if he was spared, if he had
time to do anything, it should not be merely a Scotch earldom that he
would transmit to his son. At last Lindores had come into the possession
of one who knew what he wanted, and meant to obtain it. His family,
which had suffered so much, should no longer be pushed aside among the
titled nobodies. It should have its weight in the councils of the
sovereign and in the history of the kingdom. "The house shall not suffer
because I have come to the head of it," he cried. He felt that he could
compensate it for the series of misfortunes it had endured, by adding
importance and dignity to the name. He made up his mind, then, that when
his son succeeded him it should be as a peer of the realm. And it was to
this end and with this inspiration that so great a change had come upon
him. For this he had set his heart upon making his county a model for
every shire in England. To this end he had determined to wrest the seat
from the Tory representative, and put in his son in the Liberal
interest. A seat so important gained, an influence so great established,
what Ministry could refuse to the representative of one of the oldest
families in the North the distinction which ought to have been his long
before?

Nobody suspected the Earl's meaning in its fullest extent. Old Miss
Barbara Erskine was the only one who had partly divined him; but of all
the people who did not understand his intention, the wife of his bosom
was the first. To her high mind, finely unsuspicious because so
contemptuous of mean motives, this little ambition would perhaps have
seemed pettier than it really was; for if nobility is worth having at
all, surely it is best to possess all its privileges. And perhaps, had
Lady Lindores been less lofty in her ideal, her husband would have been
more disposed to open his inmost thoughts to her, and thus correct any
smaller tendency. It was this that had made him insist upon Carry's
marriage. He wanted to ally himself with the richest and most powerful
people within his reach, to strengthen himself in every way, extending
the family connection so that he should have every security for success
when the moment came for his great _coup_. And he was anxiously alive to
every happy chance that might occur for the two of his children who were
still to marry--anxious yet critical. He would not have had Rintoul
marry a grocer's daughter for her hogsheads, as Miss Barbara said. He
would have him, if possible, to marry the daughter of a Minister of
State, or some other personage of importance. He intended Rintoul to be
a popular Member of Parliament, a rising man altogether, thinking he
could infuse enough of his own energy as well as ambition into the young
man to secure these ends. And this great aim of his was the reason why
he underwent the expense of a season, though a short one, in town. He
was of opinion that it was important to keep himself and his family in
the knowledge of the world, to make it impossible for any fastidious
fashionable to say, "Who is Lord Lindores?" The Earl, by dint of nursing
this plan in his mind, and revealing it to nobody, had come to think it
was a great aim.

It was, as we have said, a rainy morning when the family left Lindores.
They made the journey from Edinburgh to London by night, as most people
do. But before they reached Edinburgh, there was a considerable journey,
and those two ferries, of which Rolls had reminded Colonel Barrington.
Two great firths to cross, with no small amount of sea when the wind is
in the east, was no such small matter. Lady Caroline had driven over in
the morning to bid her mother good-bye, and it was she who was to
deposit Nora Barrington at Chiefswood, where her next visit was to be
paid. There had been but little conversation between the mother and
daughter on the subject of that scene which Edith had witnessed, but
Lady Lindores could not forbear a word of sympathy in the last half-hour
they were to spend together. They were seated in her dressing-room,
which was safe from interruption. "I do not like to leave you, my
darling," Lady Lindores said, looking wistfully into her daughter's pale
face.

"It does not matter, mother. Oh, you must not think of me, and spoil
your pleasure. I think perhaps things go better sometimes when I have no
one to fall back upon," said poor Lady Caroline.

"Oh, Carry, my love, what a thing that is to say!"

Carry did not make any reply at first. She was calm, not excited at all.
"Yes; I think perhaps I am more patient, more resigned, when I have no
one to fall back upon. There is no such help in keeping silence as when
you have no one to talk to," she added, with a faint smile.

Her mother was much more disturbed in appearance than she. She was full
of remorse as well as sympathy. "I did not think--I never knew it was so
bad as this," she said, faltering, holding in her own her child's thin
hands.

"What could it be but as bad as this?" said Carry. "We both must have
known it from the beginning, mother. It is of no use saying anything. I
spoke to Edith the other day because she came in the midst of it, and I
could not help myself. It never does any good to talk. When there is no
one to speak to, I shall get on better, you will see."

"In that case, it is best for us to be away from you----Carry, my
darling!" Lady Lindores was frightened by the wild energy with which her
daughter suddenly clutched her arm.

"Oh no, no! don't think that. If I could not look across to Lindores and
think there was some one there who loved me, I should go out of my
senses. Don't let us talk of it. How curious to think you are going away
where I used always to wish to go--to London! No, don't look so. I
don't think I have the least wish to go now. There must be ghosts
there--ghosts everywhere," she said, with a sigh, "except at home. There
are no ghosts at Tinto; that is one thing I may be thankful for."

"I don't think," said her mother, with an attempt to take a lighter
tone, "that London is a likely place for ghosts."

"Ah, don't you think so? Mother," said Carry suddenly, "I am afraid of
John Erskine. He never knew of what happened--after. What so likely as
that he might have people to stay with him--people from town?"

"Nobody--whose coming would make any difference to _us_--would accept
such an invitation, Carry. Of that you may be sure."

"Do you think so, mother?" she said; then added, with some wistfulness,
"But perhaps it might be thought that no one would mind. That must be
the idea among people who know. And there might be, you know, a little
curiosity to see for one's self how it was. I think I could understand
that without any blame."

"No, I do not think so--not where there was any delicacy of mind. It
would not happen. A chance meeting might take place anywhere else; but
here, in our own country, oh no, no!"

"You think so?" said Lady Caroline: perhaps there was a faint
disappointment as well as relief in her tone. "I do not know how or why,
but I am afraid of John Erskine," she said again, after a pause.

"My dearest! he brings back old associations."

"It is not that. I feel as if there was something new, some other
trouble, coming in his train."

"You were always fanciful," her mother said; "and you are feverish,
Carry, and nervous. I don't like to leave you. I wish there could be
some one with you while we are away. You would not ask Nora?"

"I am better without company," she said, shaking her head. "In some
houses guests are always inconvenient. One never knows--and indeed,
things go better when we are alone. Don't vex yourself about me. There
is the carriage. And one thing more--take care of Edith, mother dear."

"Of Edith? But surely! she will be my constant companion. Why do you say
take care of Edith, Carry?"

"I think I have a kind of second-sight--or else it is my nerves, as you
say. I feel as if there were schemes about Edith. My father will want
her--to marry,--that is quite right, I suppose; and in town she will see
so many people. I am like an old raven, boding harm. But you will stand
by her, mother, whatever happens?"

"Oh, Carry, my darling, don't reproach me!" cried her mother; "it breaks
my heart!"

"Reproach you! Oh, not for the world! How could I reproach my dearest
friend--always my best support and comfort? No, no, mamma--no, no. It is
only that I am silly with sorrow to see you all go away. And yet I want
you to go away, to get all the pleasure possible. But only, if anything
should happen,--if Edith should--meet any one--you will be sure to stand
by her, mamma?"

"Are you ready? Are you coming? The carriage is waiting," said Lord
Lindores at the door.

Carry gave a little start at the sound of his voice, and her mother rose
hastily, catching up a shawl from the sofa on which she had been
sitting--a sort of excuse for a moment's delay. "Let me see that we have
got everything," she said, hurriedly; and coming back, took her daughter
once more into her arms. "Take care of yourself--oh, take care of
yourself, my darling! and if you should want me--if it should prove too
much--if you find it more than you can bear----"

"I can bear anything for a month," said Lady Caroline, with a smile;
"and I tell you, things go better--and _you_ will be all the better of
forgetting me for a while, mother dear."

"As if that were possible, Carry!"

"No, no; thank God, it is not possible! But I shall do very well, and
you will not have my white face for ever before your eyes. There is my
father calling again. Good-bye, mother dear--good-bye!" and as they
kissed, Carry breathed once more that prayer, "Take care of Edith!"--in
which Lady Lindores read the most tender and heartrending of all
reproaches--in her mother's ear.

They drove to the little station, a large party. Lady Caroline, who was
the element of care and sadness in it, made an effort to cast her
troubles behind her for the sake of the travellers. As they all walked
about on the little platform waiting the arrival of the slow-paced local
train, it was she who looked the most cheerful--so cheerful, that her
mother and sister, not unwilling to be deceived, could scarcely believe
that this was the same being who had been "silly with sorrow" to part
from them. Between Lord Lindores and his daughter there had always been
a certain shadow and coldness since her marriage; but to-day, even he
seemed to miss the tacit reproach in her look, and to feel at his ease
with Carry. Before the train arrived, John Erskine, too, appeared on the
platform to say good-bye to his friends. John was by far the most
downcast of the party. "I shall vegetate till you come back," he said to
Lady Lindores, not venturing to look at Edith, who listened to him with
a smile all the same, mocking his sentiment. She was not afraid of
anything he could say at that moment.

"Come and meet us this day month," she said, "and let us see if you are
in leaf or blossom, Mr Erskine."

John gave her a reproachful glance. He did not feel in the humour even
to answer with a compliment--with a hint that the sunshine which
encourages blossom would be veiled over till she came back, though some
loverlike conceit of the kind had floated vaguely through his thoughts.
When the travellers disappeared at last, the three who remained were
left standing forlorn on the platform, flanked by the entire strength of
the station (one man and a boy, besides the stationmaster), which had
turned out to see his lordship and her ladyship off. They looked blankly
at each other, as those who are left behind can scarcely fail to do.
Nora was the only one who kept up a cheerful aspect. "It is only for a
month, after all," she said, consoling her companions. But Carry dropped
back in a moment out of her false courage, and John looked black as a
thunder-cloud at the well-meant utterance. He was so rude as to turn his
back upon the comforter, giving Lady Caroline his arm to take her to her
carriage. With her he was in perfect sympathy--he even gave her hand a
little pressure in brotherly kindness and fellow-feeling: there was
nothing to be said in words. Neither did she say anything to him; but
she gave him a grateful glance, acknowledging that mute demonstration.
At this moment the stillness which had fallen round the little place,
after the painful puffing off of the train, was interrupted by the sound
of horse's hoofs, and Torrance came thundering along on his black horse.
Lady Caroline made a hurried spring into the carriage, recognising the
sound, and hid herself in its depths before her husband came up.

"Holloa!" he cried. "Gone, are they! I thought I should have been in
time to say good-bye. But there are plenty of you without me. Why, Car,
you look as if you had buried them all, both you and Erskine. What's the
matter? is she going to faint?"

"I never faint," said Lady Caroline, softly, from the carriage window.
"I am tired a little. Nora, we need not wait now."

"And you look like a dead cat, Erskine," said the civil squire. "It must
have been a tremendous parting, to leave you all like this. Hey! wait a
moment; don't be in such a hurry. When will you come over and dine, and
help Lady Car to cheer up a bit? After this she'll want somebody to talk
to, and she don't appreciate me in that line. Have we anything on for
Tuesday, Car, or will that suit?"

"Any day that is convenient for Mr Erskine," said Carry, faltering,
looking out with pitiful deprecation and a sort of entreaty at John
standing by. Her wistful eyes seemed to implore him not to think her
husband a brute, yet to acknowledge that he was so all the same.

"Then we'll say Tuesday," said Torrance. "Come over early and see the
place. I don't suppose you have so many invitations that you need to be
asked weeks in advance. But don't think I am going to cheat you of your
state dinner. Oh, you shall have that in good time, and all the old
fogeys in the county. In the meantime, as you're such old friends, it's
for Lady Car I'm asking you now." This was said with a laugh which
struck John's strained nerves as the most insolent he had ever heard.

"I need not say that I am at Lady Caroline's disposition--when she
pleases," he replied, very gravely.

"Oh, not for me--not for me," she cried, under her breath. Then
recovering herself--"I mean--forgive me; I was thinking of something
else. On Tuesday, if you will come, Mr Erskine--it will be most kind to
come. And, Nora, you will come too. To Chiefswood," she said, as the
servant shut the door, falling back with a look of relief into the
shelter of the carriage. The two men stood for a moment looking after it
as it whirled away. Why they should thus stand in a kind of forced
antagonism, John Erskine, at least, did not know. The railway forces
looked on vaguely behind; and Torrance, curbing his impatient horse,
made a great din and commotion on the country road.

"Be quiet, you brute! We didn't bargain for Nora--eh, Erskine? she's
thrown in," said Torrance, with that familiarity which was so offensive
to John. "To be sure, three's no company, they say. It's a pity they
play their cards so openly--or rather, it's a great thing for you, my
fine fellow. You were put on your guard directly, I should say. I could
have told them, no man was ever caught like that--and few men know
better than I do all the ways of it," he said, with a laugh.

"You have the advantage of me," said Erskine, coldly. "I don't know who
is playing cards, or what I have to do with them. Till Tuesday--since I
have Lady Caroline's commands," he said, lifting his hat.

"Confound----" the other said, under his breath; but John had already
turned away. Torrance stared after him, with a doubt in his eyes whether
he should not pursue and pick a quarrel on the spot; but a moment's
reflection changed his plans. "I'll get more fun out of him yet before
I'm done with him," he said, half to himself. Then he became aware of
the observation of Sandy Struthers the porter and the boy who had formed
the background, and were listening calmly to all that was said. He
turned round upon them quickly. "Hey, Sandy! what's wrong, my man? Were
you waiting to spy upon Mr Erskine and me?"

"Me--spying! No' me; what would I spy for?" was the porter's reply. He
was too cool to be taken by surprise. "What's that to me if twa
gentlemen spit and scratch at ilk ither, like cats or women folk," he
said, slowly. He had known Tinto "a' his days," and was not afraid of
him. A porter at a little roadside station may be pardoned if he is
misanthropical. He did not even change his position, as a man less
accustomed to waiting about with his hands hanging by his side might
have done.

"You scoundrel! how dare you talk of spitting and scratching to me?"

"'Deed, I daur mair than that," said Sandy, calmly. "You'll no' take the
trouble to complain to the Directors, Tinto, and I'm feared for naebody
else. But you shouldna quarrel--gentlemen shouldna quarrel. It sets a
bad example to the country-side."

"Quarrel! nothing of the sort. That's your imagination. I was asking Mr
Erskine to dinner," said Tinto, with his big laugh.

"Weel, it looked real like it. I wouldna gang to your dinner, Tinto, if
you asked me like that."

"Perhaps you wouldn't take a shilling if I tossed it to you like that."

"It's a'thegither different," said Sandy, catching the coin adroitly
enough. "I see nae analogy atween the twa. But jist take you my advice
and quarrel nane, sir, especially with that young lad: thae Erskines are
a dour race."

"You idiot! I was asking him to dinner," Torrance said. He was on
friendly terms with all the common people, with a certain jocular
roughness which did not displease them. Sandy stood imperturbable, with
all the calm of a man accustomed to stand most of his time looking on at
the vague and quiet doings of the world about him. Very little ever
happened about the station. To have had a crack with Tinto was a great
entertainment after the morning excitement, enough to maintain life upon
for a long time, of having helped the luggage into the van, and assisted
my lord and my lady to get away.

"I wish," cried Nora, as they rolled along the quiet road, "that you
would not drag me in wherever John Erskine is going, Car!"

They all called him John Erskine. It was the habit of the neighbourhood,
from which even strangers could scarcely get free.

"I drag you in! Ah, see how selfish we are without knowing!" said Carry.
"I thought only that between Mr Torrance and myself--there would be
little amusement."

"Amusement!" cried Nora--"always amusement! Is that all that is ever to
be thought of even at a dinner-party?"

Carry was too serious to take up this challenge. "Dear Nora," she said,
"I am afraid of John Erskine, though I cannot tell you why. I think Mr
Torrance tries to irritate him: he does not mean it,--but they are so
different. I know by my own experience that sometimes a tone, a
look--which is nothing, which means nothing--will drive one beside one's
self. That is why I would rather he did not come; and when he comes, I
want some one--some one indifferent--to help me to make it seem like a
common little dinner--like every day."

"Is it not like every day? Is there--anything? If you want me, Carry, of
course there is not a word to be said." Nora looked at her with anxious,
somewhat astonished eyes. She, too, was aware that before Carry's
marriage--before the family came to Lindores--there had been _some one
else_. But if that had been John, how then did it happen that
Edith----Nora stopped short, confounded. To her young imagination the
idea, not so very dreadful a one, that a man who had loved one sister
might afterwards console himself with another, was a sort of sacrilege.
But friendship went above all.

"I do not think I can explain it to you, Nora," said Lady Caroline.
"There are so many things one cannot explain. Scarcely anything in this
world concerns one's very self alone and nobody else. That always seems
to make confidences so impossible."

"Never mind confidences," cried Nora, wounded. "I did not ask why. I
said if you really _wanted_ me, Carry----"

"I know you would not ask why. And there is nothing to tell. Mr Torrance
has had a mistaken idea. But it is not that altogether. I am frightened
without any reason. I suppose it is as my mother says, because of all
the old associations he brings back. Marriage is so strange a thing. It
cuts your life in two. What was before seems to belong to some one
else--to another world."

"Is it always so, I wonder?" said Nora, wistfully.

"So far as I know," Carry said.

"Then I think St Paul is right," cried the girl, decisively, "and that
it is not good in that case to marry; but never mind, if you want me.
There is nothing to be frightened about in John Erskine. He is nice
enough. He would not do anything to make you uncomfortable. He is not
ill-tempered nor ready to take offence."

"I did not know that you knew him so well, Nora."

"Oh yes--when you have a man thrust upon you as he has been--when you
have always heard of him all your life; when people have said for
years,--in fun, you know, of course, but still they have said it--'Wait
till you see John Erskine!'"

Nora's tone was slightly aggrieved. She could not help feeling herself a
little injured that, after so much preparation and so many indications
of fate, John Erskine should turn out to be nothing to her after all.

Lady Caroline listened with an eager countenance. Before Nora had done
speaking, she turned upon her, taking both her hands. Her soft grey eyes
widened out with anxious questions. The corners of her mouth drooped.
"Nora, dear child, dear child!" she said, "you cannot mean--you do not
say----"

"Oh, I don't say anything at all," cried Nora, half angry, half amused,
with a laugh at herself which was about a quarter part inclined to
crying. "No, of course not, Car. How could I care for him--a man I had
never seen? But just--it seems so ludicrous, after this going on all
one's life, that it should come to nothing in a moment. I never can help
laughing when I think of it. 'Oh, wait till you see John Erskine!' Since
I was fifteen everybody has said that. And then when he did appear at
last, oh,--I thought him very nice--I had no objection to him--I was not
a bit unwilling,--to see him calmly turn his back upon me, as he did
to-day at the station!"

Nora laughed till the tears came into her eyes; but Lady Caroline, whose
seriousness precluded any admixture of humour in the situation, took the
younger girl in her arms and kissed her, with a pitying tenderness and
enthusiasm of consolation. "My little Nora! my little Nora!" she said.
She was too much moved with the most genuine emotion and sympathy to say
more; at which Nora, half accepting the crisis, half struggling against
it, laughed again and again till the tears rolled over her cheeks.

"Lady Car! Lady Car! it is not for sorrow; it is the fun of it--the fun
of it!" she cried.

But Carry did not see the fun. She wanted to soothe the sorrow away.

"Dearest Nora, this sort of disappointment is only visionary," she said.
"It is your imagination that is concerned, not your heart. Oh, believe
me, dear, you will laugh at it afterwards; you will think it nothing at
all. How little he knows! I shall think less of his good sense, less of
his discrimination, than I was disposed to do. To think of a man so left
to himself as to throw my Nora away!"

"He has not thrown me away," cried Nora, with a little pride; "because,
thank heaven, he never knew that he had me in his power! But you must
think more, not less, of his discrimination, Carry; for if he never had
any eyes for me, it was for the excellent good reason that he had seen
Edith before. So my pride is saved--quite saved," the girl cried.

"Edith!" Carry repeated after her. And then her voice rose almost to a
shriek--"Edith! You cannot mean that?"

"But I do mean it. Oh, I know there will be a thousand difficulties.
Lord Lindores will never consent: that is why they go and do it, I
suppose. Because she was the last person he ought to have fallen in love
with, as they say in the 'Critic'----"

"Edith!" repeated Carry again. Nora was half satisfied, half
disappointed, to find that her own part of the story faded altogether
from her friend's mind when this astonishing peace of intelligence came
in. Then she whispered in an awe-stricken voice, "Does my mother know?"

"Nobody knows--not even Edith herself. I saw it because, you know----And
of course," cried Nora, in delightful self-contradiction, "it does not
matter at all when I meet him now; for he is not thinking of me any
longer, but of her. Oh, he never did think of me, except to say to
himself, 'There is that horrid girl again!'"

This time Nora's laugh passed without any notice from Carry, whose
thoughts were absorbed in her sister's concerns. "Was not I right," she
said, clasping her hands, "when I said I was frightened for John
Erskine? I said so to my mother to-day. What I was thinking of was very
different: that he might quarrel with Mr Torrance--that harm might come
in that way. But oh, this is worse, far worse! Edith! I thought she at
least would be safe. How short-sighted we are even in our instincts! Oh,
my little sister! What can I do, Nora, what can I do to save her?"

Nora received this appeal with a countenance trembling between mirth and
vexation. She did not think Edith at all to be pitied. If there was any
victim--and the whole matter was so absurd that she felt it ought not to
be looked at in so serious a light,--but if there was a victim, it was
not Edith, but herself. She could only reply to Carry's anxiety with a
renewed outbreak of not very comfortable laughter. "Save her! You
forget," she said, with sudden gravity, "that Edith is not one to be
saved unless she pleases. And if she should like Mr Erskine----"

"My father will kill her!" Lady Caroline cried.




CHAPTER XIII.


Lord Rintoul made his appearance in the house which his parents had
hired in Eaton Place on the day before their arrival, with a mixture of
satisfaction and anxiety. He was pleased, for he was a good young fellow
on the whole, and fond of his mother and sister; but he was anxious, for
he was a Guardsman--a young man about town, "up," as he modestly hoped,
to most things--and they were people from the country, who in all
probability were not quite dressed as they ought to be, or prepared for
the duties of their position. These mingled sentiments were apparent in
the young man's face as he walked into the room in which Lady Lindores
and Edith were sitting together, working out on their side a programme
of the things they were going to do. Notwithstanding Carry, they were
both tolerably cheerful, looking forward to the excitement of this
unaccustomed life with a little stir of anticipation; for neither
mother nor daughter was _blasée_, and the thrill of quickened existence,
in a place where human pulses beat more rapidly and the tide runs fuller
than elsewhere, moved them in spite of themselves. Lady Lindores would
have said, and did say, that her heart was not in it--and this in
perfect good faith; yet when she was actually in London, though her
daughter's pale face and lonely life were often present with her, the
impression was less strong than when that white face, as poor Carry
said, was constantly before her eyes. She was a handsome woman of
forty-five, with a liking for all that was beautiful, a love of
conversation and movement, much repressed by the circumstances of her
life, but always existing; and when thus free for a moment from habitual
cares, her heart rose almost in spite of herself, and she was able to
believe that things would set themselves right somehow, even though she
did not see from whence the alleviation was to come. She was discussing
with Edith many things that they had planned and thought of, when
Rintoul arrived. Their plans embraced various matters which were not
within the range of that golden youth's ideas. When they had been in
London before, they had vexed his soul by the list of things they had
wanted to see. The sights of London! such as country people of the lower
orders went staring about: Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament,
even St Paul's and the Tower!--things which he had never seen nor
thought of seeing himself, though he often passed the former, not taking
any notice, thinking it was "bad form" to show any rustic curiosity. His
mother and the girls had scoffed at all he said about "bad form;" but
now they were accustomed to their change of circumstances, and
everything was different. Would they be reasonable, and acknowledge that
there were certain matters in which he was an authority now?

Rintoul himself had made, he was conscious, immense progress since he
first stepped upon that platform of rank to which he was now accustomed.
At first the elevation had made him a little giddy. Young Robin
Lindores, of the 120th, had been on the whole a very simple young
fellow, pleased to feel that he had the benefit of "good connections,"
and an uncle who was an Earl, though they had never been of any use to
him. Even in that innocent stage he was, as is natural to a young man,
vaguely critical of the proceedings of his "people." He thought it was a
pity they should live abroad. Were they at home, it appeared certain to
him that he would now and then have been invited to Lindores for the
shooting, and been taken some notice of. But on the other hand, he
acknowledged that to live abroad was cheap, and that it was better for
him on the whole to say "My people are abroad," than to be obliged to
acknowledge that they were living in a little country cottage somewhere,
or in Brighton or Cheltenham, or some shabby-genteel place. And he did
his duty very cheerfully, and kept tolerably well within his allowance,
and took such pleasures as came in his way, without any very clear
outlook towards the future, but always with some hope of active service
and promotion. So long as he had "something to do"--a little cricket or
boating, a tolerable amount of parties--he neither looked too closely
into the pedigree of his entertainers, nor gave himself any airs on the
subject of his own birth and connections. For what was he, after
all?--not even an Honourable himself, but the son of an
Honourable--plain Mr Lindores, no more than Mr Smith or Mr Jones. It
never occurred to him that his position demanded anything of him in
those days; for what position had he but that of a lieutenant in the
120th? In society, though he would pretend now and then, like the rest,
to talk of this and that girl as having money--or "tin," as it was more
usually called--such a prudential consideration never went beyond the
mere light flutter of talk; and he liked to dance, not with the
heiresses, but with the prettiest girls and the best dancers, as was
natural and befitting--to marry anybody being entirely out of his
_rôle_. He knew himself to be wiser than his mother, and to know more
of life than even the governor himself, who (no fault of his) was
growing an old fogy in the course of nature; but on the whole, he was
respectful enough to these old persons when he was with them, and in his
way fond of them all, and even proud of little Edith's prettiness, and
the distinguished looks of Carry, who was always like a princess though
she was not pretty. When, however, that sudden and unlooked-for
advancement came, and Robin Lindores at one bound became Lord Rintoul,
the change that passed over him was something wonderful. It was as great
a revolution as that which had converted the gentle and fastidious
_dilettante_ of former years into the energetic, ambitious Scotch Earl,
who kept his family in awe and wonder. Robin changed as much, or almost
as much, as his father had changed. He left his simple regiment, and all
its little garrison gaieties, and became a Guardsman, and was introduced
into society. He learned the chatter of the drawing-rooms and clubs, and
to talk familiarly about everybody, and to think he understood all the
motives (almost always supposed to be bad ones) which swayed their
conduct. Perhaps it was his familiarity with these tales which drove the
young man into such an alarmed state of susceptibility as to the risk of
encountering in his own person, or in his family, a similar freedom of
comment. He said to himself that he knew "how fellows talked," and he
could not bear that his sister should be pulled to pieces among them,
and known as a rustic or an _exaltée_--one of the strong-minded
sisterhood on the one hand, or a foolish bread-and-butter girl on the
other. And Rintoul had become fully possessed by the idea that to get
Edith "off" was the first duty of the family. He felt that his pride
would be touched if she did not secure a good marriage before the end of
the season. "Fellows would talk:" they would say that she had been a
failure; that it was no good Lady Lindores hawking her daughter about;
that she had tried very hard for this man, or flung herself at the
other's head, but it was no use. He knew that he had heard such things
said a hundred times--perhaps been moved to echo them himself on the
very slightest warrant; but the blood rushed to his face when it
occurred to him that his sister in her turn might be subjected to such
comments. And the only way for her to escape them was to succeed.
Therefore it was with a conviction of the importance of the crisis,
which affected every nerve in his body, as well as all the powers of his
mind, that Rintoul appeared in the little morning-room at Eaton Place.
Every girl was said to throw herself at somebody's head--to make a dead
set at one man or another. Without that purpose no one was supposed to
go into society. When she succeeded, and the man was secured, her
triumph, it is true, was always discussed in the same way; but that was
once for all, and the matter was done with. Therefore it was evident to
Rintoul that Edith must succeed. She must secure somebody before the
season was out. He could not bear to have it said of her that she was
hawked about. At the same time, this anxious young man saw the
difficulties. His "people" had not a very large acquaintance. His mother
was not half up to her duties as a mother. Edith herself, though a very
pretty girl, was not a beauty of the undeniable and all-conquering sort.
So much the more grave were all the difficulties of the situation, and
so much the more important all the expedients that could be adopted, all
the precautions that Rintoul--perhaps, he felt, the only one of the
family who fully perceived them--must take. Their appearance, their
gowns and bonnets, the places they intended to appear in,--all these
were of the utmost consequence--a consequence, he was afraid, which the
real head of the party, she who ought to be the chief mover in the
matter, could scarcely be got to understand, much less to take into
earnest consideration as she ought.

This was why his pleasure in seeing his people was shadowed by so much
anxiety. His smile was only on the lower part of his face--all the rest
was clouded with an almost fretful disquietude. He did not even know
whether he could make them understand the importance of the crisis. They
would receive him, he felt sure, with levity, with minds directed to
things of no consequence whatever; and it was natural that this sense,
that he was the only person who understood the gravity of the situation,
should make Rintoul's countenance serious. As he kissed his mother and
sister, he looked them all over, taking in every detail of their
appearance, and uttered a mental thanksgiving, and felt an enormous
relief to find that there was little to remark upon. "They would not
look amiss anywhere," he said to himself. But this gleam of contentment
was soon dimmed by the reflection that you never can know how a woman
will look till you have seen her in her outdoor costume. The bonnet is
such a test! Most likely they wore impossible bonnets. So the
contraction returned to his forehead once more.

"So here you are," he said. "I am mighty glad to see you. I thought
everything worth while would be over before you came."

"And what is there that is worth while that is not over?" said his
mother. "We defer to your superior knowledge. We in our ignorance were
thinking of the concerts, and the pictures, and the new play."

"Ah, that's all very well. _They're_ not over, of course, nor will be
so long as the season lasts," said Rintoul, carelessly. "I was thinking
of more important things. I think I've got you cards for the next
Chiswick _fête_. It wanted diplomacy. I got Lady Reston, who is _au
mieux_ with Archy Chaunter, to get them for you; but you must have very
nice toilets for that. The new Irish beauty went to the last a perfect
fright in poplin and Limerick lace, all native product, and was the talk
of the town. Thank heaven there's nothing but tartan indigenous to
Scotland!"

"Let us go in tartan, mamma," said Edith. "It would be a graceful way of
showing our nationality, and please the people who are going to elect
Robin for the county."

"If you think it would please the county," said the Countess, with much
gravity, which almost paralysed Rintoul; but she added, shaking her
head, "Alas! the county is not Highland at all, and scoffs at the
tartan. We must try some other way."

"I wish you wouldn't speak nonsense to aggravate me," cried the young
man. "How am I to know when you're in earnest, and when you are
laughing? But one thing I can tell you: unless you are well dressed, you
need never think of going at all. Old-fashioned gowns that do well
enough for the country--though even in the country I don't think you
ought ever to be careless of your dress----"

"You seem to be an authority," said Edith, laughing. "You will have to
tell us if our gowns are old-fashioned."

"Well, I don't suppose I am an authority: I don't understand details;
but I can tell on the whole, as well as another, whether a woman looks
as she ought when she's got up."

"_Comme il faut._ I thought the phrase was untranslatable, but Robin has
mastered it," said Lady Lindores.

"You need not laugh at me, mother; and I wish you wouldn't, all of you,
call me by that absurd name. I feel like a shepherd boy in a
pastoral--the hero, you know,--like Fidelio or Cherubino. Oh, I don't
say you are to call me Rintoul--that if you like; but I don't mind
Bob----"

"Bob!" the mother and sister cried in one breath. They had all been
secretly proud of that pet name of Robin, which he had borne from a
child.

"It's not worth talking of," he said carelessly, feeling something of
ridicule involved; for though he was not clever, he was sufficiently
sympathetic to be conscious of the sentiment in the minds of the others.
"The real question is, what you are going to do while you are in town. I
have told everybody you were coming; but, mamma, I hope you won't balk
everything by going on about theatres and pictures, and so forth.
Society is a hundred times more important. It is not only amusing
ourselves we have got to think of. It is all very well to laugh," he
said, with the most solemn air of offended dignity, "but anybody who
knew the world would tell you the same thing."

"My dear boy, I thought I knew a little about the world; but I daresay I
am mistaken. I hope, however, you will permit us to amuse ourselves a
little now and then. Edith wants to see something and hear something
while she is in London. She has not had your advantages----"

"My advantages don't count for very much," said Rintoul, half irritated,
half flattered, "and it's just Edith I'm thinking of. There is more to
be taken into consideration for her than either amusement or what you
call improving her mind. Edith is the entire question. It is to do her
justice that is my whole thought."

Edith, on hearing this, laughed out, yet flamed crimson, with mingled
ridicule and suspicion. "In what respect am I to have justice?" she
said.

"You needn't fire up. All that I want is your good. You ought to be
seen: you ought to have your chance like the rest. How are you ever to
have that if my mother and you fly about skylarking in all sorts of
unlikely places, and keep out of the way of--every opportunity?"

Rintoul, though carried away by his feelings to the point of making this
plain statement, was rather alarmed when he had said it, and stopped
somewhat breathless. It was alarming to be confronted by his sister's
indignant countenance and the angry sparkle in her eyes.

"Do you know what he means, mother?" she cried. "Did you bring me to
London to market? That's what he means. Did you come to set up a booth
in Vanity Fair? If you did, you must find other wares. Rintoul would
make such a good salesman, it is a pity to balk him. But I am not going
to be put up to auction," cried the girl, springing to her feet. Then
she laughed, though she was so angry. "I am going to get ready for a
walk," she said. "I think that delightful bonnet that Miss Macalister in
Dunearn made for me will be the very thing for the Park----"

"Heaven above! do you let her have bonnets from Miss Macalister in
Dunearn?" cried Rintoul, dismayed, as his sister disappeared. "Even in
the country I would never consent to that."

"You must not pour too much wisdom upon us all at once," said his
mother, "especially upon Edith, who is not used to it." Lady Lindores
could not take it all seriously. She was vexed at the bottom of her
heart, yet could not but smile at the oracle who had so short a time
before been simple Robin--her nice, kind, silly, lovable boy. He had not
ceased to be lovable even in his new development as Mentor and man of
the world.

"That is all very well, mother; but if you make a joke of it, what is
the good of coming to town at all?" cried Rintoul, with his serious
face--too serious to be angry. "Edith may flare up if she pleases--she
doesn't know any better; but surely you must understand she has never
had her chance. Who is to see her down in the country? There was
Torrance of course, but Carry snapped him up."

"Robin," said his mother, her countenance changing, "I desire you will
not speak in that heartless, vulgar way. Yes, my boy, it is vulgar,
though you think it so wise. Poor Carry, to her sorrow, has snapped up,
as you say, a most unsuitable husband and a miserable life. I wish I was
free of blame in that matter. We must make the best of it now, since
there's no remedy; but to speak as if Carry's marriage was something to
be envied----"

"Well, Torrance is rather a brute," Rintoul acknowledged, somewhat
subdued; "but what a place and what a position! Carry's boy, with our
connection and all that money, may be--anything she chooses to make
him----"

"Carry's boy is not half so much to me as Carry herself," said Lady
Lindores, gravely; "but that is done, and we must make the best of it,"
she added, with a sigh.

"A girl may pick up a bad husband anywhere," said Rintoul, regaining his
confidence. "It just as often happens in a hot love-match as in anything
else. There's Lily Trevor, old Lord Warhawk's daughter, would never rest
till they had let her marry Smithers of the Blues--and they say he beats
her. Charley Floyd says there never was such a wretched _ménage_; and
she might have married half-a-dozen fellows, every one a better match
than Smithers. There's no accounting for these sort of things. But,
mamma, unless we're all mad together, we must give Edith her chance. By
Jove, when you think of it, she's past her first bloom!" ("and that's
mostly the thing that fetches," he added parenthetically, under his
breath)--"she's twenty-one, mother! The moment she's seen anywhere,
people will begin to calculate when she came out: and it's three seasons
back! That does a girl more harm than anything. There's always a little
added on to every one's age, and I shouldn't wonder in the least if they
made her out to be thirty! She doesn't look it, fortunately; but what
are looks, when half the women one sees are made up like pictures? But
mind my words, mother--you will repent it all your life if you don't
make up your mind now to give Edith one real good chance."

Lady Lindores made no reply. She began to lose her sense of amusement,
and to feel vexed and humiliated, sore and wroth, as parents do when
their children parade before them sentiments which are unworthy. Perhaps
a woman cannot be quite just in such a predicament. It may be all an
unconscious fiction, this atrocious precocious cynicism and worldliness
of youth. Nothing is ever so cruelly conventional, so shamelessly
egoistical, as the young disciple of social philosophy, who is possibly
hiding a quivering and terrified youthful heart beneath that show of
abominable wisdom. But it is hard for a mother whose whole heart is bent
on finding excellence and nobleness in her child, to be tolerant of what
appears to be such apparent and unmistakable unworthiness. Lady Lindores
felt, while her son was speaking, as if some barbarous giant had got her
heart in his hand and crushed it, clinching his cruel grasp. She did not
look at him while he pleaded that Edith might have her chance, nor
answer him when he had spoken. What could she say to the boy who could
thus discourse to her like an old man learned in all wickedness? There
was a poignant sting of injured pride, too, in the sensation with which
she listened to him. This from the boy she had trained, to whom she
must have given his first conception of life, of women and their ways!
Had it been her example, against her will, unconscious of any such
possibility, that had taught him to despise them? She looked at the
young face so dear to her, and which was now full of all the gravity of
conviction, endeavouring to enforce its doctrines upon her mind, with a
mixture of hot impatience and hopeless toleration. Poor boy! this was
what he really thought, honestly believed, though he was _her_ son! His
eyes were quite impressive in their sincerity. "She ought to see
people," Rintoul said; "she ought to be seen. She has never been hawked
about like other girls, so it does not matter so much that this isn't
her first season. People may forget it if we take no notice. But in
another year, mother, if she does not have her chance now--in another
year," cried the anxious brother, with threatening solemnity, "it will
be quite another matter. She has kept her bloom pretty well, but it will
be gone by that time; and when it's gone, she'll not have half the
chance. A girl _must_ make hay while the sun shines," he added, more and
more dogmatically: "we all of us ought to remember that, but for a girl
it's imperative--there is nothing that tells like the first bloom."

Still Lady Lindores did not make any reply.

"I wonder at you, mother," he cried, exasperated. "I should have
thought it would be your first object to see Edith happily settled. And
when you think how difficult it is--how many there are always ready,
waiting to snap up any fellow with money! I believe," he said, with a
sort of prophetic wrath, a visionary anger at what might have been,--"I
believe if my father had not interfered, Carry was as likely as not to
have married that Professor fellow. By the way, isn't Erskine at
Dalrulzian? and I daresay you have had him up at Lindores?"

"Certainly, we have had him up at Lindores. What is your objection to
that?" said Lady Lindores, quietly.

And now it was Rintoul's turn to sigh and shake his head with hopeless
impatience. Was it impossible to get her to understand? "I don't know
what you people are thinking of," he said, with a kind of quiet despair.
"Though you know what mischief happened before, you will have that
fellow to the house, you will let him be with Edith as much as he
pleases."

"Edith!" cried Lady Lindores: and then she stopped short, and added with
a laugh, "I assure you, Robin, there's no danger in that quarter. The
entire county has made up its mind that John Erskine is to marry Nora
Barrington, and nobody else, whatever other people may say."

Now it was Rintoul's turn to be red and indignant. He was so much
startled, that he sprang to his feet with an excitement altogether
without justification. "Nora Barrington!" he cried; "I would like to
know what right any one has to mix up the name of an innocent girl--who
never, I am certain, had either part or lot in such wretched
schemings----"

"The same kind of schemings--but far more innocent--as those you would
involve your sister in," cried Lady Lindores, rising too, with a deep
flush upon her face.

"Nothing of the kind, mother--besides, the circumstances are entirely
different," he cried, hotly. "Edith _must_ marry well. She must marry to
advantage, for the sake of the family. But Nora--a girl that would never
lead herself to--to--that never had a thought of interest in her
head--that doesn't know what money means----"

"I am glad there is somebody you believe in, Robin," his mother said.

The young man saw his inconsistency, but that mattered little. It is
only in other people that we find consistency to be necessary. The
consciousness made him hotter and less coherent perhaps, but no more.
"The cases are entirely different. I see no resemblance between them,"
he said, with resentment and indignation in every tone. Lady Lindores
would have been more than human if she had not followed up her
advantage.

"Yes," she said, "in Nora's case even I myself, though I am no
match-maker, feel disposed to aid in the scheme. For nothing could be
more entirely suitable. The same position, the same class, the same
tastes; and the Barringtons are poor, so that it would be a great
comfort to them to see their girl in a nice house of her own; and she is
very fond of Dalrulzian, and much liked in the neighbourhood. I can see
everything in favour of the plan--nothing against it."

"Except that it will never come to anything," cried young Rintoul. "Good
heavens! Nora--a girl that one never could think of in any such
way,--that never in her life--I'll answer for it--made any plans about
whom she was to marry. Mother, I think you might have so much respect
for one of your own sex as to acknowledge that."

"It is time to appeal to my respect for my own sex," cried Lady
Lindores, with an angry laugh. If this was how the tables were to be
turned upon her! When she left the room, angry, yet indignantly amused
at the same time, Rintoul reflected with hot indignation upon the want
of sympathy and fellow-feeling among women. "When they do see a girl
that's above all that sort of thing, that it's desecration to think of
in that way, they either don't understand her, or they're jealous of
her," he said to himself, with profound conviction. "Women don't know
what justice means."




CHAPTER XIV.


The present writer has already confessed to a certain disinclination to
venture upon any exposition of the manners and customs of the great; and
should an attempt be made to thread the mazes of the season, and to
represent in sober black and white the brilliant assemblies, the crowded
receptions, the drawing-rooms and ball-rooms and banqueting-rooms, all
full of that sheen of satin and shimmer of pearls which only the most
delicate manipulation, the lightest exquisite touch, can secure? Could
the writer's pen be dipped in tints as ethereal as those which fill the
brush (if that is not too crude a word) of the accomplished President,
then perhaps the task might be attempted; but common ink is not equal to
it. Though Lady Lindores was negligent of her duties, and did not give
herself up as she ought to have done to the task of getting invitations
and doing her daughter justice, yet her shortcomings were made up by the
superior energy and knowledge of her husband and son. And as a matter
of fact, they went everywhere, and saw a great deal of society. So far
were they from being under the standard at that Chiswick _fête_, as
Rintoul nervously anticipated, that the graceful mother and pretty
daughter were noticed by eyes whose notice is the highest distinction,
and inquired into with that delightful royal curiosity which is so
complimentary to mankind, and which must be one of the things which make
the painful trade of sovereignty tolerable. Both the ladies, indeed, had
so much _succès_, that the anxious young Guardsman, who stalked about
after them, too much disturbed to get any satisfaction in his own
person, and watching their demeanour as with a hundred eyes, gradually
allowed the puckers in his forehead to relax, and went off guard with a
sigh of relief. Rintoul was more than relieved--he was delighted with
the impression produced by Edith's fresh beauty. "Oh, come! she's a
pretty little thing, if you please; but not all that," he said, confused
by the excess of approbation accorded to her by some complimentary
friend. There was one drawback, however, to this satisfaction, and that
was, that neither did Edith "mind a bit" who was introduced to her, who
danced with her, or took her down to dinner,--whether a magnificent
young peer or a penniless younger son; nor, still more culpable, did her
mother pay the attention she ought to this, or take care as she ought
that her daughter's smiles were not thrown away. She was known once,
indeed, to have--inconceivable folly!--actually gone the length of
introducing to Edith, in a ball-room bristling with eligible partners, a
brilliant young artist, a "painter-fellow," the very last person who
ought to have been put in the girl's way. "If a girl goes wrong of
herself, and is an idiot, why, you say, it's because she knows no
better," Rintoul said; "but when it's her mother!" The young painter
danced very well, and was bright and interesting beyond, it is to be
supposed, the general level; and he hung about the ladies the whole
evening, never long away from one or the other. Rintoul felt that if it
happened only one other evening, all the world would say that there was
something going on, and possibly some society paper would inform its
anxious readers that "a marriage is arranged." On the other hand, that
evening was marked with a white stone on which the young Marquis of
Millefleurs, son of the Duke of Lavender, made himself conspicuous as
one of Edith's admirers, pursuing her wherever she went, till the
foolish girl was disposed to be angry; though Lady Lindores this time
had the sense to excuse him as being so young, and to add that he seemed
"a nice sort of boy,"--not a way, certainly, to recommend so desirable
an adorer to a fanciful girl, but still perhaps, in the circumstances,
as much as could be expected. Lady Lindores received with great
composure a few days after, an announcement from her husband that he had
asked the youth to dinner. She repeated her praise with a perfectly calm
countenance--

"I shall be glad to see him, Robert. I thought him a mere boy, very
young, but frank and pleasant as a boy should be."

"I don't know what you call a boy. I believe he is four-and-twenty,"
said Lord Lindores, with some indignation; and then he added in a
subdued tone, as knowing that he had something less easy to suggest, "I
have asked some one else whom you will probably not look on in the same
light. I should much rather have left him out, but there was no getting
Millefleurs without him. He has been travelling with him as a sort of
tutor-companion, I suppose." Here he seemed to pause to get up his
courage, which was so remarkable that his wife's suspicions were
instantly aroused. She turned towards him with a look of roused
attention.

"I don't hesitate to say that I am sorry to bring him again in contact
with the family. Of course the whole affair was folly from beginning to
end. But the young fellow himself behaved well enough. There is nothing
against him personally, and I am rather willing to let him see that it
has entirely passed from our minds."

"Of whom are you speaking?" cried Lady Lindores.

The Earl actually hesitated, stammered, almost blushed, so far as a man
of fifty is capable of blushing. "You remember young Beaufort, whom we
saw so much of in----"

"Beaufort!" cried Lady Lindores,--"_Edward!_" her voice rose into a sort
of shriek.

"He certainly was never Edward to me. I thought it best, when
Millefleurs presented him to me, to receive him at once as an old
acquaintance. And I hope you will do so also, without any fuss. It is
very important that it should be made quite clear we have no fear of
him, or feeling in the matter."

"Edward!" Lady Lindores said again. "How can I receive him as if I had
no feeling in the matter? He has called me mother. I have kissed him as
Carry's future husband. Good heavens! and Carry poor Carry!"

"I did not know you had been such a fool," he cried, reddening; then
after a pause, "I see no reason why Carry should be called poor. Her
position at home is in some points better than our own. And it is not
necessary to tell Carry of every one who enters this house, which is so
much out of her way."

"My poor child, my poor child!" the mother said, wringing her hands.
"She divined this. She had a fear of something. She thought John Erskine
might invite him. Oh, you need not suppose this was ever a subject of
conversation between us!--but it seems that Mr Torrance suspected John
Erskine himself to be the man. Edith surprised them in the midst of a
painful scene on this subject, and then Carry told me of her terror lest
John should invite--she did not say whom. It was not necessary between
us to name any names."

"What did Torrance know about 'the man'? as you say; what had he to do
with it? You women are past bearing. This was some of your confidences,
I suppose."

"It was Carry's own communication to the man who is her husband. She
thought it her duty, poor, poor child!--and now, is it I that am to be
made the instrument of further torture?" Lady Lindores cried.

"The instrument of--fiddlesticks! This is really not a subject for
heroics," said her husband, fretfully. "I ask you to receive as an
acquaintance merely--no intimacy required of you--a man against whom I
know nothing. These absurd passages you refer to, _I_ had no knowledge
of. It was idiotic; but fortunately it is all over, and no harm done.
For Carry's sake even, that nobody may be able to say that there was any
embarrassment on her account, it seems to me your duty to receive
him--especially as his coming involves Millefleurs."

"What do I care for that boy? What do you want with that boy?" Lady
Lindores cried. She did not show her usual desire to please and soothe
him, but spoke sharply, with an impatience which she could not control.

"Whatever my reason may be, I hope I have a right to invite Millefleurs
if I please," said the Earl, with a cloudy smile, "and his companion
with him, whoever he may be."

Lady Lindores made no reply, nor was there anything further said between
them on the subject. The intimation, however, almost overwhelmed the
woman, who in these last years had learned to contemplate her husband in
so different a light. Enough has been said about the tragical
unworthiness which tears asunder those who are most closely bound
together, and kills love, as people say, by killing respect. To kill
love is terrible, but yet it is an emancipation in its way; and no man
or woman can suffer for the unworthiness of one whom he or she has
ceased to love, with anything approaching the pain which we feel when
those who never can cease to be dear to us fall into evil. And love is
so fatally robust, and can bear so many attacks! Lady Lindores, who
divined her husband's motives, and the unscrupulous adherence to them
through thick and thin which would recoil from nothing, suffered from
that and every other discovery that he was not what she had thought
him, with bitter pangs, from which she would have been free had he
ceased to be the first object of her affections. But that he could never
cease to be; and his faults tore her as with red-hot pincers. She could
not bear to think of it, and yet was obliged to think of it, unable to
forget it. That he should not shrink from the embarrassment and pain of
renewing an acquaintance so broken up, when it happened to appear to him
useful for his own ends, was more to her than even the pain she would
feel in herself receiving the man who might have been Carry's
husband--whom Carry had, as people say, jilted in order to marry a
richer rival. How could she look him in the face, knowing this? How
could she talk to him without allusion to the past? But even bad as this
was, it was more heartrending still to think why it was that he was
invited. She had to explain it to Edith too, who was thunderstruck.
"Edward! you don't mean _Edward_, mamma?" "Yes, my darling, I mean
Edward, no one else. He must not be Edward now, but Mr Beaufort, to you
and me. Your father was obliged to ask him, for he was with Lord
Millefleurs." "But what does he want with Lord Millefleurs? I would
rather have had nobody in the house till we go home than ask Edward. And
what, oh what will you say to Carry, mamma?" "We must say nothing," the
mother cried, with a quivering lip. "It must not be breathed to her.
Thank heaven, we have no old servants! At all costs Carry must not
know." "I thought you said, mamma, that there never was such a thing as
a secret--that everything was known?" "And so I did," cried Lady
Lindores, distracted. "Why do you remind me of what I have said? It is
not as if I could help it. We must stand firm, and get through it as
well as we can, and think as little as we can of what may follow. There
is no other way." This was how Lady Lindores bore the brunt of her
child's inquiries. As for Lord Rintoul, he declared that he understood
his father perfectly. "If Beaufort were left out, he'd fill
Millefleurs's mind with all sorts of prejudices. I'd rather not meet the
fellow myself; but as it can't be helped, it must be done, I suppose,"
he said. "He will never say anything, that is certain. And what can that
boy's opinion be to us?" said Lady Lindores. Her son stared at her for a
moment open-eyed. "Mamma, you are the most wonderful woman I ever knew,"
he said. "If you don't mean it, it's awfully clever; and if you do mean
it, you are such an innocent as never was seen. Why, don't you know that
everybody is after Millefleurs? He is the great match of the season. I
wish I thought Edith had a chance." Lady Lindores covered her face with
her hands, hating the very light. Her boy, too! They pursued their
ignoble way side by side with her, scarcely believing that it was
possible she did not see and share their meaning, and in her heart
approve of all their efforts.

"What is wrong now?" said Rintoul. "I declare I never know what to say.
Sometimes you take things quite easily. Sometimes you will flare up at
nothing at all."

"Do you think it is nothing at all that your sister and I should be
brought into what you yourselves call a husband-hunt?" cried Lady
Lindores. "Have you not told me of a dozen women who are trying to catch
this man and that? Don't you think it is ignominious to expose us to the
same reproach? Perhaps they are just as innocent of it as I."

"Oh, trust them for that," said Rintoul, with a laugh. "Of course it is
said of everybody. It will be said of you just the same; we can't help
that. But surely you can see yourself--even _you_ can see--that when a
fellow like Millefleurs actually puts himself out of the way to come
after a girl like Edith----"

"Robin!" cried his mother (a little _accès_ of passion seized her). "Do
you think Edith--Edith, your sister--is not worth a hundred boys like
this Millefleurs? What do you mean by coming out of his way? Is it the
fashion now that girls like Edith should put themselves at the disposal
of a little jackanapes--a bit of a boy--a----"

"Don't lose your temper, mamma," said the young man, with a laugh. "But
now you've had it out," said this wise son, "only just be reasonable,
and think a moment. Millefleurs is a great catch. There's not such a big
fish to be landed anywhere; and Edith is no better than a hundred
others. Do hear a fellow out. She's very pretty and nice, and all that;
but there's heaps of pretty, nice girls--and the prettier they are, and
the nicer they are, the less they have a penny to bless themselves
with," he added, in a regretful parenthesis. "There's a hundred of them,
and there's only one of him. Of course he knows that well enough. Of
course he knows it's a great thing when he lets a girl see that he
admires her; and if her people are such fools as to let him slip through
their fingers for want of a little trouble--why, then, they deserve to
lose their chance,--and that's all I can say," Rintoul said.

Once more Lady Lindores was silenced. What was the use of saying
anything? Indignation was out of place, or anything that she could say
of love profaned and marriage desecrated. To speak of the only
foundation of a true union to this world-instructed boy--what would be
the use of it? She swallowed down as best she could the bitterness, the
pain, the disappointment and contempt, which it is anguish to feel in
such a case. After a while she said with a smile, commanding herself,
"And you, Robin, who are so clever as to know all this, are you too a
catch, my poor boy? are you pursued by mothers, and competed for by
girls?--not, of course, to the same extent as Lord Millefleurs--I
recognise the difference; but something, I suppose, in the same way?"

"Well," said Rintoul, caressing his moustache, "not to the same extent,
as you say, and not in the same way perhaps. I'm nobody, of course, when
Millefleurs is there; but still, you know, when there's no Millefleurs
on the horizon--why, one has one's value, mother. It's an old title, for
one thing, and Scotch estates, which people think better than they are,
perhaps. They don't throw heiresses at my head; but still, you know, in
a general way----"

As he sat stroking that moustache which was not very mature yet, but
rather young and scanty for its age, with a little smile of subdued
vanity about his mouth, and a careless air of making light of his
advantages, what woman could have helped laughing? But when a mother
laughs at her boy, the ridicule hurts more than it amuses her. "I see,"
she said. "Then don't you think, Robin, you who are so clear-sighted,
that this young man will see through our attentions, if we pay him
attention, and laugh at our efforts to--catch him (that's the word, is
it?), as much as you do yourself?"

"All right," said Rintoul; "so he will, of course; but what does that
matter when a fellow takes a fancy into his head? Of course he knows you
will want to catch him if you can--that stands to reason--everybody
wants to catch him; but if he likes Edith, he will never mind that--if
he likes Edith----"

"Robin, hold your tongue," cried his mother, almost violently. She felt
that she could have boxed his ears in the heat of her displeasure. "I
will not hear your sister's name bandied about so. You disgust me--you
horrify me--you make me ill to hear you! _My_ son! and you venture to
speak of your sister so!"

Rintoul, arrested in his speech, stared for a moment open-mouthed; and
then he shook his head with a look of impatient toleration, and uttered
a weary sigh. "If you will not hear reason, of course it's in vain my
arguing with you," he said.

These several encounters, and the heavy thought of what might be to come
soon, took away all the gloss of pleasure that had been upon Lady
Lindores's first entrance into society. She thought, indeed, there had
never been any pleasure at all in it; but this was an unintentional
self-deception. She thought that Carry's pale image had come between
her and every lighter emotion. She did not herself know how natural she
was--her mood changing, her heart rising in spite of herself, a bright
day, a pleasant company, the consciousness of being approved, and even
admired, giving her some moments of gratification in spite of all; but
after these discussions, she was so twisted and turned the wrong way, so
irritated and disenchanted by her husband and son, that she felt herself
sick and disgusted with London and all the world. If she could but get
home! but yet at home there was poor Carry, who would ask after
everything, and from whom it would be so difficult to conceal the
reappearance of her old lover: if she had but wings like a dove!--but
oh, whither to go to be at rest! One must be alone, and free of all
loves and relationships, to hope for that anywhere by flight. And what
was before her was appalling to her: to meet the man whom she had
thought of as her son, to keep a calm countenance, and talk to him as if
no different kind of intercourse had ever been between them--to avoid
all confidence, all _épanchements_, and to keep him at the safe distance
of acquaintanceship: how was she to do it? She said to herself that she
did not know how to look him in the face, he who had been so deeply
wronged. And then she began to hope that he, full of delicacy and fine
feeling as he used to be, would see how impossible it was that they
should meet, and would refuse to come. This hope kept her up till the
last moment. When the evening came, it was with a quivering emotion
which she could scarcely restrain, that she waited to receive her
guests, hoping more strenuously every moment, and trying to persuade
herself, that Beaufort would not come. He had accepted the invitation;
but what was that? He would accept, no doubt, in order to show them that
he had got over it--that he bore no malice--and then he would send his
excuses. Her eyes were feverish with eagerness and suspense when the
door opened. She could not hear the names announced for the beating of
her heart in her ears; but it was only when she saw against the light
the shadow of a figure not to be forgotten, and heard the doors open and
shut, that she realised the fact that he had really presented himself.
Then it seemed to Lady Lindores that all her pulses stood still, and
that an appalling stillness instead of their loud flutter of beating was
in her ears and in the world. He had really come! She became conscious
of her husband's voice speaking to her, and the sound of his name, and
the touch of his hand, and then she regained her composure desperately,
by such an effort as it seemed to her she had never made before. For to
faint, or to call attention to herself in any way, was what must not be
done. And by-and-by the moment was over, and the party were all seated
at table, eating and drinking, and talking commonplaces. When Lady
Lindores looked round the table and saw Beaufort's face among the other
faces, she seemed to herself to be in a dream. The only other face of
which she was conscious was that of Edith, perfectly colourless, and
full of inquiry and emotion; and at the other end of the table her
husband, throwing a threatening, terrified look across the flowers and
the lights, and all the prettinesses of the table. These three she
seemed to see, and no more.

But Lord Millefleurs by her side was full of pleasant chatter and
cheerful boyish confidence, and demanded her attention. He was aware how
important he was; and it never occurred to him that Beaufort, who was an
excellent fellow, but nobody in particular, could distract the attention
of those who surrounded him from himself. Millefleurs sat between Lady
Lindores and Edith. It was a position that was his due.

"I am so sorry you are not well," he said. "The fact is, it is London,
Lady Lindores. I know your complaint, for it is mine too. Was there ever
anything so irrational as to carry on this treadmill as we all do--you
out of a wholesome country life, no doubt, and I out of a wandering
existence, always in the open air, always in motion? What do we do it
for? Lady Edith, tell me, what do we do it for?--I am asking everybody.
Half of it would be very well, you know, but the whole of it is
purgatory. I am sure that is your opinion. Is it merely fashion, or is
it something in our nature which requires extravagance in all we do----"

"There is not much extravagance in what we do habitually," said Lady
Lindores, "which perhaps makes this outbreak of activity less alarming
to us. It is a change; and as for Edith, this is virtually her first
season----"

"I thought it was your first season," cried the little Marquis. "I knew
it must be so." This he said with decision, as if in triumph over some
adversary. "There is a look which one is never deceived in. I have seen
all my sisters come out, so I am quite an authority. They get to look at
things quite in another way; they get so knowing, as bad--as I am
myself," the youth added in perfect good faith, with a serious look upon
his infantile countenance, and a lisping utterance which gave point to
the speech. Lord Millefleurs, though he did not need to study
appearances, was yet aware of the piquancy of the contrast between his
round childlike countenance and the experience of his talk.

"I should not have thought you were so bad," said Edith, beguiled into
smiling. "I think you look as if you were in your first season too----"

"Oh, bad--Bohemian, a waif and a stray," said Millefleurs; "you cannot
think what an abandoned little person I was, till Beaufort took me in
hand. You knew Beaufort, abroad somewhere? So he tells me. How lucky for
him to be able to renew such an acquaintance! I need not tell you what a
fine fellow he is--he has made me quite a reformed character. Do not
laugh, Lady Edith; you hurt my feelings. You would not laugh if I were a
coal-heaver addressing a meeting and telling how wicked I had been."

"And have you really been so wicked? You do not look so," said Edith,
who, amused in spite of herself, began to get used to the grave
countenance of Beaufort, seated on the other side of the table. Both the
ladies were grateful to Millefleurs, who chattered on, and gave them
time to recover themselves.

"No," he said, "that is what makes it so funny, they all tell me. I am a
wolf in sheep's clothing; at least I was--I was, until Beaufort took me
in hand. At present I am good, as good as gold. I get up early, and go
to bed--when I can. I go out to three parties every night, and stand
about at everybody's receptions. I even pay calls in the morning. I
shall go to a levee soon--I know I shall," he said, in an accent of
deep conviction. "Can you think of anything more virtuous than that?"

"And what has your Bohemianism consisted in, Lord Millefleurs?"

"Good heavens!" said the self-accused, "do you venture to ask me, Lady
Edith?--everything that is dreadful. For months I never wrote a letter,
for months I never had a penny. It was the best fun in the world. The
sting of being poor is when you can't help it. I believe, for my part,
that the most luxurious condition in this world is when you know you can
be well off at any moment, and yet are half starving. No, I never was
half starving. I worked with these hands;" and he held out a pair of
plump, delicate, pink-tinged hands, not without a little vanity. "To
feel that it's quite a chance whether you have ever any dinner again, to
be altogether uncertain how you're to get shelter for the night--and yet
to be quite sure that nothing dreadful can happen to you, that at the
worst you can always 'draw a bugle from your side,' and be surrounded by
'five-and-thirty belted knights,'--I assure you it is the most
delightful excitement in the world."

It was impossible to resist this baby-faced and lisping adventurer. The
mother and daughter both yielded to his fascinations. The conversation
became more and more animated and amusing. At the other end of the
table they were not by any means so cheerful; but Lord Lindores beheld
with a satisfaction far more solid than any sort of amusement, the
result of his experiment. Edith, who had been pale and _distraite_,
doing herself no sort of justice, when they sat down at table, had
roused up, and was now bright and responsive, interested in all that was
being said to her. And Millefleurs, it was evident, was enjoying himself
thoroughly. Two such women giving their full attention to him, listening
to all his adventures--which were neither few nor small--was enough to
raise him to the height of satisfaction. Lord Lindores talked very
rationally and agreeably to the lady next him, but it was with an effort
that he caught her not very brilliant remarks, so much interested was he
in what was going on at the other end of the room. As for Rintoul, he
gave himself up to his dinner. Things were going as well as possible, he
thought; and though Millefleurs was a little Bohemian, he was the heir
of a Duke, and could do no wrong.

It was thus that Lady Lindores was beguiled almost to forget the other
guest at the table, whose coming had affected her so deeply. Her
interest was easily excited, and the little Marquis was delightful. And
it was not till she had returned to the comparative quiet of the
drawing-room that the recollection of Beaufort came back to her. Much
of the danger seemed over. It would be over altogether in another hour,
and the tremor in her mind was not so all-pervading as when she first
saw his familiar face approaching. But she was not to get over her
ordeal so easily. When the gentlemen came up-stairs, Beaufort came at
once towards her. He stood in front of her for a moment, as if claiming
his right to be heard, shutting everybody else out. She felt a sort of
fascination in his gaze, and could make no attempt to begin any
conversation. Her tremor returned: she looked up wistfully at him
without anything to say, clasping and unclasping in unspoken appeal her
unsteady hands.

"It is a long time since we have met," he said at length.

"Yes--it is a long time, Mr Beaufort."

"And many things have happened since that time."

She raised her clasped hands a little from her lap in mute entreaty, and
made no other reply; but it did not occur to her--what was the
case--that he was quite as much excited as she was, and did not notice
her agitation, being so fully occupied with his own.

"I hope--that all of your family are--well: and happy, Lady Lindores."

"Very well. Mr Beaufort, I know that there is much that must have seemed
strange and cruel to you. How can I speak of it now? It is impossible to
explain."

He paused a little, replying nothing. Then he said suddenly, "If you
would let me come and talk to you--talk of everything--I should feel it
a great kindness--when I could see you alone."

She put out her hands now in sudden alarm and deprecation. "Mr Beaufort,
it could do no good, it would be very painful. Do not ask me to do it.
For me it would be a terrible ordeal--and no advantage to you."

"I think it would be an advantage," he said gently.

Again she clasped her hands, imploring forbearance. "I do not wish to
try to justify--but after so long a time--is it right, is it kind, do
you think, to press me so?"

"Let me come and talk to you," he said; "you need not fear my
reproaches. May not I know how it was, how it came about? I will not
complain. How can I cease to be interested, if that were all? Let me
come and talk to you--let me know how it was."

Lady Lindores did not know what to answer or how to hide her emotion.
She was trying to form an evasive answer with lips that faltered, when
suddenly her husband came to her relief.

"I should not have expected you to have had part in adventures such as I
hear Millefleurs relating. Where was he really when you picked him up?"
said Lord Lindores.


END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.


PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.


[The end of _The Ladies Lindores, Volume 1_ by Margaret Oliphant]







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