A life of unalloyed content,
A life like that of land-locked seas.
J. R. Lowell
“Elspeth, you really must tell me, I'm dying of curiosity, and I can see
by your face you know all about it! How is it that grandpapa's name is
in the papers when he has been dead all these years? I tell you I saw
it, a little paragraph in today's paper, headed, 'Mr. Luke Raeburn.' Is
this another namesake who has something to do with him?”
The speaker was a tall, bright-looking girl of eighteen, a blue-eyed,
flaxen-haired blond, with a saucy little mouth, about which there now
lurked an expression of undisguised curiosity. Rose, for that was her
name, was something of a coax, and all her life long she had managed
to get her own way; she was an only child, and had been not a little
spoiled; but in spite of many faults she was lovable, and beneath her
outer shell of vanity and self-satisfaction there lay a sterling little
heart.
Her companion, Elspeth, was a wrinkled old woman, whose smooth gray
hair was almost hidden by a huge mob-cap, which, in defiance of modern
custom, she wore tied under her chin. She had nursed Rose and her mother
before her and had now become more like a family friend than a servant.
“Miss Rose,” she replied, looking up from her work, “if you go on
chatter-magging away like this, there'll be no frock ready for you
tonight,” and with a most uncommunicative air, the old woman turned
away, and gave a little impressive shake to the billowy mass of white
tarletan to which she was putting the finishing touches.
“The white lilies just at the side,” said Rose, her attention diverted
for a moment. “Won't it be lovely! The prettiest dress in the room, I'm
sure.” Then, her curiosity returning, “But, Elspeth, I sha'nt enjoy the
dance a bit unless you tell me what Mr. Luke Raeburn has to do with us?
Listen, and I'll tell you how I found out. Papa brought the paper up
to Mamma, and said, 'Did you see this?' And then mamma read it, and the
color came all over her face, and she did not say a word, but went out
of the room pretty soon. And then I took up the paper, and looked at the
page she had been reading, and saw grandpapa's name.”
“What was it about?” asked old Elspeth.
“That's just what I couldn't understand; it was all about secularists.
What are secularists? But it seems that this Luke Raeburn, whoever he
is, has lost his wife. While he was lecturing at Birmingham on the soul,
it is said, his wife died, and this paragraph said it seemed like a
judgment, which was rather cool, I think.”
“Poor laddie!” signed old Elspeth.
“Elspeth,” cried Rose, “do you know who the man is?”
“Miss Rose,” said the old woman severely, “in my young days there was a
saying that you'd do well to lay to heart, 'Ask no questions, and you'll
be told no stories.'”
“It isn't your young days now, it's your old days, Elsie,” said the
imperturbable Rose. “I will ask you questions as much as I please, and
you'll tell me what this mystery means, there's a dear old nurse! Have I
not a right to know about my own relations?”
“Oh, bairn, bairn! If it were anything you'd like to hear, but why
should you know what is all sad and gloomful? No, no, go to your balls,
and think of your fine dresses and gran' partners, though, for the
matter of that, it is but vanity of vanities--”
“Oh, if you're going to quote Ecclesiastes, I shall go!” said Rose,
pouting. “I wish that book wasn't in the Bible! I'm sure such an old
grumbler ought to have been in the Apocrypha.”
Elspeth shook her head, and muttered something about judgment and
trouble. Rose began to be doubly curious.
“Trouble, sadness, a mystery--perhaps a tragedy! Rose had read of such
things in books; were there such things actually in the family, and
she had never known of them? A few hours ago and she had been unable to
think of anything but her first ball, her new dress, her flowers; but
she was seized now with the most intense desire to fathom this mystery.
That it bid fair to be a sad mystery only made her more eager and
curious. She was so young, so ignorant, there was still a halo of
romance about those unknown things, trouble and sadness.
“Elspeth, you treat me like a child!” she exclaimed; “it's really too
bad of you.”
“Maybe you're right, bairn,” said the old nurse; “but it's no doing of
mine. But look here, Miss Rose, you be persuaded by me, go straight
to your mamma and ask her yourself. Maybe there is a doubt whether you
oughtn't to know, but there is no doubt that I mustn't tell you.”
Rose hesitated, but presently her curiosity overpowered her reluctance.
Mrs. Fane-Smith, or, as she had been called in her maiden days, Isabel
Raeburn, was remarkably like her daughter in so far as features
and coloring were concerned, but she was exceedingly unlike her in
character, for whereas Rose was vain and self-confident, and had a
decided will of her own, her mother was diffident and exaggeratedly
humble. She was a kind-hearted and a good woman, but she was in danger
of harassing herself with the question, “What will people say?”
She looked up apprehensively as her daughter came into the room.
Rose felt sure she had been crying, her curiosity was still further
stimulated, and with all the persuasiveness at her command, she urged
her mother to tell her the meaning of the mysterious paragraph.
“I am sorry you have asked me,” said Mrs. Fane-Smith, “but, perhaps,
since you are no longer a child, you had better know. It is a sad story,
however, Rose, and I should not have chosen to tell it to you today of
all days.”
“But I want to hear, mamma,” said Rose, decidedly. “Please begin. Who is
this Mr. Raeburn?”
“He is my brother,” said Mrs. Fane-Smith, with a little quiver in her
voice.
“Your brother! My uncle!” cried Rose, in amazement.
“Luke was the oldest of us,” said Mrs. Fane-Smith, “then came Jean, and
I was the youngest of all, at least of those who lived.”
“Then I have an aunt, too, an Aunt Jean?” exclaimed Rose.
“You shall hear the whole story,” replied her mother. She thought for a
minute, then in rather a low voice she began: “Luke and Jean were always
the clever ones, Luke especially; your grandfather had set his heart on
his being a clergyman, and you can fancy the grief it was to us when he
threw up the whole idea, and declared that he could never take Orders.
He was only nineteen when he renounced religion altogether; he and my
father had a great dispute, and the end of it was that Luke was sent
away from home, and I never have seen him since. He has become a very
notorious infidel lecturer. Jean was very much unsettled by his change
of views, and I believe her real reason for marrying old Mr. Craigie
was that she had made him promise to let her see Luke again. She married
young and settled down in London, and when, in a few years, her husband
died, she too, renounced Christianity.”
To tell the truth, Rose was not deeply interested in the story, it fell
a little flat after her expectations of a tragedy. It had, moreover, a
sort of missionary flavor, and she had till the last few months lived in
India, and had grown heartily tired of the details of mission work,
in which both her father and mother had been interested. Conversions,
relapses, heathenism, belief and unbelief were words which had sounded
so often in her ears that now they bored her; as they were the merest
words to her it could hardly be otherwise. But Rose's best point was her
loyalty to her own family, she had the “clan” feeling very strongly,
and she could not understand how her mother could have allowed such a
complete estrangement to grow up between her and her nearest relations.
“Mamma,” she said, quickly, “I should have gone to see Uncle Luke if I
had been you.”
“It is impossible, dear,” replied Mrs. Fane-Smith. “Your father would
not allow it for one thing, and then only think what people would say!
This is partly my reason for telling you, Rose; I want to put you upon
your guard. We heard little or nothing of your uncle when we were in
India, but you will find it very different here. He is one of the most
notorious men in England; you must never mention his name, never allude
to him, do you understand me?”
“Is he then so wicked?”
“My dear, consider what his teaching is, that is sufficient; I would
not for the whole world allow our Greyshot friends to guess that we
are connected with him in any way. It might ruin all your prospects in
life.”
“Mamma,” said Rose, “I don't think Mr. Raeburn will injure my
prospects--of course you mean prospects of marrying. If a man didn't
care enough for me to take me whether I am the niece of the worst man in
England or not, do you think I would accept him?”
There was an angry ring in her voice as she spoke, her little saucy
mouth looked almost grand. After a moment's pause, she added, more
quietly, but with all the force of the true woman's heart which lay
hidden beneath her silliness and frivolity, “Besides, mamma, is it quite
honest?”
“We are not bound to publish our family history to the world, Rose. If
any one asked me, of course I should tell the truth; if there was any
way of helping my brother or his child I would gladly serve them, even
though the world would look coldly on me for doing so; but while they
remain atheists how is it possible?”
“Then he has a child?”
“One only, I believe, a girl of about your own age.”
“Oh, mamma, how I should like to know her!”
“My dear Rose, how can you speak of such a thing? You don't realize that
she is an atheist, has not even been baptized, poor little thing!”
“But she is my cousin, and she is a girl just like me,” said Rose. “I
should like to know her very much. I wonder whether she has come out
yet. I wonder how she enjoyed her first ball.”
“My dear! They are not in society.”
“How dull! What does she do all day, I wonder?”
“I cannot tell, I wish you would not talk about her, Rose; I should not
wish you even to think about her, except, indeed, to mention her in your
prayers.”
“Oh, I'd much rather have her here to stay,” said Rose, with a little
mischievous gleam in her eyes.
“Rose!”
“Why mamma, if she were a black unbeliever you would be delighted to
have her; it is only because she is white that you won't have anything
to do with her. You would have been as pleased as possible if I had made
friends with any of the ladies in the Zenanas.”
Mrs. Fane-Smith looked uncomfortable, and murmured that that was a very
different question. Rose, seeing her advantage, made haste to follow it
up.
“At any rate, mamma, you will write to Uncle Luke now that he is in
trouble, and you'll let me send a note to his daughter? Only think,
mamma, she has lost her mother so suddenly! Just think how wretched she
must be! Oh, mamma, dear, I can't think how she can bear it!” and Rose
threw her arms round her mother's neck. “I should die too if you were to
die! I'm sure I should.”
Rose was very persuasive, Mrs. Fane-Smith's motherly heart was touched;
she sat down there and then, and for the first time since the summer day
when Luke Raeburn had been turned out of his father's house, she wrote
to her brother. Rose in the meantime had taken a piece of paper from her
mother's writing desk, and with a fat volume of sermons by way of a desk
was scribbling away as fast as she could. This was her letter:
“My dear cousin,--I don't know your name, and have only just heard
anything about you, and the first thing I heard was that you were in
dreadful trouble. I only write to send you my love, and to say how very
sorry I am for you. We only came to England in the autumn. I like it
very much. I am going to my first ball tonight, and expect to enjoy it
immensely. My dress is to be white tarle--Oh, dear! How horrid of me to
be writing like this to you. Please forgive me. I don't like to be so
happy when you are unhappy; but, you see, I have only just heard of
you, so it is a little difficult. With love, I remain, your affectionate
cousin, Rose Fane-Smith.”
That evening, while Erica, with eyes dim with grief and weariness, was
poring over the books in her father's study, Rose was being initiated
into all the delights of the ballroom. She was in her glory. Everything
was new to her; she enjoyed dancing, she knew that she looked pretty,
knew that her dress was charming, knew that she was much admired, and
of course she liked it all. But the chaperons shook their heads; it was
whispered that Miss Fane-Smith was a terrible flirt, she had danced no
less than seven dances with Captain Golightly. If her mother erred by
thinking too much of what people said, perhaps Rose erred in exactly the
opposite way; at any rate, she managed to call down upon her silly but
innocent little head an immense amount of blame from the mothers and
elderly ladies.
“A glorious moonlight night,” said Captain Golightly. “What do you say,
Miss Fane-Smith? Shall we take a turn in the garden? Or are you afraid
of the cold?”
“Afraid! Oh, dear no,” said Rose; “it's the very thing I should enjoy. I
suppose I must get my shawl, though; it is upstairs.”
They were in the vestibule.
“Have my ulster,” said Captain Golightly. “Here it is, just handy, and
it will keep you much warmer.”
Rose laughed and blushed, and allowed herself to be put into her
partner's coat, rather to the detriment of her billowy tarletan. After
a while they came back again from the dim garden to the brightly lighted
vestibule, and as ill luck would have it, chanced to encounter a stream
of people going into the supper room. Every one stared at the apparition
of Miss Fane-Smith in Captain Golightly's coat. With some difficulty
she struggled out of it, and with very hot cheeks sought shelter in the
ballroom.
“How dreadfully they looked! Do you think it was wrong of me?” she half
whispered to her partner.
“Oh, dear, no! Sensible and plucky, and everything delightful! You are
much too charming to be bound down to silly conventionalities. Come, let
us have this dance. I'm sure you are engaged to some one in the supper
room who can't deserve such a delightful partner. Let us have this TROIS
TEMPS, and hurl defiance at the Greyshot chaperons.”
Rose laughed, and allowed herself to be borne off. She had been excited
before, now she was doubly excited, and Captain Golightly had the most
delicious step imaginable.