… “On the shadowy margin
Of the lake, in a spot sequester’d.”
“Can that noise be the bagpipes?” said Frances to Julia, trying to look
from an upper window in one of the turrets of Arandale Castle. But no
object immediately near the building could be discerned from windows
situated as were those of this apartment. The more removed prospect,
however, was rich and magnificent. Woods, which seemed interminable,
every where met the eye; with, here and there, an opening among their
ranges, displaying a grassy avenue which ran along till lost again in
the far perspective of grove meeting grove. In some of those avenues
stood herds of deer, looking around them with an air of the most stately
security; in others, even hares and rabbits were sometimes seen to
venture from under cover, cross a path, and disappear again, whilst
innumerable cawing rooks, continually passing and repassing each other’s
heavy flight, hovered over all the summits of the trees; and in their
branches sat gay plumed peacocks, uttering, from time to time, their
wild cry. To complete the picture, one of the grassy avenues already
described, terminated in a smooth, still sheet of water, an arm of which
was crossed, at a considerable height, by a light bridge of iron work;
while, on its glassy surface, sailed two snow white swans, the sole
visible inhabitants of this their watery realm.
“It is the bagpipes, my Lady,” said Alice Smyth, “the housekeeper told
me to tell your ladyships, that that was the way your ladyships would
know when breakfast was ready. The old piper walks up and down under the
windows, playing highland tunes all the time of breakfast, which my Lady
Arandale makes herself every day at ten o’clock, and never waits for any
body, but sends all away again at eleven, let who will or will not come
down.”
“And does her ladyship make no allowance for the first morning after a
long journey?” said Frances, (for they had all arrived at Arandale but
the night before); “I declare my limbs are quite stiff. But we had better
make haste, or, by Alice’s account, we shall have no breakfast,” she
continued, taking her sister’s arm.
As they passed along the galleries above, and across the halls below,
numerous domestics pointed out, in silence, the way to the breakfast
room. On their entrance, a general move took place among the gentlemen,
though only the family party, each offered or pointed out a seat or
seats. It so happened, that Julia took one offered by Edmund, who seated
himself beside her, and began silently placing within her reach, every
thing she could possibly want.
Lady Arandale sat at the head, Lady Susan at the foot of a long table;
the one filled tea, the other coffee; and, in the intermediate space
appeared the usual hot rolls, toast, eggs, etc. of an English breakfast,
reinforced by the Scottish addition of crisp leaves of oaten cake, thin
as writing paper, together with comfits, marmalade, and all sorts of
sweetmeats. Lord Morven presided at a side table, abundantly covered with
savoury pies, cold meats, and dried fish; while Lord Arandale seemed to
have the sole possession of a third and lesser one, where he alone was
eating of a certain preparation of oatmeal, called in Scotland, porridge.
“You have quite forsaken your post, Captain Montgomery,” said Lady Susan.
“I beg a thousand pardons,” exclaimed Edmund, starting up, “I thought I
had filled all the cups.”
“Indeed!” replied her ladyship, in a tone of much pique, “Oh, pray be
seated,” then, affecting a laugh, and closing her eyelids quickly once or
twice to disperse a tear that might else have betrayed her mortification,
she added, “you did not then, let me inform you, fill even one. Nay, do
pray sit down!” she continued, as Edmund made another attempt to rise,
“I have completed my task with very little fatigue, I assure you, though
you were so much shocked at the idea of my undertaking it.” Lord Morven,
a wing of pigeon suspended on his fork, looked round at his sister with a
broad and silent stare. She blushed, and addressed, successively, Henry,
Frances, and Colonel Morven, without waiting for an answer from any of
them. Edmund coloured, and Julia, who had neither been addressed nor
accused, but by her own conscience, coloured also.
Lord Arandale, having dispatched his first course, joined the general
table to finish his repast with some of the good things it afforded.
Plans of amusement for the day now became the general topic; Julia
and Frances begged that they might be permitted to explore some of
the beauties of the grounds, which, from their windows, promised
so much. Lady Susan proposed a visit to her cottage; it was one of
those imitations of a real rustic habitation, which, situated in some
delightful retirement in the midst of extensive pleasure grounds, were
the fashionable playthings of the great young ladies of the day. A
spinning wheel was always a part of the furniture, and a proficiency
in its use a necessary accomplishment to ladies possessing these rural
boudoirs. Her ladyship’s proposition seemed agreeable to every one;
particularly as the walk to the cottage led through much of what was most
interesting in the grounds. Immediately after breakfast, therefore, the
whole party assembled in front of the castle to commence their ramble.
Lord Arandale saying that he would show Julia the way, drew her arm
over his; Lord Morven offered his to Frances; Henry joined Colonel
Morven; Lady Susan walked alone; and Edmund, who on first setting out
had intended to walk at the other side of Julia, felt himself obliged,
in common politeness, to step forward and join the lady who had no
companion. He did not, however, intend to offer his arm, as he meant
to avail himself of the first favourable opportunity for desertion.
But her ladyship struck her foot against the stump of a flower root,
then limped a step or two, and next came in contact with a loose stone:
in short he found it impossible to evince a suitable concern for such
accidents, without saying something about an arm. Lady Susan accordingly
took his arm; laughed at her own giddiness, confessed her want of a
guide; “Though,” she added, “here I ought rather to be yours, instead
of making myself so troublesome.” Edmund said, very coolly, as he
thought, that he was happy in being useful; reproached her ladyship in
due form for misnaming the pleasure of being so, a trouble; and proceeded
to hope that she had not suffered materially from his negligence, in
the first instance. There was something so soothing, so persuasive in
Edmund’s manner and voice, at all times, that common politeness from him,
possessed an almost dangerous charm; and her ladyship was willing to be
deceived.
Such a manner must be the result of suppressed feeling, thought Lady
Susan; but she remembered the coffee: yet, might not even that, she asked
herself, be one of the strange inconsistencies of love. Her spirits began
to rise; and her good humour, never long absent, returned. She introduced
sentimental subjects, and frequently spoke in so low a tone, that Edmund
was obliged to stoop towards her to gather the meaning of what she said;
so that to those who walked behind them, they appeared to be engaged in
very earnest, and very interesting conversation. They turned off into a
narrower walk; and the next time Edmund looked over his shoulder, which
he did rather oftener than Lady Susan liked, not one of the rest of the
party was any where to be seen.
“Your ladyship should certainly know the way here,” said Edmund,
hesitating, and slackening his pace; “but we have either left them all
very far behind, or taken a wrong path.” “This is the prettiest way to
my cottage,” said her ladyship, “to which they will all certainly bend
their steps, by whatever walk they may have gone round.” Accordingly,
our advance couple proceeded onward uninterrupted through delightful
solitudes. Her ladyship grew more and more romantic; many of her
opinions, many of her very expressions were in perfect unison with the
secret sentiments of Edmund; though those sentiments had, it must be
confessed another object; Edmund’s replies, therefore, were frequently
bursts of feeling suddenly checked; he was often silent, and sometimes
sighed.
Lady Susan no longer doubted. There was a struggle in her bosom between
natural modesty and a generous wish to reward the attachment of one, who
was kept silent by honourable and manly motives.
By this time they reached the cottage. It was all that was rural;
thatched, of course, and overgrown with jessamine, honeysuckle, and ever
blowing roses. Buried in the deep woods that surrounded the castle, it
had a little paled in garden and a small space of green, clear in its
front; and, at the foot of the green, ran a little rivulet with a plank
thrown over it, to form a rustic bridge. Tamed pheasants strayed about
instead of barn-door fowl, a kid was tied to the paling, and a sheep with
two lambs fed on the little plot of grass before the door.
Her ladyship having, with Edmund’s assistance, crossed the plank,
caressed each of her favourites as she passed them, and, leading the way
through the little garden, opened the latch of the cottage. All within
was perfect rusticity: the furniture consisted of a small dresser with
a few delf plates, a corner cupboard with some common looking cups and
saucers, a deal table, a few wooden chairs, a low three legged stool, a
spinning wheel, a kettle and some dried herbs suspended from the ceiling,
some bright tin utensils arranged on nails against the wall over the
chimney-piece, and a small looking-glass hung at the side of the latticed
window.
Lady Susan became silent and absent; went to various repositories of
grain and fed each of her pets; Edmund, of course, assisting. When she
had finished, she seated herself on the three-legged stool, and began to
spin with great assiduity and quite a practised hand. Edmund, whom she
had requested to take a chair beside her, sat for some time in silent
admiration of her performance. Suddenly, she lifted the toe of the foot
that had kept the wheel in motion, and suspended the little white hand
over the fore finger, of which the thread had been passing. “This spot,
you see, Captain Montgomery,” she said, “is my plaything; yet, how happy
might people be whose all it was!”
“Certainly!” he replied with much energy, instantly making Julia in
imagination its mistress, and himself her partner for life: “Here is all
that unsophisticated nature calls for; and, in the society of an object
beloved, how seldom would the outer world be remembered!”
Her ladyship blushed and sighed; but Edmund’s thoughts were full of
another image, and the blush and the sigh, which else might have spoken
volumes, were unnoticed by him. A considerable pause ensued. “It
certainly is madness,” said Lady Susan at length in a low voice, and with
some hesitation, “It certainly—is—madness, to sacrifice realities to
opinions, and those opinions not our own!”
“Oh, most assuredly!” replied Edmund, “when such is the case; but
when our own opinions, our own sense of all that is honourable, just,
grateful, are in direct opposition to our own feelings of all that:”—he
recollected himself, broke off suddenly, and coloured: not that he
apprehended being misunderstood; he rather dreaded that he was too well
understood, and conscious that he thought of Julia while he spoke, feared
he had inadvertently betrayed sentiments it was so incumbent upon him to
conceal. “Yet—yet—” said her ladyship, “if—if the object—of an attachment
so tender, yet governed so entirely by honourable principles, is willing
to wave imaginary, in favour of real superiority?”—and she held out her
hand.
Edmund first stared at the hand; then, scarcely conscious of the
mechanical movement, took it in his. “For heaven’s sake, what do you
mean, Lady Susan?” he exclaimed, changing colour twenty times in a
minute; for, still possessed with the one idea, and too little of a
coxcomb to be ready to believe her ladyship seriously attached to him
because idle people had jested on the subject, the thought crossed his
mind in the confusion of the moment, that Lady Susan must be in the
confidence of her cousin, and must be expressing her belief that Julia
returned his attachment.
Lady Susan spoke again,—“It would be mere affectation in me, Captain
Montgomery,” she said, “to pretend blindness to the state of your
feelings, and I respect the motives that have prevented their open
declaration—” Her ladyship looked down, paused, and trembled excessively.
Voices were heard without. The party passed the paling gate, and moved
along the little walk of the garden. Lady Susan looked in alarm towards
the door, coloured very deeply, and said, in a hurried tone, and with a
kind of smile that struggled with a few tears of mingled pleasure and
shame, “It is rather hard, that I should have it to say, half unasked
after all; yet, in favour of your motives, which I honour, I will say
it—I am yours!” At this moment, the whole party flocked in, and filled
up the little cottage room. Lady Susan snatched away her hand, which
Edmund had been too much puzzled to resign, and resumed her spinning
in a state of overwhelming confusion. Edmund stood rooted to the spot,
looking and feeling, if possible, still more confounded; his colour
mounting gradually as his perception of the truth cleared up, while his
countenance became filled with expressions the most inexplicable!
Lord Arandale, fortunately for Lady Susan, was too busy speaking to Julia
about some of the beauties of the grounds to observe his daughter. But
he addressed an ear that heard little of what he said. Julia, during the
walk, had been wishing that Edmund would join them. She had observed
him when going on before the rest of the party with Lady Susan, and,
seemingly engaged in a conversation so earnest; and she had, even then,
felt a slight unacknowledged sensation of uneasiness.
On entering the cottage, the first object that met her eye was the eye
of Edmund. For the first time its expression did not banish every shadow
from her thoughts, did not bring sunshine to her heart. It had never
before had a meaning that she had not felt, at least, (if not exactly
understood,) and felt with a too dangerous consciousness of delight; now
his eye wandered from hers without an answering look. Lady Susan, too,
how extraordinary was her expression! Julia became in one moment, though
she had no time to ask herself why, miserable! entirely miserable! It was
a kind of wretchedness, too, that she had never before even imagined.
It puzzled—it alarmed her. A hopelessness came over her heart, that in
all her grievings over the thoughts of Edmund’s going away, she had
never known. Though she had never formed any other plan but that Edmund
was to be her friend, her brother, she his friend, his sister; this
had all been, while the bare idea of ever being other than the first
in his affections, had not once presented itself to her imagination as
even possible; but now, unaccustomed as she was to analyze subjects
of love and marriage, there was something in the circumstances of the
two conscious beings before her, which seemed obviously to set up a
living, breathing object between herself and Edmund. Why such should be
any obstacle to brotherly and sisterly regard still subsisting between
them, she did not particularly enquire; yet all the stores of love and
happiness that she had been collecting from infancy, seemed now to have
been swept away in one single moment. She continued, however, to hang
on the arm of Lord Arandale, and to answer any direct questions put to
her as well as she could. After examining and admiring the cottage and
grounds, the party at length returned to the gravel-sweep before the
castle.
A curricle, with a gentleman driving, and a lady seated beside him, was
now seen approaching. “Here is Lady Morven at last,” said Lord Arandale,
letting go Julia’s arm, and advancing towards the new arrival.
“Matilda, I declare!” cried Lady Susan, hastening forward with her
brother, who, on their return from the cottage, had, in a very marked
manner, insisted on her taking his second arm. Edmund, who had walked
in silence on the other side of Julia, pondering partly on her altered
manner, and partly on his own late adventure; when Lord Arandale withdrew
his support, took up her hand, softly, and drew it over his arm;
bending forward, at the same time, as if anxious to catch a view of her
countenance. She kept her head, however, carefully turned in a contrary
direction, and the moment they reached the steps, without speaking or
looking round, withdrew her arm, glided away, and hurried up to her own
room. Yet, such is the weakness of the heart that loves, that she had
felt less unhappy during the few seconds her arm had rested on that of
Edmund.
Julia’s conduct and feelings on this occasion, were certainly very
foolish, but it must be remembered that she was scarcely eighteen;
that she had been brought up in perfect seclusion, a seclusion too
of sentiment, where, from five years old, she had never seen, or even
heard any thing of life, but within the one domestic circle, in which
all that was thought of, was tender mourning for the one that was
lost, and tender cherishing of the few that were left. It is not then
surprising that those few, and the first place in their hearts, should
be romantically valued by one whose opening mind had thus, in every
stage of its developement, been strongly impressed with the one idea,
that all the rest of the world must be for ever strangers to her, in
comparison of those who had, in this exclusive manner, possessed her
earliest affections. And when, in addition to all this, the spell of a
_first love_ had fallen on a heart so prepared, could much philosophy be
expected?