Jeanie.
Edgar did not come home till the evening was considerably advanced. He
went with Campbell to his house, and partook of the substantial family
tea in the best parlour, which Mrs. Campbell, his aunt, called the
drawing-room--so that it was late before he returned home.
“There’s a moon,” Campbell said. “Ye need be in no hurry. A young fellow
in certain states of mind, as we a’ know, takes to moonlight walks like
a duck to the water.”
At which speech Mrs. Campbell laughed, being evidently in the secret;
but John, the only son, who was a student at the University of Glasgow,
and just about to set out for the winter session, looked black and
fierce as any mountain storm. These inferences of some supposed
sentiment, which he was totally ignorant of, might have passed quite
innocuously over Edgar only a day before, but they filled him now with
suppressed rage and deep mortification. Perhaps unreasonably; but there
is nothing which a man resents so much as to be supposed “in love” with
some one whom he considers beneath him. Even when there is truth in the
supposition, he resents the discovery which brings all the
inappropriateness of the conjunction before his mind; and if there is no
truth in it, he feels himself injured in the tenderest point--ill-used,
humbled, wronged. Edgar’s impulse was to leave the house where he was
thus insulted by inference; but partly pride, partly his usual deference
to other people’s feelings, and partly the necessity which was now
stronger than ever of carrying out his intentions and leaving the place
where he was subject to such an insane suggestion triumphed over his
first impulse.
Even Campbell was staggered in his vulgar notion that only Jeanie and
her fresh beauty could account for the young man’s prolonged stay and
unusual devotion, when he began to perceive the munificence of Edgar’s
intentions. A young man who wanted to marry might indeed be guilty of a
great many foolishnesses; he might be ready, Mr. Campbell thought, to
burden himself with the old mother for the sake of the pretty child; but
to alienate a portion of his income (for Edgar did not enter fully into
his plan) was a totally different and quite impossible sort of
sacrifice. What could be his motive? Was it that Jeanie might be
educated and made a lady of before he should marry her? As for pure duty
towards the old mother, honour of her long and virtuous life, compassion
for the downfall of so proud a spirit, being motives strong enough for
such a sacrifice, at this the worthy man guffawed loudly.
“I’m no the man to be taken in with fine words,” he said, with a broad
smile.
While these jokes and discussions were going on in the best parlour at
Loch Arroch Head, Jeanie, unconscious of any debate in which her name
could be involved, went about her usual occupations at home. She got the
tea ready, coming and going with soft steps from the parlour to the
kitchen, carrying in the tray, and “masking” the tea with her own hands.
As for Bell, she was “suppering” the kye, and looking after the outdoor
work, and had no time for such daintier service. Jeanie would steal a
moment now and then, while she prepared this simple meal, to step
noiselessly to the ever open door, and cast a wistful look up the
loch-side to see “if he was coming.” The gloaming grew darker and
darker, the stars came out over the hill, the moon rose, and still
Jeanie strained her eyes to see if any figure approached on the long
line of almost level road by the side of the loch. Once her heart leaped
up, thinking she saw him; but it was only a shearer taking his way home
from the West Park, where, taking advantage of a good day, the harvest
had gone on as long as the light permitted. Poor Jeanie! what a
difference there was between this heavy rustic form as it drew near,
relieved against the dark yet gleaming water of the loch, and the erect,
light-footed, elastic figure she looked for! As she washed the old china
cups brought out in his honour, and put the tea-things away, she
wondered with a pang in her kind little heart what could have kept him?
Had he met some of his grand friends, sportsmen arriving by the boat, or
those tourists whom the natives looked upon with mingled admiration and
scorn? or could any accident have happened? a thought which blanched her
pretty cheek with fear.
She would have liked to talk to her grandmother about Edgar, but she did
not venture to do more than wonder “what could be keeping him?” a
question to which Mrs. Murray responded placidly that no doubt he was
“drinking tea” with somebody at Loch Arroch Head. The old lady was not
discomposed by Edgar’s absence as Jeanie was; and poor Jeanie, in the
flutter and warmth of her feelings, could have cried with vexation at
the contrast between her own agitated heart and this calm, which she
thought indifference. Her grandmother “did not care.” “Oh, how could she
help caring, and him so good to her!” poor Jeanie said to herself. And
Bell went about her work out of doors, cheerily singing, in her full
rustic voice, as she prepared the supper for the kye, and carried it out
to the byre, coming and going in her strong shoes, with clink of pails,
and loud talking now and then to Sandy, who was helping. Nobody cared
but Jeanie that he was so late of coming home.
Then she went upstairs with her grandmother, who was still an invalid,
and helped her to bed, and read “the chapter” with which the day was
always concluded; and put a great old stick, with a gold head, which had
belonged to some ancestor, by the bedside, in order that Mrs. Murray, if
she wanted anything, should “knock down,” for there were not many bells
in the little farmhouse. The sitting-room was immediately below, and
this was the recognised way at the Castle Farm of calling for the
attendants. When this last duty was done, Jeanie was free for the night
to “take her book” or “her seam,” and do as she pleased, for she had
never had anything to do with “the beasts” or outdoor matters.
By this time Bell had finished with her clinking pails. She was in the
kitchen, still moving about, frying the cold potatoes into a savoury
mess, with which Sandy and she were about to regale themselves. Where
Bell’s strong shoes were, and her hearty voice, not to speak of Sandy’s,
which was very deep bass, there could scarcely be stillness in the
house; but when the kitchen door was closed, and the two (who were
sweethearts) talked lower, the spell of the quiet grew strong upon
Jeanie. She put down her seam, and stole out very quietly to the door,
which still stood innocently open; for at the Castle Farm they feared no
evil. If you could but have seen her, no prettier figure ever watched
for a tardy lover. She was dressed in a plain little brown frock,
without any furbelows, with a little rim of white collar round her neck.
Her golden hair was fastened up with a large tortoise-shell comb,
thought “very old-fashioned” by all the girls about Loch Arroch, which
had belonged to Jeanie’s mother, and of which, as a valuable article,
costing originally “more than a pound-note,” as her grandmother had
often told her, Jeanie was proud. The comb was scarcely visible in the
soft bright mass of hair, which Jeanie had not neglected to twist up in
its abundance into some semblance of “the fashion.” She leant against
the doorway with her chin propped in the hollow of her hand, and one
folded arm supporting the elbow of the other.
The stars shone high over head, high up above the big summit of
Benvohrlan, which shut out from her half the heavens. The moon was
behind, silvering over the red roof of the house, and falling glorious
upon the dark water, making it one sheet of silver from where it opened
out of the bigger loch up to the very foot of the mountain. The side of
Benvohrlan was almost as light as in the day-time, and Loch Long on the
other turn of the gigantic corner formed by the hill, went gleaming away
into invisible space, betraying itself in undefinable distance by here
and there a line or speck of silver. All up the loch side, at Jeanie’s
left hand, the path lay clear and vacant, without a shadow on it. On the
other side, the glimmering lightness of the stubble field, with its
sheaves looking like strange animals in the moonlight, extended to the
water edge, rounding out to where it too gained the margin of the parent
loch. I do not know any finer combination of hill and water. The level
fields of the Castle Farm on one side, and Big Benvohrlan on the other,
form the doorway by which the lesser loch enters the greater; on one
side an angle of cultivated land: on the other a gigantic angle of
mountain. But little Jeanie thought little of the familiar scene around
her. The moon, newly risen, cast a soft shadow of her little figure, the
same way as her heart went, upon the road from the loch-head by which
Edgar was coming. He saw this shadow with a little impatient vexation as
he approached the house, but not till long after little Jeanie’s heart
had jumped to perceive him.
Poor little gentle soul! her large eyes made larger and softer still by
her wistful anxiety and longing for his presence, had watched with
patience unwavering for more than an hour. She had not minded the chill
wind nor the weariness of standing so long, with no support but the
doorway. The attitude, the strained look, the patience, were all
characteristic of Jeanie. She was the kind of being which in all
second-rate poetry, and most second-rate imaginations, is the one sole
type of woman. Looking for some one who was the lord of her life, or
looking to some one--with soft eyes intent, with quick ears waiting,
with gentle heart ready to receive whatever impression he wished to
convey, the soft soul turned to the man who had caught her heart or her
imagination as the flower turns to the sun. To use the jargon of the
day, poor little Jeanie was receptive to the highest degree. She never
originated anything, nor advised anything, nor took any part as an
individual being in the conduct of life, either her own or that of
others. Hers were not those eager youthful opinions, those harsh
judgments, those daring comments which belong as much to youth as its
bloom. She was too artless to know anything of the prettiness of her
uplifted eyes, or the delicious flattery which lay in her absolute
submissiveness. Poor Jeanie did not know that these were charms much
more potent than the talents which she was aware she did not possess.
She listened, and looked, and watched for those signs of guidance, which
she obeyed by instinct with the docility of a dumb creature, because it
was her nature. She did not even intend to please; though she was happy
beyond description when she found that she had pleased, she did but act
as she could not help acting, according as her disposition moved her.
Edgar, who had not been used to this kind of woman, had been half
annoyed, half amused by her powerlessness to advise or help, her soft
devotion of look, now addressed to himself, now to Mrs. Murray. He had
wondered at it, and objected to it; yet he had been moved like any other
man to a softening sense of protection and almost tenderness. He was
flattered too in spite of himself to find her thus watching for him. It
made him more than half angry, but yet it pleased him involuntarily.
“You will catch cold standing out here in the night air,” he said
pettishly at the first moment. Then he added with compunction, “It is
kind of you to look for me, Jeanie; but you should not stand out in the
cold without a shawl.”
“I’m glad you’re come home,” said Jeanie, with instinctive policy
ignoring this reproof. “Grannie is in her bed, and it is lonely without
you. Will I make you some tea? or will you have your supper? You’ve been
long away.”
“Not so very long,” said Edgar, touched by the soft complaint, “but I
ought to have recollected that you were alone. Are you afraid, Jeanie,
at night with no one but Bell and the granny to take care of you? It is
a lonely house.”
“Oh, no,” said Jeanie, looking brightly round upon him, as he followed
her into the low parlour, where two candles were flickering on the table
before the fire.
“But it is a lonely house?”
“Oh, yes,” she repeated softly, “but what o’ that? Nobody would meddle
with us. Granny is as well known as Loch Arroch Kirk. Nobody dares
meddle with us. I’m never lonely, except when granny is ill and goes to
her bed, and I can hear Bell and Sandy in the kitchen. That makes me
think I would like somebody to speak to, too.”
“But Bell and Sandy,”--Edgar began: if he was going to be so incautious
as to add,--“are sweethearts,” I don’t know what would have become of
him; but happily Jeanie, with a sudden blush interposed.
“I was not meaning Bell and Sandy; any voices have the same sound. They
make you feel how lone you are.”
“That is true,” said Edgar, seating himself by the fire, which Jeanie
had kept bright, with a clean-swept hearth, and a clear red glow for his
coming. He sat down meditatively in the old mother’s chair. “That is
true,” he repeated slowly, “I have felt it often of winter nights when I
have gone upstairs to my chilly room, and heard the people chatting
together as I passed their doors.”
“_You_ have felt that, too?” said Jeanie timidly, with reverential
wonder, “but you need never be your lane unless you like.”
“I assure you I have often been ‘my lane,’ as you call it, when I did
not like at all,” said Edgar smiling, “you have much too high an
opinion, Jeanie, of what I can do ‘if I like.’”
“Oh, no,” said Jeanie, “you are not the same as the like of us; you are
a man, which is a great difference,--and then you’re a grand gentleman.”
“Jeanie, my foolish little Jeanie! I am your cousin and your granny’s
child like you,” he cried, putting his hand upon hers, to stop her in
the little outburst of innocent enthusiasm, which was, he felt, for an
ideal Edgar--not for him.
“It’s very hard to understand,” said Jeanie shaking her head softly with
a little sigh, “why you should be yonder the greatest of the land, and
now only granny’s son, like me. I’ll no try. When I think, I get back a
pain in my head like what I had--when I was ill.”
“You must not think,” said Edgar, “but, Jeanie, tell me, did you do my
commission? Did you persuade granny to let me do what I wish?”
“Yes,” said Jeanie eagerly; she came forward and stood by him in the
pleasure of making this report of her own faithfulness,--and the
cheerful ruddy gleam of the firelight flickered about her, shining in
her hair and eyes, and adding a tint to the colour on her cheek, which
was pale by nature. “I told her a’ you said, I did not miss a word. I
said it would be fine for her, but better for you; that you would do
something then, and now you were doing nothing; and that you would be
glad aye to think of Loch Arroch, and that there was a house there where
you were thought upon day and night, and named in a’ the prayers, and
minded, whatever you did, and whatever we did.”
“That was your own, Jeanie,” said Edgar, taking her hand, and looking up
at her with gratified tenderness. She was to him as a little sister, and
her affectionate half-childish enthusiasm brought a suffusion to his
eyes.
“If it was, may I no say what I think--me too?” said Jeanie, with modest
grace. “I told her that you couldna bear the thought of her away in
another man’s house, after so long keeping her own over a’ our heads,
that the siller was nothing to you, but that her--and me--were something
to you, your nearest friends in this world. Eh, I’m glad we’re your
nearest friends! though it’s strange, strange to think of,” said Jeanie,
in a parenthesis. “I told her that though she couldna work and I couldna
work, you could work, and win a fortune if you liked. I did not forget a
single word,” cried the girl, “not a word! I told her all you said.”
For a moment Edgar made no reply. He listened with a half smile,
wonderingly endeavouring to put himself in the place of this limited yet
clear intelligence, which was capable of stating his own generous
arguments so fully, yet incapable, as it seemed, of so much reflection
as would make her hesitate to expound them. Jeanie, so far as her
personal sentiment went, accepted his sacrifice with matter-of-fact
simplicity, without ever thinking of his side of it, or of the
deprivations involved. She took his offer to denude himself of
everything he had, with the same absolute pleasure and satisfaction with
which a child would accept a present. Was it her unbounded confidence in
his power to win a fortune if he liked? Or was it her simple instinct
that this was natural, and that the weak and helpless had a right to the
services of the strong? Edgar was bewildered by this question which
never entered into Jeanie’s mind. He was almost glad of her incapacity
to see beyond the surface of things, and yet wondered at it with
something between amusement and pain. Here was the primitive nature,
commonplace, unsophisticated, he said to himself, which believed what
was said to it simply demanding without motive or reason. No second
thoughts troubled the limpid surface of Jeanie’s gentle mind. She
believed unhesitatingly not only that he meant what he said (which was
true), but that the arguments she repeated were infallible, without
perceiving the sophistry of which Edgar himself, the author of them, was
fully conscious. Truly and sincerely she made as light of his
self-renunciation as he himself had made--a thing which is bewildering
to the self-sacrificer, though it may be the thing which is most
desirable to him and suits his purpose best. I do not know if Jeanie was
aware of the half tone of descent in the moral scale which made itself
apparent in Edgar’s voice.
“You have been a clever advocate, Jeanie,” he said with a smile, “and I
hope a successful one,” and with that he dropped her hand and took out
his newspaper. Was there anything amiss, or was it merely his lordly
pleasure to end the conversation? With a momentary sense of pain, Jeanie
wondered which it was, but accepted the latter explanation, got her
seam, and sat down within reach of the pleasant warmth of the fire,
happy in the silence, asking nothing more.