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.