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.