After the strange scene in which she had been made a party to her
sister's wretchedness, it was inevitable that Edith should return to
Lindores so completely occupied with this subject that she could think
of nothing else. It was some time before she could get her mother's ear
undisturbed; but as soon as they were alone, after various interruptions
which the girl could scarcely bear, she poured forth her lamentable
story with all the eloquence of passion and tears. Edith's whole soul
was bent upon some remedy.
"How can there be any doubt on the subject? She must come home--she must
go away from him. Mother! it is sacrilege, it is profanation. It is--I
don't know any word bad enough. She must come away----"
Lady Lindores shook her head. "It is one of the most terrible things in
the world; but now that it is done, she must stand to it. We can do
nothing, Edith----"
"I cannot believe that," cried the girl. "What! live with a man like
that,--live with him _like that_--always together, sharing
everything--and hate him? Mother! it is worse wickedness than--than the
wicked. It is a shame to one's very nature. And to think it should be
Carry who has to do it! But no one ought to be compelled to do it. It
ought not to be. I will speak to papa myself if no one else will--it
ought not to be----"
Again Lady Lindores shook her head. "In this world, in this dreadful
world," she said, "we cannot think only of what is right and
wrong--alas! there are other things to be taken into consideration. I
think till I came home I was almost as innocent as you, Edith. Your
father and I were very much blamed when we married. My people said to
me, and still more his people said to him, that we should repent it all
our lives; but that once having done it, we should have to put up with
it. Well, you know what it used to be. I suppose I should be ashamed to
say that I found it very easy to put up with. It was a strange sort of
wandering life----"
"Oh, how much happier than now!" cried Edith. "Oh, poor little Rintoul!
poor uncle! if they had but lived and flourished, how much better for us
all!"
"I would not say that," said Lady Lindores. "I think now that when we
were all so happy your father felt it. He did not say anything, but I am
sure he felt it. See how different he is now! Now he feels himself in
his right place. He has room for all his talents. Edith, do not put on
that look, my dear child."
Edith's face was soft and young; but as her mother spoke, it hardened
into an expression which changed its character entirely. Her upper lip
closed down tight upon the other; her eyes widened and grew stern. Not
her father himself, not the old ancestors on the panels, looked more
stern than this girl of twenty. She did not say anything, but the change
in her face was answer enough.
"Edith! you must not form such strong opinions; you must not make
yourself the judge----"
"Then I must not be a human creature, mamma; and that I am, grown up,
and obliged to think for myself. Sometimes I wish I did not. If I could
only believe that all that was done was well, as some people do. Here
all is wrong--all is wrong! It ought not to have been at all, this
marriage,--and now--it ought not to continue to be----"
"My darling!" said Lady Lindores, appealing to her child with piteous
eyes, "I am to blame too. I ought to have resisted more strongly; but it
is hard, hard--to set one's self against one's husband, whom one has
respected, always respected, and who has seemed to know best."
Edith's face did not relax. "Let us not talk of that," she said. "It
makes one's heart sick. I think every one was wrong. Neither should you
have done it, mamma--forgive me! nor should Carry have done it. She
ought never, never, to have consented. I could not believe till the last
moment that it was possible. Some one should have stopped it. I hoped so
till the last moment; but when once it was done, as you say, one thought
at least that he loved her. Why did he want to marry her if he did not
love her? But he can't love her, since he behaves so. No love at all,
either on one side or the other; and yet the two bound together for
their lives. Was there ever anything so horrible? It ought not to be! It
ought not to be!"
Lady Lindores took her daughter in her arms to soothe her; but Edith,
drying the hot tears from her eyes, was almost impatient of her mother's
caresses. What were caresses? Well enough, sweet in their way, but
setting nothing right that was wrong. Yes, it was true the mother should
not have permitted it, any more than the daughter should have done it.
Two human creatures, grown up (as Edith repeated to herself), able to
judge--they ought not to have allowed themselves to be swept away by
the will of another. This was how the resolute girl put it. Her father
she gave up--she would not judge him, therefore she preferred not to
think of him at all. He had done it determinedly, and of distinct
purpose; but the others who submitted, who allowed themselves to be
forced into ill-doing, were they less to blame? All this she had gone
over at the time of Carry's marriage, and had suppressed and forced it
away from her. But now the current turned again. She withdrew herself
from her mother's arms. Here was the most hideous thing in the world
existing in their sight, her sister at once the victim and the chief
actor in it, and all that could be given her in her eager attempt to set
things right was a kiss! It seemed to Edith that the shame on her
cheeks, the fire in her eyes, dried up her tears. She turned away from
Lady Lindores. If she should be doomed too, by her father's will, would
her mother have no better help to give her than a kiss? But when this
idea passed through the girl's mind, she tossed back her head with an
involuntary defiance. Never should such a doom come upon her. Heaven and
earth could not move her so far. Obedience! This was such obedience as
no one of God's creatures had any right to render to another--neither
wife to husband, nor to her parents any child!
After this there was a long pause in the conversation between the mother
and daughter. Lady Lindores divined Edith's thoughts. She understood
every shade of the repugnance, disgust, disapproval, that the young
upright spirit, untouched as yet by the bonds and complications of life,
was passing through. And she shrank a little from Edith's verdict, which
she acknowledged to be true. But what could she have done, she asked
herself? Who would have approved her had she opposed her husband's
wishes, encouraged her daughter to keep to a foolish engagement made
under circumstances so totally different, and to refuse a match so
advantageous? She had done everything she could; she had remonstrated,
she had protested: but when Carry herself gave in, what could her
mother, in the face of the universal disapproval of the world, at the
risk of an absolute breach with her husband, do? But none of these
things did Edith take into account--Edith, young and absolute, scorning
compromises, determined only that what was right should be done, and
nothing else. Lady Lindores withdrew too, feeling her caress rejected,
understanding even what Edith was saying in her heart. What was a kiss
when things so much more important were in question? It was perfectly
true. She felt the justice of it to the bottom of her heart, and yet was
chilled and wounded by the tacit condemnation of her child. She went to
her work, which was always a resource at such a moment, and there was a
silence during which each had time to regain a little composure.
By-and-by, when the crisis seemed to have passed, Lady Lindores spoke.
"We must have young Erskine here," she said, almost timidly. "Your
father has asked him; and in the circumstances, as we saw so much of him
before, it is quite necessary. I think, as this unpleasant suggestion
has been made--now, Edith, do not be unreasonable, we must do what we
can in this world, not what we would,--as this has taken place, I will
ask Carry and her husband to meet him. It will show Mr Torrance at
least----"
"Mother!" Edith burst out--"mother! I tell you of a thing which is
wickedness, which is a horror to think of, and you speak of asking
people to dinner! Do you mean to turn it all into ridicule?--oh, not me,
that would not matter--but all purity, all fitness? To ask them to--meet
him----"
"My dear, my dear!" cried Lady Lindores, half weeping, half angry,
appealing and impatient at once. She did not know what to say to this
impracticable young judge. "We cannot resort to heroic measures," she
cried. "It is impossible. We cannot take her away from him, any more
than we can make of him a reasonable man. Carry herself would be the
first to say no--for the children's sake, for the sake of her own
credit. All we can do is to make the best of what exists. Mr Torrance
must be shown quietly how mistaken he is--how much he is in the wrong."
"Mr Torrance! I would show him nothing, except how much I scorn him,"
Edith cried. "A man who dares to torture my sister--a man--who is not
worthy to take her name into his lips, with his insolent doubts and his
'Lady Car,' which I cannot endure to hear!"
"But who is her husband, alas! I cannot bear to hear it either; but what
can we do? We can take no notice of his insolent doubts; but we must
prove, all the same, to all the world----"
"Mother! But if it did so happen--who can tell?--that it had been--poor
Edward?"
"Hush!" cried her mother, almost fiercely; and then she added, "God
forbid, Edith--God forbid!"
But who could have divined that such preliminaries were necessary to
procure the assembling of the little party which met a few evenings
later at Lindores, just on the eve of the departure of the family to
London for their short enjoyment of the season? John Erskine had been
told that it would be merely a family party--his old friends, as Lady
Lindores, with kind familiarity and a smile so genial and so charming
that the young man must have been a wizard had he seen anything beneath
it, assured him. It never occurred to him to think of anything beneath.
The Earl had been as cordial, as friendly, as could be desired; and
though it gave him a disagreeable sensation to meet, when he entered the
room, the stare of Torrance, whose big light eyes seemed to project out
of his face to watch the entrance of the stranger, yet he speedily
forgot this in the pleasure with which he found himself greeted by the
others. Carry walked across the room with a gentle dignity, which yet
was very unlike the shy brightness of her old girlish aspect, and held
out to him a thin hand. "I think you scarcely remember me," she said,
with a soft pathetic smile. She was not, as many women would have been,
confused by the recollection that her husband was there jealously
watching her looks and her tones: this consciousness, instead of
agitating her, gave her a kind of inspiration. In other circumstances,
the very sight of one who had been a witness of her brief romance might
have disturbed her, but she was steeled against all tremors now.
John could scarcely make her any reply. The change in her was so great
that he was struck dumb. Her girlish freshness was gone, her animation
subdued, the intellectual eagerness quenched in her eyes. A veil of
suffering and patience seemed to fall about her, through which she
appeared as at a distance, in another sphere. "Indeed," he said,
hesitating, "I should scarcely have known you," and murmured something
about his pleasure in seeing her--at which she smiled again sadly,
saying nothing more. This was all their greeting. Edith stood by with an
unusually high colour, and a tremor of agitation in her frame, which he
perceived vaguely with surprise, not knowing what it could mean; and
then the little incident was over, half of the company seeing nothing
whatever in it but a mere casual encounter of old acquaintances. Besides
the family, there were present the girl whom John Erskine began within
himself to call "that everlasting Miss Barrington," and the minister of
the parish, a man carefully dressed in the costume adopted during the
last generation by the Anglican priesthood, who was one of the "new
school," and had the distinction of having made himself very alarming to
his presbytery as, if not a heretic, yet at least "a thinker," given to
preaching about honest doubt, and trifling with German philosophy. These
two strangers scarcely afforded enough of variety to change the
character of the family party. Torrance devoted himself to his dinner,
and for some time spoke but little. Lady Caroline occupied herself with
Dr. Meldrum with something of her old eagerness. It was evident that he
was her resource, and that vague views upon the most serious subjects,
which everybody else thought high-flown, found some sympathy in this
professional thinker, who was nothing if not heretical. As for John, he
was wholly occupied by Lady Lindores, who talked to him with a fluency
which was almost feverish.
"We shall find you here when we come back," she said, "with all your
arrangements made? And I hope Rintoul will return with us. Certainly he
will be here in August, and very thankful to find a neighbour like you,
Mr Erskine, with whom he will have so much in common."
"That's a compliment to the rest of us," said Torrance, who sat on the
other side. "Rintoul, I suppose, doesn't find much in common with us
ignorant clowns in the county,"--this he said without looking at any
one, with his head bent over his plate.
"I did not say so. Rintoul is not so much with us as I could wish--he
has his duty to attend to. To be sure, they get a great deal of leave;
but you young men have so many places to go to nowadays. You spend so
very little time at home. I wonder if it is a good thing or the
reverse," said Lady Lindores, with a little sigh. "A mother may be
pardoned for not admiring the new way, when our sons come home, not for
us, but for the shooting."
"I think I am scarcely able to judge," said John: "home--perhaps was a
little different to me: my mother has so many claiming a share in her.
And now my home is here in Dalrulzian, which is merely a house, not a
home at all," he said with something between a laugh and a sigh.
"You must marry," Lady Lindores said; "that is what the county expects
of you. You will disappoint all your neighbours if you do not accomplish
this duty within a year. The question is, whether the lady is already
found, or whether we are to have the gratification of seeing you go
through all the preliminaries, which is a great amusement, Mr Erskine;
so I hope you have your choice still to make."
It was accident, of course, which directed her eyes to Nora, who sat by
Torrance--accident only; for a kind woman, who was herself a mother,
would not have willingly done anything to light up the sudden colour
which flamed over the girl's face. Nora felt as if she could have sunk
into the earth. As for John, it seemed almost an insult to her that he
should look at her coldly across the table with studious
unconsciousness.
"I am afraid I cannot undertake to furnish amusement for the county," he
said, "in that way--and Dalrulzian is not big enough for two people. I
had no idea it was so small. It is a bachelor's box, a lodge, a sort of
chambers in the country, where one can put up a friend, but nothing
more."
Here Nora found a way out of her embarrassment. "Indeed," she cried,
"you wrong Dalrulzian, Mr Erskine. We found it sufficient for our whole
family, and the most delightful place to live in. You are not worthy of
Dalrulzian if you talk of it so."
"I think Erskine is quite right," said Torrance, between two mouthfuls;
"it's a small little bit of a place."
"So is Lindores," the Countess said, eagerly; "there are quantities of
small rooms, but no sort of grandeur of space. We must go to Tinto for
that. You have not yet seen Tinto, Mr Erskine? We must not be jealous,
for our old nests are more natural. If we were all rich enough to build
sets of new rooms like a little Louvre, there would be none of the old
architecture left."
"You are speaking about architecture, Lady Lindores," said Dr Meldrum.
He had just returned from his first expedition "abroad," and he was very
willing to enlighten the company with his new experiences: besides, just
then Lady Caroline was pressing him very hard upon a point which he did
not wish as yet to commit himself upon. "Stone and lime are safer
questions than evolution and development," he said, turning to her, in
an undertone.
"Safer perhaps, but not so interesting. They are ended and
settled--arrange them in what form you please, and they stand there for
ever," said Lady Caroline, with brightening eyes; "but not so the mind:
not so a single thought, however slight it may be. There is all the
difference between life and death."
"My dear Lady Caroline! you will not call the Stones of Venice dead--or
St Peter's, soaring away into the skies? Though they are but collections
of stones, they are as living as we are."
"I begin to recognise her again," said John, innocent of all reason why
he should not fix his attention upon poor Carry, as her pale face
lighted up. He felt too pitiful, too tender of her, to speak of her
formally by her new title. "She used to look like that in the old days."
"Yes," said Lady Lindores, with a sigh. "Poor Carry! visionary subjects
always pleased her best."
Torrance had raised his head from his plate, and was lending an eager
ear. "It's confoundedly out of place all that for a woman," he said.
"What has she to do with politics, and philosophy, and nonsense? She has
plenty to think of in her children and her house."
Lady Lindores made him a little bow, but took no further notice. She was
exasperated, and scarcely under her own control; but Nora, on the other
side, was glad to have the chance of breaking her lance on some one. If
Pat Torrance was not worth her steel, there was at least another
opposite whose opinions she had no clue to, whom she would have liked
to transfix if that had been possible. "It does us poor girls good to
have the benefit of a gentleman's real opinion," she said. "Would you
like Lady Caroline to make your puddings? It is so good to know what is
expected of us--in all ranks."
"Why not?" said Torrance, over his plate. "A woman's business is to look
after her house--that was always considered the right thing. I hope you
are not one of the strong-minded ones, Miss Barrington. You had much
better not. No man ever looks at them."
"And what a penalty that would be!" cried Nora, with solemnity.
"You wouldn't like it, that I'll promise you. I tell you, they are all
the ugly ones. I once saw a lot of them, one uglier than the
other--women that knew no man would ever look at them. They were friends
of Lady Car's, you may be sure, all chattering twenty to the dozen. They
want to get into Parliament--that is at the bottom of it all; and then
they would make a pretty mess--for us to set right."
"But, Mr Torrance, you could not set it right, for you are not in
Parliament any more than I am," said Nora, pointedly. He gave her a look
out of his big eyes which might have killed her had looks such power.
The Earl had complained that his son-in-law was not amenable in this
matter. But nobody knew that it was a very sore point with the wealthy
squire, whom no one had so much as thought of for such a dignity. Much
poorer, less important persons than himself, had been suggested, had
even sat for the county. But Torrance of Tinto, conscious that he was
the only man among them who could afford to throw away a few thousands
without wincing--of him nobody had thought. He had declaimed loudly on
many occasions that nothing would induce him to take the trouble; but
this slight had rankled at his heart.
"Mr Torrance would not like London life," Lady Lindores said, coming to
his aid; "turning night into day is hard upon those who are accustomed
to a more natural existence."
"You speak as if I had never been out of the country," said her
ungracious son-in-law. "I know that's the idea entertained of me in this
house: but it's a mistake. I've seen life just as much as those who make
more fuss about it."
"And you, Mr Erskine, have you seen life?" said Lady Lindores, turning
to him with, a smile.
"Very little," said John--"in London at least."
"It's a wonderful idea to me, though most people seem to hold it," said
Dr Meldrum, coming in, in a pause of that conversation with Lady
Caroline, which sometimes alarmed him by its abstractness and
elevation, "that life is only to be seen in London, or in Paris, or some
of those big centres. Under correction, Lady Lindores, and not to put my
small experience above the more instructed----"
"That is an alarming beginning," cried Edith. "Dr Meldrum means to show
us how ignorant we all are."
"That's what I never can show any one in this house," said the minister,
with old-fashioned politeness; "but my opinion is, that life in a great
metropolis is the most conventional--ay, you'll acknowledge that--the
most contracted, the most narrow, the most----Well, well, if you'll not
let a man speak----"
The hubbub of contradiction and amusement made the party more genial,
more at ease, than it had yet been.
"If you make that out, Doctor, you will give us something new to think
of," the Earl said.
And poor Lady Caroline, who found in the good minister her chief
intellectual resource, prepared to listen to his argument with all the
attention of a hearer who believes fully in the abilities of her guide.
"I think I can see what Dr Meldrum means," she said.
"I am sure you will see what I mean," the Doctor said, gratefully. "In
the first place, it's far too big to make society general--you'll allow
that? Well, then, the result is, that society, being so vast, breaks
itself up into little coteries. It's liker a number of bits of villages
just touching each other, like a long thread of them, every one with its
own little atmosphere. That's just London to me. You meet the same
people as if you were in a village; then go out of that clique to
another, and you meet the same people again, but another set. There was
one day," said the minister, with a certain pride, "that I was very
dissipated. I went out to my lunch, and then to a party in the
afternoon, and then to my dinner, and to two places at night. It was a
great experience. Well, if you'll believe me, I was wearied with seeing
the same faces, in a great society like London, the chief place in the
world. There was scarcely one I did not meet three times in the course
of that day. In the country here, you could not do more. There's as much
variety as that in Dunearn itself."
"I see what Dr Meldrum means," said Carry. "No doubt it was a special
society into which he had been introduced, and people were asked to meet
him because they were distinguished--because they were people whom it
was a pleasure to meet."
"That's a great compliment to me, but I cannot take it to myself. They
were, many of them, persons that it was no pleasure to meet. Some with
titles, and, so far as I could see, little more. Some that were perhaps
rich--I hope so, at least, for they were nothing else."
"This is cynicism," said Lord Lindores; "and I, who have lived in the
opinion that Dr Meldrum was the most benignant, the most tolerant of
men----"
"One can understand entirely," repeated Lady Caroline, standing by her
friend, "what he means. I have thought so myself. The same faces, the
same ideas, even the same words that mean so little----"
"I didn't know you were so well up in London society, Lady Car," said
her husband, who had been trying for some time to strike into the
_mêlée_, and whose lance was specially aimed at her of all the talkers.
And then there was a general flutter of talk, instinctive, all round the
table; for when a man stretches across to say something disagreeable to
his wife, everybody present is upon their honour to quench the nascent
quarrel. The ladies left the table soon after; and the conversation of
the men did not afford the same risks, for after one or two
contradictions, which the Earl put aside with well-bred ease and a
slight but unanswerable contempt, Torrance sank into sulky silence,
taking a great deal of wine. At such moments a little poetic justice and
punishment of his sins towards his daughter was inflicted even upon Lord
Lindores.