FRIENDSHIP
LADY ELIZA LAMONT splashed along the road and over the bridge; her
heart was beating under the outlandish waistcoat, and behind her red
face, so unsuggestive of emotion of any sort, a turmoil was going on in
her brain. She had seen him at last.
She breathed hard, and her mouth drew into a thin line as she passed
Whanland, and saw the white walls glimmering through the beech-trees.
There was a light in one of the upper windows, the first she had seen
there for thirty years in the many times she had ridden past.
He was so little like the picture her mind had imagined that she would
scarcely have recognised him, she told herself. Yet still there was
that in his look which forbade her to hate him unrestrainedly, though
he represented all that had set her life awry. He was now her neighbour
and it was likely they would often meet; indeed, sooner or later,
civility would compel her to invite him to wait upon her. She gave the
mare a smart blow with her riding-cane as they turned into the approach
to Morphie House.
Up to the horse-block in the stable-yard she rode, for her fall had
made her stiff, and, though she usually objected to dismounting upon
it, she was glad of its help this evening. The groom who came out
exclaimed as he saw her plight, but she cut him short, merely sending
him for a lantern, by the light of which they examined the mare
together in the growing dusk; she then gathered up her skirt and went
into the house by the back entrance. Her gloves were coated with mud,
and she peeled them off and threw them on a table in the hall before
going into the long, low room in which she generally sat. The lights
had not been brought and it was very dark as she opened the door; the
two windows at the end facing her were mere gray patches of twilight
through which the dim white shapes of a few sheep were visible; for, at
Morphie, the grass grew up to the walls at the sides of the house. A
figure was sitting by the hearth between the windows and a very tall
man rose from his chair as she entered.
Lady Eliza started.
‘Fullarton!’ she exclaimed.
‘It is I. I have been waiting here expecting you might return earlier.
You are out late to-night.’
‘The mare put her foot in a hole, stupid brute! A fine roll she gave
me, too.’
He made an exclamation, and, catching sight of some mud on her sleeve,
led her to the light. She went quietly and stood while he looked at
her.
‘Gad, my lady! you have been down indeed! You are none the worse, I
trust?’
‘No, no; but I will send for a dish of tea, and drink it by the fire.
It is cold outside.’
‘But you are wet, my dear lady.’
‘What does that matter? I shall take no harm. Ring the bell,
Fullarton--the rope is at your hand.’
Robert Fullarton did as he was desired, and stood looking at the ragged
grass and the boles of the trees. His figure and the rather blunt
outline of his features showed dark against the pane. At sixty he was
as upright as when he and Lady Eliza had been young together, and he
the first of the county gentlemen in polite pursuits. At a time when it
was hardly possible to be anything else, he had never been provincial,
for though he was, before anything, a sportsman, he had been one of the
very few of his day capable of combining sport with wider interests.
The friendship between his own family and that of Morphie House had
gone far back into the preceding century, long before Mr. Lamont,
second son of an impoverished earl, had inherited the property through
his mother, and settled down upon it with Lady Eliza, his unmarried
sister. At his death she had stepped into his place, still unmarried, a
blunt, prejudiced woman, understood by few, and, oddly enough, liked by
many. Morphie was hers for life and was to pass, at her death, to a
distant relation of her mother’s family. She was well off, and, being
the only occupant of a large house, with few personal wants and but one
expensive taste, she had become as autocratic as a full purse and a
life outside the struggles and knocks of the world will make anyone who
is in possession of both.
The expensive taste was her stable; for, from the hour that she had
been lifted as a little child upon the back of her father’s horse, she
had wavered only once in her decision that horses and all pertaining to
them presented by far the most attractive possibilities in life. Her
hour of wavering had come later.
The fire threw bright flickerings into the darkness of the room as Lady
Eliza sat and drank her tea. The servant who had brought it would have
brought in lights, too, but she refused to have them, saying that she
was tired and that the dusk soothed her head, and she withdrew into the
furthest corner of a high-backed settee, with the little dish beside
her on a spindle-legged table.
Fullarton sat at the other end of the hearth, his elbows on his knees
and his hands spread to the blaze. They were large hands, nervous and
well formed. His face, on which the firelight played, had a look of
preoccupation, and the horizontal lines of his forehead seemed deeper
than usual--at least, so his companion thought. It was easily seen that
they were very intimate, from the silence in which they sat.
‘Surely you must be rather wet,’ said he again, after a few minutes. ‘I
think it would be wise if you were to change your habit for dry
clothes.’
‘No; I will sit here.’
‘You have always been a self-willed woman, my lady.’
She made no reply, merely turning her cane round and round in her hand.
A loud crash came from the fire, and a large piece of wood fell into
the fender with a sputter of blue fireworks. He picked it up with the
tongs and set it back in its place. She watched him silently. It was
too dark to read the expression in her eyes.
‘I have seen young Whanland,’ she said suddenly.
‘Indeed,’ said Fullarton.
‘He caught the mare and brought her to me at Granny Stirk’s house.’
‘What is he like?’ he asked, after a pause.
‘A proper young fellow. He obliged me very greatly. Have you not met
him? He has been at Whanland this fortnight past, I am told.’
‘No,’ said Fullarton, with his eyes on the flame, ‘never. I have never
seen him.’
‘As I came by just now I saw the lights in Whanland House. It is a long
time that it has been in darkness now. I suppose that sawney-faced
Macquean is still minding it?’
‘I believe so,’ said the man, drawing his chair out of the circle of
the light.
‘How long is it now since--since Mrs. Speid’s death? Twenty-eight or
twenty-nine years, I suppose?’
‘It is thirty,’ said Robert.
‘It was a little earlier in the year than this,’ continued Lady Eliza.
‘I remember seeing Mr. Speid’s travelling-carriage on the road, with
the nurse and the baby inside it.’
‘You build your fires very high,’ said Fullarton. ‘I must move away, or
the cold will be all the worse when I get out of doors.
‘But I hope you will stay and sup, Fullarton. You have not been here
since Cecilia came back.’
‘Not to-night,’ said he, rising; ‘another time. Present my respects to
Cecilia, for I must go.’
Lady Eliza sat still. He stood by the settee holding out his hand. His
lips were shaking, but there was a steadiness in his voice and a
measured tone that told of great control.
‘Good-night,’ he said. ‘I left my horse in the stable. I will walk out
myself and fetch him.’
He turned to go to the door. She watched him till he had almost reached
it.
‘Fullarton!’ she cried suddenly; ‘come back!’
He looked round, but stood still in his place.
‘Come back; I must speak--I must tell you!’
He did not move, so she rose and stood between him and the fire, a
grotesque enough figure in the dancing light.
‘I know everything; I have always known it. Do you think I did not
understand what had come to you in those days? Ah! I know now--yes, more
than ever, now I have seen him. He has a look that I would have known
anywhere, Robert.’
He made an inarticulate sound as though he were about to speak.
She held up her hand.
‘There is no use in denying it--you cannot! How can you, with that man
standing there to give you the lie? But I have understood always--God
knows I have understood!’
‘It is untrue from beginning to end,’ said Fullarton very quietly.
‘You are obliged to say that,’ she said through her teeth. ‘It is a
lie!’
But for this one friendship, he had lived half his life solely among
men. He had not fathomed the unsparing brutality of women. His hand was
on the door. She sprang towards him and clasped both hers round his
arm.
‘Robert! Robert!’ she cried.
‘Let me go,’ he said, trying to part the hands; ‘I cannot bear this.
Have you _no_ pity, Eliza?’
‘But you will come back? Oh, Robert, listen to me! Listen to me! You
think because I have spoken now that I will speak again. Never! I never
will!’
‘You have broken everything,’ said he.
‘What have I done?’ she asked fiercely. ‘Have I once made a sign of
what I knew all those years? Have I, Robert?’
‘No,’ he said thickly; ‘I suppose not. How can I tell?’
The blood flew up into her face, dyeing it crimson.
‘What? what? Do you disbelieve me?’ she cried. ‘How dare you, I say?’
She shook his arm. Her voice was so loud that he feared it might be
overheard by some other inmate of the house. He felt almost distracted.
He disengaged himself and turned to the wall, his hand over his face.
The pain of the moment was so intolerable. Lady Eliza’s wrath dropped
suddenly and fell from her, leaving her standing dumb, for there was
something in the look of Fullarton’s bowed shoulders that struck her in
the very centre of her heart. When she should have been silent she had
spoken, and now, when she would have given worlds to speak, she could
not.
He turned slowly and they looked at each other. The fire had spurted up
and each could see the other’s face. His expression was one of physical
suffering. He opened the door and went out.
He knew his way in every corner of Morphie, and he went, as he had
often done, through the passage by which she had entered and passed by
the servants’ offices into the stable-yard. He was so much preoccupied
that he did not hear her footsteps behind him and he walked out,
unconscious that she followed. In the middle of the yard stood a
weeping-ash on a plot of grass, and she hurried round the tree and into
an outbuilding connected with the stable. She entered and saw his
horse standing on the pillar-rein, the white blaze on his face distinct
in the dark. The stablemen were indoors. She slipped the rings and led
him out of the place on to the cobble-stones.
Robert was standing bareheaded in the yard. He took up the rein
mechanically without looking at her, and put his foot in the stirrup
iron. As he was about to turn, she laid hold of the animal’s mane.
‘Lady Eliza!’ he exclaimed, staring down through the dusk.
‘You have left your hat, Fullarton,’ she said. ‘I will go in and fetch
it.’
Before he could prevent her, she had vanished into the house. He sat
for a moment in his saddle, for there was no one to take the horse; but
he followed her to the door, and dismounted there. In a couple of
minutes she returned with the hat.
‘Thank you--thank you,’ he said; ‘you should not have done such a
thing.’
‘What would I not do?’
‘Eliza,’ he said, ‘can I trust you?’
‘You never have,’ she replied bitterly, ‘but you will need to now.’
He rode out of the yard.
She reached her room without meeting anyone, and sank down in an
armchair. She longed to weep; but Fate, that had denied her the human
joys which she desired, but for which she had not, apparently, been
created, withheld that natural relief too. The repressed womanhood in
her life seemed to confront her at every step. She lifted her head, and
caught sight of herself in a long cheval glass, her wig, her
weather-beaten face, her clumsy attitude. She had studied her
reflection in the thing many and many a time in the years gone by, and
it had become to her almost as an enemy--a candid enemy. As a girl going
to county balls with her brother, she had stood before it trying to
cheat herself into the belief that she was less plain in her evening
dress than she had been in her morning one. Now she had lost even the
freshness which had then made her passable. She told herself that, but
for that, youth had given her nothing which age could take away, and
she laughed against her will at the truth. She looked down at the pair
of hands shining white in the mirror. They were her one ornament and
she had taken care of them. How small they were! how the fingers
tapered! how the pink of the filbert-shaped nails showed against the
cream of the skin! They were beautiful. Yet they had never felt the
touch of a man’s lips, never clung round a lover’s neck, never held a
child. Everything that made a woman’s life worth living had passed her
by. The remembrance of a short time when she had thought she held the
Golden Rose for ever made her heart ache. It was Gilbert’s mother who
had snatched it from her.
And friendship had been a poor substitute for what she had never
possessed. The touch of love in the friendship of a man and a woman
which makes it so charming, and may make it so dangerous, had been left
out between herself and Robert. She lived before these days of profound
study of sensation, but she knew that by instinct. The passion for
inflicting pain which assails some people when they are unhappy had
carried her tongue out of all bounds, and she realized that she was to
pay for its short indulgence with a lasting regret. She did not suppose
that Fullarton would not return, but she knew he would never forget,
and she feared that she also would not cease to remember. She could not
rid her mind of the image printed on it--his figure, as he stood in the
long-room below with his face turned from her. She had suffered at that
moment as cruelly as himself and she had revelled in her own pain.
When she had put off her riding-habit, she threw on a wrapper and lay
down on the bed, for she was wearied, body and soul, and her limbs were
beginning to remind her of her fall. It was chilly and she shivered,
drawing up the quilt over her feet. The voices of two servants, a
groom and a maid, babbled on by the ash-tree in the yard below; she
could not distinguish anything they said, but the man’s tone
predominated. They were making love, no doubt. Lady Eliza pressed her
head into the pillow, and tried to shut out the sound.
She was half asleep when someone tapped at the door, and, getting no
answer, opened it softly.
‘Is it Cecilia?’ said she, sitting up.
‘My dearest aunt, are you asleep? Oh, I fear I have awakened you.’
The girl stood holding back the curtains. As she looked at the bed her
lips trembled a little.
‘I have only this moment heard of your accident,’ she said.
‘I am not hurt, my dear, so don’t distress yourself.’
‘Thank Heaven!’ exclaimed the other.
‘My patience, Cecilia, you are quite upset! What a little blockhead you
are!’
For answer, Cecilia took Lady Eliza’s hand in both her own, and laid
her cheek against it. She said nothing.
‘It must be almost supper-time,’ said the elder woman. ‘I will rise,
for you will be waiting.’
‘May I not bring something up to your room, ma’am? I think you should
lie still in bed. I am very well alone.’
‘Nonsense, child! Go downstairs, and let me get up. I suppose you think
I am too old to take care of myself.’
Cecilia went out as she was bid, and took her way to the dining-room.
Her face was a little troubled, for she saw that Lady Eliza was more
shaken than she had been willing to admit, and she suspected the
presence of some influence which she did not understand; for the two
women, so widely removed in character and age, had so strong a bond of
affection, that, while their minds could never meet on common ground,
there was a sympathy between them apart from all individual bias.
Cecilia was one of those unusual people whose outward personalities
never look unsuitable to the life encompassing them, though their
inward beings may be completely aloof from everything surrounding them
physically. She sat down by the table, her gray gown melting into the
background of the walls, and the whiteness of her long neck rising
distinct from it. Her dress was cut open in front and bordered by a
narrow line of brown fur which crossed on her bosom. Though she was so
slim, the little emerald brooch which held the fastening of it together
sank into the hollow made by her figure; her hair was drawn up on the
top of her head, and piled in many rolls round a high, tortoiseshell
comb. Her long eyes, under straight brows, seemed, in expression, to be
holding something hidden behind the eyelashes, something intangible,
elusive. To see her was to be reminded, consciously or unconsciously,
of mists, of shadows, of moonlit things--things half seen, things
remembered. Her lips closed evenly, though in beautiful lines, and the
upper, not short enough for real beauty, had an outward curve, as it
rested on its fellow, which held a curious attraction. She was very
pale with a pallor that did not suggest ill-health.
Though she was the only young inhabitant of Morphie, she existed among
the dusty passages--dusty with the powdering of ages--and the sober
unconventionality of the place as naturally as one of those white
plants which haunt remote waterways exists among the hidden hollows and
shadows of pools. She was very distantly related to Lady Eliza Lamont,
but, when the death of both parents had thrown her on the world, a
half-grown, penniless girl, she had come to Morphie for a month to gain
strength after an illness, and remained there twelve years. Lady Eliza,
ostentatiously grumbling at the responsibility she had imposed upon
herself, found, at the end of the time, that she could not face the
notion of parting with Cecilia. It was the anxiety of her life that,
though she had practically adopted the girl, she had nothing she could
legally leave her at her death but her own personal possessions.
A few minutes later she came down in the ancient pelisse which she
found comfortable after the exertions of the day. She had taught
Cecilia something of the activity which, though now a part of most
well-bred women’s lives, was then almost an eccentricity. The female
part of the little society which filled Kaims in the winter months
nodded its ‘dressed’ head over its cards and teacups in polished dismay
at the effect such ways would surely have on the young women; at other
times one might hardly have guessed at the lurking solicitude in so
many womanly bosoms; for, though unwilling, for many reasons, to
disagree with Lady Eliza, their owners were apt, with the curious
reasoning of their sex, to take her adopted daughter as a kind of
insult to themselves. It was their opinion that Miss Cecilia Raeburn,
though a sweet young lady, would, of course, find the world a _very_
different place when her ladyship’s time should come, and they only
hoped she was sensible of the debt she owed her; these quiet-looking
girls were often very sly. With prudent eyes the matrons congratulated
themselves and each other that their own Carolines and Amelias were
‘less unlike other people,’ and had defined, if modest, prospects; and
such of the Carolines and Amelias who chanced to be privily listening
would smirk in secure and conscious unison. Even Miss Hersey Robertson,
who mixed a little in these circles, was inclined to be critical.
The advent of a possible husband, though he would present in himself
the solution of all difficulties, had only vaguely entered Lady Eliza’s
mind. Like many parents, she supposed that the girl would ‘marry some
day,’ and, had anyone questioned the probability in her presence, it is
likely that she would have been very angry. Fullarton, who was
consulted on every subject, had realized that the life at Morphie was
an unnatural one for Cecilia and spoken his mind to some purpose. He
suggested that she should pass a winter in Edinburgh, and, though Lady
Eliza refused stubbornly to plunge into a society to whose customs she
felt herself unable to conform, it was arranged by him that a favourite
cousin, widow of the late Lord Advocate of Scotland, should receive the
girl. This lady, who was childless, and longed for someone to accompany
her to those routs and parties dear to her soul, found in her kinsman’s
suggestion something wellnigh providential. So kind a welcome did she
extend, that her charge, whose pleasure in the arrangement had been but
a mixed business, set out with an almost cheerful spirit.
A nature inclined to study and reflection, and nine years of life with
a person of quick tongue, had bred in Cecilia a different calibre of
mind to that of the provincial young lady of her time; and Lady Eliza
had procured her excellent tuition. The widow had expected to find in
her guest a far less uncommon personality, and it was with real
satisfaction that she proceeded to introduce her to the very critical
and rather literary society which she frequented. There were some
belonging to it who were to see in Miss Raeburn, poor as she was, an
ideal future for themselves. Cecilia, when she returned to Morphie,
left more than one very sore heart behind her. To many it seemed
wonderful that her experiences had not spoiled her, and that she could
take up life again in the draughty, ill-lit house, whose only outward
signs of animation were the sheep grazing under its windows and the
pigeons pluming in rows under the weathercock swinging crazily on the
stable roof.
What people underrated was her devoted attachment to Lady Eliza, and
what they could not understand was the fact that, while she was
charmed, interested, and apparently engrossed by many things, her inner
life might hold so completely aloof as never to have been within range
of them.