"Would you not have liked to have gone with the other girls, Joanna? for
Conny, she must submit to be a _halflin_ yet. But is it not dull for you
only to hear of a party? country girls have few enough opportunities of
being merry," observed Mr. Crawfurd, with his uneasy consciousness, and
his sad habit of self-reproach.
"Oh, Mr. Crawford, it would not have done--not the first time--Joanna
had much better stay at home on this occasion. She is too well brought
up to complain of a little sacrifice."
It is curious how long some wives will live on friendly terms with their
husbands and never measure their temperaments, never know where the shoe
pinches, never have a notion how often they worry, and provoke, and pain
their spouses, when the least reticence and tact would keep the ship and
its consort sailing in smooth water.
Mrs. Crawfurd would have half-broken her heart if Mr. Crawfurd had not
changed his damp stockings; she would fling down her work and look out
for him at any moment of his absence; she would not let any of her
children, not her favourite girl or boy, take advantage of him; she was
a good wife, still she did not know where the shoe pinched, and so she
stabbed him perpetually, sometimes with fretting pin-pricks, sometimes
with sore sword-strokes.
"My dear, I wish you were not a sacrifice to me." It is a heart-breaking
thing to hear a man speak quite calmly, and like a man, yet with a
plaintive tone in his voice. Ah! the old, arch spirit of the literary
Laird of the Ewes had been shaken to its centre, though he was a
tolerable man of business, and rather fond of attending markets, sales,
and meetings.
"Papa, what are you thinking of?" exclaimed Joanna indignantly. "I am
very proud to help you, and I go out quite as often as the others. Do
you not know, we keep a card hung up on Lilias's window-shutter, and we
write down every month's invitations--in stormy weather they are not
many--and we fulfil them in rotation. You don't often want me in the
evenings, for you've quite given me up at chess, and you only condescend
to backgammon when it is mid-winter and there has been no curling, and
the book club is all amiss. Lilias insists upon the card, because the
parties are by no means always merry affairs, and she says that
otherwise we would slip them off on each other, and pick and choose, and
be guilty of a great many selfish, dishonourable proceedings."
"Lilias is the wise woman in the household. I'm aware there is a wise
woman in every family--but how comes it that Lilias is the authority
with us? It always rather puzzles me, Joanna; for when I used to implore
Miss Swan to accept her salary, and pay Dominie Macadam his lawful
demand of wages for paving the boys' brains in preparation for the High
School, they always complimented me with the assurance that you were my
clever daughter."
"Because they saw your weak side, I dare say, my dear," suggests
Mrs. Crawfurd.
"No, I am the cleverest, papa; I am so deep that I see that it is easier
to live under an absolute monarchy than to announce myself a member of a
republic, and assert my prerogatives and defend my privileges--but I
confess I have a temper, papa. Lilias says I am very self-willed, and I
must grant that she is generally in the right."
"You don't feel satisfied with the bridle, child, till it gets into
stronger hands."
"Yes, Joanna has a temper," chimed in Mrs. Crawfurd, pursuing her own
thread of the conversation. "Strangers think her softer than Susan; but
I have seen her violent, and when she takes it into her head, she is the
most stubborn of the whole family. I don't mean to scold you, my dear;
you are a very good girl, too, but you are quite a deception."
"Oh, mamma! what a character!" Joanna could not help laughing. "I must
amend my ways."
Of course, Joanna was violent at times, as we imagine a sensitive girl
with an abhorrence of meanness and vice, and she was stubborn when she
was convinced of the right and her friends would assert the wrong. Mr.
Crawfurd's idea was, that Joanna had a temper like Cordelia, not when
she spoke in her pleased accents, "gentle, soft, and low," but when she
was goaded into vehemence, as will happen in the best regulated palaces
and households.
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Crawfurd, five minutes afterwards, disturbing
the cosy little party round the tea-table by her sudden air of distress.
"Oh! dear, dear me! Susie has left her pearl sprigs behind her. There
they are on the loo-table. My pearl sprigs, Mr. Crawfurd, that I used
to wear when I was young; they have come in again for the hair, and
Susie settled they were just the thing to give a more dressed look to
her spring silk--these easy way parties are so ill to manage, and Polly
was of the same mind, and she came in to show me the effect, for I
always like to see the girls after they are dressed, and be satisfied
how they look--and there she has forgotten the box, and she will appear
quite a dowdy, and be so vexed."
"I don't think it will signify very much, mamma; Susan looks very well
in her blue silk."
"But it is such a pity, Joanna; so unfortunate,--she only put them out
of her hand for one moment, and you see there they are still;" and so
Mrs. Crawfurd sounded the lamentation, and dwelt on its salient points,
and ingeniously extracted new grounds of regret, till, by dint of
repetition, in ten minutes more Mr. Crawfurd and Joanna were almost
persuaded that Susan had sustained a serious loss.
"Send a servant with the foolery," proposed Mr. Crawfurd, seeking a
little relief, and tolerably affronted at his interest in the question.
"I don't think it would do. Would it, Joanna? There is always such
confusion at Hurlton when there is company? and then they have people
dining. There would be a mistake, and my pearls are no joke, Mr.
Crawfurd. They cost papa fifty pounds when they were so prettily set to
go to Sir William's ball. Ah! you don't remember it. There would be a
fuss, and Lilias would not like it. If Oliver had not been there at
dinner, or Charlie had been at home--"
"Of the two evils choose the least," recommended Mr. Crawfurd, taking up
his book.
"If you are very anxious, mamma," said Joanna, "as it is very early, and
they set out to walk round by the garden at Houndswood to get some
geraniums, which Polly saw yesterday, and set her heart upon; if you
order out the ponies and Sandy, I think Conny and I could easily ride
over to Hurlton, and deliver the little parcel to the girls in time. It
would be a nice evening ride for us, since you are afraid that Conny
hangs too much over her books."
"Thank you, dear; that is just like you, Joanna, you are so sensible and
helpful, no wonder papa monopolizes you. I will be so glad that Susie
has the pearls. Such a pity, poor dear! that her evening should be
spoilt, and they lying ready to be put on. Conny? Yes, indeed, that girl
will be getting spine complaint, or the rickets. In my day it was sewing
in frames that twisted girls; but these books in the lap, the head poked
forward, one shoulder up, and knees half as high as the shoulder, are a
thousand times worse."
"Good luck to you, Jack. Now you deserve your name, since you constitute
yourself groom of the chambers to your sisters."
Joanna laughed back to him. "Come and meet us, papa." And in the
shortest interval given to tie on their hats and skirts, the girls were
racing along to Hurlton.
In that moorland country, with outlying moorland fields where it was not
primitive nature--in a large family like that of the Crawfurds, rough
walking ponies swarmed as in Shetland. They were in constant request at
the Ewes, and the girls rode them lightly and actively, with the
table-boy, Sandy, at their heels, as readily as they walked. Perhaps
Joanna was the least given to the practice, though she availed herself
of it on this domestic occasion.
Joanna was a deception, as her mother said. She was a little, round,
soft thing, whom you would have expected to flash over with sunshine.
She was not a melancholy girl--as you may have been able to judge--and
it was not her blame that anything in her position had developed her
into a thoughtful, earnest character. But then she was always fancied
younger than she really was; people supposed her as easy as her mother,
while she could be vehement, and was firm to tenacity. Perhaps the
reason of the puzzle might be, not only that she had a little of that
constitutional indolence which serves to conceal latent energy, but
that, in trifles, she did inherit, in a marked degree, the unexacting,
kindly temper which causes the wheels of every-day life to turn easily.
She allowed herself to be pushed aside. She accepted the fate or
superstition which linked her with her father's sorrow; she was content,
she thought, to suffer the dregs of his act with him; she wished she
could suffer for him; the connexion had indeed a peculiar charm for her
enthusiasm and generosity, like her admiration of this Corncockle Moor.
Corncockle Moor, in its dreariness, loneliness, and wildness, now hung
out a vast curtain, which Joanna and Conny were skirting under the
golden decline of day, not so far from the spot where the little group
of men had gathered on the autumn morning, and the two sharp, short
cracks, and the little curl of blue smoke had indicated where one life
had gone out, and another was blasted in a single second. Joanna had
scarcely got time to wonder how Harry Jardine and her sisters would look
at each other, and she did not allow herself to think of it now. She
would wait till she had skilfully avoided any chance of encountering the
company, delivered her mother's errand, and was safe with Conny,
cantering homewards. Even then she would not dwell on the notion, lest
her father should allude to the stranger, and she should betray any
feeling to discompose him. "I must take care of papa. Papa is my
charge," repeated Joanna, proud as any Roman maid or matron.
What malign star sent Mrs. Maxwell into the bedroom, just as Joanna had
entered it? She ought to have been only quitting the dining-room for
the drawing-room, but Mrs. Maxwell was always to be found where she was
least expected. She was a good-natured, social, blundering body, whom
girls condescended to affect, because she liberally patronized young
people, proving, however, quite as often the marplot, as the maker of
their fortunes--not from malice, but from a certain maladroitness and
fickleness. Mrs. Maxwell took it into her head to lay hands on Joanna,
and to send out for Conny, whom Joanna had cautiously deposited in the
paddock, and to insist that they should remain, and join the party. She
would take no denial; she never got them all together; it was so cruel
to leave out Joanna and Conny, a pair of her adopted children, since she
had no bairns of her own to bless herself with. She had plenty of
partners, or the girls would dance together. Yes, say no more about
it; she was perfectly delighted with the accession to her number--it
was to be.