sinking down, it seemed to me, far and low therein; and then I was
buoyed up again to the top, and I tried to make some little struggle
for life. But the waters closed over me again, and I knew no more.
The next minute, as it felt, I was lying with mine eyes shut,
methought, in my little bed at Lauchie. I thought I had dreamed a
bad dream, sith I felt stiff, and sore, and cold, and wet, all over:
but as I awoke, I felt it was truly so: and at last I oped mine eyes
and strove to sit. Then I saw that I sat on the sea-sand, and above
me the blue sky, and I all alone: and an exceeding bitter cry rose to
my lips as it came back upon me what had been. When I fancied I
heard a bit groan no so far from me and I struggled up on my feet,
and crept, rather than walked, wondering I had no bones broken, to a
cleft of the rocks whence methought the groan came. And there was
Jamie Campbell, lying sorely bruised and hurt; and when I stooped to
him he lifted up his eyes, and saith, 'O Patient! I thought all were
drowned, and that there was none here but God.' I said, 'Are you
sore hurt, my poor bairn?' 'Yea,' quoth he, 'for I cannot move nor
sit, and methinks I have some bones broke.' Poor laddie! he was in a
sad way indeed. I tare mine own clothing to bind up his bruises, and
promising to return to him, I set out to see if any other might have
been saved from the wreck, ever hoping to find my father, my mother,
or Mr. Grey. I walked upon the sand to the right hand, and saw no
sign of any soul: then I turned to the left hand, and passing Jamie,
walked far that way. Not a soul did I see, and I was about turning
again in despair, accounting that he and I were the only two alive,
when all at once I fancied I heard Roswith's voice. I stood and
hearkened--sure enough it was Roswith's voice, for I never could
mistake that. I could not hear whence it came, and so weak was I
become with sorrow and weariness and fasting, that methought she was
speaking to me from Heaven. Then I called, 'Roswith!' and heard her
cry as in joy, 'Patient! O Miss Magdalene, Patient is alive! here is
Patient!' And before I knew aught more, her little arms were around
me, and Miss Magdalene, white and wan, stood at my side."
"How had they been saved?"
"They knew that no more than I did, Madam. Truly, Roswith, like a
bit fanciful lassie, said she thought the Lord sent an angel to help
her, and talked of walking over some rocks. I had not the heart to
gainsay the bairn, and how did I know that the Lord had not sent His
angel? Well, we all got back to Jamie Campbell, but what little I
could do for him was no good; he died that forenoon. Then I said we
would set forth and seek some house, for it was eleven hours gone
since we had eaten food. But afore we could depart, the tempest,
which was somewhat lulled, washed up two bodies at our feet, Mr.
Grey's and Elsie Armstrong's. We poor weak maids could do nought for
their burying; but Miss Magdalene cut off a lock of her father's
hair, and kissed him, and wept over him. Then we set out to try and
find some house near. When at last, after two hours' good walking,
we reached a cot, we found to our sorrow that they spake a strange
tongue. Miss Magdalene was the only one of us that could speak their
speech, and she told us that the country where we were thus cast was
the North of France."
"Patient! Patient Irvine, where are you?"
"Here, Sir," answered Patient to the voice without. "Your brother,
Madam, Mr. Philip Ingram."
Celia was half-way across the room before she remembered that one
side of her hair was still floating on her shoulders.
"I will take him into your closet, Madam," said Patient, as she left
the room.
The colloquy outside was audible within.
"Mr. Philip, will you wait a few minutes? I have not ended dressing
Madam's hair, but by the time you have changed your boots she will be
ready to see you."
"Pray what is the matter with my boots?"
"They are splashed all over, Sir. My Lady would not allow you to
come into Madam's closet with such boots as those, which you know."
"Leather and prunella! Never mind my boots nor my mother neither!"
"Sir!" responded Patient, in a tone which admitted of but one
interpretation.
"Well, come, I don't mean----you are always making me say something I
don't mean, you dear old tease!"
"Sir, I must obey my Lady's orders."
"Must you, really? Well, then, I suppose I must. Eh! Madam
Patient?"
"If you will please to change your boots, Mr. Philip," quietly
repeated Patient, "Madam will be ready to receive you in a few
minutes."
"Very well, Madam Patient. I will obey your orders."
And the boots were heard quickly conveying their owner down the
corridor. Celia's hair was soon put up, for she was very wishful to
make the acquaintance of her half-brother; and she was in the boudoir
waiting for him before Mr. Philip Ingram had completed the changing
of his objectionable boots.
"Come in!" she said, with a beating heart, to the light tap at her
door.
"Are you my sister Celia? I am very glad to see you--very glad. I
must congratulate dear old Patient on having finished you sooner than
I expected."
The first greeting over, Celia looked curiously at her half-brother.
He was not like what she had anticipated, and, except for a slight
resemblance about the eyes, he was not like Lady Ingram. He looked
older than his years--so much so, that if Celia had not known that he
was her junior, she would have supposed him to be her senior by some
years. Philip Ingram was of middle height, inclining rather to the
higher side of it, slenderly built, thin, lithe, and very active in
his movements, with much quickness, physical and mental. He had dark
glossy hair, brilliant dark eyes, and a voice not unmusically toned.
"Well, Madam!" he said at last, laughingly; "I hope you like me as
well as I do you."
Celia laughed in her turn, and colored slightly. "I have no doubt
that I shall like my new brother very much," she said. "Whom do you
think me like?"
"That is just what I cannot settle," said Philip, gravely,
considering her features. "You are not like Ned, except about the
mouth; you have his mouth and chin, but not his eyes and forehead."
"Am I like my father?"
"Don't recollect him a bit," said Philip. "He died before I was
three years old."
"Edward is not here, is he?"
"No; he is on his travels."
"Where has he gone?"
"The stars know where! He did not ask me to go with him, and if he
had done, my Lady-Mother would have put an extinguisher upon it. I
wish he were here; 'tis only endurable when he is."
"What is it that you dislike?"
"Everything in creation!" said Philip, kicking a footstool across the
room.
"You speak very widely," replied Celia, laughing, and thinking of
Charley Passmore.
"I speak very truly, as you will shortly find, Madam, to your cost.
Wait until you have been at one of her Ladyship's evening assemblies."
"I am not to go until she is better satisfied with my manners," said
Celia, simply.
Philip whistled. "You will not lose much," he answered.
"Don't you like them?"
"What is there to like?" asked Philip, dissecting the tassel of the
sofa-cushion. "A thousand yards of satin and lace, or the men and
women under them, whose hearts are marble and their brains sawdust!
Celia Ingram, don't let my mother spoil you! From the little I see
of you now, I know you are not one of them. Indeed, I guessed that
from what my mother told me. She said you were absolutely without a
scrap of fine breeding--which she meant as a censure, and I took as a
compliment. I know what your grand ladies are, and what their fine
breeding is! And I hope you are a true English girl, with a heart in
you, and not one of these finnicking, fussy, fickle, faithless
French-women!"
Philip let the sofa-cushion go when he had relieved his feelings by
this burst of alliteration.
"I hope I have a heart, dear Philip," replied Celia. "But can you
find no friends anywhere?"
"Just one," said Philip, "that is, beside Ned. You see, when Ned is
here, he is master; but when he is away, I am not master: her
Ladyship is mistress and master too."
"But surely, Philip, you do not wish to disobey your mother?"
"Disobey my mother!" answered Philip, reflectively, and resuming the
sofa-cushion. "Well, Madam, I never get much chance of doing that.
You don't know the sort of game my mother can play sometimes!"
"What do you mean, Philip?"
"I will tell you what I mean. Celia, there is a very, very pleasant
prospect before you. Imprimis, Madam, you will be converted; that
is, if she can manage it; and if she can't, it will show that you are
a clever hand. In the latter case, the probability is that she won't
think you worth the waste of any more time; but if she succeed in
converting you, she will then proceed to form you. She will turn
your feet out, and pinch your waist in, and stick your head up, and
make you laugh when you are angry, and cry when you are pleased. She
will teach you to talk without interruption for an hour, and yet to
have said nothing when the hour is over. You will learn how to use
your eyes--how to look at people and not see them, and _who_ to see,
or not to see. I can give you a hint about that, myself; a man who
wears no orders is nobody--you may safely omit seeing him. A man of
one order is to be treated with distant civility; a man of two, with
cordiality; but a man who wears three is to be greeted with the most
extreme pleasure, and held in the closest friendship."
"But if I don't like the man, I cannot make a friend of him," said
Celia, in a puzzled tone.
"My dear, that doesn't come into consideration. You will have to
learn never to look at the man, but only at his coat and decorations.
A man is not a man in genteel society; he is a Consul, a Marquis, or
a nobody. Never look at nobodies; but if a Duke should lead you to a
chair, be transported with delight. You have a great deal to learn,
I see. Well, after you have got all this by heart--I am afraid it
will take a long while!--my mother will proceed with her work. The
last act will be to take your heart out of you, and put instead of it
a lump of stone, cut to the proper shape and size, and painted so as
to imitate the reality too exactly for any one to guess it an
imitation. And then, with a lot of satin and velvet and lace on the
top, Mrs. Celia Ingram, you will be finished!"
"Oh dear! I hope not," said Celia involuntarily.
"So do I," echoed Philip, significantly.
"But, Philip, I want to ask you one thing--are you not a Protestant?"
"I?" asked Philip, with a peculiar intonation. "No."
"You are a Papist?" said Celia, in a very disappointed tone.
"No," said Philip again.
"Then what are you?" asked she, astonished.
"Neither--nothing," he answered, rather bitterly. "I am what half
the men of this age are, Sister Celia;--nothing at all. I call
myself a Catholic, just to satisfy my mother; and when I see her
becoming doubtful of my soundness in her faith, I go to mass with her
half a dozen times, to quiet her conscience--and perhaps my own.
But, Catholic as I am--so far as I own to anything--I do not believe
you have read more Protestant books, or heard more Protestant
preaching, than I have. I have tried both religions in turn, and now
I believe in nothing. I have lost all faith, whether in religion, in
morality, in man, or woman. I see the men of this city, Protestant
and Catholic, either bent on pursuing their own pleasures, or on
seeking their own interests--thinking of and caring for themselves
and nothing in the world else; and I see the women, such as I have
described them to you. I find none, of either faith, any better than
the rest. What wonder, then, that the fire of my faith--the old,
bright, happy trust of my childhood--has blackened and gone out?"
"But, Philip, dear Brother," pleaded Celia in great pain, "surely you
believe in God?"
"I believe in _nothing_," said he, firmly.
Celia turned away, grieved at her very heart.
"Listen to me, Celia," resumed Philip, now quite serious. "You will
not betray me to my mother--I see that in your eyes. You see I can
believe in _you_," he added, smiling rather sadly. "There was a time
when I believed all that you do, and more. When I was a little
child, I used to think that, as Patient told me, God saw me, and
loved me, and was ready to be my Friend and Father. All that I
noticed different from this in the teaching of my other nurse,
Jeannette Luchon, was that she taught me to think this of the Virgin
Mary, my patron saint, and my guardian angel, as well as of God. Had
I been struck deaf, dumb, and blind at that time, I might have
believed it all yet. Perhaps it would have been as well for me. But
I grew up to what I am. I watched all these highly religious people
who visit here. I heard them invoke the Virgin or the saints to
favor--not to forgive, mind you--but, before its committal, to
prosper--what they admitted to be sin. I saw my own mother come home
from receiving the Eucharist at mass, and tell lies: I knew they were
lies, I was taught that it was very wicked in me to tell lies, and
also that, in receiving the Eucharist, she had received Christ
Himself into her soul. How could I believe both the one and the
other? I was taught, again, that if I committed the most fearful
sins, a man like myself, sitting in a confessional, could with two
words cleanse my soul as if I had never sinned. How could I believe
that, when from that cleansing I came home and found it no whit the
cleaner? I turn to Protestantism. I hear your preachers tell me
that 'Without holiness no man shall see the Lord;' that God has
'purer eyes than to behold sin;' and many another passage to the like
effect. The next week I hear that one of the pastor's flock, or
perhaps the very preacher himself, has been guilty of some glaring
breach of common honesty. Does the man mean me to believe--does he
believe himself--what he told me from the pulpit only a few days
earlier? Romans and English, all are alike. I find the most zealous
professors of religion in both communions guilty of acts with which
I, who profess no religion at all, would scorn to sully my
conscience. I have seen only one man who seems to me really honest
and anxious to find out the truth, and he is about where I am; only
that his mind is deeper and stronger than mine, and therefore he
suffers more."
"But Edward!"
"Oh, Edward! He is a Protestant after your own heart. But he could
not enter into my feelings at all. He is one of your simple, honest
folks, who believe what they are taught, and do not trouble
themselves about the parts of the puzzle not fitting."
"Philip, I do not know what to say to you," answered his sister,
candidly. "I do not think we ought to look at other people, and take
our religion from what they do, or do not do, but only from God
Himself. If you would read the Bible"--
"I have read it," he interrupted.
"And do you find nothing to satisfy you there?" asked Celia, in
surprise.
"I will tell you what I find. Very ancient writings, and very
beautiful language, which I admire exceedingly; but nothing upon
which I can rely."
"Not in God's Word?"
"How do I know that it is God's Word? How can I be sure that there
is a God at all?"
Celia was silent. Such questions had never suggested themselves to
her mind before, and she knew not how to deal with them. At length
she said--
"Philip, I believe in one God, who is my Father, and orders all
things for me; and who gave His Son Jesus Christ to die for me,
instead of my dying for my own sins. Is this so difficult to
believe?"
"I believe that you believe it," said Philip, smiling.
"But you do not believe it yourself?" she asked, with a baffled
feeling.
"I have told you," he said, "that I believe nothing."
"Philip," she answered, softly, "I do not understand your feelings,
and I do not know what to say to you. I must ask my Father. I will
lay it before Him to-night; and as He shall give me wisdom I will
talk with you again."
So she closed the subject, not knowing that the quiet certainty of
conviction expressed in her last words had made a deeper impression
upon Philip than any argument which could have been used to him.
"Come in!" said Lady Ingram, that afternoon, in reply to Celia's
gentle tap at her door. "I thought it was you, _ma chère_. I am
glad you are come, for I have something to say to you."
"Yes, Madam," responded Celia, resigning herself to another lecture.
"When you have taken dancing-lessons for a month, so that your
deportment is a little improved, I wish you to be present at my first
assembly for this year. Do not be alarmed--I require nothing more of
you than to dress well and sit still. I shall present you to my
particular friends, saying that you do not yet speak French, and none
of them will then address you but such as are acquainted with
English. You must remain in a corner of the room, where your awkward
manners will attract no notice; and I shall put you in Philip's
charge, and desire him to tell you who each person is, and so on.
You will then have the opportunity of seeing really fine breeding and
distinguished manners, and can help in the formation of your own
accordingly, as you will then understand what I require of you."
"Yes, Madam," said Celia again.
"I have ordered stuffs for you, and they are now in the house. My
assembly will be on Thursday week. There is quite time enough to
make you one dress; and you will not appear again until you are
formed--at least, that is my present intention. Thérèse will take
your measure this evening, and cut out the dress, which Patient can
then make. I wish you to have a white satin petticoat and a yellow
silk bodice and train, guarded with lace; and I will lend you jewels."
"Thank you, Madam," answered Celia, giving herself up to all her
step-mother's requirements.
"When you feel tired--I dare say you are not accustomed yet to late
hours--you may slip out of the room and retire to you own apartments.
Nobody will miss you."
"No, Madam," meekly responded Celia again, to this not very
flattering remark.
"I think that is all I need say," pursued Lady Ingram, meditatively.
"I do not wish to encumber and confuse your mind with too many
details, or you will certainly not behave well. I will instruct
Patient how you must be dressed, and I will look at you myself before
you descend to the drawing-room, to be sure that no ridiculous
mistake has been made. Thérèse shall dress your hair. Now help
yourself to the chocolate."
"Patient! will you bring your work into my closet? I want to hear
the end of your story."
"If you please, Madam. I must try the skirt on you in a little
while, by your leave."
So Patient and the white satin petticoat came and settled themselves
in Celia's boudoir.
"You had just landed in France when you left off, Patient. I am
anxious to know if you found friends."
"'Twould make it a very long tale, Madam to tell you of all that we
did and suffered ere we found friends. It was a hard matter to see
what we should do; for had I sought a place as woman to some lady, I
could not have left Roswith alone; and no lady would be like to take
the child with me. So I could but entreat the Lord to show me how to
earn bread enough for my wee sister and myself. The woman of the
house who took us in after the shipwreck was very good unto us, the
Lord inclining her heart to especial pity of us; and she greatly
pressed us to go on to Paris, where she thought we should be more
like to meet with succor. Therefore we set out on our way to Paris.
The Lord went with us, and gave us favor in the eyes of all them whom
we had need of on our road. Most of the women whom we met showed
much compassion for Roswith, she being but a wee bit wean, and a very
douce and cannie bairn to boot. It was in the month of October that
we arrived in Paris. Here the Lord had prepared a strange thing for
us. There was an uncle of Miss Magdalene, by name Mr. Francis Grey,
who was a rich gentleman and a kindly. He had been on his travels
into foreign parts, and was returning through this city unto his
place; and by what men call chance, Miss Magdalene and I lighted on
this gentleman in the Paris street, we returning from the buying of
bread and other needful matters. He was as if he saw her not, for he
afterward told us that he had heard nought of the harrying of
Lauchie, nor of our shipwreck. But she ran to him, and cast her arms
about him, calling 'Uncle Francis!' and after a season he knew her
again, but at first he was a man amazed. When he heard all that had
come upon us, and how Miss Magdalene was left all alone in the world,
father and mother being drowned, he wept and clipped[4] her many
times, and said that she should come with him to his inn, and dwell
with him, and be unto him as a daughter, for he had no child. Then
she prayed him to have compassion upon us also, Patient and Roswith
Leslie; who, as John saith, had continued with her in her
tribulation, and, it pleased her to say, had aided and comforted her.
Mr. Francis smiled, and he said that I, Patient, should be in his
service as a woman for her; and for Roswith, 'She,' quoth he, 'will
not eat up all my substance, poor wee thing! So she shall come too,
and in time Patient must learn her meetly unto the same place to some
other lady.' Thus it was, Madam, that at the time when we seemed at
the worst, the Lord delivered us out of our distresses."
"Then you went back to Scotland?"
"No, Madam, we never went back. For when Mr. Francis heard all, of
the harrying of Lauchie, and the evil deeds of the King's troopers,
and the cruelty of Claverhouse, he said there could be no peace in
Scotland more, and sent word unto his steward to sell all, and remit
the money to him. He bought a house at Paris, and there we dwelt
all."
"It was in her uncle's house, then, that my mother met my father?"
"There, Madam. Sir Edward took her to England, for they married in
January, 1687, while King James yet reigned; and Sir Edward was great
with the King, and had a fine land there. Her son, your brother,
Madam, that is Sir Edward now, was born in London, in the summer of
1688."
"Patient, what kind of man was my father?"
"He was a very noble-looking gentleman, Madam, tall, with dark eyes
and hair."
"Yes, but I mean in his mind and character?"
"Well, Madam," answered Patient, rather doubtfully, "he was much like
other men. He had good points and bad points. He was a kindly
gentleman, and open-handed. He was not an angel."
"You scarce liked him, I think, Patient."
"I ought not to say so, Madam. He was alway a good and kind master
to me. Truly, he was not the man I should have chosen for Miss
Magdalene; but I seldom see folks choose as I should in their places.
Yet that is little marvel, since, fifteen years gone, Patient Leslie
made a choice that Patient Irvine would be little like to make now."
Patient's dry, sarcastic tone warned Celia that she had better turn
the conversation.
"And where was I born, Patient?"