In the meantime, had the four people who were now to meet known anything
about each other's thoughts they would have been spared something upon
the one hand, and on the other they would have seen cause for much
greater anxiety.
Mr. Sandford knew nothing--but he feared a great deal, and when he saw
the fly appearing he was surprised himself at the sensations he was
conscious of.
Afraid of nothing as a rule, it was quite incomprehensible to him that
he should feel uncomfortable; his sister had always been afraid of him,
what was changed?
Why did one momentary look in her face so disturb him? It must be that
his illness was still affecting him.
Grace and her sister saw it come with different feelings. Grace was
resolved to take her stand from the first, and Margaret was so much
occupied with her anxieties for her sister that she forgot to have any
anxieties for herself; and into this small group of people, intensely
interested, and full of suppressed excitement, came the slight pale
woman, herself conscious of so much conflicting emotion that she had not
much room for acute observation.
"So you are here," said John Sandford, as he gave her his hand. Kissing
between these two had never been in fashion; and then in a manner that
he meant to be imposing, but which only succeeded in being pompous, he
pushed the two girls towards her.
"There," he said, "go and welcome her; Mrs. Dorriman, my wards, Grace
and Margaret Rivers."
Grace held out her hand, with an air which was entirely lost upon Mrs.
Dorriman, who was conscious only of one overpowering wish, to go to her
room and cry without being observed.
She was composed because she had in years gone by learned
self-control--any exhibition of feeling seemed only to place her at her
brother's level of sarcasm.
Margaret, stirred to the depths of her kind and unselfish heart, gave an
appealing look at her sister, and then bending timidly she kissed the
pale cheek and said something in a kindly manner about resting and a cup
of tea.
Mrs. Dorriman was surprised and moved at the girl's action, and allowed
herself to be taken upstairs and looked after in her own room with a
feeling akin to gratitude.
The evidence of friendship offered just when she was feeling so forlorn
came to her as a ray of sunshine. The house, so bare and so
desolate-looking in its exterior, had struck her painfully as she went
up to it. Her last home, with its wooded knolls and a lovely background
of hills, was vividly present to her.
Why, if her brother did not want money, had he sold the place? Surely he
must have had some liking for a home where so many generations had lived
and died, and, as her eye took in the ugly garden and the closely-built
streets at a stone's throw only of his gate, her wonder increased.
She was conscious of a perfect sinking of the heart when she thought
that here must probably all the rest of her days be spent.
Christie's words rushed into her mind, and then came the meeting at the
hall-door, and Margaret's sweetness.
Yes; that was a real comfort to her, and no caress ever was bestowed
with greater results; the drop of kindness just when she so needed
kindness sank into her heart. Whatever the days might hold for her in
the future, this would always be gratefully remembered.
Poor Margaret, having left her, went to congratulate Grace, as she did
herself, upon so pleasant a surprise. Instead of the disagreeable and
authoritative woman they had pictured to themselves, here was a gentle
and timid lady, whom it would be easy to love. Full of this relief, she
found Grace in their own room.
She was leaning against the shutters, and her eyes were fixed upon the
town. Margaret knew by instinct that she was ruffled.
"Anything wrong?" she asked, brightly, going up to her, and laying her
hand affectionately upon her shoulder.
Grace made no reply, but she gave a little shrug, and dislodged her
sister's hand.
"What is wrong, Gracie?" asked Margaret anxiously; "what have I done?
Are you vexed with me, dear?"
"Vexed with you! oh, dear no! but you really are very dull, Margaret.
You make life here difficult for me."
"I make life more difficult for you!" And Margaret coloured, partly from
a just sense of Grace's unfairness, and partly because she was
indignant as well as hurt.
"How can I put that Mrs. Dorriman in her place, when my sister, my own
sister, makes such a fuss about her?"
"It never occurred to me that she was a person you would think of
putting in her place."
"That is just what I complain of."
"She seems to me so gentle and so timid. I think it will be more
difficult for her to take up a position than you think. I cannot fancy
her ever saying anything to you you may not like."
"If she does, I will soon let her know my opinion about her; but you
heard what Mr. Sandford said, and I mistrust these quiet women. I feel
as though she might be as obstinate as possible. Did you notice, her
upper lip?"
"You are so much cleverer than I am, darling, and so much quicker. No; I
only saw that she felt coming here very much, she looked ready to cry."
"Well, Margaret, if you think yourself wiser than I am, I give it up. As
I said before--making a fuss about her at the very outset makes my part
very much more difficult; and after all your violent professions it
seems hard that on the very first opportunity you fail me, and take up a
line of your own."
Poor Margaret! Though it was not the first time that Grace had accused
her of swerving in her allegiance to her, it was the first time such an
accusation had been made on such serious grounds.
Very real tears stood in her soft eyes as she held out her hand to her
sister and said--
"What do you wish me to do? What can I do to please you?"
"To please me! Nothing; only for your own sake, Margaret, for the sake
of being a little consistent, you need not gush over her, and pretend to
like her, before you know whether she is for us or against us."
She turned away, and began to change her dress, her head held high, not
yet forgiving. Margaret felt as though the luxury of tears would be a
relief, but she thought she would make one more effort to win back her
sister's cordiality.
"I am sure," she began, while her lip quivered nervously, "I mean
nothing. I was sorry for her, and showed I felt sorry, but I think I
shall hate her if her coming is to make differences between us."
"It need not make any difference if you are only true to me," said
Grace, firmly. "Leave her alone and watch me, and you can do what I do."
"I never can," pleaded Margaret. "And oh! Grace, sometimes, when you are
disdainful, I feel as if I must go and console. You don't know how hard
it is for people when you draw yourself up and say something cutting. I
always feel so sorry for whoever it is."
"You are a little goose," said Grace melting a little at this tribute
to her power, "you exaggerate everything about me."
But she did not think so.
She threw her arms round her sister now with a protecting gesture she
herself was unconscious of, and hurried to get ready for dinner, in a
way that Grace Rivers hardly would have done some days before. At any
rate, she had learnt one lesson--not to be late for anything Mr.
Sandford was connected with.
The two girls went into the drawing-room only as dinner was announced by
an insignificant little bell, and Mr. Sandford marched off with his
sister.
Placing her at the head of the table, he said in his most pompous
manner, "It is my wish that you act as mistress of my house, and that
all should consider you in that light," and he glared round as though
many were there to hear this, and not only two girls who already
understood this.
Mrs. Dorriman, conscious of an action antagonistic to his wishes, sat
silent, feeling as though she were a traitor; never was there any one
more acutely self-tormenting, more sensitive about anything she did,
than this poor lady. She was perpetually worrying herself about trifles
she might, or should, have done or left undone, and this was no trifle;
though she little thought that her presence in her brother's house, and
her being uprooted from her little home, was due to the colour and
agitation that had betrayed to her brother that she had knowledge of the
papers he wished to possess.
She roused herself after a time and was then for the first time
conscious of Margaret's changed manner.
All the sweetness and kindness which had so cheered her advent, and
lessened the pain of her arrival, had gone, and was replaced by a cold
indifference--which was Margaret's only possible way of being unlike
herself.
Poor Mrs. Dorriman imagined that she was in some way in fault, and
blamed herself for her abstraction, but her efforts were quite
unavailing--the girl's one anxiety was to prove her loyalty and
allegiance to her sister. She was conscious of a dawning feeling of
affection for the little woman who sat looking pale and sweet opposite
Mr. Sandford's massive figure. She had felt her clinging arms round her,
and the feeling had been of comfort and sympathy, but Grace decreed
otherwise, and Grace's word was her law.
Never, perhaps, sat four people together whose thoughts were of so
different a nature; when four people live together, generally, there is,
at any rate a bond of union, some interest, in which, however much they
diverge in their thoughts towards it, forms, at last, something in
common--here there was nothing!
Mr. Sandford, at other times an acute observer, noticed nothing
to-night. The face of his sister opposite to him affected him strangely.
No one had so faced him since his wife had died, and he was so busy
looking through the long vista of years, and seeing the one creature he
had ever loved, looking back at him from the past, that he ate
mechanically and did not speak.
At length he roused himself and addressed Mrs. Dorriman, "I hope you
will bring things into better order," he said abruptly; "if the cook
cannot do better than this, you must change her. I look to you. I'm not
a dainty man, but I pay for the best and I intend having the best."
"And I will do my best," said Mrs. Dorriman, gently.
"You should know about things. I do not know how it was done, but there
was some comfort in the old place, and I suppose you had something to do
with that."
"Of course I did see about things. I do not know if they were very
comfortable."
"They were," he said, emphatically, "and you will find they want
stirring up in this house. The morning I was taken ill there was not one
soul out of bed. I rang and rang and only a wretched girl answered. You
must alter all that. I expect you to keep everyone and everything in
order, and in good order too; and," he added--looking round, not at the
girls but well above their heads--"if any one gives trouble, they go!"
Mrs. Dorriman felt her heart sink. The old manner, the old hard-handed
way of laying down the law, brought to her mind times when in almost
these very words she had read changes distasteful and unfortunate for
her; something of that helpless feeling of her childhood came to her,
when she had been left to struggle on without care or affection, when
her nurse had been banished, and she had to put on her clothes, and
perform for herself all that, till then, had been done by kindly hands.
For, though we live to forgive many wrongs, and time mercifully softens
our regrets, and blunts the edge of our sensibilities, there are two
things we may learn to forgive, but we never learn to forget--a wrong
done to us in childhood, when we were too helpless and too young to
protect ourselves, and a wound to our self-love in later life.
There was a prolonged silence, which became at length a noticeable one.
Then Grace, feeling that it lay with her to show how little the purport
of Mr. Sandford's words affected her, said in a light tone,
"Do you ever see people here, Mr. Sandford?"
"See people!" he echoed; "you can see plenty of people whenever you look
out of the window. See people! why it would be a pleasanter place if
there were not so many to see."
"Of course I do not mean in that sense," said Grace, with dignity; "I
mean, do people call here?"
"I have no doubt plenty of people will call now," he said, with mock
solemnity, which for the moment took her in, as he gave an old-fashioned
bow in her direction.
Grace bridled a little; her influence was beginning to make itself felt
even on this rough man, she thought.
"I am not sure that the callers are just in your line," he said, after a
momentary pause. "Some are I doubt beneath your level, and some I fancy
a good bit above it."
"No one can be above Grace's level," exclaimed Margaret, "she is so
clever, and----"
"Tut, tut," he said, "I wish every one had so good a trumpeter, but
Grace is nothing very wonderful--I have not seen any proof of her
cleverness. Come now, Margaret, what can she do? Can she sew a seam,
knit a stocking, turn her hand to any useful thing, eh?"
"Grace could do everything of the kind if she chose."
"Then she had better try; it's worse to have talents and let them lie
idle than to be born with none."
"If it is necessary," said Grace, still speaking in a measured tone. "I
think I could do these things. I do not think knitting a stocking
requires a great deal of intellect I must say."
"But it requires industry, and I think you are not industrious; however,
my sister, Mrs. Dorriman there, will arrange what you are to do," and,
rising in his usual abrupt fashion, he left the room, leaving Grace in a
state of mind which is difficult to describe.
Next day, breakfast over, Mrs. Dorriman went to see the cook, outwardly
calm but inwardly with very great trepidation.
She herself was one of those quiet people who have a genius for
household management, and she was blessed with that happy absence of
irritability and anxiety to domineer, which wins its own way without any
violent commotion.
Mrs. Chalmers, for some years so completely her own mistress, was as
ready to go off into a blaze as a well-laid fire. She had quite made up
her mind to one thing, that if she was interfered with she would go. She
valued her place or rather had valued it because she was entirely her
own mistress, free to get up and go out and come in without any let or
hindrance from any one. She did not mind having these people, for the
extra work fell more upon her underling than upon herself, but
interference she would not have.
She had put on her best cap and apron, ready to be summoned, and she
would then and there give out her mind--perhaps resign her place; but,
instead of being summoned, Mrs. Dorriman came down, looking so quiet and
yet so evidently resolved to do what she felt to be right and with such
a friendly air and so much politeness, that Mrs. Chalmers's unaccustomed
knees bent, and before she had time to take her stand she was talking
respectfully to Mrs. Dorriman and evidently anxious to please her.
Mrs. Dorriman was shown all the lower part of the house. What a contrast
she thought it to the wide passages and large rooms of the old home. She
gave her meed of praise, made Mrs. Chalmers propose the dinner, made a
few suggestions, and went upstairs, leaving Mrs. Chalmers comfortably
satisfied that she need not give up her place--indeed, anxious to
surpass herself and please the new mistress.
Such is the charm of manner, even down to those who do not in the least
understand why they are charmed or in what way it affects them.
Mrs. Dorriman's next step was one which required much more courage. She
felt that Margaret at sixteen could not have completed her education, to
use the stereotyped phrase--for when is our education complete? She
called the girl to her and began, in the low voice which, to a close
observer, would have betrayed effort and a great shyness, to speak to
her about her work and her idle hours.
"You are young to have left school; too young to give up steady work,"
she said gently; "shall we talk it over together?"
"Grace knows so much. Grace can help me," said Margaret, terribly
inclining to this kindly woman and held back by her sister's words.
"Has Grace any plan? Suppose you call her," said Mrs. Dorriman gently.
"Grace," she began, "about Margaret; are you going to read with her,
have you made any plan? Because she is too young, and, indeed, you are
too young, to leave off all work."
"I think, as I was at the top of my class _always_," said Grace,
bristling up, "that you may safely leave this question to me. I think it
so much better, Mrs. Dorriman, to make you understand at once that
neither Margaret or I will stand any interference."
"I am afraid, without what you call interference, I cannot do my duty,"
said Mrs. Dorriman, quietly, but with a flush of colour in her pale face
that rose and died away again immediately. "What do you do in the
mornings? We do not know each other, my dear Grace; we are to live
together; will it not be for our mutual comfort and happiness if we
agree to try and like each other?"
Grace was a little moved by this appeal, but she was unused to be put in
the wrong and could not accept the situation gracefully.
"There is nothing but that horrid old piano with jingling keys. I cannot
play upon it, or I should play to you."
Mrs. Dorriman went towards it, opened it, and struck a few chords; they
responded with harsh discords. She let the lid down with a little sigh,
music was to her a second nature.
"No, you cannot play upon that," she said, "but books. What books have
you both read? Do you like reading?"
Grace and Margaret looked at each other. A few pages of history each,
read as a task; a few biographies of excellent people as Sunday reading;
a few poetical extracts learned by heart: this was the sum total of
their knowledge--all else in their empty minds a barren waste.
"If you will help me to unpack my books, we may perhaps find something
we might like to read together," said Mrs. Dorriman; "and if you would
like to prove to my brother that you are industrious," she added,
laughing a little, "we can easily get some wool and produce a stocking."
Margaret looked a little eagerly at her sister; she was just at the age
when she missed the regularity of the school life, and when time hung
heavily upon her hands. The new feeling of interest and occupation held
out by Mrs. Dorriman was very pleasant and gave her the first
home-feeling she had in that house.
But a glance at Grace again threw her back, and she said with some
hesitation that it would be nice to unpack the books, and appealed to
Grace for some sign of consent.
Grace, however, was in no mood to be pleased with any suggestion of poor
Mrs. Dorriman's, and, muttering something about having something to do
in her own room, she went off alone there, in stately silence and a
very bad temper.
Mrs. Dorriman led the way to her room upstairs; where, by her wish, her
heavy luggage had been placed, and the lids were unscrewed, and they set
to work doing their spiriting gently but very slowly, as the girl opened
many volumes, and desired to know the history of each. But she knew too
little to be interested, really interested, in anything. Grace would
have concealed her ignorance and merely passed everything over, but
Margaret was more natural, and Mrs. Dorriman was by turns amazed and
amused. The girl seemed to have heard of no one, and to know so little
on every conceivable subject that, every now and again, her questions
were absolutely ridiculous.
A rare edition of Spenser, exquisitely bound, was handled reverently by
Mrs. Dorriman. It had been a favourite book of her father's, and Mr.
Dorriman had had it rebound for her.
"What is that?" asked Margaret, very innocently; "oh, I see, the man
who wrote in what is called black-letter writing."
"My dear," said the amazed Mrs. Dorriman, "surely you cannot have been
taught that."
"Well, there is something funny about his writing, so that trying to
read it was no use."
"I hope to convince you of the contrary," said Mrs. Dorriman with
suppressed merriment; not for worlds would she have hurt the girl's
feelings by laughing at her, and Margaret went away.
Then she seemed to see herself with certainly more education, but very
ignorant still at the age of seventeen, thrown so much upon herself and
her own resources for all amusements and happiness--turning to these
books, and losing herself in silent delight as one treasure after
another opened to her enraptured eyes.
Her husband, himself fond of reading and anxious to win her love in any
way, had spent a great deal in filling her library with books. She had
editions which were priceless of various old authors, and the most
perfect possible collection of poetical works, including many of those
tender French poets from whom in these days it is so easy to borrow
without detection, so completely are they out of date and forgotten;
and, who living lives apart from their fellows, seem to have kept their
old words and chivalrous sentiments pure and free from the worldliness
and the grossness of their time.
But she was recalled to the present by Grace's voice, and then she
looked round to see where she could put her books. There was but one
little bookshelf in her room. She filled that and then went into the
drawing-room to see what could be done there.
She found Margaret in tears, and Grace looking flushed and defiant.
But she had resolved to take no notice of anything not immediately
directed to herself, and Grace left the room.
Relieved by not being asked for any explanation, Margaret threw herself
now again into the matter. The bookshelves, standing almost empty, were
soon comfortably filled, and then Mrs. Dorriman, who had a happy gift of
arrangement, moved the tables and chairs about, made a comfortable
corner for her brother, and gave a look of home to the room which it had
sorely needed, by which time the morning had passed away.
In the afternoon Mrs. Dorriman wished to go and see how Jean fared; but
she did not want to be out of the way if the girls wanted to go out with
her.
Before she rose to find them, however, she heard the hall-door shut, and
she saw them walking down the avenue.
"They might have said something to me," she thought, but she understood
immediately that this was another protest made by Grace against any
"interference."
She went off herself, not sorry to be alone, feeling the squalor of the
narrow streets through which she passed--like all people who are easily
impressed by the absence of any beauty in life. She felt for the poor
human beings who toiled so hard for such a bare and unlovely existence.
The grey houses with their dirty, ill-kept doors, and the "common
stairs," upon which went so many weary feet. In front, a bit of
trodden-down mud and a black stream, in which dirty ducks and dirtier
children paddled. Her spirits sank lower and lower. At length she
arrived at the address she had got from Jean, and was asked to "walk up
the stair" by a shock-headed girl, without any attempt at tidiness,
"busy," and evidently imagining that in that fact lay excuse enough for
all disregard of appearance.
Jean, clean, trim, but with eyes that told their own tale of weeping,
was scrubbing a floor; unaccustomed to such treatment, the shutters and
woodwork all glistened, and the floor was nearly finished. It was one of
the rooms, part kitchen, part bedroom, which you obtain in towns where
overcrowding is the rule. The window was small and high up--worse than
this, it could not open.
"And is this your situation? This the place you were coming to, my poor
dear Jean?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, in faltering tones.
"'Deed, my dear, I may just say, without vanity, I could get mony a
situation; but I am here working housekeeper to two lads--kin to myself,
my dear. No one to hurry me or hinder me, and little to do. So little,
I'll be often down bothering you."
She spoke lightly, afraid of giving way. The sight of Mrs. Dorriman
brought back all her own misgivings of the day before; when she had
found herself in an airless room, with nothing but filth and dirt around
her, and not a "kent face" near her.
But Mrs. Dorriman must never know that she had made a sacrifice to be
near her; and with a fair attempt at a laugh she said--
"You know, my dear, I was always ill to command. Better this than be
under a mistress who might be a harder mistress than ever you were to
do with."
Mrs. Dorriman could not speak. She looked round the room to see in what
way she could help to make things comfortable. She resolved that
something should be done to the windows, and she noted other things. But
the feeling uppermost in her mind was, that it would not be for long.
Jean and herself--they would at no distant day wend their way back to
the hill-side together.
"And are you happy? Are you comfortable, my dear?" asked Jean, "How is
it with you?"
"I am comfortable, Jean, and have all to make me comfortable; but, like
you, I miss the great purple hills, the life and light of the sea, the
freedom and brightness of Inchbrae."
"And yet you speak cheerfully, my dear;" and the poor woman looked
wistfully at her former mistress.
"I speak cheerfully, Jean," and Mrs. Dorriman rose and laid her hand
caressingly upon the old woman's shoulder, "because, Jean, the darkest
and longest day comes to an end; you and I will go back to the light and
the sunshine. We shall go back, Jean, there again."
"But the place is sold; it has passed into the hands of a stranger,"
said the old woman, wondering.
"We shall go back," said Mrs. Dorriman, firmly. "Yes, Jean, that hope
keeps me from despair; that conviction comforts me. We shall go back to
Inchbrae once more," and so saying she left her.