There came a great sense of desolation and misery into the heart of
Jeanie after she had witnessed, with eyes averted and without a sign of
affection, wrapped up in offence and estrangement, the departure of her
sister. She was angry with Kirsteen and deeply disappointed, and
incapable of comprehending that it must be so, and that she, Jeanie, was
to be crossed at last and after all, her plaint disregarded, her prayer
refused. It had been her lot hitherto to get all her little requirements
in the end, however her mother or Marg’ret might at first stand out. And
the boys had been much ruled by Jeanie’s will, and had yielded to her as
big brothers often fail to do. She had never been crossed, in the end.
Opposition had been made to her, difficulties insisted upon, but in the
end they had always given way. Only once before had Jeanie come face to
face with a disappointment, which could not by anything she could do be
changed into happiness and content. It was the central incident in her
life, but it had been up to this moment the exception, the one adverse
event she had ever known. And it had been so great, so startling and
astonishing that the girl’s pride and all her strength had been roused
to conceal and surmount it, so that no one should ever suspect that to
her, Jeanie, any slight had ever come. To nobody but to Kirsteen, and to
her only when taken utterly by surprise, had this secret ever been
betrayed. Young Gordon had visited Glendochart from time to time during
the last years. He had come in the intervals of his service while Jeanie
grew and blossomed into womanhood. While she was still half child, half
woman, he had awakened in her heart that first delicious and strange
sense of power which is so great a revelation to a girl. His eyes had
said a thousand indistinct sweetnesses to her, which his lips had not
ventured to confess. He had been reverent of her extreme youth. He had
been kept back by his own uncertain prospects, by his want of money and
unsettled life, a soldier seeking advancement wherever it was to be
found. But none of these honourable reasons had been taken into account
by the girl who, convinced as she had been of his love, had seen him go
away with an amazement and shock of feeling scarcely comprehensible out
of the first absolutism and certainty of youth. He had gone away, saying
never a word. That he was overwhelmed with agitation and distress when
the summons to join his regiment (for which he professed to be looking
eagerly) came; that he had spoken of returning, of hopes that were
involved in his return, with allusions and suggestions that the poor
fellow thought plain enough, had all been invisible to Jeanie, or
disdained by her, as so many evidences of falsehood. Her little
imperious soul had been shaken as by a tempest. She to be forsaken,
wooed and abandoned, she before whom every one bowed, the flower of the
Highlands, as they called her!
And now Kirsteen had done the same. Once again, till the last moment
Jeanie had believed that her sister would yield, and she would have her
way. Just as she had expected that word which never came from Lewis
Gordon, she had expected from Kirsteen if it were but a word, a whisper
of consent at the last. Even while she held her cheek to be kissed,
turning away her eyes which were sullen with anger yet expectation, the
girl expected that Kirsteen might still whisper--“Come.” She had
contrived all in her own mind ready for that last moment--Kirsteen would
say, “Come, I’ll wait for you at the clachan,”--and all unsuspected, the
stranger having visibly departed, Jeanie would steal out, nobody taking
any notice, and fly along the road, and spring up light as a feather
beside Miss Macnab. What would it matter to her that there was no room?
She had planned it all. At the very last, as her mother used to do, as
Marg’ret did, compunction at the sight of Jeanie’s averted face would
seize upon Kirsteen. None of them could bear to see her vexed--and at
the last that feeling would be stronger than prudence or any wise
sentiment. Jeanie within herself had been sure of this; but she had been
deceived. And after she had watched with incredulous angry eyes full of
a mist of bitterness--for tears she would not shed to acknowledge
herself defeated--the actual going away without a word of her sister,
she had fled to her room and flung herself upon her bed, even now not
without an ear intent on any sound that might indicate Kirsteen’s
return, to say yet the tardy “Come,” to her little sister. But the
wintry afternoon closed down, the light faded away, and stillness fell
upon the house. There was nothing to be heard but the echo of the linn
which always mingled with everything, and Merran’s heavy footstep and
Marg’ret’s distant voice in the kitchen. Kirsteen was gone. It was
impossible to believe it, but it was true. She was gone like _him_--him
for whom she had spoken, who was her friend, for like draws to like,
Jeanie cried furiously to herself, in the silence. They had gone
away--both of them!--the man who loved her, and the sister who was
evidently born for no such important end as to save and succour
Jeanie--both! They had gone away, and she was left alone--to meet her
fate.
Jeanie was not of the simple fibre of her family. Perhaps her condition
of spoiled child had done something towards the development of a
different character, but that character was there in the first place to
be developed. Her impatient determination to have what she wanted, to be
happy, to get such amusements, privileges, and advantages as were
comprehensible to her, without consideration as to whether they were
possible or not, or what the result of her satisfaction would be--was
very different both from the steadfastness of Kirsteen, and the calm
self-seeking of Mary. Jeanie had a passion in her which would not be
gainsaid. She did not understand obstacles except as things to be
eluded, pushed aside, thrust out of the way, arbitrarily, imperiously,
whether they were just or even necessary or not. She could not
understand that she had been born for anything but to be paramount, to
be loved and admired, and happy. Her lover and heaven itself had wronged
her by holding back that happiness that was her due. And when there
seemed a prospect that it was to come back to her, Jeanie’s heart rushed
at the hope with a fervour which was largely made up of fury and
indignation. The thought of a future more brilliant than any she could
have had with Gordon filled her with fierce delight, principally from
the hope that he would hear of it, perhaps see it and recognize her
superior bliss and his loss. This, more than a girl’s natural vanity in
being followed by one so much above her in rank, and far more than any
feeling for Lord John, had made his attentions delightful to her. Jeanie
had been taken like her sisters before her to the ball at the Castle;
but hers were not merely the good looks of Kirsteen or the comeliness of
Mary. It had not been possible to keep the little beauty in the
background. Even the noble party of visitors and relations who were
usually so little interested by the lairds and their belongings were
moved by Jeanie. She was introduced among them, danced with, talked to,
while the others of her class looked on grim or smiling as their case
might be. That Jeanie had been excited and delighted by her triumph it
is needless to say; what was much more extraordinary was that her
father, though he said nothing, felt for the first time the true
sensation of that superiority which he had believed in and asserted all
his life. The beauty and brightness which dazzled everybody were but the
natural emanation of her blood, to Drumcarro. “Oh, ay, she’s of the real
auld Douglas kind,” he said with proud carelessness when compliments
were paid him. That the Douglases should gain a triumph through a lassie
was a thing that he had scarcely been able to bring himself to believe;
but when this triumph was accomplished for him, his pride accepted it as
a thing to be looked for. Was not she a Douglas? That explained all.
And when Lord John appeared “incognity” as Marg’ret said, in the little
shooting lodge on the hill, both father and daughter had responded after
their kind. Drumcarro had felt the suggestion of an alliance with the
other noble house which had outstripped his in honours, but never to his
consciousness excelled or even equalled it in antiquity and nobility, to
be a gratifying circumstance and high testimonial to his superiority to
everything around, but he had not contemplated it with any surprise. To
get a Douglas as his wife was honour enough for any duke’s son; but the
thought of being so closely allied to the Duke gave him on his side a
proud satisfaction. It was a great thing for a daughter to do who was
only a daughter, and of no account whatever. Jeanie too felt a subtle
elation in her veins, a sense of high promotion, but not in so simple a
way. When _he_ heard of it what would he think? was the burden of her
thoughts. He would see that Jeanie Douglas was not one to be deserted,
left or taken up again at his pleasure. She pictured to herself meeting
him in some vague grandeur of a party in London, and a hundred times in
her heart rehearsed the bow she would give him, the sweeping curtsey,
the fine progress past him which she would make on her husband’s arm.
The husband himself had a very secondary place--but that did not occur
to Jeanie. He was understood as the occasion of all that grandeur, the
sharer of it no doubt; but the exquisite revenge of such an encounter
was what in her first vague sense of triumph, Jeanie chiefly pictured to
herself.
The girl was not, however, herself enlightened by this curious evidence
of the state of her mind. She had not begun to think about her thoughts;
all was straightforward and simple with her, as with a young savage. On
the other side Lord John did not leave her in any doubt as to his
feelings. His declaration of love was not delayed by any scruples--but
neither was it followed by any of those practical steps which even in
Jeanie’s limited experience were usual in the circumstances. It is true
that Jeanie herself was coy, and held off from the warm love-making of
her suitor, keeping him at arm’s length; but no reference to her father,
none of the suggestions and arrangements into which happy lovers rush
ever came from Lord John’s lips. He spoke indeed of the time when they
should be always together, but said not a word as to when or how that
should be. It was less difficult to Jeanie to keep such a secret than it
would have been for most girls. Her mother was ill, her father, as she
supposed, utterly indifferent, no sister near to whom her heart could be
opened. And to be secret in love was one of the traditions of the time
and country. But still after a time she began to feel that there was
something, she could not tell what, unexpected, undesirable, in her
lover. When he spoke of marriage it was with a scoff and jeer. Even,
however, when the moment came in which he told her that marriage in the
ordinary way, with all the publicity usually surrounding that event, was
impossible to him, Jeanie was not suspicious enough to be defiant.
“You’ll have to steal out some night, and trust yourself to me and let
me carry you away,” he said, “that’s what we’ll have to do. My bonny
Jeanie will trust herself to me.”
“That is what Anne did,” cried Jeanie, startled. “My father would not
give his consent; and he has never seen her again. We dare not say her
name. But maybe,” she added after a pause, “it would be different with
you.”
“I think it would be different with me,” he said, with a laugh that
somehow offended Jeanie, she could not tell how. But then he began to
lavish sweet words and praises upon her, so that the girl’s vanity was
soothed and her imagination excited. He told her where he would take
her--to London, and then abroad, which was a word of no tangible import
to her ignorance, but meant only everything that was brilliant and
splendid--and of all the beautiful places she should see, and the
beautiful things she should have.
“I suppose,” said Jeanie, “we would go to see the king?”
“There is no king, in that way,” he said, with a laugh.
“But there is a court, for we see it in the paper,” said Jeanie. “If it
is the prince, it would just be the same.”
“We’ll not go to the court this time,” he said, with another of those
laughs which wounded Jeanie, she could not tell how.
“I thought it was the right way,” said Jeanie, thoughtfully. What she
was thinking was, that in that case she would not meet _him_, and that
the heart of her triumph would be lost.
“In some cases,” he said, still laughing, “but not in ours, my lovely
dear. We will never think of the world, we’ll think only of love.
Whatever’s pleasantest my Jeanie shall see, but nothing so bonny as
herself.”
“There will be many things in London besides the court--there is my
sister Kirsteen,” said Jeanie, still musing. “Oh, I will be glad to see
Kirsteen.”
“It’s clear I am not enough for my Jeanie, though my Jeanie is enough
for me!”
“Oh, it is not that,” said Jeanie, vaguely. In her heart, however, there
was no doubt a sensation that to dazzle _him_ with her grandeur, and to
make her sister a spectator of her new and exalted life, were the things
to which she looked forward most.
“I’ll not promise to take you to Kirsteen, any more than to take you to
court,” he said. “I’ll promise nothing that takes your mind off me. To
think of having you all to myself is enough for me. I mean to carry you
off to some Italian bower, where there will be nothing to do but love,
and love, and----”
“Till you are tired of love, as you call it, and me too,” said Jeanie,
with a little disdain.
He gave her a curious look, wondering if at last the little simplicity
had fathomed what he really meant. But Jeanie’s eyes were all
untroubled, and her brow serene. She was disappointed and dissatisfied
with his way; but only because it was not her way, and contrary to her
expectations, not that she had divined the shame that was in his heart.
But one day a gleam of strange light burst upon the girl. He had been
telling her of one of his friends, who had gone to those Italian bowers,
and of the life he led; the lake, the moonlight, the myrtles and roses
in the middle of winter, till Jeanie’s eyes grew bright. “We will get
him to look for a place for us, on the water’s edge,” Lord John said. No
thought of suspicion, or of finding her lover out, was in Jeanie’s mind.
She asked, as a girl does, eager to hear of others in the same
circumstances as herself, “And is he married, too?”
For the moment she could not comprehend the hurried demonstration, the
embarrassment of Lord John among his caresses, the laugh, always so
distasteful to her. “They don’t think of that out there,” he said, “they
don’t put you in chains out there, they trust everything to love--as my
Jeanie is going to do.”
What did it mean? She was always shy of these vehement caresses--she
freed herself, with a strange chill upon her, and said that she must go.
They had been wandering by the side of the linn, under the bare,
over-arching trees; and Jeanie would not listen to the explanations
which he was anxious to make, and which she understood no more than the
offence. She was sure of nothing but that she must get away.