If I may not speak, I pray,
All the words I have to say,
Where shall I go hide them?
Nought say I ’gainst words of thine,
Do not listen, father mine--
So you need not chide them.--SONG.
Hope Oswald was very much puzzled. She could by no means understand why
this perfectly unreasonable interdict should be put upon her free and
unfettered speech, and was not in any degree inclined to submit to it.
She resolved to be at the bottom of the mystery.
Mr Oswald and William were no sooner fairly lodged in the office the
next morning than Hope began her investigation. Mrs Oswald sat sewing
again; she had an old-fashioned horror of idleness.
“Mother,” said Hope, “I want you to tell me what ails Helen Buchanan?”
“Hush, my dear!” said her mother.
“But why should I hush, mamma? and why am I never to speak about Helen?
William told me the very same; and it’s too bad--as if you could not
trust me!”
“What makes you think there is anything to trust you with, Hope?” said
Mrs Oswald.
“Oh, I know--because you will not let me speak, and say always, hush!
hush! Mother, do tell me: what is the matter with Helen?--what ails
her?”
“Nothing ails her, Hope--she is perfectly well.”
Hope became very impatient.
“But you know you don’t mean that, mamma; there _is_ something wrong;
and would it not be better to tell me than to be always saying ‘hush!’”
Mrs Oswald smiled.
“It is not always so easy to tell, Hope:--for instance, why do you call
me ‘mamma’ one moment, and ‘mother’ the next?”
“Oh, that is easy,” said Hope; “because the girls at school say mamma,
and it sounds best there; and when I come home, William says mother,
and it is home-like and--and the right word; but I forget sometimes, and
mix them at first. So now, mother, if you please, tell me about Helen
Buchanan.”
“You are a very pertinacious girl,” said Mrs Oswald; “but remember,
Hope, if I tell you this, that you must be very prudent and sensible,
and never mention it again.”
“I will be very prudent and sensible, mother,” promised Hope, with a
reservation.
Mrs Oswald hesitated still: the impatient Hope volunteered to thread her
mother’s refractory needle, and urged her petition still more warmly. A
slight fugitive smile crossed the good mother’s face--then she became
very grave.
“Helen’s father died long ago; he used to be very fond of you when you
were a baby, Hope; but you cannot remember him.”
“Oh, yes! was he not very thin and pale, mother, with a white high
forehead, like Mossgray?--I do mind him.”
“Hush, Hope! you are interrupting me now. He was a very delicate, gentle
man, this poor Mr Buchanan; but he was not at all like Mossgray, and
when he died, your father and he were not good friends.”
“Yes, mother, I know that,” said the disappointed Hope; “but is that
all?”
“Wait a little; do not be so impatient!” said Mrs Oswald. “And foolish
people said that your father’s sternness killed this delicate man. I
believe Mrs Buchanan thinks so still.”
Hope started.
“Then Helen will not be friends with us because my father was poor Mr
Buchanan’s enemy:--is that it, mother?”
“No, Hope, that is not it. Helen knows that her father was a weak man,
and Helen is a wise, good girl, and would not do anything so foolish;
but Helen is only a poor schoolmistress, Hope, and your brother William,
you know, will be rich.”
“Oh, mamma!” exclaimed Hope, clapping her hands as the conjunction of
these two names threw sudden light upon the mystery, “are they going to
be married?”
“I very much fear you are not the sensible person you call yourself,”
said her mother; “your father will not let them be married, Hope.”
Hope’s bright face became suddenly blank.
“Mother, there is nobody like Helen Buchanan in all Fendie! why will my
father not let them be married?”
“Because her father did him wrong, Hope; and because she is poor.”
“Because she is poor!--Helen is a gentlewoman, mother!--and because her
father did wrong! But that is not Helen’s fault. If my father did wrong,
no one would blame William or me.”
“Take care, Hope; you are treading on dangerous ground,” said Mrs
Oswald; “and though it is not Helen’s fault, your father has made up his
mind, and William must submit.”
“But, mother,” said Hope doubtfully, “William is old--William is a man.”
“And what then?”
“I don’t know,” said Hope, hesitating; “perhaps it would be quite wrong,
but--mother, is William always to do what my father bids him?”
“And why should he not, Hope?” said Mrs Oswald; “does it alter his duty
that he is old?”
“I don’t know, mother,” said Hope again; “but if my grandfather were
living now, my father would not always ask him before he did anything,
as I ask you; and perhaps William is right, and perhaps--mother, what
would my father do if William disobeyed him?”
“I believe he would never speak to him again,” said Mrs Oswald.
Hope shrank back and looked afraid.
“And all that he has, Hope, he would take from William and give to you.”
“To me, mother? that would not do William any harm,” said Hope, looking
up brightly; “though if my father would not _speak_ to him--but he
would, mother--he could not help it.”
“My dear, I have known your father longer than you have,” said Mrs
Oswald; “and besides, Hope, Helen Buchanan would not consent if your
father did not consent; she is as firm as he is.”
“Then it is all because everybody is proud, mother,” said Hope, turning
away disconsolately, “and would rather make other folk unhappy than give
up their own will.”
“There are some things in the world, Hope,” said Mrs Oswald, “that are
of more importance than even making people happy.”
“I know, mother,” said Hope: “it is best to be _right_ always, whether
we are happy or not; but this is not right, I am sure--my father does
not know--there is nobody in Fendie like Helen Buchanan!”
Mrs Oswald sighed.
“You must not speak so of your father, Hope, he knows what is right
better than you do.”
Hope looked sceptical; those frank instinctive impulses of the young
heart, which had no complicated mesh of secret motives to hinder its
prompt out-going, were perhaps better guides after all than the groping,
worldly wisdom of elder minds; wisdom whose wary steps are supposed to
be guided by the caution of clear-sightedness, when it is only the timid
caution of the blind.
“But I may go to see Helen Buchanan, may I not, mother?” asked Hope,
after a pause.
“Surely, Hope; I have no wish to restrain you, and your father will not,
I dare say, unless you speak of her again before him, as you did
yesterday; and you must be cautious of that, for it only aggravates your
father’s prejudice and vexes William, without doing any good.”
“And am I not to speak about Helen at all?” said Hope.
“No, my dear, not now. I do not forbid you praising Helen as frankly as
you blame Adelaide Fendie--and you must restrain that last propensity of
yours a little, Hope--but do it cautiously and warily, and let me see
something of this wisdom and good sense which Miss Swinton has
discovered. You see I trust you, Hope.”
Hope drew herself up.
“I will be very careful, mother, no fear, but may I go to see Helen
now?”
“Helen will be busy now, Hope.”
“Well, then, come to the Waterside, mother; I want to see Mossgray, and
I want to see Maggie Irving. Come!”
The indulgent mother laid aside her work and went.
Friarsford was a farm-house standing on a little eminence at some
distance from the Water, and Maggie Irving was the farmer’s daughter.
She was a year older than Hope Oswald, and one of her Fendie intimates.
The house was only a little out of the direct road to Mossgray, and Mrs
Oswald and her daughter turned up the winding by-way to make their first
visit there.
Matthew Irving of Friarsford was wealthy and had some ambition. He was
exceedingly desirous to give his children good education, and with the
masculine part of them he had succeeded tolerably well, thanks to the
academy of Fendie; but the hapless Maggie was less fortunate. She was
the only daughter; especial pains, and care, and labour had been
expended upon her training, and the father and mother, exulting over
their accomplished girl, thought the process a perfectly satisfactory
and successful one.
Maggie had been sent to the house of a relative in one of the busy towns
of Lancashire to learn English, and she had learnt it to perfection.
Maggie had a piano, and could play you against time, all manner of
inarticulate music. Maggie could draw, as three or four copies made from
French lithographs--_patterns_, as Maggie and her mother called
them--hung there, elaborately framed, upon the walls, to testify.
Moreover, Hope Oswald’s quick movements had swept upon the ground a
couple of handsome specimens of knitting, displayed upon the arm and
cushions of the sofa, before Hope had been ten minutes in the lightsome
cheerful apartment, which was the comfortable parlour once, but had now
obtained brevet rank as drawing-room. As Maggie hastened to arrange
them, she pointed out the stitch to her visitor, and offered to show her
the various stock she had. Hope was dismayed; never girl of fourteen was
more innocent of stitches than she, and this branch of her friend’s
acquirements had very little interest for her. It was not so with Mrs
Irving, a comfortable, kindly, vulgar woman, who was very proud of her
daughter’s accomplishments, and eager to exhibit them.
“Miss Hope will give you a tune, Maggie,” she said; “and you can let her
hear how you come on yoursel. She’s very good at it, Mrs Oswald, though
she hasna had the same advantages as Miss Hope.”
Hope started in alarm.
“On, don’t let us have any music, Mrs Irving!--I mean, I shall be very
glad to hear Maggie, but I don’t like playing.”
Mrs Irving thought the young lady only coy.
“Hout, Miss Hope! a’body that’s very good at it makes that excuse, ye
ken; and I’m sure ye must aye be getting new tunes in Edinburgh.”
“But I don’t like new tunes,” pleaded Hope.
“Oh, Miss Oswald!” said the astonished Maggie, in gentle reproof.
Hope was offended; Maggie Irving called her Miss Oswald; Maggie Irving
had nothing to talk about, after so long a separation, but stitches and
new tunes! Their friendship was at an end. Hope walked indignantly to
the piano, and played her favourite air of “Hame, hame, hame!”
“It’s a bonnie bit simple thing that,” said Mrs Irving, looking proudly
at her own accomplished performer, as she took her place at the
instrument, by the side of which Hope and her mother were reluctantly
compelled to sit for a dull half hour, listening to jingling pieces of
music, whose brief moment of fashion was long ago over, and which had
never had anything but fashion to recommend them.
But Mrs Irving was delighted, and Maggie was exceedingly complacent.
Alas, poor Maggie! her fingers were highly educated; her mind was
fallow. The thorough training of Hope’s Edinburgh school these good folk
in Fendie could not reach; but they could reach the superficials, and
they were contented.
“Well, Hope,” said Mrs Oswald, in answer to a burst of wonder and
disappointment, when they had left Friarsford and its accomplishments
behind them; “you remember how you used to resist and be disobedient
when your father said that Matthew Irving’s daughter was no companion
for you.”
“But, mother,” said Hope solemnly, “Adelaide Fendie is just the
same--and Adelaide ought to be a lady, if being anybody’s daughter would
make her one; but she is not, for all that.”
“Adelaide is only a girl like yourself, Hope.”
“But she is not a gentlewoman, mamma; and she talks about stitches and
tunes like Maggie Irving--and I’m sure I don’t know what’s the use of
them.”
Hope could not forget her disappointment; there was only one consolation
in it. In the midst of all these twinkling artificial lights, the star
of Helen Buchanan rose clearer and clearer. Helen was a gentlewoman; and
what did it matter that she was poor?
“Yonder is Mossgray!” exclaimed Hope, as they approached the house;
“yonder he is, up among the trees, and he has got something like a
letter in his hand. Do you see him, mother?”
The bank of the wan Water sloped upward into gentle braes, a little
beyond the house of Mossgray, and the laird was certainly there, walking
among the trees, with a step altogether unlike his usual meditative,
slow pace. Hope Oswald was an especial favourite with Mr Graeme of
Mossgray, and he liked her mother; but Mrs Oswald had too much regard
and sympathy for the old man to intrude on his retirement.
“We will go in and see Mrs Mense, Hope,” she said; “Mossgray seems
occupied just now. You will see him another day.”
The large old-fashioned kitchen had a separate entrance to itself. The
mass of buildings altogether bore evident testimony to the different
periods of their erection, and looked, as their owner said, a natural
growth of the homesoil in which the grey walls and rude, dark, massy
tower seemed so firmly rooted. A large garden descended from the most
modern front of the house to the water, where it was deeply fringed with
willows. The clipt, fantastic trees of a generation which admired such
clumsy gambols of art were scattered through it, and there was a
sun-dial, and many prim flower-beds; but the cherished lilies of
Mossgray were not in these stiffly-angled enclosures; their fresh green
leaves were beginning to shoot up in the freer borders--those borders on
which they gleamed in the dim summer evenings, like errant rays of the
moon.
Mrs Mense was a very old woman now, and invalided. She sat in a great
elbow-chair by the fireside, spinning feebly sometimes, and sometimes
giving counsel, by no means feebly, to her self-willed niece, the
housekeeper _de facto_. The establishment was a very limited one;
besides Janet, and the miscellaneous personage known as “Mossgray’s
man,” there was only one other servant in the house.
“Eh, Miss Hope, is this you?” said Mrs Mense, “and your mamma nae less,
minding the auld wife as she aye does. Effie, ye tawpie, get chairs to
the ladies--or are ye gaun ben, Mrs Oswald, to wait for Mossgray?”
“Mossgray is out, I see,” said Mrs Oswald. “No, Hope came to see you,
Mrs Mense; we will sit down beside you awhile. That will do, Effie.”
“And look till her how she’s grown!” exclaimed the old woman, “and stout
wi’t. Ye’re no gaun to let down our credit, Miss Hope. Ye’ll let the
Edinburgh folk see what guid bluid is in thir southland parts. Effie,
gar Janet gie ye the wee cheeny luggie fu’ o’ cream. Ye mind it, Miss
Hope? it belangs mair to you than to onybody about Mossgray.”
“But, Mrs Mense,” said Hope, “you did not call Crummie’s calf after me,
as you said you would.”
“My dear lamb! ye wadna have had me to ca’ the muckle langleggit haverel
of a beast after you, and you a winsome young lady? Na, I ken better
manners--and forbye Mossgray said it was nae compliment. But I’ll tell
ye what, Miss Hope, there’s a new powny--the bonniest creature!--and
ye’se get the naming o’t, gin ye like.”
“Where is it?--wait till I see it, mamma!” cried Hope, starting up. Hope
had, like most country girls, an especial liking for youthful animals.
“Ye maun hae your cream first,” said the housekeeper, as Effie
approached with the china luggie, in which, from time immemorial, Hope
had received a draught of rich cream on her every visit to Mossgray.
Hope hardly took time to taste it; she was too eager to see the “new
powny.”
“Did you see the laird, Mem?” said Mrs Mense, with some appearance of
anxiety, as Mrs Oswald waited for her daughter’s return.
“We saw him on the knowe,” said Mrs Oswald; “but did not disturb him, as
he seemed occupied. I fancy that is one of his favourite spots, Mrs
Mense.”
“Na--I’m meaning I dinna ken,” said the old woman; “but he’s gotten some
letter the day that’s troubled him--I canna bide to see him fashed, and
he’s just unco easy putten about. Janet, div ye hear the clock? it’s twa
chappit, and the dinner no to the fire!”
“I ken what I’m doing, auntie,” returned the impatient Janet.
“Ye dinna ken onything very wise then,” said the dethroned monarch of
the kitchen; “it’s a bonnie-like thing that the laird, honest man, maun
wait for his dinner, aboon a’ the rest o’ his troubles! I heard him
travelling up and down in his ain study-room in the tower, after thae
weary letters came in. What gars folk write when they’ve naething but
ill-tidings to tell about, I wad like to ken? and syne out to the
Waterside as he aye does when he’s troubled--I canna bide, as I was
saying, to see him fashed, for--”
“Oh, Mrs Mense!” exclaimed Hope, bounding in, “be sure and tell Mossgray
that he is not to call the pony anything till I come back again. Mamma,
come and see it; it’s like as if its coat was all sprinkled with snow--I
think I will call it Spunkie; but that’s not a bonnie name. Mind, Mrs
Mense, that nobody is to give it its name but me.”
Mrs Mense promised, and after some further lamentation about her
master’s supposed trouble, resumed so keenly the dinner controversy with
Janet, that her visitors withdrew. It was yet too early to visit Helen
Buchanan, so Hope, expatiating on the beauty of the pony, returned with
her mother, home.