The slip between the cup and the lip came in two ways. The first was the
arrival from India--in advance of Eric who was to get the short leave
which his stepmother thought such a piece of extravagance, in order to
be present at the marriage of his only sister--of Ronald Sutherland, in
order to take possession of the inheritance which had fallen to him on
the death of his uncle.
It was not a very great inheritance--an old house with an old tower, the
old “peel” of the Border, attached to it; a few farms, a little money,
the succession of a family sufficiently well known in the countryside,
but which had never been one of the great families. It was not much
certainly. It was no more to be compared with the possessions in fact
and expectation of Fred Dirom than twilight is with day; but still it
made a great difference.
Ronald Sutherland of the 111th, serving in India with nothing at all but
his pay, and Ronald Sutherland of Haythorn with a commission in her
Majesty’s service, were two very different persons. Mrs. Ogilvie allowed
that had old David Hay been so sensible as to die three years
previously, she would not have been so absolutely determined that
Ronald’s suit should be kept secret from Effie; but all that was over,
and there was no use thinking of it. It had been done “for the
best”--and what it had produced was unquestionably the best.
If it had so happened that Effie had never got another “offer,” then
indeed there might have been something to regret; but as, on the
contrary, she had secured the best match in the county, her stepmother
still saw no reason for anything but satisfaction in her own diplomacy.
It had been done for the best; and it had succeeded, which is by no
means invariably the case.
But Mrs. Ogilvie allowed that she was a little anxious about Ronald’s
first appearance at Gilston. It was inevitable that he should come; for
all the early years of his life Gilston had been a second home to him.
He had been in and out like one of the children of the house. Mrs.
Ogilvie declared she had always said that where there were girls this
was a most imprudent thing: but she allowed at the same time that it is
difficult to anticipate the moment when a girl will become marriageable,
and had better be kept out of knowing and sight of the ineligible, so
long as that girl is a child. Consequently, she did not blame her
predecessor, Effie’s mother, for permitting an intimacy which at six was
innocent enough, though it became dangerous at sixteen.
“Even me,” she said candidly, “I cannot throw my mind so far forward as
to see any risks that little Annabella Johnston can run in seeing Rory
every day--though sixteen years hence it will be different; for Rory, to
be sure, will never be an eligible young man as long as his step-brother
Eric is to the fore--and God forbid that anything should happen to
Eric,” she added piously.
On this ground, and also because Ronald had the latest news to give of
Eric, it was impossible to shut him out of Gilston, though Mrs. Ogilvie
could not but feel that it was very bad taste of him to appear with
these troubled and melancholy airs, and to look at Effie as he did. It
was not that he made any attempt to interfere with the settlement of
affairs. He made the proper congratulations though in a very stiff and
formal way, and said he hoped that they would be happy. But there was
an air about him which was very likely to make an impression on a silly,
romantic girl.
He was handsomer than Fred Dirom--he was bronzed with Indian suns, which
gave him a manly look. He had seen a little service, he was taller than
Fred, stronger, with all those qualities which women specially esteem.
And he looked at Effie when she was not observing--oh, but Mrs. Ogilvie
said: “It is not an easy thing to tell when a girl is not
observing!--for all that kind of thing they are always quick enough.”
And as a matter of fact, Effie observed keenly, and most keenly,
perhaps, when she had the air of taking no notice. The first time this
long, loosely clothed, somewhat languid, although well-built and manly
figure had come in, Effie had felt by the sudden jump of her heart that
it was no ordinary visitor. He had been something like a second brother
when he went away, Eric’s invariable companion, another Eric with
hardly any individual claim of his own: but everything now was very
different. She said to herself that this jump of her heart which had
surprised her so much, had come when she heard his step drawing near the
door, so that it must be surely his connection with Eric and not
anything in himself that had done it; but this was a poor and
unsatisfactory explanation.
After that first visit in which he had hoped that Miss Effie would be
very happy, and said everything that was proper, Effie knew almost as
well as if she had been informed from the first, all that had passed:
his eyes conveyed to her an amount of information which he was little
aware of. She recognized with many tremors and a strange force of
divination, not only that there had been things said and steps taken
before his departure of which she had never been told, but also, as well
as if it had been put into words, that he had come home, happy in the
thought of the fortune which now would make him more acceptable in the
eyes of the father and stepmother, building all manner of castles in the
air; and that all these fairy fabrics had fallen with a crash, and he
had awakened painfully from his dream to hear of her engagement, and
that a few weeks more would see her Fred Dirom’s wife.
The looks he cast at her, the looks which he averted, the thrill
imperceptible to the others which went over him when he took her hand at
coming and going, were all eloquent to Effie. All that she had felt for
Fred Dirom at the moment when the genuine emotion in him had touched her
to the warmest sympathy, was nothing like that which penetrated her
heart at Ronald’s hasty, self-restrained, and, as far as he was aware,
self-concealing glance.
In a moment the girl perceived, with a mingled thrill of painful
pleasure and anguish, what might have been. It was one of those sudden
perceptions which light up the whole moral landscape in a moment, as a
sudden flash of lightning reveals the hidden expanse of storm and sea.
Such intimations are most often given when they are ineffectual--not
when they might guide the mind to a choice which would secure its
happiness, but after all such possibilities are over and that happy
choice can never be made. When he had gone away Effie slid out of sight
too, and sought the shelter of her room, that little sanctuary which had
hid so many agitations within the last few weeks, but none so tremendous
as this. The discovery seemed to stun her. She could only sit still and
look at it, her bosom heaving, her heart beating loudly, painfully like
a funeral toll against her breast.
So, she said to herself, _that_ might have been; and _this_ was. No,
she did not say it to herself: such discoveries are not made by any
rational and independent action of mind. It was put before her by that
visionary second which is always with us in all our mental operations,
the spectator, “qui me resemblait comme mon frère,” whom the poet saw in
every crisis of his career. That spiritual spectator who is so seldom a
counsellor, whose office is to show the might-have-beens of life and to
confound the helpless, unwarned sufferer with the sight of his mistakes
when they are past, set this swiftly and silently before her with the
force of a conviction. This might have been the real hero, this was the
true companion, the mate congenial, the one in the world for Effie. But
in the moment of beholding she knew that it was never to be.
And this was not her fault--which made it the more confusing, the more
miserable. When it is ourselves who have made the mistake that spoils
our lives, we have, at least, had something for it, the gratification of
having had our own way, the pleasure of going wrong. But Effie had not
even secured this pleasure. She would be the sufferer for other people’s
miscalculations and mistakes. All this that concerned her so deeply she
had never known. She faced the future with all the more dismay that it
thus appeared to her to be spoiled for no end, destroyed at once for
herself and Ronald and Fred. For what advantage could it be to Fred to
have a wife who felt that he was not her chief good, that her happiness
was with another? Something doubly poignant was in the feeling with
which the poor girl perceived this.
Fred even, poor Fred, whom she approved and liked and sympathized with
and did all but love--Fred would be none the better. He would be
wronged even in having his heart’s desire conceded to him, whereas--it
all came before Effie with another flash of realization--Fred would
never have thought of her in that way had she been pledged to Ronald.
They would have been friends--oh! such good friends. She would have been
able to appreciate all his good qualities, the excellence that was in
him, and no close and inappropriate relationship could have been formed
between the two who were not made for each other.
But now all was wrong! It was Fred and she, who might have been such
excellent friends, who were destined to work through life together,
badly matched, not right, not right, whatever might happen. If trouble
came she would not know how to comfort him, as she would have known how
to comfort Ronald. She would not know how to help him. How was it she
had not thought of that before? They belonged to different worlds, not
to the same world as she and Ronald did, and when the first superficial
charm was over, and different habits, different associations, life,
which was altogether pitched upon a different key, began to tell!
Alarm seized upon Effie, and dismay. She had been frightened before at
the setting up of a new life which she felt no wish for, no impulse to
embrace; but she had not thought how different was the life of Allonby
from that of Gilston, and her modest notions of rustic gentility from
the luxury and show to which the rich man’s son had been accustomed.
Doris and Phyllis and their ways of thought, and their habits of
existence, came before her in a moment as part of the strange shifting
panorama which encompassed her about. How was she to get to think as
they did, to accustom herself to their ways of living? She had wondered
and smiled, and in her heart unconsciously criticised these ways: but
that was Fred’s way as well as theirs. And how was she with her country
prejudices, her Scotch education, her limitations, her different
standard, how was she to fit into it? But with Ronald she would have
dwelt among her own people--oh, the different life! Oh, the things that
might have been!
Poor Ronald went his way sadly from the same meeting with a
consciousness that was sharp and confusing and terrible. After the first
miserable shock of disappointment which he had felt on hearing of
Effie’s engagement, he had conversed much with himself. He had said to
himself that she was little more than a child when he had set his boyish
heart upon her, that since then a long time had passed, momentous years:
that he had changed in many ways, and that she too must have
changed--that the mere fact of her engagement must have made a great
difference--that she had bound herself to another kind of existence, not
anything he knew, and that it was not possible that the betrothed of
another man could be any longer the little Effie of his dreams.
But he had looked at her, and he had felt that he was mistaken. She was
his Effie, not that other man’s: there was nothing changed in her, only
perfected and made more sweet. Very few were the words that passed
between them--few looks even, for they were afraid to look at each
other--but even that unnatural reluctance said more than words. He it
was who was her mate, not the stranger, the Englishman, the millionaire,
whose ways and the ways of his people were not as her ways.
And yet it was too late! He could neither say anything nor do anything
to show to Effie that she had made a mistake, that it was he, Ronald,
whom Heaven had intended for her. The young man, we may be sure, saw
nothing ludicrous in this conviction that was in his mind; but he could
not plead it. He went home to the old-fashioned homely house, which he
said to himself no wife of his should ever make bright, in which he
would settle down, no doubt, like his old uncle, and grow into an old
misanthrope, a crotchety original, as his predecessor had done. Poor old
uncle David! what was it that had made him so? perhaps a fatal mistake,
occurring somehow by no fault of his--perhaps a little Effie, thrown
away upon a stranger, too--
“What made you ask him to his dinner, though I made you signs to the
contrary?” said Mrs. Ogilvie to her husband, as soon as, each in a
different direction, the two young people had disappeared. “You might
have seen I was not wanting him to his dinner; but when was there ever a
man that could tell the meaning of a look? I might have spared my
pains.”
“And why should he not be asked to his dinner?” said Mr. Ogilvie. “You
go beyond my understanding. Ronald Sutherland, a lad that I have known
since he was _that_ high, and his father and his grandfather before him.
I think the woman is going out of her wits. Because you’re marrying
Effie to one of those rich upstarts, am I never to ask a decent lad
here?”
“You and your decent lads!” said his wife; she was at the end of her
Latin, as the French say, and of her patience too. “Just listen to me,
Robert,” she added, with that calm of exasperation which is sometimes so
impressive. “I’m marrying Effie, since you like to put it that way (and
it’s a great deal more than any of her relations would have had the
sense to do), to the best match on all this side of Scotland. I’m not
saying this county; there’s nobody in the county that is in any way on
the same footing as Fred. There is rank, to be sure, but as for money he
could buy them all up, and settlements just such as were never heard of.
Well, that’s what I’m doing, if you give me the credit of it. But
there’s just one little hindrance, and that’s Ronald Sutherland. If he’s
to come here on the ground of your knowing him since he was _that_ high,
and being Eric’s friend--that’s to say, like a son of the house--I have
just this to say, Robert, that I will not answer for Effie, and this
great match may not take place after all.”
“What do you mean, you daft woman? Do you mean to tell me there has been
any carrying on, any correspondence----”
“Have some respect to your own child, Robert, if not to your wife. Am I
a woman to allow any carrying on? And Effie, to do her justice, though
she has very little sense in some respects, is not a creature of that
kind; and mind, she never heard a word of yon old story. No, no, it’s
not that. But it’s a great deal worse--it’s just this, that there’s an
old kindness, and they know each other far better than either Effie or
you or me knows Fred Dirom. They are the same kind of person, and they
have things to talk about if once they begin. And, in short, I cannot
tell you all my drithers--but I’m very clear on this. If you want that
marriage to come off, which is the best match that’s been made in
Dumfriess-shire for generations, just you keep Ronald Sutherland at
arm’s length, and take care you don’t ask him here to his dinner every
second day.”
“I am not so fond of having strangers to their dinner,” said Mr.
Ogilvie, with great truth. “It’s very rarely that the invitation comes
from me. And as for your prudence and your wisdom and your grand
managing, it might perhaps be just as well, on the whole, for Effie if
she had two strings to her bow.”
Mrs. Ogilvie uttered a suppressed shriek in her astonishment. “For any
sake! what, in the name of all that’s wonderful, are you meaning now?”
“You give me no credit for ever meaning anything, or taking the least
interest, so far as I can see, in what’s happening in my own family,”
said the head of the house, standing on his dignity.
“Oh, Robert, man! didn’t I send the young man to you, and would not
listen to him myself! I said her father is the right person: and so you
were, and very well you managed it, as you always do when you will take
the trouble. But what is this about a second string to her bow?”
Mr. Ogilvie _se faisait prier_. He would not at first relinquish the
pride of superior knowledge. At last, when his wife had been tantalized
sufficiently, he opened his budget.
“The truth is, that things, very queer things, are said in London about
Dirom’s house. There is a kind of a hint in the money article of the
_Times_. You would not look at that, even if we got the _Times_. I saw
it yesterday in Dumfries. They say ‘a great firm that has gone largely
into mines of late’--and something about Basinghall Street, and a hope
that their information may not be correct, and that sort of thing--which
means more even than it says.”
“Lord preserve us!” said Mrs. Ogilvie. She sat down, in her
consternation, upon Rory’s favourite toy lamb, which uttered the squeak
peculiar to such pieces of mechanism. Probably this helped to increase
her annoyance. She seized it with impatient warmth and flung it on the
floor.
“The horrible little beast!--But, Robert, this may be just a rumour.
There are plenty of firms that do business in mines, and as for
Basinghall Street, it’s just a street of offices. My own uncle had a
place of business there.”
“You’ll see I’m right for all that,” said her husband, piqued to have
his information doubted.
“Well, I’ll see it when I do see it; but I have just the most perfect
confidence--What is this, George? Is there no answer? Well, you need not
wait.”
“I was to wait, mem,” said George, “to let the cook ken if there was
nobody expected to their dinner; for in that case, mem, there was yon
birds that was quite good, that could keep to another day.”
“Cook’s just very impatient to send me such a message. Oh, well, you may
tell her that there will be nobody to dinner. Mr. Dirom has to go to
London in a hurry,” she said, half for the servant and half for her
husband. She turned a glance full of alarm, yet defiance, upon the
latter as old George trotted away.
“Well, what do you say to that?” cried Mr. Ogilvie, with a mixture of
satisfaction and vexation.
“I just say what I said before--that I’ve perfect confidence.” But
nevertheless a cloud hung all the rest of the day upon Mrs. Ogilvie’s
brow.