The Ladies Lindores. Volume 1 of 3

"I do not think I can explain it to you, Nora," said Lady Caroline. "There are so many things one cannot explain. Scarcely anything in this world concerns one's very self alone and nobody else. That always seems to make confidences so impossible."

"Never mind confidences," cried Nora, wounded. "I did not ask why. I said if you really wanted me, Carry – "

"I know you would not ask why. And there is nothing to tell. Mr Torrance has had a mistaken idea. But it is not that altogether. I am frightened without any reason. I suppose it is as my mother says, because of all the old associations he brings back. Marriage is so strange a thing. It cuts your life in two. What was before seems to belong to some one else – to another world."

"Is it always so, I wonder?" said Nora, wistfully.

"So far as I know," Carry said.

"Then I think St Paul is right," cried the girl, decisively, "and that it is not good in that case to marry; but never mind, if you want me. There is nothing to be frightened about in John Erskine. He is nice enough. He would not do anything to make you uncomfortable. He is not ill-tempered nor ready to take offence."

"I did not know that you knew him so well, Nora."

"Oh yes – when you have a man thrust upon you as he has been – when you have always heard of him all your life; when people have said for years, – in fun, you know, of course, but still they have said it – 'Wait till you see John Erskine!'"

Nora's tone was slightly aggrieved. She could not help feeling herself a little injured that, after so much preparation and so many indications of fate, John Erskine should turn out to be nothing to her after all.

Lady Caroline listened with an eager countenance. Before Nora had done speaking, she turned upon her, taking both her hands. Her soft grey eyes widened out with anxious questions. The corners of her mouth drooped. "Nora, dear child, dear child!" she said, "you cannot mean – you do not say – "

"Oh, I don't say anything at all," cried Nora, half angry, half amused, with a laugh at herself which was about a quarter part inclined to crying. "No, of course not, Car. How could I care for him – a man I had never seen? But just – it seems so ludicrous, after this going on all one's life, that it should come to nothing in a moment. I never can help laughing when I think of it. 'Oh, wait till you see John Erskine!' Since I was fifteen everybody has said that. And then when he did appear at last, oh, – I thought him very nice – I had no objection to him – I was not a bit unwilling, – to see him calmly turn his back upon me, as he did to-day at the station!"

Nora laughed till the tears came into her eyes; but Lady Caroline, whose seriousness precluded any admixture of humour in the situation, took the younger girl in her arms and kissed her, with a pitying tenderness and enthusiasm of consolation. "My little Nora! my little Nora!" she said. She was too much moved with the most genuine emotion and sympathy to say more; at which Nora, half accepting the crisis, half struggling against it, laughed again and again till the tears rolled over her cheeks.

"Lady Car! Lady Car! it is not for sorrow; it is the fun of it – the fun of it!" she cried.

But Carry did not see the fun. She wanted to soothe the sorrow away.

"Dearest Nora, this sort of disappointment is only visionary," she said. "It is your imagination that is concerned, not your heart. Oh, believe me, dear, you will laugh at it afterwards; you will think it nothing at all. How little he knows! I shall think less of his good sense, less of his discrimination, than I was disposed to do. To think of a man so left to himself as to throw my Nora away!"

"He has not thrown me away," cried Nora, with a little pride; "because, thank heaven, he never knew that he had me in his power! But you must think more, not less, of his discrimination, Carry; for if he never had any eyes for me, it was for the excellent good reason that he had seen Edith before. So my pride is saved – quite saved," the girl cried.

"Edith!" Carry repeated after her. And then her voice rose almost to a shriek – "Edith! You cannot mean that?"

"But I do mean it. Oh, I know there will be a thousand difficulties. Lord Lindores will never consent: that is why they go and do it, I suppose. Because she was the last person he ought to have fallen in love with, as they say in the 'Critic' – "

"Edith!" repeated Carry again. Nora was half satisfied, half disappointed, to find that her own part of the story faded altogether from her friend's mind when this astonishing peace of intelligence came in. Then she whispered in an awe-stricken voice, "Does my mother know?"

"Nobody knows – not even Edith herself. I saw it because, you know – And of course," cried Nora, in delightful self-contradiction, "it does not matter at all when I meet him now; for he is not thinking of me any longer, but of her. Oh, he never did think of me, except to say to himself, 'There is that horrid girl again!'"

This time Nora's laugh passed without any notice from Carry, whose thoughts were absorbed in her sister's concerns. "Was not I right," she said, clasping her hands, "when I said I was frightened for John Erskine? I said so to my mother to-day. What I was thinking of was very different: that he might quarrel with Mr Torrance – that harm might come in that way. But oh, this is worse, far worse! Edith! I thought she at least would be safe. How short-sighted we are even in our instincts! Oh, my little sister! What can I do, Nora, what can I do to save her?"

Nora received this appeal with a countenance trembling between mirth and vexation. She did not think Edith at all to be pitied. If there was any victim – and the whole matter was so absurd that she felt it ought not to be looked at in so serious a light, – but if there was a victim, it was not Edith, but herself. She could only reply to Carry's anxiety with a renewed outbreak of not very comfortable laughter. "Save her! You forget," she said, with sudden gravity, "that Edith is not one to be saved unless she pleases. And if she should like Mr Erskine – "

"My father will kill her!" Lady Caroline cried.

CHAPTER XIII

Lord Rintoul made his appearance in the house which his parents had hired in Eaton Place on the day before their arrival, with a mixture of satisfaction and anxiety. He was pleased, for he was a good young fellow on the whole, and fond of his mother and sister; but he was anxious, for he was a Guardsman – a young man about town, "up," as he modestly hoped, to most things – and they were people from the country, who in all probability were not quite dressed as they ought to be, or prepared for the duties of their position. These mingled sentiments were apparent in the young man's face as he walked into the room in which Lady Lindores and Edith were sitting together, working out on their side a programme of the things they were going to do. Notwithstanding Carry, they were both tolerably cheerful, looking forward to the excitement of this unaccustomed life with a little stir of anticipation; for neither mother nor daughter was blasée, and the thrill of quickened existence, in a place where human pulses beat more rapidly and the tide runs fuller than elsewhere, moved them in spite of themselves. Lady Lindores would have said, and did say, that her heart was not in it – and this in perfect good faith; yet when she was actually in London, though her daughter's pale face and lonely life were often present with her, the impression was less strong than when that white face, as poor Carry said, was constantly before her eyes. She was a handsome woman of forty-five, with a liking for all that was beautiful, a love of conversation and movement, much repressed by the circumstances of her life, but always existing; and when thus free for a moment from habitual cares, her heart rose almost in spite of herself, and she was able to believe that things would set themselves right somehow, even though she did not see from whence the alleviation was to come. She was discussing with Edith many things that they had planned and thought of, when Rintoul arrived. Their plans embraced various matters which were not within the range of that golden youth's ideas. When they had been in London before, they had vexed his soul by the list of things they had wanted to see. The sights of London! such as country people of the lower orders went staring about: Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, even St Paul's and the Tower! – things which he had never seen nor thought of seeing himself, though he often passed the former, not taking any notice, thinking it was "bad form" to show any rustic curiosity. His mother and the girls had scoffed at all he said about "bad form;" but now they were accustomed to their change of circumstances, and everything was different. Would they be reasonable, and acknowledge that there were certain matters in which he was an authority now?

Rintoul himself had made, he was conscious, immense progress since he first stepped upon that platform of rank to which he was now accustomed. At first the elevation had made him a little giddy. Young Robin Lindores, of the 120th, had been on the whole a very simple young fellow, pleased to feel that he had the benefit of "good connections," and an uncle who was an Earl, though they had never been of any use to him. Even in that innocent stage he was, as is natural to a young man, vaguely critical of the proceedings of his "people." He thought it was a pity they should live abroad. Were they at home, it appeared certain to him that he would now and then have been invited to Lindores for the shooting, and been taken some notice of. But on the other hand, he acknowledged that to live abroad was cheap, and that it was better for him on the whole to say "My people are abroad," than to be obliged to acknowledge that they were living in a little country cottage somewhere, or in Brighton or Cheltenham, or some shabby-genteel place. And he did his duty very cheerfully, and kept tolerably well within his allowance, and took such pleasures as came in his way, without any very clear outlook towards the future, but always with some hope of active service and promotion. So long as he had "something to do" – a little cricket or boating, a tolerable amount of parties – he neither looked too closely into the pedigree of his entertainers, nor gave himself any airs on the subject of his own birth and connections. For what was he, after all? – not even an Honourable himself, but the son of an Honourable – plain Mr Lindores, no more than Mr Smith or Mr Jones. It never occurred to him that his position demanded anything of him in those days; for what position had he but that of a lieutenant in the 120th? In society, though he would pretend now and then, like the rest, to talk of this and that girl as having money – or "tin," as it was more usually called – such a prudential consideration never went beyond the mere light flutter of talk; and he liked to dance, not with the heiresses, but with the prettiest girls and the best dancers, as was natural and befitting – to marry anybody being entirely out of his rôle. He knew himself to be wiser than his mother, and to know more of life than even the governor himself, who (no fault of his) was growing an old fogy in the course of nature; but on the whole, he was respectful enough to these old persons when he was with them, and in his way fond of them all, and even proud of little Edith's prettiness, and the distinguished looks of Carry, who was always like a princess though she was not pretty. When, however, that sudden and unlooked-for advancement came, and Robin Lindores at one bound became Lord Rintoul, the change that passed over him was something wonderful. It was as great a revolution as that which had converted the gentle and fastidious dilettante of former years into the energetic, ambitious Scotch Earl, who kept his family in awe and wonder. Robin changed as much, or almost as much, as his father had changed. He left his simple regiment, and all its little garrison gaieties, and became a Guardsman, and was introduced into society. He learned the chatter of the drawing-rooms and clubs, and to talk familiarly about everybody, and to think he understood all the motives (almost always supposed to be bad ones) which swayed their conduct. Perhaps it was his familiarity with these tales which drove the young man into such an alarmed state of susceptibility as to the risk of encountering in his own person, or in his family, a similar freedom of comment. He said to himself that he knew "how fellows talked," and he could not bear that his sister should be pulled to pieces among them, and known as a rustic or an exaltée– one of the strong-minded sisterhood on the one hand, or a foolish bread-and-butter girl on the other. And Rintoul had become fully possessed by the idea that to get Edith "off" was the first duty of the family. He felt that his pride would be touched if she did not secure a good marriage before the end of the season. "Fellows would talk: " they would say that she had been a failure; that it was no good Lady Lindores hawking her daughter about; that she had tried very hard for this man, or flung herself at the other's head, but it was no use. He knew that he had heard such things said a hundred times – perhaps been moved to echo them himself on the very slightest warrant; but the blood rushed to his face when it occurred to him that his sister in her turn might be subjected to such comments. And the only way for her to escape them was to succeed. Therefore it was with a conviction of the importance of the crisis, which affected every nerve in his body, as well as all the powers of his mind, that Rintoul appeared in the little morning-room at Eaton Place. Every girl was said to throw herself at somebody's head – to make a dead set at one man or another. Without that purpose no one was supposed to go into society. When she succeeded, and the man was secured, her triumph, it is true, was always discussed in the same way; but that was once for all, and the matter was done with. Therefore it was evident to Rintoul that Edith must succeed. She must secure somebody before the season was out. He could not bear to have it said of her that she was hawked about. At the same time, this anxious young man saw the difficulties. His "people" had not a very large acquaintance. His mother was not half up to her duties as a mother. Edith herself, though a very pretty girl, was not a beauty of the undeniable and all-conquering sort. So much the more grave were all the difficulties of the situation, and so much the more important all the expedients that could be adopted, all the precautions that Rintoul – perhaps, he felt, the only one of the family who fully perceived them – must take. Their appearance, their gowns and bonnets, the places they intended to appear in, – all these were of the utmost consequence – a consequence, he was afraid, which the real head of the party, she who ought to be the chief mover in the matter, could scarcely be got to understand, much less to take into earnest consideration as she ought.

This was why his pleasure in seeing his people was shadowed by so much anxiety. His smile was only on the lower part of his face – all the rest was clouded with an almost fretful disquietude. He did not even know whether he could make them understand the importance of the crisis. They would receive him, he felt sure, with levity, with minds directed to things of no consequence whatever; and it was natural that this sense, that he was the only person who understood the gravity of the situation, should make Rintoul's countenance serious. As he kissed his mother and sister, he looked them all over, taking in every detail of their appearance, and uttered a mental thanksgiving, and felt an enormous relief to find that there was little to remark upon. "They would not look amiss anywhere," he said to himself. But this gleam of contentment was soon dimmed by the reflection that you never can know how a woman will look till you have seen her in her outdoor costume. The bonnet is such a test! Most likely they wore impossible bonnets. So the contraction returned to his forehead once more.

"So here you are," he said. "I am mighty glad to see you. I thought everything worth while would be over before you came."

"And what is there that is worth while that is not over?" said his mother. "We defer to your superior knowledge. We in our ignorance were thinking of the concerts, and the pictures, and the new play."

"Ah, that's all very well. They're not over, of course, nor will be so long as the season lasts," said Rintoul, carelessly. "I was thinking of more important things. I think I've got you cards for the next Chiswick fête. It wanted diplomacy. I got Lady Reston, who is au mieux with Archy Chaunter, to get them for you; but you must have very nice toilets for that. The new Irish beauty went to the last a perfect fright in poplin and Limerick lace, all native product, and was the talk of the town. Thank heaven there's nothing but tartan indigenous to Scotland!"

"Let us go in tartan, mamma," said Edith. "It would be a graceful way of showing our nationality, and please the people who are going to elect Robin for the county."

"If you think it would please the county," said the Countess, with much gravity, which almost paralysed Rintoul; but she added, shaking her head, "Alas! the county is not Highland at all, and scoffs at the tartan. We must try some other way."

"I wish you wouldn't speak nonsense to aggravate me," cried the young man. "How am I to know when you're in earnest, and when you are laughing? But one thing I can tell you: unless you are well dressed, you need never think of going at all. Old-fashioned gowns that do well enough for the country – though even in the country I don't think you ought ever to be careless of your dress – "

"You seem to be an authority," said Edith, laughing. "You will have to tell us if our gowns are old-fashioned."

"Well, I don't suppose I am an authority: I don't understand details; but I can tell on the whole, as well as another, whether a woman looks as she ought when she's got up."

"Comme il faut. I thought the phrase was untranslatable, but Robin has mastered it," said Lady Lindores.

"You need not laugh at me, mother; and I wish you wouldn't, all of you, call me by that absurd name. I feel like a shepherd boy in a pastoral – the hero, you know, – like Fidelio or Cherubino. Oh, I don't say you are to call me Rintoul – that if you like; but I don't mind Bob – "

"Bob!" the mother and sister cried in one breath. They had all been secretly proud of that pet name of Robin, which he had borne from a child.

"It's not worth talking of," he said carelessly, feeling something of ridicule involved; for though he was not clever, he was sufficiently sympathetic to be conscious of the sentiment in the minds of the others. "The real question is, what you are going to do while you are in town. I have told everybody you were coming; but, mamma, I hope you won't balk everything by going on about theatres and pictures, and so forth. Society is a hundred times more important. It is not only amusing ourselves we have got to think of. It is all very well to laugh," he said, with the most solemn air of offended dignity, "but anybody who knew the world would tell you the same thing."

"My dear boy, I thought I knew a little about the world; but I daresay I am mistaken. I hope, however, you will permit us to amuse ourselves a little now and then. Edith wants to see something and hear something while she is in London. She has not had your advantages – "

"My advantages don't count for very much," said Rintoul, half irritated, half flattered, "and it's just Edith I'm thinking of. There is more to be taken into consideration for her than either amusement or what you call improving her mind. Edith is the entire question. It is to do her justice that is my whole thought."

Edith, on hearing this, laughed out, yet flamed crimson, with mingled ridicule and suspicion. "In what respect am I to have justice?" she said.

"You needn't fire up. All that I want is your good. You ought to be seen: you ought to have your chance like the rest. How are you ever to have that if my mother and you fly about skylarking in all sorts of unlikely places, and keep out of the way of – every opportunity?"

Rintoul, though carried away by his feelings to the point of making this plain statement, was rather alarmed when he had said it, and stopped somewhat breathless. It was alarming to be confronted by his sister's indignant countenance and the angry sparkle in her eyes.

"Do you know what he means, mother?" she cried. "Did you bring me to London to market? That's what he means. Did you come to set up a booth in Vanity Fair? If you did, you must find other wares. Rintoul would make such a good salesman, it is a pity to balk him. But I am not going to be put up to auction," cried the girl, springing to her feet. Then she laughed, though she was so angry. "I am going to get ready for a walk," she said. "I think that delightful bonnet that Miss Macalister in Dunearn made for me will be the very thing for the Park – "

"Heaven above! do you let her have bonnets from Miss Macalister in Dunearn?" cried Rintoul, dismayed, as his sister disappeared. "Even in the country I would never consent to that."

"You must not pour too much wisdom upon us all at once," said his mother, "especially upon Edith, who is not used to it." Lady Lindores could not take it all seriously. She was vexed at the bottom of her heart, yet could not but smile at the oracle who had so short a time before been simple Robin – her nice, kind, silly, lovable boy. He had not ceased to be lovable even in his new development as Mentor and man of the world.

"That is all very well, mother; but if you make a joke of it, what is the good of coming to town at all?" cried Rintoul, with his serious face – too serious to be angry. "Edith may flare up if she pleases – she doesn't know any better; but surely you must understand she has never had her chance. Who is to see her down in the country? There was Torrance of course, but Carry snapped him up."

"Robin," said his mother, her countenance changing, "I desire you will not speak in that heartless, vulgar way. Yes, my boy, it is vulgar, though you think it so wise. Poor Carry, to her sorrow, has snapped up, as you say, a most unsuitable husband and a miserable life. I wish I was free of blame in that matter. We must make the best of it now, since there's no remedy; but to speak as if Carry's marriage was something to be envied – "

"Well, Torrance is rather a brute," Rintoul acknowledged, somewhat subdued; "but what a place and what a position! Carry's boy, with our connection and all that money, may be – anything she chooses to make him – "

"Carry's boy is not half so much to me as Carry herself," said Lady Lindores, gravely; "but that is done, and we must make the best of it," she added, with a sigh.

"A girl may pick up a bad husband anywhere," said Rintoul, regaining his confidence. "It just as often happens in a hot love-match as in anything else. There's Lily Trevor, old Lord Warhawk's daughter, would never rest till they had let her marry Smithers of the Blues – and they say he beats her. Charley Floyd says there never was such a wretched ménage; and she might have married half-a-dozen fellows, every one a better match than Smithers. There's no accounting for these sort of things. But, mamma, unless we're all mad together, we must give Edith her chance. By Jove, when you think of it, she's past her first bloom!" ("and that's mostly the thing that fetches," he added parenthetically, under his breath) – "she's twenty-one, mother! The moment she's seen anywhere, people will begin to calculate when she came out: and it's three seasons back! That does a girl more harm than anything. There's always a little added on to every one's age, and I shouldn't wonder in the least if they made her out to be thirty! She doesn't look it, fortunately; but what are looks, when half the women one sees are made up like pictures? But mind my words, mother – you will repent it all your life if you don't make up your mind now to give Edith one real good chance."

Lady Lindores made no reply. She began to lose her sense of amusement, and to feel vexed and humiliated, sore and wroth, as parents do when their children parade before them sentiments which are unworthy. Perhaps a woman cannot be quite just in such a predicament. It may be all an unconscious fiction, this atrocious precocious cynicism and worldliness of youth. Nothing is ever so cruelly conventional, so shamelessly egoistical, as the young disciple of social philosophy, who is possibly hiding a quivering and terrified youthful heart beneath that show of abominable wisdom. But it is hard for a mother whose whole heart is bent on finding excellence and nobleness in her child, to be tolerant of what appears to be such apparent and unmistakable unworthiness. Lady Lindores felt, while her son was speaking, as if some barbarous giant had got her heart in his hand and crushed it, clinching his cruel grasp. She did not look at him while he pleaded that Edith might have her chance, nor answer him when he had spoken. What could she say to the boy who could thus discourse to her like an old man learned in all wickedness? There was a poignant sting of injured pride, too, in the sensation with which she listened to him. This from the boy she had trained, to whom she must have given his first conception of life, of women and their ways! Had it been her example, against her will, unconscious of any such possibility, that had taught him to despise them? She looked at the young face so dear to her, and which was now full of all the gravity of conviction, endeavouring to enforce its doctrines upon her mind, with a mixture of hot impatience and hopeless toleration. Poor boy! this was what he really thought, honestly believed, though he was her son! His eyes were quite impressive in their sincerity. "She ought to see people," Rintoul said; "she ought to be seen. She has never been hawked about like other girls, so it does not matter so much that this isn't her first season. People may forget it if we take no notice. But in another year, mother, if she does not have her chance now – in another year," cried the anxious brother, with threatening solemnity, "it will be quite another matter. She has kept her bloom pretty well, but it will be gone by that time; and when it's gone, she'll not have half the chance. A girl must make hay while the sun shines," he added, more and more dogmatically: "we all of us ought to remember that, but for a girl it's imperative – there is nothing that tells like the first bloom."