The Ladies Lindores. Volume 1 of 3

"Surely it could not be your fault; if he wanted a reception, he should have come when he was expected," said a softer voice, with a little sound of laughter. Surely, John thought, he had heard that voice before. He hurried forward wondering, taking off his hat instinctively. Who were they? Two ladies, one elder, one younger, mother and daughter. They looked up at him as he approached. The faces were familiar, and yet not familiar. Was it possible? He felt himself redden with excitement as he stood breathless, his hat off, the blood flushing to the very roots of his hair, not able to get out a word in his surprise and pleasure. They on their side looked at him smilingly, not at all surprised, and the elder lady held out her hand. "After so long a time you will scarcely know us, Mr Erskine," she said; "but we knew you were expected, and all about you, you see."

"Know you?" cried John, almost speechless with the wonder and delight. "Mrs Lindores! The thing is, can I venture to believe my eyes? There never was such luck in the world! I think I must be dreaming. Who would have expected to meet you here, and the very first day?"

Peggy Burnet was much disturbed by this greeting. She pushed forward, making an anxious face at him. "Sir! sir! you maun say my leddy," she breathed, in a shrill whisper, which he was too much excited to take any notice of, but which amused the ladies. They cast a laughing look at each other. "Didn't you know we were here?" the mother said. "Then we had the advantage of you. We have been speculating about you for weeks past – whether you would be much changed, whether you would come at once to Lindores to renew old acquaintance – "

"That you may be sure I should have done," said John, "as soon as I knew you were there. And are you really at Lindores? living there? for good? It seems too delightful to be true."

They were both changed. And he did not know why they should look at each other with such a laughing interchange of glances. It made him somewhat uncomfortable, though his mind was too full of the pleasure of seeing them to be fully conscious of it. It was Edith, as was natural, who was most altered in appearance. She had been a tall girl, looking more than her age; and now she was a small, very young woman. At that period of life such changes happen sometimes; but the difference was delightful, though embarrassing. Yes, smaller, she was actually smaller, he said to himself, – "as high as my heart," as Orlando says: yet no longer little Edith, but an imposing stately personage at whom he scarcely ventured to look boldly, but only snatched shy glances at, abashed by her soft regard. He went on stammering out his pleasure, his delight, his surprise, hardly knowing what he said. "I had just begun to hope that you might come sometimes, that I might have a chance of seeing you," he was saying; whereupon Edith smiled gravely, and her mother gave a little laugh aloud.

"I don't believe he knows anything about it, Edith," she said.

"I was sure of it, mamma," Edith replied; while between them John stood dumb, not knowing what to think.

CHAPTER IV

The explanation which was given to John Erskine on the highroad between Dalrulzian and Lindores, as it is still more important to us than to him, must be here set forth at more length. There are some happy writers whose mission it is to expound the manners and customs of the great. To them it is given to know how duchesses and countesses demean themselves in their moments perdus, and they even catch as it flies that airy grace with which the chit-chat of society makes itself look like something of consequence. Gilded salons in Belgravia, dainty boudoirs in Mayfair, not to speak of everything that is gorgeous in the rural palaces, which are as so many centres of light throughout England – are the scenery in which they are accustomed to enshrine the subjects of their fancy. And yet, alas! to these writers when they have done all, yet must we add that they fail to satisfy their models. When the elegant foreigner, or what is perhaps more consonant with the tastes of the day, the refined American, ventures to form his opinion of the habits of society from its novels, he is always met with an amused or indignant protestation. As if these sort of people knew anything about society! Lady Adeliza says. It is perhaps as well, under these circumstances, to assume a humility, even if we have it not; and indeed the present writer has always been shy of venturing into exalted regions, or laying profane hands upon persons of quality. But when a family of rank comes in our way by necessity, it would be cowardice to recoil from the difficulties of the portraiture. Should we fail to represent in black and white the native grace, the air noble, the exalted sentiments which belong by right to members of the aristocracy, the reader will charitably impute the blame rather to the impression made upon our nerves by a superiority so dazzling than to any defect of goodwill. Besides, in the present case, which is a great aid to modesty, the family had been suddenly elevated, and were not born in the purple. Lady Lindores was a commoner by birth, and not of any very exalted lineage – a woman quite within the range of ordinary rules and instincts; and even Lady Edith had been Miss Edith till within a few years. Their honours were still new upon them: they were not themselves much used to these honours any more than their humble chronicler; with which preface we enter with diffidence upon the recent history of the noble house of Lindores.

The late earl had been a man unfortunate in his children. His sons by his first marriage had died one after another, inheriting their mother's delicate health. His second wife had brought him but one son, a likely and healthy boy; but an accident, one of those simplest risks which hundreds are subject to, and escape daily, carried this precious boy off in a moment. His father, who had been entirely devoted to him, died afterwards of a broken heart, people said. The next brother, who was in India with his regiment, died there almost at the same time, and never knew that he had succeeded to the family honours. And thus it was that the Honourable Robert Lindores, a poor gentleman, living on a very straitened income, in a cheap French town, with his wife and daughters, and as little expecting any such elevation as a poor curate expects to be made Archbishop of Canterbury, became Earl of Lindores and the head of the family, without warning or preparation. It does not perhaps require very much preparation to come to such advancement; and the new earl was to the manner born. But Mrs Lindores, who was a woman full of imagination, with nerves and ideas of her own, received a considerable shock. She had no objection to being a countess; the coronet, indeed, was pleasant to her as it is to most people. She liked to look at it on her handkerchiefs: there is no such pretty ornament. But it startled her mind and shook her nerves just at first. And it made a great, a very great, change in the family life. Instead of strolling about as they had done for years, with one maid for the mother and daughters, and a shabby cheap French servant, who was valet and factotum; going to all kinds of places; living as they liked; and though, with many a complaint, getting a great deal of pleasure out of their lives: there was an immediate shaking of themselves together – a calling in of stray habits and fancies, – a jump into their new place, as of an inexperienced and half-alarmed rider, not at all sure how he was to get on with his unaccustomed steed. This at least was the mood of Lady Lindores. The Earl knew all about it better than she did. Even to be merely the "honourable" had fluttered her senses a little; and it had never occurred to her that anything further was possible. The family was poor – still poor, even when thus elevated as it were to the throne; but the poverty of the Honourable Robert was very different from that of the right honourable Earl. In the one case it was actual poverty, in the other only comparative. To be sure it was, when one had time to think, distressing and troubling not to have money enough to refurnish the Castle (the taste of the late lord had been execrable) and make many improvements which were quite necessary. But that was very different from not having money enough to possess a settled home of your own anywhere, which had been their previous condition. The Earl took his measures without a moment's delay. He dismissed the servants who had followed them in their poverty, and engaged others in London, who were more proper to the service of a noble family. They travelled quite humbly, indeed, in their old half-Bohemian way, until they reached London, and then all at once cast their slough. The ladies put on their clothes, which they had stopped to procure in Paris, and suddenly blossomed out (though in deep mourning) into the likeness of their rank. It was a thing to make the steadiest heart beat. Young Robin was at Chatham, a lieutenant in a marching regiment – a young nobody, pleased to be noticed even by the townsfolk; and lo! in a moment, this insignificant lieutenant became Lord Rintoul. It was like a transformation scene; he came to meet his people when they passed through London, and they could scarcely speak to each other when they met in their mutual wonder. "Poor little Rintoul, all the same, poor little beggar!" Robin Lindores said. To think of the poor boy, cut off in a moment, whose death had purchased them all these honours, affected the young people with a strange awe, and almost remorseful pain. They felt as if somehow, without knowing it, they had been the cause of that terrible sudden removal of all the hopes that had rested on their little cousin's head. Lady Lindores herself declared that she dared not think of her predecessor, the mother of that poor boy, "the dowager," alas! poor lady. The dowager was younger than her successor in the family honours, having been a second wife. They were all silent with respectful awe when her name was mentioned; but the Earl said pshaw! and thought this superfluous. He was more used to it; he had been born in the purple, and now that he had come, though unexpectedly, to his kingdom, he knew how to fill that exalted place.

The Earl was a man of a character which never, up to this time, had been estimated as it deserved. He had been quite an easy-going sort of person in his former estate. In his youth he was said to have been extravagant. Since his marriage – which had been an imprudent marriage, in so far that he might perhaps have got a richer wife had he tried, but which was wise so far that the income upon which they lived chiefly came from that wife – he had let himself go quietly enough upon the current, there being no motive to struggle against it. The very best that they could make of it was simply to "get along;" and get along they did without putting any force upon their inclinations. He was always able to secure his comforts, such as were indispensable; and as he liked the easier routine of a wandering life, he did not object, as he said, to make a sacrifice for the education of his children and their amusement, by living in places where the pleasures were cheap and there was no dignity to keep up. He had in this sense been very complying, both as a husband and a father, and had allowed himself to be guided, as his family thought, by their wishes quite as much, at least, as by his own. He had not in these days been in the least a severe father, or shown marks of a worldly mind. What was the use? The girls were too young as yet to have become valuable instruments of ambition, and he had not learnt to think of them as anything but children. But when this extraordinary change came in their existence, the easy dilettante– whose wants were limited to a few graceful knick-knacks, an elegant little meal, good music, when procurable, and a life undisturbed by vulgar cares – altered his very nature, as his family thought. Hitherto his wife and his girls had done everything for him, aided by the ubiquitous, the handy, the all-accomplished Jean or François, who was half-a-dozen men in one – cook, valet, footman, pattern man-of-all-work. They arranged the rooms in every new place they went to, so that the fact that these rooms were those of a hotel or lodging-house should be masked by familiar prettinesses, carried about with them. They gave a careful supervision to his meals, and arranged everything, so that papa should get the best out of his limited existence, and none of its troubles. And as there was nothing against Mr Lindores – no bad repute, but with an honourable at his name – every English club, every cercle, was open to him. He always dressed carefully; now and then he helped a wealthier friend to a bargain in the way of art. He saw a great deal of society. On the whole, perhaps, for a man without ambition, and upon whom neither the fate of his children nor the use of his own life pressed very heavily, he got as much satisfaction out of his existence as most men; and so might have lived and died, no man knowing what was really in him, had not poor young Rintoul broken his neck over that fence, and drawn his father with him into the grave. From the moment when the letter, placed calmly by Mr Lindores's plate at breakfast, as though it meant nothing particular, had its black seals broken, he was another man. How distinctly they all recollected that scene! – a lofty French room, with bare white walls and long large windows, the green Persians closed to keep out the sunshine, one long line of light falling across the polished floor, where one of these shutters had got unfastened; the spacious coolness in the midst of heat, which is characteristic of such houses, like the atmosphere in M. Alma Tadema's pictures; the white-covered table with its flowers and pretty arrangements; the girls in their white cool dresses; and François lifting the small silver cover from his master's favourite dish. All the composure and quiet of this interior had been broken in a moment. There had been a sudden stifled cry, and Mr Lindores, pushing the table from him, disordering the dishes, over-setting his heavy chair as he sprang to his feet, had finished reading his letter standing upright, trembling with excitement, his face flushed and crimson. "What is it?" they had all cried. "Robin?" Naturally, the son who was away was the first thought of the women. For a minute the father had made no reply, and their anxiety was beyond words. Then he put down the letter solemnly, and went to his wife and took her hand. "There is nothing wrong with Robin," he said; "but it comes by trouble to others, if not to us. My dear, you are the Countess of Lindores." It was some minutes before the real meaning of this communication penetrated their astonished minds; and the first proof of understanding which the new Lady Lindores gave was to cover her face and cry out, "Oh, poor boy! oh, poor Jane, poor Jane!" with a pang at her heart. It was not all grief for the other – could any one expect that? – but the poignant state of emotion which this strange terrible good fortune caused her, had a sharpness of anguish in it for the moment. The girls went away hushed and silenced, unable to eat their breakfasts, to find some black ribbons instead of the bright ones they wore. They wept a few tears as they went to their rooms over poor young Rintoul; but they had known very little of the boy, and the strange excitement of the change soon crept into their veins. Lady Caroline and Lady Edith! instead of the humble Miss Lindores. No wonder that it went to their heads.

And from that moment the new Earl was a different man. He threw off all his languor, took everything into his own hands. Those little economies which it had been so necessary to insist upon yesterday were now absurd, notwithstanding that the Earls of Lindores were far from rich – comparatively. The family came home rapidly, as has been said; pausing in Paris to get their dresses, to dismiss the faithful servants of their poverty, who would be of no use, the Earl decided, in the change of circumstances. He behaved very well, everybody said, to poor Lady Lindores, his brother's young widow, who had thus been left at once widowed and childless. He showed "every consideration;" would not allow her to be hurried; waited her convenience and her pleasure in every way. But, naturally, that poor lady was glad to take refuge with her own family in her desolation; and within a few months, the wandering exile-family, familiar with all the cheap watering-places and centres of genteel emigration on the Continent, were settled in the greatness of their new position, as if they had never known any less elevated circumstances. There was a great deal of excitement in the change; and though it was sad at first, no doubt there was a pleasure in hearing Robin addressed by the name of Rintoul, and accustoming themselves to their ladyships. But yet, when all was over, it was not perhaps to the girls so great an improvement as it appeared on the old life. They were not dull – oh no – but still there was a great deal less to do and to see than there used to be; and though they felt, as their mother said, that girls with so many resources ought to be occupied and happy wherever they went, still the calm of the Castle was very different from the stir and movement to which they had been used.

Up to this time, however, nothing had happened to them except that which was determined by another will than theirs, the inevitable result of other events. But they had not been long settled in their new and elevated life when it became apparent that other changes had happened which were not evoked by any external fate, and which were yet more profoundly to affect their life. That Swiss holiday had been more important to Carry than any one out of the family knew. It had ended in a kind of vague engagement, only half sanctioned, yet only half opposed by her family, and which it was possible, had Mr Beaufort been rich enough to marry, would not have been opposed at all. Had he possessed income enough or courage enough to make the venture, the result in all likelihood would, years before, have been out of the reach of evil fate; but while it remained only an engagement, Mr Lindores had refused his official sanction to it. And it had seemed to Carry, in whose mind the first conscious thought after the news of this extraordinary change was to communicate it to Edward, that from that very day her father's aspect had changed towards her. He had met her running out to the post with her letter in the afternoon, and had given a suspicious glance at it, and stopped her, telling her it was not fit she should go out on a day so serious. Not a word had been said for weeks and even months after, but she knew very well that things were not as before. All reference to Beaufort was somehow stopped; even her mother managed to arrest upon her lips all mention of her lover. She was herself too timid to open the subject, and gradually a chill certainty that he was to be ignored and pushed aside out of her life, came upon the poor girl. How it was that further dangers dawned upon her, it would be hard to tell; but it is certain that she had divined a something – a tightening coil about her helpless feet, a design upon her freedom and happiness – before the family had been long at Lindores. One of the consequences of their great honour and increased stateliness of living was, that the two sisters were partially separated, as they felt, from each other. They no longer occupied the same room as they had done all their lives. They had now what with their foreign habits they called an appartement– a suite of rooms set apart for them; and as Edith was full of curiosity and excitement about the new life, and Carry was discouraged and depressed, and felt it odious to her, they fell a little apart without any mutual intention or consciousness. It was in the beginning of their first winter, when the dark days were closing in, that this semi-estrangement first became apparent to the younger sister. She awoke all at once to the consciousness that Carry was pale; that she shut herself up very much, and more than ever devoted herself to her writing; that she composed a great many little poems (for she was the genius of the family), and often had a suspicion of redness about her eyes. This discovery was instantaneous. Edith had never been awakened to any but the most simple troubles of life, and it had not occurred to her to imagine that there was anything beneath the headache which her sister so often took refuge in. But her mind, when it began to act, was rapid and keen. It became apparent to her that she had been losing sight of Carry, and that Carry was not happy. The progress from one step to another of her solicitude for her sister was rapid as lightning. She remembered everything in a moment, though these causes of sorrow had been altogether out of her thoughts before. She remembered that not a word had been said of Mr Beaufort for months; that Carry had ceased altogether to speculate as to anything that might happen in the future; that all this was as a closed book between them nowadays. As soon as she arrived at this conviction, Edith found herself ready to interfere for good or evil. She went into the room where Carry was writing her little poetries, with something of the effect of a fresh light wind, carrying refreshment, but also a little disturbance, with her. She stooped over her sister with a caressing arm round her neck, and plunged at once into the heart of the subject. It was a still, dull afternoon of early winter, and nobody was by. "Carry," she said, all at once – "Carry, it is so long since we have said anything to each other! I wanted to ask you about – Edward!" Upon this, for all answer, Carry fell a-crying, but after a while sobbed forth, "I will never give him up!"

"Give him up!" cried Edith, surprised. She had what her mother called a positive nature, much less romantic, much less sensitive, than her sister. The idea of giving up had never entered her mind. "Give him up! – no, of course not. I never thought of such a thing; but I am afraid it will be harder than ever with papa."

"Oh, Edith, it will be impossible," Caroline said. And then the two sisters looked at each other – the one astonished, indignant, full of resistance; the other pale, drooping, without vigour or hope.

"What does impossible mean?" said the younger, not with any affectation or grandiloquence; for probably she had never heard of any heroic utterance on the subject. "You mean very, very hard. So it will be. I have wanted to speak to you since ever we came here. I want to know what he says himself, and if papa has said anything, and what mamma thinks. We don't seem to live together now," she added, with a clouded countenance. "It's always, 'Oh, Lady Caroline has gone out,' or, 'Her ladyship is in the library with my lord,' It seemed very nice at first, but I begin to hate ladyships and lordships with all my heart."

"So do I," said Caroline, with a sigh.

"If you marry a man without a title, couldn't you give it up? Perhaps one wouldn't like that either, now," said the girl, candidly. "It was far, far nicer, far more natural, in the old days; but perhaps one wouldn't like to go back."

"I suppose not," said Carry, drearily. She was not a beautiful girl, as in her romantic position she ought to have been. Her nose was too large; her complexion deficient; her eyes were grey, sweet, and thoughtful, but not brilliant or shining. Her figure had the willowy grace of youth, but nothing more imposing. She had a very sweet radiant smile when she was happy; this was the chief attraction of her face: but at present she was not happy, and her pale gentle countenance was not one to catch the general eye.

"But I hope you are going to make a stand, Carry," said the energetic little Edith. "You won't, surely – you can't be so lâche as to give in? I would not! – not if it cost me my life!"

"Ah, if it was a question of one's life! but no one wants your life," said Carry, shaking her head. "No one will touch us, or lock us up, or any of these old-fashioned things. If they only would! The poets say 'I could die for you,' as if that was difficult! Oh no, it is far harder, far harder to live."

"Carry! you have been thinking a great deal about it, then?"

"What else could I think about? Since the first moment papa looked at me that day – you remember that day? – I knew in a moment what he meant. He gave me just one glance. You know he never said that he would consent."