The Ladies Lindores. Volume 1 of 3

Lady Lindores made no immediate reply. All this was so new to her – a revelation of things unthought of. It took away her breath; it took away her courage. Is there any shock, any pang that life can give, equal to that of suddenly perceiving a touch of baseness, a failure of honour, a lower level of moral feeling, in those who are most dear to us? This is what shatters heaven and earth, and shakes the pillars of existence to the beholder. It filled this woman with a sudden despair impossible to describe. She tried to speak, and her very voice failed her. What was the use of saying anything? If he thought thus, could anything that was said affect him? Despair made her incapable of effort. She was like Hamlet, paralysed. At the end she managed to falter forth a word of protestation. "There are some," she said, faintly, "who are content with so much less, Robert – and yet how much more! – you and I among the rest."

"A woman always answers with a personal example," he said.

And Lady Lindores was dumb. She did not know what to say to the new man who stood beside her, in the familiar aspect of her husband, expressing sentiments which never before had come from the lips of Robert Lindores. He had been self-indulgent in the old days – perhaps a little selfish – accepting sacrifices which it was not right for him to accept. But there had been a hundred excuses for him; and she and the girls had always been so ready, so eager, to make those sacrifices. It had been the pleasure of their lives to make his as smooth, as graceful, as pleasant as possible. There was no question of anything of this kind now. He who had been dependent on their ministrations for half the comfort of his life, was now quite independent of them, the master of everybody's fate, – judging for them, deciding for them, crushing their private wishes. Lady Lindores was confused beyond measure by this discovery. She put her hand to her head unconsciously, as if it must be that which was wrong. A vague hope that things might not look so terrible in the morning came into her mind. It was very late, and they were all tired and worn with the agitation of the evening. "I think I am not in a condition to understand to-night," she said, drearily. "It will be better, perhaps, to put off till to-morrow."

"It is a pity you sat up," he said coldly; and thus the strange conference ended. It was already morning, the blue light stealing in through the closed shutters. Things, as well as faces, look ghastly in this unaccustomed light. Lady Lindores drew the curtains closer to shut it out, and lay down with her head aching, turning her face to the wall. There are circumstances in which the light of heaven is terrible; and darkness, darkness, oblivion of itself, the only things the soul cares for. But though you can shut out the light, you cannot shut out thought. There was not much rest that night in Lindores. The Earl himself had a consciousness of the strange discovery of him which his wife had made; and though he was defiant and determined to subdue all opposition, yet he was hurt and angry all the same that his Mary should think less well of him. He seemed to himself of late to have done a great deal for her and her children. No idea of the elevation she had now reached had been in her mind when they married. There were three brothers then between him and the title, besides the children of the elder. And now that things had so come about, as that Mary was actually Countess of Lindores, he could not but feel that he had done a great deal for her. Yet she was not grateful. She looked at him with those scrutinising, alarmed eyes. She turned away from him with painful wonder; with – there was no doubt of it – disapproval. And yet all he wanted was the advancement of the family – the real good of his daughter. Who could doubt what his motive was? or that it was for Carry's good to have a noble establishment, a fortune that a princess might envy? Could there be any comparison between that and the marriage with a poor barrister, upon which, in her first folly, she had set her heart? It was unreasonable beyond measure, ungrateful, that his quite legitimate determination, judging for the real advantage of his daughter, should be thus looked upon by Lady Lindores.

But it would be vain to attempt to describe the struggle that followed: that domestic tragedy would have to be told at length if told at all, and it included various tragedies; not only the subjugation of poor Carry, the profanation of her life, and cruel rending of her heart, but such a gradual enlightening and clearing away of all the lovely prejudices and prepossessions of affection from the eyes of Lady Lindores, as was almost as cruel. The end of it was, that one of these poor women, broken in heart and spirit, forced into a marriage she hated, and feeling herself outraged and degraded, began her life in bitterness and misery with a pretence of splendour and success and good fortune which made the real state of affairs still more deplorable; and the other, feeling all the beauty of her life gone from her, her eyes disenchanted, a pitiless cold daylight revealing every angle once hid by the glamour of love and tender fancy, began a sort of second existence alone. If Torrance had been determined before to have Lady Caroline for his wife, he was far more determined after she had put his pride to the humiliation of a refusal, and roused all the savage in him. From the night of the ball until the moment of the wedding, he never slackened in his pursuit of the shrinking unhappy girl, who, on her side, had betrayed her weakness to her sister on the first mention of the hateful suitor. Edith was disenchanted too, as well as her mother. She comprehended none of them. "I would not do it," she said simply, when the struggle was at its bitterest; "why do you do it?" Rintoul, for his part, when he appeared upon the scene, repeated Edith's positivism in a different way. "I think my father is quite right," he said. "What could Carry look for? She is not pretty; she is twenty-four. You ought to take these things into consideration, mother. She has lost her chance of any of the prizes; and when you have here the very thing, a man rolling in money – and not a tradesman either, which many girls have to put up with – it is such a chance as not one in a thousand ever gets. I think Car ought to be very grateful to papa." Lady Lindores listened with a gasp – Robin too! But she did not call him Robin for a long time after that day. He was Rintoul to her as to the rest of the world, his father's heir, very clearly alive to the advantage of having, when his time came, no provision for his sister hanging like a millstone round his neck. His sympathy and approval were delightful to his father. "Women are such queer cattle, you never know how to take them," the experienced young man said. A man is not in a crack regiment for nothing. He had more knowledge of the world than his father had. "I should have thought my mother would have been delighted to settle Carry so near home."

Thus it was a very strange divided house upon the eve of this marriage. To add to the confusion, there was great squabbling over the settlements, which Pat Torrance, eager though he was to secure the bride, whom his pride and self-will, as well as what he believed to be his love, had determined to have at all costs, was by no means so liberal about as the Earl thought necessary. He fought this out step by step, even venturing to hint, like the brute he was, that it was no beauty or belle whom he was marrying, and cutting down the requirements of her side in the most business-like way. Lady Lindores had been entirely silenced, and looked after the indispensable matters of her daughter's trousseau without a trace of the usual cheerful bustle attending wedding preparations; while Carry seemed to live in a dream, sometimes rousing up to make an appeal to her father's pity, but mostly in a sort of passive state, too heart-broken to be excited about anything. Edith, young and curious, moved about in the midst of it all in the activity of her independence, as yet touched by none of these things. She was a sort of rebellion impersonated, scarcely comprehending the submission of the others. While Carry wept she stood looking on, her face flushed, her eyes brilliant. "I would not do it," she said. These words were constantly on her lips.

"How could you help doing it?" poor Carry cried, turning upon her in the extremity of her despair. "Oh, have a little pity upon me, Edie! What can I do? I would sooner die. If there is anything you can think of – anything! But it is all past hope now. Papa will not even listen to me. Rintoul tells me I am a fool. He – " but here Carry's voice was broken with a shudder. She could not speak of her bridegroom but with a contraction of her heart.

"I don't know what I should do, but I should not do this," said Edith, surveying her sister from the height of untried resolution. "Nobody can force you to say Yes instead of No; nobody can make you do a thing you are determined not to do. Why do you do it? you can't want not to do it at the very bottom of your heart."

Carry gave her a look of anguish which brought the girl to her knees in compunction and remorse. "Oh, forgive me, Car! but why, why do you do it?" she cried. Lady Lindores had come softly in to give her child her good-night kiss. It was within a few days of the wedding. She stood and looked at the group with tears in her eyes – one girl lying back white, worn, and helpless in her chair; the other, at her feet, glowing with courage and life.

"Speak to her, mamma," cried Edith, "as long as there is any hope."

"What can I say?" said the mother; "everything has gone too far now. It would be a public scandal. I have said all that I could. Do not make my poor child more unhappy. Carry, my darling, you will do your duty whatever happens: and everything becomes easier when it is duty – "

"But how is it duty?" said rebellious Edith. "I would not do it!" she cried, stamping her foot on the floor.

"Edith, Edith! do not torture your sister. It is easy to say such things, but how are you to do them? God knows, I would not mind what I did if it was only me. I would fly away with her somewhere – escape from them all. But what would happen? Our family would be rent asunder. Your father and I" – Lady Lindores's voice quivered a little – "who have been always so united, would part for ever. Our family quarrels would be discussed in public. You, Edith – what would become of you? Your prospects would all be ruined. Carry herself would be torn to pieces by the gossips. They would say there must be some reason. God knows, I would not hesitate at any sacrifice."

"Mamma, do not say anything more; it is all over. I know there is nothing to be done," said Carry, faintly. As for Edith, she could not keep still; her whole frame was tingling. She clenched her small fists, and dashed them into the air.

"I would not do it! I would just refuse, refuse! I would not do it! Why should you do it?" she cried.

But between these two there was no talking. The younger sister flew to her own room, impelled by her sense of the intolerable, unable to keep still. She met her brother by the way, and clutched him by the arm, and drew him with her within her own door. "I would not do it, if I were Carry," she said, breathless. "You might drag me to church, if you liked, but even there I would not consent. Why, why does she do it?" Edith cried.

"Because," said Rintoul the experienced, "she is not such a fool as she looks. She knows that after the first is over, with plenty of money and all that, she will get on first-rate, you little goose. Girls like something to make a fuss about."

"Oh, it is a great deal you know about girls!" cried Edith, giving him a shake in the violence of her emotion. But he only laughed, disengaging himself.

"We'll see what you'll do when it comes to your turn," he said, and he went off along the passage whistling. It did not matter to him that his sister was breaking her heart. But why, why, oh why does she do it? Edith dozed and woke again half-a-dozen times in the night, crying this out into the silence. To refuse, surely one could do that. Papa might scold, there might be scenes and unhappiness, but nothing could be so unhappy as this. She was incapable of understanding how there could be any difficulty in the case.

The marriage took place, however, in spite of these convulsions, and several years had elapsed since that event. It was an old affair when John Erskine, newly arrived, and full of curiosity and interest, had that encounter with Lady Lindores and her daughter at his own gate, where something of the outline of this story was communicated to him – the facts of it at least. The ladies did not linger upon Carry's marriage in their narrative. He was told of it briefly as an event long over, and to which everybody had got accustomed. And so it was. The most miserable of events settle down into the routine of life when a few years have elapsed. Carry herself long ago had accepted her fate, trying to persuade herself that an unhappy marriage was nothing out of the common, and taking such comfort as was possible in poetry and intellectual musings. Her husband, who neither knew nor cared for anything above his own rude external world, yet felt her poetry to enhance the delicacy of her being, and to raise Lady Car more and more to that height of superiority which was what he had sought in her – was all the better satisfied with his bargain, though all the more separated from any possible point of junction with her. The neighbourhood was very well aware of all the circumstances; and though Lady Lindores entered into no explanations, yet there was a sigh, and a tone in her voice, as she spoke of her daughter, which suggested sorrow. But to tell the truth, young John Erskine, suddenly finding such friends at his very door, suddenly readmitted into the old intimacy, and finding the dull country life to which he had been looking forward flash into sunshine and pleasure, made few inquiries into this darker chapter of the family history; and in reality cared for nothing much but to convince himself that the Lindores family were really his next neighbours; that they were quite willing to receive him on the old footing; and that, demurely walking along the same road on the other side of her mother, saying little but touching the entire atmosphere with a sense of her presence, was Edith Lindores. Perhaps, had he actually been by her side, the sensation being more definite would have been less entrancing. But her mother was between them, animated and pleased by the meeting, ready to tell him all that had happened, and to hear his account of himself, with friendly interest; while beyond her ample figure and draperies, the line of a grey dress, the occasional flutter of a ribbon, the putting forth of a small foot, made the young man aware of the other creature wrapped in soft silence and maidenly reserve, whom he could image to himself all the more completely that he saw no more of her. He scarcely heard her voice as they walked along thus near yet separated; but a great many things that Lady Lindores said were confused by the sound upon the road of her daughter's step – by the appearance of that bit of ribbon, with which the sunny wind did not hesitate to play, floating out in advance of her, catching the young man's eye. Thus all at once, on the very first day after his return, another new existence began for John Erskine on the road between Dalrulzian and Lindores.

CHAPTER VII

There are few things in human affairs more curious than the structure of what is called society, wherever it is met with, whether in the most primitive of its developments or on the higher levels. The perpetual recurrence of a circle within which the sayings and doings of certain individuals are more important than anything else in earth or heaven, and where the conversation persistently rolls back, whatever may be its starting-point, to what this or that little knot of people are doing, to the eccentricities of one and the banalities of another, to some favourite individual scene of tragedy or comedy which forms the centre of the moral landscape – is always apparent to the observer, whether his observations are made in Kamtchatka or in London, among washerwomen or princesses. But under no circumstances is this so evident as to a new-comer in a region where all the people know each other. The novelty and freshness of his impressions perhaps make him congratulate himself for a moment that now at last he has got into a society fresh and original, with features of its own; but half-a-dozen meetings are enough to prove to him that he has only got into another round, a circle as little extended, as much shut up in its own ring, as all the rest. This was what John Erskine found, with a little amusement and a little disgust, almost as soon as he got settled in his unknown home. Any addition to their society was interesting to the country folks, especially in May, when there is not much doing – when those who can indulge themselves in the pleasures of the season have gone to London, and those who cannot are bound to bring forth their philosophy and prove that they enjoy the country in the early summer, even though there is nothing to do. But a young man unencumbered and alone, with all his life before him, and all his connections to form, is perhaps of all others the most interesting human creature who can come into a new sphere. All the world is curious about him – both those whose lives he may influence, and those to whom he can contribute nothing but the interest, perhaps of a new drama, perhaps only of a new face. He who will enact his own story publicly before the eyes of his neighbours, falling in love, wooing, marrying, or, still better, carrying on these processes with interruptions of non-success and threatenings of postponement, what a godsend he is! and perhaps scarcely less he who brings in darker elements into the placid tenor of the general history, and ruins himself for our instruction, while we all look on with bated breath. To the country-side in general, John Erskine, while as yet unknown, was a new hero. He was the beginning of a romance with all the more fascination in it that the most interested spectator for a long time could form but little idea how it was to turn. As soon as he was known to be at home, his neighbours came down upon him from all quarters with friendly greetings, invitations, offers of kindness on all sides. The first to appear was Sir James Montgomery, a sunburnt and cheerful old soldier, whose small estate of Chiefswood "marched" on one side with Dalrulzian, and who was disposed to be very friendly. He came in beaming with smiles over all his brown jovial countenance, and holding out a large cordial hand.

"Well, young man, so this is you at last. You're heartily welcome home. I've been long away myself, and you've never been here, but we're old neighbours for all that, and I take it upon me to call myself an old friend."

"You are very kind," John said, suffering his hand to be engulfed in that kind, warm, capacious grasp. The old soldier held him at arm's length for a moment, looking at him with friendly eyes.

"I remember your grandfather well," he said; "not so much of your father, for he came to man's estate, and died, poor lad, when I was away; but I see some features of the old man in you, my young friend, and I'm glad to see them. You'll seldom meet with a better man than your grandfather. He was very kind to me as a young lad at the time I got my commission. They were ill able to afford my outfit at home, and I'm much mistaken if old Dalrulzian did not lend a helping hand; so mind you, my lad, if young Dalrulzian should ever want one – a day in harvest, as the proverb goes – "

"You are very kind, sir," said John Erskine again: he was touched, but half amused as well. It seemed so unlikely that he should require the old general's helping hand. And then they talked of the country, and of their previous lives and diverse experiences. Sir James was one of those primitive men, much more usual a generation ago than now, whose knowledge of life, which to his own thinking was profound and extensive, left out the greater part of what in our days is known as life at all. He knew Scotland and India, and nothing more. He was great in expedients for dealing with the natives on one hand, and full of a hundred stories of village humour, fun, and pawkiness on the other. To hear him laugh over one of these anecdotes till the tears stood in his clear, warm blue eyes, which were untouched by any dimness of time, was worth all the witticisms ever printed; and to see him bend his fine old brows over the characteristics of his old subjects in India, and the ameliorations of character produced by British rule, firmness, and justice, was better than philosophy. But with that which young John Erskine knew as life he had no acquaintance. Save his own country and the distant East, the globe was wrapped in dimness to him. He had passed through London often, and had even transacted business at the Horse Guards, though an Indian officer in those days had little to do with that centre of military authority; but he had a mingled awe and horror of "town," and thought of the Continent as of a region of temptation where the devil was far more apparent than in other places, and sought whom he might devour with much more openness and less hindrance than at home. And when our young man, who flattered himself a little on his knowledge of society and the world, as he understood the phrase, unfolded himself before the innocent patriarch, their amazement at each other was mutual. Old Sir James contemplated John in his knowledge with something of the same amused respect which John on his side felt for him in his ignorance. To each there was in the other a mixture of a boy and a sage, which made them each to each half absurd and half wonderful. An old fellow, who must have seen so much to have seen so little! and a mere bit of a lad, Sir James said to himself, who knew nothing about India or anything serious, yet had seen a vast deal, and had very just notions, and spoke like a man of the world when you came to talk to him! It was thus the senior who did most justice to the junior, as is usually the case.

"I am afraid," Sir James said, "that you'll find our country-side but dull after all you've seen. We're pleased with ourselves, as most ignorant people are; we think we're good enough company on the whole, but music, or the play, or art, or that kind of thing, you'll find us wanting in. I'm afraid they find us very wanting at Lindores; but as for a kind welcome, whenever you like and however you like, and a good Scotch dinner, and sometimes a dance, if that will content you in the way of company – "

"I should be hard to please if that would not content me," said John. "I hope you will give me the chance."

"That we will – that we will," said Sir James, heartily; and then he added, "we have no young people about us – Lady Montgomery and me. Our two children are as far from children now as their father and mother. They are both in India, and their families grown up and gone out to them. So we have nothing young of our own about the house; but don't go too fast, we're not without attraction. In a week, I think, we're expecting a visitor that will make the place bright – Miss Barrington – Nora Barrington; you'll have heard of her by this time. She's a great favourite in the country. We are all keen to have her and to keep her. I'm not afraid that a young man will find us dull when we've Nora in the house."

Here John, who had become suspicious of the name of this girl whom everybody insisted on recommending to him, eagerly protested that he should want no foreign attraction to the house in which the kind old general was.

"Foreign! No, she's not foreign," said Sir James; "far from that. A bonnie English girl, which, after a bonnie Scotch lassie, is by far the best thing going. We must stand up for our own first," said the old soldier, laughing; "but nothing foreign – nothing foreign: if you want that, you'll have to go to Lindores."

John felt – he could scarcely tell why – slightly irritated by these references to Lindores. He said, somewhat elaborately, "They are the only people I really know in the county. I met them long ago – on the Continent."

"Ah! – ay; that's just what I say – for anything foreign, you'll have to go to the Castle," said Sir James, a little doubtfully. "But," he added, after a moment's pause, "I hope you'll take to us and your own country, and need no 'foreign aid of ornament,' eh? You must forgive me. I'm an old fellow, and old-fashioned. In my time it used to be thought that your French and Italians were – well, no better than they should be. Germans, they tell me, are a more solid race; but I know little difference – I know little difference. You'll say that's my ignorance," said this man of prejudice, beaming upon his companion with a smile in which there was a little deprecation, but a great deal of simple confidence. It was impossible not to condone the errors of a censor so innocent.