Read Ebook: May; vol. II by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

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"May I write again soon? and will you give me a line--just a line--three or four words, if no more, to tell me that you still remember the existence of one who is always

"Your faithful servant, "E. F."

This letter Marjory read at the breakfast-table, seated between Aunt Jean and Uncle Charles, with little Milly opposite to her, and all the commonplaces of ordinary talk going on. How bewildered would those good folks have been could they have read it over her shoulder! How bewildered did she feel reading it, moved to an interest which made her half indignant with herself, and feeling impatient with the writer for that restrained glow of feeling, which notwithstanding communicated to her a sympathetic thrill. "Ridiculous!" she said, and felt her cheeks glow, and her heart move a little, notwithstanding all she did to control it.

"That's a long letter, May," said Mr. Charles, looking at it with some curiosity as she put it carefully back into its envelope.

"It is from Mr. Fanshawe," she said, with a consciousness for which she could have taken instant vengeance on herself; "he has gone to London. He said he would let me know where he had gone."

"Oh!" said Mr. Charles; and Miss Jean's eyes lighted up.

Marjory let the letter lie by her plate as if it was of no importance, but felt her cheeks grow hotter and hotter. Ridiculous! She determined to write him a most matter-of-fact reply, which should make an end of this discursive nonsense. If he thought she had leisure for a sentimental correspondence, she must convince him to the contrary; how absurd it was! And yet to be thus put upon a pedestal of absolute superiority, and worshipped in this covert way, is not in itself disagreeable. A little weakness stole about her heart; insensibly it occurred to her during the forenoon that there were several things she would like to consult him about. She slid the letter quietly into her pocket before she left the table. It happened to her to look at it again during the course of the day, just "to see what he had said" about his present occupations. As it happened he had not said anything. But how was Marjory to recollect that?

Mr. Charles Heriot had not come to the High Street without an object. He had left Pitcomlie on the morning after Marjory left it, and had proceeded straight to his house in Edinburgh to review the capabilities of George Square; and he had not been very well satisfied with those capabilities. The house had not been inhabited since it had been in his possession. It was an excellent old-fashioned house, worth a dozen of the ordinary habitations which fall to your lot and mine, dear reader; but it was furnished with mere chairs and tables, bookcases and side-boards, not with any associations or kindly customs of use and wont. There was some old spindle-legged furniture, which had belonged to some Leddy Pitcomlie in the beginning of last century, with which Marjory could have made a quaint corner to live in, in one part, at least, of the chilly, uninhabited drawing-room, converting it all at once into such a chamber as some Jacobite lady might have received the Chevalier in, or where Mrs. Anne Keith might have discoursed to young Walter Scott. But Mr. Charles's imagination was dulled by the vexations and embarrassments that possessed him, and he could not realize this; and his decision about George Square was that it would not do. The chain of habit was very hard to break with Mr. Charles; but when once broken, he was impatient, and almost lawless, rushing into any novelty that presented itself. The novelty in this case, however, was not extravagant. What he did was simply to take a house in St. Andrew's for the summer; and it was this which he had come to intimate to the household in the High Street.

"Not but what Marjory would be very happy with you, poor thing," he said to Aunt Jean; "perhaps more happy than I can hope to see her; but still it will be more of a change. After griefs like hers, and all that has happened, I have always heard that a change was the best thing; and as she's used to me and my ways--"

"You need not apologize, Chairles Heriot," said the old lady. "If I ever deluded myself I was to get a companion, it's best to undeceive me; but I did not delude myself. I'm used to live alone, and no doubt after the first I would have gone back to my crabbed ways. But there's one thing I must say. I'm fond of the girl, though she maybe does not give me credit for it, and she shall have all I've got to leave; I said in my haste she was my natural heir, and too natural, and a Miss Heriot doomed, all her days, like me. But mind this, if you take May away, I'll no have her back. I give her to you on one condition, and that is, that you'll marry her well. Marry that girrl, and marry her well, and you'll have my blessing, and I'll think better of ye, Chairles, than I've ever thought all your days."

"Marry her, and marry her well!" cried Mr. Charles, in dismay; "and how am I to do that? I have never married myself, and neither have you."

"That has nothing to do with it," said Miss Jean, promptly. "The more reason that Marjory should; there's enough of us poor dry trees, with nothing to leave behind. If you have any respect for the past generation, of which I'm the last representative, Charlie Heriot, you'll do what I say. Marry her well; she's worthy the trouble. She'll make such a man's wife as few men deserve, that's my opinion. Mind, I'm not saying but what she might be mended; but marry her, and marry her well, Charlie, or you'll get nothing from me."

"Perhaps you would tell me how I'm to do it?" said Mr. Charles, with sarcastic seriousness.

"If you cannot find that out for yourself, you'll never do it by my teaching," said Miss Jean. "Well I know ye have but little sense, you useless men; but ye know other men, if you do nothing else. If it was a wife, now, that I wanted for a likely lad, do ye think I could not lay my hand on one? aye, and bring it to pass, too, if there was not something sore against me. Keep your eyes open, and when ye see a man that's worth the trouble, take him to your house--since ye are to have a house; and meddle no more, Charlie Heriot, after ye have done that; meddle no more. The first step is in your power; but the rest they must do themselves, or it will never be done. That's my advice. Friends can do a great deal, but there's a leemit which they must never pass. Once let May see what you have in your head, and there's an end of it all. Without judgment, ye'll never succeed in that, nor, indeed, in anything else, as ye might have learned from the family letters ye are so fond of. But the Heriots have never minded their daughters; they have left the poor things to themselves. There's me, for example; not that I'm regretting my lot. A man would have been a terrible trouble to me; I could not have been fashed with a creature aye on my hands. But Marjory's young enough to accustom herself to her fate, whatever that may be."

"I hope so," said Mr. Charles, with some impatience; "but if you think that I am going to take home every man about the Links to see whether our May is good enough for him--"

"That's just like one of your interpretations," said Miss Jean, with quiet scorn. "'Any man that's worth the trouble,' said I; 'every man upon the Links,' says he; it's just what a woman has to expect. And Marjory may have settled for herself, so far as I know. There was that English lad, that you and poor Thomas, like two wise men, had so much about the house--"

"Fanshawe? I don't think he has a penny," said Mr. Charles.

"Most likely no, or ye would not have taken such pains to throw him in the girrl's way. He was not ill-looking, and he had a taking manner, and when the heart's soft it's easy to make an impression; she has a kind of absent look at times. And there's Johnnie Hepburn, not a great match, but well off, that would give his two e'en if she would but look at him--"

"Johnnie Hepburn is not an ill lad," said Mr. Charles, inclining for the moment, if Marjory's marriage was to be brought into the foreground, to seize on the easiest way of deciding it; "but in the meantime," he added, recalling his thoughts, "neither marrying nor giving in marriage is in her head--or mine either--with three deaths in the family."

"Oh aye!" said Miss Jean; "ye need not tell me the importance of what's happened. Both to us now living and to all the race, it's a terrible thing to think of, that both sons should be swept away, and a poor little bairn with a strange woman of a mother, a mindless creature that kens none of our ways, should be all that's left to succeed. Never since I mind has anything happened like it. However, we must all die; but there's no the same necessity in marriage, and that's why I'm speaking. I'm old, older than all them that's gone. Before ye see me again, I may be on the road to Comlie kirkyard, beside the rest--which is one good thing," Miss Jean added, with her sharp eyes twinkling, "of a maiden state like yours and mine, Charlie. No other family has any share in us. We are sure, at least, to lie with our own at the last."

"Ay, to be sure," said Mr. Charles, who was not thinking of any such consolation, and who was glad to recur to his original subject. "We'll live very quietly, and see no company. St. Andrews is one of the places where you can see many people, or few, according to your inclination; and I'll have my quiet game, and May will have her sister to take up her mind. For the time being, Aunt Jean, I cannot see that we could do better; and I will always be at hand in case of that foolish young woman at Pitcomlie going wrong altogether."

"The Lord preserve us from these greedy men!" said Miss Jean. "The water's in his e'en over his friar's chicken; which is as wasteful a dish and as extravagant as any I know. You must try to put up with my poor Jess's plain roast and boiled. It will be a trial, no doubt; but I must go and give her her orders," said the old lady, marching downstairs with her cane tapping on every step. She went to the kitchen, and stirred up the artist there, whose powers were anything but contemptible, by sarcastic descriptions of her nephew's tastes. "You would think to hear him that nobody could dress a decent dish but yon woman at Pitcomlie," Miss Jean said, artfully, "and he's very great on fish, and thinks none of us know how to put a haddie on the table. It's not pleasant for an honest woman like you that have been born among haddies, so to speak, Jess; but you must not mind what an epicure like that may say. For my part, I'm always very well pleased with your simple dishes."

"It is wonderful the talent that is hidden in out-of-the-way places," he said afterwards, when describing this feast; and when you reflect that he did not know what sort of cook was awaiting him in St. Andrews, and did know that the good woman in George Square was good for nothing beyond an occasional chop, it may be supposed that his pretensions in presence of Miss Jean were considerably lessened. This gave Mr. Charles more thought than that other matter of the necessity of marrying Marjory. Now that Marjory belonged as it were to himself, forming indeed the very first of his conditions of existence, he did not see the necessity of any change. He said to himself, as her father had once said, "No husband would be so considerate of her as I am. She will never get so much of her own way again," and felt that the suggestion that Marjory should be married was an impertinence especially offensive to himself. That could be dismissed, however, with little ceremony. It was a more serious matter about the cook.

Some weeks, however, elapsed before the removal to St. Andrews was effected, and in those weeks things went very badly with the household at Pitcomlie. Fleming, being further aggravated after Mr. Charles's departure, decided upon leaving at once instead of waiting for the term, which had been his first intention.

"A man may argufy with a man," he said, when he announced his final decision to Mrs. Simpson, "but to put up with a wheen woman is mair than I'm equal to. Stay you, my dear, if you think proper; but I'm auld enough to take my ain way, and I'll no stay to be driven about by these new leddies. If it had been Miss Marjory, it would have been another kind of thing; but, by George, to put up with all their tantrums, me an auldish man, and used to my ain way and very little contradiction, and a man engaged to be married into the bargain! I'll no do't."

This was a serious blow to the house. The footman, who had been thereupon elevated by Matilda to Fleming's place, was elated by his advancement, and conducted himself towards the maids in a way which produced notice of resignation from several of the women. And Mrs. Simpson, when it came to her turn to bear, unsupported by her Fleming, the daily burden of the "new leddy's" unsatisfactory manners, struck work too, and decided that it was not worth her while to struggle on even for the short time that remained.

"I'm weel aware, mem," she said to Verna, who had attempted a private remonstrance, "that we should act, no as ithers act to us, but as we would that they should do. That's awfu' true; but I canna but think He would have made a difference Himself, if it had been put to Him, in the case of a servant. You see, naturally we look up to them that are above us for an example; we dinna set up to give them an example, which would be terrible conceited. And a woman like me, with a' the care of the house on her head, and slaving over the fire, dressing dishes that I have no heart to touch by the time they come to me--Na, na! it's no from the like of me that a Christian example should be expectit. And then you must mind it's said in the Bible as weel, 'I will be good to him that is good, and froward to him that is froward.' I humbly hope I'm a Christian woman, but I canna go beyond Scripture. And what is a month's wages to me? I've been long in good service, and I've put by some siller, and I dinna doubt but you've heard, mem, that though I'm no so young as I once was, I have--ither prospects; and ane that will no see me want. So as for the month's wages, I've made mair sacrifices than that."

"Your sister, mem!" the housekeeper answered in a blaze of passion; but then feeling her superiority, paused and controlled herself. "When Mistress Chairles is as well kent in the countryside as I am, it will be time to speak about characters," she said. "Characters, Lord preserve us! am I like a young lass wanting a character? You're a stranger, Miss Bassett, and a weel meaning young leddie, that has nae intention to give offence, I ken that; and I think no worse of you for judging according to your lights; but when it's said that Mrs. Simpson, housekeeper for ten years at Pitcomlie, has left her situation, who do you think will stand most in need of an explanation--Mistress Chairles, or me? If I wanted a new place, it would not be to her I would come to recommend me. And as it happens," said the housekeeper with modest pride, "I'm no wanting a new place; I'm going home to my ain house."

"But, dear Mrs. Simpson, it will be so very, very inconvenient for us; what shall we do?" cried Verna, driven to her last standing-ground.

"I'm no blaming you, mem," said Mrs. Simpson, with dignity; "but Mistress Chairles should have taken mair thought what she was saying to a decent woman--that has never been used to ill language. If she wanted me to consider her, she should have shown me a good example and considered me."

"I know! you have refused my advice, and laughed at all my remonstrances; you have never listened to a single word I have said since that day when the will was read. I have made up my mind to give up, like the rest."

"Oh, Verna, don't! oh don't forsake me; what shall I do? If I am a little quick-tempered, is that my fault? I am always sorry, and beg your pardon. I will beg your pardon on my knees. Oh, Verna! and the Ayah going, and everybody. I shall get no sleep with baby, and no rest with all these worries. If you go and forsake me, I shall die!"

"You treat me just like one of the servants," said Verna; "except that I have no wages. I don't know why I should stay to be bullied and made miserable. I will go too. I can have the Ayah to take care of me, and poor papa will be glad enough to see me again."

"Oh, Verna, for heaven's sake! for pity's sake, for the sake of my poor, poor unfortunate babies! You shall have everything you can think of; everything you would like--"

"Yes, all that is unpleasant!" said Verna; "the kicks, but not the halfpence; the battles with the servants, and everything that is disagreeable--"

"Verna! if I promise never to do anything but what you like, never to say anything you don't approve of--to do always what you advise me? Oh, Verna! if I say I will be your slave!" cried Matilda, throwing herself upon her sister's neck.

Then Verna allowed herself to be softened.

"I didn't want to come," she said. "I came for your sake, and poor Charlie's. I don't want to stay; it's cold and wretched here; I like India a great deal better; but if I should try a little while longer, and make an attempt to keep you straight, will you promise to take my advice, and do what I tell you? It is of no use my staying otherwise. I am quite ready to pack up and go back to India; make up your mind what you will do."

"I will do whatever you please," said Matilda, dissolved in tears.

"For you know you are a fool," said Verna calmly; "you always were; when you came out a girl, and gave us all that trouble about the cadets in the ship--when you married poor Charlie, and led him such a life--when you came back here and insulted Miss Heriot, and made the house miserable; you have always been a fool, and I suppose you cannot be different; but, at least, you ought to know."

"Oh, Verna, I will!" cried the penitent; and it was thus with her blue eyes running over with tears, with her lips quivering, and her pretty face melting into its most piteous aspect, that Mr. Hepburn found the young mistress of the house when he went to Pitcomlie, charged with a message, which Marjory, wearied by his importunate desire to serve her, had invented for the purpose. He had not been thinking of Mrs. Charles. She was Marjory's supplanter to him, and a thoroughly objectionable personage. But when he came suddenly into the room, and saw this weeping creature with her fair hair ruffled by her emotion, tears hanging on her eyelashes, her piteous little pretty mouth trembling and quivering, the sight went to the young man's susceptible heart. No secondary trouble, such as quarrels with her servants, or the desolation consequent upon that amusement occurred to him as the possible cause for the state in which he found her; no doubt crossed his mind that it was the woe of her widowhood that was overwhelming her. He stopped short at the door out of respect for the sorrow into which he had intruded unawares. He explained with perturbation that he was the bearer of a message; he begged pardon metaphorically upon his knees. "Pray, pray assure your sister that I would not have intruded for the world; that I feel for her most deeply," he said, the sympathetic tears coming to his own eyes.

"She will be better presently," said wise Verna; "and it will do her good to see some one. She indulges her feelings too much. Poor child! perhaps it is not wonderful in her circumstances--"

"How could she do otherwise? I remember Charlie so well; may I speak of him to her?" said this sympathetic visitor.

Verna received this prayer very graciously; she said, "It will do her good;" and now she will have something to amuse her, she added, in her heart.

Hepburn amused Mrs. Charles very much, though that was not considered one of his capabilities in Comlie. He roused her gradually from her depressed state into general conversation. After he had delivered Marjory's message, he stayed and talked, feeling a quite novel excitement and exhilaration in the fact of this social success, which was unprecedented in his experience. To be appreciated is doubly delightful to a man who is not used to much applause from his friends. Matilda was the first pretty woman who had "understood" him, who had permitted herself to be beguiled out of her private sorrows by his agreeable society. He was not the less faithful to Marjory, who had possessed all his thoughts as long as he could remember; but still it was pleasant to be able to comfort the afflicted, and to feel that his efforts for that end were successful. After a while, when the tears had been cleared away, when a gentle smile had stolen upon the fair countenance before him; when she had yielded to his fascination so far as to talk a little, and to listen eagerly, and to look up to him with those blue eyes, Hepburn could not but feel that Miss Heriot must have been deceived somehow, and that so gentle a creature must be easy "to get on with," to those who would be good to her. For the first time in his life, he felt that there was something to excuse in the idol of his youth. Not a fault, indeed, but a failure of comprehension; and Marjory had never failed before in any particular, so far as her adorer knew. Perhaps the reason was that this gentle little widow was a totally different kind of woman. Various things he had heard on this subject occurred to Hepburn's mind to account for Marjory's failure. Women, even the best and cleverest, did sometimes fail to understand each other, he believed, upon points which offered no difficulty to an impartial masculine intellect. This was not at all a disagreeable thought; it raised him vaguely into a pleasant atmosphere of superiority which elated him, and could not hurt anybody. He even seemed to himself to be fonder of Marjory from the sense of elevation over her. Yes, no doubt this was the explanation. Mrs. Charles had done or said something which a man probably would never have noticed, but which had affected the more delicate and sensitive, but less broad and liberal nature of the sweetest of women; and Marjory, on her side, as he knew by experience, uttered words now and then which were not destitute of the power to sting. Hepburn thought that to bring these two together again would be a very fine piece of work for the man who could accomplish it. A loving blue-eyed creature like this could not but cling to Marjory's strength, and Marjory would derive beauty, too, from the fair being whom she supported. Yes, he thought, as he looked at her, Matilda was the kind of woman described in all the poets, the lovely parasite, the climbing woodbine, a thing made up of tendrils, which would hang upon a man, and hold him fast with dependent arms. Marjory was not of that nature. To be sure, Marjory was the first of women; but there was a great deal to be said for the other, who was, no doubt, inferior, but yet had her charm. Hepburn felt that in the abstract it would be sweet to feel that some one was dependent upon him. Somehow the idea crept to his heart, and nestled there; but Marjory naturally would not have the same feelings. Marjory would be disposed rather to push away the tendrils. It was a different sort of thing altogether between the two women. Thus Hepburn felt a delicious superiority creep over him as he sat and talked. He received Mrs. Charles's confidences about the servants after a time, and was deeply sorry. Fleming and the rest seemed to him a set of savages, taking advantage of this sweet young creature's ignorance and innocence.

"Let me manage it for you," he said, eagerly. "I am not very clever about servants myself, but I will speak to my housekeeper, who knows everybody. She will find you some one. Let me be of some use to you."

"Oh, that will be so kind!" cried both the ladies. Johnnie Hepburn had never felt himself such a man during his whole life.

When Verna had thus arranged matters for her sister's comfort, she herself withdrew to put the house once more in order, and to resume the helm of state. She shrugged her shoulders when she left the room, in which she left the new-comer quite happy, and Matilda in gentle good spirits.

"No wonder we think men fools," she said to herself; "and no wonder men think us fools," she added, philosophically, after a moment.

And then she put on her hat and went round the house outside. She took a very comprehensive view, taking her double eyeglass, which she kept for important moments, and studying the building thoroughly from every point of view. Women are deeply conservative, it is common to say; but at the same time there is no such iconoclast as an ignorant young woman longing for perfection, and secure in her own opinion. Verna thought the old house a most unnecessary adjunct to the new. The only useful part of it was the tower occupied by Mr. Charles, which would no doubt accommodate a visitor if the house was very much crowded--but then if a new wing was built there would be a great deal more accommodation. Verna built the wing in her imagination, drawing it along the further side of the lime avenue, and planting long windows open to the ground in the new drawing-room, which would be much "snugger," she thought, than the old drawing-room which opened upon the cliff. She made a nice room for herself in the warmest corner facing to the south, for she was cold by right of being Indian, and liked to bask in the sun. How delightful was this sense of being supreme, this feeling of power, this capacity for doing as she liked! It seemed to her that she had fairly subdued Matilda, and that nothing would tempt that incapable person, after her failure, to meddle any more with the affairs which she had so mismanaged; besides Verna meant to make her sister very comfortable; she liked people to be comfortable. She had no inclination to oppress, or to be unkind. She meant to do more for Matilda than she would have done for herself, indulging her to the top of her bent, and putting up with all her weaknesses. Even to the length of providing somebody to flirt with, of taking her to gaieties which they had both dreamt of as girls, and had read about in books, without ever having it in their power to taste their sweetness, Verna was willing to humour her sister; and so long as she would consent to be quiet and enjoy herself, asked nothing more from Matty. That she should enjoy herself was necessary, as this was the only expedient Verna knew to keep her contented. Finally she sat down on the steps of the sundial, where Marjory had sat so often, and turned over all her plans in her mind with a satisfaction which it would be difficult to describe in words. Nineteen years must elapse before Tommy should be of age. Nineteen years! a lifetime; and during that time there seemed no reason why she should not be virtual mistress of the place. To be sure such a thing was possible as that she should marry; but Verna knew herself well enough to feel that she could trust herself, and would do nothing contrary to her own interests. If some one should by chance turn up with an estate and house equal to Pitcomlie, who had sense enough to see what an admirable mistress she would make for it, why then, indeed, marriage might be attractive, and an improvement upon present circumstances; but without an inducement of this kind, Verna felt herself to be safe. What happy visions floated through her brain as she sat on the steps of the sundial, and looked at the house which was to be her kingdom! What a thing it is to come suddenly from poverty and obscurity into wealth, and ease, and honour, and glory! Mr. Bassett out in Calcutta was not badly off, but he had brought up his daughters very economically, and he had not concealed his desire to get rid of them as soon as possible. Verna had thwarted and provoked her father by not marrying. He had sworn it was her fault, though she knew it was not her fault. Surely he could not wish nor expect her to marry a subaltern in a line regiment, which was all the Fates had sent in her way? But still he had been dissatisfied, warmly asserting that the business of girls who came to India was to marry--well, if they could, but anyhow to marry--a view of the case which disgusted his daughter; and there were complications about a second half-caste family of young Bassetts which made her very glad to escape from her father's paternal care. After all the storms that had surrounded her existence, and all the shabbiness of her beginning, and fear of future shabbiness in store, it may be imagined what it was to Verna when her ship suddenly sailed into this bay of plenty. She disliked cold winds generally, but the cold wind to-day, though it blew from the east, did not affect her as she sat on the base of the sundial and contemplated her empire. Not without a struggle had that empire been attained. She had almost despaired when she saw how her sister in the strength of her folly, had put to flight the Heriots, and emptied the house; but still she had been patient and bided her time, and that time had come at last.

Short-sighted young woman! She did not perceive, till she had put up her eyeglass, that Johnnie Hepburn was leading Mrs. Charles out from the open window to take the air upon the cliff. When she did see it, she congratulated herself only on having found some one to amuse Matty--for she had no eyeglass to remedy that short-sightedness so far as the future is concerned, which is common to the human race.

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