AND for all these things Effie cared nothing. This forms always a tragic element in the most ordinary love-making, where one gives what the other does not appreciate, or will not accept, yet the giver cannot be persuaded to withdraw the gift, or to follow the impulse of that natural resentment which comes from kindness disdained.
There was nothing tragical, however, in the present circumstances, which were largely composed of lawn tennis at Allonby, afternoon tea in the dimness of an unnecessarily shaded room, or walks along the side of the little stream. When Effie came for the favourite afternoon game, the sisters and their brother would escort her home, sometimes all the way, sometimes only as far as the little churchyard where the path struck off and climbed the high river bank.
Nothing could be more pleasant than this walk. The days were often gray and dim; but the walkers were young, and not too thinly clad; the damp in the air did not affect them, and the breezes stirred their veins. The stream was small but lively, brown, full of golden lights. So far as the park went the bank was low on the Allonby side, though on the other picturesque, with rising cliffs and a screen of trees. In the lower hollows of these cliffs the red of the rowan berries and the graceful bunches of the barberry anticipated the autumnal tints, and waving bracken below, and a host of tiny ferns in every crevice, gave an air of luxuriance. The grass was doubly green with that emerald brightness which comes from damp, and when the sun shone everything lighted up with almost an artificial glow of excessive colour, greenness, and growth. The little party would stroll along filling the quiet with their young voices, putting even the birds to silence.
But it was not Effie who talked. She was the audience, sometimes a little shocked, sometimes bewildered, but always amused more or less; wondering at them, at their cleverness, at their simplicity, at what the country girl thought their ignorance, and at what she knew to be their superior wisdom.
Fred too was remarkable on these points, but not so remarkable as his sisters; and he did not talk so much. He walked when he could by Effie’s side, and made little remarks to her, which Effie accounted for by the conviction that he was very polite, and thought it right to show her those regards which were due to a young lady. She lent but a dull ear to what he said, and gave her chief attention to Phyllis and Doris, whose talk was more wonderful than anything else that Effie knew.
“It is curious,” Miss Phyllis said, “that there never are two picturesque banks to a river. Nature provides herself a theatre, don’t you know. Here are we in the auditorium.”
“Only there is nothing to hear,” said Doris, “except the birds—well, that’s something. But music over there would have a fine effect. It would be rather nice to try it, if it ever was warm enough here for an open air party. You could have the orchestra hidden: the strings there, the wind instruments here, don’t you see, violas in the foreground, and the big ’cello booming out of that juniper.”
“By Jove!” cried Fred from where he strolled behind with Effie, “how astounded the blackbirds would be.”
“It would be interesting to know what they thought. Now, what do you suppose they would do? Stop and listen? or else be struck by the force of the circumstances and set up an opposition?”
“Burst their little throats against the strings.”
“Or be deafened with your vulgar trombones. Fancy a brass band on the side of the wan water!”
“It would be very nice, though,” said Doris. “I said nothing about trombones. It would be quite eighteenth century. And here on the lawn we could sit and drink syllabubs. What are syllabubs? Probably most people would prefer tea. Effie, what do you think? you never say a word. Shall we have a garden party, and music over there under the cliff?”
Effie had walked on softly, taking in everything with a mingled sense of admiration and ridicule. She was quite apart, a spectator, listening to the artificial talk about nothing at all, the conversation made up with a distinct idea of being brilliant and interesting, which yet was natural enough to these young people, themselves artificial, who made up their talk as they made up their life, out of nothing. Effie laughed within herself with involuntary criticism, yet was half impressed at the same time, feeling that it was like something out of a book.
“Oh, me?” she said in surprise at being consulted. “I have not any opinion, indeed. I never thought of it at all.”
“Then think now, and let us hear; for you should know best how the people here would like it.”
“Don’t you see, Dor, that she thinks us very silly, and would not talk such nonsense as we are talking for the world? There is no sense in it, and Effie is full of sense.”
“Miss Ogilvie has both sense and sympathy,” said Fred.
This discussion over her alarmed Effie. She grew red and pale; half affronted, half pleased, wholly shy and uncomfortable.
“No,” she said, “I couldn’t talk like you. I never talk except when—except when—I have got something to say; that is, of course, I mean something that is—something—not merely out of my head, like you. I am not clever enough for that.”
“Is she making fun of us, Phyll?”
“I think so, Dor. She is fact, and we are—well, what are we?—not fiction altogether, because we’re real enough in flesh and blood.”
Effie was moved to defend herself.
“You are like two young ladies in a book,” she said, “and I am just a girl like anybody else. I say How-do-you-do? and Do you think it will be a fine day? or I can tell you if anything has happened in the village, and that Dr. Jardine was called away this morning to Fairyknowe, so that somebody there must be ill. But you make up what is very nice to listen to, and yet it makes one laugh, because it is about nothing at all.”
“That is quite true,” said Doris; “that is our way. We don’t go in for fact. We belong to the speculative side. We have nothing real to do, so we have to imagine things to talk about.”
“And I hope you think we do it well,” said Phyllis with a laugh.
Effie was encouraged to laugh too; but her feelings were very complicated; she was respectful and yet she was a little contemptuous. It was all new to her, and out of her experience; yet the great house, the darkened rooms, the luxury and ease, the way in which life went on, apparently without any effort on the part of this cluster of people, who had everything they wanted without even the trouble of asking for it, as in a fairy tale, harmonized with the artificial talk, the speculations, the studies which were entirely voluntary, without any use as Effie thought, without any call for them.
She herself was not indeed compelled to work as poor girls were, as governesses were, even as the daughters of people within her own range, who made their own dresses, and taught their little brothers and sisters, had to do. But still there were certain needs which she supplied, and cases in which she had a necessary office to fulfil. There were the flowers for instance. Old Pirie always brought her in a basketful whenever she wanted them; but if Pirie had to be trusted to arrange the flowers!
In Allonby, however, even that was done; the vases refilled themselves somehow, as if by help of the fairies; the table was always magnificent, but nobody knew when it was done or who did it—nobody, that is, of the family. Phyllis and Doris decided, it was to be supposed, what they should wear, but that was all the trouble they took even about their dress. Numbers of men and women worked in the background to provide for all their wants, but they themselves had nothing to do with it. And they talked as they lived.
Effie did not put all this into words, but she perceived it, by means of a little humorous perception which was in her eyes though she did not know it. And though they were so much finer than she was, knew so much more, and possessed so much more, yet these young ladies were as the comedians of life to little Effie, performing their drawing-room drama for her amusement. They talked over the little churchyard which lay at the opening of the glen in the same way.
“The Americans have not found out Allonby yet,” they said to each other. “We must ask Miss Greenwood up here—or, oh! let us have Henry Holland. But no, he will not go into any raptures. He has gone through everything in that way. He is more blasé than the most blasé of Englishmen; let us have some one fresh. How they will hang over the Hic jacet! And we must have some one who knows the ballad. Do you know the ballad, Effie? but perhaps you never heard of it, as you were born here.”
“Do you mean about Helen?” said Effie. And in her shyness she grew red, up to her hair.
“Oh Helen fair beyond compare,
I’ll make a garland of thy hair,
Shall bind my heart for ever mair.”
“How delightful! the rural muse, the very genius of the country. Effie, you shall recite it to us standing by the stone with a shepherd’s maud thrown over you, and that sweet Scotch accent which is simply delicious.”
“And the blush, dear, just as it is,” said Phyllis, clapping her hands softly; “you will have the most enormous success.”
“Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort,” said Effie, her soft colour of shyness and resentment turning into the hot red of shame. “I wish you would not try to make a fool of me, as well as of the place.”
“To make a fool of you! Don’t be angry, Effie, the phrase is enchanting. Make a fool of—that is Scotch too. You know I am beginning to make a collection of Scoticisms; they are one nicer than another. I only wish I had the accent and the voice.”
“And the blush, Dor; it would not be half so effective without that. Could you pick up those little particulars which Effie doesn’t appreciate, with your dramatic instinct into the bargain——”
“Should I be able to recite Fair Helen as well as Effie? Oh no,” said Doris, and she began, “Oh Helen fair beyond compare,” with an imitation of that accent which Effie fondly hoped she was free of, which entirely overcame the girl’s self-control. Her blush grew hotter and hotter till she felt herself fiery red with anger, and unable to bear any more.
“If I spoke like that,” she cried, “I should be ashamed ever to open my mouth!” then she added with a wave of her hand, “Goodbye, I am going home,” for she could not trust herself further.
“Oh, Effie, Effie! Why goodness, the child’s offended,” cried Phyllis.
“And I had just caught her tone!” said the other.
Then they both turned upon Fred. “Why don’t you go after her? Why don’t you catch her up? Why do you stand there staring?”
“Why are you both so—disagreeable?” cried Fred, who had hurried on while they spoke, and turned back to fling at them this very innocent missile as he ran; nothing stronger occurred to him to say. He had not the vocabulary of his sisters. They watched him while he rushed along and saw him overtake the little fugitive. It was a sight which interested these two young ladies. They became contemplative spectators once more.
“I wonder if he will know what to say?” Doris inquired of herself. “It should be a capital opportunity for Fred if he knows how to take advantage of it. He ought to throw us both overboard at once, and say we were a couple of idiots, who did not know what we were talking about. I should, in Fred’s place.”
“Yes, I suppose that would be the right way; but a man does naturally throw over his sisters,” said Phyllis. “You need not be afraid. It was fine to see her blaze up. Fury is not pretty generally—in papa, for instance.”
“Ah, that’s beyond a sentiment. But in Effie it will only be a flare and all over. She will be penitent. After a little while she will be awfully sweet to Fred.”
“And do you really want him to—propose to her, Dor?”
“That is a strong step,” said the young lady, “because if he did he would have to stick to it. I don’t see that I am called upon to consider contingencies. In the meantime it’s very amusing to see Fred in love.”
“In the absence,” said Phyllis, “of more exciting preoccupations.”
“Ah! that’s true; you’re a marrying woman yourself,” was the remark her sister made.
Meanwhile Fred had overtaken Effie, who was already beginning to feel ashamed and remorseful, and to say in her own ear that it was she who was making a fool of herself. How could she have been so silly? People always make themselves ridiculous when they take offence, and, of course, they would only laugh at her for being so touchy, so absurd. But nobody likes to be mocked, or to be mimicked, which comes to the same thing, Effie said to herself.
A hot tear had gathered into each eye, but the flush was softening down, and compunction was more and more getting possession of her bosom, when Fred, anxious, devoted, panting, came up to her. It was a moment or two before he could get breath to speak.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Miss Ogilvie. That is just my difficulty with the girls,” said Fred, promptly throwing his sisters over as they had divined. “They have so little perception. Not a bad sort in themselves, and devoted to you: but without tact—without your delicacy of feeling—without——”
“Oh,” cried Effie, “you must not compare them with me; they are far, far cleverer—far more instructed—far—— It was so silly of me to be vexed——”
“Not silly at all; just what you would naturally be with your refined taste. I can’t tell you how I felt it,” said Fred, giving himself credit for the perception that was wanting in his sisters. “But you will forgive them, Miss Ogilvie? they will be so unhappy.”
“Oh no,” cried Effie, with once more a sense of the ludicrous in this assertion. But Fred was as grave as an owl, and meant every word he said.
“Yes, indeed, and they deserve to be so; but if I may tell them that you forgive them——”
“It is not worth speaking about, Mr. Dirom; I was foolish too. And are you really going to have Americans here? I never saw any Americans. What interest would they take in our old churchyard, and Adam Fleming’s broken old gravestone?”
“They take more interest in that sort of thing than we do whom it belongs to; that is to say, it doesn’t belong to us. I am as much a new man as any Yankee, and have as little right. We are mere interlopers, you know.”
Fred said this with a charming smile he had, a smile full of frank candour and openness, which forestalled criticism. Effie had heard the same sentiment expressed by others with a very different effect. When Fred said it, it seemed a delightful absurdity. He laughed a little, and so, carried away by sympathetic feeling, did she, shame-faced and feeling guilty in her heart at the remembrance of the many times in which, without any sense of absurdity, she had heard the same words said.
“We are a queer family,” he continued in his pleasant explanatory way. “My father is the money-maker, and he thinks a great deal of it; but we make no money, and I think we are really as indifferent about it as if we had been born in the backwoods. If anything happened at the office I should take to my studio, and I hope I should not enjoy myself too much, but there would be the danger. ‘Ah, freedom is a noble thing,’ as old Barbour says.”
Effie did not know who old Barbour was, and she was uncertain how to reply. She said at last timidly, “But you could not do without a great deal of money, Mr. Dirom. You have everything you want, and you don’t know how it comes. It is like a fairy tale.”
Fred smiled again with an acquiescence which had pleasure in it. Though he made so little of his advantages, he liked to hear them recognized.
“You are right,” he said, “as you always are, Miss Ogilvie. You seem to know things by instinct. But all the same we don’t stand on these things; we are a little Bohemian, all of us young ones. I suppose you would think it something dreadful if you had to turn out of Gilston. But we should rather like any such twist of the whirligig of fortune. The girls would think it fun.”
To this Effie did not make any reply. To be turned out of Gilston was an impossibility, for the family at least, whatever it might be for individuals. And she did not understand about Bohemians. She made no answer at all. When one is in doubt it is the safest way. But Fred walked with her all the way home, and his conversation was certainly more amusing than that with which she was generally entertained. There ran through it a little vein of flattery. There was in his eyes a light of admiration, a gleam from time to time of something which dazzled her, which she could not meet, yet furtively caught under her drooping eyelashes, and which roused a curious pleasure mixed with amusement, and a comical sense of guilt and wickedness on her own part.
She was flattered and dazzled, and yet something of the same laughter with which she listened to Phyllis and Doris was in her eyes. Did he mean it all? or what did he mean? Was he making conversation like his sisters, saying things that he meant to be pretty? Effie, though she was so simple, so inexperienced, in comparison with those clever young people, wondered, yet kept her balance, steadied by that native instinct of humour, and not carried away by any of these fine things.