APART from these painful struggles with her children which were quite new to Lady Car, there were many things that pained her in her residence at the Towers.
First of all there was her nearest neighbour, her dearest friend, her only sister Edith; the dearest companion of her life, who had stood by her in all her troubles, and to whom she had given a trembling support in her struggle, more successful than poor Carry’s against the husband her father had chosen for her. Edith had succeeded at last in marrying her only love, which was a poor marriage for an Earl’s daughter. They had, indeed, finally, both of them, made poor marriages; but what a contrast between them! Carry living ignobly with the husband of her choice upon Torrance’s money, the result of her humiliation; while Edith was at the head of a happy, frugal family, carefully ordered, with little margin for show or pleasure, but yet in all the plenitude of cheerful life, without a recollection to rankle, or any discord or complication in all her candid existence. Her father had not been able to force the will of Edith. She had not loved her John any better than poor Carry had loved in her early tender youth the lover of all her dreams, the Edward Beaufort who was now her husband; but Carry had not been able to resist the other husband, the horrible life. Even in that Edith had so much, so much the advantage over her sister! And then—oh, wonder to think of it—— John—John, from whom nothing had been expected, except that he should show himself, as he had always done, the good fellow, the honest gentleman, the true friend he was, whether by development of his own respectable mind or by the influence of Edith (though she was never clever like Carry), or by the united force of both, John had long been one of the most important men in the district, member for his county, trusted and looked up to both by his constituency at home and the people at head-quarters, who took his advice, it was said, on Scotch affairs more than anyone’s; whereas Edward—— Carry had long made that poignant comparison in her heart, but to see them together now bowed her to the ground with a secret humiliation which she could never acknowledge—not to her sister, who also in the old days had put so much faith in Beaufort’s genius; not to Edward himself—oh no, to humiliate him. He did not seem to feel the contrast at all himself, or, if he did perceive it, he thought it apparently to be to his own advantage, speaking now and then of the narrowness of practical men, of the deadening influence of politics, and of how completely John Erskine’s interest was limited to matters of local expediency and questions before Parliament. ‘And he used to have his share of intelligence,’ said all unconscious the useless man, whose failure his wife felt so passionately. Then, as if this were not enough, there was Jock, little Jock, who was younger than Janet, only fourteen, but already at Eton like Tom, and holding a place above that of the seventeen-year-old big lower boy. The reader must understand that this history is not of to-day, and that in those times big lower boys were still possible, though it is so no longer. Tom was only a lower boy, and little Jock might have fagged his cousin, had it not been that Jock was in college, on the foundation, saving the money which was not too plentiful at Dalrulzian. ‘A Tug!’ Tom had cried with contempt intensified by the sense of something in his mother’s eyes, the comparison which made her heart sick. Little Jock at fourteen, so far above the boy who was almost a man: John Erskine, in his solid good sense, so much more important a man than Edward with his genius manqué. It went to Carry’s heart.
It is difficult to feel that sense of humiliation, that overwhelming consciousness of the superiority of another family, however closely connected, to our very own, without a little grudge against the happy, the worthy, the fortunate. Carry loved her sister tenderly, and Edith’s happiness was dear to her; but the sight of that happiness before her eyes was more than the less fortunate sister could bear. She could not look upon Edith’s bright boy, with his candid countenance, without thinking with a deeper pang of Tom’s lowering brows, and that horrible look of intoxication which she had seen in his face; nor could she see her brother-in-law busy and cheerful with his public work, his table piled with letters, blue-books, all the paraphernalia of business, without thinking of Beaufort’s dilettante ease, his dislike of being appealed to, his ‘Oh, I know nothing of business!’ Why did he know nothing of business; why was he idle, always idle, good for nothing, while others—oh, with not half his powers!—were working for the country? It was still Carry’s desperate belief that no one had half his powers—yet sometimes she said to herself that, had he been stupid as some were, she could have borne it, but that it was the waste of these higher qualities which she could not bear. Even this little refuge of fancy was taken from her on the occasion of a meeting about some county movement, to which her husband was called as the guardian of young Tom, and where he had to make a speech much against his will. His speech was foolish, tedious, and ignorant—how indeed should he know about the affairs of a Scotch county?—while John Erskine held the matter and the attention of the hearers in his hand. ‘I thought Lady Car’s new husband had been a very clever man,’ she heard, or fancied she heard, someone say as the people dispersed. Perhaps she only fancied she heard it, caught it in a look. And how they applauded John Erskine, who did so well!—oh, she knew he did well, the master of his subject and of the people’s sympathies; whereas what information could poor Edward have, what common interest with all these people? Poor Edward! Carry’s heart contracted with an ineffable pang to think she could have called him so.
She loved Edith all the same—oh, yes! how could she fail to love her only sister, the person most near to her in all the world? But yet she shrank from seeing Edith, and felt at the sound of her happy voice as if she, Carry, must fly and hide herself in some dark and unknown place, and could not bear the contact of the other, who had the best of everything, and in whose path all was bright. To sympathise with one’s neighbour’s blessedness, when all that makes her happy is reversed in one’s own lot, is hard, the hardest of all the exercises of charity. Carry said to herself that she was glad and thankful that all was so well with Edith; but to hide her own face, to turn to the wall, not to be the witness of it, was the best thing to do. To look on at all, with the aching consciousness of failure on her own part, and smile over her own trouble at Edith’s happiness, was more than she was able to do: yet this was what she did day after day. And she read in Edith’s eyes that happy woman’s opinion of Tom, her verdict upon Beaufort, and her disappointment in Janet. Though Edith said nothing, Carry knew all that she could have said, and even heard over intervening miles, and through stone walls, how her sister breathed with a sigh her melancholy name. Poor Carry! Her heart fainted within her to realise everything, yet she did it, and covered her face and covered her ears not to hear and see that pity, which she could neither have heard nor seen by any exercise of ordinary faculties. But the mind by other means both sees and hears.
‘Edward,’ she said to her husband suddenly one day, ‘we must leave this place. I cannot bear it any more!’
He turned round upon her with a look of astonishment. ‘Leave this place! But why, my love?’ he said. His surprise was quite genuine. He had not then, during the whole of her martyrdom, acquired the faintest insight into her mind.
‘There is no reason,’ she said hastily, ‘only that I cannot—I cannot bear it any more.’
‘But is not that a little unreasonable, Carry? Why should you go away? It is only the middle of September. Tom does not go back to school for ten days at least—and after that——’
‘Edward, I hate the place. You knew that I hated the place.’
‘Yes, my love; and felt that it was not quite like my Carry to hate any place, especially the place which must be her son’s home.’
‘I never wanted to come,’ she said, ‘and now that we have proved—how inexpedient it was——’
‘Don’t say so, dear. I have told you my opinion already. The best women are unjust to boys in these respects. I don’t blame you. Your point of view is so different. On the contrary, we should have brought Tom here long ago. He ought to have learned as a child that there were men calling themselves his father’s friends who were not fit company for him. I think he has learned that lesson now, and to force him away from a place he is fond of, as if to show him that you could not trust him——’
‘It is not for Tom,’ she said; ‘Edward, cannot you understand? it is for myself.’
‘You are not the sort of woman to think of yourself when Tom’s interests are at stake. We ought to stay even after he is gone, to make all the friends we can for him. For my own part, I like the place very well,’ Beaufort said. ‘And then there is your sister so near at hand. You must try to forget the little accident that has disgusted you, Carry. Think of the pleasure of having Edith so near at hand—and that excellent fellow John—though he’s too much of an M.P.’
It was with purpose that Beaufort laughed, with that gentle and friendly ridicule of his brother-in-law, to carry her thoughts away from the accident—from Tom’s escapade, which he thought was the foundation of Carry’s trouble. And what could she say more? She did not, could not, tell him that Tom’s look had reminded her of another, and that Torrance himself, standing in full length in the hall, claiming its sovereignty, master of all that was within, kept the miseries of her past life and her unsatisfied heart too terribly before her. Of that she could say nothing to her husband, nor of Janet’s rebellion, nor above all of what was intolerable in Edith’s gentle society, the sense of her superior happiness, her pity for poor Carry! He might have divined what it was which made the house intolerable to her; but if he did not, how could she say it? Thus Lady Car gradually achieved the power of living on, of smiling upon all who surrounded her with something in her eyes which nobody comprehended, but which some few people were vaguely aware of, though they comprehended it not.
‘Poor Carry!’ Lady Edith said, in the very tone which Lady Car heard in her heart: but it was said in John Erskine’s library at Dalrulzian, with the windows closed, five miles away.
‘Why poor Carry?’ asked her husband; ‘if you were to ask her, she would say she was a happy woman, happy beyond anything she could have hoped. When I think of her with that brute Torrance—where is she now, but in such different circumstances.’
‘Oh, John, the circumstances are different; Edward is very nice: but—— ’
‘But what?’
‘Carry is not like you and me,’ said Edith, shaking her head.
‘No: perhaps so much the better for us. She is fanciful and poetical and nervous, not easy to satisfy; but the comparison—must be like heaven after hell.’
Edith continued to shake her head, but said no more. What was there to say? She could not perhaps have put it into words had she tried, and how get John to understand it?—a man immersed in public business, fearing that soon he should need a private secretary, which was an expense quite unjustified by his means. She patted him on the shoulder as she stood behind his chair, and said, ‘Poor John, have you all these letters to answer?’
‘Every one,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘You are in a compassionate humour to-day. Suppose you answer a few of them for me, instead of saying poor John.’
This was so easy! If she had not been so busy with the children she was the best of private secretaries! Alas! there was nothing to be done for poor Carry in the same simple way. Nor in any way, Edith reflected, as she sat down at her husband’s table: a sympathetic sister must not even venture to show that she was compassionate. She must conceal the consciousness of his father’s look in Tom Torrance’s face, and of the fact that Beaufort’s book had never been written, and that his name was altogether unknown to the world save as that of Lady Caroline Torrance’s second husband. Oh, poor Carry! Edith said again. But this time only in the depths of her own heart, not to John.
The only other person who saw the change in Lady Car’s look was Janet, who had defied her mother. The girl was in high rebellion still. She spent her life as much as she could with Tom, seconding powerfully, without being aware of it, the watchful supervision of Beaufort, who, if he had failed her in so many respects, was anxiously and zealously acting for Lady Car in her son’s interests. Janet seized upon her brother on every occasion when it was possible. She managed to ride with him, to walk with him, to occupy his attention as nobody else could have done. It is true that Tom had no delicacy on the subject of Janet, and sent her away with a push of his elbow when she bored him, without the least hesitation; but in her vehemence and passion she did not bore him for the short period of his holidays which remained. She had told him of her rebellion with a thrill of excitement which shook her from head to foot. The crisis was the greatest that had ever happened in her life. She could not forget it, not a word that had passed nor a look. Tom had contemplated her with an admiration mingled with alarm when he first heard the tale of her exploit. ‘You cheeked mother!’ He had scarcely done more himself, though he was a man and the master of all: and Janet was only a little girl, of no account at all. But her fervour, her passion seized hold upon him, and as it occupied herself in the overwhelming way with which a family conflict occupies the mind, Janet became as the sharer of an exciting secret to Tom. They watched their mother’s looks and every word she said in the light of that encounter. Neither of them was capable of believing that it had passed from Lady Car’s mind, while still they dwelt upon it, making it the theme of long conversations. ‘I say, do you think she’ll say anything to me?’ Tom asked, with some anxiety.
‘I don’t know; but if she does you’ll stand by me, won’t you, Tom?’
‘Oh, I say!’ Tom replied. ‘Beau would make a fuss if I said anything to mother. He has a way of speaking that makes you feel small somehow.’
‘Small? You! When you are the master! Why, mother said so, though she was so cross.’
‘Oh yes, of course I’m the master,’ said Tom. ‘But you should hear Beau when he gets on about a gentleman, don’t you know? What’s a gentleman? A man that has a place of his own and lots of money, and no need to do anything unless he likes—if that’s not a gentleman, I don’t know what is.’
‘And does Beau say—something different?’ Janet asked, with a little awe.
‘Oh, all kinds of nonsense; that it’s not what you have but what you do, and all that. Never take a good glass—well, that’s what Blackmore, father’s friend, calls it—a good glass—nor say a rude word—and all that sort of thing. By Jove! Jan, if it’s all true they say, father was a jolly fellow, and no mistake.’
‘Do you mean that he did—that?’
Tom gave vent to a large laugh. ‘Did—what? Oh, I can’t tell you all he did. He rode like anything; flew over every fence and every ditch that nobody else would take, and enjoyed himself. That’s what he did—till he married, which spoils all a man’s fun.’
‘Oh, Tom!’
‘Well, it does—you have to give up—ever so many things, and live like an old woman. I shan’t marry, I can tell you, Jan, not for years.’
‘Then I shall stop with you, Tom, and keep the house.’
‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ said Tom; ‘I shall have too many fellows coming and going to do with a girl about the place.’
‘But you must have some one to keep house. Mother said so! She is not going to have me at Easton—that I am sure of; and if I am not to keep house for you, Tom, what shall I do?’ said Janet, with symptoms of coming tears.
Then Tom did what the men of a family generally do when a foolish sister relies upon them. He promptly threw her over. ‘You should not have cheeked mother,’ he said.