MRS. MURRAY was left alone with her grandchild, and she was glad. Though she was old, she was full of that patient strength which shows itself without any ostentation whenever the emergency which requires it arises. She was not sorry for herself, nor did she think much of her own age, or of what was due to her. She had long got over that phase of life in which a woman has leisure to think of herself. And there was no panic of alarm about her, such as might have come to the inexperienced. She knew her work, and all about it, and did not overwhelm herself with unnecessary excitements. She laid her child down in the grass, in the shade, laying her head upon a folded shawl. Jeanie had come out of her faint, but she lay in a state of exhaustion, with her eyes closed, unable to move or speak. The grandmother knew it was impossible to take her home in such a state of prostration. She seated herself so as to screen her charge from passers by, and resumed her knitting—a picture of calm and thoughtful composure—serious, yet with no trace of mystery or panic about her. What had happened to Jeanie was connected with their own affairs. It was a thing which nobody but themselves had anything to do with. She sat and watched the young sufferer with all that grave power of self-restraint which it is always so impressive to witness, asking neither help nor pity, knitting on steadily, with sometimes a tender glance from her deep eyes at the young fair creature lying at her side, and sometimes a keen look round to guard against intrusion. The work went on through all, and those thoughts which nobody knew of, which no one suspected. What was she thinking about? She had a breadth of sixty years to go back upon, and memories to recall with which nothing here had any connection. Or could it be possible that there might be a certain connection between her thoughts and this unknown place? Sometimes she paused in her work, and dropped her hands, and turned her face towards the house, which was invisible from where she sat, and fell into a deeper musing. “Would I do it over again if it were to do?” she said half aloud to herself, with an instinctive impulse to break the intense stillness; and then, making no answer to her own question, sat with her head dropped on her hand, gazing into the shadowy distance. What was it she had done? It was something which touched her conscience—touched her heart; but she had not repented of it as a positive wrong, and could yet, it was clear, bring forth a hundred arguments to justify herself to herself. She paused, and leant her head upon her hand, and fixed her eyes on the distance, in which, unseen, lay the home of the Ardens. Her thoughts had strayed away from Jeanie. She mused, and she sighed a sigh which was very deep and long drawn, as if it came from the depths of her being. “The ways of ill-doers are hard,” she murmured to herself; and then, after a pause, “Would I do it again?” It was not remorse that was in her face; it was not even penitence; it was pain subdued, and a great doubt which it was very hard to solve. But there was no clue to her musing, either in her look or her tones. She took up her knitting with another sigh, when she had apparently exhausted, or been exhausted by that thought, and changed the shawl under Jeanie’s head, making her more comfortable, and looked at her with the tenderest pity. “Poor bairn!” she said to herself; “Poor bairn!” and then, after a long pause, “That she should be the first to pay the price!” The words were said but half aloud, a murmur that fell into the sound of the wind in the trees and the insects all about. Then she went to work again, knitting in the deepest quiet—a silence so intense that she looked like a weird woman knitting a web of fate.
It was a curious picture. The girl with her bonnet laid aside, and her hair a little loosened from its smoothness, lying stretched out in the deep cool grass which rose all round her, and shaded by a great bough of hawthorn, laden with the blossom which was still so sweet. The white petals lay all about upon the grass, lying motionless like Jeanie, who was herself like a great white flower, half buried in the soft and fragrant verdure; while the old mother sat by doing her work, watching with every sense, ear and eye on the alert to catch any questionable sound. The girl fell asleep in her weakness; the old woman sat motionless in her strength and patience; and the trees waved softly over them, and the summer blue filled up all the interstices of the leafage. This was the scene upon which Arthur Arden came back as he returned from the house with aid and promises of aid. He had been interested before, and now, when he perceived that Clare was not to be seen, his interest grew more manifest. He came up hurriedly, half running, for he was not without natural sympathy and feeling. “Is she better?” he asked. “Miss Arden’s maid is coming, and the carriage to take her home; and, in the meantime, here is something.” And he hastily produced a bottle of smelling-salts and some eau-de-cologne.
“She is better,” said Mrs. Murray, stiffly. “I thank ye, sir, for all your trouble; but there’s no need—no need! She is resting, poor lamb, after her attack. It’s how she does always. But I would fain be sure that she would never see you again. Dinna think I’m uncivil, Mr. Arden; for I know you are Mr. Arden by your looks. You are like one that brought great pain and trouble to our house a year or two since. I would be glad to think that she would never see ye more.”
“But that is a little hard,” said Arthur Arden. “To ask me to go away and make a martyr of myself, without even telling me why. I must say I think that harsh. I would do a great deal for so pretty a creature,” he added, carelessly drawing near the pretty figure, and stooping over her. Mrs. Murray half rose with a quick sense of the difference in his tone.
“My poor bairn is subject to a sore infirmity,” she said, “and for that she should be the more pitied of all Christian folk. A gentleman like you will neither look at her nor speak to her but as you ought. I am asking nothing of you. It’s my part to keep my own safe. All I pray is that if you should meet her in the road you would pass on the other side, or turn away your face. That’s little to do. I can take care of my own.”
“My good woman, you are not very complimentary,” said Arthur; and then he went and gazed down once more upon the sleeping figure in the grass. His gaze was not that of a pure-minded or sympathetic spectator. He looked at her with a half smile, noting her beauty and childish grace. “She is very young, I suppose?” he said. “Poor little thing! What did the man who was like me do to frighten her so? And I wonder who he was? The resemblance must be very great.”
“He brought grief and trouble to our house,” said Mrs. Murray, who had risen, and stood screening her child with a jealous mother’s instinct. “Sir, I am much obliged to you. But, oh! if you would be kinder still, and go on your way! We are complaining of nothing, neither my bairn nor me.”
“Your ‘bairn,’ as you call her, is mighty pretty,” said Arthur Arden. “Look here, buy her a ribbon or something with this, as some amends for having frightened her. What, you won’t have it? Nonsense! I shall probably never see her again. You need not be afraid of me.”
“I am no afraid of any man,” said Mrs. Murray; “if you would leave us free in this spot, where we’re harming nobody. Good day to you, sir. Give your siller to the next poor body. It’s no wanted by me.”
“As proud as Lucifer, by Jove!” said Arthur Arden, and he put back his half-sovereign in his pocket, perhaps not unwillingly, for he had not many of them; and then he stood still for a minute longer, during which time the old woman resumed her knitting, and went on steadily, having dropped him, as it were, though she still watched him keenly from under her eyelids. He waited for some other opportunity of speech, but at length, half amazed half annoyed, swore “by Jove!” once more, and turned on his heel with little courtesy. Then he began to bethink himself of Clare, who had gone down the avenue, and whom he had missed. He was a man used to please himself, used to turn aside after every butterfly that crossed his path, and it was so long since he had engaged in the warm pursuit of anything that he had forgot the amount of perseverance and steadiness necessary for it. He had been almost, nay quite glad, when he saw that Clare was gone, and felt himself free for the moment to find out something about the pretty creature who lay in the grass like a Sleeping Beauty; but now that the careful guardian of the sleeping beauty had sent him away, his mind returned to its original pursuit. Would Clare be angry; would she consider his desertion as a sign of indifference, an offence against herself? He chafed at the self-denial thus made necessary, and yet he was as anxious to secure Clare’s good opinion as any man could be, and not entirely on interested motives. She was very dignified and Juno-like and stately. She would condemn him and all his ways did she know them. She would be intolerant of his life, and his friends, and his habits; and yet Clare attracted him personally as well as pecuniarily. He would be another man if he could succeed in persuading her to love him. It would make him rich, it would give him an established position in the world—and it would make him happy. Yes, there could not be any doubt on that subject, it would make him happy; and yet he was ready to be led astray all the same by any butterfly hunt that crossed his path.
As he hastened down the avenue, he met a little procession which was coming up, and which consisted of an invalid chair, drawn by a man, who paused every ten minutes to speak or be spoken to by the patient within, and followed by an elderly maid, who walked with a disapproving air under a huge umbrella. Arthur Arden was sufficiently acquainted with the population of Arden to know at once who this was, and the voice which immediately addressed him was one which compelled his attention. “Mr. Arden, Mr. Arden,” said the voice, “do stop and look at this beautiful chair; a present from Edgar. I was saying to my brother just the other day—— Ten minutes in the open air—only ten minutes now and then, if there was any way of doing it! And to think of dear Edgar recollecting. And the handsomest—— Now, is not he a dear fellow? All padded and cushioned, and as easy as a bed—— And the very best temper in the world, Mr. Arden, and always thinking of others. You will think me an old fool, but I do so love that boy.”
“He is very lucky, I am sure, to inspire so warm a feeling,” said Arthur, with mock respect.
“Lucky indeed! he deserves it, and a thousand times more. Of course I would not speak of such a thing as loving a gentleman,” said Miss Somers, with a soft blush stealing over her pretty faded old face, “if it was not that I was so old and helpless. And dear Edgar is so nice and so kind. Fancy his coming to see me the very first day he was at home: a young man you know, that might have been supposed—— and, then this beautiful chair. I was saying to my brother just the other day—— but then some men are so different from others, and never take the trouble even to give you an answer. To be sure, there are many things that put a gentleman out and try his temper that we ladies have not got to bear; but then, on the other hand—— And, as I was saying, it arrived all at once, two days ago, in a big packing-case—the biggest packing case, you know. My brother said, ‘It is for you, Lucy;’ and ‘Oh, good gracious, is it for me? and what is it, and who could have sent it? and how good of them to think of me;’ and then, when one is in the midst of one’s little flutter, you know, he tells you you are a little fool, and how you do run on!”
“That was unkind,” said Arthur, when she paused to take breath; “but will you tell me, please, have you seen Miss Arden? I left her going down the avenue.”
“Oh, Clare! she’s in the village by this time, walking so quick. I wonder if it is good to walk so quick, especially in the sun. When I was a young girl like Clare—— And then they say it brings illnesses—— She was in such a hurry; not a bit like Clare to walk so fast; and it makes you look heated, and all that. Mr. Arden, you will make me so happy if you will only look. It can draw out, and I can lie all my length when I get tired. The Queen herself, if she were an invalid—but I’m so glad she is not an invalid, poor dear lady; with all those horrible death warrants to sign, and everything—Don’t you think there should be somebody to do the death warrants when there is a lady for the Queen—I mean, you know, when there is a Queen? But if I were the Queen I could not have anything better. Isn’t he a dear fellow! And the springs so good, and everything so light and nice and so pretty. You have not half seen yet how nice——”
“There is somebody a little in advance who will appreciate it a great deal better than I can,” said Arthur. “I must overtake Miss Arden. Yes—there; just a little further on.”
“Now, I wonder what he can mean by somebody a little in advance,” said Miss Somers, as Arthur went hastily on. “Can it be Edgar, I wonder—the dear fellow! or the Rector? or whom, I wonder? Mercy, please, if you don’t mind the trouble, do you see anybody coming? Not that I mind who I meet. I am sure I should like to show dear Edgar’s present everywhere. I wonder if it is Lady Augusta? I am sure, Mercy, you know I have always thought well of Lady Augusta——”
“I don’t see nobody, mum,” said Mercy, cutting her mistress remorselessly short, “but them Scotch folks as lives in the village, and ain’t no company for the quality; set them up, them and their pride! John, Miss Somers wants to go a little quicker past them tramps and folks; for they ain’t no better, a poking into our parish,” muttered Mercy, under her breath.
“Oh, no, John; please, John—I want so much to see them,” remonstrated Miss Somers. Fortunately, John wanted to see them too, and after a struggle with Mercy, who ruled her mistress with a rod of iron, the procession paused opposite to where Mrs. Murray sat. Mercy herself could not be more unwilling for any colloquy. The old Scotchwoman kept on her knitting, with her eyes steadily fixed upon it, as long as that was possible. She only moved when the invalid’s eager voice had called her over and over again, “Oh, please, come and speak to me. I am Dr. Somers’ sister, and a great invalid, and I have heard so much about you; and just yesterday I was saying to my brother—— Oh, please, do put down your knitting for a moment and come to me. I am so helpless, I cannot put my foot to the ground.”
Mrs. Murray rose slowly at this appeal, and came and stood by the invalid’s chair.