MRS LAURIE sits by the table with her work; but it is still an easy thing to perceive the irritation on Mrs Laurie’s brow; her hand moves with an additional rapidity, her breath comes a little faster; and if you watch, you will see the colour gradually receding from her cheek, like an ebbing tide, and her foot ceasing to play so impatiently upon its supporting stool.
Very humbly, like a culprit, Menie draws forward her chair to the light. She is admonished, ere long, by a hasty answer, an abrupt speech, a slight pushing back from the table and erection of her figure, that Mrs Laurie is still angry. It is strange how this cows and subdues Menie—how eager she is to say something—how humble her tone is—and how difficult she feels it to find anything to say.
Poor heart! like many another bewildered moth, Menie flutters about the subject it behoves her most to avoid, and cannot help making timid allusions to their future life in London—that future life which begins to darken before her own vision under a cloudy horizon of doubt and dread. It has ceased to be a speculation now, this future; for even within these few days there has been talk of Menie’s marriage.
“We will speak of some other thing; there is no very great charm in the future for me, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, with a sigh.
But Menie, with trembling temerity, begs to know the reason why. Why?—what concerns her concerns her mother also. Very timid, yet too bold, Menie insists, and will be satisfied—why?
“Because it is hard to lose my only child,” said Mrs Laurie. “Let us not deceive ourselves; it is easy to say we will not be separated, that there shall be no change. I know better, Menie; well, well! do not cry—say it is only the natural lot.”
“What is only the natural lot? O mother, mother! tell me.” Menie is still pertinacious, even through her tears.
“I will tell you, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, quickly. “Randall Home and I cannot dwell under one roof in peace. I foresee a wretched life for you if we tried it; a constant struggle—a constant failure. Menie, I will try to be content; but your mother feels it hard to yield up you and your love to a stranger—very hard. I ought to be content and submissive. I ought to remember that it is the common necessity—an every-day trial; but we have been more to each other than mere mother and daughter. I cannot hide it from you, Menie; this trial is very grievous to me.”
“Mother! mother!” It is not “for nothing” now that Menie Laurie weeps.
“You have been the light of my eyes for twenty years—my baby, my only bairn! I have nothing in the world when you are gone. Menie, have patience with your mother. I thought we might have been one household still. I never thought I could have hurt my bairn by clinging to her with all my heart. I see through another medium now. Menie, this that I say is better for us both. I would lose my proper place—I would lose even my own esteem—if I insisted, or if I permitted you to insist, upon our first plan. I do not mean to insist with Randall,” said Mrs Laurie, with a sudden flush of colour, “but with ourselves. It is not for your credit, any more than mine, that your mother should be unnecessarily humiliated; and I choose to make this decision myself, Menie, not to have it forced upon me.”
“If you think so—if I have nothing to hope but this—mother, mother!” cried Menie in her sobs, “there is yet time; we can change it all.”
But Menie’s voice was choked; her head bowed down upon her folded arms; her strength and her heart were overcome. The room was only partially lighted. So vacant—only these two figures, with their little table and their lamp at one end—it looked lonely, silent, desolate; and you could hear so plainly the great struggle which Menie had with these strong sobs and tears.
Mrs Laurie wiped a few hot hasty drops from her own eyes. She was not much used to contest; nor was it in her to be inflexible and stern; and the mother could not see her child’s distress. “Menie!” Menie can make no answer; and Mrs Laurie rises to go to her side, to pass a tender caressing hand over the bowed head, to shed back the disordered hair. “Menie, my dear bairn, I did not mean to vex you. I will do anything—anything, Menie; only do not let me see you in such grief as this.”
“He is not what you think, mother—he is not what you think,” cried Menie; “it is not like this what he says of you. O mother! I do not ask you to do him justice—to think well of him. I ask a greater thing of you;—mother, hear me—I ask you to like him for Menie’s sake.”
And it will not do to evade this petition by caresses, by soothing words, by gentle motherly tenderness. “Yes, Menie, my darling, I’ll try,” said Mrs Laurie at last, with tearful eyes. “Do you think it is pleasant to me to be at strife with Randall? God forbid! and him my dear bairn’s choice; but do not look at me with such a pitiful face. Menie, we’ll begin again.”
Was Menie content?—for the moment more than content, springing up into a wild exhilaration, a burst of confidence and hope. But by-and-by the conversation slackened—by-and-by the room became quite silent, with its dim corners, its little speck of light, and the two figures at its farther end. A heavy stillness brooded over them—they forgot that they had been talking—they forgot, each of them, that she was not alone. The leaves stirred faintly on the windows—the night-wind rustled past the yew-tree on the lawn. From the other end of the house came sometimes a stir of voices, the sound of a closed or opened door: but here everything was silent—as still as if these were weird sisters, weaving, with their monotonous moving fingers, some charm and spell; while, down to the depths—down, down, as far into the chill and dark of sad presentiment as a heart unlearned could go—fluttering, with its wings close upon its breast, its song changed into a mournful cry—down out of the serene heavens, where it had its natural dwelling, came Menie Laurie’s quiet heart.