“IT must not be—I cannot permit it,” said Mrs Laurie. “Menie, is this all that your mother deserves at your hands? to take such a step as this without even telling me—without giving me an opportunity of remonstrance? Menie! Menie!”
And with hasty steps Mrs Laurie paces backward and forward the narrow room. Beside the window, very pale, Menie stands with a half-averted face, saying nothing—very pale—and there is a sullen suffering in Menie Laurie’s darkened face.
“I cannot have it—I will not permit it”—Mrs Laurie is much excited. “My own honour is compromised; it will be said it is I who have separated you. Menie! it is strange that you should show so little regard either to Randall or to me. I must do something—I must make an effort—I cannot have this.”
“Mother, hear me,” exclaimed Menie. “No one shall do anything; I will not bear it either. In everything else you shall make of me what you will—here I am not to be swayed; I must decide this for myself—and I have decided it, mother.”
With astonished eyes Mrs Laurie looked upon her daughter’s face. Flushed with passion, full of a fierce unrespecting will—was this Menie Laurie? but her mother turned aside from her. “I am sorry, Menie—I am very sorry—to see you show such a spirit; another time I will speak of it again.”
Another time!—Menie Laurie laughed a low laugh when her mother left the room. Something like a scowl had come to Menie’s brow; a dark abiding cloud was on her face: and in her heart such bitterness and universal disappointment as killed every gentle feeling in her soul: disloyal to the one love, disrespectful and disobedient to the other—bitterly Menie’s heart turned upon itself—she had pleased no one; her life was nothing but a great blot before her. She was conscious of a host of evil feelings—evil spirits waging war with one another in her vexed and troubled mind. Sullenly she sat down once more upon the ground, not to seek if there was any comfort in the heavens above or the earth beneath, but to brood upon her grief, and make it darker, till the clouds closed over her, and swallowed her up, and not a star remained.
There is a certain obstinate gloom; satisfaction in despair. To decide that everything is hopeless—that nothing can be done for you—that you have reached to the pre-eminence of woe—no wonder Menie’s race was dark and sullen—she had come to this point now.
Like a thunder-storm this intelligence came upon little July Home—she could not comprehend it, and no one took the trouble to explain to her. Lithgow, knowing but the fact, was surprised and grieved, and prophesied their reunion; but no hope was in Menie’s sullen gravity—none in the naughty resentment of Randall Home.
And Mrs Laurie once more with a troubled brow considers of her future—will Menie be best in the Dumfriesshire cottage, where no one will see their poverty, or pursuing some feminine occupation among the other seamstresses, teachers, poor craftswomen of a less solitary place? For now that all is done that can be done, there is no hope of recovering anything of the lost income,—and Mrs Laurie will not live on Miss Annie’s bounty. She is anxious with all her heart to be away.
Miss Annie herself has not recovered her trial: autumn winds grow cold at night—autumn rains come down sadly upon the little world which has had its cheerfulness quenched out of it—and when Randall takes away his little sister to carry her home, Miss Annie looks a mournful old woman, sitting there wrapped up by the early lighted fire. These two or three mornings she has even been seen at the breakfast-table with a cap protecting the head which is so sadly apt to take cold—and Miss Annie cries a little to herself, and tells bits of her own love-story to Menie, absorbed and silent, who sits unanswering beside her—and moans to herself sadly sometimes, over this other vessel of youthful life, cast away.
But Miss Annie Laurie never wears ringlets more. Strangely upon her conscience, like a reproach for her unnatural attenuated youth, came Menie’s appeal to her for help and comfort. Feeling herself so frivolous and feeble, so unable to sustain or strengthen, Miss Annie made a holocaust of her curls, and was satisfied. So much vanity was relinquished not without a struggle; but great comfort came from the sacrifice to the heroic penitent.
And Jenny, discontented and angry with them all, furiously now takes the part of Randall Home, and wonders, in a fuff and outburst, what Miss Menie can expect that she “lightlies” a bonnie lad like yon. A great change has taken place on Menie; no one can say it is for the better—and sullenly and sadly this bright year darkens over the house of Heathbank.