After the strange scene in which she had been made a party to her sister's wretchedness, it was inevitable that Edith should return to Lindores so completely occupied with this subject that she could think of nothing else. It was some time before she could get her mother's ear undisturbed; but as soon as they were alone, after various interruptions which the girl could scarcely bear, she poured forth her lamentable story with all the eloquence of passion and tears. Edith's whole soul was bent upon some remedy.
"How can there be any doubt on the subject? She must come home—she must go away from him. Mother! it is sacrilege, it is profanation. It is—I don't know any word bad enough. She must come away——"
Lady Lindores shook her head. "It is one of the most terrible things in the world; but now that it is done, she must stand to it. We can do nothing, Edith——"
"I cannot believe that," cried the girl. "What! live with a man like that,—live with him like that—always together, sharing everything—and hate him? Mother! it is worse wickedness than—than the wicked. It is a shame to one's very nature. And to think it should be Carry who has to do it! But no one ought to be compelled to do it. It ought not to be. I will speak to papa myself if no one else will—it ought not to be——"
Again Lady Lindores shook her head. "In this world, in this dreadful world," she said, "we cannot think only of what is right and wrong—alas! there are other things to be taken into consideration. I think till I came home I was almost as innocent as you, Edith. Your father and I were very much blamed when we married. My people said to me, and still more his people said to him, that we should repent it all our lives; but that once having done it, we should have to put up with it. Well, you know what it used to be. I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I found it very easy to put up with. It was a strange sort of wandering life——"
"Oh, how much happier than now!" cried Edith. "Oh, poor little Rintoul! poor uncle! if they had but lived and flourished, how much better for us all!"
"I would not say that," said Lady Lindores. "I think now that when we were all so happy your father felt it. He did not say anything, but I am sure he felt it. See how different he is now! Now he feels himself in his right place. He has room for all his talents. Edith, do not put on that look, my dear child."
Edith's face was soft and young; but as her mother spoke, it hardened into an expression which changed its character entirely. Her upper lip closed down tight upon the other; her eyes widened and grew stern. Not her father himself, not the old ancestors on the panels, looked more stern than this girl of twenty. She did not say anything, but the change in her face was answer enough.
"Edith! you must not form such strong opinions; you must not make yourself the judge——"
"Then I must not be a human creature, mamma; and that I am, grown up, and obliged to think for myself. Sometimes I wish I did not. If I could only believe that all that was done was well, as some people do. Here all is wrong—all is wrong! It ought not to have been at all, this marriage,—and now—it ought not to continue to be——"
"My darling!" said Lady Lindores, appealing to her child with piteous eyes, "I am to blame too. I ought to have resisted more strongly; but it is hard, hard—to set one's self against one's husband, whom one has respected, always respected, and who has seemed to know best."
Edith's face did not relax. "Let us not talk of that," she said. "It makes one's heart sick. I think every one was wrong. Neither should you have done it, mamma—forgive me! nor should Carry have done it. She ought never, never, to have consented. I could not believe till the last moment that it was possible. Some one should have stopped it. I hoped so till the last moment; but when once it was done, as you say, one thought at least that he loved her. Why did he want to marry her if he did not love her? But he can't love her, since he behaves so. No love at all, either on one side or the other; and yet the two bound together for their lives. Was there ever anything so horrible? It ought not to be! It ought not to be!"
Lady Lindores took her daughter in her arms to soothe her; but Edith, drying the hot tears from her eyes, was almost impatient of her mother's caresses. What were caresses? Well enough, sweet in their way, but setting nothing right that was wrong. Yes, it was true the mother should not have permitted it, any more than the daughter should have done it. Two human creatures, grown up (as Edith repeated to herself), able to judge—they ought not to have allowed themselves to be swept away by the will of another. This was how the resolute girl put it. Her father she gave up—she would not judge him, therefore she preferred not to think of him at all. He had done it determinedly, and of distinct purpose; but the others who submitted, who allowed themselves to be forced into ill-doing, were they less to blame? All this she had gone over at the time of Carry's marriage, and had suppressed and forced it away from her. But now the current turned again. She withdrew herself from her mother's arms. Here was the most hideous thing in the world existing in their sight, her sister at once the victim and the chief actor in it, and all that could be given her in her eager attempt to set things right was a kiss! It seemed to Edith that the shame on her cheeks, the fire in her eyes, dried up her tears. She turned away from Lady Lindores. If she should be doomed too, by her father's will, would her mother have no better help to give her than a kiss? But when this idea passed through the girl's mind, she tossed back her head with an involuntary defiance. Never should such a doom come upon her. Heaven and earth could not move her so far. Obedience! This was such obedience as no one of God's creatures had any right to render to another—neither wife to husband, nor to her parents any child!
After this there was a long pause in the conversation between the mother and daughter. Lady Lindores divined Edith's thoughts. She understood every shade of the repugnance, disgust, disapproval, that the young upright spirit, untouched as yet by the bonds and complications of life, was passing through. And she shrank a little from Edith's verdict, which she acknowledged to be true. But what could she have done, she asked herself? Who would have approved her had she opposed her husband's wishes, encouraged her daughter to keep to a foolish engagement made under circumstances so totally different, and to refuse a match so advantageous? She had done everything she could; she had remonstrated, she had protested: but when Carry herself gave in, what could her mother, in the face of the universal disapproval of the world, at the risk of an absolute breach with her husband, do? But none of these things did Edith take into account—Edith, young and absolute, scorning compromises, determined only that what was right should be done, and nothing else. Lady Lindores withdrew too, feeling her caress rejected, understanding even what Edith was saying in her heart. What was a kiss when things so much more important were in question? It was perfectly true. She felt the justice of it to the bottom of her heart, and yet was chilled and wounded by the tacit condemnation of her child. She went to her work, which was always a resource at such a moment, and there was a silence during which each had time to regain a little composure. By-and-by, when the crisis seemed to have passed, Lady Lindores spoke.
"We must have young Erskine here," she said, almost timidly. "Your father has asked him; and in the circumstances, as we saw so much of him before, it is quite necessary. I think, as this unpleasant suggestion has been made—now, Edith, do not be unreasonable, we must do what we can in this world, not what we would,—as this has taken place, I will ask Carry and her husband to meet him. It will show Mr Torrance at least——"
"Mother!" Edith burst out—"mother! I tell you of a thing which is wickedness, which is a horror to think of, and you speak of asking people to dinner! Do you mean to turn it all into ridicule?—oh, not me, that would not matter—but all purity, all fitness? To ask them to—meet him——"
"My dear, my dear!" cried Lady Lindores, half weeping, half angry, appealing and impatient at once. She did not know what to say to this impracticable young judge. "We cannot resort to heroic measures," she cried. "It is impossible. We cannot take her away from him, any more than we can make of him a reasonable man. Carry herself would be the first to say no—for the children's sake, for the sake of her own credit. All we can do is to make the best of what exists. Mr Torrance must be shown quietly how mistaken he is—how much he is in the wrong."
"Mr Torrance! I would show him nothing, except how much I scorn him," Edith cried. "A man who dares to torture my sister—a man—who is not worthy to take her name into his lips, with his insolent doubts and his 'Lady Car,' which I cannot endure to hear!"
"But who is her husband, alas! I cannot bear to hear it either; but what can we do? We can take no notice of his insolent doubts; but we must prove, all the same, to all the world——"
"Mother! But if it did so happen—who can tell?—that it had been—poor Edward?"
"Hush!" cried her mother, almost fiercely; and then she added, "God forbid, Edith—God forbid!"
But who could have divined that such preliminaries were necessary to procure the assembling of the little party which met a few evenings later at Lindores, just on the eve of the departure of the family to London for their short enjoyment of the season? John Erskine had been told that it would be merely a family party—his old friends, as Lady Lindores, with kind familiarity and a smile so genial and so charming that the young man must have been a wizard had he seen anything beneath it, assured him. It never occurred to him to think of anything beneath. The Earl had been as cordial, as friendly, as could be desired; and though it gave him a disagreeable sensation to meet, when he entered the room, the stare of Torrance, whose big light eyes seemed to project out of his face to watch the entrance of the stranger, yet he speedily forgot this in the pleasure with which he found himself greeted by the others. Carry walked across the room with a gentle dignity, which yet was very unlike the shy brightness of her old girlish aspect, and held out to him a thin hand. "I think you scarcely remember me," she said, with a soft pathetic smile. She was not, as many women would have been, confused by the recollection that her husband was there jealously watching her looks and her tones: this consciousness, instead of agitating her, gave her a kind of inspiration. In other circumstances, the very sight of one who had been a witness of her brief romance might have disturbed her, but she was steeled against all tremors now.
John could scarcely make her any reply. The change in her was so great that he was struck dumb. Her girlish freshness was gone, her animation subdued, the intellectual eagerness quenched in her eyes. A veil of suffering and patience seemed to fall about her, through which she appeared as at a distance, in another sphere. "Indeed," he said, hesitating, "I should scarcely have known you," and murmured something about his pleasure in seeing her—at which she smiled again sadly, saying nothing more. This was all their greeting. Edith stood by with an unusually high colour, and a tremor of agitation in her frame, which he perceived vaguely with surprise, not knowing what it could mean; and then the little incident was over, half of the company seeing nothing whatever in it but a mere casual encounter of old acquaintances. Besides the family, there were present the girl whom John Erskine began within himself to call "that everlasting Miss Barrington," and the minister of the parish, a man carefully dressed in the costume adopted during the last generation by the Anglican priesthood, who was one of the "new school," and had the distinction of having made himself very alarming to his presbytery as, if not a heretic, yet at least "a thinker," given to preaching about honest doubt, and trifling with German philosophy. These two strangers scarcely afforded enough of variety to change the character of the family party. Torrance devoted himself to his dinner, and for some time spoke but little. Lady Caroline occupied herself with Dr. Meldrum with something of her old eagerness. It was evident that he was her resource, and that vague views upon the most serious subjects, which everybody else thought high-flown, found some sympathy in this professional thinker, who was nothing if not heretical. As for John, he was wholly occupied by Lady Lindores, who talked to him with a fluency which was almost feverish.
"We shall find you here when we come back," she said, "with all your arrangements made? And I hope Rintoul will return with us. Certainly he will be here in August, and very thankful to find a neighbour like you, Mr Erskine, with whom he will have so much in common."
"That's a compliment to the rest of us," said Torrance, who sat on the other side. "Rintoul, I suppose, doesn't find much in common with us ignorant clowns in the county,"—this he said without looking at any one, with his head bent over his plate.
"I did not say so. Rintoul is not so much with us as I could wish—he has his duty to attend to. To be sure, they get a great deal of leave; but you young men have so many places to go to nowadays. You spend so very little time at home. I wonder if it is a good thing or the reverse," said Lady Lindores, with a little sigh. "A mother may be pardoned for not admiring the new way, when our sons come home, not for us, but for the shooting."
"I think I am scarcely able to judge," said John: "home—perhaps was a little different to me: my mother has so many claiming a share in her. And now my home is here in Dalrulzian, which is merely a house, not a home at all," he said with something between a laugh and a sigh.
"You must marry," Lady Lindores said; "that is what the county expects of you. You will disappoint all your neighbours if you do not accomplish this duty within a year. The question is, whether the lady is already found, or whether we are to have the gratification of seeing you go through all the preliminaries, which is a great amusement, Mr Erskine; so I hope you have your choice still to make."
It was accident, of course, which directed her eyes to Nora, who sat by Torrance—accident only; for a kind woman, who was herself a mother, would not have willingly done anything to light up the sudden colour which flamed over the girl's face. Nora felt as if she could have sunk into the earth. As for John, it seemed almost an insult to her that he should look at her coldly across the table with studious unconsciousness.
"I am afraid I cannot undertake to furnish amusement for the county," he said, "in that way—and Dalrulzian is not big enough for two people. I had no idea it was so small. It is a bachelor's box, a lodge, a sort of chambers in the country, where one can put up a friend, but nothing more."
Here Nora found a way out of her embarrassment. "Indeed," she cried, "you wrong Dalrulzian, Mr Erskine. We found it sufficient for our whole family, and the most delightful place to live in. You are not worthy of Dalrulzian if you talk of it so."
"I think Erskine is quite right," said Torrance, between two mouthfuls; "it's a small little bit of a place."
"So is Lindores," the Countess said, eagerly; "there are quantities of small rooms, but no sort of grandeur of space. We must go to Tinto for that. You have not yet seen Tinto, Mr Erskine? We must not be jealous, for our old nests are more natural. If we were all rich enough to build sets of new rooms like a little Louvre, there would be none of the old architecture left."
"You are speaking about architecture, Lady Lindores," said Dr Meldrum. He had just returned from his first expedition "abroad," and he was very willing to enlighten the company with his new experiences: besides, just then Lady Caroline was pressing him very hard upon a point which he did not wish as yet to commit himself upon. "Stone and lime are safer questions than evolution and development," he said, turning to her, in an undertone.
"Safer perhaps, but not so interesting. They are ended and settled—arrange them in what form you please, and they stand there for ever," said Lady Caroline, with brightening eyes; "but not so the mind: not so a single thought, however slight it may be. There is all the difference between life and death."
"My dear Lady Caroline! you will not call the Stones of Venice dead—or St Peter's, soaring away into the skies? Though they are but collections of stones, they are as living as we are."
"I begin to recognise her again," said John, innocent of all reason why he should not fix his attention upon poor Carry, as her pale face lighted up. He felt too pitiful, too tender of her, to speak of her formally by her new title. "She used to look like that in the old days."
"Yes," said Lady Lindores, with a sigh. "Poor Carry! visionary subjects always pleased her best."
Torrance had raised his head from his plate, and was lending an eager ear. "It's confoundedly out of place all that for a woman," he said. "What has she to do with politics, and philosophy, and nonsense? She has plenty to think of in her children and her house."
Lady Lindores made him a little bow, but took no further notice. She was exasperated, and scarcely under her own control; but Nora, on the other side, was glad to have the chance of breaking her lance on some one. If Pat Torrance was not worth her steel, there was at least another opposite whose opinions she had no clue to, whom she would have liked to transfix if that had been possible. "It does us poor girls good to have the benefit of a gentleman's real opinion," she said. "Would you like Lady Caroline to make your puddings? It is so good to know what is expected of us—in all ranks."
"Why not?" said Torrance, over his plate. "A woman's business is to look after her house—that was always considered the right thing. I hope you are not one of the strong-minded ones, Miss Barrington. You had much better not. No man ever looks at them."
"And what a penalty that would be!" cried Nora, with solemnity.
"You wouldn't like it, that I'll promise you. I tell you, they are all the ugly ones. I once saw a lot of them, one uglier than the other—women that knew no man would ever look at them. They were friends of Lady Car's, you may be sure, all chattering twenty to the dozen. They want to get into Parliament—that is at the bottom of it all; and then they would make a pretty mess—for us to set right."
"But, Mr Torrance, you could not set it right, for you are not in Parliament any more than I am," said Nora, pointedly. He gave her a look out of his big eyes which might have killed her had looks such power. The Earl had complained that his son-in-law was not amenable in this matter. But nobody knew that it was a very sore point with the wealthy squire, whom no one had so much as thought of for such a dignity. Much poorer, less important persons than himself, had been suggested, had even sat for the county. But Torrance of Tinto, conscious that he was the only man among them who could afford to throw away a few thousands without wincing—of him nobody had thought. He had declaimed loudly on many occasions that nothing would induce him to take the trouble; but this slight had rankled at his heart.
"Mr Torrance would not like London life," Lady Lindores said, coming to his aid; "turning night into day is hard upon those who are accustomed to a more natural existence."
"You speak as if I had never been out of the country," said her ungracious son-in-law. "I know that's the idea entertained of me in this house: but it's a mistake. I've seen life just as much as those who make more fuss about it."
"And you, Mr Erskine, have you seen life?" said Lady Lindores, turning to him with, a smile.
"Very little," said John—"in London at least."
"It's a wonderful idea to me, though most people seem to hold it," said Dr Meldrum, coming in, in a pause of that conversation with Lady Caroline, which sometimes alarmed him by its abstractness and elevation, "that life is only to be seen in London, or in Paris, or some of those big centres. Under correction, Lady Lindores, and not to put my small experience above the more instructed——"
"That is an alarming beginning," cried Edith. "Dr Meldrum means to show us how ignorant we all are."
"That's what I never can show any one in this house," said the minister, with old-fashioned politeness; "but my opinion is, that life in a great metropolis is the most conventional—ay, you'll acknowledge that—the most contracted, the most narrow, the most——Well, well, if you'll not let a man speak——"
The hubbub of contradiction and amusement made the party more genial, more at ease, than it had yet been.
"If you make that out, Doctor, you will give us something new to think of," the Earl said.
And poor Lady Caroline, who found in the good minister her chief intellectual resource, prepared to listen to his argument with all the attention of a hearer who believes fully in the abilities of her guide. "I think I can see what Dr Meldrum means," she said.
"I am sure you will see what I mean," the Doctor said, gratefully. "In the first place, it's far too big to make society general—you'll allow that? Well, then, the result is, that society, being so vast, breaks itself up into little coteries. It's liker a number of bits of villages just touching each other, like a long thread of them, every one with its own little atmosphere. That's just London to me. You meet the same people as if you were in a village; then go out of that clique to another, and you meet the same people again, but another set. There was one day," said the minister, with a certain pride, "that I was very dissipated. I went out to my lunch, and then to a party in the afternoon, and then to my dinner, and to two places at night. It was a great experience. Well, if you'll believe me, I was wearied with seeing the same faces, in a great society like London, the chief place in the world. There was scarcely one I did not meet three times in the course of that day. In the country here, you could not do more. There's as much variety as that in Dunearn itself."
"I see what Dr Meldrum means," said Carry. "No doubt it was a special society into which he had been introduced, and people were asked to meet him because they were distinguished—because they were people whom it was a pleasure to meet."
"That's a great compliment to me, but I cannot take it to myself. They were, many of them, persons that it was no pleasure to meet. Some with titles, and, so far as I could see, little more. Some that were perhaps rich—I hope so, at least, for they were nothing else."
"This is cynicism," said Lord Lindores; "and I, who have lived in the opinion that Dr Meldrum was the most benignant, the most tolerant of men——"
"One can understand entirely," repeated Lady Caroline, standing by her friend, "what he means. I have thought so myself. The same faces, the same ideas, even the same words that mean so little——"
"I didn't know you were so well up in London society, Lady Car," said her husband, who had been trying for some time to strike into the mêlée, and whose lance was specially aimed at her of all the talkers. And then there was a general flutter of talk, instinctive, all round the table; for when a man stretches across to say something disagreeable to his wife, everybody present is upon their honour to quench the nascent quarrel. The ladies left the table soon after; and the conversation of the men did not afford the same risks, for after one or two contradictions, which the Earl put aside with well-bred ease and a slight but unanswerable contempt, Torrance sank into sulky silence, taking a great deal of wine. At such moments a little poetic justice and punishment of his sins towards his daughter was inflicted even upon Lord Lindores.