"Do you like him, Nora?"
This is a question that means nothing in most cases, nor would it have meant anything now save for Nora's special sense of having been presented to John Erskine in something like the light of a candidate for his favour.
"I don't think I like him at all," she said, with some petulance. "He looks at us all as if we were natives of an undiscovered country. He is very cautious, not intending to make us proud by too much notice. Oh, it is different with you. You knew him before—you are not one of the barbarous people. As for me, I am jaundiced, I am not a fair judge; because he is determined, whatever happens, that not a single glass bead, not a cowrie or a bangle, or whatever you call them, will he give to me."
"That is not what he means, Nora. He is a little bewildered. Fancy coming into an entirely new place, which you know nothing about, and realising all at once that you belong to it, and that here is your place in the world. That happened to us too. I sympathise with him. We felt just the same when we came to Lindores."
"But you were not afraid of the natives, Edith. Young men, however," said Nora, with an air of grave impartiality, "are to be pitied in that way; they think themselves so dreadfully important. If they speak to a girl, they suppose immediately that they may be putting false hopes into her head and making her think—and then that frightens them. Well, it is natural it should frighten them. Suppose that Mr Erskine, by merely speaking civilly to me, should run the risk of breaking my heart—is not that something to be afraid of? for he is quite nice, I am sure, and would not, if he could help it, break any girl's heart."
"You are talking nonsense, Nora. How did you get so much acquaintance with the conceits of young men?"
"I see them through the boys. Jamie and Ned are like a pair of opera-glasses; you can see through them what that kind of creature thinks."
"I am sure," said Edith, with some heat, "Rintoul is not like that."
"Oh, I was not thinking of Lord Rintoul," cried Nora, precipitately. She blushed, and Edith observed it, making her own conclusions. And thereupon she on her side had something to say.
"Rintoul, when he was only Robin, was a delightful brother. He never was clever—even I was cleverer than he was; and Carry, of course, was always ever so far above us both. But now that he is Rintoul, he is a little changed. One is fond of him, of course, all the same. But it is different; he has ideas—of money, of getting on in the world, of people making good marriages, and that sort of thing. I think we have had enough of that in our family," Edith added, with a sigh; "but Rintoul has got corrupted. To be heir to anything seems to corrupt people somehow. It is not so very much: but he has got ideas—of what his rank demands—that sort of thing. Because there is a title, he must marry for money. Well, perhaps not quite so broad as that: but he must not marry where there is no money. I cannot put up with it," Edith cried.
And it was true that she could not put up with it. Yet there was a certain intention, too, even in this little outburst. One girl cannot chatter with another without meanings, without secret intimations of dangers in the way. Nora's countenance clouded over, the blush on her cheek grew deeper; but she laughed, putting a little force on herself.
"Is not that quite right? I have always been taught so. Not to marry for money. That is putting it a great deal too broadly, as you say—but only when you are going to marry, that it should not be a penniless person. It is so much better for both parties, mamma always says."
"I wonder if you mean to conform to the rule?" her friend asked, with an impulse half of mockery, half of curiosity.
"I don't mean to conform to any rule," said Nora. "One has to wait, you know, when one is a girl, till somebody is kind enough to fall in love with one; and then you are allowed to say whether you will have him or no. Don't you remember what Beatrice says?—'It is my cousin's duty to make courtesy and say, "Father, as it please you,"' only with that little reservation, 'Let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another courtesy——'"
"It is worse than that," said Edith, very gravely. "You say some things are hard upon young men; but oh, how much, much harder upon girls! It is in town that one feels that. There was something, after all, to be said for Carry marrying in the country, without going through the inspection of all these men. If I speak to any one or dance with any one who would be a good match, they will say immediately that mamma has got her eye upon him—that she is trying to catch him for me—that she means to make up a marriage. My mother," cried Edith, with an inference in the very emphasis with which she uttered the word; "as if she were not more romantic than I am a hundred times, and more intolerant of scheming! The fatal thing is," added the girl, with her serious face, "that, if a crisis should come, mamma would give in. Against her conscience she will try to find reasons for doing what my father wishes, whether it is right or wrong."
"But isn't it a woman's duty to do what her husband wishes?" said Nora. "I have always heard that, too, at home."
These two young women belonged to their period. They considered the subject gravely, willing to be quite impartial; but neither she who suggested that conjugal obedience was a duty, nor she who objected to it in her mother's case, felt the question to be in the least beyond discussion.
"It is in the Bible," said Edith—"one cannot deny that; still there must be distinctions. A woman who is grown up, and a reasonable creature, cannot obey like a slave. It is still more distinct that a child should obey its parents; but at my age, it is not possible I could just do everything I am told, like a little girl. If papa were to order me to do as poor Carry did, I should not think twice; I should refuse, plainly. If it is wrong, I cannot help it; it could not be so wrong as to obey. I would not do it,—nothing in the world," cried the girl, in her ardour striking her hands together, "would make me do it; and with far more reason a mother should—judge for herself. You will never convince me otherwise," Edith said, holding her head high.
Nora pondered, but made no reply. She had never arrived at any great domestic question on which the rules of her life had been out of accord with her happiness. She had never thought of orders from one or the other of her parents, insisted upon against her will. They had never compelled her to do anything, so far as she could remember. And indeed, cruel parents are little known to the children of the present day. She would not have believed in them but for this great and evident instance of Carry Lindores. The Earl was no tyrant either. He had never been known in the character until that temptation came in his way. Had he forced his daughter to compliance? Nobody could say so. He had not locked her in her room, or kept her on bread and water, or dragged her to the altar, according to old formulas. He had insisted, and she had not been strong enough to stand out. Was it not her fault rather than his? Open as a nineteenth-century mind is bound to be to all sides of the question, Nora was not sure that there was not something to be said for the father too—which was a great instance of candour in a representative of youth.
"I do not understand being forced to do anything," she said, contemplatively. "How is it when you are forced? One might yield of one's own will. If I was asked to do anything—I think anything—for the sake of my father and mother, I should do it, whatever it was."
"Almost anything," Edith said, correcting her friend; "but not that, for instance—certainly not that."
"I don't know what you mean by that" said Nora, petulantly; though indeed this was not exactly true. Both speaker and listener knew that it was not exactly true, and no explanation followed. The girls had been wandering in the woods which covered the sloping bank on the summit of which the castle stood. Its turrets were visible far above them, among the green of the early foliage. The trees were still thinly but brightly clad, the leaves not wholly unclosed, the beeches just loosening their spring finery out of its brown sheath. The river was still some way below. They were seated full in the afternoon sunshine, which was not warm enough to incommode them, upon a knoll covered half with grass, half with moss, through which penetrated here and there the brownness of the twisted roots, and of bits of rock and boulder. All about in the hollows, under every projection, at the root of every tree, nestling in the crevices of the brown banks, and on the edges of the rocks, were clumps of primroses, like scatterings of palest gold. The river made a continuous murmur in the air; the birds were busy overhead in all their sweet afternoon chatter, flitting about from branch to branch, paying their visits, trying over their notes. It was only through a checkered screen of leaves that the sky was visible at all, save in this little opening, where all was light and brightness, the centre of the picture, with these two young figures lending it interest. They were not either of them beauties to make a sensation in a London season, but they were both fair enough to please any simple eye—two fair and perfect human creatures in their bloom, the very quintessence of the race, well-bred, well-mannered, well-educated, well-looking, knowing a little and thinking a little, and perhaps, according to the fashion of the time, believing that they knew less and thought more than was at all the case. Both Edith and Nora despised themselves somewhat for knowing no Latin, much less any Greek. They thought the little accomplishments they possessed entirely trivial, and believed that their education had been shamefully neglected—which was an unnecessary reproach to their parents, who had done the best they could for the girls, and had transmitted to them at least an open and bright intelligence, which is more pleasant than learning. On the other hand, these young things believed that they had inspirations unknown to their seniors, and had worked out unaided many problems unsolved by their fathers and mothers—which perhaps was also a mistaken view. They liked to raise little questions of delicate morality, and to feel that there were more things in heaven and earth than had been thought of in any previous philosophy. They were a little alike even in appearance; the one a little fairer than the other—not any piquant contrast of blue eyes with brown, after the usual fashion of artistic grouping. They might even have been mistaken for sisters, as they sometimes were—a mistake which pleased them in their enthusiasm for each other.
Both these girls had been affected more or less by the intellectual tastes of poor Lady Caroline, whom they devoutly believed to be a genius, though wanting (as persons of genius are supposed generally to be) in some ordinary qualities which would have been good for her. Their speculations, their loves and likings, especially in the matter of books, were more or less moulded by her; and they copied out her verses, and thought them poetry. Perhaps in this respect Nora, who was the more intellectual, was at the same time the less independent of the two. Edith was in all things the representative of the positive, as they were all fond of saying—the realist, the practical person. Such was the pretty argot of this thoughtful circle. But on the whole, as they sat there together musing and talking as became their visionary age, the eye could not have lighted upon, nor the heart been satisfied with, any spectacle more pleasant than that of these two slim and simple girls exchanging their thoughts in the temperate spring sunshine, among the spring buds and flowers. A little silence had fallen upon them: they were sitting idly together, each one following out her own thoughts—thoughts which bore somehow, who could doubt, upon the opening life before them, and were more than mere thinkings, dreams, and anticipations all in one—when suddenly there drifted across their path a very simple, very ordinary embodiment of fate, yet distinctly such, a young man in fishing costume, with his basket over his shoulder, coming towards them by the winding path from the river. The sound of his step in the silence of the woods—which were not silent at all, yet thrilled to the first human sound as if all the rest of creation were not worth reckoning—caught their attention at once. They saw him before he was aware of their presence, and recognised him with a slight sensation. It is to be doubted whether the sudden apparition of a pretty girl flitting across the vision of two young men would not have produced a greater emotion for the moment, but it would have been of a different kind. Both Nora and Edith recognised in the approach of the new-comer the coming in of a new influence—a something which, for aught they knew, might be of far more importance in their lives than all the echoes of the woods or influences of the fresh spring skies. The character of the scene changed at once with his appearance. Its tranquillity lessened; it became dramatic, opening up an opportunity for all the complications of life. Nora was the one whom these romantic possibilities affected the most, for she was the most imaginative, seeing a story in everything. Since that morning at Miss Barbara's house in Dunearn, she had withdrawn from the contemplation of John Erskine as in any way capable of affecting herself. For a moment she had been offended and vexed with fate; but that feeling had passed away, and Nora now looked upon him with a philosophical eye with a reference to Edith, not to herself. From all she had ever seen or heard, it did not appear likely to Nora that two girls and a young man could go on meeting familiarly, constantly, as it was inevitable they should do, without something more coming of it than is written in the trivial records of every day. Perhaps young men, being more immediately active agents of their own fate, are less likely to think of the dramatic importance of any chance meeting. John did not think about the future at all, nor had he made any calculation as to what was likely to result from continual meetings. He was pleased, yet half annoyed at the same time, his heart giving a jump when he recognised Edith, but falling again when he saw "that eternal Miss Barrington" beside her. "Am I never to see her by herself?" he muttered, half angrily. But next moment he came forward, quickening his pace; and after a little hesitation, to see whether it were permissible, he threw himself at their feet, making the pretty picture perfect.
"Have you caught any fish, Mr Erskine? But isn't it too bright?"
"I have not been trying to catch any fish. These things," said John, laying down his rod and loosening his basket from his shoulder, "are tributes paid to the genius of the place. I don't want to kill the trout. I daresay they are of more use, and I am sure they have more right to be where they are, than I."
"Who can have a better right than you?" said Nora, always moved by the idea of the home from which she had felt herself ousted to make room for this languid proprietor. "You are the real owner of the place."
"I am a fish out of water—as yet," said the young man: he added the last words in deference to the eager remonstrances and reproaches which were evidently rushing to their lips.
"You had better come with us to town. Would you be in your element there? Men seem to like that do-nothing life. It is only we girls that are rising up against it. We want something to do."
"And so do I," said John, ruefully. "Tell me something. Nobody that I can see wants me here. Old Rolls, perhaps; but his approval is not enough to live for—is it? He would make out a code for me with very little trouble. But imagine a poor fellow stranded in a fresh country—altogether new to me, Miss Barrington, notwithstanding my forefathers—no shooting, no hunting, nothing to do. You may laugh, but what is to become of me—especially when you go away?" he said, turning to Edith, with a little heightening colour. This acted sympathetically, and brought a still brighter flush to Edith's face. Nora looked on in a gentle, pensive, grandmotherly sort of way, observing the young people with benignity, and saying to herself that she knew this was how it would be—because it is not so suitable, and Lord Lindores will never consent, she added, with a private reflection aside upon the extreme perversity of human affairs.
"No shooting, no hunting, no——Then you will be happy, Mr Erskine, in September."
"Happier. But I don't want to wait so long. I should prefer to be happy now."
"In the way of amusement, Mr Erskine means, Edith. That is all boys——I beg your pardon—I was thinking of my brothers. That is all gentlemen mean when they speak of something to do."
"Well—unless I had a trade, and could make shoes or chairs, or something. The people are all too well off, too well educated, to want me. They condescend to me as a foolish individual without information or experience. They tell me my family has always been on the right side in politics, with a scornful consciousness that I don't know very well what they mean by the right side. My humble possessions are all in admirable order. There are not even any trees to cut down. What am I to do? Visit the poor? There are no poor——"
"Oh, Mr Erskine!" cried both the girls in a breath.
"I poveri vergognosi, who require to be known and delicately dealt with, perhaps—fit subjects for your delicate hands, not for mine."
"If you begin talking of delicate hands, you defeat us altogether: the age of compliments is over," said Edith, with some heat; while Nora cast a furtive glance at the hands both of herself and her friend. They were both sufficiently worthy of the name—ladies' hands which had known no labour, neither in themselves nor their progenitors. Edith's were the better shaped—if the tapering Northern fingers are to be considered better than the blunter Greek—but Nora's the whiter of the two. This reflection was quite irrelevant; yet how much of our thinkings would be silenced if all that was irrelevant was put out of account?
"I mean no compliment. Suppose that I were to go into the nearest village and offer charity—that would be my brutal way of proceeding. What would they do to me, do you think? Pitch me into the river! tar and feather me! No; if there is anything to be done in that way, it must be done with knowledge. It is in vain you mock me with reproaches for doing nothing—I am a man out of work."
"So long as they do not ask for money," said Nora, demurely, "mamma says every man should be helped to get work. And then we ask, what is his trade?"
"Ah! that is the question,—if the wretch hasn't got one?"
"It is very difficult in that case. Then he must take to helping in the garden, or harvest-work, or—I don't know—hanging on (but that is so very bad for them) about the house."
"Clearly that is what I am most fit for. Do you remember how you used to engage me reading aloud? They all made sketches except myself, Miss Barrington. Beaufort—do you recollect what capital drawings he made? And I read—there's no telling how many Tauchnitz volumes I got through: and then the discussions upon them. I wonder if you recollect as well as I do?" said John to Edith, with a great deal of eager light in his eyes.
Nora had a great mind to get up and walk away. She was not at all offended, nor did she feel left out, as might have happened. But she said to herself calmly, that it was a pity to spoil sport, and that she was not wanted the least in the world.
"I remember very well; but there are reasons," said Edith, dropping her voice, and bending a little towards him, "why we don't talk of that much. Oh, it does not matter to me! but mamma and Car—have a—feeling. Don't say anything to them of these old times."
"So long as I may talk of them now and then—to you," said John, in the same undertone. He was delighted to have this little link of private recollections between them; and the pleasure of it made his eyes and his countenance glow. At this Nora felt actually impelled to do what she had only thought of before. She rose and wandered off from them on pretence of gathering some primroses. "How lovely they are! and nobody sees them. Will you lend me your basket, Mr Erskine, to carry some home?" She took it up with a smile, bidding them wait for her. She felt gently benignant, protecting, patronising, like a quite old person. Why should not they have their day? Edith, too, rose hastily, following her friend's example, as if their easy repose was no longer practicable. She had a sense, half delightful, half alarming, of having suddenly got upon very confidential terms with John Erskine. She rose up, and so did he. But it would have been foolish to copy Nora's whim and gather primroses, or even to follow her, as if they were afraid of each other. So Edith stood still, and John by her side.
"I cannot forget that summer," he said, in the same low tone, which was now totally unnecessary, there being nobody at hand to overhear.
"I remember it too," said Edith, softly, "almost better than any other. It was just before—anything happened: when we were so poor. I have my little grey frock still that I used to wear—that I went everywhere in. What expeditions we had—Car and I! I daresay you thought us very wild, very untamed. That was what mamma always used to say."
"I thought you," John began hurriedly—then stopped, with a little unsteady laugh. "You might object if I put it into words. It was my first awakening," he added a moment after, in a still lower tone.
Edith gave him a curious, half-startled glance. She thought the word a strange one. Awakening! What was the meaning of it? But he said no more; and they stood together in the sweet silence, in that confusion of delightful sound which we call silence, because our human voices and noises have nothing to do with its harmony. There were birds singing, one would have said, on every twig, pouring forth their experiences with a hundred repetitions, flitting from one branch to another telling their several tales. On every side were mysterious depths of shadow, cool hollows, and long withdrawing vistas—a soft background, where nature tenderly looked on and watched, around that centre of life and brightness and reawakening. It was a scene for any painter: the brown banks and spring foliage, all breathing new life; the sunny opening all full of the warmth of the present sunshine; Nora a pretty attendant figure on the grass among the trees, all flushed with light and shadow, stooping to gather handfuls of primroses, while the others stood diffident, charmed, shy of each other, lingering together. It seemed to John the new world in which all life begins again; but to Edith it was only a confusing, bewildering, alarming sort of fairy land, which all her instincts taught her it was right to flee from. "Look at Nora with her basket full," she cried, hurriedly, "and we doing nothing! Let us go and help her."