After this there ensued a brief pause in the history of the family in all its branches: it was a pause ominous, significant—like the momentary hush before a storm, or the torrent's smoothness ere it dashes below. The house of Lindores was like a besieged stronghold, mined, and on the eve of explosion. Trains were laid in all directions under its doomed bastions, and the merest breath, a flash of lightning, a touch of electricity anywhere, would be enough to bring down its defences in thunders of ruin. It seemed to stand in a silence that could be felt, throwing up its turrets against the dull sky—a foreboding about it which could not be shaken off. From every side assaults were preparing. The one sole defender of the stronghold felt all round him the storm which was brewing, but could not tell when or how it was to burst forth. Lord Lindores could scarcely have told whence it was that this vague apprehension came. Not from any doubt of Rintoul, surely, who had always shown himself full of sense, and stood by him. Not from Edith—who had, indeed, been very rebellious, but had done her worst. And as for Carry: Carry, it was true, was left unfettered and her own mistress, so to speak; but he had never found any difficulty with her, and why should he fear it now? An uneasiness in respect to her future had, however, arisen in his mind. She had made that violent protest against interference on the night of the funeral, which had given him a little tremor of alarm; but why should he anticipate danger, he said to himself? It might be needful, perhaps, to proceed with a little delicacy, not to frighten her—to go very softly; but Carry would be amenable, as she had always been. And thus he endeavoured to quiet the apprehensions within him.
There was one thing, however, which the whole family agreed upon, which was, in an uneasy sense, that the presence of Beaufort in their neighbourhood was undesirable. If they agreed in nothing else they agreed in this. It was a shock to all of them to find that he had not departed with Millefleurs. Nothing could be more decided than Rintoul was in this respect. So far as that went, he was evidently disposed to take to the full the same view as his father. And Edith, though she had been so rebellious, was perfectly orthodox here. It was not for some time after the departure of Millefleurs, indeed, that the ladies made the discovery, not only that Beaufort was still at Dalrulzian, but that he had been at Tinto. The latter fact had been concealed from Lord Lindores, but it added sadly to the embarrassment and trouble of the others. They were all heavy with their secrets—all holding back something—afraid to divulge the separate course which each planned to take for themselves. A family will sometimes go on like this for a long time with the semblance of natural union and household completeness, while it has in reality dropped to pieces, and holds together only out of timidity or reluctance on the part of its members to burst the bonds of tradition, of use and wont. But on one point they were still united. Carry was the one subject upon which all were on the alert, and all agreed. Rintoul had no eyes for Edith's danger, and Edith—notwithstanding many an indication which would have been plain enough to her in other circumstances—never even suspected him; but about Carry the uneasiness was general. "What is that fellow doing hanging about the place?—he's up to no good," Rintoul said, even in the midst of his own overwhelming embarrassments. "I wonder," was Lady Lindores's way of putting it—not without a desire to make it apparent that she disapproved of some one else—"I wonder how John Erskine, knowing so much as he does, can encourage Mr Beaufort to stay." "Mamma! how can you suppose he encourages him—can he turn him out of his house?" cried Edith, flaming up in instant defence of her lover, and feeling her own guilt and hidden consciousness in every vein. There was no tender lingering now upon Beaufort's name, no hesitation or slip into the familiar "Edward." As for Rintoul, he had been providentially, as he felt, delivered from the necessity of speaking to his father of his own concerns, by being called away suddenly to the aid of a fellow officer in trouble. It tore his heart, indeed, to be out of reach of Nora; but as Nora would not see him, the loss was less than it might have been, and the delay a gain. Edith's story was in abeyance altogether; and their mourning, though it was merely of the exterior, brought a pause in the ordinary intercourse of social life. They did not go out, nor receive their neighbours—it was decorous to refrain even from the very mild current of society in the country. And this, indeed, it was which made the pause possible. Lord Lindores was the only member of the family who carried on his usual activities unbroken, or even stimulated by the various catastrophes that had occurred. He was more anxious than ever about the county hospitals and the election that must take place next year; and he began to employ and turn to his own advantage the important influence of the Tinto estate, which he, as the little heir's grandfather, was certainly entitled, he thought, to consider as his own. Little Tommy was but four; and though, by a curious oversight, Lord Lindores had not been named as a guardian, he was, of course, in the circumstances, his daughter's natural guardian, who was Tommy's. This accession of power almost consoled him for the destruction of his hopes in respect to Millefleurs. He reflected that, after all, it was a more legitimate way of making himself indispensable to his country, to wield the influence of a great landed proprietor, than by any merely domestic means; and with Tinto in his hands, as well as Lindores, no man in the county could stand against him. The advantage was all the greater, since Pat Torrance had been on the opposite side of politics, so that this might reasonably be concluded a county gained to the Government. To be sure, Lord Lindores was far too high-minded, and also too safe a man, to intimidate, much less bribe. But a landlord's legitimate influence is never to be undervalued; and he felt sure that many men who had been kept under, in a state of neutrality, at least, by Torrance's rough and brutal partisanship—would now be free to take the popular side, as they had always wished to do. The influence of Tinto, which he thus appropriated, more than doubled his own in a moment. There could not have been a more perfect godsend to him than Torrance's death.
But the more he perceived and felt the importance of this, the more did the presence of Beaufort disturb and alarm him. It became daily a more urgent subject in the family. When Lord Lindores got vague information that Carry had met somewhere her old lover on the roadside—which somebody, of course, saw and reported, though it did not reach his ears till long after—his dim apprehensions blazed into active alarm. He went to his wife in mingled anger and terror. To him, as to so many husbands, it always appeared that adverse circumstances were more or less his wife's fault. He told her what he had heard in a tempest of indignation. "You must tell her it won't do. You must let her know that it's indecent, that it's shameful. Good heavens, just think what you are doing!—letting your daughter, your own daughter, disgrace herself in the sight of the whole county. Talk about the perceptions of women! They have no perceptions—they have no moral sense, I believe. Tell Carry I will not have it. If you don't, I must interfere." Lady Lindores received this fulmination with comparative silence. She scarcely said anything in her own defence. She was afraid to speak lest she should betray that she had known more than her husband knew, and was still more deeply alarmed than he was. She said, "You are very unjust," but she said no more. That evening she wrote an anxious note to John Erskine; the next day she drove to Tinto with more anxiety than hope. Already a great change had come over that ostentatious place. The great rooms were shut up; the less magnificent ones had already begun to undergo a transformation. The large meaningless ornaments were being carried away. An air of home and familiar habitation had come about the house. Carry, in her widow's cap, had begun to move lightly up and down with a step quite unlike the languor of her convalescence. She was not convalescent any longer, but had begun to bloom with a soft colour and subdued air of happiness out of the cloud that had enveloped her so long. To see her so young (for her youth seemed to have come back), so fresh and almost gay, gave a wonderful pang of mingled pain and delight to her mother's heart: it showed what a hideous cloud that had been in which her life had been swallowed up, and to check her in her late and dearly bought renewal of existence was hard, and took away all Lady Lindores's courage. But she addressed herself to her task with all the strength she could muster. "My darling, I am come to—talk to you," she said.
"I hope so, mother dear; don't you always talk to me? and no one so sweetly," Carry said, with her lips upon her mother's cheek, in that soft forestalling of all rebuke which girls know the secret of. Perhaps she suspected something of what was coming, and would have stopped it if she could.
"Ah, Carry! but it is serious—very serious, dear: how am I to do it?" cried Lady Lindores. "The first time I see light in my child's eye and colour on her cheek, how am I to scold and threaten? You know I would not if I could help it, my Carry, my darling."
"Threaten, mamma! Indeed, that is not in your way."
"No, no; it is not. But you are mother enough yourself to know that when anything is wrong, we must give our darlings pain even for their own dear sakes. Isn't it so, Carry? There are things that a mother cannot keep still and see her dear child do."
Carry withdrew from behind her mother's chair, where she had been standing with one arm round her, and the other tenderly smoothing down the fur round Lady Lindores's throats. She came and sat down opposite to her mother, facing her, clasping her hands together, and looking at her with an eager look as if to anticipate the censure in her eyes. To meet that gaze which she had not seen for so long, which came from Carry's youth and happier days, was more and more difficult every moment to Lady Lindores.
"Carry, I don't know how to begin. You know, my darling, that—your father is unhappy about you. He thinks, you know,—perhaps more than you or I might do,—of what people will say."
"Yes, mother."
Carry gave her no assistance, but sat looking at her with lips apart, and that eager look in her eyes—the look that in old times had given such a charm to her face, as if she would have read your thought before it came to words.
"Carry, dear, I am sure you know what I mean. You know—Mr Beaufort is at Dalrulzian."
"Edward? Yes, mother," said Carry, a blush springing up over her face; but for all that she did not shrink from her mother's eyes. And then her tone sunk into infinite softness—"Poor Edward! Is there any reason why he shouldn't be there?"
"Oh, Carry!" cried Lady Lindores, wringing her hands, "you know well enough—there can only be one reason why, in the circumstances, he should wish to continue there."
"I think I heard that my father had invited him, mamma."
"Yes. I was very much against it. That was when he was supposed to be with Lord Millefleurs—when it was supposed, you know, that Edith—and your father could not ask the one without asking the other."
"In short," said Carry, in her old eager way, "it was when his coming here was misery to me,—when it might have been made the cause of outrage and insult to me,—when there were plans to wring my heart, to expose me to——Oh, mother, what are you making me say? It is all over, and I want to think only charitably, only kindly. My father would have done it for his own plans. And now he objects when he has nothing to do with it."
"Carry, take care, take care. There can never be a time in which your father has nothing to do with you: if he thinks you are forgetting—what is best in your position—or giving people occasion to talk."
"I have been told here," said Carry, with a shiver, looking round her, "that no one was afraid I would go wrong; oh no—that no one was afraid of that. I was too proud for that." The colour all ebbed away from her face; she raised her head higher and higher. "I was told—that it was very well known there was no fear of that: but that it would be delightful to watch us together, to see how we would manage to get out of it,—and that we should be thrown together every day. That—oh no—there was no fear I should go wrong! This was all said to your daughter, mother: and it was my father's pleasure that it should be so."
"Oh Carry, my poor darling! No, dear—no, no. Your father never suspected——"
"My father did not care. He thought, too, that there was no fear I should go wrong. Wrong!" Carry cried, starting from her seat in her sudden passion. "Do you know, mother, that the worst wrong I could have done with Edward would have been whiteness, innocence itself, to what you have made me do—oh, what you have made me do, all those hideous, horrible years!"
Lady Lindores rose too, her face working piteously, the tears standing in her eyes. She held out her hands in appeal, but said nothing, while Carry, pale, with her eyes shining, poured forth her wrong and her passion. She stopped herself, however, with a violent effort. "I do not want even to think an unkind thought," she said—"now: oh no, not an unkind thought. It is over now—no blame, no reproach; only peace—peace. That is what I wish. I only admire," she cried, with a smile, "that my father should have exposed me to all that in the lightness of his heart and without a compunction; and then, when God has interfered—when death itself has sheltered and protected me—that he should step in, par example, in his fatherly anxiety, now!——"
"You must not speak so of your father, Carry," said Lady Lindores; "his ways of thinking may not be yours—or even mine: but if you are going to scorn and defy him, it must not be to me."
Carry put her mother down in her chair again with soft caressing hands, kissing her in an accès of mournful tenderness. "You have it all to bear, mother dear—both my indignation and his—what shall I call it?—his over-anxiety for me; but listen, mother, it is all different now. Everything changes. I don't know how to say it to you, for I am always your child, whatever happens; but, mamma, don't you think there is a time when obedience—is reasonable no more?"
"It appears that Edith thinks so too," Lady Lindores said gravely. "But, Carry, surely your father may advise—and I may advise. There will be remarks made,—there will be gossip, and even scandal. It is so soon, not more than a month. Carry, dear, I think I am not hard; but you must not—indeed you must not——"
"What, mother?" said Carry, standing before her proudly with her head aloft. Lady Lindores gazed at her, all inspired and glowing, trembling with nervous energy and life. She could not put her fears, her suspicions, into words. She did not know what to say. What was it she wanted to say? to warn her against—what? There are times in which it is essential for us to be taken, as the French say, at the half word, not to be compelled to put our terrors or our hopes into speech. Lady Lindores could not name the ultimate object of her alarm. It would have been brutal. Her lips would not have framed the words.
"You know what I mean, Carry; you know what I mean," was all that she could say.
"It is hard," Carry said, "that I should have to divine the reproach and then reply to it. I think that is too much, mother. I am doing nothing which I have any reason to blush for;" but as she said this, she did blush, and put her hands up to her cheeks to cover the flame. Perhaps this sign of consciousness convinced the mind which Lady Lindores only excited, for she said suddenly, with a tremulous tone: "I will not pretend to misunderstand you, mamma. You think Edward should go away. From your point of view it is a danger to me. But we do not see it in that light. We have suffered a great deal, both he and I. Why should he forsake me when he can be a comfort to me now?"
"Carry, Carry!" cried her mother in horror—"a comfort to you! when it is only a month, scarcely a month, since——"
"Don't speak of that," Carry cried, putting up her hands. "What if it had only been a day? What is it to me what people think? Their thinking never did me any good while I had to suffer,—why should I pay any attention to it now?"
"But we must, so long as we live in the world at all, pay attention to it," cried Lady Lindores, more and more distressed; "for your own sake, my dearest, for your children's sake."
"My children!—what do they know? they are babies; for my own sake? Whether is it better, do you think, to be happy or to be miserable, mother? I have tried the other so long. I want to be happy now. I mean," said Carry, clasping her hands, "to be happy now. Is it good to be miserable? Why should I? Even self-sacrifice must have an object. Why should I, why should I? Give me a reason for it, and I will think; but you give me no reason!" she cried, and broke off abruptly, her agitated countenance shining in a sort of rosy cloud.
There was a pause, and they sat and gazed at each other, or, at least, the mother gazed at Carry with all the dismay of a woman who had never offended against the proprieties in her life, and yet could not but feel the most painful sympathy with the offender. And not only was she anxious about the indecorum of the moment, but full of disturbed curiosity to know if any determination about the future had been already come to. On this subject, however, she did not venture to put any question, or even suggest anything that might precipitate matters. Oh, if John Erskine would but obey her—if he would close his doors upon the intruder; oh, if he himself (poor Edward! her heart bled for him too, though she tried to thwart him) would but see what was right, and go away!
"Dear," said Lady Lindores, faltering, "I did not say you might not meet—whoever you pleased—in a little while. Of course, nobody expects you at your age to bury yourself. But in the circumstances—at such a moment—indeed, indeed, Carry, I think he would act better, more like what we had a right to expect of him, if he were to consider you before himself, and go away."
"What we had a right to expect! What had you a right to expect? What have you ever done for him but betray him?" cried Carry, in her agitation. She stopped to get breath, to subdue herself, but it was not easy. "Mother, I am afraid of you," she said. "I might have stood against my father if you had backed me up. I am afraid of you. I feel as if I ought to fly away from you, to hide myself somewhere. You might make me throw away my life again,—buy it from me with a kiss and a smile. Oh no, no!" she cried, almost violently; "no, no, I will not let my happiness go again!"
"Carry, what is it? what is it? What are you going to do?"
Carry did not reply; her countenance was flushed and feverish. She rose up and stood with her arm on the mantelpiece, looking vaguely into her own face in the mirror. "I will not let my happiness go again," she said, over and over to herself.
John Erskine carried his own reply to Lady Lindores's letter before she returned from this expedition to Tinto. He, too, was one of those who felt for Lady Car an alarm which neither she nor Beaufort shared; and he had already been so officious as to urge strongly on his guest the expediency of going away,—advice which Beaufort had not received in, as people say, the spirit in which it was given. He had not been impressed by his friend's disinterested motives and anxiety to serve his true interests, and had roundly declared that he would leave Dalrulzian if Erskine pleased, but no one should make him leave the neighbourhood while he could be of the slightest comfort to her. John was not wholly disinterested, perhaps, any more than Beaufort. He seized upon Lady Lindores's letter as the pretext for a visit. He had not been admitted lately when he had gone to Lindores—the ladies had been out, or they had been engaged, or Lord Lindores had seized hold upon him about county business; and since the day when they parted at Miss Barbara's door, he had never seen Edith save for a moment. He set off eagerly, without, it is to be feared, doing anything to carry out Lady Lindores's injunctions. Had he not exhausted every argument? He hurried off to tell her so, to consult with her as to what he could do. Anything that brought him into contact and confidential intercourse with either mother or daughter was a happiness to him. And he made so much haste that he arrived at Lindores before she had returned from Tinto. The servant who opened the door to him was young and indiscreet. Had the butler been at hand, as it was his duty to be, it is possible that what was about to happen might never have happened. But it was a young footman, a native, one who was interested in the family, and liked to show his interest. "Her ladyship's no' at home, sir," he said to John; "but," he added, with a glow of pleasure, "Lady Edith is in the drawing-room." It may be supposed that John was not slow to take advantage of this intimation. He walked quite decorously after the man, but he felt as if he were tumbling head over heels in his eagerness to get there. When the door was closed upon them, and Edith, rising against the light at the end of the room, in front of a great window, turned to him with a little tremulous cry of wonder and confusion, is it necessary to describe their feelings? John took her hands into both of his without any further preliminaries, saying, "At last!" with an emotion and delight so profound that it brought the tears to his eyes. And Edith, for her part, said nothing at all—did not even look at him in her agitation. There had been no direct declaration, proposal, acceptance between them. There was nothing of the kind now. Amid all the excitements and anxieties of the past weeks, these prefaces of sentiment seemed to have been jumped over—to have become unnecessary. They had been long parted, and they had come together "at last!"
It may probably be thought that this was abrupt,—too little anxious and doubtful on his part, too ready and yielding on hers. But no law can be laid down in such cases, and they had a right; like other people, to their own way. And then the meeting was so unexpected, he had not time to think how a lover should look, nor she to remember what punctilios a lady should require. That a man should go down on his knees to prefer his suit had got to be old-fashioned in the time of their fathers and mothers. In Edith's days, the straightforwardness of a love in which the boy and girl had first met in frank equality, and afterwards the man and woman in what they considered to be honest friendship and liking, was the best understood phase. They were to each other the only possible mates, the most perfect companions in the world.
"I have so wanted to speak to you," he cried; "in all that has happened this is what I have wanted; everything would have been bearable if I could have talked it over,—if I could have explained everything to you."
"But I understood all the time," Edith said.
There is something to be said perhaps for this kind of love-making too.
And the time flew as never time flew before—as time has always flown under such circumstances; and it began to grow dark before they knew: for the days were creeping in, growing short, and the evenings long. It need not be said that they liked the darkness—it was more delightful than the finest daylight; but it warned them that they might be interrupted at any moment, and ought to have put them on their guard. Lady Lindores might come in, or even Lord Lindores, which was worse: or, short of those redoubtable personages, the servants might make a sudden invasion to close the windows, which would be worst of all: even this fear, however, did not break the spell which enveloped them. They were at the end of the room, up against the great window, which was full of the grey evening sky, and formed the most dangerous background in the world to a group of two figures very close together, forming but one outline against the light. They might, one would think, have had sense enough to recollect that they were thus at once made evident to whosoever should come in. But they had no sense, nor even caution enough to intermit their endless talking, whispering, now and then, and listen for a moment to anything which might be going on behind them. When it occurred to Edith to point out how dark it was getting, John had just then entered upon a new chapter, and found another branch of the subject upon which there were volumes to say.
"For look here," he said, "what will your father say to me, Edith? I am neither rich nor great. I am not good enough for you in any way. No—no man is good enough for a girl like you—but I don't mean that. When I came first to Dalrulzian and saw what a little place it was, I was sick with disgust and disappointment. I know why now—it was because it was not good enough for you. I roam all over it every day thinking and thinking—it is not half good enough for her. How can I ask her to go there? How can I ask her father?"
"Oh how can you speak such nonsense, John. If it is good enough for you it is good enough for me. If a room is big or little, what does that matter? And as for my father——"
"It is your father I am afraid of," John said. "I think Lady Lindores would not mind; but your father will think it is throwing you away; he will think I am not good enough to tie your shoe—and he will be quite right—quite right," cried the young man, with fervour——
"In that case," said a voice behind them in the terrible twilight—a voice, at the sound of which their arms unclasped, their hands leapt asunder as by an electric shock; never was anything more sharp, more acrid, more incisive, than the sound,—"in that case, Mr Erskine, your duty as a gentleman is very clear before you. There is only one thing to do—Go! the way is clear."
"Lord Lindores!" John had made a step back in his dismay, but he still stood against the light, his face turned, astonished, towards the shadows close by him, which had approached without warning. Edith had melted and disappeared away into the gloom, where there was another shadow apart from the one which confronted John, catching on the whiteness of its countenance all the light in the indistinct picture. A sob, a quickened breathing in the background, gave some consciousness of support to the unfortunate young hero so rudely awakened out of his dream, but that was all.
"Her father, at your service,—entertaining exactly the sentiments that you have attributed to him, and only surprised that with such just views, a man who calls himself a gentleman——"
"Robert!" came from behind in a voice of keen remonstrance; and "Father!" with a cry of indignation.
"That a man who calls himself a gentleman," said Lord Lindores deliberately, "should play the domestic traitor, and steal into the affections—what she calls her heart, I suppose—of a silly girl."
Before John could reply, his outline against the window had again become double. Edith stood beside him, erect, with her arm within his. The touch filled the young man with a rapture of strength and courage. He stopped her as she began to speak. "Not you, dearest, not you; I," he said: "Lord Lindores, I am guilty. It is true what you say, I ought to have gone away. Had I known in time, I should have gone away—('Yes, it would have been right:' this in an undertone to Edith, who at these words had grasped his arm tighter); but such things are not done by rule. What can I do now? We love each other. If she is not rich she would be happy with me—not great, but happy; that's something! and near home, Lord Lindores! I don't stand upon any right I had to speak to her—perhaps I hadn't any right—I beg your pardon heartily, and I don't blame you for being angry."
Perhaps it was not wonderful that the father thus addressed, with his wife murmuring remonstrance behind him, and his daughter before him standing up in defiance at her lover's side, should have been exasperated beyond endurance. "Upon my soul!" he cried. He was not given to exclamations, but what can a man do? Then after a pause,—"that is kind," in his usual sharp tone, "very kind; you don't blame me! Perhaps with so much sense at your command you will approve of me before all's done. Edith, come away from that man's side—this instant!" he cried, losing his temper, and stamping his foot on the ground.
"Papa! no, oh no—I cannot. I have chosen him, and he has chosen——"
"Leave that man's side. Do you hear me? leave him, or——"
"Robert! Robert! and for God's sake, Edith, do what your father tells you. Mr Erskine, you must not defy us."
"I will not leave John, mother; you would not have left my father if you had been told——"
"I will have no altercation," said Lord Lindores. "I have nothing to say to you, Edith. Mr Erskine, I hope, will leave my house when I tell him to do so."
"Certainly I will,—certainly! No, Edith darling, I cannot stay,—it is not possible. We don't give each other up for that; but your father has the best right in his own house——"
"Oh, this is insupportable. Your sentiments are too fine, Mr Erskine of Dalrulzian; for a little bonnet laird, your magnanimity is princely. I have a right, have I, in my own——"
Here there suddenly came a lull upon the stormy scene, far more complete than when the wind falls at sea. The angry Earl calmed down as never angry billows calmed. The pair of desperate lovers stole apart in a moment; the anxious, all-beseeching mother seated herself upon the nearest chair, and said something about the shortening of the days. This complete cessation of all disturbance was caused by the entrance of a portly figure carrying one lamp, followed by another slimmer one carrying a second. The butler's fine countenance was mildly illuminated by the light he carried. He gave a slight glance round him, with a serenity which made all these excited people shrink, in his indifferent and calmly superior vision. Imperturbable as a god, he proceeded to close the shutters and draw the curtains. John Erskine in the quiet took his leave like any ordinary guest.
The mine had exploded;—the mines were exploding under all the ramparts. This was the night when Rintoul came home from his visit; and Lady Lindores looked forward to her son's composure of mind and manner, and that good sense which was his characteristic, and kept him in agreement with his father upon so many points on which she herself was apt to take different views. It was the only comfort she could think of. Edith would not appear at dinner at all; and her mother was doubly afraid now of the explanation of Carry's sentiments which she would have to give to her husband. But Rinto