THE outward signs of Lady Eliza’s wrath endured for a few days after Crauford’s untimely mistake, and then began to die a lingering death; but her determination that the enemy should make amends was unabated. In her heart, she did not believe that Cecilia cared for her suitor, and that being the case, she knew her well enough to be sure that nothing would make her marry him. For this she was both glad and sorry. It would have been easy, as Crauford had applied to her, to discover the state of the girl’s feelings; and should she find her unwilling to accept him, convey the fact to Fullarton and so end the matter.
But that course was not at all to her mind; Lady Fordyce should, if Cecilia were so inclined, pay for her words. She should write the letter her son had undertaken to procure, and he should present it and be refused. She was thinking of that as she sat on a bench in the garden at Morphie, and she smiled rather fiercely.
The development she promised herself was, perhaps, a little hard on Crauford, but, as we all know, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and that did not concern her; written words had the powerful effect upon her that they have upon most impulsive people. She was no schemer, and was the last being on earth to sit down deliberately to invent trouble for anyone; but all the abortive maternity in her had expended itself upon Cecilia, and to slight her was the unforgivable sin.
She sat in the sun looking down the garden to the fruit-covered wall, her shady hat, which, owing, perhaps, to the wig beneath it, was seldom at the right angle, pulled over her eyes. No other lady of those days would have worn such headgear, but Lady Eliza made her own terms with fashion. All the hot part of the afternoon she had been working, for her garden produce interested her, and she was apt to do a great deal with her own hands which could more safely have been left to the gardeners. Cecilia, who was picking fruit, had forced her to rest while she finished the work, and her figure could be seen a little way off in a lattice of raspberry-bushes; the elder woman’s eyes followed her every movement. Whether she married Fordyce or whether she did not, the bare possibility seemed to bring the eventual separation nearer, and make it more inevitable. Lady Eliza had longed for such an event, prayed for it; but now that it had come she dreaded it too much. It was scarcely ever out of her mind.
When her basket was full Cecilia came up the path and set it down before the bench. ‘There is not room for one more,’ she said lightly.
‘Sit down, child,’ said her companion; ‘you look quite tired. We have got plenty now. That will be—let me see—five baskets. I shall send two to Miss Robertson—she has only a small raspberry-bed—and the rest are for jam.’
‘Then perhaps I had better go in and tell the cook, or she will put on all five to boil.’
‘No, my dear, never mind; stay here. Cecilia, has it occurred to you that we may not be together very long?’
The idea was so unexpected that Cecilia was startled, and the blood left her face. For one moment she thought that Lady Eliza must have some terrible news to break, some suddenly-acquired knowledge of a mortal disease.
‘Why?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, aunt, what do you mean?’
‘I suppose you will marry, Cecilia. In fact, you must some day.’
The blood came back rather violently.
‘Don’t let us think of that, ma’am,’ she said, turning away her head.
‘You do not want to leave me, Cecilia?’
The two women looked into each other’s eyes, and the younger laid her hand on that of her companion. The other seized it convulsively, a spasm of pain crossing her features.
‘My little girl,’ she said; ‘my darling!’
In those days, endearments, now made ineffective by use and misuse, had some meaning. Young people addressed their elders as ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir,’ and equals, who were also intimates, employed much formality of speech. While this custom was an unquestionable bar to confidence between parents and children, it emphasized any approach made by such as had decided to depart from it; also, it bred strange mixtures. To address those of your acquaintance who had titles as ‘your lordship’ or ‘your ladyship’ was then no solecism. Women, in speaking to their husbands or their men friends, would either use their full formal names or dispense with prefix altogether; and Lady Eliza, whose years of friendship with Fullarton more than justified his Christian name on her tongue, called him ‘Fullarton,’ ‘Robert,’ or ‘Mr. Fullarton,’ with the same ease, while to him she was equally ‘your ladyship’ or ‘Eliza.’ Miss Hersey Robertson spoke to ‘Gilbert’ in the same breath in which she addressed ‘Mr. Speid.’
Though Cecilia called her adopted aunt ‘ma’am,’ there existed between them an intimacy due, not only to love, but to the quality of their respective natures. The expectancy of youth which had died so hard in Lady Eliza had been more nearly realized in the loyal and tender devotion of her adopted niece than in any other circumstance in life. There was so fine a sympathy in Cecilia, so great a faculty for seizing the innermost soul of things, that the pathos of her aunt’s character, its nobility, its foibles, its prejudices, its very absurdities, were seen by her through the clear light of an understanding love.
‘I suppose you have guessed why Mr. Crauford Fordyce has been here so much?’ said Lady Eliza in a few minutes. ‘You know his feelings, I am sure.’
‘He has said nothing to me.’
‘But he has spoken to me. We shall have to decide it, Cecilia. You know it would be a very proper marriage for you, if—if—— He annoyed me very much the other day, but there is no use in talking about it. Marry him if you like, my dear—God knows, I ought not to prevent you. I can’t bear his family, Cecilia, though he is Fullarton’s nephew—insolent fellow! I have no doubt he is a very worthy young man. You ought to consider it.’
‘What did you say to him, ma’am?’
‘Oh—well, I cannot exactly tell you, my dear. I would not bias you for the world.’
‘But you promised him nothing, aunt? You do not mean that you wish me to accept him?’ exclaimed Cecilia, growing pale again.
‘You are to do what you please. I have no doubt he will have the face to come again. I wish you were settled.’
‘If he were the only man in the world, I would not marry him,’ said the girl firmly.
‘Thank Heaven, Cecilia! What enormous front teeth he has—they are like family tombstones. Take the raspberries to the cook, my dear; I am so happy.’
As Cecilia went into the house a man who had ridden up to the stable and left his horse there entered the garden. Fullarton’s shadow lay across the path, and Lady Eliza looked up to find him standing by her. Her thoughts had been far away, but she came back to the present with a thrill. He took a letter from his pocket, and handed it to her, smiling.
‘This is from my sister,’ he said. ‘If you knew her as well as I do you would understand that it has taken us some trouble to get it. But here it is. Be lenient, Eliza.’
Robert, if he had given himself the gratification of teasing his nephew, had yet expressed himself willing to take the part of Noah’s dove, and go out across the troubled waters to look for a piece of dry land and an olive-branch. His task had not been an easy one at first, and he had been obliged to make a personal matter of it before he could smooth the path of the unlucky lover. But his appeal was one which could not fail, and, as a concession to himself, his friend had consented to look with favour upon Crauford, should he return bringing the letter she demanded.
Having disposed of one difficulty, Fullarton found that his good offices were not to end; he was allowed no rest until he sat down with his pen to bring his sister, Lady Fordyce, to a more reasonable point of view and a suitable expression of it. As he had expected, she proved far more obdurate than Lady Eliza; for her there was no glamour round him to ornament his requests. ‘God gave you friends, and the devil gave you relations,’ says the proverb, but it does not go on to say which power gave a man the woman who loves him. Perhaps it is sometimes one and sometimes the other. Be that as it may, though Robert returned successful from Morphie, it took him more time and pains to deal with Lady Fordyce than he had ever thought to expend on anybody.
He sat down upon the bench while Lady Eliza drew off her gloves and began to break the seal with her tapered fingers. He wondered, as he had done many times, at their whiteness and the beauty of their shape.
‘You have the most lovely hands in the world, my lady,’ he said at last; ‘some of the hands in Vandyke’s portraits are like them, but no others.’
He was much relieved by having finished his share in a business which had begun to weary him, and his spirits were happily attuned. She blushed up to the edge of her wig; in all her life he had never said such a thing to her. Her fingers shook so that she could hardly open the letter. She gave it to him.
‘Open it,’ she said; ‘my hands are stiff with picking fruit.’
He took it complacently and spread it out before her.
It was Crauford’s distressed appeals rather than her brother’s counsels which had moved Lady Fordyce. She was really fond of her son, and, in company with almost every mother who has children of both sexes, reserved her daughters as receptacles for the overflowings of her temper; they were the hills that attract the thunderstorms from the plain. Crauford was the plain, and Sir Thomas represented sometimes one of these natural objects and sometimes the other. Of late the whole household had been one long chain of mountains.
She was unaware of what had happened to her former letter; uncle and nephew had agreed that it was unnecessary to inform her of it, and Robert had merely explained that Crauford would not be suffered by Lady Eliza to approach his divinity without the recommendation of her special approval. It was a happy way of putting it.
‘MY DEAR CRAUFORD,
‘I trust that I, of all people, understand that it is not wealth and riches which make true happiness, and I shall be glad if you will assure Lady Eliza Lamont that you have my consent in addressing the young lady who is under her protection. I shall hope to become acquainted with her before she enters our family, and also with her ladyship.
‘I remain, my dear Crauford,
‘Your affectionate mother,
‘LOUISA CHARLOTTE FORDYCE.
‘P.S.—When do you intend to return home?’
She ran her eyes over the paper and returned it to Fullarton.
‘From my sister that is a great deal,’ he observed; ‘more than you can imagine. She has always been a difficulty. As children we suffered from her, for she was the eldest, and my life was made hard by her when I was a little boy. Thomas Fordyce has had some experiences, I fancy.’
‘And this is what you propose for Cecilia?’ exclaimed Lady Eliza.
‘My dear friend, they would not live together; Crauford will take care of that.’
‘And Cecilia too. She will never marry him, Fullarton. She has told me so already. I should like to see Lady Fordyce’s face when she hears that he has been refused!’ she burst out.
Fullarton stared.
‘I think your ladyship might have spared me all this trouble,’ he said, frowning; ‘you are making me look like a fool!’
‘But I only asked her to-day,’ replied she, her warmth fading, ‘not an hour ago—not five minutes. I had meant to say nothing, and let him be refused, but you can tell him, Fullarton—tell him it is no use.’
A peculiar smile was on his face.
‘My dear Eliza,’ he said, ‘Crauford is probably on his way here now. I undertook to bring you the letter and he is to follow it. I left him choosing a waistcoat to propose in.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Lady Eliza, too much cast down by his frown to be amused at this picture.
‘Well, what of it?’ he said, rather sourly. ‘He must learn his hard lessons like the rest of the world; there are enough of them and to spare for everyone.’
‘You are right,’ she replied, ‘terribly right.’
He looked at her critically.
‘What can you have to complain of? If anyone is fortunate, surely you are. You are your own mistress, you are well enough off to lead the life you choose, you have a charming companion, many friends——’
‘Have I? I did not know that. Who are they?’
‘Well, if there are few, it is your own choice. Those you possess are devoted to you. Look at myself, for instance; have I not been your firm friend for years?’
‘You have indeed,’ she said huskily.
‘There are experiences in life which mercifully have been spared you, Eliza. These are the things which make the real tragedies, the things which may go on before the eyes of our neighbours without their seeing anything of them. I would rather die to-morrow than live my life over again. You know I speak truly; I know that you know; you made me understand that one day.’
She had turned away during his speech, for she could not trust her face, but at these last words she looked round.
‘I have never forgiven myself for the pain I caused you,’ she said; ‘I have never got over that. I am so rough—I know it—have you forgiven me, Robert?’
‘It took me a little time, but I have done it,’ replied he, with an approving glance at the generosity he saw in his own heart.
‘I behaved cruelly—cruelly,’ she said.
‘Forget it,’ said Fullarton; ‘let us only remember what has been pleasant in our companionship. Do you know, my lady, years ago I was fool enough to imagine myself in love with you? You never knew it, and I soon saw my folly; mercifully, before you discovered it. We should have been as wretched in marriage as we have been happy in friendship. We should never have suited each other.’
‘What brought you to your senses?’ inquired Lady Eliza with a laugh. She was in such agony of heart that speech or silence, tears or laughter, seemed all immaterial, all component parts of one overwhelming moment.
He looked as a man looks who finds himself driven into a cul-de-sac.
‘It was—she,’ said Lady Eliza. ‘Don’t think I blame you, Fullarton.’
She could say that to him, but, as she thought of the woman in her grave, she pressed her hands together till the nails cut through the skin.
At this moment Crauford, in the waistcoat he had selected, came through the garden door.
As he stood before Lady Eliza the repressed feeling upon her face was so strong that he did not fail to notice it, but his observation was due to the fact that he saw his mother’s letter in Fullarton’s hand; that, of course, was the cause of her agitation, he told himself. But where was Cecilia? He looked round the garden.
His civil, shadeless presence irritated Lady Eliza unspeakably as he stood talking to her, evidently deterred by his uncle’s proximity from mentioning the subject uppermost in his mind. He possessed the fell talent for silently emphasizing any slight moment of embarrassment. Robert watched him with grim amusement, too indolent to move away. Fordyce was like a picture-book to him.
The little group was broken up by Cecilia’s return; Crauford went forward to meet her, and pompously relieved her of the two garden baskets she carried. This act of politeness was tinged with distress at the sight of the future Lady Fordyce burdened with such things.
‘Let us go to the house,’ exclaimed Lady Eliza, rising from her bench. If something were not done to facilitate Crauford’s proposal she would never be rid of him, never at leisure to reason with her aching heart in solitude. When would the afternoon end? She even longed for Fullarton to go. What he had said to her was no new thing; she had known it all, all before. But the words had fallen like blows, and, like an animal hurt, she longed to slink away and hide her pain.
‘Put the baskets in the tool-house, Cecilia. Fullarton, come away; we will go in.’
The tool-house stood at the further end of the garden, outside the ivy-covered wall, and Crauford was glad of the chance given him of accompanying Cecilia, though he felt the difficulty of approaching affairs of the heart with a garden basket in either hand. He walked humbly beside her. She put the baskets away and turned the key on them.
‘May I ask for a few minutes, Miss Raeburn?’ he began. ‘I have come here for a serious purpose. My uncle is the bearer of a letter to her ladyship. It is from my mother, and is written in corroboration of one which I lately received from my father. I had written to ask their approval of a step—a very important step—which I contemplate. Miss Raeburn—or may I say Cecilia?—it concerns yourself.’
‘Really, sir?’ said Cecilia, the cheerfulness of despair in her voice.
‘Yes, yourself. No young lady I have ever seen has so roused my admiration—my affection, I may say. I have made up my mind on that subject. Do not turn away, Miss Raeburn; it is quite true, believe me. My happiness is involved. To-morrow I shall hope to inform my parents that you will be my wife.’
He stopped in the path and would have taken her hand. She stepped back.
‘I cannot,’ she said. ‘I am sorry, but I cannot.’
‘You cannot!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why?’
‘It is impossible, sir, really.’
‘But you have Lady Eliza’s permission. She told me so herself. This is absurd, Miss Raeburn, and you are distressing me infinitely.’
‘Please put it out of your head, Mr. Fordyce. I cannot do it; there is no use in thinking of it. I do not want to hurt you, but it is quite impossible—quite.’
‘But why—why?’ he exclaimed. He looked bewildered.
Cecilia’s brows drew together imperceptibly.
‘I do not care for you,’ she said; ‘you force me to speak in this way. I do not love you in the least.’
‘But what is there that you object to in me?’ he cried. ‘Surely you understand that my father, in consenting, is ready to establish me very well. I am the eldest son, Miss Raeburn.’
Cecilia’s pale face was set, and her chin rose a little higher at each word.
‘That is nothing to me,’ she replied; ‘it does not concern me. I do not care what your prospects are. I thank you very much for your—civility, but I refuse.’
He was at a loss for words; he felt like a man dealing with a mad person, one to whom the very rudiments of reason and conduct seemed to convey nothing. But the flagrant absurdity of her attitude gave him hope; there were some things too monstrous for reality.
‘I will give you time to think it over,’ he said at last.
‘That is quite useless. My answer is ready now.’
‘But what can be your objection?’ he broke out. ‘What do you want, what do you expect, that I cannot give you?’
‘I want a husband whom I can love,’ she replied, sharply. ‘I have told you that I do not care for you, sir. Let that be the end.’
‘But love would come after, Miss Raeburn; I have heard that often. It always does with a woman; you would learn to love me.’
He stopped and looked at her. Through her growing exasperation his very fatuity, as he stood there, almost touched her. To her mind he was so unfit an object for the love he spoke of, parrot-fashion, so ignorant of realities. A man cannot understand things for which he has been denied the capacity; like Lady Eliza, in the midst of her anger, she could see the piteous side of him and be broad-minded enough to realize the pathos of limitation.
‘Don’t think I wish to hurt you,’ she said gently, ‘but do not allow yourself to hope for anything. I could never love you—not then any more than now. I am honestly sorry to give you pain.’
‘Then why do you do so?’ he asked pettishly.
She almost laughed; his attitude was invincible.
‘You will regret it some day,’ he said.
‘But you never will; you will be very happy one day with someone else who finds importance in the same things as you do. I should never suit you.’
‘Not suit me? Why not? You do yourself injustice.’
‘You are fitted for the very highest position,’ he said, with solemnity.
That night Cecilia sat in her room at the open window. Her dark hair fell in a long, thick rope almost to the ground as she leaned her arms on the sill, and looked out over the dew. High in the sky the moon sailed, the irresponsible face on her disc set above the trailing fragments of cloud. From fields near the coast the low whistle of plover talking came through the silence, and a night-jar shrieked suddenly from the belt of trees near the dovecot. She turned her face towards the sound, and saw in its shadow a piece of stonework glimmering in the white light. To her mind’s eye appeared the whole wall in a flare of torchlight, and a figure standing in front of it, panting, straight and tense, with a red stain on brow and cheek. She had told Crauford Fordyce that she could not marry him because she did not love him, and, assuredly, she had not lied. She had spoken the truth, but was it the whole truth?
Out there, far over the woods, lay Whanland, with the roar of the incoming sea sending its never-ceasing voice across the sandhills, and the roll of its white foam crawling round the skirts of the land. It was as though that sea-voice, which she could not hear, but had known for years, were crying to her from the distant coast. It troubled her; why, she knew not. In all the space of night she was so small, and life was vast. She had been completely capable of dealing with her own difficulties during the day, of choosing her path, of taking or leaving what she chose. Now she felt suddenly weak in spirit. A sense of misgiving took her, surrounded as she was by the repose of mighty forces greater than herself, greater, more eternal, more changeless than humanity. She laid her head upon her arms, and rested so till the sound of midnight rang from the tongue of the stable-clock across the sleeping house. The plover had ceased their talking.
She drew down the blind and stretched herself among the dim curtains of the bed, but, though she closed her eyes, she lay in a kind of waking trance till morning; and when, at last, she fell asleep, her consciousness was filled by the monotony of rolling waters and the roar of the seas by Whanland.