CHAPTER XIV
STORM AND BROWN SILK
AGNETA and Mary Fordyce were in the drawing-room of Fordyce Castle, an immensely solemn apartment rendered more so by the blinds which were drawn half-mast high in obedience to an order from Lady Fordyce. She was economical, and the carpet was much too expensive to be looked upon by the sun. In the semi-darkness which this induced the two girls were busy, one with her singing, which she was practising, and the other with the tambour-work she loved. Mary, the worker, was obliged to sit as close as possible to the window in order to get light by which to ply her needle. Agneta’s voice rose in those desolate screams which are the exclusive privilege of the singer practising, and for the emitting of which any other person would justly be punished. Though thin, she was very like Crauford, with the same fresh colour and the same large front teeth, now liberally displayed by her occupation. Mary was short-sighted and a little round-shouldered from much stooping over her work-frame.
‘I am afraid from what mamma has heard that Lady Eliza Lamont is not a very nice person; so eccentric and unfeminine, she said,’ observed Mary.
‘Perhaps Miss Raeburn is the same. I am afraid poor Crauford is throwing himself away. A-a-ah-ah!’ replied Agneta, leaping an octave as though it were a fence.
‘He has never answered your letter, Agneta. I really wonder what she is like. Mamma only hopes she is presentable; one can never trust a young man’s description of the person he is in love with, she says.’
‘Oh-h-h-oh! A-a-a-ah! I shall be very curious to see her, shan’t you, Mary?’
‘I suppose she will be invited here soon. It would be funny if she were here with Lady Maria, would it not?’
‘Mamma says it is all Uncle Fullarton’s doing, because he is so much mixed up with that dreadful Lady Eliza. Ah-a-a-a-ah!’
‘I know; she has always thought that very undesirable, she says. I wonder how she has consented to write; I am sure she would never have done it for anyone but Crauford.’
‘I wonder what it is like to have a sister-in-law?’ said Agneta, pausing in her shrieks.
‘It would depend very much what kind of person she is,’ replied her sister, with some show of sense.
‘Yes, but should we be allowed to go anywhere with her? Perhaps she would take us out,’ said Agneta.
Lady Fordyce was one of those mothers who find it unnecessary to take their daughters into society, and yet confidently expect them to marry well. Though Agneta, the youngest, was twenty-five, and Mary was past thirty, Lady Maria Milwright was the only young person who had ever stayed in the house. A couple of stiff parties were given every year, and, when there was a county ball, the Misses Fordyce were duly driven to it, each in a new dress made for the occasion, to stand one on either side of their mother’s chair during the greater part of the evening. Had anyone suggested to Lady Fordyce that Mary was an old maid and that Agneta would soon become one, she would have been immoderately angry. ‘When my daughters are married I shall give up the world altogether,’ she would sometimes say; and her hearer would laugh in his sleeve; first, at the thought of any connection between Lady Fordyce and the world, and secondly, at the thought of any connection between the Misses Fordyce and matrimony. Had they been houris of Paradise their chances would have been small, and unfortunately, they were rather plain.
‘I should think Crauford will soon come back,’ continued Agneta, as she put away her music. ‘I shall ask him all sorts of questions.’
To do Fordyce justice, he was a kind brother in an ordinary way, and had often stood between his sisters and the maternal displeasure when times were precarious. He did not consider them of much importance, save as members of his own family, but he would throw them small benefits now and again with the tolerant indulgence he might have shown in throwing a morsel to a pet animal.
‘He has never said whether she is pretty,’ observed Mary reflectively. ‘He always calls her “ladylike,” and I don’t think mamma believes him; but, after all, she may be, Agneta.’
‘Mamma says she must have had a deplorable bringing-up with Lady Eliza.’
‘If she comes we must do what we can to polish her,’ rejoined Mary, who was inclined to take herself seriously; ‘no doubt there are a lot of little things we could show her—how to do her hair and things like that. I dare say she is not so bad.’
Agneta pursed up her lips and looked severe.
‘I think it is a great pity he did not choose Lady Maria. Of course, she is not at all pretty, but mamma says it is nonsense to think about such things. He has been very foolish.’
‘I really can hardly see this dull day,’ sighed Mary. ‘I wonder if I might pull up the blind ever so little. You see, mamma has made a pencil-mark on all the sashes to show the housemaids where the end of the blind is to come, and I am afraid to raise it.’
‘There is no sun,’ observed her sister; ‘I think you might do it.’
Mary rose from her frame, but, as she did so, a step was heard outside which sent her flying back to her place, and her mother entered.
Lady Fordyce was a short, stout woman, whose nose and forehead made one perpendicular outline without any depression between the brows. Her eyes were prominent and rather like marbles; in her youth she had been called handsome. She had married late in life, and was now well over sixty, and her neck had shortened with advancing years; her very tight brown silk body compressed a figure almost distressingly ample for her age.
She installed herself in a chair and bade her daughter continue practising.
‘I have practised an hour and my music is put away,’ said Agneta. ‘We were talking about Miss Raeburn. Will she come here, ma’am?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Lady Fordyce; ‘but whether you will see much of her depends upon whether I consider her desirable company for you.’
‘She may be nice after all,’ hazarded Mary.
‘I trust that I am a fit judge of what a young lady should be,’ replied her mother. ‘As Lady Eliza Lamont spends most of her time in the stable, she is hardly the person to form my daughter-in-law successfully.’
‘She is Lady Eliza’s niece, ma’am, is she not?’
‘She is a relation—a poor relation, and no doubt gets some sort of salary for attending to her ladyship. I must say a paid companion is scarcely the choice that I should have made for Crauford. What a chance for her!’
‘She is most fortunate,’ echoed Agneta.
‘Fortunate? A little more than fortunate, I should think! Adventuresses are more often called skilful than fortunate. Poor, poor boy!’
With this remark Lady Fordyce opened an account-book which lay on her lap, and began to look over its items. The girls were silent.
Mary stitched on, and Agneta spread out some music she was copying; the leaden cloud which hung over domestic life at Fordyce Castle had settled down upon the morning when there was a sound of arrival in the hall outside. No bell had rung, and the sisters, astonished, suspended their respective employments and opened their mouths. Though there were things they proposed to teach Cecilia, their ways were not always decorative. Lady Fordyce, who was a little deaf, read her account-book undisturbed, and, when the door opened to admit Crauford, it slid off her brown silk knee like an avalanche.
‘I hardly expected you would take my hint so quickly,’ she said graciously, when the necessary embraces were over.
Crauford’s face, not usually complicated in expression, was a curious study; solemnity, regret, a sense of injury, a sense of importance, struggled on it, and he cleared his throat faintly now and then, as some people will when they are ill at ease.
‘I am sorry to tell you, ma’am, that your trouble has been useless. I have had a great disappointment—a very great one: Miss Raeburn has refused my offer.’
He looked round at his sisters as though appealing to them to expostulate with Providence.
‘What?’ cried his mother.
‘She has refused,’ repeated Crauford.
‘Refused? Oh, my dear boy, it is impossible! I refuse—I refuse to believe it! Nonsense, my dear Crauford! It is unheard of!’
Mary, who had never taken her eyes off her brother’s face, laid down her needle and came forward.
‘Sit down!’ thundered her mother. ‘Sit down, and go on with your work! Or you can leave the room, you and Agneta. There is nothing so detestable as curiosity. Leave the room this moment!’
Dreadfully disappointed, they obeyed. Though it was safer in the hall, the other side of the door was far more entertaining.
Crauford moved uneasily about; he certainly was not to blame for what had happened, but the two lightning-conductors had gone, and the clouds looked black around him. Also he had no tact.
‘You need not be annoyed, ma’am,’ he began; ‘you did not approve of my choice.’
‘Happy as I am to see you deterred from such a fatal step, I cannot submit to the indignity to which you—and we all—have been subjected,’ said his mother. ‘That a paid companion should have refused my son is one of those things I find it hard to accept.’
‘She may yet change,’ replied he. ‘I told her I should give her time.’
Lady Fordyce’s prominent eyes were fixed. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you will ask her again? That you will so far degrade yourself as to make another offer?’
He made a sign of assent.
She threw up her hands. ‘What have I done?’ she exclaimed, addressing an imaginary listener—‘what have I done that my own children should turn against me? When have I failed in my duty towards them? Have I ever thought of myself? Have I ever failed to sacrifice myself where their interests were concerned?’
She turned suddenly on Crauford.
‘No, never,’ he murmured.
During her life Lady Fordyce had seldom bestirred herself for anyone, but habit had made everybody in the house perjure themselves at moments like the present. Declamation was one of her trump-cards; besides, her doctor had once hinted that apoplexy was not an impossible event.
‘As a mother, I have surely some right to consideration. I do not say much—I trust I understand these modern times too well for that—but I beg you will spare us further mortification. Are there no young ladies of suitable position that you must set your heart upon this charity-girl of Lady Eliza Lamont’s?’
‘I don’t understand why you should be so much set against her, ma’am; if you only saw Miss Raeburn you would be surprised.’
‘I have no doubt that I should!’ exclaimed his mother in a sarcastic voice; ‘indeed, I have no doubt that I should!’
Like violin playing, sarcasm is a thing which must be either masterly or deplorable, but she was one of the many from whom this truth is hidden.
‘It would be a good thing if my sisters had one half of her looks or manners,’ retorted he, goaded by her tone. ‘Beside her, Agneta and Mary would look like dairy-maids.’
‘Am I to sit here and hear my own daughters abused and vilified?’ exclaimed Lady Fordyce, rising and walking about. ‘You have indeed profited by your stay among those people! I hope you are satisfied. I hope you have done enough to pain me. I hope you will never live to repent the way in which you have insulted me.’
‘My dear mother, pray, pray be calmer. What am I doing that you should be in this state?’
‘You have called your sisters dairy-maids—servants! You are throwing yourself away upon this worthless creature who has been trying all the time to entrap you.’
‘How can you say such a thing, ma’am, when I tell you that she has refused me? Not that I mean to accept it.’
‘Refused you, indeed! I tell you I do not believe it; she merely wants to draw you on. I ask you, is it likely that a girl who has not a penny in the world would refuse such prospects? Pshaw!’ cried Lady Fordyce, with all the cheap sense of one who knows nothing of the varieties of human character.
‘I wish you could see her,’ sighed her son.
‘If you persist in your folly I shall no doubt have that felicity in time.’
‘My father has not taken this view,’ said Crauford. ‘You are very hard upon me, ma’am.’
‘Let me remind you that you have shown no consideration for me throughout the whole matter,’ she replied. ‘I, of course, come last. I ask you again, will you be guided by one who is more fitted to judge than you can be, and put this unjustifiable marriage out of your head?’
She stood waiting; their eyes met, and he cast his down.
‘I must try again,’ he said with ineffective tenacity.
She turned from him and left the room, brown silk, account-book, and all.
He was accustomed to scenes like the one he had just experienced, but generally it was someone else who played the part of victim, not himself. For a week or more the world had used him very badly; his visit to Lady Eliza had been startling, his interview with Cecilia humiliating, and his reception by his mother terrific; even his uncle had maintained an attitude towards him that he could not understand. His thoughts went back to Barclay, the one person who seemed to see him in his true colours, and he longed for him as a man who has had an accident longs for the surgeon to come and bind his wounds. He had left Fullarton hurriedly and now he was sorry for what he had done.
He was certainly not going to accept Cecilia’s mad folly as final; his mother had rated him for his want of pride in not abandoning his suit, but, had she understood him, she would have known that it was his pride which forbade him to relinquish it, and his vanity which assured him that he must be successful in the end. Each man’s pride is a differently constructed article, while each man is certain that his private possession is the only genuine kind existing.
Lady Fordyce’s own pride had received a rude blow, and she looked upon her brother as the director of it; he it was who had thrown her son into the society of the adventuress, he it was who had persuaded her to give unwilling countenance to what she disapproved. From their very infancy he had gone contrary to her. As a little boy he had roused her impatience over every game or task that they had shared. There had always been something in him which she disliked and which eluded her, and one of her greatest grievances against him had been her own inability to upset his temper. She was anything but a clever woman, and she knew that, though his character was weaker than her own, his understanding was stronger. Brother and sister, never alike, had grown more unlike with the years; his inner life had bred a semi-cynical and indolent toleration in him, and her ceaseless worldly prosperity had brought out the arrogance of her nature and developed a vulgarity which revolted Robert.
As her brown silk dress rustled up the staircase, her son, driven into an unwonted rebellion, made up his mind that, having seen his father, he would depart as soon as he could decide where to go. He hankered after Kaims. He had written to Barclay, bidding his ally farewell and telling him of Cecilia’s refusal, and the ally had written a soothing reply. He praised his determination to continue his suit, assured him of his willingness to keep him acquainted with anything bearing on his interests, and, finally, begged him to remember that, at any time or season, however unpropitious, a room in his house would be at his disposal. Protestations of an admiring friendship closed the letter.
When the rustling was over, and he heard his mother’s door close, he left the drawing-room with the determination of accepting the lawyer’s offer; while he had sense enough to see that there was something undignified in such a swift return to the neighbourhood of Morphie, he yet so longed for the balm in Gilead that he made up his mind to brave the opinion of Fullarton, should he meet him. He would only spend a few quiet days in Kaims and then betake himself in some other direction. Fordyce Castle had grown intolerable.
While he pondered these things, Agneta, at her mother’s dictation, was writing to Lady Milborough to ask if her daughter Maria might hasten her promised visit, and pay it as soon as possible, instead of waiting until the autumn.
‘The girls were so impatient,’ said Lady Fordyce; ‘and it would be such a kindness on Lady Milborough’s part if she could be prevailed upon to spare her dear Maria.’
Thus two letters were dispatched; one by Crauford unknown to his mother, and one by his mother unknown to Crauford. It chanced that the two answers arrived each on the same day.
Lady Fordyce’s serenity was somewhat restored by the one which found its way into her hands. Her correspondent expressed herself much gratified by the appreciation shown of her Maria. Her daughter, under the care of an elderly maid, should start immediately.
‘We shall all be pleased to welcome Lady Maria, shall we not, Crauford?’ said Lady Fordyce, as the family were gathered round the dinner-table.
‘I shall not be here, ma’am,’ replied her son, looking up from his veal pie. ‘I am starting on a visit the day after to-morrow.’