THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40

"I am sorry you have stirred up Keith to the renewal of this painful
subject. You know I considered that page in my life as closed for
ever, and I see nothing that would compensate for what it costs me
even to think of it. To redeem my name before the world would be of
no avail to me now, for all my English habits are broken, and all
that made life valuable to me is gone. If Long and Beauchamp could
reject my solemn affirmation three years ago, what would a
retractation slowly wrung from them be worth to me now? It might
once have been, but that is all over now. Even the desire to take
care of you would no longer actuate me since you have Keith again;
and in a few years I hope to make my child independent in money
matters--independent of your love and care you would not wish her to
be. Forget the troubles of your life, Ermine, and be happy with your
faithful Keith, without further efforts on behalf of one whom they
only harass and grieve."

Ermine shed some bitter tears over this letter, the more sorrowful
because the refusal was a shock to her own reliance on his honour,
and she felt like a traitress to his cause. And Colin would give him
up after this ungrateful indifference, if nothing worse. Surely it
betrayed a consciousness that the whole of his conduct would not bear
inquiry, and she thought of the representations that she had so
indignantly rejected, that the accounts, even without the last fatal
demand, were in a state that it required an excess of charity to
ascribe to mere carelessness on the part of the principal.

She was glad that Alison was absent, and Rose in the garden. She
laid her head on her little table, and drew long sobs of keen
suffering, the reaction from the enjoyment and hope of the last few
months. And so little knew she what she ought to ask, that she could
only strive to say, "Thy will be done."

"Ermine! my Ermine, this is not a thing to be so much taken to heart.
This foolish philosopher has not even read his letters. I never saw
any one more consistently like himself."

Ermine looked up, and Colin was standing over her, muffled up to the
eyes, and a letter of his own in his hand. Her first impulse was to
cry out against his imprudence, glad as she was to see him. "My
cough is nearly gone," he said, unwinding his wrappings, "and I could
not stay at home after this wonderful letter--three pages about
chemical analysis, which he does me the honour to think I can
understand, two of commissions for villainous compounds, and one of
protestations that 'I will be drowned; nobody shall help me.'"

Ermine's laugh had come, even amid her tears, his tone was so great a
relief to her. She did not know that he had spent some minutes in
cooling down his vexation, lest he should speak ungently of her
brother's indifference. "Poor Edward," she said, "you don't mean
that this is all the reply you have?"

"See for yourself," and he pointed to the divisions of the letter he
had described. "There is all he vouchsafes to his own proper
affairs. You see he misapprehends the whole; indeed, I don't believe
he has even read our letters."

"We often thought he did not attend to all we wrote," said Ermine.
"It is very disheartening!"

"Nay, Ermine, you disheartened with the end in view!"

"There are certainly the letters about Maddox's committal still to
reach him, but who knows if they will have more effect! Oh, Colin,
this was such a hope that--perhaps I have dwelt too much upon it!"

"It is such a hope," he repeated. "There is no reason for laying it
aside, because Edward is his old self."

"Colin! you still think so?"

"I think so more than ever. If he will not read reason, he must hear
it, and if he takes no notice of the letters we sent after the
sessions, I shall go and bring him back in time for the assizes."

"Oh, Colin! it cannot be. Think of the risk! You who are still
looking so thin and ill. I cannot let you."

"It will be warm enough by the time I get there."

"The distance! You are doing too much for us."

"No, Ermine," with a smile, "that I will never do."

She tried to answer his smile, but leant back and shed tears, not
like the first, full of pain, but of affectionate gratitude, and yet
of reluctance at his going. She had ever been the strength and stay
of the family, but there seemed to be a source of weakness in his
nearness, and this period of his indisposition and of suspense had
been a strain on her spirits that told in this gentle weeping. "This
is a poor welcome after you have been laid up so long," she said when
she could speak again. "If I behave so ill, you will only want to
run from the sight of me."

"It will be July when I come back."

"I do not think you ought to go."

"Nor I, if Edward deigns to read the account of Rose's examination."

In that calm smiling resolution Ermine read the needlessness of
present argument, and spoke again of his health and his solitary
hours.

"Mitchel has been very kind in coming to sit with me, and we have
indulged in two or three castles in the air--hospitals in the air,
perhaps, I should say. I told him he might bring me down another
guest instead of the tailor, and he has brought a poor young pupil
teacher, whom Tibbie calls a winsome gallant, but I am afraid she
won't save him. Did you ever read the 'Lady of La Garaye'?"

"Not the poem, but I know her story."

"As soon as that parcel comes in, which Villars is always expecting,
I propose to myself to read that poem with you. What's that? It
can't be Rachel as usual."

If it was not Rachel, it was the next thing to her, namely, Alick
Keith. This was the last day of those that he had spent at the
Homestead, and he was leaving Rachel certainly better. She had not
fallen back on any evening that he had been there, but to his great
regret he would not be able to come out the next day. Regimental
duty would take him up nearly all the day, and then he was invited to
a party at the Deanery, "which the mother would never have forgiven
me for refusing," he said; just as if the mother's desires had the
very same power over him as over her daughters. "I came to make a
desperate request, Miss Williams," he said. "Would it be any way
possible for you to be so kind as to go up and see Rachel? She comes
downstairs now, and there are no steps if you go in by the glass
doors. Do you think you could manage it?"

"She wishes it!" said Ermine.

"Very much. There are thorns in her mind that no one knows how to
deal with so well as you do, and she told me yesterday how she longed
to get to you."

"It is very good in her. I have sometimes feared she might think we
had dealt unfairly by her if she did not know how very late in the
business we suspected that our impostors were the same," said Ermine.

"It is not her way to blame any one but herself," said Alick, "and,
in fact, our showing her the woodcut deception was a preparation for
the rest of it. But I have said very little to her about all that
matter. She required to be led away rather than back to it.
Brooding over it is fatal work, and yet her spirits are too much
weakened and shattered to bear over-amusement. That is the reason
that I thought you would be so very welcome to-morrow. She has seen
no one yet but Lady Temple, and shrinks from the very idea."

"I do not see why I should not manage it very well," said Ermine,
cheerfully, "if Miss Curtis will let me know in time whether she is
equal to seeing me. You know I can walk into the house now."

Alick thanked her earnestly. His listless manner was greatly
enlivened by his anxiety, and Colonel Keith was obliged to own that
marriage would be a good thing for him; but such a marriage! If from
sheer indolence he should leave the government to his wife, then--
Colin could only shrug his shoulders in dismay.

Nevertheless, when Ermine's wheeled chair came to the door the next
afternoon, he came with it, and walked by her side up the hill,
talking of what had been absolutely the last call she had made--a
visit when they had both been riding with the young Beauchamps.

"Suppose any one had told me then I should make my next visit with
you to take care of me, how pleased I should have been," said Ermine,
laughing, and taking as usual an invalid's pleasure in all the little
novelties only remarked after long seclusion. That steep, winding,
pebbly road, with the ferns and creeping plants on its rocky sides,
was a wonderful panorama to her, and she entreated for a stop at the
summit to look down on the sea and the town; but here Grace came out
to them full of thanks and hopes, little knowing that to them the
event was a very great one. When at the glass doors of the garden
entrance, Ermine trusted herself to the Colonel's arm, and between
him and her crutch crossed the short space to the morning room, where
Rachel rose from her sofa, but wisely did not come forward till her
guest was safely placed in a large easy chair.

Rachel then held out her hand to the Colonel, and quietly said,
"Thank you," in a subdued manner that really touched him, as he
retreated quickly and left them together. Then Rachel sat down on a
footstool close to Ermine, and looked up to her. "Oh, it is so good
of you to come to me! I would not have dared to think of it, but I
just said I wished to get out for nothing but to go to you; and then
he--Captain Keith-would go and fetch you."

"As the nearest approach to fetching the moon, I suppose," said
Ermine, brightly. "It was very kind to me, for I was longing to see
you, and I am glad to find you looking better than I expected."

For in truth Rachel's complexion had been little altered by her
illness; and the subdued dejected expression was the chief change
visible, except in the feebleness and tremulousness of all her
movements. "Yes, I am better," she said. "I ought to be, for he is
so good to me."

"Dear Rachel, I was so very glad to hear of this," said Ermine,
bending down to kiss her.

"Were you? I thought no one could be that cared for him," said
Rachel.

"I cared more for him the week that you were ill than ever I had done
before."

"Grace tells me of that," said Rachel, "and when he is here I believe
it. But, Miss Williams, please look full at me, and tell me whether
everybody would not think--I don't say that I could do it--but if
every one would not think it a great escape for him if I gave him
up."

"No one that could really judge."

"Because, listen," said Rachel, quickly, "the regiment is going to
Scotland, and he and the mother have taken it into their heads that
I shall get well faster somewhere away from home. And--and they want
to have the wedding as soon as I am better; and they are going to
write about settlements and all that. I have never said I would, and
I don't feel as if--as if I ought to let him do it; and if ever the
thing is to be stopped at all, this is the only time."

"But why? You do not wish--"

"Don't talk of what I wish," said Rachel. "Talk of what is good for
him."

Ermine was struck with the still resolute determination of judging
for herself--the self-sufficiency, almost redeemed by the
unselfishness, and the face was most piteously in earnest.

"My dear, surely he can be trusted to judge. He is no boy, in spite
of his looks. The Colonel always says that he is as much older than
his age in character as he is younger in appearance."

"I know that," said Rachel, "but I don't think he ought to be trusted
here; for you see," and she looked down, "all the blindness of--of
his affection is enhanced by his nobleness and generosity, and he has
nobody to check or stop him; and it does seem to me a shame for us
all to catch at such compassion, and encumber him with me, just
because I am marked for scorn and dislike. I can't get any one to
help me look at it so. My own people would fancy it was only that I
did not care for him; and he--I can't even think about it when he is
here, but I get quite distracted with doubts if it can be right
whenever he goes away. And you are the only person who can help me!
Bessie wrote very kindly to me, and I asked to see what she said to
him. I thought I might guess her feeling from it. And he said he
knew I should fancy it worse than it was if he did not let me see.
It was droll, and just like her--not unkind, but I could see it is
the property that makes her like it. And his uncle is blind, you
know, and could only send a blessing, and kind hopes, and all that.
Oh, if I could guess whether that uncle thinks he ought! What does
Colonel Keith think? I know you will tell me truly."

"He thinks," said Ermine, with a shaken voice, "that real trustworthy
affection outweighs all the world could say."

"But he thinks it is a strange, misplaced liking, exaggerated by pity
for one sunk so low?" said Rachel, in an excited manner.

"Rachel," said Ermine, "you must take my beginning as a pledge of my
speaking the whole truth. Colonel Keith is certainly not fond of you
personally, and rather wonders at Alick, but he has never doubted
that this is the genuine feeling that is for life, and that it is
capable of making you both better and happier. Indeed, Rachel, we do
both feel that you suit Alick much more than many people who have
been far better liked."

Rachel looked cheered. "Yet you," she faltered, "you have been an
instance of resolute withstanding."

"I don't think I shall be long," murmured Ermine, a vivid colour
flashing forth upon her cheek, and leading the question from herself.
"Just suppose you did carry out this fierce act of self-abnegation,
what do you think could come next?"

"I don't know! I would not break down or die if I could help it,"
added Rachel, faintly after her brave beginning.

"And for him? Do you think being cast off would be so very pleasant
to him?"

Rachel hung her head, and her lips made a half murmur of, "Would not
it be good for him?"

"No, Rachel, it is the very sorest trial there can be when, even in
the course of providence, kind intentions are coldly requited; and it
would be incalculably harder when therewith there would be rejection
of love."

"Ah! I never said I could do it. I could not tell him I did not care
for him, and short of that nothing would stop it," sobbed Rachel,
"only I wished to feel it was not very mean--very wrong." She laid
her weary head on Ermine's lap, and Ermine bent down and kissed her.

"So happy, so bright and free, and capable, his life seems now,"
proceeded Rachel. "I can't understand his joining it to mine; and if
people shunned and disliked him for my sake!"

"Surely that will depend on yourself. I have never seen you in
society, but if you have the fear of making him unpopular or
remarkable before your eyes, you will avoid it."

"Oh, yes, I know," said Rachel, impatiently. "I did think I should
not have been a commonplace woman," and she shed a few tears.

Ermine was provoked with her, and began to think that she had been
arguing on a wrong tack, and that it would be better after all for
Alick to be free. Rachel looked up presently. "It must be very odd
to you to hear me say so, but I can't help feeling the difference.
I used to think it so poor and weak to be in love, or to want any one
to take care of one. I thought marriage such ordinary drudgery, and
ordinary opinions so contemptible, and had such schemes for myself.
And this--and this is such a break down, my blunders and their
consequences have been so unspeakably dreadful, and now instead of
suffering, dying--as I felt I ought--it has only made me just like
other women, for I know I could not live without him, and then all
the rest of it must come for his sake."

"And will make you much more really useful and effective than ever
you could have been alone," said Ermine.

"He does talk of doing things together, but, oh! I feel as if I could
never dare put out my hand again!"

"Not alone perhaps."

"I like to hear him tell me about the soldiers' children, and what he
wants to have done for them."

"You and I little thought what Lady Temple was to bring us," said
Ermine, cheerfully, "but you see we are not the strongest creatures
in the world, so we must resign ourselves to our fate, and make the
best of it. They must judge how many imperfections they choose to
endure, and we can only make the said drawbacks as little troublesome
as may be. Now, I think I see Miss Curtis watching in fear that I am
over-talking you."

"Oh, must you go? You have really comforted me! I wanted an
external opinion very much, and I do trust yours! Only tell me," she
added, holding Ermine's hand, "is this indeed so with you?"

"Not yet," said Ermine, softly, "do not speak about it, but I think
you will be comforted to hear that this matter of yours, by leading
to the matron's confession, may have removed an obstacle that was far
more serious in my eyes than even my own helplessness, willing as
Colin was to cast both aside. Oh, Rachel, there is a great deal to
be thankful for."

Rachel lay down on her sofa, and fell asleep, nor did Alick find any
occasion for blaming Grace when he returned the next day. The effect
of the conversation had been to bring Rachel to a meek submission,
very touching in its passiveness and weary peacefulness. She was
growing stronger, walked out leaning on Alick's arm, and was even
taken out by him in a boat, a wonderful innovation, for a dangerous
accident to Mr. Curtis had given the mother such a horror of the sea
that no boating excursions had ever taken place during her solitary
reign, and the present were only achieved by a wonderful stretch of
dear Alexander's influence. Perhaps she trusted him the more,
because his maimed hand prevented him from being himself an oarsman,
though he had once been devoted to rowing. At any rate, with an old
fisherman at the oar, many hours were spent upon the waters of the
bay, in a tranquillity that was balm to the harassed spirit, with
very little talking, now and then some reading aloud, but often
nothing but a dreamy repose. The novelty and absence of old
association was one secret of the benefit that Rachel thus derived.
Any bustle or resumption of former habits was a trial to her
shattered nerves, and brought back the dreadful haunted nights.
The first sight of Conrade, still looking thin and delicate, quite
overset her; a drive on the Avoncester road renewed all she had felt
on the way thither; three or four morning visitors coming in on her
unexpectedly, made the whole morbid sense of eyes staring at her
recur all night, and when the London solicitor came down about the
settlements, she shrank in such a painful though still submissive
way, from the sight of a stranger, far more from the semblance of a
dinner party, that the mother yielded, and let her remain in her
sitting-room.

"May I come in?" said Alick, knocking at the door. "I have something
to tell you."

"What, Alick! Not Mr. Williams come?"

"Nothing so good. In fact I doubt if you will think it good at all.
I have been consulting this same solicitor about the title-deeds;
that cheese you let fall, you know," he added, stroking her hand, and
speaking so gently that the very irony was rather pleasant.

"Oh, it is very bad."

"Now wouldn't you like to hear it was so bad that I should have to
sell out, and go to the diggings to make it up?"

"Now, Alick, if it were not for your sake, you know I should like--"

"I know you would; but you see, unfortunately, it was not a cheese at
all, only a wooden block that the fox ran away with. Lawyers don't
put people's title-deeds into such dangerous keeping, the true cheese
is safe locked up in a tin-box in Mr. Martin's chambers in London."

"Then what did I give Mauleverer?"

"A copy kept for reference down here." Rachel hid her face.

"There, I knew you would think it no good news, and it is just a
thunder-clap to me. All you wanted me for was to defend the mother
and make up to the charity, and now there's no use in me," he said in
a disconsolate tone.

"Oh, Alick, Alick, why am I so foolish?"

"Never mind; I took care Martin should not know it. Nobody is aware
of the little affair but our two selves; and I will take care the fox
learns the worth of his prize. Only now, Rachel, answer me, is there
any use left for me still?"

"You should not ask me such things, Alick, you know it all too well."

"Not so well that I don't want to hear it. But I had more to say.
This Martin is a man of very different calibre from old Cox, with a
head and heart in London charities and churches, and it had struck
him as it did you, that the Homestead had an easier bargain of it
than that good namesake of yours had ever contemplated. If it paid
treble or quadruple rent, the dear mother would never find it out,
nor grow a geranium the less."

"No, she would not! But after all, the lace apprenticeships are poor
work."

"So they are, but Martin says there would be very little difficulty
in getting a private bill to enable the trustees to apply the sum
otherwise for the benefit of the Avonmouth girls."

"Then if I had written to him, it would have been all right! Oh, my
perverseness!"

"And, Rachel, now that money has been once so intended; suppose it
kept its destination. About £500 would put up a tidy little
industrial school, and you might not object to have a scholarship or
two for some of our little --th Highlander lassies whose fathers won't
make orphans of them for the regular military charities. What,
crying, Rachel! Don't you like it?"

"It is my dream. The very thing I wished and managed so vilely.
If Lovedy were alive! Though perhaps that is not the thing to wish.
But I can't bear taking your--"

"Hush! You can't do worse than separate your own from mine. This is
no part of the means I laid before Mr. Martin by way of proving
myself a responsible individual. I took care of that. Part of this
is prize-money, and the rest was a legacy that a rich old merchant
put me down for in a transport of gratitude because his son was one
of the sick in the bungalow where the shell came. I have had it
these three or four months, and wondered what to do with it."

"This will be very beautiful, very excellent. And we can give the
ground."

"I have thought of another thing. I never heard of an industrial
school where the great want was not food for industry. Now I know
the Colonel and Mr. Mitchell have some notion floating in their minds
about getting a house for convalescents down here, and it strikes me
that this might supply the work in cooking, washing, and so on. I
think I might try what they thought of it."

Rachel could only weep out her shame and thankfulness, and when Alick
reverently added that it was a scheme that would require much thought
and much prayer, the pang struck her to the heart--how little she had
prayed over the F. U. E. E. The prayer of her life had been for
action and usefulness, but when she had seen the shadow in the
stream, her hot and eager haste, her unconscious detachment from all
that was not visible and material had made her adhere too literally
to that misinterpreted motto, laborare est orare. How should then
her eyes be clear to discern between substance and shadow?

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE HONEYMOON.

"Around the very place doth brood
A calm and holy quietude."--REV. ISAAC WILLIAMS.

The level beams of a summer sun, ending one of his longest careers,
were tipping a mountain peak with an ineffable rosy purple,
contrasting with the deep shades of narrow ravines that cleft the
rugged sides, and gradually expanded into valleys, sloping with green
pasture, or clothed with wood. The whole picture, with its clear,
soft sky, was retraced on the waters of the little lake set in
emerald meadows, which lay before the eyes of Rachel Keith, as she
reclined in a garden chair before the windows of a pretty rustic-
looking hotel, but there was no admiration, no peaceful contemplation
on her countenance, only the same weary air of depression, too
wistful and startled even to be melancholy repose, and the same
bewildered distressed look that had been as it were stamped on her by
the gaze of the many unfriendly eyes at the Quarter Sessions, and by
her two unfortunate dinner parties.

The wedding was to have been quietness itself, but though the
bridegroom had refused to contribute sister, brother-in-law, or even
uncle to the numbers, conventionalities had been too strong for Mrs.
Curtis, and "just one more" had been added to the guests till a
sufficient multitude had been collected to renew all Rachel's morbid
sensations of distress and bewilderment with their accompanying
feverish symptoms, and she had been only able to proceed on her
journey by very short stages, taken late in the day.

Alick had not forgotten her original views as to travelling, and as
they were eventually to go to Scotland, had proposed beginning with
Dutch reformatories and Swiss cretins; but she was so plainly unfit
for extra fatigue and bustle, that the first few weeks were to be
spent in Wales, where the enjoyment of fine scenery might, it was
hoped, be beneficial to the jaded spirits, and they had been going
through a course of passes and glens as thoroughly as Rachel's powers
would permit, for any over-fatigue renewed feverishness and its
delusive miseries, and the slightest alarm told upon the shattered
nerves.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40