THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY

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

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"Edward Williams."

"August 3d, 11 P. M.

"Dearest Colin,--The one sound in my ears, the one song in my heart
is, 'Let them give thanks.' It is as if we had passed from a dungeon
into sunshine. I suppose it would be too much if you were here to
share it. They sent Rose in first to tell me, but I knew in the
sound of their wheels that all was well. What an evening we have
had, but I must not write more. Ailie is watching me like a dragon,
and will not rest till I am in bed; but I can't tell how to lose one
minute of gladness in sleep. Oh, Colin, Colin, truest of all true
knights, what an achievement yours has been!"

"August 4th.

"That was a crazy bit that I wrote last night, but I will not make
away with it. I don't care how crazy you think me. It would have
been a pity not to have slept to wake to the knowledge that all was
not a dream, but then came the contrast with the sorrow you are
watching. And I have just had your letter. What a sudden close to
that joyous life! She was one of the most winning beings, as you
truly say, that ever flashed across one's course, and if she had
faults, they were those of her day and her training. I suppose, by
what you say, that she was too girlish to be all the companion your
brother required, and that this may account for his being more
shocked than sorrow-stricken, and his child, since he can dwell on
the thought, is such a new beginning of hope, that I wonder less than
you do at his bearing up so well. Besides, pain dulls the feelings,
and is a great occupation. I wish you could have seen that dear
Bessie, but I gather that the end came on much more rapidly than had
been expected. It seemed as if she were one of those to whom even
suffering was strangely lightened and shortened, as if she had met
only the flowers of life, and even the thorns and stings were almost
lost in their bright blossoms. And she could hardly have lived on
without much either of temptation or sorrow. I am glad of your
testimony to Rachel's effectiveness, I wrote it out and sent it up to
the Homestead. There was a note this morning requesting Edward to
come in to see Maddox, and Ailie is gone with him, thinking she may
get leave to see poor Maria. Think of writing 'Edward and Ailie
again! Dr. Long and Harry are gone with them. The broken thread is
better pieced by Harry than by the Doctor; but he wants Ailie and me
to go and stay at Belfast. Now I must hear Rose read, in order to
bring both her and myself to our reasonable senses."

"5 P. M.

"They have been returned about an hour, and I must try to give you
Edward's account of his interview. Maddox has quite dropped his
mask, and seems to have been really touched by being brought into
contact with Edward again, and, now it is all up with him, seemed to
take a kind of pleasure in explaining the whole web, almost, Edward
said, with vanity at his own ingenuity. His earlier history was as
he used to represent it to Edward. He was a respectable ironmonger's
son, with a taste for art; he was not allowed to indulge it, and then
came rebellion, and breaking away from home. He studied at the
Academy for a few years, but wanted application, and fancied he had
begun too late, tried many things and spent a shifty life, but never
was consciously dishonest till after he had fallen in with Edward;
and the large sums left uninquired for in his hands became a
temptation to one already inclined to gambling. His own difficulties
drove him on, and before he ventured on the grand stroke, he had been
in a course of using the sums in his hands for his own purposes. The
finding poor Maria open to the admiration he gave her beauty, put it
into his head to make a tool of her; and this was not the first time
he had used Edward's seal, or imitated his writing. No wonder there
was such a confusion in the accounts as told so much against Edward.
He told the particulars, Edward says, with the strangest mixture of
remorse and exultation. At last came the journey to Bohemia, and his
frauds became the more easy, until he saw there must be a bankruptcy,
and made the last bold stroke, investing the money abroad in his own
name, so that he would have been ready to escape if Edward had come
home again. He never expected but that Edward would have returned,
and finding the affairs hopeless, did this deed in order to have a
resource. As to regret, he seemed to feel some when he said the
effects had gone farther than he anticipated; but 'I could not let
him get into that subject,' Edward said, and he soon came back to his
amused complacency in his complete hoodwinking of all concerned at
home, almost thanking Edward for the facilities his absence had given
him. After this, he went abroad, taking Maria lest she should betray
him on being cast off; and they lived in such style at German
gambling places that destitution brought them back again to England,
where he could better play the lecturer, and the artist in search of
subscriptions. Edward could not help smiling over some of his good
stories, rather as 'the lord' may have 'commended the wisdom of his
unjust steward.' Well, here he came, and, as he said, he really
could hardly have helped himself; he had only to stand still and let
poor Rachel deceive herself, and the whole concern was in a manner
thrust upon him. He was always expecting to be able to get the main
sum into his hands, as he obtained more confidence from Rachel, and
the woodcuts were an over-bold stroke for the purpose; he had not
intended her to keep or show them, but her ready credulity tempted
him too far; and I cannot help laughing now at poor Edward's reproofs
to us for having been all so easily cheated, now that he has been
admitted behind the scenes. Maddox never suspected our
neighbourhood, he had imagined us to be still in London, and though
he heard Alison's name, he did not connect it with us. After all,
what you thought would have been fatal to your hopes of tracing him,
was really what gave him into our hands--Lady Temple's sudden descent
upon their F. U. E. E. If he had not been so hurried and distressed
as to be forced to leave Maria and the poor child to her fate, Maria
would have held by him to the last and without her testimony where
should we have been? But with a summons out against him, and hearing
that Maria had been recognised, he could only fly to the place at
Bristol that he thought unknown to Maria. Even when seized by the
police, he did not know it was she who directed them, and had not
expected her evidence till he actually saw and heard her on the night
of the sessions. It was all Colonel Keith's doing, he said, every
other adversary he would have despised, but your array of forces met
him at every corner where he hoped to escape, and the dear little
Rosie gave him check-mate, like a gallant little knight's pawn as she
is. 'Who could have guessed that child would have such a confounded
memory?' he said, for Edward had listened with a sort of interest
that had made him quite forget that he was Rose's father, and that
this wicked cunning Colonel was working in his cause. So off he goes
to penal servitude, and Edward is so much impressed and touched with
his sharpness as to predict that he will be the model prisoner before
long, if he do not make his escape. As to poor Maria, that was a
much more sad meeting, though perhaps less really melancholy, for
there can be no doubt that she repents entirely, she speaks of every
one as being very good to her, and indeed the old influences only
needed revival, they had never quite died out. Even that poor
child's name was given for love of Ailie, and the perception of
having been used to bring about her master's ruin had always preyed
upon her, and further embittered her temper. The barbarity seemed
like a dream in connexion with her, but, as she told Ailie, when she
once began something came over her, and she could not help striking
harder. It reminded me of horrible stories of the Hathertons' usage
of animals. Enough of this. I believe the Sisterhood will find a
safe shelter for her when her imprisonment is over, and that
temptation will not again be put in her way. We should never have
trusted her in poor dear Lucy's household. Rose calls for the
letters. Good bye, dearest Colin and conqueror. I know all this
will cheer you, for it is your own doing. I can't stop saying so,
it is such a pleasant sound--Your own,

"E. W."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

VANITY OF VANITIES.

"Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all."
TENNYSON.

The funeral was very quiet. By Colonel Keith's considerate
arrangement the attendants met at Timber End, so that the stillness
of the Parsonage was not invaded, a measure the more expedient, as
Alick was suffering from a return of his old enemy, intermitting
fever, and only was able to leave his room in time to join the
procession.

Many were present, for poor Bessie had been a general favourite, and
her untimely fate had stirred up feelings that had created her into a
saint upon earth; but there was no one whose token of respect she
would have more esteemed than Colonel Hammond's, who in all the
bustle of the remove to Edinburgh had found time to come to
Bishopsworthy to do honour to the daughter of his old commanding
officer. A flush of gratitude came over Alick's pale face when he
became aware of his colonel's presence, and when the choristers' hymn
had pealed low and sweetly over the tranquil meadows, and the
mourners had turned away, Alick paused at the Parsonage gate to hold
out his hand, and bring in this one guest to hear how near to
Bessie's heart the father's Highland regiment had been in all the
wanderings of her last moments.

The visit was prolonged for nearly an hour, while recollections of
Alick's parents were talked over, and Rachel thought him more cheered
and gratified than by any other tribute that had been paid to his
sister. He was promised an extension of leave, if it were required
on account of Lord Keith's state, though under protest that he would
have the aguish fever as long as he remained overlooking the water
meadows, and did not put himself under Dr. M'Vicar. Through these
meadows Colonel Hammond meant to walk back to the station, and Alick
and Rachel conducted him far enough to put him into the right path,
and in going back again, they could not but go towards the stile
leading to that corner of the churchyard where the sexton had
finished his work, and smoothed the sods over that new grave.

Some one was standing at the foot--not the sexton--but a young man
bending as with an intolerable load of grief. Rachel saw him first,
when Alick was helping her down the step, and her start of dismay
made him turn and look round. His brow contracted, and she clutched
his arm with an involuntary cry of, "Oh, don't," but he, with a
gesture that at once awed and tranquillized her, unclasped her hold
and put her back, while he stepped forward.

She could hear every word, though his voice was low and deep with
emotion. "Carleton, if I have ever been harsh or unjust in my
dealings towards you, I am sorry for it. We have both had the
saddest of all lessons. May we both take it as we ought."

He wrung the surprised and unwilling hand, and before the youth,
startled and overcome, had recovered enough to attempt a reply, he
had come back to Rachel, resumed her arm, and crossed the churchyard,
still shivering and trembling with the agitation, and the force he
had put on himself. Rachel neither could nor durst speak; she only
squeezed his hand, and when he had shut himself up in his own room,
she could not help repairing to his uncle, and telling him the whole.
Mr. Clare's "God bless you, my boy," had double meaning in it that
night.

Not long after, Alick told Rachel of his having met poor young
Carleton in the meadows, pretending to occupy himself with his
fishing-rod, but too wretched to do anything. And in a short time
Mrs. Carleton again called to pour out to Mrs. Keith her warm thanks
to the Captain, for having roused her son from his moody,
unmanageable despair, and made him consent to accept a situation in a
new field of labour, in a spirit of manful duty that he had never
evinced before.

This was a grave and subdued, but not wholly mournful, period at
Bishopsworthy--a time very precious to Rachel in the retrospect--
though there was much to render it anxious. Alick continued to
suffer from recurrences of the fever, not very severe in themselves
after the first two or three, but laying him prostrate with shivering
and headache every third day, and telling heavily on his strength and
looks when he called himself well. On these good days he was always
at Timber End, where his services were much needed. Lord Keith liked
and esteemed him as a sensible prudent young man, and his qualities
as a first-rate nurse were of great assistance to the Colonel. Lord
Keith's illness was tedious and painful, the necessity of a dangerous
operation became increasingly manifest, but the progress towards such
a crisis was slow and the pain and discomfort great; the patient
never moved beyond his dressing-room, and needed incessant attention
to support his spirits and assist his endeavours to occupy himself.
It was impossible to leave him for long together, and Colonel Keith
was never set at liberty for exercise or rest except when Alick came
to his assistance, and fortunately this young brother-in-law was an
especial favourite, partly from Lord Keith's esteem for his prudence
partly from his experience in this especial species of suffering. At
any rate the days of Alick's enforced absence were always times of
greater restlessness and uneasiness at Timber End.

Meantime Rachel was constantly thrown with Mr. Clare, supplying
Alick's place to him, and living in a round of duties that suited her
well, details of parish work, walking with, writing for, and reading
to Mr Clare, and reaping much benefit from intercourse with such a
mind. Many of her errors had chiefly arisen from the want of some
one whose superiority she could feel, and her old presumptions
withered up to nothing when she measured her own powers with those of
a highly educated man, while all the time he gave her thanks and
credit for all she had effected, but such as taught her humility by
very force of infection.

Working in earnest at his visitation sermon, she was drawn up into
the real principles and bearings of the controversy, and Mr. Clare
failed not to give full time and patience to pick out all her
difficulties, removing scruples at troubling him, by declaring that
it was good for his own purpose to unwind every tangle even if he did
not use every thread. It was wonderful how many puzzles were
absolutely intangible, not even tangled threads, but a sort of
nebulous matter that dispersed itself on investigation. And after
all, unwilling as she would have been to own it, a woman's tone of
thought is commonly moulded by the masculine intellect, which, under
one form or another, becomes the master of her soul. Those opinions,
once made her own, may be acted and improved upon, often carried to
lengths never thought of by their inspirer, or held with noble
constancy and perseverance even when he himself may have fallen from
them, but from some living medium they are almost always adopted, and
thus, happily for herself, a woman's efforts at scepticism are but
blind faith in her chosen leader, or, at the utmost, in the spirit of
the age. And Rachel having been more than usually removed from the
immediate influence of superior man, had been affected by the more
feeble and distant power, a leading that appeared to her the light of
her independent mind; but it was not in the nature of things that,
from her husband and his uncle, her character should not receive that
tincture for which it had so long waited, strong and thorough in
proportion to her nature, not rapid in receiving impressions, but
steadfast and uncompromising in retaining and working on them when
once accepted, a nature that Alick Keith had discerned and valued
amid its worst errors far more than mere attractiveness, of which his
sister had perhaps made him weary and distrustful. Nor, indeed,
under the force of the present influences, was attractiveness
wanting, and she suited Alick's peculiarities far better than many a
more charming person would have done, and his uncle, knowing her only
by her clear mellow voice, her consideration, helpfulness, and desire
to think and do rightly, never understood the doubtful amazement now
and then expressed in talking of Alick's choice. One great bond
between Rachel and Mr. Clare was affection for the little babe, who
continued to be Rachel's special charge, and was a great deal dearer
to her already than all the seven Temples put together. She studied
all the books on infant management that she could obtain, constantly
listened for his voice, and filled her letters to her mother with
questions and details on his health, and descriptions of his small
person. Alick was amused whenever he glanced at his strong-minded
woman's correspondence, and now and then used to divert himself with
rousing her into emphatic declarations of her preference of this
delicate little being to "great, stout, coarse creatures that people
call fine children." In fact, Alick's sensitive tenderness towards
his sister's motherless child took the form of avoiding the sight of
it, and being ironical when it was discussed; but with Mr. Clare,
Rachel was sure of sympathy, ever since the afternoon when he had
said how the sounds upstairs reminded him of his own little daughter;
and sitting under the yew-tree, he had told Rachel all the long
stored-up memories of the little life that had been closed a few days
after he had first heard himself called papa by the baby lips. He
had described all these events calmly, and not without smiles, and
had said how his own blindness had made him feel thankful that he had
safely laid his little Una on her mother's bosom under the church's
shade; but when Rachel spoke of this conversation to her husband, she
learnt that it was the first time that he had ever talked of those
buried hopes. He had often spoken of his wife, but though always
fond of children, few who had not read little Una's name beneath her
mother's cross, knew that he was a childless father. And yet it was
beautiful to see the pleasure he took in the touch of Bessie's
infant, and how skilfully and tenderly he would hold it, so that
Rachel in full faith averred that the little Alexander was never so
happy as with him. The chief alarms came from Mrs Comyn Menteith,
who used to descend on the Rectory like a whirlwind, when the Colonel
had politely expelled her from her father's room at Timber End.
Possessed with the idea of Rachel's being very dull at Bishopsworthy,
she sedulously enlivened her with melancholy prognostics as to the
life, limbs, and senses of the young heir, who would never live, poor
little darling, even with the utmost care of herself and her nurse,
and it was very perverse of papa and the doctors still to keep him
from her--poor little darling--not that it mattered, for he was
certain not to thrive, wherever he was, and the Gowanbrae family
would end with Uncle Colin and the glassblower's daughter; a disaster
on which she met with such condolence from Alick (N. B. the next
heir) that Rachel was once reduced to the depths of genuine despair
by the conviction that his opinion of his nephew's life was equally
desponding; and another time was very angry with him for not
defending Ermine's gentility. She had not entirely learnt what
Alick's assent might mean.

Once, when Mrs. Menteith had been besetting her father with
entreaties for the keys of Lady Keith's private possessions, she was
decisively silenced, and the next day these same keys were given to
Alick, with a request that his wife would as soon as possible look
over and take to herself all that had belonged to his sister, except
a few heirloom jewels that must return to Scotland. Alick demurred
greatly, but the old man would not brook contradiction, and Rachel
was very unwillingly despatched upon the mission on one of Alick's
days of prostration at home. His absence was the most consoling part
of this sad day's work. Any way it could not be otherwise than
piteous to dismantle what had been lately so bright and luxurious,
and the contrast of the present state of things with that in which
these dainty new wedding presents had been brought together, could
not but give many a pang; but beside this, there was a more than
ordinary impression of "vanity of vanities, all is vanity," very
painful to affection that was striving to lose the conviction that it
had been a self-indulgent, plausible life. The accumulation of
expensive trinkets and small luxuries, was as surprising as
perplexing to a person of Rachel's severely simple and practical
tastes. It was not only since the marriage; for Bessie had always
had at her disposal means rather ample, and had used them not exactly
foolishly, but evidently for her own gratification. Everything had
some intrinsic worth, and was tasteful or useful, but the multitude
was perfectly amazing, and the constant echo in Rachel's ears was,
"he heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them." Lord
Keith could hardly have found an executrix for his poor young wife,
to whom her properties would have done so little harm. Rachel set
many aside for the cousins, and for Mrs. Menteith, others she tried
to persuade the Colonel to call Gowanbrae belongings, and failing in
this, she hoped through Grace, to smuggle some of them into his
Gowanbrae; but when all was done, there was a mass of things that
Lord Keith never wished to see again, and that seemed to Rachel to
consist of more ornaments than she could ever wear, and more knick-
knacks than a captain's wife could ever carry about with her.

She was putting aside the various packets of letters and papers to be
looked over more at leisure, when the Colonel knocked at the morning-
room door, and told her that his brother would like to see her, when
her work was done. "But first," he said, "I must ask you to be kind
enough to look over some of these papers, and try to find receipts
for some of those bills."

"Here they are," said Rachel, "I was going to look them over at
home."

"If you have time to examine them here with me," said Colonel Keith,
gently, "I think it might save Alick some pain and vexation."

Rachel was entirely unaware of his meaning, and supposed he only
thought of the mere thrilling of the recent wound; but when he sat
down and took a long account out of a tradesman's envelope, a chill
of dismay came over her, followed by a glow of hope as she
recollected a possible explanation: "Have these wretched tradesmen
been sending in bills over again at such a time as this?" she
exclaimed.

"I should be very glad to find their receipts," returned the Colonel.

They opened the most business-like looking bundles, all of them,
though neatly kept, really in hopeless confusion. In vain was the
search, and notes came forth which rendered it but too plain that
there had been a considerable amount of debt even before the
marriage, and that she had made partial payments and promises of
clearing all off gradually, but that her new expenses were still
growing upon her, and the few payments "on account," since she had
been Lady Keith, by no means tallied with the amount of new purchases
and orders. No one had suspected her money matters of being in
disorder, and Rachel was very slow to comprehend; her simple, country
life had made her utterly unaware of the difficulties and ways and
means of a young lady of fashion. Even the direct evidence before
her eyes would not at first persuade her that it was not "all those
wicked tradesmen;" she had always heard that fashionable shops were
not to be trusted.

"I am afraid," said Colonel Keith, "that the whole can scarcely be
shifted on the tradesmen. I fear poor Bessie was scarcely free from
blame in this matter."

"Not paying! Going on in debt! Oh she could not have meant it;"
said Rachel, still too much astonished to understand. "Of course one
hears of gay, thoughtless people doing such things, but Bessie--who
had so much thought and sense. It must be a mistake! Can't you go
and speak to the people?"

"It is very sad and painful to make such discoveries," said Colonel
Keith; "but I am afraid such things are not uncommon in the set she
was too much thrown amongst."

"But she knew so well--she was so superior; and with Alick and her
uncle to keep her above them," said Rachel; "I cannot think she could
have done such things."

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