Mrs. Oliphant

“ Lady Mary put out her hand again suddenly, with an excitement which she did not seem able to control, and laid it on Edgar’s arm.
“Mr. Earnshaw!” she said, the tears coming to her eyes. “It is not for you. Augusta, like myself, trusts you entirely; it is not you.”
“What then?” said Edgar, suddenly stopping short, and facing her.
“Mr. Earnshaw! Oh! how can I put into words the strange service—the thing beyond words, which Augusta thinks she can trust you enough to ask for. Oh! Mr. Earnshaw, see how absolute is our faith in you! It is not you she fears. ”

“ To serve Lord Newmarch, and through him the Government, and through the Government the country, was not that, Edgar asked himself at last, feeling finally able to laugh again, a much more important matter than securing bread and butter for our thriftless man? As soon as he had laughed he was himself again, and the after processes of thought were more easy.
By-and-by he persuaded himself that on the whole Newmarch had behaved quite naturally, and not unkindly. “As a matter of course,” he said to himself, “every man’s own affairs are more interesting to him than any other man’s.” ”

“ The surprise, I believe, is common to both sexes, and as much when love is out of the question as when it is deeply involved. It is one of the most penetrating of mental sensations—a sudden revelation. Lady Mary felt this as she sat down on the stump of the tree, and called Edgar Earnshaw by his Christian name, and cried, suddenly abandoning her colours, giving up her cause, owning herself utterly conquered. It was a great deal to be accomplished by so few words, and Edgar himself was so entirely moved and shaken by what had occurred, that he was not half sensible of his own success. ”

“ If that’s your thought, my lad, I am not the one to say you nay.”
“If what is my thought?” said Edgar, bewildered.
I do not think the idea had ever occurred to him before, and I cannot describe the thrill of wounded pride with which he received this shock. Jeanie! A child—a creature altogether out of his sphere. Jeanie! with her pretty peasant manners, and poetic homely dialect, a little girl whom he could be kind to, as he would be kind to the maid who milked the cows, or the child who ran his errands! ”

“ He has taken it into his head to be genteel—and Marg’ret, poor thing, is genteel.”
“What has that to do with it?” said Edgar, laughing.
“We are not genteel, Jeanie and me,” said the old woman, with a gleam of humour. “But, Edgar, my man, still you must not judge Charlie. You are a gentleman, that nobody could have any doubt of; but the danger of being a poor man’s son, and brought up to be a gentleman, is that you’re never sure of yourself. You are always in a fear to know if you are behaving right—if you are doing something you ought not to do.” ”

“ Earnshaw! why I learn!” cried Lady Mary; “if I could I would go in for all the studies, but that is impossible. I follow as many as I can, and find it an admirable discipline for the mind, just that discipline which is denied to women. Why do you look at me so strangely? Why do you laugh? I assure you I mean what I say.”
“If I must not laugh, pray teach me some more philosophical way of expressing my feelings,” said Edgar, “I fear I should laugh still more if you did me the honour to select me as one of your instructors. ”

“ Do I have your attention, Earnshaw?”
“I am listening,” said Edgar; “but you must excuse me if my attention seems to wander a little. Consider how short an acquaintance ours is, and that I am somewhat giddy with the strange turn my life has taken. Pure selfishness, of course; but one does rank more highly than is fit in one’s own thoughts.”
“To be sure, it is all novel and strange,” said Mr. Tottenham, in a soothing and consolatory tone. “Never mind; you will soon get used to our ways. For my own part, I think a spinning mill is nothing to my shop. ”

“ Edgar, for his part, dropped down in his chair something like the same toy when shut up in its hiding-place. There was a buzzing in his ears again as there had been when he had his first interview with the Minister—but this time the giddiness was more overpowering; a hundred thoughts passed through his mind in a moment, each crowding upon each, a noiseless, breathless crowd. What was he to do? Everything seemed to be shown to him in the space of a moment, as fable says, a whole lifetime is shown in a moment to those who die suddenly. Good God! ”

“ The high wind was of itself a blessing after days of that weary rain, which is so common in the west of Scotland. The damp corn out on the fields, the still damper corn which stood in faint whiteness upon the hillside was shaking off some part of its superabundant moisture in the cheerful breeze. The white clouds were scudding over the mountains, throwing a poetic and perpetual interchange of light and shade over those silent spectators who occupied so large a share in the landscape, and whose sudden glories and brightness gave a human aspect to their everlasting strength. ”

“ Tottenham, Mr. Edgar Earnshaw,” said the Under-Secretary, “one of my best friends. Come and see me, won’t you, in Eaton Place. I must go now; and come to the office soon, and let us talk your affair over. The moment old Runtherout will consent to take himself out of the way—As for you, Tottenham, I envy you. All your schemes in your own hands, no chief to thwart you, no office to keep on recommending this man and that, when they know you have a man of your own. You may thank heaven that you have only your own theories to serve, and not Her Majesty. ”

“ The shop people went along the road getting and delivering orders; the maid-servants bustled about the doors in the foggy, uncertain light; the omnibuses rushed on, on, in a continuous stream; and everybody was busy. Those who had no work to do, pretended at least to be busy too; the idlers had not come out yet, had not stirred, and the active portion of the world were having everything their own way. Edgar had revived from his depression, but he had not regained his insouciance and trust in the future. ”

“ Campbell laughed, being evidently in the secret; but John, the only son, who was a student at the University of Glasgow, and just about to set out for the winter session, looked black and fierce as any mountain storm. These inferences of some supposed sentiment, which he was totally ignorant of, might have passed quite innocuously over Edgar only a day before, but they filled him now with suppressed rage and deep mortification. Perhaps unreasonably; but there is nothing which a man resents so much as to be supposed “in love” with some one whom he considers beneath him. ”

“ I’m never lonely, except when granny is ill and goes to her bed, and I can hear Bell and Sandy in the kitchen. That makes me think I would like somebody to speak to, too.”
“But Bell and Sandy,”—Edgar began: if he was going to be so incautious as to add,—“are sweethearts,” I don’t know what would have become of him; but happily Jeanie, with a sudden blush interposed.
“I was not meaning Bell and Sandy; any voices have the same sound. They make you feel how lone you are.” ”

“ Granny would not like that, and neither would I.”
“But Granny is not the only person in the world,” he said, “there are others who would like it. Men like it, Jeanie; they like to see their wife take her place with anyone, and you cannot always be with Granny—you will marry some day.”
Jeanie’s fair soft countenance glowed like the setting sun, a bright and tender consciousness lit up her features; her blue eyes shone. Dr. Charles, who had his back to the loch, as he stood at the farm-house door, did not perceive that Edgar had come into sight with Mrs. Murray leaning on his arm. ”

“ To enlarge the sphere of ideas ever so little is an advantage worth fighting for.”
“Very well,” said Edgar, “I am proud to be thought capable of enlarging somebody’s sphere. What do lectures on German mean? Before I begin you must tell me what I have to do.”
“You must teach them the language, Mr. Earnshaw.”
“Yes, but where shall we begin? with the alphabet? Must I have a gigantic black board to write the letters on?”
“Oh, not so rudimentary as that; most of the ladies, in fact, know a little German,” said Lady Mary. “I do myself, just enough to talk.” ”

“ He’s a man in a very decent way of business, and I’ve no doubt he could make her useful in the shop.”
“But cannot you see,” cried Edgar, with a start and sudden wince, interrupting him, “that my poor old grandmother would be wretched without Jeanie? And Jeanie herself is too delicate a creature for any such life. They must stay together. Surely, surely,” cried the young man, “when she is helpless who has done so much for everybody, it is not too much that we should provide for something beyond her mere existence—her happiness as well.” ”

“ The question is what would you like—or perhaps—what could you do?”
“I can do anything a man can usually do, who has never done anything in his life,” said Edgar, trying to laugh. “You know how little that is—a great deal that is absolutely useless—nothing that is much good.”
“Yes,” said Lord Newmarch, looking much more grave than his applicant did, whose levity he had always disapproved of. “It is very unfortunate that what we call the education of a gentleman should be so utterly unpractical. And, as you are aware, all our clerkships now-a-days are disposed of by competitive examination. ”

“ Of all that call kin with me, Edgar, my bonnie lad, you are the last that should sacrifice your living to keep up my auld and weary life. I canna do it. It’s pride, nothing but pride, that makes me loth to go away—loth, loth to eat other folk’s bread. But wherefore should I be proud? What should an old woman like me desire better than a chair at my ain daughter’s chimney-corner, and a share of what she has, poor woman? ”

“ I am not against Sisterhoods, Earnshaw; I should not like to see Gussy go into one, it is true—”
“Is there any likelihood of that?” Edgar asked with a great start, which made the light waggon they were driving in, swerve.
“Hallo! steady!” cried Mr. Tottenham, “likelihood of it? I don’t know. She wished it at one time. You see, Earnshaw, we don’t sufficiently understand, seeing how different they are, how much alike women are to ourselves. I suppose there comes a time in a girl’s life, as well as in a man’s, when she wants to be herself, and not merely her father’s daughter. ”

“ It must all go so soon that it seems worse than useless to ménager the little remnant, and a kind of vertige, a rage to get it all over, comes upon the mind. Perhaps it is the same feeling which makes men in a sinking ship leap wildly into the water to meet their fate instead of waiting for it; and as time went on the impulse grew stronger and stronger. The seventy-five pounds of capital seemed magnificent in December; but after Christmas it seemed to Edgar that even his fifty pounds was too much to be lying useless ”

“ Edgar sat down humbly by her, almost forgetting, in his sense of the comical position which fate had placed him in, the daily increasing embarrassments which filled his path. All the Universities put together could scarcely have made up as much enthusiasm for education as shone in Lady Mary’s pretty eyes, and poured from her lips in floods of eloquence. Mr. Tottenham, who leaned back in his chair abstractedly, and pondered his plans for the perfection of the faulty and troublesome little society in the shop, took but little notice, being sufficiently occupied with views of his own ”

“ Schemes and crotchets ran, I suppose, in the noble blood which Lady Augusta had transmitted to her daughters. It showed itself in different ways in the sisters: Helena’s ways had been all intellectual, but Gussy, who was benevolent and religious, was more difficult to deal with. The melancholy seclusion, which to an English mind is the first characteristic of a convent, has little to do with the busy beehive of a modern sisterhood; and a young woman connected with such an institution has claims made upon her which are wonderfully embarrassing to a fashionable mother. ”

“ They’re very uncanny sort of things when a person does not quite understand the nature of our lochs. I suppose, Mr. Edgar, you’re in that case?” said Mrs. MacKell, looking at him with an ingratiating smile.
He was her nephew, there could be no doubt of it, and she had a right to talk to him familiarly; but at the same time he was a fine gentleman and a stranger, and made an impression upon her mind which was but inadequately counter-balanced by any self-assurances that he was “just an orphan lad—no better—not to say a great deal worse off than our own bairns.” ”

“ He breathed more freely when he was out of doors, in the damp wintry woods, with Phil, who kept close by his side, carrying on a monologue very different in subject, but not so different in character from his father’s steady strain of talk. There is a certain charm in these wintry woods, the wet greenness of the banks, the mournful stillness of the atmosphere, the crackle of here and there a dropping branch, the slow sailing through the air now and then of a leaf, falling yellow and stiff from the top of a bough. ”

“ Lady Augusta Thornleigh, who was Lady Mary Tottenham’s sister, was born one of the kindest souls that ever drew breath. She had it in her even to be “viewy” as Lady Mary was, or to be sentimentally yielding and eager for everybody’s happiness. But all her canons of duty bound her to regard these dispositions as weakness, almost as guilt, and represented worldliness to her as the highest of virtues. She sighed after this as the others sigh after the higher heights of self-denial.{239} Her searchings of heart were all directed (unconsciously) to make the worse appear the better cause ”

“ She listened, and looked, and watched for those signs of guidance, which she obeyed by instinct with the docility of a dumb creature, because it was her nature. She did not even intend to please; though she was happy beyond description when she found that she had pleased, she did but act as she could not help acting, according as her disposition moved her. Edgar, who had not been used to this kind of woman, had been half annoyed, half amused by her powerlessness to advise or help, her soft devotion of look, now addressed to himself, now to Mrs. Murray. ”