Mrs. Oliphant

“ Of that she could say nothing to her husband, nor of Janet’s rebellion, nor above all of what was intolerable in Edith’s gentle society, the sense of her superior happiness, her pity for poor Carry! He might have divined what it was which made the house intolerable to her; but if he did not, how could she say it? Thus Lady Car gradually achieved the power of living on, of smiling upon all who surrounded her with something in her eyes which nobody comprehended, but which some few people were vaguely aware of, though they comprehended it not. ”

“ Nature, merciful, sometimes blinds the woman’s eyes, makes her incapable of judging, fills her with fond folly that sees no imperfection in her own—and that folly is blessed. But there are some who are not blinded by love, but made more keen and quick of sight. She lay silent and listened while Beaufort performed that melody in her ears, feeling a poignant sweetness in it, since at least it was the most beautiful thing for him to do, yet with every word feeling more{285} and more the anguish of the failure and the depth of the death wound which was in her heart. ”

“ Lady Car turned her eyes upon him with a wonderful, inquiring look. Nothing, indeed, could be more natural. Yet to hear that someone would go there, not for holidays, but to settle down, oppressed poor Carry’s soul. She faded into whiteness, as if she were fainting. It seemed to her that his father looked over Tom’s shoulder—the father whom the boy was so like—his living image, as people said. Not so tall and strong, but with the features and the eyes and the aspect, which poor Carry had so feared. ”

“ It is hard to resent a woman’s admiration even if it is of something which is no longer yourself. It softened his heart, but it embarrassed him more than ever, as it made her more and more sure. He took advantage of Tom with a little secret chuckle to himself behind backs. Tom amused this philosopher too. He liked to draw him out, to watch the movements of character in him, even to speculate what kind of a man it had been that had produced this child. He must be like his father, Beaufort said to himself, without any sentiment even of animosity towards Carry’s husband. ”

“ He felt much taken down—crushed by a superiority which he could not resist, yet very unwilling to yield. There was always the uncomfortable conviction in his mind that what Beaufort said must be true, mingled with the uneasy feeling that Beau might be chaffing all the time, a combination confusing for every simple mind. Tom was not at all willing to give in. He felt instinctively that a flag at Easton would turn his own grandeur, which he believed in so devoutly, into ridicule: for Easton was not much more than a villa, in the suburbs of a little town. ”

“ He thought at first that his wife was ill, and hurried forward anxiously, asking, ‘What is the matter?’ He saw Carry pale as death, her mouth drawn, her eyes dilated, leaning back against the rocks, holding the hand of a girl unknown who knelt beside her, while Tom, who had laughed, stood over the pair with still that mirthless grimace distending his lips.
‘Edward,’ Lady Car said, ‘I have something to ask you; something at once, before you ask me a question. A marriage under a false name—is that no marriage? ”

“ Nor in any way, Edith reflected, as she sat down at her husband’s table: a sympathetic sister must not even venture to show that she was compassionate. She must conceal the consciousness of his father’s look in Tom Torrance’s face, and of the fact that Beaufort’s book had never been written, and that his name was altogether unknown to the world save as that of Lady Caroline Torrance’s second husband. Oh, poor Carry! Edith said again. But this time only in the depths of her own heart, not to John.
The only other person who saw the change in Lady Car’s look was Janet, who had defied her mother. ”

“ When a woman comes to this climax of happiness, she generally does so more thoroughly with her arrière-pensée than a man. Only one thing could have made Carry’s bliss more exquisite—if he had done it for her—and yet, on the whole, I am not sure that to have done it for him was not a higher pleasure still. Little Janet had held by her mother’s dress coming into the new, strange house, and thus had been swept into this rapture without intention, and stood gazing at it with great eyes, half wondering, half critical. ”

“ My love, Tom is like that: it is part of the dreadful cynicism that young men seem to originate somehow among themselves. They think they are the subjects of every kind of interested wile, and that such a thing as—this’—Beaufort was not philosopher enough to name Tom’s act more distinctly—‘is nothing more than a sort of balance on their side.’
Lady Car opened her eyes, which were clear with fever and weakness, lucid like an evening sky, and looked at her husband with a piteous smile. ”

“ What has happened?—tell me,’ cried Lady Car, taking her daughter by the arms and gazing into her eyes with an agonised question. The arrival of the cart at such headlong speed seemed to give a sort of certainty to all the fears that had been taking shape among the watchers.
‘Oh, Mozer!’ Janet cried, her childish outcry coming back in the extremity of her apprehension and consciousness. But Charlie Blackmore, with his wits about him, called out from the cart, ‘There’s nothing wrong. Mr. Tom he’s just behind. They’ve ridden owre far and wearied themselves. Mr. Tom he’s just behind. ”

“ She thought, with the simplicity of her age, that perhaps if she went away a little, was absent for an hour or so from the room, that her mother would not look so pale when she came back, and Lady Car’s smile went to Janet’s heart. It was too like an angel’s, she thought to herself. A living woman ought not to be too like an angel. ”

“ Tom was half mad with disappointment and humiliation. He was very proud in his way, with the mingled pride of the peasant and the nouveau riche, the millionaire and the (Scotch) clown. He had meant, after he had ‘had his fun,’ to have settled down when his time came, and to have married a lady like his mother. Without imagination, or sense, or principle, or restraint of honour, he had pursued his reckless career, too precipitate and eager in pursuit of pleasure to leave time to think, even if he had been able to think. ”

“ We were looking for you everywhere, Jock and I.’ Jock was an Erskine cousin, the eldest of the tribe.
‘What does it matter to you where I was?’ said the sullen boy.
‘Tom! everything about you matters to me,’ said Janet, ‘and for one thing we couldn’t make up our game.’
‘Oh, that humbugging game. Do you think I’m a baby or a girl? I hate your tennis. It isn’t a game for a man.’
‘Quantities and quantities of gentlemen play. Beau plays. Why, the officers play,’ cried Janet, feeling that nothing more was to be said. ”

“ He sat down gloomily, after having watched him disappear, on the bench from which Charlie Blackmore had risen.
‘I don’t care what becomes of me, Jan,’ he said. ‘I’m done. Nothing that ever happens will be any good to me now. I’ve choked that fellow off, that’s one thing, and he’ll never dare speak to you again. But as for me, I’m done, and I’ll never lift my head any more.’
‘Oh Tom!’ Janet cried. ”

“ These thoughts came like a wave over Carry while she sat with her fingers clasped tight, arrested, dumb, incapable of any reply. What a blessed thing that even one’s nearest and dearest cannot divine the quick thoughts that come and go, the visions that flash across us, while we sit by their side and reveal{33} nothing! If Beaufort could have seen that black-browed spectre, and realised all that Torrance had brought for him, would he have maintained that attitude of thoughtful leisure, that calm of assured satisfaction and happiness? ”

“ A woman who has once borne such a storm recognises it again. To whom could Tom speak in that voice of the supreme?—mocking, threatening, pouring forth abuse and wrath. To whom did the boy dare to speak so? He had no wife.
The voices grow louder; the two seem to be parting; the man hurrying away, discharging a volley at his companion as he left her, the woman weeping, following, calling him back. Lady Car sat breathless, her terrified eyes fixed on the path behind, up which she heard him coming. ”

“ It was not till Christmas, when she suddenly woke up to the passage of time by the startling reminder of little Tom’s return from school for the holidays, that she remembered how much time had passed. To be brought suddenly to a pause in the midst of one’s enthusiasm is always disagreeable, and the thought had been uneasy in Carry’s mind for several days before she put it timidly into words. ”

“ Blackmore began to laugh with an exasperating contempt—contempt which exasperated Janet, though Tom too had touched the same note of the intolerable. She sprang up hastily, putting out her arm between them. ‘You are two men,’ she said, ‘but Tom is not much more than a boy, and you are quarrelling about me that wants nothing in the world so much as to get away from both of you. Do you hear me? I would not vex mother,’ Janet cried, ‘for all the men in the world. ”

“ Carry never said a word. She shook her head; not even perhaps to their own father could she have revealed that discovery. A mother’s part is to excuse, to pardon, to bear with everything, even to pretend that she is deceived and blinded by the partiality of love, never to disclose the profound and unutterable discouragement{156} with which she has recognised the truth. She shook her head at Beaufort’s arguments, leaving him to believe that it was only a woman’s natural severity of judgment against the sins with which she had no sympathy. ”

“ But yet she shrank from seeing Edith, and felt at the sound of her happy voice as if she, Carry, must fly and hide herself in some dark and unknown place, and could not bear the contact of the other, who had the best of everything, and in whose path all was bright. To sympathise with one’s neighbour’s blessedness, when all that makes her happy is reversed in one’s own lot, is hard, the hardest of all the exercises of charity. Carry said to herself that she was glad and thankful that all was so well with Edith ”

“ You would be coming to see me, and Jan, and kiss me, and call me “Tom,” and make the other fellows laugh.{49}’
‘What should you be called but Tom?’ said Lady Car, with a smile.
‘Torrance!’ cried the child with pride, as who should say Plantagenet. She had been looking at him, smiling, but at this utterance of the boy Lady Car started and turned burning red, then coldly pale. Why should she? Nothing could be more fantastic, more absurd, than the feeling. She had done no harm in making a second marriage, in which she had found happiness, after the first one, which had brought nothing but misery. ”

“ Beaufort had lit his cigarette, which was so habitual to him, so completely the breath of his reflective leisure and gentleness and calm, that the most sensitive of women could not have objected to it; nothing so aggressive as a cigar ever touched his lips, as little as any lady could he tolerate a pipe. ”

“ She had felt that those black brows could frown and those staring eyes burn beyond anything that her softly nurtured childhood had known. She would not betray herself by a word or even a thought if she could help it, but it could not be denied that her heart sank. ‘I wish,’ she said, quickly, ‘you’d leave off breakfasting, Tom, and come out with me for a walk. What is the good of pretending? One can see you don’t want anything to eat.’
‘Walk!’ said Tom. ‘You can get that little sap to walk with you. I’ve got to meet a fellow—Blackmore’s his name—away on the other side of the moor at twelve. ”

“ They are so young, they don’t know; but it is true all the same. They don’t mind how I look, Edward: which must be my blame and not theirs,’ she added, with a faint smile; ‘how should it be theirs? It is only part of the failure. Some people make no impression on—anyone. They are ineffective, like what you say of a wall-paper or a piece of furniture.’
‘These are strange things to say,’ said Beaufort, gravely.
‘Silly things,’ said Lady Car. ”

“ And then he went to poor Carry, who in this home of evil memories sat like a ghost surrounded by the recollections of the past, and seeing for ever before{152} her eyes the disordered looks and excited eyes of her boy. He was not, alas! the son of her dreams, the child whom every mother hopes for, who is to restore the ideal of what a man should be. Many disappointments had already taught Lady Car that her son had little of the ideal in him, and nothing, or next to nothing, of herself ”

“ Tom was a little fellow of six, so that a long period of supremacy was in Carry’s hands, and the rough fellow whom she had almost hated, from whom her very soul had shrunk with a loathing indescribable, had done her the fullest justice. It is doubtful whether Lady Car was at all touched by these evidences of devotion on the part of a man who had bullied and oppressed her for years. ”

“ A great many people will never have heard of it, nor would they attach any importance to it if they did hear. I have told you before, Carry, that the best of women are unjust to boys. It is very natural that it should be so. Even now, however, there is nothing to prevent Tom from doing very well.’
‘The thing is that he seems to be getting a reward for his foolishness, instead of any punishment,’ said Edith Erskine, who was, as she thought, upholding her sister’s view. As for Carry herself, she had said nothing. ”