Mrs. Oliphant

“ That was just as he did; but men are no made like us. Yours was kindness, but his was love. Oh, lady, dinna hurry me; my heart’s fluttering as if it would break forth; it’s like a bird in my breast. I’m his marriet wife.”
“Whose wife?” cried Marjory, rising up. She came forward in her excitement, her tall figure towering over the others. Her passion of anxiety and wonder took almost the form of anger. “Whose wife?” she repeated, involuntarily taking hold of the ring. “Is this all you have to make you so? Oh, woman, do not make me curse the dead in his grave! ”

“ If some one should by chance turn up with an estate and house equal to Pitcomlie, who had sense enough to see what an admirable mistress she would make for it, why then, indeed, marriage might be attractive, and an improvement upon present circumstances; but without an inducement of this kind, Verna felt herself to be safe. What happy visions floated through her brain as she sat on the steps of the sundial, and looked at the house which was to be her kingdom! What a thing it is to come suddenly from poverty and obscurity into wealth, and ease, and honour, and glory! ”

“ Speak out, Jean, if you’re a woman, and no a stone; speak out, I tell you! It’s true, Sir—as sure as death—as true as the Bible. God! woman, will ye no speak?”
“I’ll speak if ye’ll leave me time,” said Jean. “I’m no to be pushed that gate, and pushed the other, and never left to mysel’. She was never an ill lass. I’ve kent her since she was this height; a bit genty creature, never just like other folk. Ye ken yourself, Sir, I said we could never swear against Bell—she’s a good lass. ”

“ Marjory had gone out to the Spindle on a bright Winter day to pay a farewell visit to that spot which had occupied so important a place in her past life. Who does not know the keen and radiant brightness of a sunny day in Winter, when there is no wind to chill the still air, no clouds upon the deepened blue, none of the languid softening of Summer, but every outline sharp, and every tint brought out by the radiant sun and clear atmosphere? The rocks unfolded all their glittering veins, all their ruddy stains of colour under the sunshine. ”

“ The waves came in with a threatening rush round the Spindle; the wind sighed with a sound of rain; and though she had not expected Isabell to be outside on such a day, yet a sense of unreasonable disappointment arose in Marjory’s mind at the absence of the well-known figure from the cottage-door. The door was closed, and no one was visible about. In all the earth and air there seemed no living thing, except in the few ships—big and little, which struggled across the horizon. ”

“ It’s hard to tell the truth and find nobody to believe you; but all I can do is to tell him, and leave the rest to God, Miss Heriot. Eh, what cause I have to trust in Him! A while ago I thought I never would hear the name again; and now there will be Heriots a’ about me—you that are my kindest friend—and this gentleman. If it was not too much trouble, oh, might I see the bonnie little lady with the gold hair that Agnes says is like my baby? He’s a Heriot too,” said poor Isabell, with a wistful upward glance at Marjory’s face. ”

“ She’s a good leddy,” said Agnes; “but ye can take many a thing from them below you that you canna take from them above you. Love’s no love unless you’re a kind of equals. I would rather he kent nothing about us. We’re no of his condition, and never can be. Eh, my poor Bell! my poor Bell! that was so pleased he should be a gentleman’s son, without thinking that it parted him from all belonging to her,” cried Agnes, the tears rushing down her face in a sudden tempest. Then she dried her eyes hurriedly. “Miss Heriot, I ken he’s in good hands. ”

“ Andrews then?” said the happy Johnnie, “to look after the children’s rights? What pretence can I make, if I cannot speak the truth?”
“Oh, I cannot let you go to St. Andrews,” said Matilda, “I want you here, I can’t get on without you; and as soon as ever you see Marjory you will forget me. Oh, yes, you may say what you like, but I know you would forget me. And to be sure you could always say you were acting as our friend,” she added, looking up into his face with a merry laugh, “a gentleman may always be a lady’s friend. ”

“ She had committed herself in many ways—to Isabell; and still more, to Fanshawe; she had filled the girl with false hopes, and, perhaps, still falser hopes had been raised in the man’s mind by her appeal to him. She had sent him out against his will, against his own idea of what was needful—and now she repented! This is the danger of possessing an impulsive temperament. Such disgust and discouragement seldom come until the world has been set on fire by the hasty spirit. Marjory felt (for the moment) that she would gladly have turned her back upon it all now ”

“ Nothing could be more absolute than Fanshawe’s absorption at this moment in thought of the woman thus approaching him. Adam, when he saw Eve, the only human companion for him, could not have been more entirely bound and limited to the one being. This man saw nothing else, heard nothing else, felt nothing else in heaven or earth. He had asked himself sometimes whether he was at all, what is called, in love with Marjory Hay-Heriot. ”

“ But the reason often recognizes what the heart does not admit; and to range herself on the side of Mrs. Charles was utterly impossible to Charlie’s sister. The best thing she could now do was to forget Pitcomlie altogether, she said to herself. The worst thing, and unfortunately the most likely, was that she should become, like Miss Jean, the critic of Pitcomlie, half-consciously on the outlook for its follies, and judging it severely, perceiving all its mistakes, and scarcely sorry for them. Marjory, who was no model of womankind, felt within herself all the capability for doing this. ”

“ Do you think an invention of this kind could ever stand the eye of day?”
“It is—it must be an invention!” cried Verna; and then, poor soul, she had recourse to that expedient which women employ by instinct, and which, did they but know it, always ruins their cause, though it may gain them a momentary triumph. She appealed to her companion, as if that could serve her. “Oh, Mr. Fanshawe,” she said, “we should do well if we were but left alone. ”

“ Certainly the other group approaching the cottage thought nothing of it as they straggled across the rocks, each taking his own way, and occupied with his or her own thoughts. They reached the door just when Marjory had risen and was replacing the sleeping baby in the warm nest from which he had been taken. She was stooping over the homely bed. Nothing could be poorer or more humble; but Marjory had forgotten all this. Her pride and pangs of revulsion had all gone from her; so had any doubts or difficulties that had ever crossed her mind.
“You must live, you must live, Isabell!” ”

“ It seemed to Fanshawe—to carry out the fantastical character of the idea—that it was only in his best moments that he saw this likeness. Sometimes he looked for it vainly, and called himself a fool to have entertained such a notion; but at other times it would shine out upon him, filling him with a kind of heavenly pleasure—that pleasure which glows in a man’s heart,{142} and makes him feel his own nature exalted in a consciousness of the excellence of his love. Marjory’s little notes were very rare delights, and this all the more so for being utterly unexpected. ”

“ Had the flirtation which Verna had encouraged, by way of diverting Matilda and keeping her occupied, already come to a serious issue? It was incredible. Charlie was not yet six months dead, poor fellow; but the sister, who knew Matty, was alarmed, and followed closely, with all her senses about her, watching and listening. A mixture of wonder, admiration, contempt, and partial envy, filled her mind. Nobody knew so well as she what Matilda was; to think that any man should be such a fool! Verna, it must be remembered, used very plain expressions. ”

“ These reflections, however, are ours, and not those of Marjory Hay-Heriot, as she stood at the narrow window of her new dwelling-place, and looked out upon the same sea which washed her native headland. Her eye sought that first, as is natural to the eyes of{61} those who have been born upon its margin. Over the old ruins she looked to the older, everlasting thing, which is never antiquated, but keeps its youth continually. She could hear the sea dashing over the pier, and see how it rose, marking with a white line of surf the sweep of the bay beyond. ”

“ Nay, it would be better to be turned out with Matilda than by her; better to share her downfall than to be crushed by her triumphant prosperity. Thus of the three people affected by Fanshawe’s message, there was but one person whom it affected mildly, and that the one most concerned. Matilda, after her fit of abuse of Marjory and the old family, shed a few angry tears, and then was comfortable again, and ready for such dalliance with her lover, interspersed by quarrels, as was her only fashion of mental amusement. ”

“ Women are so jealous of you, and so nasty in their ways. I don’t pretend to be very clever, but I do like to be with some one who is clever. And one feels at once the superiority when one hears gentlemen talk. It is so different from our chitter-chatter. Isn’t it now? I like to have some one I can look up to,” said the woman, who was a fool, looking up, with all the skill of her folly, into the face of the foolish young man who was intellectual. Oh, poor Johnnie! ”

“ The East coast is not rainy like the West; but the soft continuous rain of the Western Highlands is scarcely so terrible as the westerly haar, which wraps everything up in white wool, and blots out sea and sky, and chokes the depressed wayfarer—not to speak of the penetrating chill which even in June goes down into the marrow of your bones, and makes the scrap of standing-ground, which is all that is left you in the misty world, as lonely as an alp, and as dull as a fen. ”

“ He’ll let you do all the foolishness you please; but if there’s one great thing, one good thing that ye would like to do, and then die—oh me, oh me! He brings in other folk; when your heart’s full of hope, and ye see your way clear before ye—He brings in other folk!”
Here she sat down and covered her face and wept. That these tears sprung from some disappointment connected with herself, Marjory divined, though she could not understand how this could be. She stood by for some time, respecting the strong emotion which she did not understand. ”

“ That was enough to satisfy Marjory, even though the intermediate foreground was filled up by ruins and graves. Nature is always consolatory; but Art not always, not even the pathetic art of antiquity and decay.
In this old house the diminished family settled down, not without some sense of comfort. Mr. Charles had his golf, and Milly all the fresh delights of the Links and the sands, the shops and the streets, all of which were sweet to her unsophisticated intelligence. ”

“ Yes, she was not as they are, she was a fool, and yet a goddess—to be petted, put up with, laughed at, admired, thought more of and less of than was possible to any other created thing. This was Hepburn’s way, as it has been many another man’s, of making up to himself for having given over his whole being to the sway of a foolish woman. He made out that all women were foolish, and idealized her meanness, not being able to fit her to the ancient ideal he had once possessed. Women, perhaps, when they choose badly, do something of the same kind ”

“ Andrews that this meeting took place—a broad and handsome street, lined with old houses at the lower end, and terminating at the upper in an old gateway, one of the few perfect relics of the past that remain among so many ruins. Marjory was walking with little Milly, as usual, by her side, pressing into her very steps—her golden hair asserting itself as a point of colour, even in the persistent greyness of the street and the mist of the atmosphere.
“May, May!” Milly was saying; “there is a lady bowing to you from the carriage-window yonder; there is a gentleman taking off his hat. ”

“ Men do not like to feel themselves inferior to a woman; but there are kinds of inferiority which a man in love may put up with—and to Fanshawe it seemed that Marjory would be to him what the soul is to the body, what inspiration is to the soul. ”

“ How many of us have felt this! and what poor expedients some are put to, to invent for themselves such excuses for living as may cheat the vacancy into some reasonable semblance! This cannot happen, fortunately, at twenty-five; but Marjory felt, as was natural, that twenty-five was a great age, and that she had outlived all the new openings, all the possibilities of youthful existence. Miss Hay-Heriot, of the High Street of Comlie, like her great-aunt Jean, and many great-aunts before that, with all the use died out of her, and nothing to do but live. ”

“ Nobody but those who are over-persuadable, ready to be over-borne by the appeals made to them by their more indolent neighbours, and to take upon their shoulders burdens which are none of theirs, can understand how ashamed Fanshawe felt of his own amiability in the business which he had at present in hand—or how disgusted with the piece of work which Mr. Charles had basely thrust upon his shoulders. ”

“ Fanshawe is my friend,” she said; “he is the friend of the family; he is (this Marjory said proudly, remembering Seton’s report of him, remembering Mr. Charles, and bearing her testimony with a certain consciousness of doing something to set him right with the world) , one of those men who will work and suffer, if need be, for their friends—as you have worked and suffered, Agnes. He will not weigh what is enough or too much to do. Of all my friends, and we have many, he was the only one whom I felt I could appeal to—who would pause at nothing. ”

“ It is the absurd way in which we are accustomed to have things done for us—the difficulty a woman finds in moving anywhere without a host of explanations. But pray forgive me; feeling as I do, it is my business to complete poor Agnes’s work, and clear up the matter, whatever it may cost me. Of course, there is no reason in the world why I should not do it myself.”
“You reject my assistance, then!” said Fanshawe, ruefully. “You take it out of my hands? Miss Heriot, is that fair?” ”