Mrs. Oliphant

“ Nora, think! If you only think, you will see that you are unreasonable. How could I stand up and contradict a man who had accused himself?"
"I was not thinking of Rolls," cried Nora, who had tried to break in on this flood of eloquence in vain. "I was thinking of——Lord Rintoul, I am not a person of rank like you—I don't know what lords and ladies think it right to do—but I will not have clandestine meetings with any one. If a man wants me, if he were a prince, he must ask my father,—he must do it in the eye of day, not as if he were ashamed. ”

“ Once more Nora stamped her foot on the ground. "Oh, I cannot away with you!" she cried. It was one of Miss Barbara's old-fashioned phrases. She was at the end of her own. She would have liked, she thought, to strike him as he stood before her deprecating, yet every moment recovering himself.
"If another man chooses to take it upon him, why should I contradict him?" Rintoul said, with good sense unanswerable. "I was stunned with astonishment; but when you reflect, how could I contradict him? If he did it for John Erskine's sake, it would have spoiled the arrangement." ”

“ Rintoul had gone round behind her chair, beside his mother; and Edith, rising up behind, stood there also, looking at him with a pale face and wide-open eyes. It was as if he had made an attack upon her—he who had come here to inform her of her freedom and her rights. This sudden siding together of all against one is bitter, even when the solitary person may know himself to be wrong. But Lord Lindores felt himself in the right at this moment. Supposing that perhaps he had made a mistake in this marriage of Carry's, fate had stepped in and made everything right. ”

“ He thought no more of the matter which had affected him so deeply for the last week, or of Torrance, who was dead, or of Rolls, who was in jail, than he did of last year's snow. Every interest in heaven and earth concentrated to him in these endless delightful questions. When a man, or, for that matter, a woman, is in this beatific agitation of mind, the landscape generally becomes a sort of blurr of light around them, and, save to the inward eye, which more than ever at such a moment is "the bliss of solitude," there is nothing that is very clearly visible. ”

“ Miss Barbara, for her part, considered it her duty to her nephew to maintain an easy aspect and ignore the misery of the situation. She exerted herself to amuse him, to talk as if nothing was amiss. She told him of Tinto's grand funeral, with which the whole country-side was taken up. "Everybody is there," Miss Barbara said, with some indignation,—"great and small, gentle and simple, as if auld Torrance's son was one of the nobles of the land."
"They care more for the dead than the living," John said, with a laugh. ”

“ Lord Lindores also knew this, and it had the most curious composing and subduing effect upon him. What is the use of being angry, when the object of your anger does not care for it? There is no such conqueror of passion. If nobody cared, the hastiest temper would learn to amend itself. Lord Lindores was aware that Rintoul would hear him out to the end,—that he would never, so to speak, turn a hair,—that he would reply with perfect coolness, and remain entirely unmoved. It would be like kicking against a blank wall,—a child's foolish instinctive paroxysm of passion. ”

“ Then in the tremor of blessedness and overwhelming emotion, she awoke to remember that she was by the roadside—no place for talk like this. Carry had no thought of what any one would say. She would have bidden him come into the carriage and carried him away with her—her natural support, her consoler. There was no reason in her suddenly roused and passionate sense that never again must it be in any one's power to part them. Nor did she think that there could be any doubt of his sentiments, or whether he might still retain his love for her, notwithstanding all she had done to cure him of it. ”

“ Rintoul flung himself against the side of the carriage with a muttered curse. "Marrying!—hanging is more what I feel like!" he cried.
"Rintoul!"
"Don't torture me, father. There is not a more wretched fellow on the face of the earth. Link an innocent woman's name with mine? Ask a girl to?——For heaven's sake let me alone—let me be!"
"What is the meaning of this?" Lord Lindores cried. "Are you mad, Rintoul? I am altogether unprepared for heroics in you." ”

“ She was not the important person Beaufort had expected to see; but as she stood there, with her large white apron thrown over her arm, and her comely countenance, like a sky after rain, lighted up with a very wan and uncertain smile, putting the best face she could upon it, Beaufort's sympathy overcame the inclination to laugh which he might have felt in other circumstances, at the sight of her sudden entrance and troubled clinging to the doorway. "Good evening," he said, "Mrs——" "They call me Bauby Rolls, at your service," said Bauby, with a curtsey, and a suppressed sob. ”

“ Colonel Barrington is not a fool; he knows Nora couldn't have been expected to do better. You see cleverness is not everything, mamma."
"I think you are very clever, Robin," his mother said, with a smile and a sigh—a sigh of wonder that her son (always such a mystery to a woman) should feel and talk and think so unlike herself; a smile that he should be so much justified in doing so, so successful in it. Both the smile and the sigh were full of wonder and of pain. But she was comforted to think that Rintoul at least was capable of something heavenly—of true love and disinterested affection. ”

“ If only Edith could make up her mind to it! Lady Lindores went no further. Nevertheless, when the important moment approached, she could not help, like Carry, breathing a word in her child's ear, "Remember, there is no better heart in existence," she said. "A woman could not have a better man." Edith, in her excitement, grasped her mother's arms with her two hands; but all the answer she gave was a little nervous laugh. She had no voice to reply.
"You will remember, Millefleurs, that my daughter is very young—and—and shy," said Lord Lindores, on the other side. ”

“ Were they for good or evil?—was it a life of hope fulfilled, or of ever increasing and deepening disappointment, which lay before Carry's tremulous feet? They were not the assured feet of a believing and confident bride. What is love without faith and confidence and trust? It is the strangest, the saddest, the most terrible, the most divine of human passions. It is seldom that a woman begins with such enlightenment in her eyes. ”

“ Carry lay back in her corner, and felt that she would like to kiss the soft air that blew upon her, and send salutations to the trees and the sun. What could any one want more? The world was so beautiful, pain had gone out of it, and all the venom and the misery. To rest from everything, to lie still and get better, was of itself too exquisite. Carry had not for a long time written any of those little poems which Edith and Nora and some other choice readers had thought so lovely. ”

“ The great rooms were shut up; the less magnificent ones had already begun to undergo a transformation. The large meaningless ornaments were being carried away. An air of home and familiar habitation had come about the house. Carry, in her widow's cap, had begun to move lightly up and down with a step quite unlike the languor of her convalescence. She was not convalescent any longer, but had begun to bloom with a soft colour and subdued air of happiness out of the cloud that had enveloped her so long. ”

“ He looked at her pitifully with a gaze of sympathy. He was prepared to be sorry if she was sorry. Even over his rival's death Edward Beaufort felt himself capable of dropping a tear. He could go so far as that. Self-abnegation is very good in a woman, but in a man it is uncalled for to this degree. He could put himself out of the question altogether, and looked at her with the deepest sympathy, ready to condole if she thought proper. He was not prepared for the honesty of Carry's profound sense of reopening life. ”

“ Carry was to her mother a standing admonition against any further weakness on this point. In every word and step by which the young widow showed her thankfulness for her deliverance, she struck with horror the fine sense of fitness and reverence which was in her mother's mind. Lady Lindores had not been false in the sentiments of pity and remorseful regret with which she had heard of the death of Torrance. There are some souls which are so finely poised that they cannot but answer to every natural claim, even when against themselves. ”

“ There was in him a forlorn desire for consolation. "Don't tell Miss Barbara I am here just yet," he said hastily to the maid, and opened the glass-door, beyond which Nora stood among all the geraniums and mignonette. There was no agitation about her. She was not sufficiently interested in John Erskine to be deeply troubled by the idea of annoyance to him as his old aunt was, or alarmed by a passing shadow upon his name. She was serene and calm in this quiet world of flowers and greenness where no trouble was. She welcomed him with a smile. "Miss Barbara is very anxious," she said. ”

“ After all, who could harm John Erskine? He had been very foolish; he had exposed himself to suspicion; but no doubt a gentleman so respected would be able to clear himself—a gentleman so respected. Rintoul repeated the words to himself, as he had repeated the names of Millefleurs and Lady Reseda the night before. And what would it matter to John Erskine to put off till the 25th his emancipation and the full recognition of his innocence? If he had a bad cold, it would have the same result—confinement to the house, perhaps to his room. ”

“ It is easy to stand through evil report and good by those who are unjustly accused, who are wronged, for whom and on whose behalf you can hold your head high. But when, alas! God help them, they are base, and the accusation against them just! Nora, young, unused to trouble, not knowing the very alphabet of pain, fell into this horrible pit in a moment, without warning, without escape. It confused all her faculties, so that she could do nothing save stumble blindly on, and let Miss Barbara talk of John Erskine—as if John Erskine and the worst that could happen to him were anything, anything! ”

“ But poor Rintoul was not in the humour for jest. He took her hand, her arm, and drew it through his.
"I cannot wait to think about our fathers. I have such need of you, Nora. I have something to tell you that I can tell to no one in the world but you. I want my other self to help me. I want my wife, to whom I can speak——"
His arm was quivering with anxiety and emotion. Though Nora was bewildered, she did not hesitate—what girl would?—from the responsibility thus thrust upon her. To be so urgently wanted is the strongest claim that can be put forth upon any human creature. ”

“ She had wished it surely—she had felt that to see her child a duchess would be a fine thing, a thing worth making a certain sacrifice for; and Millefleurs had nothing in him to make a woman fear for her daughter's happiness. But women, everybody knows, are inaccessible to reason. It is to be doubted whether Lady Lindores had ever in her life received a blow more keen than when she made up her mind that Edith was going to do the right thing, the prudent wise thing, which would secure family peace to her mother, and the most dazzling future to herself. ”

“ Carry drew back at the sound of his voice as if she had received a blow. She clung to the edge of the tall white mantelpiece, shrinking, her figure drawn together, an impersonation of terror and trouble. Beaufort started too, but slightly, and stood instinctively out of the way to make room for the new-comer. Lord Lindores went straight forward to the fire and took up his position with his back to it, with a certain straightforward ease and authority, like a man in his own house, who has no doubt of his right to do his pleasure there. ”

“ The coachman and footman on the box thought it was excess of feeling that made this meeting so silent. They were sorry for their mistress, who was not yet able to meet any one with composure; and the low brief conversation that followed, sounded to them like condolence and sympathy. How astounded the men would have been, and the still landscape around them, with its houses hidden in the trees, and all its silent observers about, had they known what this colloquy actually was.
"Edward!" was the first word that was said—and then "Carry! Carry! but I ought not to call you so." ”

“ He will know perfectly well that if he deserves it he will find friends; in short, that we are all his friends, and that everybody will be too glad to assist him—as soon as he has cleared himself——"
"As soon as he wants it no longer," cried Lady Lindores.
"My dear, you are always violent; you are always a partisan," said her husband, drawing back his chair a little, with the air of having ended the discussion; and there was a pause—one of those breathless pauses of helplessness, yet rebellion, which make sick the hearts of women. ”

“ Such a luncheon! a duke's son from England, an earl, all the best men in the county: and Janet's dishes praised and consumed to the last morsel, and the best wine brought up from the cellar, and the house not big enough to contain the guests. Miss Barbara sat at the head of the table, with a little flush of triumph on her cheek. "It's like a marriage feast," she said to Sir James when they rose from the table. ”

“ Her fragility, her paleness, her smile of gentle exhaustion and worn-out looks, did her unspeakable credit with all the good people about. They were aware that she had little enough to mourn for, but there are occasions on which nature demands hypocrisy. Any display of satisfaction at another's death is abhorrent to mankind. Carry in her convalescence was no hypocrite, but she got the credit of it, and was all the better thought of. ”