Eppie

“ I never believed they clung in real life until seeing Eppie with her ragamuffins; they adore her.”
This remark, to whose truth she assented by a vague smile, gave Eppie’s thoughts a further push that sent them seeing herself among the golden heads and white pinafores on the lawn at Cheylesford Lodge; and though the vision maintained its loving aunt relationship of the slums, there was now a throb and flutter in it, as though she held under her hand a strange wild bird that only her own will not to look kept hidden. ”

“ And at this Gavan said, with a smile that protested against any idea that he should not find her so: “I’m only afraid that I’m not good company for any one. She is a dear little girl.”
It was in the wanderings over the moors and in the birch-woods and up the hillside, where Eppie took him to see her views, that the bond really drew to closeness. Here nature and little Eppie seemed together to thaw him, to heal him, to make him unconsciously happy. A fugitive color dawned in his wasted cheeks; a fragile gaiety came to his manner. He began to find it easy to talk, easy to be quite a little boy. ”

“ The forms were changed, but it might almost have been little Eppie, the boy Gavan, and Robbie himself who went together through the heather. The form was changed, but the sense of saneness so strong that it would have seemed perfectly natural to pass an arm about a child Eppie’s neck and to talk of the morning’s reading in the Odyssey.
Never had the feeling of reality been so vague or the dream sense been so beautiful. His instinctive choice of this peace, instead of the other, had been altogether justified. ”

“ Eppie cried. “Write at once and make her come. Send a wire, Gavan. Couldn’t she be here very soon, if you wired that she must—must come? I wouldn’t bear it if I were you.”
“She can’t come. She must stay with my father.”
All the barriers were down now, so that Eppie could insist: “She would rather be with you. You want her most.”
“Yes, I want her most. But he needs her most,” said Gavan. “He is extravagant and weak and bad. He drinks and he gambles, and if she left him he would probably soon ruin himself—and us; for my mother has no money. ”

“ The very fact that Eppie’s narrow face, the hair brushed back from brow and temples, showed, in the clear morning light, more of its oddity than its beauty, made its charm cling the more closely. Her eyes looked small, her features irregular; he saw the cliff-like modeling of her temples, the cheeks, a little flat, pale, freckled; the long, queer lines of her chin. Bare, exposed, without a flicker of sunlight on her delicate analogies of ruggedness, of weather-beaten strength, she might almost have been called ugly ”

“ The gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object compacted of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and carried them far away from their old eager pacing towards the same blank limit—carried them away to the new things that would come with the coming years, when Eppie would have learned to understand how her father Silas cared for her; and made him look for images of that time in the ties and charities that bound together the families of his neighbours. ”

“ And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the buttercups were thick in the meadows, Silas might be seen in the sunny mid-day, or in the late afternoon when the shadows were lengthening under the hedgerows, strolling out with uncovered head to carry Eppie beyond the Stone-pits to where the flowers grew, till they reached some favourite bank where he could sit down, while Eppie toddled to pluck the flowers, and make remarks to the winged things that murmured happily above the bright petals, calling "Dad-dad's" attention continually by bringing him the flowers. ”

“ He noticed that a faint color drifted into Eppie’s cheek when he named Gavan.
“He is as old as you are, Jim,” she remarked.
“He looks like a person to be taken care of, all the same.”
“He has been ill. He took care of some one else, as it happens. He nursed his father for months.”
“Um,” Grainger gave an inarticulate grunt, “just about what he’s fit for, isn’t it? to help dying people out of the world.”
Eppie received this in silence, and he went on: “He looks rather like a priest, or a poet—something decorative and useless.”
“Would you call Buddha decorative and useless?” ”

“ MacHendrie with sympathetic curiosity.
“Natural!” said Eppie. “It was dastardly. You deserve every thrashing you get. I hope no one will interfere for you next time.”
“My dear Eppie!” Gavan murmured, while Mrs. MacHendrie continued to weep humbly.
“Why shouldn’t I say it? I am disgusted with her.” Eppie turned almost as fierce a stillness of look and tone upon him as upon Mrs. MacHendrie. “Let me tie up your head, Gavan. Yes, indeed, you are covered with blood. I suppose you never thought, Mrs. MacHendrie, that your husband might kill Mr. Palairet.” ”

“ There was talk now—Eppie’s was the publicity of popularity—of Gavan’s old-time rival, Grainger, who had inherited an immense fortune and, unvarnished and defiantly undecorative on his lustrous background, was one of the world’s prizes. All that he had was at Eppie’s feet, and some more brilliant alternative could be the only cause for hesitation in a young woman seared by misfortune and cured forever of folly. ”

“ Eppie asked in her steady voice.
“What you call life is what I call death, perhaps, Eppie.”
“Your metaphysics may be very cheap; I know very little about them. But if all that were true, I should still say that the illusion is more real than that nothingness—for to us such a reality would be nothingness. And I should say, let us live our reality all the more intensely, since, for us, there is no other.”
“How you care for life,” said Gavan, as he had said it once before. He looked at her marching through the mist like a defiant Valkyrie. ”

“ Eppie walked beside her uncle and still observed Gavan as he went before them with the aunts.
“How do you like your playmate, Eppie?” the general asked.
“He isn’t a playmate,” Eppie gravely corrected him.
“Not very lively? But a nice boy, eh?”
“I think he is very nice; but he is too big to care about me.”
“Nonsense; he’s but three years older.”
“Four, Uncle Nigel. That makes a great deal of difference at our ages,” said Eppie, wisely.
“Nonsense,” the general repeated. “He is only a bit down on his luck; he’s not had time to find you out yet. ”

“ Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a satisfied gaze as she spread the clean cloth, and set on it the potato-pie, warmed up slowly in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over a slowly-dying fire, as the best substitute for an oven. For Silas would not consent to have a grate and oven added to his conveniences: he loved the old brick hearth as he had loved his brown pot—and was it not there when he had found Eppie? The gods of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots. ”

“ She had a distinct intention as to the use of the scissors; and having cut the linen strip in a jagged but effectual manner, in two moments she had run out at the open door where the sunshine was inviting her, while poor Silas believed her to be a better child than usual. It was not until he happened to need his scissors that the terrible fact burst upon him: Eppie had run out by herself—had perhaps fallen into the Stone-pit. Silas, shaken by the worst fear that could have befallen him, rushed out, calling "Eppie!" ”

“ Silas, bewildered by the changes thirty years had brought over his native place, had stopped several persons in succession to ask them the name of this town, that he might be sure he was not under a mistake about it.
"Ask for Lantern Yard, father—ask this gentleman with the tassels on his shoulders a-standing at the shop door; he isn't in a hurry like the rest," said Eppie, in some distress at her father's bewilderment, and ill at ease, besides, amidst the noise, the movement, and the multitude of strange indifferent faces. ”

“ But at last Eppie, glancing at the clock, checked the play, and said, “O daddy, you’re wanting to go into the sunshine to smoke your pipe. But I must clear away first, so as the house may be tidy when godmother comes. I’ll make haste—I won’t be long.” ”

“ Why, you’ve everything in your favor. You weren’t enough in earnest; that was the trouble. You didn’t care enough; you played into your opponents’ hands. The British public doesn’t understand idealism or irony. Eppie told us all about it.”
“Eppie? How did Eppie know?” He found himself using her little name as a matter of course.
“She knows everything,” the general rejoined, with his air of happy, derived complacency; “even when she’s not in England, she never loses touch. Eppie is very much behind the scenes.”
The simile recalled to Gavan his own vision of the stage and the waiting figure. ”

“ Eppie flushed, incredulous of such good fortune, and almost reluctant to accept it. “You really don’t mind, Gavan? Boys hate dolls, as a rule, you know.”
“I don’t mind in the least,” he laughed. “I am sure I shall enjoy it. How do we begin? You must teach me.”
“I’ll teach you everything. You are the very kindest person I ever knew, Gavan. Really, I wouldn’t ask you to if I didn’t believe you would like it when once you had tried it. It is such fun. And now we can make them do all sorts of things, have all sorts of adventures, that they never could have before.” ”

“ By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms of custom and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life; and as, with reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he had begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity between his past and present. ”

“ Aunt Rachel cast an eye of comprehension upon Eppie’s discomfited visage. “That would be a most inappropriate generosity, my dear Gavan. Eppie comes with us always.”
Gavan still looked at Eppie, who, with downcast eyes, ate swiftly.
“Now I’ll be bound that she has been wheedling you to get her off, Gavan,” said the general, with genial banter. “She is a little rebel to the bone. She knows that it’s no good to rebel, so she put you up to pleading for her”; and, as Gavan protested, “Indeed, indeed, sir, she didn’t,” he still continued, “Oh, Eppie, you baggage, you! ”

“ The tender and peculiar love with which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable companionship with himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her from the lowering influences of the village talk and habits, and had kept her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed to be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas's hearth ”

“ On another time, as they walked up the hillside, beside the burn, she said: “I thought you were not going to like us at all, when you first came.”
“I was horribly afraid of you all,” said Gavan. “Everything was so strange to me.”
“No, you weren’t afraid,” Eppie objected—“not really afraid. I don’t believe you are ever really afraid of people.” ”

“ MacHendrie was crying to me about it this morning. Archie is hardly ever sober now. I shall drive over to Carlowrie and see Sir Alec about it; as the wretch’s landlord he can make it uncomfortable for him, and I’ll see that he makes it as uncomfortable as possible.”
Laughingly, but slightly harassed, the general said: “You see, we have a tyrant here. Eppie is really a bit too hard on the man. He is an unpleasant fellow, I own, a most unpleasant manner—a beast, if you will, but a legal beast.”
“The most unpleasant form of animal, isn’t it? It’s very good of Eppie to care so much,” said Gavan. ”

“ It’s changed since you were here, Gavan. Ah! time goes—it goes. Poor Rachel! we lost her five years ago. If Eppie didn’t look after us so well we should be lonely, Barbara and I. We seldom get away now. Too old to care for change. But Eppie always gives us three or four months, and a letter once a week while she’s away. She puts us first. This is home, she says. She sees clever people at Alicia Waring’s, has the world at her feet,—you’ve heard, no doubt,—but she loves Kirklands best. She gardens with me—a great gardener Eppie, but she is good at anything she sets herself to ”

“ “O father,” said Eppie, “what a pretty home ours is! I think nobody could be happier than we are.” ”

“ It’s a pity, of course, that one can’t painlessly pinch such people out of existence, as one would offensive insects.”
Eppie, across the table, eyed him, her anger quieted. “He is a product of a good many things,” she said, now in her most reasonable manner, “and he is going to be a product of some more before I’m done with him,—a product of my hatred for him and his kind, for one thing. That will be a new factor in his development. Gavan,” she smiled, “you and I are going to quarrel.”
“Dear Eppie!” Miss Barbara interposed. “Gavan, you must not take her seriously ”

“ There's good i' this world—I've a feeling o' that now; and it makes a man feel as there's a good more nor he can see, i' spite o' the trouble and the wickedness. That drawing o' the lots is dark; but the child was sent to me: there's dealings with us—there's dealings."
This dialogue took place in Eppie's earlier years, when Silas had to part with her for two hours every day, that she might learn to read at the dame school, after he had vainly tried himself to guide her in that first step to learning. ”