CHAPTER VI
Alas! it was not very long before everybody knew. The demeanour of Pat Torrance at the dinner, to which Lady Lindores had been so reluctant to ask him, gave much occasion for thought to the other guests who knew the man and his ways. These said to each other that Pat had put his foot in it at last – that he had made his choice, and thrown his handkerchief at almost the only woman in the county, who was not sure to respond to it. Nothing could have been colder or more repellent than Lady Caroline was to this great matrimonial prize – the idol whom they all bowed down to, though some with minds which rebelled against the rude and ungodlike divinity. Among these interested lookers-on were some who rejoiced to see that he was likely to be made "to see his place" and submit to the humiliation of refusal; and some who, conscious that in their own families there were worshippers who would not have refused to bow down, were angry with poor Carry for "setting up" to be so much better than her neighbours. The most sagacious of these, however, reserved their judgment. There was something in the demonstration with which the Earl brought Pat forward and patted him on the back – something, too, of pain in poor Lady Carry's mild eyes, which made these more profound observers pause. The Lindores were poor. There were two daughters to provide for; and it was not a matter to be settled so easily, or which the parents would allow to turn entirely on a young girl's fancy. And then she was not even pretty, and she had got into the twenties – not a mere girl, with all the world before her. The wise would not give any opinion on the subject. They shook their heads and refused to commit themselves. But this was exactly what Pat Torrance did. He was so satisfied that here at last he had got everything he wanted, that he displayed his decision in Carry's favour from the first day. He made a spectacle of himself to the whole county, looking on with the keenest attention; and oh, how pleased society would have been in the district had he been once for all made an example of, made a fool of, as they said, – held up to public scorn and ridicule as a rejected suitor! As the wooing went on, the desire for such a consummation – the anticipation of it – grew daily in intensity; and it was not very long doubtful. One of the usual great balls was given at Tinto, which was specially in honour of the new-comers, and took place as soon as they were out of their mourning. It was evidently a crisis in the life of the master of the house, and to the greater part of the guests all the interest of a highly exciting drama was mingled with the milder impulses of amusement. Lady Caroline, everybody said, had never looked less well. She was very pale; – it was even said that freckles, caused by her sinful exposure of her face to all the elements during the summer, diminished the sheen of her ordinarily white forehead – her nose was longer than ever. But all this only increased, to her admirer, the charm of her presence. She was independent of beauty. Though she was very simply dressed – too simply for a lady of rank – yet the air with which she moved about these fine rooms was (Pat thought) such as no one else who had ever been there had possessed. She was superior to them, as she was superior to the lilies and the roses, the wreathed smiles and shining eyes of the other girls. He followed her about with demonstrations of devotion which no one could mistake. He would have danced with nobody but her, in the most marked abandonment of all his duties as host, would she have permitted him. Even when he danced with others his eyes followed her, and the only talk he vouchsafed to his partners was about Lady Car, as he called her, with offensive familiarity and a sort of intoxication. As for poor Lady Caroline herself, it was apparent to every one that she retreated continually into out-of-the-way corners – hiding herself behind the old maids and dowagers, who were never left out of such gatherings, and liked to come and look on and criticise the girls, and tell how things had been done in their day. Several of these old ladies, distressed to see a girl not dancing, had betrayed poor Carry's hiding-place by their kind efforts to get her a partner; and the result had been two or three times that she was thus delivered over into the very clutches of the wolf.
"Mr Patrick," one of those kind ladies said, rising from her seat and taking hold of his arm as he prowled about, wondering where Carry could have disappeared to, "do you no think it's discreditable to the county that a young leddy newly come among us, and a person of rank – and, what is better, a sweet young creature – should be left sitting down the whole night and get no dancing?"
It was on this occasion that Miss Barbara Erskine won the heart of the persecuted girl. She said to her in a strong whisper which went through Carry's ear like a – skewer (the simile is undignified, but suits the fact) – "My dear, there's that eediot, Jean Sempill, drawing attention to you. If you want to get out of the way, slip away behind me; there's a door there that leads into the corridor, and so you can get back to your mother. Stay by your mother – that's your safest way." Thus Carry was delivered for the moment. But, alas! her mother could not protect her effectually. When Pat Torrance came boldly up with his dark face glowing, and his projecting eyes ready, as a spectator remarked, to jump out of his head, and said, "This is our dance," what could any one do for her? Lady Lindores had become alarmed, not knowing what to make of Carry's agitation; but even a mother in these circumstances can do so little. "I am afraid she is tired, Mr Torrance," Lady Lindores said; but Carry's arm was already in his. She had not presence of mind even to take the advantage of such an excuse.
When he brought her back, however, to her mother's side, nobody could have helped seeing that something had happened. Poor Carry was as white as her dress: she seemed scarcely able to hold herself upright, and sank down by her mother's side as if she neither saw nor heard anything that was going on round her. On the other hand, Pat Torrance was crimson, his eyes were rolling in his head. He said almost roughly – "You were right, Lady Lindores. Lady Car is tired; but I make no doubt she will be herself again to-morrow." It was a curious speech to make, and there was a tone of threatening and anger in his somewhat elevated voice which roused the liveliest displeasure in the mind of Lady Lindores; but he was gone before she could say anything. "What is the matter?" she said, taking her daughter's hand. "Rouse yourself, Carry; everybody is staring. What has happened?" "Oh, nothing, nothing! Oh, mamma, let us go home," the poor girl cried. Her lips, her very eyelids, trembled. She looked as if she were about to faint. Lady Lindores was glad to see her husband approaching; but he too had a threatening and stern look. She called him to her, and begged him to ask for the carriage. "Carry is quite ill," she said. "If you will stay with Edith, I can send it back for you; – but poor Car has looked like a ghost all night." "She has looked much more like a fool – as she is," said her father, between his set teeth; but at last he consented that she should be taken home, seeing the state of collapse in which she was. He took her down-stairs, supporting her on his arm, which was necessary, as she could scarcely walk; but when they skirted the dance, in which the master of the house was performing, talking loudly and laughing with forced merriment all the time the Earl, though he was a well-bred man, could not help giving his daughter's arm a sharp pressure, which hurt her. "I might have known you would behave like a fool," he said in a low undertone, which nobody but Carry could hear. She wavered for a moment, like a young tree in the wind, but clung to him and hurried past replying nothing. Lady Lindores following, formed her own conclusions, though she did not hear what her husband said. She took her child into her arms when they were safe in the carriage, rolling along the dark roads in the dimness of the summer night, and Carry cried and sobbed on her mother's breast. "I understand that you have refused him," Lady Lindores said. "But what then? Why should you be so wretched about it, Carry? It is a kind of vanity to be so sorry for the man. You may be sure Mr Torrance will get over it, my love."
Then Carry managed to stammer forth the real source of her terror. She was not thinking of Mr Torrance, but of papa. What would he say to her? would he ever forgive her? And then it was Lady Lindores's turn to be amazed. "My darling, you must compose yourself," she said; "this is greater nonsense than the other. Papa! What can it matter to your father? He will never force your inclinations; and how can this coarse bumpkin interest such a man as he is?" She became almost angry at the sight of Carry's tears. "Allow me to know your father a little better than you do," she cried. "Mr Torrance! who is Mr Torrance? I can't believe that he would favour such a suitor for a moment. But supposing that he did so, – supposing he thought, as people are apt to do, that money covers a multitude of sins – your father is not a worldly-minded man, Carry; he is ambitious, but not for money, – supposing just for the sake of argument – Anyhow, my dear, that could only be if the man happened to please you in his own person. We might like the match better because the pretender was rich, nothing more. Can you really think that papa would be a tyrant to you, – that he would compel you to marry any one? Carry, my love, you have got an attack of the nerves; it is your good sense that has given way."
Carry wept abundantly while her mother thus talked to her, and the agitation which she had so long shut up in her heart calmed down. Every word Lady Lindores said was perfectly reasonable, and to have represented her kind father to herself as a domestic tyrant was monstrous, she felt; but yet – she could not tell her mother all the trifling circumstances, the tones, the looks which had forced that conviction upon her. But she was willing, very willing, to allow herself to be persuaded that it was all a mistake, and to accept the gentle reproof and banter with which Lady Lindores soothed her excitement. "To refuse a man is always disagreeable," she said, philosophically, "especially as one must always feel one is to blame in letting him come the length of a proposal, and self-esteem whispers that he will find it hard to console himself. No, my Carry, no; don't distress yourself too much. I don't want to be cynical; but men of Mr Torrance's type soon console themselves. Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
"It is not that, it is not that," Carry protested among her tears.
But her mother would hear of nothing more alarming. "It is a wrong to your father to think he would take up the cause of such a man," she said, indignantly; "and I should have been horribly disappointed in you, Carry, if you had thought of him for a moment." Carry was so soothed, so comforted, so almost happy in her trouble, that the inmost doors of her heart opened to her mother. "Whatever he had been, oh, mother, do you think I could forget Edward?" she said. His name had not been mentioned between them for months before.
"Edward," said Lady Lindores, shaking her head; and then she kissed the pleading expectant face, which she could only feel, not see. "He should have showed more energy, Carry. Had he been worthy of you, he would not have left this question unsettled till now."
"What could he do?" cried Carry, roused out of her prostration; "he could not invent business for himself." Again Lady Lindores shook her head; but by this time they had reached their own door, and in the fervour of her defence and championship of her lover, Carry got out of the carriage a very different creature from the prostrate and fainting girl who had been put into it at Tinto. She went with her mother to her room, feverish and anxious to plead the cause of Edward. Lady Lindores was a romantic woman, who believed in love, and had taught her children to do the same. But she was disappointed that her daughter's lover had not been inspired by his love; that he had not found success, and secured his own cause beyond the power of evil fortune. Arguing against this adverse opinion, and defending Edward on every question, Carry recovered her courage and her composure. She felt able to fight for him to her last gasp when she left her mother, shaking her head still, but always well disposed to every generous plea; for the moment she had forgotten all the nearer dangers which had seemed so terrible to her an hour before.
Lady Lindores sat up in her dressing-gown till her husband and Edith came back. He was very gloomy, she excited and breathless, with a feverish sparkle in her eyes, which her mother noticed for the first time. She wondered if little Edith was in the secret too – that secret which she had herself scarcely thought of till to-night; and her husband's aspect filled her with strange anxieties. Was it possible that she, who had known them so long, her husband for all the most important time of his life, her child since her first breath, should have discoveries to make in them now? The thought was painful to her, and she tried to dismiss it from her mind. "Carry is better," she said, with an attempt to treat the subject lightly. "It was the glare of these rooms, I suppose. They are very handsome, but there was too much heat and too much light."
"I hope it is the last time we shall have any such scenes from Carry," said the Earl. "You ought to speak to her very seriously. She has been behaving like a fool."
"Dear Robert," said Lady Lindores, "it is trying to a girl of any feeling to have a proposal made to her in a ball-room, and I daresay Mr Torrance was rude and pressing. It is exactly what I should have expected of him."
"Since when," said the Earl, sternly, "have you studied Mr Torrance so closely as to divine what may be expected of him?"
"Robert! I have not studied him at all, nor do I attempt to divine. Carry's agitation, her fright, her panic, if I may call it so – "
"Were simply ridiculous, ridiculous!" cried Lord Lindores. "I always thought her sentimental, but I never suspected her to be a fool."
"Carry is no fool," cried her mother, indignantly; "you know very well she has both spirit and sense, and more than sense. She is not a common girl. She ought not to be treated as one. And this man, this fox-hunter, this vulgar laird – "
"As he will probably be your son-in-law, you will do well to avoid epithets," Lord Lindores said.
"My son-in-law!" said his wife, in a suppressed shriek. "But Carry has refused him," she added, with relief.
"To-night – being flurried, and not knowing her own mind; but she will know better to-morrow."
"Robert! for heaven's sake, when she has been so distressed by this most hateful proposal, you surely will not suffer it to be repeated!"
"Why should it be a hateful proposal?" he said.
"Why?" Lady Lindores did not know how to answer; if he did not see it, if it did not jump at his eyes, as she said to herself, what explanation would make it clearer? She tried to smile and approach him on another side. "Dear Robert," she said, tremulously – "to think of you taking the part of such a man! He must have some fine qualities, I am sure, or you never could have endured the outside of him, or his manners, or his talk. He is so unlike you, so unlike anything the girls have ever been taught to care for." If this was flattery, surely it may be forgiven to the anxious mother. She was anxious too, as a wife, that her husband should not come down from the pedestal on which it had been her pride to keep him for so many years.
"That is all very well," he said, impatiently; "but I never set myself up as a model of what my children were to like. Yes; he has fine qualities, golden qualities. Do you know that he is the richest commoner in Scotland, Lady Lindores?"
"I know," she said, with quick offence, the tears starting suddenly to her eyes, "that my name is Mary, and that I hate this wretched title, which I shall never get used to, and never tolerate if my husband calls me by it. We are all, all, put asunder, all changed, and finding each other out since we came here."
This little outburst was partly real and partly a half-conscious art to find an outlet for her excitement. Her husband was more touched by it than if it had been more serious. The complaint was fantastic, yet it was one which love might be excused for making. "My love," he said, "of course I meant nothing unkind. There have been times when I called you Mrs Lindores in jest, as I did just now. But, seriously, you must see what I am thinking of – you must give me your support. We are poor. If Rintoul is to take the position to which he is entitled after me – "
"You mean Robin? I tell you I hate those new names!" she cried.
"This is foolish, Mary. If he is to enter upon life when his time comes weighted with a heavy provision for his sisters – consider; there is poor Jane. She is quite young; she may outlive us all: and if I were to die, there would be two jointures besides Car and Edith."
"Let me be struck off the list," cried Lady Lindores. "I will never be a burden on my son. Robert, God forgive you; for a distant evil like this, would you bring that man into our family, and force an unwilling marriage on your child? But no, no; I am doing you wrong; your thoughts have never gone so far."
The Earl made no reply. His face was like a thunder-cloud, lowering and heavy – a darkness from which, at any moment, fire and flame might burst forth.
"No, no," said the mother. "I understand what you have thought. I did so once myself when – you remember – young Ashestiel came in our way. I thought if they would but take to each other; if they would only see what a natural harmony they would make! Yes, yes, I remember, I was provoked beyond measure that they would not see it; and when he went away, I did not know how to contain myself. I was angry with my innocent Carry for not caring. I understand you, Robert. If by any chance her fancy had been taken by this young millionaire; but dear, how could it? You would yourself have thought less of Carry had she liked such a man. Acknowledge: he is not much better than a boor – with, perhaps, a boor's virtues."
She looked up when she had got so far, and stopped in sheer amazement at the sight of her husband's face. She had never seen any indication before of what she now found in it. Rage with difficulty smothered; a determined intention to follow his own way; an uneasy shame turning to bitterness and passion. His voice was quite hoarse with the effort to contain himself. "I thought," he said, "that at least you were not one of the silly women who speak of things they don't understand. But I was mistaken. You will rather encourage a foolish girl in a piece of unworthy romance, than show her her duty – her duty! But neither you nor she, by – shall hold me up to ridicule! She shall take this husband I choose for her, or by – " Here he became aware how much he was committing himself. He stopped, gazed at her defiantly for a moment, then began to pace up and down the room in great confusion. "The short and the long of it is," he said, "that I can't suffer Carry, for a girlish prejudice, to throw away such a position. He might be the first man in the county," Lord Lindores said. "He has twice as much as we have, and no title to keep up; no encumbrance of any kind. She might be a sort of princess. I cannot allow all this to be thrown away for a mere fancy. If she does not like him, she must learn to like him. What would she have? He is not a petit maître, certainly; but he is a man, every inch of him – his family good, his health good, a magnificent house; what could any woman want more? She will have everything that heart can desire."
Lady Lindores made no immediate reply. All this was so new to her – a revelation of things unthought of. It took away her breath; it took away her courage. Is there any shock, any pang that life can give, equal to that of suddenly perceiving a touch of baseness, a failure of honour, a lower level of moral feeling, in those who are most dear to us? This is what shatters heaven and earth, and shakes the pillars of existence to the beholder. It filled this woman with a sudden despair impossible to describe. She tried to speak, and her very voice failed her. What was the use of saying anything? If he thought thus, could anything that was said affect him? Despair made her incapable of effort. She was like Hamlet, paralysed. At the end she managed to falter forth a word of protestation. "There are some," she said, faintly, "who are content with so much less, Robert – and yet how much more! – you and I among the rest."
"A woman always answers with a personal example," he said.
And Lady Lindores was dumb. She did not know what to say to the new man who stood beside her, in the familiar aspect of her husband, expressing sentiments which never before had come from the lips of Robert Lindores. He had been self-indulgent in the old days – perhaps a little selfish – accepting sacrifices which it was not right for him to accept. But there had been a hundred excuses for him; and she and the girls had always been so ready, so eager, to make those sacrifices. It had been the pleasure of their lives to make his as smooth, as graceful, as pleasant as possible. There was no question of anything of this kind now. He who had been dependent on their ministrations for half the comfort of his life, was now quite independent of them, the master of everybody's fate, – judging for them, deciding for them, crushing their private wishes. Lady Lindores was confused beyond measure by this discovery. She put her hand to her head unconsciously, as if it must be that which was wrong. A vague hope that things might not look so terrible in the morning came into her mind. It was very late, and they were all tired and worn with the agitation of the evening. "I think I am not in a condition to understand to-night," she said, drearily. "It will be better, perhaps, to put off till to-morrow."
"It is a pity you sat up," he said coldly; and thus the strange conference ended. It was already morning, the blue light stealing in through the closed shutters. Things, as well as faces, look ghastly in this unaccustomed light. Lady Lindores drew the curtains closer to shut it out, and lay down with her head aching, turning her face to the wall. There are circumstances in which the light of heaven is terrible; and darkness, darkness, oblivion of itself, the only things the soul cares for. But though you can shut out the light, you cannot shut out thought. There was not much rest that night in Lindores. The Earl himself had a consciousness of the strange discovery of him which his wife had made; and though he was defiant and determined to subdue all opposition, yet he was hurt and angry all the same that his Mary should think less well of him. He seemed to himself of late to have done a great deal for her and her children. No idea of the elevation she had now reached had been in her mind when they married. There were three brothers then between him and the title, besides the children of the elder. And now that things had so come about, as that Mary was actually Countess of Lindores, he could not but feel that he had done a great deal for her. Yet she was not grateful. She looked at him with those scrutinising, alarmed eyes. She turned away from him with painful wonder; with – there was no doubt of it – disapproval. And yet all he wanted was the advancement of the family – the real good of his daughter. Who could doubt what his motive was? or that it was for Carry's good to have a noble establishment, a fortune that a princess might envy? Could there be any comparison between that and the marriage with a poor barrister, upon which, in her first folly, she had set her heart? It was unreasonable beyond measure, ungrateful, that his quite legitimate determination, judging for the real advantage of his daughter, should be thus looked upon by Lady Lindores.
But it would be vain to attempt to describe the struggle that followed: that domestic tragedy would have to be told at length if told at all, and it included various tragedies; not only the subjugation of poor Carry, the profanation of her life, and cruel rending of her heart, but such a gradual enlightening and clearing away of all the lovely prejudices and prepossessions of affection from the eyes of Lady Lindores, as was almost as cruel. The end of it was, that one of these poor women, broken in heart and spirit, forced into a marriage she hated, and feeling herself outraged and degraded, began her life in bitterness and misery with a pretence of splendour and success and good fortune which made the real state of affairs still more deplorable; and the other, feeling all the beauty of her life gone from her, her eyes disenchanted, a pitiless cold daylight revealing every angle once hid by the glamour of love and tender fancy, began a sort of second existence alone. If Torrance had been determined before to have Lady Caroline for his wife, he was far more determined after she had put his pride to the humiliation of a refusal, and roused all the savage in him. From the night of the ball until the moment of the wedding, he never slackened in his pursuit of the shrinking unhappy girl, who, on her side, had betrayed her weakness to her sister on the first mention of the hateful suitor. Edith was disenchanted too, as well as her mother. She comprehended none of them. "I would not do it," she said simply, when the struggle was at its bitterest; "why do you do it?" Rintoul, for his part, when he appeared upon the scene, repeated Edith's positivism in a different way. "I think my father is quite right," he said. "What could Carry look for? She is not pretty; she is twenty-four. You ought to take these things into consideration, mother. She has lost her chance of any of the prizes; and when you have here the very thing, a man rolling in money – and not a tradesman either, which many girls have to put up with – it is such a chance as not one in a thousand ever gets. I think Car ought to be very grateful to papa." Lady Lindores listened with a gasp – Robin too! But she did not call him Robin for a long time after that day. He was Rintoul to her as to the rest of the world, his father's heir, very clearly alive to the advantage of having, when his time came, no provision for his sister hanging like a millstone round his neck. His sympathy and approval were delightful to his father. "Women are such queer cattle, you never know how to take them," the experienced young man said. A man is not in a crack regiment for nothing. He had more knowledge of the world than his father had. "I should have thought my mother would have been delighted to settle Carry so near home."
Thus it was a very strange divided house upon the eve of this marriage. To add to the confusion, there was great squabbling over the settlements, which Pat Torrance, eager though he was to secure the bride, whom his pride and self-will, as well as what he believed to be his love, had determined to have at all costs, was by no means so liberal about as the Earl thought necessary. He fought this out step by step, even venturing to hint, like the brute he was, that it was no beauty or belle whom he was marrying, and cutting down the requirements of her side in the most business-like way. Lady Lindores had been entirely silenced, and looked after the indispensable matters of her daughter's trousseau without a trace of the usual cheerful bustle attending wedding preparations; while Carry seemed to live in a dream, sometimes rousing up to make an appeal to her father's pity, but mostly in a sort of passive state, too heart-broken to be excited about anything. Edith, young and curious, moved about in the midst of it all in the activity of her independence, as yet touched by none of these things. She was a sort of rebellion impersonated, scarcely comprehending the submission of the others. While Carry wept she stood looking on, her face flushed, her eyes brilliant. "I would not do it," she said. These words were constantly on her lips.
"How could you help doing it?" poor Carry cried, turning upon her in the extremity of her despair. "Oh, have a little pity upon me, Edie! What can I do? I would sooner die. If there is anything you can think of – anything! But it is all past hope now. Papa will not even listen to me. Rintoul tells me I am a fool. He – " but here Carry's voice was broken with a shudder. She could not speak of her bridegroom but with a contraction of her heart.
"I don't know what I should do, but I should not do this," said Edith, surveying her sister from the height of untried resolution. "Nobody can force you to say Yes instead of No; nobody can make you do a thing you are determined not to do. Why do you do it? you can't want not to do it at the very bottom of your heart."
Carry gave her a look of anguish which brought the girl to her knees in compunction and remorse. "Oh, forgive me, Car! but why, why do you do it?" she cried. Lady Lindores had come softly in to give her child her good-night kiss. It was within a few days of the wedding. She stood and looked at the group with tears in her eyes – one girl lying back white, worn, and helpless in her chair; the other, at her feet, glowing with courage and life.
"Speak to her, mamma," cried Edith, "as long as there is any hope."
"What can I say?" said the mother; "everything has gone too far now. It would be a public scandal. I have said all that I could. Do not make my poor child more unhappy. Carry, my darling, you will do your duty whatever happens: and everything becomes easier when it is duty – "