EMORY UNIVERSITY
A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME
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BY
"RITA"
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DAME DURDEN
MY LADY COQUETTE
VIVIENNE
LIKE DIAN'S KISS
COUNTESS DAPHNE
FRAGOLETTA
A SINLESS SECRET
FAUSTINE
AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN
TWO BAD BLUE EYES
London : J. & R. MAXWELL,
Milton House, 14 & 15, Shoe Lane, Fleet St. ,
AND
35, St. Bride St., Ludgate Circus, E.C.
And at all Railway Bookstalls, Booksellers, etc.
I"
\
A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME
Jlnft (Dtte gteks
BY
I. GILCHRIST
LONDON
JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL
MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, ELEET STEEET
AND
\ 35, ST. BELDE STEEET, LUDGATE CIECUS, E.C.
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of
E. SPENDER'S NOVELS.
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1. RESTORED
2. A TRUE MARRIAGE
3. SON AND HEIR
4. KINGSFORD
London: J. & R. MAXWELL,
Milton House, 14 & 15, Shoe Lane, Fleet Street,
and
35, St. Bride Street, Ludgate Circus, E.C.
And at all Railway Bookstalls, Booksellers, &*c.
gtebfcatei) to
JAMES PAYN, Esq.
IN SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OP HIS KINDLINESS.
Jfciu ©heap <Hnif.orm ©biticn j
OF j
E. S. DREWRY'S NOVELS, j
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ONLY AN ACTRESS
ON DANGEROUS GROUNDS
BAPTISED WITH A CURSE
A DEATH-RING
VERE DELMAR
THE CLOUDS BETWEEN THEM
LOVE'S LABOUR GAINED
London : J. & R. MAXWELL,
Milton House, 14 & 15, Shoe Lane, Fleet St.,
and
35, St. Bride St., Ludgate Circus, E.C.
And at all Railway Bookstalls, Booksellers, etc.
CONTENTS.
A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME:
PACK
CHAPTER I. LONELINESS 3
CHAPTER II. INJUSTICE 10
CHAPTER III. "A TWILIGHT IN THE SKY " . . 19
CHAPTER IV. AWAKENING 24
CHAPTER V. "MINISTERS OF LOVE " ... 32
CHAPTER VI. A PATRON OF GENIUS ... 38
CHAPTER VII.—THRALDOM 49
CHAPTER VIII.—ESCAPE 57
CHAPTER IX. FATE SMILES 66
CHAPTER X.—I AM A SUCCESS . . . .77
viii CONTENTS.
A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME {continued):
CHAPTER XI. MARGARET . . . •
CHAPTER XII. LITERARY CRITICISM
CHAPTER XIII.—THE ANGEL DEATH
CHAPTER XIV.—A "QUICK" BURIAL
CHAPTER XV.—AT MR. WENTWORTH's
CHAPTER XVI.—A LAST PUBLIC APPEARANCE .
CHAPTER XVII.—AN END OF PERSONAL ASPIRATION
ABBOT'S GRANGE:
CHAPTER I.—A FAMILY PICTURE .
CHAPTER II.—GOOD-BYE ....
CHAPTER III.—HOME AGAIN ....
CHAPTER IV.—APPLES OF BODOM .
CHAPTER V. THE CONFESSION
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA':
CHAPTER I.—THE LAIRD'S DEATH NIGHT
CHAPTER II.—DAFT BARBARA .
PAGE
85
95
105
112
121
131
137
149
156
171
182
191
211
226
CONTENTS. ix
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA' (continued):
PAGE
CHAPTER III.—MOTHER AND SON .... 234
CHAPTER IV.—A PARTING . . . . .251
CHAPTER V.—A DEUS EX MACHINA . . . 268
LOVE'S EXTREMITY:
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTIONS 277
CHAPTER II 291
CHAPTER III. 305
CHAPTER IV. 315
CHAPTER V . . .326
Jfcto Cheap- Ettiform Cbitimt
OF
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A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME
CHAPTER I.
LONELINESS.
" Ainsi, lecteur, je snis moy-mesme la matiere de mon
livre; ce n'est pas raison que tu employes ton loisir en un
sujet si frivole et si vain • adieu done."—Montaigne.
S it a sin to be unhappy ? In that
golden past the poets sing, or that
glowing future of righteousness the
prophets foretell, sorrow was, and is to be a
thing unknown. Yet how can perfection be
attained without struggle over the stony,
upward path ?
I threw myself, face downward, on the
faded chintz cushions of the old sofa in the
B 2
4 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
drawing-room of my home. I was disappointed
and sad; to hide myself from the light in that
painful hour was my means of seeking solace.
My life was narrow, the only possible out-
let for my energies, the woman's resource,
light literature, and the morning's post had
brought me this long-expected, long-deferred
letter: " Your MS. is not without merit, but
it is certainly not equal to the standard of
our magazine."
I know more now of the thorny stuffing
of the editorial chair. Then I was twenty,
writing out of my heart, and, suffering a girl's
modest shame when I removed the veil that
covers feeling and thought, I dreaded the criti-
cism of cool judgment, and for an hour had
mentally sounded the rejection, each time with
a differently-placed accent.
There could not be a more lonely creature
in the universe than I thought myself. I was
mistaken. A secret crime would have placed
me further beyond human sympathy than my
circumstances did. But I wTas alone, and sadly
LONELINESS. 5
alone too. My only living relative was my
father, and difference in age, religious senti-
ment, and sex, were not in our case bridged
over by the slenderest cord of affection. I had
committed an unpardonable sin against him in
being born a woman when a son was his
requirement. I sinned again in resembling
my mother with whom he had lived in dis-
agreement, more heinously I was in fault in,
according to the terms of her marriage settle-
O O
ment, receiving my education in rationalistic
Protestantism; for my father was a Poman
Catholic after the narrowest formula.
At my school I had not been unhappy.
Much intercourse with the other pupils had
been out of my power, yet I had a joy in
study and in striving after the knowledge which
charms while it eludes. The last twelve months
I had spent at home without companionship,
for my father ate alone and spent all his waking
hours, save those times of anger when temper
brought him into society for the sake of fault-
finding, in his study, smoking till the dense
6 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
air positively screened him from the sight of
hardy intruders.
I had read of love and friendship in romances,
as one reads of Hesperidean apples. They were
golden, fabulous fruit. And in my girlish
writings I drew a fancied picture of the posses-
sion of the glowing treasures.
Yet I had my music. The old piano in the
room in which I sat, was a thin, wiry-toned
instrument, of the earlier German makers, and
I beguiled much weary time by classical,
operatic, and sacred music, playing my dance
tunes to a slow measure, and my masses allegro
for very dulness sake.
My father's house is placed amidst beautiful
scenery. It is one of those quiet, gray stone
buildings, large enough for comfort, too small
for show ; the lawn, shaded in summer by sweet-
scented, yellow-blooming limes, where a garden
seat, under an old, reddish-brown trunked cedar,
was my favourite resting place. The park is
planted with oak, ash, beech, sycamore, broad-
leaved chestnut, and slender birch trees.
LONELINESS.
7
The well-stocked fishponds glimmer :n and
reflect bright and dark cloud lights, while
limestone hills, rugged and broken, here and
there bound the pleasant horizon. Such a
wealth of largess as Nature showers here should
drive away all poverty of soul, one has only
to look through the window to find consolation
Alas t Pain-blinded eyes cannot see the
fair outline and delicate shading of a lovely
prospect.
I might enclose myself in my woes the whole
day without likelihood of interruption.
The editor's rejection of my paper only
showed my uselessness more plainly. It is
perhaps good for one to learn the lesson of
personal iusignificance in youth ; but it is an
unpleasant study, and costs some grief.
A bell ringing violently and a quickly-
opened door roused me, they foretokened a
parental outburst of rage. I was standing
upright instantly, waiting for the angry sum-
mons and the angrier lecture I expected.
Fortunately, I had not cried; there were no
8 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
fiery stains on my cheeks or eyelids, the
heaviness of the eyes was not likely to attract
my father's notice. And I was thankful, for
worse to me than rejection from a stranger
would be the contempt veiled by a thin
cloak of pity which a manly scholar with-
held from the world's prizes by a creed
restriction would show to the child who
failed through weakness of effort.
Five minutes ago I had been too self-
absorbed to heed the spring sunlight, which
sought the furthest corners of the room and
showed the shabbiness of furniture and
upholstery with the supercilious coldness of
Youth contemplating a meagre Past. The
purple and golden crocuses in the window
were the only things in the room to bear
the searching scrutiny without dread, unless,
perhaps, I may be allowed to except my own
face, scarcely girlish at the moment.
My interviews with my father were never
pleasant. Antipathy stood between us. I
have often regarded it as one of the mys-
LONELINESS.
9
teries of the Omniscient that natures so op-
posite and alien should be united by kindred
blood. It may be for the discipline of
character, and is truly, as discipline often is,
an acute pain.
The trees were leafless, but I was forester
enough to know each by its bough and trunk
structure according to its order. I loved
them when they waved bare arms as much,
if not more, than when leaf-clothed they
fluttered and danced to warm breezes. They
could not comfort me ; and the fishponds, in
place of reflecting heaven, seemed chilly,
steely mirrors.
CHAPTER II.
INJUSTICE.
expected summons came; in half
an hour I must visit my father
in his study.
My heart fell back on retrospect.
My mother, a pale, proud creature, with
mournful eyes, sat beside the fire in the
room where I now was, I, on a footstool at
her feet, nursing and caressing my doll. I
dimly knew her troubles, and leaned my head
against her knee in silent, childish sympathy.
" Elsie ! my little Elsie !" she murmured,
as she watched the endearments I gave my
waxen darling.
"This is my Elsie, and I am your doll,"
I replied, looking up at the lovely, worn face.
INJUSTICE.
IX
She raised me to her breast.
"More than a doll, child; a woman, born
to suffer, to love, to die!"
Her exultant tone as she spoke the last
word sounded in my heart; unlowered through
the fourteen years' interval.
Another picture. I sat on the edge of
the bed where she lay paler than ever, her
features consecrated by patiently-endured sor-
row, stood out in creamy' relief from the
whiteness of the frilled pillow.
" I am going on a long journey."
"Take Elsie with you."
"Not yet. Elsie will come after."
" When ?" My childish heart was filling
with a dread of loneliness, but there were
no tears in the dear eyes looking tenderly
into mine and their calmness restrained my
weeping. My mother sighed.
" I would take my Elsie only too gladly,
but, Elsie, I must speak, and you perhaps
not know the meaning of my words. Listen !
You have the blood of a martyr in your veins.
12 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
They burned him to death for his faith.
Remember — you can't understand yet — you
will have need of such teaching."
How much, or how little, do children com-
prehend of spiritual thought ? My mother's
words were beyond me while intuitively I saw
so much of their meaning as to feel a proud
strength in my relationship to her when she
had uttered them. And in after years, I knew
that she had preserved one treasure sacred
from the profanation of an unholy marriage.
Her soul had been her own indestructible
possession. The knowledge tightened the
light grasp with which I held the belief in
immortality.
The solitude that followed her death was
very present to me. My father, a rigid
disciplinarian, visiting each trivial fault with
stern correction, made those early years a
wretched memory. In thought I sat again
on the broad oaken stairs leading to my
chamber, my heart swelling, my throat choking
with the humiliation of endurance of corporal
INJUSTICE.
13
punishment. My hands striped with the
strokes of the cane, hurt me, but the anger
of helpless womanhood, assaulted in a form
of weakness, was the unconscious feeling in-
spiring my prayers to the Almighty for
vengeance on the parent who had outraged
its dignity. In those days I must have re-
called my mother too vividly to him for
justice to do more than assert the Nemesis
aspect of her character when the lightest faults
of my mother's daughter required correction.
Such memories were not likely to lead to
loving conference between us, and I confess
it was with ho kindly feeling that I entered
his study.
My own part of the house was furnished
barely enough, but I had arranged my rooms
after my own wish and the disposition of
movables pleased my accustomed fancy. This
room—where books and brackets were undis-
turbed from month to month, and every curtain
and shelf were strongly scented with the fumes
of tobacco, where all was dusty as only the
14 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
apartment of a recluse can be, and the one
solace in the room, a large cheerful fire, sur-
mounting heaps of ashy embers—a room visited
by me at rare intervals, always excited a feeling
of disgust in my mind.
I was in no humour to enact the amiable
hypocrite—look with complacence on discomfort
I could not remove, and must for a short space
endure. I was not always so wicked as I
felt at this moment. Often my own sorrows
were intensified by the knowledge of what
outsiders were pleased to speak of as Mr.
Longford's peculiarities.
My father was walking from one end of
the room to the other when, having knocked,
I entered in response to his loudly-spoken
" Come in!" His eyes were glittering, he
was biting his lip, and alternately clenching
his hands and throwing them wide asunder
to the full length of the arm. I saw that
we were to have a very stormy interview.
He motioned me to a chair. I was not so
foolish as to give him more of the advantage
INJUSTICE. 15
of superior height than I could avoid. Refus-
ing the seat courteously, I stood near the
door, and waited to hear a summary of my
faults.
He fixed his eyes on mine, and I looked
with intentness into them. It was the animal
impulse to measure force before proceeding to
conflict. I really believe the soul in my
eyes compelled from him, however much
against his will, admiration for my inherited
strength in that five minutes of silence. His
tones were softer when he spoke:
"You received a packet by post this
morning ?"
It was well for me that my heart did not
beat, and I could answer calmly :
"Yes. It was a rejected manuscript from
an editor."
Again his eyes sought to read me before
he spoke. I feared nothing, and waited in
calm expectancy for his words, which were
scarcely so violent as I expected.
"You write! A woman, a brainless, un-
16 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
learned, inexperienced creature! You try to
teach the world! What have you to say ?
Never attempt such folly again. I will have no
unsexed female for my daughter. The province
of women lies neither in literature nor art,
and yom shall not discredit my name by
making a monster of one who bears it."
He waited a reply. I was silent, but the
curve of my lips irritated him. He came
closer to me.
"Do you hear?" he shouted. "Must I
speak the words again ? I will have no such
folly. Promise that the offence shall not be
repeated, and I forgive you."
With an angry man of my father's tern-
perament, alike passionate and unforgiving, one
never knows the wisest course of action.
Absolute submission alone would have avoided
the blow I saw him about to strike. Absolute
submission I could not give. The hope of a
successful literary career I saw to be the only
door of escape from a life of slavery; and
could I, in a moment of fear, bind myself by
INJUSTICE.
17
a promise, the fulfilment of which entailed
subjection, and whose breach meant false-
hood ?
" Promise!" he shouted again, with his
hand uplifted to strike.
" Never ! " I could only whisper, for, against
my will, I dreaded the blow. With one hand
he held my shoulder tightly and cruelly, with
the other he opened the door, dashed me
violently on the flagged pavement of the hall,
closed, locked, and double-locked the door.
My head struck on the corner of the lowest
step of the stairs; I was stunned for a moment
or two ; then I rose and stepped quietly up-
stairs, anxious, like a wounded beast, to hide
myself from my fellows. Alone in my bed-
room, I clasped my hands in pain. For the
first time the question asked itself, "Had he
dared to strike my mother ?" I answered
affirmatively, and filial respect died within me.
Something warm on my neck roused me
after a time. The stair had cut my head, and
the blood was trickling in a narrow stream
o
18 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
on to my dress. I had no desire for pity from
the domestics in the house. I shrank from
any expressed sympathy or help. I removed
my gown, and bathed my head with cold
water until the bleeding was stanched. There
was only a small cut, but the wound had
severed the connection between the circum-
stances of my past and future time. Before
I dressed again I promised myself solemnly,
by good or ill help, to escape from the house
as soon as the slightest hope of freedom dawned
on my horizon. The rejected manuscript had
been a sword-thrust to my pride; my father's
tyranny was a strong-healing styptic.
CHAPTER III.
"A TWILIGHT IN THE SKY."
T is a merciful rule that wears each
day on to evening. The lover
happy with his beloved, may fool-
ishly wish for an eternity of joyful sensation;
but, to ordinary mortals, sad though the vigil
be, it is yet a relief from the weariness of
the day.
It was the early twilight of the spring
before I recovered enough energy to leave
the house for my usual solace in pain, a long
walk through the country lanes. Twice I
turned irresolute, an unaccustomed shrinking
to leave the shelter of what should have
been my home took hold of me, Shrugging
c 2
20
A tiAUGHTEB OP OtlB TIME,
my shoulders at my weakness, I trampled oil
intuition and hastened out of the doorway.
The night was a consolation. There shone
a clear green, blue sky, on which a white
crescent moon rested like a depicted boat
fixed by a painter's skill on an upheaving
breaker. Jupiter, bright with its fullest
radiance, graced the zenith, a cross-shaped
meteor shading its glory; Saturn, gloomy and
foreboding, a little nearer the west; and the
glowing, passionate, red-hearted Venus burned
below those planets of ambition and avarice.
Surely the heavens were motherly enough
to comfort a girl's troubled heart.
As I passed through the courtyard I called
to my favourite dog. He was sleepy,v and
wagged his tail in reluctant protest against
leaving the paradise of dreams he had entered.
I have always felt great interest in what are
falsely named the inferior animals, from the
early day on which the only living love I
saw looked on me out of the eyes of the
Skye terrier folded in my arms, to this even-
"A TWILIGHT IN THE SKY." 21
in^ of my life when I was, if it were possible,
more cheerless than that neglected little crea-
ture could have been, because more keenly
alive to pain, and craving more for sympa-
thetic joy than one is consciously capable of
suffering or desiring a step beyond infancy,
and I would not disturb the pleasure of my
friend.
I should have been happier had he been
my companion, and perhaps, so light are the
fatal touches which urge us into destined
paths, my life's course might have been changed
had my dog this night vouchsafed me his
society and care.
Tramp, tramp along the pleasant roads, hard
with a suspicion of spring frost, at every step
crushing down the heartache, up a steep, hilly
lane, where thick hollies threw their gnarled
roots out of the. red-soiled banks at each side,
yews and flat-boughed cedars, meeting and
seeming to interlace their branches overhead;
but the moon was not yet strong enough to
sketch the tracery on the path at my feet,
22 A DAUGHTER OF OUR 'TIME.
and the very hilly shadow of death my soul
desired was afforded to me here. At the top
of the hill the trees, sparser in number, were
deciduous, and I had light enough after the
sombreness of the Dark Lane, as we name
that shady ascent.
The gloom of Nature sometimes by simili-
tude and likeness cheers more than her glories
can ; or, rather, the contrast between gloom and
remembrance of beauty suggesting the bright-
ness of the ideal day-dawn which the night
preludes, effaces the blackness of despair, and
paints hope on the cleared canvas.
I walked on with lighter footsteps, fearing
nothing until I reached a tall gate, one of
whose stone pillars had afforded a pleasant
seat on many a summer evening, and where
I had meditated over the' feeling I had tried
to express in the rejected novel, and whence I
had pictured my heroine hastening to meet
friend and lover.
Life is a semi-stupor for months and years,
bvit there comes a time of full awakening.
"A TWILIGHT IN THE SKY." 23
Before I left the place where so many torpid
hours of my existence had slipped into the
past, the prologue of the paradisaical mystery
was spoken, and without conscious pain throe
my soul was born.
CHAPTER IV.
AWAKENING.
IFE without love is death in life. I
had in my father's house a middle-aged
Scotswoman, who had been my nurse,
for my human friend, and two dogs to give
unquestioning response of affection. Out of
doors the little children of the two or three
cottagers and the neighbouring farmers mostly
returned my smiles with answering brightness ;
and often my walks were cheered by the
company of these small villagers. "What within
the bounds of my possibility would I not have
given in those lonely days for one little child
as my own sole possession ! When I saw tramps
or gipsies drudging beneath the heavy burden
of poverty-stricken motherhood I envied them
AWAKENING.
25
their freedom, and the needed response to the
all-demanding instinct of helpless infancy. I
knew so little of life as not to know that
while there is absolute open-handedness with
Providence we have yet no unbought gift from
Nature, that love must pay a full price for love,
and the guerdon is always exacted to the very
last mite. I longed to have a treasure without
estimating its cost*.
As I passed from beneath the shadowy trees
a shuffling footstep sounded at my side, a rough
hand grasped my arm, and the starlight showed
me a miserable, wretched creature, whose claim
to manhood might be advanced, but could never
be made good.
His clothes had an unwholesome smell, his
coarse, unkempt hair pushed itself between
the brim and the side of his broken hat. To
think of such a being as human made one hate
the moment of one's own birth, if humanity
between oneself and such a depraved object
were to be named equality. The voice, abject
but threatening, was the tone you would expect
26 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
from uncleanliness; it was a defiling sound
which, you could never have softened to childish
or prayerful accents, but would always associate
with brutal threats, with villainous oaths, and,
worse than either, with obscene, ribald jesting.
My nerves were too highly strung, and I
was too unhappily careless of life to dread
injury from the man, but I felt his touch
pollution. What I should have done or how
I might have freed myself out of his power,
I do not know. I am convinced that had
the opportunity been given to me, I could
have wrested myself from him and compelled
his apologies, or his quick disappearance from
my sight.
I was not, however, to have the pleasure
of personal victory. A firmer hand than my
assailant's caught his shoulder, he was quickly
and suddenly thrown into the weeds and
stinging nettles on the bank at the roadside.
" Are you hurt ?" was asked of me in
soft accents.
Some new feeling stirred in me. I breathed
AWAKENING, 27
quickly, shook violently, and covering my face
with my hands, wished that the earth would
open and hide me. For the first time in my
knowledge of myself, I was compelled to con-
fess myself subject to a superior will, and my
trembling confusion humiliated me.
"Your nerves are excited. It is unsafe
for a woman of your age to walk unguarded
on these lonely roads at night. You will
allow me to see you to your home. As for
you," turning to the man who was rising,
groaning at every slow attempt at movement,
"you will not try to enforce an alms again."
I would gladly have refused the offered
arm, but I could not help myself. I could
only lean on its support. Withal the pain
this first acquaintance with womanly depend-
ence gave me life seemed to have widened
into a more extensive area in that short space
of time. Past, present, future evolved them-
selves on the tablets of my heart in that brief
interval. I felt it to be a recovered companion
who had essayed my defence. And the acute-
28 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
ness of my sensations tore down all veils of
womanly reserve. I could not so much as
lower my eyes from the questioning eyes
looking into mine.
It had been a pleasure ^ to lie wakeful in
my bed and people the darkness and solitude
of the night with imaginings, seeing old
plays act themselves before my closed eyelids,
or in the breaking twilight of the dawn,
figuring each shadowed piece of furniture into
monstrous proportion. This evening I was
a conscious mystery to myself. My hands
were neither parched nor icy, but my heart
was at fever-heat. I had no short, wakeful
moments in which to try to solve this new
problem of feeling, for scarcely had I laid my
head upon my pillow than a full sense of
restful security possessed me, and I slept a
dreamless sleep.
The morning had dawned bright as a poet's
spring day should be, when I was startled
with troubled nightmare, and, waking in fright,
heard that quick following knocks 011 my door
AWAKENING. 29
Were the sounds my half-active brain had
woven into the fabric of terror which disturbed
me.
It was the voice of Sophia, my nurse,
speaking:
" Quick, quick, Miss Elsie, open."
" What is it ?" I asked, standing bedside-
slippered and dressing-gowned at the opened
door. Sophia's voice had startled me, her
face added to my fright, and I stumbled
dizzily against the lintel.
"Don't be frightened. A poor man has
been nearly murdered just by the south gate
of the park. Your father has ordered that
he should be brought in here, and he lies on
the drawing-room sofa. You are to come
instantly and see if anything can be done
before the doctor comes."
My bath, filled with cold water, stood
behind a screen in the room. While I listened
I was splashing in the water, and fastening
my clothes with fingers that almost refused
to do their office* I need not tell what I feared.
30 A DAUGHTER OH OUR TlMH
I had always dreaded a calamity would over-
shadow my wffiole life, and I felt its darkness
deepening momentarily.
On the sofa where the day before I had
suffered the despondence of rejected literary
effort, a long, slender figure was stretched
whom I recognised as my newly-found friend.
His face was pallid, his closed eyelids were
shaded by purple circles, and from one jagged
rent just over the left temple, blood dripped
on the chintz of the cushion, and formed a
small pool on the floor; his left arm fell
helplessly at his side.
It was not a moment in which to lose
my self-control. To ask for cold water, a
sponge, and linen bandages, and, having washed
the wound, to try and stop the bleeding be-
fore the doctor's arrival, was more sign of
interest than, swooning could have been.
Whether my father's heart had relented
towards me I know not, if it were so, he took
a sufficiently disagreeable way of showing his
repentance. Turning to me before the three
AWAKENING, 31
women servants of the house, he said: "Works
of charity are more in accordance with womanly
duty than the vain attempt at a foolish literary
effort. Try your best to nurse this injured
man to health, and for a short time justify
yonr creation." Looking at Mrs. Woodhouse,
his housekeeper, he continued : " -All the doctor's
instructions are to be implicitly obeyed, your
young mistress has my order to take this
stranger's welfare under her own especial
charge."
Having so spoken he left us and fastened
himself in his own room.
There were no initials on the stranger's
linen. No English name was written in the
Hebrew Prayer-book, which was the one book
in his pocket; and through the long weeks
when the spring days lengthened into summer
lightness, while he wearily and languidly fought
an unconscious battle for life, he was known
to us simply as "the invalid,"
CHAPTER V.
"MINISTERS OF LOVE."
ND you are better ?" said Dr. Morten,
turning to the window, lifting the
blind, and letting the brightness of
the morning's sunshine into the bedroom.
The patient's eyes endured the sudden change
from shaded twilight to brightness without
blinking, and the doctor smiled his gratifica-
tion at that sign of returning health. " I
am better," replied a soft voice, "and I can
continue my journey. First you will explhin
to me where I am. This is not the chamber
I occupied in the inn."
Hidden behind the curtain at the bed-head,
I listened to the first conscious words my
"MINISTERS OF LOVE" 33
charge had spoken, and waited the surgeon's
answer, that I might hear farther.
" You must ask no questions. You have
had a serious illness, and you are spared, my
good fellow, to do some useful work yet."
And the kindly voice trembled a little with
joyful emotion, for, strange as it may seem,
and his is no unusual case, the constant sight
of death had not hardened Dr. Morten's heart
to accept it cheerfully as the result of his
own labour.
"Ask no questions?"
" Ask no questions. Lie still at rest, and
perhaps to-morrow I will tell you what you
wish to know."
"To-morrow you will tell me what I wish
to know ?"
"Here is your nurse," taking my hand and
leading me forward. "You will have confidence
in her skill, and await my morning's visit."
A searching look was fixed on my face, then
the invalid sighed gently and sadly and closed
his eyelids. I thought the lashes were wet,
D
34 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
and he seemed, as it were, in old Biblical
phrase, to turn his soul's face to the wall,
he was yet too weak to turn himself bodily
on his bed. I left the room to Dr. Morten,
and waited on the landing of the staircase
for his instructions for the day's service.
Shortly he joined me there.
" He is asleep, and much better," he said;
"in a few days he may be helped from his
bed to a couch. He will improve rapidly now,
but he will be unable to leave here yet, and
will require constant attention for some time
longer. But you look worn with watching.
The strain has been too heavy for you. Shall
I ask Mr. Langford to allow me to send a
professional nurse ?"
He spoke the last two words with a sar-
castic inflection. I had heard of his horror
of some female pretenders to surgery, and,
thanking him gratefully, I declined the pre-
sence of any stranger in the house, and he,
after expressing himself as more than satisfied
"MINISTERS OF LOVE." 35
with my skilful obedience, left me to my
work.
My patient required little, food at short
regular intervals and intermittent sleep made
up this day, as it had made so many uncon-
scious days of his.
But I was excited. For the first time
since his illness I had been assured of the
probability of his recovery, and all my readers
who have fought for a life in as close a conflict
as I seemed to have waged for this one, will
understand how the relief from suspense after
many days and nights of anxious watching so
unnerved me, that I could scarcely endure the
constraint I needed to put upon myself to
enable me to further observe the restrictions
of nursing. I was thankful when Sophia's
daily work being over, she came for a time.
to take my post, and sent me out of doors
for my usual tonic and sedative, an hour's
walking exercise.
It was difficult for me to quiet myself. By
d 2
36 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
the uneasiness of my forecasting of loss I knew
how strong an interest the case of my first
patient had become to me. The soft hay-
scented air, the wind rustling the leaves and
foretelling rain, the tones of men and girls in
the fields, the sound of creaking unoiled wheels,
the rattle of heavy harness and the whirr of
the mowing machine should have distracted my
brains from the painful result of thought I
wished to come at, but the pleasant odours
and sounds of country life only disturbed me.
It was twelve weeks only since the day on
which I received my rejected MS., and my
wish for fame acquired by writing, my artistic
desire of animating the creatures of my fancy,
were temporarily forgotten.
Since as an ambitious child I had prayed
a childish prayer for a good and great woman-
hood, the goal of my attainment had always
until now adorned my visionary future. I
was not of a self-examining nature, and I
might feel perplexed at the change, but I
"MINISTERS OF LOVE." 37
could not then, nor can I now, analyse each
feeling to its proper source.
I was at one and the same moment uneasy,
happy; foreboding, and joyfully expectant.
CHAPTER VI.
A PATRON OF GENIUS.
ITH the patient's time of convales-
cence, came our knowledge of his
name and place in the world. The
first wTas Benedict, or Baruch Halevi. He
was the son of a German Jewish Rabbi, and
before commencing fresh duties as a second
teacher in a Jewish school at Brighton, was
on a walking tour for a renewal of his health,
when he was struck down at the park gate.
Having given us this explanation of his cir-
cumstances frankly and thanked us for hospi-
tality he would have gone on his journey;
but it was to be otherwise.
Scholars have their weaknesses. My father,
confining himself to the seclusion of his own
A PATRON OF GENIUS.
39
study and his private collection of books, pur-
posed writing an attack on Renan's "Vie de
Jesus," from the critical side. Finding Halevi
to be a careful student of the Semitic lan-
guages, he saw his misfortune as an ordination
of the saints, and himself as a blind instru^
ment appointed in the hands of a skilful
craftsman to do a great work. I need not
tell you that my father believed himself the
skilful craftsman.
Halevi, who would have chosen to go
further and try his chance of some appoint-
ment among his own people—his place in the
school had been filled long before this—was
too grateful to deny my father's wish, and
begging only that no question of pecuniary
remuneration might rise between them, he
devoted himself to the careful perusal of the
copies of manuscripts which my father pos-
sessed, not however without first urging upon
him the absolute necessity of careful research
among the large libraries of the world.
My father, fancying that out of opposition
40 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
to him, I might treat his newly-chosen secretary
with disrespect, or fail in courteous attention
towards him, commanded that such hours as
were not required for his purpose should, if
Mr. Halevi desired, be spent in my sitting-
room, and arranged for the young man to
eat his meals in my company, I receiving
injunction to order the dietary of the table
in as strict accordance with the Mosaic rule
as my ignorance allowed.
The new arrangement was not agreeable to
me. If I had thought myself greatly to be
pitied when my whole time was at my own
disposal, and regarded my loneliness as an
occasional weariness, now that solitude was
no longer mine, like a foolish woman I tried
to look on the past with regret.
Nor was my mental discontent brightened
when my father determined to make me
useful in his great work, and requested Mr.
Halevi to teach me to write the Hebrew
characters, that my imitative faculties might
prove of benefit, saying before me to the
A PATRON OF GENIUS.
41
young man, "Women's natures combined the
mixed attributes of parrot and ape, and I
might be taught to make those gifts of mine
of some avail."
To my limited knowledge it was surprising
that a man professing a creed which entreats
and urges the mediatory prayers of a perfect
woman, should allow himself the expression
of contemptuous opinions respecting the sex of
the Madonna. My ignorance must excuse my
wonder. The rustic and the sage are both
puzzled with the marvellous, while the common-
place mediocrity can walk in undisturbed com-
placency amidst miracles as great a3 those
which gilded an apostolic age. My father
showed that ordinary anomaly, one whose
belief represents the higher side of character,
and whose! words and actions show the smaller
ingredients in the human composition.
The library is one of the best rooms of our
house, taking the whole length of the south
wing it has also the advantage of the full
height of the building, and a double row of
42 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
windows facing East and^est, throw cross lights
on worn, dusty volumes, and quaint, heavy
oaken furniture. The lights were toned to
shades of glowing colouring, the windows in
the clerestory, if one may use the word in an
unecclesiastical connection, were filled with me-
diseval stained glass brought from a ruined old
hall of the Longfords. And dawn and sunset
alternately brightened crimson, purple, and
orange to deeper glories or gloomy skies
darkened the chamber to weariness.
It was here that I was to receive my lessons
in Hebrew. Never before had I mentally ob-
jected to teacher or lesson. I had been dimly
aware that training in the acquisition of know-
ledge was a discipline fitting one for active
exertion in the world's arena, and had not
complained even if the exercise were some-
what arduous. My father's insult to my sex,
his sneer when he willed to avail himself of
my weak services disheartened me, but lately
I had lost the energy of resistance. I made
no protest against the new study, but had
A PATRON OF G-FN1PS. 43
to be summoned twice to my first lesson
before I followed Sophia to the library.
Two small old books were placed on the
end of the long table, two chairs were in
readiness for teacher and pupil. I found Mr.
Halevi looking over a soiled, mildewed parch-
ment manuscript. Whether it was his intention
to show me my insignificance by seeming careless
of my presence for some minutes, whether he
was really absorbed in his attempt to decipher
half-worn writing or nervous as I was myself,
I do not know, the result was the same.
I stood biting my lip in silence, and waiting
as a disciple should for his master's instruc-
tions. In about ten minutes he spoke :
"I beg your pardon, Be seated."
He sat down at my side, opened the
Hebrew primer, and bade me name the letters
after his pronunciation. I stammered and
mumbled over the sounds. With great
patience he repeated the letters again and
again. I was mortified at my own stupidity.
The square characters, the left to right read-
U A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
ing were all puzzling, but I could not voice
the gutturals. He taught me as one teaches
and speaks to a child drawing comparisons
between certain letters and familiar objects.
Annoyed a.t what seemed a low estimate of
my intelligence I dared not resent it.
My new work should have been a joy.
When looking backward on Elizabethan times
trying to reconstruct that nearer past had
pleased me, how much more should the further
retrospect into earlier records of the world's
story have delighted my fancy, half blinded
by the mists of ages though the eyes might
be ? Mr. Halevi irritated me. My father's
scholarly, womanish jealousy of the claims of
women showed itself painfully, but my new
teacher's manner, which I felt to express alter-
nately a haughty condescension and an interest
closer than I wished to grant to one of his
sex, puzzled and excited me, until I could
scarcely study the square Semitic letters.
Meanwhile the alphabet, with the explanations
I found in old encyclopaedias of the origin of
A PATBON OF GFNIUS. 45
this or that early sign of thought, led to wide
enough area for any imaginative student to
walk upon. Had I been fortunate enough to
have had for guide in that literary pilgrimage
some man of advanced years, I might have
rivalled those women whom the world accredits
with great learning. As it' is I am assured
that Heloise had acquired Hebrew before she
saw Abelard.
My father seemed happier than ever I
had known him. To write a page of his
book with Mr. Halevi's help, to forward it to
his printer, to correct his proofs, then to have
these portions clearly and beautifully printed
on vellum paper, to send them to great men
of his own communion and receive their gene-
rally flattering comments, uplifted him greatly.
Never had I felt my tolerance so tried before.
He knew that I did not sympathise in his
manner of working if I said no words to that
effect, and with the weakness of a literary man
who writes from vanity he would bring each ful-
some letter and lay it on the desk before my eyes.
46 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
I said great men of his communion flattered
him, hut the greatest men who were truly
students as much as men of the world, re-
served their judgments, corrected historical
errors, or dissented from his conclusions on
historical facts, and in this way gained his
ill opinion, and weakened his faith in the
present infallibility of the priesthood.
Poor man ! Had not my mother's shadow
eclipsed his need, I might now through pity
have grown to feel an affection for him.
You will have misunderstood these pencilled
hints of his character if you judge constancy
of liking one of his attributes. He had no
friend and a friendless man of position has only
himself to blame for that negation. Isolated
by his own will, closed within himself, no other
mortal could have built as strong a prison wall
for him as that within which he had entrenched
himself. He was ambitious, talented; some
ingredient of success was wanting. I think
he failed from lack of imaginative power of
feeling with his brethren. Like Coleridge's
A PATRON OF GENIUS.
47
Ancient Mariner after the murder of the
albatross, he suffered a self-inflicted torture.
Wilfully turning his face from all external
goodness, he looked inwardly, and seeing on
the prison walls graffiti of selfish horrors, he
read other men's natures from his own, and
grew daily more and more the suspicious
misanthrope, whose hatred of his fellows arises
from self-knowledge. I cannot trace the source
of his religious sentiment; in its expression it
seemed to me a secondary principle, best to
be explained in this formula, " Myself and my
Church." Perhaps in this respect he was not
alone.
Mr. Halevi served his immediate purpose,
or his abilities would more quickly have roused
my father's jealous dislike. Besides, this young
man must early have endured a sharp discipline
in the school of life, for naturally haughty to
a fault, he yet considered no service menial,
and while he compromised no principle by
conformity to what he held false dogma, he
only expressed adverse belief in reply to actual
48 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
questioning. He would have made a good
Jesuit, and safely crossed the naked sword
path leading to the Mussulman's paradise. He
did this without bowing to expediency; he had
simply gained by inheritance, or personal
acquirement, the treasure of silence, and he
used it to good purpose in my father's com-
pany. My father enjoyed the pleasure of
patronising one whose abilities and learning
were greatly in advance of those of ordinary
men. Had it pleased destiny to will that
Mr. Longford should have chosen to figure
before posterity as the patron of genius, instead
of genius at first hand, the connection between
them might have been longer lived, for the
young man, who spoke at times as though he
valued his life at little cost, felt a strong
gratitude to the host whom he chose to con-
sider its preserver.
CHAPTER VII.
THRALDOM.
R. HALEVI bestowed few words on
me, and I now endured his company
in my room with more patience than
a few weeks ago I could have believed myself
capable of. I even amused myself with my
music in his presence. I had by this time
mastered the Hebrew alphabet and the vowel
points with their traditional names, and was
now working at a paradigm of the different
conjugations. My lessons finished, my teacher
gave little attention to me, seeming to attach
as slight interest to my existence as the barest
.courtesy demanded.
This evening I sat at the old piano, throwing
pay soul into my fingers, asking myself mean-
E
50 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
while, what should I have been without the
mechanical art of my playing ?
With thankfulness to the great master I had
expressed the tragical emotions born of my sense
of lonely uselessness in the " Moonlight Sonata,"
had seen the sights the moon sees represented
in that weird composition; dwelling for my
own interest on the page I imagine to represent
an unfortunate lover drowning himself in a lake,
whose moonlit waters reflect the shimmering
lights of the ballroom, where his faithless
mistress waltzes encircled by the arm of his
favoured rival.
The Waldstein suited my present mood
best, and I passed on to that storm piece.
The crash of pine forests, the howling of
winds, shipwrecks at sea, and the terrible
fantasy of a witches' sabbath, with the sound
of a chorale echoing in the heart of one of
the company who is still possessed of such a
troublesome inmate, were all in unison with
my feeling.
The chant softened me. I passed on to
THRALDOM. 51
the sadness of disappointed aspiration the
nineteenth of the Lieder ohne Worte sings.
I had scarcely played through the first page,
when Mr. Halevi threw down his book on
the table, and muttering : " This is no music
for a man to listen to," hastened out of the
room.
And I, I confess my folly, closed the piano
softly, extinguished the lights, and, taking the
chair he had left beside the hearth, sat biting
my lips, and meditating many impracticable
ways of escape from my painful position. I
owed duties where I was, and I had no rights
accorded in return. Love was not paid for
service. Was it a wondef that I should wish
to relieve my shoulders of the yoke ?
My Hebrew for the next day had been
well prepared but I went into my lesson
against my will. I should have preferred, I
thought, henceforward to avoid sight and
thought of Mr. Halevi, were such avoidance
possible. Never before had any study caused
me uneasiness as this did. vet never before
E 2
52 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
had any study yielded itself so easily to my
approach.
My heart failed me when, having knocked
at the library door, I waited for the summons
to enter. What had changed me so pitifully
I knew not. My self-composure had not
publicly deserted me in emergency before. I
had prided myself on courage to encounter
the worst vicissitudes. My solitary life I
fancied to have strengthened me: 3^et it left
me undefended with the smaller weapons a
civilised woman needs to complete the full
panoply of her armour.
I found Mr. Halevi seated at the table,
seated myself, and began to recite the Hebrew
of the other day's lesson. I fancied that I was
acquiring a correct Sephardic pronunciation,
but was told that my sounds were harsh and
barbarous as the most uncultured German could
utter them. I flushed up to my hair, and my
throat and neck burned. Hard work had with
my other masters brought me commendation,
now I was to-day right, to-morrow all at fault.
THRALDOM.
53
Looking up at Mr. Halevi, I found his eyes
fixed on me with what showed as the dawning
of new feeling; they did not look unkindly, if
his words were harsh and his voice constrained
as, pointing to the grammar, he bade me
" Go on ! "
The lesson over, he crossed the room, and,
with the table between us, looked at me until
I lifted my eyes to him, and stood silently for
a short time. What I saw in the depths of
his eyes I shall not say. It was a strange
picture, thrilling my heart and holding me
spellbound, though as quickly as I could I left
the room. In those few minutes I had lost
and gained. Would the gain ever counter-
balance the loss?
I stayed in my bed-room the rest of the
day. I was too much troubled and excited
to eat. A woman of the world might have
been able to go down and sit at meals opposite
to Mr. Halevi. I was only a siinple, foolish girl,
beginning to know her own folly.
Perhaps my teacher's nerves were not perfect
54 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
either. For the first time he irritated my
father's sensitive vanity, either by objecting
to his reading of an old manuscript or placing
a different meaning on hieroglyphics. It was
my father's habit when annoyed to sit and
brood over the offence he had received until
it took full possession of his understanding
and the culprit became a being capable of
the greatest enormities. By this encouraged
suspicion he had grown to believe my mother
guilty of all the crimes, and they were not
few, of which he had accused her, and saw
in me a wretch inheriting vice, and only want-
ing circumstance to develop into a perfect
Messalina. This young fellow, who had had
the impertinence to differ from his senior on
a philological question, was a miscreant unfit
to be trusted with a man's purse or a woman's
honour.
He took reprisals after a sufficiently painful
manner.
The night had closed in. . I was without
light and food. They had brought me tea,
THRALDOM. 55
but I did not drink it, though my throat
felt parched. I could not think. I sat with
clasped hands and wondered.
All at once I heard my father's study-door
violently opened, and his voice shouting my
name with loud and angry emphasis, giving
me also an unusual title:
" Elsie ! my daughter, Elsie ! "
I waited a moment before I left my chamber,
and was only in time to see him entering
the drawing-room with hurried angry gestures.
I ran downstairs, and, unseen by him, saw
the insolence his manner showed and heard
the contempt his voice denoted.
Mr. Halevi, who had been, alone in the
room, had risen to his feet, and was looking
at my father with an expression showing
very mixed feelings when I reached the
doorway.
Let me do my father justice. I believe he
was too blinded by passion to be in reality
aware of my presence.
Advancing into the room he shouted :
56 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" Where is my daughter % Where is my
daughter ?"
Mr. Halevi's voice trembled as he replied:
"Miss Longford is not here."
" Not here ! You have stolen her affections,
and dare to hide her from me."
And with excited gestures he looked be-
hind chairs and under tables for me.
I only heard Mr. Halevi's composed answer,
"Mr. Longford, this is not convenient," before
I hurried quietly back to my own room and
closed myself in its darkness again. I did not
know if he also was unaware of my presence.
CHAPTER VIII.
ESCAPE.
ITERARY failure had been hard to
bear: the blow my father struck me
on that unfortunate day of unsuccess
stunned my heart. Those pains were nameless
in comparison with this humiliation.
I was naturally angrily unwilling to believe
that my father's words were a truthful state-
ment. I wanted fresh scenes and new circum-
stances, that was all. I was a woman, and
must see the world. Supineness was not a
fault of mine. Circumstances making a plan
of action necessary, I began to carry it into
purpose.
Waiting until the stillness of the house
58 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
assured me that its other inmates were asleep,
I lighted a taper, and began my preparations
for leaving its shelter. To put up a change
of linen in a hand-bag, to gather together one
or two trinkets, and to place most of my
small stock of money in the bosom of my gown,
were such trifles that they were quickly accom-
plished. On my dressing-table lay two books,
worn with much reading. One was my mother's
New Testament, with the Scottish metrical
version of the Psalms at the end of the book;
the other a small copy of Thomas a Kempis.
These I must not forget. I took them in my
hand. The " Imitation of Christ" slipped out
of my grasp and fell upon the floor. I lifted
it up and superstitiously looked where the
crumpled leaves showed it to have opened.
It was on the hundred and fortieth page.
The paper was marked with what seemed old
tear stains, and this sentence margin-lined :
" Let not therefore strange phantasms that
possess thee against thy will, of whatever they
are born, disturb the quiet of the soul; main-
ESCAPE.
59
tain only a firm and pure intention towards
God, and all will be well."
I blew out the taper and sat to think in
the darkness. My intellectual faculties were
recovering their assertion. This book, written
for saints who, seeking in the quiet of the
cloister a place of holy meditation, were yet
disturbed there by vain desires, spoke in this
paragraph an ordinary human experience. That
my mother had known this pain the lined
margin showed. I, as a human being, must
expect to feel the sufferings of the common
lot, nor did I wish to attempt avoidance of
an inevitable burden. The prospect of relief
was seen in the distance. My father was
mistaken, it was a phantasm not a passion,
that possessed me.
Passion or phantasm, I would not remain
to be uselessly troubled with the sight of the
bodily presence enclosing its influence. I knew
not that the authority overruling me was
quite independent of personal nearness.
I had two farewells to say which might be
60 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
very painful. My dogs would miss me. One
of them, a melancholy-looking white mongrel,
had sought5 refuge in the courtyard from the
severe cold of the last winter and being cared
for, had refused to leave us, the other was
old and more careless of affection than was
the poor Tiberius as I had named the stranger,
but I had bemoaned my childish sorrows in
his sympathising ear.
Old Hector seemed to care little for the
kisses I gave him. Tiberius, with the quicker
intelligence of half-breeds, knew I was troubled
and licked my cheek in response. Do you
blame me that I could not leave him ? Taking
him in my arms I put his forepaws round
my neck, and with a dog for my companion
I went out of the gateway representing protection
and bondage.
The roads were muddy and difficult to
walk upon, because of heavy rains. Too glad
to fancy I was making my escape from p^in,
I cared not that my feet slipped. The watery
moon was first partly obscured by dark clouds,
ESCAPE.
61
next a silver border fringed the greenness pre-
luding its fuller radiance, then the sky was
flooded with light, the winds driving the
darkness to distant horizons.
I walked through the mire as quickly as
I could, but the dog and my bag together
tired me, Tiberius objecting to soil his feet.
In one of the fields to my right hand a herd
of Highland cattle were pasturing on the
damp grass. Three of these beasts, with some
impulse of curiosity, drew near to the wall
to look at us, the dog shrinking close to my
breast in his fear of them. Seeing him harm-
less they gazed with slow attention at me,
their expressive eyes looking such interest
that I went up and stroked the long hair on
their faces, a black, a brown, and a gray cow,
and my dog, I thought, showing most concren
in my action.
It was now two o'clock in the morning. I
had eaten nothing since breakfast the day
before. I was near the railway-station whence
I proposed taking the train to London, when
62 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
fatigue overpowered me, and sitting on a moss-
covered stone under a leafless ash by the way-
side I, as I fancied, fell asleep. But I was
not asleep though my bodily faculties were
numbed. The creaking of the boughs, the
pulsations of the dog's heart, the breathing of
the cattle I had passed, all made part of my
sensation, and I was resting. My eyes were
firmly closed my hands and feet were power-
less yet I was cognisant of the surroundings.
A sound of wheels, the stopping of a
vehicle, a shout in a kindly voice added them-
selves to the other sounds. A grasping of my
hands, a forcing open of my mouth and brandy
poured down my throat, gave back to me the
power of sight, movement, and speech. Open-
ing my eyes with some difficulty I saw a
red-bearded face looking into mine.
" Lassie, for I kenna whether ye be maiden,
wife, or mither, how cam ye to faint on the
road ?" was the natural question of the man
who was watching me.
Without going into the casuistical question
ESCAPE. 63
whether untruth and withholding of truth be
pardonable under certain circumstances, one
may be permitted' to say that it is well if
one have an instinctive sense of trustworthy
ness or treachery in one's neighbours. I felt
at once that my questioner was to be relied
upon, as far as the need of confidence went,
and I replied:
"A disagreement with my father has driven
me from his house. I was walking to the
station, when I grew tired, sat down, and fell
asleep."
" I would ca' your sleep a swoon, lassie.
Get up in the gig beside me an' I'll see ye
at the station."
He helped me to mount to the vacant seat
in the conveyance, and taking his own place,
drove quickly forward. I saw him to be un-
acquainted with the country, for he passed the
end of the lane leading to Straiton, where I
had purposed taking the train, and drove for-
ward to the large market town of Desdale,
eight miles from my home.
64 A DAUGHTER OF -OUR TIME.
The horse was spirited, and went too quickly
to allow of talking. We were ascending the
hill leading into the town when my com-
panion told me that he was a Scotch drover
going down to Barnet on business respecting
a herd of cattle he had sent there, asked me
if London were my destination, and very deli-
cately inquired if in my hurry I had brought
sufficient money for my fare and my expenses
until I reached the friends at my journey's
end. He looked surprised when I told him
I had money and no friends.
"An' whaur will ye gang in London,
lassie ?"
"To an hotel."
He took out a thick leather pocket-book,
tore out one of the pages, and wrote a few
lines on it.
" Here's the address of the hoose where I
put up, give this to the mistress, she's a freen
o' my ain, an' she will look to you."
I thanked him gratefully. By this time
we were at the station. He took my ticket,
ESCAPE.
65
and one for ray dog, saw us into a compart-
ment, said a word or two to the guard, whom
he feed, had the carriage-door locked upon
us, and standing at a little distance, watched
the train out of the station. We were just
outside when I burst into a fit of weeping,
and cried myself into a natural sleep.
v
CHAPTER IX.
FATE SMILES.
inn to which my new-found friend
had directed me was in a quiet
street. It was too early in the
morning for the hostess to be out of her
room when I reached the house. I had washed,
had breakfast, and was sitting beside a com-
fortable fire in a small room, when, in answer
to my request for her presence, she came to
me. I found her to be a Scotchwoman of an
old school, a tall, distinguished-looking woman
of seventy years at least. Her black cash-
mere gown was without trimming, a white
crape shawl was knotted Marie Antoinette
fashion across her bosom, and her black hair
EATE SMILES. 67
and. pallid face were surrounded with the dead
white of the conventional widow's cap.
Of course, I rose when she entered my
room, and placed a chair for her. The civility
pleased her, judging from the smile which
lighted the gravity of her face. I handed her
the torn slip of paper; she looked at it, and
then at me.
"Are you a frien' of John M'Roberts?"
X had not so much as known his name before.
" He has befriended me."
"And he recommends you to my charge.
What is there I can do for you ?"
" I wish to stay here for a time, until I
find suitable lodgings. I have some money,
but have come to London to find employment."
She laughed. " I'm no feared about the
money nor "
She stopped, I supposed, in embarrassment,
not liking to ask what employment I wished,
and I, scarcely caring to say to her that my
purpose was to obtain a minor place at a
theatre, stammered while I said :
v 2
68 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" I think of acting for a living."
" Will your frien's like that ?"
" I have none."
"You're surely no a stage-struck lassie wha
leaves a' for a fancy ?"
I shook my head. "That is more than I
can say."
" Well, we will leave it. You will have
some plans. As far as it is just and right
I shall help any one sent to me by John
M'Roberts. You shall tell me as much and
as little as you choose. Rest the day. You
dinna look strong; you have been travelling
a' nicht. Come into my room and sit there."
But to rest, even for a day, in uncertainty
was beyond my powers. I must put my faith
to the touch, and win employment or know
of failure quickly.
" I wish to see Mr. Went worth of the
Cosmopolite Theatre, this morning. Is it far
from here ? Can I find my way there alone ?
If I cannot find a place with him, then I will
rest, and think what I must do next,"
FATE SMILES.
69
" Ane o' the actors from the Cosmopolite
comes here to lunch, or dine, in the middle
of the day; I will speak with him. Or, if
ye will gang alane ane o' the lasses-shall see
you to the stage door, an' maybe ye'll tak'
carfu' note o' the way ye maun return."
The last offer pleased me best, for if, as
was most probable, I was an unsuccessful
applicant for work, I preferred swallowing the
lump in my throat, which would rise at rejec-
tion, unseen. At a quarter before noon the
maidservant knocked at my room door. I
was ready, and we went together to the
stage entrance of the theatre, where she left
me.
I had read of the difference between a
theatre seen at night by the blaze of gas and
filled with an appreciative audience, and the
same building by daylight with a hard sun
peering into every dingy corner, and showing
the gray dust showers falling upon seats and
floor. I confess that, although I had dramatic
theories of my own, I had never been within
70 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
a theatre before, and could make no comparison
for my own benefit.
The door was half open, I entered, and
seeing no one to reply to questions, pursued
my way along stone passages and up steps
slightly revolting to my country sense of clean-
liness until a door to my right hand, with
Mr. Wentworth's name painted in white letters
on a deep green ground, attracted my notice.
I knocked and waited a response. Fortune
had favoured me so far. I had met no re-
pulsing official, and with the temerity of a
nervous woman was intrusively pushing myself
into the presence of the great man I wished
to see. A quick, clear, decisive tone bade me
"Come in." I fancied its tones represented
impatient disappointment. I entered. A tall,
black-haired man was leaning his elbows on
the mantelpiece and resting his forehead on
his clasped fingers. He did not turn when I
went in, but spoke sharply :
"Then you have come."
FATE SMILES. 71
I looked round the room in some amazement.
Bookshelves filled with well-bound volumes, a
library table littered with manuscripts in the
centre of the room, large mirrors, two or three
heavy black-oak chairs, and a folding screen
half hiding an open doorway, were the objects
I noticed before I could reply.
" I beg pardon; may I speak with Mr,
Wentworth ?"
The man at the hearth started visibly,
turned quickly, said, "I am Mr. Wentworth,"
and looked the question he was too polite to
put in words.
" Can you give me a small place on the
boards of the theatre ? I am willing to begin
at the lowest step to study."
. His eyes fell on the cloak I wore; it was
lined with Russian sable: it had been my
mother's.
"Be seated." And he placed a chair in a
full light for me and sat down opposite, " Have
you any stage experience ?"
72 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
"Not any."
" And do you know that our business needs
as laborious an apprenticeship as any craft
can ?"
" I know that I am rather old, but I could
work for art's sake, and I must earn my own
living."
He looked closely at me. I watched my
chances in his face. He had aquiline features,
and a broad imaginative forehead; his eyes
were dreamy, but not without quickness of
vision. His scrutiny had no offence in it,
and I met it firmly.
" Does some family trouble lead you to
think of the stage as a means of livelihood ?"
" I have had a quarrel with my father; but
it is more want of sympathy than discord that
has led me from home."
"Do you know what the life of an actress
means ?"
" Hard work, insult, undeserved obloquy,
and a sense of art triumphing over difficulties,"
FATE SMILES. 73
His eyes brightened.
" Have you a good verbal memory ? Have
you made any studies of Shakespearean character?
Can you speak out your ideal ?"
« Very partially." He laughed.
" Good! Loose your cloak, remove your
gloves, walk across the room, and speak some-
thing."
At that moment I could only remember
Ophelia's answer to Laertes' advice respecting
Hamlet. A personal feeling lent itself to
my short identification with that unfortunate
heroine, and I had the brief satisfaction of
forgetting myself in the character.
" That is not bad. Do you know that in
Ophelia one has perhaps the most difficult
of Shakespeare's women to portray ? Her
shadowy nature, her weakness and strength,
her madness, need inspiration to show their
effect. As it happens, I want an actress
for a minor part to-night. You are quite
untrained. Can I depend on you doing
74 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
your best and not being nerve-struck by an
audience ?"
"I will answer for it that I try to do
well."
"You must do well."
A quarrel among the company, resulting
in the second actress breaking her engagement
and leaving the Cosmopolite without notice,
she, trusting to Mr. Went worth's well-known
generosity not to claim the penalty he could
claim for her breach of trust, had placed him
in the difficulty which opened my access to
the stage. An early English drama, written
by a celebrated poet, was advertised for pro-
duction this evening; scions of royalty were
expected, and Miss Granton, as the delinquent
was named, had timed her spiteful vengeance
well.
"A rehearsal is arranged in half-an-hour.
Here is the play. You are to be serving-woman
to a nobler queen than Cleopatra, and to die
of grief at her heart-break. Look at the play.
FATE SMILES.
75
Stay, I will mark your character. Ebba is
your name. And for a stage name how shall
I advertise you ? "
" My own name, which I shall use no longer,
is Ellice Mary Longford."
" Suppose you are known to fame as Clare
Gordon ?"
" Clare Gordon will serve as well as any
pseudonym."
" Right. I will bring your Queen Etheldreda
to speak with you, to discuss details, and to
teach you the action of your part. Perhaps it
is only right for me to ask if you have
thoroughly considered this step of yours ?"
" I have considered it."
Mr. Went worth left me alone for a time,
and I read over the few words of the play
it fell to me to speak. A sketch of the plot
was printed on the title page. My success
depended greatly on the Queen whose attendant
I was to be. When I saw my mistress I was
assured of doing my utmost to credit her service.
76 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
Miss Norton spoke kindly to me, gave me
several stage directions, discussed the dress I
must wear, bade me not speak of my inexperience
to the other members of the company, and
ushered me on the stage for my first rehearsal,
CHAPTER X.
I AM A SUCCESS.
S I sit writing of Margaret Norton I
wonder that tears do not blot the
letters my pen forms. When I think
of her goodness, her genius, her misfortunes,
the only consolation I feel for her early death,
knowing as I know the sadness of her story
and her- heroic efforts to bring pleasure to others
out of her own sorrow, is the hope of future
recompense for pain and the certainty of rest.
Of all the shadowy phantoms standing out
on the misty background of the past, hers is
the most beautiful. She is imprinted in my
remembrance as I saw her first. A symmetrical,
black-gowned figure, with bordering of soft
lace caressing her graceful neck and shapely
78 A DAUGHTER OE OUR TIME.
hands; thick, rippling chestnut hair growing
low on a broad forehead, arched eyebrows well
apart, long lashes veiling dark gray eyes of
unusual size and expressiveness; well-formed
features, the massiveness of jaw and chin, so
requisite for good utterance, the only drawback
to a perfectly artistic face, and a complexion
whose clear transparency and rose flush were
only too ominous.
We each carry our atmospheres with US,
and others are quickly aware of their maleficent
or healthful influences. She diffused an air
of ideal goodness by her presence. To know
her was to feel worthy of knowledge.
The rehearsal was lengthy, and it was late
in the afternoon when I returned to my inn,
when I found Mrs. Pagan, my landlady, uneasy
about my prolonged absence. I did not wait
for questioning.
" I am successful. I am to act to-night
at the Cosmopolite," I said.
She lifted her eyebrows.
" Oh, lassie I An' your frien's ?"
I AM A SUCCESS.
79
Excitement had temporarily vanquished my
sadness, now pain reasserted itself, or rather
a depression, which was worse than pain. I
laughed bitterly.
"Oh, friends! I have none save you, Mr.
M'Roberts, the actors and actresses."
Mrs. Pagan's eyes filled.
" Your mither ?" It was the word I needed
to confirm my courage.
" Dead, when I was a child." She laid her
hand gently on my shoulder.
" You shall be my bairn. I am a lanely
auld body. Stay with me ; you are too bonnie
to act at the theatre."
I could not draw myself to my full height,
or withdraw from the old woman's kindly touch,
though her suggestion made me shudder.
" My art must be my life. There is no other
life for me."
" Oh, you are young; things aye change.
Consider what you do."
"The time for consideration is over, if I
wished to have time* and I don't wish. I
80 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
could not refuse to fulfil a promise, and a
promise given to those who have befriended
me."
"You have fasted over long. Come and
eat with me. If it must be, I will make
arrangements for some one to bring you hame.
I think I will take you and wait for you mysel'
the nicht."
"That would be very kind." I lifted the
wrinkled, withered right hand lying on my
shoulder in my own right hand, and kissed
it tenderly. The benevolence of strangers was
enough to break my heart, but my eyes were
dry and tearless.
In spite of all Mr. Went worth's study it
was probable that our dress would be an
anachronistic compromise. This drama was to
be a beautiful as well as a realistic spectacle,
and what is known of early English costume
is not too graceful in modern eyes. Our
gowns, as emblematic of purity—for my queen
and myself were both to die grief-stricken by
an unmerited stain cast upon her honour—»
I AM A SUOOESS. 81
should have been of white samite, if one only
knew of a nineteenth-century loom which
could weave that Arthurian material. As the
best imitation we had dresses of fine white
cashmere, Etheldreda's plentifully embroidered
with gold, her short gold-fringed overcloak
being fastened at the throat with a brooch
copied from an early medal. My gown was
simply trimmed with silver braid, and my
cloak clasped on the right shoulder with a
silver buckle. Our shoes, of white undressed
kid, were seamless, stitched on the feet up
the back.
Had I ever foreseen myself in my present
position I should probably have imagined my
nerves vibrating with the excitement of facing
an audience for the first time. It was not so.
My nerves were tranquil in the desolation I
suffered. Young as I was, I had yet wisdom
enough to be aware that patient, long-con-
tinued work was the best, • if not the only,
remedy for my disease.
I did my best to obey the instruction I
G
82 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
had received and to make my acting faithful,
as far as ifc might be, to what I fancied to
be the dramatist's creation, and I had my
share of reward. The drama was a success.
The theatre resounded with cheers and cries,
first for the author, who critical and grave
as an owl had been seated in a stage-box
watching the performance of his work; next
for the King and Queen, then a loud and
continuous shout for Ebba brought me for-
ward with Mr. Went worth and Miss Norton
to receive thanks and plaudits, which were a
mockery to me.
Afterwards, in the green room, the poet
who had written the play courteously thanked
the actors for its reception. After speaking to
the others as a body, and aside a few minutes
to Mr. Wentworth and Miss Norton, he came
forward and specially thanked me for my
impersonation of his idea. I had not words
wherewith to disclaim the undue praise. I
murmured some acknowledgment, and after-
I AM A SUCCESS.
83
wards learned that the great man had spoken
highly of my modest maidenhood.
I was very tired when I lay down to sleep
in the bedroom my hostess's kindness had
arranged for me. A bright fire burned in the
grate, a door opened on a little bath-room where
I had had the warm bath she directed, and the
comfort and order of the place might, in my
present fatigue, have secured me a good night's
sleep. How strange the events of the past
night and day! Twenty-four hours ago I was
in my father's house, waiting for the time in
which to escape from what I felt captivity.
Now over a hundred miles of physical distance,
separated me from that place; and I had erected
an indefensible barrier between my parent and
myself. His ideas of women, his religious
conventionality, I knew would lead him to
disown a daughter who outraged what he
believed feminine propriety by taking to the
stage as a living. So far it was good. My
father had no place in my heart. But though
g 2
84 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
the change might' be for the better, it was a
change, and one fancies that death itself, with
the entrance into the new life we hope for,
is not without regret of loss. Lying at rest
bodily, luxuriously fatigued, I smiled at the
transitions of fate in the past few hours. It
was a fairy tale ; it was a romance ; more, it
was life itself,
Yet the sense of humiliation was the most
overpowering feeling I knew. To be aware
that one person strongly influenced one's
thought, and to hear that person loudly ac-
cused of having stolen one's affection, was a
shame to a woman who was thus loudly
charged with displaying the weakness of the
sex.
CHAPTER XI.
MARGARET.
WAS to spend the afternoon and
evening of my first London Sunday
with Miss Norton. I rose in moderate
time and attended service at one of the old
City churches. The congregation of worshippers
was small, the service bare and heartless. The
prayers were the old prayers which had ex-
pressed the needs of generations of aching
hearts, though the heavy, unventilated air of
the building seemed full of cries which had
risen no higher than the ceiling, and un-
answered, settled down to form a spiritual
miasma for future suppliants.
A week ago I had heard the Liturgy intoned
86 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
by a white-surpliced village choir, sitting in
a country sanctuary had watched the leaves
dropping slowly from the trees on the turf-
covered graves beneath, and walked homeward
through leaf-strewn lanes. Henceforward my
old place would know me no more for ever.
Cut adrift from all old moorings, I had yet
a possible anchorage. Art was the haven I
wished to reach, and was to be my life's
harbour.
Margaret Norton had pleasant lodgings in
an old house in a Western suburb. I found
her alone in her drawing-room. Coming to
meet me at the door she took my hand in
hers, kissed me on both cheeks in greeting,
loosed my cloak, led me to the fire, and seated
me in a soft, low chair on the hearth.
" What am I to call you ?" she asked,
" Clare, or Miss Cordon ?"
" No; you shall call me my own name
when you speak to me, if you please. Let
me be Elsie to you, as I was to my mother."
She covered her face with her hands.
MARGARET.
87
"You were Elsie to your mother. Then
she is dead ? "
" Years ago."
She lowered her hands.
" Let me tell you my history as far as I
know it. I am a married woman separated
from my husband. I don't wish to speak
hardly of any one, and I won't blame him ;
but I have one little girl eight years old,
her father has the charge of the child, and
I never see her."
I sat down on the rug beside her in silence,
and clasped her hands in mine. I was learning
that my troubles were only an infinitesimal
portion of the burden of humanity.
"You are good to feel for me." She
sighed wearily, but soon recovered hers.elf.
" I am childish and unkind to trouble you
with my sorrow. I want to talk to you of
yourself. Don't be troubled about me. The
child is in the hands of the Almighty. I can
bear all until the end comes, and it will not
be very long."
88 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" I hope not."
" Don't you see ?"
She pushed back the sleeve from her wrist,
and I saw that her arms were almost fleshless.
" You will grow strong again."
"Not in this world."
For the first time I noticed the shortness
of her breathing as she spoke.
"You have come just by some strange
fortune at the moment when I wished for
some one to train in my place. Mr. Went-
worth has been too good to me to be allowed
to suffer by my death, and it will be im-
possible for me to act much longer, unless
I wish to shock an audience by dying on the
stage."
" What do the doctors say to you ?"
" Everything that doctors could clo for one
they have done for me. They can't cure
broken hearts, thank God! If they could one's
sufferings would seem endless. You know
the papers speak favourably of the promise of
your acting ?"
MARGARET. 89
"No; I didn't know that."
" It is so. Arc you determined to make
art your life ? "
" Absolutely determined."
" Then Mr. Wentworth is right. The
burning in your eyes means genius and not
disappointed passion."
My face flushed.
"Don't be angry. You choose well, if it
is so. Perhaps an artist's life is the best life
for a woman. I might still have had a future
before me had I been as wise as you are."
I was not untruthful. I dared not lay
claim to that which was not mine.
" I have had a painful experience, but I
shall conquer it by hard work." '
She caressed my hand with hers. " Some
painful experiences conquer the women who
endure them."
"My experience shall not be triumphant.
I will learn of it how to touch an audience."
" Brave girl! "
"You are sarcastic."
90 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" No; but perhaps you are a little fool-
hardy. It is of no use to be epigrammatic.
Mr. Wentworth is coming to dine with us.
He will bring his wife, and we shall have a
pleasant evening I hope. Now about your
plans for a home."
" I am to stay with Mrs. Pagan. She has
placed a large attic, with a long mirror in it,
at my disposal. She is very good to me, and
I am comfortable with her."
" That is well. Shall we go out before
dinner, or would you prefer to talk ?"
" I would rather talk to you."
I thought myself a fantastic figure, as I
looked at myself in Margaret's looking-glass.
A tall girl, whose white face, lighted by dark
gray eyes and shaded by closely-cut curling
black hair, looked over gloomy draperies, I
had bought myself a gown since I came to
London, and had chosen it at a mourning
warehouse. Art has sisterhoods as well as
religion, and I, vowed to serve that goddess,
would wear garments showing my consecration.
MARGARET.
91
At the same time I did not think I looked
ugly; nor. should I have liked to be an ugly
woman, though genius had filled the room of the
lacking beauty.
" You are a charming Puritan," my friend
said, looking over my shoulder at my reflection.
"That style of dress suits you."
We spent the afternoon very happily
together. Margaret opened her piano, drew
forward a high chair, and asked me to play for
her.
" Plow do you know that I can ? "
" I know your ear is musically cultured by
your speaking accent."
I played preludes and fugues of Bach's.
One lovely melodious anagram on his own
name, where the summer wind is chasing the
music of a brook through leafy wood, pleased
my listener, and I tried it over again and
again.
" Do you know what it makes me see ?"
she said. " A bright day, and a bird's nest,
with two speckled blue eggs half hidden in
92 A DA UGllTKIu UY U1JR TIME.
the long yellow last year's grass, beneath the
entangled budding shoots of a brier rose."
Without thought I drifted on to one of
the gavottes.
"That is better. The white peruked Kapell-
meister at his harpsichord is looking over his
shoulder at his wife and eldest son leading a
dance in which his nineteen children all figure.
I have a barbarous taste, I love picture music
and domestic scenes more than still life."
" But still life comforts, when men and
women often fail us."
" That may be, I think it is true; but I
would rather act to a London pit than recite
a play to the waves."
" That's not a fair comparison. If one
were hissed by a London pit, the memory of
a lovely sunset might soothe one's natural
anguish a "Tittle."
The servant announced Mr. and Mrs.
Went worth.
"You are in time to say if you agree
with me in telling Miss Gordon that I prefer
MARGARET. 93
acting to a London pit to reciting a drama to
the waves or not."
" I always act to the pit," Mr. Wentworth
answered.
His wife laughed, and coming to me held
out her hand.
"In your business disquisitions you forget
social civilities, Margaret. You have not made
me acquainted with my new friend yet."
She was tall, big-boned, angular, timid,
and nervous, as large-framed women often are.
But she was never too timid to sacrifice herself
to do a kind action, or too nervous to remember
to exert herself for the comfort of others, though
her short laugh, really no more than an un-
avoidable exercise of weak nerves, came in at
times with such inappropriate effect, as almost
to lend her the reputation of a scoffing female
Mephistopheles. She had one very good quality
in a wife, she adored her husband. Her brains
were sufficient to enable her to hold her own
in most arguments, yet she deferred completely
to his judgment, and he repaid her worship
91 A BAUGirjJRR OF OUR TIMJU.
by consulting her in all his business. He was
a great man, and far excelled ordinary men in
goodness ; but his wife was only his echo, not
his complement,
CHAPTER XII.
LITERARY CRITICISM.
E dined early; the bells were ringing
for evening service as we sat down
to table. The meal was apparently
simple, but exquisitely cooked, and served with
dainty perfection of bright silver and pure
damask, and the wines were as fragrant as
flowers. We did not sit long over dinner;
the gentlemen rose and accompanied us into
the drawing-room. Besides Mr. Wentworth, his
wife, and myself, were two other guests, both
men, of from thirty-five to forty years of age,
and both connected with the Press. Eric Fraser
and Alan Holroyd, though opposites in nature
and disposition, bore an equal reputation as
conscientious and painstaking critics.
96 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
Fraser, tall, princely in manner and bearing,
impressed one with sadness, his deep-set blue
eyes looking sorrow for a world of misfortune.
He had mostly the air of a man foredoomed to
a tragic ending, and, while he might be one- of
the best fellows in the world, was often moody
and desponding. Holroyd was short, fleshy,
dark-complexioned, Jewish-featured, merry and
happy by temperament. As might be ex-
pected with such opposites, the men were close
friends.
The lamps were lighted, the fire glowed,
heavy curtains were drawn . before the three
windows, the furthest of which was opened for
ventilation's sake. All the colours in the room
were harmonious, all the chairs and couches were
easy. The air would have been too odorous
with flowers had it not been for the opened
window; as it was, the surroundings seemed
to compose a short melody of existence while
we sat drinking our coffee.
Mr. Fraser was talking to Mrs. Wentworth,
Margaret and Mr. Wentworth were seated
LITERARY CRITICISM. 97
together, and Mr. Holroyd purposed to interest
me by his description of a scientific lecture he
had attended the day before.
" Of course you are fashionably interested
in science, Miss Gordon ? "
My ears, at first startled by the pseudonym,
were now growing accustomed to it.
" I scarcely know what science is. As
much of it as a schoolgirl learns used to
please me."
" Does ethnological research amuse you ? "
" Very much."
" Then perhaps you have discovered that
in spite of my English name, I am a Jew ?"
" No," I blushed ; the word was suggestive.
" I don't see why you should colour. I
suppose I ought to be ashamed that I am not
Moses or Levy. The fact is my father was
foolish enough to change his name on his
marriage to an Englishwoman."
" Well ?"
"I suppose you mean to ask why I give
you so much personal information. You have
H
98 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
a charming air of inviting confidence, and as
Punch says: '"We may change our names, but
we can't change our noses.'"
" I should think you are too proud of your
race to disclaim it."
" Thank you: I hope so. You play, of
course ? All your sex are musical."
I
" Is Mr. Holroyd teasing you ?" Margaret
asked from the other side of the room.
" No; Miss Gordon is teasing me by
questions about my nationality and my scien-
tific and musical abilities."
" I think you urge an unjust charge against
me.
" Pray pardon me. Won't you play or sing
for us ?"
" I don't think I can play for you. I fear
you are'too critical to listen to me."
"No, you are wrong. I earn my living
by criticism, and in private life I forget my
trade."
" What school of music do you like best ?"
LITERARY CRITICISM.
90
" Something light and comic, as merry as
Fraser looks."
" Mr. Fraser looks very sad."
"That is because Mrs. Wentworth is only
appreciative to her husband, does not sympa-
thise with Fraser's views, and laughs when
he would have her weep."
"He would be more sorrowful if he moved
his friend to tears."
" No ; a weeping philosopher always rejoices
when he finds a new disciple. When the school
of Heraclitus is well attended he *will change
the order of his thought."
"Then it is good for his fame that he be
unsuccessful."
"You are too metaphysical for a young
woman, Miss Gordon."
" Do you think so ? Is that a compliment
or an accusation ? Pray, tell me what you
mean by metaphysical!"
" Now you are Socratic." He looked mis-
chievously puzzled, shook his head, laughed.-
H 2
100 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" A young lady who plays very well. May
I lead you to the piano ?"
"If the others will continue to talk, I will
play."
He bowed. "I am charmed with the good
sense, desiring me for your sole listener."
I played the Scherzo and Trio from one of
Beethoven's sonatas and when I had finished
them rose from the music chair.
" Don't leave the piano."
" I wish you 'to sing now if you please."
" I don't sing. I would rather amuse you
by talking."
Margaret crossed the room to Mr. Fraser
and Mrs. Went worth. Mr. Wentworth joined
Mr. Holroyd and myself.
" Here comes our nineteenth-century Don
Quixote," said Mr. Holroyd*
" I must warn you, Miss Gordon, that
there is no reliance to be placed on this man.
You never know what judgment his fancy
will lead him to express. He sees things, not
as they are, but as they appear."
LITERARY CRITICISM. 101
" In which way the greater part of the
world sees. And this serious knight sees
them as they should be."
"Mr. Holroyd pays you a high compli-
ment, Mr. Wentworth."
"He is ever too kindly to his friends."
" I dare not ask him to write me on that list
then, lest I might seem to ask a flattery, or "
"Finish the sentence, if you please."
" It is best left unworcled."
" Holroyd, tell me seriously what is your
own opinion of the new play ?"
" Haven't you read it in the Strand
Review f "
"I do not know. Sometimes your good
nature leads you to speak in uncertain phrase."
"Fraser is not open to the same charge."
Mr. Fraser looked across the room as though
he purposed to join us, and Holroyd cried in
answer to the look:
"No, no! Mrs. Wentworth and Miss
Norton want you. It is a question of criticism
which arose."
102 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" About the new play ? It is Thornton's
greatest work, a" drama which will outlive
everything else he has written."
"You don't agree with Fraser, I can see
so much, Holroyd, if you will not speak your
opinion."
" I respect Thornton, and I am sorry he
should waste his time in attempting to write
plays. It was only the genius and beauty
of the acting that saved the piece from being
' damned.'"
" Holroyd !" Mr. Fraser almost shouted.
" Quite true. The action is heavy where
it should be rapid, the thoughts are swaddled,
not clothed, with words, and every element of
lasting success is wanting."
" I think," Mr. Wentworth said, " you are
too severe. The play is a disappointment to
me; but it is not so bad as you represent it
to be."
" Thornton should wrrite epics; a lyrical
poet would do best with a drama. His play
owes everything, as a play, to actors and
LITERARY CRITICISM.
103
actresses, and lie is owl enough to go on
attempting to write for the stage when he
might give us better work of other kinds, if
you had only thrown that in the waste-paper
basket."
" I think," said Fraser, " that the play
almost equals some of Goethe's best works."
" I don't agree with that judgment either,"
said Mr. Wentworth. " The -piece, as a whole,
is heavy without doubt. There are some very
good passages and some quick action in it.
Perhaps we may make it last for two or three
months, then quietly withdraw it."
The hansom was waiting to take me home,
and with pleasant words my new friends bade
me good-night, Mr. Holroyd holding my cloak
and seeing me to the cab. Afterwards Margaret
told me that, as was natural, they discussed me
after I left them, when Mr. Holroyd's judgment
was : " She will make a good actress ; she has
been acting all the evening; she is nervous
and unaccustomed to strangers; yet she is
courteous and quick-witted without being flip-
104 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
pant or servile. That burning look in her eyes
does not mean genius, but disappointment."
"I think her an artist," Mr. Wentworth
said, " and capable of becoming a great artist, if
she work hard enough."
" I am sure Mr. Wentworth is right," his
wife agreed.
" And you, Mr. Fraser ? " Margaret asked.
"She is young and beautiful. She will have
success for a time, at any rate."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ANGEL DEATH.
R. HOLROYD was right. I had been
acting all that evening, if to seem
cheerful when one is almost despair-
ing be acting. I might laugh, jest, or play, yet
though I would not allow myself to speak the
sadness T. endured, the disease of heartbreaking
looks out of the eyes, even if one can constrain
oneself to hold one's tongue.
I can understand men who know the disap-
pointment of passion striving to drown its pain
in drunkenness or by foolish revelries; I can
pardon women accepting the first suitor who
comes after an unreturned attachment. The
house is empty, swept and garnished, and any
companion seems preferable to orderly bareness.
106 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
But the parable expresses a cruel truth. New
associates obtained by a restless soul are often
likely to prove worse fellows than the departed
despondency demon. Dissipation, revelry, un-
holy marriages, are more to be dreaded than the
humiliation of rejected love.
I had my art, and it was to triumph
over love. I fancied I should be happy if I
knew no rankling pain of loss. I forgot the
Grecian's saying in prosperity after banish-
ment: " Children, we should now be ruined if
we had not formerly been undone." Had I
not had a past to forget, I should never have
striven with pains and tears after the depiction
of an ideal.
I had everything to learn and the best
teachers in Margaret and Mr. Went worth. To
forget myself was a glad relief to me; to act
to the pit, to face my audience, to think of
the mass as composed of units, each a being
to be cheered, pleased, and perhaps benefited
by one's effort; and to let the result of work
seem effortless, were all lessons daily taught
THE ANGEL DEATH.
107
me. I had little leisure: private study,
rehearsals, and the play, left me scanty time
for introspection.
It was fortunate that I was much occu-
pied, for of what weakness was I guilty ? A
service which any man would render to any
woman, some need for careful attendance, a
little teaching, an explicit understanding of
my sex inferiority, my father's insane pro-
cedure—these were small items to swell a sum
of misery which in spare moments I felt to
be insupportable. Reason showed me my folly
in figuring such a result from such ciphers;
but when the contest between judgment and
feeling waged my heart was always the
victor.
It is very well for poets to write their
imaginations of disappointed passion in sonnets
and lines of rhythm, or for novelists to pen
word after word, describing the torture of
hopeless longing. Fancy which loses its kin-
dred. fancy may find relief in outcry, but
real human love denied reciprocity must endure
108 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
a dumb anguish. Perhaps men may thank
Providence for the rarity of the feeling.
Margaret's health was failing rapidly; her
breathlessness, her hectic flush, the severity
of her cough, were all signs that the end
she desired was approaching. I loved her
dearly, and I prayed, as we do pray, against
drea'd and conviction, for recovery and a happy
earthly future for my friend.
She worked harder than her fading strength
should have allowed in trying to teach me
to act her parts which always afterwards
were to be associated in my heart with her
training.
Winter had set in early. The ground was
white in the country, and the city streets
were alternately sparkling with ice crystals
and sloppy with trampled snow. The theatre
was well heated. When one was within its
walls the air was warm enough, but for a
consumptive patient the drive through chilly
streets was trying. She was only able to act
for one week. Then the end came, and the
THE ANGEL DEATH. 109
quickness of its arrival was a shock to us,
for we had suffered little of that wearying
suspense which makes the worst itself a relief
from painful oscillation between hope and
dread. Margarets child, in her husband's
guardianship, was not allowed to attend her
mother's deathbed, nor did Margaret crave an
interview likely to be cruel to both.
The moment of her death was in those
early hours of the morning when human
vitality is at its lowest. And I, who after
leaving the Cosmopolite was watching beside
my friend, was alone with her at the last.
We had spent the night in talking of our art
and its mission. She, wrapped in a dressing-
gown of some light blue woollen material,
lying on a couch in front of the fire, now and
again raising herself on her elbow when the
energy of the thought she spoke excited her
beyond tranquillity. I, sitting on a low chair
at her side, holding her hand tightly in mine
as though my weak grasp were stronger than
destiny. Looking at her after an interval of
110 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
silence, I saw her eyebrows uplifting, the
pupils of her eyes dilating and expressing a
happy far-sightedness, while the curves of her
lips were smiling. Her fingers clapped mine
more firmly. " Is this death % " she whispered
in an accent of surprised gladness, and left me.
Her disembodied, unseen, felt presence mean-
time filling the whole space of the room.
It is only in the fabled natural state of
man, whatever the natural state may mean,
that work is looked on as the curse following
sin, in civilised societies congenial work calling
the powers into full exercise, is the solace of
woe, the panacea of suffering. That night
at the theatre I was no more Elsie Longford,
a girl whose heart bereaved of friendship
ached with disappointed passion I was the
shadowy, weak Ophelia led by parental tutelage
to crafty dealing with an unhappy lover; I
was crazed with the madness turning that
feeble brain, and in the consciousness 01
helpful genius I lost myself.
The next morning, going early with stepha-
THE ANGEL DEATH. Ill
notis and maiden-hair to place on my friend's
breast, I was denied entrance to her chamber.
Her husband, who had asserted his right of
admittance into her dead presence, purposed
arranging and directing those sad obsequies
which are the farewells to the dead. She had
had no formal separation from him, and his
legal right was unquestionable, though his touch
might be a desecration to that empty shrine.
Here was a man who had broken the heart
of a being most dependent on his tenderness,
yet claiming her body as a tenant of his family
vault, a fellow of those ancestors whose honour
he alleged her profession to have outraged, for
he was of long lineage.
A window of stained glass with her por-
trait, representing a Madonna nursing the
infant Christ, now throws its colouring over
his pew in the old church on one of his estates,
and he sits in its shadow Sunday after Sunday
with her daughter beside him.
CHAPTER XIV.
a "quick" burial.
HEN I had been only an aspirant
after art, I had been kindly treated
by the Press, and my essays at
character study spoken of as almost promising
the fame of Rachel or Siddons. Now, when
by my own knowledge I was an artist losing
myself in my parts, I began to suffer from
adverse criticisms. There was, said my literary
friends, something monstrous and unnatural in
my representation of heroines whose woes were
my very own. Forgetting that the advance
of time made certain old standards of beauty
archaic, they advised me to study the manner
of my predecessors on the stage, and to form
myself on the best models of the past.
A "QUICK" BURIAL. 113
Sensitive to blame, I feared to look at the
theatrical columns of the papers; yet, with a
morbid craving to know the worst said of my
work, I read daily condemnations of myself
as an actress who outraged all dramatic canons.
More, I saw marvellous things recorded of my
history. I was a woman separated from her
husband, the illegitimate daughter of a foreign
prince, a novice who had made her escape
from a convent, a girl rescued by Mr. Went-
worth from the poverty of the streets, and a
hoyden who spent her leisure in smoking
cigarettes and drinking absinthe. I was en-
gaged in marriage to one or other nobleman,
I was the cause of an anticipated divorce suit,
and the topic of many untruthful slanders.
But the Cosmopolite was crowded; one
Shakespearean play after another was played to
appreciative audiences. Mr. Wentworth was
pleased with me, and I must take the bitter
of success with its sweeter morsels. I lived
quietly with Mrs. Pagan, who saw that a proper
attendant protected my return from the play ;
i
114 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
and I studied many subjects which, without
perhaps having an immediate histrionic bearing,
by widening my grasp of intellect, might help
me in the exposition of great thoughts.
There are perhaps as many problems in art
as in life itself. Art should be an idealised life,
freed from the literalism of a disfiguring realism,
which, representing some old Dutch Frow in
her kitchen as the type of feminine womanhood,
would transcribe on its canvas each separate
wrinkle on her parchment-skinned visage. One
of the puzzles pushing itself forcibly on my
notice was the apparent dearth of the primary
passions of the hot heart in the crowd of
respectable seeming mediocrities that thronged
the theatre, while their possession of admiration
for the strong impulses leading to tragedies
was shown by their presence, attention, and
applause.
There was no hidden secret in my life
whose revelation I dreaded. My real name and
original place in the world were confidentially
known to Mr. Wentworth. My father might
A "QUICK" BURIAL.
115
object to my present work. Save for a possible
protest from parental authority I did not
dread discovery and that fear was to be averted.
The post brought me many letters and papers.
Among the former it was often my fortune to
receive offers of marriage from absolute strangers,
for which I had one concise form of polite
rejection. The journals containing unkindly
critiques of my acting often found their way
to my table. In the beginning of their reception
the motive sending them I judged a cruel one;
later I came to imagine that it had its root
in a twofold feeling—literary conceit and the
thoughtlessness which unwittingly inflicts torture.
Sometimes I wondered if my art were worth
the suffering it entailed ; but rehearsals, when
I could hold my own with the best, and the
remembrance of the pinched lives of the crowds
who thronged pit and galleries, whose meagre-
ness our description of passionate imaginations
must enrich, always answered the question in
the affirmative.
Among the packet of papers lying before
i 2
11G A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
me on a certain morning, one was directed in
my father's handwriting. As coolly as I could,
I ate my breakfast before I opened it, and saw
a leaded column, indicated with red crosses,
headed thus: "Komantic disappearance and
death of a Dearnshire young lady of good
family." My father's daughter was represented
as a girl of strong prejudices and weak judg-
ment, who, with her mental balance disturbed
by an unrequited love attachment, had left
home in the night time, and, after some
months' interval, been discovered by Mr.
Longford in the sick ward of a -workhouse,
worn to a skeleton by unexpected, unaccustomed
privations ; her death was recounted, her father's
grief sympathised with, and a full report of the
funeral arrangements given.
What a strange experience to see a notice
of one's death staring one in the face, and
one's heart meantime to throb so rapidly with
horror at parental falsehood as to give the
knowledge of a quicker pulsing life. I was
as it were buried quick. Ellice Mary Longford,
A "QTTIGK" BURIAL.
117
the paper showed to have "been found dying
in a poorhouse, and carried thence to her grave,
and I, Ellice Mary Longford, looked with living
eyes at the story of my burial. At last I
laughed. My voice .sounded strange in my
ears, half insanely I wondered if I were the
real girl's wraith. I looked at myself in the
mirror, my face was pallid and awe-stricken,
my lips white, my eyelids purple; it was
wonderful that the reflection wakened a com-
forting thought—could I represent horror on
the stage as well as my countenance showed it
now, the pain would be of use to me.
I dressed, put the newspaper in my pocket
and went to the theatre, to show the paragraph
to Mr. Went worth, and to ask his sympathy.
Perhaps rather to see how my father's conduct
showed itself to an outsider. My pride must
suffer; to show the paragraph to Mr. Went-
worth, was to tell him one reason for my
leaving home. He was a gentleman, and
would not let a woman's confidence place her
at a disadvantage. More, the London papers
118 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
were sure to seize on such a romantic story ;
in self-defence, I must show my only living
confidant the lines registering my father's
crafty vengeance. An unpleasant duty is
best done quickly. I saw Mr. "Wentworth
before rehearsal, gave the paper into his hand,
pointed to the crossed column, begged him
to look at it and to give me a few minutes
when the morning's work was over, and left
him as quickly as I could.
A change of play was advertised that
night, and our business was more engrossing
than usual, but every now and again I saw
Mr. Wentworth's eyes looking at me with a
kindly feeling akin to tears in their expression.
It was wicked and ungrateful of me, yet,
though I loved him as my friend, momentarily
I hated to be pitied. I was first to speak
when we were alone.
" You see the nature of my father's
reprisal ?"
" I do not wonder longer whence you
have the firm decision of your character."
A "QUIOK" BURIAL. 119
* Am I firm ? " I asked.
"As a rock outwardly, though you have
a woman's heart beating under the granite
covering."
My eyes filled and my lips trembled. Not
to seem to observe my trouble he looked
down, recovering myself I answered :
" What is the benefit of a woman's heart,
save to animate one for one's work ? The
horror that I felt when I read the paper was
followed by the, wonder if I could act an
emotion as well as I then felt one."
"You are brave."
" And you are very good to me."
" Do you purpose taking any action respect-
ing this announcement? Forgive me asking
if your father has a monetary interest in your
death ?"
" I think under piy mother's marriage
settlement he gains by it; but I know no-
thing clearly of his affairs."
" Will you take legal advice ?"
" No, he is my father; I can support my-
120 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
self, and if the worst should come, there
are two resources open, the river and the
workhouse."
" You are unjust to your friends."
"Not intentionally. The worst will not
come while I have friends like you."
" Thank you. It is a strange story ; written
and acted it would be named extravagant
and improbable, beyond all bounds of veri-
similitude."
"It is a bold artist who dares to show
the purity of the naked flesh."
CHAPTER XV.
AT MR. WENTWORTH'S.
INCE Margaret's death my Sunday
afternoons and evenings were spent
at Mr. Wentworth's. With his boys,
one of five, the other of two years and a half,
I was happy. Francis, the younger, would
sit on my knee, Martin, the elder, on a foot-
stool at my feet, while I told them nursery
stories and sang simple ballads for their
amusement. I took care to increase my store
of such literature and music, but there were
three or four old favourites always stirring
the boys to laughter, and I found the later
editions of the rhymes often either too abstruse
or too babyish for these young philosophers.
122 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
Francis, unable to name me Miss Gordon
would, greatly to Martin's displeasure, call me
Gordon, and ask me, by the unadorned
§&eudonym, for the little pigs going to market,
goosey-gander, and the mice spinning in the
hole. Martin, who, with his added years, had
a manly consciousness of what was becoming
to himself, would listen, enjoy, and apologise
for his interest. " It pleases little brother;
dt is more suitable for him than for a boy
of my age." He knew no children but Francis,
and superior age and the company of his
elders had given him too much preciseness.
The little Francis would shout with laughter,
puzzle himself to repeat the words after me,
wind his soft arm round my neck, stroke my
cheek with his plump small fingers, and say,
" adain, love, adain."
Mrs. Wentworth was a good mother and
not beyond smiling at her children's trifling
pleasures, so that these afternoons were rest
times for both of us.
They were beautiful children. Martin,
AT MR. WENTWORTH'S. 123
slender and tall for his age, with dark com-
plexion and soft gray eyes shining with an
inner light, looked fitted to, wear the martyr's
crown; and Francis, fair-skinned, golden-haired,
blue-eyed, would have well represented one of
St. Augustine's English "angels." Looking at
them I often speculated on their future. If
the house into which children are horn he
their predestination for good and evil, Martin
and Francis were elected for happiness. A
mezzotinto of Bartolozzi's, engraved after
Cipriani, named " Connubial Love," hangs on
the wall of my bedchamber; it represents a
lovely woman nursing a child, who is drinking
from a small mug, and Francis looks down on
me • from that picture as I last saw him in the
nursery on his mother's knee. For Martin was
to have his first experience of the loneliness of
grief in his brother's death. That early con-
summation of the child's life was not anticipated
on one Sunday in spring when I sat with him
in my lap pleasing the children, their mother,
and myself. -We were in the midst of the
124 A DAUGHTER OF OUR, TIME.
scream with which the baby from the tree
top comes " down to her mother once more,"
when the room door opened and Mr. Went-
worth, in company with Mr. Fraser, Mr.
Holroyd, and Mr. Halevi, entered. My host
came forward to introduce the stranger, Mr.
Fraser and Mr. Holroyd speaking to Mrs.
Went worth. Holding Francis in my left arm
—he had clasped his arms round my neck
and shyly hidden his face on my shoulder—
I rose and held out my right hand in greeting,
saying, "I have seen Mr. Halevi before." He
took my hand in his cold fingers, and, bowing
over it, replied:
" I hope Miss Gordon is well."
Would my powers of acting fail or help
me in this emergency ? Francis nearly over-
balanced my hardly kept mental equilibrium.
The child's heart seemed to feel my agita-
tion of mind, and clasping me closer round
the neck he whispered, " My Gordon." Martin
unwittingly helped me — " Francis, you will
choke Miss Gordon."
AT MR. WENTWOUTII'S.
125
Mr. Went worth took Mr. Halevi to the
other end of the room to his wife. Mr. Fraser
came to speak to me. I believed I knew him
for my enemy, and I was mistress of myself
at once. I thought it was to him I was
indebted for the severe criticisms of my work
which had so much disturbed me, and a want
of clearness in his eyes, an evasiveness in the
manner of his speech, convinced me that I
was correct in the judgment. I was the more
confirmed in my opinion by his first sentence
after ordinary social civilities.
" Your acting grows more marvellous
nightly."
" The last time I saw you, Mr. Fraser,
Mr. Holroyd told me that he forgot his trade
in society. May I ask that you will forget
my occupation here ? "
" Certainly, if you wish it." His lips curved
into a .sneer. He looked, at Halevi. " That is
Holroyd's latest fancy."
My eyes spoke a question.
" Holroyd is always taking up cases. That
126 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
is a poor compatriot whom he wishes to advance
in the world."
" Mr. Holroyd is then of a kindly nature."
"You wish to infer that I am unkindly."
He spoke angrily. Martin came forward as my
defender.
" Why are you cross with Miss Gordon ? "
Fraser stroked the boy's hair.
" I am not angry; you, like all children,
are given to misinterpretation."
" Miss Gordon is good."
"That point is proved beyond words, my
child."
The announcement of dinner saved us from
reply. Mr. Went worth led me downstairs, Mr.
Halevi, as the greatest stranger present, taking
his hostess. In spite of Mr. Holroyd's well-
meant attempts at cheerfulness we were a
constrained and silent company. I had seen
little of Mr. Hplroyd since Margaret's death.
She was his friend, and his face showed traces
of painful feeling, and his eyes were sadder
than ever before they had been. Mr. Fraser
AT Ml{. WENTWORTH '8. 127
—in a bad temper, and obliged by the forms
of courtesy to keep his anger within bounds—
was unable to restrain himself from darting
severe looks at me, and I, missing Margaret
deeply, felt in the position of a spectator
waiting for the uplifting of the curtain screen-
ing destiny, and knew in Mr. Halevi's presence
a confident, indefinable security.
After dinner in the drawing-room, Mr.
Holroyd came to me, leaving Mr. Halevi to
the attention of his host, hostess, and Mr.
Eraser.
"You were with Miss Norton at the last?'"
he said, speaking in low tones.
My eyes filled with tears. I bit my lip. I
had first met him in her company, and the
question wakened a painful sense of loss.
"Yes, I was With Margaret when she
died."
"We were none of us at her funeral/'
" No, it was impossible. They refused to
allow me to place some flowers on her after
she died."
128 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
His eyes gleamed, his lips curved derisively ;
by change of expression he became a stranger
to me.
" It was a contradiction," he said, " that
her husband should claim her body for his
family burial place—one of the bitter ironies
of fate."
" It was a profanation to the sanctity of
death."
Mr. Halevi was looking at me, and Mr.
Holroyd noticed his intentness. His face
altered, he smiled :
" One needs exercise much patience in this
^orld. Let us speak of something pleasant;
you have seen Halevi before to-day."
" Yes, I have seen your friend."
" I suppose to ask when or where would
be to attempt to tear aside the veil of mys-
tery with which it pleases you to hide your
past ?"
"That is a hard saying. Mr. Wentworth
is aware of my relations with the past as much
as any one needs to know, and "
AT MB. WE NT WORTH'S.
129
"I have no right to ask; certainly not."
"I would tell you as much of my history
as to any one, but "
"You are quite right to be reticent. You
seemed at hot words with Fraser before dinner,
and he looks fierce yet. Let me give you a
little advice ; never irritate a critic."
I wondered for a minute or two if I should
tell Mr. Holroyd my suspicions respecting his
friend, then I thought candour best.
" I don't feel kindly to Mr. Fraser. I think
I owe to him some criticisms which I felt severely
unjust."
He looked surprised.
" Fraser admires you too much to criticise
you severely."
" I do not wish admiration, only justice."
"You are Utopian; justice is the last
attribute you may expect to find in men or
women. Have you nerve enough to give us
music to-night ? "
" I should break down if I attempted to play,
I will go home ; Margaret's memory is present
K
130 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
with me; justice does not seem a plant growing
on mortal soil. Mr. Fraser has excited me, and
my nerves tingle."
" I think you are mistaken in your con-
elusion about Fraser. I hope so."
" If you wish that, I will wish it also for
Margaret's sake."
Mr. Holroyd was afterwards painfully obliged
to own that I was not mistaken. Mr. Fraser
had tried to write me down .and spread several
fictitious rumours as to my life and conduct.
Some time after this he came in a violent fit of
rage to me at the theatre, in company with
Mr. Holroyd, and announced himself as the
author of the scandals, excusing them, and
upbraiding me for traducing him to his friend,
and behaving altogether so insanely, that I
pardoned his fault on the reserved plea of lacking
moral and mental qualities.
CHAPTER XVI.
A LAST PUBLIC APPEARANCE.
FEAR I have been remiss in not
speaking more at length of Mrs.
Pagan and my home with her. If
you associate dissipation and a fast life with
the thought of a second or perhaps third rate
London inn, you form a mistaken idea of her
house. No clergyman's dwelling was ever
more regular in hours and decorum. Her guests
were principally country people of her own,
and she herself a hostess after the old-fashioned
pattern, personally receiving the new comers;
and speeding the departing with dignified
hospitality.
She liked me, thinking she saw in me an
independence of spirit akin to her own national
K 2
132 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
pride. When we sat together in the hours
between rehearsal and the evening performance
she would tell me little stories of her personal
history, which' from a woman of her reserved
nature was a token of unusual favour. She
had known great griefs, though she was for-
tunate, if a sufficiency of money be good
fortune. It had been her lot to close the
eyes of her husband and her four children.
Now lonely and old, Her personal interests
in life were over. The servants who had been
with her for years, the people coming to the
house, the charities in which she interested
herself, and the public concerns of the world
occupied the outer chambers of her heart;
those inner recesses given to the dearest sym-
pathies were closed with tombstones.
On the Monday after my meeting Mr.
Halevi at Mr. Went worth's, I sat with
Tiberius my dog on my knee, in my favourite
position on a stool at Mrs. Pagan's feet. She
had been telling me of her dislike to London
and the close streets when first she, with her
A LAST PUBLIG APPEARANCE. 133
young husband, came from her father's farm
to keep this inn, and how the web of her
life had woven her so closely to the building
itself that to leave the shelter of its walls
would be, she thought, to cut its thread.
" These rooms are always filled for me
when I seem alone with my husband and my
children. They sit at the hearth beside me,
and I nurse the youngest on my knee. Some-
times I speak aloud to them, and the girls
coming to ask for business directions think I
have a strange habit of talking to myself, and
they are right, for the dead are a part of
me. I. should not be myself elsewhere."
4'And I have found in the change here a
new life."
" Mr. M'Roberts did not know when he
brought you here that he brought an actress
who was to set the town admiring."
"Mr. M'Roberts was to me a god out of
a machine."
" Poor M'Roberts ! That's a strange praise
you give him. God out of a machine, lassie!
134 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
Ye use queer and irreverent-sounding words.
How can God come out of a machine ? I'm a
stupid old bodie, you know."
"It's a classical phrase, meaning any mar-
vellous help that surpasses nature."
"And a Scots drover was a marvellous
help surpassing nature to you."
"Yes, indeed."
" You look bright to-day; whiles you look
so sad that I have thought you had been
best to have dreed your weird at hame."
" No ! no ! Home meant prison, and this
is liberty."
" See you dinna use it badly. I'm not
feared for ye doin' that."
" Will you come to see me to-night in
'Juliet?'"
" What's an old woman like me to do
with the play ? It would be liker I were
reading my Bible at hame."
"But you will come."
" Oh, I am foolish enough to come." The
A LAST PUBLIC APPEARANCE. 135
words do not look very gracious, but spoken
with a soft accent they expressed kindliness.
The story of impassioned, unfortunate youth-
ful love has attractiveness even for slow-
blooded age, and the house was crowded when
the curtain drew up on the first scene of the
play.
My heart beat more firmly for seeing Mr.
Halevi yesterday, and I enjoyed the trans-
position which, removing me from the England
of to-day to a far past Italy, left me free to
express the depth of my own feeling and pain
in the woes of another. Surely my representa-
tion of my art would gain in height by the
trampled self on which its fabric was built.
The night's deepest gloom ushers in the
day dawn, the severest pain is a birth travail.
It was mostly my fortune to rise from the
stage at the point of fainting after acting
Juliet. To-night the audience was clamorous
in vain for my appearance to receive the
applause they would have given me. Mr.
136 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
Wentworth, in response to the cries for Juliet,
must tell them that I was in a swoon, and
unable to hear their praise.
It was true. I had acted the character
with such self-devotion that I was carried
from the stage to a cab, and taken thence to
my bed in a state of unconsciousnes, and
weeks passed while I, the I who gives to the
body the elevation above animalism, was, save
at rare intervals, torpid or absent, where I know
not.
CHAPTER XVII.
AN END OF PERSONAL ASPIRATION.
0 lie unconscious or conscious only
of pain; to watch gnomes defying
laws of gravity, walking fly-like on
the paper of my bed-room walls, and trundling
wheelbarrows in the same fantastic manner;
to make of my window a diorama where the
pictures were high-vaulted naves and aisles of
Gothic cathedrals paced by white-robed acolytes
swinging censers, or familiar landscapes from
the wider sanctuary of the outside world; to
imagine unknown staircases ascending from be-
hind the head of my bedstead; to speak to
strange figures seated beside me; to address
Mr. Halevi and feel his cool fingers clasping
138 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
my hands were the varied delusions of that
period of fever.
One morning, wakening to fresh knowledge
of life, I saw Tiberius lying on a cushion
chair at my feet. It had been latterly so
often my experience to find objects vanishing
beneath my gaze that I looked intently at
the dog until I drew his eyes to mine. There
he noticed something he had missed, and leap-
iug on the bed, with' short jumps, frolics,
barking and face licking, he expressed his con-
gratulation on my recovery. Mrs. Pagan came
forward to the bedside. I tried to .lift my
hand to take hers, and realised the powerless-
ness of my weakness. She would have removed
the dog from the room, but I begged her
to leave him with me. Shortly I fell into
a dreamless sleep. It was evening when I
wakened, restless and languid. Feeble bodily
and mentally, my chief concern I fancied the
impossibility of detaching the loose fitting skin
of my wrists from its complementary muscles
and bones.
AN END OF PERSONAL ASPIRATION- 139
Each day saw a gradual growth in that
new self born out of illness. I was not to
suffer the worst penalty of an overtaxed brain
—to such reason the doctors imputed my
disease—a lowered intellectual rank ; returning
bodily health restored my mental faculties to
their ordinary level of enjoyment. Had I
spoken truly an opinion of the cause of the
temporary interruption of my active vitality,
I should perhaps have said an overburdened
heart was more in fault than the studious work
with which the scientific men credited me.
Fortunately, my fever had not been infec-
tious or contagious in its nature, and my friends
were not restrained from showing the goodness
of their dispositions by fear for others. Mrs.
Pagan was as tender to me as my mother might
have been. Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth, to my
knowledge, shared her cares. And daily my
eyes, seeing things as they were, not as they
appeared in a distempered imagination, were
pleased with the sight of a fresh bunch of wild
flowers on my table.
140 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
Whence they came I never asked, nor did
I receive any worded confirmation of my own
surmise as to the sender.
Loosely dressed in a white wrapper, with
my feet in slippers, I sat in Mrs. Pagan's
sitting-room. It was the first day I had left
my chamber since my illness, and had felt
all the tremor of early convalescence as I
made my simple toilet, had been amused at
the reflection of a *thin, wasted, shadowy-eyed
face which looked at me out of the mirror.
It was June, but the day was chilly, and a
bright fire burned in the grate. Screening my
cheeks from the blaze with a palm-leaf fan,
I sat on a low chair near to the hearth, specu-
lating how soon I should be able to resume
my work. The doctor and Mrs. Pagan, in
answer to a question on the subject, that
morning had rebuked my hurry; but I knew
that occupation was my only safeguard against
an overmastering enemy.
The door opened, Mr. Halevi was announced,
entered, the door was closed, and he stood
AN END OF PERSONAL ASPIRATION. HI
looking down at me. To my surprise his
lips quivered a little.
" You have been very ill."
" I shall soon be quite well again."
"You nursed me in my illness, I was not
allowed to nurse you."
"The circumstances were different,"
"It is my misfortune that our circumstances
are different. I have been poor. I could keep
my wife in comfort, not in affluence."
My face was burning. I raised the fan
a little higher. What had Mr. Halevi to say
to me about his means of keeping a wife ?
" Miss Longford, had it been otherwise,
could I have taught you to love me ?"
I was angry and spoke indignantly.
"Am I a woman to be guided by circum-
stances in a matter of deep feeling ?"
" May I try to teach you to love me ? "
I could not say any word of reply. I
suppose Mr. Halevi read my eyes aright, for
sitting down beside me to my measureless
content, he took my hand, kissed it, and
142 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
holding it in his began to speak to me of
ways and means and his plan of life. In the
joy of listening to his voice, and knowing
his satisfaction, I learned how much happier
a woman can be than is an artist.
The remembrance of my mother's wretched-
ness in a marriage of mixed creeds, of Margaret's
misery as an actress married to a conventional
aristocrat, was ineffectual in deterring me from
tempting destiny on my own behalf. A Jew,
of whose past and outward circumstances I
knew only that he was a gentleman, had but
to speak words of invitation, and I was gladly
ready to accept unknown responsibilities, and
to face the future in his company. Love must
needs still be lord of all, the force which
had conquered me was the strongest universal
law. It is the woman's nature to obey when
the right ruler comes. It may be a calamity
to be born a woman; it is perhaps not so bad
when there is sympathy of likeness between
sovereign and subject. In my case, I confess
that my experience of Mr. Halevi's wife' has
AN END OF PERSONAL ASPIRATION. 143
reconciled me to my weakly constitution.
There is great happiness in being well cared
for by and caring for a tender husband whom
one loves.
Mr. Halevi said it was through Mr. Holroyd's
interest that he obtained his place as librarian
in one of our public museums. I found great
interest in helping him, as far as a woman
might help, in writing the book he hoped would
do good service of its kind. Strangely enough,
it paid its expenses, and the publisher handed
us a royalty on several editions. My husband's
position was more assured through that success.
Mr. Went worth and his wife are still our
friends. They are both sadder for the death
of little Francis. Martin is studying for the
stage with every promise of genius taught by
hard work to master technical difficulty.
Mr. M'Roberts visits us when he comes to
London. He is now a prosperous married man.
Mr. Fraser earns his living by writing
bitter critiques. Mr. Holroyd will never marry,
but he is cheerful and kindly as ever.
144 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
It was my filial duty to watcli over Mrs.
Pagans last illness. To my surprise I found
after her death that I was her residuary
legatee. She had no living relative, and when
the legacies and annuities to her old servants
and the charities benefited by her will were
fully settled, I found myself the mistress of
twenty thousand pounds of her earning. It is
something to have an assured provision ; but
I missed my friend greatly, and endured much
pain in thinking of the long years of thrift
gathering the money together, and on the pre-
mature death partings causing the wealth to
fall to my lot.
And of my father? On the morning when
I wrote the first word of my story I received
a letter from him offering to allow me a suit-
able income for my needs on the condition
that I left the state in which I was living,
a state he was pleased to name after an ugly
fashion, my marriage at the registrar's office
being in his eyes no marriage at all.
In my natural grief my husband comforted
AN END OF PEBSONAL ASPIRATION. 145
me thus: "Your father is to be pitied and
forgiven; he is morbidly insane on certain
points." My husband can always comfort me
in any trouble, and I hope he also finds me
a helpmeet,
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
L 2
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
CHAPTER I.
A FAMILY PICTURE.
BBOT'S GRANGE bears a bad name,
and the trustees of the owner
cannot let the house.
Tenant after tenant has been charmed with
the quaint Grange, the fine scenery, or, most of
all, with the good fishing in the Abbot's Loch,
and in the water of Dee, which is one of the
boundaries of the estate; and tenant after tenant
has left hurriedly, giving some trifling reason
or other.
Whether or no there be any supernatural
150 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
appearances I cannot say; when I pass the
place by daylight superstitious fears do not
affect me, but when twilight overtakes me
on that road, and the shadows, flitting out
of their lurking-places, dress the old walls
in weird drapery, I confess that I look in-
tently at the house until I have passed the
march dyke,* or boundary wall of the estate, and
then with my heart beating up into my throat,
run along, fearing Satan himself for a pursuer.
Five-and-twenty years a retired physician,
Dr. Miles Leighton, was laird of Abbot's Grange.
The Leightons have taken an active part in the
business of the shire for generations, and the
doctor was not short of proper family pride.
A Calvinist himself, his Covenanting ancestors
were no dearer to his heart than the young
Jacobite who lost his head for Prince Charlie,
and family pride is strong when it leads a
man like this Miles Leighton to forgive
religious and political divergence. He was
* March, dyke, presumably from lands marching or
matching with each other.
ABBOT'S GBANGE. 151
a bachelor: either he had found women
wanting in the attributes he required in a
companion for life, or the woman he had
chosen had found herself short of strength
to carry the weight of honour which must
have burdened his wife.
Two nephews, Miles Leighton and Alexander
Mclntyre, the orphaned sons of his younger
brother and his only sister, were his prospec-
tive heirs ; they, with one man and two women
servants, formed his household and were his more
immediate subjects.
Dr. Leighton and his nephews sat together
in the drawing-room in the evenings—a square,
low room, pleasant enough to-night when a
bright fire of peat and wood crackled and
glowed in the grate, and the light of a green-
shaded lamp showed the comfort and hid the
faults of worn carpets and faded hangings. The
doctor had his own place at the head of the
table. The light fell full on his large, bony,
red hands, and on the pages of his book,
Charnock " On the Divine Attributes," while
152 A DAUGHTER OF OUti TIME.
his face, with the long Roman nose and high
forehead crowned with closely-cut white hair,
was shaded. Miles the younger had Gurnall's
" Christian in Complete Armour" open before
him, and Alexander Mclntyre, a volume of
" The Spectator," the lightest reading the house
allowed.
The night might have been marked with
"red ochre" if the doctor had not found a
slip of manuscript between the pages of his
book. He lifted it to the light, and having
read it thrice, he struck the table heavily with
his empty hand. The young men started and
looked up.
" What is it, uncle ? " Miles said.
"Nothing of yours. I thank God you are
not both reprobates."
" What have I done ?" asked Sandy.
" Done ! You're a fool—a born fool."
"If I am a fool, sir, you, as a Christian,
should pity me."
There was a sting in Sandy's words which
touched a sorer place than the lad knew, or
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
153
could have imagined, in his uncle's heart. The
doctor's misspent youth and middle age haunted
him, and he was ever and again held in fear
as to his own reprobation, and lest the re-
pentance he was striving to work out by
almsdeeds, lengthy prayers, and careful reading
of Puritan divinity should not be efficacious.
There was silence while his anger was
gathering its forces together for a full out-
burst of storm. When he did. speak his tone
was raised to a hoarse shout.
"You're a fool, I tell you, whether I'm
a Christian or no! Who but a fool would
write trash like this to Margaret ? Is it Muir,
the factor's daughter, you make the object of
your Muse ?"
Alexander started forward, snatched the
paper out of his hand, threw it in the fire,
and held it down with his foot until the
flame set it ablaze. The doctor was furious
at this defiance of his authority.
" You're an insolent fool," he hissed
through his closed teeth, " and an ungodly,
154 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
godless fool, to place your ribald rhymes
between the pages of a holy book."
" The verses are not ribald, nor did I
place them in your book."
aWill you contradict me? You lie! You
did place the paper in the book."
"The lie rests with you. I tell you again
that I did not place the paper in the book."
"Leave my house instantly, you imperti-
nent beggar. No, stay till morning, and after
then never darken my doors again."
" I never will."
Look, reader, if you please, before the
curtain falls on the first act of the little
drama I want you to see. This is the posi-
tion of the actors. A tall, white-headed, old
man, whose face is purple with rage, and on
whose temple the knotted veins swell and
throb with the quick movement of the angry
blood, stands shaking his clenched right hand
at his offending nephew, and grasping at the
table edge with his left hand — that is Dr.
Leighton, Sandy, leaning against the door-
ABBOT'S GBANGE.
155
post, is looking for a minute or two at the
emotion, written in such large letters, on the
face of the man who has stood in the place
of his parents. And Miles (good Miles!), like
Bunyan's Christian, has his fingers stopping
his ears and his eyes busy with his book.
CHAPTER II.
GOOD-BYE.
ANDY was not long in gathering his
things. A few books, a gold watch
which had been his father's, a heavy
old-fashioned rifle, a pipe or two, and seventeen
sovereigns, earned by teaching while at the
University, were all his belongings.
The books he threw into the chest with
his clothes, and fastened the rifle to the cord
which held the lid clown.
He had kept a change of clothes out of
the box ; he folded them neatly together, and
strapped them in his travelling bag; he nailed
a card, with his name written on it in large
letters, to the lid of the trunk, then, his
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
157
'preparations completed, he sat for a time
thinking.
He was not unhappy.
At another time the doctor's anger might
have weighed him to the ground, but it was
not so to-night, for he was in the seventh
heaven of a young lover's paradise. "Muir,
the factor's daughter," was to him the heaven-
descended angel whose presence had chauged
the stagnant malarious pool which aforetime
represented his life to a sun-reflecting fountain
of healing. And to-day he had met her, had
spoken words of love, had seen the colour
deepening on her neck; her face had been half
averted from him with what he thought to
be a charming girlish modesty, and he had
felt the answering pressure of her soft warm
fingers. Had felt it! He felt it yet, and the
foolish, boy kissed his own hand where her
fingers had rested. He had not kissed her
lips, he was of an old-fashioned race of men,
and her hand was a revelation to so devout
and modest a worshipper. The passage clock
158 A DAUOUTER OF OUR TIME.
striking ten wakened him from his dream; it-
was time that he should go and put his plans
into purpose.
He crossed the small landing and went
into his cousin's room. Miles was looking at
his own likeness in the dressing glass. He
rose as the door opened and moved a little
forward to prevent Sandy coming further, then
stopped, and grasping the back of a chair with
both his hands fixed his eyes on Sandy's.
" Aren't you to bed yet, Sandy ? Can't
you sleep ? What a fury the old fellow was
in ! His Christianity has little effect on his
temper. I'm glad you gave him a rub about
being a Christian. He'll be all right in the
morning, I should think."
" Don't talk about giving him rubs, I
intended no sneer at him or at Christianity."
" Of course not. Tell him so to-morrow,
and ask him to pardon you."
" I shall not be here to-morrow."
" Not be here to-morrow! What do you
mean ?"
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
159
" He ordered me away, and I am about to
obey his orders."
" Go away! You are never fool enough
to throw away your chance of a share in his
money for an angry word or two."
"I care nothing for his money. I am a
beggar—there he spoke truly—but I will never
be a greedy beggar. I would not stay in his
house after what he has said for all he has."
" He shouldn't have called you a beggar.
I'd stay though, were I in your place—old
men are queer. What can he have against
Margaret Muir? So far as I can judge she
is a prudent girl, sure enough."
" Never mind Margaret Muir, Miles. Good-
bye."
Miles followed him to the door.
" Who could have laid the paper in the
book?"
" I should like to know."
" I should think you would. Good-night,
Sleep will put all right."
"Not with me. Good-bye, Miles."
160 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
"Nonsense! Good-night you mean. I'm
terribly sleepy."
And Miles, seeming not to see Sandy's hand,
closed his door, glad to have come out of the
encounter with such flying colours.
There was another leave-taking for Sandy.
He must bid " Good-bye " to his uncle's servants
and have their good wishes.
In every house some room has its pleasanter
or more painful associations, and for him the
heart of his uncle's house was in the kitchen.
When he was a child it had been a treat to
escape from his uncle's presence and spend his
evening by its cheerful fire. He had listened
for hours there to old-world stories of water
kelpies, of warnings, wraiths, or bogles, from
the lips of Agnes and her gossips, until his flesh
had crept with awe, and she, to pacify his
terrors, must have him to sleep at her side. Or,
with a more personal interest, he had heard from
Agnes alone, loving little stories of his dead
mother, whom from her words he saw gifted
with the charms of a beauty, a loving woman,
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
161
and a saint. It was there that the praise
denied liim in the room was lavishly given,
Agnes (who for his mother's sake loved him)
holding him in estimation as a future light
of the nation! And lier neighbours, glad of
the momentary rest at her warm hearth from
importunate children and tiresome husbands,
chimed in with her, praises as a payment
for the comfort. When he was home from
college how many surreptitious pipes he had
smoked up the wide chimney lest the doctor
should discern the evil savour of tobacco.
This had been a day of extra cleaning, and
things, cheerful and orderly always in this
kitchen under Agnes's management, were at
their best and brightest to-night. The strong
wood dressers and chairs were purely white,
each glittering brass, copper, or tin utensil,
from its ordered place on wall or shelf, gave
back a bright answer of its own to the firelight,
and a different reflection of the group the
firelight showed. On the grey flags before
the hearth a large half-worn rug was laid for
M
162 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
the evening's comfort. And the two women
and David Cowan, the doctor's man-servant,
with their chairs placed on the rug, sat with
their feet upon the fender for a few minutes
before they went to bed.
David had been trying to frighten the
women with the story of a ghost he had seen
down by the river the night before. Agnes,
too weary with the day's work to feel acute
fear, had heard him to an accompaniment of
yawns, but Janet's heart throbbed "with interest
at danger threatening David, and she had
listened with open eyes and trembling nerves
until she started and screamed when she saw
Sandy beside her.
" Gude guide us a'! "
" What's the matter, Janet ? Do you take
me for a f warlock ?'"
Agnes answered for Janet.
" Gang awa' to your bed, Alick, and dinna
come here again at this time o' nicht decked
oot in that fule's fashion to frichten us daft
(foolish) women."
ABBOT'8 GRANGE.
163
"Speak for yersel, Aggy," Janet put in.
" I'm wise aneuch (enough)."
"Ye're maybe wise aneuch in your ain
conceit, an' daft aneuch in your neebour's een,
my lass."
" Don't quarrel now. I am come to bid you
all good-bye."
" My dream's brokken if Maister Alick's gang
awa," Janet cried.
"Your dream brokken ! It wad profit ye
mair if your heid were brokken. Take shame
to yersel, Alick; gang to your bed an' dinna
be sae foolish. David, are ye to steek (bolt,
bar) the doors the nicht, or will I bid the doctor
do it himsel' ?"
" I am going away, Agnes. If Janet dreamt
it she is a true seer."
" I joost dreamed that, Maister Alick, an'
that ye cam' in this pairt o' the hoose as ye
did the nicht."
"Haud your peace, Janet. Ye're jestin',
Alick, ye're no gaun to leave the doctor."
"I'm going away now, Agnes. I suppose
M 2
164 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
before I see you again Janet, that you and
Davie will have taken up house together,"
David flushed and held down his head;
but Janet was not troubled with unnecessary
bashfulness.
" I'll no tak up house wi' Dawvid. I hate
the very sicht o' him."
"Deed, lassie," said Agnes, " ye'll be glad
to marry Davie or ony decent man wha gies
ye the offer."
Janet pouted.
"Ye think a' women are like yersel, Aggy,
and would marry any doited fuil that had a
hauding (house or holding)."
"Davie's no doited fuil, Janet. I'll not be
here at the marriage, but I wish you joy now."
"Go to your bed, Janet. If Maister Alick
an' David hae nae mair sense than to lose their
rest an' run the risk o' disturbin' the maister
by clashing here, ye shall na lose yours, my
lass."
"Ye want all the clash to yersel, Aggy—
that's it," were Janet's parting words. She
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
165
turned in the doorway to look at David, who,
wounded at being called by inference a " doited
fuil," held his head down and gave no answering
look.
Janet gone, Agnes turned to David and
asked again very sharply "if he meant to bar
the doors or no."
" He needn't bar the doors until I am
outside them, Agnes."
"Bar you oot ! You are in earnest? Why
are ye gaun awa' ?"
"To seek my fortune in London."
" Dinna lose your soul in the search for
siller, Lunnon's a awfu' place for wickedness.
Are ye nae gaen to tak a pairting word wi'
the doctor ?"
"My uncle and I have had words enough
together."
" Have you had angry words ? "
" He has ordered me from his house."
" I was feared he would quarrel wi' you;
it will be aboot Maggie Muir,"
" Hush!"
166 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" Weel, weel. I'll say nae mair. Ye're
no gaun the nicht ?"
" I'm going now. Wish me well."
Agnes was in a bad temper. She was
tired, and she grudged the love Sandy bore
to Margaret Muir. She had always known
that it was impossible that her love for him,
her service to him, and the faithful love she
had shown towards his mother, would ever
meet an equal response. It was not in nature,
she told herself (hoping meanwhile that she
spoke untruly), that he should love her as he
would have loved his mother, although she had
had the care of him from his earliest infancy, and
she believed she loved him as dearly as any
mother could love an only son. Still though
she thought this she was human, and she
suffered bitterly when her company was avoided,
her stories of her dead mistress no longer desired,
and Sandy preferred the pretence of reading
in the dining-room or the cold solitude of his
chamber, that in silence he might build his
castles in the air, to an occasional seat by her
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
167
warm fire. So now, instead of the outburst
of tears and the invoked blessings he had
expected from her she said crustily, shaking
his hand with a loose clasp meanwhile, "Fare-
well! do right for yersel an' ye'll do weel for
a'." He did not see the trouble she was in
when she was alone, and her curt dismissal griev-
ing him, he left the house slowly and with a
sad heart.
David followed him, turning back to bid
Agnes fasten the doors herself, for he would
sleep in the stable. Silently the young men
crossed the park and entered the high road ;
and Miles, who had been watching at his
window, heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the
gate close after them, undressed, went to bed,
and slept comfortably.
It was a fine night in the spring-time.
There was a moon a little past its full, but
bright enough to throw gaunt shadows of the
bare trees across the damp road, and to silver
with a divine brightness every little pool of
rain water that it glanced on. There were
168 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
rain-clouds floating about in the heavens, and
the damp air was heavy with the odours from
the fir trees, the ploughed ground, and the
last year's dead leaves, which still lay in wind-
collected heaps here and there beside the stone
walls.
David was the first to speak.
"We were at the schule thegither, Sandy."
" So we were, Davie."
"Ye always shared your piece of bread wi'
me."
" What of that ? "
" Many a day I would have missed it sairly,
we were that puir at hame. The doctor's joost
an auld crab."
" Do you think so, David ?"
" Ye're crabbit tae, Sandy."
" I'm not crabbed."
" Ye're very crabbit; ye'll nae help a body
ava."
" I don't understand you. What do you
want me to help you in ?"
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
169
" Ye ken I was never a scholar, an' many
a time ye hae saved me a licking. Oh, man !
an' didn't auld Smith lay it on heavy wi' his
tawse " (a leathern strap).
" Well, what of that to-night, David ? "
And Sandy turned towards him, trying in
an old fashion to find his friend's meaning
from his face when the words were so enig-
matic. The moonlight showed no answer to
the riddle, and he waited for David's words
to explain themselves.
" Ye're real fulish, Sandy."
" So the doctor tells me. But what would
you have me to do ?"
" Janet's a daft lassie. I'm no feared but
she'll wait £or me, though."
" I hope she will if you wish it."
"Dinna jeer at me, Sandy. I hae saxteen
punds saved for hoose plenishing. It's here
for ye"—trying to force a canvas bag into
Alick's hand. Alick drew back, the kindness
was too much for him, and it was some time
before he could say :
170 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" God knows I thank you, Davie, but I
have plenty of money."
"I fear ye're leein', Sandy. The doctor's
no a man to give ye a plenty in his lifetime;
but he's not sweer (averse, unwilling) to part
wi' his siller for the kirk! I didna think ye
had been too prood to let me gie ye a
lift."
"I would have it from you, Davie, rather
than from any other did I need it. I have
money, but if I want I will send to you for
part of it."
"Ye're sure ye will?"
" I'm sure I will."
"Aweel, I never kent ye leein."
And David put the bag back in his pocket,
half pleased not to part with his treasure, for
it had been hardly earned, and none save
himself knew how many unspoken hopes each
sovereign represented—for his was one of the
dumb souls which always lack expression for
their feelings.
CHAPTER III.
HOME AGAIN.
ANDY knew no one in London, but
he had good references from his
college tutors, and a good education.
Where he was unknown, he thought no service
menial. He was honest and temperate, and
Providence having thus gifted him, he was
not long in finding work.
His first place, that of under usher in a
large school, was a harder life than a crossing
sweeper's would have been, and perhaps as
unremunerative, but as he taught well and
fiked boys he gained promotion, and he had
only been three years and a few months from
Scotland when he was able to return without
172 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
fearing taunts of greed or self-seeking. He
had heard no tidings of Margaret Muir or his
relatives meanwhile, and had given none of
himself to them. At first pride had kept him
from writing, he had confidently expected to
do great deeds in London, and when he was
glad to escape starvation by taking an under
usher's place he could not write until his
future was brighter. When he had the better
post, letters seemed powerless to say what he
had to tell, and he would wait and give the
history of his years of absence with all the
advantages that a present lover has.
It was on a sultry midsummer day that he
came back. There was a thunderstorm brewing,
and the air was oppressively heavy. Naturally
he had a temperament awake to every change
of weather, and his three years' work at
teaching had not lessened his sensitiveness of
fibre and nerve. He walked the six miles
distance between the landing-place of the
Countess of Galloway (the little steamer
which plies between Liverpool and Kirkcud-
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
bright) and Abbot's Grange, and thus had
time to feel all the influence of the weather
and to muse sadly on the quarrel with his
uncle, his leave-taking, and the possibility of
the doctor's refusing tp be reconciled with him.
He would never, he said to himself, cross
Abbot's Grange threshold until his uncle
retracted his cruel words and made him
welcome. There is a little inn in the village.
He would lodge there, and arrange some plan
of action. The road to it leads through the
Grange estate, and when he had passed the
boundary-wall and was walking on Leigh ton's
land he saw that there had been strange
changes in his absence. The remembrance
of home he had carried with him showed
Nature in her trimmest order, his eyes saw
Nature in slovenly rags.
The fir trees in the plantations wanted
thinning, there were large gaps here. and
there in the stone dykes, between some fields
whole walls needing pulling down and
rebuilding. Over one gap a flock of sheep
174 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
had leaped into a cornfield and were feasting
themselves on the green wheat. Near the
Grange, the neglect was as great. Ten or
twelve lean, long-bodied swine were ranging
in the small park. Large crops of nettles
flourished under the fine old trees, whose
orderly age had been Dr. Leighton's pleasure.
Even the walls of the house (spotless of old)
were gray and weather-stained for want of
whitewash. The gates were open, and, despite
his intention, he could not pass the park without
entering and going forward to the house. It
was possible that he might see Agnes; she
would tell him all the news, and he could
have her opinion as to the best time for
meeting the doctor.
The Grange was at first a square, two-
storeyed house, afterwards a gabled wing was
built at either end—that to the south fitted
for kitchens and offices, that to the north
arranged as a drawing-room with a small bed-
room leading from it. The old entrance was
towards the east, but one Leighton, more
ABBOT'S GUANGE.
175
sensitive to cold than the builder, closed that
door, carried the carriage-road round the end
of the kitchens and through the flower-garden
& O
to a doorway he opened eastward.
He disliked spending money, and the old
doorposts, with the fanlight heading the door,
still had a place in the wall. Sandy was in-
quisitive, and tall enough to look through this
window. He saw a woman in a white gown
sitting in the doorway, and his heart gave
passionate, tumultuous throbs. That shapely
head, that shining brown hair, surely belonged
to Margaret Muir—his Margaret. He could
not leave the Grange without speaking to her.
Beyond the drawing-room a wooden fence
divides the flower-garden from the park. He
crossed the neglected grass, vaulted over the
palings, and crushed through the thickly-
growing shrubs.
It was about the time that poor Charlotte
Bronte had first taken the world's ear captive
with her wonderful story of "Jane Eyre," and
Margaret Muir was so absorbed with Rochester's
176 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
love-making, that it was at least a minute
before, feeling she was no longer alone, she
lifted her eyes from the page and saw her
own lover. In many a night's wakeful vigil
he had painted this scene until it had
taken these proportions; Margaret meeting
him with loving eyes, with warm blushes,
hiding her lovely confused face on his neck,
and murmuring into his ear the few tender
words that were all her deep feeling could
express, then bursting into a soft rain of
joyful tears. That was his fancy. This is the
reality. There were welcoming blushes. The
painting was life-like enough there, for all
the blood in her body might have mounted
to her face and neck, their colour was so
painful. But the clinging of the soft arms
and the tender words were wanting. For she
stood trembling before him and was silent.
He took her hand.
" Have I startled you, Maggie ?"
He might have been encouraging a timid
child.
ABBOT'S GRANGE. 177
"You are home again, Sandy," was the
answer. "Miles will be glad to see you."
" Is that your welcome 1"
She had not strength to brave out the
act to the end, the colour faded from her
face until even her lips were white.
"You never wrote, Sandy!" she cried, con-
tracting her brows, and twitching the muscles
round her mouth. "You never wrote, and
Miles"—the words might have been choking
her, for she clutched at her throat with her
free hand. " Let me go ! Let me go!" she
almost screamed, "Miles is my husband."
She ran out of the hall, down the passages
leading to the kitchens, found Agnes, sent her
to him, and ran up a back staircase to her
own room. He was standing on the threshold
when Agnes came to him, and, but for her
mediation, he would have turned his back on
that house for ever. "With kindly entreaty
she constrained him to come in, to be seated,
and to hear her story. His uncle was dead3
they had found him in a fit on the dining-
N
178 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
room floor. And his cousin and Margaret had
been married more than twelve months.
She had told him all she would tell when
he heard a soft footstep on the stair and a
louder on the doorstep. Then the sound of a
book banged violently on the floor, and Miles
spoke:
" Wasting your time with your trashy
novels—if you have not plenty to do, come
out in the fields and help to get in the hay.
Why should I keep you in idleness ?"
His wife told him of Sandy's return, and
together they came into the room.
"You here again, Sandy! Have you made,
your fortune ? There have been changes in
your absence."
"Agnes has told me of them."
" Well, you are welcome at the old house.
Bring in the tea, Agnes. Go and help Agnes,
Maggie, for Sandy will be hungry."
Tea over, the whisky bottle was brought
out, and Miles, after pressing Alick in vain to
ABBOT'S GRANGE. 179
drink, drank freely of toddy himself. The
drink made him angry, and his wife's offences
were punished after this fashion :
"I suppose you never thought I should
wear your old shoes, Sandy !"
Sandy's answer was inarticulate, and Mar-
garet tried to turn the talk to some other
subject, but Miles was in too bad a mood to
let his words pass for an ill-timed jest.
" Look at her ! Listen to her !" he said,
bitterly. " She's an idiot, she never let me
rest until I married her. She was always
after me. It was the worst day's work I
ever did. I never wanted to marry her. She's
doing her best to ruin me. And old Muir,
her father, the factor, he thought I should
help him out of his money difficulties, but I
soon stopped him from coming here to borrow.
If I am hampered with her, I won't be
burdened with all the Muir clan. Then he
came to me and said he feared she was unhappy.
And when I asked had she complained against
180 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
me, he could only mutter that she looked
sad. Insolent old fool! How dare he to insult
me in my own house ?"
Agnes had used to say of Alick when he
was a lad that " Sandy was saft aneucli whiles,
but he could thole when he likit," and his
behaviour while with his cousins this night
justified her judgment, for he gave no sign
before them of the passions which, like unclean
birds, were devouring his heart. Yet he was
obliged to make an excuse of his fatigue and
escape early from the room. He felt that in
another minute his self-restraint must be
snapped asunder like the green withes with
which Delilah bound the sleeping Samson,
and the evil that was in him would show its
power, making him shout aloud blasphemous
words against his Maker, or call down terrible
curses on himself and all in the house.
It was unendurable to have come home
to a lost love and a lost inheritance (for his
uncle had died without a will, and by his
intestacy all the estate had fallen to Miles
ABBOTS GRANGE.
181
as heir-at-law), and by neglected lands and
torturing words to know that the owner valued
neither wife nor heritage. He thought when
he lay down in his old room, worn out with
the fury he had expressed when alone, in
frightful words and oaths unknown to his
tongue before, that sleep was for ever
unattainable, but the day's walking served
him well, and when Agnes, troubled for
him, came to look how he rested before she
went to her own bed, he was sleeping like a
tired child.
CHAPTER IV.
APPLES OF SODOM.
HE windows of the Grange were
opened as wide as their cumbrous
fashion would allow, and the curtains,
flapped about by the soft autumn wind, were
blown to and fro in many kinds of whimsical
resemblances. The outer walls of the house
were pure enough to sparkle in the sunset.
The grass in the park was evenly mown, and
the pigs were no longer masters of the hunt
in that domain, but were held in well-fed
bondage elsewhere. The nettles were gone,
the boundary walls rebuilt, the sunset could
not find a pleasanter resting-place than Abbot's
Grange estate looked this night.
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
183
Inside too there were improvements. The
dingy hangings and worn floorcloths had given
place to bright silken curtains and carpets
which muffled the footfall. The furniture was
brightened, and the family portraits looked
out from newly-gilded frames. The linen on
the dining-table shone out the graceful pattern
that in bygone years some genius of a country
weaver had worked with the fine threads
Leighton fingers had spun. The worn silver
was faultlessly bright, and there were tea-
cups at one side of the table which might
have broken the heart of a covetous collector
of china. The whole house looked a cheerful
welcome for some guest.
Agnes (hard enough to please with her
own handiwork) was satisfied, and said, half
aloud:
"I dinna think it could be better." Then
she sighed heavily. " Weel, there's aye change,
and gin they hae the blessing o' the A'mighty
they will do brawly. I could wish though "
There was the sound of wheels ; an open
184 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
carriage drove through the park round the house
to the front entrance, and the guests entered,
greeted by the old woman's kindest words and
heartiest wishes. Guests ! They were no guests.
It was the Laird of Abbot's Grange and his
young wife returned from their six months'
holiday tour. What! Had Miles's heart so
expanded that he had disbursed money on the
house, the lands, and for his wife's pleasure ?
Not so. You must only expect from the tree
its proper fruit. Miles had been some time
dead, and Margaret and the inheritance were
Sandy's now.
The country people thought a sufficient time
had not elapsed between the dates of Margaret's
widowhood and her second marriage, but the
Scots are very jealous of the propriety of
widows, and public opinion is rigorous in
exacting a due time of mourning.
" You are glad to be at home, Margaret ?"
" Glad to be at home ? Yes, Sandy."
"And the old house will not be ghost-
haunted to you ?"
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
185
Her face lost its light. It might have been
the reflection of a deeper shadow, for the moon-
light, streaming in a white flood through the
window, showed her her husband looking sadly
troubled. She thought, poor woman ! that a
remembrance of her first marriage pained him,
her heart was too full for words, and, for answer,
she took his hands and held them to her lips ;
his fingers were very cold, although the night
was sultry. There were no further words spoken
between them before Agnes knocked at the door.
"Will ye speak for a minute, Maister
Alick?"
He followed her into the dining-room,
where the curtains were drawn, the lighted
lamp was on the table, and beside the lamp
the family Bible lay. Agnes pointed to it.
" Will ye no tak the buik ? It's a godly
fashion, and aye the practeese o' yer forbears."
" Had you always prayers ? "
" Dinna speir that at me. Dawvid an
the lasses will come ben, an ye'll hae warship,
Alick. It'll bring ye a blessin'."
186 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
And she laid her hand entreatingly on his
arm.
" Bring them in, then."
And, with Margaret sitting beside him, he
opened the book and found a chapter. The
two women, who were now Agnes's underlings,
were first to come in, Agnes followed, then
Jock, the lad engaged as helper for David
Cowan, who was still in Abbot's Grange service,
and last of all David himself. Alexander
rose and went forward to meet him, and
Margaret, not at rest yet from the trouble
stirred in her heart by her husband's question
and his sad look, watched them eagerly. She
knew the story of their schoolboy friendship,
and Sandy had told her of David's offer the
night of his quarrel with the doctor. To her
surprise, their eyes showed no joyful expression,
but David's womanly pity and Sandy's awaken-
ing pain. He trembled when the greeting
over he sat down at her side again, and his
hands shook as, turning back the pages of
ABBOT'S GRANGE. 187
the Bible, he chose a Psalm for the evening's
reading.
She found no appropriateness in the portion
he read, for it was the Fifty-first Psalm, and
to her mind there was no special necessity for
those penitential outcries on the night of their
home-coming. David, resting his elbows upon
his knees, leaned his head on his outspread
hands, so that none could see how the reading
affected him. Once she thought she heard him
sob, but it might have been only an effect of
her excited fancy. For the first time since
her second marriage, she lay down in her bed
without the expectation of bright waking to
a happy life in the morning. Her uneasiness
was ominous. That was the last day of her
honeymoon. There might have been an evil
spell hanging over the old house, for, after their
return, her husband shunned her company, and
grew moodier daily. There is a hilly field on
the estate called the Abbot's Holm; the river
bounds it on the west; and it is a pleasant
188 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
waterside walk in the summer time, when the
sunlight brightens the dark pools of the Dee,
and reflects itself in rainbows in the broken
spray which falls from the uneven rocks, for
the bed of the river is very rugged at that
point; but in the misty autumn it is cheerless
and gloomy. There Sandy spent hours and
days, walking in one line at the river side until
his feet had worn a bare pathway on the rank
pasture grass. Thrice Margaret followed him,
and timidly laying her hand on his arm, kept
pace with his measured steps. Twice he took
no heed of her, but the third time he sharply
begged her, at least for a little time, to leave
him alone.
Had she been of a coarser fibre, and, deter-
mined at all costs to know his trouble, rudely
torn aside the veil of reserve he held between
them, it might have been better for both.
But she was naturally easily repressed, her
schooling with Miles had increased her defects
of temperament, and instead of bringing all
her womanly arts to bear upon her husband,
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
189
that she might learn the cause of his coldness,
she endured in silence, saying that in this
sorrow she was rightly punished for the sin
of her first marriage. She endured in silence,
but the salt of her life was gone. Aforetime,
who knows what silent proud consciousness
of superiority, or what unconfessed foolish hope
nerved her to bear Miles's torture without
much flinching? But this experience was an
acuter torture without an alleviating hope.
For now the one man to whom her heart
turned, the man she had injured, and from
whose memory she had hoped by a thousand
tender touches to efface all record of her in-
constancy, was cold to her, and careless of
her cares for him. A brief honeymoon, she
thought, had seen the setting of his love, and
she was nothing to him—worse than nothing
:—an endured hindrance.
Added to this, she had another trial. She
was nervous, and Sandy had bad dreams.
Night after night, he, having fallen heavily
asleep the moment his head was laid on his
190 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
pillow, would begin to mutter words through
his closed teeth. The excitement of his brain
increasing, he would leap out of bed, scream-
ing in all the agony of a terrible nightmare.
His cousin's death had deeply impressed
him, and was generally the subject of his
talk.
"Dead! Do you tell me he is dead,
David? Do you tell me that Miles is dead?"
he would ask, shudderingly, with a long moan-
ing emphasis on the last word of the question.
Then, sitting down by the bed-room fire, he
would wring his hands and weep himself awake.
Fully conscious, he would rise, dress, and spend
the rest of the night wandering from one
room of the house to another, while she lay
with widely-opened eyes, beating heart, and
quivering nerves, longing for morning. It was
a hard time.
CHAPTER V.
THE CONFESSION.
T the time of that religious difference
among the Presbyterians, which
Scotsmen name the Disruption,
Dr. Leighton seceded from the Established
Church. He was moved to take this step,
not so much by conscientious scruples as to
the headship of the Church as by a personal
quarrel on an ecclesiastical question between
himself and the parish clergyman, one Dr.
Miller. A young woman had died in her
confinement, the child lived, and the widower,
who was not a Church member, asked that
■thfe child might be baptized. Dr. Miller at
once baptized the child publicly in the church,
192 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
and so grievously offended Dr. Leighton by
bis tolerance (it being against the strict Pres-
byterian usage to admit an infant, whose
parents do not profess to be of regenerate
nature, into Church privileges) that he, with
other members of the congregation, seceded,
engaged a Free Churchman as their pastor,
and the doctor, at his own cost, built a church.
He was appointed one of the elders, and
was decidedly the ruling elder. At his death,
Miles, though very young for such office, wa3
elected in his place, and did his duties to the
satisfaction of minister and people. But Sandy
was only an occasional communicant, yet it
was on the day of the winter sacrament that
the climax of this history was reached.
The Presbyterians enshroud their celebra-
tion of the Eucharist in all the mystery their
bare ceremonial will lend. They have two
communions in the year, and before the sacra-
ment day they hold public fast days and a
Preparation Sabbath. After the rite is over,
a day of thanksgiving for the feast is instituted.
ABBOTS GRANGE.
193
Oil the Preparation Sabbath the "tables are
fenced;" that is done by the preacher expounding
each commandment of the Decalogue, exhorting
on his exposition, and forbidding all living in
wilful breach of one of these laws to come near
the Lord's Table.
The Reverend Thomas Smith, the minister
of the church, had taken this service himseif.
A pure Church was his ideal, and his dicta had
been harsh and stringent. Actions, words,
thoughts even, he gave as barriers to Church
membership. He had followed his lecture by a
zealous sermon on " Achans in the Camp," and
enthusiasm being a brand which quickly fires,
his more excitable hearers questioned, and
requestioned themselves, as to their fitness to
communicate.
Sandy was much troubled; the week between
the two Sabbaths he spent in fasting and
prayers, and, on the sacrament day, he was so
weak and ill, that his wife gathered courage
to speak, and begged him to rest at home.
But he had to carry into purpose a plan which
o
194 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
was not to be set aside by failing health or
for a wife's entreaties.
There had been a light fall of snow in the
night time, and the wind had drifted it here
and there into snow wreaths. The sky was
clear now, and the air as hushed as if Nature
respected the sanctity of the day, and in its
honour, for a time with a strong hand, held
her rebellious forces in durance.
The communion-table was placed in the
wide aisle of the church. It was only a very
long, narrow plank of unplaned wood laid on
trestles, covered with a fine white damask
cloth that, glistening, reflected all the light
of the wintry day; it looked pure and fair.
Forms were ranged at either side, and the>
sermon over, the communicants would leave
their pews, and singing meanwhile the last
four verses of the Scottish metrical version
of the 116th Psalm, to a plaintive melody,
would quietly seat themselves at the table.
The elders of the church had brought out
the sacred elements and laid them before the
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
195
minister, and were collecting the brass medal
which each member had received, and now
gave in as a token of his or her fitness to
participate in the ordinance, when Sandy rose
to his feet and spoke :
"I have somewhat to confess before this
assembly."
All, even the most devout, were startled,
and unclosed their eyes on hearing these strange
words. His looks were no anodyne for thrilled
nerves, his eyes were wild in their expression,
his forehead was wrinkled with upright wrinkles,
and the colour of his face was the pallor of a
corpse.
"Your minister"—and with a gesture of
the hand he pointed to the Reverend Thomas
Smith, whose curiosity overpowered his sense
of the fitness of things—"your minister deplores
his unfruitful Church. I am an Achan in the
camp. Take me without the boundaries and
stone me to death with stones. Two years
ago last midsummer I murdered my cousin, Miles
Leighton, in the field called Abbot's Holm."
o 2
196 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
There was a long unanimous sob from all
the company. It was as though every heart
had at that moment felt in unison. Mr. Smith
was ready to speak, but he was forestalled
by David Cowan.
" It wasna' a murder ava'," he said, starting
up.
Sandy, who, trembling and grasping the
table for steadiness, perfectly unconscious that
his wife's hands were tenderly laid upon his,
was staring up at a corner of the ceiling (per-
haps seeing the whole scene re-enacted there),
looked down on hearing David's voice, and
listened to his words.
" I was in the field and saw it a'. It
wasna' a murder ava'. Ye a' ken that Miles
was awfu' near, and the morn's morn after
Sandy cam' hame, he had him up in the
dawnin' to help wi' the hay, for he was feared
for a thunner storm brewin', an' he wouldna'
pairt wi' his siller to pay helpers. I saw
that the laird, he was then, was in a flaysome
ill-humour. They baith cam' to where I
ABBOT*8 ORANGE. 19?
stood at the Dee side, an' Sandy, wha hadna
seen me afore for three years, had some
kindly words to speak to me aboot mysel',
an' Janet (that's my wife) an' the wean. Miles
was ill pleased that we spak' tliegither, an'
he bade Sandy to do some work an' earn his
keep. We turned to the hay, an', as ill-luck
had it, Sandy, in liftin' the fork, struck Miles
on the ankle. {Ye did that for spite, you
beggar,' he shouted. Sandy's face reddened.
' I didn't. I'm no beggar. When did I ask
aught from you ?' Miles laughed loud and
lang. 'You no beggar! Why you cam hame
to sponge on the doctor. I supplanted you
with him and with——' Sandy took a step
toward him, and laid his hand on his mouth.
' Stop !' Miles made nae mair ado but lifted
his hand an' struck him on baith cheeks. And
Sandy, oot o' himsel' a' thegither, pushed him in
the Dee. There was a storm an' a splash in
the water, an' Sandy and I stood lookin' in
ane anither's face. I was feared for Miles's
fury when he cam oot, but he didna rise for
198 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
a minute, and then we only caught a glint o'
his white face, and he sank again. ' In God's
name, David! have I killed him ?' Sandy
cried, an' he sprang in the river. I helpit
him, and we gat Miles oot; but he was deicl.
His temple had struck on a stane, an' spite o'
a' we could do, he lay on the grass cauld an'
deid, wi' his een wide open, gin he were
lookin' up to heaven for help. Sandy would
hae gane awa' there and then and gi'en himsel'
up to the sheriff, but I beggit him no, an'
tauld him it was an accident Miles had brought
on himsel'. I beggit him, but, oh, I was
fulish! I wad maist hae deed mysel' for him,
an' I hae only helpit on his ruin!'"
David stopped to take breath. What other
words he may have purposed to say were un-
spoken, for Mr. Smith took advantage of his
silence to assert his authority by trying to
restore order to the people.
Surely never was the decorum of a Scottish
sacrament so much upset before. The women
were weeping and sobbing, the men groaning,
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
199
and the very sheep dogs, who in these wide-
spread country parishes regularly form an
attentive part of the congregations at divine
service, were for sympathy sniffing at their
masters, giving occasional low barks, and
walking uneasily to and fro. The minister
spoke sharply.
"Mr. MTntyre, and you, David Cowan,
would have acted better in bringing this crime
before a civil tribunal. The mischief is done
now, and the only reparation you can make
for disturbing the worshippers will be to retire
yourselves into the session room, wait there for
the close of this service, and leave us to our
devotions."
Sandy tottered out of the church. His wife
and David followed. They did not obey the
minister by waiting in the session room, and he
had the mortification of hearing the outer door
opened and closed again, and sitting in suspense
as to the 'flight or safety of the criminal until
the service was ended.
Sandy's confession had been the last bright
200 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
flame of the dying lamp, for, after it, his strength
was gone, and it was with difficulty he reached
the Grange with Margaret helping him on one
side and David on the other. Sharp trouble
and the near approach of death had blunted his
perceptions, and though he knew well that it
was the last time his eyes would see the loved
home country, whose remembrance had been
dear to his heart in the days of his English
servitude, as Jerusalem was to the heart of the
Jewish exiles who hanged their silent harps by
the Babylonian willows, the beauties of the
wintry landscape were all unfelt in his weary
. longing for rest.
They were silent. He was too weak to talk.
David had spoken out his heart. And his wife,
who had no true conception of his extreme
languor, was too much troubled by the dread
of transportation, or worse, the gallows, for her
husband, to have words to speak or tears to
shed.
David saw him comfortably resting on the
sofa in the dining-room, and, having bade him
ABBOT'S GRANGE. 201
" Cood-bye," was in the doorway when Sandy
recalled him, held his hands tightly for a time,
said some words of blessing, and in a lower voice
thanked him for " love passing the love of
women." Agnes brought food and wine. He
ate nothing, but the stimulant revived him, and
rising, he seated himself, called his wife to him,
drew her down at his side, and leaned his head
on her shoulder.
"You must forgive, Margaret. You have
not been happy. I meant you to be happy. I
hoped we should make each other's happiness,
but after we came home my sin was always
before me, and I was wretched—doubly wretched
in seeing your misery."
She put away his arm, rose from his side,
and walked hurriedly across the room, holding
her hands tight over her heart. She had heard
his murmured words to David; they had in-
creased her pain.
" Can't you forgive me, Margaret ?"
She came to him when he asked the second
time for her forgiveness, threw herself on her
202 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
knees at his feet, and looking up into his eyes,
spoke quickly :
"Why didn't you tell me all? We should
have been happier if I had shared your secret,
and we could have left this place with its
accursed associations. Why do you speak of
forgiveness to me ? My sin is as great as
yours. I am a woman, and I married Miles
without one feeling of love for him. In my
heart I despised him. I excused myself to my-
self by saying what else could I do ? My
father's affairs were embarrassed, and Miles
helped him. You had never written to me.
At first I had thought you loved me, but as
the days went on and no word came I felt
forsaken. I turned to religion for a solace.
Prayers and rites did not immediately ease
me. In enthusiastic moments the superior
love to my Maker that I fancied I had,
helped me to bear the pain with composure.
Still it was always with me, and I madly
thought any change would be a change
for the better. Miles professed an ardent
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
203
love for me and an ardent Christianity. I
married him and in time I might have
loved him had he been kind to me. But,
after our marriage, he told me that he had
not married me for love, but to affect a pur-
pose; and he tortured me more than I could
have thought it possible for one soul to tor-
ment another, until, scores of times, I silently
wished him dead. Wished ! It was only a
fear of my own remorse which kept me from
doing him a mischief."
"My poor child! and I can't help you."
She rose from her knees.
"Let us go away, now. They will not
come for you to-day. Wre may be far from
here before morning."
"Nay, Margaret. Laws are not broken
with impunity."
He soothed her, he drew her close to
him, and leaned his head on her shoulder
again, and she held him with a tight grasp,
unconsciously defying even death to wrest
him from her now.
204 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
£f It is a hard, hard world," she moaned.
They sat until the twilight deepened, and
his hands grew chilly.
" Let me mend the fire. You are cold,
Sandy."
" Oh, don't move ! I am so comfortable."
He lifted his face for a kiss. She kissed
him again and again.
o o
" It will not be always hard and cold. We
shall not be always parted," he said.
Mr. Smith spent an uneasy afternoon and
night. Had it been possible, he, reviving the
stern ecclesiastical times of Knox and Welsh,
would have punished even the minor offences
of professors of religion as heavily as the
Church Session did in those days. And here
a murderer had been joined in Church privi-
leges with his Church, and another of the com-
municants had connived at and hidden the
sin.
Perhaps even Margaret had known that
Sandy was Miles s murderer, and had married
him, holding that guilty knowledge hidden in
ABBOT'S GRANGE.
205
her heart. No! he felt that supposition un-
tenable. Margaret's beautiful face rose phantom-
like before him in that weary night watch, and
he must hold such loveliness unstained by
crime.
Early morning found him on his way to
the Grange, where he purposed seeing Alexander,
showing him the enormity of his crime, and
leading him to deliver himself up to justice.
Should Alexander refuse to accept his deserved
punishment, then it would be his duty to accuse
him to the officers of the law. A painful duty,
for he was a gentleman; but still a duty.
When he saw the house closely shut, and
the windows darkened, he started. "Had he,
out of reverence for the sanctity of the Sabbath,
allowed a hypocritical murderer to escape his
just due?" He hastened his step, and, ex-
pecting no answer to the summons, thundered
on the door with his stick. It was quickly
opened by Margaret. Her eyes were heavy
with watching; and he drew back, ashamed of
his violence.
206 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
She was self-possessed, and she spared him
questions.
" You want to see Sandy."
She led the way along the lobby and up
the shallow stairs of the old staircase, drew a
key from her pocket, and unlocked the door
of one of the bedrooms. He wondered at her
precautions, but followed her to the side of the
bed, which was shrouded in white. Taking the
corner of the sheet reverently in her hand, she
turned it down and uncovered the face of a
corpse.
" My husband is beyond man's judgment,
Mr. Smith. Dr. Munro says he has died of a
broken heart."
He was speechless. Words of apology for
his hardness, or words of sympathy for her
trouble, would not come at his bidding. And
silently he, having looked on the dead man's
face, turned from the room and left the house.
And Margaret ?
In one of our large towns, in those low
quarters where vice and misery, filth and disease
ABBOT'S ORANGE.
207
are well-matched companions, there lives a
woman reverenced as a saint. A woman whose
tender hand comforts even the frailest, feeblest
infant of those wan inheritors of the earth who
first claim their share of existence in those
dens. A woman, the hem of whose garment
hardened reprobates would almost kiss, whose
service is a heart service, and all for the poor
and wretched. Her relatives speak of her as
" poor Margaret," and fear " that trouble has
crazed her brain." But the sick, at whose bed-
side she ministers, the dying, who go out of life
the easier for her loving tendance, all the un-
fortunates who know her, have a truer estimate
of Margaret M'Intyre.
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA',
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'.
CHAPTER I.
THE LAIRD'S DEATH NIGHT.
AVEN'S HALL, or Raven's Ha', as
the peasantry name the house, is
built of yellowish stone, and is
of an order of architecture one may fitly
name the Domestic Scottish. There are
turreted wings at each end of the building,
and a plain centre ; the windows have small,
diamond-shaped, beaded panes, and are divided
by stone mullions. There is a large, square
entrance hall, out of which the broad, low
oaken stairs, with their massive balusters, and
212 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
heavy, oaken balustrade, ascend to a gallery
whence the upper rooms lead.
You see nothing unusual about this house.
Stop a moment. Over the principal door-
way, in the place where yon mostly find the
family escutcheon, and the date of the build-
ing, a stone slab, with an inscription, is fastened
to the wall, the words you read on it are
these :
" Near this place, Alexander Bethune, a
man of God, laid down his life for the cause
of Christ in this land."
As we go along together, reader, let me
beg of you to amplify the words for yourself.
This little story of mine, to my thought,
illustrates the half divine immortality of the
memory of heroism. I do not desire to
preach or enforce morals, but to tell the tale
as well as may be, leaving you to animate
the words with your own life.
It is five-and-twenty years ago, and a spring
night, and stormy as one used to fancy spring
nights only could be. The moon is at full,
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN*8 HA\ 213
and you see her at intervals, for dark green
clouds are driven quickly before her face. . The
wind, freshened by the ozone from leagues of
not too far distant salt water, dashes up the
fertile haugh which faces the house, and im-
prisoned within the hills that bound the horizon
northward and southward, shakes Raven's Ha'
with its wild gust of raving, stills itself, and
rests for a few minutes when the rain falls in
sheets of water.
It is a glorious night for a musician, he
can hear melodies in the rhythm of the storm
that will for ages pass his execution, and his
longing soul may lose itself in the conception
of the Infinite, as the hurricane enclasps it and
hurries it forward, on, on, on, for ever on!
When the moon is clear you see a pleasant
wooded valley, as well watered as Lot's chosen
possession; you see that the hills on the north
are planted with firs, but the southern hills
are bare of trees; while in many an unsuspected
hollow, little lochs, momentarily placid or storm-
disturbed, give each a different reflection of the
214 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
moon. If it were daylight you would see the
peat-stained foam of the linn that dashes in
fulness of life over the rocks in the fir wood;
you would also see narrow tributaries hurrying
on to feed the Water • of Orr, and the ever-
varying colour of the heather and bilberry-
clothed hills to the south, as one cloud after
another finds its pastime in lending its shade,
before flitting on to the boundless area beyond
our limitation.
In spite of wind and rain the windows of the
Laird's bedroom at Eaven's Ha' are set wide
open. The ashes from the peat fire are blown
in fine powder of white dust to and fro. The
wax candles gutter and waste in the draught,
or the rain pours off the window-seats and forms
pools in the hollows of the time-worn floor;
according as wind or rain for the moment has
the mastery.
What of these trifles ?
Andrew Grant wishes to feel the breath from
his lands, and to hear the sough of the wind
stirring the boughs of his trees. They will be
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S EA\ 215
his lands and his woods for so short a space of
time that the watchers would have desired to
please him at the cost of inconvenience had he
consulted their wish ; having pursued the execu-
tion of his own will at all costs through life, he,
on his deathbed, will not by change of action
acknowledge himself in former fault.
He was not one of those weaklings, who, by
altered manners, shows a consciousness of the past
wrong-doing they are too mean-spirited to
avow ; but more of the nature of his fellow-
countryman who could be answerable to men,
as he said, " and would take God into his own
hands." .Not that the Laird would not have been
duly horrified had he heard the utterance of
such a sentiment, though its motive was the
spring of his action.
Look at him, as he sits in the bed, supported
by a bed-rest and pillows. Look round first at
the room. These have been Grants of Raven's
Ha' for generations, and the air of the chamber
seems to-night to breathe out the spirit of the
hardy, resolute, dead Scots ; it is in reality the
216 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
strength of will of their two living descendants
present before you that give you that fancy.
For the Laird's son and only child, Robert, is
one of his watchers, and father and son are
holding a controversy.
The room is panelled with cedar, and has
a pleasant smell. There is a finely-moulded
plaster ceiling overhead, and the bedstead on
which the Laird lies is an old-fashioned tent,
with hangings of moth-eaten tapestry. For the
rest, there is no luxury in the room ; but all the
furniture could doubtless tell many stories of
Grants and Grants' doings, for it has spent
much time in their service.
You might study Andrew Grant's face for
months without fully understanding the mean-
ing of its varying expressions. Are you an
acute judge of character from physiognomy ?
For myself I prefer to trust to intuitions. He
is to die shortly, the doctors say; but his
features show no fear, only a haughty resolu-
tion, and his eyes seem to blaze with fury. The
Norse sage has it, that the gods were known
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S FLA\ 217
of men by their eyes ; surely the demons have
the same prerogative. The Laird's hands are
clasped. God help the creature who falls into
the complete power of a nature typified by such
hands, with their long, cruel fingers interlaced
tightly now, to help their owner to repress all
other show of feeling.
Robert Grant is kneeling at the bedside,
with his face buried in the counterpane ; and
Margaret Cameron, the other watcher, a woman
who has spent twenty years in the service of
the Lady of Raven's Ha', is standing at the
hearth.
The Laird had not cultivated the grace of
patience, he touched his son on the shoulder.
" Rise, Robert! You can leave us, Margaret,
but wait in the lobby, I may want jmu.
Rise, Robert! you can pray when I have
gone from you. Give me the promise I ask,
and I will recall my words."
His son rose to his feet, and one saw
that he was tall of stature, and had a well-
developed manly grace of figure.. The Laird
218 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
pointed to a chair, and bade him be seated;
he could speak better if he saw his son's face
on some equality with his own; it was a
new thing for him lying on his bed to have
to ask a favour. Robert seated himself near
the bed-foot, exactly at the right point for
careful attention, and waited without speech.
His father looked at him intently, but could
find no expressed meaning in his face; the
misty eyes showed sadness only, and the
short moustache he wore covered the set
firmness of the closed lips.
" How am I to explain your silence ; does
it mean assent or denial 1"
The young man found a difficulty in
speaking the single word, which he ushered
into sound by a heavy sigh:
" Denial."
The Laird lifted his right hand menac-
ingly, then, smiling bitterly at himself, he let
it fall languidly on the bed. His days of
strength were past, he must try the weak
recourse of conciliatory pleading, and the terms
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S 1U\ 219
of entreaty were alien to his lips. He would
allow himself five minutes' grace before he
began the unpleasant task ; and the two men
watched each other in silence. His son's re-
sistance to his will, while it angered the father,
gave him a pride in the young man he had
never felt before. "It is the old Grant blood
that speaks : he will hold his own in the
shire when I am gone, and there will be
Grants for generations yet," he said to himself,
for he still hoped for ultimate success in
gaining his purpose.
" Well," he said aloud, " do you know
your position ?"
" Yes."
"And your ?"
The answer was unworded. But the reply
the eyes gave was so potent in its reproach
that it was some time before the Laird, with
all his hardihood, could speak again.
"And that by acceding to my wish you
can arrange all in decent order?"
" That I don't know."
220 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" Why lias this illness come on like this
without an hour's warning ? You were always
an obstinate lacl, but you daren't deny your
father's dying wish."
"I shall never accede to it."
" What do you think the minister will
say to the story ?"
Robert started to his feet and clenched his
hands : his anger could never lead him to offer
to strike a dying man, and that man his own
father—he hurried with quick steps from one
end of the room to the other. Andrew Grant
dared not say more to him, but shouted at the
top of his voice : " Margaret ! Margaret! come
here and let down these pillows and give me
some brandy ! "
His son came forward, but he waved him
aside.
" Go to your mother," he said; " she has
trained you well, and she may reap what she
has sown."
Margaret let down the pillows, removed
the bed-rest, and gave him brandy.
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S TIA\ 221
"This is a fine night to die in, woman.
There will be many going out beside me—
these storms carry many souls on their
wings."
"Dinna be sae hard, Laird. Why should
ye forecast woe to ithers ?
" What have ithers ever done for me ? That's
a tremendous gust."
The wind having found out a flaw in the
masonry of the window mullion, it fell with
a heavy crash against the looking-glass, over-
turning it and then extinguishing the side-
lights; and the wind having free ingress, played
fantastic tricks in the room, lifting the bed-
curtains and making them into the likeness of
inflated sails, and causing a dim half light by
blowing out all the candles. The Laird cried
aloud as if a sharp pain had seized him. Robert
caught his father's hand, and Margaret struck
one match after another.
" Burn the paper. Burn it," Andrew Grant
said in a quick-coming sentence; then he sobbed,
drew a short breath, gasped, drew a shorter
222 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
breath, and, without waiting an answer, left
them.
" Oh," said Margaret, bringing a lighted
candle to the bedside, and shielding it with
her hand, 'c my master is dead! Your father
is dead ! "
" I know it," Robert answered.
" I must waken my mistress."
He caught a fold of her dress in his left
hand, and he held his fathers hand with the
other.
" You must not waken my mother, let
her sleep. You have sense enough, Margaret,
to know what will be best to do."
"She will be heart-broken to know he
died without her seeing him. Let her sleep
while she can. Go for some one to help you
to shutter this broken window, and to put
the room in order."
Left alone with the dead body, Robert
still felt his father's presence in the room;
the hand he clasped was warm and supple.
Death had interposed a veil, that was all,
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 223
and, fancying that the Laird heard him, he
said aloud:
" Father, I will do what I can; if you
may know, you will forgive me that I do
not burn the paper, and that I consult my
own judgment as to the best way to use
it."
An open door in the room, in a line with
the bed-head, led into a large dressing-room,
fitted up as a book closet. It was there the
Laird had used to retire from his family, when
fits of moodiness estranged him from their
society, and the privacy of his study was not
free enough from intrusion. His son fancied
he heard a rustling of paper there, and felt
a short thrill of childish terror. It was the
wind working its pleasure he knew, but he
half-imagined that his father's soul, in its
gradual regression, was still near at hand.
The moon wras clear-faced, the wind had
lulled a little, but there was no rainfall at
the moment, and the light fell fully in the
room, showing the damage of broken glass
224 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
and fallen masonry, showing fully the chiselled
beauty of the dead man's face, and the strange
sudden blankness of the open eyes. The
woman was not long absent, but in his pain
Robert felt the time an age of slowly passing,
ceaseless hours.
Yet when she returned with her women
helpers he was able to give the needed direc-
tions as to the best manner of arranging the
boards they brought at the window, and was
calm and collected in thought and manner.
Whether it was the calmness of despair, or
the self-mastery of a strong spirit, the future
must show.
Undisturbed by the noise of the falling
stone, perhaps weaving its clamour into some
weird dream tapestry of confusion, the Laird's
wife slept quietly in a distant chamber, for
grief brings the rest of heaviness, and she
was undisturbed.
In an hour the room was placed in order,
every mirror and brightly glancing piece of
furniture shrouded with white, and the Laird's
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 225
bed covered with the fine linen that had decked
it for his bridal, after the suggestive old
Scottish fashion, which these people, conserva-
tive in their manners, still observed.
Q
CHAPTER II.
DAFT BARBARA.
night's work was not yet over for
Robert Grant. Holding his hands
lightly clasped over his hot eyes,
and pressing his temples with his thumbs,
he went slowly downstairs, across the hall,
along a narrow stone-paved passage, and
knocked at a door at the farther end.
A woman's voice bade him " come in," and
he entered a room bright with fire and candle-
light. It was a homely place, furnished after
the fashion of the best room of the double-
roomed cottage of a hind or cottar. There
was a sofa with a round pillow covered with
checked gingham, beneath the closely-screened
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S 3A\ 227
window, an old-fashioned escritoire supporting
a tall shelved cupboard with closed doors
opposite, a bedstead built into the wall faced
the fireplace, a small square table, and four
rush-bottomed chairs, completed the narrow
inventory of the furniture.
Two women were sitting on the hearth;
both rose, and one came with outstretched
hands to meet him.
" Na, na! Laird, no' the nicht," she said,
shaking her head and smiling winsomely.
He looked at the other woman, she nodded
an assent to his silent question, and, taking
the outstretched hands kindly in his, he said,
softly and tremblingly, in one of those heart
tones which make the hearer's heart flutter
as quickly as the south wind stirs the leaves:
" Barbara ! Barbara ! "
" Dinna, dinna ask me to come out the
nicht, Laird ; my folks begin to suspect that
a's no richt."
" It is I, Barbara—Robert*"
" Wha speaks to me of Robert—of my
Q 2
228 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
man ? he lies a thousan' miles oot at sea; he
fell frae the bowsprit, they said. Ye ken I
darena' meet yon, Laird, gin he were here;
he would be my death if he came to know
it; but you satisfied me, and, oh, I love
you ! I love you !"
Her voice lingered tenderly on the words,
and Robert interrupted their continuance—
"It is Robert Grant."
She laughed in a rippling monotone.
" Your name's no Robert, Laird! It's
Andrew. Tho' they say I'm daft, I'm no
that daft."
The expression of her eyes changed; she
stood silent half a minute, at least; and then,
looking wildly round the room, went ori
speaking :
" Daft! where's the bairn ? Oh, it's a
bonnie wee lassie, and it favours you."
And she fixed her eyes fully on him again.
"What was it ye sang to me yestreen 1
And gin ye forsake me, Marion, I'll een fore-
gather wi' Jean. I'll no forsake ye. But where
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S EA\ 229
is the bairn ? I mind it a' noo. I'll tell ye;
there was the shame to think on, an' it was
a woman child, and would have tholed it
hardly, an' I joist laid my han' on its wee
mouthie when it was sleepin'. It knew nae
pain, but they said I killed it, an' the Sheriff's
men were after me. Sae I took my cuisin's
bairn an' I said that was mine. It had a'e
tooth but a stane frae the quarry soon knockit
it oot. They took it away frae me, an' my
cuisin raged at me, an' they pit me in the jail.
There my ain child cam' aft in the darkness
o' the nicht, an' lay across my knee, and
strokit my briest wi' its saft palmie, an' lifted
its wee mouth to mine. Ye never cam' near
me, but I keepit your trust weel. Oh, my
heid! my heid! mercifu' God, is this my
doom ?"
She wrenched her hands out of his, she
threw them upwards, protesting to heaven
against her suffering, she clasped them together
until the finger-points cracked. And her dark-
brown hair having been only loosely gathered
230 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
in a knot behind her head, fell from its fasten-
ings and shrouded her face, her quick move-
ment now and again throwing it aside when her
bright blue eyes gleamed out of its meshes.
She was a beautiful woman, with that mesmeric
power of attraction that draws your attention
even against your will—a woman who, in her
right mind, would have influenced for good or
evil any neighbour with whom she was thrown
into contact.
She was fifty years of age at least, but her
insanity had served as genius is said to serve
its possessors ; robbing her of innocent rest in
the daily monotony of life it had intensified
her feelings to such potency, that living, as she
ever did in a quick-pulsed past, she would
always have somewhat of the freshness of
youth.
Her figure was so gracefully moulded that
even the muffling wrapping of the white dimity
bedgown she wore over a linsey petticoat could
not conceal its eye-refreshing outline; the loose
sleeves falling back as she clasped her hands
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 231
over her head, showed her arms to be white,
shapely, and beautiful; she was barefooted, and
her slender blue-veined feet contrasted well
with the dark colours of the brown Turkey
carpet that covered the floor.
Mary Somers, her attendant, was not forty,
but she might have been Barbara's mother, to
judge by appearances. She watched the scene
closely. Determined, for her own satisfaction, to
puzzle out the meaning of the. human riddles
that came within her observation, she had
mentally arranged her own version of Barbara's
story.
Robert, who was bodily weary without
knowing of his weariness, had thrown himself
on the chair between the sofa and the wall
bedstead, and, clasping his hands, sat looking
at the crazy woman. It was one of those
times with him when, by the interest of pain,
he was living a full life; his nerves were
tightly strung, his senses- were open to receive
the keenest enduring impressions; his brain
was working actively, connecting the past and
232 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
present, and foreshadowing the future, while
his eyes were fixed on Barbara.
Mary Somers saw a sharp contraction of
his features, then, as the twilight quickly clears
from the mountain tops, and above their snows
is seen the reflection of the coming glory of
the dawn, his face changed, the quivering of
the lips was stayed, the eyes cleared, and
expressed only pity.
It was, the nurse said to herself, scarcely
a wonder that her charge stayed her walk
before him, and threw herself on her knees at
his feet, calling him the Physician, and asking
that she, touching the hem of his garment,
might find her infirmity healed.
It was a painful scene, the words of entreaty
she used sounded as the bitterest mockery in
his ears. He took her hands, and raised her
from the floor; she laid her head on his
shoulder and rocked herself back and forward
against his breast; in a little time he rose and
placed her in the chair he had occupied. She
still held one of his hands firmly.
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 233
"I must leave you, Barbara."
" You are gentle the nicht, Laird. I love
you when you are douce. You'll come the
morn."
She kissed his hand, stroked it, and let it
fall wearily.
" I will."
And, having spoken a word or two to Mary
Somers, he left them.
CHAPTER III.
MOTHER AND SON.
E Lady of Raven's Ha' had her
chief earthly strength in her power
of loving.
Robert's mother had always made his home.
The Laird also had his own place in her
heart—a place he retained not by fulfilling
its duties well, but through the strength of
his wife's will, and more through her natural
delicacy of womanhood, "which, unable to find
in the other soul that, clothed in flesh,
walked pace by pace at her side, the virtues
whose daily manifestation she had expected,
threw over his naked hardness the mantle of
her love, and to herself and those around
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S EA\ 235
persistent in giving his slightest kindly action
a worthiness not its own, and excused ill-
tempers and injustice on the plea of outer
worries or bodily ailments.
All her household were the better for her
kindly • sympathy.
By using herself to give back reflective
smiles and .sighs when the villagers of Raven's
Ha' were joyful or in trouble she had won
their hearts, and for her sake they paid the
Laird the highest compliment they could give
in electing him an elder of the Church he had
largely helped to build.
Robert had a bad night after his father's
death. Andrew Grant had not left his son that
best heritage for survivors — the memory of
much love—but his sudden death was a grief
to the young man.
The manner of the death made the trouble
heavier to bear. It was in complete contrast
to the whole outward tenor of the Laird's
life, for he had always respected and observed
religious forms; as a Church officer had at-
236 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
tended many deathbeds, and offered spiritual
consolation to men and women in the mortal
extremity. In his own case, his real character
showing itself without a pretended decency,
he had apparently unshriven and "unabsolved
taken the first step of the last journey with a
hardihood that was naturally his.
In the stillness of the night the teaching
of Robert's childhood reasserted its power
over him. It was the dogmatism of perverted
Calvinism. He, by careful reading and
mental extension of his own best qualities,
had escaped its tyranny. Do not think his
was a meagre victory—our triumphs are to
be estimated by the relative position of armies
as much as by their strength.
To-night the old dogma iterated and re-
iterated itself in his ears, until, weak as he
was with the shock of a sudden blow, he
believed himself elected from undated eternity
to everlasting reprobation. He was not one
of those orderly men who can disembarrass
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN *S HA'. 237
themselves of trouble as they divest their
bodies of clothing, and 'who sleep as com-
fortably after bereavement as after a pleasant,
not too-long-extended carousal, yet his healthy
manhood did him good service, and the morning
was far spent when his mother's hand, touch-
ing his cheek, brought him back to conscious
life.
He had thrown himself fully dressed upon
his bed, and he rose hastily, feeling some
heaviness weighing down his heart without,
in the dulness of a half awakening, knowing
what the oppression was.
His mother's voice had a far - reaching
tone as of one who would speak not to the
bodily present only; it expressed, too, a sad
composure that repeated silently borne dis-
appointments might have left it.
" Eobert, did your father speak of me last
night ?"
The only words the Laird had spoken of
her were his unjust reproach as to her training
238 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
of her son, and such words had been with
him a common formula, signifying any or
every dissatisfaction.
"He left no message for you."
"Ah!"
" Come here, mother."
The Lady of Kaven's Ha' was not naturally
beautiful. Her forehead was too wide and
high to be in accordance with any artistic
canons. But she was noble - looking; good
blood cannot lie, and her birth showed itself
in all her actions and movements. She was
one of those women who best beseem the
moment on which you see them. Fresh
with the dew of youth, you long that
such a space of time shall be theirs for
ever; matronly, and bending tenderly over
children, you fancy the position better than
the promise; or, seen as now, with clear, pink-
shaded complexion, silver hair (for, though
she was not fifty, her hair was white), and
eyes that had learned to show love in the
ROBERT GRANT OE RAVEN'S BA\ 230
schools of expectancy and retrospection, looking
out from under her well-marked, arched, black
eyebrows, exactly one's thought of the friend
on whose will and counsel implicit reliance may
be placed.
She was very cheerful mostly, and the teeth
her open lips showed, when she smiled, were
healthy and even; her cheerfulness made one
of her great charms for the villagers, for most
of us have family or inner trouble enough to
appreciate a smiling visitant.
There was no smile in her eyes or on her
lips to-day as going slowly up to her son
she laid her head on his shoulder and wept
and sobbed.
He gave her no words of sympathy—words
were not the great signs of thought with
Robert and his mother, but he stroked her
hair caressingly, and promised, silently, to
keep her path as clear of trouble as might be.
Along with his natural grief he had the
perplexity of knowing a horror, whose story
240 A DAUGHTER OE OUR TIME.
might break her heart, and it must be his
task to suggest such a hint of it as would
ensure her compliance with the strange con-
ditions he should ask her to observe. He felt
also the shame a reticent nature experiences
in seeing an unexpected demonstration of the
mystery of the inner soul in one so near to
itself as his mother was to him.
She was the first to speak.
"I have only you now, Robert," she said,
lifting her head, drawing back from him and
O * O
looking fully in his face, while she pushed
her hair, wet with her tears, aside from each
temple, "I have only you left now."
" Can you calm yourself, mother, and listen
to me ?"
" Yes."
" Did Margaret say anything of my father's
death?"
"She said he was angered at you, and
wished you to burn a paper."
"Will you trust me, mother?"
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 241
"Yes; for I never knew you to lie."
" There is a secret affecting my father's
honour "—he stammered and stopped. '' Give
me your hand."
The firm, supple fingers seemed to help
him along a weary road.
"Oh, Robert, will you not tell me what
the secret is ?"
"I dare not."
Her eyes and nostrils dilated, her forehead
wrinkled, and her voice fell into a trembling
whisper.
"Is it a guilty secret that affects his
honour ?"
"Don't ask me a question. Think of my
father always at his best."
" I have always so thought of him."
" I know it." And the supplication of his
face was painful to see. "Think of him as
you have always thought of him."
" I will, but troubles fall heavily on me."
She sat down and covered her face. In a
R
242 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
terrible moment her past spread itself like
an unfolding scroll before her.
Her childhood, always anticipating an im-
possible future; her marriage, with the bright
expectations that a romantic girl forms as to
prospective happiness; her disappointment on
first finding her husband only human, then
seeing his humanity disfigured by injustice and
cruelty; her futile repentance at being unable
to carry into action her proposed plan of life,
the years of repression and servitude, the
thousand silently-endured humiliations that a
proud woman suffers in seeing herself of no
apparent importance when of right the first
place was hers, came in due order before her
mind, and her pain wTas too great for tears,
for outcry, or for its endurance of a friendly
oversight.
Robert, out of respect for her, looked round
his room meanwhile.
It wTas the chamber of a student, and had
in it traces of pleasant occupation, memories
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 243
of yesterday, that showed a sad contrast to
his to-day.
His fishing tackle stood in one corner,
his reels, his creels, his hooks, his fly books,
his wading boots, and his waterproof coat.
He had overhauled them the other morn-
ing and speculated as to this year's perch
in the Raven's Ha' Loch, and the trout
and grayling in the running waters. His
gun, a present from his uncle, David Grant,
was reared beside the fishing rods. On the
table, at the other side of the hearth, were
his microscope with its carefully prepared
specimens—he was making an examination of
lung tissue for his own satisfaction. Mathe-
matical instruments and papers of algebraic
figures were scattered on the table. The
shelves in the recesses on each side the deep
fireplace were filled with books, and books
and pamphlets covered two or . three chairs,
and lay in little mounds upon the floor.
The toilet accommodations were of the
r 2
244 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
scantiest—a long narrow mildewed mirror
hanging on the wall and a large bath.
He had been very happy in this room. It
is a question for philosophers, as well as for
religious enthusiasts, whether or no each
thoughtful man does not find his greatest
joy in solitude, and until lately Robert Grant
had imagined no higher pleasure in life than
that of self-rewarding study.
It was some time before he said:
" Mother, we must leave here. David
Grant is the rightful owner of the estate."
" You mean your Uncle David ?"
He nodded.
" I will go anywhere so that we leave
this place."
He looked at her in surprise; her unex-
pected, unquestioning compliance startled him.
He had no key to the riddle of her conduct.
"We shall be very poor; I will work for
you."
She rose and held out her hand.
BOBEBT GBANT OF BAVEN'S HA'. 245
"Let us go," she said.
" Now ?"
" Yes, now. As soon as it is possible to
get from here. Our clothes are our own, are
they not ? We will gather them together, and
go to-day."
" There is business to arrange ; there will
be the funeral."
"Can't your Uncle David see to all that
business ?"
" Mother !"
"I mean what I say. If there is some
secret that you daren't tell me, let us leave
its influences. If David Grant is the Laird
and you have no inheritance why should we
intrude on his prosperity ?"
"David Crant has not injured us, mother.
Why should we give our neighbours ground to
build a thousand speculations on ?"
"You talk foolishly, their gossip will not
reach us. If I, partly to please you, partly
because I will not now begin to pry into your
246 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
father's private affairs, free myself from curiosity,
do you think others will be as scrupulous ?
You don't know human nature, Robert."
" Let that pass. You will stay for my sake,
mother."
"You ask too much from me."
"Have you been in my father's room this
morning ?"
" No."
"Let us go together."
In her present humour she would rather
have left the dead altogether unvisited. She
blamed him as injured women do blame cul-
prits; not only where he was justly in fault,
but also for the misery of her own mis-
take. The education of half a lifetime was
not without its effect ; the momentary
revolt over, accustomed to obedience, she
leaned on her son's offered arm, and they
went to the Laird's room in company.
Death had made one of his transformations.
It was no longer the angry mask they had
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 247
so often seen that they looked on now; it
was a chiselled beauty of so rare an order that
the body might have served for a statue of the
dead Adonis.
The lady saw a face that revived the
memory of love-making; the mouth seemed
smiling, and she half expected the lips and
eyes to open and the voice to speak one of
those soft words that had in past years won
her by their pleading.
The room was haunted by unspeakable
recollections. It was here she had seen her
eldest child laid in his father's arms, and she
lying in all the heavenly languor of a newly-
made mother, watched the love that, for her
sake, beamed on the infant out of her hus-
band's eyes. Little children had died on her
bosom here, and her heart, with half its
strength gone with them, had throbbed more
feebly since these partings. The future was
not all bitterness while there were these re-
inembrances of love and grief. Who shall
248 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
unravel the fitful workings of a woman's soul ?
—for, now, all the Laird's unkindness, and her
hard life, were at once forgiven for the sake
of the recalled memory of a transient passion
and agonising pains.
On Robert the effect of the sight was dif-
ferent, to him no tender memories sued for
pardon ; it had been easier for him to forgive
before than it was now, when his father
seemed to lie youthful and smiling before his
eyes, while an intangible barrier fenced him
in from all unhallowed intrusion on his past
or present. He saw the Laird's crime stripped
of extenuations and clothed in its attendant
evils, and overlooked the necessary suffering
that follows the sinner. "This," his anger
said, "is my father, who, to please himself
momentarily, has left me to endure a lasting
misery, who has slipped out of life undis-
credited, and I must all my lifetime bear
patiently the obloquy of his sin."
He frowned, covered the face, took his
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 249
mother's hand, and led her gently out of the
room.
She thought he feared for her composure
giving way, and turned to him on the other
side of the close door.
" I could have stayed longer; I will do
what you judge best to be done. But what
will become of poor Barbara if we leave here ?
David Grant's wife will not be good to her,
and your father was always careful that she
should be well treated."
" How was it that he interested himself in
her well-being ?"
" Her mother was his nurse, his foster
mother. Barbara fell into some trouble—I
don't rightly know what it was, for your
father only hinted at it to me, and I did
not ask more than he told. Then she lost
her reason, and he brought her here. She
was here when I came. I thought she would
be better elsewhere, and said so, and he was
angry. But don't ask about that. I know
250 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
her ways now, and for herself I could not
suffer her to be neglected or abused. And
we must remember that she is your father's
legacy to us."
" She shall be well cared for, mother,"
CHAPTER IV.
A PARTING.
HE Laird's son sat alone in the room
where his father had used to
transact business with his tenants,
which was dignified by the name of "The
Library," by favour of the three bookcases it
held filled with Puritan divinity, Covenanting
tracts, and old pamphlets, whose possession
would have made the fortune of a skilful
bibliographer. On the leather-covered writing-
table were spread plans of cottages, drains,
and roads; for the Laird had been a pain3-
taking improver of his estate, and the ink
seemed scarcely dry on some of his writings;
his unexpected quick-coming death having
252 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
caused him to leave his worldly affairs in
that confusion which an unforeseen chance
may entail on the most orderly man of
business. This was not the case of an
unwilling mortal taken from the unwithered
rosebud and the unfinished dance, but rather
one where the aspirant for starry honours
falls into the ditch. There was only one easy-
chair in the room, it was the Laird's of use,
and his son left it unoccupied, and was "sitting
on the hard oaken bench placed for the
accommodation of waiting tenants.
The green blinds were sun-faded to a pale
yellow, and the room was only redeemed
from universal dinginess by a good portrait
let into the panel over the mantelpiece; the
books, not being of the friendly or companion-
able order, but of the dictatorial or magisterial
class, their prim arrangement giving one the
impression that their contents were as musty
as the scent of their old calfskin bindings
and mildewed paper.
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S BA\ 253
But the likeness was a well-painted picture
of a noble face that attracted minds of its
own order to a close and yet closer study
of its lineaments, and satisfied their research
by a true record that its living counterfeit
had been one of those good men for whom
their neighbours would dare to die.
It was Holbein's portrait of George
Bethune, the martyr, Bobert's celebrated
maternal ancestor. On a scroll at the foot
of the carved moulding that served as a
frame were stamped in gilded letters the
man's dying words—" Though the flame has
scorched my body it has not daunted my
spirit." Bobert rose from his seat and stood
looking at the picture, and you saw the
family likeness between the two men. Nature
allowing one of her moulds to lie unused
for two generations, had brought it «into
service in the third.
Bethune's large brown eyes, painted with
all the mastery of Holbein's art, seemed to
254 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
look down on a twin soul in the person of
his descendant. In both men the eyes told
of sympathy with the pain which fills the
universe with tears; of a great compassion for
weakness; and a sad wonder at men's blind-
ness to ths secrets that the external world
unfolds.
Both men had curly chestnut hair, width
enough of space to show candour between the
arched eyebrows, prominent foreheads, and
slightly marked, the perpendicular wrinkle that
tells of abstract thought, lips not sensuously
full nor calculatingly thin, and firm, well-;
developed chins.
In the shape of the head the resemblance
failed; one might have judged Bethune strongly
prejudiced in favour of his own views of truth ;
a just observer would have rightly expected
from Robert Grant calm judgment of other
men's opinions, and an unwonted charity in
viewing other men's faults.
But, though Bethune might be a little
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA\ 255
behind his relative in breadth of tolerance,
he had, his story tells us, no lack of culture ;
and the faces showed, as fully as might be,
the beauty of the Christian ideal of manliness,
as a self-forgetting, humanity-embracing shadow
of the divine love.
In his left hand Robert held a slip of
greasy paper: it had suggested the muse into
which he had fallen, yet he scarcely knew he
was holding it.
We do a great mischief when we freeze a
budding life. He had been the child of rigour;
law has justice in its severity; but his father,
with the hardness of an unimaginative nature,
willing to destroy his width of imagination,
and, after the fashion of Paul's fathers of
the flesh, correcting him for his own pleasure,
had sown in his heart the seeds of social
Ishmaelitism.
How often in his childhood had his an-
cestor's benignity helped him to bear in un-
complaining silence the unjust, repeated chas-
256 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
tisements, which his father had seen fit to
bestow. Even as a boy he could appreciate
the heroism which, overmastering bodily pain,
asserted the supremacy of mental freedom.
The memory was too painful for him, and
passing his hand over his forehead, and comb-
ing his fingers through his hair, as if to
throw off the unkindly remembrance, he turned
from the hearth and took a small leather-
bound volume from the table and seated him-
self half unconsciously in his father's chair.
The book was a copy of the New Testament,
and had served as his primer. It opened, as
books of use do, at the place where their owners
would have them.
His favourite reading as a child had been
the first eleven verses of the fourth chapter
of St. Matthew's Gospel; he read them again
now, without his mind at first receiving any
intelligence from his eyes; then the story
brought its own associations, and he half smiled
at the childish fancies with which he had in-
vested it.
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 257
Fairy tales and novels were forbidden to
his nursery days. There were for him no
blind Calendars, no golden-visioned Alnaschars,
no lamp-endowed Aladdins; nevertheless, he
had not been without his Scheherazades.
The women-servants at Raven's Ha' in his
boyhood had stores of folk lore, and many
times he had listened with eager interest to
their thrilling recitals of kelpies rising from
sullen, tree-shaded pools, or, beguiling horse-
men to a watery grave at unfrequented fords,
of brownies playing their mischievous pranks
on farmers' wives ; of men who, like the Magus
Zoroaster, saw their own doubles, of men
who were fey or unusually merry before quick-
coming death—stories, in short, of hints at
an undiscovered natural law, at whose mani-
testations men of science have curved the lip
instead of wrinkling the brow.
Matthew's story of the Temptation in the
Wilderness had had a great charm for the
boy. Samson and David, physical heroes
s
258 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
as they were, had not had to the metaphysical
mind, inherited with his Scottish blood, half
the grandeur of a humanity which could sue-
cessfully resist the arch demon in proper person,
and again and again he had paced from side
to side of his own chamber reciting the well-
known words. While he did not reason as
to the ascending scale of this version of the
trial, he perceived it. The offered glory of a
wide-extended rule to a seeming peasant had
its own breadth of suggestion to the ambitious
boy. He had found masks of flesh and blood
for the dramatis person®. For the master,
one of the teachers of Raven's Ha' Academy,
had served; a licentiate of the Established
Church, who had died young in the full
blossom of a fair promising life leaving to
Robert a heart-ache which time had deadened
by this to a prideful remembrance of his
friend's perfection. It is .true, if it be sad
to say, that his father had mostly represented
the Evil One to him, for he had not seen
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 259
it fit to discredit the force of the victory
by giving a full-faced repulsiveness of aspect
to the defeated combatant, and the Laird
had had a certain majesty of carriage and
demeanour that combined with his self-
seeking to give much outward power. He
had longed to engage personally in such a
conflict; and hearing, in one of those kitchen
seances, of a hill-top, where, at a certain hour
of the night on such a vigil the devil might
be encountered, he, alone and unobserved, had
stolen from the house, armed with this very
Testament, to battle with the Prince of Dark-
ness. To stand on the hill-side, charmed by
the holiness of the night feeling himself at
one with Nature and watching with pleased
eyes the brightening and setting stars, the
gathering and dispersing clouds, and the
different shades of darkness on the heathery
or mossy hill-sides; but with a want of success
as to the motive of his errand which he
childishly believed to arise from Satan's fear
s 2
260 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
of the written Word, and had returned home
in the gray morning, disappointed yet exultant,
fortunately to creep quietly to his own room
without disturbing the inmates of the house.
A low knock at the door roused him from
these panoramic fancies; he rose, opened it,
and admitted his lover, Isobel Brown, the
minister's daughter.
His colour equalled her blushes. It was
shame that dyed the cheeks of both lovers,
but shame having in each a different root.
Robert Grant, as a boy, had placed before
himself the personal ideal of a noble life,
which should work good service for humanity.
One of his earliest prayers had been that his
manhood might be good and great, that he
might do work for his fellow human beings
that should help them when he, its perhaps
unknown author, should be beyond their mortal
ken and recognition, he not having that
vulgar ambition which desires the loud-toned
clamour of immediate praise. In his estimate
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S SA\ 261
of the qualities needed for the attainment of
his purpose he had left the passions altogether
out of sight until a year ago, when, home
for a holiday, he had seen Isobel Brown at
church, had been seized by an irrepressible
longing for her constant loving presence, had
known himself a man by the sense of his
loneliness and the intensity of his desire for
this woman as an ever-present helpmate to
him, and had widened his plans, by requiring
her co-operation in their fulfilment.
She was born to be in unison with a
full-voiced music, and her acceptance of her
responsibility had brought her here to-night.
With all his love for her, for the last hour she
had been altogether outside his thought,
and it was the self-accusation at his forget-
fulness that reddened his face.
But Isobel Brown's was the lovely colour
of the virgin shame of a girl's heart, which
fears to own too much, and yet dares not
withhold the confession of its feeling.
262 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
She stood within the doorway, his type of
all that was best in womankind. Seen with
clear eyes, she might be said fully to justify
his choice.
A girl a little above the middle height
of woman, with a delicate colouring of face,
and a slenderness of figure that suggested
the careful handiwork of patience, as much
as does the pencilled fragility of spring
anemones. Time and well-endured suffering
might give a deeper meaning to the expression
of the eyes, they might soften the sympa-
thetic lines round the curved lips, but they
could never give a sweeter grace of self-
devotion than was her natural possession.
Through merit of suffering she might be
lovelier than she was now, but she would
never be more freshly charming.
Her presence brought his passion into
vivid action. He took her hand, drew her
close to him, clasped her in his arms, and
kissed her hair, her neck, her lips, again and
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S SA: 2G3
again, with the ecstacy of love. Such caresses
were painful to her, she feared that her
coming to comfort him might be an infraction
of the dignity of maidenhood, a blasphemy
against the divinity of her sex, but the
thought of his possible grief had overcome
her scruples, and now, when for the first
time he asserted his privileges as her lover—
"for what," she innocently thought, " are
these kisses, but seals of an indissoluble inti-
macy which he claims, and I cannot dis-
avow ?"—she trembled, and the warm blood
brought tears into her eyes.
" Do not," she said—" you should not "—
she stopped, she could not say, in so many
words, "You should not kiss me so passion-
ately." A little ashamed of his warmth, he
unclasped his arms, drew a chair forward for
her, and sat beside her. She covered her
burning face with her hands.
" Nay," he said, taking her fingers in
his, and holding them firmly, " don't hide
264 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
your face. If I have offended you, for-
give me."
They sat without speech for a time. What
different meanings silence covers ! The girl's
fancy was busy stretching a delightful future,
whose fair outlines, like the cloud glories of a
fine sunset, far exceeded any earthly possibility,
broad as earthly joys may be—a future in
which, she being all-in-all to her lover, his
willing servant, his wife, his devoted friend,
should breathe every moment the ether of
transcendentalism—forgetting, poor child ! that,
soul of his soul though she might be, he yet
walked in fleshly garments, and had the ordi-
nary inheritance of pains and ills; while Robert
after a short indulgence in what he felt to be
a baseless anticipation, was looking forward to
their complete separation, holding her hands in
a tightening clasp, as the mother holds the nerve-
less fingers of her dying child closer in her own.
At length his uneasiness wakened her from
her pleasant reverie. She looked up, he let
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 265
her hands fall, rose, lifted the Testament and the
slip of paper, and held them towards her. She
would have taken them from him, but he re-
placed them on the table. Surprised at his
action, she waited an .explanation. Her ques-
tioning look overcame his fortitude, he threw
himself on the ground at her feet, and laid his
head on her lap.
" Isobel! your father will never give you
to me now. He is a good man, but he has
prejudices; we must part. The slip of paper
that I showed you was a decree of separation,
and. the Testament only enforced the injunction."
The girl's heart seemed to stop beating,
she sighed heavily before she could speak.
" Part, Eobert! do you not love me, and
I "
He lifted his head and rested his chin on
her knee.
" You may say it, Isobel. You may tell
me now that you love me, for there will be
no further love-making between us."
266 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
In place of answering in words, she
smoothed his hair off his forehead with a
gentle caressing touch.
"You dare not marry me in direct
opposition to your father's commands."
" He will not lay such a command upon
me. He knows that I am promised to
you."
"He will withdraw his promise, Isobel,
before many days are past. Oh, my love!
my love! without you half my life is gone,
and yet I must live on alone."
Isobel had no thought of questioning as
to whence had arisen the cloud that obscured
their future, her lover's pain called for all
her sympathy. It was difficult for her to
speak, but she did speak.
"Robert, my father may separate us, and
I dare not—" (the simplicity of her religious
training showing itself)—" I dare not disobey
him, but he cannot kill our love. We shall
always have a possession in each other, and
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 2(37
I shall know and rejoice in yonr advance-
ment."
Then a desire for darkness and the loneli-
ness of her own room took possession of her
—if any space could be lonely which she had
peopled with the presence of her lover.
"Take me home, Robert," she said; "I am
tired."
They went together on the road leading from
the Hall to the Manse, and took leave of each
other with a simple hand-clasp, which both
felt to have all the solemnity of a grave-side
parting.
CHAPTER V.
A DEUS EX MACHINA.
HERE is a joy in the agonies of
youthful passion. It was some-
thing to Robert Grant to know
himself so well beloved. The one fault he
had found in Isobel aforetime had been the
delicacy of her reserve—a wise precaution,
Nature-implanted, which made the girl chary
of her gifts to her lover, and taught her
mostly to speak with her eyes only the lan-
guage of tenderness.
He was more elated to-night than he could
have judged it possible for him in his sad
isolation to be. He knew himself no longer
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S EA\ 269
as the master of Raven's Ha', he was only
an illegitimate son of Andrew Grant's; his
mother a defrauded mistress; Barbara his
father's wife and the mistress of all his personal
belongings.
To wear an escutcheon crossed with the
"bar sinister," was to be branded outwardly,
but his heart was hot within him with the re-
membrance of his darling's concession, and his
lips burned yet with the kisses he had taken
as his right from hers. He would make
himself of such honourable mention among his
fellows that the old minister should be proud
to overlook the undeserved stigma of his birth,
and gladly own him as a son-in-law to be
named with approval.
In this mind he rose after a sleepless night,
whose darkness had been brightened with
hopeful anticipation. While dressing he was
called to speak to a stranger in the study,
and went down fasting to hear the man's
business.
270 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
His old store of legendary tradition came
to his memory as his eyes encountered those
of his visitor. So passionate, so fiercely savage
were the eyes fixed upon him, when, having
entered the room and closed the door, the
man turned from looking at Bethune's por-
trait, and glared at him. Then it was as
though a cloud cleared from the stranger's
face, and, without waiting for question or greet-
ing, he spoke.
" You take after your mother's side of the
house, young man."
Bobert smiled.
"You have scarcely come here to tell me
that."
The other straightened himself, his eyes
flashed again.
<c Scarcely. "What I have to say is not, per-
haps, so pleasant a story for your ears. Your
mother's a decent body."
"Well."
" Oh, you need not be impatient, ill news
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN78 EA\ 271
will betide its own telling. I have come to
claim my right at yonr hands."
" I shall not wilfully do you a wrong. What
do you wish from me ?"
"You have a daft woman here, Barbara by
name."
It seemed that his eyes cleared and softened
with tears as he spoke the name.
"That is true."
" Your father, young man, did me a terrible
wrong. You are old enough to have a lover.
You have no wife and you cannot know what
a man suffers when a villain takes his wife
out of his bosom. But, by the Almighty,
Andrew Grant has suffered too. I took care
he should know torture when I heard of his
marriage with your mother, and the birth of
an heir, whom I allowed him always to believe
to be the heir to shame. He has gone, and
it is my will now to have the guardianship of
that faithless woman, who was and is the one
woman in the world for me."
272 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
Robert started back.
"Then you are "
" Robert Cameron, and Barbara Gray is my
wife."
The revulsion of feeling was so strong that
the young man staggered.
" Did you think that you were a ?"
Cameron asked not unkindly.
"Since my father's death-night only."
"You are legally begotten enough, though
he did not know that. It suited me that
he should have as much punishment as I
could inflict. Now, let me see this false
woman."
"Perhaps she would scarcely wish to see
you."
"You cannot forbid me seeing my wife."
His voice trembled. "If you have a man's
heart can you not feel for me ?"
He turned to the window as he spoke,
and saw Barbara walking with crazy imitation
of the gestures of a peacock, that with out-
ROBERT GRANT OF RAVEN'S HA'. 273
spread feathers strutted on the terrace on which
the study window opened. To rush from the
room and out of the" house was Cameron's
momentary action.
" Barbara ! Barbara ! Barbara !" You would
have thought it was an echo of the loud voice
which had spoken to the young Laird.
The poor woman turned.
" Oh, God !" she cried. I knew it; the
sea has given up its dead. There are no
rocks or hills to hide me from the avenger.
The loch I the loch ! "
And before they had time to arrest her
hurried footsteps or breath with which to
speak in soothing tone to her she had found
a hiding-place for herself under the brown,
peat-stained waters of the little loch, which
bounds the north side of the home plantation.
Some days and some lives must be sad
and dreary. Kobert Grant and his wife,
Isobel, as they sit hand-in-hand by their own
T
274 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
hearth, feel their days occasionally a little
beclouded by the fate of Barbara and her
husband's gloom.
" Besides," Robert sometimes says in teasing
to Isobel—for, like most good husbands he
now and again exercises that privilege —
"there is something ignominious in being with-
drawn from martyrdom when one sees the
pile lighted. The purgatory of the married
state is but a poor compensation for a death-
purchased heaven."
But she laughs and kisses him, and he is
as contented as a man may be.
LOYE'S EXTREMITY.
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTIONS.
O-DAY, just before noon, a shadow
crossed the light. I looked up
from the lesson I was giving the
children, and saw Mr. Dalziel and his second
wife standing in the open doorway.
He is much altered. That complacency
of wealth which clothed him like a garment
has slipped from his shoulders, and if you
look deep you may see in him a discontented
278 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
soul, stripped of the robe it prided itself
upon. Changed or unchanged, he has yet
force and passion enough left, for his angry
words came like a snow-swelled mountain
torrent. He was sinking into calm when
he said that I was the cause of the misery
that had come to him and vengeance would
surely follow me, and called me "the artful
child of an over-speculative beggar."
Unjust as his words were, I heard them
without recrimination. My troubles have
taught me some forbearance, and I thought
it was to silence the upbraidings of his own
conscience that he denounced me.
His wife stood by meanwhile, silent and
self-possessed. She is of a reserved nature,
and had I not known aforetime the workings
of her face, I might have thought her an
impassive spectator; but the slight dilation
of her nostrils and the curve of her lips
showed me that she enjoyed the scene. She
had clothed herself sumptuously, and her dress
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
279
was, after its kind, a perfect framework to
her face.
Lazarus, lying among his friends the dogs,
may have admired the rich man's grandeur,
as, clad in his purple and fine finen, Dives
swept past the beggar at his gate; and I
admired Mrs. Dalziel's dress, though her pre-
sence alone would have sufficed to show me
the time-wornness of my belongings ; her beauty
being one of those gems which require orna-
mented cabinets.
Had I met Mr. Dalziel's passion with
superior passion, and after finishing my store
of invective, drowned my rage in womanish
tears, I should have felt better to-night than
I do feel. Exhaustion after victory would
have been mine, instead of this aching conflict
of question and reply.
But he is my lover's father, and the
memory of love helped me to silence. Let
me take courage, the story explaining his
anger is not all -sadness. In narrating it I
280 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
shall have a fuller knowledge of my lover's
presence; I shall hear his voice, look into
his eyes, and be warned once again with their
tenderness.
My name is Mary Fraser. I am the na-
tional schoolmistress at Laytonston, a village
some miles from Lamport, a northern metro-
polis of coal and iron; and I have a beautiful
little schoolhouse to live in, under one roof
with the school. School and teacher's house
were both built by the lord of the manor, and
presented to the villagers.
It is rather paradoxical that I should hold
this post, for my father was the pastor of
one of those Nonconformist chapels which, as
far as temporalities go, you liken to old sea
margins, left high and bare by the sub-
sidence of the wTater. The families whose
forefathers built the chapel had prospered,
and their homes were too far out of town
for Mount Gerizim, the name of the place,
to be within an easy Sunday drive. Pros-
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
281
perity, too, desires a good social position,
and a Churchman is always more respectable
than a Dissenter. And the congregation who
gathered together week after week in the
old building were, with four or five ex-
ceptions, struggling shopkeepers and mechanics.
My father's talents might have raised
him to a much higher Connexional position
than the minister of Mount Gerizim had,
but he was not worldly-wise, and the chapel-
house held associations for him which glorified
the dark rooms. He had spent his honey-
moon in them. My mother had died young
there; he could not of his own will leave
the place where he had had glimpses of
heaven and the full sight of death.
Unlike many self-sacrificing widowers, he
had not taken a second wife for the sake
of his motherless child; yet he was one of
those men who need a loving woman for
a staff and comforter, and who are formed
by Nature to be happiest under a kindly
282 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
tyranny. For after my mother's death my
grandmother had come to live with him, and
in her he had a friend bound to him by
bands of love and sympathies of near kindred.
Children discern character by instinct, and
my eyes were early open to my grandmother's
heroism. I could see elements of weakness
in my father's nature, but in her I could not
in the present, nor can I in remembrance, see the
shadow of an imperfection. From my earliest
recollection until the hour when she lay down
to die I have nothing but loving words and
kindly judgments and actions of hers to
record.
We had a very narrow income, but
through her management we were not poor,
and we had wherewithal to help our neigh-
hours. Those troubles of domestic work which
burden the housekeepers of to-day were unfelt
in our home. My grandmother was skilful
in household duties, and felt it no cause for
shame to be discovered by her richer acquaint-
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 283
ance in the performance of needful hand-
soiling labour, nor occasion of trouble or
anger when she heard that some of the better-
to-do of the Church members foolishly thought
" that their minister would have been wiser
had he engaged a housekeeper and left his
mother in the background of her native
village," for she was by birth a Scottish
peasant.
In spite of, or perhaps by favour of, her
origin, riches were indifferent to her. John
Smith with ten thousand pounds a year was
held to be neither better nor worse than
John Smith with ten shillings a week. She
stands alone in my experience, for your
despiser of money is mostly blind to the
virtues of its owner and sharp-eyed as to
his faults, and the caste of wealth is nowhere
greater than in our religious communities,
where a miserable sinner of a millionaire will
confess his sins as though he condescended
to his Maker by owning himself guilty.
284 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
So far as outward circumstances go, my
childhood was happy; but we are much
straitened in providing happiness for children,
original sin, hereditary transmission of tern-
perament, or, whatever you choose to call the
principle, confronts us like a hydra : thus,
though I had a wealth of expressed love to
draw from, my heart still desired the unat-
tainable expression of my mothers love, and
the happiest hours of my childhood were spent
sitting on the flat stone that covered her
grave with my doll in my arms, where I
told my child (as I called her), in whispers,
imaginary stories of my mother's history, or
I foolishly prayed fervently that an angel
might come down and remove the stone from
off the grave, fancying that I should be
nearer to her if I could with childish palm
stroke the earth that covered her body.
Of course I had been told of the immor-
tality of the soul, but I had two conceptions
of my mother: one as an intangible, white-
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
285
winged angel, a denizen of heaven, and the
other as a sweet-faced woman sleeping with
my little brother on her breast under that
heavy, weather-stained stone, and my child's
heart preferred the second imagination to the
first.
It was necessary that I should be taught
to work for my living. My father saw in me
an aptitude for teaching, and I was trained
for this post.
Let me give here the thanks I owe.
I had never liked the deacons of Mount
Gerizim. It is wonderful how clever some
religious men are in the art of tormenting,
and they who were supposed to be chosen
from the Church members for their pre-eminent
spirituality could torture my father so efiec-
tually that, for days after their fault-findings,
he would be unable to study, to visit his
people, or even to pray. So varied were their
accusations that I said they held him the
scapegoat for the sins of the whole congre-
286 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
gation; but, instead of sending him into the
wilderness to suffer the penalty alone, they
kept him in their presence, that they might
load him constantly with offences.
We say that a man is often his own
Nemesis, and it is true my father suffered
for a past folly. My mother had a dower
of two hundred pounds. Anxious for her
sake to make a good use of this money he
invested it in a new company. The company
was bankrupt within the year, and the share-
holders were ruined. Then the deacons, chief
of whom was Mr. Dalziel, lent my father the
money to buy back his books and furniture.
Through economy the money and its interest
were repaid, but the obligation incurred was
stamped indelibly upon my father's memory.
He was over-conscientious, and what many
men—most men—would have felt to be a
trifling matter fully atoned for, were atonement
needed, was to him a transgression of the precept
against hastening to be rich. Commonplace
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
287
people take us at our own value, unless by
rating ourselves too highly we prick their
vanity, and the deacons, seeing my father
lamenting his fault in spiritual sackcloth and
ashes, chose to think him guilty. They held
it no sin for a business man to be burnt
over the fingers in taking speculative chest-
nuts out of the fire, but for a pastor of
the faithful to lose money in a bubble com-
pan}^ was, judging by my father's remorse,
a crime of a damnatory class, and he was hence-
forth their subordinate and the butt of their
ill-humours.
But they helped me to this place.
Now, let me tell you something of my
lover, and I have done with introduction.
John Dalziel had a score of angularities of
character, but one purpose—a will to elevate
not himself only, but the class also to
which he belonged, a purpose of idealising
the tradesman element which subordinates
our English society. His mother had taken
288 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
care that as a boy he had been well
schooled, and now he was working towards
his own education — that education which is
a bringing out of the best of one's self,
a broadening of one's tenderness and a
strengthening of one's spiritual sight. In
minor points he was amiable. He would sit
on a bench in a draught at chapel and give
up his cushioned seat to any poor man or
neuralgic old maid; he would wait for
dinner, or go dinnerless, and not call down
condemnation on the head of the offender,
or more, submit to have his books and
papers arranged by an orderly maidservant,
without special outward sign of vexation.
He was not always contrasting himself in the
present with what he had been in the past,
but his body and mind went together to
make a large nature without meanness, and
with well-extended sympathies, though he
could not yet tolerate intolerance, for let
Mr. Dalziel, in his hearing, assert some dogma
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
289
or censure some belief that went against his
own creed, in the autocratical tone which
made you think he believed he patronised
the universe by living in this world, and
you saw John's worst side at once. Forgetting
filial reverence, he would speak sharply to
his father as he might have done to a
foolish fellow his equal in age, who had no
extraordinary claim upon his forbearance.
I saw a thousand virtues in him. To
my mind he was born to be a leader
of men. I gave him the qualities of the
noblest heroes. His fine stature and his
stalwart breadth of figure confirmed me in my
judgment, for the physical endowments of your
book heroes are mostly in accordance with
their mental attributes. I wondered how I
came to have such a lover. He had a good
face, a broad forehead, with space between
the eyes, and well-marked eyebrows; he had
fair hair, keen blue-gray eyes which softened
and dilated when he looked on things pleasing
u
290 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
him, and mobile lips which curved and quivered
with joy or pain.
His mother had interested herself in my
lonely childhood, and he and I had enough
association as children to have memories in
common and not enough familiarity to blind
us to each other's good qualities.
Mrs. Dalziel was dead. Her husband had
prospered until he was one of the first ship-
wrights in Lamport, and I, a national school-
mistress, was surely no fit mate for his only
son.
That was how matters stood two years ago.
CHAPTER II.
T was evening, the children had gone
home an hour before, and I had had
the meal so dear to most women—
my tea. The work remaining for me before
I was at liberty to throw aside my character
of schoolmistress and workwoman and enjoy
a little dutiful self-improvement or a soft dis-
coursing of music, was work that I could do
best alone, without quick eyes watching me
or childish voices circling the quiet waters of
my thought. I had exercises to correct,
needlework to fix, and, for myself my sehool-
gown to mend where a careless boy had rent
it from the waist, My fire was bright, and
u 2
292 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
my room in order, for I cannot enjoy an
untidy leisure. I expected no guest to-night,
the rain fell heavily, and I knew the roads
would he very muddy. I was happy never-
theless. The imagination of love-making is
sometimes a pleasanter pastime than the
reality. Even the downfall of rain added to
my pleasure by, through force of contrast,
enhancing the homely comfort of my fireside.
Yet I confess that my pulse quickened when
there was a hand on the door-latch, and I
heard a known footstep in the small entrance
passage. Needlework, exercises, study, dress-
mending, must be left until morning, while
I tried to charm my lover and repay him
for his wintry walk. It was not a very hard
task. Love has intuitions, and as far as the
power of loving was given to me, I loved
him. So according to his humour I arranged
my behaviour. If he was moody or thought-
ful, I played music with a soul in it; or,
sat quietly with my sewing in hand beside
LOVE 'S EXTREMITY. 293
him, while he meditated on the subject
which occupied him, thought it through and
laid it aside. If he were idealistic or ener-
getic I listened to his plans for the improve-
ment of his fellow-workmen, and brought
appreciative words and tender raillery to help
him. Sometimes we sat hand in hand for
hours together without speech, feeling the
silence too enjoyable to be broken.
To-night it was written that we were to
have our only quarrel, and that I was to learn
something of the unsuspected weakness of my
own temper.
When he sat in his accustomed chair at
the fireside, I saw from his face that he was
troubled; the upright wrinkle on his fore-
head tightened the skin on his temples, and
now and again he bit the corner of his lip.
My fingers were busy with the needle, and I
waited until he spoke.
" Molly, who do you think is staying at
my father's
294 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" Your father's ward, Agnes Miller."
He laughed. " What occult means of know-
ing your neighbours' affairs have you ? Are
you a witch ? "
I nodded.
"What do you think is my father's motive
in bringing her to stay at our house ?"
" Is she alone ? "
" Alone ! What must you think of us ?
Of course not. My Aunt Martha is with her
for propriety's sake."
"She is very beautiful."
" It is the first time I have heard my aunt
so complimented."
His words irritated me. Martha Dalziel
is an ugly woman, whose life seems but to
have had two aims: the family aggrandise-
ment and her own comfort. And Agnes
Miller's beauty is undeniable—the beauty of
rounded outline and lithesome movement,
crowned with a soothing perfection of face
which would make most men judge of her as a
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
295
tenderly sympathetic companion. I had known
her from childhood, and thought that I saw her
face was only a mask, not the shadow of a pure
soul. I could not claim the same insight for
my lover, and had dreaded that she might be
brought into the field against me, my ex-
perience of her having shown me a stealthy,
cat-like pursuit of her objects, and an
almost certain attainment of them. Her
name aroused these sleeping fears, and I
was in no humour to be teased. I said
sharply:
"Your father wishes you to marry Agnes
Miller. He is wise. Her money would
help you forward in the world. You wiil
represent the town and your own views in
Parliament before long, perhaps be Prime
Minister. She will be a wife whom most
men will envy you. And what am I that
I should stand in your way?"
"' The children of this world are in
their generation wiser than the children of
296 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
light.' Do you place my father in the
first category ?"
" That goes without saying."
It was wrong to say this of Mr. Dalziel
to his son, for I knew that, however we
may disparage our relatives, we wish to
preserve the privilege for ourselves and wince
if others , use it.
" Come, Molly, don't be so hard. When
a fellow is tempted by the devil to do a
meanness, he has a right to expect his good
angel to help him to resist the temptation."
" Then you have been tempted to marry
Agnes Miller ?"
" All the day I have had seductive
visions of myself in Parliament, the ' working
man's candidate.' Nay, I have even been
in imagination the 'leader' of the Opposition;
and with, as you say, a wife whom most
men wonld envy me "
He stopped. I did not see at the time
that had he proposed this meanness as he
LOVE }S EXTREMITY. 297
called it, lie would not have told me of
the temptation, and I suppose he saw my
pain in my face.
" Molly ?" How softly he spoke. No
mother could have soothed a loved ailing
child more tenderly, I answered the word,
and not the tone:
"Yes."
" Do you remember the night " ? He
stammered and blushed. I felt hot, too, but
I finished the sentence for him.
"The night you first told me you loved
me ? Yes. Your father was willing then
that you should marry me. It was the night
your mother died, and when we came down
together from her death chamber, we were
both greatly troubled, and you said ' Molly,
you are the only woman I have to love and
think for now;' and I let you kiss me and
lean your head on my shoulder — that was
all."
I looked down when I had spoken. My
298 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
words had pierced my heart, for when I let
him kiss me I had felt that the caress wras
as solemn a betrothal as any marriage cere-
mony could be, and that I was dedicated by
it to him and his interests as sacredly as
any vestal to the holy fire by her oath.
" John, I love you well enough to bid
you obey your father without thought of
me."
He 'let my hand fall.
" Nay," he said, " you know nothing of
love when you can seriously bid me marry
another woman."
Woman - like, when I saw that he was
grieved, I wished to throw myself spiritually
at his feet and ask forgiveness for my mis-
apprehension, but pride withheld me. " What
have you said or done so much amiss ?" it
asked. "You are poor in money, but you
can work, and you need not cause dis-
cord in a family. And for your love which
he doubts, and your pain at its disap-
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 299
pointment, you can bear all. You have the
days fully occupied, but the nights are
your own to fight against trouble in. Let
him go, and be done with the struggle
at once." After what seemed an age of silence,
he rose to go, and bade me " Good-night."
I did not speak. He turned to leave me.
I let him open the door. Then I broke the
spell and called him by his name. He looked
back at me. And how was it ? His arms
held me, my face was hidden on his shoulder.
And we had no need for words of explana-
tion or forgiveness. When he did speak it
was to ask: " Did you think ours was to
be £ faded bliss ' faded so soon ? "
I had a sleepless night. Doctors tell us
that passion of any kind is not good for
bodily health; that the man who would
live long must be somewhat like a snail—
easy, slow-going, and not over-troubled with
feeling.
All my hopes for this world, all the joys
300 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
and sorrows, all the endearments, all the
differences of opinion and unities of interests
and hopes that go to make up the best state
for most women, that of a happy marriage,
depended for me on one thread, my lover's
constancy.
The strength of the fibre was now to be
tested, and I knew it would be thoroughly
proved when Martha Dalziel had a hand in
the trial. For I had offended her years ago,
and had neither desired nor obtained her
forgiveness. I laughed aloud as I remembered
the manner of my offence. One sultry Sunday
afternoon, when she was comfortably settled
to rest in a shady corner of her sister-in-
law's drawing-room, a book of religious light
literature and a packet of sweetmeats on her
lap, we had disturbed her by speaking in
high tones. She revenged herself by lecturing
us on propriety, good manners, and reverence
to elders, illustrating her words by the story
of the stern Elisha, the children of the
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
301
prophets, and the bears. We listened patiently
until the exercise was over, when John turned
to her and asked after boyish fashion, in a
grave manner of his own, "if she thought
they were bears bereaved of their whelps to be
so savage ?" The seriousness with which he
spoke and the mischievous twinkling of his
eyes were too much for m^ composure, and
though I made my utmost efforts to restrain
myself, I laughed immoderately, and made
by this misconduct an enemy of Miss Dalziel.
She forgave her nephew after a time, for
some women can more easily forgive boys
for offences than they can forgive girls, and he
was her nephew. My offence was ranker in
her eyes. She fancied my laughter savoured
of ridicule, and I felt her ill-will again and
again.
I was self-accused also. Until to-night I
had despised many other women as frivolous,
weak, and worldly, and had seen much
heroism in my own resistance to the natura]
302 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
longing for an easy living, purple and fine
linen. Most of us have, knowingly or un-
knowingly, our imaginary standard of per-
fection, and my personal ideal of womanhood
had been a complete submergence of oneself
in one's lover. I desired to be soul of his
soul and spirit of his spirit. My ambition
—for I had ambition—was to be gratified
by shining with the reflected glory from his
brightness.
That was the imagination. This was the
reality. So long as his actions and words
accorded with my will I was ready to listen
and admire. While the unconscious flattery of
his looks and manner showed me that I held
the strongest place in his heart, I was ready
to shadow his sentiments, but when there was
a suggested thought of another woman ousting
me from my citadel, a mention of a temptation
to make her his wife, I lost my temper, spoke
sharply of his father, then, touched by his
hand-clasp into the remembrance of tender-
LOVE >S EXTREMITY. 303
ness, I bade him obey his father and leave
the woman he loved. No three-volumed
heroine, no " Tilburnia raving mad in white
satin," could have acted more foolishly. From
judging of myself as almost a demi-god, I
fell to the other extreme, and was so over-
whelmed in my own weakness that I could
endure to stay in the house no longer. Feel-
ing as the prisoner in the Venetian dungeon
must have felt when the walls, roof, and floor
drew gradually together until he was smothered
or crushed to death, I rose, dressed, and
went out for a walk in the early morning
darkness.
The rain was over; a sharp frost had
set in, and the stars were very bright. The
sight of their presence solaced me. How
many myriads of unfortunates had they
looked down upon ? Wretches whose hearts
had throbbed with a fiercer pain than
mine. Wretches whose trial was over, and
who, doubtless, now recognised the salutary
304 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME,
influence of the discipline they had under-
gone.
I also was in the hands of the Great
Father; my weakness, follies, faults, were to
be expurgated by a merciful hand, and the
thoroughly cleansed palimpsest was to have
a fairer character traced upon it. Assured
of help and attainment of the goodness I
desired, assured too of the everlasting happi-
ness these had reached, I went back to my
house inexpressibly comforted, and set to
work to correct the exercises, to fix the
needlework, and to mend my gown.
CHAPTER III.
OW the next six weeks passed I can
scarcely tell. A battle involving my
happiness was being fought, and I
could not by words or questioning looks ask
how the day was going. I could only try my
best to be loving and sympathetic to my lover,
with that unworded sympathy, which, failing
as human help must be, is still the best gift
one has to give another. I felt myself each
day required to learn a harder lesson, but I
was conscious of strength, and the day's
lessons were not unacquired. When I was
at the end of endurancej the strain was
loosened.
306 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
It had been a fine spring day, and school
over, I had tried the effect of an alterative,
a little hard hand labour, after the mental
drudgery — for let children be as good as
children can be—and that to my mind says
much for the capability of goodness—there
is no work heavier than trying to arouse
dormant brains. I am proud of my house-
wifely abilities, and enjoy a thoroughly
cleaned room as well as, if not better than,
a perfectly-written exercise.
Brains and hands had done their day's
work, and I sat down in the doorway of my
house to rest, thinking, by some parallel of
thought, as I leaned back in the wicker
chair I use for a garden seat, of the Patriarch
on the plains of Mamre, resting in the door
of his tent, when the angel came down to
be the prophet of good news to him. My
minister of grace was coming down the
road, and I went along the garden path to
meet him.
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
"Put on your hat, and let us walk to-
gether," was his greeting. "It is a pity to
waste this lovely time indoors, and it is too
cool for you to sit outside."
About a mile from Laytonston the Duke
of Lamport has a shooting box, and by
his courtesy the walks round the house are
open to the villagers and excursionists from
the town. We made our way there to-
gether. In front of the house there is a
large smooth-mown grass-plot, soft with the
springy turfiness of centuries of mossy growth,
bounded by distant hills, at this moment
irradiated by a deep crimson sunset sky,
crossed by bars of black cloud that threatened
a rainy morrow. We sat down for a mo-
ment or two in front of the house. A
party of townspeople were enjoying a holi-
day on the grassy lawn. A portion of them
were dancing some northern dance to whistled
music and the cracking of finger-ends.
Others were playing at a round game, and
x 2
M A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
|rs of the party sat on the turf and
enjoyea the sight of merriment.
"Have you ever had a moment in your
life that you would have liked to make
eternal ?" John asked.
" I think not—I am sure not. This is
a pretty picture, and your presence enhances
its interests, but it holds possibilities of weari-
ness. Eternity must have change of action
to be even endurable, to say nothing of en-
joyment, or we must suppose an alteration
of being that makes sameness happiness;
and that I should think an impossibility, for
it would be a degradation in nature, judging
as we judge."
He rose. " Let us go forward."
"You prove the truth of my answer."
He laughed, and took my hand in his.
"I do not think eternity would be happi-
ness to me without you."
Some distance further the pathway leads
through plantations and past a fish-pool. We
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 309-
followed the road, and stayed opposite the
water. It was a pretty little scene. We
stood under a glossy-leaved beech. There were
oak-trees at hand, with their unfurling foliage
of delicate yellow, and one or two alders,
whose folded leaves showed only their silvery
lining as yet, and in front the placid lake,
momentarily disturbed by the fishes snatching
the unwary flies for their evening meal—all
irradiated by that wonderful spring sunset.
" Small fleas have larger fleas upon their
backs to bite 'em, and so on ad infinitum,"
John laughed. "Look at those happy, help-
less flies. Is this an emblem of life, Molly ?
Are the weak and small always victims of
larger greed ?"
"You are not weak."
" I shall never be strong in the sense of
successfulness."
" That depends on your reading of sue-
cess. Do you remember Solon's answer to
Croesus's question as to the happiest man ? "
310 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" I took the ordinary meaning of worldly
success. To my own mind I am most fortunate.
What a gift you are to me ! "
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me for a simple statement
of truth."
" It is truth, is it not ?"
" Oh, what a little glutton you are for
protestations of love !"
My heart beat quickly.
" You are assured of my love for you ?"
" I think so—nay, I don't think; " and he
took both my hands in his and looked down
into my eyes, " I am as sure of it as that
I hope for heaven."
There was a minute or two of silence.
" Well, Molly, I am a free man to-day. You
see before you another version of the prodigal
son, a prodigal turned out, thank Providence,
without any division of his father's living."
" Has it come to an open breach between
you ?"
LOVE'8 EXTREMITY. 311
His face clouded.
" An overpassable one. If it were possible
for words to unloose the ties of kindred, I
had no father to-night, and my father no
son."
" Oh, don't say so!" It horrified me to
think that I had been the cause of such
a rending asunder of natural affection. He
soothed me.
"Be easy, love; you are not at fault.
I can't judge you to blame for loving me;
for myself I can find no words to say what
your love is to me. Ah! I forgot to tell
you in this new version the prodigal is to
be endowed with a beautiful young step-
mother."
" Then Agnes Miller marries your father ?"
" It is so intended."
" She is a dangerous enemy. Have you
had a stormy scene with her ?"
"I don't fear her, nor should you. Let
ns' hold a council of ways and means now,
312 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
How am I to make a living ? This," and
he drew a handful of silver out of his pocket,
"represents the storied sixpence that became
a thousand pounds, but the qualities that
scraped the gold together are wanting in
me. I wish we were married, and that we
were going together to seek our fortune."
" Going!"
The word opened the vista of an unknown,
almost unimaginable future.
"Yes, I must go to make a home ready
for you. We shall have no luxuries but
love, for hand work is not often paid with
much money, but it is generally to be had
now, and let us be thankful that I can do
my own trade's work very well."
"Then you must leave Lamport?"
"Yes, not even to be near you could I
stay in Lamport now."
The expression of his face told me how
the quarrel and the present bearing of his
affairs hurt him.
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
313
" Besides, were I ever so minded to stay
my father would hinder my having work."
To-night I put the selfish future out of
sight, and tried to help him in his trouble.
I stroked his hand softly. " Let us be happy
in the present. Money is not to be named
in a breath with love, and we love each
other so well that we might be Adam and
Eve in the garden."
" Thank you." His face had brightened
so that I felt more satisfied for him, and
we turned our steps homeward, where we
sat late into the night planning out the
future. He had spoken for a bed at the
village inn, for he was to leave at any early
hour in the morning for Glasgow, where
shipwrights were wanted, and he had no
fear of finding work, for he was a good
handicraftsman.
In the early morning we had breakfast
together. I walked with him to the little
station, saw him into the train, watched
314 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
him looking at me out of the window until
the carriages were out of sight, and with a
prayer in my heart for him and myself,
turned back to the house, which had lost
its homeliness without his often-expected pre-
sence,
CHAPTER IY.
HAD been happy, and in my liappi-
ness I had outraged propriety, there-
fore I must suffer. It is right
that, certain unwritten laws being promul-
gated for the government of the respect-
ability of this earth, the respectable ones
should outwardly observe them, but that I,
who claimed or obtained no place in society
—was a nonentity, as it were—and had no
benefit from these rules of management, should
still be punished for the breach of their social
observance, struck me as an injustice. Yet
I was punished.
316 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
The Reverend Samuel Hall, a clergyman
of my parish, is my superior in the school.
Though I do not agree with all his teachings,
I respect his virtues, and believe him to
be one of those good men for whom one would
even dare to die. He is a bachelor of
about five-and-thirty years of age, and so
associated are kindly looks and actions with
him that I could not have foreseen that society
would choose him for my judge, yet it was
so written.
Eight weeks after my lover had left me,
I was finishing the afternoon's lessons when
Mr. Hall entered the schoolhouse and craved
a little time for speech with me. The children
were glad to leave a few minutes earlier
than usual and we had the large room to
ourselves very shortly. Scarcely had the
outer gate clanged after the last child when
he placed a chair for me opposite one of the
blackboards, where the chalk outlines of the
map of Scotland showed our afternoon's study,
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
317
sat down on a form opposite to me, and began
after this fashion :
"Miss Fraser, if I hurt you by what I
say, you must pardon me, it is for your good
I speak."
After this preface I knew something very
disagreeable was to be said, and I waited
uneasily for his words.
"Have I your permission to say what I
wish ?"
I was not alone in my uneasiness. Let
Mr. Hall's words be painful as they might
be to me, he was not to speak them without
cost to himself. His face and neck had red-
dened until they showed a darkened shade
to his red hair and beard. He had removed
from before his eyes the spectacles which
were such an appurtenance of his that one
of the little children had asked him if "he
was born with windows before his eyes ?"
and was nervously changing them from one
hand to the other. In gratitude for
3l8 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
the past I restrained myself to hear him
patiently.
"My position is a very embarrassing one.
I have no wife to help me in these delicate
duties. You will believe me, Miss Fraser,
that it is for your interest I speak."
How thankful I was that he had no wife to
reprove me, and afterwards give a history of
my alleged misconduct to all her gossips in
the parish. I said :
" I am sure you have a good motive in
what you say. But what have I done wrong ?
I thought the children's progress satisfied
you."
"Yes, the children are a great praise to
you. It is of your outside conduct as it
affects the school that I have to speak."
His words showed me whose hands had
feathered the arrow, and I nerved myself
to endure a rankling pain as calmly as I
might.
" You have a lover ?" He stopped, but
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 3l9
I was not going to help him. In spite of
my nervous tremor, perhaps because of it, I
laughed aloud. Here was he, a bachelor, about
to advise a young spinster as to the decorum
of her behaviour, and starting the lecture by
asking or asserting that she has a lover. I
rose from my chair and placed my hands on
the back of it, wishful to stand in a child's
attitude if I must be chidden as a child.
My action gave him a little rest from his task.
" It is no laughing matter. But sit
down."
"Thank you, I prefer to stand."
"I am not unjust enough to expect too
much; but when I told you that it was for
your benefit 1 spoke, you should at least
believe my word, and do justice to the
goodness of my feeling to you."
"I beg your pardon," and I sat down.
"Yesterday I had a visit from two ladies
who wished me to exert my influence over
you as your clergyman."
320 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
" I am a Dissenter. As mistress of tlie
school "
He waved his hand.
" That I know. I told them that in con-
sideration of your ability and your willingness
to attend the Sunday services of the Church,
nothing further religiously was to be asked
from you. Then the young lady said 'could
I not, for your ultimate good, exert the
influence I held over you as your '"
" Superior in my work. Certainly, as
far as my conduct affects the school."
He rose and walked the length of the
room and back again.
" And no further, you would say. Don't
you see that if your character falls into
discredit the schools suffer ?"
" My character fall into discredit!" My
breath came quickly, and I could feel my
face lose its colour. " Character and reputa-
tion are not synonymous. My character, as
men count character, is as stainless as your
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
321
own. What have they said against my
reputation!" For my life I could not have
helped my voice taking a pleading tone as
I asked the last question. It is such a hard
thing for a woman to feel that she wears a
blighted name.
" I am very much grieved for you—from the
bottom of my heart I believe you innocent."
" Innocent! Is there a charge of guilt
brought against me ? "
o o
" My duty embarrasses me very much."
I could not doubt the truth of his words.
I pitied him, and I said :
" I suppose your visitors were Miss Dalziel
and Miss Miller. I saw them pass my house
yesterday."
"No : Mrs. and Miss Dalziel were the names
they gave. It is with nothing worse than
folly that they charge you, but my experience
of life shows me that in this world folly is
outwardly more heavily punished than guilt."
" I do not know of what special foolishness
Y
322 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
they accuse me and I do not see that their
charge amounts to more than impertinent inter-
ferenee. I was first engaged to marry Mr. John
Dalziel with his father's consent. They have no
right to meddle in our affairs."
" Surely, Miss Fraser, a mother and sister
should have some interest in a son and brother."
" Mr. Hal], Mrs. Dalziel has not been
married to Mr. Dalziel above a month at
most. I did not know of the marriage until
a moment ago you told me what name she gave
you."
" I thought the old lady was Mrs. Dalziel
and the young lady her daughter."
"Miss Dalziel is an old lady. May I ask
what they said of me ?"
"I should not have thought from their
words that the elder Mr. Dalziel was ever
willing your engagement should be entered
into. This is the sum of what the young
lady told me, that you were unsuspecting,
and with all your talent, a little simple in
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
323
the ordinary conduct of life; that Mr. John
Dalziel was amusing himself at your expense,
and using you as a weapon against his father,
whose pride of money and newly acquired posh
tion, will always prevent his sanction of the mar-
riage, even should she be wrong in her estimat'i
of your professed lover. For your own sake^,
she wished me to warn you, she having had
more experience of the censoriousness of the
world than you had. She said further, you
had an unfortunate prejudice against her
which would cause her personal interference
to be mischievous, and the elder lady endorsed
her words."
How his words awakened the sleeping
demon in me! What a passion beat in every
pulsation of my heart, and throbbed in all my
veins ! I mastered myself sufficiently to keep
back the angry words I was all too ready
io speak to my monitor. I could not help
the expression my eyes showed him, or the
quick rising and falling of my chest. He
y 2
324 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
stood looking at me with amazement, until
the sight of his wonder helped me to re-cover
myself with the cloak of decorous behaviour.
" I suppose"—how hoarse and unaccustomed
my words sounded above the rushing of water
I heard in my ears—" I suppose I must
thank you for the kindness of your inten-
tion. Allow me a little quiet, lonely time,
to think the matter over, and I shall, I
hope, see my duty more plainly, and try
to do it."
He could not stay longer after such an
intimation, and he took his hat, bade me
"Good day" rather icily, and left me.
I do not think it would benefit or amuse
you if I were to give you a realistic descrip-
tion of my feelings when I was alone. After
I had calmed myself by pacing the floor
backward and forward for a time which
seemed an hour—but which, had my clock told
me, stretched itself over three hours—I had
come to two determinations. The first showed
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
325
itself in a note to the clergyman, the second
in a letter to my lover. Mr. Hall, I thanked
sincerely for the goodness of his motive, and
gave him notice of my resignation of my
place at Christmas. To my lover I said
how I wearied without him, and that at
Christmas I was coming that we might earn
our living together. I was not afraid he
would find me an intruder.
In the morning I began to work very
hard with the children, that they might retain
some real advantage from my teaching, and
at intervals I arranged for my own modest
outfit.
CHAPTER V.
" Kirkcudbright.
Y DEAR,—Your letter found rue
sitting in a muse at the window
of my room. I have come here
to superintend some repairs that we are doing
to a vessel that has stranded off the river,
stranded when the tide is out, that is, she
floats at high water.
" I have a very nice lodging with a worthy
old Scotswoman, in whom, for the sake of
association, you would find many good quali-
ties, and in whom I find to have one fault.
Her courtesy to strangers shows itself in a
constant desire to keep me in amusement,
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 327
and the best pleasure she can give me she
believes to be an ever-flowing stream of talk.
I sit at the opposite side of the fireplace
and appear to listen to her words, thinking
meantime of you, until the walls fall before
me like the walls of Jericho at the blast of
the trumpet, and in place of Mrs. Campbell's
portly figure I see you coming to meet me
with outstretched hands, and for her mo-
notonous platitudes your voice thrills me with
the well-worded expression of some thought
which had beat against the enclosure of my
own brain without finding an outlet.
"I am in ecstasy. I cannot express my-
self for joy. I have done good head work
and good hand work since I left you, but I
feel that I shall to-day outdo all that I
have done. Your goodness lifts me so much
beyond myself, etc., etc."
My eyes were still suffused with reading
this letter, when a knock sounded on the
328 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
panels of the door, the door was opened, and
a shrill voice cried, " Is there no one in ?"
It was a little lad, one of my last year's
pupils — promoted, his mother said, to the
Civil Service. He held a letter in a brownish
envelope.
"Miss Fraser."
"What is it, my dear?"
"This is for you."
" For me ? "
"Yes. Please sign your name, and put
the time down on this paper."
I did as he bade me, found a penny for
him in my pocket, and sat down again to read
my letter, the brown envelope before me 011
the table. I was so far away from my present
surroundings that I did not connect the
letter the boy had brought me with his
office, until, having read and re-read, my
conscience reminded me of my day's work,
and my clock showed me that in half-
an-hour the children would come. I
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 329
folded my letter and placed it inside the
breast of my gown. The stiff paper rustled
a little; but that was so much the better, I
should have in the sound a more constant
suggestion of happiness. I looked round the
room, my breakfast-cup must be removed.
My eyes fell on the brown envelope. I took
it thoughtlessly in my fingers, dallied with
it back and forward from one hand to the
other. What was it ? I opened it carelessly
and took out the slip of paper it held. It
was a telegram, and the words were :
" From Mrs. Campbell, Kirkcudbright.
" To Miss Fraser, schoolmistress, Laytonston."
" Come at once. Mr. John Dalziel has
had a had accident."
What a long breath I drew ! My heart
sickened. What could it be ? How power-
less I felt in a moment. It was hard to
330 A DAUGHTER- OF OUR TIME,
fall so quickly from the very height of happi-
ness and security into an abyss of trouble
and dread without a twig of hope to hold
on by.
The children's voices roused me. I must
do my morning's work. Duty must be done,
and let women who would take on themselves
uncalled-for outside tasks consider that they
thereby cut themselves off from the poor con-
solation of moaning over troubles when they
come. Fortunately, I had prepared well for
that morning's lessons.
School over, I sent a child with a message
to Mr. Hall, begging him to come and speak
to me at once. I looked at the time tables.
A steamer left Lamport for Kirkcudbright at
midnight. I should have time to make all
needful arrangements and be ready.
Mr. Hall was not long in obeying my
summons. He came in cheerfully, looking
benignly ready to forgive my offences of
the other day.
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 331
" What can I do for you, Miss Fraser ?
I hope you have sent for me to say that
you have reconsidered your decision, and
you will not leave us. It is Friday, and I
was in my study. You will not detain me
long ?"
" I want you to give me a week's holiday
from to-day."
" A week's holiday ? Are you out of
health ? You don't look well."
I put the telegram in his hand. I fear
I spoke bitterly.
"Shall I be injuring the school if I obey
this summons."
Turning to the window, I looked out over
my garden without seeing anything.
" Ah ! What can I do to help you away ?"
He spoke very kindly and I made a fool of
myself at the first touch of sympathy. It
is of no use to fight against nature. We
may take on ourselves men's duties and try
to be philosophers, but we are but women
332 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
after all, slight creatures, disturbed or quieted
by a breath. Mr. Hall brought me some
water.
" It may not be as bad as you fear."
I looked despairingly at him. Worse
than my fears it could scarcely be.
" Have you enough ready-money at hand
for your journey ?"
"Yes thank you. I have money in
abundance."
Mr. Hall was very good to me. He
accorded me the holiday I asked. I made
my preparations, and I was in time for the
steamboat. I had often fancied this as the
route of my wedding journey. I was so
relationless that a visit in company with my
lover to the country graveyard where my
remoter forefathers lay buried had seemed
to me the most romantic manner of spending
a part of the honeymoon I had intended to
enjoy.
Now I was indeed on board the little
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
333
steamer, crossing on an errand full of fore-
bodings and dark fears. It was an unpleasant
night, the rain fell heavily, but I spent the
greater part of the time on deck. When
once or twice I went below to the cabin for
shelter, the illness of the women, and their
frequent calling for the stewardess for one
service or other, worried me. The place
was close too. I could not bear its confine-
ment. I sat upon deck under a large umbrella
and covered with some unused sails, listening
mechanically to the different sounds, the
churning of water under the wheel, the plunge
of the vessel through the waves, and the
heavy fall of rain upon the deck.
The night passed on. The wind had
settled, the rain was over, and it was in the
cold, clear light of the early morning that
I saw the land. When we reached the landing-
stage a stout, elderly woman was waiting
for me.
334 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
"Are you Miss Fraser?" she asked. "My
name's Campbell."
The captain and the two seamen who were
superintending the unloading of the boat
looked wistfully at me, so wistfully that I
felt a desire to hide myself from their pitying
eyes. I took the woman's hand. In my
hurry to be gone I had nearly stepped over-
board, but she led me safely across the
footbridge, and we were on shore.
" I will send down for her traps again,"
she called to the captain.
"All right, mistress," he answered.
What was I to see ? What was I to hear
now ? I turned cold and shivered in the
chilly morning air, and had it not been for
Mrs. Campbell's arm I must have fallen to
the ground.
" Puir bairn!" I had not heard that
accent since my grandmother's lips had been
closed in death, and the connection of ideas
impelled me to feel some reliance 011 her
pity.
LOVE *S EXTREMITY. 335
"John is dead," I said, not so much as a
question as an assertion of a fact.
" Whist, whist! The minister will tell
you a'."
There were two men, and a young woman
with a child in her arms, in Mrs. Campbell's
house. It was a large room we entered,
with a window at each end; a bedstead,
with lianffin^s of blue and white checked
o o
linen, stood in a recess beside the further
window. A round table near it was littered
with papers, pens, and pencils.
They drew an old-fashioned cushioned chair
forward and placed me in it, and the younger
woman gave the child to one of the men
and brought a little stand to my side, with
a cup of tea and bread upon it.
"Where is he?" I asked. I was so certain
of the very worst calamity, as far as my
present judgment went, having overtaken
my lover that I fancied I could see his body
laid on the bed at the end of the room,
but I wanted some confirmation of my fancy,
336 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
and I wanted too some friendly words to
^ive me strength to see the sight I dreaded.
<0 ©
The older man came forward and took my
hand. He poured some tea into the saucer and
begged me to drink. I moistened my lips and
throat. He pressed bread upon me. I held it to
my mouth, but I could not swallow it; and laid
the saucer and it together on the table, leaned
back in the chair, fixed my eyes upon him and
waited. In the pause he made before he spoke
I had time to fix his portrait upon my memory.
He was tall and strongly built, with close cut
white hair, and a face which gave you an
impression of power rather than compassion,
and yet there were kindly lines round the
mouth. He held his snuffbox in his hand,
took a pinch, looked at me, felt my pulse with
his second finger, and spoke after this fashion :
"Women mostly profess to admire heroism
above all things. Very few women have as
good an opportunity of showing the truth
of their profession, as, unfortunately for your-
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 337
self, you have. Maxwell, come here and tell
the lady your story."
The younger man came forward and stood
at a little distance immediately in front of me.
The excitement, the dread, and the unusual
fatigue, were having a singular effect upon
me. I felt that if I left my eyes longer un-
veiled they would speak the secrets of my own
soul to those around me, or, in spite of my
will to preserve the respect one owes to another,
would unravel the mystery of their hearts to
my consciousness.
" Mr. John Dalziel was foreman over me.
I likit him week He kenned a gude workman,
and he cmld do gude wark himsel'. We
were repa :in' the Nancy, of Glasgow. She
lies beside the landin' yonner. The morn
afore yest u'day we were to do some wark
to the outer keel o' the boatie. You'll no
ken what the keel is, but it was right
amidships, at the bottom o' the ship, that
we had . j mend. It was my place to do
z
338 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
that work, and for it to be safely dune we
should have had her in a dry dock, an laid
on stays, but we canna' have a' things. Mr.
Dalziel said to me, ' There is a spring-tide
to-day, I don't like working at the keel, as
the boat lies now, but I have had a letter
from the masters this morning hastening on
the work, and it must be done. I will do
it.' 'But that's my work.' eNo matter.' I
thocht o' my wife and the wee laddie there,
and I thankit him an' said nae mair. Ye
see if we stayed from our wark when we
were a wee bittie feared for danger we micht
do little. He had aboot dune, and was takin'
ae look to see if a' was richt, when the ship
gave a lurch and heeled over; and oh, mercifu'
powers! he was under her, and the tide
comin' up like a ragin' beast. I helped up
his head and shouted to the folk. They ran
an' brought levers an' ropes, but it was na
gude ava, for how could we lift a ship o' sae
mony tons burden. I think the weight o'
LOVE'S EXTREMITY. 339
the ship had crushed his ribs, or it was the
awfu' thocht o' deith comin' on him unawares,
that made his face sae white. They brocht
brandy, an' I touched his lips with it, an'
he said ' Do me one kindness, Maxwell.
Send for Mary Fraser. Mrs. Campbell will
find her address in my papers. She was to
be my wife at Christmas. Tell her how I
died. She'll not forget me, and I shall not
forget her where I am going.' Deed I could
scarcely speak to promise. ' Wipe my face,'
he said. His hands were fast, ye ken. ' Is
your child there ? Let me kiss it.' My wife
was on the beach wi' the bairn on her arm
runnin' to an' fro. I think all the folk
in the place were on the shore. I called
to her, she held the boy down to him. 41
am afraid your feet will be wet,' he said
to her smilin'. She couldna' speak for
greitin'. He kissed the bairn twice or thrice,
and said to my wife, ' Let my sweetheart
kiss the child.' Then he closed his eyes and
340 A DAUGHTER OF OUR TIME.
spoke low, and I thocht he was prayin'. He
lifted his head a little. ' The tide's coining
in fast now; let my head down and leave
me. Good-bye.' Oh, mistress ! I could not
thank him for taking my place there. I can't
tell you how sair my breast was! I just
kissed his forehead and laid his head softly
down in the mud an' left him to dee. There
wasna' ae dry e'e amang the crowd."
I heard no more. My eyes closed of
themselves in that blessed heaviness that
comes with the certainty of great sorrow.
When I came to myself it was night. I was
lying on the bed; they brought the child
to me. I took it in my arms, it pressed its
pretty mouth to mine, patted my cheek with
its little hand, and uttered some of those
soft cooing murmurs which stand for lan-
guage with infants.
"Look at Jamie, Mistress Campbell, did
ye ever see aucht like that?" its mother
asked with a natural pride.
LOVE'S EXTREMITY.
341
I wept at the child's touch. Then I
lifted up the burden of life again, and I
must carry it as cheerfully as may be until
the end of the day.
THE END.
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
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