Girlhood and Womanhood Part 17

"I cannot help it, mamma."

"Why not, child? Are you ill?"

"Yes--no, mamma. I don't know what to think--I can't think. But Hector Garret has asked me to be his wife."

Mrs. Bower's needle dropped from her fingers. She stared at her daughter. She rose slowly.

"Impossible, Leslie," she observed.

Leslie laughed hysterically.

"Yes, indeed. It was very strange, but I heard every word."

"Are you certain you are not mistaken?"

Mrs. Bower had never so cross-examined her daughter in her life; but Leslie was not disturbed or vexed by her incredulity.

"Quite certain. I know it was only yesterday that you scolded me for taking liberties with his name; but he was perfectly serious, and he has gone to tell papa."

Mrs. Bower gazed wistfully on Leslie, and a faint red colour rose in her cheek, while she interlaced her fingers nervously.

"Leslie," she asked again, in a shaking voice, "do you know what you are doing?"

Leslie looked frightened.

"Is it so very terrible, mamma? I should possibly have married some day--most girls mean to do it; and only think of Ferndean and Otter.

Besides, there is n.o.body I could like so well as Hector Garret, I am quite sure, although I little guessed he cared so much for me;" and Leslie's eye's fell, and a sunny, rosy glow mantled over her whole face, rendering it very soft and fair.

"I see it is to be, Leslie. May it be for your welfare, my dear;" and her mother stooped abruptly, and kissed the young, averted cheek.

Leslie was awed. She dreaded that her father would be equally moved, and then she did not know how she could stand it. But she might have spared herself the apprehension; for when the Professor shuffled in he sat down as usual, fumbled for his spectacles, looked round with the most unconscious eye, observed that "Ware" had that day exceeded in his lecture by twenty minutes--"a bad practice," (Dr. Bower was himself notoriously unpunctual,) and took not the slightest notice of any event of greater importance, until Leslie's suspense had been so long on the rack that it began to subside into dismay, when glancing up for a moment, he observed parenthetically, as he turned a page--"Child! you have my approval of a union with Hector Garret--an odd fancy, but that is no business of ours,"--dropped his eyes again on his volume, and made no further allusion to the subject for the rest of the evening--no, nor ever again, of his own free will. Hector Garret a.s.sailed him on preliminaries, his wife patiently waylaid and besieged him for the necessary funds, acquaintances congratulated him--he was by compulsion drawn more than once from roots and aesthetics; but left to himself, he would have a.s.suredly forgotten his daughter's wedding-day, as he had done that of her baptism.

Leslie recovered from the stunning suddenness of her fate, and awoke fully to its brightness. To go down to Ayrshire and dwell there among hills and streams, and pure heather-scented air, like any shepherdess; to be the nearest and dearest to Hector Garret:--already the imaginative, warm-hearted girl began to raise him into a divinity.

Leslie was supremely content, she was gay and giddy even with present excitement; with the pretty bustle of being so important and so occupied--she whose whole time lately had been vacant and idle--so willing to admire her new possessions, so openly elated with their superiority, and not insensible to the fact that all these prominent obtrusive cares were but little superfluous notes of the great symphony upon which she had entered, and whose infinitely deeper, fuller, higher tones she would learn well, by-and-by.

Leslie Bower was the personification of joy, and no one meddled with her visions. Hector Garret was making his preparations at Otter; and when Leslie sang as she st.i.tched, and ran lightly up and down, only the servants in the kitchen laid their heads together, and confided to each other that "never did they see so daffin' a bride; Miss Leslie should ken that a greetin' bride's a happy bride!" But no one told Leslie--no one taught her the tender meaning of the wise old proverb--no one warned her of the realities of life, so much sadder, so much holier, purer, more peaceful than any illusion. Her mother had relapsed into her ordinary calmness, rather wounding Leslie's perceptions when she allowed herself to think of it, for she did not read the lingering a.s.siduity that was so intent it might have been employed upon her shroud. And there was no one else--no; Leslie was quite unaware that her gladness was ominous.

Only the shadow of a warning crossed Leslie's path of roses, and she disregarded it. Her confidence in Hector Garret and in life remained unbounded.

Leslie had gone to the best known of her early companions, her cup br.i.m.m.i.n.g over in the gracious privilege of begging Mary Elliot to be her bridesmaid. The Elliots had been kind to her, and had once taken her to their cheerful country-house; and now Mary was to witness the ceremony, and Hector Garret had said that she might, if she pleased, pay Leslie a long visit at Otter.

Mary Elliot was a little older, a little more experienced in womanly knowledge than Leslie.

"How strange it sounds that you should be married so soon, Leslie, from your old house, where we thought you buried. We believed that you must lead a single life, unless your father made a pet of one of his students: and then you must have waited until he left college."

"It is the reverse. I have no time to lose," nodded Leslie; "only Hector Garret is not old-looking. I don't believe that he has a grey hair in his head. He is a far handsomer man than Susan Cheyne's sister's husband."

"I know it; he was pointed out to me in the street. Is he very fond of you, Leslie?"

"I suppose--a little, or he would not have me."

"Does he flatter you, pretend that you are a queen, say all manner of fine things to you? I should like to be enlightened."

"No, no, Mary; real men are not like men in books--and he is not foolish."

"But it is not foolish in a lover. They are all out of their senses--blinded by admiration and pa.s.sion."

"Perhaps; but Hector Garret is a clever man, only he speaks when he is spoken to, and does not forget you when out of sight. And do you know, I have been used to clever people, and decidedly prefer to look up to a man?"

"What does he call you, Leslie?"

"Why, Leslie, to be sure, or Miss Bower. You would not have him say Mrs.

Garret yet?" And Leslie covered her face and laughed again, and reddened to the tips of her fingers.

"Not 'Bonnie Leslie,' 'Jewel,' 'Angel,'" jested Mary, thrilling at the echo of a certain low, fluttered voice, that had sounded in her own ears and would wilfully repeat, "Winsome Mary," "Little Woman," "Witch!"

"No," Leslie replied, with honest frankness, "that would be speaking nonsense; and if Hector Garret thinks nonsense that is bad enough."

"Do you remember how we talked sometimes of our husbands?"

"Yes, I do. They were all to be heroes."

"And you were to be courted on bended knees. Yes, Leslie, solicited again and again; and when you yielded at last, it should be such an act of grace that the poor fellow would be half mad with delight."

"I was mad myself. I was full of some song or bit of poetry. I tell you again, Mary, if you have not found it out for yourself, real life is not like a book. Hector Garret is not the man to beg and implore, and wait patiently for a score of years. I wish you saw how he manages his strong horse. He sits, and does not yield a hair's breadth. Though it paws and rears, he just holds its head tight and pats its neck. Now, I want him to check and guide me. I have been left a great deal to myself. Papa and mamma are not young, and it appears to me that a single child is not enough to draw out the sympathies of a staid, silent couple. They have been very kind to me all my life, and I ought to be glad that they will not miss me much. But although it was wrong, I have often felt a little forlorn, and been tempted to have bad, discontented thoughts all by myself. However, that is over, and I hope I'm going to be a good and sensible woman now. And, Mary, I am so anxious to have your opinion upon my crimson pelisse, because mamma does not profess to be a judge; and I cannot be certain that it is proper merely on a mantua-maker's word and my own taste. I would like to do Hector Garret credit; not that I can really do so in any eyes but his own."

III.--THE NEW HOME.

Hector Garret had his girl wife at Otter, and very sunny her existence was for the l.u.s.trum of that honeymoon. It was almost sufficient for her to be at liberty, fairly installed in her castle in the air, a country home. And its lord and master was generous and indulgent, and wasted, he did not care to say how many days, in displaying to her the green ruinousness of Ferndean--in climbing the hills and hunting out the widest views for her--in taking her out in his boat, and rowing her in sunshine and shade, enjoying her wonder and exultation most benevolently. In a short time he left her to herself, for he had much property, to whose numerous details he attended with rigid conscientiousness, and he had been a student from his youth, and sat almost as much as Dr. Bower in his library, although it was an airier and more heterogeneously fitted-up sanctuary. Leslie was perfectly satisfied; in fact, while the novelty around her was fresh, she preferred to wander about at her leisure, and find out places for herself, because Hector Garret was always hurrying her, and she was trying so hard to be clever, active, and amiable. Ah, that slight strain already perceptible, that growth of ignorance, misconception, and extravagant reverence--what fruit would it bear?

Otter was a rambling white house in a green meadow opening to the sea.

Its salient points were its size and age. The slowest-growing shrubs in its pleasance were tough, seamed, branched and bowed with time. There were few trees in the neighbourhood except at forsaken Ferndean; but there were slow swelling hills crowned with heather closing in the valley over which Otter presided with the dignified paternal character of the great house of strath, or glen. Leslie smiled when she first heard the natives of the district term the grey or glittering track that bounded the western horizon, "The Otter Sea," but very soon she fell into the use of the same name, and was conscious of feeling far more interest in the boats and ships that crossed that limited s.p.a.ce, than in those which she saw from the hilltops spread far and wide over a great expanse broken only by the misty Irish coast-line. Indeed, Hector Garret explained to her that he had seignorial claims over that strip of waves--that the seaweed, and, after certain restrictions, the fragments of wreck cast upon its sands, were his property, quite as much as if he had waved his banner over it, like the gallant Spaniard, in the name of his Most Catholic Majesty.

Leslie had variety in her locality; the beach, with its huge boulders and inspiring music; the fields and "uplands airy," with their hedge wealth of vetch, briar, and bramble; the garden, the ancient walled garden, at whose antiquities Hector Garret laughed.

Leslie played sad pranks in the early season of her disenthralment. She wandered far and near, and soiled her white gowns, to the despair of the Otter servant who did up the master's shirts and managed the mistress's clear-starching, but who never dreamt, in those days of frills, robes, and flounces, of styling herself a laundress. Leslie filled her ap.r.o.n with mosses and lichens: she stole out after the reapers had left the patch of oats which was not within sight of the house, and gathered among the sheaves like a Ruth. She grew stout and hardy, and, in spite of her gipsy bonnet, as brown as a berry under this out-of-door life, until no one would have known the waxen-faced city girl; and many a time when Hector Garret left his study in the dusk and found his way to the drawing-room, he discovered her asleep from very weariness, with her head laid down on her spindle-legged work-table, and the white moonbeams trying to steal under her long eyelashes. He would tread softly, and stand, and gaze, but he never stooped and kissed her cheek in merry frolic, never in yearning tenderness.

Such was Leslie's holiday; let her have it--it ended, certainly. The black October winds began to whistle in the chimneys and lash the Otter sea into foam; the morning mists were white and dense on the hills, and sometimes the curtain never rose the whole day; the burns were hoa.r.s.e and muddy, the sheep in fold, the little birds silent. Leslie loved the prospect still, even the wild grey clouds rent and whirled across the sky, the watery sun, and the ragged, wan, dripping verdure; but it made her shiver too, and turn to her fireside, where she would doze and yawn, work and get weary in her long solitary hours. Hector Garret was patient and good-humoured; he took the trouble to teach her any knowledge to which she aspired; but he was so far beyond her, so hopelessly superior, that she was vexed and ashamed to confess to him her ignorance, and it was clear that when he came up to her domain in the evening he liked best to rest himself, or to play with her in a fondling, toying way.

After the first interminable rainy day which she had spent by herself at Otter, when he entered and proceeded in his cool, rather lazy fashion to tap her under the chin, to inquire if she had been counting the rain drops, to bid her try his cigar, she felt something swelling in her throat, and answered him shortly and crossly; but when she found that he treated her offended air as the whim of a spoilt child, and was rather the more amused by it, she determined that he should not be entertained by her humours. Perilous entertainment as it was, Leslie could not have afforded it; her wilderness tamed her so that she welcomed Hector Garret eagerly, submitted to be treated as a child, exerted herself to prattle away gaily and foolishly when her heart was a little heavy and her spirits languid.

Leslie saw so little of her husband--perhaps it was the case with all wives; her father and mother were as much apart--but Leslie did not understand the necessity. She did not like her life to be selfish, smooth, and aimless, except for her own fancies, as it had been from the first. She wanted to share Hector Garret's cares and his work which he transacted so faithfully. She wished he thought her half as worth consulting as his steward. She had faith in woman's wit. She had a notion that she herself was quick and could become painstaking. She tried entering his room once or twice uninvited, but he always looked so discontented, and when she withdrew so relieved, that she could not persevere in the attempt.

When Hector Garret went shooting or fishing, Leslie would have accompanied him gladly, would have delighted in his trophies, and carried his bag or his basket, like any gillie or callant of the Highlands or Lowlands, if he would have allowed it; but his excursions were too remote and fatiguing, and beyond the strength that was supposed consistent with her s.e.x and nurture.

Little fool! to a.s.sail another's responsibilities and avocations when her own were embarra.s.sing her sufficiently. Her household web had got warped and entangled in her careless, inexperienced hands, and vexed and mortified her with a sense of incapacity and failure--an oppression which she could not own to Hector Garret, because there was no common ground, and no mutual understanding between them. When Leslie came to Otter she found the housekeeping in the hands of an Irish follower of the Garrets--themselves of Irish origin; and Hector Garret presented Bridget Kennedy to his wife as his faithful and honoured servant, whom he recommended to a high place in her regard. Bridget Kennedy displayed more marked traces of race than her master, but it was the Celtic nature under its least attractive aspect to strangers, proud, pa.s.sionate, fanciful, and vindictive. She was devoted to her master, and capable of consideration for Leslie on his account--though jealous of her entrance upon the stage of Otter; but she evinced this reflected interest by encroachments and tyranny, a general determination to adhere doggedly to her own ways, and to impose them upon her mistress.

Leslie began by admiring Bridget, as she did everything else at Otter.