Girlhood and Womanhood Part 4

The common world rolled on its course; the seasons succeeded each other, although even they seemed to culminate in dull, monotonous vanity and vexation of spirit. The frosty wind had swept "that l.u.s.tre deep from glen and brae," and the chill watery mosses alone looked green and fresh when the snow melted. It was the cold under which Joanna Crawfurd shivered and shrank; at least so she a.s.sured every friendly person who remarked that she was thin, and paler than ever. Mrs. Jardine had looked her in the face, nay, kept nervously glancing at her when she was visible at church, on the loch where the curling match was played, or in the concert-room at the county town.

Of course the girl would get over it; yet Joanna bore a suspicious likeness to Mrs. Jardine's sister Anne, who did not "get over" such a cross. Mrs. Jardine remembered well her sister Anne's parting look, and now, strive as she would, she could not resist the conviction that it was hovering over Joanna Crawfurd's face. Mrs. Jardine, like the Laird of the Ewes, could have cried, "Pray do not smile, girl; you do not know how you look; we, the initiated, have not stony enough hearts to stand that." Mrs. Jardine was surprised that Harry could be so foolish as to redden and appear displeased at Joanna Crawfurd's gaiety.

Mrs. Jardine almost complained against Providence that she was condemned to punish her only child. Then she could not help speculating whether, if by some unimaginable arrangement of events, she had been the sufferer, and Harry's father had been spared to him, he would have denied Harry his happiness in the name of her memory, and from a sense of righteous animosity, whether, if she could have looked down purified and peaceful from the spirit-world, she would have desired the sacrifice, and whether she would not have pleaded against it for love and mercy's sake?

The winter was gone, the early spring was at hand, and all around the outskirts of the moor, like an incense to spring and the Lord of the spring, rose the smoke of the whin burnings which were to clear the ground for the sweet young gra.s.s, to employ the nibbling teeth of hundreds on hundreds of sheep and lambs. Joanna Crawfurd had never so sighed for spring, never sat in such pa.s.sive inertness (highly provocative to Lilias), receiving and realizing what it brought to her.

But the period of listlessness and inaction, life-long to some, was nearly ended for this pair. With the last snowdrops of the garden in February, and the first glinting gowans of the lea in March, came the news to the country-side of the bankruptcy of one of the first of the chain of banks, whose defalcations have accomplished more in causing property to change hands than the lances of the moss-troopers. The young Laird of Whitethorn held money in the shape of his father's shares in one of those unlucky banks; and so it fell upon him one morning like a clap of thunder that he was responsible for about as much as the acres of Whitethorn would retrieve, besides the trifling morsel to whet his appet.i.te in the loss of his loose thousands. Harry Jardine was likely to know himself as "landless, landless," as ever a proscribed Macgregor.

Harry rose to the encounter. "I am sorry for you, mother, and I do not pretend that I shall not regret the old moorland acres; but I shall do very well, notwithstanding. I'm old to learn a profession; but how many volunteers and retired lieutenants had to study and serve apprenticeships after the long wars! I will stick in; I don't mind it on my own account, and I will be proud to provide for you. I say, mother, don't vex yourself; perhaps it is the best thing that can happen to me.

I don't think a fellow gets well seasoned unless he is knocked about at some time: better late than never. I have been coveting change--any change and occupation, an engrossing occupation--for the last few months." He said that to reconcile her to what was an overwhelming blow to her, and his words aroused her with a sharp pang. Had Harry become so miserable and sick of his blessings that he was ready to welcome the cold-bath of labour and poverty as a relief to his oppressive languor, and a ground of hope for his fainting mind?

But Harry came in to her with a troubled face, on another day--a mild day--a subtle, penetrating, relaxing day, under whose balmy breath it is doubly difficult to contend with encircling difficulties, and reject the one clue suddenly vouchsafed to lead us out of the labyrinth.

"I must tell you, mother, though, of course, it cannot be in the circ.u.mstances--he does not see it--but there is no fatality to bind me to his views. Mr. Crawfurd of the Ewes sent for me this morning, and I went to him immediately; I could not tell what he might have to say to me."

"Without consulting your mother, Harry?"

"Yes, mother," answered Harry, with unconscious sternness, "because it might have been my own business, entirely my own affair, with which no mortal, not even you, can be ent.i.tled to interfere. But it was only to offer and urge upon me a loan of money to enable me to satisfy the bank's claims, if they come to the worst, and retain Whitethorn, paying him at my leisure. I a.s.sure you that it was delicately done; my father's ghost may rest in peace. I beg your pardon, mother; I did not mean to pain you. I am afraid I do speak queerly at times. Well, well; it was a kind, confiding, neighbourly action, though I refused it decidedly, from the man whose alliance is forbidden to us. I had no resource but to respect myself, as I respected him; and it is no great matter that it hurt me to cut up that gentle, inoffensive old man, endeavouring to show his rue for having proved, twenty years ago, what my father was to at least an equal degree, and what I have no a.s.surance that I would not have found myself, to a far greater extent than either of them--a slave to a false code of honour."

Harry sat down, haggard, dispirited, half-desperate. His mother made no reply. All the rest of the day she walked about the house like a restless spirit; half the night she paced up and down her chamber softly, lest Harry should hear her, and come in again, and begin to caress her; for she could not endure Harry's kisses now--they were like Joanna Crawfurd's smiles.

Was Harry quarrelling with his father's memory? It was a ghastly sacrilege to her; yet might he not arrive at cursing in his heart, even while he was grasping the devil within him by the throat? What had it not cost him? First, his young love and the cream of his happiness; and now his paternal acres, and his position among the independent, influential gentlemen of his native county. He might not value the last in his present fever and rashness, but he would weigh it more justly hereafter. The moorland inheritance was not of great money purchase, but it had descended to its possessors through long generations. It was hallowed by venerable a.s.sociations. The name and the property together were of some importance in this nook of the south. Harry's father had a family affection for his _place_, and, doubtless, Harry entertained it also, undeveloped as yet, but to grow and acquire full maturity one day, addressing him at every pensive interval with a vain craving and yearning. And, again, in the confusion and distraction of Mrs.

Jardine's feelings, there was her sister Anne haunting her dreams, and reproaching her with having forgotten her; and lastly, one verse in her well-worn Bible was constantly standing out before her aching eyes in letters of fire, and shining into her rebellious but scared heart, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice."

It is one thing to have been Christians all our lives, drawn along by a current, only broken by comparatively trivial, every-day temptations, contests and sacrifices, and another thing to wrestle with a decree that all at once confronts and contradicts a master-pa.s.sion, a deeply-founded verdict, a strongly-rooted opinion whose overthrow will shake the entire framework of our lives.

Mrs. Jardine descended the stairs the next morning very pale and exhausted, and for the first time (though she was a widow by a peculiarly sorrowful visitation), with a certain wistful air which Harry had observed in Mr. Crawfurd. It touched him--a fiery, dogged man--extremely, in the one case as in the other. His mother, on the announcement of his loss, had insisted on undertaking various domestic examinations with respect to general retrenchment; he had humoured her, under the impression that it diverted her mind, and broke the force of what was a great calamity to her. He believed that she had over-exerted herself, and he commenced to remonstrate in the imperious, reproachful, affectionate tone, which the mother loves in her manly son.

"Yes, Harry, I have undertaken too much, and therefore I have requested the company of two friends, who will be willing to lighten our burden."

"Strangers in the house at this time, mother?" exclaimed Harry, bewildered. "Well, if you can bring yourself to suggest it, and wish it, I need have no objection. Never mind me, mother. Besides, I shall be from home. Yes, I do believe it will be a good plan."

"I thought, Harry," said Mrs. Jardine, so tremulously that Harry felt quite alarmed for his upright, obdurate mother, "as Mr. Crawfurd had been so friendly in his intentions towards you--the only man who has come forward with such a proposal and entreaty--isn't he, Harry?--that two of the Miss Crawfurds might consent to pay us a visit at last. I believe they would waive all ceremony, and their father would like it.

It would show that we were willing, at least, to be reconciled in our evil day; that we appreciated their magnanimity; that we were not mean as well as malicious, Harry."

Harry stared, "Mother," he said slowly, colouring violently, "are you prepared for the consequences of inviting the Miss Crawfurds here, or what do you mean?"

"I have counted the cost, Harry; I have written and sent away a note, asking if Miss Joanna and one of her sisters will have so much consideration for an old afflicted woman."

Harry burst away from her, that she might not read the glow which was in his eyes and searched through his whole being.

Mrs. Jardine cried a little, as a woman might say, quietly and comfortably; a strange thing for her, since she was one of those women who shed vehement tears or none at all; then she dried her eyes and folded her hands reverently, saying, "I have a strange sense of calm and of Divine favour this morning. I am sure I am not mystical, but one jogs along the beaten way, and gets stupified, and doubts whether one can be a Christian or no, there is so little conviction of the fact in what divines, from the Bible, call 'the inner man of the spirit;' but when we conquer our wills, and obey one of His everlasting decrees, then we do feel that we must belong to Him, and we have an a.s.surance of His presence, which is a great enough reward without the gratification of earthly afflictions. Ah! I have had dear old Annie's voice ringing in my ears all the morning; and I have heard George Jardine bidding me take care of Harry, as he always did before he went from home, except the last day when he dared not face me."

The Crawfurds came to Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd sent them at once; he would not listen to a single objection or obstacle, though Lilias and Conny were with Polly Musgrave, and it was inconvenient to spare the others on a moment's warning. Susan could not understand it--why they should be bidden to Whitethorn now, when it had been so long debarred to them; but Susan liked company, even company under a cloud; and she had a curiosity to inspect Whitethorn, into which not one of them had put a foot, except papa and mamma, long ago. Joanna made no demur, though, a month before, nothing would have induced her to believe that she would be staying with Susie this March at Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd walked with his daughters to the great gate, and Joanna, looking back, saw him, on his return, switching the thistle-heads in the hedge, as she had never witnessed him attempt in her experience; she could almost fancy he was whistling, as Harry Jardine went piping along before he fell in love with her.

It was a trial when Harry Jardine was introduced into the Crawfurds'

company; but Mrs. Jardine was very hospitable and kind, and Harry rapidly recovered or a.s.sumed his usual ease and animation, and Susan soon lost all peculiar consciousness, and Joanna fell back on the woman's armour, dinted, but not broken, of her self-control. In a few hours they did wonderfully well together. Susan was delighted with the novelties of the old-fashioned country-house, and Harry was not particularly downcast in his misfortunes; he was almost as amusing as ever, and invented fun for her as if he had never heard the name of bank, and, finally, he did not complain of the arrangement, of which Susan highly approved, that she should be Harry's companion, and Joanna should belong to Mrs. Jardine. Joanna was so sedate, and, although she was not a business-woman like Lilias (how Susan would boast of the ground she had gained when she wrote and amazed Lilias!) she was used to a.s.sociating with older people, and could suit herself to their ways and be handy to them.

Harry smiled blandly on the part.i.tion for three whole days. At the close of the third day, when Susan and Joanna were brushing their hair together, Susan started the proposal that they should return to the Ewes whenever Mrs. Jardine's inventories, and settling and sorting of accounts, were brought to an end; "because, Joanna, Harry is getting cross; I am sure of it; he is not half so agreeable as he was the first night. I think he is angry because his mother keeps you to herself, and sends me to talk to him and give him music. When I come to think of it, it is a very senseless plan of hers, and perhaps she is spiteful though she is so attentive, and I am not frightened at her any longer. She is a quick woman, but as pleasant as possible; but if you please, Joanna, you can be shut up with her, and go out with her till we leave, for I should not care for it very much, and I see no call for it on my part; and I am certain we had better fix on going home again as soon as we can manage it."

"Very well, Susan; only you speak very fast; I can scarcely follow you. It strikes me you are wrong on one point. I never noticed that Harry Jardine was tired of being your host, or that he minded who sat next him."

"Not tired of me exactly, or careless of my enjoyment, because, to be sure, Harry Jardine is courting all of us. Nonsense, Joanna, you need not affect to be sage and precise and unconcerned. I am not so silly, and it is very conceited of you, and I have no patience with you. Of course I was not blind and deaf, and I have not lost my memory. Harry Jardine is continually looking after you, whatever his mother persuades herself. He never notices what I wear, and he remembered ribbons you wore months since. I put on mine, and he looked at it and said, 'That is like one of Joanna's; is it not?' Now I know very well he never calls any of us by our Christian names to other people, and only you to one or other of us, and he does it pointedly, as if to express, 'I mean to be your brother-in-law one of these days, and I want to keep you in mind of my intentions, so I take the liberty.'"

"Why don't you say, 'Mr. Jardine, Joanna does not like a liberty taken with her name'?"

"I dare say! and have him reply, 'Did Joanna tell me so herself?' I believe he would be only too glad to have you speak to him on any subject, and I put him into such a fume about your appearance, Jack! Of course, I intended no harm, the words came out somehow. You remember, last night, his showing me an engraving he had bought. 'Tell me some one that is like,' he said to me. It was the least in the world like you, or like your mode of dressing your hair, but it flattered you, as these chance likenesses always do. 'Is it a little like Joanna?' I asked trying him; and I continued, 'Our Joanna would be rather a pretty girl if it were not for the blemish;' and there I stopped short, for I recollected that I should not have mentioned it to him. I wish you had seen him, how hot and haughty he was, as if you were not my own sister, and as if I had not more business with you than he had yet. 'I wonder how any one who has any regard for Joanna can term that mark a defect: it is very sacred and beautiful, otherwise Joanna is without spot'--and there he caught himself and turned away--he was about to add, 'or wrinkle or any such thing,' and I am afraid it was a quotation from the Bible; but I fancy he felt that he was making a fool of himself, and held his tongue. We ought to speak of going home."

"Susie, dear, don't be unreasonable; you know what a claim this family has upon ours; you know what papa desires."

"I know nothing except that Harry Jardine wants me out of his way, and you in his way. It is very disagreeable to me, and a great responsibility to me. You are an interested party, you cannot be expected to see things as you should."

"Why not? I told you to correct him when he was wrong. But I thought you were great friends; and poor Mrs. Jardine, Susan, I can be of use to her in her adversity. I can do things for her as I do for--"

"As you do for papa; there is a fine confession!"

Joanna ensconced herself in silence. Susan had provocation, but Joanna took great care next day not to support Harry Jardine in his levity and discontent. All the morning she spent with Mrs. Jardine; she pinned herself to her sleeve until, after luncheon, she was taken by the old lady into her own room, with its bright fire and shining dogs, its broad, easy couch, its table, with the handsome ponderous writing-desk, flanking the handsome heavy dressing-case, and its look-out from the warmly-curtained windows quite across the moor.

"What a comfortable room, Mrs. Jardine!" Joanna could not help exclaiming; "I never saw a more fresh, inspiriting view to my taste, and such a stretch of sky,--you may sit and foretell all weathers here."

"Yes, my dear, and I have foretold all weathers here. I'll talk to you a little of my nice room, and why I am so sorry to think of leaving it."

"We hope you will not leave it," Joanna ventured, timidly.

"Ah! that rests with others now. But I came here a gay girl; I visited at Whitethorn before my marriage, Joanna; I dwelt here a thoughtless, happy young wife; and here I kept Harry, not quite so troublesome as now; and here I lay a heart-stricken widow while they were bringing home the corpse of my husband, who had left me a vigorous, determined man two hours before."

"It must have been dreadful! dreadful!" murmured Joanna faintly; but lifting up her face to Mrs. Jardine with the earnest confiding eyes, the blanched cheeks, and that seal on her brow--"Oh, how often papa and I have thought of it, and pitied you and ourselves!"

"My dear, it was one of those dispensations of Providence which one never forgets to the end of a long life. But I was a sinner, I deserved what I bore; we all deserve the sorest evil that can afflict us; and, thank G.o.d, there is mercy mingled with the greatest misery. I do not speak often of it, but I can do so to-day; and I find it is a relief to talk to you of our misfortune, because you can sympathize with me; you were a sufferer in it like myself; it cannot be to many other living persons what it is to us two. I have had that brought home to me, my love. I do not grieve or frighten you, Joanna?"

"No, Mrs. Jardine, I have lamented it all my life. I am very grateful that you should let me say that papa was very sorry; they sound very little words, Mrs. Jardine, but you understand them, and papa will never cease to be sorry in this world, and we have only wanted to comfort you."

"Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Jardine absently. "Crawfurd of the Ewes, an accomplished, pleasant fellow--so broken a man!"

They talked a little longer of the tragedy with composed but strong mutual interest and commiseration; and Mrs. Jardine acknowledged that such pity was not like the world's pity, but was delicate and tender as the ministry of any Barnabas or son of consolation; and when she finished, she kissed Joanna on the forehead, and said to herself, "Harry was right. If this is the sign of George Jardine's blood, it was placed there to pay her father's debt, and set her apart for us."

"Now, the sun is shining out, Joanna--'a clear shining after rain,'--don't you like the Bible words?--I know you do. You must have a walk yet. Why, the violets will be out in another ten days. Hand me my garden bonnet, and we will have a turn in the garden or shrubbery. I saw Harry and your sister take the way there. My dear, you have the look of a sister I was very fond of, and I think Mr. Jardine would have admired you. Yonder they are, Joanna. I should like that you would send Miss Crawfurd to me, and have a stroll with Harry yourself. You will injure your health, child, if you do not attend more to yourself. And, Joanna, if my son questions you as to what I said to you, for he is a curious fellow, tell him I have been reading a text for myself this morning, and for several mornings--'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.' And although I am an old woman, I have got it by heart. And bid him show you the thorn walk."

Joanna did not like to decline a commission of Mrs. Jardine's, but she could no more have asked Harry to walk with her than if he had been a duke. However, Harry was loitering and watching them, and came forward at this moment, and Mrs. Jardine herself appropriated Susan, and transferred Joanna to Harry.

"I am very much obliged to you for your kindness to my mother," said Harry formally--no Joanna this time, no name at all. "I never saw my mother take so much to any one," he continued eagerly; "she is naturally a self-reliant, reserved woman; but she has opened up to you?"

"Yes," answered Joanna softly; "and do you know, she has been talking to me of the past."

Harry started. "What did she say, Joanna? She could not offend you. Pray what did she say to you?"

"She did not offend me--far from that--she was very good, and she gave me a message to you, if you were inquisitive--she had been studying a text, 'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.'"