Inchbracken Part 21

'You said I was unmaidenly,' replied Sophia, aghast at her own temerity; but even the sheep when it is cornered will turn its horns to the collie.

'And was that not enough for any right thinking young woman?' retorted the mother, showing a pink spot on either cheek--the red lamps of danger.

'I am not thinking of myself, mamma! Mr. Brown has written me a kind and a very urgent letter, and I think I owe him an answer of some kind, when he shows so deep an interest in me. You said yourself this morning that a girl will be an old maid and a failure if she is not married. I suppose you don't want me to propose to the men myself? and if a gentleman proposes to me, surely I owe him a civil answer.'

'The la.s.sie's in a creel!' cried Mrs. Sangster, jumping up. She had a tingling in her finger tips, which not so many months before, would have relieved itself in an a.s.sault on her daughter's ears; but the blue silk, the tall womanly figure, or an unwonted determination in the girl's face, restrained her, and she sat down again.

'I am astounded, Sophia, to hear you use such language! When I was a girl I think I would have died, before I could have brought myself to say as much. Have you been reading novels? or what has come over you?'

Sophia sat speechless, eyeing the danger signals on her mother's cheeks, with considerable alarm; but that did not appear. Well for us it often is, that the sluggish frame is a mask and veil, but slowly responding to the inner working of our minds, or the tide of battle would oftener be turned in its course. She said nothing, which was the very best reply she could have made.

'Here have we got a most desirable match in the very house with you--one only requiring the most ordinary a.s.siduity on the part of any handsome and well brought-up young woman, to secure the prize. Nature has done its part for you, and I, though you think so little of your mother's love, have done mine; and yet you send your thoughts wool-gathering far and wide to take up with a penniless, ill-principled, disreputable licentiate! Not even ordained! Nor ever likely to be, if a's true that's suspected. For shame, woman! An' show mair sense!'

'Mamma! I am nothing to the gentleman you allude to! He would rather sit in Peter's room and smoke tobacco, than trouble with me. And I care just as little for him.'

'Ay! There it is! You're that indolent you canna be fashed to make yourself commonly agreeable to your brother's friend! Do you take yourself for another 'Leddy Jean' in the ballad, that all the lords and great men in the country are to come bowin' and fraislin' for a glint o' _your_ e'e? You are vastly mistaken if you do! The young men of fortune now-a-days know their own weight too well for any such nonsense. A girl will have to make herself agreeable before she need expect attention even, not to speak of a proposal.'

'But I don't want a proposal! and I don't want _him!_ Am I for sale, that I am to be trotted out and shown off to him, as Jock Speirs does with papa's colts, when the horse-couper comes round?'

'Sophia Sangster! To think I should live to see the day when my own child would taunt me with being a match-making mother! Is that the outcome of all my self-denying care and love? But you'll change your mind yet, my lady, or I'm mistaken. When your poor mother is laid in the kirk-yard, and yourself are a middle-aged spinster living in lodgings, up a stair, in some country town, spending your time cutting up flannel to make petticoats for beggar wives, and no diversion the live long week but the Dorcas meetings on Friday evenings, then you'll remember your poor mother's a.s.siduous endeavours to settle you in life, and you'll see your headstrong folly when it's too late!'

Mrs. Sangster seldom attempted to wield the limner's art, and that was the reason why her present effort was so effective on her own sensibilities. She buried her face in her handkerchief and gulped.

'Mamma! what is the good of talking nonsense like this? There is no present fear of my being an old maid; Mr. Brown has asked me to marry him, and that is what I want to talk about,--not about suppositions that can never come to anything.'

'And what would you wish to say, then, in your great wisdom?'

'I would simply say that I am not engaged to anybody, and that I am too much startled by his letter to be able to say more; but he can speak to papa about it.'

'But I will not allow you to have any correspondence with that young man!--a bringer of open reproach upon the truth he professes! All who have dealings with him will be brought to confusion yet, I am certain!

Touch not, taste not, handle not!'

'I only want to write him a letter!' responded Sophia, a little pertly; but the effort of self-restraint had lasted a good while, and she was approaching that state in which one must either laugh or cry.

'And what do you know against him?' she added.

'There are rumours in circulation,--and well founded rumours, too, I am sorry to say,--which preclude decent people from having any dealings with him whatever.'

'But what are they about? Considering the subject of his letter, I ought to know--surely!'

'I hope you will never know what they are about. They are too shocking to be spoken about altogether.'

'And do you believe them?'

'I cannot help myself! The evidence is too convincing.'

'Does papa believe them?'

'I don't know that he does--exactly--just yet. He is so prejudiced in favour of that young man. But he will be compelled to believe before long.'

'Does papa know of his letter to me?'

'How should he know? Do you think I would bring myself to speak of what I consider a gross insult to the family? But have done! Here comes Mr. Wallowby. The dinner was to be kept back on account of his absence. Go and bid them have it on the table in three quarters of an hour. But remember, Sophia, I command you in the most solemn manner not to write to that other man. And think no more of it.'

The guest's return cut short further discussion; and probably it was best so. Mrs. Sangster had had the last word, which she would have insisted on having in any case; and Sophia, if slow, was well known in the family to be obstinate--one on whose mind, if an idea could once inscribe itself, it remained for ever, written in ink indelible; and under the new awakening that was at work within her, she was little likely to have been moved by any thing that would have been said. Her mind was made up. Roderick should certainly hear from her, on that she was resolved; but the lifelong habit of obedience in which she had been reared, prevented her direct contravention of her mother's command. She would not write a letter, but she must get at him in some other way.

She would have liked to talk it all over with her father, as being a person of incomparable wisdom, and one better inclined to Mr. Brown, as she had just gathered, than her mother; but her father if very wise, was also very far off--a Merovingian king, in affairs of the household or of his daughter, which he was content to leave under the absolute and undisputed control of his wife--the mayor of the palace.

She had been used every day to see him preside at table, and read prayers morning and evening, but she had never had much personal intercourse or conversation with him; and to go to him and say that a young man had asked her to marry him, was beyond her strength. She grew pale at the bare thought of it.

The next day was taken up with other cares--a dinner party at home, and on Wednesday came leave-taking, as her brother and Mr. Wallowby were returning to the South. In the afternoon, however, stillness had fallen upon the house. Her father was away, having accompanied his guests to the county town where they were to catch the mail. All the stir and bustle of the past two weeks was over, and her mother declaring she had a headache, had retired to her room. Sophia sat down to her worsted work, and as with busy fingers she wove the many-hued threads into her web, her own thoughts seemed to disentangle themselves out of the confused wisp in which they had lain, she began to perceive what it really was that she wanted, and to make up her mind what she would do. Roderick's letter somehow kept repeating itself over and over again through her mind, but she made no attempt to stifle it, nor did she grow weary of the phrases so often rehea.r.s.ed; on the contrary the colour deepened in her cheek, and a light dawned in her eye, clearer, warmer, more human, than those organs with all their gazelle-like beauty--their suggestion of the ox-eyed Here--had ever revealed before. 'Yes! Roderick should have his answer--in part at least--for, after all she felt herself, as one of G.o.d's free creatures, ent.i.tled to exercise the resources of her hunter's skill. Before she yielded to his yoke, as Tibbie Tirpie would have said, she meant to have more courting. And Mary--she could see and speak to _her_ without challenge and without reproach--_she_ should be her messenger.

CHAPTER XXIV.

_LUCKIE HOWDEN_.

Roderick was certainly growing worse, although the rheumatic symptoms had disappeared. His voice was scarcely audible now, and he spoke with great difficulty. All through Tuesday there was a look of waiting and anxiety on his face. A step in the pa.s.sage without, or a pa.s.sing wheel on the road, and he would turn his eyes to the door, as though he expected some one. But no one came, wheels and footsteps alike pa.s.sed on their way; and he would heave a weary sigh, turning his face to the wall. On Wednesday he was more restless, more depressed and certainly worse. He had not slept the night before, and at early daylight he had begun again to watch for coming steps, and to sigh as each pa.s.sed on without turning in to him. Mary sat by him, and sat alone. Excepting the Doctor and Eppie Ness, no one came to share her watching, or to enquire how he was--their minister, for whom they had hitherto professed such regard, and to whose bounty so many were indebted for substantial pecuniary aid.

'I think it very unkind of Mrs. Sangster never to have come to ask after him,' she said, 'and it is strange as well, seeing that it was in her service he got so wet; but I am quite confounded at the neglect the rest of the parishioners are showing him.'

'Can you account for it, Eppie?'

'No, mem. Gin it bena just the way o' the world. "Them 'at gets, forgets." It's an auld sayin', and it looks as gin it was a true ane.

An' they're a' that gleg, to tak up ilka daftlike clash 'at ony donnart haverel may set rinnin'. Whan a man has gaed out an' in amang them, an' gien them his strength an' his gear sae free, they micht think shame.' Here she stopped abruptly and in some confusion, as one whose tongue had outrun her discretion. She caught the look of bewildered surprise in Mary's face. 'But I'm thinkin' my ain tongue's rinnin' awa wi' me. I'm just clean angered wi' the doited gomerels.'

'I don't understand you, Eppie. There must be something going on we don't know about. What is it?'

'Hoot, mem, there's just naething ava! But I'm thinkin' ye'll better gae ben, the minister's steerin!'

Mary returned to her brother's bedside, but he told her he had not called. She took one of his books and strove to interest him by reading aloud, while she ran over in her mind all that had occurred in the neighbourhood for weeks past, and how it could in any way bear on their relations with the people. Roderick grew drowsy in time under the monotony of her voice, and she herself would shortly have fallen asleep, when the click of the latch was heard.

Both were awake in a moment, and starting round, beheld Kenneth Drysdale standing in the doorway.

'Is any body in?' he exclaimed, as he stepped into the room with a laugh. 'I have knocked three times and got no answer. You must both have been asleep. Ah! I see. A good book! That is just like my mother's reading on a Sunday afternoon. Good books give such peace of mind and repose of conscience, that the body shares in it too. One is sure to find her extended on her sofa any time between luncheon and the dressing bell. 'Meditating with her eyes closed,' she calls it; but from the regularity of her breathing, I would venture to call it by another name. Julia, now, reads French novels, and you won't catch _her_ napping. Roderick, old man! Laid up?'

Roderick took his old friend's hand in both his own. It was a great and unexpected pleasure to see him. The stand he had taken on the Church question appeared to have severed him altogether from the family at Inchbracken, and it was by no means the least of the sacrifices he had felt bound to make for the truth. He had heard of Mary's visit to Inchbracken before taking to his bed at Gortonside, but since then his own physical pains, and the misery in his mind about Sophia's being about to marry the Manchester man, had so possessed him, that he had not spoken to her on the subject. If he had, he would have been less surprised at Kenneth's appearance; that is to say, if she had or could have explained; for in converse where looks and tones of the voice go so far to modify and even replace spoken language, it may be doubted whether she would have found anything she could have reported. _She_ understood, and Kenneth understood, and each knew that the other understood; and yet what was there after all to tell? Until you found it necessary to make a disclosure to your mamma, dear Madam, and the gentleman now your husband made a formal statement to your papa,--pray what could you have said in your own case? And would it not have been impossible for you to say anything at an earlier period to enlighten your elders and save them from afterwards moralizing on the remarkable secrecy and cleverness of the young people in managing their tender affairs? A good deal of the same sort of thing pa.s.sed on the present occasion.

Kenneth talked mostly to Roderick, and both were happy to renew the old friendship. Mary sat by perfectly content. The portion of the conversation that fell to her share was not large, but there were looks and softenings of the voice, quiet smiles and comings and goings of a flush, that supplied all she waited to hear or desired to say.

Roderick felt refreshed by the visit, and when Kenneth, promising to come again very shortly, at last withdrew, the burden of living appeared lighter to him, and he lay back armed with new fort.i.tude to bear and wait.

Kenneth had been gone but a few minutes when Eppie Ness in her turn had a visitor--an old woman, toothless and bent, limping on a staff, and with a covered basket on her arm. A grizzled elf-lock or two had escaped from the white sowback mutch which was bound to her head by a winding of broad black ribbon, and hung down over the glittering beadlike eyes. A hook nose and projecting chin nearly met in a bird-like beak over the fallen-in mouth, whence one surviving fang protruded with a grim witch-like effect. Her dress was dark blue linsey, and over it she wore, as on all occasions of ceremony, the scarlet cloak in which she had been 'kirket' as a bride fifty years before, and had worn unfailingly ever since, summer and winter, to kirk and market. It was Luckie Howden. She pushed open the door without ceremony, and stood in the middle of the kitchen looking about her. Eppie, with the child in her lap, sat by the fire and was crooning some old song in the endeavour to make it sleep.

'Hear til her noo! wi' her daft sinfu' sangs. Wraxin' the thrapple o'

her like some screighin' auld craw! "Like draws to like," folk says, an' aiblins ye're no that faur wrang, gude wife, to be skirlin' the like til a merry-begotten wee din raiser, as that wein's like to turn out. But wadna "Bangor," noo, or "Saunt Neot's," or some douce tune like that, an' belike ane o' the waesome Psaulms o' penitence be fitter baith for the puir bairn an' its ill-doin' faither?'

'Haud yer lang, ill-scraipet tongue, Luckie Howden! We a' ken what maks _ye_ sae bitter on the puir bairn. Gin ye'd gotten the tentin' o'

her, an' three shillin's the week forby the feedin', ye'd hae thocht nae wrang; an' ye wadna hae been sae gleg to hearken to senseless lees, 'at ony body no clean doited micht ken better nor mind.'