Mrs. Dorriman Volume I Part 3

1. About the broken fences at Ardenthird.

2. " sale of larch-poles.

3. " advice on the subject of wool.

4. Papers and memorandums of his conversation about my wife's money.

5. Memorandums, written verbatim on same subject.

6. Certified copies, verbatim, on same subject.

7. Certified copies, verbatim, on same subject.

8. Transcribed conversation word for word.

9. Have not succeeded in seeing my father-in-law's will.

10. Copy of paper ... old Mr. Sandford.

What did all these last memorandums refer to? He had not seen the will.

What paper had he a copy of, and why had he had that paper copied, and who had copied it for him? This book which John Sandford carried away with him gave him the most endless and intense anxiety. His own conscience spoke of a thousand things, a thousand transactions between them, that must not see the light. The very vagueness of it all was an additional trouble to him.

Through the day this annoyance pressed upon him, but through the night these shadows became real fears. He tormented himself in vain. Sixth and seventh all blank. Those unwritten words might be of terrible moment to him, for, as all men have their ambition in one or another corner, John Sandford had his--to be looked up to and to be respected. He was wealthy, but he remembered enough of the old days to know that mere wealth would bring but outward respect, and that character was the real power there, in that land where he craved for power. For power was what he really loved; he loved to feel that his will was law, and till his poor half-sister married he had made her feel this, as he tried to make every one else feel it. When he received her answer he was absolutely frantic; the least opposition to his will made him all the more resolute to enforce it, and he knew immediately that in some way unknown to him she had gathered strength. There was an a.s.sertion of herself in her answer both new and unexpected. All the more was he determined she should come under his roof. There was another reason, though he thought of it as a reason only when the desirability of her being under his own immediate supervision became so evident to him.

Mr. Sandford had married when in India, though, as his wife died within the year, and no one had ever seen her in Scotland, the fact was often entirely forgotten.

How his marriage would have turned out eventually is more than any one can say, but it had been the one softening influence in his life, and the one real grief had been his wife's loss. She had a twin sister who died before her, leaving two little girls, and the one request she had time to make was that he would always befriend these children for her sake; she made him promise this. Under the softening influences of the moment he had written to their relations telling them of his promise, and a.s.suring them of his intention to keep his word if called upon to do so.

Having done this, and having received letters expressive of their grat.i.tude, he forgot them as completely as though no such children existed.

Four years before the time when Mrs. Dorriman sat in tears at Inchbrae, in the arms of her faithful Jean, Mr. Sandford received a letter the purport of which was, that the little girls were now orphans, their circ.u.mstances not so good as might be, and in consequence of his promise (vide copy of letter inclosed) the old lady who had cared for them wrote to him for a.s.sistance and advice.

And he gave both, and a.s.sisted them at school, and now when these girls were respectively 18 and 16 he was once more asked in what way he intended to befriend them, and if they might still look to him for counsel and a.s.sistance?

CHAPTER III.

Mr. Sandford, having arranged through his banker about the small payments annually required for the two children, Grace and Margaret Rivers, had never given them much thought since. Their own money had made his payments of small account, though something had been necessary, and the payment of that something was as necessary to his sense of what his promise to his wife meant, as to the comfort and well-being of the children themselves. Having fulfilled what he conceived his duty his mind was at ease; he had kept his promise and it had not inconvenienced him. He was essentially a man who thought that all obligations could be wiped off by money, in some shape or other. When he went to church, which he did only because it was the right thing to do, he gave largely, comprising the whole extent of the charity which was expected of him in that one gift. He gave always the same sum, and felt then that he had done his duty, but he could never understand why people talked sometimes of the "blessedness of giving" and of "a glow of satisfaction." He felt no glow, and, not being by nature a generous man, he thought giving a disagreeable thing; it would have been more disagreeable if he had had less to give; even as it was, he grudged it, and considered it as a very tiresome part of his position.

When he got the letter asking his future wishes about the girls he was very much annoyed. He was not well, having caught cold, and, as he was a man who never showed the slightest consideration for his servants, he had no old servants. There was no one in his house who took any interest in him; he was their paymaster and taskmaster, nothing more. His cold became feverish and he was really ill, so ill that he, for the first time, felt his loneliness. When he rang, his bell was promptly answered, and the trifle he wanted, more because he wanted an excuse to have some one near him, even for a moment, than from any real want, given to him; he lay in lonely state, and felt his loneliness terribly. The undefined dread about his half-sister, the shadowy fears of what those blanks in the list might mean, came and tormented him. There is an old and pathetic saying that deeds of kindness are the brightest lamps round a man's death-bed, but he had no such lamps; he had lived for himself; he could remember nothing, no words of grat.i.tude, for he had earned none: worse than that, he had not always been just in his dealings. Then this letter came and here was a new complication.

He was worse than ever next day; all through the night his fears had been exaggerated and had kept him awake, and in the morning the doctor was sent for--for the first time he wanted one. When he came he was struck by the desolate and uncomfortable look of the rich man's surroundings; his servants were too much afraid of him to spend one unnecessary moment in his company; the contrast between services paid for, and services given from love and affection, were startling to a man who saw the poor in their hours of sickness, and who saw the tenderness of heart and the care amongst them, however roughly it might be shown.

He knew little of the man before him, except that he had been a hard man to his brother-in-law and to the half-sister whom he had seen in former days, by the father's side, so often; but he was full of compa.s.sion for him and for his want of womanly care and kindness.

"You should have womankind, in some way, about you," he said. "You are not so ill; you will pull through this all right; but you may be ill again, and you need care and kindness. What a pity you have no family!

Many a man would marry if he could look forward and see himself left to the mercy of servants and strangers when he is ill."

"I lost my wife," said John Sandford, abruptly.

"I'm sorry," said Doctor Bayne. "I forgot that; I now remember hearing of it. Well, it cannot be helped, but it makes a great difference having young ones about one; young people make one young again."

He stayed some time from pure kindness, and Mr. Sandford was anything but grateful to him; he wanted to think out by himself the thought his words had given him. However, he asked him to come next day; his visit was something to look forward to.

When he left Mr. Sandford lay quietly thinking.

"Young people make one young again."

Perhaps this was true; he was not old; he was strong and had never been ill. He was a hale strong man under sixty, and yet the doctor spoke as though now he must expect illness, then after illness came the end, yes, the end!

The evening shadows crept slowly over everything; all the hours since the doctor had left him John Sandford lay quiet, thinking, thinking of all that had come and gone, all that might come and go.

At length he slept, and in his sleep, caused by the soothing draught given to him, he dreamed strange things; some one, his sister, seemed pursuing him with something that always threatened to overwhelm him, and two girls kept warding it off. He saw their outstretched hands, and he had a sort of consciousness that with them there, she could not hurt him. The dream was so vivid that when he woke he looked round him expecting still to see the pursuing figure. He gave a deep sigh, the reality had been to terrible so him.

The morning light was struggling against the night shadows; it was still very early, so early that no one was astir, save a sleepy girl whose duty it was to light the kitchen-fire, and who was so startled by the sound of his bell that she let her sticks burn out without any coal while she went and stared at the bell-clapper as though there she could discover the reason for its early motion. As she looked it rang again, the master must be ill--what ought she to do? Rouse the cook and risk a furious scolding from her, or go and see what he wanted? While she was hesitating it rang a third time, and in her confusion she did both, she rushed into the cook's room and told her the bell was ringing like mad, and that Mr. Sandford was ill, and she fled upstairs in breathless haste, and knocked and went in, expecting to see her master on the floor in a fit, when she was quite prepared to throw her ap.r.o.n over her head and scream to the best of her ability.

"What do you mean by keeping me waiting and not answering my bell?" he asked in a tone of fury.

She was so surprised to find him able to speak at all that she held her tongue, and this was the best thing she could do.

"I want writing materials and a cup of tea," he said. "Where is Robert?"

"I believe he's in bed, sir, and Mrs. Chalmers, she is not up. I'll make some tea."

"And what the ---- do I keep servants for, if they are all to lie in bed in the morning?"

The girl, frightened by his manner, left his door wide open, and he had the satisfaction of hearing her call out to the head of the establishment: "Oh, Mrs. Chalmers, maister Sandford he's just very ill, and he is just lying there and cursing and swearing like anything."

Mrs. Chalmers, fat, forty, but not fair, panted upstairs, raging at Robert for not being "at hand."

Mr. Sandford repeated his wishes, and he added, "It's high time you had a mistress to look after you all, and you'll have one too."

Down went Mrs. Chalmers, who was "that upset" she first sat down and had a cry, then she scolded the girl violently, making those general and vague accusations which are so much harder to bear than any that are definite; scolded Robert and the housemaid, who was used to it, and had too thick a skin to mind; and, the tea being made, she poured out the first cup for Mr. Sandford, which was less good than the second, which she took for herself; then she felt better and retired to her room, till the house was "right," and to reflect in silence upon the threat held over her of a mistress to keep all in order.

It will be seen that all these things together combined to bring about two results--the peremptory command to Mrs. Dorriman, and an invitation to Grace and Margaret Rivers to consider Renton House as their home, at any rate for the present.

If there was a wide difference between the way this invitation was given, there was a still wider difference in the way it was received. We have seen how poor Mrs. Dorriman felt it to be the loss of her independence and the uprooting of her quiet and peaceful life.

But the Rivers girls had that boundless spring of hope that is the delightful portion of youth and health combined; and in the invitation conveyed to them through the banker they only saw fresh kindness.

They had been all these years at a very second-rate English school; they had no visitors, nothing, not even holidays, to break the monotony of school life, and the prospect of going anywhere was exciting.

They had the misfortune there of being just a little above their companions in position, their father being a man of good family and their mother well connected; they had also a little independence of their own, a hundred and twenty pounds a year, and they were the wards of Mr. Sandford, whose wealth was immensely exaggerated, as fortune often is when at all undefined.

The two sisters who kept the school were kindly-intentioned, weak, and very ignorant women, whose educational deficiencies did not they thought signify, because they supervised only, and taught nothing themselves--the fact being that they were not capable of distinguishing real teaching from something of a very superficial kind.

The girls went there at six and eight years old; they were nice-looking girls, with no real beauty, but good-looking enough for partial friends to admire, and enemies to dispraise their personal appearance. The old ladies were fond of them, flattered and spoiled them, and their companions followed suit. Never did two girls go out into the wide world less fitted to take up a position in it properly. Grace had a rooted conviction that in some way she was a little better than every one else, and must always lead everywhere; and Margaret, herself very gentle, timid, and of a clinging nature, saw everything from Grace's standpoint, measured everything by Grace's standard, conceived her to be the most beautiful, cleverest, and most wonderful creature ever made, and thought it quite natural that she should expect always to be first everywhere.