One of the most respected inhabitants of the village, rather of the parish, of Eskholm in Mid-Lothian was Mrs Ogilvy, still often called Mrs James by the elder people who had known her predecessors, who had seen her married, and knew everything about her, her antecedents and belongings. This is a thing very satisfactory in one way, as giving you an assurance that nothing can be suddenly found out about you, no disreputable new member or incident foisted into your family life; while, on the other hand, it has its inconveniences, since it becomes more or less the right of your neighbours to have every new domestic occurrence explained to them in all its bearings. Great peace, however, had for a long time fallen over the house in which Mrs James Ogilvy was spending the end of her quiet days: no new incident had occurred there for years: its daily routine to all appearance went on as cheerfully as could be desired. It was one of the prettiest houses of the neighbourhood. Built on the side of a little hill, as so many houses are in Scotland, it was a tallish two-storeyed house behind, plunging its foundations deep in the soil, with an ample garden lying east and south, full of all the old-fashioned vegetables and most of the old-fashioned flowers of its period. But in front it was the trimmest cottage, low but broad, opening upon a little round platform encircled by a drive, and that, in its turn, by closely clipped holly-hedges, as thick as a wall and as smooth. Andrew, the gardener, thought it more genteel to fill the little flower-border in front with bedding-out plants in the summer,—red geraniums, blue lobelias, and so forth—never the pansies and gillyflowers his mistress loved,—and it was only with great difficulty that he had been prevented from shutting out the view by a clump of rhododendrons in the middle of the grass plot. “The view!” Andrew said in high contempt: but this time his mistress had her way. The view, perhaps, was nothing very wonderful to eyes accustomed to fine scenery. A bit of the road that led to Edinburgh and the world was visible among the trees at the foot of the brae, where the private path of the Hewan between its close holly-hedges sloped upward to the house: and behind stretched the full expanse of country,—the towers of the castle making a break among the clouds of trees on one hand, and some of the roofs of the village and the little stumpy church-steeple showing on the other side. Between these two points, and far on either side, the Esk somehow threaded his way, running by village and castle impartially, but indeed exerting himself very much for the Hewan, forming little cascades and bits of broken water at the foot of the steep brae, throwing up glints of sunshine as it were from the depths, and filling the air always with a murmur of friendly companionship of which the inhabitants were unconscious, but of which had it stopped they would have instantly become aware and felt that all the world had gone wrong.
There was a garden-chair placed out here under the window of the drawing-room, where Mrs Ogilvy used to sit during a great part of the summer evenings—those long summer evenings of Scotland, which are so lingering and so sweet. To sit “at the doors” is so natural a thing for the women. They do it everywhere, in all climates and regions. Ladies who were critical said that this was a bad habit, and that there was nothing so becoming for a woman as to sit in her own drawing-room, in her own chair, where she could always be found when she was wanted. But a seat that was just under the drawing-room window, was not that as little different from being inside as could be? I agree, however, with the critics that the sentiment was quite different, and that to go indoors at the right time and have your lamp lighted, and sit down in your comfortable chair, denotes, perhaps, a more contented mind and a spirit reconciled to fate.
It would have been hard, however, to have looked upon the face of Mrs James Ogilvy as she went about her little household duties in the morning, or took her walks about the garden, or knitted her stocking in the placid afternoon, and to have thought of her as discontented or struggling with fate. She was about sixty, a little woman but trim in figure, with a pleasant colour, and eyes still bright with animation and interest. Perhaps you will think it ridiculous to be asked to interest yourself in the character and proceedings of an old woman of sixty when there are so many younger and prettier things in the world: which I allow is quite true in the general: yet there may be advantages in it, once in a way. She wore much the same dress all the year through, which was a black silk gown of varying degrees of richness (her best could “stand alone,” it was so good), or rather of newness—for the best gown of one year was the everyday dress of another, not so fresh perhaps, but wearing to the last thread, and always looking good to the last, as a good black silk ought to do. Over this she wore a white shawl, which on superior occasions was of China crape beautifully embroidered, a thing to be remembered—but often of humbler material. I recollect one of fine wool with a coloured border printed in what was called an Indian pine pattern in those days. But whatever the kind was, she always wore a white shawl. Her cap was also all white, lace for best, but net for everydays, trimmed with white ribbons, and tied under the chin with the same. This dress had been old-fashioned when she assumed it, and was more than old-fashioned now; but it suited her very well, as unusual dresses, it may be remarked, usually do.
And she was kind as kind could be. She could not refuse either beggar or borrower, unless the one was a sturdy beggar presuming on the supposed loneliness of the house and unaware of Andrew in the background, upon whom she would flash forth indignant, sending him off “with a flee in his lug,” as Janet said: or the other a professional spendthrift of other people’s money. Short of these two classes—and even to them her heart had moments of melting—she refused nobody within her humble means. But I will not deceive you by pretending that she was a woman who went a great deal among the poor. That fashion of charity had not come into use in her days. The Scotch poor are farouche, they are arrogant, and stand tremendously on their dignity—which is thought by many people a fine thing, though, I confess, I don’t think it so; but it was no doubt cultivated more or less by good people like Mrs Ogilvy, who never visited among them, yet was ready to give with a liberality which was more like that of a Roman Catholic lady “making her soul” by such means, than a Scotch Puritan looking upon all she herself said or did as unworthy of regard. They came to her when they were in want; they came for food, for clothes, for coals; for money to pay an urgent debt; for all things that could affect family peace. And they very seldom were sent empty away. It was for this, perhaps, that the other ladies thought a woman should be found in her own chair in a corner of her own drawing-room. But if so, it certainly did not matter much, for Mrs Ogilvy’s seat outside answered quite as well.
There was a dining-room and a drawing-room inside, one on each side of the door. The latter was usually called the parlour. It was full of curious things, not exactly of the kind that are considered curious now,—Mrs Ogilvy was not acquainted with bric-à-brac,—but there had been two or three sailors in the family, and they had brought unsophisticated wonders, shells, pieces of coral, bowls, sometimes china and precious, sometimes wood and of no value at all: but all esteemed pretty much alike, and given an equal place among the treasures of the house. There was some good china besides of her own, one good portrait, vaguely believed or hoped by the minister and some other connoisseurs of the village to be a Rubens (which meant, I suppose, even in their sanguine imaginations, a copy); and a row of black silhouettes, representing various members of the family, over the mantelpiece. Therefore it will be seen there was great impartiality in respect to artistic value. The carpet was partially covered with a grey linen cloth to preserve it, which gave the room a somewhat chilly look. It was in the dining-room that Mrs Ogilvy chiefly sat. She would have found it a great trouble to change from one to another at every meal. The large dining-table had been placed against the wall, which was a concession to comfort for which many friends blamed her during these years when Mrs Ogilvy had been alone. A smaller round table stood near the fire, her chair, her little old-fashioned stand for book and her work and her occasional newspaper, in the corner. It was all very comfortable, especially on the wintry evenings when the fire sparkled and the lamp burned softly, and everything felt warm and looked bright—as bright as Mrs Ogilvy’s face with her white hair under her white cap, and her white shawl upon her shoulders. It might have been a symphony in white, had anybody heard of anything so grand and superior in these days.
It seldom happened, however, that one of the long evenings passed without the entrance of Janet, who at a certain hour in the placid night began always to wonder audibly what the mistress was doing, and to divine that she would be the better of a word with somebody, “if it was only you or me.” Perhaps this meant that Janet herself by that time had become bored by the society of Andrew, her husband and constant companion, who was a taciturn person, and who, even if he could have been persuaded to utter more than one word in half an hour, had no new subject upon which he could discourse, but only themes which Janet knew by heart. They were a most peaceable couple, never quarrelling, working into each other’s hands as the neighbours said, keeping the Hewan outside and inside as bright as a new pin; and I have no doubt that the sincerest affection, as well as every tie of habit and long companionship, bound them together: but still there were moments very probably when Janet, without using the word or probably understanding it, was bored. The “fore-night” was long, and the ticking of the clock, so offensively distinct when nothing is being said, got on Janet’s nerves; and then she bethought herself of the mistress sitting all alone in the silence. “I’ll just go ben and see if she wants onything,” she said. “Aweel: I’ll take a look at Sandy and see if he’s comfortable,” replied Andrew. Sandy was a sleek old pony with which Mrs Ogilvy drove in to Eskholm when she had occasion, and sometimes even to Edinburgh, and he held a high place in Andrew’s affections. The one visit was as invariable as the other; and Sandy, to whom perhaps also the fore-night was long, probably expected it too.
“Well, Janet,” Mrs Ogilvy would say, putting aside the newspaper. She did not put aside her stocking, which went on by itself mechanically, but she turned her countenance towards her old servant always with the shining on it of a friendly smile.
“Well, mem—I just came in to see if ye maybe were wanting onything. Andrew he’s away taking a look at Sandy. You would think he is a Christian to see the troke there is between that beast and my man.”
“Andrew’s a good creature, mindful of everybody’s comfort,” said Mrs Ogilvy.
“I’m saying nothing against that; but it micht be more cheery for me if he were a wee less preceese about what he hears and sees. A man is mair about, he canna miss what might be ca’ed the events of the day. But you and me, mem, we miss them a’ up here.”
“That’s true, Janet; a man that brings in the news is more entertainment in a house than the newspaper itself.”
“Whiles,” said Janet, moderating the expression. “It’s no the clashes and clavers of the toun that I’m wanting, but when onything important is stirring—there’s another muckle paper-mill to be set up on our water. It brings wark for the lads—and the lasses too—and ye daurna say, just for the sake of Esk, that is no living thing——”
“I have more courage than you, Janet, for I daur to say it. What! my bonnie Esk no a living thing! What was ever more living than the bonnie running water? Eh, woman, running water is not like anything else in the world! It’s just life itself! It sees everything happen and flows on—no stopping for the like of us creatures of a day. It heartens me to think that there’s aye some bairns sitting playing by it, or some young thing dreaming her dream, or some woman with her little weans—not you and me, for our time is past, but just other folk.”
“I’m no like you, mem. I get little comfort out of that. It’s a bonnie stream, and I like the sough of it coming up through the trees; but none of the paper-mills would stop that. And when you think that it will bring siller into the place and wark, and more comfort for the poor folk——”
“Will it do that? God forbid that I should go against what brings work and comfort. It will bring new families, Janet, and strange men to sit and drink, and roar their dreadful songs at the public-house door; and more publics, and more dirty wives and miserable weans. I’m just for doing the best we can with what we have,—and that is not an easy thing.”
“And I’m for ganging forward,” cried Janet. “The more ye produce the better off ye are—that’s what the books ca’ an axiom. I carena for the new folk; but it is a grand thing to be making something, and putting work into men’s hands to do. Thae poor Millers themselves get but little out of it. They say there’s another of them, the little one with the curly head, that is just going like the rest.”
“Oh, Janet, the Lord forbid! the little blue-eyed one, that was just the comfort of the house?”
“That’s what folk say. I’m no answering for it. In an unfortunate family like that, ye canna have a sair finger but they’ll say it’s the auld trouble breaking out.”
“Poor man, poor man!” cried Mrs Ogilvy. “My heart is wae for him, Janet. He is like the man in the Bible that built Jericho. He has laid his foundations in his first-born, and established his gates on his youngest son. You must tell Andrew that I will want him and Sandy to-morrow to go and inquire. No the bonnie little one that was his comfort!—oh, not her, not her, Janet!”
“Mem, it is aye the Lord that kens best.”
“I am not misdoubting that; but I’ve had many a thought—I would not aye be blaming the Lord. When the seed is put into the ground, we should be prepared for what it will bring forth, and no look for leaves of silver and apples of gold; but why should I speak? for there is little meaning in words, and we are a strange race—oh, just a strange race—following our wild ways.”
Mrs Ogilvy had dropped her stocking by this time into her lap, and she wrung her slender hands as she spoke, with a look that was not like the calm of the place. Whether Janet noted this or merely followed the instinct of her wandering record of events, it was impossible to tell from her steady countenance, which did not change.
“And there’s to be a wedding up the water at Greenha’. You will mind, mem, Thomoseen, that was once in our ain house here as the girrl, and an awfu’ time I had with her, for she would learn nothing. She’s grown the biggest woman on a’ Eskside, and they call her Muckle Tammy, and mony an adventure she’s had since she left my kitchen—having broken, ye will maybe mind, mem, every dish we had. And for her ain sake, thinking it would maybe be a lesson to her, I wanted you to take it off her wages——”
“Yes, yes, I mind. The things would not stay in her hands; they were too big. We have had our experiences with our girrls, Janet,” Mrs Ogilvy said, with a smile. She had taken up her knitting again, and recovered her tranquil looks.
“That we have, mem! if I was to make out a chronicle—but some of them have turned out no so ill after a’. Weel, Muckle Tammy, she has gotten a man.”
“He will likely be some small bit creature,” the mistress said.
“They say no—a clever chield, and grand wi’ a garden, and meaning to grow vegetables for the market at Edinburgh; for she is a lass with a tocher, her mother’s kailyard and her bit cottage, and nothing for him to do but draw in a chair and sit down.”
“I doubt there’ll be but little comfort inside,” said Mrs Ogilvy. “If it had been her to look after the kail and the cabbages, and him to keep everything clean and trig; but there’s no telling. A change like that works many ferlies. You must just see, Janet, if there is anything she is wanting for her plenishing—some linen, or a few silver teaspoons, or a set of china, or a new gown.”
“They a’ ken there will be something for them in the coffers at the Hewan,” said Janet; “but, mem, if ye will be guided by me, you will let it be no too much. If only one of these dishes had been stoppit off her wages it would have been a grand lesson: but ye will never hear a word! A set of chiney! they would a’ be broken afore ever she got them hame.”
“Let it be the silver spoons then, Janet; they are the things that last the best. And now, if you were to cry in Andrew, we might read our chapter, and get ready for our beds.”
This was the invariable conclusion of these evening colloquies. And Janet went “ben” to her kitchen and then to the garden door, and “cried upon” Andrew, still conversing with the pony in the stable. And then there was a great turning of keys and drawing of bolts, and the house was closed up for the night. And finally the pair went into the parlour, where Mrs Ogilvy, with her clear little educated voice read “the chapter,” usually from one of the Gospels, and read in sequence night by night. Janet was of opinion that she never understood so well as when her mistress read, and indeed Mrs Ogilvy had a little pride in her reading, which was very clear and distinct with its broad vowels. The little prayer which was read out of a book did not please Andrew so much, who was of opinion that prayers ought never to be previously invented and written, but come, as he said, “straught from the hairt.” He had himself indeed thought on occasion that he could have poured forth the sentiments that moved the family with more unction and expression than was in the sometimes faltering voice and pause for breath which affected his mistress when she read these “cauld words out of a book”; but Andrew knew his own place: or if he did not know, Janet did.
What was there to catch the breath, and make the voice falter, in the printed words and amid all that deep calm of waning life? It was at the prayer for the absent that Mrs Ogilvy for fifteen years past had always broken down. Nay, not broken down: she was too deeply sensible that to make an exhibition of private feeling while leading the family devotions would have been irreverent and unseemly, but she was not capable of going on quite smoothly without a pause over that petition, “Those who are absent of this family, be Thou with them to bless them, and bring them home in Thy good time if it be Thy blessed will.” Every night there came to Janet’s eyes as she knelt a secret tear; and every night it seemed to Andrew that if he might speak “straught from the hairt” instead of that cauld prayer that was printed, the Lord would hear. I need not say that even in a Scotch book of domestic worship the words were varied from day to day, but the meaning was always the same. They left the mistress of the house in a certain commotion of mind when her old servants had bidden her good night and withdrawn. She had a way then of walking about the room, sometimes pausing as if to listen. There was deep silence about the Hewan, uplifted on its little brae, and with few houses near,—nothing to be heard except the distant murmur of the Esk, and the rustling of the trees. But the night has strange mysteries of sound for which no one can account. Sometimes something came that seemed like a step on the gravel outside, sometimes, fainter in the distance, what might have been the swing of the gate, sometimes a muffled knock as at the door. She knew them all well, and had been deceived by them a thousand times; nor was she undeceived yet, but would stop and raise her head and hold her breath, waiting for perhaps some second sound to follow to give meaning to it. But there never came any second sound, or at least there never was, never had been, any meaning in them. She listened, holding up her head, and then drooped it again, going on upon her little measured walk. “At ainy moment!” she would say sometimes to herself.
Over the front door of the cottage, which was not without a little pretension, there was what we used to call a fanlight: and in this summer and winter every night a light burned till morning. People shook their heads at it as a piece of foolish sentiment and very extravagant; and Andrew grudged a little the trouble it caused him. But there it burned all the year round, every night through.
In the summer evenings Mrs Ogilvy sat on the bench outside the parlour window. I have never forgotten the sort of rapture with which the long summer evenings in Scotland impressed my own mind when I rediscovered them, so to speak, after a long interval of absence. The people who know Scotland only in the autumn know them not. By that time all things have grown common, the surprises of the year are over; but in June those long, soft, pearly, rosy hours which are neither night nor day, which melt by indescribable degrees out of the glory of the sunset into everything that is soft and fair, through every tint and shining colour and mingling of lights, until they reach that which is inconceivable—surround us with a heavenly atmosphere all their own, the fusion of every radiance, the subdual of every shade. There are no shadows in that wonderful light any more than there is any sun. The midnight sun must be a very spectacular sort of performance in comparison. To people who live in it always, however, it will probably appear no such great thing.
Mrs Ogilvy was not aware that there was anything that was not most ordinary in these June nights. She loved them, but knew no reason why. She sat in the sweet air, in the silence, sometimes feeling herself as if suspended between air and sky, floating softly in space with the movement of the world: and in her thoughts she was able even sometimes to detach herself from Then and Now, those two dreadful limits of our consciousness, and to catch a glimpse of life as it is rounded out, and some consciousness of the beginning and the end, and the sequence and connection of all things. Sometimes: but perhaps not very often, for these gleams of discovery are but gleams, and fly like the flashes of lightning which suddenly reveal to us a broad country, a noble city lost in the darkness. On such occasions the great sphere overhead, the great landscape stretching into distance, the glimpses of houses, great and small, amid the warm surrounding of the trees, the murmur of the Esk low in the glen, filling all the air with sound, affected her with an extraordinary calm. She used to think sometimes that this was the Peace that passeth understanding which descended upon her, hushing all her thoughts, stilling every sigh. It came but seldom in that height of blessing, but often in a less perfect way, as she sat and pondered upon the great still world revolving round, and she an atom in the boundless breadth of being, which by-and-by would drop, while the world went on.
But at other times it appeared to her more strange still that in all these miles and miles of distance, of solid earth and growing trees, and the hopeful harvests that were coming, there was one little thing, so little in fact, so insignificant in the midst of all, that was throbbing and throbbing and disturbing the quiet, unmoved by the peace of the sky and the earth and all the beautiful things between them—thinking its own small thoughts, and troubling, and living—till all the quiet throbbed and thrilled with it, the one thing that was out of harmony. The centre of her thoughts, or rather the cause of them all, night and day, was a thing that had happened fifteen years ago, a thing that most people had forgotten—a small matter to the world—just the going away of a heedless young man. It was not that she was always thinking of him, for her thoughts rambled and wandered through all the heavens and earth; but that he was the centre of all, the pivot on which they turned, the beginning and the end of everything. He had gone away—he had left his home, having already erred and strayed—and he had been heard of no more. She was not complaining or finding fault with God for it: she would sometimes wonder with a little wistfulness why God never listened to her, did not somewhere seize that wandering boy and bring him back—to satisfy her before she died. But then there were many things to be considered, Mrs Ogilvy knew and acknowledged to herself in the philosophy that had grown out of her much thinking. Robert was not a bairn, nor was God a mere benevolent patron, to seize the lad without rhyme or reason, and set him back there, because she wearied Him with crying. She had wanted God to be that, many times in her long period of trouble; but by dint of time and thought a different sense of things had come to her. God was not a good fairy: He was the great God of heaven and earth. He had Robert to think of as well as his mother, and thousands and millions of other things. Often in the weariness of her heart she asked nothing for Robert, said nothing, but sat there before the Lord with the boy’s name on her heart put before Him. And that was all she was doing now.
Of all that landscape there was one point to which her eyes turned the oftenest, and, which drew her away out of herself, as if by some charm of movement and going. And that was the piece of road which lay at the foot of the brae, with her own garden-gate opening into it, and the two lines of the holly-hedges on either side. Often she would be drawn back from her thinking by the sight of a figure on the road, which turned out to be a very common figure,—sometimes a beggar, or a man with a pack, a travelling merchant, or, more familiar still than that, a postman on his way home, or a lad that had been working later than usual. But whatever the man was, the sight of him always gave Mrs Ogilvy a sharp sensation. “At any moment!” she had said to herself so long that it had entered into her very soul. “At any moment!”—she was conscious of this night and day. Through all that she was doing she had always one ear listening for any new step or sound. And you may think how much more strong that habitual watchfulness was when she looked out in the evening, the time when everybody comes home, upon the road by which he must come, if he ever came. A hundred times and a hundred more she had watched that road, with her eyes
Often and often she had seen a man detach himself from the white strip of the road, and heard her own gate click and swing, and watched a head moving upward over the line of the hedge. But it never was any one except the most simple, the most naturally to be expected visitor—perhaps the minister, perhaps Mr Miller from the paper-mill, perhaps some friend of Andrew’s and Janet’s. Her heart beat in her ears, in her throat, for a dreadful moment, and then stood still. It was not he: how should it? She rose up with no heart at all, everything stopped and hushed, and said, “How are you to-night, Mr Logan? What a bonnie evening for a walk,” or “How are you, Mr Miller; sit down and take a rest after your climb.” She said nothing about her disappointment; and, indeed, who could say she was disappointed? It just was not Robbie: and she had no more reason to think that it would be him than that the night would suddenly turn into day.
On this particular evening it was Mr Logan, the minister, who gave her this thrill of strong expectation, this disappointment—which was not a disappointment. He found nothing that was out of the way in her peaceful looks, neither the one sensation nor the other, but sat down beside her, pleased with this conclusion to his summer evening’s walk, and the delightful air and pleasant view, and the calm of the Hewan, in which everybody said there was such an atmosphere of repose and peace. Mr Logan was a country minister of what is now called the old school. He was not a man who had ever thought of making innovations or disturbing the old order of affairs. His services were just the same as they had been when he was ordained some thirty years before. He had baptised a great part of his parishioners, and married the others, so that there were only the quite old folk, patriarchs of the parish, who could remember the time when he was first “placed” at Eskholm, and opposed by some, though always “well likit” by others. He was considered by Mrs Ogilvy and many ladies of the parish to be a very personable man, comely in his grey hair, with a good presence and a good voice, and altogether a wyss-like man. This description, which is so common in Scotland, has nothing to do with the wisdom of the person described, who may be very wyss-like without being at all wise. Mr Logan sat down and stretched out discreetly his long legs. He had the shadow, or rather the subdued light, of a smile hovering about his face. He looked as if he had something agreeable to tell.
“And how is Susie?” Mrs Ogilvy said.
“Susie,” he said, with a change of expression which did not look quite so genuine as the lurking smile. “Oh, Susie, poor thing, she is just in her ordinary; but that is not very well——”
“Not well! Susie? But she has just been wonderful in her health and her cheery ways.”
“Ay, ay! she has kept up to the outside of her strength; but I have never thought she was equal to it. You will do me the justice to remember that I always said that. These big boys are too much for her; and now that they’re coming and going to Edinburgh every day, and all the trouble of getting them off in the morning, with sandwiches for George who is in his office, and a piece for Walter and Jamie who are at the school: and the two little ones all the day at home, and me on the top of all, that am perhaps accustomed to have too much attention paid to me——”
The lurking smile came forth again, much subdued, so that nobody could ask the minister brutally, “What are you smiling at?”
“Dear me,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “I am very much astonished. I have always thought there was nobody like Susie for managing the whole flock.”
“She is a good girl, a very good girl; but it’s too much for her, Mrs Ogilvy. I’ve always said so. She takes after her mother, and you know my—wife was far from strong.”
The little pause he made before that simple word wife was as when a man who has married a second time says “my first wife.”
Mrs Ogilvy was startled and stared; but she did not take any notice of this alarming peculiarity. She said, “I cannot think Susie delicate, Mr Logan. She has none of the air of it. And her mother at her age——”
“Ah, her mother at her age! I must take double care that nothing interferes with Susie. It is an anxious position for a man to have a family to look after that is deprived of a mother’s care.”
“It is so, no doubt,” said Mrs Ogilvy; “but with Susie——”
“Poor thing! who just strains every faculty she has. There are some women who do these kind of things with no appearance of effort,” said Mr Logan, shaking his head a little. “You will have heard there was a marriage in the parish yesterday. They would fain have had it in the church, in their new-fangled way. But I said our auld kirk did not lend itself to that sort of thing, and I would like it better in their own drawing-room, or if they preferred it, mine.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “I heard of it. The English family that have taken the little house near the Dean. I did not think it was big enough to have a drawing-room.”
“Well, an English family is rather a misnomer: they can scarcely be called English, though they come from the south—and a family you can call it no longer, for this was the last daughter, and there’s nothing but Mrs Ainslie herself left.”
“She’s a well-put-on, well-mannered woman, and well-looking too: but I know nothing more about her,” Mrs Ogilvy said.
“She is all that,” replied the minister, with a little fervour unnecessary in the circumstances. “We were at the little entertainment after, Susie and me. Everything was just perfectly done, and nobody neglected, and without a bit of fuss or flutter such as is general in these cases——”
“Do you think it is general?” said Mrs Ogilvy, with that natural and instantaneous impulse of self-defence which is naturally awakened by excessive praise bestowed upon the better methods of a stranger. “We are maybe not much used to grand entertainments in a landward parish like this, where there are not many grand folk.”
“Oh, there was nothing particularly grand about it,” said the minister, with the air of lingering pleasantly in recollection over an agreeable subject. “These simple sort of things are so much better; but it takes a clever person to see just what is adapted to a country place. I was saying to Susie this morning it’s a grand thing to bring people together like you—and no expense to speak of when you know how to go about it——”
“And what did Susie think?” Mrs Ogilvy asked.
“My dear lady,” said the minister, “nobody will say I am one to take down the ladies or give them a poor character; but they are maybe slower of the uptake than men—especially when it’s another lady, and one with gifts past the common, that is held up for their example.”
“I thought you were too wise a man to hold up anybody for an example.”
“You’re always sensible, Mrs Ogilvy. That is just what I should have remembered: but perhaps I am too open in my speech at all times. I’ve come to speak to Susie as if she knew things and the ways of the world just as well as me.”
Mr Logan was a little vague about his pronouns, which arose not from want of grammar, but from national prejudice or prepossession.
“And so she does,” said Mrs Ogilvy, with a little surprise. “She’s young still, the dear lassie; but it’s very maturing to the mind to be in a position like hers, and she is just one of the most reasonable persons I know.”
“Ah, yes,” said the minister, with a sigh, which did not interrupt the lurking smile; “but it’s a very different thing to have a companion of your own age.”
At this she began to look at him with more attention than she had as yet shown, and perceived that there was a little flush more than ordinary on the minister’s face. Had he come to make any revelation? Mrs Ogilvy had all the natural prejudices, and she was resolved that at least she would do nothing to help him out. She sat demurely and looked at him, while he, leaning forward, traced lines upon the gravel with the end of his stick. The faint imbecility of the smile about his lips, made of vanity and pleasure and a little shame, always irritating to women, called forth an ironical watchfulness on her part.
“There is but one way of having that,” he continued; “a man’s a sad wreck in many cases when he’s left a widower, as you may say, in the middle of his days—
This is not the usual sense in which the words are used, but it just comes to that. You will know by yourself, Mrs Ogilvy. You were widowed young.”
“I have never taken myself to be a rule for other folk,” she said.
“Well, you don’t do that; but still how are you to judge of other folk’s feelings but according to what you feel yourself?”
The lady made no reply. No, she would not help him! if he had any ridiculous thing to say to her, he should muddle through it the best way he could. She would not hold out a little finger to help him up to dry land.
“Well,” he said, after a pause, with a little sigh, “to return to Susie. She’s not equal to her present charge, not equal to it at all. Three big boys on her hands, and the two little ones, not to count all the family correspondence with the others in India and Australia, and all that. There is a great deal of care connected with a large family that people never think of.” He paused for sympathy, but it was not a point upon which his present listener could speak: he went on with a slight and momentary feeling that she was selfish not to have entered into this trouble, notwithstanding that it was so different from her own. “And these growing laddies want a firm hand over them—they want authority—not just a sister that they can tease and fleech—— I maybe ought from the first,” he said, slowly and tentatively, “to have taken the burden more upon myself.”
“It would have left less burden upon Susie; but I think for my part she is quite equal to it,” Mrs Ogilvy said.
When a man condescends to blame himself, he expects as his natural due that he should be reassured. Mr Logan felt that his old friend and parishioner, to whom he had come half for sympathy, half for encouragement, was not nearly so sympathetic a person as he thought.
“I see we’ll not agree in that; and I am sure I hope you’re the one that is in the right. Well,” he said, getting up slowly, “I’m afraid I must be going. This is a long walk for me at this hour of the night; and they’ll be waiting for me at home.”
“You’ll let me know,” Mrs Ogilvy said, as she walked with him along the little platform round the plot of grass. “You’ll let me know—when things have gone further.”
“When things have gone further?” he cried, with a sudden redness and look of surprise: then added, shaking his head, “What things there are to go further, and how far they can go, is a mystery to me. You must be referring to something in your own mind.”
And the good-night was a little formal with which he went away.
It was time to go in. The light was fading at last, growing a little paler, and ten had struck on the big clock. The lamp had been lighted in the drawing-room for Mrs Ogilvy to read the chapter by, though there was no real need for it. Janet, who had come out for her mistress’s work and her footstool, lingered, as was her wont, before she “cried upon” Andrew for that concluding ceremonial of the day.
“Did you ever hear that there was any word of the minister——? But perhaps I should not speak on the small authority I have,” Mrs Ogilvy said.
“Speak freely, mem; I can aye bear it—and better from you than from some other folk.”
Andrew had strong Free Church inclinations. He was given to disrespectful speech of the ministers of the Auld Kirk in general, and of Mr Logan in particular, calling him a dumb dog that could not bark—which roused Janet to her inmost soul. She was not satisfied even with her mistress, though she had never forsaken the Kirk of her fathers. Janet bore her burden, as the only perfectly orthodox person in the house, with great solemnity and a sense of suffering for the right. “Say what you will, mem; you may be sure I will have heard worse. I can put up with it,” Janet said.
“You are just a very foolish person to speak in that tone to me. Am I one to find fault with the minister without cause? Nor am I finding fault with him. He has a right to do it if he likes. I would not say that it was expedient.”
“Eh, mem, if ye would but put me out of my pain! What is it? He is a douce man, that would do harm to nobody. What is he going to do?”
“Indeed, Janet, I cannot tell. It is just some things he said. Was there ever any lady’s name named—or that caused a silly laugh, or made folk speak?”
“Named!” said Janet,—“with our minister? ’Deed, and that there have been—every woman born that he has ever said a ceevil word to. You ken little of country clashes, mem, if you’re surprised at that. Your ainsel’ for one, and we ken the truth there is in that.”
“They were far to seek if they named me,” said Mrs Ogilvy, drawing herself up with dignity; “but there is a lady he is very full of. I do not ask you to inquire, for I hate gossip; but if it should come your way from any of the neighbours, I would like to hear what they say. Poor Susie! he says she is not able for so much work, that he is feared she will go like her mother. Now, she’s not like her mother either in that or any other thing. There’s trouble brewing for my poor Susie—if you hear anything, let me know.”
“And you never heard who the leddy was?” Janet said.
“I have heard much more—a great deal more,” Mrs Ogilvy cried, very inconclusively it must be allowed, “than I had any wish to hear!”
This was the ordinary of the life at the Hewan. A great deal of solitude, a great deal of thought, an endless circling of mind and reflection round one subject which shadowed heaven and earth, and affected every channel in which the thoughts of a silent much-reasoning creature can flow: and at the same time much acquaintance with a crowd of small human events making up the life of the neighbourhood, with which, practically speaking, Mrs Ogilvy had nothing to do, yet with which, in the way of sympathy, advice, and even criticism, she had a great deal to do. Such half confidences as that of Mr Logan were brought to her continually—veiled disclosures made for the purpose of finding out how such and such things looked in the eyes of a woman who was very discreet, who never repeated anything that was said, and who had the power of intimating an opinion as veiled as the disclosure by delicate methods without putting it into words. She sat on her modest height, a little oracle wrapped in mystery as to her own inner life, impartial and observant as to that about her. How she had come to be an authority in the village it would be difficult to tell. She was not a person of noted family or territorial importance, which is a thing which tells for so much in Scotland. Perhaps it was chiefly because, since the great misfortune of her life, she had retired greatly from the observation of the parish, paying no visits, seeing only the people who went to see her, and as for her own affairs confiding in nobody, asking no sympathy—too proud in her love and sorrow even to allow that she was stricken, or that the dearest object of her life was the occasion of all her suffering. Neighbours had adjured her not “to make an idol” of her boy; and after the trouble came they had shaken their heads and assured her in the first publicity of the blow that God was a jealous God, and would not permit idolatry. To these speeches she had never made any reply: and scarcely any one to this day knew whether his mother had ever heard from Robert, or was aware of his movements and history. This position had been very impressive to the little community. It is a kind of pride with which in Scotland there is a great deal of sympathy.
On the other hand she had never rejected the appeal, tacit or open, of any one who came to her. The ladies of the village were almost a little servile in the court they paid to this old lady. They liked to know what Mrs Ogilvy thought of most things that went on, and to have her opinion of any stranger who settled among them; and if a rumour rose in the village, where rumours are so apt to rise, nobody knows how, there was sure to be a concourse in the afternoon, unpremeditated and accidental, of visitors eager to hear, but very diffident of being the first to ask, what the lady of the Hewan thought. Now the suggestion that the minister of Eskholm was about to make a second marriage, overturning the entire structure of life, displacing his daughter, who had been the mistress of the manse for many years, and inflicting a new and alien sway upon his big boys and his little girls, all flourishing under the cheerful sovereignty of Susie, was such an idea as naturally convulsed the parish from one end to the other. And there was little doubt that this was the question it was intended to discuss, when two or three of these ladies met without concert or premeditation in the afternoon at the Hewan; and Janet, half proud of the concourse, half angry at the trouble involved, had to spend all the warm afternoon serving the tea. If such was the purpose, however, it was entirely foiled by the unlooked-for appearance of a lady not at all like the ladies of Eskholm—a stranger, with what was considered to be a strongly marked “English accent,” the very person who was believed to have led the minister astray. The new-comer was good-looking, well-dressed, and extremely anxious to please; but as the only method of doing so which she could think of was to take the lead of the conversation, and to assume the air of the principal person, the expedient perhaps was not very successful. But for the moment even Mrs Ogilvy was silenced. She allowed her hand to be engulfed in the two hands of the stranger held out to her; and even gave to this frank and smiling personage in her consternation the place of honour, the seat by herself. The English lady, Mrs Ainslie, was not shy; and the little hostile assembly in the drawing-room of the Hewan, which had assembled to discuss the danger to the minister of this alarming siren in their midst, was changed into an audience of civil listeners, hearing the siren discourse.
“Oh, I like it beyond description,” she said. “It has become the most important place in the world to me! What a thing providence is! We came here thinking of nothing, meaning to spend six weeks, or at the most two months. And lo! this little country retreat, as we thought it, has become—I really can’t speak of it. My daughter, my only remaining one, the last—whom I have sometimes thought the flower of the flock——”
“You will have a number of daughters?”
“I am a grandmother these four or five years,” said the stranger, spreading out her hands, and putting herself forth, and her still fresh attractions, with a laugh and a pardonable boast. The ladies of Eskholm, all listening, felt a movement among them, a half-perceptible rustle, half of interest, half of envy. This was what it was to be English, to have a house in London, to move about the world, to introduce your girls and have them properly appreciated. How can you do that in a small country place? Some of these ladies were grandmothers too, and no older than Mrs Ainslie, but not one of them could have succeeded in declaring with that light and airy manner, See how young, how fresh, how unlike a grandmother I am! They looked at her with admiration modified by disapproval. They had meant to discuss her, to organise a defence against her; and here she was in command of everybody’s attention, the centre of the group!
“I am sure,” the lady continued, “it is the truest thing to say that marriages are made in heaven. We came here, Sophie and I, thinking of nothing—just for a few weeks in the summer: and here she is happily married! and, for all I know, I may spend the rest of my life in the place. She is my youngest, and to be near her is such an attraction. Besides, I have made such excellent friends—friends that I hope to keep all my life.”
“It is not everybody that is so fortunate,” Mrs Ogilvy said. None of the audience gave her the least assistance. They were fascinated by the confidence of the stranger, her pleasure in her own good fortune, and her freedom from any of that shyness which silenced themselves.
“Fortunate is really too little to say. Fancy, all my girls have made love-matches, and my sons-in-law adore their wives—and me. Now, I think that is a triumph. They are all fond of me. Don’t you think it is a triumph? If ever I feel inclined to boast, it is of that.”
“You are perhaps one of those,” said Mrs Ogilvy, somewhat grimly, “that, as we say in this country, a’body likes,—which is always a compliment—in one way.”
“That ah-body likes,” cried Mrs Ainslie with out-stretched hands, and an imitation which had a very irritating effect on the listeners. “Thank you a hundred times. It is a very pretty compliment, I think.”
“That awbody likes,” repeated Mrs Ogilvy, putting the vowel to rights. “We do not always mean it in just such a favourable sense.”
“It means a person that makes herself agreeable—with no real meaning in it,” said one.
“It means just a whillie-wha,” said another.
“It means a person, as they say, with a face like a fiddle, and no sincerity behind.”