The Clever Woman of the Family

CHAPTER VIII. WOMAN’S MISSION DISCOVERED

“Only nerves,” said Alison Williams, whenever she was pushed hard as to why her sister continued unwell, and her own looks betrayed an anxiety that her words would not confess. Rachel, after a visit on the first day, was of the same opinion, and prescribed globules and enlivenment; but after a personal administration of the latter in the shape of a discussion of Lord Keith, she never called in the morning without hearing that Miss Williams was not up, nor in the afternoon without Alison’s meeting her, and being very sorry, but really she thought it better for her sister to be quite quiet.

In fact, Alison was not seriously uneasy about Ermine’s health, for these nervous attacks were not without precedent, as the revenge for all excitement of the sensitive mind upon the much-tried constitution. The reaction must pass off in time, and calm and patience would assist in restoring her; but the interview with Lord Keith had been a revelation to her that her affection was not the calm, chastened, mortified, almost dead thing of the past that she had tried to believe it; but a young, living, active feeling, as vivid, and as little able to brook interference as when the first harsh letter from Gowanbrae had fallen like a thunderbolt on the bright hopes of youth. She looked back at some verses that she had written, when first perceiving that life was to be her portion, where her own intended feelings were ascribed to a maiden who had taken the veil, believing her crusader slain, but who saw him return and lead a recluse life, with the light in her cell for his guiding star. She smiled sadly to find how far the imaginings of four and twenty transcended the powers of four and thirty; and how the heart that had deemed itself able to resign was chafed at the appearance of compulsion. She felt that the right was the same as ever; but it was an increased struggle to maintain the resolute abstinence from all that could bind Colin to her, at the moment when he was most likely to be detached, and it was a struggle rendered the more trying by the monotony of a life, scarcely varied except by the brainwork, which she was often obliged to relinquish.

Nothing, however, here assisted her so much as Lady Temple’s new pony carriage which, by Fanny’s desire, had been built low enough to permit of her being easily lifted into it. Inert, and almost afraid of change, Ermine was hard to persuade, but Alison, guessing at the benefit, was against her, and Fanny’s wistful eyes and caressing voice were not to be gainsaid; so she suffered herself to be placed on the broad easy seat, and driven about the lanes, enjoying most intensely the new scenes, the peeps of sea, the distant moors, the cottages with their glowing orchards, the sloping harvest fields, the variety that was an absolute healing to the worn spirits, and moreover, that quiet conversation with Lady Temple, often about the boys, but more often about Colonel Keith.

Not only Ermine, but other inhabitants of Avonmouth found the world more flat in his absence. Rachel’s interest was lessened in her readings after she had lost the pleasure of discussion, and she asked herself many times whether the tedium were indeed from love, or if it were simply from the absence of an agreeable companion. “I will try myself,” she said to herself, “if I am heartily interested in my occupations by the end of the next week, then I shall believe myself my own woman!”

But in going back to her occupations, she was more than ordinarily sensible of their unsatisfactoriness. One change had come over her in the last few months. She did not so much long for a wider field, as for power to do the few things within her reach more thoroughly. Her late discussions had, as it were, opened a second eye, that saw two sides of questions that she had hitherto thought had only one, and she was restless and undecided between them, longing for some impulse from within or without, and hoping, for her own dignity and consistency’s sake, that it was not only Colonel Keith’s presence which had rendered this summer the richest in her life.

A test was coming for her, she thought, in the person of Miss Keith. Judging by the brother, Rachel expected a tall fair dreamy blonde, requiring to be taught a true appreciation of life and its duties, and whether the training of this young girl would again afford her food for eagerness and energy, would, as she said to herself, show whether her affections were still her own. Moreover, there was the great duty of deciding whether the brother were worthy of Fanny!

It chanced to be convenient that Rachel should go to Avoncester on the day of the arrival, and call at the station for the traveller. She recollected how, five months previously, she had there greeted Fanny, and had seen the bearded apparition since regarded, with so much jealousy, and now with such a strangely mixed feeling. This being a far more indifferent errand, she did not go on the platform, but sat in the carriage reading the report of the Social Science Congress, until the travellers began to emerge, and Captain Keith (for he had had his promotion) came up to her with a young lady who looked by no means like his sister. She was somewhat tall, and in that matter alone realized Rachel’s anticipations, for she was black-eyed, and her dark hair was crepe and turned back from a face of the plump contour, and slightly rosy complexion that suggested the patches of the last century; as indeed Nature herself seemed to have thought when planting near the corner of the mouth a little brown mole, that added somehow to the piquancy of the face, not exactly pretty, but decidedly attractive under the little round hat, and in the point device, though simple and plainly coloured travelling dress.

“Will you allow me a seat?” asked Captain Keith, when he had disposed of his sister’s goods; and on Rachel’s assent, he placed himself on the back seat in his lazy manner.

“If you were good for anything, you would sit outside and smoke,” said his sister.

“If privacy is required for swearing an eternal friendship, I can go to sleep instead,” he returned, closing his eyes.

“Quite the reverse,” quoth Bessie Keith; “he has prepared me to hate you all, Miss Curtis.”

“On the mutual aversion principle,” murmured the brother.

“Don’t you flatter yourself! Have you found out, Miss Curtis, that it is the property of this species always to go by contraries?”

“To Miss Curtis I always appear in the meekest state of assent,” said Alick.

“Then I would not be Miss Curtis. How horribly you must differ!”

Rachel was absolutely silenced by this cross fire; something so unlike the small talk of her experience, that her mind could hardly propel itself into velocity enough to follow the rapid encounter of wits. However, having stirred up her lightest troops into marching order, she said, in a puzzled, doubtful way, “How has he prepared you to hate us?—By praising us?”

“Oh, no; that would have been too much on the surface. He knew the effect of that,” looking in his sleepy eyes for a twinkle of response. “No; his very reserve said, I am going to take her to ground too transcendent for her to walk on, but if I say one word, I shall never get her there at all. It was a deep refinement, you see, and he really meant it, but I was deeper,” and she shook her head at him.

“You are always trying which can go deepest?” said Rachel.

“It is a sweet fraternal sport,” returned Alick.

“Have you no brother?” asked Bessie.

“No.”

“Then you don’t know what detestable creatures they are,” but she looked so lovingly and saucily at her big brother, that Rachel, spite of herself, was absolutely fascinated by this novel form of endearment. An answer was spared her by Miss Keith’s rapture at the sight of some soldiers in the uniform of her father’s old regiment.

“Have a care, Bessie; Miss Curtis will despise you,” said her brother.

“Why should you think so?” exclaimed Rachel, not desirous of putting on a forbidding aspect to this bright creature.

“Have I not been withered by your scorn!”

“I—I—” Rachel was going to say something of her change of opinion with regard to military society, but a sudden consciousness set her cheeks in a flame and checked her tongue; while Bessie Keith, with ease and readiness, filled up the blank.

“What, Alick, you have brought the service into disrepute! I am ashamed of you!”

“Oh, no!” said Rachel, in spite of her intolerable blushes, feeling the necessity of delivering her confession, like a cannon-ball among skirmishers; “only we had been used to regard officers as necessarily empty and frivolous, and our recent experience has—has been otherwise.” Her period altogether failed her.

“There, Alick, is that the effect of your weight of wisdom? I shall be more impressed with it than ever. It has redeemed the character of your profession. Captain Keith and the army.”

“I am afraid I cannot flatter myself,” said Alick; and a sort of reflection of Rachel’s burning colour seemed to have lighted on his cheek, “its reputation has been in better hands.”

“O Colonel Colin! Depend upon it, he is not half as sage as you, Alick. Why, he is a dozen years older!—What, don’t you know, Miss Curtis, that the older people grow the less sage they get?”

“I hope not,” said Rachel.

“Do you! A contrary persuasion sustains me when I see people obnoxiously sage to their fellow-creatures.”

“Obnoxious sageness in youth is the token that there is stuff behind,” said Alick, with eagerness that set his sister laughing at him for fitting on the cap; but Rachel had a sort of odd dreamy perception that Bessie Keith had unconsciously described her (Rachel’s) own aspect, and that Alick was defending her, and she was silent and confused, and rather surprised at the assumption of the character by one who she thought could never even exert himself to be obnoxious. He evidently did not wish to dwell on the subject, but began to inquire after Avonmouth matters, and Rachel in return asked for Mr. Clare.

“Very well,” was the answer; “unfailing in spirits, every one agreed that he was the youngest man at the wedding.”

“Having outgrown his obnoxious sageness,” said Bessie.

“There is nothing he is so adroit at as guessing the fate of a croquet-ball by its sound.”

“Now Bessie,” exclaimed Alick.

“I have not transgressed, have I?” asked Bessie; and in the exclamations that followed, she said, “You see what want of confidence is. This brother of mine no sooner saw you in the carriage than he laid his commands on me not to ask after your croquet-ground all the way home, and the poor word cannot come out of my mouth without—”

“I only told you not to bore Miss Curtis with the eternal subject, as she would think you had no more brains than one of your mallets,” he said, somewhat energetically.

“And if we had begun to talk croquet, we should soon have driven him outside.”

“But suppose I could not talk it,” said Rachel, “and that we have no ground for it.”

“Why, then,”—and she affected to turn up her eyes,—“I can only aver that the coincidence of sentiments is no doubt the work of destiny.”

“Bessie!” exclaimed her brother.

“Poor old fellow! you had excuse enough, lying on the sofa to the tune of tap and click; but for a young lady in the advanced ranks of civilization to abstain is a mere marvel.”

“Surely it is a great waste of time,” said Rachel.

“Ah! when I have converted you, you will wonder what people did with themselves before the invention.”

“Woman’s mission discovered,” quoth her brother.

“Also man’s, unless he neglects it,” returned Miss Elizabeth; “I wonder, now, if you would play if Miss Curtis did.”

“Wisdom never pledges itself how it will act in hypothetical circumstances,” was the reply.

“Hypothetical,” syllabically repeated Bessie Keith; “did you teach him that word, Miss Curtis? Well, if I don’t bring about the hypothetical circumstances, you may call me hyperbolical.”

So they talked, Rachel in a state of bewilderment, whether she were teased or enchanted, and Alexander Keith’s quiet nonchalance not concealing that he was in some anxiety at his sister’s reckless talk, but, perhaps, he hardly estimated the effect of the gay, quaint manner that took all hearts by storm, and gave a frank careless grace to her nonsense. She grew graver and softer as she came nearer Avonmouth, and spoke tenderly of the kindness she had received at the time of her mother’s death at the Cape, when she had been brought to the general’s, and had there remained like a child of the house, till she had been sent home on the removal of the regiment to India.

“I remember,” she said, “Mrs. Curtis kept great order. In fact, between ourselves, she was rather a dragon; and Lady Temple, though she had one child then, seemed like my companion and playfellow. Dear little Lady Temple, I wonder if she is altered!”

“Not in the least,” returned both her companions at once, and she was quite ready to agree with them when the slender form and fair young face met her in the hall amid a cloud of eager boys. The meeting was a full renewal of the parting, warm and fond, and Bessie so comported herself on her introduction to the children, that they all became enamoured of her on the spot, and even Stephana relaxed her shyness on her behalf. That sunny gay good-nature could not be withstood, and Rachel, again sharing Fanny’s first dinner after an arrival, no longer sat apart despising the military atmosphere, but listening, not without amusement, to the account of the humours of the wedding, mingled with Alick Keith’s touches of satire.

“It was very stupid,” said Bessie, “of none of those girls to have Uncle George to marry them. My aunt fancied he would be nervous, but I know he did marry a couple when Mr. Lifford was away; I mean him to marry me, as I told them all.”

“You had better wait till you know whether he will,” observed Alick.

“Will? Oh, he is always pleased to feel he can do like other people,” returned Bessie, “and I’ll undertake to see that he puts the ring on the right—I mean the left finger. Because you’ll have to give me away, you know, Alick, so you can look after him.”

“You seem to have arranged the programme pretty thoroughly,” said Rachel.

“After four weddings at home, one can’t but lay by a little experience for the future,” returned Bessie; “and after all, Alick need not look as if it must be for oneself. He is quite welcome to profit by it, if he has the good taste to want my uncle to marry him.”

“Not unless I were very clear that he liked my choice,” said Alick, gravely.

“Oh, dear! Have you any doubts, or is that meant for a cut at poor innocent me, as if I could help people’s folly, or as if he was not gone to Rio Janeiro,” exclaimed Bessie, with a sort of meek simplicity and unconsciousness that totally removed all the unsatisfactoriness of the speech, and made even her brother smile while he looked annoyed; and Lady Temple quietly changed the conversation. Alick Keith was obliged to go away early, and the three ladies sat long in the garden outside the window, in the summer twilight, much relishing the frank-hearted way in which this engaging girl talked of herself and her difficulties to Fanny as to an old friend, and to Rachel as belonging to Fanny.

“I am afraid that I was very naughty,” she said, with a hand laid on Lady Temple’s, as if to win pardon; “but I never can resist plaguing that dear anxious brother of mine, and he did so dreadfully take to heart the absurdities of that little Charlie Carleton, as if any one with brains could think him good for anything but a croquet partner, that I could not help giving a little gentle titillation. I saw you did not like it, dear Lady Temple, and I am sorry for it.”

“I hope I did not vex you,” said Fanny, afraid of having been severe.

“Oh, no, indeed; a little check just makes one feel one is cared for,” and they kissed affectionately: “you see when one has a very wise brother, plaguing him is irresistible. How little Stephana will plague hers, in self-defence, with so many to keep her in order.”

“They all spoil her.”

“Ah, this is the golden age. See what it will be when they think themselves responsible for her! Dear Lady Temple, how could you send him home so old and so grave?”

“I am afraid we sent him home very ill. I never expected to see him so perfectly recovered. I could hardly believe my eyes when Colonel Keith brought him to the carriage not in the least lame.”

“Yes; and it was half against his will. He would have been almost glad to be a lay curate to Uncle George, only he knew if he was fit for service my father would have been vexed at his giving up his profession.”

“Then it was not his choice!” said Rachel.

“Oh, he was born a soldier, like all the rest of us, couldn’t help it. The —th is our home, and if he would only take my hint and marry, I could be with him there, now! Lady Temple, do pray send for all the eligible officers—I don’t know any of them now, except the two majors, and Alick suspects my designs, I believe, for he won’t tell me anything about them.”

“My dear!” said Fanny, bewildered, “how you talk; you know we are living a very quiet life here.”

“Oh, yes, so Alick has told me,” she said, with a pretty compunction in her tone; “you must be patient with me,” and she kissed Fanny’s fingers again and spoke in a gentler way. “I am used to be a great chatter-box, and nobody protested but Alick.”

“I wish you would tell me about his return, my dear; he seemed so unfit to travel when your poor father came to the hills and took him away by dak. It seemed so impossible he could bear the journey; he could not stand or help himself at all, and had constant returns of fever; but they said the long sea voyage was the only chance, and that in India he could not get vigour enough to begin to recover. I was very unhappy about him,” said Fanny, innocently, whilst Rachel felt very vigilant, wondering if Fanny were the cause of the change his sister spoke of.

“Yes, the voyage did him good, but the tidings of papa’s death came two months before him, and Uncle George’s eyes were in such a state that he had to be kept in the dark, so that no one could go and meet the poor dear boy at Southampton but Mr. Lifford, and the shock of the news he heard brought the fever back, and it went on intermitting for weeks and weeks. We had him at Littleworthy at first, thinking he could be better nursed and more cheerful there, but there was no keeping the house quiet enough.”

“Croquet!” said Rachel.

“Everything!” returned Bessie. “Four courtships in more or less progress, besides a few flirtations, and a house where all the neighbours were running in and out in a sociable way. Our loss was not as recent there as it was to him, and they were only nieces, so we could not have interfered with them; besides, my aunt was afraid he would be dull, and wanted to make the most of her conquering hero, and everybody came and complimented him, and catechised him whether he believed in the Indian mutilations, when, poor fellow, he had seen horrors enough never to bear to think of them, except when the fever brought them all over again. I am sure there was excuse enough for his being a little irritable.”