The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations

“Cannot we help you?” said Ethel.

“I don’t know. Thank you. But, Dr. May, I must not keep you from other people—”

“I have no one to go to this morning,” said Dr. May. “I am ready to stay with you, my dear.”

Meta came closer to him, and murmured, “Thank you!”

The breakfast things had, by this time, been taken away, and Meta, looking to see that the door had shut for the last time, said, in a low voice, “Now tell me—”

Dr. May drew her down to sit on the sofa beside him, and, in his soft, sweet voice, told her all that she wished to learn of her father’s last hours, and was glad to see showers of quiet, wholesome tears drop freely down, but without violence, and she scarcely attempted to speak. There was a pause at the end, and then she said gently, “Thank you, for it all. Dear papa!” And she rose up, and went back to her room.

“She has learned to dwell apart,” said Dr. May, much moved.

“How beautiful she bears up!” said Ethel.

“It has been a life which, as she has used it, has taught her strength and self-dependence in the midst of prosperity.”

“Yes,” said Ethel, “she has trained herself by her dread of self-indulgence, and seeking after work. But oh! what a break up it is for her! I cannot think how she holds up. Shall I go to her?”

“I think not. She knows the way to the only Comforter. I am not afraid of her after those blessed tears.”

Dr. May was right; Meta presently returned to them, in the same gentle subdued sadness, enfolding her, indeed, as a flower weighed down by mist, but not crushing nor taking away her powers. It was as if she were truly upheld; and thankful to her friends as she was, she did not throw herself on them in utter dependence or self-abandonment.

She wrote needful letters, shedding many tears over them, and often obliged to leave off to give the blinding weeping its course, but refusing to impose any unnecessary task upon Dr. May’s lame arm. All that was right, she strove to do; she saw Mr. Charles Wilmot, and was refreshed by his reading to her; and when Dr. May desired it, she submissively put on her bonnet, and took several turns with Ethel in the shrubbery, though it made her cry heartily to look into the downstairs rooms. And she lay on the sofa at last, owning herself strangely tired, she did not know why, and glad that Ethel should read to her. By and by, she went to dress for the evening, and came back, full of the tidings that one of the children in the village had been badly burned. It occupied her very much—she made Ethel promise to go and see about her to-morrow, and sent Bellairs at once with every comfort that she could devise.

On the whole, those two days were to Ethel a peaceful and comfortable time. She saw more than usual of her father, and had such conversations with him as were seldom practicable at home, and that chimed in with the unavowed care which hung on their minds; while Meta was a most sweet and loving charge, without being a burden, and often saying such beautiful things in her affectionate resignation, that Ethel could only admire and lay them up in her mind. Dr. May went backwards and forwards, and brought good accounts of Margaret and fond messages; he slept at the Grange each night, and Meta used to sit in the corner of the sofa and work, or not, as best suited her, while she listened to his talk with Ethel, and now and then herself joined.

George Rivers’s absence was a serious inconvenience in all arrangements; but his sister dreaded his grief as much as she wished for his return; and often were the posts and the journeys reckoned over, without a satisfactory conclusion, as to when he could arrive from so remote a part of Scotland.

At last, as the two girls had finished their early dinner, the butler brought in word that Mr. Norman May was there. Meta at once begged that he would come in, and Ethel went into the hall to meet him. He looked very wan, with the dark rings round his eyes a deeper purple than ever, and he could hardly find utterance to ask, “How is she?”

“As good and sweet as she can be,” said Ethel warmly; but no more, for Meta herself had come to the dining-room door, and was holding out her hand. Norman took it in both his, but could not speak; Meta’s own soft voice was the first. “I thought you would come—he was so fond of you.”

Poor Norman quite gave way, and Meta was the one to speak gentle words of soothing. “There is so much to be thankful for,” she said. “He has been spared so much of the suffering Dr. May feared for him; and he was so happy about George.”

Norman made a great effort to recover himself. Ethel asked for Flora and George. It appeared that they had been on an excursion when the first letter arrived at Glenbracken, and thus had received both together in the evening, on their return. George had been greatly overcome, and they had wished to set off instantly; but Lady Glenbracken would not hear of Flora’s travelling night and day, and it had at length been arranged that Norman Ogilvie should drive Norman across the country that evening, to catch the mail for Edinburgh, and he had been on the road ever since. George was following with his wife more slowly, and would be at home to-morrow evening. Meantime, he sent full authority to his father-in-law to make arrangements.

Ethel went to see the burned child, leaving Meta to take her walk in the garden under Norman’s charge. He waited on her with a sort of distant reverence for a form of grief, so unlike what he had dreaded for her, when the first shock of the tidings had brought back to him the shattered bewildered feelings to which he dared not recur.

To dwell on the details was, to her, a comfort, knowing his sympathy and the affection there had been between him and her father; nor had they parted in such absolute brightness, as to make them unprepared for such a meeting as the present. The cloud of suspense was brooding lower and lower over the May family, and the need of faith and submission was as great with them as with the young orphan herself. Norman said little, but that little was so deep and fervent, that after a time Meta could not help saying, when Ethel was seen in the distance, and their talk was nearly over, “Oh, Norman, these things are no mirage!”

“It is the world that is the mirage,” he answered. Ethel came up, and Dr. May also, in good time for the post. He was obliged to become very busy, using Norman for his secretary, till he saw his son’s eyes so heavy, that he remembered the two nights that he had been up, and ordered him to go home and go to bed as soon as tea was over.

“May I come back to-morrow?”

“Why—yes—I think you may. No, no,” he added, recollecting himself, “I think you had better not,” and he did not relent, though Norman looked disappointed.

Meta had already expressed her belief that her father would be buried at the suburban church, where lay her mother; and Dr. May, having been desired to seek out the will and open it, found it was so; and fixed the day and hour with Meta, who was as submissive and reasonable as possible, though much grieved that he thought she could not be present.

Ethel, after going with Meta to her room at night, returned as usual to talk matters over with him, and again say how good Meta was.

“And I think Norman’s coming did her a great deal of good,” said Ethel.

“Ha! yes,” said the doctor thoughtfully.

“She thinks so much of Mr. Rivers having been fond of him.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “he was. I find, in glancing over the will, which was newly made on Flora’s marriage, that he has remembered Norman—left him £100 and his portfolio of prints by Raffaelle.”

“Has he, indeed?—how very kind, how much Norman will value it.”

“It is remarkable,” said Dr. May; and then, as if he could not help it, told Ethel what Mr. Rivers had said of his wishes with regard to his daughter. Ethel blushed and smiled, and looked so much touched and delighted, that he grew alarmed and said, “You know, Ethel, this must be as if it never had been mentioned.”

“What! you will not tell Norman?”

“No, certainly not, unless I see strong cause. They are very fond of each other, certainly, but they don’t know, and I don’t know, whether it is not like brother and sister. I would not have either of them guess at this, or feel bound in any way. Why, Ethel, she has thirty thousand pounds, and I don’t know how much more.”

“Thirty thousand!” said Ethel, her tone one of astonishment, while his had been almost of objection.

“It would open a great prospect,” continued Dr. May complacently; “with Norman’s talents, and such a lift as that, he might be one of the first men in England, provided he had nerve and hardness enough, which I doubt.”

“He would not care for it,” said Ethel.

“No; but the field of usefulness; but what an old fool I am, after all my resolutions not to be ambitious for that boy; to be set a-going by such a thing as this! Still Norman is something out of the common way. I wonder what Spencer thinks of him.”

“And you never mean them to hear of it?”

“If they settle it for themselves,” said Dr. May, “that sanction will come in to give double value to mine; or if I should see poor Norman hesitating as to the inequality, I might smooth the way; but you see, Ethel, this puts us in a most delicate situation towards this pretty little creature. What her father wanted was only to guard her from fortune-hunters, and if she should marry suitably elsewhere—why, we will be contented.”

“I don’t think I should be,” said Ethel.

“She is the most winning of humming-birds, and what we see of her now, gives one double confidence in her. She is so far from the petted, helpless girl that he, poor man, would fain have made her! And she has a bright, brave temper and elastic spirits that would be the very thing for him, poor boy, with that morbid sensitiveness—he would not hurt her, and she would brighten him. It would be a very pretty thing—but we must never think about it again.”

“If we can help it,” said Ethel.

“Ah! I am sorry I have put it into your head too. We shall not so easily be unconscious now, when they talk about each other in the innocent way they do. We have had a lesson against being pleased at match-making!” But, turning away from the subject, “You shall not lose your Cocksmoor income, Ethel—”

“I had never thought of that. You have taken no fees here since we have been all one family.”

“Well, he has been good enough to leave me £500, and Cocksmoor can have the interest, if you like.”

“Oh, thank you, papa.”

“It is only its due, for I suppose that is for attendance. Personally, to myself, he has left that beautiful Claude which he knew I admired so much. He has been very kind! But, after all, we ought not to be talking of all this—I should not have known it, if I had not been forced to read the will. Well, so we are in Flora’s house, Ethel! I wonder how poor dear little Meta will feel the being a guest here, instead of the mistress. I wish that boy were three or four years older! I should like to take her straight home with us—I should like to have her for a daughter. I shall always look on her as one.”

“As a Daisy!” said Ethel.

“Don’t talk of it!” said Dr. May hastily; “this is no time for such things. After all, I am glad that the funeral is not here—Flora and Meta might be rather overwhelmed with these three incongruous sets of relations. By their letters, those Riverses must be quite as queer a lot as George’s relations. After all, if we have nothing else, Ethel, we have the best of it, in regard to such relations as we have.”

“There is Lord Cosham,” said Ethel.

“Yes, he is Meta’s guardian, as well as her brother; but he could not have her to live with him. She must depend upon Flora. But we shall see.”

Ethel felt confident that Flora would be very kind to her little sister-in-law, and yet one of those gleams of doubt crossed her, whether Flora would not be somewhat jealous of her own authority.

Late the next evening, the carriage drove to the door, and George and Flora appeared in the hall. Their sisters went out to meet them, and George folded Meta in his arms, and kissing her again and again, called her his poor dear little sister, and wept bitterly, and even violently. Flora stood beside Ethel, and said, in a low voice, that poor George felt it dreadfully; and then came forward, touched him gently, and told him that he must not overset Meta; and, drawing her from him, kissed her, and said what a grievous time this had been for her, and how sorry they had been to leave her so long, but they knew she was in the best hands.

“Yes, I should have been so sorry you had been over-tired. I was quite well off,” said Meta.

“And you must look on us as your home,” added Flora.

“How can she?” thought Ethel. “This is taking possession, and making Meta a guest already!”

However, Meta did not seem so to feel it—she replied by caresses, and turned again to her brother. Poor George was by far the most struck down of all the mourners, and his whole demeanour gave his new relations a much warmer feeling towards him than they could ever have hoped to entertain. His gentle refined father had softly impressed his duller nature; and his want of attention and many extravagances came back upon him acutely now, in his changed home. He could hardly bear to look at his little orphan sister, and lavished every mark of fondness upon her; nor could he endure to sit at the bottom of his table; but when they had gone in to dinner, he turned away from the chair and hid his face. He was almost like a child in his want of self-restraint; and with all Dr. May’s kind soothing manner, he could not bring him to attend to any of the necessary questions as to arrangements, and was obliged to refer to Flora, whose composed good sense was never at fault.

Ethel was surprised to find that it would be a great distress to Meta to part with her until the funeral was over, though she would hardly express a wish lest Ethel should be needed at home. As soon as Flora perceived this, she begged her sister to stay, and again Ethel felt unpleasantly that Meta might have seen, if she had chosen, that Flora took the invitation upon herself.

So, while Dr. May, with George, Norman, and Tom, went to London, she remained, though not exactly knowing what good she was doing, unless by making the numbers rather less scanty; but both sisters declared her to be the greatest comfort possible; and when Meta shut herself up in her own room, where she had long learned to seek strength in still communing with her own heart, Flora seemed to find it a relief to call her sister to hers, and talk over ordinary subjects, in a tone that struck on Ethel’s ear as a little incongruous—but then Flora had not been here from the first, and the impression could not be as strong. She was very kind, and her manner, when with others, was perfect, from its complete absence of affectation; but, alone with Ethel, there was a little complacency sometimes betrayed, and some curiosity whether her father had read the will. Ethel allowed what she had heard of the contents to be extracted from her, and it certainly did not diminish Flora’s secret satisfaction in being ‘somebody’.

She told the whole history of her visits; first, how cordial Lady Leonora Langdale had been, and then, how happy she had been at Glenbracken. The old Lord and Lady, and Marjorie, all equally charming in their various ways; and Norman Ogilvie so good a son, and so highly thought of in his own country.

“Did I tell you, Ethel, that he desired to be remembered to you?”

“Yes, you said so.”

“What has Coralie done with it?” continued Flora, seeking in her dressing-case. “She must have put it away with my brooches. Oh, no, here it is. I had been looking for Cairngorm specimens in a shop, saying I wanted a brooch that you would wear, when Norman Ogilvie came riding after the carriage, looking quite hot and eager. He had been to some other place, and hunted this one up. Is it not a beauty?”

It was one of the round Bruce brooches, of dark pebble, with a silver fern-leaf lying across it, the dots of small Cairngorm stones. “The Glenbracken badge, you know,” continued Flora.

Ethel twisted it about in her fingers, and said, “Was not it meant for you?”

“It was to oblige me, if you choose so to regard it,” said Flora, smiling. “He gave me no injunctions; but, you see, you must wear it now. I shall not wear coloured brooches for a year.”

Ethel sighed. She felt as if her black dress ought, perhaps, to be worn for a nearer cause. She had a great desire to keep that Glenbracken brooch; and surely it could not be wrong. To refuse it would be much worse, and would only lead to Flora’s keeping it, and not caring for it.

“Then it is your present, Flora?”

“If you like better to call it so, my dear. I find Norman Ogilvie is going abroad in a few months. I think we ought to ask him here on his way.”

“Flora, I wish you would not talk about such things!”

“Do you really and truly, Ethel?”

“Certainly not, at such a time as this,” said Ethel.

Flora was checked a little, and sat down to write to Marjorie Ogilvie. “Shall I say you like the brooch, Ethel?” she asked presently.

“Say what is proper,” said Ethel impatiently. “You know what I mean, in the fullest sense of the word.”

“Do I?” said Flora.

“I mean,” said Ethel, “that you may say, simply and rationally, that I like the thing, but I won’t have it said as a message, or that I take it as his present.”

“Very well,” said Flora, “the whole affair is simple enough, if you would not be so conscious, my dear.”

“Flora, I can’t stand your calling me my dear!”

“I am very much obliged to you,” said Flora, laughing, more than she would have liked to be seen, but recalled by her sister’s look. Ethel was sorry at once.

“Flora, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to be cross, only please don’t begin about that; indeed, I think you had better leave out about the brooch altogether. No one will wonder at your passing it over in such a return as this.”

“You are right,” said Flora thoughtfully.

Ethel carried the brooch to her own room, and tried to keep herself from speculating what had been Mr. Ogllvie’s views in procuring it, and whether he remembered showing her, at Woodstock, which sort of fern was his badge, and how she had abstained from preserving the piece shut up in her guide-book.

Meta’s patient sorrow was the best remedy for proneness to such musings. How happy poor little Meta had been! The three sisters sat together that long day, and Ethel read to the others, and by and by went to walk in the garden with them, till, as Flora was going in, Meta asked, “Do you think it would be wrong for me to cross the park to see that little burned girl, as Mr. Wilmot is away to-day, and she has no one to go to her?”

Flora could see no reason against it, and Meta and Ethel left the garden, and traversed the green park, in its quiet home beauty, not talking much, except that Meta said, “Well! I think there is quite as much sweetness as sadness in this evening.”

“Because of this calm autumn sunset beauty?” said Ethel. “Look at the golden light coming in under the branches of the trees.”

“Yes,” said Meta, “one cannot help thinking how much more beautiful it must be—”

The two girls said no more, and came to the cottage, where so much gratitude was expressed at seeing Miss Rivers, that it was almost too much for her. She left Ethel to talk, and only said a few soft little words to her sick scholar, who seemed to want her voice and smile to convince her that the small mournful face, under all that black crape, belonged to her own dear bright teacher.

“It is odd,” said Meta, as they went back; “it is seeing other people that makes one know it is all sad and altered—it seems so bewildering, though they are so kind.”

“I know what you mean,” said Ethel.

“One ought not to wish it to go on, because there are other people and other duties,” said Meta, “but quietness is so peaceful. Do you know, Ethel, I shall always think of those two first days, before anybody came, with you and Dr. May, as something very—very—precious,” she said at last, with the tears rising.

“I am sure I shall,” said Ethel.

“I don’t know how it is, but there is something even in this affliction that makes it like—a strange sort of happiness,” said Meta musingly.

“I know what it is!” said Ethel.

“That He is so very good?” said Meta reverently.

“Yes,” said Ethel, almost rebuked for the first thought, namely, that it was because Meta was so very good.

“It does make one feel more confidence,” said Meta.

“‘It is good for me to have been in trouble,’” repeated Ethel.

“Yes,” said Meta. “I hope it is not wrong or unkind in me to feel it, for I think dear papa would wish it; but I do not feel as if—miss him always as I shall—the spring of life were gone from me. I don’t think it can, for I know no more pain or trouble can reach him, and there is—don’t you think, Ethel, that I may think so?—especial care for the orphan, like a compensation. And there is hope, and work here. And I am very thankful! How much worse it would have been, if George had not been married! Dear Flora! Will you tell her, Ethel, how really I do wish her to take the command of me? Tell her it will be the greatest kindness in the world to make me useful to her.”

“I will,” said Ethel.

“And please tell her that I am afraid I may forget, and take upon me, as if I were still lady of the house. Tell her I do not mean it, and I hope that she will check it.”

“I think there is no fear of her forgetting that,” said Ethel, regretting the words before they were out of her mouth.

“I hope I shall not,” said Meta. “If I do, I shall drive myself away to stay with Aunt Leonora, and I don’t want to do that at all. So please to make Flora understand that she is head, and I am ready to be hand and foot;” and Meta’s bright smile shone out, with the pleasure of a fresh and loving service.

Ethel understood the force of her father’s words, that it was a brave, vigorous spirit.

Dr. May came back with George, and stayed to dinner, after which he talked over business with Flora, whose sagacity continually amazed him, and who undertook to make her husband understand, and do what was needed.

Meta meanwhile cross-questioned her brother on the pretty village by the Thames, of which she had a fond, childish remembrance, and heard from him of the numerous kind messages from all her relations. There were various invitations, but George repeated them unwillingly.

“You won’t go, Meta,” he said. “It would be a horrid nuisance to part with you.”

“As long as you think so, dear George. When I am in your way, or Flora’s—”

“That will never be! I say, Flora, will she ever be in our way?”

“No, indeed! Meta and I understand that,” said Flora, looking up. “Well, I suppose Bruce can’t be trusted to value the books and prints.”

Dr. May thought it a great relief that Meta had a home with Flora, for, as he said to Ethel as they went home together, “Certainly, except Lord Cosham, I never saw such an unpresentable crew as their relations. You should have heard the boys afterwards! There was Master Tom turning up his Eton nose at them, and pronouncing that there never were such a set of snobs, and Norman taking him to task as I never heard him do before—telling him that he would never have urged his going to Eton, if he had thought it would make him despise respectable folks, probably better than himself, and that this was the last time in the world for such observations—whereat poor Tommy was quite annihilated; for a word from Norman goes further with him than a lecture from any one else.”

“Well, I think Norman was right as to the unfitness of the time.”

“So he was. But we had a good deal of them, waiting in the inn parlour. People make incongruities when they will have such things done in state. It could not be helped here, to be sure; but I always feel, at a grand undertaker’s display like this, that, except the service itself, there is little to give peace or soothing. I hate what makes a talk! Better be little folk.”

“One would rather think of our own dear cloister, and those who cared so much,” said Ethel.

“Ah! you were happy to be there!” said Dr. May. “But it all comes to the same.” Pausing, he looked from the window, then signed to Ethel to do the same—Orion glittered in the darkness.

“One may sleep sound without the lullaby,” said Dr. May, “and the waves—”