Mrs. Dorriman Volume I Part 10

She found Margaret in tears, and Grace looking flushed and defiant.

But she had resolved to take no notice of anything not immediately directed to herself, and Grace left the room.

Relieved by not being asked for any explanation, Margaret threw herself now again into the matter. The bookshelves, standing almost empty, were soon comfortably filled, and then Mrs. Dorriman, who had a happy gift of arrangement, moved the tables and chairs about, made a comfortable corner for her brother, and gave a look of home to the room which it had sorely needed, by which time the morning had pa.s.sed away.

In the afternoon Mrs. Dorriman wished to go and see how Jean fared; but she did not want to be out of the way if the girls wanted to go out with her.

Before she rose to find them, however, she heard the hall-door shut, and she saw them walking down the avenue.

"They might have said something to me," she thought, but she understood immediately that this was another protest made by Grace against any "interference."

She went off herself, not sorry to be alone, feeling the squalor of the narrow streets through which she pa.s.sed--like all people who are easily impressed by the absence of any beauty in life. She felt for the poor human beings who toiled so hard for such a bare and unlovely existence.

The grey houses with their dirty, ill-kept doors, and the "common stairs," upon which went so many weary feet. In front, a bit of trodden-down mud and a black stream, in which dirty ducks and dirtier children paddled. Her spirits sank lower and lower. At length she arrived at the address she had got from Jean, and was asked to "walk up the stair" by a shock-headed girl, without any attempt at tidiness, "busy," and evidently imagining that in that fact lay excuse enough for all disregard of appearance.

Jean, clean, trim, but with eyes that told their own tale of weeping, was scrubbing a floor; unaccustomed to such treatment, the shutters and woodwork all glistened, and the floor was nearly finished. It was one of the rooms, part kitchen, part bedroom, which you obtain in towns where overcrowding is the rule. The window was small and high up--worse than this, it could not open.

"And is this your situation? This the place you were coming to, my poor dear Jean?" asked Mrs. Dorriman, in faltering tones.

"'Deed, my dear, I may just say, without vanity, I could get mony a situation; but I am here working housekeeper to two lads--kin to myself, my dear. No one to hurry me or hinder me, and little to do. So little, I'll be often down bothering you."

She spoke lightly, afraid of giving way. The sight of Mrs. Dorriman brought back all her own misgivings of the day before; when she had found herself in an airless room, with nothing but filth and dirt around her, and not a "kent face" near her.

But Mrs. Dorriman must never know that she had made a sacrifice to be near her; and with a fair attempt at a laugh she said--

"You know, my dear, I was always ill to command. Better this than be under a mistress who might be a harder mistress than ever you were to do with."

Mrs. Dorriman could not speak. She looked round the room to see in what way she could help to make things comfortable. She resolved that something should be done to the windows, and she noted other things. But the feeling uppermost in her mind was, that it would not be for long.

Jean and herself--they would at no distant day wend their way back to the hill-side together.

"And are you happy? Are you comfortable, my dear?" asked Jean, "How is it with you?"

"I am comfortable, Jean, and have all to make me comfortable; but, like you, I miss the great purple hills, the life and light of the sea, the freedom and brightness of Inchbrae."

"And yet you speak cheerfully, my dear;" and the poor woman looked wistfully at her former mistress.

"I speak cheerfully, Jean," and Mrs. Dorriman rose and laid her hand caressingly upon the old woman's shoulder, "because, Jean, the darkest and longest day comes to an end; you and I will go back to the light and the suns.h.i.+ne. We shall go back, Jean, there again."

"But the place is sold; it has pa.s.sed into the hands of a stranger,"

said the old woman, wondering.

"We shall go back," said Mrs. Dorriman, firmly. "Yes, Jean, that hope keeps me from despair; that conviction comforts me. We shall go back to Inchbrae once more," and so saying she left her.

CHAPTER VI.

In spite of a good deal of open opposition on the part of Grace, Margaret, full of the enthusiasm of a girl whose intelligence after being long cramped suddenly finds an outlet, threw herself heartily into a systematic course of real study, and the mornings flew on pleasantly.

Mrs. Dorriman, who had read a great deal during the lonely hours she had spent, had theorized after the fas.h.i.+on of solitary readers. Her views of life were not unnaturally entirely pessimist, she rejected many high and great ideas from a dislike to what she conceived to be exaggeration. Her character was very far from firm, and she was conscious of this and other shortcomings, but her sweetness of temper saved her from being soured. She had a craving for happiness, without believing in its being possible for her. Her spirits were always low, and the effect of the harshness of her brother, and of the neglect she had suffered from in her youth, would probably pursue her all her life, and affected her now.

She carried this negation of hope even into her religious exercises, finding comfort chiefly in pa.s.sages about resignation; and, though she had a vague belief that in the future she might have some share of bliss, she never expected it on this side of the grave.

Then another and a most terrible question troubled her greatly. She did not look forward with any profound rejoicing, to the prospect of once more meeting with her husband whom she had forgiven, but whom she had never loved.

That hope that spans the chasm between us and the future, is not always the comfort it is supposed to be, and indeed much may be said about her want of wisdom in dwelling upon problems which must remain unsolved.

She was too timid to take her fears and show her anxieties to any one capable of helping her at all. She was conscious of feeling disloyal to her husband in this matter, which was often a trial to her, and she indulged sometimes in speculations which unsettled her and did not tend to comfort her.

Poor woman! When Margaret put those pointed questions to her common to girls who have begun to think out things and want help, she read and re-read various authors only to come to the unsatisfactory previous conclusions. In this respect the a.s.sociation was not productive of much good on either side, but, excepting in this, the results were to make both happier.

Mrs. Dorriman, married so young as to be barely out of childhood, had the tenacity of opinion and the strong bias in favour of her own conclusions always to be found where the mind has dwelt upon itself, and has not been enlarged by friction with other minds, a bias which no amount of reading tends to modify, since each book is read and digested, almost one might say distorted, by the views brought to bear upon it, a mode of reading which may be compared to looking at a bright and a rainy day through the same smoky gla.s.s which gives everything its own hue. But the very exception she took at times, served to arouse Margaret's own powers of thought, and to make her reflect upon her reasons for liking and disliking opinions, and the language in which those opinions were put before her. Many fine sounding phrases fell to pieces when treated this way, and many lovely poems became to her so much more when she followed out a thought therein shadowed forth.

Grace could in reality do nothing to stop this reading, and, though at first she made many bitter observations, she had not the heart to destroy her sister's comfort in these mornings; and indeed, at certain times, when her own idleness became oppressive, she went and sat with them, preserving her independence by making no remarks, standing, as it were, aside and taking no part in any discussion, as though her own mind had been long made up and that these questions had been grappled with and settled by her long ago.

Mrs. Dorriman, who was always more timid when Grace was present, was always relieved when she did not appear, and then took herself to task for the relief. There was no doubt that Mrs. Dorriman brought a great increase of comfort to the place, everything was well looked after, and Mr. Sandford recognised that it was so, without exactly knowing in which way a change had been made.

The one restless and dissatisfied person was always Grace. The monotony of the days became to her absolutely terrible. She had all the discomfort of having put herself upon a pinnacle without any admiring crowd to make up for the isolation. It was difficult for her to come down. Advances of friendliness and proffered affection had been made in vain by Mrs. Dorriman and now no effort was made. Perhaps the hardest trial of all was the perceptible loss of her sister's blind admiration for all she said. To Margaret, Grace was still beautiful, graceful, and full of talents, which only needed recognition to dazzle the world; but she began to think it just possible that Grace did not quite understand things affecting herself and Mrs. Dorriman; and instead of accepting her conclusions, as she had done all her life, without question, she began now to endeavour to argue with her, and though Grace bore her down by a flow of language and silenced her she remained unconvinced and Grace herself knew it. This change, this falling-off in her allegiance, was laid to the charge of Mrs. Dorriman, and when occasions arose that poor lady was told much, which wounded her sorely, about setting the sisters against each other.

There were times when Grace paced her room in a perfect frenzy of impatience. Her life was slipping away, she thought, and there was no break, nothing in sight. What was the use of being what she was--fitted to reign--when there was no kingdom? Were her gifts--for she believed in her gifts--all to be useless to her?

They had been four months together now; she had seen the snowfall turn black and s.m.u.tty and lose its beauty under the influence of smoke. Some half-dozen people had called, but they came to see Mrs. Dorriman. In a thousand little minute things she found herself of no account. This was not her natural sphere, and she longed for something in which her merits would be recognised. A good deal of her dissatisfaction was entirely unknown to Mrs. Dorriman, but she had so kindly a heart that she longed to give the girl some interest in life. It was sad to see her day by day more dull, more apathetic, and more discontented.

"Will you not come and look into the housekeeping with me, Grace?" she said, one morning when she saw her, without even the pretence of a book in her hand, throw herself down on a lounging-chair, looking as usual bored and dull.

"What good would it do?" asked Grace, surprised by the invitation.

"I think a notion of housekeeping is a very useful thing. You may have a house of your own some day."

"When that day comes I may learn it. There is not much to learn, I suppose--any intelligent person can order a dinner."

Mrs. Dorriman said no more.

It was rather surprising to Grace that Mrs. Dorriman was so fond of going into the town, and evidently liked going alone. What took her there? Idleness being the mother of curiosity as well as of mischief and other things, she never rested till she found out that she always went to one particular street and to one particular house.

Unsuspecting Mrs. Dorriman felt as though a bomb-sh.e.l.l exploded under her feet when Grace said at dinner:

"What is the name of the person you go to see at Baxter's Houses, Mrs.

Dorriman?"

The poor woman coloured and looked nervously at her brother as she answered:

"An old servant of mine, if you wish to know."

Her colour and her nervousness gave Grace a sort of inkling that something more lay behind, so she said with a laugh:

"You must be much attached to her as you seem to go and see her every second day."