Mrs. Dorriman Volume I Part 17

"I do not forget, Margaret, darling, it is true; but if I encouraged you to laugh, and in so doing have spoiled the future for you--and for me,"

she added, in a lower tone.

"Spoiled the future!" exclaimed Margaret, wondering, "we think differently. I am sorry, I was very sorry, because he cared so much--but no future with him is possible. Think, Grace, how annoyed we have been by his noisy laughter, by his endless jokes, by his very ways. How is it you forget?"

"It is different," said Grace. "Mind, I do not say, take him; but I say you might have thought of it for a little while. What did he say, Margaret can you remember?"

"I can remember some; he was very kind; and he said something about making me happy and about living where I liked in London, or anywhere, and giving me luxuries. I hated his saying all that, and I said so. I said it was like a bribe."

"It was not nice," said Grace slowly, "he ought not to have said it. And yet--oh, Margaret!" she exclaimed, fervently, "think how near we have been to the realization of our dreams! To leave this hateful place--which is choking me, and making me wretched--to go away, to live in the centre of all that is worth living for!"

Margaret was perfectly overwhelmed at this discovery. Grace was disappointed; she wished her to marry this man, whom she had laughed at, and turned into the bitterest ridicule, ever since she had seen him, and had seen that he was not in the least like the expected prince who was to rescue her!

The poor child could not get over it. She stood still clasping her; but she felt as though her world had crumbled to pieces at her feet. She was roused from the deepest and cruellest pain by feeling Grace's tears dropping fast upon her. Grace was weeping, and she was the cause of her tears. She struggled with a feeling of indignation also. A sense of being unfairly and unjustly put in the wrong, made her less hurt than angry after a moment. It seemed as though in a supreme moment of her life her sister had failed her.

"Grace," she said, after a long silence seemed to have made her voice startling, "if this had come to you, would you have done it?"

"How can I tell?" said Grace. "Nothing comes to me, it seems."

"But you can imagine--you can put yourself in my place."

"No, I cannot! We are so different--you and I."

"And yet we used to think alike, up till now, Grace. I have always seen the wisdom of your thoughts; you surely cannot counsel me to marry a man who has never appeared to me in any but a ridiculous light."

"No, I do not counsel it," said Grace; "but I cannot help seeing that this was a chance for us both, and that it has gone."

Margaret s.h.i.+vered.

"It is getting cold," she said, abruptly, "and I am tired."

She kissed her sister with a long, lingering kiss. It was as if she were bidding farewell to the sister she had known, so much had her words jarred upon her heart and hurt her.

Grace slept. Through the uncurtained window, with no blind between her and the bright stars she so loved to look upon, Margaret lay awake.

She was only conscious at first of a vivid and keen disappointment. All Grace's cutting speeches about this man's inferiority were fresh in her memory, and now--she thought it possible! Then she thought of all their high expectations when they left school, and of the way in which Grace had been made a sort of leader among them. Grace, who had never really worked, who only did things when she felt inclined, whose work was, as often as not, done for her, and who took all for granted, as due to her personal influence--why had she the position she took up? Softer thoughts succeeded these; during their long stay at school how often Grace had defended her from the oppression of others. How often she had used her influence in her behalf; how often stood out till she had obtained some concession for her.

Loving words and caresses, the numberless little actions that knit sisters together, floated before her. The times without number when she had been filled with pride; and how proud she was of Grace. If she could be seen; if only the world could see her, she would have it at her foot--so she had always thought, so she thought still. Then as a flash came the thought, "Could I do it?" She thought of all it might give Grace; of the many things she might have in her power; and she began to feel once more bewildered; her brain was getting weary; her eyes were closing, and her lips framed the words, "I cannot do it," as she sank into slumber.

The stars looked down upon her innocent face--ruffled with the first real care or sorrow it had ever known--they faded as the day strengthened; and then came the blaze of early morning, and the long shafts of light everywhere, and her seventeenth birthday had come.

She met Mr. Drayton that day with an overwhelming sense of consciousness, but she was rea.s.sured by his manner, perhaps she had exaggerated--all unwittingly--to Grace and to herself his despair and his pa.s.sion, for he met her with a smile in which there was nothing to be seen save good-will, and he congratulated her upon having reached so advanced an age in something of his old manner; then he produced his birthday-gift, a ring, deep-set with stones, and with a half-laughing reference to her uncle, Mr. Sandford, for permission, put it into her hand. She took it unwillingly, feeling afraid that in taking it she was in some way giving him cause to think she might change, and she felt no change was possible for her. But she was obliged to accept it and to put it on, and, on the whole, the day pa.s.sed off well. Mr. Sandford looked anxiously for some indication of any liking between Mr. Drayton and Grace, and was disappointed afresh to see none.

Mr. Drayton was obliged to go, and his going put an end to all hopes about an investment, and the disappointment in two quarters made itself felt in the home party, but was skilfully veiled by Mrs. Dorriman, whose duty it seemed generally to be to stand in the breach and turn all storms and disagreeables aside.

These things, however, once more made Mr. Sandford think of the past.

The interest in the present and the anxiety he had felt to arrange matters had driven the past further from him.

Poor Mrs. Dorriman, as she caught her brother's eyes fixed upon her, little thought how he was weighing her in the balance, wondering whether she would show herself more pliable now in the matter of those papers and how best he could talk to her about them.

She herself had put the subject away from her when she first entered his house. She had a confused notion that even thinking of them was treachery whilst under his roof; having done this the companions.h.i.+p of Margaret and the small round of household duties filled up her time and her thoughts; she strove hard to do her duty, and she did it well, giving nothing a divided attention. By degrees the papers and their possible contents became as a forgotten tale. She had the consciousness that they were there, but they were not before her mind now.

Something might have been uttered by Mr. Sandford, had not his attention been drawn to Grace. She had spoken some words that had roused even gentle Mrs. Dorriman to indignation, for the words had reference to Jean.

"Her illness was nothing much," she was saying, "and she gained her point. She got poor Mrs. Chalmers out of it and stepped into her shoes.

I liked Mrs. Chalmers myself."

"It is very unfair to say this of Jean," said Mrs. Dorriman, with a heightened colour; "she never meddled or interfered, and I never asked her to stay; she stayed because Mrs. Chalmers left suddenly and we had no one else."

"Yes, my dear Mrs. Dorriman, but _why_ did she leave suddenly? There are two sides to every question," said Grace, with her little air of superiority, caring nothing really about the question, but in rather a state of irritation, and arguing merely because she had no other way of venting her ruffled feelings. She was unreasonably cross, first because Mr. Drayton was not what she had expected, and then because something might have come of his visit and nothing had come, and she saw before her the monotony of days, and nothing, no excitement, nothing in sight.

Her spirits were low and when this was the case she was always cross.

"What are you driving at?" exclaimed Mr. Sandford angrily; "what do you know about it?"

"Only that that Highland woman, Mrs. Dorriman's servant, managed to get Mrs. Chalmers out of the house. I suppose I may have an opinion on the subject?" said Grace, her colour rising and her temper also.

"You have no business to say anything of the kind," thundered Mr.

Sandford, too angry to restrain his voice, sending terror into the timid soul of his sister and making Margaret turn pale, while she instinctively rose and stood by Grace; "Mrs. Chalmers ventured to be insolent to _me_ and she left, as all people may expect to do who venture to show insolence to me or mine."

"If _you_ have an opinion I may have mine," persisted Grace, too much roused herself to feel afraid of him.

"You may have an opinion but you are not ent.i.tled to express it in my house," he answered, still more irritated by her manner; "you can wait for that till you have a house of your own, a thing which appears to me very problematical, since no man would care to have an upsetting, conceited young woman as a wife with no fortune, or looks, or any single recommendation."

Grace was pale with anger. Margaret turned upon him like a young lioness.

"How can you say such unkind, such untrue things?" she exclaimed pa.s.sionately. "Oh! Grace, my darling, do not heed him."

"I do not heed him," said Grace, magnificently, wounded and stung beyond belief, and quivering with pa.s.sion, "but I want to know why you keep us in your house, hating us so evidently--we will not stay, we will go. You offered us a home, and now you speak as though we were a burden. We will go, Margaret."

"Speak for yourself, I offered you a home for the sake of one I loved. I did not know you then. When I saw what you were, I still kept that home open to you for the sake of your sister; you put yourself above her in everything, you have made her believe you her superior in all things, but she is worth a dozen of you, and so every man in his senses will think as they know you."

Grace was in tears by this time, and Margaret tried to get her to go out of the room, but she was struggling forwards, she would not go till she had said something, and she meant the last word to be very cutting.

"Brother," said Mrs. Dorriman, imploringly, "you are wrong; you are saying things now in the heat of pa.s.sion that you will be sorry for afterwards. It is hard to be obliged to eat the bread of dependence, and to have it cast up to you."

"It is her own fault," he said, angrily; "she gives herself airs and graces as though she were above the ground she treads upon. It makes me ill the way she goes on, and she must hear it!"

"Spare her now."

"Oh! I'll spare her, but she has to lower her head; even Drayton would have nothing to say to her, though I did my best, and praised her up to the skies when I spoke to him."

"That is more than enough!" sobbed Grace, as with Margaret clinging to her she rushed to her own room, and the sisters sobbed out their misery in each other's arms.

But crying would not help them; they resolved to leave the house, to go far from this, _where_ they did not exactly know; they did not know any one except their school-mistress, and having left her with flying colours it seemed terrible to them to have to go back and face the wonder and the pity they would meet with.

They were both so young and so inexperienced. They sat thinking, not wholly miserable now because they were conscious of a sort of excitement and they were together.

Grace at that moment could not help thinking what a small beginning generally leads to large conclusions--this beginning had been so very, very trifling.