Mrs. Dorriman Volume Iii Part 31

"No, but I think you will ask him. He is here, and, by the way, he wants to see you about something."

Mrs. Dorriman took off her housekeeping ap.r.o.n, washed her hands, and went composedly to meet her fate, with an innocence and want of suspicion that gave Margaret much quiet amus.e.m.e.nt.

Mrs. Dorriman was a little nervous, because she thought perhaps Mr.

Stevens brought her news from her brother. She had not heard from him for some days, and she expected him daily; since the frequent attacks of illness, which she did not thoroughly understand the import of, a vague uneasiness filled her.

"Is my brother well? Have you news of him?" she asked hastily, when she went into the room.

"He was well enough when I heard," he answered; and then a sudden shyness possessed him.

She waited for him to speak, and he noted, with much admiration, that when she sat expectant she did not fidget. This power of stillness he counted a great merit. Nothing annoyed him so much as being spoken to in turns, with an intense and unflattering attention towards an uninteresting piece of work, or what he considered uninteresting.

"I wish," he said suddenly, "that you could think of some one else as much as you do of your brother!"

Startled, she raised her eyes, and his look confused her.

"I----I have no one else," she said, in a low voice.

"Yes, you have, Mrs. Dorriman, if only you will try to think so. I believe--I am afraid the idea is new to you--but could you not try and like me a little? I cannot tell you how I have learned to love you! but you are so good and so unselfish. I think--I am quite sure--there is n.o.body like you!..."

Margaret, sitting on the stone seat, heard voices coming towards her.

She rose, and went to meet those two who, after the flush of youth and bloom was pa.s.sed, had for the very first time found a real home in the heart of another.

Mrs. Dorriman seemed to have renewed her youth; the flush in her face, and the serenity of her brow, made her look so much younger.

She walked as in a dream. She had for so long now thought of Mr. Stevens as a most kind and most helpful friend; and she had always admired that independence and straight-forwardness that upheld the right without roughness. And this man loved her! How wonderful, she thought in her humility, how extraordinary, that he, with the whole world to choose from, should love _her_--wish her to be his wife.

Margaret's congratulations were most heartfelt. She understood the charm to Mr. Stevens that lay in Mrs. Dorriman's sweetness and gentleness, and there was something frank and pleasant about him.

The sight of these two, so utterly and quietly happy, did make her think a little of the emptiness of her own life; but she would not dwell upon this--she would try and throw her energies into some useful direction.

In the meantime, she would do her utmost not to mar Mrs. Dorriman's happiness by any repinings about leaving Inchbrae. The place was very dear to her; she had grown to love it; but she knew that there was no scope here for her energies. She must turn her steps southwards; she would not make a third in the little household. Perhaps Mr. Sandford might wish her to remain with him, and she would do this. She told herself she would do whatever was really right.

Mr. Stevens, before he left Inchbrae, made Anne Dorriman give him a solemn promise--a promise that she gave him smiling till, she saw him grave.

"Promise me, Anne, that, come ill or good fortune, nothing will turn you from marrying me!"

"I promise."

She said it thoughtfully, and then insisted on his repeating the words.

"Now," he said, "if every s.h.i.+lling of your brother's has gone, if you are left without one, still you will be my wife?"

"You are speaking as though you knew," she said, looking at him inquiringly; but he turned her words aside, and she forgot them.

"What have I done to deserve this happiness?" she asked of Margaret later, when the two went to their rooms.

"Much," said Margaret, gently. "Have you ever lived for yourself?--never since I knew you! I was thinking only to-day that it was not good for me to be with you, because you make so much of me and so little of yourself, that I am growing narrow and selfish."

"Nonsense! my dear," answered Mrs. Dorriman. "Oh! Margaret, if you knew how I hate being alone and having to decide things myself--now think of the comfort of having some one to go to!"

"And so able to help you," said Margaret, feelingly.

She also felt this burden of loneliness; felt it all the more because of the contrast between her own life and that of others.

Christie was much moved when the news was told her.

"It is coming near, my dear," she said to Margaret, "in the Lord's good time."

Margaret did not comprehend her.

Jean was most amusing upon the subject.

"And what for no!" she asked, when Mrs. Dorriman told her. "You have never had real true love, though Mr. Dorriman, poor man, was aye fond of you in his way; but he was a crookit stick, with no pith in him. This man's a man to be proud of. There's stuff in him, and you will be able to lean on him. It's not a light puff of wind will blow him down!"

Mrs. Dorriman wrote to her brother, and, in a few words which she found difficult to write, told him of her engagement.

She also said that she trusted Margaret would fill her place and live with him. "I think Margaret will be more to you than I could ever be."

She wound up by saying, "You have been kind, but I have always felt that you were disappointed in me. I am not strong-minded enough to be a good companion for one so accustomed to more intelligence."

Had she deliberately steeped her pen in gall she could not have given him a bitterer moment.

He was physically unfit for any excitement or worry. His illness had gained rapidly upon him, and he suffered terribly at times.

He received a letter from Margaret which also troubled him greatly.

Knowing him to be well off, and that he did not care about money for its own sake, she wrote with confidence to him about Grace.

"She has given up the money left to her after me which I refused to take. I am afraid that giving it up will embarra.s.s her and Paul. You have often offered to settle money upon me--to give me much that I did not want--will you do something for my sister? will you arrange something to make up to her for what she has given up? I think you feel with me, that accepting that money would humiliate me whether it was accepted by Grace or by myself."

A few days and then came the answer.

"DEAR MARGARET,

"I have nothing to give. I have no right to give anything, and I have not got it in my power. I am ill, and I am miserable. When I can I am going to Inchbrae. I have something to say to my sister. I think your ideas about that overstrained."

To say Margaret was disappointed is to say little. She doubted now whether the stand she had taken was the right one. All at once she seemed to see everything differently; for a moment or two she felt as though her sensitiveness on this subject had led Grace to disaster.

But, on re-reading her sister's letter, she saw that her objections had had no weight; it was Paul who thought as she did; it was because of her husband that Grace had yielded.

Before she had time to arrange in her own mind whether it would be wise or not to let Mrs. Dorriman know about Mr. Sandford's illness and his loss of fortune, Mrs. Dorriman had come up to her and recognised her brother's writing.

At first when Margaret tried to put her off with the convenient word "business," Mrs. Dorriman was ready to believe it, but Margaret's countenance was expressive; and the little woman, anxious at any rate about her brother, got so hysterical that she was only pacified by its being given her.

"I must go to him!" she exclaimed as she saw the tremulous handwriting; "he must be very ill."

"You had better ask Mr. Stevens what he thinks," said Margaret, gently.

"My dear, yes. What a comfort it is to have some one with a good head on his shoulders who will advise me what is best to be done. It is such a comfort! But I am very unhappy about my brother; I must write at once."