Not Like Other Girls Part 21

"Oh, yes; you will be obeyed, mother. After to-night I will not open my lips to offend you again. If I have said more than I ought to have said as a daughter, I will ask your pardon now; but I cannot take back one of my words. They are true,--true!"

"I must say your apology is tardy, Grace."

"Nevertheless, it is an apology; for, though you have hurt me, I must not forget you are my mother. I know my life will be harder after this, because of what I have said; and yet I would not take back one of my words!"

"I am more displeased with you than I can say," returned her mother, taking up her neglected work; and her mouth looked stern and hard.

Never had her aspect been so forbidding, and yet never had her daughter feared her less.

"Then, if you are displeased with me, I will go away," replied Grace, moving from her seat with gentle dignity. "I wish you had not compelled me to speak, mother, and then I should not have offended you: but as it is there is no help for it." And then she gathered up her work and walked slowly out of the room.

Mrs. Drummond sat moodily in the empty room that had somehow never seemed so empty before. Her att.i.tude was as rigid and uncompromising as usual; but there was a perplexed frown on her brow. For the first time in her life one of her girls had dared to a.s.sert her own will and to speak the truth to her; and she was utterly nonplussed. It was not too much to say that she had received a blow. Her justice and sense of fairness had been questioned,--her very maternal authority impugned,--and that by one of her own children! Mattie, who was eight years older, would not have ventured to cross her mother's will.

Grace had so dared; and she was bitterly angry with her. And yet she had never so admired her before.

How honestly and bravely she had battled for her rights! her gray eyes had shone with fire, her pale cheeks had glowed with the pa.s.sion of her words: for once in her life the girl had looked superbly handsome.

"You have no faith in me; you treat me like a child." Well, she was right; it was no child, it was a proud woman who was flinging those hard words at her. For the first time Mrs. Drummond recognized the possibility of a will as strong as her own. In spite of all her authority, Grace had been a match for her mother: Mrs. Drummond knew this, and it added fuel to her bitterness.

"I know my life will be harder for what I have said." Ah, Grace was right there; it would be long before her mother would forgive her for all those words, true as they were; and yet in her heart she had never so feared and admired her daughter. Grace went up to her own room, where Dottie was asleep in a little bed very near her sister's: it was dark and somewhat cold, but the atmosphere was less frigid than the parlor downstairs. Grace's frame was trembling with the force of her emotion; her face was burning, and her hands cold. It was restful and soothing to put down her aching head on the hard window-ledge and close her eyes and think out the pain! It seemed hours before Isabel came to summon her to supper, but she made an excuse that she was not hungry, and refused to go downstairs.

"But you ate nothing at tea, and your head is aching!" persisted Isabel, who was a bright, good-natured girl, and, in spite of Archie's strictures, decidedly pretty. "Do let me bring you something. Mother will not know."

But Grace refused: she could not eat, and the sight of food would distress her.

"Why not go to bed at once, then?" suggested Isabel,--which was certainly sensible counsel. But Grace demurred to this; she knew Archie would be up presently to say good-night to her: so, when Isabel had gone, she lighted the candle, shading it carefully from Dottie's eyes, and then she bathed her hot face, and smoothed her hair, and took up her work again.

Archie found her quite calm and busy, but he was not so easily deceived.

"Now, Gracie, you have got one of your headaches: it is the disappointment and the bother, and my going away to-morrow. Poor little Gracie!"

"Oh, Archie, I feel as though I shall never miss you so much!"

exclaimed the poor girl, throwing down her work and clinging to him.

"When shall I see your dear face again?--not until Christmas?"

"And not then, I expect. I shall most likely run down some time in January, and then I shall try hard to take you back with me, just for a visit. Mattie will be dull, and wanting to see some of you, and I will not have one of the others until you have been."

"I don't believe mother will spare me even for that," returned Grace, with a sudden conviction that her mother's memory was retentive, and that she would be punished in that way for her sins of this evening; "but promise me, Archie, that you will come, if it be only for a few days."

"Oh, I will promise you that. I cannot last longer without seeing you, Grace!" And he stroked her soft hair as she still clung to him.

The next day Archibald bade his family good-bye: his manner had not changed toward his mother, and Mrs. Drummond thought his kiss decidedly cold.

"You will be good to Mattie, and try to make the poor girl happy; you will do at least as much as this," she said, detaining him as he was turning from her to see Grace.

"Oh, yes, I will be good to her," he returned, indifferently, "but I cannot promise that she will not find her life dull." And then he took Grace in his arms, and whispered to her to be patient, and that all would be well one day; and Mrs. Drummond, though she did not hear the whisper, saw the embrace and the long lingering look between the brother and sister, and pressed her thin lips together and went back to her parlor and mending-basket, feeling herself an unhappy mother, whose love was not requited by her children, and disposed to be harder than ever towards Grace, who had inflicted this pain on her.

CHAPTER XV.

A VAN IN THE BRAIDWOOD ROAD.

One bright July morning, Mattie Drummond walked rapidly up the Braidwood Road, and, unlatching the green door in the wall, let herself into the large square hall of the vicarage. This morning it looked invitingly cool, with its summer matting and big wicker-work chairs; but Mattie was in too great haste to linger; she only stopped to disenc.u.mber herself of the various parcels with which she was ladened, and then she knocked at the door of her brother's study, and, without waiting for the reluctant "Come in" that always answered her hasty rap, burst in upon him.

It was now three months since Mattie had entered upon her new duties, and it must be confessed that Archie's housekeeper had rather a hard time of it. As far as actual management went, Mattie fully justified her mother's eulogiums in her household arrangements: she was orderly and methodical,--far more so than Grace would have been in her place; the meals were always punctual and well served, the domestic machinery worked well and smoothly. Archie never had to complain of a missing b.u.t.ton or a frayed wrist-band. Nevertheless, Mattie's presence at the vicarage was felt by her brother as a sore burden. There was nothing in common between them, nothing that he cared to discuss with her, or on which he wished to know her opinion; he was naturally a frank, outspoken man, one that demanded sympathy from those belonging to him; but with Mattie he was reticent, and as far as possible restrained in speech.

One reason for this might be that Mattie, with all her virtues,--and she was really a most estimable little person,--was sadly deficient in tact. She never knew when she was treading on other people's pet prejudices. She could not be made to understand that her presence was not always wanted, and that it was as well to keep silence sometimes.

She would intrude her advice when it was not needed, in her good-natured way; she had always interfered with everything and everybody. "Meddlesome Mattie" they had called her at home.

She was so wonderfully elastic, too, in her temperament, that nothing long depressed her. She took all her brother's snubbings in excellent part: if he scolded her at dinner-time, and made the ready tears come to her eyes,--for it was not the least of Mattie's sins that she cried easily and on every possible occasion,--she had forgotten it by tea-time, and would chatter to him as happily as ever.

She was just one of those persevering people who seem bound to be snubbed; one cannot help it. It was as natural to scold Mattie as it was to praise other people; and yet it was impossible not to like the little woman, though she had no fine feelings, as Archie said, and was not thin-skinned. Grace always spoke a good word for her; she was very kind to Mattie in her way,--though it must be owned that she showed her small respect as an elder sister. None of her brothers and sisters respected Mattie in the least; they laughed at her, and took liberties with her, presuming largely on her good nature. "It is only Mattie; n.o.body cares what she thinks," as Clyde would often say. "Matt the Muddler," as Frederick named her.

"I wonder what Mattie would say if any one ever fell in love with her?" Grace once observed in fun to Archie. "Do you know, I think she would be all her life, thanking her husband for the unexpected honor he had done her, and trying to prove to him that he had not made such a great mistake, after all."

"Mattie's husband! He must be an odd sort of person, I should think."

And then Archie laughed, in not the politest manner. Certainly Mattie was not appreciated by her family. She was not looking her best this morning when she went into her brother's study. She wore the offending plaid dress,--a particular large black-and-white check that he thought especially ugly. Her hat-tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs were frayed, and the straw itself was burnt brown by the sun, and her hair was ill arranged and rough, for she never wasted much time on her own person, and, to crown the whole, she looked flushed and heated.

Archie, who was sitting at his writing-table in severely-cut ecclesiastical garments, looking as trim and well-appointed a young clergyman as one might wish to see, might be forgiven for the tone of ill-suppressed irritation with which he said,--

"Oh, Mattie! what a figure you look! I am positively ashamed that any one should see you. That hat is only fit to frighten the birds."

"Oh, it will do very well for the mornings," returned Mattie, perfectly undisturbed at these compliments. "n.o.body looks at me: so what does it matter?" But this remark, which she made in all simplicity, only irritated him more.

"If you have no proper pride, you might at least consider my feelings.

Do you think a man in my position likes his sister to go about like an old beggar-woman? You are enough to try any one's patience, Mattie; you are, indeed!"

"Oh, never mind me and my things," returned Mattie coaxingly; "and don't go on writing just yet," for Archie had taken up his pen again with a great show of being busy. "I want to tell you something that I know will interest you. There are some new people come to the Friary."

"What on earth do you mean?--what Friary? I am sure I never heard of such a place."

"Dear me, Archie, how cross you are this morning!" observed Mattie, in a cheerful voice, as she fidgeted the papers on the table. "Why, the Friary is that shabby little cottage just above us,--not a stone's throw from this house."

"Indeed? Well, I cannot say I am much interested in the movements of my neighbors. I am not a gossip like you, Mattie!"--another fling at poor Mattie. "I wish you would leave those papers alone. You know I never allow my things to be tidied, as you call it, and I am really very busy just now. I am in the middle of accounts, and I have to write to Grace and----"

"Well, I thought you would like to know." And Mattie looked rather crestfallen and disappointed. "You talked so much about those young ladies some weeks ago, and seemed quite sorry not to see them again; and now----" but here Archie's indifference vanished, and he looked up eagerly.

"What young ladies? Not those in Milner's Library, who asked about the dressmaker?"

"The very same," returned his sister, delighted at this change of manner. "Oh, I have so much to tell you that I must sit down,"

planting herself comfortably on the arm of an easy-chair near him.

Another time Archie would have rebuked her for her unlady-like att.i.tude, and told her, probably, that Grace never did such things; but now his interest was so excited that he let it pa.s.s for once. He even suffered her to take off her old hat and deposit it unreproved on the top of his cherished papers. "I was over at Crump's this morning, to speak to Bobbie about weeding the garden, when I was surprised to see a railway-van unloading furniture at the Friary."

"What an absurd name!" _sotto voce_ from Archie: but he offered no further check to Mattie's gossip.

"I asked Mrs. Crump, as a matter of course, the name of the new people; and she said it was Challoner. There was a mother and three daughters, she believed. She had seen two of them,--pretty, nice-spoken young creatures, and quite ladies. They had been down before to see the cottage and to have it done up. It looks quite a different place already,--nicely painted, and the shrubs trimmed. The door was open, and as I stood at Mrs. Crump's window, peeping between her geraniums, I saw such a respectable gray-haired woman, like an upper servant, carrying something into the house; and a moment after one of those young ladies we saw in the Library--not the pretty one, but the other--came to the door and spoke to the men."