The Ladies Lindores · Chapter 5 (2/2)

This chance meeting, and the instant conviction that followed, had taken place some time before the interview between the sisters which we have described. How it was that the suitor communicated his wishes to the Earl, or the Earl to poor Carry, it is impossible to tell⁠—or if, indeed, up to this time, any communication had been made on the subject. Most likely there had been no communication; but the proposal, which turned the light into darkness for Carry, was in the air, overshadowing everything. Her father saw it in the dark face of Pat Torrance, and she surmised it in her father’s eyes. Before a word had been said she knew her fate, struggling dumbly against it like a creature fascinated and magnetised in the grip of a monster, but without any possibility or hope of escape. There was something more terrible in this silent certainty than there would have been in any conflict. She felt herself sucked in as to a whirlpool, overpowered⁠—all her forces taken from her in the giddy rush with which the days and hours were carrying her on, irresistible, to that climax. It was this fatal consciousness which made her cry out, “I will never give him up;” which was the cry, not of resolution, but of despair. All that she could do in her sick and failing soul was to grasp at and cling to the weeds on the bank, while the current carried her wildly on, plucking them out of her hands. Edith, who was of so different a nature, stood by appalled, astonished, not knowing how to account for her sister’s helplessness. She was positive, as her mother said, not visionary, incapable either of divining what was going to happen or of yielding to it. Why Carry could not simply make up her mind to refuse, to stand fast, to resist whatever powers might be brought to bear upon her, was a thing which Edith could not understand.

And stranger still, Lady Lindores had not even found it out. She disliked Mr. Torrance, and made no secret of her dislike. “If that is your type of a Scotch laird, I cannot say I like the species,” she said, eliciting a soft, “Oh, mamma!” from Edith, who remembered very well a statement of an entirely contrary character which her mother had once made. “If young Erskine is a type of a young Scotch laird, I am disposed to fall in love with the class,” was what Lady Lindores had then said. Edith remembered it distinctly, but gave her tongue a little malicious bite, and would not recall it to her mother’s mind; for was not young Erskine coming back? But Lady Lindores’s feeling about Torrance was more than passive. She took care to let him see that he was not a favourite in the house. She wondered audibly, even after the eyes of Edith had been opened, what that odious man wanted here; and indeed did all but refuse to ask him to a dîner intime, at which her husband desired his presence. “Torrance of Tinto,” she cried, with a cloud on her face; “why Torrance of Tinto? He has already dined here. Why should we have him again?”

“Why not?” said the Earl, with a still deeper shadow on his face. Lady Lindores saw very clearly when her attention was aroused; but she was a high-minded woman, slow to be awakened to suspicion, and scorning to think evil. It seemed to her an evidence of a poor nature to suppose anyone else capable of an act you would not have done yourself.

“Why not? I think that jumps at the eyes,” she said. It was Lady Lindores’s weakness to employ idioms which, being translated idioms, sounded very strange to ordinary ears. This was so far comprehensible because she had lived abroad the greater part of her life, and she thought the polyglot chatter which is so common, especially among the English abroad, vulgar; so she translated her French, and thought it less objectionable. “That jumps at the eyes,” she said; “he is not a friend of the house⁠—only a recent acquaintance⁠—and he has dined here already. Why have him again? He is not an attractive person. You cannot care for him, Robert; and he is no favourite with the girls.”

“The girls must learn to receive the people I approve of,” said the Earl, “or we shall quarrel. You must make them aware of that.”

“Quarrel! for the sake of Mr. Torrance! That is carrying clanship a great way.”

“There is no clanship in it. You ought to know better, my dear. Your English fallacies are quite out of place here. If I had a clan (which I have not⁠—we are purely Norman, not Celtic at all), Pat Torrance could have had as little to do with it as John Smith.”

“My dear Robert,” said Lady Lindores, for she had not learned to address her husband by his title, “you take it very seriously. I meant your kindness for your own people. But for a kind prejudice, which I admire and respect, for your old neighbours, you never would put up with a being like this Tinto, as they call him⁠—a rich foxhunter, with the mind of a ploughman.”

“You will oblige me, Mary,” said her husband, coldly, “by restraining your opinion⁠—at all events until you have a better right to express it. What do you know of Pat Torrance? I should very much prefer that you did not commit yourself on the subject. You might regret it after.”

“Commit myself!⁠—regret it!” Lady Lindores gazed at her husband with consternation. She had absolutely no guide to what he could mean; but as he stood to his point and would not yield, and as one must certainly yield when such a question arises, she found herself unwillingly obliged to give in. She was behind her children in comprehension, strange as it seems to say so. Lady Lindores had not been unfavourable to Beaufort’s claims when first he made his suit to Carry; but she had been perhaps a little disappointed in him as the years passed on. He had not shown the energy, the determination, which a man in such circumstances ought to show. He had made no passionate effort to obtain his bride, such as Carry’s mother felt her child was worth. And it was a long time now since Lady Lindores had taken any notice of the lingering engagement which her husband had never positively sanctioned, but which had lingered on for a year or two, coming to nothing. She had thought it best not to interfere. Perhaps Mr. Beaufort might think it his duty to release Carry, now that her position was so much changed. The mother did not feel that she could ask him to do so; but if anything had happened to the tardy lover⁠—had he been ill, or died, or proved fickle, she would have felt that Providence was interfering on their behalf. In the meantime, she thought it the best policy to say nothing about it. And it was this reticence which she intended for wisdom, which prevented any explanation between them, and kept her ignorant of what even Edith knew. It did not occur to her to connect her child, so delicate and refined, with the rough and coarse squire, whom she could not tolerate. How her husband could put up with him Lady Lindores could not conceive. He certainly meant something by it, she thought; but what did he mean? Was it some scheme of tactics in respect to the next election? which already, she knew, gave Lord Lindores great concern. Perhaps the Earl, who had a devouring ambition, now that he found an opening for it, thought it well to have the richest man in the county under his influence. This was all that she had yet divined. “Your father insists upon having that Mr. Torrance,” she said to the girls. “What he can see in him, I cannot imagine. But that does not look at us. We are not called upon to make martyrs of ourselves for papa’s political friends.”

Carry looked up eagerly as her mother spoke. “Political!” she said, with a quiver of hopeful eagerness in her voice. “Is that the reason?” This eager tone and broken question would have made Lady Lindores wonder had she not been full of the subject from her own point of view.

“What else?” she said. “You cannot suppose a man like your father can find anything else in Mr. Torrance to attract him. Politics are very entrancing, but, like necessity, they bring you acquainted with strange bedfellows. Papa thinks, no doubt, that he ought to turn his influence to account.”

“Oh, if that is the reason!” said Carry, clasping her hands together, with something like an ecstasy of prayer and thankfulness in her face. Lady Lindores, though she thought the emotion excessive⁠—but then Carry was always visionary⁠—understood that her daughter’s delicate soul had been wounded by her father’s regard for so unattractive a person. She patted her child upon the cheek tenderly.

“You must not consider yourself responsible for all the things we do in the prosecution of our several parts,” she said. “I feel, for my own part, that I take a great deal too much notice of old Gardener. I am getting much too fond of him. This is more innocent, I allow, than your father’s fancy for Mr. Torrance; for I don’t insist on asking old Gardener to dinner.”

“That I never should object to!” cried Carry, kissing her mother with sudden enthusiasm. She was cheered beyond measure by the comparison, and by Lady Lindores’s absolute ignorance of any other pretension on the part of Torrance. Perhaps she had been deceiving herself, and attributing to her father intentions that had never entered his mind. Carry was too thankful to think that this might be how it was. But Edith, the clear-sighted, avoided her sister’s eye. She made no comment on what her mother said. Edith felt that, however others might be deceived, she knew.