The Ladies Lindores · Chapter 13 (2/2)

“That is all very well, mother; but if you make a joke of it, what is the good of coming to town at all?” cried Rintoul, with his serious face⁠—too serious to be angry. “Edith may flare up if she pleases⁠—she doesn’t know any better; but surely you must understand she has never had her chance. Who is to see her down in the country? There was Torrance of course, but Carry snapped him up.”

“Robin,” said his mother, her countenance changing, “I desire you will not speak in that heartless, vulgar way. Yes, my boy, it is vulgar, though you think it so wise. Poor Carry, to her sorrow, has snapped up, as you say, a most unsuitable husband and a miserable life. I wish I was free of blame in that matter. We must make the best of it now, since there’s no remedy; but to speak as if Carry’s marriage was something to be envied⁠—”

“Well, Torrance is rather a brute,” Rintoul acknowledged, somewhat subdued; “but what a place and what a position! Carry’s boy, with our connection and all that money, may be⁠—anything she chooses to make him⁠—”

“Carry’s boy is not half so much to me as Carry herself,” said Lady Lindores, gravely; “but that is done, and we must make the best of it,” she added, with a sigh.

“A girl may pick up a bad husband anywhere,” said Rintoul, regaining his confidence. “It just as often happens in a hot love-match as in anything else. There’s Lily Trevor, old Lord Warhawk’s daughter, would never rest till they had let her marry Smithers of the Blues⁠—and they say he beats her. Charley Floyd says there never was such a wretched ménage; and she might have married half-a-dozen fellows, every one a better match than Smithers. There’s no accounting for these sort of things. But, mamma, unless we’re all mad together, we must give Edith her chance. By Jove, when you think of it, she’s past her first bloom!” (“and that’s mostly the thing that fetches,” he added parenthetically, under his breath)⁠—“she’s twenty-one, mother! The moment she’s seen anywhere, people will begin to calculate when she came out: and it’s three seasons back! That does a girl more harm than anything. There’s always a little added on to everyone’s age, and I shouldn’t wonder in the least if they made her out to be thirty! She doesn’t look it, fortunately; but what are looks, when half the women one sees are made up like pictures? But mind my words, mother⁠—you will repent it all your life if you don’t make up your mind now to give Edith one real good chance.”

Lady Lindores made no reply. She began to lose her sense of amusement, and to feel vexed and humiliated, sore and wroth, as parents do when their children parade before them sentiments which are unworthy. Perhaps a woman cannot be quite just in such a predicament. It may be all an unconscious fiction, this atrocious precocious cynicism and worldliness of youth. Nothing is ever so cruelly conventional, so shamelessly egoistical, as the young disciple of social philosophy, who is possibly hiding a quivering and terrified youthful heart beneath that show of abominable wisdom. But it is hard for a mother whose whole heart is bent on finding excellence and nobleness in her child, to be tolerant of what appears to be such apparent and unmistakable unworthiness. Lady Lindores felt, while her son was speaking, as if some barbarous giant had got her heart in his hand and crushed it, clinching his cruel grasp. She did not look at him while he pleaded that Edith might have her chance, nor answer him when he had spoken. What could she say to the boy who could thus discourse to her like an old man learned in all wickedness? There was a poignant sting of injured pride, too, in the sensation with which she listened to him. This from the boy she had trained, to whom she must have given his first conception of life, of women and their ways! Had it been her example, against her will, unconscious of any such possibility, that had taught him to despise them? She looked at the young face so dear to her, and which was now full of all the gravity of conviction, endeavouring to enforce its doctrines upon her mind, with a mixture of hot impatience and hopeless toleration. Poor boy! this was what he really thought, honestly believed, though he was her son! His eyes were quite impressive in their sincerity. “She ought to see people,” Rintoul said; “she ought to be seen. She has never been hawked about like other girls, so it does not matter so much that this isn’t her first season. People may forget it if we take no notice. But in another year, mother, if she does not have her chance now⁠—in another year,” cried the anxious brother, with threatening solemnity, “it will be quite another matter. She has kept her bloom pretty well, but it will be gone by that time; and when it’s gone, she’ll not have half the chance. A girl must make hay while the sun shines,” he added, more and more dogmatically: “we all of us ought to remember that, but for a girl it’s imperative⁠—there is nothing that tells like the first bloom.”

Still Lady Lindores did not make any reply.

“I wonder at you, mother,” he cried, exasperated. “I should have thought it would be your first object to see Edith happily settled. And when you think how difficult it is⁠—how many there are always ready, waiting to snap up any fellow with money! I believe,” he said, with a sort of prophetic wrath, a visionary anger at what might have been⁠—“I believe if my father had not interfered, Carry was as likely as not to have married that Professor fellow. By the way, isn’t Erskine at Dalrulzian? and I daresay you have had him up at Lindores?”

“Certainly, we have had him up at Lindores. What is your objection to that?” said Lady Lindores, quietly.

And now it was Rintoul’s turn to sigh and shake his head with hopeless impatience. Was it impossible to get her to understand? “I don’t know what you people are thinking of,” he said, with a kind of quiet despair. “Though you know what mischief happened before, you will have that fellow to the house, you will let him be with Edith as much as he pleases.”

“Edith!” cried Lady Lindores: and then she stopped short, and added with a laugh, “I assure you, Robin, there’s no danger in that quarter. The entire county has made up its mind that John Erskine is to marry Nora Barrington, and nobody else, whatever other people may say.”

Now it was Rintoul’s turn to be red and indignant. He was so much startled, that he sprang to his feet with an excitement altogether without justification. “Nora Barrington!” he cried; “I would like to know what right anyone has to mix up the name of an innocent girl⁠—who never, I am certain, had either part or lot in such wretched schemings⁠—”

“The same kind of schemings⁠—but far more innocent⁠—as those you would involve your sister in,” cried Lady Lindores, rising too, with a deep flush upon her face.

“Nothing of the kind, mother⁠—besides, the circumstances are entirely different,” he cried, hotly. “Edith must marry well. She must marry to advantage, for the sake of the family. But Nora⁠—a girl that would never lead herself to⁠—to⁠—that never had a thought of interest in her head⁠—that doesn’t know what money means⁠—”

“I am glad there is somebody you believe in, Robin,” his mother said.

The young man saw his inconsistency, but that mattered little. It is only in other people that we find consistency to be necessary. The consciousness made him hotter and less coherent perhaps, but no more. “The cases are entirely different. I see no resemblance between them,” he said, with resentment and indignation in every tone. Lady Lindores would have been more than human if she had not followed up her advantage.

“Yes,” she said, “in Nora’s case even I myself, though I am no matchmaker, feel disposed to aid in the scheme. For nothing could be more entirely suitable. The same position, the same class, the same tastes; and the Barringtons are poor, so that it would be a great comfort to them to see their girl in a nice house of her own; and she is very fond of Dalrulzian, and much liked in the neighbourhood. I can see everything in favour of the plan⁠—nothing against it.”

“Except that it will never come to anything,” cried young Rintoul. “Good heavens! Nora⁠—a girl that one never could think of in any such way⁠—that never in her life⁠—I’ll answer for it⁠—made any plans about whom she was to marry. Mother, I think you might have so much respect for one of your own sex as to acknowledge that.”

“It is time to appeal to my respect for my own sex,” cried Lady Lindores, with an angry laugh. If this was how the tables were to be turned upon her! When she left the room, angry, yet indignantly amused at the same time, Rintoul reflected with hot indignation upon the want of sympathy and fellow-feeling among women. “When they do see a girl that’s above all that sort of thing, that it’s desecration to think of in that way, they either don’t understand her, or they’re jealous of her,” he said to himself, with profound conviction. “Women don’t know what justice means.”