Inchbracken: The Story of a Fama Clamosa

by Robert Cleland

CHAPTER XXIII.

[MOTHER AND DAUGHTER].

Sophia looked from behind her window-blind as Mr. Wallowby drove away to make his visit at Inchbracken.

'A fine looking man!' observed her mother, who stood behind her. 'This cold of yours is very disappointing, Sophia, confining you to your room. I was in hopes you and he would have become quite intimate by this time. He seems a very superior person, and would have been an improving companion for you. Your cold appears to be better to-day. Put on your blue silk, and let him find you in the drawing room on his return. You owe to your brother, my dear, that his friend should find things as comfortable and pleasant here as among our neighbours.'

'Certainly, mamma, if you say so. But I don't think it will signify much to Mr. Wallowby. He does not mind me in the least, and I find it uphill work trying to make manners to him. Even Mary Brown, who has so much to say, thinks him a tiresome man.'

'She did not appear to think so when she was in his company, laughing and singing and carrying on! I was disappointed to see her father's daughter manifest so much levity of character. I fear it is a family trait.'

'Mamma!'

'Yes, Sophia! I mean what I say; young girls should be seen, but not heard. That was the rule in my young days. She took the whole entertainment of the stranger off your hands, as if she had been in her own house; forward, I thought her, in fact; and I don't think your brother Peter thought any the more of her for it.'

'Oh, mamma! it was Peter who made her talk! A girl must answer when she is spoken to; and she must laugh too, when people are trying to amuse her, however poor the joke may be. And it was Peter who persuaded her to sing when she would rather not. I know, for she told me so!'

'H'm! I fear she is a sly monkey that Mary Brown--for all her artless ways! I wish you had some of her worldly wisdom, added to the high principles I have been at such pains to instil into your mind. I am sure you will never be a flirt; but a young woman must be settled in life unless she is to be an old maid and a failure; and how is an eligible young man to know what treasures of good sense and right principle there may be in her, if she will not open her mouth to him, or hides away in her own room? I call it a waste of precious opportunity! Remember the fate of the man who hid his talent in a napkin, and be warned in time!'

'But, mamma, you have always told me, and I am sure it is so, that marriages are ordained by a higher power, and that the appointed man will certainly find you out, even if he has to come down the chimney to reach you.'

'Quite true, my dear, in a sense! but we don't want the sweeps at Auchlippie at this time of year. And there can be no more proper place for a gentlewoman to meet a young man than her mother's drawing-room; so put on your blue silk and bring your worsted work down stairs as soon as you are ready. I shall send Betsy to your assistance;' and, with a rather scornful shrug, the old lady left the room.

'I believe,' she muttered to herself as she descended the stairs, 'that girl's a gowk! It's the Sangster blood in her, I suppose--a dull, literal-minded lot!--soft and sober! To think that a daughter of mine should need to be spoken to, as I have just been speaking to her! We were all more gleg than that on my side of the house. I don't know whether to be more ashamed of being mother to sic a daw; or for the things I have been driven to say to her! They don't sound like the walk and conversation of a Christian woman! and yet the best of us are but flesh and blood. We must all eat and drink, wear clothes, live in houses, and, when we can, ride in coaches, marry and give in marriage, just like the people before the flood, though they were so bad; and we must strive our best to provide for our families unless we would deny the faith and be worse than infidels. Ah! there is Scripture for it! So glad I remembered that text! It saves one from feeling base and scheming. But one ought not to be driven to put doubtful sentiments into words. One should be helped out with them. 'Bear ye one another's burdens.' That seems an apt quotation and appropriate, if it had only come into Sophia's mind! But there's no use looking for that from her. She's a glaikit tawpie. Ah me! the trials of a discreet and conscientious mother are not light! I hope I may have strength to bear them.' And so, with a sigh, she went about her affairs. The texts had evangelicalized (if not evangelized) the mercenary schemes, and she was again rehabilitated in her own eyes as a righteous person.

Sophia stood brushing out her hair and musing on her mother's precepts, as a dutiful daughter should. She had never before heard marrying discussed in this bare, hard fashion. Was she a Circassian slave at Constantinople, to be tricked out and submitted to the inspection of the rich man in this fashion? Once before, some few words had been said to her in a more guarded way, but, as she now perceived in the same spirit, when the coming of her brother and his friend had been first spoken of; but at that time they had been less heeded, or she had understood them less, and they had not then shocked her. Love and marriage were subjects which up to that time had only been mentioned in her hearing as something vague, mysterious and holy, which it did not become her to pry into. As for personal love experiences, she had none; and the subject of maidenly fancies had generally been referred to by her hard and practical mother with scorn and derision.

Roderick's letter to her had therefore fallen on her unprepared mind as a revelation. All the two previous days her thoughts had been repeating over and over his earnest words. How deeply he must have felt before he could so have expressed his anxiety! And she? What answer should she make? All the long years of their intercourse passed through her memory, and incidents disregarded at the time and forgotten, came back now to her recollection with a new meaning and a new force. Their long talks, in which he had spoken so much and she so little, began now to take a new aspect in her mind. She must have been encouraging him though she did not know it; and what was more, if she had to enact those scenes over again, with the new enlightenment in her eyes, she felt that she would encourage him none the less, but rather the more. To have excited such emotion in one so clever and good, was an achievement of which she felt proud, in a wondering and enquiring way, for she could not imagine how she had done it; but the thought of his love for her grew more and more sweet and engrossing, and she began to suspect that down deep somewhere in her nature where she had never looked or known of before, she was fond of him in return.

And yet, she had not answered the letter. What would he think of her? Since her mother had called her unmaidenly, she had not ventured to return to the subject in case of another explosion. But now that she had in cold blood set a matrimonial scheme before her, and deliberately incited her to endeavour to win the regard of a man for whom she felt no attraction whatever, simply because he was rich, she felt strong enough to broach the question again. Whatever her mother said she would answer his letter somehow, and more than that, should her mother propose another suitor, she would have nothing to say to him till she had come to an understanding with Roderick.

Having donned the blue silk, Sophia descended to the drawing-room, work-basket in hand. The room was empty, which was disappointing, as she had strung herself up to concert pitch She settled herself to work and waited. The monotonous motion of the needle and thread had a calming influence on her nerves; but as they grew less tense she began to feel less confidence in her own courage, and to wish her meditated conversation well over. Visitors came in, which afforded her a further respite, and in her disturbed state supplied a vent for some of her suppressed energy. She had never before, perhaps, shown so much animation and vivacity in general conversation. It surprised her mother and quite rehabilitated her in the good opinion of that careful parent, who congratulated her on having so well held her part, and hoped it was the beginning of a new chapter in her life, and that she was about to assume with due éclat the part of daughter in so prominent a household of the Free Church.

'It's a duty to the cause, my dear! Remember how the daughters of Israel sewed curtains of scarlet and needlework for the ark in the wilderness. By all means let us show that we are in no respect behind the heathen in the graces of life! and let us show forth the beauty of holiness among the uncircumcised residuaries!'

It was not altogether plain to Sophia how holiness arrayed in blue silk was to advance the cause, but she let it pass. Her lady mother was in tolerably good humour, and that was a point in her favour. She consulted her about the shading of a rose in the worsted work, to break the current of her thoughts, and then, like the bather about to plunge into an unkindly sea, with firm-set teeth, and fingers clenched beneath her embroidery, she made the leap. After a preliminary cough to steady the tremor in her voice--

'Have you got that letter of mine, mamma? I think I must answer it to-day.'

'What letter?' demanded the old lady with a start.

'That letter from Rod--Mr. Brown.'

'I thought we had said all that need be spoken on that subject already.'

'You said I was unmaidenly,' replied Sophia, aghast at her own temerity; but even the sheep when it is cornered will turn its horns to the collie.

'And was that not enough for any right thinking young woman?' retorted the mother, showing a pink spot on either cheek--the red lamps of danger.

'I am not thinking of myself, mamma! Mr. Brown has written me a kind and a very urgent letter, and I think I owe him an answer of some kind, when he shows so deep an interest in me. You said yourself this morning that a girl will be an old maid and a failure if she is not married. I suppose you don't want me to propose to the men myself? and if a gentleman proposes to me, surely I owe him a civil answer.'

'The lassie's in a creel!' cried Mrs. Sangster, jumping up. She had a tingling in her finger tips, which not so many months before, would have relieved itself in an assault on her daughter's ears; but the blue silk, the tall womanly figure, or an unwonted determination in the girl's face, restrained her, and she sat down again.

'I am astounded, Sophia, to hear you use such language! When I was a girl I think I would have died, before I could have brought myself to say as much. Have you been reading novels? or what has come over you?'

Sophia sat speechless, eyeing the danger signals on her mother's cheeks, with considerable alarm; but that did not appear. Well for us it often is, that the sluggish frame is a mask and veil, but slowly responding to the inner working of our minds, or the tide of battle would oftener be turned in its course. She said nothing, which was the very best reply she could have made.

'Here have we got a most desirable match in the very house with you--one only requiring the most ordinary assiduity on the part of any handsome and well brought-up young woman, to secure the prize. Nature has done its part for you, and I, though you think so little of your mother's love, have done mine; and yet you send your thoughts wool-gathering far and wide to take up with a penniless, ill-principled, disreputable licentiate! Not even ordained! Nor ever likely to be, if a's true that's suspected. For shame, woman! An' show mair sense!'

'Mamma! I am nothing to the gentleman you allude to! He would rather sit in Peter's room and smoke tobacco, than trouble with me. And I care just as little for him.'

'Ay! There it is! You're that indolent you canna be fashed to make yourself commonly agreeable to your brother's friend! Do you take yourself for another 'Leddy Jean' in the ballad, that all the lords and great men in the country are to come bowin' and fraislin' for a glint o' your e'e? You are vastly mistaken if you do! The young men of fortune now-a-days know their own weight too well for any such nonsense. A girl will have to make herself agreeable before she need expect attention even, not to speak of a proposal.'

'But I don't want a proposal! and I don't want him! Am I for sale, that I am to be trotted out and shown off to him, as Jock Speirs does with papa's colts, when the horse-couper comes round?'

'Sophia Sangster! To think I should live to see the day when my own child would taunt me with being a match-making mother! Is that the outcome of all my self-denying care and love? But you'll change your mind yet, my lady, or I'm mistaken. When your poor mother is laid in the kirk-yard, and yourself are a middle-aged spinster living in lodgings, up a stair, in some country town, spending your time cutting up flannel to make petticoats for beggar wives, and no diversion the live long week but the Dorcas meetings on Friday evenings, then you'll remember your poor mother's assiduous endeavours to settle you in life, and you'll see your headstrong folly when it's too late!'

Mrs. Sangster seldom attempted to wield the limner's art, and that was the reason why her present effort was so effective on her own sensibilities. She buried her face in her handkerchief and gulped.

'Mamma! what is the good of talking nonsense like this? There is no present fear of my being an old maid; Mr. Brown has asked me to marry him, and that is what I want to talk about,--not about suppositions that can never come to anything.'

'And what would you wish to say, then, in your great wisdom?'

'I would simply say that I am not engaged to anybody, and that I am too much startled by his letter to be able to say more; but he can speak to papa about it.'

'But I will not allow you to have any correspondence with that young man!--a bringer of open reproach upon the truth he professes! All who have dealings with him will be brought to confusion yet, I am certain! Touch not, taste not, handle not!'

'I only want to write him a letter!' responded Sophia, a little pertly; but the effort of self-restraint had lasted a good while, and she was approaching that state in which one must either laugh or cry. 'And what do you know against him?' she added.

'There are rumours in circulation,--and well founded rumours, too, I am sorry to say,--which preclude decent people from having any dealings with him whatever.'

'But what are they about? Considering the subject of his letter, I ought to know--surely!'

'I hope you will never know what they are about. They are too shocking to be spoken about altogether.'

'And do you believe them?'

'I cannot help myself! The evidence is too convincing.'

'Does papa believe them?'

'I don't know that he does--exactly--just yet. He is so prejudiced in favour of that young man. But he will be compelled to believe before long.'

'Does papa know of his letter to me?'

'How should he know? Do you think I would bring myself to speak of what I consider a gross insult to the family? But have done! Here comes Mr. Wallowby. The dinner was to be kept back on account of his absence. Go and bid them have it on the table in three quarters of an hour. But remember, Sophia, I command you in the most solemn manner not to write to that other man. And think no more of it.'

The guest's return cut short further discussion; and probably it was best so. Mrs. Sangster had had the last word, which she would have insisted on having in any case; and Sophia, if slow, was well known in the family to be obstinate--one on whose mind, if an idea could once inscribe itself, it remained for ever, written in ink indelible; and under the new awakening that was at work within her, she was little likely to have been moved by any thing that would have been said. Her mind was made up. Roderick should certainly hear from her, on that she was resolved; but the lifelong habit of obedience in which she had been reared, prevented her direct contravention of her mother's command. She would not write a letter, but she must get at him in some other way.

She would have liked to talk it all over with her father, as being a person of incomparable wisdom, and one better inclined to Mr. Brown, as she had just gathered, than her mother; but her father if very wise, was also very far off--a Merovingian king, in affairs of the household or of his daughter, which he was content to leave under the absolute and undisputed control of his wife--the mayor of the palace. She had been used every day to see him preside at table, and read prayers morning and evening, but she had never had much personal intercourse or conversation with him; and to go to him and say that a young man had asked her to marry him, was beyond her strength. She grew pale at the bare thought of it.

The next day was taken up with other cares--a dinner party at home, and on Wednesday came leave-taking, as her brother and Mr. Wallowby were returning to the South. In the afternoon, however, stillness had fallen upon the house. Her father was away, having accompanied his guests to the county town where they were to catch the mail. All the stir and bustle of the past two weeks was over, and her mother declaring she had a headache, had retired to her room. Sophia sat down to her worsted work, and as with busy fingers she wove the many-hued threads into her web, her own thoughts seemed to disentangle themselves out of the confused wisp in which they had lain, she began to perceive what it really was that she wanted, and to make up her mind what she would do. Roderick's letter somehow kept repeating itself over and over again through her mind, but she made no attempt to stifle it, nor did she grow weary of the phrases so often rehearsed; on the contrary the colour deepened in her cheek, and a light dawned in her eye, clearer, warmer, more human, than those organs with all their gazelle-like beauty--their suggestion of the ox-eyed Heré--had ever revealed before. 'Yes! Roderick should have his answer--in part at least--for, after all she felt herself, as one of God's free creatures, entitled to exercise the resources of her hunter's skill. Before she yielded to his yoke, as Tibbie Tirpie would have said, she meant to have more courting. And Mary--she could see and speak to her without challenge and without reproach--she should be her messenger.