IV.
Dr. Brunton had been attending an old woman who kept one of the gates of the castle-grounds and lived in the lodge. It was the least frequented of all the entrances to the castle, and the least important. The gate was rustic, and the lodge was rustic and thatched, and looked like a big beehive, standing as it did at the corner of a fir plantation, the trees coming up almost to its walls and overshadowing it entirely. It seemed an eerie, solitary place for one lone woman to inhabit, but she had been there for many years, and, whatever she had or wanted, time had come and time had gone. It was a place where you might have thought Death would have called early any day if he was passing, in case he might forget it altogether; but he had not, and not only did he not forget it, but he had come to this house months ago, and hovered about since as if he had nothing to do elsewhere, or as if he could not have despatched his business in a moment. At this very time he was seizing some of the great ones of the earth with little ceremony, for rank and wealth can't keep him waiting in an anteroom till they are ready to receive him: if they could, he might get leave to wait long enough. How was it worth his while to look in on this poor woman every night and show her his face as king of terrors, and yet hang back from enforcing his rights?
Another elderly woman, lonely like herself, had been got to wait on her. Women of this kind are not scarce: as life closes in on them they drift away into little remote houses in the country, or into single rooms up three or four stairs in towns, like the leaves of autumn that have had their spring and summer, and are only waiting for the kindly mother earth to absorb them again. It looks but a dreary last chapter in their lives, yet it may not be so. In one such instance, at least, which had been utterly obscure and unknown but that it stood within the charmed circle of genius, it was not so—that of Christophine, the eldest sister of Schiller, who, after a self-denying life, died the last survivor of her family in her ninety-first year, having lived in the loneliness of widowhood for thirty years on the slenderest of means, yet, we are told, "in a noble, humbly admirable, and even happy and contented manner;" and there are many such women. But Bell Thomson, the keeper of this outlying lodge of the earl's, had no chance of the bull's eye from the lantern of genius throwing her into a strong permanent light, nor had the friend who had come to be with her. Happily, the pathetic in their circumstances did not strike themselves as it might strike others, and no doubt they had their own interests and enjoyments. At this time they looked forward to the doctor's daily visit, not merely in the expectation of gathering hope and comfort from his words, but because they liked the man himself: he was kind and courteous even to poor old women, and it was a break in the continuous monotony of their lives.
It chanced on one occasion that the doctor did not get the length of the lodge till toward the gloaming, having been occupied the whole day: he was tired, and rather reluctant to hear the minute history of Bell's sensations for the last twenty-four hours, but he did drive up to the lodge, and, leaving his gig at the gate, walked in. "How is this?" he said to Bell: "are you alone? what's become of your nurse?"
"Oh, she had to gang hame for an hour or twa, but I'm no my lane: a lassie offered to bide wi' me till Ann cam back."
"That's right," said the doctor, and he talked for a little. "Now," he said, "you're better to-day than you were yesterday, just admit that."
"Weel, I'm nae waur, but, doctor, ye aye see me at my best, come when ye like. Whether it's you comin' in that sets me up a wee I dinna ken, but I'm aye lighter when ye're here than ony other time."
"I must try and act the other way," he said: "it won't do for me to rival my own medicine."
He turned round and saw standing with her back to him, and looking out at the little window, a girl, apparently the daughter of one of the neighboring hinds, as farm-servants who live in the cottages on a farm are called in Scotland. She wore a striped woolen petticoat, short enough to show her thick worsted stockings and stout little shoes that were tied close round her ankles; a striped pink-and-white cotton short-gown, as it is called, with a small tartan shawl pinned round her neck. This was her dress—the dress common to female farm-servants, which to neatness joins fitness: it is not in the way, and it gives all the muscles free room for exercise; but it is rapidly becoming a thing of the past now, the more's the pity! Her hair was all drawn behind and twisted up at the back of her head, where it was fastened by a little common horn comb: she had also a string of amber glass beads round her neck.
This girl turned round and looked at the doctor with a simple stare of curiosity, such as her class fix on a stranger.
The doctor was startled, he almost uttered a low cry of admiration: the face was perfect, heavenly, indescribable.
Bell, who was sitting up in bed supported by pillows, said, "Isn't she a bonnie lassie, doctor?"
"Hoot!" said the girl—"hoot, Bell! that's nae news. Could ye no tell us something we dinna ken?"
From some lips this might have been an impertinent remark: from hers it had the most piquant charm of simplicity.
The doctor, having recovered from his first thrill of surprise, said, "Where do you live, my good girl?"
"Wi' my faither, sir," she said simply.
"Who is your father?" he asked.
"He is ane o' our neighbors," Bell answered.
"Just up the gate a bit," the girl said.
"Over at Claygates?" said the doctor.
"A wee bit farrer yont, sir," the girl said, and disappeared into an inner room.
"I wonder I never saw her before," the doctor said to his patient.
"Weel, she's worth seeing: she's—"
But the rustic beauty reappeared, and Bell did not speak further.
Dr. Brunton's visit had exceeded its ordinary limits, and he rose to go. The girl opened the door for him, and as he was passing out he said to her, "Are you often here?"
"Gey an' often: Bell's an auld friend o' my mither's, and I run over to speir for her aye when I've time."
"Shall you be here to-morrow?"
"Oh, ay: I'll be here the morn and the next day, and maybe the day after: I'll be often here as lang as I'm at hame."
"And where will you be when you are not at home?"
"Weel, sir"—and she hesitated a little—"weel, sir, where can the like o' me be but at service? We hae nae muckle choice, folk like us."
"Choice!" thought the doctor. "At service! Why, to be served by a being wearing such a face must be like being waited on by an angel: she might have her choice of the crowned heads of Europe."
He sprang into his gig: all his sense of fatigue had vanished, and a new and strange feeling had taken possession of him.
"And they are going to send her to service!" he said to himself. "What a shame!"
And yet he knew he was unreasonable. As she herself had said, what choice was there in her rank of life? and it was only her beautiful face that made it seem at all out of place; but what an only that was! "Why," he thought, "I have been five and twenty years in the world, and I have never seen a face to match it—never!"
At dinner that day Dr. Brunton was rather preoccupied and taciturn till his sister asked him if he had yet happened to see Lady Louisa Moor.
"No," he said, "I have not had that pleasure."
"Well, it is a pleasure," she said: "I think she is as pretty a girl as I ever saw."
"Pretty!" said he: "why, I saw a girl to-day—a hind's daughter—so beautiful that I can't think how I never heard of her before: her beauty is a thing to be spoken about."
"The style of good looks that pleases one person often does not please another," said Miss Robertson.
"But she is not good-looking—I tell you no one would speak of good looks in connection with her—she is simply and perfectly beautiful; and she is going to service. Imagine yon creature brushing your boots and bringing them to you! The bare idea is profanation. She only wants education to make her a thing to be worshiped; but she is quite uncultured: I shouldn't wonder if she can't even read or write decently, but she has no want of natural ability: everything she said proved that."
"I am afraid you have fallen in love," said Miss Robertson.
"I am afraid of it," he said.
"I think hardly," said his sister. "I think you have more sense, James, than to be taken with a pretty face belonging to a young lady who can neither read nor write."
"Millions of people can read and write," said he, "but how many have a face like hers?"
"I must find her out and have a look at her," said Miss Robertson.
"Wait, James," said Mary, "till you see Lady Louisa."
"Lady Louisa may be anything she likes," said he, "but it is impossible she can match this peasant-girl without a single grace of dress or culture. I never saw anything like her—never."
"I have heard of gentlemen picking up pretty girls and sending them to be educated with a view of marrying them," said Miss Robertson.
"I've heard of that too," said the doctor. "Well, beauty is a wonderful gift; that is, the transcendent beauty that every one acknowledges."
"And very rare," said Mary. "I should like to see the beauty every one would acknowledge. If this girl seemed as beautiful to every one as she does to you, I think she would have been advanced to a tobacconist's shop at least by this time."
"Don't speak of it!" said her brother.