Strange as it may seem, George Rutherford had never heard the details of this story. From the time of William’s disgrace—the facts of which had oozed out in some measure, though not through George Rutherford, the Cairns family had lived as far as possible in strict seclusion. No neighbors were admitted to intimacy at the farm, and few among their few acquaintances knew how Marian left her home, or conjectured the cause of her absence.
When Marian wrote to George Rutherford, “You will not know my married name,” she was rather making a happy shot than asserting what she knew to be a fact. It really was so, however. The Cairnses, as a family, were grateful to George Rutherford for his forbearance, but the very sight of him was by association painful, and they had quietly dropped themselves as far as possible out of his ken. The farm lay beyond Woodleigh parish limits; and while they often heard of him, he did not hear of them. In a passing way it came to his ears that the eldest daughter of old Cairns had married and gone away, but that was all. If her “married name” was ever mentioned to him, it made no impression. He could recall “Polly” as a pretty sweet-mannered girl, overwhelmed with grief, at the time of her brother’s wrong-doing; but he had not exchanged a word with her since; and he could not guess the deep girlish admiration and gratitude with which she had ever regarded him for William’s sake.
During all the seventeen years that Joan, the granddaughter of old John Cairns, had lived at Woodleigh Hall, no passing breeze had ever brought to light the fact of this unsuspected connection. Perhaps it was not surprising. Intercourse between George Rutherford and the Cairns family had become absolutely nothing in amount. John Cairns did not know that he had a granddaughter. When he or his met Joan—as doubtless they did in the country lanes—they could have seen nothing in her face or manner to recall the vanished Marian.
The Brooke family did know of the probable existence of a grandchild, and of her relationship to the Cairnses of Cairns farm. But they had not the slightest wish to know more, always excepting Hubert’s mother, whose desires were overborne by her husband’s determination. They were under no anxiety to rake up the smouldering ashes of a past fire. Until their old friend Mrs. St. John had come to live near Woodleigh none of them had ever wished to visit the neighborhood. Thus it had come to pass, both easily and naturally, that the matter had slumbered all these long years.
John Cairns at seventy-five was a fine old man still, tall and massive, with strong features, and unsmiling expression. He overlooked everything on the farm himself, trusting to nobody’s memory except his own, and tramping about in all weathers, with a hardy disdain of cold and wet not often to be surpassed by younger men.
Hannah Cairns resembled her father, alike in appearance and in character. She too was tall and big-boned, with harsh mouth and cold eyes. Within a few months of forty in age, she might have been taken for ten years older, judging from the marked features and deep intervening hollows.
Jervis Cairns, her brother, six years her junior in reality, and fifteen years her junior in look, was a widely different subject from the other two. Delicate in health from babyhood; always more or less a sufferer from alternations of asthma and bronchitis; an intelligent reader and thinker, and a man of warm affections; he seemed to be singularly planted in the unsympathetic companionship of a silent father and a morose sister. He would have enjoyed the kindly warmth of real family life; but from this he had been debarred ever since the loss of his sister Marian, and the death of his mother. The farm servants all loved Jervis Cairns; but their affection could not make up for the lack of loving-kindness from his own people.
They did not mean to be otherwise than good to him. Cairns and Hannah would alike have been amazed at any complaint on his part. All his bodily wants were attended to; and in illness no expense was spared. Nevertheless, Jervis was keenly conscious of a want.
“It’s going to be a boisterous night,” old Cairns said, coming in late one evening. A lamp was on the little parlor table, and he sat down, pulling off a woollen comforter, and drawing out a short pipe, which he proceeded to light. “Have up the shutters, Hannah. The wind blows in cold.”
“Winter seems coming before its time,” remarked Jervis. “I never knew it turn suddenly cold like this, quite so early. Well, we’ve had a lovely autumn till to-day, so we needn’t complain.”