Born with me somewhere that men forget,
And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
Known for my soul’s birth-partner well enough.”
CHAPTER IX
THE HOME MADE DESOLATE
“There is a warm impression, an instinctive sagacity, by which we anticipate future events.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Life is filled with issues.”
With renunciation life begins. For nineteen years I had been a receiver: I was now to learn the grace of surrender, and of giving up. I was to drink the cup of pain, and to go through the valley of humiliation. As far as my home and kindred were concerned, we had counted the price together, and accepted the inevitable toll of marriage, understanding well, that marriage, as well as death, makes barren our lives. This fact was soon illustrated by the attitude assumed by my old friends in Glasgow. I thought I should be treated even with additional éclat, and they had apparently cut me out of their lives. I met Mrs. Sage one morning, soon after my return from my wedding journey, and greeted her with glad excitement. She was polite, but restrained, and when I asked her to call on me, regretted she had no time. The girls were going off to school, and her son Alick was going to Australia as representative of the Western Bank of Scotland. She gave me this information with a great deal of pride, and just a tone of resentment, then said, “Good morning,” and virtually passed out of my life.
I was much troubled by her behavior for a week, then I went one morning to Campbell’s for some muslin, and there I saw Mrs. McIntosh. She was such a good-hearted, sweet-tempered soul, I never doubted her kindness; but she, also, was changed. Civil, of course, but she never once spoke of their Saturday evenings, or asked, “When are you coming to see us?” I told Robert of these meetings, and he smiled and said that the behavior of my friends was quite natural. I was no longer available 107 for young parties. I was out of the race, as it were, and my presence among the youths and girls was restraining and unpleasant to them. “You will have to be contented with the married women, now, Milly, and I think the girls are glad of your absence.” That was all his comment, and he did not seem to think it a matter of any importance.
Now I had always held my own with the girls—with the married women it was different. I thought them cold and critical, and, unfortunately, I gave them plenty of opportunities for criticism. I was ignorant of many things that were only to be learned by years of social experience, unless one was to the manner born. My dress, though handsome and becoming, was not like unto theirs, and I was innocently, but constantly, offending some national feeling or tradition. Thus, when I went to Campbleton to pay a week’s visit to my sister-in-law, I wore at a special entertainment a satin gown of the Royal Stuart tartan. I thought I was paying Scotland a compliment, but I could hardly have done anything more offensive to every Campbell in Campbleton. They could not believe any one was so densely ignorant, as not to know that the Campbells hated the Stuarts. To the local dominie I was an ignoramus, because I was not familiar with the smallest fact regarding the Great Disruption, and the founding of the Free Kirk. He wondered where I had been born, “not to have heard of Chalmers and Guthrie and the Highland Host they led to a great spiritual victory.” Yet, honestly, never even in Dr. Farrar’s, where embryo clergy congregated, had I heard of the Scottish Disruption. And this ignorance was astounding to them, if it was real, and impertinence, if it was only pretended.
I dislike to make the acknowledgment, but even Mrs. Semple was changed. She was offended because she was not asked to be present at our wedding. I explained to her the circumstances making her visit impossible—the smallness of my father’s house, and the likelihood of sickness at any hour, and she appeared quite satisfied at the time; but, when Robert brought his sister and brother-in-law to Kendal, she thought she ought to have been included in his party. I think she ought, and I would have been glad of her presence. There was somehow a mistake, 108 and the fault was said to be mine; and I saw that Robert would be annoyed if I made a question about it, so I accepted the wrong and the blame.