Though faint and weary, standing fast;
It never fails, and thus the prize
Is won by love at last.’
Perhaps of the four young ladies who had thus devoted themselves to the service of the Queen, Mary Carmichael was the least changed in demeanour and outward appearance at the auspicious period which gave them their freedom, and entitled them to assume that temporary dominion over the other sex which is a woman’s birthright. She was still beautiful as ever; her sorrows, if she had any, did not veil an atom of brilliancy in her eye, or take a shade of colour from her cheek; her figure was no less rounded and symmetrical in its full flowing lines, her step no less firm and haughty, her manner, if anything, colder and more self-reliant. If there was any change observable in Mary Carmichael, it was that she seemed to become harder, prouder, less sympathising and less womanly day by day.
On some natures anxiety and distress produce a bracing, and as it were a petrifying effect; they will not have it thought that they can be affected by such morbid influences as the feelings. There are women of ice and women of fire, women of wax and women of marble. It is possible that, if the truth were known, these strong beauties suffer as much as their more impressionable sisters, and yet the proud face never falls, the hard eyes never soften. Try her with words that ought to stab, each of them, to the quick; if she winces you never know it, for the white bosom heaves no higher, the colour neither fades nor deepens on the fair, provoking cheek. It is maddening to the assailant; perhaps also the one attacked is not quite so comfortable as she looks; perhaps if you were to alter your tactics, to change your mood, and take up the cool, indifferent line yourself, she might be goaded out of this unnatural calm into a tempest that, if it did break out, would probably be very terrible. It is better not to try. ‘Touch not the cat but a glove,’ says the motto of a noble Scottish family; ‘Never drive a woman into a corner,’ is the maxim of every philosopher who would escape scaithless from those contests in which the rougher and honester nature is almost sure to come by the worst.
Walter Maxwell was not the man to persevere in a wooing that he once had reason to believe was unwelcome; he, too, could hide a warm, loving heart, under a grave, impenetrable brow—could bear the pain of seeing the idol of his fancy day by day more and more estranged, yet never wince nor writhe under the torture, far less upbraid or complain. For weeks he had been habitually in her society, himself the hero of the hour, the man whom the Queen favoured as her deliverer, whom lords and ladies greeted as her champion, yet never hazarded a word nor look that could lead Mary Carmichael to believe he still cared for her, far less sought an interview, as doubtless she often hoped he would, that should bring about reproaches, tears, a quarrel, an explanation, and a reconciliation.
These two proud dispositions were like the parallel lines which, similar in all their properties, are for that reason incapable of meeting. How the woman’s heart swelled and ached when she watched him always so calm, so courteous, so impassible, so indifferent; how she longed for him to be rude, fierce, angry, even unjust and unreasonable! she would rather he had struck her than thus passed her by with that studiously gentle manner, that hateful iron smile. Oh! it was hard to bear—hard to bear; and yet she must bear it, and none must know her weakness or her sufferings.
And he, too, longing only to forgive everything in which he felt himself aggrieved, believing he could be quite content now if they were but friends and nothing more, thirsting for one kind look from her eyes, one cordial word from her lips, felt bound perforce to treat her with the calm, courteous, defiant bearing of those who are enemies to the death.
Ludicrous as it might have been to the bystanders, it was an uncomfortable state of things to the performers themselves in the little drama,—tragedy, comedy, farce, call it what you will, and your nomenclature will probably depend upon your time of life: lovers’ quarrels look so different as the decades roll by. An uncomfortable state of things, doubtless, and it might have gone on for a lifetime but for one of those accidents to which such sufferers are peculiarly susceptible.
Accidents, like the fresh breeze that springs up on a sultry summer’s day. The heavens are dark and lowering, there is an oppressive weight in the atmosphere, the very birds sit hushed and sullen behind the motionless leaves, and the earth looks saddened and weary, mourning as if she had made up her mind that the sun was never to shine again. Suddenly the breeze wakes up and comes laughing out of the west; the clouds fly scattered before him, the young leaves flicker in the golden sunshine, the birds burst forth in those joyous strains which, to do them justice, they are ever ready to strike up on the slightest provocation, and the whole landscape shines and smiles and quivers in life and light once more.