Nothing more gracious, more kindly, can be conceived than her manner to the poor lady who so required it, and one slight effect of her influence was amusing enough. Instead of leaving the bank and going to fetch the pony-carriage, Mrs. Dorriman boldly sent for it to come and take her up there.
CHAPTER II.
Mrs. Dorriman drove home, well wrapped-up, and in a glow of feeling which would have been difficult to analyse. To one who is, as a rule, in an undecided state of mind, the very fact of having come to a decision is a comfortable feeling: besides this, there had been friendliness and kindness just at the moment the poor woman had been sorely needing both—and, though directly opposed to poetical ideas, it may here be surely confessed that excellent food—daintily set before her, and proffered with that true hospitality which nowhere is more real than in Scotland, and was conspicuous in Mrs. Macfarlane—had its share.
Then the support a cheerful, honest, and direct person (above all petty prejudices, and seeing facts disentangled from all complications) is capable of giving, had a most beneficial influence. Mrs. Dorriman's character had suffered in a long and weary contest against petty tyranny—just as a tender sapling may live and grow exposed to adverse and cruel winds, but it will be bent, and twisted, and gnarled, and finally grow stunted and fixed in one direction—an existing proof of the severity to which it was exposed when too young to stand against it.
A child, motherless, and with an invalid father, she had been unwelcome; the half-brother, who was so many years her senior, had asserted his authority harshly over and over again. She had been taught something, in odd ways, as representations from outsiders had been made, and she had learned some lessons not intended to be taught her. By nature anything but strong, she was timid and nervous, shrinking from every one, expecting roughness, repressed and taking refuge by her father's paralysed form as the one place where she could hear no reproaches. She dared make no friends, and she did not distinguish between those she might have made, and those she had better not make. No servant stayed long enough to befriend the child, and her earliest recollection was the departure of her nurse, who having, upon one occasion, got certain dainties for her, and being met by John Sandford, had been dismissed on the spot, as a thief. Mrs. Dorriman could yet remember how she had shivered in the cold nursery that night, and how helplessly she had tried to undress herself; and how, when all was quiet, a kind-hearted rough dairymaid had brought her a bowl of milk and a hunch of bread—and how wretched it had all been since then, when it was no one's business to look after her, and how she had been indebted to one or another servant (as they had tried) to do anything for her. Then a rough school, where no one seemed to care about her and where she was in perpetual disgrace for not knowing lessons she could not even read; the discovery of her appalling ignorance and the mortification of having as a child of nine to stand by little ones of five and learn as they did; the scanty provision sent for her clothes, whose very patches she vividly remembered—a harder nature would have soured for life. Mrs. Dorriman grew up with all the spirit crushed out of her, but she was not hardened. She had no holidays; she was left year after year there till she was seventeen. Then a gleam of joy broke into her life, for she was suddenly summoned home—by her father's wish—and she had arrived to find that he had made a rally, and that John Sandford was not there.
Her father could barely speak, even inarticulately. She yet could recall his wondering touch upon her shabby gown, and how, almost as in a fairy-tale, she had suddenly found herself in possession of much she had never dreamed of having.
His one happiness seemed to be to see her, and to have her near him. A few months passed like this—very few. She had arrived poorly clad, and suffering from the acute cold and bitter wind, in late autumn; when the snowdrops were still blooming, and the earliest trees were yet in bud, he died suddenly; giving her just before his death a little case in which she saw a lovelier fairer likeness of herself—her mother.
She had loved him with all the love that had never before had an outlet. The days that followed were like a painful dream. What she had, what her position was—of all this she knew absolutely nothing. The one thing she clung to was the old grey house, with the great beech and plane trees, and silver firs, up which the squirrels (imps of mischief though they are) ran so gracefully. The sea—the friend of all, giving society and music to the desolate, and rejoicing the hearts of those who are lighthearted enough to enjoy its sparkling moods—that sea was now her friend. To wander in the wood and look down upon it; to let its salt spray touch her face as it broke upon the rocks.—She loved it in every mood, and found there something of the comfort which the absence of any intimate religion deprived her of, the bald learning of a few verses, the chapters read in the morning in a dull tone by a shivering teacher in the fireless schoolroom; where, from motives of economy, the fire (generally kindled with damp sticks, and which hardly ever did anything but smoke) was never even allowed to have a match put to it till the girls were all assembled there.
This had been her religious instruction; and, as the church was very far from them, they seldom went, and, when they did go, the walk was too long for her, and most painful from the chilblains, which caused her much suffering; so that cold and pain were the chief impressions in connection with a sense of fatigue which left her half-awake in church, and employing all her energy in trying to conceal the fact of her drowsiness.