“Oh ay, mem,” said Gilchrist, “there’s somebody waiting,—just him himsel’, the weirdless creature, that is good for nothing.” Gilchrist did not approve of all her mistress’s liberalities. “I would not just be their milch cow to give them whatever they’re wanting,” she said. “It’s awful bad for any person to just know where to run when they are in trouble.”
“Hold your peace!” cried her mistress. “Am I one to shut up my heart when the blessing of God has come to me?”
“Oh, mem!” cried Gilchrist, remonstrating, holding up her hands.
But Miss Bethune stamped her foot, and the wiser woman yielded.
She found Hesketh standing at the door of the sitting-room, when she went out to give him, very unwillingly, the money for his wife. “The impident weirdless creature! He would have been in upon my leddy in another moment, pressing to her very presence with his impident ways!” cried Gilchrist, hot and indignant. The faithful woman paused at the door as she came back, and looked at her mistress turning over and rearranging these treasures. “And her sitting playing with her bonnie dies, in a rapture like a little bairn!” she said to herself, putting up her apron to her eyes. And then Gilchrist shook her head—shook it, growing quicker and quicker in the movement, as if she would have twisted it off.
But Miss Bethune was “very composed” when young Gordon came back. With an intense sense of the humour of the position, which mistress and maid communicated to each other with one glance of tacit co-operation, these two women comported themselves as if the behests of the young visitor who had taken the management of Miss Bethune’s accès des nerfs upon himself, had been carried out. She assumed, almost unconsciously, notwithstanding the twinkle in her eye, the languid aspect of a woman who has been resting after unusual excitement. All women, they say (as they say so many foolish things), are actors; all women, at all events, let us allow, learn as the A B C of their training the art of taking up a rôle assigned to them, and fulfilling the necessities of a position. “You will see what I’m reduced to by what I’m doing,” she said. “As if there was nothing of more importance in life, I am just playing myself with my toys, like Dora, or any other little thing.”
“So much the best thing you could do,” said young Harry; and he was eager and delighted to look through the contents of the box with her.
He was far better acquainted with their value than she was, and while she told him the family associations connected with each ornament, he discussed very learnedly what they were, and distinguished the old-fashioned rose diamonds which were amongst those of greater value, with a knowledge that seemed to her extraordinary. They spent, in fact, an hour easily and happily over that box, quite relieved from graver considerations by the interposition of a new thing, in which there were no deep secrets of the heart or commotions of being involved: and thus were brought down into the ordinary from the high and troublous level of feeling and excitement on which they had been. To Miss Bethune the little episode was one of child’s play in the midst of the most serious questions of the world. Had she thought it possible beforehand that such an interval could have been, she would, in all likelihood, have scorned herself for the dereliction, and almost scorned the young man for being able to forget at once his sorrow and the gravity of his circumstances at sight of anything so trifling as a collection of trinkets. But in reality this interlude was balm to them both. It revealed to Miss Bethune a possibility of ordinary life and intercourse, made sweet by understanding and affection, which was a revelation to her repressed and passionate spirit; and it soothed the youth with that renewing of fresh interests, reviving and succeeding the old, which gives elasticity to the mind, and courage to face the world anew. They did not know how long they had been occupied over the jewels, when the hour of dinner came round again, and Gilchrist appeared with her preparations, still further increasing that sense of peaceful life renewed, and the order of common things begun again. It was only after this meal was over, the jewels being all restored to their places, and the box to its old brown cover in Miss Bethune’s bedroom, that the discussion of the graver question was resumed.
“There is one thing,” Miss Bethune said, “that, however proud you may be, you must let me say: and that is, that everything having turned out so different to your thoughts, and you left—you will not be offended?—astray, as it were, in this big unfriendly place——”
“I cannot call it unfriendly,” said young Gordon. “If other people find it so, it is not my experience. I have found you.” He looked up at her with a half laugh, with moisture in his eyes.