Effie Ogilvie: the story of a young life; vol. 2

by Mrs. Oliphant

“It would be a very good thing if he were here; he would perhaps bring you to your senses. A young man that you have kept dancing about you all the summer, and let him think you liked his society, and was pleased to see him when he came, and never a thought in your head of turning him from the door. And now when he has spoken to your father, and offered himself and all, in the most honourable way. Dear bless me, Effie, what has the young man done to you that you have led him on like this, and made a fool of him, and then to send him away?”

“I have never led him on,” cried Effie through her tears. “I have not made a fool of him. If he liked to come, that was nothing to anybody, and I never—never——”

“It is very easy to speak. Perhaps you think a young man has no pride? when they are just made up of it! Yes—you have led him on: and now he will be made a fool of before all the county. For everybody has seen it; it will run through the whole countryside; and the poor young man will just be scorned everywhere, that has done no harm but to think more of you than you deserve.”

“There’s far too much of this,” said Mr. Ogilvie, who prided himself a little on his power to stop all female disturbances and to assert his authority. “Janet, you’ll let the girl alone. And, Effie, you’ll see that you don’t set up your face and answer back, for it is a thing I will not allow. Dear me, is that tea not coming? I will have to go away without it if it is not ready. I should have thought, with all the women there are in this house, it might be possible to get a cup of tea.”

“And that is true indeed,” said his wife, “but they will not keep the kettle boiling. The kettle should be always aboil in a well-cared-for house. I tell them so ten times in a day. But here it is at last. You see you are late, George; you have kept your master waiting. And Effie——”

But Effie had disappeared. She had slid out of the room under cover of old George and his tray, and had flown upstairs through the dim passages to her own room, where all was dark. There are moments where the darkness is more congenial than the light, when a young head swims with a hundred thoughts, and life is giddy with its over-fulness, and a dark room is a hermitage and place of refuge soothing in its contrast with all that which is going through the head of the thinker, and all the pictures that float before her (as in the present case—or his) eyes. She had escaped like a bird into its nest: but not without carrying a little further disturbance with her.

The idea of Fred had hitherto conveyed nothing to her mind that was not flattering and soothing and sweet. But now there was a harsher side added to this amiable and tender one. She had led him on. She had given him false hopes and made him believe that she cared for him. Had she made him believe that she—cared for him? Poor Fred! He had himself put it in so much prettier a way. He was to try to please her, as if she had been the Queen. To try to please her! and she on her side was to try—to like him. That was very different from those harsh accusations. There was nothing that was not delightful, easy, soothing in all that. They had parted such friends. And he had called her darling, which no one had ever called her before.

Her heart took refuge with Fred, who was so kind and asked for so little, escaping from her stepmother with her flood of questions and demands, and her father with his dogmatism. His word; he had given his word. Did he think that was to pledge her? that she was to be handed over to any one he pleased, because he had given his word? But Fred made no such claim—he was too kind for that. He was to try to please her; that was different altogether.

And then Effie gradually forgot the episode downstairs, and began to think of the dark trees tossed against the sky, and the road through the wood, and the look of her young lover’s eyes which she had not ventured to meet, and all the things he said which she did not remember. She did not remember the words, and she had not met the look, but yet they were both present with her in her room in the dark, and filled her again with that confused, sweet sense of elevation, that self-pleasure which it would be harsh to call vanity, that bewildered consciousness of worship. It made her head swim and her heart beat. To be loved was so strange and beautiful. Perhaps Fred himself was not so imposing. She had noticed in spite of herself how the wind had blown the tails of his coat and almost forced him on against his will. He was not the hero of whom Effie, like other young maidens, had dreamed. But yet her young being was thrilled and responsive to the magic in the air, and touched beyond measure by that consciousness of being loved.

Fred came next morning eager and wistful and full of suppressed ardour, but with a certain courage of permission and sense that he had a right to her society, which was half irksome and half sweet. He hung about all the morning, ready to follow, to serve her, to get whatever she might want, to read poetry to her, to hold her basket while she cut the flowers—the late flowers of October—to watch while she arranged them, saying a hundred half-articulate things that made her laugh and made her blush, and increased every moment the certainty that she was no longer little Effie whom everybody had ordered about, but a little person of wonderful importance—a lady like the ladies in Shakespeare, one for whom no comparison was too lofty, and no name too sweet.