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

by Mrs. Oliphant

But Miss Dempster and the doctor knew better. The old lady was more than ever distressed that Providence had not taken better care of the affairs of Effie Ogilvie. It was this she was saying to Ronald, as he sat beside her. He had come over with some birds and a great bunch of hothouse grapes. He was, as the reader may remember, a connection—even, Miss Beenie said, a near connection: and the ladies had been good to him in his early youth.

“Yes, it was a great peety,” Miss Dempster said. “I am not grudging your uncle Dauvid a day of his life, honest man—but the three last months is never much of a boon, as I know by myself. It would have done him no harm, and you a great deal of good. But there’s just a kind of a blundering in these things that is very hard to understand.”

“The chances are it would have made no difference,” said the young man, “so there is nothing to be said.”

“It would have made a great difference; but we’ll say nothing, all the same. And so you’re asked to the wedding? Well, that woman is not blate. She’s interfered with the course of nature and thinks no shame: but perhaps she will get her punishment sooner than she’s looking for. They tell me,” said the old lady, “that the Diroms have had losses, and that probably they will have to leave Allonby, and come down in their grand way of living. I will say that of Janet Ogilvie that she has a great spirit; she’ll set her face like a rock. The wedding will be just as grand and as much fuss made, and nobody will hear a word from her; she is a woman that can keep her own counsel. But she’ll be gnashing her teeth all the same. She will just be in despair that she cannot get out of it. Oh, I know her well! If it had been three months off instead of three weeks, she would have shaken him off. I have always said Effie’s heart was not in it; but however her heart had been in it, her stepmother would have had her way.”

“We must be charitable, we must think ill of nobody,” said Miss Beenie. “I’m too thankful, for my part, to say an ill word, now you’re getting well again.”

“She might have done all that and done nothing wrong,” said Miss Dempster sharply. And then Ronald rose to go away; he had no desire to hear such possibilities discussed. If it had not been for Eric’s expected arrival he would have gone away before now. It was nothing but misery, he said to himself, to see Effie, and to think that had he been three months sooner, as his old friends said!

But no, he would not believe that; it was injurious to Effie to think that the first who appeared was her choice. He grew red and hot with generous shame and contempt of himself when he thought that this was what he was attributing to one so spotless and so true. The fact that she had consented to marry Fred Dirom, was not that enough to prove his merit, to prove that she would never have regarded any other? What did it not say for a man, the fact that he had been chosen by Effie? It was the finest proof that he was everything a man could be.

Ronald had never seen this happy hero. No doubt there had been surgings of heart against him, and fits of sorrowful fury when he first knew; but the idea that he was Effie’s choice silenced the young man. He himself could have nothing to do with that, he had not even the right to complain. He had to stand aside and see it accomplished. All that the old lady said about the chances of the three months too late was folly. It was one of the strange ways of women that they should think so. It was a wrong to Effie, who not by any guidance of chance, not because (oh horror!) this Dirom fellow was the first to ask her, for nothing but pure love and preference (of which no man was worthy) had chosen him from the world.

Ronald, thinking these thoughts, which were not cheerful, walked down the slope between the laurel hedges with steps much slower and less decided than his ordinary manly tread. He was a very different type of humanity from Fred Dirom—not nearly so clever, be it said, knowing not half so much, handsomer, taller, and stronger, without any subtlety about him or power of divination, seeing very clearly what was before him with a pair of keen and clear blue eyes, straightforward as an arrow; but with no genius for complication nor much knowledge of the modifying effect of circumstances. He liked or he did not like, he approved or he did not approve: and all of these things strenuously, with the force of a nature which was entirely honest, and knew no guile.

Such a man regards a decision as irrevocable, he understands no playing with possibilities. It did not occur to him to make any effort to shake Effie’s allegiance to her betrothed, or to trouble her with any disclosure of his own sentiments. He accepted what was, with that belief in the certainty of events which belongs to what is called the practical or positive nature in the new jargon, to the simple and primitive mind, that is to say. Ronald, who was himself as honest as the day, considered it the first principle in existence that his fellow-creatures were honest too, that they meant what they said, and when they had decided upon a course of action did not intend to be turned from it, whatever it might cost to carry it out.