“No fear of him waking; he is just an old doited person,” said Miss Beenie, with indignation.
“Not so old as either you or me. But let alone till I’ve told my story. And then, Ronald, my man, you’ve heard what’s followed. Not only a failure, but worse and worse; and the father fled the country. They say he had the assurance to come down here to get some papers that were laid up in his wife’s jewel press, and that Effie saw him. But he got clean away; and it’s a fraudulent bankruptcy—or if there’s anything worse than a fraudulent bankruptcy, it’s that. Oh, yes, there has been a great deal of agitation, and it is perhaps just as well that you were out of the way. I cannot tell whether I feel for the family or not. There is no look about them as if they thought shame. They’re just about the same as ever, at kirk and at market, with their horses and carriages. They tell me it takes a long time to wind up an establishment like that—and why should they not take the good of their carriages and their horses as long as they have them? But I’m perhaps a very old-fashioned woman. I would not have kept them, not a day. I would never have ridden the one nor driven about in the other, with my father a hunted swindler, and my family’s honour all gone to ruin—never, never! I would rather have died.”
“Sarah, that is just what you will do, if you work yourself up like this. Will ye not remember what the doctor says?”
“Oh, go away with your doctors. I’m an old-fashioned woman, but I’m a woman of strong feelings; I just cannot endure it! and to think that Effie, my poor little Effie, will still throw in her lot with them, and will not be persuaded against it!”
“Why should she be persuaded against it?” said Ronald Sutherland, with a very grave face. “Nobody can believe that the money would make any difference to her: and I suppose the man was not to blame.”
“The man—was nothing one way or another. He got the advantage of the money, and he was too poor a creature ever to ask how it was made. But it’s not that; the thing is that her heart was never in it—never! She was driven—no, not driven—if she had been driven she would have resisted. She was just pushed into it, just persuaded to listen, and then made to see there was no escape. Didn’t I tell you that, Beenie, before there was word of all this, before Ronald came home? The little thing: had no heart for it. She just got white like a ghost when there was any talk about marriage. She would hear of nothing, neither the trou-so, as they call it now, nor any of the nonsense that girls take a natural pleasure in. But now her little soul is just on fire. She will stick to him—she will not forsake him. And here am I in my bed, not able to take her by her shoulders and to tell her the man’s not worthy of it, and that she’ll rue it just once, and that will be her life long!”
“Oh!” cried Miss Beenie, wringing her hands, “what is the use of a woman being in her bed if she is to go on like that? You will just bring on another attack, and where will we all be then? The doctor, he says——”
“You are greatly taken up with what the doctor says: that’s one thing of being in my bed,” said Miss Dempster, with a laugh, “that I cannot see the doctor and his ways—his dram—that he would come to the window and take off, with a nod up at you and me.”
“Oh, Sarah, nothing of the kind. It was no dram, in the first place, but just a small drop of sherry with his quinine——”
“That’s very like, that’s very like,” said Miss Dempster, with a satirical laugh, “the good, honest, innocent man! I wonder it was not tea, just put in a wine glass for the sake of appearances. Are you sure, Beenie, it was not tea?”