“Oh, no,” said Jeanie, “you are not the same as the like of us; you are a man, which is a great difference,—and then you’re a grand gentleman.”
“Jeanie, my foolish little Jeanie! I am your cousin and your granny’s child like you,” he cried, putting his hand upon hers, to stop her in the little outburst of innocent enthusiasm, which was, he felt, for an ideal Edgar—not for him.
“It’s very hard to understand,” said Jeanie shaking her head softly with a little sigh, “why you should be yonder the greatest of the land, and now only granny’s son, like me. I’ll no try. When I think, I get back a pain in my head like what I had—when I was ill.”
“You must not think,” said Edgar, “but, Jeanie, tell me, did you do my commission? Did you persuade granny to let me do what I wish?”
“Yes,” said Jeanie eagerly; she came forward and stood by him in the pleasure of making this report of her own faithfulness,—and the cheerful ruddy gleam of the firelight flickered about her, shining in her hair and eyes, and adding a tint to the colour on her cheek, which was pale by nature. “I told her a’ you said, I did not miss a word. I said it would be fine for her, but better for you; that you would do something then, and now you were doing nothing; and that you would be glad aye to think of Loch Arroch, and that there was a house there where you were thought upon day and night, and named in a’ the prayers, and minded, whatever you did, and whatever we did.”
“That was your own, Jeanie,” said Edgar, taking her hand, and looking up at her with gratified tenderness. She was to him as a little sister, and her affectionate half-childish enthusiasm brought a suffusion to his eyes.
“If it was, may I no say what I think—me too?” said Jeanie, with modest grace. “I told her that you couldna bear the thought of her away in another man’s house, after so long keeping her own over a’ our heads, that the siller was nothing to you, but that her—and me—were something to you, your nearest friends in this world. Eh, I’m glad we’re your nearest friends! though it’s strange, strange to think of,” said Jeanie, in a parenthesis. “I told her that though she couldna work and I couldna work, you could work, and win a fortune if you liked. I did not forget a single word,” cried the girl, “not a word! I told her all you said.”
For a moment Edgar made no reply. He listened with a half smile, wonderingly endeavouring to put himself in the place of this limited yet clear intelligence, which was capable of stating his own generous arguments so fully, yet incapable, as it seemed, of so much reflection as would make her hesitate to expound them. Jeanie, so far as her personal sentiment went, accepted his sacrifice with matter-of-fact simplicity, without ever thinking of his side of it, or of the deprivations involved. She took his offer to denude himself of everything he had, with the same absolute pleasure and satisfaction with which a child would accept a present. Was it her unbounded confidence in his power to win a fortune if he liked? Or was it her simple instinct that this was natural, and that the weak and helpless had a right to the services of the strong? Edgar was bewildered by this question which never entered into Jeanie’s mind. He was almost glad of her incapacity to see beyond the surface of things, and yet wondered at it with something between amusement and pain. Here was the primitive nature, commonplace, unsophisticated, he said to himself, which believed what was said to it simply demanding without motive or reason. No second thoughts troubled the limpid surface of Jeanie’s gentle mind. She believed unhesitatingly not only that he meant what he said (which was true), but that the arguments she repeated were infallible, without perceiving the sophistry of which Edgar himself, the author of them, was fully conscious. Truly and sincerely she made as light of his self-renunciation as he himself had made—a thing which is bewildering to the self-sacrificer, though it may be the thing which is most desirable to him and suits his purpose best. I do not know if Jeanie was aware of the half tone of descent in the moral scale which made itself apparent in Edgar’s voice.
“You have been a clever advocate, Jeanie,” he said with a smile, “and I hope a successful one,” and with that he dropped her hand and took out his newspaper. Was there anything amiss, or was it merely his lordly pleasure to end the conversation? With a momentary sense of pain, Jeanie wondered which it was, but accepted the latter explanation, got her seam, and sat down within reach of the pleasant warmth of the fire, happy in the silence, asking nothing more.