For love and life; vol. 1 of 2

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Jeanie, you must not blame the rest,” said the old woman. “They have no siller to give me. They would take me into their houses. What more could they do? No, Jeanie; you may be just to him, and yet no cruel to them. Besides, poor lad,” said Mrs. Murray with a sigh, “he has a rich man’s ways, though he’s rich no more.”

“He has the kindest ways in all the world,” cried Jeanie. “Granny, you’ll do what he says.”

The old woman leant back in her chair, crossing her thin hands in her lap; her musing eyes sought the hills outside and the gleam of the water, her old, old counsellors, not the anxious face of the child at her feet. She was but a farmer’s wife, a farmer herself, a lowly, homely woman; but many a princess was less proud. She sat and looked at the blue loch, and thought of the long succession of years in which she had reigned as a queen in this humble house, a centre of beneficence, giving to all. She had never shut her heart against the cry of the poor, she who was poor herself; she had brought up children, she had entertained strangers, she had done all that reigning princesses could do. For forty years all who had any claim on her kindness had come to her unhesitatingly in every strait. Silver and gold she had little, but everything else she gave, the shelter of her house, her best efforts, her ready counsel, her unfailing help. All this she had bestowed munificently in her day; and now—had she come to the point when she must confess that her day was over, when she must retire from her place, giving way to others, and become dependent—she who had always been the head of her house? I do not say that the feelings in the mind of this old Sovereign about to be dethroned were entirely without admixture of ignoble sentiment. It went to her heart to be dethroned. She said to herself, with a proud attempt at philosophy, that it was the natural fate, and that everything was as it ought to be. She tried to persuade herself that a chair in the chimney-corner was all the world had henceforth for her, and that her daughter and her daughter’s husband would be kind—enough. But it went to her heart. She was making up her mind to it as men make up their minds to martyrdom; and the effort was bitter. I do not know whether it ever occurred to her painfully that she herself, had she been in the fulness of her powers, would never have suffered her old mother to be driven from that homely roof which she loved—or if something whispered in her soul that she had done better by her children than they were doing by her; but if such thoughts arose in her mind, she dismissed them unembodied, with an exercise of her will, which was as proud as it was strong. Her very pride prevented her from assuming even to herself the appearance of a victim. “It is but the natural end,” she said, stoically, trying to look her trouble in the face. She was ready to accept it as the inevitable, rather than own to herself that her children failed in their duty—rather than feel, much less admit, that she had expected more of them than they were willing to give.

The cause of this deep but undisclosed pain was, that things had been going badly for some time with the Castle Farm. Mrs. Murray herself was growing old, and less strong than is necessary for a farmer, and she had been absent for some time, a few years before, an absence which had wrought much trouble in the homestead. These misfortunes had been complicated, as was inevitable, by one or two cold springs and wet autumns. It was October now, and the harvest was but accomplishing itself slowly even on the level fields on the loch side. The higher lying acres of corn land still lay in sickly yellow patches on the braes behind the house, half-ripened, damp and sprouting, sodden with many a rain-storm; a great part of the corn would be fit for nothing but fodder, and what remained for the woman-farmer, unable to cope with these difficulties as she once had done, before strength and courage failed—what remained for her to do? She had made up her mind to abandon the old house she loved—to sell all her belongings, the soft-eyed cows whom she called by their names, and who came at her call like children—and the standing crops, the farm implements, even her old furniture, to denude herself of everything, and pay her debts, and commit the end of her life to Providence. This had been the state of affairs when she fell ill, and Edgar Earnshaw was summoned to come to her, to receive her blessing and farewell. But then, in contradiction to all her wishes, to all that was seemly and becoming, she did not die. When she knew she was to get better, the old woman broke forth into complainings such as had never been heard from her lips in her worst moments. “To lead me forth so far on the way, and then to send me back when the worst was over—me that must make the journey so soon, that must begin all over again, maybe the morn!” she cried, with bitter tears in her eyes. But Heaven’s decree is inexorable, whether it be for life or death, and she had to consent to recover. It was then that Edgar, her grandson, had made the proposal to settle upon her a little income which he possessed, and which would secure her a peaceful end to her days in her old home. That he should do this had filled her with poignant emotions of joy and shame. The only one of her kith and kin whom she had wronged, and he was the one to make her this amends. If she accepted it, she would retain all that she desired—everything that was personally important to her in this life. But she would denude him of his living. He was young, learned (as she thought), accomplished (as she thought), able “to put his hand to anything,” doubtless able to earn a great deal more than that, did he choose to try. It might even be for his advantage, as he said, to have the spur of necessity to force him into exertion. All this was mingled together in her mind, the noble and generous feeling that would rather suffer than harm another, rather die than blame, mixed with sharp stings of pride and some sophistries of argument by which she tried to persuade herself against her conscience to do what she wished. The struggle was going on hotly, as she sat by her homely fireside and gazed out at the loch, and the shadow of the big ash, which seemed to shadow over all Benvohrlan; things which are close at hand are so much bigger and more imposing than things afar.

CHAPTER II.
Edgar.

Edgar set off on a brisk walk up the loch when he parted from the two women at the door of the farmhouse. The previous history of this young man had been an extraordinary one, and has had its record elsewhere; but as it is not to be expected that any—even the gentlest reader—could remember a story told them several years ago, I will briefly recapitulate its chief incidents. Till he was five-and-twenty, this young man had known himself only as the heir of a great estate, and of an old and honourable name, and for some few months he had been in actual possession of all the honours he believed his own. He was a great English squire, one of the most important men in his district, with an only sister, to whom he was deeply attached, and no drawback in his life except the mysterious fact, which no longer affected him except as a painful recollection, that his father, during his lifetime, had banished him from his home, and apparently regarded him with a sentiment more like hatred than affection. But Clare his sister loved him, and Edgar, on coming to his fortune, had begun to form friendships and attachments of his own, and had been drawn gently and pleasantly—not fallen wildly and vehemently—into love with the daughter of one of his near neighbours, Augusta (better known as Gussy) Thornleigh, whom he was on the very eve of asking to be his wife, when his whole existence, name, and identity were suddenly altered by the discovery that he was an innocent impostor, and had no right to any of the good things he enjoyed. I do not attempt to repeat any description of the change thus made, for it was beyond description—terrible, complete, and overwhelming. It plunged him out of wealth and honours into indigence and shame—shame not merited, but yet clinging to the victim of a long-continued deception. It not only took from him all his hopes, but it embittered his very recollections. He lost past, and present, and future, all at a blow. His identity, and all the outward apparel of life by which he had known himself, were taken from him. Not only was the girl whom he loved hopelessly lost to him, but she who had been his sister, his only relative, as he supposed, and his dearest companion, became nothing to him—a stranger, and worse than a stranger—for the man whom she loved and married was his enemy. And in place of these familiar figures, there came a crowd of shadows round him who were his real relations, his unknown family, to whom, and not to the Ardens, he now belonged. This fatal and wonderful change was made all the harder to him from the fact that he was thus transplanted into an altogether lower level, and that his new family was little elevated above the class from which he had been in the habit of drawing his servants, not his friends. Their habits, their modes of speech, their ways of thinking, were all strange to him. It is true that he accommodated himself readily to these differences, as exhibited in the old grandmother whom I have just presented to the reader, and the gentle, soft-voiced, poetic Jeanie; but with the other members of his new family, poor Edgar had felt all his powers of self-control fail him. Their presence, their contact, their familiarity, and the undeniable fact that it was to them and their sphere that he actually belonged was terrible to the young man, who, in his better days, had not known what pride meant. Life is in reality so much the same in all classes that no doubt he would have come to perceive the identity of substance notwithstanding the difference of form, had he not been cast so suddenly into this other phase of existence without preparation, without anything to break the fall; but as it was, he had no preparation, and the blow went to his heart.

This fall had taken place nearly three years before the time at which this story opens, and poor Edgar, stunned by his overthrow, repelled by his new relatives, vaguely wretched, notwithstanding the stoutness of heart with which he had braced himself to meet calamity, had done but little with his life for these two years. A small provision had been secured for him from his successor in the estates of Arden, the rightful heir whom he had unwittingly wronged, and to whom he did instant justice as soon as he heard of the wrong; and this little provision had been augmented by the small property of the Rector of Arden, Mr. Fielding, who had left him everything he possessed. He had thus enough to support him, that most dangerous of all endowments for a young man. Poor fellow! he had made his sacrifice with great bravery, and had wrenched himself away from all he cared for with the smile of a hero, neither sinking under the blow, nor exaggerating its force. “Courage!” he had said to himself, when he lost the place where he had been lord and master, and went forth poor, humble, and nameless, to face the world. He meant nothing less than to make a new life for himself better than the last, to assert the superiority of a guiltless heart and free conscience over fate. But, alas, it is so easy to do this in the general, so difficult in detail! “We will make our lives sublime,” says the poet, with such cheap magniloquence—and how many an enthusiast youth has delighted himself with the thought!

Edgar was a very sensible, reasonable young fellow, but yet it was a consolation to him, in his sudden fall, to reflect that every man may conquer circumstances, and that will and energy are better than riches. He had dreamt of “doing something,” if not to make himself known and famous, at least to be of use in this life to his fellow-creatures and to himself. He meant it firmly up to the day when he left everything he knew or cared for, and he meant it the next day, and the day after, and even the next year; but up to this moment he had done nothing. For after all what was there to do?

Young Paladins cannot kill fiery dragons, cannot meet giants in single combat, cannot deliver a whole district now-a-days by the stroke of a sword. To be sure, a man whose tastes lie that way may tackle the giant, Sewage, or attack the dragon, Ignorance; but that is slow work, seldom of a primitive, straightforward kind, and leading the fighter into many entanglements, dubious company, and very uncertain results. So the consequence was that poor Edgar meaning to do much, did nothing—not because he loved idleness, but because he did not know what to do. He wandered off abroad very soon disgusted with everything; with his downfall and his inability to surmount that downfall; with the meanness of estimating worth by rank and wealth, and the still greater meanness of his own incapacity to get quite free from that standard, which, so long as he was himself rich and great, he had disowned manfully. Cheerily he had laughed at the frivolity of the young men of fashion surrounding him when he was as they, but his laugh now had a certain bitterness, and he felt himself turn with a sickening of the heart from intercourse with a lower class, and then deeply and bitterly despised himself for this ignoble sentiment. His state of mind, indeed, though strange and miserable to himself, was no more than was natural and to be looked for in a man forcibly transplanted from the place of his natural growth, and from all the habits and traditions of his previous life.

Therefore, these three years had been a failure with Edgar. He had done nothing with them, he who had gone out of his old existence firmly determined to do so much. He had wandered about over the face of the earth, to and fro, an unquiet spirit—but no good had come from any of his wanderings. He could not help being kind and charitable; it was no virtue on his part, but “just a carnal inclination;” and except this inevitable goodness, which was an affair of temperament, nothing had come of him, nothing had come from him, in these years.