“I do not see that we are the people who ought to judge him,” said Marjory, rising from the table; while little Milly, with all her golden locks on end, holding by her sister’s dress, and turning looks of fire and flame upon the calumniator, rose too, in a flush of childish fury.
“Oh! how I would have liked to have done something to him!” cried Milly, as soon as they had got to the safe shelter of the drawing-room. “If I had been a man, I would have fought him, May! Our Mr. Fanshawe, that is good for everything! I hope Uncle Charles will never, never as long as I live, bring that man here again!”
“I hope so, too, Milly,” said Marjory, breathing quick in her suppressed excitement; and she seated herself at the deep window overlooking the Cathedral ruins and the sea beyond, with her arm round her little sister. Milly’s hair spread over their black dresses like sprinkled gold; Milly’s little heart beat against the bosom in which another heart was beating still more warmly; with indignation—only with indignation, and generous resistance to wrong.
It was the longest day of the year. What lingering silvery light, what soft tints of pale celestial colour, what opal radiance of enchanted hours that are neither day nor night, is involved in that description! I do not know what these evenings may be in the region of the midnight sun; but they cannot possess such mystic, poetic light as do the long Summer nights in Scotland, too poetic for any weird glory of unnatural shining. The young woman and the child sat enshrined in this visionary radiance long after Milly ought (I allow) to have been in bed. Mr. Seton had an engagement at the Club, and did not, fortunately, return to the drawing-room. His presence would not have been appreciated there.
CHAPTER VII.
It was according to all the rules of that condition into which Marjory was gliding unawares that next morning she should receive another letter from Fanshawe, which, however, was not the second nor the third. The incident had lost all its novelty, and become common enough in her experience. And there could be little doubt that these letters conveyed to her, with all the subtle difference which exists between a man’s self-accusations and the censures of another man, very much the same tale which had been told by the visitor of last night. Fanshawe allowed in so many words that he was good-for-nothing; he told her in covert language, but still plain enough, that he had been roused by meeting her into thoughts of, and dreams after, better things. But he did not tell her what better thing he was doing, what attempt he was making to attain a career worthy of a man. And probably had she been able to see him as he was at that moment, dropped back into all his old habits, occupied with his old busy round of idleness, and keeping up just enough of his nobler discontent as found utterance in his letters to her, Marjory would have felt with a pang that Seton was right and she herself wrong. She had a vague uneasy feeling to this effect, even while she read the unintentionally deceptive and skilful sentences by which he appealed to her sympathy, and by which he secured that sympathy, notwithstanding the sense of something unreal which floated vaguely over the surface as it were, stopping her in the full course of interest and belief. She said to herself uneasily, why does he not do something? or why, if he cannot do anything, should he lament over it? Had he been silent, Marjory would not have thought upon the subject; but Fanshawe, who knew no other means by which to recommend himself to her, unconsciously followed Mr. Seton’s lead. He abased himself, hoping to be exalted. He mourned over his uselessness, expecting her to receive these lamentations as virtue. And Marjory indeed, though she faintly perceived a certain hollowness in the lamentations, did accept them as such. She took a rapid survey of the position, and asked herself, if it was all true, wherein he was inferior to other men? Seton, who had accused him, how was he better? He had an estate to look after, which gave him a certain anchor, and object in life; “and I have no doubt he manages it very badly,” Marjory said to herself, with a certain spitefulness. And her uncle, for example, who had given up Fanshawe’s cause, and had shaken his head over the idea that he was nobody’s enemy but his own, of what practical use was his life that he should shake his head at another man? Marjory grew hot upon this subject in her private thoughts. The Pitcomlie papers, the portfolios of prints, and the golf at St. Andrews! Did these serious occupations give one man a right to erect himself in superiority as fulfilling all the duties of life over another? Marjory walked down to the Links in her fervour, and watched all the men going out for their game. Some of them were hardworking men taking their relaxation; but a great many of them were gentlemen living at home at ease, and considering, as we have before said, that two rounds of the Links was the whole duty of man. A meritorious individual who had won his game before luncheon, came sailing up to her with satisfaction beaming from every wrinkle. He had no sense of being a useless member of society; but probably he would shake his head at Fanshawe, who played no golf, and who could be, when occasion served, the truest, most self-denying of friends. Nobody’s enemy but his own! And whose enemies, then, were the busy groups on the Links? extremely busy—at what? Such were Marjory’s bitter feminine thoughts—thoughts which probably would never have crossed her mind had they not been provoked by injudicious criticism.
“I have not time to speak to you, May,” said Mr. Charles, waving his hand to her. “I am engaged for a foursome; and if I am late for dinner you must not be surprised, for I am very busy to-day.”
“Oh, very busy, I see,” cried Marjory, “and most usefully employed, uncle.”
“Yes, my dear, there is nothing in the world so good for the health,” he said, hurrying off with his long legs, and a countenance of the utmost importance and seriousness. And it was he who had said of Fanshawe that he was nobody’s enemy but his own!
Little Milly was golfing too, at the Ladies’ Links, whither some youthful companions had beguiled her from her constant clinging to her sister’s side. “But I’ll come with you directly, May, if you want me,” cried youthful Milly, ready to throw down her club at a moment’s notice. What a pretty sight it was!—groups of pretty girls (the girls are all pretty in St. Andrews) in the picturesque dresses of the period, looped up at every available corner, with bright flying ribbons, bright-coloured petticoats, a patch-work of brilliant colours—and such quantities of bright locks ruffled by the breeze, as might have set up a hair-market on the spot—were scattered in knots of two or three over the smooth slippery velvet of the grass. Across the burn on the other side, were the darker groups of the men, relieved by, here and there, a red coat. Yellow heaps of sand, upturned by the sea, which was little seen but much heard, and great rough whin-bushes scattered about the “bent,” or rougher edge of the Links, with a background of blue hills, and enough trees to swear by on one side—and on the other St. Andrews, on its headland, the sun shining full upon it, upon its grey towers and white houses, and the stretch of sea which filled in the landscape. The prettiest scene! Marjory was half softened by it, yet turned away with a certain scorn that did not belong to her nature. These were the people who found Fanshawe a good-for-nothing, nobody’s enemy but his own!