May; vol. II

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Go away, go away!” said Mr. Charles with a smile, which he tried hard to conceal; and a short time after he set out with his two strange companions for the Spindle, to find the cottage where Isabell was. This was the interruption which broke in upon Marjory when deeply touched and half-weeping, she sat with Tom’s child upon her lap, and her heart going back into her own childhood—when Tom, too, was a child. The knocking at the cottage door was not a more harsh interruption of the stillness than was the other interruption, which was about to come into this sad yet exciting chapter of her life.

CHAPTER XVII.

Meanwhile Fanshawe had been passing his time very uncomfortably, on the whole, wandering about the Channel Islands the first part of his journey, and asking himself half dolefully, half with a certain rueful amusement whether his next stage should be Australia or New Zealand. He had written to Marjory from London, where he returned within three days of his precipitate departure; but he had not had courage enough to write to her since, having felt that he must wait for something to tell. It would be difficult to describe the effect produced upon Fanshawe’s mind by his late interview with her. She had disappointed him by her pre-occupation, wounded him by what he could not but feel to be indifference to himself, and by the almost harsh readiness to take advantage of him, and employ him in her service, which she had shown. A man may be very ready to say that he will go through fire and water to serve the lady of his affections, and may mean it; but when that lady sends for him abruptly, and lays her commands upon him, calling him frankly, not for his sake, but because he can be of use—not all the serviceableness in the world will prevent the man from feeling that this is hard upon him. That no woman can accept such services without—one way or other—paying for them, is a consolation which suggests itself only to the calculating and cold-blooded lover. The generous soul that offers itself without hire or reward is very apt to despair of remuneration; but even while taking the yoke upon him, it is disagreeable for a man to feel that it is not him, but the use of him, that a woman wants. This was Fanshawe’s feeling; he was glad to do all that man could do for her; but yet to be simply made use of was hard. And after all, Tom Heriot, and the Heriots generally, were so little to him in comparison with Marjory! But with these feelings there mingled some which were very different. He felt a respect for her, because she was able to resist all that vague fascination which subjugated himself; he admired her insensibility; it seemed well that a woman such as she, should be slow to be won—if ever she could be won by such a man as himself, which Fanshawe felt to be unlikely enough. Sometimes he had moments of great depression on this score, and felt that the idea was not one to be entertained or thought of; and then again the atmosphere of dreams would steal over him, that atmosphere which envelops everything in a sweet mist and uncertainty, where nothing is sure, and all is possible. Her very decision, her energy, the way in which she had sent him forth—though he did not like it—increased his admiration of her. It was so unlike himself; so much better than himself. And the little fluctuations of temper, the shades of offence, of withdrawal, of partial anger, which showed themselves when he did not agree with her, or was not rapid enough in following her conclusions, were sweet to him, sweeter than all her excellences. These imperfections gave him something to forgive in her, something to indulge, to throw the great golden mantle of Love over, and—no, not to forget. The flaws were the last thing he wanted to forget; but if there had been any chance for him of getting free of Marjory’s fetters, that last chance had floated away, when she sent him upon this unpalatable quest. It seemed to him needless, it was unpleasant; and yet how it bound him with chains, which he could not and did not wish to break!

Men do not like to feel themselves inferior to a woman; but there are kinds of inferiority which a man in love may put up with—and to Fanshawe it seemed that Marjory would be to him what the soul is to the body, what inspiration is to the soul. This was how he put it, saving his own pride. It was not that she would do anything for him, but that she would stimulate him into doing; she would inspire him, he felt; she would bring all his buds of meaning into flower, and work within him a realization of those intentions which arose so often in his mind, and came to nothing when they rose. Through all his journeys he kept thinking of her in this strain. She would be his inspiration. He could do something—something vague, he did not know what—but something worth doing, under the impulse which she would give him. What would she say? Would it be possible for her to accept a rôle in life which was so little encouraging as that of trying to put energy into him? Fanshawe did not ask himself this question—neither did he ask many more, which it would have been very well worth his while to ask. How, if she married him, they were to live; what he could do to make their marriage possible; where and how they were to establish themselves? these questions did not enter his mind—partly, perhaps, because he was still in the reverential stage of love, thinking of her vaguely as something better than all created things, yet impetuously too, as of something which could not be done without, which was necessary to existence. But perhaps it was, on the whole, because of his prevailing character of good-for-nothing that he was able to elude all the practical questions, and to let his love absorb him without any notion of how he could make the after-life possible. Besides, he said to himself, if ever the question crossed his mind, he could do nothing at this moment; she herself had made it impossible for him to do anything. Had she not sent him away from all the uses of life, from all the efforts which he might have been making towards something better—on this wild goose chase—for her? This afforded him an answer to every objection of his own thoughts, and with a certain humorous sense of the cleverness of such a response to all criticism, he used it in imagination even to herself. “What could I do? how could I do anything? You sent me away from rationality to hunt for a needle in a bottle of hay.” This was the imaginary reply which he made to her imaginary fault-finding. Ah, if the matter were but so far advanced as that! Then he would find a hundred answers, a hundred excuses. The only thing he would not be able to find—though this part of the subject he managed to elude cleverly—was any reasonable ground upon which to ask Marjory Hay-Heriot to marry him, or any feasible way of providing for her, should she be willing to share his fortune.

With these thoughts in his mind, and those other thoughts carefully excluded from it, he wandered about the smiling isles which are enclosed in so wild a sea. He went, as he thought, to every inn over their whole extent—from the smallest to the largest—encountering endless experiences (which were not all disagreeable), and seeing a great deal of novel life. And he found nothing—no Scotch face nor Scotch accent even met his eyes or ears—or when by accident they did, they belonged to some one who denied the name of Macgregor, and was not to be identified in any way with the man he sought. He was retiring disconsolately from his last attempt to discover this undiscoverable personage, and questioning himself ruefully as to which was the nearest way to New Zealand, when some one came up to him on the pier where he waited for the steamer—a ruddy, red-haired young man or boy, not more than twenty, freckled up to the roots of his hair, and with a shrewd but innocent face. He was one of the porters on the pier, and Fanshawe instinctively stole his portmanteau out of the way, to keep it from the clutches of this predatory personage. He was very much astonished to see the individual in question pushing towards him, evidently with a purpose; and still more startled when the youth addressed him.

“You were asking, Sir, for ane of the name of Macgregor?” he said, interrogatively.

Fanshawe turned sharply round upon him.

“I was doing so,” he said; “what of that? Have you anything to tell me about him?”

“I’m him,” said the young man, “that’s a’.”

“You are he!” said Fanshawe, in dismay, gazing at the youthful countenance with a kind of horror. The lad put his hand to his hat with a comfortable smile, which told how far he was from any consciousness of offence.