“In the interests of the other heir? Johnnie, my man, you’re a fine lad,” said Miss Jean, “and very accomplished. I do not know another man like you in all Fife for the piano and the like of that; but for a determined character—na—na—I’ll go myself.”
“I don’t see what the piano has to do with it,” said Hepburn angrily.
“Nor I either,” said Miss Jean with a laugh, and she rang her bell, and gave her orders about her change of linen in such simplicity of diction that her guests took their leave. “Half-a-dozen shifts, Bell, for you never know what may happen at my age. Lord bless me! am I to learn new-fangled words to save the Minister’s modesty, forsooth—and what’s more modest than a shift? As for Johnnie Hepburn, I don’t doubt that he calls all his clothing by nasty French names. Give me good Scotch that’s aye clean and wholesome; and bring me a cup of tea—and let the carriage be round in half-an-hour. I’m going on family business—you can say that to whoever wants to know.”
“Eh! it’s Miss May that’s to be married!” said Bell, clapping her hands.
“You think that’s something to be pleased at, you lightheaded taupie? When Miss May’s married, there will not be one person of the name of Hay-Heriot worth their salt upon this earth—except me,” said the old lady with moisture in her eyes, “and, oh! the old rag o’ flesh and blood that I am! Go quick, and make up my bundle, you gaping thing! Miss May’s no the fool to marry till she sees what’s she’s doing. I can see to that at the same time,” Miss Jean added briskly as the maid left her. And with these double intentions she set out, meaning to dine comfortably at the end of her journey, and to carry confusion to the unrightful claimants of the old lands. But Miss Jean arrived to find the house empty, the dinner-table spread but vacant, the servants full of consternation. Miss Heriot must have fallen over the cliff—she must have been blown off the Spindle Rock—and Mr. Charles, in the effort to save her, must have perished too. What so likely, it was known that they had gone in the same direction, and when no one came back for dinner, notwithstanding the well-known punctuality of the affrighted house?
CHAPTER XVIII.
Young Hepburn went out of Miss Jean’s door with a face full of offence and a heart full of trouble. He was not thinking much of himself, however, so that the offence was evanescent; he was thinking of her; yes, of that Her, who, however hastily, unreasonably, and without adequate cause, had come to be the representative of womankind to the young man, superseding Marjory and all ideals. Matilda was not an ideal woman; he could not worship her in that guise, nor put her into any shrine. It is needless for me to pause and remark upon the curious unsuitability of perhaps the majority of mortal unions, the way in which young men or young women prefer the individual least calculated to make them happy—and hold to that choice with an obstinacy worthy of the original folly. Poor Hepburn had been seized with this too common form of love-sickness; he was not blind; he saw well enough that Mrs. Charles was unlike anything that he had set before himself, in his days of imagination, as worthy of love; and already he had begun to say to himself that an ideal standard was folly; that a real human creature was above ideals; that to be genuine was best whatever the character of that reality might be. This was the first stage—afterwards he went further, and said to himself that women were different from men; that justice was not to be expected from them, or an appreciation of anything above the ordinary level of facts; that they were not capable of understanding abstractions; that they were invincible to reason; and that after all, it was because she was so undauntedly foolish, so delightfully under the sway of her feelings, and had so different a way of judging—a method quite her own, and independent of law and rule—that men worshipped a woman; Yes, she was not as they are, she was a fool, and yet a goddess—to be petted, put up with, laughed at, admired, thought more of and less of than was possible to any other created thing. This was Hepburn’s way, as it has been many another man’s, of making up to himself for having given over his whole being to the sway of a foolish woman. He made out that all women were foolish, and idealized her meanness, not being able to fit her to the ancient ideal he had once possessed. Women, perhaps, when they choose badly, do something of the same kind; but they are seldom so general in their conclusions. For the most part, they have a hankering after the ideal, which makes them always capable of believing in a higher kind of man; but men make their convenient theory into a general truth which, perhaps, is one result of their superior power of understanding the abstract. To have loved a fool is sufficient reason with them to conclude that all women are fools—and so Hepburn did. No, Matilda was not an ideal woman; she was not like the high feminine types of being which poets have created; but she was real, and all women were like her; from the old theory to the new there is but a step, and this step he had made unawares. He set off now with a heavy heart to Pitcomlie, feeling that he knew exactly what she would say, how she would burst out in denunciation of “the old family,” and declare that it was all a plot to injure her and her child. And strange as it seemed to him, he knew that Matilda would put real faith in this; she would have no difficulty in believing that Mr. Charles and Marjory had hatched an iniquitous plot, and that lawyers and judges, and a crowd of honourable men, were accomplices in the scheme against her. It was the way of women. What he should have to do would be to soothe and to console—and he did not dislike the office. Her theories would be idiotic, her rage unreasonable; but she would be so pretty in her anger, so fascinating in her tears; and to soothe them away, to coax her back to quietness, would be so pleasant! Thus the foolish lover justified Providence, which provides silly women for the delectation of the world; he liked it better than if she had been a reasonable creature, and he said to himself that all women were alike, and that folly was the sweetest thing between earth and heaven.
Matilda was reclining on the sofa when he went into that drawing-room at Pitcomlie, which no longer bore the remotest resemblance to Marjory’s drawing-room. The room was strewed with traces of the destructive tendencies of the little heir. He had been brought down by Verna, who felt it necessary, from time to time, to demonstrate how much the young mother was devoted to her children; and it was Verna who had caused Tommy’s gorgeous new rocking-horse to be placed in a corner of the drawing-room. But on this particular afternoon the young Laird had given decided indications of a will of his own; he had torn the mane of his rocking-horse out in handfuls of horse-hair, which was scattered all over the room. He had thrown about the sofa-cushions, and made ropes of the anti-macassars; he had cast down several glass vases, and one of old china, breaking them into millions of pieces. Finally, he had been sent away in disgrace, howling so as to be audible half way down the Comlie road, where Hepburn heard his shrieks; he hurried on in consequence, fearing hysterics, and was consoled to find it was only Tommy. The pretty mother lay on the sofa, fatigued with the passion which Tommy had driven her into. There were two patches of rose-red on her cheeks—traces of her excitement; and she held out her hand half-irritably, half-languidly to her visitor. “Oh, you have come at last;” she said, for he had not been at Pitcomlie the day before. Verna was sitting by with her account-books; she was making up the bills, and putting her affairs in order, and she was happy. The squabble with Tommy had not affected her.
“I was obliged to go to Edinburgh yesterday,” said Hepburn humbly; “as I told you—to see my sister’s trustees.”
“Oh yes, I know!” said Matilda. “Business is always so much more important than anything else. You men will make any sacrifice to business—and leave your friends in loneliness, without ever thinking once—”