"Let me be struck off the list," cried Lady Lindores. "I will never be a burden on my son. Robert, God forgive you; for a distant evil like this, would you bring that man into our family, and force an unwilling marriage on your child? But no, no; I am doing you wrong; your thoughts have never gone so far."
The Earl made no reply. His face was like a thunder-cloud, lowering and heavy—a darkness from which, at any moment, fire and flame might burst forth.
"No, no," said the mother. "I understand what you have thought. I did so once myself when—you remember—young Ashestiel came in our way. I thought if they would but take to each other; if they would only see what a natural harmony they would make! Yes, yes, I remember, I was provoked beyond measure that they would not see it; and when he went away, I did not know how to contain myself. I was angry with my innocent Carry for not caring. I understand you, Robert. If by any chance her fancy had been taken by this young millionaire; but dear, how could it? You would yourself have thought less of Carry had she liked such a man. Acknowledge: he is not much better than a boor—with, perhaps, a boor's virtues."
She looked up when she had got so far, and stopped in sheer amazement at the sight of her husband's face. She had never seen any indication before of what she now found in it. Rage with difficulty smothered; a determined intention to follow his own way; an uneasy shame turning to bitterness and passion. His voice was quite hoarse with the effort to contain himself. "I thought," he said, "that at least you were not one of the silly women who speak of things they don't understand. But I was mistaken. You will rather encourage a foolish girl in a piece of unworthy romance, than show her her duty—her duty! But neither you nor she, by —— shall hold me up to ridicule! She shall take this husband I choose for her, or by ——" Here he became aware how much he was committing himself. He stopped, gazed at her defiantly for a moment, then began to pace up and down the room in great confusion. "The short and the long of it is," he said, "that I can't suffer Carry, for a girlish prejudice, to throw away such a position. He might be the first man in the county," Lord Lindores said. "He has twice as much as we have, and no title to keep up; no encumbrance of any kind. She might be a sort of princess. I cannot allow all this to be thrown away for a mere fancy. If she does not like him, she must learn to like him. What would she have? He is not a petit maître, certainly; but he is a man, every inch of him—his family good, his health good, a magnificent house; what could any woman want more? She will have everything that heart can desire."
Lady Lindores made no immediate reply. All this was so new to her—a revelation of things unthought of. It took away her breath; it took away her courage. Is there any shock, any pang that life can give, equal to that of suddenly perceiving a touch of baseness, a failure of honour, a lower level of moral feeling, in those who are most dear to us? This is what shatters heaven and earth, and shakes the pillars of existence to the beholder. It filled this woman with a sudden despair impossible to describe. She tried to speak, and her very voice failed her. What was the use of saying anything? If he thought thus, could anything that was said affect him? Despair made her incapable of effort. She was like Hamlet, paralysed. At the end she managed to falter forth a word of protestation. "There are some," she said, faintly, "who are content with so much less, Robert—and yet how much more!—you and I among the rest."
"A woman always answers with a personal example," he said.
And Lady Lindores was dumb. She did not know what to say to the new man who stood beside her, in the familiar aspect of her husband, expressing sentiments which never before had come from the lips of Robert Lindores. He had been self-indulgent in the old days—perhaps a little selfish—accepting sacrifices which it was not right for him to accept. But there had been a hundred excuses for him; and she and the girls had always been so ready, so eager, to make those sacrifices. It had been the pleasure of their lives to make his as smooth, as graceful, as pleasant as possible. There was no question of anything of this kind now. He who had been dependent on their ministrations for half the comfort of his life, was now quite independent of them, the master of everybody's fate,—judging for them, deciding for them, crushing their private wishes. Lady Lindores was confused beyond measure by this discovery. She put her hand to her head unconsciously, as if it must be that which was wrong. A vague hope that things might not look so terrible in the morning came into her mind. It was very late, and they were all tired and worn with the agitation of the evening. "I think I am not in a condition to understand to-night," she said, drearily. "It will be better, perhaps, to put off till to-morrow."
"It is a pity you sat up," he said coldly; and thus the strange conference ended. It was already morning, the blue light stealing in through the closed shutters. Things, as well as faces, look ghastly in this unaccustomed light. Lady Lindores drew the curtains closer to shut it out, and lay down with her head aching, turning her face to the wall. There are circumstances in which the light of heaven is terrible; and darkness, darkness, oblivion of itself, the only things the soul cares for. But though you can shut out the light, you cannot shut out thought. There was not much rest that night in Lindores. The Earl himself had a consciousness of the strange discovery of him which his wife had made; and though he was defiant and determined to subdue all opposition, yet he was hurt and angry all the same that his Mary should think less well of him. He seemed to himself of late to have done a great deal for her and her children. No idea of the elevation she had now reached had been in her mind when they married. There were three brothers then between him and the title, besides the children of the elder. And now that things had so come about, as that Mary was actually Countess of Lindores, he could not but feel that he had done a great deal for her. Yet she was not grateful. She looked at him with those scrutinising, alarmed eyes. She turned away from him with painful wonder; with—there was no doubt of it—disapproval. And yet all he wanted was the advancement of the family—the real good of his daughter. Who could doubt what his motive was? or that it was for Carry's good to have a noble establishment, a fortune that a princess might envy? Could there be any comparison between that and the marriage with a poor barrister, upon which, in her first folly, she had set her heart? It was unreasonable beyond measure, ungrateful, that his quite legitimate determination, judging for the real advantage of his daughter, should be thus looked upon by Lady Lindores.
But it would be vain to attempt to describe the struggle that followed: that domestic tragedy would have to be told at length if told at all, and it included various tragedies; not only the subjugation of poor Carry, the profanation of her life, and cruel rending of her heart, but such a gradual enlightening and clearing away of all the lovely prejudices and prepossessions of affection from the eyes of Lady Lindores, as was almost as cruel. The end of it was, that one of these poor women, broken in heart and spirit, forced into a marriage she hated, and feeling herself outraged and degraded, began her life in bitterness and misery with a pretence of splendour and success and good fortune which made the real state of affairs still more deplorable; and the other, feeling all the beauty of her life gone from her, her eyes disenchanted, a pitiless cold daylight revealing every angle once hid by the glamour of love and tender fancy, began a sort of second existence alone. If Torrance had been determined before to have Lady Caroline for his wife, he was far more determined after she had put his pride to the humiliation of a refusal, and roused all the savage in him. From the night of the ball until the moment of the wedding, he never slackened in his pursuit of the shrinking unhappy girl, who, on her side, had betrayed her weakness to her sister on the first mention of the hateful suitor. Edith was disenchanted too, as well as her mother. She comprehended none of them. "I would not do it," she said simply, when the struggle was at its bitterest; "why do you do it?" Rintoul, for his part, when he appeared upon the scene, repeated Edith's positivism in a different way. "I think my father is quite right," he said. "What could Carry look for? She is not pretty; she is twenty-four. You ought to take these things into consideration, mother. She has lost her chance of any of the prizes; and when you have here the very thing, a man rolling in money—and not a tradesman either, which many girls have to put up with—it is such a chance as not one in a thousand ever gets. I think Car ought to be very grateful to papa." Lady Lindores listened with a gasp—Robin too! But she did not call him Robin for a long time after that day. He was Rintoul to her as to the rest of the world, his father's heir, very clearly alive to the advantage of having, when his time came, no provision for his sister hanging like a millstone round his neck. His sympathy and approval were delightful to his father. "Women are such queer cattle, you never know how to take them," the experienced young man said. A man is not in a crack regiment for nothing. He had more knowledge of the world than his father had. "I should have thought my mother would have been delighted to settle Carry so near home."
Thus it was a very strange divided house upon the eve of this marriage. To add to the confusion, there was great squabbling over the settlements, which Pat Torrance, eager though he was to secure the bride, whom his pride and self-will, as well as what he believed to be his love, had determined to have at all costs, was by no means so liberal about as the Earl thought necessary. He fought this out step by step, even venturing to hint, like the brute he was, that it was no beauty or belle whom he was marrying, and cutting down the requirements of her side in the most business-like way. Lady Lindores had been entirely silenced, and looked after the indispensable matters of her daughter's trousseau without a trace of the usual cheerful bustle attending wedding preparations; while Carry seemed to live in a dream, sometimes rousing up to make an appeal to her father's pity, but mostly in a sort of passive state, too heart-broken to be excited about anything. Edith, young and curious, moved about in the midst of it all in the activity of her independence, as yet touched by none of these things. She was a sort of rebellion impersonated, scarcely comprehending the submission of the others. While Carry wept she stood looking on, her face flushed, her eyes brilliant. "I would not do it," she said. These words were constantly on her lips.