Poor heart! like many another bewildered moth, Menie flutters about the subject it behoves her most to avoid, and cannot help making timid allusions to their future life in London—that future life which begins to darken before her own vision under a cloudy horizon of doubt and dread. It has ceased to be a speculation now, this future; for even within these few days there has been talk of Menie’s marriage.
“We will speak of some other thing; there is no very great charm in the future for me, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, with a sigh.
But Menie, with trembling temerity, begs to know the reason why. Why?—what concerns her concerns her mother also. Very timid, yet too bold, Menie insists, and will be satisfied—why?
“Because it is hard to lose my only child,” said Mrs Laurie. “Let us not deceive ourselves; it is easy to say we will not be separated, that there shall be no change. I know better, Menie; well, well! do not cry—say it is only the natural lot.”
“What is only the natural lot? O mother, mother! tell me.” Menie is still pertinacious, even through her tears.
“I will tell you, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, quickly. “Randall Home and I cannot dwell under one roof in peace. I foresee a wretched life for you if we tried it; a constant struggle—a constant failure. Menie, I will try to be content; but your mother feels it hard to yield up you and your love to a stranger—very hard. I ought to be content and submissive. I ought to remember that it is the common necessity—an every-day trial; but we have been more to each other than mere mother and daughter. I cannot hide it from you, Menie; this trial is very grievous to me.”
“Mother! mother!” It is not “for nothing” now that Menie Laurie weeps.
“You have been the light of my eyes for twenty years—my baby, my only bairn! I have nothing in the world when you are gone. Menie, have patience with your mother. I thought we might have been one household still. I never thought I could have hurt my bairn by clinging to her with all my heart. I see through another medium now. Menie, this that I say is better for us both. I would lose my proper place—I would lose even my own esteem—if I insisted, or if I permitted you to insist, upon our first plan. I do not mean to insist with Randall,” said Mrs Laurie, with a sudden flush of colour, “but with ourselves. It is not for your credit, any more than mine, that your mother should be unnecessarily humiliated; and I choose to make this decision myself, Menie, not to have it forced upon me.”
“If you think so—if I have nothing to hope but this—mother, mother!” cried Menie in her sobs, “there is yet time; we can change it all.”
But Menie’s voice was choked; her head bowed down upon her folded arms; her strength and her heart were overcome. The room was only partially lighted. So vacant—only these two figures, with their little table and their lamp at one end—it looked lonely, silent, desolate; and you could hear so plainly the great struggle which Menie had with these strong sobs and tears.