Mrs Laurie wiped a few hot hasty drops from her own eyes. She was not much used to contest; nor was it in her to be inflexible and stern; and the mother could not see her child’s distress. “Menie!” Menie can make no answer; and Mrs Laurie rises to go to her side, to pass a tender caressing hand over the bowed head, to shed back the disordered hair. “Menie, my dear bairn, I did not mean to vex you. I will do anything—anything, Menie; only do not let me see you in such grief as this.”
“He is not what you think, mother—he is not what you think,” cried Menie; “it is not like this what he says of you. O mother! I do not ask you to do him justice—to think well of him. I ask a greater thing of you;—mother, hear me—I ask you to like him for Menie’s sake.”
And it will not do to evade this petition by caresses, by soothing words, by gentle motherly tenderness. “Yes, Menie, my darling, I’ll try,” said Mrs Laurie at last, with tearful eyes. “Do you think it is pleasant to me to be at strife with Randall? God forbid! and him my dear bairn’s choice; but do not look at me with such a pitiful face. Menie, we’ll begin again.”
Was Menie content?—for the moment more than content, springing up into a wild exhilaration, a burst of confidence and hope. But by-and-by the conversation slackened—by-and-by the room became quite silent, with its dim corners, its little speck of light, and the two figures at its farther end. A heavy stillness brooded over them—they forgot that they had been talking—they forgot, each of them, that she was not alone. The leaves stirred faintly on the windows—the night-wind rustled past the yew-tree on the lawn. From the other end of the house came sometimes a stir of voices, the sound of a closed or opened door: but here everything was silent—as still as if these were weird sisters, weaving, with their monotonous moving fingers, some charm and spell; while, down to the depths—down, down, as far into the chill and dark of sad presentiment as a heart unlearned could go—fluttering, with its wings close upon its breast, its song changed into a mournful cry—down out of the serene heavens, where it had its natural dwelling, came Menie Laurie’s quiet heart.
CHAPTER XVII.
Through the depth and darkness of the summer-night, you can hear Mrs Laurie’s quiet breathing as she lies asleep. With a pain at her heart she lay down, and when she wakes she will feel it, or ever she is aware that she has awaked; but still she sleeps: blessing on the kind oblivion which lays all these troubles for a time to rest.
But what is this white figure erecting itself from the pillow, sitting motionless and silent in the night? It is tears that keep these gentle eyelids apart—tears that banish from them the sleep of youth. Still, that she may not wake the sleeper by her side, scarcely daring to move her hand to wipe away this heavy dew which blinds her eyes. Menie Laurie, Menie Laurie, can this sad watcher be you?
And Menie’s soul is vexing itself with plans and schemes, and Menie’s heart is rising up to God in broken snatches of prayer, constantly interrupted and merging into the bewilderment of her thoughts. Startled once for all out of the early calm, the serene untroubled youthful life which lies behind her in the past, Menie feels the change very hard and sore as she realises it;—from doing nought for her own comfort—from the loving sweet dependence upon others, to which her child’s heart has been accustomed—suddenly, without pause or preparation, to learn that all must depend upon herself,—to have the ghost of strife and discord, where such full harmony was wont to be,—to feel the two great loves of her nature—the loves which heretofore, in her own innocent and unsuspicious apprehension, have but strengthened and deepened each the other—set forth in antagonism, love against love, and her own heart the battle-ground. Shrinking and failing one moment, longing vainly to flee away—away anywhere into the utmost desolation, if only it were out of this conflict,—the next resolving, with such strong throbs and beatings of her heart, to take up her burden cordially, to be ever awake and alert, to subdue this giant difficulty with the force of her own strong love and ceaseless tenderness—praying now for escape, then for endurance, and anon breaking into silent tears over all. Alas for Menie Laurie in her unaccustomed solitude! and Menie thinks, like every other Menie, that she could have borne anything but this.
But by-and-by, in spite of tears and trouble, the natural rest steals upon Menie—steals upon her unawares, though she feels, in the sadness of her heart, as if she could never rest again; throws back her drooping head upon her pillow, folds her arms meekly on her breast, closes her eyelids over the unshed tear; and thus it is that the dawn finds her out, like a flower overcharged and drooping with its weight of evening dew, but wrapt in sleep as deep and dreamless and unbroken as if her youth had never known a tear.
The sun is full in the room when Menie wakes, and Mrs Laurie has but a moment since closed the door softly behind her, that the sleeper might not be disturbed. Even this tender precaution, when she finds it out, chills Menie to the heart; for heretofore her mother’s voice has roused her, and even her mother’s impatience of her lingering would be joy to her to-day; but Mrs Laurie is not impatient. Mrs Laurie thinks it better, for all the sun’s unceasing proclamation that night and sleep are past, to let the young heart refresh itself a little longer, to leave the young form at rest.