“They were far to seek if they named me,” said Mrs Ogilvy, drawing herself up with dignity; “but there is a lady he is very full of. I do not ask you to inquire, for I hate gossip; but if it should come your way from any of the neighbours, I would like to hear what they say. Poor Susie! he says she is not able for so much work, that he is feared she will go like her mother. Now, she’s not like her mother either in that or any other thing. There’s trouble brewing for my poor Susie—if you hear anything, let me know.”
“And you never heard who the leddy was?” Janet said.
“I have heard much more—a great deal more,” Mrs Ogilvy cried, very inconclusively it must be allowed, “than I had any wish to hear!”
CHAPTER III.
This was the ordinary of the life at the Hewan. A great deal of solitude, a great deal of thought, an endless circling of mind and reflection round one subject which shadowed heaven and earth, and affected every channel in which the thoughts of a silent much-reasoning creature can flow: and at the same time much acquaintance with a crowd of small human events making up the life of the neighbourhood, with which, practically speaking, Mrs Ogilvy had nothing to do, yet with which, in the way of sympathy, advice, and even criticism, she had a great deal to do. Such half confidences as that of Mr Logan were brought to her continually—veiled disclosures made for the purpose of finding out how such and such things looked in the eyes of a woman who was very discreet, who never repeated anything that was said, and who had the power of intimating an opinion as veiled as the disclosure by delicate methods without putting it into words. She sat on her modest height, a little oracle wrapped in mystery as to her own inner life, impartial and observant as to that about her. How she had come to be an authority in the village it would be difficult to tell. She was not a person of noted family or territorial importance, which is a thing which tells for so much in Scotland. Perhaps it was chiefly because, since the great misfortune of her life, she had retired greatly from the observation of the parish, paying no visits, seeing only the people who went to see her, and as for her own affairs confiding in nobody, asking no sympathy—too proud in her love and sorrow even to allow that she was stricken, or that the dearest object of her life was the occasion of all her suffering. Neighbours had adjured her not “to make an idol” of her boy; and after the trouble came they had shaken their heads and assured her in the first publicity of the blow that God was a jealous God, and would not permit idolatry. To these speeches she had never made any reply: and scarcely any one to this day knew whether his mother had ever heard from Robert, or was aware of his movements and history. This position had been very impressive to the little community. It is a kind of pride with which in Scotland there is a great deal of sympathy.
On the other hand she had never rejected the appeal, tacit or open, of any one who came to her. The ladies of the village were almost a little servile in the court they paid to this old lady. They liked to know what Mrs Ogilvy thought of most things that went on, and to have her opinion of any stranger who settled among them; and if a rumour rose in the village, where rumours are so apt to rise, nobody knows how, there was sure to be a concourse in the afternoon, unpremeditated and accidental, of visitors eager to hear, but very diffident of being the first to ask, what the lady of the Hewan thought. Now the suggestion that the minister of Eskholm was about to make a second marriage, overturning the entire structure of life, displacing his daughter, who had been the mistress of the manse for many years, and inflicting a new and alien sway upon his big boys and his little girls, all flourishing under the cheerful sovereignty of Susie, was such an idea as naturally convulsed the parish from one end to the other. And there was little doubt that this was the question it was intended to discuss, when two or three of these ladies met without concert or premeditation in the afternoon at the Hewan; and Janet, half proud of the concourse, half angry at the trouble involved, had to spend all the warm afternoon serving the tea. If such was the purpose, however, it was entirely foiled by the unlooked-for appearance of a lady not at all like the ladies of Eskholm—a stranger, with what was considered to be a strongly marked “English accent,” the very person who was believed to have led the minister astray. The new-comer was good-looking, well-dressed, and extremely anxious to please; but as the only method of doing so which she could think of was to take the lead of the conversation, and to assume the air of the principal person, the expedient perhaps was not very successful. But for the moment even Mrs Ogilvy was silenced. She allowed her hand to be engulfed in the two hands of the stranger held out to her; and even gave to this frank and smiling personage in her consternation the place of honour, the seat by herself. The English lady, Mrs Ainslie, was not shy; and the little hostile assembly in the drawing-room of the Hewan, which had assembled to discuss the danger to the minister of this alarming siren in their midst, was changed into an audience of civil listeners, hearing the siren discourse.
“Oh, I like it beyond description,” she said. “It has become the most important place in the world to me! What a thing providence is! We came here thinking of nothing, meaning to spend six weeks, or at the most two months. And lo! this little country retreat, as we thought it, has become—I really can’t speak of it. My daughter, my only remaining one, the last—whom I have sometimes thought the flower of the flock——”
“You will have a number of daughters?”
“I am a grandmother these four or five years,” said the stranger, spreading out her hands, and putting herself forth, and her still fresh attractions, with a laugh and a pardonable boast. The ladies of Eskholm, all listening, felt a movement among them, a half-perceptible rustle, half of interest, half of envy. This was what it was to be English, to have a house in London, to move about the world, to introduce your girls and have them properly appreciated. How can you do that in a small country place? Some of these ladies were grandmothers too, and no older than Mrs Ainslie, but not one of them could have succeeded in declaring with that light and airy manner, See how young, how fresh, how unlike a grandmother I am! They looked at her with admiration modified by disapproval. They had meant to discuss her, to organise a defence against her; and here she was in command of everybody’s attention, the centre of the group!
“I am sure,” the lady continued, “it is the truest thing to say that marriages are made in heaven. We came here, Sophie and I, thinking of nothing—just for a few weeks in the summer: and here she is happily married! and, for all I know, I may spend the rest of my life in the place. She is my youngest, and to be near her is such an attraction. Besides, I have made such excellent friends—friends that I hope to keep all my life.”