'Poor man!' moralized Julia, 'the quiet of the country will soothe him. His was indeed a fearful calamity.'
'Ah yes!' sighed Lady Caroline, 'and I declare I like him the better for being inconsolable! They are not all so tender-hearted and faithful, Julia, by any means. Now, my General! Do you think I can count on leaving so much desolation behind me? The idea would almost console one for having to go.'
'You forget, my dearest lady,' said the General finishing his egg (it was at breakfast), Major Steele had been less than two years married. Providence has been far kinder to us than that, and I doubt not, when the time of our separation shall arrive at last, that you will wear your weeds admirably, and continue to justify the opinion I have always held of you as the best dressed woman of my acquaintance.'
It was December when Major Steele arrived at Inchbracken. The ground was powdered with early snow, and the higher hilltops looked solidly white and alpine. The sharp air and the movement had stirred his torpid blood into some appearance of animation, but as the excitement of arrival wore off, he relapsed into wan despondency, and was indeed a melancholy object.
The two older men from the first gave up the case in reverent despair. What had there ever been in their most comfortable but burdensome lives, to entitle them to intrude their ignorant sympathy on the unparalleled tragedy of this man's sore bereavement? Like Job's three friends, they would have sat by him without speaking for three days and three nights, with eyes fixed sorrowfully on the carpet, had human life been still as of old, a majestic but monotonous sequence extending over centuries; but in its modern abbreviated form, with so many things to attend to in the brief threescore and ten, that was impossible. They sighed and looked gloomy when they found themselves near him, and then escaped to some other quarter of the house with all decent speed.
It was on Kenneth, as old friend and special host, that the full duty of condolence devolved. He led his friend to the smoking-room where they could sit together by the hour in silent amity, watching the blue smokerings widen and disappear, companionable to each other's sight, yet leaving the mind at rest from disturbing talk. Fearing to touch unwisely on the open wound, Kenneth did not venture on any allusion to his friend's bereavement. Mary's commission was ever present in his mind, but he dared not approach the subject to raise a hope that might only be quenched again in deeper gloom. He dared not question him even, that he might judge of the probability for himself; he simply waited, hoping that in time the other would give the opening which he desired.
Julia was perhaps the most successful sympathizer in the household. Her fine dramatic instinct enabled her to throw herself into the artificial mood, and play the part with an abandon relieved and varied by graceful little touches which she could never have displayed in her natural character. She was a woman with a head rather than a heart, and it was when feeling was presented to her through the imagination rather than her own emotions, that she was able to realize, seize and clothe it in expression. Her performance in the new rôle of 'Woman the Consoler,' was delicate, but beautiful and touching in the extreme, and more than once brought the handkerchief to honest Lady Caroline's eyes, who declared in confidence to her General that Julia was a 'fine creature,' and far too good for that vulgar Crœsus in Manchester. Perhaps the same idea may have struck Julia, or it may have been that the artist in her was engrossed by the new delineation of character, and revelled, for the time, in the artificial emotions of her own creation. It is certain that the Manchester correspondence lost much of its interest. The morning letter was slipped into her pocket as usual, at breakfast, but she no longer seized the first opportunity to escape with it to her own room, and by the end of the week she found three of them still in her pocket unopened. They were all opened at once, glanced over, and locked up in the drawer with those that had gone before them, and some sort of an answer was scrawled to 'Dear Augustus.' It was scarcely so charming a letter as some that had preceded it, and Augustus thought so, with his first twinge of love, pain, and jealousy; for hitherto his path had been one of rose-strewn triumph. But the letter did not take long to knock off--that was the main point at the moment--and she descended the stairs, gloved and bonneted, for a stroll by the lake, before Major Steele had begun to think of growing impatient.
When the bereaved widower first arrived at Inchbracken, Julia was very silent. Young innocence and awakening womanhood stood appalled before the revelation of grief and mystery in human life. Her eyes and voice drooped plaintively, but it was not till the following morning that she and the sufferer exchanged a word. Even then it was but little that was said, some civil words of routine, but the gentle pensive droop in word and look, distilled like heavenly dew over some acrid waste. Even so the Angel of Pity may look down on the vanquished and sore wounded in the battle of life; and the poor woe-begone Major felt grateful and consoled at the gentle tribute to his grief. She would linger in the breakfast-room with needle work or a book, and the Major got into a way of hovering round, as some frost-benumbed toad might creep from under his cold stone, to stretch his stiffened limbs, and thaw them in the watery sunshine of a February afternoon. When this arrangement seemed growing into a habit, Julia betook herself to the morning-room, which she could count on having to herself at that hour, for pursuing her work or studies. Presently the door would open and the widower would appear, asking her permission to sit awhile, and apologizing for his intrusion. There must have been companionship in each other's presence, for there was not much conversation, and what there was was vapid enough; but the divine pity in Julia's pensive droop transfused itself through each syllable, and the desolate one felt soothed and refreshed.
What Julia felt, it is difficult to say, and one cannot but wonder that, after the first three days, she did not find the whole business a lackadaisical bore. We can only suppose that life in the proper character and circumstance of Julia Finlayson had become intolerably dull, and that she had adopted those of the Angel of Pity by way of a change. She could not have seriously contemplated capturing the broken-hearted widower, especially since Lady Caroline had just secured Mr. MacSiccar's report as to the fortune and standing of Augustus Wallowby, Esquire. The report had been most satisfactory, in fact had so far exceeded expectation, that good Lady Caroline had been seduced into a momentary irreverence at the ways of Providence, in giving vulgar people so much money. She was sorry for it immediately after, however, for she was a good Tory, and honoured the powers that be, among which Providence admittedly takes the first place. As to the vulgarity even, Lady Caroline might have been brought to admit that she had seen examples of it in circles bordering very closely on the Court, and she would not have been at all reluctant to acknowledge that it existed in the army, and when found there was quite as offensive as any thing that the proverbial Manchester of her day could produce.
At last a morning came, when, over a sympathetic pipe, the Major expressed a wish to go and look at the Effick water, where all his happiness and love had come to such dismal shipwreck.