Julia heard it all, while with her scissors she snipped the ends of her flower stalks, and arranged her nosegays. In her rôle of affability and general good nature with the household, her presence imposed no restraint on those confidential servants; in fact, it rather stimulated them to talk, and show how much at heart they had the interests of the family, and how well they understood whatever was going on. It suited her to know whatever was to be thus picked up, so long as it could be done without betraying unseemly curiosity, and she was much too wise to compromise herself by putting questions to a domestic; but this intelligence was far from welcome to her, and what was worse, Mrs. Kipper's speculations were but confirmation of her own fears.
A gentlewoman of slender means, and with no near relations, she had to make her own way in the world and effect a lodgment in it somewhere by the aid of such wits as relenting nature had bestowed, when she withheld the brute strength that is given to vulgar humanity. In fact, my poor Julia was, I fear, something of a schemer. Is it not shocking?
And yet, dear lady, if I may ask--how long would that charming candour and transparency of soul, not to speak of the high-spirited independence of character, which so delight your friends, survive, if you had to depend on the hospitality of some one, whom no social law ordained to offer it? We must all eat three times a day if possible, and those who have no money themselves must arrange that some one else who has, shall pay for the dinner, or worse will come of it. Inchbracken had been the oyster offered by fortune to Julia, and very well she had acquitted herself in the task of opening it. Friends and every comfort she had been able to achieve thereby, with every prospect of their continuance so long as her kinswoman should survive. But then good things of life are not enough, so soon at least as they are once secured. Man is not an oyster, whatever his remote ancestors may have been, nor woman either; and as regards ancestors, without impugning the oyster's claim, if we are to infer anything from a never-failing hereditary trait, a place should be found somewhere in the pedigree for the horseleech; all human desire, aim, aspiration, may be expressed by the one simple formula--'a little more.' With that ahead and within view, how contentedly we can struggle along, and with how little! Progress is what we need to make us happy. Julia was becoming less young each day, and she was still unwed. No suitor had appeared, but while her kinsman remained single she had still looked forward with some confidence in her own skill and good fortune. That good fortune had sent Kenneth abroad when Mary Brown appeared to be getting dangerous, and had given herself the opportunity to slide into intimate correspondence with him as a substitute for his indolent mother. Again kind fortune had intervened in removing the Browns from the scene before Kenneth's return, and in involving them in such disfavour as to remove all danger of their being invited to the house. Then, too, she had aimed her own little shaft to aggravate the alienation by clouding his fair fame with insinuations of a disreputable scandal.
If she could but have left her ears in the housekeeper's room when she went up stairs she would have learned how successful had been her little device to make people entangle their ideas, by accepting juxtaposition for connection, and thereby mistaking, like their hostess, the post hoc for the propter hoc. William coming for the dinner bouquets while the confidential talk was in progress, was able to contribute his quota to it by repeating the appalling facts and surmises which his friends on the moor had discussed the previous Sunday, and which, in fact, had been started by himself, though his memory had failed to record that circumstance. The lady's maid raised her eyes to the ceiling, and declared that 'she never----,' while the housekeeper was 'thankful Roderick's godly father was safe in heaven, or it would have killed him outright.' In due time all this would filter upwards to Lady Caroline's ears, and yet what would it avail to Julia? Here was Mary already in the house. A fog on the hill had been able to undo all that Fortune and herself had been able to effect in two years time, as the blundering broom of a housemaid will carry away at one sweep the cobwebs that have been weeks in spinning. Mary Brown in the house, and Kenneth at her side for a whole evening--but at least she would be true to herself, and not yield till she was defeated. Mary would be at a disadvantage in more respects than one, certainly as regards dress, and also in accomplishments and knowledge of the world. Mary on the other hand had youth, but then, as Julia told herself, youth means rawness, and 'I won't give in yet!' she added, 'I must go to her now to reconnoitre, and behave my very prettiest, and that will at least keep her upstairs till the dressing bell rings.'
So thinking, she entered Lady Caroline's sitting-room with her flowers.
'Oh, Julia! such pretty flowers! What should I do without your kind clever fingers to brighten my room for me? Have you seen the visitor my General has brought me? But of course not. She is bathing and dressing, and what not. The poor child seemed actually dripping when General Drysdale brought her in;--found her in the mist! Away up on Craig Findochart. I have handed her over to Briggs, and by and by I hope she will be able to see us. So nice to have somebody arrive this dismal afternoon. I really felt too dawny even to open the new book box from London, and as for my knitting, the stitches wouldn't count somehow, and that fool Briggs went and dropped some of them in trying to put it right, and altogether the appearance of a new face has made a most pleasing variety. You remember Mary Brown, of course,--a nice little girl, and very like her poor mother. A great friend of mine her mother was--a most dear woman. I believe I miss her sadly still, sometimes. In fact, I always do miss the Browns when I see the new people that have come to the manse,--not, my dear, that I would have you imagine I could undervalue any clergyman of our national church. Indeed, I consider it an honour to be able to contribute to its well-being in these levelling times, when if we who have a stake in the country do not support the Church, we shall have the State too tumbling in about our ears. Those dreadful levellers seem to reverence nothing, wanting to repeal the Corn Laws, and to call their dissenting meeting-places churches! and putting steeples on them, and actually ringing bells. What is to become of the British constitution if every dissenting chapel is to have a steeple and call itself a church, and ring a bell? As my dear General says sometimes, I think the flood gates must be opening. If it was only the English chapels, it would be of less consequence. You know my brother Pitthevlis is an Episcopalian, and I belonged to that Church till my marriage (the Drysdales have always held to the Establishment and the Revolution Settlement), not to mention that it is the Established form across the Border; but that every little gathering of impudent seceder bodies is to hang up its kettle and deave the whole parish, whenever it wishes to say its prayers, I consider it most improper, and neither to the glory of God or man. And therefore, my dear, I would be most scrupulous in paying the clergy every attention. Still, when I asked Mrs. Snodgrass and her children to come up and eat strawberries one summer's day, you may remember it, I could not but think of poor dear Mrs. Brown, and miss her sadly. I think in future I shall send my strawberries to Mrs. Snodgrass. I believe she would rather eat them at home, and I know I shall prefer it. Then it was so convenient in Dr. Brown's time, whenever a gentleman was required to make up the number at dinner, he would come so obligingly on the shortest notice, and be so useful in the conversation;--a most accomplished man, my dear. But this Mr. Snodgrass is different, dining out does not appear to be his forte; though he is a most excellent man, and I am sure we ought to appreciate him highly. But, as I was saying, this little Mary Brown was always a favourite of mine--a nice, quiet, soft little thing, and so bright and pretty, just like one of your charming posies there, and quite a relief on a grey colourless afternoon like this. But here is Briggs to say Miss Brown is ready to receive us. Come.'
They passed into an adjoining apartment, where, seated in an elbow chair by the fire, was Mary. She was wrapped in a large white peignoir, and her hair, gathered in a knot behind, had partly escaped from the comb, and fell in a stream of sunny brown across her shoulders.
'Mary, my dear, keep your seat, and try to get rested,' said Lady Caroline. 'Why, child, how like your mother you grow! and so pretty! I was so fond of your mother, my dear, and you remind me of her. I hope they have attended to you, and brought you whatever you want. Be sure and ask Briggs for anything that has been forgotten.'
And so she went on in a continuous monody, while the younger women listened; for, when Lady Caroline felt disposed to talk, she gave little heed to what was said by any one else, but followed the tangled thread of her own ideas, never doubting but they must be as interesting to persons of lower degree, as she found them herself. An Earl's daughter, and of a historical house, she deemed nothing so reverent as its traditional glories, and insisted with gracious pertinacity on the full measure of deference according thereto; and there is little doubt that when in after years she was duly gathered to her noble fathers, it would not have been the 'Law and the Testimony,' but the tables of precedence that would have been found graven on her heart. In one house at the other end of the county she had been led out to dinner behind the daughter of a more recent creation, but she had never crossed that threshold since, nor were the offenders ever again permitted to share in the festivities of Inchbracken.
'Well, girls, here comes Briggs with my tea, so I shall leave you to your own chit-chat; it will be half-an-hour yet before the dressing-bell rings.'