Inchbracken: The Story of a Fama Clamosa

by Robert Cleland

'Yes, Sophia! I mean what I say; young girls should be seen, but not heard. That was the rule in my young days. She took the whole entertainment of the stranger off your hands, as if she had been in her own house; forward, I thought her, in fact; and I don't think your brother Peter thought any the more of her for it.'

'Oh, mamma! it was Peter who made her talk! A girl must answer when she is spoken to; and she must laugh too, when people are trying to amuse her, however poor the joke may be. And it was Peter who persuaded her to sing when she would rather not. I know, for she told me so!'

'H'm! I fear she is a sly monkey that Mary Brown--for all her artless ways! I wish you had some of her worldly wisdom, added to the high principles I have been at such pains to instil into your mind. I am sure you will never be a flirt; but a young woman must be settled in life unless she is to be an old maid and a failure; and how is an eligible young man to know what treasures of good sense and right principle there may be in her, if she will not open her mouth to him, or hides away in her own room? I call it a waste of precious opportunity! Remember the fate of the man who hid his talent in a napkin, and be warned in time!'

'But, mamma, you have always told me, and I am sure it is so, that marriages are ordained by a higher power, and that the appointed man will certainly find you out, even if he has to come down the chimney to reach you.'

'Quite true, my dear, in a sense! but we don't want the sweeps at Auchlippie at this time of year. And there can be no more proper place for a gentlewoman to meet a young man than her mother's drawing-room; so put on your blue silk and bring your worsted work down stairs as soon as you are ready. I shall send Betsy to your assistance;' and, with a rather scornful shrug, the old lady left the room.

'I believe,' she muttered to herself as she descended the stairs, 'that girl's a gowk! It's the Sangster blood in her, I suppose--a dull, literal-minded lot!--soft and sober! To think that a daughter of mine should need to be spoken to, as I have just been speaking to her! We were all more gleg than that on my side of the house. I don't know whether to be more ashamed of being mother to sic a daw; or for the things I have been driven to say to her! They don't sound like the walk and conversation of a Christian woman! and yet the best of us are but flesh and blood. We must all eat and drink, wear clothes, live in houses, and, when we can, ride in coaches, marry and give in marriage, just like the people before the flood, though they were so bad; and we must strive our best to provide for our families unless we would deny the faith and be worse than infidels. Ah! there is Scripture for it! So glad I remembered that text! It saves one from feeling base and scheming. But one ought not to be driven to put doubtful sentiments into words. One should be helped out with them. 'Bear ye one another's burdens.' That seems an apt quotation and appropriate, if it had only come into Sophia's mind! But there's no use looking for that from her. She's a glaikit tawpie. Ah me! the trials of a discreet and conscientious mother are not light! I hope I may have strength to bear them.' And so, with a sigh, she went about her affairs. The texts had evangelicalized (if not evangelized) the mercenary schemes, and she was again rehabilitated in her own eyes as a righteous person.

Sophia stood brushing out her hair and musing on her mother's precepts, as a dutiful daughter should. She had never before heard marrying discussed in this bare, hard fashion. Was she a Circassian slave at Constantinople, to be tricked out and submitted to the inspection of the rich man in this fashion? Once before, some few words had been said to her in a more guarded way, but, as she now perceived in the same spirit, when the coming of her brother and his friend had been first spoken of; but at that time they had been less heeded, or she had understood them less, and they had not then shocked her. Love and marriage were subjects which up to that time had only been mentioned in her hearing as something vague, mysterious and holy, which it did not become her to pry into. As for personal love experiences, she had none; and the subject of maidenly fancies had generally been referred to by her hard and practical mother with scorn and derision.

Roderick's letter to her had therefore fallen on her unprepared mind as a revelation. All the two previous days her thoughts had been repeating over and over his earnest words. How deeply he must have felt before he could so have expressed his anxiety! And she? What answer should she make? All the long years of their intercourse passed through her memory, and incidents disregarded at the time and forgotten, came back now to her recollection with a new meaning and a new force. Their long talks, in which he had spoken so much and she so little, began now to take a new aspect in her mind. She must have been encouraging him though she did not know it; and what was more, if she had to enact those scenes over again, with the new enlightenment in her eyes, she felt that she would encourage him none the less, but rather the more. To have excited such emotion in one so clever and good, was an achievement of which she felt proud, in a wondering and enquiring way, for she could not imagine how she had done it; but the thought of his love for her grew more and more sweet and engrossing, and she began to suspect that down deep somewhere in her nature where she had never looked or known of before, she was fond of him in return.

And yet, she had not answered the letter. What would he think of her? Since her mother had called her unmaidenly, she had not ventured to return to the subject in case of another explosion. But now that she had in cold blood set a matrimonial scheme before her, and deliberately incited her to endeavour to win the regard of a man for whom she felt no attraction whatever, simply because he was rich, she felt strong enough to broach the question again. Whatever her mother said she would answer his letter somehow, and more than that, should her mother propose another suitor, she would have nothing to say to him till she had come to an understanding with Roderick.

Having donned the blue silk, Sophia descended to the drawing-room, work-basket in hand. The room was empty, which was disappointing, as she had strung herself up to concert pitch She settled herself to work and waited. The monotonous motion of the needle and thread had a calming influence on her nerves; but as they grew less tense she began to feel less confidence in her own courage, and to wish her meditated conversation well over. Visitors came in, which afforded her a further respite, and in her disturbed state supplied a vent for some of her suppressed energy. She had never before, perhaps, shown so much animation and vivacity in general conversation. It surprised her mother and quite rehabilitated her in the good opinion of that careful parent, who congratulated her on having so well held her part, and hoped it was the beginning of a new chapter in her life, and that she was about to assume with due éclat the part of daughter in so prominent a household of the Free Church.