Cecilia was one of those unusual people whose outward personalities never look unsuitable to the life encompassing them, though their inward beings may be completely aloof from everything surrounding them physically. She sat down by the table, her gray gown melting into the background of the walls, and the whiteness of her long neck rising distinct from it. Her dress was cut open in front and bordered by a narrow line of brown fur which crossed on her bosom. Though she was so slim, the little emerald brooch which held the fastening of it together sank into the hollow made by her figure; her hair was drawn up on the top of her head, and piled in many rolls round a high, tortoiseshell comb. Her long eyes, under straight brows, seemed, in expression, to be holding something hidden behind the eyelashes, something intangible, elusive. To see her was to be reminded, consciously or unconsciously, of mists, of shadows, of moonlit things—things half seen, things remembered. Her lips closed evenly, though in beautiful lines, and the upper, not short enough for real beauty, had an outward curve, as it rested on its fellow, which held a curious attraction. She was very pale with a pallor that did not suggest ill-health.
Though she was the only young inhabitant of Morphie, she existed among the dusty passages—dusty with the powdering of ages—and the sober unconventionality of the place as naturally as one of those white plants which haunt remote waterways exists among the hidden hollows and shadows of pools. She was very distantly related to Lady Eliza Lamont, but, when the death of both parents had thrown her on the world, a half-grown, penniless girl, she had come to Morphie for a month to gain strength after an illness, and remained there twelve years. Lady Eliza, ostentatiously grumbling at the responsibility she had imposed upon herself, found, at the end of the time, that she could not face the notion of parting with Cecilia. It was the anxiety of her life that, though she had practically adopted the girl, she had nothing she could legally leave her at her death but her own personal possessions.
A few minutes later she came down in the ancient pelisse which she found comfortable after the exertions of the day. She had taught Cecilia something of the activity which, though now a part of most well-bred women’s lives, was then almost an eccentricity. The female part of the little society which filled Kaims in the winter months nodded its ‘dressed’ head over its cards and teacups in polished dismay at the effect such ways would surely have on the young women; at other times one might hardly have guessed at the lurking solicitude in so many womanly bosoms; for, though unwilling, for many reasons, to disagree with Lady Eliza, their owners were apt, with the curious reasoning of their sex, to take her adopted daughter as a kind of insult to themselves. It was their opinion that Miss Cecilia Raeburn, though a sweet young lady, would, of course, find the world a very different place when her ladyship’s time should come, and they only hoped she was sensible of the debt she owed her; these quiet-looking girls were often very sly. With prudent eyes the matrons congratulated themselves and each other that their own Carolines and Amelias were ‘less unlike other people,’ and had defined, if modest, prospects; and such of the Carolines and Amelias who chanced to be privily listening would smirk in secure and conscious unison. Even Miss Hersey Robertson, who mixed a little in these circles, was inclined to be critical.
The advent of a possible husband, though he would present in himself the solution of all difficulties, had only vaguely entered Lady Eliza’s mind. Like many parents, she supposed that the girl would ‘marry some day,’ and, had anyone questioned the probability in her presence, it is likely that she would have been very angry. Fullarton, who was consulted on every subject, had realized that the life at Morphie was an unnatural one for Cecilia and spoken his mind to some purpose. He suggested that she should pass a winter in Edinburgh, and, though Lady Eliza refused stubbornly to plunge into a society to whose customs she felt herself unable to conform, it was arranged by him that a favourite cousin, widow of the late Lord Advocate of Scotland, should receive the girl. This lady, who was childless, and longed for someone to accompany her to those routs and parties dear to her soul, found in her kinsman’s suggestion something wellnigh providential. So kind a welcome did she extend, that her charge, whose pleasure in the arrangement had been but a mixed business, set out with an almost cheerful spirit.
A nature inclined to study and reflection, and nine years of life with a person of quick tongue, had bred in Cecilia a different calibre of mind to that of the provincial young lady of her time; and Lady Eliza had procured her excellent tuition. The widow had expected to find in her guest a far less uncommon personality, and it was with real satisfaction that she proceeded to introduce her to the very critical and rather literary society which she frequented. There were some belonging to it who were to see in Miss Raeburn, poor as she was, an ideal future for themselves. Cecilia, when she returned to Morphie, left more than one very sore heart behind her. To many it seemed wonderful that her experiences had not spoiled her, and that she could take up life again in the draughty, ill-lit house, whose only outward signs of animation were the sheep grazing under its windows and the pigeons pluming in rows under the weathercock swinging crazily on the stable roof.
What people underrated was her devoted attachment to Lady Eliza, and what they could not understand was the fact that, while she was charmed, interested, and apparently engrossed by many things, her inner life might hold so completely aloof as never to have been within range of them.
[CHAPTER IV
JIMMY]
INLAND from the river’s mouth the dark plough-fields stretched sombre, restful, wide, uncut by detail. The smaller roads intersecting the country were treeless in the main, and did not draw the eye from the majesty of the defined woods. There was everything to suggest breadth and full air; and the sky, as Gilbert rode up towards a farm cresting the swell of the high horizon, was as suggestive of it as the earth. The clear gray meeting the sweep of the world was an immensity on which cloud-masses, too high for rain, but full of it, looked as though cut adrift by some Titanic hand and left to sail derelict on the cold heavens.
The road he was travelling was enlivened by a stream of people, all going in the same direction as himself, and mostly on foot, though a couple of gigs, whose occupants looked as much too large for them as the occupants of country gigs generally do, were ascending to the farm at that jog which none but agriculturally-interested persons can suffer.