Kitabı oku: «The Elect Lady»

THE ELECT LADY

CHAPTER I. LANDLORD’S DAUGHTER AND TENANT’S SON

In a kitchen of moderate size, flagged with slate, humble in its appointments, yet looking scarcely that of a farmhouse—for there were utensils about it indicating necessities more artificial than usually grow upon a farm—with the corner of a white deal table between them, sat two young people evidently different in rank, and meeting upon no level of friendship. The young woman held in her hand a paper, which seemed the subject of their conversation. She was about four- or five-and-twenty, well grown and not ungraceful, with dark hair, dark hazel eyes, and rather large, handsome features, full of intelligence, but a little hard, and not a little regnant—as such features must be, except after prolonged influence of a heart potent in self-subjugation. As to her social expression, it was a mingling of the gentlewoman of education, and the farmer’s daughter supreme over the household and its share in the labor of production.

As to the young man, it would have required a deeper-seeing eye than falls to the lot of most observers, not to take him for a weaker nature than the young woman; and the deference he showed her as the superior, would have enhanced the difficulty of a true judgment. He was tall and thin, but plainly in fine health; had a good forehead, and a clear hazel eye, not overlarge or prominent, but full of light; a firm mouth, with a curious smile; a sun-burned complexion; and a habit when perplexed of pinching his upper lip between his finger and thumb, which at the present moment he was unconsciously indulging. He was the son of a small farmer—in what part of Scotland is of little consequence—and his companion for the moment was the daughter of the laird.

“I have glanced over the poem,” said the lady, “and it seems to me quite up to the average of what you see in print.”

“Would that be reason for printing it, ma’am?” asked the man, with amused smile.

“It would be for the editor to determine,” she answered, not perceiving the hinted objection.

“You will remember, ma’am, that I never suggested—indeed I never thought of such a thing!”

“I do not forget. It was your mother who drew my attention to the verses.”

“I must speak to my mother!” he said, in a meditative way.

“You can not object to my seeing your work! She does not show it to everybody. It is most creditable to you, such an employment of your leisure.”

“The poem was never meant for any eyes but my own—except my brother’s.”

“What was the good of writing it, if no one was to see it?”

“The writing of it, ma’am.”

“For the exercise, you mean?”

“No; I hardly mean that.”

“I am afraid then I do not understand you.”

“Do you never write anything but what you publish?”

“Publish! I never publish! What made you think of such a thing?”

“That you know so much about it, ma’am.”

“I know people connected with the papers, and thought it might encourage you to see something in print. The newspapers publish so many poems now!”

“I wish it hadn’t been just that one my mother gave you!”

“Why?”

“For one thing, it is not finished—as you will see when you read it more carefully.”

“I did see a line I thought hardly rhythmical, but—”

“Excuse me, ma’am; the want of rhythm there was intentional.”

“I am sorry for that. Intention is the worst possible excuse for wrong! The accent should always be made to fall in the right place.”

“Beyond a doubt—but might not the right place alter with the sense?”

“Never. The rule is strict”

“Is there no danger of making the verse monotonous?”

“Not that I know.”

“I have an idea, ma’am, that our great poets owe much of their music to the liberties they take with the rhythm. They treat the rule as its masters, and break it when they see fit.”

“You must be wrong there! But in any case you must not presume to take the liberties of a great poet.”

“It is a poor reward for being a great poet to be allowed to take liberties. I should say that, doing their work to the best of their power, they were rewarded with the discovery of higher laws of verse. Every one must walk by the light given him. By the rules which others have laid down he may learn to walk; but once his heart is awake to truth, and his ear to measure, melody and harmony, he must walk by the light, and the music God gives him.”

“That is dangerous doctrine, Andrew!” said the lady, with a superior smile. “But,” she continued, “I will mark what faults I see, and point them out to you.”

“Thank you, ma’am, but please do not send the verses anywhere.”

“I will not, except I find them worthy. You need not be afraid. For my father’s sake I will have an eye to your reputation.”

“I am obliged to you, ma’am,” returned Andrew, but with his curious smile, hard to describe. It had in it a wonderful mixing of sweetness and humor, and a something that seemed to sit miles above his amusement. A heavenly smile it was, knowing too much to be angry. It had in it neither offense nor scorn. In respect of his poetry he was shy like a girl, but he showed no rejection of the patronage forced upon him by the lady.

He rose and stood a moment.

“Well, Andrew, what is it?”

“When will you allow me to call for the verses?”

“In the course of a week or so. By that time I shall have made up my mind. If in doubt, I shall ask my father.”

“I wouldn’t like the laird to think I spend my time on poetry.”

“You write poetry, Andrew! A man should not do what he would not have known.”

“That is true, ma’am; I only feared an erroneous conclusion.”

“I will take care of that. My father knows that you are a hard-working young man. There is not one of his farms in better order than yours. Were it otherwise, I should not be so interested in your poetry.”

Andrew wished her less interested in it. To have his verses read was like having a finger poked in his eye. He had not known that his mother looked at his papers. But he showed little sign of his annoyance, bade the lady good-morning, and left the kitchen.

Miss Fordyce followed him to the door, and stood for a moment looking out. In front of her was a paved court, surrounded with low buildings, between two of which was visible, at the distance of a mile or so, a railway line where it approached a viaduct. She heard the sound of a coming train, and who in a country place will not stand to see one pass!

CHAPTER II. AN ACCIDENT

While the two were talking, a long train, part carriages, part trucks, was rattling through a dreary country, where it could never have been were there not regions very different on both sides of it. For miles in any direction, nothing but humpy moorland was to be seen, a gathering of low hills, with now and then a higher one, its sides broken by occasional torrents, in poor likeness of a mountain. No smoke proclaimed the presence of human dwelling; but there were spots between the hills where the hand of man had helped the birth of a feeble fertility; and in front was a small but productive valley, on the edge of which stood the ancient house of Potlurg, with the heath behind it: over a narrow branch of this valley went the viaduct.

It was a slow train, with few passengers. Of these one was looking from his window with a vague, foolish sense of superiority, thinking what a forgotten, scarce created country it seemed. He was a well-dressed, good-looking fellow, with a keen but pale-gray eye, and a fine forehead, but a chin such as is held to indicate weakness. More than one, however, of the strongest women I have known, were defective in chin. The young man was in the only first-class carriage of the train, and alone in it. Dressed in a gray suit, he was a little too particular in the smaller points of his attire, and lacked in consequence something of the look of a gentleman. Every now and then he would take off his hard round hat, and pass a white left hand through his short-cut mousey hair, while his right caressed a far longer mustache, in which he seemed interested. A certain indescribable heaviness and lack of light characterized his pale face.

It was a lovely day in early June. The air was rather cold, but youth and health care little about temperature on a holiday, with the sun shining, and that sweetest sense—to such at least as are ordinarily bound by routine—of having nothing to do. To many men and women the greatest trouble is to choose, for self is the hardest of masters to please; but as yet George Crawford had not been troubled with much choosing.

A crowded town behind him, the loneliness he looked upon was a pleasure to him. Compelled to spend time in it, without the sense of being on the way out of it, his own company would soon have grown irksome to him; for however much men may be interested in themselves, there are few indeed who are interesting to themselves. Those only whose self is aware of a higher presence can escape becoming bores and disgusts to themselves. That every man is endlessly greater than what he calls himself, must seem a paradox to the ignorant and dull, but a universe would be impossible without it. George had not arrived at the discovery of this fact, and yet was for the present contented both with himself and with his circumstances.

The heather was not in bloom, and the few flowers of the heathy land made no show. Brown and darker brown predominated, with here and there a shadow of green; and, weary of his outlook, George was settling back to his book, when there came a great bang and a tearing sound. He started to his feet, and for hours knew nothing more. A truck had run off the line and turned over; the carriage in which he was had followed it, and one of the young man’s legs was broken.

CHAPTER III. HELP

“Papa! papa! there is an accident on the line!” cried Miss Fordyce, running into her father’s study, where he sat surrounded with books. “I saw it from the door!”

“Hush!” returned the old man, and listened. “I hear the train going on,” he said, after a moment.

“Part of it is come to grief, I am certain,” answered his daughter. “I saw something fall.”

“Well, my dear?”

“What shall we do?”

“What would you have us do?” rejoined her father, without a movement toward rising. “It is too far off for us to be of any use.”

“We ought to go and see.”

“I am not fond of such seeing, Alexa, and will not go out of my way for it. The misery I can not avoid is enough for me.”

But Alexa was out of the room, and in a moment more was running, in as straight a line as she could keep, across the heath to the low embankment. Andrew caught sight of her running. He could not see the line, but convinced that something was the matter, turned and ran in the same direction.

It was a hard and long run for Alexa, over such ground. Troubled at her father’s indifference, she ran the faster—too fast for thinking, but not too fast for the thoughts that came of themselves. What had come to her father? Their house was the nearest! She could not shut out the conviction that, since succeeding to the property, he had been growing less and less neighborly.

She had caught up a bottle of brandy, which impeded her running. Yet she made good speed, her dress gathered high in the other hand. Her long dark hair broken loose and flying in the wind, her assumed dignity forgotten, and only the woman awake, she ran like a deer over the heather, and in little more than a quarter of an hour, though it was a long moor-mile, reached the embankment, flushed and panting.

Some of the carriages had rolled down, and the rails were a wreck. But the engine and half the train had kept on: neither driver nor stoker was hurt, and they were hurrying to fetch help from the next station. At the foot of the bank lay George Crawford insensible, with the guard of the train doing what he could to bring him to consciousness. He was on his back, pale as death, with no motion and scare a sign of life.

Alexa tried to give him brandy, but she was so exhausted, and her hand shook so, that she had to yield the bottle to the guard, and, hale and strong as she was, could but drag herself a little apart before she fainted.

In the meantime, as the train approached the station, the driver, who belonged to the neighborhood, saw the doctor, slackened speed, and set his whistle shrieking wildly. The doctor set spurs to his horse, and came straight over everything to his side.

“You go on,” he said, having heard what had happened; “I shall be there sooner than you could take me.”

He came first upon Andrew trying to make Miss Fordyce swallow a little of the brandy.

“There’s but one gentleman hurt, sir,” said the guard. “The other’s only a young lady that’s run till she’s dropped.”

“To bring brandy,” supplemented Andrew.

The doctor recognized Alexa, and wondered what reception her lather would give his patient, for to Potlurg he must go! Suddenly she came to herself, and sat up, gazing wildly around. “Out of breath, Miss Fordyce; nothing worse!” said the doctor, and she smiled.

He turned to the young man, and did for him what he could without splints or bandages; then, with the help of the guard and Andrew, constructed, from pieces of the broken carriages, a sort of litter on which to carry him to Potlurg.

“Is he dead?” asked Alexa.

“Not a bit of it. He’s had a bad blow on the head, though. We must get him somewhere as fast as we can!”

“Do you know him?”

“Not I. But we must take him to your house. I don’t know what else to do with him!”

“What else should you want to do with him?”

“I was afraid it might bother the laird.”

“You scarcely know my father, Doctor Pratt!”

“It would bother most people to have a wounded man quartered on them for weeks!” returned the doctor. “Poor fellow! A good-looking fellow too!”

A countryman who had been in the next carriage, but had escaped almost unhurt, offering his service, Andrew and he took up the litter gently, and set out walking with care, the doctor on one side, leading his horse, and Miss Fordyce on the other.

It was a strange building to which, after no small anxiety, they drew near; nor did it look the less strange the nearer they came. It was unsheltered by a single tree; and but for a low wall and iron rail on one side, inclosing what had been a garden, but was now a grass-plot, it rose straight out of the heather. From this plot the ground sloped to the valley, and was under careful cultivation. The entrance to it was closed with a gate of wrought iron, of good workmanship, but so wasted with rust that it seemed on the point of vanishing. Here at one time had been the way into the house; but no door, and scarce a window, was now to be seen on this side of the building. It was very old, and consisted of three gables, a great half-round between two of them, and a low tower with a conical roof.

Crawford had begun to recover consciousness, but when he came to himself he was received by acute pain. The least attempt to move was torture, and again he fainted.

CHAPTER IV. THE LAIRD

Conducted by the lady, they passed round the house to the court, and across the court to a door in one of the gables. It was a low, narrow door, but large enough for the man that stood there—a little man, with colorless face, and quiet, abstracted look. His eyes were cold and keen, his features small, delicate, and regular. He had an erect little back, and was dressed in a long-tailed coat, looking not much of a laird, and less of a farmer, as he stood framed in the gray stone wall, in which odd little windows, dotted here and there at all heights and distances, revealed a wonderful arrangement of floors and rooms inside.

“Good-morning, Mr. Fordyce!” said the doctor. “This is a bad business, but it might have been worse! Not a soul injured but one!”

“Souls don’t commonly get injured by accident!” returned the laird, with a cold smile that was far from discourteous. “Stick to the body, doctor! There you know something!”

“It’s a truth, laird!” answered the doctor—but added to himself—“Well! it’s awful to hear the truth from some mouths!”

The laird spoke no word of objection or of welcome. They carried the poor fellow into the house, following its mistress to a room, where, with the help of her one domestic, and instructed by the doctor, she soon had a bed prepared for him. Then away rode the doctor at full speed to fetch the appliances necessary, leaving the laird standing by the bed, with a look of mild dissatisfaction, but not a whisper of opposition.

It was the guest-chamber to which George Crawford had been carried, a room far more comfortable than a stranger might, from the aspect of the house, have believed possible. Everything in it was old-fashioned, and, having been dismantled, it was not in apple-pie order; but it was rapidly and silently restored to its humble ideal; and when the doctor, after an incredibly brief absence, returned with his assistant, he seemed both surprised and pleased at the change.

“He must have some one to sit up with him, Miss Fordyce,” he said, when all was done.

“I will myself,” she answered. “But you must give me exact directions, for I have done no nursing.”

“If you will walk a little way with me, I will tell you all you need know. He will sleep now, I think—at least till you get back: I shall not keep you beyond a few minutes. It is not a very awkward fracture,” he continued, as they went. “It might have been much worse! We shall have him about in a few weeks. But he will want the greatest care while the bones are uniting.”

The laird turned from the bed, and went to his study, where he walked up and down, lost and old and pale, the very Bibliad of the room with its ancient volumes all around. Whatever his eyes fell upon, he turned from, as if he had no longer any pleasure in it, and presently stole back to the room where the sufferer lay. On tiptoe, with a caution suggestive of a wild beast asleep, he crept to the bed, looked down on his unwelcome guest with an expression of sympathy crossed with dislike, and shook his head slowly and solemnly, like one injured but forgiving.

His eye fell on the young man’s pocket-book. It had fallen from his coat as they undressed him, and was on a table by the bedside. He caught it up just ere Alexa reentered.

“How is he, father?” she asked.

“He is fast asleep,” answered the laid. “How long does the doctor think he will have to be here?”

“I did not ask him,” she replied.

“That was an oversight, my child,” he returned. “It is of consequence we should know the moment of his removal.”

“We shall know it in good time. The doctor called it an affair of weeks—or months—I forget. But you shall not be troubled, father. I will attend to him.”

“But I am troubled, Alexa! You do not know how little money I have!”

Again he retired—slowly, shut his door, locked it, and began to search the pocket-book. He found certain banknotes, and made a discovery concerning its owner.

With the help of her old woman, and noiselessly, while Crawford lay in a half slumber, Alexa continued making the chamber more comfortable. Chintz curtains veiled the windows, which, for all their narrowness, had admitted too much light; and an old carpet deadened the sound of footsteps on the creaking boards—for the bones of a house do not grow silent with age; a fire burned in the antique grate, and was a soul to the chamber, which was chilly, looking to the north, with walls so thick that it took half the summer to warm them through. Old Meg, moving to and fro, kept shaking her head like her master, as if she also were in the secret of some house-misery; but she was only indulging the funereal temperament of an ancient woman. As Alexa ran through the heather in the morning, she looked not altogether unlike a peasant; her shoes were strong, her dress was short; but now she came and went in a soft-colored gown, neither ill-made nor unbecoming. She did not seem to belong to what is called society, but she looked dignified, at times almost stately, with an expression of superiority, not strong enough to make her handsome face unpleasing. It resembled her father’s, but, for a woman’s, was cast in a larger mold.

The day crept on. The invalid was feverish. His nurse obeyed the doctor minutely, to a single drop. She had her tea brought her, but when the supper hour arrived went to join her father in the kitchen.