THERE WAS WHILES some pain to me in the questions Mrs. Elphinstone asked; doubtless she had been long away, and knew not the turn divers things had taken, nor how the naming of a name could cause a sore stound; but, for all that, there was a measure of pleasantness in that first night. It was also a relief, when I did show a hesitation, that she was content to let it pass, and did not, like some dull folk I have seen, need to have it all summered and wintered to her.
It was not to be expected, even though we had many bye-past things to speak about, that I could be so long in the company of anybody, far less an old friend like Mrs. Elphinstone, without speaking of my bairn, Grace; but as she had lived all her widowhood in foreign lands, she did not know about Grace’s aunt, and, indeed, I hardly expected she would.
“There was a Maitland,” she said, to me, “whom I remember seeing the first summer of my married life, a cadet of a good family, proud, dashing, and penniless, and a fortune-hunter moreover. I heard afterwards that he had married a Miss Hunter, of — I forget the name of the place; but she was an heiress, rather inferior to him in rank, and in every other way very much above him. According to the established wont in such cases, the handsome, dashing husband broke the poor wife’s heart — at least got the credit of doing so. I recollect her perfectly. She was quite a girl when I saw her, with a very thoughtful and pale face, and fine eyes. Poor thing! she did not live long.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Elphinstone,” said I, “if you had been describing my dear bairn herself, you could not have done it in better words; but my Grace’s eyes are like floods — I never saw the like of them.”
“She might have a daughter,” said Mrs. Elphinstone. “I have an idea that Miss Hunter’s name was Grace, too, but it is so long ago. What did you say about an aunt?”
“My bairn is dwelling at this time with her aunt,” said I, “a high lady, in Edinburgh, whose name is Mrs. Lennox. I would like well to hear about her from some other hand, for Grace is yearning for her old home, and maybe does not judge right, being but a young thing yet.”
“Lennox,” said Mrs. Elphinstone, with a considering look. “I do not recollect the name. Maitland had a haughty sister, I recollect, who married somebody. Really, Miss Maitland, I think it is very likely that your ward is a daughter of my old acquaintance, Miss Hunter. If I could only remember the name of her place.”
“Was it Oakenshaw, think you?” said I.
“Oakenshaw. Perhaps that may he it,” said Mrs. Elphinstone. “Oakenshaw — yes, to be sure, that is it. So that is proof positive. I am sorry you could not have delayed her departure for a week longer, Miss Maitland. I should have liked much to see my old friend’s child.”
“Miss Maitland and you are most ingenious reasoners, mother,” said Mr. Allan, who had been sitting by the fireside in a meditative way, taking no heed of our converse, as I thought; “Miss Maitland’s ward is a Maitland, and will perhaps have an estate; you knew a Maitland who married an heiress, ergo, the young lady is the daughter of your friend — most ingenious; our old friend the Professor, System-Gebälk, could hardly have done better.”
“We will not make you the judge, Allan,” said his mother, smiling, “however superior your logic might be. I have a very confident persuasion that we are right, Miss Maitland, and that your ward is indeed Miss Hunter’s child.”
“And so have I,” said I, “and a dear bairn she is, Mrs. Elphinstone; it grieves me that you have not seen her. Even my own nearest kin, my brother’s bairns, are scarcely as dear to me as Grace.”
Mr. Allan gave me a look with that, as if he would have said something in his laughing, saucy way, but then he seemed to mind himself, and so turned about to his mother.
“Is it your will, madam, that I should make an invasion to-morrow of the peaceful domain of Pasturelands, take the Manse by storm, and beg of our good minister and Mrs. Maitland to honour Lilliesleaf with a visit.”
“Do, Allan,” said Mrs. Elphinstone. “I am five years younger to-night with the company of my old friend,” and she looked with a pleased-like face to me—” but you hope to have your own share of benefit from the invasion of Pasturelands Manse, I suppose.”
Mr. Allan turned his face round to me, and there was the red mounting higher and higher up, till it was at his hair.
“Oh, I should like — like exceedingly to know — Mr. Maitland,” he got out, with some stammering.
Truly it was out of my power to think what the lad could mean.
“And Mr. Maitland’s son,” said his mother. “Confess now, Allan, that it is the prospective acquaintance of the young gentleman that quickens your zeal.”
The red ran down, and settled naturally in the young man’s cheeks.
“Oh, I confess,” he said, looking at his mother like a bairn that had escaped the tawse, “I have a particular interest in Mr.
Claud, and regret his absence exceedingly. Does he fish, Miss Maitland? or shoot? or which of all these rustic and manly amusements is it, that Mr. Claud does especially patronize? Tell me, that I may be prepared for him.”
“Bless me, Mr. Allan,” said I, “the youth, my nephew Claud, is a divinity student in his last year, and if he’s spared for another twelvemonth, it’s my hope to see him a licentiate of the kirk, preaching the Word. Fishing and hunting, and the like, are no for him.”
Mr. Allan gave a kind of shame-faced look at me, but for all that he smiled.
“Angling, surely, is not unclerical, Miss Maitland,” he said, “that most patient and contemplative of all pursuits. However, Mr. Claud Maitland and I will surely be able to fall upon something in which we shall have entire fellowship. You will not warn him to avoid me as a dangerous companion, Miss Maitland? nor frown upon our intimacy that is to be?”
“No, truly, Mr. Allan,” said I, “I think not that I am given to setting my face against right pleasantness.”
Mr. Allan smiled, and seeing he had some orders to give to his folk, it was not long till he went his way out of the room.
“Do you think I have spoiled my son, Miss Maitland?” said his mother to me, as we both looked after him. “My Allan has been everything to me, nurse and companion, pupil and friend. Mine would have been a dreary life, if Allan had not been just what he is.”
“I doubt it not,” said I, “seeing I myself know what it is to watch the upgrowing of pleasant bairns. It’s my hope that Mr.
Allan will grow to be a pillar of strength in the house of his fathers.”
Mrs. Elphinstone raised herself upon her chair and drew near to me, and then she turned up what I may call an old past leaf out of her history and mine, which, being private and particular to ourselves, it needs not to mention here.
I said a word, that night, to Mr. Allan respecting Grace’s letter, which was very like to come upon the next day; so early in the morning he had a man and horse sent to Sunnyside, with no other errand than to get it, which was very kind of him. So when the man came back, there was a letter from my bairn, which I will just put in. —
“My dear Aunt.
“Mary tells me you are away to Lilliesleaf; nevertheless, as I think you are not likely to stay long from home, I will still send my report to Sunnyside. The said report has one incident in it this time, which may make it the more worth sending, and that incident is the long expected visit of Claud.
“The day after I wrote last, I happened to be entrusted with some message to my aunt, who, during the morning, enshrines herself in a grim library, where hangs a portrait of her dead husband, and sundry of his fathers, and which is consecrated by her to business and letter-writing.
“This library is on the ground-floor, and opens into what, in little houses, we would call the lobby, and in great houses, the hall. I had just got my errand done and shut the library door, when I heard the sound of my own name, repeated in the saucy footman’s sauciest voice to some one at the outer door: “Miss Maitland is not at home.” The person without made some inquiry, I did not hear what, and the falsehood was repeated. I immediately went forward and contradicted it, and Claud was admitted, to the great amazement apparently of the saucy footman, who did not, however, dare to disobey me. So Claud and I went into the first room we came to — a little waiting parlour, for humble visitors — and were in the middle of a most interesting conversation about ourselves and you, when in upon us, armed with her most severe brow and most frigid stateliness, came my terrible aunt.
“She looked at Claud, and then she looked at me, and we not knowing what to do, rose both of us and looked at her.
“‘I was not aware, Miss Maitland,’ she said, ‘that you had any friends in Edinburgh.’
“I said, as calmly as I could, that I had none but Claud, and told her who he was.
‘“Mr. Claud Maitland is aware, I presume,’ said Mrs. Lennox, ‘that your father and myself have seen it necessary to remove you from the charge, or guardianship, as you are pleased to call it, of his relative.’
“I bowed, not daring to trust my voice.
“‘My own daughters,’ Mrs. Lennox continued, ‘are not wont to receive visits from gentlemen without my express sanction. I cannot for a moment think of permitting you, whose demeanour I can scarcely say is regulated by the same high sense of delicacy and propriety as theirs, to do so.’
“You may think, aunt, whether this was easily borne or no. But I did not want to prolong these disagreeables for Claud: so I bade him go away, and when we had shaken hands, he obeyed me. Perhaps, We may never see each other again; but my aunt was watching me, so I put force on myself and was calm.
“‘Miss Maitland,’ said Mrs. Lennox, when Claud was fairly gone, ‘I am sorry for my own sake to be compelled to say that I have seen few young ladies who had so little sense of delicacy or decorum.’
“‘You have told me that before, madam,’ I said.
“‘And, therefore, I presume,’ said Mrs. Lennox, ‘you do not think it necessary that I should tell you again. You are mistaken, Miss Maitland: you seem to have entirely misapprehended the person whom you have to deal with. Depend upon it, no romantic pretences shall impose upon me.’
‘“You have no right, madam,’ I said, ‘to imagine for a moment that I or my friend should have the remotest intention of imposing upon you, and I would very fain know what purpose is to be served by restraining me thus.’
“Mrs. Lennox changed colour, with rage, I suppose.
“‘Go to your room, Miss Maitland,’ she said, ‘I am not accustomed to such altercations as this. Go to your room, young lady, and study, if it be possible, to acquire something more of feminine feeling and deportment.’”
“Aunt, am I unfeminine? It seems to me that you should be as clear-sighted as Mrs. Lennox; and such an imputation is very hard to bear. In those gentle rebukes of yours, dear aunt, which followed my misdemeanours of old, I remember the word, ‘unwomanly,’ but it was used as a bugbear, rather than a reproach; a fearful thing to be avoided, and not an error committed. Am I unwomanly, after all?
“On Sabbath morning, finding that Mrs. Lennox and her daughter gave no sign of going to church, I got Jessie to go with me, and went out without asking leave, thinking it better to go without my aunt’s permission than against her will; and the walk to church was so exhilarating, that I almost forgot my troubles. There were so many people in the streets — so many groups of families, brothers and sisters belonging to one another, belonging to the grave mothers and fathers at their head, while poor I belonged to nobody, that I was both saddened and comforted, saddened for my present self, comforted with the thought of home. These grave cheerful church-going people — I wonder how I resisted my inclination to speak to some of them, they were all so like friends.
“I got Jessie to guide me to Dr. C’s church, partly for his own fame, and partly because he was Mr. Maitland’s friend. The great Doctor is a little thin, small man, with that look of melancholy, and almost pain, in his face, which you see often in those who are deformed; deformed, however, he is not, and before long, one could see that these nervous arms, tugging at the cushion, with the velvet clutched in their thin long fingers, were the arms of a giant. There was something grand, too, in seeing the one mind swelling within its slight physical covering (for I never saw a man with whom the idea of being merely clothed with a body, could be so easily realized), and reigning over all around it.
“When the service was over, and we were going away, we encountered in the passage a lady, whose glance I had met several times in the church. An alert, decided, business-like person, who stopped us suddenly, asked if my name was Maitland.
“I daresay you have guessed already who she was — your old friend, and my conductor to Sunnyside, Mrs. Standright. She said a great deal to me, and would have said more, but that I was uneasy and impatient to get away, (rebellion, against lawful authority, being still so far from habitual, that my conscience remonstrates loudly), which, when she perceived, she kindly let me go, asking me to come and see her, which I shall endeavour to do. It is so great a comfort to hear a kind voice.
“When we got home I had the misfortune to meet my aunt on my way to my own room, and encountered another storm — but I am getting used to them. I am very glad that you have got friends at Lilliesleaf. How does the great dull house look when it is inhabited? Write to me, dear aunt, yourself, as large a letter as you possibly can, and do not let either Mrs. Elphinstone or her son displace me.
“Yours affectionately, “GRACE MAITLAND.”
Truly I was troubled in my spirit for my dear bairn, and also for the young man, my nephew Claud, seeing he was not like to be well pleased with the manner in which he had been dealt with; for, though maybe I should not say it, we were a family of good lineage, and as well thought of, and also of as long standing in the countryside, as many richer folk; and, truly I saw not any cause why a bairn of our house should put up with such affronts. But woes me! for my dear bairn Grace, who was dwelling so among the fremd, and parted from all her friends, truly my heart was troubled, and sore within me. Nevertheless, I thought it was in no manner needful to speak of it to Mrs. Elphinstone, seeing that it was not pleasant for ourselves, and she was not altogether, in my thinking, what she had once been.
So when I came out of the seat at the window, where I had been reading the letter of my bairn, Mr. Allan was just going upon his journey to Pasturdands, so I got him to take it over with him to Mary, my niece, the which he did blythely.
“How is your ward, Miss Maitland?” said Mrs. Elphinstone to me, when we were sitting looking after the pleasant young man riding upon his gray horse down through the long avenue.
“Well enough in health, Mrs. Elphinstone,” said I, “but troubled in spirit, seeing that though she is dwelling among her kin, they are but strangers to her.”
“If her aunt is Charles Maitland’s sister,” said Mrs. Elphinstone, “I am afraid a girl, such as you describe, will have very little sympathy with her. She was always frigid.”
“And that is just what Grace thinks,” said I. “There is my nephew Claud, Mrs. Elphinstone,” (I forgot that I did not intend to mention that story, but indeed I just began to speak about it unwittingly): “Grace and him were bairns together, and Claud is now in Edinburgh; so, as was to be expected, he went to see her, and Mrs. Lennox came in, and would not hear of the two getting so much as a word together. Doubtless, he is a young man, and there might be an objection in regard to that; but it was ill done when she had to deal with the like of Grace.”
“It was not judicious,” said Mrs. Elphinstone; “but these very words, ‘young man’, give her a sort of excuse. There are some people who have a terror of young people being together; very foolish, I think. I daresay I am as solicitous about Allan as any mother could be, and would like as ill that he should make any mesalliance; yet, nevertheless, I would trust him without fear in the company of as many young ladies as the county can boast of. I am by no means nervous.”
I had a drither within myself when Mrs. Elphinstone said that. She would not have spoken in that tone when I first knew her.
“How old is your nephew, Miss Maitland?” she said to me again.
“He is one and twenty past, Mrs. Elphinstone,” said I. “You will mind my brother the minister at his years, and truly, Claud is his very picture.”
Mrs. Elphinstone smiled.
“It is hardly to be wondered at then, Miss Maitland,” she said, “that Mrs. Lennox should be chary of giving him much access to her niece. The Claud Maitland of my young days would scarcely, perhaps, have been a safe intimate for a young lady. But your niece, Miss Maitland, who does she resemble? Is she like you?”
“Oh, no!” said I. “Mary is like her mother. Doubtless there may be a glint of the Maitland look in the bairn, which Mary, my sister, wants; but, for all that, I doubt not you would have known her for Mary Elder’s bairn, wherever you had seen her.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Elphinstone, and then she abode quiet for a space, and so did I.
“I think you said your nephew had nearly finished his studies,” she said awhile after.
“Claud is in his last year,” said I, “and has spent his time to profit, so far as we can hear.”
“And — I am an old friend you know, Miss Maitland, you will excuse me speaking so freely,” said Mrs. Elphinstone— “what are Mr. Claud’s prospects when he has received license?”
I felt a kind of flush and heat come over my face, though I am sure I had no call to show any pride at a question like that.
“It is but a troublous time,” said I, “for a young man beginning his warfare. My brother Claud had an old promise from the Earl, of a parish for his son — that was in the lawful way of putting him on the leet — but you may not have heard, Mrs. Elphinstone, being away in foreign countries so long, that there are divisions in the Kirk, and as the minister, my brother, is opposed in his principles to the folk the Earl most iodines to, it is but uncertain whether his promise will be redeemed or no.”
“I have heard of some controversy,” said Mrs. Elphinstone, “but I have paid little attention to it, and, to tell the truth, have no great understanding of the points disputed. There is the parish of Langheads, you know, of which we have the patronage, but it is filled up, and I really do not know whether the incumbent is old or young — very young he cannot be, and in case of any vacancy—”
“Bless me! Mrs. Elphinstone,” said I, “Mr. Upwright, of Langheads, is a man in his prime, and a better minister there is not in the whole country-side.”
“Indeed! I was not aware of that,” said Mrs. Elphinstone, in a kind of dry way; “I was just about to say, Miss Maitland, that I should be glad to serve your nephew, and so, I am sure, would my son.”
I thanked her, and our converse after that was stayed for a while. Truly I had little comfort in the manner of her discourse, both touching the controversy in the Kirk (as if the peace of Jerusalem and the spread of the pure Word were light things!) and the way she spoke of the seat in which sat a living man — and him a most godly and faithful minister — as if the preaching of the Word was a matter of merchandise, or a mere carnal handicraft, whereby men might win the bread that perisheth. And I was thereby led to an exercise, within my own mind, that knowledge, and light, and peace might come to her, seeing she had been wandering upon the face of the earth for twenty weary years, seeking rest and finding none.
I saw that the young man, Allan, her one son, was just an idol to her, and truly I trembled within myself, lest the Giver should take His good gift away, because it was set in His own place; and earnestly did I wish that, if it was His will, she might be drawn by His loving kindness and long suffering, and no by the sore stroke of His uplifted and Almighty hand.