Mrs. Dorriman Volume I Part 5

A cold-water douche would hardly have been a greater shock to her.

"I meant I wanted to be useful here."

"Oh! You wanted to be useful. In what way?"

Poor Grace!

"I thought you would like me to order dinner, and--look after things."

"Have you had any experience? I thought you had always been at school.

Did you order the dinners there?"

There was something almost insolent in his tone, and Grace through all the thick skin of her self-love, which generally prevented her seeing or feeling any intended slight, winced.

She rallied her courage, however, and said, "As we are with you and it is usual for a lady to be the mistress of the house, I thought...."

John Sandford threw himself back in his chair and laughed out loud. He was immensely tickled by this girl's a.s.sumption. His sense of humour--rarely touched--was reached by it; the situation seemed to him to have all the elements of the ridiculous in it, and his laugh was an unaccustomed and noisy laugh--under no control. An angry flush rose on Grace's face, Margaret saw it, and, as usual, threw herself into the breach--

"Grace only meant to do what she thought was her duty," she said bravely, "and it is unkind of you to treat her so--and, my dear Grace don't mind," and she rose and threw her arms round her.

"You are right, my girl," said Mr. Sandford, looking at her with increased respect. "It's a pity your sister does not take a leaf out of your book. 'Those who don't walk on tiptoes need never come down on their heels,' a homely saying but a true one;" then turning to Grace, against whom he felt no softening influence, he said drily, "I am obliged to you for offering to make yourself the mistress of my house, and of not wis.h.i.+ng to eat the bread of idleness, and all the rest of it.

It all sounds very fine, but if I wanted a mistress--which I do not, being provided with one already--I should not choose an inexperienced girl under twenty, for the post. However, I have to tell you it is not necessary. My sister, Mrs. Dorriman, comes to-morrow, to be the mistress of this house; without her or some one like her, I could not have asked you here; and when she comes, it is my wish that you look up to her and obey her in all things."

Here was a thunder-clap. The girls looked at each other in dismay. His sister! she would then be a feminine edition of himself! All the poor children's dreams of having their time to themselves, and of being to all intents and purposes free, fell to the ground; the shock made Grace silent and Margaret's eyes filled with tears.

"I hope you quite understand," Mr. Sandford said roughly, pleased by the effect he had produced, "I have not reached my time of life to be worried and troubled by female rows and disturbances--and, if you cannot make up your mind to swallow your pride and knock under, you will have to find out some other way of eating bread, whether of idleness or the reverse."

With the scowl that clouded his face whenever he was angry he looked at Grace, resolutely keeping his face away from Margaret, whose glance had a strange influence over him, and, pus.h.i.+ng back his chair, he rose and walked out of the room.

Grace rose also. She was pale and defiant, not in the mood to tolerate even Margaret's caresses, she went to their own room; and, chilly though it was, she threw open the window, feeling as though she was suffocating. For the first time in all her life she had been spoken to rudely and insolently, and made to feel her dependence. Fate was indeed cruel: why was she left to the mercy of the world and Mr. Sandford? She would not stay with him--to be bullied and hectored and ordered about by him and his sister. She would go--but where?

The spasm of pain, of rage, and of indignation, surged through her--for the first time in all her life her vanity and her self-love had been sorely wounded. She was suffering acutely, and just at that moment when she was railing against her fate and every one connected with it a letter from her old school-mistress was put into her hands. She read it and shrank as she did so, the fond words in which so much affectionate flattery was mixed, struck her almost as though written in mockery, she was not to allow her present life of splendour to make her idle: she had such great gifts, she was to use them; she was not to allow vanity about her personal appearance to disfigure her mind; though queen-like in appearance she was to walk humbly, &c. &c.

She sat down, staring at her surroundings. What splendour was there in the four-post bed with its moreen curtains and the hideous carpet which was the exact opposite of all she had been taught to like? She did not pursue the thought, and it never dawned upon her that her great gifts and her queen-like grace were equally untrue. She accepted everything, and no one can blame her for so doing, but no greater cruelty could have been done her than the false standard and over-estimation of herself given her, so completely enshrouding her, that one day the awakening would be terrible to her.

Her sister's innocent pleasure over the letter and the hearty way in which she endorsed the flattery, made her once more a comfort to her, and once again she turned towards her and spoke.

"What are we to do about this woman, this sister, this Mrs. Dorriman, Madge?"

Margaret laughed softly.

"You will get the better of them all in time," she said; "you make every one do as you like; every one admires you so much; you are so clever, darling, and so beautiful. I am quite sure you will marry a duke."

Grace smiled; she was beginning to forget the wound she had received, and her sister's consolations were very sweet to her. She went to bathe her face and said, laughingly,

"Unfortunately no dukes are in sight here; and Margaret," she said suddenly, with a little shudder, "I feel as if in this dreary place no one will ever come."

"That is nonsense, darling," Margaret said quietly; "the prince always comes just when great distress is there, just when the princess needs him."

A turn in the cabbage-garden, revealed a few coloured leaves and some late flowers mixed with the "useful" vegetables; these were better than nothing, and the girls gathered them and then went through the town, attracting, of course, a good deal of attention in that out-of-the-way place, where few gentry ever came.

Grace went home not altogether unhappy. One or two clerks and several of the shop people had followed her and her sister with admiring glances, and, in the absence of all else, this was acceptable.

She returned to the house in good-humour, and walked more daintily than ever, meeting Mr. Sandford at the front door. He had come home earlier than usual to receive his sister. He was satisfied to see she was not sulky; if she had been he had made up his mind to put it down, and her too, at once.

Grace was, however, soon in her own room, getting ready for the encounter she dreaded. From the first Mrs. Dorriman should be taught the place she was to have; outwardly she might be mistress, order dinner, and keep the servants in their places, but, as regarded interference with her and Margaret, it was not to be, and she was thirsting to make this evident to her and settle it all at once.

As usual she was rehearsing the words and the manner in which she should speak when Mr. Sandford called her. He had his own notion of what was respectful to his sister, and before she had time to make a stand or say a word she had intended to say he was hurrying her downstairs with no very gentle grip upon her arm, having made up his mind that, as the proper thing to do was to go downstairs to the front door to receive Mrs. Dorriman, there she should go.

The carriage was not in sight even, but he had seen the train come in; and as Grace, standing beside him at the open hall-door, felt the cold wind blowing in upon her, she added this to the other wrongs, and almost hated him.

CHAPTER IV.

The last afternoon of her stay at Inchbrae had come. Mrs. Dorriman, under the impression she was working very hard, carried several things upstairs that ought to have remained down, and wandered about helplessly, a terrible sense of having an enormous deal to do and to arrange pressing upon her; mixed with that ever constant and depressing feeling which distinguished her, of not being up to the mark. Can anything be more dreadful than a consciousness that strength is _not_ there whatever "the day" may be? and is it not as much a sin to crush and murder a spirit as to destroy a body? and her spirit had been crushed. She sat down upstairs in the favourite corner from where she could see the river rus.h.i.+ng into the sea; she took her Bible from a hope of finding comfort--but her spirits were so fluttered that she read the words without taking in their sense.

The river suggested to her, as it does to all--the resistlessness of fate--she was inexpressibly affected by this new and terrible disappointment. After having known so little happiness she had got into so quiet a haven; and once more, after feeling safe and happy, she was dragged out into the rough waves of life to commence a battle again. It crossed her mind that there might be some appeal--some one might help her to avert this; she was a widow and no longer a girl; how was it that she was so much in her brother's hands? Could Mr. Macfarlane not unravel it. She had a secret dread giving up her husband's papers--perhaps something might be found in them that might harm his memory, and since his death she thought so much more tenderly of him, and remembered him with so much more affection than she had done during his life, in spite of her contempt for his abilities.

But still she blamed him for not having kept her safe out of this position of dependence which had been her great hope when she had married him. She forgave him now his want of success, but that--it was so hard and it was so unfair to her.

She was deep in these thoughts when she was roused by the crunching of the gravel under her window, and she went down to the room looking so bare and desolate, stripped of its flowers, its quaint bits of china, of everything that made it homelike--to receive Mr. and Mrs. Macfarlane.

Mrs. Macfarlane was a cheerful and a pleasant woman, but was much too warm-hearted to be overpoweringly and oppressively cheerful when it would have been hard for another to respond. She had the tact of a kind-hearted woman, which is a much more reliable thing than the tact acquired from the constant friction of society.

In a few moments they were all three having tea, the fire was making up for other deficiencies, and, though Jean made an apology about the best cups, no one had thought of anything as missing. Mrs. Dorriman had been very greatly troubled about the papers; she herself had never dared to go into them thoroughly as we know--she was afraid of seeing something in those records that might distress her, about her husband. But for this dread, she felt sometimes curious to know how these papers affected her brother, and she did not know what to do about them. She did not dare take them with her because she knew that if she did her brother would soon make himself master of them; she could not lock them up as the place was sold, and when she thought of that she always had a lump in her throat.

All the time she was drinking her tea she was wondering what to do, and longing to consult Mr. Macfarlane about it, kept back by her overpowering timidity.

He himself came to the rescue: he asked her if she wished to leave anything behind, and said he and his wife would be glad to take charge of anything for her.

He was quite astonished at her grat.i.tude, which seemed so far beyond the slight service he offered her. She thanked him with tears in her eyes--there was some china and----

Mrs. Macfarlane's shrewd eyes saw that in some way this offer meant more than appeared, and she rose with Mrs. Dorriman to go and see how much room the things would take, and how best to take them over.

Mrs. Dorriman stood before the boxes holding the household treasures, her colour coming and going, and her evident hesitation and uncertainty quite pitiable to see. Her friend looked at her in amazement--she saw tears standing in her eyes, and she laid her hand softly upon hers, and said, "It is all very painful for you, you will feel better when it is over."

"It is all pain--it is not that----" and poor Mrs. Dorriman's tears overflowed. Then, as the sound of Mr. Macfarlane's carriage announcing her impending departure struck her ear, she stooped suddenly and drew out a box which she was unable to lift, and she said in an agitated whisper, "I do not know what they are, or what secrets they hold, I am afraid of looking--my brother wants those papers--Mrs. Macfarlane they were my husband's, they are mine. You will never give them up?"

"I will never give them up, save at your own expressed wish."

"It is safer for my brother not to know that you have them. He is not sure they exist, but he is very anxious--so anxious to find them that I know they are of consequence to him."

"But, dear Mrs. Dorriman, why not look through them? An evil guessed at, is worse than one confronted."

"You do not know--I am afraid. No! I cannot look at them--a day may come--Mrs. Macfarlane, if you knew all. In looking I may do my husband injury. I cannot do it--I have not courage."