Mrs. Dorriman Volume Iii Part 7

"Well then a smaller one must do," said Grace calmly; "but she must know everybody, heaps of people and all that--she must be in the swim you know."

"But I do not know," said Lady Lyons. "In the swim! What do you mean? I have not the faintest idea."

"Oh, Paul will know."

(It had already come to this: she called him Paul! Lady Lyons was extremely displeased.)

"My son, whom you call 'Paul,'" she said, stiffly, "what can he do? He is but young."

"Oh, he knows the world a little though he is young; of course I call him Paul."

"He does know the world," said the irritated mother, "I hope he knows the world too well to be a victim to any one who is not ... in a position I should like."

"You are quite wrong, dear Lady Lyons; being a man of the world, and knowing the world a little, are two very different things, and no one can call Paul a man, he is so very young; that was what I said to him only the other day. And about a position you would like, you mean your son must marry for money. Now, I have too good an opinion of Paul to believe it--and no one worth his salt will choose only to please his mother."

"I am so unaccustomed to hear such ... unfeminine sentiments," and the irate Lady Lyons rose to go.

"It is very good for every one to hear several sides to any question,"

said Grace, rising also; "I hope I have not offended you, Lady Lyons; but you know I am one of the people who never can help speaking the truth upon all occasions--more especially when it suits me," she added to herself.

"You have not offended me at all," answered Lady Lyons, very much ruffled; "the opinion of a young lady who does not know the world has not so much weight as you think."

"Now, you want to be disagreeable," said Grace, laughing, "and you need not try. When I was in a sc.r.a.pe at school, which was very seldom, the good people did not know what to do, because scolding I never minded a bit, and hard sayings never hit me, so you see I am a hopeless character--but for Margaret, perhaps, no one would ever speak to me. She is very different."

"Yes, she is very different. I think she must be curiously different. Do you never vex her, Miss Rivers? Have you never wounded her sensibilities?"

The quick colour, even tears, came suddenly into Grace's usually tearless eyes. She tried hard to hide them, but Lady Lyons saw them, and they melted her a little. "Ah!" she said, "Yes. Well, a sincere and warm affection for your sister may bring out your good qualities."

"Thank you," said Grace, demurely, rapidly regaining her usual spirits.

And when Lady Lyons went away she carried with her a most confused impression of the girl who had made fun of her at one moment and shown very bad taste in talking about Paul with so much familiarity, and the next betrayed very deep feeling for her sister.

Lady Lyons was one of the many people in the world who forget that, though the influence of civilization has a levelling effect, underneath are many varieties of character, and that the most ordinary is a complex one, not wholly good or wholly bad, but partaking of both.

In a different way there was another person who had at first given fullest sympathy to Margaret's desolation, and yet who also now felt that she was becoming morbid in her grief, and who wished to see her rousing herself from it.

This was Jean.

With all the depth of a nature both intense and pa.s.sionate she had felt the death of the little child for her, as she had felt all the horrors she had gone through.

But now she saw that Margaret was nursing and indulging her sorrow, and she was anxious to wean her from its perpetual contemplation, conscious, through the fine natural instinct that belonged to her, that if the habit of solitude, of mourning, and of shrinking from all companions.h.i.+p, was once formed, it would be far more difficult to break through it afterwards.

The visits to the little grave, where each flower was laid and watered with tears, must be used to turn her thoughts to living children in great need of a share of her sympathy and of her help.

With her Bible in her hand, and a hearty prayer in her heart, the faithful old woman accompanied Margaret, as she had often done before, to the little corner, where the poor young mother wept and meditated, recalling every broken lisping word, so dear to her, and losing herself in fond remembrance of her lost darling.

"My bairn," said Jean, when the fresh flowers had been laid down, and Margaret stood like a frail shadow in her long black robes, "have you ever thought how much money you have now in your hands to spend?"

"Oh! do not speak of it here," said Margaret, shocked and distressed.

"Why should I not speak of it here?" said Jean, stoutly; "it is here that I want to show you that you should do something with it."

"I shall never claim it, never spend it!" exclaimed Margaret, twining her thin white fingers round the little marble cross close to her.

"But you must do both," said Jean, emphatically. "You must claim the money, and spend the money. You must spend it, my dear, for the glory of G.o.d, and to give help."

"How? Tell me how can I?"

"You never can, if you do not look further than to a few feet of green turf, and allow nothing else to fill your mind. Look round you, my bairn; see where others suffer. You mourn most because you think that if help had come your child might have lived."

"It might," murmured Margaret, in a suffocated voice.

"And, if you think that, there are hundreds and thousands of children who die because they cannot get the help you might give them, having the means."

"What do you mean, Jean?" and Margaret was startled into momentary forgetfulness.

"Oh, my bairn! you have but to walk in the streets of the Great Babylon and see the poor little things; but go out of the streets; go into the byways; leave the highways alone and see for yourself. When I lost my way the day I took a letter from you to the bank I saw a sight that set my heart aching; and, as I saw all the filth and misery, I took comfort to myself, and said, 'My young lady is rich, and she will do something for these little ones.'"

"But anything I could do would be such a drop in the ocean."

"And is the ocean not made up of drops? We can all do but little--but must we not see we do that little?"

"How can I begin?"

"I am a poor ignorant body, but I would go to some doctor and say--'I do not want this money, but I want to help children, for the sake of a little child I loved and lost myself."

Margaret's tears were falling, but they were not tears of bitterness.

Jean had touched a right chord. With the possibility of doing something, an incentive for action given, came a glow of warmer feeling for humanity. The selfishness of her sorrow grew less, and, as she once again knelt in prayer beside the flower-covered grave, she did not pray for herself only, for that meeting she longed for, but she prayed also for others, and rose up filled with a sincere hope that she might be a comfort and help to them in the future.

She walked quietly and silently by Jean's side. No more pa.s.sed between them; but when they reached home she stopped in the hall, and, putting her arms round Jean's ample shoulders, she kissed her heartily.

Full of her new resolve, Grace's mood jarred not a little upon Margaret; but she meant honestly to try for less selfishness. She had owned to herself she was selfish, and she bravely tried to turn her whole attention to her sister's enthusiastic account of no less an important matter than a brown velvet dress, which had completely taken possession of her imagination.

"How long do you want me to wear this, darling?" she asked, with an air as though, however repugnant to her own feelings, she was prepared to make a sacrifice on her sister's account.

A little while ago, only a few hours ago, how poor Margaret would have shrunk from such a question? Now it was with a fond touch on Grace's shoulder that she said, softly,

"I have been selfish, dear. I have expected you to mourn with me; you have no memory of my child. No, do not wear the semblance of a sorrow you cannot feel."

"You are a darling, Margaret. Then I may have the velvet?"

"Is it very costly?" asked Margaret, trying hard to enter entirely into the interests of the moment with Grace.

"Not for _you_ to give me," said Grace, as she twirled round the room, enchanted at this first grand success of her newly-formed resolution.

Margaret looked at her in surprise.

"You talk as though you expected me to use ... his money for you and for myself."

"Good gracious, Margaret, you are surely not going to be ridiculous about it! And I wanted you to do so many things for me. I had set my heart upon going to London and upon having nice things; you are too bad!" and Grace, whose hopes were so suddenly dashed to the ground, burst out crying.