Girlhood and Womanhood<br />The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes, Sarah Tytler [books for men to read TXT] 📗

220]vants to whom she was accustomed, condescending to her youth and ignorance, and with a courtesy the nearest to high-breeding she had ever met. She was glad to see Hector Garret, even if he did not bring a breath of the country with him. She parted from him with a sense of loss—a passing sadness that hung upon her for an hour or two, like the vapour on the river, which misses the green boughs and waving woods, and sighs sluggishly past wharfs and warehouses.

It was a still greater surprise to Leslie when Hector Garret came again the next evening. He had never been with them on two successive days before. She supposed he had gone back to Ayrshire, although he had not distinctly referred to his speedy return. But he was here, and Leslie entertained him as usual.

"Should you not like to see Ferndean?" inquired Hector Garret.

"Don't speak of it," Leslie cautioned him, soberly; "it would be far too great happiness for this world."

"Why, what sort of dismal place do you think the world?"

"Too good a place for you and me," Leslie answered evasively, and with a touch of fun.

"But this is the very season for Ferndean and Otter, when the pasture is gay as a garden, and you can have boating every day in the creeks, more sheltered than the moorland lochs."

The tears came into Leslie's eyes.

"I think it is unkind of you, Mr. Garret, to tempt me with such pictures," she answered, half pettishly.

[Page 221]"I mean to be kind," he responded quickly. "I may err, but I can take refuge in my intentions. You may see Ferndean and Otter, if you can consent to go there, and dwell there as a grave man's friend and wife."

Leslie started violently, and the blood rushed over her face.

"I beg your pardon, Sir, but you don't mean it?"

"I do mean it, Leslie, as being the best for both of us; and I ask you plainly and directly to marry me: if you agree, I hope and trust that you will never regret it."

Leslie trembled very much. She said afterwards that she pinched her arm to satisfy herself that she was awake, but she was not quite overcome.

"I was never addressed so before. I do not know what to say. You are very good, but I am not fit."

He interrupted her—not with vows and protestations, but resolutely and convincingly.

"I am the best judge of your fitness,—but you must judge for yourself also. I am certain of your father's and mother's acquiescence, so I do not mention them. But do not hurry; take time, consult your own heart; consider the whole matter. I will not press for your decision. I will wait days, weeks. I will go down to Otter in the meantime, if you prefer it. But if you do say yes, remember, dear Leslie, you confer upon me the greatest boon that a woman can bestow on a man, and I think I am capable of appreciating it."

He spoke with singular impartiality, but without reassuring his hearer. Leslie looked helplessly up to him, excited and distressed.

[Page 222]He smiled a little, and sighed a brief sigh.

"You are not satisfied. You are too candid and generous. You wish me to take my refusal at once. You feel that I am too old, too dull to presume—"

"Oh, no, no," Leslie exclaimed, seeing herself convicted of terrible selfishness and conceit, while her heart was throbbing even painfully with humility and gratitude. "You have done me a great honour, and if you would not be disappointed—if you would bear with me—if you are not deceiving yourself in your nobleness—I should be so happy to go to Ferndean."

He thanked her eloquently, and talked to her a little longer, kindly and affectionately, and then he offered to seek her father; and left her to her agitated reflections. What a fine, dignified man he looked! Could it be possible that this was her lot in life? And the very sun which had risen upon her planning a walk with Mary Elliot next week, was yet streaming upon her poor pots of geraniums on the dusty window-sill. She quitted her seat, and began to walk quickly up and down.

"Leslie, you are shaking the room." Mamma had been in the further window with her sewing all the time.

Leslie stole behind the brown window-curtain, fluttering her hand among the folds.

"Leslie, you are pulling that curtain awry."

"I cannot help it, mamma."

"Why not, child? Are you ill?"

"Yes—no, mamma. I don't know what to think—I can't think. But Hector Garret has asked me to be his wife."

[Page 223]Mrs. Bower's needle dropped from her fingers. She stared at her daughter. She rose slowly.

"Impossible, Leslie," she observed.

Leslie laughed hysterically.

"Yes, indeed. It was very strange, but I heard every word."

"Are you certain you are not mistaken?"

Mrs. Bower had never so cross-examined her daughter in her life; but Leslie was not disturbed or vexed by her incredulity.

"Quite certain. I know it was only yesterday that you scolded me for taking liberties with his name; but he was perfectly serious, and he has gone to tell papa."

Mrs. Bower gazed wistfully on Leslie, and a faint red colour rose in her cheek, while she interlaced her fingers nervously.

"Leslie," she asked again, in a shaking voice, "do you know what you are doing?"

Leslie looked frightened.

"Is it so very terrible, mamma? I should possibly have married some day—most girls mean to do it; and only think of Ferndean and Otter. Besides, there is nobody I could like so well as Hector Garret, I am quite sure, although I little guessed he cared so much for me;" and Leslie's eye's fell, and a sunny, rosy glow mantled over her whole face, rendering it very soft and fair.

"I see it is to be, Leslie. May it be for your welfare, my dear;" and her mother stooped abruptly, and kissed the young, averted cheek.

Leslie was awed. She dreaded that her father would be [Page 224]equally moved, and then she did not know how she could stand it. But she might have spared herself the apprehension; for when the Professor shuffled in he sat down as usual, fumbled for his spectacles, looked round with the most unconscious eye, observed that "Ware" had that day exceeded in his lecture by twenty minutes—"a bad practice," (Dr. Bower was himself notoriously unpunctual,) and took not the slightest notice of any event of greater importance, until Leslie's suspense had been so long on the rack that it began to subside into dismay, when glancing up for a moment, he observed parenthetically, as he turned a page—"Child! you have my approval of a union with Hector Garret—an odd fancy, but that is no business of ours,"—dropped his eyes again on his volume, and made no further allusion to the subject for the rest of the evening—no, nor ever again, of his own free will. Hector Garret assailed him on preliminaries, his wife patiently waylaid and besieged him for the necessary funds, acquaintances congratulated him—he was by compulsion drawn more than once from roots and æsthetics; but left to himself, he would have assuredly forgotten his daughter's wedding-day, as he had done that of her baptism.

Leslie recovered from the stunning suddenness of her fate, and awoke fully to its brightness. To go down to Ayrshire and dwell there among hills and streams, and pure heather-scented air, like any shepherdess; to be the nearest and dearest to Hector Garret:—already the imaginative, warm-hearted girl began to raise him into a divinity.

Leslie was supremely content, she was gay and giddy even with present excitement; with the pretty bustle of [Page 225]being so important and so occupied—she whose whole time lately had been vacant and idle—so willing to admire her new possessions, so openly elated with their superiority, and not insensible to the fact that all these prominent obtrusive cares were but little superfluous notes of the great symphony upon which she had entered, and whose infinitely deeper, fuller, higher tones she would learn well, by-and-by.

Leslie Bower was the personification of joy, and no one meddled with her visions. Hector Garret was making his preparations at Otter; and when Leslie sang as she stitched, and ran lightly up and down, only the servants in the kitchen laid their heads together, and confided to each other that "never did they see so daffin' a bride; Miss Leslie should ken that a greetin' bride's a happy bride!" But no one told Leslie—no one taught her the tender meaning of the wise old proverb—no one warned her of the realities of life, so much sadder, so much holier, purer, more peaceful than any illusion. Her mother had relapsed into her ordinary calmness, rather wounding Leslie's perceptions when she allowed herself to think of it, for she did not read the lingering assiduity that was so intent it might have been employed upon her shroud. And there was no one else—no; Leslie was quite unaware that her gladness was ominous.

Only the shadow of a warning crossed Leslie's path of roses, and she disregarded it. Her confidence in Hector Garret and in life remained unbounded.

Leslie had gone to the best known of her early companions, her cup brimming over in the gracious privilege of [Page 226]begging Mary Elliot to be her bridesmaid. The Elliots had been kind to her, and had once taken her to their cheerful country-house; and now Mary was to witness the ceremony, and Hector Garret had said that she might, if she pleased, pay Leslie a long visit at Otter.

Mary Elliot was a little older, a little more experienced in womanly knowledge than Leslie.

"How strange it sounds that you should be married so soon, Leslie, from your old house, where we thought you buried. We believed that you must lead a single life, unless your father made a pet of one of his students: and then you must have waited until he left college."

"It is the reverse. I have no time to lose," nodded Leslie; "only Hector Garret is not old-looking. I don't believe that he has a grey hair in his head. He is a far handsomer man than Susan Cheyne's sister's husband."

"I know it; he was pointed out to me in the street. Is he very fond of you, Leslie?"

"I suppose—a little, or he would not have me."

"Does he flatter you, pretend that you are a queen, say all manner of fine things to you? I should like to be enlightened."

"No, no, Mary; real men are not like men in books—and he is not foolish."

"But it is not foolish in a lover. They are all out of their senses—blinded by admiration and passion."

"Perhaps; but Hector Garret is a clever man, only he speaks when he is spoken to, and does not forget you when out of sight. And do you know, I have been used to clever people, and decidedly prefer to look up to a man?"

[Page 227]"What does he call you, Leslie?"

"Why, Leslie, to be sure, or Miss Bower. You would not have him say Mrs. Garret yet?" And Leslie covered her face and laughed again, and reddened to the tips of her fingers.

"Not 'Bonnie Leslie,' 'Jewel,' 'Angel,'" jested Mary, thrilling at the echo of a certain low, fluttered voice, that had sounded in her own ears and would wilfully repeat, "Winsome Mary," "Little Woman," "Witch!"

"No," Leslie replied, with honest frankness, "that would be speaking nonsense; and if Hector Garret thinks nonsense that is bad enough."

"Do you remember how we talked sometimes of our husbands?"

"Yes, I do. They were all to be heroes."

"And you were to be courted on bended knees. Yes, Leslie, solicited again and again; and when you yielded at last, it should be such an act of grace that the poor fellow would be half mad with delight."

"I was mad myself. I was full of some song or bit of poetry. I tell you again, Mary, if you have not found it out for yourself, real life is not like a book. Hector Garret is not the man to beg and implore, and wait patiently for a score of years. I wish you saw how he manages his strong horse. He sits, and does not yield a hair's breadth. Though it paws and rears, he just holds its head tight and pats its neck. Now, I want him to check and guide me. I have been left a great deal to myself. Papa and mamma are not young, and it appears to me that a single child is not enough to draw out the sympathies of a staid, silent [Page 228]couple. They have been very kind to me all my life, and I ought to be glad that they will not miss me much. But although