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

entitled to blame Joanna," defended sister Lilias, stoutly;—Lilias, who was so swift to find fault herself.

"There, I'll say no more; I beg your pardon, I merely intended to show you your world in an ordinary light."

"Do you know, Polly, that Mrs. Jardine has never visited us since?" asked Susan.

"Very likely, she was entitled to some horror. But she is a reasonable woman. Mr. Maxwell told me—every third party discusses the story behind your backs whenever it chances to come up, I warn you—Mr. Maxwell informed me that she never blamed Uncle Crawfurd, and that she sent her son away from her because she judged it bad for him to be brought up among such recollections, and feared that when he was a lad he might be tampered with by the servants, and might imbibe prejudices and aversions that would render him gloomy and vindictive, and unlike other people for the rest of his life; she could not have behaved more wisely. I am inclined to suppose that Mrs. Jardine of Whitethorn has more knowledge of the world and self-command than the whole set of my relations here, unless, perhaps, my Aunt Crawfurd—she will only speculate on your dresses—that is the question, Susan."

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[Page 16]

II.—THE ORDEAL.

"Would you not have liked to have gone with the other girls, Joanna? for Conny, she must submit to be a halflin yet. But is it not dull for you only to hear of a party? country girls have few enough opportunities of being merry," observed Mr. Crawfurd, with his uneasy consciousness, and his sad habit of self-reproach.

"Oh, Mr. Crawford, it would not have done—not the first time—Joanna had much better stay at home on this occasion. She is too well brought up to complain of a little sacrifice."

It is curious how long some wives will live on friendly terms with their husbands and never measure their temperaments, never know where the shoe pinches, never have a notion how often they worry, and provoke, and pain their spouses, when the least reticence and tact would keep the ship and its consort sailing in smooth water.

Mrs. Crawfurd would have half-broken her heart if Mr. Crawfurd had not changed his damp stockings; she would fling down her work and look out for him at any moment of his absence; she would not let any of her children, not her favourite girl or boy, take advantage of him; she was a good wife, still she did not know where the shoe pinched, and so she stabbed him perpetually, sometimes with fretting pin-pricks, sometimes with sore sword-strokes.

"My dear, I wish you were not a sacrifice to me." It is a heart-breaking thing to hear a man speak quite calmly, [Page 17]and like a man, yet with a plaintive tone in his voice. Ah! the old, arch spirit of the literary Laird of the Ewes had been shaken to its centre, though he was a tolerable man of business, and rather fond of attending markets, sales, and meetings.

"Papa, what are you thinking of?" exclaimed Joanna indignantly. "I am very proud to help you, and I go out quite as often as the others. Do you not know, we keep a card hung up on Lilias's window-shutter, and we write down every month's invitations—in stormy weather they are not many—and we fulfil them in rotation. You don't often want me in the evenings, for you've quite given me up at chess, and you only condescend to backgammon when it is mid-winter and there has been no curling, and the book club is all amiss. Lilias insists upon the card, because the parties are by no means always merry affairs, and she says that otherwise we would slip them off on each other, and pick and choose, and be guilty of a great many selfish, dishonourable proceedings."

"Lilias is the wise woman in the household. I'm aware there is a wise woman in every family—but how comes it that Lilias is the authority with us? It always rather puzzles me, Joanna; for when I used to implore Miss Swan to accept her salary, and pay Dominie Macadam his lawful demand of wages for paving the boys' brains in preparation for the High School, they always complimented me with the assurance that you were my clever daughter."

"Because they saw your weak side, I dare say, my dear," suggests Mrs. Crawfurd.

[Page 18]"No, I am the cleverest, papa; I am so deep that I see that it is easier to live under an absolute monarchy than to announce myself a member of a republic, and assert my prerogatives and defend my privileges—but I confess I have a temper, papa. Lilias says I am very self-willed, and I must grant that she is generally in the right."

"You don't feel satisfied with the bridle, child, till it gets into stronger hands."

"Yes, Joanna has a temper," chimed in Mrs. Crawfurd, pursuing her own thread of the conversation. "Strangers think her softer than Susan; but I have seen her violent, and when she takes it into her head, she is the most stubborn of the whole family. I don't mean to scold you, my dear; you are a very good girl, too, but you are quite a deception."

"Oh, mamma! what a character!" Joanna could not help laughing. "I must amend my ways."

Of course, Joanna was violent at times, as we imagine a sensitive girl with an abhorrence of meanness and vice, and she was stubborn when she was convinced of the right and her friends would assert the wrong. Mr. Crawfurd's idea was, that Joanna had a temper like Cordelia, not when she spoke in her pleased accents, "gentle, soft, and low," but when she was goaded into vehemence, as will happen in the best regulated palaces and households.

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Crawfurd, five minutes afterwards, disturbing the cosy little party round the tea-table by her sudden air of distress. "Oh! dear, dear me! Susie has left her pearl sprigs behind her. There they are on the loo-table. My pearl sprigs, Mr. Crawfurd, that I [Page 19]used to wear when I was young; they have come in again for the hair, and Susie settled they were just the thing to give a more dressed look to her spring silk—these easy way parties are so ill to manage, and Polly was of the same mind, and she came in to show me the effect, for I always like to see the girls after they are dressed, and be satisfied how they look—and there she has forgotten the box, and she will appear quite a dowdy, and be so vexed."

"I don't think it will signify very much, mamma; Susan looks very well in her blue silk."

"But it is such a pity, Joanna; so unfortunate,—she only put them out of her hand for one moment, and you see there they are still;" and so Mrs. Crawfurd sounded the lamentation, and dwelt on its salient points, and ingeniously extracted new grounds of regret, till, by dint of repetition, in ten minutes more Mr. Crawfurd and Joanna were almost persuaded that Susan had sustained a serious loss.

"Send a servant with the foolery," proposed Mr. Crawfurd, seeking a little relief, and tolerably affronted at his interest in the question.

"I don't think it would do. Would it, Joanna? There is always such confusion at Hurlton when there is company? and then they have people dining. There would be a mistake, and my pearls are no joke, Mr. Crawfurd. They cost papa fifty pounds when they were so prettily set to go to Sir William's ball. Ah! you don't remember it. There would be a fuss, and Lilias would not like it. If Oliver had not been there at dinner, or Charlie had been at home—"

[Page 20]"Of the two evils choose the least," recommended Mr. Crawfurd, taking up his book.

"If you are very anxious, mamma," said Joanna, "as it is very early, and they set out to walk round by the garden at Houndswood to get some geraniums, which Polly saw yesterday, and set her heart upon; if you order out the ponies and Sandy, I think Conny and I could easily ride over to Hurlton, and deliver the little parcel to the girls in time. It would be a nice evening ride for us, since you are afraid that Conny hangs too much over her books."

"Thank you, dear; that is just like you, Joanna, you are so sensible and helpful, no wonder papa monopolizes you. I will be so glad that Susie has the pearls. Such a pity, poor dear! that her evening should be spoilt, and they lying ready to be put on. Conny? Yes, indeed, that girl will be getting spine complaint, or the rickets. In my day it was sewing in frames that twisted girls; but these books in the lap, the head poked forward, one shoulder up, and knees half as high as the shoulder, are a thousand times worse."

"Good luck to you, Jack. Now you deserve your name, since you constitute yourself groom of the chambers to your sisters."

Joanna laughed back to him. "Come and meet us, papa." And in the shortest interval given to tie on their hats and skirts, the girls were racing along to Hurlton.

In that moorland country, with outlying moorland fields where it was not primitive nature—in a large family like that of the Crawfurds, rough walking ponies swarmed as in Shetland. They were in constant request at the Ewes, [Page 21]and the girls rode them lightly and actively, with the table-boy, Sandy, at their heels, as readily as they walked. Perhaps Joanna was the least given to the practice, though she availed herself of it on this domestic occasion.

Joanna was a deception, as her mother said. She was a little, round, soft thing, whom you would have expected to flash over with sunshine. She was not a melancholy girl—as you may have been able to judge—and it was not her blame that anything in her position had developed her into a thoughtful, earnest character. But then she was always fancied younger than she really was; people supposed her as easy as her mother, while she could be vehement, and was firm to tenacity. Perhaps the reason of the puzzle might be, not only that she had a little of that constitutional indolence which serves to conceal latent energy, but that, in trifles, she did inherit, in a marked degree, the unexacting, kindly temper which causes the wheels of every-day life to turn easily. She allowed herself to be pushed aside. She accepted the fate or superstition which linked her with her father's sorrow; she was content, she thought, to suffer the dregs of his act with him; she wished she could suffer for him; the connexion had indeed a peculiar charm for her enthusiasm and generosity, like her admiration of this Corncockle Moor.

Corncockle Moor, in its dreariness, loneliness, and wildness, now hung out a vast curtain, which Joanna and Conny were skirting under the golden decline of day, not so far from the spot where the little group of men had gathered on the autumn morning, and the two sharp, short cracks, and the little curl of blue smoke had indicated where [Page 22]one life had gone out, and another was blasted in a single second. Joanna had scarcely got time to wonder how Harry Jardine and her sisters would look at each other, and she did not allow herself to think of it now. She would wait till she had skilfully avoided any chance of encountering the company, delivered her mother's errand, and was safe with Conny, cantering homewards. Even then she would not dwell on the notion, lest her father should allude to the stranger, and she should betray any feeling to discompose him. "I must take care of papa. Papa is my charge," repeated Joanna, proud as any Roman maid or matron.

What malign star sent Mrs. Maxwell into the bedroom, just as Joanna had entered it? She ought to have been only quitting the dining-room for the drawing-room, but Mrs. Maxwell was always to be found where she was least expected. She was a good-natured, social, blundering body, whom girls condescended to affect, because she liberally patronized young people, proving, however, quite as often the marplot, as the maker of their fortunes—not from malice, but from a certain maladroitness and fickleness. Mrs. Maxwell took it into her head to lay hands on Joanna, and to send out for Conny, whom Joanna had cautiously deposited in the paddock, and to insist that they should remain, and join the party. She would take no denial; she never got them all together; it was so cruel to leave out Joanna and Conny, a pair of her adopted children, since she had no bairns of her own to bless