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

had known of any one hunting up a relationship with her; and though pleased in her humility—Chrissy was no fool in that humility of hers—Bourhope, she knew, was destined for her cousin Corrie. He was out of Corrie's way just now, and was only courteous and cordial to her as living for a time under the same roof. She liked the ruddy, curly, independent, clever fellow of a farmer laird, who, out of the riches of his kindness, could be courteous and cordial to a poor plain girl. Bourhope could never overtake Chrissy coming from Dr. Stark's again. He spied and peeped and threw out hints, and hurried or loitered on the [Page 284]way to no purpose. Chrissy took care that people should not notice the fact of her being escorted home in the early morning by Bourhope.

A chance conversation between Mrs. Spottiswoode and Corrie was overheard one day by Bourhope, when they imagined him deep in "Blackwood;" for it was the days of the "Noctes." Mr. Hunter, of Redcraigs, Corrie's father, had not been well one day, and a message had been sent to that effect to her. But Corrie was philosophic, and not unduly alarmed. "Papa makes such a work about himself," she said candidly to Mrs. Spottiswoode. "Very likely he has only taken lobster at supper, or his Jamaica rum has not agreed with him, and he is bilious this morning. I think I will send out a box of colocynth, and a bit of nice tender veal, to put him in good humour again. You know, Agnes, if I were to drive out, I would not get back in time for the evening walk in the meadows. Besides, I was to see Miss Aikin about the change in the running on of my frills. It would overturn all my plans to go, and my head gets so hot, and I look so blowsy, when my plans are disarranged," Corrie concluded, almost piteously.

"Yes, but Corrie," hesitated Mrs. Spottiswoode, "you know Dr. Stark is not easy about papa just now. I think I had better go out myself. It is unlucky that Spottiswoode is to have several other yeomen who do business at the Bank, at dinner to-day with Bourhope; but I dare say Mary will manage that, as Chrissy will mix the pudding for her. So I will go myself to Redcraigs; all things considered, it would be a pity for you not to be in your best looks——"

[Page 285]Bourhope at this point fell into a fit of coughing, and lost the rest of the dialogue; but perhaps his occasional snort of disapprobation was called forth as much by this interlude as by the audacious judgments of the Shepherd and Tickler.

The day unluckily turned out very rainy, and the drill was gone through in a dense white mist, which caused every horse to loom large as an elephant, and every rider to look a Gog or Magog. The young ladies, so fond of a change of costume at this time in Priorton, could do no shopping; the walk in the meadows at sunset with the lounging yeomen had to be given up. The green meadows were not inviting, the grass was dripping, the flowers closed and heavy, the river red and drumly. All was disappointing; for the meadows were beautiful at this season with their summer snow of daisies—not dead-white snow either, for it was broken by patches of yellow buttercups, crow's-foot, lady's-finger, and vetch, and by the crimson clover flowers and the rusty red of sorrel, and the black pert heads of the nib-wort plaintain, whose black upon the white of ox-eye daisies has the rich tone of ermine.

Instead of walks, there were gatherings round shining tables; and bottles and glasses clinked cheerily in many a parlour. But Mr. Spottiswoode was sober by inclination. The impressiveness of office, which had quite the contrary effect on many provosts of his era, only added to his characteristic caution. The yeomen, too, knew well where hilarity ended and excess began. So there was little fear of excess in Mr. Spottiswoode's house. Mrs. Spottiswoode, a genius in her own line, had a cheerful fire in her [Page 286]drawing-room, and sat by the hearth with her children tumbling round her, while Corrie, fairer than ever in the blinking fire-light, and Chrissy, brown and merry, sat on either side of her. She invited the farmer laird to enter that charmed ring, which, of course, he could not help contrasting with the loneliness and comfortlessness of Bourhope. But though Bourhope sat next Corrie, a certain coldness crept over the well-arranged party. He caught himself glancing curiously at the book Chrissy Hunter had been almost burning her face in reading by the fire-light before he came in. Mrs. Spottiswoode did not much care for reading aloud, but she took the hint in good part, and called on Chrissy to tell what her book was about, and so divert Bourhope without wholly monopolizing his attention.

Chrissy was rather shy at first. She never told stories freely away from home; but she was now pressed to do it. After a little, however, she put her own sympathetic humour and pathos into the wondrous narrative, till she literally held her listeners spell-bound. And no wonder. Those were the days of Scott's early novels, when they were greatly run after, and the price of a night's reading was high. Chrissy's cousin "Rob" was a bookseller's apprentice, and his master, for the purpose of enabling Robbie to share his enthusiasm, would lend the apprentice an uncut copy. Robbie brought it out to Blackfaulds, and then all would sit up, sick mother among the rest, to hear them read aloud, till far into the small hours.

Who can tell what that cordial of pure, healthful intellectual diversion may have been, even to the burdened [Page 287]father and sick mother at Blackfaulds! To Chrissy—the very speaking of it made her clasp her hands over her knee, and her grey eyes to shine out like stars—as Bourhope thought to himself.

How suggestively Chrissy discoursed of Glendearg, and the widow Elspeth Glendinning, her two lads, and Martin and Tib Tacket, and the gentle lady and Mary Avenel. With what breadth, yet precision, she reproduced pursy Abbot Boniface, devoted Prior Eustace, wild Christie of the Clinthill, buxom Mysie Hopper, exquisite Sir Percy Shafton, and even tried her hand to some purpose on the ethereal White Lady. Perhaps Chrissy enjoyed the reading as much as the great enchanter did the writing. Like great actors, she had an instinctive consciousness of the effect she produced. Bourhope shouted with laughter when the incorrigible Sir Percy, in the disguise of the dairywoman, described his routing charge as "the milky mothers of the herd." Corrie actually glanced in affright at the steaming windows and the door ajar, and pinched Chrissy's arm when she repeated for the last time the words of the spell:—

"Thrice to the holly brake—
Thrice to the well;—
Wake thee, O wake,
White Maid of Avenel."

The assembly paid Chrissy the highest compliment an assembly can pay a speaker. They forgot their schemes, their anxieties, themselves even, to fasten their eyes and hearts on the brown girl—the book dropping from her [Page 288]hand, but the story written so graphically on her memory. Corrie was the first to recover herself. "Oh dear!" she cried, "I have forgot I was to take down my hair for Miss Lothian to point it at eight o'clock," and hurried out of the room.

Mrs. Spottiswoode roused herself next, and spoke a few words of acknowledgment to Chrissy. "Upon my word, Chrissy, your recital has been quite as good as the play. We are much obliged to you. I am afraid your throat must be sore; but stay, I have some of the theatre oranges here. No, bairns, you are not to have any; it is far too late for you to be up. Dear me; I believe you have been listening to Chrissy's story like the rest of us!" But Mrs. Spottiswoode was not under any apprehension about the success of Chrissy's reading. Mrs. Spottiswoode proved this by immediately leaving Chrissy tête-à-tête with Bourhope while she went to put the children to bed, and see if Mr. Spottiswoode, who was doing a quiet turn of business in his office, would have a game of cards before supper. She had really never heard of a girl being married simply for her tongue's sake! She perhaps knew the line in the song too—

"Very few marry for talking,"

and had found its truth in her own experience, for she was a shrewd, observant woman.

Bourhope, it should be understood, was longest subjected to the influence of Chrissy's story-telling power. Indeed, when he did somewhat recover from it, his fancy created fine visions of what it would be to have such a [Page 289]storyteller at Bourhope during the long, dark nights of winter and the endless days of summer. Bourhope was no ignoramus. He had some acquaintance with "Winter's Tales" and summer pastorals, but his reading was bald and tame to this inspiration. He thought to himself it would really be as good as a company of players purely for his own behoof, without any of the disadvantages. He stammered a little in expressing the debt he owed to Chrissy, and she could only eagerly reply by saying, "Not to me, not to me the praise, Mr. Spottiswoode, but to the great unknown. Oh! I would like to know him."

Bourhope was stimulated to do at once what he was sure to do ultimately: he presented his hospitable entertainers with a box at the play. No doubt it was a great delight to Chrissy; for it was in the days when actors were respectable artists and play-going was still universal. Chrissy in her freshness enjoyed the provincials as well as if they had been first-rate—took the good and left the bad, and sat quite entranced.

Bourhope, although he was decidedly intellectual for his calling, watched Chrissy rather than the stage. He read the feeling of the moment reflected in her sagacious yet sensitive face. Once he turned round and tried the same experiment with Corrie. He might as well have expected to borrow a living soul from well-moulded stucco or marble. He now realized in a more lively manner than ever, that geese may look fair and white and soft and shapely as swans till they expose their waddling. He tried in church the process he had learned at the play, and, it must be confessed, not without effect—Chrissy's expres[Page 290]sion giving a fair notion of the good Priorton minister's earnestness and eloquence.

But at length Chrissy, aware of the liberty Bourhope took in thus making her his study, got restless and troubled in her sound head and warm heart. She was no fool in her simplicity. She knew that Bourhope did not in any sense belong to Mrs. Spottiswoode and Corrie, and she had shrewdly suspected of late that their anticipated arrangements would not be carried out. She could not help occasionally turning over in her mind the circumstance that Cecilia was very plain, but that depressed Mortimer Delville nevertheless bestowed his heart on her, though the gift, like her fortune, was disastrous to Cecilia for many a long day. Chrissy thought that if Bourhope were independent and original enough to like her—to love her—he was his own master; there was nothing between him and his inclination save her inclination and her father and mother's will. And there was little doubt about father and mother's will with respect to a man so worthy, so unexceptionable, and so well endowed as Bourhope.

Nor was there anything like duty to the Spottiswoodes to stand between Bourhope and Chrissy. But still Chrissy's nice sense of honour was disturbed, for had she not a guess that a very different result had been expected? Nay, she had even a half-comical notion that she herself had been expressly selected as a companion to Corrie Hunter during the gaieties of the yeomanry weeks, because she would also prove a sort of harmless foil.

A dream of love was a grand shock to Chrissy's quiet life, making wild yet plaintive music, like all nature's true [Page 291]harmonies, within her, and filling her mind with tremulous light which glorified every object, and was fain even to dazzle herself. It was not unnatural that Bourhope should excite such a dream. But Chrissy was not completely dazzled. It was only a dream as yet, and she would be the mistress of her dream; it should not be the mistress of her. So she resolved, showing herself a reasonable, thoughtful, conscientious woman, as well as a loving, fairly proportioned, and lovely human spirit.

Chrissy retained all her sober senses. She recollected what was due both to the hero