Part 23 (1/2)
”Only the windows,” murmured Tiny musingly. ”Those windows mean to haunt me for the rest of my time.”
”I wish it were moonlight,” Ruth said. ”I wish we could see everything.”
”No, I like it best as it is,” remarked Tiny, after further meditation.
”It leaves something to your imagination. Those windows are going to leave my imagination uncommonly well off!”
They stood together in silence, and the beeches talked in whispers above them. When Ruth spoke next she whispered too, as though they were just outside those lighted windows:
”Yet you would rather live at Wallandoon than anywhere else on earth!”
Tiny said nothing to that; but after it, at a distance, there came a sigh.
”What's the matter, Ruth?”
”I'd rather not tell you, dear; it might make you angry.”
”I think I like being made angry just at present,” said Christina, with a little laugh; ”but you've spiked my guns by saying that first; you are quite safe, my dear.”
”Then I was thinking--I couldn't help thinking--that one day you might have been mistress----”
”Of the windows? Then it's high time we turned our backs on them! That's just what I was thinking myself!”
CHAPTER XV.
THE INVISIBLE IDEAL.
On the flags of a London square, some days later, Ruth repeated the sigh that had succeeded on Gallow Hill, and once more Christina asked her what was the matter.
”I was thinking,” said Ruth with a confidence born of the former occasion, ”that one day all this, too, would have been more or less yours.”
”All what, pray?”
”Every brick and slate that you can see! All this is part of the Dromard estate; they own every inch hereabouts.”
Christina's next remark was a perfectly pleasant one in itself, only it referred to a totally different matter. And thus she treated poor Ruth.
At other times she would herself rush into the subject without warning, and out of it the moment it wearied or annoyed her; to follow her closely in and out required a nimble tact indeed. Nor was it easy to know always the right thing to say, or at all delightful to feel that the right thing to-day might be the wrong thing to-morrow. But into this one subject Ruth was as ready to enter at a hint from Tiny as she was now contented to quit it at her caprice. The elder sister's patience and good temper were alike wonderful, but still more wonderful was her faith. Instinctively she felt that all was not over between Tiny and Lord Manister, and like many people who do not pretend to be clever, and are fond of saying so, she believed immensely in her instincts. It must not, however, be forgotten that her wishes for Tiny were the very best she could conceive; and it should be remembered that she had n.o.body but Tiny to watch over and care for, to think about and make plans for, during the long days when Erskine was in the City. This was the great excuse for Ruth, which never occurred to her husband, and was unknown even to herself. Christina was her baby, and a very troublesome, bad baby it was.
But what could you expect? The girl was sufficiently worried and unsettled; she was suffering from those upsetting fluctuations of mind which few of her kind entirely escape, but which are violent in characters that have grown with the emotional side to the sun and the intellectual side to the wall. In such a case the mind remains hard and green, while the emotions ripen earlier than need be; and the fault is the gardener's, and the gardener is the girl's mother. Now Mrs. Luttrell was a soulless but ladylike nonent.i.ty, with an eye naturally blind to the soul in her girls. All she herself had taught them was an unaffected manner and the necessity of becoming married. So Ruth had married both early and well by the favor of the G.o.ds, and Christina had restored the average by committing more follies of all sizes than would appear possible in the time. That in which Lord Manister was concerned had doubtless been the most important of the series, but its sting lay greatly in its notoriety. It had caused a light-hearted girl to see herself suddenly in the pupils of many eyes, and to recoil in shame from her own littleness. It had made her hate both herself and the owners of all those eyes, but men especially, of whom she had seen far too much in a short s.p.a.ce of time. What she had done in England only heightened her poor opinion of herself now that it was done. She had seen her way to an incredibly sweet revenge, only to find it incredibly bitter. In striking hard she had hurt herself most, as Erskine had divined; instead of satisfying her naturally vindictive feeling toward Lord Manister that blow had killed it. Now she forgave him freely, but found it impossible to forgive herself; and so the generosity that was in a disordered heart a.s.serted itself, because she had omitted to allow for it, not knowing it was there. Worse things a.s.serted themselves too, such as the very solid attractions of the position which might have been hers; to these she could not help being fully alive, though this was one more reason why she hated herself. Her first judgment on herself, if a mere reaction at the beginning, became ratified and hardened as time went on. She became what she had never been before, even when notoriety had made her reckless--an introspective girl. And that made her twisty and queer and unaccountable; for, to be introspective with equanimity, you must have a bluff belief in yourself, which is not necessarily conceit, but Tiny was not blessed with it.
”She has lost her sense of fun--that's the worst part of the whole business!” exclaimed Erskine, one night when Christina had gone early to bed, as she always would now. ”She has ceased to be amusing or easily amused. The empty town is boring her to the bone, and if I don't fix up our Lisbon trip we shall have her wanting to go back to Australia.
However, I am bound to be in Lisbon by the end of next month, and I'm keener than ever on having you two with me. I know the ropes out there, and I could promise you both a good time--but that depends on Tiny. Let us hope the bay will blow the cobwebs out of her head; she wasn't made to be sentimental. I only wish I could get her to jeer at things as she used before we went to Essingham and while we were there!”
”Don't you think it's rather a good thing she has dropped that?” Ruth asked. ”She had no respect for anything in those days.”
”And her humor saved her! Pray what does she respect now?”
”Two or three people that I know of--my lord and master for one, and another person who is only a lord.”