Lady Lindores sat and cried by the fire, while Carry swept about the room in her passion, crossing and recrossing the firelight. The servants at Tinto were more judicious than those at Lindores. They were accustomed to scenes in the drawing-room, and to know that it was indiscreet to carry lights thither until they were called for. In the late Tinto’s time the lamps, when they were carried in abruptly, had lit up many an episode of trouble—the fierce redness of the master’s countenance, the redness so different of his wife’s eyes. So that no one interrupted the lingering hour of twilight. Lady Lindores sat like any of the poor women in the cottages, unable to stand against the passion of her child. How familiar is the scene—the mother crying by the fireside, descended from her dignity and power to sway (if she ever possessed any), to sheer helplessness and pathetic spectatorship, unable, with all the experience and gathered wisdom of her years, to suggest anything or do anything for the headstrong life and passion of the other woman, who could learn only by experience as her mother did before her. Carry paced up and down the room from end to end; even the shadowy lines of her figure, even her step, revealed the commotion of her soul: when she came full into the firelight she stood still for a moment, her hands clasped, her head thrown back, confronting the dim image of herself in the great mirror against a ruddy background of gloom. And Carry in her passion was not without enlightenment too.
“No,” she said passionately, “no, no. Do you know why I am so determined? It is because I am frightened to death. Oh, don’t take an advantage of what I am saying to you. How do I know what my father might do this time? No, no. I must keep out of his hands. I will rather die.”
“Carry, I will not interfere. What can I do between you? But these are not all conventionalities, as you think—there is more in them.”
“There is this in them,” she said, with a strange pathetic smile, “that Edward thinks so too. He is not ready like me to throw away everything. He might be persuaded, perhaps, if my father put forth all his powers, to abandon me, to think it was for my interest—”
“Carry, I do not wish to support you in your wild projects: but I think you are doing Edward injustice.”
“Thank you, mother dear; your voice is so sweet,” she said, with a sudden softening, “why should you cry? It is all a black sea round about me on every side. I have only one thing to cling to, only one thing, and how can I tell? perhaps that may fail me too. But you have nothing to cry for. Your way is all clear and straight before you till it ends in heaven. Let them talk as they like, there must be heaven for you. You will sit there and wait and watch to see all the broken boats come home—some bottom upwards, and every one drowned; some lashed to one miserable bit of a mast—like me.”
“Carry,” said Lady Lindores, “if that is the case—if you do not feel sure—why, in spite of everything, father and mother, and modesty and reverence, and all that is most necessary to life, your own good name, and perhaps the future welfare of your children—why will you cling to Edward Beaufort? You wronged him perhaps, but he did nothing to stop it. There were things he might have done—he ought to have been ready to claim you before—to oppose your—”
Carry threw herself at her mother’s feet, and laid her trembling hand upon her lips. “Not a word, not a word,” she cried. “Do you think he would wrong my children? Oh no, no! that is impossible. His fault, it is to be too good. And if he did nothing, what could he do? He has never had the ground to stand on, nor opportunity, nor time. Thank God! they will be his now; he will prove what is in him now.”
Which was it that in her heart she believed? But Lady Lindores could not tell. Carry, when she calmed down, sat at her mother’s feet in the firelight, and clasped her close, and poured out her heart, no longer in fiery opposition and passion, but with a sudden change and softening, in all the pathos of trouble past and hope returned. They cried together, and talked and kissed each other, once more mother and child, admitting no other thought. This sudden change went to the heart of Lady Lindores. Her daughter’s head upon her bosom, her arm holding her close, what could she do but kiss her and console her, and forget everything in sympathy. But as she drove home in the dark other fears came in. Only one thing to cling to—and perhaps that might fail her—“one miserable bit of a mast.” What did she mean? What did Carry believe? that her old love would renew for her all the happiness of life, as she had been saying, whispering with her cheek close to her mother’s—that the one dream of humanity, the romance which is never worn out and never departs, was now to be fulfilled for her?—or that, even into this dream, the canker had entered, the sense that happiness was not and never could be?
