The marriage took place, however, in spite of these convulsions, and several years had elapsed since that event. It was an old affair when John Erskine, newly arrived, and full of curiosity and interest, had that encounter with Lady Lindores and her daughter at his own gate, where something of the outline of this story was communicated to him—the facts of it at least. The ladies did not linger upon Carry’s marriage in their narrative. He was told of it briefly as an event long over, and to which everybody had got accustomed. And so it was. The most miserable of events settle down into the routine of life when a few years have elapsed. Carry herself long ago had accepted her fate, trying to persuade herself that an unhappy marriage was nothing out of the common, and taking such comfort as was possible in poetry and intellectual musings. Her husband, who neither knew nor cared for anything above his own rude external world, yet felt her poetry to enhance the delicacy of her being, and to raise Lady Car more and more to that height of superiority which was what he had sought in her—was all the better satisfied with his bargain, though all the more separated from any possible point of junction with her. The neighbourhood was very well aware of all the circumstances; and though Lady Lindores entered into no explanations, yet there was a sigh, and a tone in her voice, as she spoke of her daughter, which suggested sorrow. But to tell the truth, young John Erskine, suddenly finding such friends at his very door, suddenly readmitted into the old intimacy, and finding the dull country life to which he had been looking forward flash into sunshine and pleasure, made few inquiries into this darker chapter of the family history; and in reality cared for nothing much but to convince himself that the Lindores family were really his next neighbours; that they were quite willing to receive him on the old footing; and that, demurely walking along the same road on the other side of her mother, saying little but touching the entire atmosphere with a sense of her presence, was Edith Lindores. Perhaps, had he actually been by her side, the sensation being more definite would have been less entrancing. But her mother was between them, animated and pleased by the meeting, ready to tell him all that had happened, and to hear his account of himself, with friendly interest; while beyond her ample figure and draperies, the line of a grey dress, the occasional flutter of a ribbon, the putting forth of a small foot, made the young man aware of the other creature wrapped in soft silence and maidenly reserve, whom he could image to himself all the more completely that he saw no more of her. He scarcely heard her voice as they walked along thus near yet separated; but a great many things that Lady Lindores said were confused by the sound upon the road of her daughter’s step—by the appearance of that bit of ribbon, with which the sunny wind did not hesitate to play, floating out in advance of her, catching the young man’s eye. Thus all at once, on the very first day after his return, another new existence began for John Erskine on the road between Dalrulzian and Lindores.
VII
There are few things in human affairs more curious than the structure of what is called society, wherever it is met with, whether in the most primitive of its developments or on the higher levels. The perpetual recurrence of a circle within which the sayings and doings of certain individuals are more important than anything else in earth or heaven, and where the conversation persistently rolls back, whatever may be its starting-point, to what this or that little knot of people are doing, to the eccentricities of one and the banalities of another, to some favourite individual scene of tragedy or comedy which forms the centre of the moral landscape—is always apparent to the observer, whether his observations are made in Kamtchatka or in London, among washerwomen or princesses. But under no circumstances is this so evident as to a newcomer in a region where all the people know each other. The novelty and freshness of his impressions perhaps make him congratulate himself for a moment that now at last he has got into a society fresh and original, with features of its own; but half-a-dozen meetings are enough to prove to him that he has only got into another round, a circle as little extended, as much shut up in its own ring, as all the rest. This was what John Erskine found, with a little amusement and a little disgust, almost as soon as he got settled in his unknown home. Any addition to their society was interesting to the country folks, especially in May, when there is not much doing—when those who can indulge themselves in the pleasures of the season have gone to London, and those who cannot are bound to bring forth their philosophy and prove that they enjoy the country in the early summer, even though there is nothing to do. But a young man unencumbered and alone, with all his life before him, and all his connections to form, is perhaps of all others the most interesting human creature who can come into a new sphere. All the world is curious about him—both those whose lives he may influence, and those to whom he can contribute nothing but the interest, perhaps of a new drama, perhaps only of a new face. He who will enact his own story publicly before the eyes of his neighbours, falling in love, wooing, marrying, or, still better, carrying on these processes with interruptions of non-success and threatenings of postponement, what a
