The Author's Daughter/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
JESSIE LINDSAY'S DECLARATION AND ITS RECEPTION.
The prospect of going home to England was also agreeable to Mrs. Hammond, because it would put a stop to Louis' and Fred's frequent rides to Branxholm, and prevent her making herself odious by laying her commands on them that they were to discontinue the practice. She disliked giving orders that she could not enforce, and she was very anxious to retain the love and confidence of her boys, so she put a constraint on herself and listened to what they said on their return from their visits without making much objection, lest they should get in the habit of going there and not telling her. But Amy Staunton was still a mere child, and no positive harm could be done yet. It had been one of the contingencies that the mother had dreaded in case of receiving Amy as an inmate that one of her sons might; become attached to her; and the likelihood pressed itself more strongly on her, when she saw that Louis in particular was very full of her praises.
One day when the boys had ridden across after school hours to ask Allan to show them how to shoe a horse, they were as usual invited to take tea. The coldness felt towards Mrs. Hammond was not extended to her sons, who were nice lads and had no airs, Mrs. Lindsay said. Amy was busy making a pretty net for Jessie's hair after the pattern of one of her own, which had been greatly admired, and Louis, wishing to show that he could do some things, though he was no quite so clever as Allan, said that he would like to help Miss Staunton with her work, as he had made fishing nets, and could do the stitch ever so fast. Amy's netting-needle, however, being of slender carved ivory was slighter than any that Louis had ever worked at, and the thread finer and more apt to go into knots, and in giving his work a hasty tug he snapped the needle into three pieces. He was sorry that his display of skill had turned out so ill, and profuse in apologies for his awkwardness, and in explanations of how he came to give the thread such a jerk; but he would send to Adelaide for a netting-needle, and it should come out the very first opportunity. Allan saw how disappointed Amy looked and Jessie too, so he said he knew he could make another, no so fine or so pretty, but which might answer the purpose. He looked at the broken implement attentively, and went to get a piece of hard wood, for he had nothing else to make it of; and Amy put the fragments of her netting-needle and her work into the little case which she had for such things. It was one of her mother's, somewhat like her work-box, but instead of the coronet it had a coat of arms on the centre plate. Louis Hammond, who was at an awkward age and felt awkward after his performance with he netting-needle, began to admire the box.
"Don't break that too," said she pleadingly.
"It is so curious, is it not, George?" said Louis to George Copeland, who had just come in for supper.
George looked at it attentively. "How strange, Miss Staunton, that you should have these arms on your box. Where in all he world did you pick it up? I know that crest as well as I know the lion and the unicorn—Lord Darlington's, it is."
Amy coloured. How had George Copeland any knowledge of her mother's family, and how did he recognize the crest? This was the only thing in her possession that was marked with the Darlington arms.
"I was my mother's," said she quickly; "I don't exactly know how she came by it, but I know she was some connection of the Darlingtons. You know that you claim relationship with Lord Lindsay of Balcarras, Jessie," continued Amy laughing.
"I can't count it nor follow my mother when she counts it," said Jessie. "But what do you know about this Lord Darlington, George?"
"My father's landlord had a son married to a daughter of the Earl of Darlington, and that's how I came to know the family and the crest. Mr. Anthony Derrick, that's Lord Darlington's grandson, is the heir to old Mr. Derrick, for Mr. John he died young, and it's likely he'll soon come in for the property; for the old squire, is as old as my grandfather, and he died an old man of seveny-six, years ago."
"Derrick " said Louis Hammond; "I should know that name. They were surely friends of mamma's. I have heard mamma speak of them."
"Oh! Mr. Derrick, the old squire, was well known far and near; they called him the cotton lord, but that was before my father went to Stanmore estate that Mr. Derrick bought. The money was all made with spinning-jennies, and this lad, young Mr. Anthony, will get the most of it, for Mr. John was the only son. His grandfather sets great store by the boy."
"I hope he is a good lad then," said Amy, in a low eager tone.
"Good enough, I dare say, and quite able to spend a fortune. He's proud and high of course, seeing what he is born to; but his grandfather thinks nothing too good for him. It is a pity when old people set their hearts too much on boys. If my grandfather had seen what I've come to, every hair on his grey head would have stood on end. Ne'er-do-wells are best at a distance, as Mrs. Lindsay would say. Tom and Charlie have turned out better than me, that's one comfort," said George, with something between a sigh and a laugh.
"You've not turned out ill," said Jessie Lindsay gravely. "My father is much pleased with you and so are we all. Why don't you write to your friends, you that can write so well? I don't believe you have written once since you came here."
"Oh! I am a rolling stone," said Copeland. "I'll stay out my year here, where, as you say, I have got a good character; and then I'll be of to get another, perhaps not so good. Does your father want hand, Master Louis?"
"Yes, to go up the Darling to one of his stations there. I am very sure he would like you, for he was wondering who to send. I wish he would send me, instead of poking me with Mr. Prince over those detestable Latin and Greek lessons, and those beastly problems. Fred and I hate them like poison, and after a year of that we're to go to England, and Fred will be sent to Harrow, or Rugby, or Eton to be flogged; and I to Oxford or Cambridge to be plucked. The whole business is a complete sell; and my father and mother have set their hearts on it, and it must be gone through. I know I'll be running away and going to sea or something of that sort, and then what will their feelings be? What is the use of all that rubbish? If a man can back a horse, and hunt up cattle, he may live like a gentleman in the bush. I don't mind learning to shoe a horse, or carpentering like Allan, and if my father would only trust me on the Darling I'm sure I'd give him satisfaction; but that brutal lingo that Mr. Prince is hammering into us is fit for nothing but monkeys to jabber. And I am sure the governor knows nothing about it himself, though he looks so wise when Prince tells him what book of Virgil we are at, and quotes a line or two of the gibberish, as if he understood every word of it. The girls actually say they like their lessons, but it must be all pretence; they can't do it, or if they really do, what can you expect from a parcel of girls? but they bother Prince as much as Fred and me do. But as the governor won't hear of me going up the Darling, it's very likely he would give you the billet, Copeland," said Louis.
"My father has no wish to part with you, George," said Jessie.
"Nor have I," said Allan, who had returned with the piece of wood he wanted. "We might make it as well worth your while as Mr. Hammond. You know my father is buying a new station a Gundabook, and he says he would like to send you to it, as Jamie can come home from school to be of some use at home. He would have sent me, but now that I am really learning I don't want to leave my little schoolmistress. But my father has such trust in you."
"But our station on the Darling is a far bigger one, and carries four times the sheep that Mr. Lindsay can put on Gundabook," said Louis; "and with my father going away a man would have more charge. George asked me if my father wanted a hand, Allan; I did not put it into his head."
"You see what it is to get a good character. It is new to me to be in such demand," said George.
"You said you liked the place and the work, George;" said Jessie.
"So I do, and I'll like the next place I'll go to as well, I suppose. I am a rover; there is no dependence to be put on me."
"Your year's up next month," said Allan; "but I never thought of your leaving us. My father does not easily part with his men I hope he will be able to persuade you to stay."
"I think not," said George, and it appeared as if no persuasion could have any effect with him. He had never stayed more than a year at any place all the years he had been in the colonies, and though the entreaties of the family made him uncomfortable they did not make him change his mind. Allan, who though nobody could withstand Amy, begged her to try her powers of persuasion. The purchase of Gundabook appeared so desirable, that Hugh Lindsay was determined to go through with it even though he feared that he must send Allan there, and so lose his society and check his studies, which were now going on so satisfactorily to himself that he was again cheerful and helpful, and almost indispensable.
Hugh Lindsay was a man who had never lost an opportunity of making money. He never had capital lying idle or a man in his employment who had not full work. His own run was now fully stocked, and it appeared to him that Gundabook might be supplied from it and the sheep never missed. The contingency of sending Allan would be a necessity ff George could not go, that must be taken along with other business necessities. The mother, on the other hand, though that if George could not go Gundabook must be given up; and that another station would cast up by the time Jamie was fit to be trusted. She did not grasp so eagerly at the opportunities as her husband, and rested more complacently in the thought of the comfort she had attained to.
"I wonder," said Amy to George, a day or two after his first intimation that he was likely to leave the Lindsays, "that you can wish to change your employment when everyone here is so kind to you and treats you as an equal, to take service with the Hammonds who hold themselves so high."
"It seems very absurd, but one likes to serve, if one has to serve, amongst gentlefolks, you know," said George.
"There are different ways of discovering gentlefolks," said Amy. "I only know that the gentlefolks had no kindness for me while these good people here have been so different."
"The chances on the Darling station are better than at Gundabook;" said George.
"I don't know that; Mr. Lindsay is very sanguine about Gundabook."
"O yes, for him no doubt, but for the manager Mr. Hammond's offer will be the best."
"Then Allan must go," said Amy. "You have been so remarkably good in contriving that Allan should have more time that I scarcely expected you would put a stop to his book-work altogether."
"Oh no fear of Allan," said George. "Set Allan anywhere now and he is sure to learn. But he, and indeed all the family, think too well of me. Any other man would suit them as well."
"I will be a great change at Branxholm," said Amy, "without Allan and without you."
"I believe it was the sight of that box of yours with the coat of arms on it that unsettled me. If I could stay more than a year at one place I think I might have stayed here, but there seems a fate against it."
Amy shook her wise little head; it seemed to her that George gave the name of fate to his own inclinations. Her fate was more definite; she was hemmed in to the life she led, and could not blame herself for having missed any opportunity of bettering it. I was well that she had been some months at Branxholm before the younger girls came home, for by that means she had learned more of Allan and of Jessie, and had contracted for them something more like friendship than she could have expected, considering the difference of their years.
Allan was her chief friend, and the person over whom she had most influence; he had always been a gentleman in mind, and he was disposed to be a gentleman in manner, if he knew how to become so. He looked best in his own house, where he was most at his ease and where he had been the master spirit since he was sixteen; for he had good judgment and a determined will, but at the same time he was so good-natured that his authority was not felt to be a tyranny. In him were developed those qualities and talents for which early colonial life is he best training—the readiness, the promptitude, the quickness of resource, the capacity for judging rightly and for acting effectively in new and untried circumstances, the quick eye and the skilful hand. There was a natural dignity about him that made nothing he did appear mean or trivial labour. None of the family had so much of this natural dignity, but they all had it more or less; and it was singular that Jessie and Allan, who had had least of the advantages of education, possessed it in the highest degree. The deference with which Allan was treated in his own family had a tendency to make him a little opinionative and obstinate, but the arrival of Amy Staunton, with so many points of superiority that he was obliged to yield to, had been an excellent corrective, and he was more convinceable than he used to be, as Hrs. Lindsay put it.
Allan was not long in making Amy's new netting-needle; it was rather thick, but she could work with it, and soon finished the net. Jessie thanked her for it, and said it was very pretty. Amy arranged the thick curls of fair hair under it and was satisfied with the effect, but Jessie looked anxious and distraught. She had not her wits about her as usual, her mother said, and indeed the anticipation of Allah's going away had unsettled everybody in the house; but no one guessed what Jessie had on her mind as an especial cause of disturbance.
It was the day before George Copeland's departure. He had not finally agreed with Mr. Hammond, but it was an understood thing that he was to go to the Darling, and on this Sunday afternoon the family at Branxholm were dull enough, and George feeling that he had been the cause of it all looked miserable; Judy had cut her finger very badly, so Jessie was obliged to go to milk instead of her, and George offered to go and bail up the cows for her and carry home the pails. He could not milk, or he would have offered to do that last good-natured office for her. There was not much said on either side till Jessie had milked her last cow. George untied the leg-rope, and was taking up the pails when she stopped him.
"Stay a few minutes, I have something to say to you before you go—just a few words. Have you nothing to say to me?"
Copeland looked embarrassed, but said nothing.
"We have been very good friends his twelve-months back," she said slowly.
"Very good friends," said George.
"I have thought whiles that we might be more than friends, but maybe you could not bring your mind to make up to my father's daughter. So, George Copeland, I'll just say his; I'm willing to be your wife if you can like me well enough to wish to be my husband." The girl's cheek crimsoned as she made his singular offer. Copeland did not speak.
"I've been mistaken, George," said she, "but it is better for me to have it all out like this than to have you going away not knowing how you thought of me, or whether you were minding or forgetting me. This last fortnight's doubt has been terrible. It is well it is at an end, only don't think the worse of me for what I have said."
"No, certainly no," said George, who could answer that question satisfactorily.
"When I made up my mind to say these words I was prepared for the consequences, and I ran the risk. Only be honourable and tell no one. If you or any man had asked me to be your wife, and I felt that I could not give you my heart, I would never have breathed word of it to a living creature."
"I am sorry, very sorry," said George, "but I never thought of you in that way. As you say, you were my master's daughter, but as for telling, you can trust to my honour not to say a word that would give you pain, although it is what I might well be proud of."
"Proud of?" said Jessie. "But I'll get over this all the better when nobody knows about it but you and me and the God above us. I'll not break my heart, though I have been strangely mistaken. You looked so unsettled and yet so sorry to leave us that I though you fancied you would get on faster with the Hammonds and so be sooner your own master and have a right to speak for yourself. If I had not thought that you liked me in that way I'd have never said what I have said and what I never can unsay. But, George, maybe it is not a fair question—if it is not tell me so—is there any other girl living that you like better?"
"No," said George, "I cannot say there is. I never thought that I was either rich enough or good enough to marry, and would not have a girl depend on such a broken reed as I am?"
"Then maybe you will change your mind and think more of me when you are far away; if so I can only say that you will find me the same."
"You said you were going to get over it," said George.
"So I will; I'll get over that senseless way of thinking about you and wondering what you think about me that makes me forget my work and lose my head, as my mother says; but that was the doubt and the fear and the difficulty of finding out your real feelings. That doubt is over and that difficulty overcome, and I'll go back to my work with a mind at rest; but as for getting over what I feel for you altogether, that will take a while, I'm thinking."
"Your father looks higher for you than such as me," said George.
"I think not," said Jessie. "What was he, what were we all but plain working people? If he's worth ten thousand pounds, or maybe nearer twenty thousand, we helped to earn it, and should have a right to please ourselves. I took a flock of sheep when I was eleven years old, and Allan even younger than that; and even after I was set free of the sheep the butter and cheese and bacon that I helped mother to make went far to keep the house, and let my father save money for land and stock. He never would like us to marry out of our degree to be looked down on by our husband's kin."
"I may be below your degree here," sad Copeland, "but my relatives at home are different. If I had not been a scapegrace and idle and fond of adventure, and gone off to sea when I should have stuck by my father, I might have been your equal in means; but I have never settled in my life, and have always spent my money as fast as I earned it. What will become of the wage I am to get from your father to-morrow, God knows—I don't. I used to say that I would begin to save next year, But lately I have given over even that salve to my conscience."
"George," said Jessie, earnestly, "there's good in you or you never could have taken such a hold of my heart. It is not for my own sake I say it, but for the sake of the father and mother that weary for you, and for the sake of the wife you will one day have, and of the God that gave you talents and opportunities that you have no right to throw away, make a beginning now. Save this money that is due to you; go to Mr. Hammond's with the determination to stick to your work; write to your father and mother; strengthen your resolution every way in you power. Look at my father who began the world with nothing and who has earned for himself comfort and abundance, and sees his children ready to work for him when he gets past hard work. This is the country for the honest industrious man, and you cannot fail to get on if you are only steady and resolved. For you are so honest and straightforward; my father says no one he ever paid wages to had his interest so much at heart. Oh! George, though I have been so mistaken in your thoughts of me, let me not be mistaken in this, that you deserve my good thoughts of you."
Jessie Lindsay was no pretty, but she was very comely, and as she now stood leaning with her back to the milking shed facing George, he for the first time saw into her soul and was touched by its strength and its weakness. She looked so earnest, so self-forgetful; she had not thought of herself, but she took the only opportunity that was given to her to arouse his better feelings and to restore him to self-respect.
This was the wife for him of all the world if he only knew it, and he began to have a consciousness of the fact. If such a woman as Jessie Lindsay, with her intuitive sense of right, her sound judgment, and her affectionate heart, could be brought to love an unsettled somewhat impressible man like him, the whole course of his life would be changed. He would infallibly rise in the world if he submitted to the affectionate influence she was capable of exerting. But such men as George Copeland do not readily attach themselves to such women, and but for her surprising frankness he would have left Branxholm on the morrow with no other memory of Jessie Lindsay than that she was a good active girl who was somewhat reserved in her manner. He might have told the wife whom at a future period he might have married, and who would be a very different person, that he wished she had a lesson from Jessie Lindsay in managing house, or a dairy, or a poultry-yard, or her quiet effective activity when there was any emergency, or her steady even temper. These things were all good in their way, but they were not charming. However, now when George knew that this large reserved nature had given all her heart to him and believed him to be worthy of it, things were changed. It was not pity that he felt for her. After the first few embarrassed words had been said and her mistake as to his feelings discovered, Jessie Lindsay had never looked more dignified than she did in this interview. She would get over it as she said. She was likely to make a far better marriage in every point of view than one with him could ever be. But George felt restored to self-respect and to honourable ambition when this woman expressed such hopes of him—when she had seen through the outer crust of levity the good true soul within him, and when she urged him for the sake of the parents he had left, and of the happy home he had scarcely thought atainable, to begin life anew on a new plan and in a better spirit.
"Jessie," said he, "you put new life into me. I'll take your advice; I'll write to my father and mother this very night; I'll leave my wages in your father's hands, where I know it will be as safe as in the bank; and I'll go either to the Darling or to Gundabook just as you think best."
"I think you had better go up the Darling. After what I have said to you I think it would be beer for me if you go right away."
"Are you so sure of that? But we part friends, I hope," said he, taking her hand.
"The best of friends," said Jessie. "I'll always wish you well wherever you may be, and I know you will not think the worse of me for what I have said, and I hope you'll mind some of it."
"I'll mind it all," said George, "but we cannot part like this." Jessie looked almost beautiful as she looked at him, and she loved him, so he thought there could be no harm in snatching a kiss. Without being at all in love with her, only having leadings in that direction, and having been long removed from that rural English society where he had spent his boyhood, where kisses were as plenty as blackberries and were given and taken without much being thought of them, the temptation to give a warmer farewell than mere hand-shaking was irresistible at the moment. But to Jessie Lindsay a kiss was a solemn thing—the seal of true love and of nothing else—to be given to the man she was to marry, but not until the troth was plighted. She drew back with an indignant blush and extended her free arm, for George held the other fast, to show how physical could support moral force, but Copeland understood the colour and escaped the threatened blow.
"Has anything I have said to you made you think that I'd allow of such a liberty " said she. "It is little you now Jessie Lindsay if you think she would have such goings on from a man that does not care for her, at least does not care for her in the way that alone can make it right and fitting to touch lip with lip. Although I have not had much learning I know my own place and yours. Let go my hand, if you please, this minute."
"I beg your pardon, Miss Lindsay," said Copeland, dropping the hand he held and feeling a little cowed by her grand manner. "I did not think you would take it up so seriously. I used to kiss my sisters and cousins and the girls about, and nobody thought anything of it."
"I'm neither your sister nor your cousin, and I don't feel like one, nor do you feel like a brother to me, and besides I'm not used to kiss anybody and I won't have it. Write your letter and go your way to-morrow, George. We part friends if you do not offend me again," and Jessie lifted her milk pails and walked slowly to the house, leaving George Copeland in a state of bewildered admiration at her spirit and her sincerity.