No More Learning

Many of Mrs. Oliphant's earlier stories and essays appeared in
Blackwood's Magazine, to which she was for years a principal con-
tributor. It was the picturesque tale of Zaidee,' published in 1856,
which first revealed her peculiar vein of arch and quietly ironical
MARGARET OLIPHANT


## p. 10820 (#28) ###########################################

10820
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
humor. Mr. Ruskin was then at the summit of his grave ascendency
over the romantic mind; but no one is more likely than himself to
have relished the detailed description of Mr. Burtonshaw's new house,
which was provided, in deference to a recent recommendation of his
own, with a species of richly sculptured spout through which articles.
of food were "shunted" to the beggars, for whom comfortable seats
had also been provided under the back porch; -a process which
went on to the satisfaction of all parties, until it was discovered that
the family plate was rapidly disappearing by the same convenient
channel.
Seven years later, in the 'Chronicles of Carlingford,' we find Mrs.
Oliphant at the height of her descriptive and dramatic power. Here,
like Mr. Trollope in the 'Chronicles of Barset,' and George Eliot in
'Middlemarch,' she annexed and made her own a small province of
English life, which she developed, thoroughly and delightfully, in all
its grades of rank and shades of opinion. Good and bad, élite and
vulgar, clergy and laity, the denizens of the ideal country town of a
generation ago live and move amid their mellow old-fashioned sur-
roundings, with all their curious and inevitable, yet often unconscious
action and reaction upon one another. Mrs. Oliphant's humor is at
its richest in depicting the career of that great altruist and gallant
social reformer, Lucilla Marjoribanks; and she has seldom struck a
deeper note of tragedy than in the histories of the proud and perse-
cuted young minister of Salem Chapel, and the Roman Catholic con-
vert Gerald Wentworth. Some of her later tales, however, as, for
example, The Story of Valentine and his Brother,' (Sir Tom,' 'In
Trust,' 'A House Divided against Itself,' and 'The Cuckoo in the
Nest,' are better constructed than the Chronicles, which are essen-
tially novels of character rather than of plot. Her greatest fault as
a story-teller has always been a tendency to over-minute analysis
of motive and mood; and to an undue repetition of her own reflec-
tions upon her people, who are after all so thoroughly alive that
they may usually be trusted to act and speak for themselves.
The admirable 'Life of Edward Irving' appeared almost simultane-
ously with the earliest Chronicle of Carlingford. Mrs. Oliphant was
now at the "half-way house," and her power of characterization was
fully ripe. She had, moreover, in this particular case, a very strong
sympathy with her subject, and unusual qualifications for dealing
with its difficulties. Herself a loyal Scot in race, and a born Presby-
terian, she knew by instinct the sources of that strange spirit, and
all the conditions of the bleak Lowland life into which it was born.
The early struggles of Edward Irving, his piety and his ambition;
the terrible test of his sudden and unparalleled London popular-
ity, and that other test, no less terrible, of its abrupt decline; the


## p. 10821 (#29) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10821
grotesque fanaticism which invaded his originally healthful mind,
and disgraced him irremediably with the world polite; the tragedy of
his expulsion from the fold of his fathers, and of his early death
in uttermost humiliation and sadness; —into all these experiences his
biographer could and did enter without an effort. She perceived his
desperate sincerity, and became his impassioned apologist; and in a
narrative more thrilling than most of her fictions, she compelled the
attention of a scoffing world. She must be held completely to have
vindicated the blameless private conduct, and the perfectly disinter-
ested purpose, of the eccentric founder of the so-called Catholic Apos-
tolic Church. The life of Edward Irving was a triumphant piece of
special pleading. That of Count Charles de Montalembert, published
in 1872,-exactly a decade later,- shows abilities of a yet higher
order; for it contains an exposition both lucid and dispassionate of
an even more obscure bit of modern religious history. Mrs. Oli-
phant had become familiar with the man Montalembert while making
her excellent translation of his monumental work on the Monks of the
West; and she brought to the estimation of his fine character and
conspicuous course, a thorough knowledge of the questions and con-
troversies with which his name is identified, and an exquisite poise of
judgment. It had always been a great puzzle to the Protestant mind,
how the three famous men who led that untimely movement toward
liberalism inside the Catholic Church, and gave the proud name of
"The Future" to the short-lived journal which they edited,- how
Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert could have been all that
they were, and no more; all so revolutionary and two so reactionary.
Mrs. Oliphant has virtually solved the enigma; and her account of the
way in which Henri Lacordaire received the rebuff of the Holy See,
when the three associates in the publication of L'Avenir had gone
with so naïf a confidence to seek the papal sanction for their gener-
ous undertaking, strikingly illustrates her power of putting herself in
the place of one whose conclusions are erroneous to her, and whose
action she more than half deplores.
Mrs. Oliphant has written three more biographies of unusual in-
terest and merit: the lives of St. Francis of Assisi, of Jeanne d'Arc,
and of her own distinguished kinsman, Laurence Oliphant. They
may best be considered together, for her view of each of these curi-
ously diverse careers is modified by a marked feature of her own
mind, her tendency, namely, toward religious mysticism. She is
herself, apparently, deeply persuaded not merely of the reality of a
future life, but of the existence, all about us, of a super-sensual scheme
of things, having a perfectly definite though as yet unfathomed con-
nection with the things which we see and hear. Into this mysterious
region -so near and yet so far-our own loved ones vanish when
-


## p. 10822 (#30) ###########################################

10822
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
they depart from us. What do they there become to one another,
and what may they still be to ourselves? It is needless to say that
Mrs. Oliphant has not answered this importunate question; but she
has the air of having received light upon it, which she imparts in
what may be described, collectively, as her Studies of the Unseen.
The first, and altogether the most symmetrical and remarkable, of
this series which includes 'Old Lady Mary,' 'The Little Pilgrim,'
and some others - appeared in 1880. It was called 'A Beleaguered
City,' and purports to be the attested narrative of the maire and
sundry citizens of the town of Semur in Haute Bretagne, of a singu-
lar series of events which at one time took place in that municipal-
ity. These amounted to no less than an invasion of the town by the
innumerable souls of all its deceased citizens, and the expulsion in a
body of the living, who remained encamped without the walls while.
the supernatural visitation continued. Nothing can surpass the veri-
similitude with which this strange and powerful conception is wrought
out. The energy of its first inspiration never flags. There is not
an inconsistent occurrence, and hardly a superfluous word, in all the
thrilling narrative. The French instinct in matters religious, so ten-
der and genuine though so alien to our own, and the French turn
of thought as well as expression, are faultlessly preserved. Here, for
once, Mrs. Oliphant's very style, so apt to be redundant and dis-
cursive, is perfect in its direct simplicity. It is her highest literary
achievement; a sacred poem in prose, which shakes the soul at the
first perusal almost with the force of an actual revelation.
It is easy to see that to a mind capable of such a conception,
both the visions of St. Francis and the "voices" of Jeanne d'Arc
would possess a peculiar interest; and that Mrs. Oliphant would not
be disposed to regard either from a strictly rationalistic point of
view. She does not pretend to do so; but while clearly avowing her
own belief in the direct Divine guidance of both the saint and the
martyr, she searches the best sources of information concerning the
material and mundane side of their careers, in the most patient
and critical spirit of modern inquiry. This is especially the case in
the life of Jeanne d'Arc, where the but recently published 'Procès'
is followed step by step, and the defense of the supposed sorcer-
ess is allowed to rest almost entirely on her own artless and solemn
asseverations. Nor has Mrs. Oliphant ever shown herself more truly
judicial than in her manner of apportioning the responsibility for the
hideous and cowardly crime of Jeanne's murder, between the vin-
dictive English authorities of the day and the Maid's own faithless
countrymen.
In describing the strange career of that most modern-minded of
mystics, her own far-away cousin Laurence Oliphant, our author had


## p. 10823 (#31) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10823
to deal with the problem of a soul's destiny under strikingly novel
conditions. But though she cannot repress her honorable scorn for
the element of vulgar charlatanry in the self-styled Prophet, at
whose bidding Laurence Oliphant, his mother and his wife, sacrificed
so much, her testimony is no less clear and unhesitating than in the
case of the medieval devotees, to the reality of that higher life for
which they gladly lost all that is supposed to render this life desir-
able to highly civilized creatures. This testimony is, in fact, Mrs.
Oliphant's true message to the world; and in bearing it she but
ranges herself with the chief seers of her own generation,— with
Tennyson and with Browning, both of whom departed from an un-
believing world with the word of faith upon their lips.
For the rest, the 'Life of Laurence Oliphant' is upon the whole
the ablest of the three biographies which have here been grouped
together. The author touchingly acknowledges, in her preface, the
assistance in preparing it of her gifted son, Francis Oliphant, whose
early death has been one of the heaviest sorrows of her later years.
But to dwell on the number of those years, or anticipate the hand
of time, would be both ungrateful and impertinent in the readers of
one whose power of sustained production has proved so very excep-
tional, and whose natural force is apparently quite unabated.
She died June
[This was written before Mrs. Oliphant's death.
25th, 1897, after this article was in type. ]
Harmet Mac's Preston
A COMFORT TO HER DEAR PAPA
From Miss Marjoribanks'
M
ISS MARJORIBANKS lost her mother when she was only fif-
teen, and when, to add to the misfortune, she was absent
at school, and could not have it in her power to soothe
her dear mamma's last moments, as she herself said. Words are
sometimes very poor exponents of such an event; but it hap-
pens now and then, on the other hand, that a plain intimation
expresses too much, and suggests emotion and suffering which in
reality have but little if any existence. Mrs. Marjoribanks, poor
lady, had been an invalid for many years; she had grown a lit-
tle peevish in her loneliness, not feeling herself of much account
in this world. There are some rare natures that are content


## p. 10824 (#32) ###########################################

10824
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
to acquiesce in the general neglect, and forget themselves when
they find themselves forgotten; but it is unfortunately much
more usual to take the plan adopted by Mrs. Marjoribanks, who
devoted all her powers, during the last ten years of her life, to
the solacement and care of that poor self which other people
neglected. The consequence was, that when she disappeared
from her sofa,-except from the mere physical fact that she was
no longer there, - no one except her maid, whose occupation was
gone, could have found out much difference. Her husband, it is
true, who had somewhere, hidden deep in some secret corner of
his physical organization, the remains of a heart, experienced a
certain sentiment of sadness when he re-entered the house from
which she had gone away forever. But Dr. Marjoribanks was too
busy a man to waste his feelings on a mere sentiment.
His daughter, however, was only fifteen, and had floods of
tears at her command, as was natural at that age.
All the way
home she revolved the situation in her mind, which was con-
siderably enlightened by novels and popular philosophy; for the
lady at the head of Miss Marjoribanks's school was a devoted
admirer of Friends in Council,' and was fond of bestowing
that work as a prize, with pencil-marks on the margin,- so that
Lucilla's mind had been cultivated, and was brimful of the best
of sentiments. She made up her mind on her journey to a great
many virtuous resolutions; for in such a case as hers, it was evi-
dently the duty of an only child to devote herself to her father's
comfort, and become the sunshine of his life, as so many young
persons of her age have been known to become in literature.
Miss Marjoribanks had a lively mind, and was capable of grasping
all the circumstances of the situation at a glance. Thus between
the outbreaks of her tears for her mother, it became apparent to
her that she must sacrifice her own feelings, and make a cheer-
ful home for papa, and that a great many changes would be
necessary in the household-changes which went so far as even
to extend to the furniture. Miss Marjoribanks sketched to herself,
as she lay back in the corner of the railway carriage with her
veil down, how she would wind herself up to the duty of pre-
siding at her papa's dinner parties, and charming everybody by
her good-humor and brightness, and devotion to his comfort; and
how, when it was all over, she would withdraw and cry her eyes
out in her own room, and be found in the morning languid and
worn-out, but always heroical, ready to go down-stairs and assist


## p. 10825 (#33) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10825
at her dear papa's breakfast, and keep up her smiles for him till
he had gone out to his patients.
«<
Altogether the picture was a very pretty one; and consider-
ing that a great many young ladies in deep mourning put force
upon their feelings in novels, and maintain a smile for the benefit
of the observant male creatures of whom they have the charge,
the idea was not at all extravagant, considering again that Miss
Marjoribanks was but fifteen. She was not however exactly the
kind of figure for this mise en scène. When her schoolfellows
talked of her to their friends,- for Lucilla was already an im-
portant personage at Mount Pleasant,—the most common descrip-
tion they gave of her was that she was a large girl"; and there
was great truth in the adjective. She was not to be described
as a tall girl, which conveys an altogether different idea, but
she was large in all particulars,- full and well developed, with
somewhat large features; not at all pretty as yet, though it was
known in Mount Pleasant that somebody had said that such a
face might ripen into beauty, and become "grandiose," for any-
thing anybody could tell. Miss Marjoribanks was not vain: but
the word had taken possession of her imagination, as was nat-
ural, and solaced her much when she made the painful discovery
that her gloves were half a number larger, and her shoes a hair-
breadth broader, than those of any of her companions; but the
hands and the feet were both perfectly well shaped, and being
at the same time well clothed and plump, were much more pre-
sentable and pleasant to look upon than the lean rudimentary
schoolgirl hands with which they were surrounded. To add to
these excellences, Lucilla had a mass of hair, which, if it could
but have been cleared a little in its tint, would have been golden,
though at present it was nothing more than tawny, and curly
to exasperation. She wore it in large thick curls, which did not
however float or wave, or do any of the graceful things which
curls ought to do; for it had this aggravating quality, that it
would not grow long, but would grow ridiculously unmanageably
thick, to the admiration of her companions, but to her own.
despair, for there was no knowing what to do with those short
but ponderous locks.
These were the external characteristics of the girl who was
going home to be a comfort to her widowed father, and meant
to sacrifice herself to his happiness. In the course of her rapid.
journey she had already settled upon everything that had to be


## p. 10826 (#34) ###########################################

10826
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
done; or rather, to speak more truly, had rehearsed everything,
according to the habit already acquired by a quick mind a good
deal occupied with itself. First she meant to fall into her
father's arms,-forgetting, with that singular facility for over-
looking the peculiarities of others which belongs to such a char-
acter, that Dr. Marjoribanks was very little given to embracing,
and that a hasty kiss on her forehead was the warmest caress he
had ever given his daughter,- and then to rush up to the cham-
ber of death and weep over dear mamma. "And to think I was
not there to soothe her last moments! " Lucilla said to herself
with a sob, and with feelings sufficiently real in their way. After
this, the devoted daughter made up her mind to come down-
stairs again, pale as death, but self-controlled, and devote herself
to papa. Perhaps, if great emotion should make him tearless,-
as such cases had been known,- Miss Marjoribanks would steal
into his arms unawares, and so surprise him into weeping. All
this went briskly through her mind, undeterred by the reflection
that tears were as much out of the doctor's way as embraces;
and in this mood she sped swiftly along in the inspiration of her
first sorrow, as she imagined,- but in reality to suffer her first
disappointment, which was of a less soothing character than that
mild and manageable grief.
When Miss Marjoribanks reached home, her mother had been
dead for twenty-four hours; and her father was not at the door
to receive her as she had expected, but by the bedside of a
patient in extremity, who could not consent to go out of the
world without the doctor. This was a sad reversal of her inten-
tions, but Lucilla was not the woman to be disconcerted. She
carried out the second part of her programme without either
interference or sympathy, except from Mrs. Marjoribanks's maid,
who had some hopes from the moment of her arrival. "I can't
abear to think as I'm to be parted from you all, miss," sobbed
the faithful attendant. "I've lost the best missus as ever was,
and I shouldn't mind going after her. Whenever any one gets
a good friend in this world, they're the first to be took away,"
said the weeping handmaiden, who naturally saw her own loss in
the most vivid light.
"Ah, Ellis," cried Miss Marjoribanks, reposing her sorrow in
the arms of this anxious attendant, "we must try to be a com-
fort to poor papa! " With this end, Lucilla made herself very
troublesome to the sober-minded doctor during those few dim


## p. 10827 (#35) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10827
days before the faint and daily lessening shadow of poor Mrs.
Marjoribanks was removed altogether from the house. When
that sad ceremony had taken place, and the doctor returned
serious enough, heaven knows-to the great house, where the
faded helpless woman, who had notwithstanding been his love.
and his bride in other days, lay no longer on the familiar sofa,
the crisis arrived which Miss Marjoribanks had rehearsed so often;
but after quite a different fashion. The widower was tearless,
indeed; but not from excess of emotion. On the contrary, a pain-
ful heaviness possessed him when he became aware how little
real sorrow was in his mind, and how small an actual loss was
this loss of his wife, which bulked before the world as an event
of just as much magnitude as the loss, for example, which poor
Mr. Lake, the drawing-master, was at the same moment suffering.
It was even sad, in another point of view, to think of a human
creature passing out of the world and leaving so little trace that
she had ever been there. As for the pretty creature whom Dr.
Marjoribanks had married, she had vanished into thin air years
and years ago.
These thoughts were heavy enough,- perhaps
even more overwhelming than that grief which develops love to
its highest point of intensity. But such were not precisely the
kind of reflections which could be solaced by paternal attendrisse-
ment over a weeping and devoted daughter.
It was May, and the weather was warm for the season: but
Lucilla had caused the fire to be lighted in the large gloomy
library where Dr. Marjoribanks always sat in the evenings, with
the idea that it would be "a comfort" to him; and for the same
reason she had ordered tea to be served there, instead of the
dinner, for which her father, as she imagined, could have little
appetite. When the doctor went into his favorite seclusion, tired
and heated and sad,- for even on the day of his wife's funeral
the favorite doctor of Carlingford had patients to think of,- the
very heaviness of his thoughts gave warmth to his indignation.
He had longed for the quiet and the coolness and the solitude
of his library, apart from everybody; and when he found it radi-
ant with firelight, tea set on the table, and Lucilla crying by
the fire in her new crape, the effect upon a temper by no means
perfect may be imagined. The unfortunate man threw both
the windows open and rang the bell violently, and gave instant.
orders for the removal of the unnecessary fire and the tea service.


## p. 10828 (#36) ###########################################

10828
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
"Let me know when dinner is ready," he said in a voice like
thunder; "and if Miss Marjoribanks wants a fire, let it be lighted
in the drawing-room. "
Lucilla was so much taken by surprise by this sudden over-
throw of her programme, that she submitted as a girl of much
less spirit might have done, and suffered herself and her fire.
and her tea things to be dismissed up-stairs; where she wept still
more at sight of dear mamma's sofa, and where Ellis came to
mingle her tears with those of her young mistress, and to beg
dear Miss Lucilla, for the sake of her precious 'ealth and her dear
papa, to be persuaded to take some tea. On the whole, master
stood lessened in the eyes of all the household by his ability to
eat his dinner, and his resentment at having his habitudes dis-
turbed. "Them men would eat and drink if we was all in our
graves," said the indignant cook, who indeed had a real griev-
ance; and the outraged sentiment of the kitchen was avenged
by a bad and hasty dinner, which the doctor, though generally
"very particular," swallowed without remark.
About an hour afterwards he went up-stairs to the drawing-
room, where Miss Marjoribanks was waiting for him, much less
at ease than she had expected to be. Though he gave a little
sigh at the sight of his wife's sofa, he did not hesitate to sit
down upon it, and even to draw it a little out of its position,
which, as Lucilla described afterwards, was like a knife going
into her heart; though indeed she had herself decided already,
in the intervals of her tears, that the drawing-room furniture had
got very faded and shabby, and that it would be very expedient
to have it renewed for the new reign of youth and energy which
was about to commence. As for the doctor, though Miss Mar-
joribanks thought him insensible, his heart was heavy enough.
His wife had gone out of the world without leaving the least
mark of her existence, except in that large girl, whose spirits
and forces were unbounded, but whose discretion at the present
moment did not seem much greater than her mother's. Instead
of thinking of her as a comfort, the doctor felt himself called
upon to face a new and unexpected embarrassment. It would
have been a satisfaction to him just then to have been left to
himself, and permitted to work on quietly at his profession, and
to write his papers for the Lancet, and to see his friends now
and then when he chose; for Dr. Marjoribanks was not a man


## p. 10829 (#37) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10829
who had any great need of sympathy by nature, or who was at
all addicted to demonstrations of feeling: consequently he drew
his wife's sofa a little further from the fire, and took his seat
on it soberly, quite unaware that by so doing he was putting a
knife into his daughter's heart.
"I hope you have had something to eat, Lucilla," he said:
"don't get into that foolish habit of flying to tea as a man flies
to a dram. It's a more innocent stimulant, but it's the same
kind of intention. I am not so much against a fire: it has
always a kind of cheerful look. "
"Oh, papa,” cried his daughter, with a flood of indignant
tears, "you can't suppose I want anything to look cheerful this
dreadful day. "
"I am far from blaming you, my dear," said the doctor: "it
is natural you should cry. I am sorry I did not write for my
sister to come, who would have taken care of you; but I dislike
strangers in the house at such a time. However, I hope, Lucilla,
you will soon feel yourself able to return to school; occupation
is always the best remedy, and you will have your friends and
companions »
"Papa! " cried Miss Marjoribanks; and then she summoned
courage, and rushed up to him, and threw herself and her clouds
of crape on the carpet at his side (and it may here be mentioned
that Lucilla had seized the opportunity to have her mourning made
long, which had been the desire of her heart, baffled by mamma
and governess, for at least a year). "Papa! " she exclaimed with
fervor, raising to him her tear-stained face, and clasping her fair
plump hands, "oh, don't send me away! I was only a silly girl
the other day, but this has made me a woman. Though I can
never, never hope to take dear mamma's place, and be-all-
that she was to you, still I feel I can be a comfort to you if you
will let me. You shall not see me cry any more," cried Lucilla
with energy, rubbing away her tears. "I will never give way to
my feelings. I will ask for no companions-nor-nor anything.
As for pleasure, that is all over. O papa, you shall never see
me regret anything, or wish for anything. I will give up every-
thing in the world to be a comfort to you! "
This address, which was utterly unexpected, drove Dr. Mar-
joribanks to despair. He said, "Get up, Lucilla; " but the de-
voted daughter knew better than to get up. She hid her face
in her hands, and rested her hands upon her mother's sofa,
-


## p. 10830 (#38) ###########################################

10830
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
where the doctor was sitting; and the sobs of that emotion
which she meant to control henceforward, echoed through the
room: "It is only for this once-I can - cannot help it," she
cried.
-
When her father found that he could neither soothe her nor
succeed in raising her, he got up himself, which was the only
thing left to him, and began to walk about the room with hasty
steps. Her mother too had possessed this dangerous faculty of
tears; and it was not wonderful if the sober-minded doctor,
roused for the first time to consider his little girl as a creature
possessed of individual character, should recognize, with a thrill
of dismay, the appearance of the same qualities which had wearied.
his life out, and brought his youthful affections to an untimely
end. Lucilla was, it is true, as different from her mother as
summer from winter; but Dr. Marjoribanks had no means of
knowing that his daughter was only doing her duty by him
in his widowhood, according to a programme of filial devotion
resolved upon, in accordance with the best models, some days
before.
Accordingly, when her sobs had ceased, her father returned.
and raised her up not unkindly, and placed her in her chair.
In doing so, the doctor put his finger by instinct upon Lucilla's
pulse, which was sufficiently calm and well regulated to reassure
the most anxious parent. And then a furtive momentary smile
gleamed for a single instant round the corners of his mouth.
"It is very good of you to propose sacrificing yourself for
me," he said; "and if you would sacrifice your excitement in the
mean time, and listen to me quietly, it would really be some-
thing: but you are only fifteen, Lucilla, and I have no wish to
take you from school just now;- wait till I have done. Your
poor mother is gone, and it is very natural you should cry; but
you were a good child to her on the whole, which. will be a
comfort to you. We did everything that could be thought of to
prolong her days, and when that was impossible, to lessen what
she had to suffer; and we have every reason to hope," said the
doctor, as indeed he was accustomed to say in the exercise of
his profession to mourning relatives, "that she's far better off
now than if she had been with us. When that is said, I don't
know that there is anything more to add. I am not fond of
sacrifices, either one way or another; and I've a great objection
to any one making a sacrifice for me
>>>
-
――――


## p. 10831 (#39) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10831
"But oh, papa, it would be no sacrifice," said Lucilla, "if you
would only let me be a comfort to you! "
"That is just where it is, my dear," said the steady doctor:
"I have been used to be left a great deal to myself; and I am
not prepared to say that the responsibility of having you here
without a mother to take care of you, and all your lessons inter-
rupted, would not neutralize any comfort you might be. You
see," said Dr. Marjoribanks, trying to soften matters a little,
"a man is what his habits make him; and I have been used to
be left a great deal to myself. It answers in some cases, but I
doubt if it would answer with me. "
And then there was a pause, in which Lucilla wept and stifled
her tears in her handkerchief, with a warmer flood of vexation
and disappointment than even her natural grief had produced.
"Of course, papa, if I can't be any comfort—I will go back to
school," she sobbed, with a touch of sullenness which did not
escape the doctor's ear.
"Yes, my dear, you will certainly go back to school," said the
peremptory father: "I never had any doubt on that subject.
You can stay over Sunday and rest yourself. Monday or Tues-
day will be time enough to go back to Mount Pleasant; and now
you had better ring the bell, and get somebody to bring you
something or I'll see to that when I go down-stairs.
It's get-
ting late, and this has been a fatiguing day. I'll send you up
some negus, and I think you had better go to bed.
"
And with these commonplace words, Dr. Marjoribanks with-
drew in calm possession of the field. As for Lucilla, she obeyed
him, and betook herself to her own room; and swallowed her
negus with a sense not only of defeat, but of disappointment and
mortification, which was very unpleasant. To go back again
and be an ordinary schoolgirl, after the pomp of woe in which
she had come away, was naturally a painful thought;-she who
had ordered her mourning to be made long, and contemplated
new furniture in the drawing-room, and expected to be mistress
of her father's house, not to speak of the still dearer privilege
of being a comfort to him; and now, after all, her active mind
was to be condemned over again to verbs and chromatic scales,
though she felt within herself capacities so much more extended.
Miss Marjoribanks did not by any means learn by this defeat to
take the characters of the other personæ in her little drama into
consideration, when she rehearsed her pet scenes hereafter,
for


## p. 10832 (#40) ###########################################

10832
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
that is a knowledge slowly acquired, but she was wise enough
to know when resistance was futile; and like most people of
lively imagination, she had a power of submitting to circum-
stances when it became impossible to change them. Thus she
consented to postpone her reign, if not with a good grace, yet
still without foolish resistance, and retired with the full honors
of war.
She had already rearranged all the details, and settled
upon all the means possible of preparing herself for what she
called the charge of the establishment when her final emancipa-
tion took place, before she returned to school. "Papa thought me
too young," she said, when she reached Mount Pleasant, "though
it was dreadful to come away and leave him alone with only the
servants: but dear Miss Martha, you will let me learn all about
political economy and things, to help me manage everything; for
now that dear mamma is gone, there is nobody but me to be a
comfort to papa. "
And by this means Miss Marjoribanks managed to influence
the excellent woman who believed in 'Friends in Council,' and to
direct the future tenor of her education; while at least, in that
one moment of opportunity, she had achieved long dresses, which
was a visible mark of womanhood, and a step which could not be
retraced.
THE DELIVERANCE
From The Ladies Lindores >
[The Lindores are a simple family, of good birth and breeding, who for
years have wandered happily over the Continent, living in cheap places on a
meagre income, and making friends with everybody. Unexpectedly inheriting
the title, and finding the estates insufficient, Lord Lindores determines that
his pretty daughters must marry fortunes. The elder, Lady Caroline, is sac-
rificed to the richest man in the county, a coarse, purse-proud, vain, and brutal
ignoramus, whom she abhors, and who grows daily more and more detestable.
Suddenly he is killed by an accident, induced by his own evil temper and
bravado. ]
C
ARRY, upon the other side of the great house, had retired to
her room in the weariness that followed her effort to look
cheerful and do the honors of her table. She had made
that effort very bravely; and though it did not even conceal from
Millefleurs the position of affairs, still less deceive her own fam-
ily, yet at least it kept up the appearance of decorum necessary,
I


## p. 10833 (#41) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10833
-
and made it easier for the guests to go through their part.
She lay on a sofa very quiet in the stillness of exhaustion, not
doing anything, not saying anything, looking wistfully at the blue
sky that was visible through the window with the soft foliage of
some birch-trees waving lightly over it-and trying not to think.
Indeed, she was so weary that it was scarcely necessary to try.
And what was there to think about? Nothing could be done to
deliver her-nothing that she was aware of even to mend her
position. She was grateful to God that she was to be spared the
still greater misery of seeing Beaufort, but that was all. Even
heaven itself seemed to have no help for Carry. If she could
have been made by some force of unknown agency to love her
husband, she would still have been an unhappy wife; but it is to
be feared, poor soul, that things had come to this pass with her,
that she did not even wish to love her husband, and felt it less
degrading to live with him under compulsion, than to be brought
down to the level of his coarser nature, and take pleasure in
the chains she wore. Her heart revolted at him more and more.
In such a terrible case, what help was there for her in earth
or heaven? Even had he been reformed, had he been made a
better man, Carry would not have loved him: she shrank from
the very suggestion that she might some time do so. There was
no help for her; her position could not be bettered anyhow. She
knew this so well, that all struggle except the involuntary strug-
gle in her mind, which never could intermit, against many of
the odious details of the life she had to lead, had died out of
her. She had given in to the utter hopelessness of her situation.
Despair is sometimes an opiate, as it is sometimes a frantic and
maddening poison. There was nothing to be done for her,—no
use in wearying Heaven with prayers, as some of us do. Nothing
could make her better. She had given in utterly, body and soul,
and this was all that was to be said. She lay there in this still-
ness of despair, feeling more crushed and helpless than usual
after the emotions of the morning, but not otherwise disturbed;
lying like a man who has been shattered by an accident, but
lulled by some anodyne draught,- still, and almost motionless,
letting every sensation be hushed so long as nature would per-
mit, her hands folded, her very soul hushed and still. She took
no note of time in the exhaustion of her being. She knew that
when her husband returned she would be sent for, and would
have to re-enter the other world of eternal strife and pain; but
XIX-678
—
.


## p. 10834 (#42) ###########################################

10834
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
here she was retired, as in her chapel, in herself - the sole
effectual refuge which she had left.
-
The house was very well organized, very silent and orderly in
general; so that it surprised Lady Caroline a little, in the depth
of her quiet, to hear a distant noise as of many voices, distinct
though not loud- a confusion and far-away babel of outcries and
exclamations. Nothing could be more unusual; but she felt no
immediate alarm, thinking that the absence of her husband and
her own withdrawal had probably permitted a little outbreak of
gayety or gossip down-stairs, with which she did not wish to
interfere. She lay still accordingly, listening vaguely, without
taking much interest in the matter. Certainly something out of
the way must have happened. The sounds had sprung up all at
once,—a hum of many excited voices, with sharp cries as of dis-
may and wailing breaking in.
At last her attention was attracted. "There has been some
accident," she said to herself, sitting upright upon her sofa. As
she did this she heard steps approaching her door. They came
with a rush, hurrying along, the feet of at least two women,
with a heavier step behind them; then paused suddenly, and
there ensued a whispering and consultation close to her door.
Carry was a mother, and her first thought was of her child-
ren. "They are afraid to tell me," was the thought that passed
through her mind. She rose and rushed to the door, throwing
it open.
"What is it? Something has happened," she said,-
"something you are afraid to tell me. Oh, speak, speak! - the
children- »
•
"My leddy, it's none of the children. The children are as
well as could be wished, poor dears," said her own maid, who
had been suddenly revealed, standing very close to the door.
The woman, her cheeks blazing with some sudden shock, eager
to speak, yet terrified, stopped there with a gasp. The house-
keeper, who was behind her, pushed her a little forward, sup-
porting her with a hand on her waist, whispering confused but
audible exhortations. "Oh, take heart-oh, take heart. She
must be told. The Lord will give you strength," this woman
said. The butler stood solemnly behind, with a very anxious,
serious countenance.
To Carry, all this scene became confused by wild anxiety
and terror. "What is it? " she said; "my mother? some one
at home? " She stretched out her hands vaguely towards the


## p. 10835 (#43) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10835
messengers of evil, feeling like a victim at the block, upon
whose neck the executioner's knife is about to fall.
"O my leddy! far worse! far worse! " the woman cried.
Carry, in the dreadful whirl of her feelings, still paused
bewildered, to ask herself what could be worse? And then there
came upon her a moment of blindness, when she saw nothing,
and the walls and the roof seemed to burst asunder, and whirl
and whirl. She dropped upon her knees in this awful blank and
blackness unawares; and then the haze dispelled, and she saw,
coming out of the mist, a circle of horror-stricken pale faces,
forming a sort of ring round her. She could do nothing but
gasp out her husband's name - "Mr. Torrance? " with quivering
lips.
―
"O my lady, my lady! To see her on her knees, and us
bringin' her such awfu' news! But the Lord will comfort ye,"
cried the housekeeper, forgetting the veneration due to her mis-
tress, and raising her in her arms. The two women supported
her into her room, and she sat down again upon the sofa where
she had been sitting — sitting, was it a year ago? —in the quiet,
thinking that no change would ever come to her; that nothing,
nothing could alter her condition; that all was over and finished
for her life.
And it is to be supposed that they told poor Carry exactly
the truth. She never knew. When she begged them to leave
her alone till her mother came, whom they had sent for, she had
no distinct knowledge of how it was, or what had happened;
but she knew that had happened. She fell upon her knees
before her bed, and buried her head in her hands, shutting out
the light. Then she seized hold of herself with both her hands
to keep herself (as she felt) from floating away upon that flood
of new life which came swelling up all in a moment, swelling
into every vein-filling high the fountain of existence which had
been so feeble and so low. Oh, shut out-shut out the light,
that nobody might see! close the doors and the shutters in the
house of death, and every cranny, that no human eye might
descry it! After a while she dropped lower, from the bed which
supported her, to the floor, prostrating herself with more than
Oriental humbleness. Her heart beat wildly, and in her brain
there seemed to wake a hundred questions clanging like bells in
her ears, filling the silence with sound. Her whole being, that
had been crushed, sprang up like a flower from under a passing


## p. 10836 (#44) ###########################################

10836
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
foot. Was it possible? was it possible? She pulled herself
down; tried by throwing herself upon her face on the carpet,
prostrating herself body and soul, to struggle against that secret,
voiceless, mad exultation that came upon her against her will.
Was he dead? — was he dead? struck down in the middle of his
days, that man of iron? Oh, the pity of it! -oh, the horror of
it! She tried to force herself to feel this-to keep down, down,
that climbing joy in her. God in heaven, was it possible? she
who thought nothing could happen to her more.
A fire had been lighted by the anxious servants,- who saw
her shiver in the nervous excitement of this great and terrible
event, and blazed brightly, throwing ruddy gleams of light
through the room, and wavering ghostly shadows upon the wall.
The great bed, with its tall canopies and heavy ornaments,
shrouded round with satin curtains, looped and festooned with
tarnished gold lace and every kind of clumsy grandeur, stood
like a sort of catafalque, the object of a thousand airy assaults
and attacks from the fantastic light, but always dark,—a fune-
real object in the midst; while the tall polished wardrobes all
round the room gave back reflections like dim mirrors, showing
nothing but the light. Two groups of candles on the high
mantelpiece, twinkling against the dark wall, were the only other
illuminations. Carry sat sunk in a big chair close to the fire.
If she could have cried, if she could have talked and lamented,
if she could have gone to bed, or failing this, if she had read
her Bible, the maids in the house, who hung about the doors
in anxiety and curiosity, would have felt consoled for her. But
she did none of these. She only sat there, her slight figure
lost in the depths of the chair, still in the white dress which
she had worn to receive her guests in the morning. She had
not stirred the women said, gathering round Lady Lindores in
whispering eagerness for hours, and had not even touched the
cup of tea they had carried to her. "O my lady, do something
to make her cry," the women said. "If she doesn't get it out
it'll break her heart. " They had forgotten, with the facile emo-
tion which death, and especially a death so sudden, calls forth,
that the master had been anything but the most devoted of hus-
bands, or his wife other than the lovingest of wives. This pious
superstition is always ready to smooth away the horror of deaths
which are a grief to no one. "Your man's your man when a's
done, even if he's but an ill ane," was the sentiment of the awe-
-
――――
-
—
-
--


## p. 10837 (#45) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10837
stricken household.
"Ye never ken what he's been to ye till ye
lose him. " It gave them all a sense of elevation that Lady
Caroline should, as they thought, be wrapped in hopeless grief,—
it made them think better of her and of themselves. The two
ladies went into the ghostly room with something of the same
feeling.
Lady Lindores felt that she understood it, that she had
expected it. Had not her own mind been filled by sudden com-
punction, the thought that perhaps she had been less tolerant
of the dead man than she ought; and how much more must
Carry, poor Carry, have felt the awe and pang of an almost
remorse to think that he was gone, without a word, against whom
her heart had risen in such rebellion, yet who was of all men
the most closely involved in her very being? Lady Lindores
comprehended it all; and yet it was a relief to her mind that
Carry felt it so, and could thus wear the garb of mourning with
reality and truth. She went in with her heart full, with tears
in her eyes, the profoundest tender pity for the dead, the deepest
sympathy with her child in sorrow. The room was very large,
very still, very dark, save for that ruddy twilight, the two little
groups of pale lights glimmering high up upon the wall, and no
sign of any human presence.
«<
-
Carry, my darling! " her mother said, wondering and dis-
mayed. Then there was a faint sound, and Carry rose, tall, slim,
and white, like a ghost out of the gloom. She had been sitting
there for hours, lost in thoughts, in dreams and visions. She
seemed to herself to have so exhausted this event by thinking of
it, that it was now years away. She stepped forward and met
her mother, tenderly indeed, but with no effusion.
come all the way so late to be with me, mother?
how kind you are! And Edith too-"
"Kind! " cried Lady Lindores, with an almost angry bewilder-
ment. "Did you not know I would come, Carry, my poor child?
But you are stunned with this blow- »
at
"I suppose I was at first. Yes, I knew you would come
first; but it seems so long since. Sit down, mother.
You are
cold. You have had such a miserable drive. Come near to the
fire- »
«< Carry, Carry dear, never mind us: it is you we are all think-
ing of.
You must not sit there and drive yourself distracted
thinking. "
"Have you
How kind,
――――――――――


## p. 10838 (#46) ###########################################

10838
MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
"Let me take off this shawl from your cap, mamma. Now
you look more comfortable. Have you brought your things to
stay? I am ringing to have fires lit in your rooms. Oh yes, I
want you to stay. I have never been able to endure this house,
you know, and those large rooms, and the desert feeling in
it. And you will have some tea or something. I must give
orders->
"Carry," cried her mother, arresting her hand on the bell,
"Edith and I will see to all that. Don't pay any attention to us.
I have come to take care of you, my dearest. Carry, dear, your
nerves are all shattered. How could it be otherwise? You must
let me get you something,-they say you have taken nothing,-
and you must go to bed. "
"I don't think my nerves are shattered. I am quite well.
There is nothing the matter with me. You forget," she said,
with something like a faint laugh, "how often we have said,
mamma, how absurd to send and ask after a woman's health
when there is nothing the matter with her, when only she has
lost - " Here she paused a little; and then said gravely, "Even
grief does not affect the health. ”
"Very often it does not, dear; but Carry, you must not for-
get that you have had a terrible shock. Even I, who am not
so nearly involved even I-» Here Lady Lindores, in her
excitement and agitation, lost her voice altogether, and sobbed,
unable to command herself. "Oh, poor fellow! poor fellow!
she said with broken tones. "In a moment, Carry, without
warning. "
Carry went to her mother's side, and drew her head upon her
breast. She was perfectly composed, without a tear. "I have
thought of all that," she said: "I cannot think it matters. If
God is the Father of us all, we are the same to him, dead or liv-
ing. What can it matter to him that we should make prepara-
tions to appear before him? Oh, all that must be folly, mother.
However bad I had been, should I have to prepare to go to
you? »
--
"Carry, Carry, my darling! It is I that should be saying
this to you.
You are putting too much force upon yourself: it
is unnatural; it will be all the more terrible for you after "
Carry stood stooping over her mother, holding Lady Lindores's
head against her bosom. She smiled faintly, and shook her head.
"Has it not been unnatural altogether? " she said.
•


## p. 10839 (#47) ###########################################

MARGARET OLIPHANT WILSON OLIPHANT
10839
"The children poor children! have you seen them, Carry?
do they know? " said Lady Lindores, drying the tears-the only
tears that had been shed for Torrance from her cheeks.
――――――――――
Carry did not make any reply. She went away to the other
end of the room, and took up a white shawl in which she
wrapped herself. "The only thing I feel is cold," she said.
"Ah, my love, that is the commonest feeling. I have felt
sometimes as if I could just drag myself to the fire like a
wounded animal and care for nothing more. "
"But, mother, you were never in any such terrible trouble. "
"Not like this- but I have lost children," said Lady Lin-
dores. She had to pause again, her lip quivering. "To be only
sorrow, there is no sorrow like that. "
She had risen, and they stood together, the fantastic firelight
throwing long shadows of them all over the dim and ghastly
room. Suddenly Carry flung herself into her mother's arms.
"O my innocent mother! " she cried. "O mother!