Girlhood and Womanhood<br />The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes by Sarah Tytler (snow like ashes series TXT) 📕

fear a livin' sorrow, I would daur a dead ane," Nelly protested, with a shade of scorn in her levity; "and ye can bide in the house on the soft summer nights. The Lady of Auchtershiel need not daunder by the burn side; she can be countin' her house purse in the still room; but if I were her, I would rather beg my bread."

"Whisht, for shame, Nelly Carnegie," was returned with a shrillness in the measured tones; "you would not; and ye'll learn yer own task, and say Yes to sour, dour Staneholme."

"I never will; I'll let myself be starved to death, I'll throttle myself with my own hands first," cried Nelly Carnegie, fire flashing in her large eyes and on her dark cheeks; and looking up in her defiance she met the glow for glow of Staneholme's star. Time-serving Janet Erskine moved off in unconcealed trepidation, and Nelly stood her ground alone, stamping her foot upon the boards, and struggling in vain against the cruel influence which she could not control, and to which she would not bend.

[Page 172]"He need not gloom and look at me; hearkeners never hear good of themselves," Nelly thought, with passionate vehemence; but her sparkling eyes fell slowly, and her proud panting heart quailed with a long throb.

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II.—A GALLANT REBUFFED.—NELLY'S PUNISHMENT.

The next time Nelly saw Adam Home was by the landing in the Canongate, in whose shelter lay the draw-well wherein the proud, gently-born laird's daughter every afternoon dipped the Dutch porcelain jug which carried the fresh spring-water wherewith to infuse her mother's cherished, tiny cup of tea. Young Home was passing, and he stepped aside, and offered to take the little vessel from her hand, and stoop and fill it. He did this with a silent salutation and glance that, retaining its wonted downward aim, yet suddenly lightened as if it loved to rest upon the little girlish figure, in its homely tucked-up gown, the crimson hood drawn over the chestnut hair that turned back in a crisp wave from the bold, frank, innocent face. But she waved him off, and balancing her foot upon the edge-stone, saw herself reflected in the steel-like water. Then he begged with rare softness in a voice that was rough and gruff, unless it deepened with strong feeling—

"Will you suffer me, Nelly Carnegie? I would give my hand to pluck but a flower to serve you."

Had he tried that tone at first, before she was more than chilled by his sombre and imperious gravity, before her mother supported him unrelentingly and galled and exasperated her by persecution, he might have attracted, fascinated, conquered. As it was, she jeered at him.

[Page 173]"Serve me! he could do me no better service than 'mount and go.' A posy! it would be the stinging-nettle and dank dock if he gathered it."

The revenge he took was rude enough, but it was not unheard of in those days. He caught her by the wrist, and under the shadow of the abutting gable he kissed the knitted brow and curling lips, holding her the while with a grasp so tight that it gave her pain. When she wrung herself from him, she shook her little hand with a rage that quivered through every nerve, and had more of hate than of romping folly or momentary pique in its passion.

"Nelly Carnegie," said her mother, as she carefully pulled out the edge of a coil of yellow point-lace, which rested on her inlaid foreign work-table, and contrasted with her black mode cloak and white skinny fingers, and looking with her keen, cold, grey eyes on the rebellious daughter standing before her, went on, "I have word that Staneholme goes south in ten days."

Nelly could have said, "And welcome," but she knew the consequences, and forbore.

"He's willin' to take you with him, Nelly, and he shows his good blood when he holds that a Carnegie needs no tocher."

Still Nelly did not answer, though she started so violently that her loosely-crossed hands fell apart; and Nanny Swinton, who was about her housewifery in the cupboard off the lady's parlour, heard every word, and trembled at the pause.

"Your providing is not to buy," continued the mistress of the aristocratic family, whose attendance was so scanty [Page 174]and their wants so ill supplied that even in necessaries they were sometimes pinched; "we've but to bid the minister and them that are allied to us in the town, and Nanny will scour the posset dish, and bring out the big Indian bowl, and heap fresh rose-leaves in the sweet-pots. You'll wear my mother's white brocade that she first donned when she became a Leslie, sib to Rothes—no a bit housewife of a south-country laird. She was a noble woman, and you're but a heather lintie of a lass to come of a good kind. So God bless you, bairn; ye'll tak the blast of wind and gang."

As if the benediction had loosened the arrested tongue, Nelly burst out—"Oh, mother, mother! no."

Lady Carnegie, in her own person, had looked upon death with unblenching front, and had disowned her only son because, in what appeared to others a trifle, he had opposed her law. Nor did a muscle of her marked face now relax; her occupation went on without a check; she did not deign to show surprise or displeasure, although her voice rose in harsh, ironical emphasis—

"Nelly Carnegie, what's your will?"

"Not that man, mother; not that fearsome man!" pleaded Nelly, with streaming eyes and beseeching tones, her high spirit for the moment broken; her contempt gone, only her aversion and terror urging a hearing—"The lad that's blate and dull till he's braggit by his fellows, and then starker than ony carle, wild like a north-country cateran; even the haill bench o' judges would not stand to conter him."

"He'll need his stiff temper; I couldna thole a man [Page 175]but had a mind of his own, my dear," ejaculated Lady Carnegie in unexpected, clear, cherry accents, as if her daughter's extremity was diversion to her.

"Oh, spare me, spare me, mother," Nelly began again.

"Hooly and fairly, Nelly Carnegie," interrupted the mother, still lightly and mockingly, "who are you that ye should pick and choose? What better man will speer your price? or think ye that I've groats laid by to buy a puggy or a puss baudrons for my maiden lady?"

"I'll work my fingers to the bone, mother; my brother Hugh will not see me want."

"Eat bite or sup of his victuals, or mint a Carnegie's working to me again, Nelly, and never see my face more."

The lady had lapsed into wrath, that burned a white heat on her wrinkled brow, and was doubly formidable because expressed by no hasty word or gesture.

"Leave my presence, and learn your duty, belyve, for before the turn of the moon Staneholme's wife ye sall be."

Do not think that Nelly Carnegie was beaten, because she uttered no further remonstrance. She did not sob, and beg and pray beyond a few minutes, but she opposed to the tyrannical mandate that disposed of her so summarily the dead weight of passive resistance. She would give no token of submission; would make no preparation; she would neither stir hand nor foot in the matter. A hundred years ago, however, the head of a family was paramount, and household discipline was wielded without mercy. Lady Carnegie acted like a sovereign: she wasted no time on arguments, threats or entreaties. She locked her wilful charge into a dark sleeping-closet, and fed her on bread and [Page 176]water until she should consent to her fate. Sometimes Nelly shook the door until its hinges cracked, and sometimes she flung back the prisoner's fare doled out to her; and then her mother came with a firm, slow, step, and in her hard, haughty manner commanded her to cease, or she would tie her hand and foot, and pour meat and drink down her throat in spite of her. Then Nelly would lie down on the rough boards, and stretch out her hands as if to push the world from her and die in her despair. But the young life was fresh and strong within her. She panted for one breath of the breeze that blew round craggy Arthur's Seat, and one drink of St. Anthony's Well, and one look, if it were the last, of the golden sunshine, no beams of which could penetrate her high, little window. She would fain have gone again up the busy street, and watched the crowds of passengers, and listened to the bustling traffic, and greeted her friends and acquaintances. Silence and solitude, and the close air that oppressed her, were things very foreign to her nature. In the dark night, when her distempered imagination conjured up horrible dreams, Nanny Swinton stole to her door, and bemoaned her bird, her lamb, whispering hoarsely, "Do her biddin', Miss Nelly; she's yer leddy mother; neither man nor God will acquit you; your burden may be lichter than ye trow." And Nelly was weary, and had sinful, mad thoughts of living to punish her enemies more by the fulfilment of their desire than by the terrors of her early death. So the next time her mother tapped on the pannel with her undaunted, unwearied "Ay or no, Nelly Carnegie? Gin the bridal be [Page 177]not this week, I'll bid him tarry another; and gin he weary and ride awa', I'll keep ye steekit here till I'm carried out a corp before ye, and I'll leave ye my curse to be coal and candle, and sops and wine, for the lave o' yer ill days."

Nelly gasped out a husky, wailing "Ay," and her probation was at an end.

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III.—A MOURNFUL MARRIAGE EVE.

There was brief space now for Nelly's buying pearlins and pinners, and sacques and mantles, and all a young matron's bravery, or for decorating a guest chamber for the ceremony. But Lady Carnegie was not to be balked for trifles. Nanny Swinton stitched night and day, with salt tears from aged eyes moistening her thread; and Nelly did not swerve from her compact, but acted mechanically with the others as she was told. With a strange pallor on the olive of her cheek, and swollen, burning lids, drooping over sunk violent lines beneath the hot eyeballs, and cold, trembling hands, she bore Staneholme's stated presence in these long, bleak March afternoons. He never addressed her particularly, although he took many a long, sore look. Few and formal then were the lover's devoirs expected or permitted.

The evening was raw and rainy; elderly gentlemen would have needed "their lass with a lantern," to escort them from their chambers. The old city guard sputtered their Gaelic, and stamped up and down for warmth. The chairmen drank their last fee to keep out the cold—and in and out of the low doorways moved middle-aged [Page 178]women barefooted, and in curch and short gown, who, when snooded maidens, had gazed on the white cockade, and the march of Prince Charlie Stuart and his Highlandmen. Down the narrow way, in the drizzly dusk, ran a slight figure, entirely muffled up. Fleet of foot was the runner, and blindly she held her course. Twice she came in contact with intervening obstacles—water-stoups on a threshold, gay ribbons fluttering from a booth. She was flying from worse than death, with dim projects of begging her way to the North, to the brother she had parted from when a child; and ghastly suggestions, too, like lightning flashes, of seizing a knife from the first butcher's block and ending her misery.

Hasty steps were treading fast upon her track. She distinguished them with morbid acuteness through the speed of her own flight. They were mingled steps—a feeble hurrying footfall, and an iron tread. She threaded a group of bystanders, and, weak and helpless as she was, prepared to dive into a mirk close. Not that black opening, Nelly Carnegie, it is doomed to bear for generations a foul stain—the scene of a mystery no Scottish law-court could clear—the Begbie murder. But it was no seafaring man, with Cain's red right hand, that rushed after trembling, fainting Nelly Carnegie. The tender arms in which she had lain as an infant clutched her dress; and a kindly tongue faltered its faithful, distressed petition—

"Come back, come back, Miss Nelly, afore the Leddy finds out; ye hae nae refuge, an' ye're traced already by mair than me."

But in a moment strong hands were upon her, holding [Page 179]her like a fluttering moth, or a wild panting leveret, or a bird beating its wings; doing her no violence, however, for who would brush off the down, or tear the soft fur, or break the ruffled feathers? She struggled so frantically that poor