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

more business with you than he had yet. 'I wonder how any one who has any regard for Joanna can term that mark a defect: it is very sacred and beautiful, otherwise Joanna is without spot'—and there he caught himself and turned away—he was about to add, 'or wrinkle or any such thing,' and I am afraid it was a quotation from the Bible; but I fancy he felt that he was making a fool of himself, and held his tongue. We ought to speak of going home."

"Susie, dear, don't be unreasonable; you know what a claim this family has upon ours; you know what papa desires."

"I know nothing except that Harry Jardine wants me [Page 54]out of his way, and you in his way. It is very disagreeable to me, and a great responsibility to me. You are an interested party, you cannot be expected to see things as you should."

"Why not? I told you to correct him when he was wrong. But I thought you were great friends; and poor Mrs. Jardine, Susan, I can be of use to her in her adversity. I can do things for her as I do for—"

"As you do for papa; there is a fine confession!"

Joanna ensconced herself in silence. Susan had provocation, but Joanna took great care next day not to support Harry Jardine in his levity and discontent. All the morning she spent with Mrs. Jardine; she pinned herself to her sleeve until, after luncheon, she was taken by the old lady into her own room, with its bright fire and shining dogs, its broad, easy couch, its table, with the handsome ponderous writing-desk, flanking the handsome heavy dressing-case, and its look-out from the warmly-curtained windows quite across the moor.

"What a comfortable room, Mrs. Jardine!" Joanna could not help exclaiming; "I never saw a more fresh, inspiriting view to my taste, and such a stretch of sky,—you may sit and foretell all weathers here."

"Yes, my dear, and I have foretold all weathers here. I'll talk to you a little of my nice room, and why I am so sorry to think of leaving it."

"We hope you will not leave it," Joanna ventured, timidly.

"Ah! that rests with others now. But I came here a gay girl; I visited at Whitethorn before my marriage, [Page 55]Joanna; I dwelt here a thoughtless, happy young wife; and here I kept Harry, not quite so troublesome as now; and here I lay a heart-stricken widow while they were bringing home the corpse of my husband, who had left me a vigorous, determined man two hours before."

"It must have been dreadful! dreadful!" murmured Joanna faintly; but lifting up her face to Mrs. Jardine with the earnest confiding eyes, the blanched cheeks, and that seal on her brow—"Oh, how often papa and I have thought of it, and pitied you and ourselves!"

"My dear, it was one of those dispensations of Providence which one never forgets to the end of a long life. But I was a sinner, I deserved what I bore; we all deserve the sorest evil that can afflict us; and, thank God, there is mercy mingled with the greatest misery. I do not speak often of it, but I can do so to-day; and I find it is a relief to talk to you of our misfortune, because you can sympathize with me; you were a sufferer in it like myself; it cannot be to many other living persons what it is to us two. I have had that brought home to me, my love. I do not grieve or frighten you, Joanna?"

"No, Mrs. Jardine, I have lamented it all my life. I am very grateful that you should let me say that papa was very sorry; they sound very little words, Mrs. Jardine, but you understand them, and papa will never cease to be sorry in this world, and we have only wanted to comfort you."

"Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Jardine absently. "Crawfurd of the Ewes, an accomplished, pleasant fellow—so broken a man!"

[Page 56]They talked a little longer of the tragedy with composed but strong mutual interest and commiseration; and Mrs. Jardine acknowledged that such pity was not like the world's pity, but was delicate and tender as the ministry of any Barnabas or son of consolation; and when she finished, she kissed Joanna on the forehead, and said to herself, "Harry was right. If this is the sign of George Jardine's blood, it was placed there to pay her father's debt, and set her apart for us."

"Now, the sun is shining out, Joanna—'a clear shining after rain,'—don't you like the Bible words?—I know you do. You must have a walk yet. Why, the violets will be out in another ten days. Hand me my garden bonnet, and we will have a turn in the garden or shrubbery. I saw Harry and your sister take the way there. My dear, you have the look of a sister I was very fond of, and I think Mr. Jardine would have admired you. Yonder they are, Joanna. I should like that you would send Miss Crawfurd to me, and have a stroll with Harry yourself. You will injure your health, child, if you do not attend more to yourself. And, Joanna, if my son questions you as to what I said to you, for he is a curious fellow, tell him I have been reading a text for myself this morning, and for several mornings—'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.' And although I am an old woman, I have got it by heart. And bid him show you the thorn walk."

Joanna did not like to decline a commission of Mrs. Jardine's, but she could no more have asked Harry to walk with her than if he had been a duke. However, Harry was loitering and watching them, and came for[Page 57]ward at this moment, and Mrs. Jardine herself appropriated Susan, and transferred Joanna to Harry.

"I am very much obliged to you for your kindness to my mother," said Harry formally—no Joanna this time, no name at all. "I never saw my mother take so much to any one," he continued eagerly; "she is naturally a self-reliant, reserved woman; but she has opened up to you?"

"Yes," answered Joanna softly; "and do you know, she has been talking to me of the past."

Harry started. "What did she say, Joanna? She could not offend you. Pray what did she say to you?"

"She did not offend me—far from that—she was very good, and she gave me a message to you, if you were inquisitive—she had been studying a text, 'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.'"

"Ah! I am very happy to understand it."

"It seems easily understood; and she advised us to walk in the thorn walk. Is it near at hand? Shall we have time?"

"We must take time, we cannot disappoint my mother. The thorn walk is a favourite with her all the year round, although it is only in its beauty in the month of May. Shall I explain to you why she has selected it to-day?"

"Yes, if you please."

"My father lived here, when he was a young man, with his uncle the laird. They had no near female relative. It was a dull house, as dull an establishment as my mother and I maintain together."

"Much duller, I should think."

[Page 58]"No; for before a certain time he was not sensible of its deficiency; he had no definite wishes or hopes for an increase to their circle, a re-modelling of their housekeeping. My mother was distantly related to him; she came on a visit to my grand-uncle with an elderly lady, who was also a connexion; she was a lively young girl then. My father often told her afterwards to what an incalculable degree her presence brightened the old house and the two forlorn gentlemen; it would have been utter darkness if she had left them again to their old hazy sunlessness; so my father took the desperate step of leading her to the thorn walk. It was the month of May then, and it was covered with blossoms, sending a white shower on their bent heads from a whole line of trysting trees; but, when I think of it, March, which is lightly esteemed, is preferable to May, for March has all the promise of the year in prospect; and see, it has cloth of gold and silver to step upon, in the shape of the bright, commonplace, unjustly overlooked crocuses."

"You have been reading the seedsman's tallies, Mr. Jardine."

"Never mind; you agree with me?"

"The world and the poets choose May. And you begin to be eccentric and choose March."

"My father conducted my mother here; she has told me the circumstances a hundred times, though she is a quiet woman; and she wore such a cloth gown as you wear to-day."

"Mr. Jardine, you are talking nonsense; this is a new stuff, I assure you it has not been half-a-dozen months out [Page 59]of the looms; and do you suppose, sir, that I shall wear this dress in the month of May?"

"That comes of confiding those details to men. I always thought it was a gown like this one; and he asked her to abide at Whitethorn, and crown his lairdship and gladden and sweeten his entire future career; and he succeeded at last in winning her consent. And this is the thorn walk, Joanna, and I am free to re-enact the old passage in two lives, and plead with you not to desert Whitethorn if we are to retain it. I am poorer by a few thousands since I first made the same prayer to you; but your father puts no weight on the difference, or, in his rare generosity, lets it tell in my favour; and I don't think we need break our hearts about our little loss, if we look to our great gain. Here I beg you, as the humblest and most sincere of your petitioners, to put your life into my life, and cause the united life to bud and blossom into the May of the heart."

"And November and December would come to that year likewise."

"Yes, they will; but they will tread hard upon the real new-year, the veritable new year, that will

"Ring out the false, ring in the true"

of this hoary world. Will you travel to it with me, Joanna? Shall we strive and pray, and help each other to reach it together? Shall we begin it even here? Your father will bestow you solemnly and gladly; my mother will accept you with a blessing."

Joanna said, "Yes; God bless us, Harry," reverently; and, reverently, God blessed them.

[Page 60]Harry was energetic, and Joanna was prudent, and old Mrs. Jardine was proud of the spirit with which they saved the swamped estate of Whitethorn even from Mr. Crawfurd's bond; and having helped themselves, they helped others, then and ever afterwards.

Polly Musgrave applied to them in time. Polly had written on Joanna Crawfurd's marriage a jeering, jibing letter. "So you have gone and done as I prophesied, after all your wrath on the moor, and preciseness at Hurlton. But, first, you were as silly as possible, and wanted to revive the Middle Ages, which was quite in Don Quixote's tone; you to pine and die, and he to shoot himself (as violent deaths are hereditary), or addict himself to loose living and destruction. Then, when he loses his money, and in common sense you may both think better of it, shake hands and go your several ways; you make all up, post haste, and come together with a flourish of trumpets, and poverty will come in at the door, and love fly out at the window. Fie! I am ashamed of you, after all!"

But Polly wrote in a different strain a year or two later:—"Dear Cousin Joanna,—I am not so healthy and heartless as I used to be, and I have been teased with a desire to come to Whitethorn, and perhaps profit by your carriage in this world, as I never dreamt of once upon a time. But I will say this for myself, I only wrote and crowed over you when you were quite able to afford it. I was very glad of your happiness, child (as our grandmother wrote, and one of our grandmothers was the same person! think of that, Harry Jardine!). Is Harry Jardine as promising as he used to be before you took him in [Page 61]hand; or is the promise fulfilled in an upright, generous, gladsome (and because of that last word you would insist on adding godly) man? He was a man of whom to make a spoon or spoil a