MRS LAURIE of Burnside sits alone in her sunny parlour. The fire in the grate, quite discountenanced and overborne by the light which pours in from the west window, keeps up a persevering crackle, intent to catch the ear, and keep itself in notice by that means if by no other. It is the only sound you can hear, except the hum of the eight-day clock in the passage without, and Jenny’s distant step upon the kitchen floor;—Menie is out again on some further explorations about the garden—Mrs Laurie sits and works alone.
You might call this room a drawing-room if you were ambitiously disposed—it is only the parlour in Burnside. Every piece of wood about it is dark with age and careful preservation; rich ancient mahogany glimmering clear in the polish of many a year’s labour—little tables with twisted spiral legs and fantastic ornaments almost as black as ebony—and here in the corner a fine old cabinet of oak, with its carved projections of flower and berry burnished bright, and standing out in clear relief from the dark background. On the table lies some “fancy-work,” which it irks the soul of Mrs Laurie to see her daughter employed on; but what is to be done with Menie’s fingers, when our mother feels the household necessities of sewing scarcely enough to supply herself?
Go lightly over the rich colours of this well-preserved carpet, which is older than yourself most probably, though it wears its age so well, and we can look out and see what lies beyond the Burnside garden before Mrs Laurie is aware. The west window is all fringed and glittering with rain-drops lying lightly on the pale green buds of these honeysuckle boughs, and now and then one of them falls pattering down upon the grass like a sigh. Do not believe in it—it is but a mock of nature—the counterfeit wherewithal a light heart enhances to itself its own calm joy; for in reality and truth there is no such thing as sighing here.
Some thatched houses in a cluster, just where the green-mossed wall of the bridge breaks out of the shelter of these guarding fir-trees—one triumphant slated roof lifting itself a story higher than the gossipry of those good neighbours who lay their brown heads together in a perpetual quiet discussion of what goes on below. The light lies quietly, half caressing, upon the thatch roofs, but gleams off the wet slates, and flashes from the tiles yonder, in a sudden glow. There are some loitering firs about, to thrust their outline on the enclosing sky, and a hazy background of bare trees fluttering and glistering in the light, all conscious of the new-budded leaves, which at this distance we cannot see. Beyond the Brigend your eye loses itself on a line of road travelling away towards the hills, with two great heavy ash-trees holding their gaunt arms over it for a portal and gateway—on a level line of fields, broken hedges, scattered trees, with the blue tints of distance, and here and there the abrupt brown dash of a new-ploughed field to diversify the soft universal green—and on the hills themselves, a bold semi-circular sweep stealing off faintly to the sky on one hand—while at the other, Criffel, bluff and burly, slopes his great shoulder down upon the unseen sea.
Nearer at hand the burn itself looks through the garden’s thorny boundary with glints and sunny glances, interchanging merrily with Menie on the lawn, who pays its smiles with interest. This is almost all we have to look at from the west window of Burnside.
And now, if you turn within to our mother in her easy-chair. It is not quite what you call benign, this broad, full, well-developed brow; and the eyes under it so brown, and liquid, and dewy, one fancies they could flash with impatience now and then, and laugh out the warmest mirth, as well as smile that smile of kindness, which few eyes express so well; and it is best to say at the beginning that our mother is not benign, and that it is no abstract being of a superior class lifted on the height of patience, experience, and years, who sits before us in this cushioned chair, bending her brow a little over the letter in her hand. Sorrow and experience she has had in her day; but still our mother, with warm human hands, and breast as full of hope and energy as it was twenty years ago, takes a full grasp of life.
The linen she has been mending lies on the table beside her, more than half concealing Menie’s lighter occupation; and, with her elbow leant upon it, Mrs Laurie holds a letter with a half-puzzle of amusement, a half-abstraction of thought. Strangely adverse to all her moods and habits is the proposal it makes, yet Mrs Laurie lingers over it, hesitates, almost thinks she will accept. Such a multitude of things are possible to be done when one does them “for Menie’s sake.”
For Menie’s sake—but, in the mean time, it is best that Menie should be called in to share the deliberation; and here she comes accordingly, with such an odour of fresh air about her as makes the parlour fragrant. Menie has a restless way of wandering about on sunny afternoons; there is something in her that will not compose into quietness; and very poor speed, when it is sunshine, comes Menie’s “fancy-work;” so that there is nothing more common than this fragrance of fresh air in the parlour when Menie’s presence is needed there.
“Your father’s aunt has written me a letter. I want your wisest thought about it. Read it, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, leaning back in her chair, with an air of exhaustion. Menie read—
“MY DEAR MRS LAURIE,—I find I really have forgotten your Christian name; and whether I have quite a right to call you my dear niece, or whether you might not think it an uncalled-for thing in me who have not the privilege of years, or if, one way or another, you would be pleased, I cannot tell, having so little acquaintance with your mental habits or ways of thinking. Indeed I confess I had nearly forgotten, my dear, that John Laurie had a wife and a little girl in Kirklands still, till just a chance recalled it to me: and I really have no means of finding out whether I should condole with you for living so much out of the world, or wish you joy of a pretty little house like Burnside, with its nice neighbourhood and good air. I am sometimes a little dull myself, living alone; and as I have positively made up my mind never to marry, and am so particular in my society that I never have above half-a-dozen friends whom I care to visit, it has occurred to me, since you were recalled to my recollection, that we might do worse than join our incomes together, and live as one household. I have pretty reception-rooms in my house, and a sleeping-room more than I need—a very good apartment; and the advantage of being near London is very great for a little girl, for masters, and all that: besides that, I flatter myself the attention I should make a point of paying her would be of great importance to your child; and out of what we could put together of our joint savings, we might make a very pretty marriage-portion for her when her time comes; for I have no other relations, as I fancy you know, and have very decidedly made up my mind, whatever persecution I may be exposed to on the subject, never to marry. I have one tolerably good servant, who is my own maid, and another very bad one, who has charge of all the household matters: the grief and annoyance this woman is to me are beyond description; and if you should happen to have an attached and faithful person in your house, I advise you to bring her with you;—of course you will require an attendant of your own.
“I shall be glad to have a letter from you soon, letting me know what you will do. You would have a cheerful life with me, I think. I am myself a person of uncommonly lively disposition, though I have known so many of the more refined sorrows of life; and the freshness of youth is a delightful study. I feel I shall grow quite a child in sympathy with your little girl. Pray come—Hampstead is a delightful locality; so near London, too, and within reach of society so very excellent—and I am sure you would find the change greatly for your daughter’s good.
“With much regard and kind feeling to both her and you, I am affectionately yours,
“ANNIE LAURIE.”
“To Hampstead! to London!” Menie says nothing more, but her eyes shine upon her mother’s with a restless glow of appeal. London holds many a wonder to the young curious heart which yet knows nothing of the world, and London holds Randall Home.
“You would like to go, Menie? But how we should like this aunt of yours is a different story,” said Mrs Laurie; “and for my part, I am very well content with Burnside.”
“It is true she calls me a little girl,” said Menie, turning to her own particular grievance; “but I should think she means everything very kindly, for all that.”
“Fantastic old wife!” said Mrs Laurie, with a little impatient derision, not unlike Jenny’s fuff. “She was older than your father, Menie—a woman near sixty, I’ll warrant; and she has made up her mind never to marry—did ever anybody hear the like! But you need not look so disappointed either. Put away the letter—we’ll take a night’s rest on it, and then we’ll decide.”
But Menie read it over once more before she laid it aside, and Menie betrayed her anxiety about the decision in a hundred questions which her mother could not answer. Mrs Laurie had only once been in London, and could tell nothing of Hampstead, the only reminiscence remaining with her being of a verdant stretch of turf, all dinted over with little mounds and hollows rich in green fern and furze, which the benighted natives called a heath. Born within sight of Lochar Moss, Mrs Laurie laughed the pretensions of this metropolitan heath to scorn.