Volume Iii Part 6 (1/2)
”The doctor wants her to have sea air and Scotch air, she wishes to come.”
”Here?”
”No, not here. Somewhere (she does not care where) she has never seen.
Some place, with no recollections clinging to it.
”Lornbay?”
”She has been there. No! not Lornbay.”
”How would Inchbrae do?” her brother asked as he watched her face closely.
Her colour came and went, then her eyes filled with tears.
”Alas! that is out of the question.”
”Is it?” He seemed to speak with a sudden sense of difficulty.
”Anne,” he said at length, ”have you really never guessed, never thought, that Inchbrae could not be sold? Do you know so little really of any business matters as not to know that without your consent, without many formalities, the place, which is your place, could not be sold?”
”Not sold! and the place is really mine?” said the poor woman, feeling naturally more bewildered than ever.
”Yes, it is yours,” he said, trying to cover his sense of shame by speaking carelessly. His feelings towards his sister were so much altered now, that looking back upon the brutality and roughness with which he had moulded her fate gave him a pang he never would have believed in former days. And there was something else, there was a page in his history which often haunted him now. The burden of knowing it even, could not be anything but painful to him, and the pain grew now each day more and more intolerable.
Mrs. Dorriman was essentially a woman who had no self-confidence, she hesitated over even small matters, and was so afraid of presumption and other sins that she said what she felt right at times, impelled by a directness and a sincere love of truth to say it abruptly, and having done this repented her sharpness with undue humility and apologised for being obliged to say what she thought.
But living in the perpetual companions.h.i.+p of a woman who was so utterly unselfish and so unworldly, a woman whose candour and transparency were those of a child, was an experience that told even upon Mr. Sandford's blunt perceptions.
He had learned to value her, and just as he knew that she had become much to him he had to lower himself probably for ever in her eyes.
Mrs. Dorriman was at this moment perturbed, distressed, and excited beyond conception. To have been peremptorily taken from her own home and her people ... to have been deceived! Then swiftly came the remembrance that she had been led to wrong her husband's memory.
Thoughts pressed upon her that were nearly intolerable to her, and she left the room, going to her own, where she tried to bring her thoughts into order.
Why had her brother done this? It was not then that he cared for her, for she knew well that in those days (that now seemed so far away) he had cared for her very little.
Poor woman! her new affection for him seemed suddenly swept away since he could carry out so much deception towards her.
It was so cruel to leave her all this while blaming her husband; and till lately, when he had spoken of his having ”taken care” of her, she had seen nothing but unkindness in the way she had been left dependent.
Sudden enlightenment came as a flash to her; those papers she had kept were of real consequence, and opened up the history of her brother's past. She had, as we know, more than once thought of this--or rather nearly thought it out, and pushed the feeling back with a kind of terror.
To be certain that she had no weapons to strike him with he had broken up her home--to have her near him and watch her actions.
She rose suddenly from her chair: she felt suffocating with the pressure upon her mind. How could she forgive him? She walked quickly up and down her room, her hands clasped closely; then she said aloud, ”My husband, forgive me,” and then cried, poor thing, till she exhausted herself.
The twilight came on; the factories, so grim by day, blazed out with their myriad lights.