CHAPTER XIV.
NOVELS AND REAL LIFE.
Mrs. Troubridge was very much disposed to cultivate the acquaintance of the interesting orphan whom Mr. Lufton had introduced to her; and although the party from Branxholm had not taken Richlands on their homeward route, as she hoped and expected, she overlooked the slight, and called at Branxholm on her next visit to Adelaide, and accepted of Mrs. Lindsay's hospitality for the night.
She was not so much afraid of compromising herself by visiting her inferiors as Mrs. Hammond had been, and she always enjoyed being in any one's house. Different walls, and floors, and plates, and teacups, from those at Richlands had always an exhilarating effect on Mrs. Troubridge's' spirits, and she found that, independent of Amy Staunton, the Lindsays were worth visiting on their own account. She had a frank, rattling manner amongst strangers, and did not appear to condescend to her host and hostess, so that they
did not feel how much she considered herself their superior.
Mrs. Lindsay had a lurking idea that this fair-spoken lady wished still to wile Amy away from Branxholm, and saw some stratagem in the friendly overtures, but it only seemed to make the good woman more original and amusing than her wont; and Mrs. Troubridge thought Mr. Lufton, who had often spoken of Mrs. Lindsay's kindness and motherly ways, had not done half justice to her cleverness and quickness of observation. Hugh Lindsay was shrewd and quiet, Isabel very lively, and Allan wonderfully intelligent, and by no means such a boor as might have been expected, and, what was more than that, he was remarkably handsome. No contemptible rival to the unlucky Mr. Lufton after all, though, true to her old friendship, she determined to further his cause as much as she could, and pressed for an early visit at Richlands from Miss Staunton, which she said had been promised to her.
Mrs. Lindsay received this invitation coldly, but said, of course Amy might please herself.
"The children have talked about you constantly since you were with us that one evening, Miss Staunton," said Mrs. Troubridge. "I am sure that with your large household, Mrs. Lindsay, you could easily spare me Miss Staunton for a month or six weeks."
"We've had to spare Jessie for good," said Mrs. Lindsay, "and I'm sure I have no done missing her yet."
"Certainly, I quite enter into your feelings; but suppose Miss Staunton and Miss Isabel (Miss Lindsay, I should call her now) would come to keep me company at Richlands for a month, the change would do them a great deal of good. I should like the two together, because they might find it dull. We have splendid rides all round about, and I have no end of books for them to read." .
"Yes, but how's the work to get on if both Amy and Isabel are away?"
"How did it get on when they went to Gundabook?" asked Mrs. Troubridge.
"That was a matter of necessity to go to see Jessie, poor thing, left all alone in that far-off region," said Mrs. Lindsay.
"And I am sure she never could be duller than I am. I'm often amused to think how little I say, and how little is said to me, week after week, at home. Nobody believes it, I know, but I am naturally quiet—very quiet, and Mr. Troubridge is the same, and unless we have a friend to wake us up, we get as dull as ditch-water. It really would be very charitable in you girls to cheer us and shake us up a little, and the children would be in ecstacies if you would come. Do, Mrs. Lindsay, give your consent."
"Well, well, we'll see about it," was all the answer Mrs. Lindsay could be prevailed upon to make.
"At any rate I'll leave you the books I promised to lend you, and you can return them in person if you please. When you have finished these I can supply you with others. I have hundreds of novels at Richlands, and I like to do my best for the diffusion of useless knowledge."
"That is a poor thing to aim at," said Mrs. Lindsay.
"Not that I consider novel-reading really useless," said Mrs. Troubridge; "I only contrast it with what is called useful knowledge, which hated at school."
"So did I," said Isabel
"And I hate it st'," continued Mrs. Troubridge, with charming frankness. "But you know that novels give you great insight into human nature, and I know I have learned more history from novels than from anything else. Then with regard to manners, I think bush people, who have not seen much of the world, ought decidedly to go through a severe course of novels to learn how people speak and act in different spheres of society. You know we are buried out here."
"You may think you are buried at Richlands: but we dinna consider we are buried at Branxholm," said Mrs. Lindsay, drily. " What with having our bairns about us, and our hands aye full of work, we are baith living and life-like. No that I say anything against an entertaining book at an odd time, but I wou'd na like to put my dependence a'thegither on romancing novels".
"Oh! but we are not all of such a solid character as you are, Mrs. Lindsay; you do not expect old heads upon comparatively young shoulders. I know the young people will enjoy the novels," said Mrs. Troubridge.
And the young people did. Gerald Staunton's library had been very deficient in novels, though rich in poetry, and it was the first introduction of the family at Branxholm to novels on a large scale. No sooner was the first packet read than it was exchanged by Mrs. Troubridge for another, and their ideas were enlarged and their minds opened by the perusal of one work of fiction after another of all colours—green, blue, red, and yellow—outside; and of all qualities—good, bed, and indifferent—inside.
Allan Lindsay was at first completely carried away with his new studies, but utter six months of excessive novel-reading he checked himself abruptly.
"This will not do, girls," he said to Isabel and Amy, and Phemia, who were, perhaps, as much addicted to the novels as he was, but not so much affected by them. "This is bad stuff to grow men and women upon. Your father did not write books like this, and I am glad of it, Amy; nor did he read them, I suppose, for he had so few."
"Yes, I think he read them to review them, but he sold all the least useful part of his library before we left, and the novels were bulky, besides, for I recollect they were all in large print."
"Well, he read them as a matter of business, not for amusement; I am glad of it," repeated Allan.
"I am sure, Allan, you have had great interest and great pleasure in these books," said Isabel.
"Yes, too much pleasure and interest, I am too apt to think that I am the hero, getting into scrapes, and getting out of them; coming into large fortunes that I have never earned, or earning them in a rapid dash by all sorts of good luck favouring everything I do—handsome, witty, agreeable, the star of society, and the choice of some lovely heroine—and to forget that. I am plain Allan Lindsay of Branxholm, that I have to plough to-morrow, and to sow next month, to prune the vines, and graft the new trees, and to go to Gundabook to lend a hand to Jamie in his busy season, before my own comes on, and to take out the reaping machine next December for the crop that has taken months to grow; everything done laboriously, and the reward following not very close on the exertion."
"But Allan, you do your work, and what matter is it that while you are reading your book, you forget sometimes where you are, and what you have got to do?" said Amy.
"I don't put so much heart in the work. I do," said Allan. "I don't feel as if it was of so much consequence."
"Well," said Isabel, "I like to be the heroine in imagination. I like to fancy myself as beautiful and as amiable, and as clever as she is; I like going through all the adventures and escaping all the dangers, and being married to the hero at last, in spite of all obstacles. Don't you like -it too, Amy?"
"Allan says what mamma used to say to me, that it is not good for young people to read too many novels and poems, or rather to read nothing else, which we have been doing for these last six months. Mamma said that it did her harm when she was young; and when I have been indulging myself lately I have felt some compunction; but it is very pleasant. Still, though I go on with the characters, I do not feel as if I were one of them; I am not clever enough to be Jane Eyre, or handsome enough to be any other novel heroine. No; I am Amy Staunton all the time."
"That's what I ought to feel, but I do not," asid Allan; "so I think they hurt me more than they hurt you."
"But do not they give you some idea of life and manners out of your own circle?" asked Amy.
"Yas,” said Allen, thoughtfully, "some of them do. They carry me into the past, and into the remote as I have never been carried before; but then I have no confidence in their being true."
"And is it not better that we should take an interest in imaginary people than only in our daily work? I am speaking to account for my own feelings, and perhaps to defend them, but not to advise you, Allan,” said Amy, musingly. "For instance, if I had continued to live in London with papa and mamma, just as we used to do before mamma became so weak and ill, knowing few people and living more amongst books than in the world, and somebody had written a novel about such people as you, and described your daily life and your way of thinking, even though it was not exactly true, and things were said in it that none of you had exactly said, and things were done that you might have done if circumstances had been a little changed, it would have been very interesting to me, and to papa too. It would not have done us any harm to have gone with you to the plough, or with Jessie and George to Gundabook, or to have watched your mother's patience with Biddy, or Biddy's wonderful kindness of heart to her poor relations in Ireland, and the effort she makes to save money to fetch them here, while at the same time she can scarcely speak the truth about them or anything else, because she does not seem to know really what truth is. This would have been just as unlike my real life and as unlike the people I lived amongst then as the novels that we are reading now are unlike the life at Branxholm; but it would have done me good, I think, and not harm."
"But these books are not written like that. Adventure after adventure, murder, bigamy, fraud, and conspiracy heaped up as they never could be in the given time and space. You make out a very good case, Amy; but I am not to be won over," asid Allan.
"'Deed! I think Allan in the right o't," said Mrs. Lindsay, who came in during the conversation. "A wheen idle stories bred up out o' folk's ain heads, and it is a marvel to me how they ever could get there. For a' it gets printed it canna mak the thing true."
"Mrs. Troubridge asys she could not live in the bush without these books; they are her only amusement," said Amy.
"Weel, what does a woman with a house and a husband and bairns want wi' amusement? When a lassie marries she should asy good-day to sic things. No that Mr. Troubridge is extraordinary entsrtaining; but she keuned that when she took him. They asy she was a wild ane when he got the taming o' her; a douce sponsible man he looks, but no just the sort to tak a young lassie's e'e. And I suppose you and Iasbel behove to go next week to pay your visit that she keeps craiking about in her letters to you, Amy, and you'll see for yourselves what a dull life it is when a young thing takes up wi' a man that might be her father. It's a thing that I have nae opinion o' mysel'," said Mrs. Lindsay.
"And is Mr. Lufton to escort us as he offers to do, mother?" said Isabel.
"No; Allan will go with you. With brothers o' your ain you need be beholden to no stranger for sic service, and as they are no throng wi' the wark at this time he can be the easier spared," said Mrs. Lindsay.
On the whole the result of the visit to Richlands was that both Isabel and Amy were better satisfied with their own home on their return. Mr. Troubridge was a man who never took any trouble to amuse his wife's guests; he liked a good dinner, and a liberal allowance of Wine after it, and after his day's work looking after his men and his stock he was more apt to fall asleep in the evenings than to add to the liveliness of the party by conversation; and although Mrs. Troubridge wish ed to make the girls happy, and was kind to them and talked a great deal to them, the house was not half so cheerful as Branxholm. They heard a great deal about Mr. and Mrs. Orme, Mrs. Troubridge's father and mother; and Miss Orme's own life before she was married, with sketches of several of her admirers, and also those of her sisters, who were now married and settled too; but no amount of leading on would induce her to reveal any particulars as to Mr. Lufton's love affairs to Isabel Lindsay. Mrs. Troubridge was upon honour there.
If it had not been for a sad event which occurred shortly after the girls had paid their visit they might have thought very little more about Mrs. Troubridge, though they liked the children and found them very smart and Mr. Troubridge had been complaining of not feeling very well when they were at Richlands, but there was not much the matter, and he was generally so strong and healthy that no one took alarm. But a neglected cold brought on violent inflammatory symptoms, and when medical aid was called in the case was critical and Within a fortnight of the day when they had last seen him they heard that he was hopelessly ill; and that Mrs. Troubridge was almost distracted with grief and worn out with fatigue. Mr. Lufton had acted like a good neighbour and a true friend, and had done everything in his power to help Mrs. Troubridge. She had no unmarried sister who could come to relieve her, and she sent to Branxholm to entreat Amy to come. It would do her so much good just to look at her. Amy could not refuse such a request, and she hastened to Richlands.
She found Mrs. Troubridge in a state of such bewildering grief that surprised her. Her impression had been that she cared very little for her husband, his tastes and habits were so different from his Wife's, and she had been in the habit of saying, "Oh! that is only Mr. Troubridge's opinion," as if that opinion carried no weight whatever. She complained of his not living in Adelaide, which she thought they could well afford to do, and she had a number of grievances larger or smaller, that Mr. Troubridge would never redress, and did not care to hear about.
Amy had been accustomed in her old life in England to perfect sympathy and union of mind and heart existing between her father and mother; and at Branxholm Hugh Lindsay and his Wife were of one heart in all things, and he was always looked on as the head of the house, and his opinions and orders treated with respect and obedience. She had felt Mrs. Troubridge's indifferent or opposing manner jar upon her; and now she was astonished at the real grief she manifested. She tried to comfort the widow when death put an end to all cares and efforts in poor Mr. Troubridge's behalf; but she found that her words had little or no effect. Mr. Lufton had never shown himself in such good colours as he did on this occasion; he was so kind, so attentive, so thoughtful; he spared himself no fatigue and gave himself up to his friend's service. Mrs. Troubridge could now consult her own inclinations as to living in Adelaide; but she seemed to feel a remorse for her grumbling at bush life, and preferred remaining for a time at least with her children at Richlands. And Amy returned to Branxholm a second time with much more regard for Mrs. Troubridge, and for Mr. Lufton too, than she could have thought possible a month before.