“‘The saints are dead, the martyrs dead,And Mary, and our Lord, and IWould follow with humility.’
“‘The saints are dead, the martyrs dead,And Mary, and our Lord, and IWould follow with humility.’
“‘The saints are dead, the martyrs dead,And Mary, and our Lord, and IWould follow with humility.’
that’s bonnie. Are you fond of poetry?”
“Yes,” said Marjory, in her surprise.
“You wonder to hear me say it? but we aye liked reading at home—though maybe not the like of that—and there were many things that I tried to learn.”
“I see that you have had a very different education from most girls,” said Marjory, with a certain buzzing and confusion of wonder in her mind, which puzzled herself. Some curious broken lights seemed to glimmer into her thoughts. She could not tell what they were, or what they meant; but a sensation of pain came over her in the midst of her wonder, pain for which she was quite unable to account.
“No—no that,” said the girl. “I liked it for itself, and so I tried; but oh, it’s a’ past now—a’ past and ended. I read my Bible most. My mother says the other books put things in my head. And oh, what wonders and mysteries there are in the Bible, more than anything in the other books.”
“But your sister always trusts you, and is good to you?” said Marjory. Her mind was disturbed, and her curiosity most warmly awakened. She would gladly have put some leading question to procure further information, but this seemed all that it was possible for her to say.
“Oh, ay, very good,” cried the sufferer. And she wandered off into those religious speculations, founded upon strong and child-like faith, yet having the appearance of doubts and questionings, which are so familiar to young and gentle souls chiefly occupied with the other world and its concerns.Marjory sat and listened, and interposed now and then a word. And thus a simple sad young soul unfolded itself before her, full of deep wonder, and pain, and sorrow, recognizing God’s hand in all the events of earth, and longing for an explanation of them—as only the truest faith can long. The poor girl thought herself wicked in some of her questionings—she thought no one had ever entertained such theories before. She poured forth all her chaos of pious difficulty upon Marjory’s ears, and it seemed to the hearer, who was so much more accustomed to the world, that these doubts and difficulties were more devout than anything she had ever heard in her life. As they thus sat, another woman, this time the mistress of the cottage, came out, and suggested that the invalid had been already long enough out of doors. She was an honest country-woman, with an anxious expression in her face, and she made signs apart to Marjory, begging her to wait. After the girl had gone in, which she did reluctantly, and with many entreaties to her new friend to come again, this good woman hurried after Marjory. She came up to her breathless, with heightened colour and anxious eyes. “Eh, mem, you’re a real leddy, and real good to poor folk, it’s easy to see that. I wanted to ask just one question. What do you think of her? I can see you’ll tell me the truth.”
“I am afraid she is very ill,” said Marjory, gravely; “and very weak.”
“Oh, it’s no her health I’m thinking of. She’s all that; but though Death is awful in a house, I’m no one that would put a dying creature to the door.It’s other things. We’re decent folk—and never have had a clash or a story about one of us, as long as I can mind. Am I right in keeping the like of her in my house?”
“But why the like of her?” said Marjory. “She seems to me a little saint.” She thought for the moment that the poor girl’s most innocent “doubts” had affected, perhaps, some one of Scotland’s rigidly orthodox critics, and that this was the result.
“Oh, dinna say it—dinna say that! I think so myself when I look at her, and when I hear her speak; but oh, mem, though she’s very good in words—the thing I cannot get over is—that bairn.”
“What bairn?” cried Marjory, aghast.
“Did they no tell you? I thought they would; for it’s no right to let a leddy come without hearing. It’s like deceiving a minister. Ay, mem, that’s just it. Poor thing, she has had a bairn.”
It would be impossible to tell the revulsion of feeling with which Marjory received this news. She gazed aghast at her questioner, she coloured as deeply as if she herself had been the guilty person, and finally she turned and fled homeward without reply. To such a question, what answer could be made.
“I cannot advise you, I cannot advise you!” she cried. She put her hands to her ears, that she might not hear more. She quickened her steps, stumbling over the grass. Was there then nothing in the world which could be accepted honestly, as pure and true, without horrors of questioning and investigation? When she had gone half the way,Marjory sank down on the turf, and covered her face with her hands, and wept bitter tears of grief and mortification. Her very heart was sick. After all her new friend was nothing to her—the chance acquaintance of an hour—a girl in a totally different sphere, where such sins were differently thought of; and yet, this new disappointment seemed somehow to chime in with the irritation of the previous night. Perhaps it was her nerves which were affected. Pain and shame, and a sensation of wounded and outraged feeling, such as she had never known before, overwhelmed her being. Was there nothing real—nothing reliable—nothing to be trusted in this whole miserable, sinful world?
Marjorydid not leave the house for some days. She was disgusted with everything. She had no heart to encounter the shining of the ceaseless sunshine out of doors, and the gay scenes upon the Links—gay yet sober, with a Northern brightness. They seemed to tantalise and mock her in the heaviness of her heart. And yet when she considered calmly (or tried to do so) she had so little foundation for this excessive and fantastic feeling. So far as Fanshawe went, she might never, she said to herself, see him again; and though of course she could not help having a certain feeling of friendship for him, considering the circumstances in which they had been drawn together, yet, after all, whether he was a good-for-nothing, or the most useful and admirable member of society, it mattered very little to Marjory. And in so far as respected this unknown girl, it mattered less still—it mattered absolutely nothing. Marjory knew, as all who know the peasant population of Scotland are compelled to admit, however reluctantly, that deviations of such a kind are unfortunately much too common, and in general much too leniently judged. Such painful incidents of rural life had come in her way before, and shocked and disturbed her without having this paralyzing and sickening effect. Whywas it? Was it her nerves, her bodily health, one of those simple physical reasons which disagreeable philosophers represent as at the bottom of all our supposed moral sentiments? This was an explanation which Marjory hated and scorned, as was natural, and which vexed her already wounded mind all the more that she could not absolutely put it out of the question. It might be that suffering and exhaustion had given to events, which would have affected her little under other circumstances, a special power to sting. She had to account for her gloom to her uncle by a headache, that most plausible excuse for all unrevealable griefs, and she overcame Milly by a quick prayer for silence—
“Never mind me, dear,” she said. “I am worried; my head aches—don’t ask me any questions.”
Obedient Milly asked no more, but she crept to her sister’s side, and kept looking at her with wistful glances, which were more inquisitive than the questions themselves. Marjory was a person of too much importance to be allowed to be out of temper, or out of heart, with impunity.
“Your headache is lasting a long time, my dear,” Mr. Charles said, after vainly suggesting “a turn on the Links” by way of remedy. “Don’t you think it would be well to see the doctor?”
And Milly wept a few ready tears at the idea that May might be ill. Thus Marjory was compelled to give up her headache; but her heartache, which nobody knew of, was more difficult to get rid of. She went no more to the Spindle, but strayed listlessly along the country roads, which are not interesting, and tried her best to forget all about an encounter which had interested her so much at first, and had wounded her so unduly. Both the interest and the vexation were, she felt, excessive—a trick of the nerves, a weakness of the body, a tendency to emotion, produced by the strain she had sustained for so long.
A whole week had elapsed in this way, when one day she was told that a woman wanted to see her; “a decent woman, but a poor body,” was the description of the maid. Marjory went down to the court to see this visitor, expecting some applicant from the poor quarter of the town, or other petitioner. She was surprised and excited to see that it was the woman who had caused her so much vexation, the mistress of the cottage at the Spindle, who stood with an anxious face, expecting her approach.
“Oh, mem,” she cried, almost as soon as Marjory came in sight. “Come back, come back, and see yon poor lass! She’s breaking her heart. She’s been worse than ever, crying for you night and day, and since she heard that I had tell’t ye, she’s had no peace in her mind. All her cry is, ‘Bring back the leddy, bring back the leddy! I canna die till I’ve seen the leddy.’ We’ve tried to pacify her a’ we could. We’ve said nae doubt you were gane away; folk come to St. Andrews for the sea-bathing, and then they go away; or we said nae doubt the leddy finds it’s ower long a walk; but naething would content her; and at last I came away, seeing it was my fault, to try if I could find you. Andoh, mem, maybe I was hard-hearted yon day. We mauna be unforgiving. She’s but a bairn, so to speak, and it was a gentleman that deluded her with his flattering tongue. When it’s a gentleman it’s a’ the harder on a poor lass; and they have such deceiving ways. When I was young myself, there was a student lad, a minister’s son, no less——”
“What does she want with me?” said Marjory, coldly.
“Oh, mem, how can I tell ye? whiles a poor creature like that will take a yearning; it may be for one thing, it may be for another. Sometimes it’s for meat and drink; but this poor thing is no of that kind. You’ve spoken to her soft and kindly, as I dinna doubt is your nature, and she canna bide that you should think ill of her.”
“How can I do other than think ill of her,” said Marjory, “after what you said?”
“Well, mem, I canna tell. You maun hear her story; one says one thing, and another another. I canna tell the rights of it; but this I maun say that she’s no just a common lass. If there are any excuses that a lady like you would think excuses, you may be sure she has them; and it would break a heart of stone to see her there, whiles in her bed, whiles on her chair, greeting and praying, ‘Oh, bring the leddy back!’ I canna stand it, mem,” said the woman, wiping her eyes, “I canna stand it, and if you saw her, neither could you.”
Then a curious sensation came over the proud young lady, who had been so deeply disgusted. It was as if some frozen spring in her had suddenlymelted; her whole heart seemed to give way. A kind of yearning desire to obey the call thus made upon her, overcame all other feelings in her mind. She made a brief, ineffectual stand against this flood of unaccountable emotion.
“I do not see what good I can do her,” she said. “I have no right to judge her, and I don’t judge her; but what can I do? If I can help her in any way, you have only to tell me; but I, whom she scarcely knows, who know nothing of her, why should I go to her? What good could I do?”
“Na, mem,” said the woman earnestly, “that’s mair than I can tell. It’s just a fancy. I’m no saying it’s more than a fancy; but ah, you ken yourself, sometimes all the world is no so much good to us as just something we have wished for and wanted; some bit thing that was nae solid advantage. Oh! if you would but come! You’re a leddy well kent and much thought o’, that can take no harm. It could not harm you; and oh! the comfort it would be to her!”
“Did you know me?” said Marjory, not knowing how to delay a little longer, and to make a last effort to stifle the melting of the heart in her own breast; “or did she know me? How did you trace me here?”
“Poor thing, she knows nobody,” said the woman; “and neither did I ken ye, mem. I ken few strangers. I found ye out by your description. I spoke to a friend of mine, a fisher’s wife, that comes whiles with her creel to the door; and as soon as she had heard me out, she said, ‘Unless I’m sairmista’en, I ken the young leddy;’ and, sure enough, she brought me to this door; but now I ken ye, Miss Heriot. My man has a cousin that lives at Comlie, and mony a time I’ve heard of the Laird’s family. Oh! Miss Heriot, come out with me! She’s in her bed, yon poor lass. Come and give her a little life, and hear her story. The sight of her would melt a heart of stone.”
Marjory’s was not a heart of stone, and it pled with her, more strongly than did this intercessor. She had seen the girl only three or four times, and had spoken to her but twice; though that had been enough to rouse in her a vague but powerful sentiment, for which she felt there was no adequate foundation. Now, however, this sentiment rose into a certain passionate force; she dismissed her visitor with a vague promise to go some time or other; but the moment the woman was gone, the pleading voice within awoke with double force, and gave her no rest. It interfered with her inevitable duties; it made her silent and pre-occupied, unable to respond to her little sister’s constant questions, and the remarks of Mr. Charles, who chose to come home for luncheon upon that day of all others, and was full of the doings of the new ladies at Pitcomlie, whom somebody he had met had been telling him doleful stories about. Mr. Charles’s brow was puckered with anxiety, and his niece did not give him the sympathy he hoped for. “I do not know what is to come of the old house, or what I can do,” he cried. “No doubt I am joint guardian; but how I am to fight against these two young women, orkeep them from having their way—it’s a position I never anticipated, never anticipated, May.”
“No doubt.” She was thinking she heard the cry “bring back the leddy!” and Matilda and her sister had no interest for Marjory, even though they were turning upside down her father’s house.
“For you see,” said Mr. Charles, with his perplexed look; “though I am joint guardian, so is she; and you may say what you please, May, when it comes to be judged between two people, and one of them a pretty young woman, there’s no tribunal yet invented that will hold the scales of justice altogether even. I might do the best for the boy and his inheritance; but she’s his mother, and has nature on her side. The claims of nature might not tell so much if she were not bonnie; but the two together are irresistible. I do not know if I have your attention—”
“Oh yes, uncle!” said Marjory. But she was not, in reality, paying any attention. Her mind was away, speeding along the coast towards the Spindle Rock, and the lowly cottage under its shadow. Mr. Charles went back to his golf somewhat disappointed at the want of interest with which his plaints had been heard, and with a secret uneasiness in his mind as to the cause of Marjory’s abstraction. He ran over all the list of men whom he had asked to dinner, in the accidental manner suggested by Miss Jean, with an anxious self-inquiry whether any of them might have to do with it. The idea was not a pleasant one. He had obeyed the old woman’s suggestion because he could not helphimself, and with a secret certainty that nothing would come of it; but the thought that something might come of it was not agreeable. It confused him in his playing that afternoon; he made such a failure on the putting green as had not been known to be made by an experienced player for many a day, and covered himself with confusion. “It’s all these young women,” Mr. Charles said to himself ruefully; as, indeed, many another man has felt, if not said.
“May I come with you, May?” said little Milly wistfully. This was another difficulty to be got over. “I never go with you now; and at Pitcomlie I never was away from you.”
“At Pitcomlie there were no links,” said Marjory, smiling; and with a promise to walk with her in the evening, she disposed of her little sister. The afternoon sunshine was blazing over the coast when she set out finally on her long walk. A whole fleet of red-sailed fishing-boats were out at sea, and dropping forth from the sheltered embrace of the little harbour; a brisk little wind was blowing from the west, a genial breeze which never disturbs the Firth, or brings up foaming waters in the bay. The sun shone with that soft and tempered light which rejoices the heart, without affecting unpleasantly the physical frame. Marjory hastened on, tracing the turnings of the coast, ascending and descending, now on the crest of the cliffs, now at their feet. She had no eyes for the landscape, no ear for the soft splash and murmur of the waves; her heart beat with anticipations for which it was impossible togive, even in imagination, any reasonable motive. Nothing that she could hear could affect her personally, and yet the emotion which possessed her was too strong to be entirely sympathetic. She said to herself that it must be some tale of pathetic shame for sin at the best, which awaited her; some story which might rouse her pity, but which would probably repel and disgust her at the same time. What better could she look for? But she hastened as if to hear news of the greatest personal importance, with a thrill in her veins, and a quite unusual palpitation in her heart.
Just before she came in sight of the Spindle, a very unlooked-for encounter happened to Marjory; she had heard steps following her for some time, but was too much pre-occupied to notice them; nor was it until she heard a voice from behind addressing her that she thought at all on the subject. When she heard herself called, she turned round hastily, and to her great surprise found herself face to face with the young woman whom she had seen at Pitcomlie, and at the family burying-place. Her aspect, however, was changed; she it was now who accosted Marjory; and there was an amount of anxiety in her round face which changed its expression entirely; she kept calling, as if this anxiety had excited her beyond all ordinary habits of self-control. “Miss Heriot, Miss Heriot!” she cried, as she came forward, stumbling among the whin-bushes in her excitement. “Where are you going, where are you going?” A certain sharp sense of amusement, mingled with anger, a perception of the ludicrousinappropriateness of the question, as addressed to herself by a person who had steadily refused to afford her any information as to her own movements, struck Marjory, amid all her impatience. She smiled as she turned round, and waited for a moment, in answer to the urgent appeal.
“Where am I going?” she said.
“Ay, Miss Heriot, where are you going? You may think I’ve nae right to ask!” cried the girl, breathless; “but you’re a leddy, and I’m but an ignorant lass. Maybe I have something to hide, but you have nothing. Oh, for the sake o’ a’ that’s merciful, tell me! it’s straightforward and simple to you, but no’ to me. You’re going for your diversion, or for kindness, or for I kenna what; but me, I’m travailing and working for life and death; for the life or death of a poor sorrowful creature that’s perishing of grief and shame, and has done nothing, nothing to be so sore punished!” she cried, with sudden tears.
Marjory had stopped, arrested, in spite of herself, by the passion in the girl’s voice. Her heart softened unawares towards this penitent opponent, who had refused all explanation on her own part, and yet demanded it with such confidence. “I am going to the cottage at the Spindle,” she said. “You have no right to ask, nor to interfere; but I tell you because you are in trouble; because you seem to think I have something to do with it.”
“No!” said the girl, pausing in her breathless course; “no you; but them that belong to you. Oh, dinna be angry, dinna upbraid me! It maun beGod that’s brought you here. When I heard of the leddy, something told me it was you; but I wouldna believe it. I wanted to do a’, a’ mysel’; to bring her up from the gates o’ the grave, to give her back her good name, to be her Saviour in this world. Eh, the Lord’s hard upon us whiles! He’ll let you do all the foolishness you please; but if there’s one great thing, one good thing that ye would like to do, and then die—oh me, oh me! He brings in other folk; when your heart’s full of hope, and ye see your way clear before ye—He brings in other folk!”
Here she sat down and covered her face and wept. That these tears sprung from some disappointment connected with herself, Marjory divined, though she could not understand how this could be. She stood by for some time, respecting the strong emotion which she did not understand. At last, however, she went up to her, and laid her hand softly on the young woman’s shoulder.
“If I am to help you in anything,” she said, with a sudden inspiration, as unaccountable to herself as all the rest, “do not stop and cry, and lose precious time; but come, like a brave girl, as I am sure you are, and show me the way.”
“I will!” cried the girl, springing suddenly to her feet. “I will! there is enough for both you and me.”
The cottage door stood half open; everything was still about; there was at first no one to be seen. A lonely place, musical with ripple of waves, with soft sough of the quiet winds, with those mysterious breathings of nature which make for themselves a language in solitary places. The two anxious and excited human creatures, one full of a sorrow and enthusiasm which had taken possession of her whole being—the other almost as much excited with that suspense of uncertainty, curiosity, and wonder which is equally enthralling—brought their painful life into the stillness, like creatures of another sphere, dispersing the natural sentiment of the place.
“There is no one here,” said Marjory, unawares; but her voice produced a strange echo, a low cry from the half open door, and immediately after the figure of the sick girl appeared, holding herself up by the door, and gazed out eagerly. Her face was suddenly suffused with colour and life as she saw them.
“Oh, come in! oh, come in!” she cried, with pathetic entreaty, tottering forward with extended hands. The other young woman brushed past Marjory without a word, and threw her arm round her sister.
“Bell, you’ll kill yourself!” she cried.
“And what if I did?” said the other, softly; “if you will but let me tell the lady. I must tell the lady. Oh, come in, come in! do not pass by the door.”
“I am coming,” said Marjory; her heart strangely divided between sympathy and the involuntary repugnance which again made itself felt within her as she approached the girl who had “gone astray.” It is hard for a delicate-minded woman, brought up in all feminine traditions, to overcome, without longtraining and some strong motive, this involuntary shrinking. She followed the sisters into the cottage with a strong thrill of repulsion, which almost tempted her to turn her back upon the sufferer. But she restrained herself, and entered after them into the dim little room. The sick girl had been seated near the open door, in a chair with pillows. Here her sister placed her again, propping her up. She was breathless with her exertions, but, notwithstanding her weakness, kept her anxious eye fixed upon Marjory, with an anguish of eagerness which fascinated the other, and held her fast. When Marjory sat down by her, this anxious gaze somewhat softened; the terror went out of it; she looked at her more calmly, her eyes lingering on her face.
“You do not come near me to-day,” she said. “You’re kind, but I can see the difference. You have come for Christian duty, but no so soft, no so sweet as when you came last and knew nothing. Oh, lady! you’ve judged me in your heart, and it’s no just. You have not waited to hear what I had to say.”
“No,” said Marjory, “that is true; but I don’t judge you. It is not for me to judge you, or any one. I have been disappointed—but God knows your excuses; how can I know them? I am very sorry for you,” Marjory added, sympathetic tears coming into her eyes as she saw the large drops that veiled the luminous dying brightness of the other’s.
“Oh, my bonnie Bell,” cried the other girl.“Never heed her; they’re all hard, hard, there’s nobody that understands but me.”
Bell did not make any answer. She fumbled with a black ribbon round her neck, pulling out slowly, with an effort which showed how great her weakness was, something which was hidden within her dress.
“I’ve never taken it from its place,” she said, “because he put it there himself. He hung it round my neck, and he said, ‘Some day, Isabell, some day I’ll put it on your finger.’ It’s aye been there since. Why should I put it on my finger when he’s no here to do it? Rings and ornaments are no for me. Oh, lady, your heart’s moved! Agnes, she’s saying something. My heart beats, and I canna hear.”
“She’s saying nothing but your name,” said Agnes, almost harshly, watching with a keenness that lost not a gesture or motion of the lips, the proceedings of the visitor. And, indeed, all that Marjory felt able to say was a startled wondering repetition of the name, “Isabell, Isabell, Isabell!”
“Here it is,” said the poor girl, panting with the effort, and holding out in the palm of her worn hand, with a piteous mingling of tears and pride, a ring attached to her ribbon. “Naebody has seen it till now. I’ve carried it next my heart. He was not the one, oh, he was never the one to bring shame on them he loved! I wasna his equal—him a gentleman that made the heart glad to see him, and me an ignorant creature that knew nothing. But I took his fancy. Oh, lady, maybe it’s becauseyou are a lady and kind, that I think you’re sometimes like him, the turns of your voice and the way you put your hands. I took his fancy. When you came and sat under the Spindle Rock, and saw me sitting at my door—some way, oh, mem,” she cried, with a pathetic apology, “I took your fancy too!”
“Go on, go on!” cried Marjory.
But Isabell knew no reason for haste. She looked at the others wondering. They were excited, but she, poor soul, had ceased to be excited. A kind of pensive shadow of happiness stole over her as she traced out the story of her love, and sought that simple apology for her lover.
“I took your fancy too,” she repeated, softly. “I watched, and watched, and wished you would speak, but it was you that came the first. That was just as he did; but men are no made like us. Yours was kindness, but his was love. Oh, lady, dinna hurry me; my heart’s fluttering as if it would break forth; it’s like a bird in my breast. I’m his marriet wife.”
“Whose wife?” cried Marjory, rising up. She came forward in her excitement, her tall figure towering over the others. Her passion of anxiety and wonder took almost the form of anger. “Whose wife?” she repeated, involuntarily taking hold of the ring. “Is this all you have to make you so? Oh, woman, do not make me curse the dead in his grave! Is this all? Did he deceive you so?”
“What does she say—what does she say? Oh, my heart’s fluttering! Was that all? I am hismarriet wife,” cried the girl. “I am his marriet wife!”
Marjory turned her eager eyes to the other, breathless, unable to speak. Agnes had her arm round her sister, supporting her. She was defiant, as always, but somewhat subdued by the command in the eyes of the lady, whom she felt to be her rival.
“It was a private marriage,” she said, hurriedly. “No the minister; poor folk are no like leddies. It wasna right, but it’s nae shame. They were marriet—before witnesses. He took her, and she took him. It’s a thing that’s done among the like of us.”
Marjory stood stupefied in the centre of the little dim room, faintly lighted by its green windows. It seemed to her that she could neither move nor speak. Was it a dream? or was it possible? Could it be? All her old thoughts at the reading of Tom’s letter swept over her mind like a gust. If this was Isabell, then what was her real position? and what changes might be involved of which nobody had dreamed? Marjory’s heart began to flutter like the sick girl’s. A cloud of confusion seemed to float round her. She saw the others but dimly out of her hot excited eyes. Isabell—his wife! “God help us,” she stammered, not knowing what she said. “I don’t understand it—I don’t understand it! Whose wife?”
Isabell raised her pathetic eyes, wondering and appealing, to her visitor’s face. Agnes looked at her steadily with an uncommunicating defiance. The one knew nothing of the confusion in Marjory’s mind, but only felt with a painful anguish such as sometimes rends the hearts of the dying, that this sympathy which she longed for, had failed her—the other knew, and confronted the lady who was her rival, daring her to avoid the revelation which was impending, but altogether unconscious and incapable of comprehending Marjory’s thoughts. Neither of them spoke. And in the moment everything that had happened during the last four months whirled through Marjory’s brain, passed before her eyes like a panorama. Poor Tom on his death-bed, playing with the something that he would and would not tell her—then in the last hurried scene of all believing he had told her, thanking God that he had done it. Oh! the pitifulness of that thanksgiving for a confession never made! Had he made it, where would this girl have been now? It might have been life to her instead of death, it might have saved the life of the old father who broke his heart for Tom. It might have—God knows what mazes of sudden fancy she plunged into;—then all in a moment, came back to find herself crouching down for support in her chair, holding by it, looking at Isabell’s pale alarmed face through a darkness that slowly dispersed. “What has happened?” she heard herself saying as she came out of the darkness. She had not fainted nor fallen; but a mist had come about her, parting her from reality, and engrossing her faculties at the very moment when the secret she had sought so long looked at her out of her companions’ eyes.
As Isabell’s face, however, slowly appeared toher out of that mist, and she saw the intense expression of suffering and anxiety in it, the weakness, every blue vein showing, the large circle round those too luminous eyes, the wistful look in which her whole soul was—Marjory’s heart was touched so suddenly that one impulse swept all other feelings away.
“Poor Isabell, poor Isabell!” she said with a cry unawares. “He tried to tell me on his death-bed. It was not his wish to leave you so. He thought he had told me;” and with an effusion of pity and tenderness which overcame all doubt, she took the girl’s wasted hands into her own.
Wonder overcast poor Isabell’s face. She began to cry softly, overpowered by the sweetness of this accost, but not knowing what it meant. “Oh, did you know him?” she murmured. “Oh, weel I ken he meant no harm. Lady, lady, did you know my Mr. Heriot—my man, my dear, dear man?”
“Bell,” cried Agnes, whispering in her ear. “Bell! it’s Miss Heriot her very sel’!”
That evening Marjory sent a hurried anxious note to Fanshawe, calling upon him to come and help her. She did it by a sudden impulse, carried away by feelings which she felt incapable of expressing to any one else. Him only she could confide in, he only could help her in the struggle that was to come.
Inthe meantime, the young women at Pitcomlie, as they were entitled by Mr. Charles, had been spending their time very agreeably. Verna had got the house well in hand. She had re-arranged everything. The very furniture had been changed from one room to another. “We must at once give the house a character,” she said, “so that it may be seen to be your house, Matty, and not the old Heriots’. There are a great many old-fashioned things which must be cleared away. We must give it a character;” and she went about the rooms, pulling the furniture hither and thither. Verna, unfortunately, though she had zeal, had no knowledge; she thought the results of a modern upholsterer’s work, spick and span new tables, chairs, and carpets, all ordered without consideration of expense, would produce something infinitely better than the present aspect of the room, which had been lived in, loved in, suffered in, for so many years, and had acquired a human character of sympathy which makes even wood and velvet poetical. She did not understand the old inlaid cabinets, which had been Marjory’s pride, any more than she could understand that insane desire for “a view,” which apparently had tempted “the old family” to open its windows so to the stormy sea.
“One cannot escape the sea at such a place as this,” Verna said; “we must put up with it, though I don’t care for it; but to turn all the windows that way,on purpose, when there is quite a pretty garden behind, and a sheltered corner, with flower-beds, and all that. I have written to Mr. Freestone, and he is coming down on Saturday to see about a new wing.”
This talk was carried on for the advantage of young Hepburn, who had come, as he now did daily, to ask how the ladies were; and if he could do anything for them.
“A new wing!” he said; “but you will find that highly expensive; and the house has always been thought a large house.”
“Always been thought!” said Verna, with some scorn. “By those who don’t know what sort of a house my sister has set her heart upon. I do not think it a large house; but it is a very good sort of foundation to work upon. By the time Tommy is of age, he is sure to be Master of the Hounds, High Sheriff of the county, or, perhaps, even Lord-Lieutenant—for I suppose the Heriots are well known to be one of the best families in Fifeshire; and then, of course, he will require room to give balls and other entertainments; he will be very grateful to me, you may be certain. My plan is to pull down the old house—”
“To pull down the old house!” Hepburn repeated, in growing consternation.
“And to build on the additions there,” Verna continued calmly. “I have it all in my head. Unfortunately, I can’t draw very well, but I have made a kind of an elevation, as they call it. The end of the new wing will come just where the old tower does; and the new drawing-room, which will be fifty feet by forty, will look out upon the lime-tree avenue. It will be delightfully shady, and we can have the flower-beds close under the windows. Then upstairs we can have some new rooms; it will be a great improvement. The drawing-room here is not a bad room, but it is dingy; and so are the dining-room, and library. In short, I don’t doubt it was very nice for the old people, Mr. Hepburn—the old gentleman, who, I suppose, never saw much society; but my sister is young, and, of course, will recover her spirits—”
“Do you think she will?” said the sympathetic Johnnie. “Are there not some gentle natures that mourn for ever?”
Verna looked at him with a doubtful glance, dubious for the moment whether she should help him to a little real insight into her sister’s inclinations, or whether she should keep up the pathetic aspect of affairs. And it appeared to her that the latter was so very much the most advantageous mode of action, that, though the temptation to reveal the truth had come strongly upon her for a moment, she hastily repelled it. “Yes, indeed,” she said, shaking her head; “that is very true; but, dear Mr. Hepburn, my sister is very young; we cannot expect that she will always be as she is now.”
“Ah!” said Johnnie; “but we may hope, atleast—I mean, she can never be more perfect than with that sweet air of resignation; that look as of one whose existence has already passed into another world.”
Oh, what a temptation it was for Verna to give him a little sketch—such as she could so well have done—of the real Matty! Anyone who has had to sit by and hear a fool elevated into a saint by some still more foolish worshipper, will understand her secret exasperation. But there were a great many things to be taken into consideration. In the first place, Matilda’s melancholy aspect was much her best one—when she cried she did not require to talk and commit herself, as otherwise she must have done infallibly; and, in the second place, Verna knew that to attempt to keep her sister in subjection, without affording her the relief of a worshipper, was hopeless, and young Hepburn ranked high in her list of ways and means. She shook her head accordingly, subduing herself, and acquiesced in this noble picture of Matty; but added: “You must remember, Mr. Hepburn, how young she is; and even if she should not care for society for herself, she must, some time or other, see the advantage for her children. And we all have a taste for fine rooms and handsome furniture,” Verna added, with a princely air. “It is a weakness, no doubt; but the Bassetts are all famed for it. Matilda will never be happy till she has given a character to the house.”
All this would have been infinitely comic to any man who had not been captivated by Mrs.Charles Heriot’s afflicted beauty. But young Hepburn was like most people in that condition; he accepted, as the most dignified truth, what would have appeared the most transparent nonsense in other circumstances. He did more than this; he allowed Marjory’s home and kingdom, in which he had worshipped her since ever he could remember, to be spoken of as “good enough for the old people,” and acquiesced in the fact that the Bassetts required something more magnificent, and that the house must have a character given to it, before it could become a fit habitation for Mrs. Charles and her sister. He was not a fool, nor unfaithful to his traditions; he was a great lover of poetry, the most intellectual person, by a long way (except the Minister, whose intellect took, as was right and natural, a Biblical form,) in the neighbourhood of Comlie. Few men in the East Neuk were to be compared to him in the way of accomplishments and general cultivation; but yet he was guilty of this foolishness and meanness without in the least being aware of it—or, at least, with an uneasy consciousness which he would not permit himself to be aware of. And yet his heart was not false to the ideal which had been his highest vision of excellence all his life. Had he spoken of Marjory, it would still have been with enthusiasm—though with that servility, which is common to men in love, he allowed it to be necessary that Mrs. Charles should “give a character” to her house. When Mrs. Charles appeared, however, and he had the honour so often accorded to him of escorting herround the garden (which Matilda, too, much preferred to the cliff) he made a gentle remonstrance against Verna’s energetic measures.
“I hear that there are to be several changes,” he said, timidly. “Miss Bassett has been telling me about a new wing.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Charles. “That is Verna’s way. She always likes to be pulling things about. I declare I think she was quite pleased to see that ugly old ruin, that she might pull it down and make everything tidy. It is a fancy she has.”
“But—do you think the old house—ugly?” said Hepburn, still more timidly.
Mrs. Charles was leaning on his arm; she was looking up at him with those pretty blue eyes, into which tears were ready to come at a moment’s notice—a sweet dependent creature, seeking support and sympathy. Johnnie Hepburn knew a great deal better on this point than she did. Had the old house of Pitcomlie been his, he would have worshipped every stone of it. He knew all its associations, historical and otherwise, to the family; but yet he dared go no further than to ask humbly whether she too thought it—ugly? His mental servility was such that, if Matilda had said “Yes,” boldly, no doubt he would have acquiesced.
“Well, isn’t it?” said Matilda, with a momentary feeling that she might be committing herself. “Verna thinks so, I’m sure. And then it is of no use; and what is the good of keeping an old place without a roof, or windows, or anything, full of rats, and I daresay snakes, and all sorts of creatures. That iswhat I hate about ruins. I suppose there are no scorpions in this country?”
“No, nor snakes either,” said Hepburn, relieved. “I see now why you dislike it. There is nothing of the kind indeed; and old Mr. Charles Heriot used to keep the ruins in capital order. The old house has so many associations, you know—to the family.”
“Oh yes, to the old family, I daresay,” said Matilda; “but I don’t know anything about their mouldy old ancestors. Verna has such a pretty plan that she drew herself—a beautiful long drawing-room, with a nice range of windows opening into the garden, and those new ribbon flower-beds that are so pretty, just like the border of a shawl, close under them. You must see the plan. Verna has quite a genius for that sort of thing, and she says it would give such character to the house.”
“But then Miss Bassett is not the lady of the house,” said Hepburn. “She cannot feel as you do, who are the representative of the Heriots. Of course she does not care about the associations as you must do.”
“Oh no; she can’t do anything at all unless I like it,” said Matilda, “of course. I let her do a great many things, because she likes fuss and bustle, and I don’t. I let her manage the servants, and order the dinner, and all that. But of course it is only because she is my sister. She has no power over anything unless I say she may have it. Everybody must know that.”
“It is like you,” said Johnnie, admiringly, “toput yourself aside so as to indulge your sister. It is exactly what one might expect from you; but perhaps in happier circumstances, when you feel a little more interest in these secondary matters——”
“Do you think she takes too much upon her?” asked Matilda, quickly. “Oh, you need not be afraid to speak! She is my sister, to be sure, but we have been separated so much, and I quite know Verna’s faults. It is quite her way to take too much upon her. If you think she is setting herself up as the lady of the house, or anything like that, I shall put a stop to it at once.”
This put Johnnie into an unfortunate position, for he could not allow it to be supposed that he was finding fault with Verna, or undermining her with her sister. He said hastily:
“Oh, no, I had no such meaning. I thought perhaps—if you were to exercise your own judgment you would be kind to the old house. We are fond of all traces of antiquity here; and I have a special love for those old gables, and the roofless walls, and narrow windows—”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Charles, archly, “we know why that is. Because you were so fond of the old family. And of course Marjory was devoted to all that old stuff.”
“No, indeed!” said Hepburn, blushing and stumbling in his words; “indeed you misunderstand me. I admire the ruin for itself, and I like it for its associations, without—Of course I have the highest respect for Miss Heriot.”
“Oh yes, indeed—the highest respect! I likethat!” said Mrs. Charles. “I wonder what Marjory would say if she heard you? Oh, yes, even if you did not blush and look so conscious, we have heard all about it, Mr. Hepburn. When is it to be? And I wonder if she likes you being here so much? If I were in her place I shouldn’t, I tell you frankly. If I were in her place——”
“Pray don’t speak so,” cried poor Hepburn, really distressed. “I am not so fortunate as to be able to hope that Miss Heriot takes any interest in what I do. Very much the reverse. She has always been like the moon and the stars, quite above my sphere.”
“Oh, you are a great deal too humble,” said Matilda, quite excited with this congenial subject, “but you ought not to come here so much if you want to please Marjory. I am sure she hatesme. That sort of superior solemn kind of woman always hates us little things. Perhaps because the gentlemen like us,” Mrs. Charles added, with a momentary giggle. Then remembering herrôle, “Dear, dear,” she said, with a sigh, “to think I should talk such nonsense! as if what gentlemen thought mattered any more to me.”
Hepburn could not but press gently to his side the soft little hand that rested on his arm. How charming her simplicity was, her naturalness, the light-heartedness of her youth cropping up in spite of her grief!
“I hope, however,” he said, “that you do not think us quite unworthy of consideration—for that would be hard, very hard upon us.”
“Oh, no,” said Matilda, “indeed I always say frankly that I like gentlemen’s society much the best. Women are so jealous of you, and so nasty in their ways. I don’t pretend to be very clever, but I do like to be with some one who is clever. And one feels at once the superiority when one hears gentlemen talk. It is so different from our chitter-chatter. Isn’t it now? I like to have some one I can look up to,” said the woman, who was a fool, looking up, with all the skill of her folly, into the face of the foolish young man who was intellectual. Oh, poor Johnnie! He had a dim notion in some corner of his mind that what she said was silly, and yet he was ready to fall down at her feet and worship her. The silliness quite achieved his downfall. He had been wavering, all but conquered; but now the finalcoupwas given to him. He murmured something in sudden delirium, he did not quite know what. Neither did Matilda know what it was; but she knew that she might henceforward guide him at her pleasure through all the ways of imbecility. She had snatched him from Marjory, too, which was a great addition to the pleasure. Marjory was clever, and Verna was clever; but here was something they could not do.
The conversation was interrupted at this beatific moment by the appearance of Verna, important and full of business as usual.
“Dr. Murray is in the drawing-room,” she said, “and you must come and see him, Matty. They are the first people that have done more than leave cards; and you would not see them when theycalled last time. He is the clergyman. You must come now.”
“Clergyman? I suppose you mean the Scotch Minister,” said Matilda. “Why should I go? I have nothing to do with him. You don’t suppose I shall go to his miserable old conventicle. Go and see him yourself, Verna. You understand that sort of people. I am engaged; am not I engaged, Mr. Hepburn?” she said, smiling upon her new slave. But Johnnie was not destitute of the prejudices of a man born in the East Neuk.
“Don’t you think you could see him?” he asked with hesitation. “He is a man of some distinction. He is a very well-known man, and he was a great friend of Mr. Heriot’s—”
“Oh, one never will hear an end of the old family,” said Matilda, “but if he is such a great person I suppose I must go. I always thought a Scotch Minister was a kind of Dissenter—oh, do tell me, Mr. Hepburn!—just for the poor people, a sort of man that would not take the liberty of calling. I am so ignorant, don’t be disgusted. I know I am silly; but I will pay such attention to what you say.”
Johnnie led her in, and expounded to her how matters stood. He gave her a sketch of Scotch ecclesiastical history, which was quite brilliant, so eager was he to make himself understood; and Mrs. Charles clung to his arm, and looked up at him, and said “Yes!” with little notes of admiration. What a quick pupil she was! he thought. Needless to add that Matilda was just as wise at the end asat the beginning, and, in short, paid not the slightest attention. It was thus that they entered the drawing-room. Verna followed closely behind. When Matilda appealed so sweetly to her companion, “Am not I engaged, Mr. Hepburn?” a thrill of alarm had passed through Verna’s soul. Could it be possible that the word meant more than met the ear? Had the flirtation which Verna had encouraged, by way of diverting Matilda and keeping her occupied, already come to a serious issue? It was incredible. Charlie was not yet six months dead, poor fellow; but the sister, who knew Matty, was alarmed, and followed closely, with all her senses about her, watching and listening. A mixture of wonder, admiration, contempt, and partial envy, filled her mind. Nobody knew so well as she what Matilda was; to think that any man should be such a fool! Verna, it must be remembered, used very plain expressions. And yet she admired her sister for this one thing which she could do, and which Verna herself could not do. She admired, and wondered, and half envied. How did she do it? And how was it that other people could not do it? And oh! what a fool the man was!
Mrs. Murraywas standing in the middle of the drawing-room in a state of dismay. The change which had come over it was greater than the actual transformation. One soul had gone out of the place, and another, a totally different soul, had come in. I suppose if this could be done with our bodies, we should cease to recognise even those familiar garments of flesh and blood. The furniture was the same, the old walls were the same, and yet the place was different. The Minister had found on the table, spread out to invite attention, Verna’s new plan, made out in very bright colours, which caught the eye—and was reading to his wife the words “new wing, on the site of old tower,” with a tone of consternation impossible to reproduce. The good people had come with friendly meaning to do what they could for the two young strangers, whom they were sorry for as having been thus suddenly thrown into a new country without any knowledge of its habits and traditions.
“Depend upon it, my dear, it is chieflygaucheréé,” Dr. Murray had said, with a very broad accent on the last syllable. “Half of what is called rudeness is just shyness—and so it must have been in this case.”
The excellent Doctor said this as a complimentto Mrs. Charles’s beauty, which precluded the idea of impertinence on her part. Mrs. Murray had not seen Mrs. Charles, and therefore was unaffected by her beauty, but she accepted the suggestion as possible. Marjory was no doubt hasty, and Miss Jean crabbed, and very likely “the young women at Pitcomlie” were onlygauches—not intentionally disagreeable. But when Matilda entered, leaning on young Hepburn’s arm, Mrs. Murray was confounded. Johnnie Hepburn! he whose hopeless devotion to Marjory had been known over all the country—who had written verses under so thin a disguise that no one could possibly mistake it, to her, in the “Fifeshire Journal”—who had tormented all her friends with offers of service, and who finally had come here upon Marjory’s business a messenger from her! Matilda did not relinquish his arm till she had reached the centre of the room, when she performed a curtsey to her guests.
“Excuse me if I put up my feet,” she said, as she placed herself on a sofa. The Minister’s wife could do nothing but sit and look at her, so entirely was she taken by surprise. Naturally it was Dr. Murray, as the most important person, who spoke first.
“I hope you have quite recovered from the fatigues of your journey, Mrs. Charles Heriot?” he said. “Sad as it was, and sore as this home-coming must have been, I hope you have now settled down. It is a favourable time of year for this part of the country, and I may say, under Providence, that it’s a very good season. We have had more brightweather than ordinary, and everything is looking very well. I hope you are beginning to like your new home?”
“Yes, I suppose it has been good weather for Scotland; but not at all like what we have been used to. I think sometimes I shall die of the cold,” and she muffled herself closely in the shawl which she had thrown off on coming in, “and the children feel it so very much.”
“Oh, but it’s new life to the children, my dear! You’ll soon find that,” cried good Mrs. Murray, “though yours are very young to be sure. My eldest daughter’s children have just come to the Manse, from the Bombay Presidency. Poor things, they were white enough and miserable enough when they came, but since then they have flourished every day.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Matilda, with a stare; “but my children have always been taken such care of; and they feel the cold very much.”
As if our bairns were not well taken care of! Mrs. Murray said to herself, and she was wroth in her heart, and concluded that this was more thangaucheréé, whatever the Doctor might say. The Doctor was not quite so easily discouraged.
“When you have been here a little longer,” he said, “and have got used to our ways, you will find it a pleasant neighbourhood—a very pleasant neighbourhood. St. Andrews is not too far for a drive, and there are a great many very agreeable families—”
“Oh, I shall never care for the Fifeshire society.They must be so stiff and so dry,” said Matilda; “and then they are all such friends of the old family, and set against us—”
“My sister means,” said Verna, “that people have not been very nice since we came. We have had a great many cards, but nobody has really paid us a visit, except yourselves.”
“They would think she was seeing nobody,” said Mrs. Murray, softly, “and very natural;” but once more the Doctor made himself the spokesman, drowning the gentle voice of his wife.
“I have always heard,” he said, “that there was a natural stiffness about our Scotch manners; but Mrs. Charles may be assured, and I take it upon me to say so, though I’m not a rash man by nature, that all that will soon disappear before her face. I hope it was not impertinent to look at the plans on the table. They are, perhaps, for some house in England?”
“Oh, no, indeed, for this house,” cried Verna, delighted. “This drawing-room, you see, is not much of a room, and that horrible old ruin close to us does so frighten my sister.”
“Frighten her! why should it frighten her?” cried Mrs. Murray. “You’re not meaning the old house?”
She turned to Hepburn with a look of dismayed inquiry, and he dared not say anything. How could he say a word that would cross that beautiful sensitive creature? but at the same time he had the fear of ridicule before him, and of the two people both looking at him, before whom he did not wishto show how foolish he was. He compromised, and fell between two stools, as was natural.
“Mrs. Charles has taken a—repugnance to it. I have been telling her it was on a mistaken idea. Snakes and scorpions don’t exist in ruins here. That is why she is nervous,” faltered Hepburn.
“Oh you naughty Mr. Hepburn,” cried Matilda; “you know you confessed you did not care a bit about the ruin, except for——. But I will not tell upon you—you confessed it was nothing but association; and as I never associated with anybody here——”
Dr. Murray was too much absorbed to notice this last speech; he was solemn, and not to be trifled with.
“Do you know, Madam,” he said, “that this is a very serious thing you are thinking of doing, a very serious thing indeed. Father and son have preserved the old house of Pitcomlie as long as I can remember. It was habitable in my young days—”
“That’s true,” said Mrs. Murray. “When I came here a bride, the old Laird—not the late Mr. Heriot, but his father, who died soon after—led me on his own arm to the best room, that was over the great door. The old lady of Pitcomlie was dead, and he had no woman-person, except the servants, in his house. It was a very handsome room, and but for its old age it’s that still; and I would do a great deal myself before I would see it pulled down.”
“I assure you,” said Verna, “there is no other way of doing—and then to us, as my sister says,it has no associations; besides, it is not beautiful, and of no use; and it is there the new wing must be built.”
“Does Mr. Charles know?” asked the Doctor solemnly.
“Oh, please don’t talk of Mr. Charles!” cried Matilda, vaguely perceiving that her side was having the worst, and beginning to cry; “it reminds me so of my poor dear Charlie. I cannot bear to hear the name. Please call him old Mr. Heriot, or something. When I think how I am left alone to struggle with everything, and poor, poor dear Charlie, who never would let the wind blow upon me! Please don’t talk of the old man by his name—please!”
Mrs. Murray’s kind eyes were quite moistened by this appeal.
“No, my dear!” she said soothingly; “no, my dear! Well, well do I know the feeling; and when I mind that dear boy—what a fine fellow he was—just the age of my Robert! Many and many a time I have held him in my arms. Oh, my dear, I beg your pardon!” cried the kind old woman, rising—with the tears dropping from her eyes, to kiss the young widow on her sofa. Matilda did not know what compunctions were expressed in this caress; and, to tell the truth, she submitted with a very bad grace to the salute, which she rather thought was a piece of presumptuous familiarity on the part of the Minister’s wife towards herself, a lady of property. The Doctor, however, this time resisted the beauty and the tears, and was less easily movedthan his wife proved herself. Beauty is a fine thing, and tears are touching; but an assault upon property—property which, to a certain extent, is national, the antiquities which give importance to a parish—is not to be permitted even on such considerations. Dr. Murray was alarmed. If this was done in the green tree, what would be done in the dry? The Heriots of Pitcomlie were the chief heritors in the parish; and what if they should take upon them to interfere with the church or churchyard?
“I am sorry,” he said stiffly, “to have roused such very painful but natural feelings. I will endeavour to be more guarded again; but what I would ask is, does he—of whom we speak—know about this proceeding—or rather, I should say, this intention on your part? If he does not, I fear it would be my duty to tell him—”
“Could he do anything to us? he has no right,” cried Verna, “to interfere.”
“I hope he could; I hope he has!” said the Doctor. “He is joint guardian with the mother; and it will be my duty to let him know.”
“I will not have old Mr. Heriot interfering!” cried Matilda. “He has nothing to do with us. Poor Charlie put him in his will only out of compliment—”
“Hush!” said Verna softly, giving her a look; “do you think really he would mind? Do you know I thought they would have been sure to do it themselves, but for money, or something? I hear that old Mr. Heriot was for ever paying his eldest son’s debts; and I thought, probably, that was the reason why the ruins were allowed to stand. But if you are sure he would object, why then I will put all the plans aside,” said Verna magnanimously; “and wait until he comes.”
“Why, Verna, your heart was set on it!” cried her sister.
“Not so much set on that as on keeping right with the other guardian, and keeping you right!” said the magnanimous Verna, whose eyes sparkled with resolution. Dr. Murray was somewhat stiff in his response, but still he was very laudatory; and Verna bowed and smiled, and accepted his praises.
“It is better in every way to take no rash step,” said the Doctor; “if by any accident—which Heaven forbid—the lands should pass to another heir—”
“How could that be?” said Verna, suddenly turning pale to her very lips. It did not occur to her that the fragile lives of her little nephews were the slight threads that bound her to this kingdom, which she had been assuming should be hers for life. A sudden precipice seemed to open at her feet; she stood aghast for the moment, gazing at him with eyes dilating, and pale cheeks. Then she recovered herself, and said hastily, glancing at Matilda: “Ah, I understand! but you should not suggest such a thing before their mother;” and placed her hand upon her beating heart.
“It is a thing that must always be taken into consideration,” said Dr. Murray. “You forget, mydear young lady, that one in a succession is quite different from the possessor of independent property, which, perhaps, he has acquired for himself; he can alienate nothing, and he has no right to destroy anything. The next heir—”
“Oh, please,” cried Verna, with unaffected alarm, raising her hands in an attitude of supplication; “don’t make me unhappy with your next heir! I shall do nothing more—indeed I shan’t—till Mr. Charles comes. It was not my sister; it was I who wanted it. Please, please don’t say any more!”
But even after the visitors were gone, Verna could not shake off this uncomfortable impression. She went about all day with the words echoing through her head, and filling her with a hundred fancies. As it happened, both the children were ailing with some innocent baby-ailment. Verna went to look at them a dozen times in the course of the evening; she felt their foreheads and their pulses, and gave them their medicine with her own hands. Their father and uncle, both vigorous young men, had been cut off within a few weeks of each other; and why should these tiny children escape the dangers to which so many stronger people succumbed? The next heir! What loss, what misery and ruin, was in the suggestion! The poor little babies themselves and their mother seemed to Verna to have but a secondary part in it; but to herself, it would be destruction—an end of all her hopes—at once of the actual and of the ideal. She put the plans in the fire that very nightwith heroic resolution, and blotted out from her mind those dreams of a great drawing-room, and even of a snug bed-chamber, sheltered from all the winds, in which she had indulged. These were glorious visions, but they were not worth the risking of her power and influence. She said to herself that she knew when to draw back, as well as when to advance, and spoke of them no more.
Meanwhile young Hepburn, much against his will, had felt that decorum bound him to take his departure when the Murrays did; and notwithstanding various signs from Matilda, propriety prevailed. He walked down towards Comlie with the Minister and his wife; and, as usual in such cases, his virtue was very indifferently rewarded.
“I hear you are a great deal at Pitcomlie, Mr. Hepburn,” Mrs. Murray said, looking at him.
She had never addressed him so formally before. That painful attempt to convert Johnnie into John, which we have all of us made when the Johnnies of our acquaintance grew into men, had been her greatest effort hitherto; but now she looked him in the face with a disapproval which there could be no mistake about; and he felt the chill, being highly sympathetic and susceptible to all the risings and fallings of the spiritual thermometer.
“Yes,” he said, uneasily; annoyed to find himself blush, and with a desperate attempt at carelessness. “Sometimes I can do little things for them; they don’t know anybody, nor the ways of the country—”
“That is very well seen,” said Mrs. Murray, with emphasis; “but Mrs. Charles is very pretty,” she added; “a bonnie creature! and that goes further than anything else with some folk. Men are so easily led away,” she went on, reflectively; “even my old Doctor, that is a very wise man in his generation, and should know better—”
“What are you saying about me, Mary?”
“I was saying you were wiser than most men, Doctor,” said the Minister’s wife, “and yet not so wise but what you are led away by a bonnie face, like other men.”
“It is not, however, the bonnie face in this instance,” said Hepburn, feeling his mind much lightened by being united with the Doctor in a broad and general accusation. “It is the sad position, the melancholy circumstances. To see so young a creature left solitary; arriving among strangers, with little children dependent on her, and no one to sustain her—”
Mrs. Murray was too tender-hearted to resist the pathos of this picture.
“And that’s true!” she said; “that’s true. Poor thing! She may be a little carried away by her new position; but I cannot think she’s without feeling. No, she’s not without feeling. What she said about old Mr. Charles was very true.”
“That is all very well,” said the Doctor; “but we cannot allow such proceedings as these young women contemplate—not if I had to appeal myself for an interdict to the Court of Session. An admirable specimen of old domestic architecture,really in very good preservation, though the roof is gone in some places—and fully described in my account of the parish. No, no; it will never do. If you have any influence with them, John (the Doctor had never said Johnnie in his life), you should let them know seriously that this kind of thing is quite out of character—quite out of character! I have always defended the mother’s rights in the way of guardianship; but an attempt like this makes me doubt.”
“Well, Doctor, I must say I wonder at you,” said Mrs. Murray; “because a young woman does not understand your domestic architecture, as you call it, you begin to doubt whether she should have the care of her own bairns! I cannot see the connection.”
“Perhaps not, perhaps not, my dear,” said Dr. Murray; “but it’s very reasonable, for all that.”
Hepburn felt with secret content that he had escaped in the midst of this discussion, and he came boldly to a pause at the next corner, to take leave of his companions. But he was not so safe as he supposed.
“I am going to write to St. Andrews to-day,” said Mrs. Murray, as she gave him her hand. “I will tell Marjory that you are very kind to Mrs. Charles, and go to see her every day. It is very kind, though it is, perhaps, a little dangerous; but then, to be sure, you have a great deal of idle time on your hands.”
This shot was double, hitting both ways, andsent the unfortunate young man away in a fever of indignation, suppressed wrath, and uneasiness. There could be no doubt that he had a great deal of spare time on his hands; but few people like to be told this. And he was not anxious that Marjory should be made aware of his daily devotions at Pitcomlie. He did not return there, as he had intended to do, but took a long walk in a contrary direction, and reflected with much annoyance upon this unlucky encounter, and all the comments of which he would be the object.
“After all, I have a right to go where I please,” he said to himself—which was as true as anything could be, yet did not reveal a comfortable state of mind. “And I do not know how they could get on without me,” he added, also to himself, a whole hour after, with a gleam of complacency in the midst of his uneasiness. But he was not prepared to give up his allegiance to Marjory, or to meet again even in imagination the smile with which she had recognised his first infidelity. He wanted still, like so many other people, to keep both delights, his ideal and his foolish fancy, both together. Indeed, it may be said that Mrs. Murray’s threat had as serious an effect upon Johnnie Hepburn as that other appalling threat of another heir had upon Verna. Both of them felt, with a thrill of alarm, that their position was an assailable—nay, a dangerous—one, and that it was impossible to tell what an hour might bring forth. And both of them were moved instantaneously to the adoption of a more prudent course. Verna sacrificed her plans for thenew wing, and Johnnie sacrificed the enervating delight of another hour’s philandering. Thus they propitiated Fate; which, however, seldom accepts such sacrifices. The chief sufferer by these prudential measures was Matilda, who, being impervious at once to reason and to sentiment, did not understand her sister, and was much annoyed by the withdrawal of her attendant, who amused her, if nothing more. She was the person really sacrificed, and that without seeing any reason for it. She yawned through the afternoon, until benign Providence sent her a soft slumber, which carried her through the time till dinner; and certainly it was hard, though natural, that she, the only one who had no responsibility, should thus be made the principal victim.