YoungHepburn went out of Miss Jean’s door with a face full of offence and a heart full of trouble. He was not thinking much of himself, however, so that the offence was evanescent; he was thinking ofher; yes, of that Her, who, however hastily, unreasonably, and without adequate cause, had come to be the representative of womankind to the young man, superseding Marjory and all ideals. Matilda was not an ideal woman; he could not worship her in that guise, nor put her into any shrine. It is needless for me to pause and remark upon the curious unsuitability of perhaps the majority of mortal unions, the way in which young men or young women prefer the individual least calculated to make them happy—and hold to that choice with an obstinacy worthy of the original folly. Poor Hepburn had been seized with this too common form of love-sickness; he was not blind; he saw well enough that Mrs. Charles was unlike anything that he had set before himself, in his days of imagination, as worthy of love; and already he had begun to say to himself that an ideal standard was folly; that a real human creature was above ideals; that to be genuine was best whatever the character of that reality might be. This was the first stage—afterwards he went further, and said to himself thatwomen were different from men; that justice was not to be expected from them, or an appreciation of anything above the ordinary level of facts; that they were not capable of understanding abstractions; that they were invincible to reason; and that after all, it was because she was so undauntedly foolish, so delightfully under the sway of her feelings, and had so different a way of judging—a method quite her own, and independent of law and rule—that men worshipped a woman; Yes, she was not as they are, she was a fool, and yet a goddess—to be petted, put up with, laughed at, admired, thought more of and less of than was possible to any other created thing. This was Hepburn’s way, as it has been many another man’s, of making up to himself for having given over his whole being to the sway of a foolish woman. He made out that all women were foolish, and idealized her meanness, not being able to fit her to the ancient ideal he had once possessed. Women, perhaps, when they choose badly, do something of the same kind; but they are seldom so general in their conclusions. For the most part, they have a hankering after the ideal, which makes them always capable of believing in a higher kind of man; but men make their convenient theory into a general truth which, perhaps, is one result of their superior power of understanding the abstract. To have loved a fool is sufficient reason with them to conclude that all women are fools—and so Hepburn did. No, Matilda was not an ideal woman; she was not like the high feminine types of being which poets have created; but shewas real, and all women were likeher; from the old theory to the new there is but a step, and this step he had made unawares. He set off now with a heavy heart to Pitcomlie, feeling that he knew exactly what she would say, how she would burst out in denunciation of “the old family,” and declare that it was all a plot to injure her and her child. And strange as it seemed to him, he knew that Matilda would put real faith in this; she would have no difficulty in believing that Mr. Charles and Marjory had hatched an iniquitous plot, and that lawyers and judges, and a crowd of honourable men, were accomplices in the scheme against her. It was the way of women. What he should have to do would be to soothe and to console—and he did not dislike the office. Her theories would be idiotic, her rage unreasonable; but she would be so pretty in her anger, so fascinating in her tears; and to soothe them away, to coax her back to quietness, would be so pleasant! Thus the foolish lover justified Providence, which provides silly women for the delectation of the world; he liked it better than if she had been a reasonable creature, and he said to himself that all women were alike, and that folly was the sweetest thing between earth and heaven.
Matilda was reclining on the sofa when he went into that drawing-room at Pitcomlie, which no longer bore the remotest resemblance to Marjory’s drawing-room. The room was strewed with traces of the destructive tendencies of the little heir. He had been brought down by Verna, who felt it necessary, from time to time, to demonstrate how much theyoung mother was devoted to her children; and it was Verna who had caused Tommy’s gorgeous new rocking-horse to be placed in a corner of the drawing-room. But on this particular afternoon the young Laird had given decided indications of a will of his own; he had torn the mane of his rocking-horse out in handfuls of horse-hair, which was scattered all over the room. He had thrown about the sofa-cushions, and made ropes of the anti-macassars; he had cast down several glass vases, and one of old china, breaking them into millions of pieces. Finally, he had been sent away in disgrace, howling so as to be audible half way down the Comlie road, where Hepburn heard his shrieks; he hurried on in consequence, fearing hysterics, and was consoled to find it was only Tommy. The pretty mother lay on the sofa, fatigued with the passion which Tommy had driven her into. There were two patches of rose-red on her cheeks—traces of her excitement; and she held out her hand half-irritably, half-languidly to her visitor. “Oh, you have come at last;” she said, for he had not been at Pitcomlie the day before. Verna was sitting by with her account-books; she was making up the bills, and putting her affairs in order, and she was happy. The squabble with Tommy had not affected her.
“I was obliged to go to Edinburgh yesterday,” said Hepburn humbly; “as I told you—to see my sister’s trustees.”
“Oh yes, I know!” said Matilda. “Business is always so much more important than anything else. You men will make any sacrifice to business—andleave your friends in loneliness, without ever thinking once—”
“Were you lonely?” whispered the gratified Johnnie; “how good, how sweet of you to miss me! you never were out of my mind all day.”
“Oh, that is what all you gentlemen say,” said Matilda, with a little toss of her head. “As for your Fifeshire people,” she went on, “I don’t think much of them. But for a few cards that have been left, one would imagine there was nobody in the county. I don’t know if it is their way here, or if it is that odious Miss Jean.”
“I told you, Matty, when you were so rude to the Heriots—” said Verna.
“Oh, don’t talk to me any more about that!” cried Mrs. Charles; “besides, I never was rude to the Heriots. They chose to take offence and go away; but was that any blame of mine? Was I to put myself at their feet, do you suppose, in my own house?”
“Have you heard anything of them lately?” asked Hepburn, with a certain solemnity in his tone and manner, which he tried vainly to banish. Verna looked up at him quickly, being more open to impression than her sister, and was the first to reply.
“Is there anything to be heard?” she said, looking at him.
Matilda’s languor was a great deal more safe than the keen alertness of the other.
He answered, “No, oh no!—I suppose not, since you have heard nothing,” with some confusion.It was the very best way of broaching the subject; but his confusion was real, and he did not think of that.
“Since we have heard nothing?” said Verna, raising herself to a very upright position. She had never been perfectly easy since Dr. Murray had thrown, quite inadvertently, into her mind that suggestion of another heir.
“Well,” said Hepburn, with some impatience, “I have no double meaning. I supposed there must be nothing to hear as you have not heard. Otherwise, I have just been listening to a story—”
“What story?”
It was strange that Matilda kept silent so long; she was cowed, I suppose, by Verna’s harsh and peremptory tone.
“They say,” said Hepburn, hesitating, and sinking his voice involuntarily; “indeed, I do not believe it, I give no credence at all to it. They say that Tom Heriot was married privately, and that there is a child—”
“What is that?” said Matilda, rousing up. “Tom Heriot married—and a child? Oh, what a wicked, wicked story! Oh, Mr. Hepburn, how can you say so, when you know, as well as I do, that we heard quite different, that it was all settled when the will was read, and that Tommy was the only heir—the only, only heir, everybody said. How can you make up such a story? It is only to frighten me, and make me unhappy. You know you don’t mean what you say.”
“Indeed,” said poor Johnnie, abject in thepenitence for which he had no cause. “I would not make you unhappy for the world. I thought it right to tell you as I heard—but I don’t believe it. It will turn out to be a mere invention, of that I am sure; but as I had just heard, I wanted to find out whether you knew.”
“Of course we know to the contrary,” said Matilda, laying herself back, somewhat excited, upon her pillows, satisfied so far with the explanation, and only angry with Johnnie in a coquettish tormenting way. But Verna, who had no such confidence, restrained her feelings, keeping her anxiety under. She was a great deal more anxious than her sister, and understood much better all that was involved.
“For simple curiosity, Mr. Hepburn,” said Verna, “tell us what they say.”
“Oh, it is just what is always said,” he answered. “Tom Heriot, they say, was privately married—married irregularly, as sometimes happens in Scotland—”
“What sort of a thing is that—before the registrar, or something?”
“Oh, not so formal. In Scotland,” said Hepburn, “if two people were to say to each other, before us, for instance, ‘This is my husband, and this is my wife,’ they would be supposed to be married.”
“Supposed! but what would that matter? It would be no marriage at all.”
“I thought there was always a blacksmith,” said Matilda, from her sofa, laughing. “When therewere Gretna Green marriages, there was always a blacksmith. I have heard of that. It must have been such fun, much greater fun than an ordinary wedding, with a breakfast, and just the same things as everybody else has.”
“It would be no marriage at all,” repeated Verna, with a certain harsh earnestness. “You hear me, Mr. Hepburn? No marriage at all!”
“Unfortunately, as much a marriage as though it had been done by an Archbishop,” said Johnnie; “that is what they say; but I don’t think Tom Heriot was the man to do it. I don’t think there is any fear. I feel sure that, if there had been anything in it, they would have let you know first of all. It would be only your right; for there is nobody so deeply concerned.”
“Of course we should have been the first to hear,” said Verna, coldly.
She went back to her account-books, closing the subject, and adding up a line of figures by way of proving to herself how calm she was. The effort was successful so far as Hepburn was concerned; but Verna did not convince herself. After a few minutes’ absorption in the books, she rose in a fever of suppressed emotion, and went slowly out of the room, wrapping herself, as it were, in a cloak of sudden self-restraint. How she trembled! how cold she had grown suddenly, though it was a day in Summer! The other two did not notice her, being absorbed in their own comedy; but this was tragedy to Verna. The fact that she might have spared herself the trouble of such energetic self-repression, and that neither of her companions had taken the trouble to think of her at all, did not affect her, as it might have affected a more sympathetic spirit. What afflicted her was no sentimental sorrow, but real heavy misfortune—the loss of a life. Yes, she felt that it was her life that was threatened, not Matilda’s fortune, or the patrimony of naughty little Tommy; it was she who was threatened, not they. She went out in a kind of despair, and sat down in a corner of the rocks, from which she could see the old house against which she had meditated such treason. It seemed to her that some magical power must attend that wretched old place. Had she ever prospered since she proposed to meddle with it? She shivered as she looked at it, feeling as though it were a wizard, or a wizard’s dwelling. Poor Verna! the tears came into her eyes, intense and bitter. To be sure it was only a report; Hepburn did not put any faith in it—nay, treated it as a simple piece of gossip; but to Verna, as to many women, the pain of it was its best authority. It would be so miserable a change, so dreadful a loss and misfortune, that somehow, according to the nature of things, it must be true.
In the meantime Matilda, from her sofa, began to claim the sympathy of her devoted admirer.
“Oh! Mr. Hepburn,” she said, “if this were true! What should I and my poor children do if this were true? I should have nothing—nothing but my pension and the two children to bring up—boys,too! And oh! my poor little Tommy! my little heir! What should I do?”
It was on Hepburn’s lips to say that she would still have her husband’s portion, the inheritance of the younger son, to fall back upon; but to console this gentle, disconsolate creature with mercenary suggestions of eight thousand pounds, seemed a miserable thing to do. He took her hand instead, and comforted her, and bid her not to fear.
“There are many that would be but too proud, too happy to be of use to you,” he said. “Everything I have in the world—everything! though it is not much—”
“Oh, Mr. Hepburn! you are too good,” murmured Matilda, and then she proceeded with her complaint. “Verna would leave me, I know,” she said, “Verna has no feeling for anything above account-books. You saw how she kept adding them up, even when you were telling me of this dreadful report. That is her sphere—fussing about a house, and having the control of the bills and all that. I have often said, what a pity it was that we were not quite poor, for then Verna might have gone out as a housekeeper and been happy. We never were rich,” she added, with that frankness that went to Hepburn’s heart, “but still ladies can’t do such things. It is a pity, though I don’t think I ever could be—a governess, for instance, though I may perhaps require to do something for my poor children. Oh, Mr. Hepburn! don’t be too kind to me. Don’t take my hand and that. It isn’t—nice; for you know I am not a young girl, as some peoplemight think, to look at me; but a poor widow—with no one to love me.”
Here Matilda’s tears overcame her—she covered her face with her handkerchief. She suffered Johnnie to do what he liked with her hand; and poor Johnnie moved beyond all control, overcome by her beauty and her tears, and her helplessness; touched by love at once, and chivalrous sympathy for her weakness and distress—Johnnie did what any such tender-hearted soul was sure to do. He threw himself on his knees by the side of the sofa—he laid himself and all his possessions at her feet—he combated all her feeble protestations, that it was impossible for her to love again—that it was far too soon to talk to her like that—that she never, never could forget her Charlie. All these whispers of resistance, he quenched by other whispers, ever more and more tender. He would be a father to her children—he would watch over their rights—he could not bear to hear her say that she had no one to love her. Did not he love her? Had not he loved her from the first day he saw her? Gradually Matilda’s protests sank lower and lower—and when the new butler, who occupied Fleming’s place, opened the door to bring in his mistress’s afternoon cup of tea, Hepburn rose from his knees, pledged to a hundred things which the young man in his enthusiasm undertook with rapture, but which were serious enough when he came to analyse them in detail. Mrs. Charles smoothed the fair locks which were slightly ruffled upon her forehead, and laughed a little laugh ofbashful consciousness becoming her new position. “And, oh! you dreadful man,” she said, when they were left alone again, “to go and make me commit myself like this before six months! I am so shocked, and so much ashamed of myself. It is all your fault, coming every day and stealing into a poor little thing’s heart. Oh, John! you must promise me—you must swear to me—never to say a word to anyone for a year at least. I could not bear it. It is not my fault that I am fond of you—but you must never, never, say a word—”
“How am I to go to St. Andrews then?” said the happy Johnnie, “to look after the children’s rights? What pretence can I make, if I cannot speak the truth?”
“Oh, I cannot let you go to St. Andrews,” said Matilda, “I want you here, I can’t get on without you; and as soon as ever you see Marjory you will forget me. Oh, yes, you may say what you like, but I know you would forget me. And to be sure you could always say you were acting as our friend,” she added, looking up into his face with a merry laugh, “a gentleman may always be a lady’s friend. You are my friend, recollect, in public—only my friend—until it is a year.”
She laughed and Johnnie laughed, though with an odd echo somehow about, which seemed to mock him. But it was the way with women; dear, loving, tender, soulless creatures, how were they to be expected to resist a living lover for the sake of a dead husband? it was their way. It was too delightful to have this lovely thing all to himself, to stop andmake a fuss about ideals. What folly they were! What ideal in the world was equal to the soft warm touch of that hand which clung to his, and that face which brightened as he bent over it? How happy he was as he sat by her, and poured all manner of nonsense into her ear! She was happy too; flattered, amused, satisfied, and full of a fluttering pride in the thought that before six months she had again been wooed. To be sure there were prejudices which might prevent this fact being made public; but still she had the satisfaction of knowing it within herself.
Marjorywas standing by Isabell’s bed, putting back the infant into its place by her side when her uncle and his attendants were admitted into the cottage. She did not see the start of amazement with which Agnes and her mother recognised the strangers. She herself did not even remark their presence. Her mind was full of emotion much too warm and strong to be easily disturbed from the thoughts that occupied her, and her only feeling towards her uncle was that of impatience that he had followed her so quickly. That he should wish to examine into the whole matter personally was simple enough, and he had even insisted upon it, in his conversations with herself; consequently she was not surprised at his appearance, but only annoyed by his haste and want of consideration for the invalid. If it had been a lady he would never have broke in upon her so, Marjory said to herself. And she showed her displeasure by taking no notice of his arrival. She bent over Isabell, smoothing her pillows, and arranging the white coverlet over her.
“My uncle has come,” she said, “you will not mind? He is an old man and very kind at heart. If he seems a little abrupt it is only his manner. He is our only relative, he has a right to inquire; you will not be frightened? Answer his questions as youhave answered me. He will be a good friend to—the child—and to you.”
“My friends must be in a better place,” said Isabell, with a faint smile.
“Yes, but we want the other too, for the child’s sake,” said Marjory. She was more excited than the dying girl. She began to picture to herself disagreeable questions which Mr. Charles might ask, suggestions he might make. He was kind, but he had a different code of civility for “a country lass” from that which would rule his utterances to a lady. Perhaps in general he was not wrong in this; but Isabell was not a mere country lass as he supposed. With a sense of anxiety which was stronger than seemed called for by the occasion, Marjory stood aside, and allowed her uncle to approach. Then, for the first time, she noticed the homely pair who accompanied him, and saw Agnes, flushed with excitement, standing back in a corner watching them, forcibly keeping herself silent, but with an eagerness of eye and look which meant something. The old mother, too, was gazing at them with open mouth and eyes, saying at intervals, “Lord preserve us a’!” with mingled anxiety and surprise. This curious consciousness, on the part of the spectators, disclosed to Marjory that the strange visitors were not mere neighbours, as she had thought. And she, too, gazed at them eagerly—but ignorantly—without being any the wiser. Their real identity strangely enough never occurred to her. She had associated the finding of them with Fanshawe, and with him alone. It is, perhaps, too much to say that she didnot want them to be found except by him; but certainly she had set her heart upon his accomplishment of this commission. It would be, she felt, a proof to heaven and earth that his real character was very different from his reputation—that he was a true friend—a man to trust and rely upon. She had “no object” (as she said to herself) in her wish to prove this—but yet abstractly she did wish to prove it. It was a foregone conclusion in her own mind. Therefore she had no desire that these should be the missing witnesses, and the idea did not occur to her, eager and anxious as her interest was.
“Yes, yes, May, my dear,” said Mr. Charles. “I see, this is the young woman. How are you to-day? I hear you are not so well as could be wished. My niece, Miss Heriot, has told me a great deal about you. I am not wanting to be uncivil, my poor girl; but I cannot conceal from you that your story is very unlikely—very unlikely; without strong proof I cannot see how it could ever be believed.”
He said this standing in the place which Marjory had given up to him, taking in everything around, the homely scene, the group which filled the room, rather than the individual whom he was addressing. When, however, he turned to her at the conclusion of his little speech, Mr. Charles gave a perceptible start. What Isabell might have been, in rude health like her sister, it would have been difficult to say, or whether the refinement and melancholy beauty of her face was purchased chiefly by grief and suffering; but certainly there was nothing in this pale and fragile creature, which answered to Mr.Charles’s idea of a country lass. He stammered a little in his confusion. He said, stumbling over his words, “I—beg your pardon; I am afraid you are—not so well—as I thought—”
“I will never be well in this world,” said Isabell. “I’m going fast, fast to a better, where a’body will understand. It was Miss Heriot put that first into my head—where there will be nobody that will not understand. I’m weak, weak, no able to tell it all over again; and oh, Sir, what for should I take all that pain, no to be believed? What matter is it whether God clear my good name or no? He will do it some time—and right my little bairn. I’m tired, tired—oh, mother, I’m tired, my heart’s beating; and my head’s throbbing. Dinna ask me any questions. I want to rest—”
“Oh, Bell!” cried the mother, coming forward. “Oh, my Bell! tell the gentleman. Now is the time to say the truth, whatever it may be. And now I’ll believe you, my bairn! I’ve been hard, and shut my heart. Now—now—if you’ll say it again, I will believe you, Bell!”
The girl closed her eyes, and shook her head gently. “How often have I told you, and you wouldna believe me, mother? Why now, when my strength is failing, and my heart sinking?”
“Isabell!” cried Agnes, “speak to them—oh, for God’s sake—look at me upon my knees to you,” and she rushed forward into the midst of the room, and threw herself upon her knees, with tears bursting from her blue eyes and her hands raised in passionate supplication, “for the man’s sake that’s dead, that never loved you half so well as I’ve done—for the bairn’s sake that I’ll be a mother to—Isabell! for the last time.”
Wearily Isabell opened her eyes. “Am I dying then?” she said, with a feeble smile. “Eh, that would be good news! You would not put it to me so solemn if I was not dying. I’m wearied, sore wearied; but if it’s the last time I must not think of mysel. My breath’s going, mother, and my heart’s fluttering; come and hold me by the hand, and Miss Heriot—where is Miss Heriot? Must I say it all over—every word? Sir, stand you there that I may see you. I was a foolish creature, and ignorant—knowing nothing. I didna pay attention when I should—I was fond of foolish things and dreaming.”
“Bell, you were the best of my bairns; you never gave me an hour’s trouble—tillthattime—”
“Whisht, mother, let me speak! Then I met with a gentleman—he was likeherthere—yon bonnie leddy, that has come to me and comforted me, and been my stay. By her ye may judge him. He said I should be his wife before God and man. Never a thought of harm, no a thought was in his mind. I’m dying and going till him. My man! no his sister there, a lady, could think less harm. Maybe I would have done what he said, good or ill; for he was like a god to me—a gentleman—no like common lads—but never a word of ill said he, mother, never a word. He said he wouldna go before the Minister, for it would be his ruin; but before decent folk.”
Here the sound of a sob broke poor Isabell’s interrupted monologue, a rude outbreak of emotion, sounding like a sudden discord. It came from the man who stood behind-backs, whose eyes had been gradually getting redder. The woman by him laid her hand upon him to restrain him; she had her handkerchief to her eyes; but was watching keenly through it, keeping her senses about her. Isabell was vaguely disturbed by this interruption; but after a moment’s pause began again; her voice more and more broken by the struggling breath.
“They were decent folk; they would say the truth if they were found—John Macgregor and his wife—they wouldna have countenanced any sin; you may believe that, mother. Folk like them would never have countenanced what was a shame to think of. I told nobody, because he said it—no one, not even Agnes. I aye hoped, and he aye hoped. But then there came the terrible news—the awfu’ news; it was in the papers. If it was not that I’m going—to him—I couldna speak of that day. Dinna ask me more. I mind nothing more, till I wakened up, and my bairn was born; and I was a disgrace and a shame!”
“No, no, Bell; no a disgrace!” cried the mother, with tears streaming from her eyes. “It was a’ for the truth that I fought—the truth. I born minded nothing more.”
“And ye believe me now, because I’m dying! there’s no other reason. I was as true then as I am now. Oh, if these decent folk were but here, that ken a’,” she cried with an effort. Anotherabrupt outbreak of sudden sobbing came from the other end of the room; Isabell raised herself up—partly it was the beating of her heart that forced her into an erect position, partly a curiosity, which was stronger than her self-restraint. When she saw the strangers, she uttered a sudden cry; excitement blazed up like flame, over her delicate face, lighting wild lamps in her eyes, and bringing colour to her cheeks; a gleam as of stormy sunshine came over her. “They’re here!” she cried, with an infantile laugh of pleasure, the last utterance of weakness. “Oh, make them speak! is it no true?”
“It’s Gospel,” cried the man, sobbing. “Oh, Bell, my bonnie woman, to see you come to this! it’s a’ Gospel truth. Speak out, Jean, if you’re a woman, and no a stone; speak out, I tell you! It’s true, Sir—as sure as death—as true as the Bible. God! woman, will ye no speak?”
“I’ll speak if ye’ll leave me time,” said Jean. “I’m no to be pushed that gate, and pushed the other, and never left to mysel’. She was never an ill lass. I’ve kent her since she was this height; a bit genty creature, never just like other folk. Ye ken yourself, Sir, I said we could never swear against Bell—she’s a good lass. There was some nonsense of the kind went on atween her and young Mr. Heriot—”
Isabell raised herself almost erect in her bed. Her fragile white figure shook with the heavings of her heart. But for this the flush upon her face, the overwhelming brightness of her eyes, might have banished even from the spectator most deeply interested, any idea of mortal sickness. She looked at the woman with a smile.
“I’m dying!” she said, in a voice that was strangely sweet and strong. “Answer, before God—and me. Ye’ll never see me mair—till the last day. Ye’ve my name and my bairn’s in your hands. Speak out! I ask you nae favour; speak the truth—- before God, and me.”
“Oh, Bell!” cried the woman, terrified, raising her hand to her face; “oh, dinna look at me with those blazing e’en! Sir, we meant nae harm—John and me. We never made our house a tryst, with an ill meaning. He went on his knees to me to let him see her. We wer’na the folk to lead gentlemen astray, nor lasses neither; it was not our blame.”
“Speak, ye deevil!” cried the man, furious; “or let me speak. It comes better from a woman. Who thinks of you and me? Sir, Sir! it’s a’ true.”
The tears were running down his rough face. With his stumbling, awkward step, too big for the place, he pushed forward. “If we didna come forrit before, it was for the fear o’ man,” he said. “She thought it was a story that would lose me my place—like as if we was entrapping lads to marry. Oh, Bell, forgive me! it was the fear of man.”
“Mother, you hear!” said Isabell. She had forgotten all the others. A glow of gentle contentment stole over her face. The strength of excitement failed her; she sank back upon the pillows, which Marjory stealing in, had raised to supporther. “Now I can depart in peace; now I’m clear; now I can go to my man. Oh, God be praised—that sent the decent folk, just in time.”
“Isabell!” cried Agnes, throwing herself on the bed; “you’re no so ill as that? It wasna that I thought you dying; you’re no dying. I bad ye speak because they were here.”
“Ay, ay! and I’ve spoken; and it’s a’ clear. The night’s coming on, I canna see. Mother, you were saying—what was somebody saying? I hear a sound in my ears; it’s the sea, or the wind—or maybe something more.”
“Bell! what is it? oh, my Bell! It’s her heart. Raise her up, to get breath; open the window. She’s aye speaking, speaking. Bell, speak to your mother. My darlin’ it’s a’ clear.”
“It’s voices,” she said, with an effort; “voices—like in the Bible—like the sound—o’ a great multitude; grander than the sea, or the wind. Do ye no hear?—and one that says ‘Isabell!’ among all the angels, and the saved that cry day and night, ‘Honour to the Lamb!’ Oh, hearken. One’s stopped, and it cries ‘Isabell!’ Ay, my man! I’m here—I’m here!”
Then a great silence suddenly fell over the cottage, a stifled sound of feet moving, faint rustling of dresses, tinkling of the glass in which they tried to administer something to revive her, and afterwards low sobs, broken cries, but not another articulate word. The conflict of wills and voices had ended. Without a word, another brief ineffectual struggle took place round the bed—thelast struggle with death—vain, passionate, hopeless effort. Isabell did not die all at once; this hard life, which is so bitter to live, so hard to begin, is hard too to end. She could not drop it from her so easily. For hours after they moved about that bed, saying nothing to each other, hiding their faces by times, stopping their ears not to hear the painful thrill of those last breathings, which seemed to shake the cottage. The doctor had time to come all the way from St. Andrews, and look at her, pitiful and helpless, shaking his head, and whispering that she did not suffer, that consciousness was gone and pain. But it was the middle of the night before the last breath died upon poor Isabell’s lips. No one of all the awe-stricken party left the cottage at first. Marjory was with the mother and sister by the bed. Mr. Charles, pale as a ghost, sat in a chair in a corner, looking on with a wondering countenance of sorrow. Had any one suggested it to him, he would have gone away; but he was absorbed like all the rest, and thought of nothing but of the wonderful act that was being accomplished before him. John Macgregor was standing on the threshold outside, his great person heaving with sobs. His wife, crying, but still with her wits about her, prepared with ghastly matter of fact composure to make herself of use. This was the scene upon which Fanshawe arrived, in the early darkening of the summer night. The baby, whom everybody had forgotten, had just awoke with a cry by the side of its insensible mother. Somehow this sudden protest of life against the pre-occupation of all theattendants on the dying, gave a touch almost of humour to the tragic scene. Marjory lifted the infant, and it was into Fanshawe’s arms that she thrust it, scarcely seeing what she did. “Take it to the woman,” she said, turning away from him. Where was he to take it? He held the helpless thing in his arms, no one finding it ludicrous, or even strange, till Jean relieved him of it. And then he went and stood with John Macgregor, not knowing who he was; or what had happened, outside the door. But after all, notwithstanding his ignorance and dismay, it was Fanshawe who brought so much common sense and understanding to the scene as to send Mr. Charles home, and Macgregor, both of whom were in the way. He understood, by instinct, a great deal of what had passed, and though he did not divine who the man was, by whose side he had been standing, yet it was impossible not to perceive that some preceding agitation, in which this man had been more or less involved, had taken place in the humble room, which now the presence of death filled to over-flowing. Fanshawe sent the other men away, and remained himself to see what was to be done. Strangely enough this seemed perfectly natural both to himself and Mr. Charles. He went outside, and sat down on the rocks which hedged in the bit of velvet greensward on which the cottage stood. It was a strange vigil. He watched the last rays of the evening light die out, the revealing of the stars among the clouds, the gleam of living radiance which woke in them from the edges of those massesof vapour; and then gradually, slowly, the pale lightening over the Eastern horizon—the promise of dawn. He sat with the waves plashing up to his very feet, carried by the high tide which came in just about the time he took his place there—then ebbing slowly down among the rocks, further and further off, moving the gleaming, living line ever lower down. The pale variations of sea and sky, the gathering midnight darkness that shut out both, all the mysterious sounds of Night and Nature went on around him; and death was overshadowing behind him, and a silent awe seemed over everything. To watch a whole night so, is such an experience as few forget; and to watch outside as Fanshawe was doing—with all the ghosts of the past and shadows of the future combining to increase the impression, was more wonderful still. And yet he felt it but little, his mind and soul being closed to external impressions by a pre-occupation which is more absorbing than any other on earth.
The faint grey of morning had begun to dawn when all at once he felt a soft touch upon his shoulder, and turned round, saw Marjory standing by him, like a ghost in the dimness.
“All is over;” she said, quietly; and then, “Have you watched with us all night?”
“All night,” he said. “I could do nothing more. Can I do anything now?”
“Take me home,” said Marjory. “I am too weary and sad to go alone. It is all over. She has got away at last. Oh, how hard it is to get rid of life!”
Her tears fell upon his hands, which held hers. He looked at her wistfully, eagerly, in the dim light, by which he could scarcely see her face. How high life was beating in his heart as he listened to these words. Hard to get rid of life! as if it were not something priceless, full of happiness, full of possibility, which a man would do anything, bear anything, rather than be rid of. He put her cloak round her while she stood passively by him, worn out, with those tears on her cheeks—and then drew her hand within his arm, and led her away silently along the dim sea-shore with all its mysterious sounds. The light increased slowly, dimly, the pale morning broke as they moved along. To Marjory it was all like a dream. To him, what was it? Every moment he could see her more plainly, and feel her, leaning on him. Rid of life! Who would be rid of that which held such prizes still?
Nohouse possessed by the Hay-Heriots had ever gone through such a night as that house by the Cathedral in St. Andrews had just passed. First there had been the blank dinner hour, with no one at home to eat the food, no one but little Milly who stood at the window and cried, and imagined misfortunes unutterable which must have befallen “my May.” The crying of the child infected the whole house. One of the maids had joined her at the window, another climbed to the top of the house to an attic which commanded the road “east the town,” leading to the Spindle, another had stolen outside to the door in the wall, where she stood watching all comers and goers, with the wind blowing her ribbons about, and ruffling her hair. In the very midst of this suspense, Miss Jean’s old coach, like a family hearse, came jolting heavily over the stones—for all the world, the excited listeners thought, like the Phantom Coach, which, as is well known, drives along the streets of St. Andrews at midnight, after a storm, carrying the drowned to the hallowed soil round the Cathedral ruins. Had it been dark, this resemblance would have been more than the nerves of the women could have borne, and the impression was scarcely lessened when Miss Jean herself, tired yet alert, with hersharp eyes looking out from the shelter of her broad “borders” and big black bonnet, got out briskly tapping upon the pavement with her cane. Milly stayed her crying, out of very excitement, to explain her sister’s absence, and was then held silent by fear while the old lady remarked upon it. “A bonny like way to leave a house with a wheen maids and one bairn!” she said. “May Hay-Heriot must be out of her senses. Out of the house at seven o’clock—the hour ye dine—did ye say it was the hour ye dine? Then it’s worse than madness, it must be wickedness. Do not look at me as if ye would eat me, ye little spirit—”
“Then do not speak of May like that!” said the child passionately, smothering her sobs. “Oh! what has become of her—what has become of her? Something has happened; oh, Aunt Jean! let you and me go and seek her out. She never left us like this before. Oh my May! my May!”
“Hold your tongue you little haverel,” said Miss Jean, “she is out to her dinner or something. Do you think Miss Heriot will leave her friends or her business because the table-maid is out at the door watching, or her own woman greeting at the window? Go in to your work this moment. Where is Mr. Charles? He will come in to his dinner and find nothing ready, and send ye about your business—or I would if it was me.”
Then it was explained to her, by three speaking at once, that Mr. Charles too had gone out mysteriously towards the Spindle, accompanied by two strangers; and Milly, whose tears had beenstayed, began again to cry more piteously than before, and the maids to rush to the windows. Miss Jean gave some decisive taps of her cane upon the floor—“Fools!” she said, “have you not sense enough to see that they’re both together with some sudden engagement they had no time to tell of? Stop this nonsense and bring ben the dinner—I’m hungry with my drive, and Milly, you’re hungry with crying—”
“Oh, Aunt Jean, I could not eat a morsel. Oh, what will I do if there is anything wrong with May?”
“You’re hungry with crying,” said Miss Jean, “we’ll wait for them no longer; bring ben the dinner. Is all the house to be turned upside down because they did not leave word where they were going? Help me off with my bonnet, woman, and dinna stand gaping. Milly, hold your tongue; is that the way to give me a welcome? You’ve let the child get low, you taupies, keeping her waiting. Bring ben the dinner, I tell you, we’ll wait for them no longer. Shut the doors and the windows, and get the spare room ready. I’ve come about business, Milly, and I mean to stay all night.”
By these decisive means Miss Jean brought the house into composure and subordination, and put a stop to the growing romance which the maids had begun to build up. They said in the kitchen that Miss Heriot could not be going so much to the Spindle for nothing, that it was fine to talk about a sick lass, but that more inducement was necessary to take a young leddy there in all weathers, andthat Mr. Chairles had found it out. This invention Miss Jean so far nipped in the bud, that she gave them all work to do, which occupied them fully and diverted their thoughts from this delightful fiction. The old lady had the spare room prepared for herself, and a fire lighted, a luxury never much out of place in St. Andrews, though it was but August, and the flush of Summer still ought to have been over the world. It was a gloomy night, dark clouds and darker sea, everything that was dismal and discouraging out of doors, and not much that was cheery within. Miss Jean herself, with many thoughts in her mind, established herself in the drawing-room after dinner—having sent Milly, much against her will, to bed—to wait for some news of her relations who had thus left the house empty to receive her. She sat in the unfamiliar room, looking out upon the old pinnacles of the cathedral ruins which were associated with many an early passage of her youth—and going back into her life, lived in it as old people do, feeling it present with her, notwithstanding the lively threads of present interest which crossed each other like a network over that landscape peculiarly her own which lay behind. Her quick mind darted in a moment from recollections of an evening fifty years ago, when she had wandered, not uncompanioned, through these ruins, to many a speculation as to how her grand-niece, Marjory, her representative, might be occupying herself, and what manner of interference “auld Charlie” might be making in some possible complication of affairs.
For her nephew was “auld Charlie” to Miss Jean as well as to the youngest scoffer who called him by that name. The old maiden was contemptuous of the old bachelor. His age was an object of greater scorn to her than it was to the young men who on the whole liked “auld Charlie.” “A poor creature, a poor feeble old creature, with no character to speak of,” she said of him. She scorned him for being what he was, nobody’s husband, nobody’s father, and amid the openings of her old dream, while still she seemed to herself to be straying down the vast nave traced out by its old pillars, with her hand upon some one’s arm, who was dead and gone years ago—there recurred to her, now and then, a sarcastic criticism upon the old man who was so much younger than herself. She herself was two persons in one, difficult to identify in their separate characters: young Jean Hay-Heriot among the ruins, fresh and sweet as the youngest rose in the garden: old Miss Jean with her shrivelled face surrounded by her “borders,” her wrinkled hand leaning on her cane. But as for Mr. Charles he had never been but one, the same figure throughout, always lean, long, dried up, occupied about nick-nacks, buried in old books, unbending to nothing but golf. “And now he’s meddling with Marjory,” Miss Jean said to herself with a vindictive gleam of her black eye, “him that knows no more about it than a man of wood! But I’ll see to that, I’ll see to that;” and then the sweep of the great west window caught her eye, and she was young Jean again, looking up at it to hide her confusedsweet girlish face from some one who would gaze too closely. Which was the real one between these two? which the most true, the past that lives for ever, or the present that is but for a moment? The old woman sat absorbed in this bewilderment of mingled memory and observation, and did not think the dim hours long as they stole past her. She would not have the lamp brought in till late. She sat at the window as Marjory had done, her old head framed in by the delicate crown of the broken arch, perfect on one side, an exquisite flowing shaft of ancient stone, with canopy work fit for a queen of heaven—on the other nothing but gloomy sky and sea. The darkness closed over her but Miss Jean noted it not. The scene before her eyes had brought all her life back to her; in that very room she had danced a girl. What need had she of lights, of books, something to divert her? as the sympathetic maid suggested who found the old lady in the dark and was sorry for her.
“Go away, and bring me the lamp in an hour. I like the gloaming,” said Miss Jean in a softened tone.
“Gloaming! it was mirk as midnicht, and her an old witch, sitting in the dark,” said the woman, reporting the circumstance below; and this further aggravation of a weird old woman seated by herself unseen at the window, seeing nobody could tell how far or how keenly, carried a still further element of mystery into the vague wonder and suspense of the house.
The arrival of Mr. Charles, which took placelate, about ten o’clock, when it was quite dark, was the first thing that roused the old lady. He came in very unsteady on his long legs, with a somewhat dazed and pre-occupied look—too much absorbed by all the events of the evening to be much startled by anything that might happen, even by a visitor so unexpected. He came in and made some sort of greeting, taking her presence for granted in a way which bewildered her, and then threw himself upon a chair in the dim room. “She’s dying,” he said in that dull tone of spent excitement which expresses so much.
“Who’s dying?” cried Miss Jean in alarm, starting from her seat at the window. “Not our May?”
“May?” Mr. Charles said with a kind of dull wonder. “May? She’s yonder,” pointing his thumb over his shoulder, “as she was at Tom’s side, poor fellow! God be praised, no—it’s not her; but that poor thing—”
“The—gamekeeper’s daughter;—the—lass—? but that’s too good news.”
Mr. Charles looked at her with reproof in his eyes. “You know nothing about it. She is far from a common kind of lass; but that is a thing women never can understand,” he added, taking a certain vigour from his opposition. “How those that are on the other side, should have any title to respect—that is a thing you can never understand.”
“Maybe not,” said Miss Jean with lively and instant assumption of the quarrel. “We’re no so clever as you. You can aye discriminate; ye see ata glance, and tell the good from the evil. We’re weaker vessels; but, perhaps, if ye were to tell me some of the arguments that convinced your strong mind—”
Mr. Charles jumped up, galled at this speech and the tone in which it was uttered; but his weariness overcame him, and he sat down again, somewhat humbled. “No argument—no argument,” he said, “the sight of her—that is all. I’ve left Marjory there. She’ll not leave the bedside so long as life remains. I thought she might have come away now, for the poor thing is no longer conscious; but May feels it her duty to Tom.”
“And you left her—a lady—a young woman—to come home alone.”
“Ay,” said Mr. Charles, and then paused, “I am meaning, not quite alone. There is that lad Fanshawe,” he added in a deprecating tone.
“Fanshawe! him that was at Pitcomlie before—the English lad?”
“Yes, the English lad—I never thought of it till this moment; but he has a way of turning up when he’s wanted that is very extraordinary—very extraordinary! To see him appear, like a ghost, at that cottage door—and not one of us surprised within. To be sure,” Mr. Charles added with sudden gravity, “all our thoughts were turned another way.”
“But my thoughts are not turned any other way,” said Miss Jean. “I don’t know what folly you’re thinking of, her and you; but Marjory is my first thought. All this about your cottage doors,and your thoughts turned other ways, is not intelligible to me. I would like to know what you mean, Charlie. Who is this lad, and what has he to do with Marjory? You’ve left him to bring her home—in the middle of the night.”
“No—no,” said Mr. Charles, deprecating, “not so bad as that—not the middle of the night. And how could I help it? It was no place for me—a man that could be of little use. I came away by his advice. It’s a long walk, and I’ve eaten nothing. And, perhaps,” he said, pausing with his hand on the bell, “I should bid them get a room ready for Fanshawe—he must stop somewhere. So far as I know, the beds at The Royal may all be taken. I suppose I must give him a bed in this house.”
“You know best who to take in, and who to leave out,” said Miss Jean. “I never interfere with the arrangements of the house. Perhaps you would like me to go to The Royal? For otherwise, I have my boxes in the spare room.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Mr. Charles, waving his hand; and he gave his orders with a degree of explanatoriness to which Miss Jean listened with grim impatience. “There’s a gentleman, Mr. Fanshawe, that may be coming in late—with Miss Heriot; not that he’s with Miss Heriot now, or more than just in the neighbourhood. But she may be kept late, and at my request he will bring her home—you understand?”
“Oh ay, Sir, I understand!” said the maid cheerfully; “the English gentleman; he was here the day already, waiting long, and very anxious about MissHeriot. He went off after you to the Spindle, when he heard ye had gone that gait; he was just off a journey; but he would take no refreshment, no so much as a glass of wine;” but aye, “where was Miss Heriot? where was Miss Heriot? that was all that was in his head.”
“It was me he wanted, in reality,” said Mr. Charles, looking anxiously towards Miss Jean; “on business. We have a great many business transactions, him and me; and put some cold meat or something in the dining-room. If Mr. Fanshawe is kept very late—as he may be, waiting at my request for Miss Heriot (for he is a young man, Aunt Jean, and I am an old one—he was more able to wait than me); he will have to sleep here.”
“And will Miss Heriot be late, Sir?” said the maid.
“She’s waiting upon a poor young woman that’s dying,” said Mr. Charles, with solemnity. “You’re amused, Aunt Jean? I’m sorry that I cannot join you, after the scene I’ve been going through—nor see the cause.”
“Oh, you blind auld beetle!” said Miss Jean; “putting it into the lass’s head every word you said, to mix up May’s name with this lad’s! Who is the lad?—is he worthy of her? or does he want her? or have you paid any attention, ye doited auld body, to what I took the trouble to say?”
“I have taken your advice,” said Mr. Charles shortly; “much to my own discomfort; but nothing has ever come of it, that I can see.”
“That’s no answer to my question,” cried theold lady peremptorily. “Is he worthy of her? and who is the lad?”
“So far as I can make out,” said Mr. Charles; “he is very little to brag of; a good-natured ne’er-do-weel—nobody’s enemy but his own.”
“And that’s just the bitterest foe of everybody that belongs to him,” said Miss Jean; “and it’s a man like that that you leave to bring May home; to wait for her, and feel for her, and bring her along a lonely road, and take advantage of all his opportunities—”
“The young man is a gentleman,” said Mr. Charles eagerly, with an indignant flush on his face.
“And you’re a fool, Charlie Heriot!” cried the old lady, growing red—as a woman of seventy-five could scarcely be expected to do. She was angry and ashamed at his interpretation of her words; she got up hastily to retire to her room, every fold of her shawl quivering with indignation. “Judging by what you say, it is little use sitting up for her, I suppose,” she said. “To think of a young woman like Marjory left to come home with a strange man in the middle of the night! You’re a bonnie guardian, Chairlie Heriot; you give us all great encouragement to trust the young women of the family to you.”
To tell the truth, something of the same feeling crept into Mr. Charles’ own mind, mingled with shame, as he went down to the dining-room to eat his long postponed dinner, and refresh himself with a little bodily comfort. He began to feel muchdiscontented, and ashamed. To leave Fanshawe to take care of her had seemed very natural in the midst of the excitement at the cottage, as soon as he had recognised that his own presence there was uncalled for. But in the light of Miss Jean’s comments it had a very different appearance. He had put Marjory into Fanshawe’s hands; he had accepted him as in some sort her natural protector and companion. This thought entirely drove from his mind the real event of the night; the occurrence which had absorbed him so short a time before. Now that he was out of the shadow of the death-chamber, all that belonged to it flitted away from him. The same feeling was strong in both of the old people; they pushed death aside almost rudely, as a thing which once completed, should be thought as little of as possible—and plunged into the concerns of life again with eagerness. The scene had been solemn, the moment touching; but these were over, and life and its necessities were not over. Mr. Charles put himself upon three chairs in the dining-room, after he had eaten his late refection, and declared his intention of waiting there till Miss Heriot returned. He fell asleep very uncomfortably, waking up now and then with a crick in his neck, with pins and needles in his feet or his fingers, with an indescribable sense of discomfort penetrating even into his sleep. When he woke from a painful doze on his three chairs, he decided with himself that now he might venture to go to bed—that she would not now come till the morning, when no one could make any remark. Accordingly, whenMarjory, half dead with fatigue and emotion, reached the house, there was no one up to receive her. She had scarcely uttered a single word the whole way, and sometimes Fanshawe, holding her fast with her hand pulled through his arm, had half fancied she must have fainted or fallen into some stupefying trance, though the mechanical motion continued and she kept walking on, like one galvanized. When at last a sleepy maid was roused to admit them, the early morning sunshine was lying warm upon the silent streets and houses. As she entered, and he after her, on the strenuous invitation of the maid, who was partly hospitable and partly afraid lest anyone, “from our house” should be seen making his way to The Royal “at such an hour”—the stillness of the house came over them both with a strange half-alarming sensation. At the top of the stairs in the bright solemn early daylight Miss Jean stood, in her broad-bordered nightcap, and with curious flannel draperies wrapped about her, looking down upon them as they mounted the stairs. Marjory was too weary to feel much surprise.
“Is it you, Aunt Jean?” she asked languidly.
“Is this the way you treat your visitors, coming in at this hour of the morning?” said Miss Jean, “and with so little regard to what folk may think? Let the young man bide below till I’m out of the way. I’ll see you to your room, Marjory. You want some woman-person to see after you, and that taupie of a maid is snoring, disturbing my slumbers for hours past.”
“I am sorry you waited for me,” Marjory said in her strange stupor, “but when you know the cause—”
“Oh, ay, I know the cause,” said Miss Jean, throwing a jealous glance over her shoulder at Fanshawe, who hesitated and lingered on the stairs. “I know the cause,” she repeated, following Marjory into her room and closing the door with much severity, “but for my part I’m a great deal more interested, to tell the truth, in what may be the result.”
Thus with one consent the elder members of the party—the ones who had lived longest and were nearest the ending—thrust the death-scene away from them, and went on with the threads of life as if there had been no interruption of its ordinary course. This was what they cared for—the living, not the dead.
And Fanshawe, dazed too with his watching, with his strange long walk through the unnatural yet fresh and lovely morning, which had seemed to spy upon them all the way, with wondering looks, like a child, went into the room prepared for him—having added that picture of Miss Jean in her dressing-gown to all the others, of which his mind was full. He did not hear what she said, but he made out her sharp look of disapproval, and the jealousy of her watch over Marjory, thus peremptorily parted from him, and taken out of his keeping the moment she crossed the threshold. She had been so absolutely confided to him before, that the contrast was all the more remarkable. Whenhe was safe in his room, the ludicrousness of the old lady’s appearance came before him so strongly, that he laughed in spite of himself—and then was intensely ashamed of himself, and crept to bed, feeling guilty in the daylight, feeling as if he had been doing something he ought not to have done. How strange to glide into the stillness of an orderly sleeping-room after an exciting night! And he was dizzy with his journey, with fatigue, and long waking. But still, of all the memories of the night, Miss Jean at the top of the stairs was the one that lingered most in his memory. He dreamed of her, and laughed in his sleep, and woke with a half-hysterical mixture of laughter and emotion, as much moved by that momentary comic glimpse as by all that had happened. But this levity, fortunately, nobody knew.
Theparty which met in the morning after this vigil regarded each other strangely, feeling the fever of their excitement still about them. Marjory did not appear, and it was from Mr. Charles that Fanshawe learnt that his own mission had failed, and that the missing witness had already appeared, a fact which he had guessed from all he saw, but had not been informed of. There was a long discussion over the breakfast table about this strange change in the family affairs, and all the revolutions it must bring about.
“An application must be made at once to the Court of Session to appoint tutors,” Mr. Charles said, who was full of suppressed excitement, “and these young women at Pitcomlie must be informed. It will be hard upon them, poor things, after all.”
“They had nothing to do with the house or the family,” said Miss Jean, briskly. “Strangers, all strangers; neither one nor another has any pity from me. Eight thousand pounds is not a bad provision for a younger son’s widow, with nothing of her own; but take you my advice, Charlie Heriot, and be very clear in your mind about this bairn. I’m not fond of chance bairns coming in when nobody expects them. This lass, that you all think so much of, may have been everything that’s good;but I would have the court to sit upon it, and make sure. I would trust nothing to chance, if it was me.”
“We’ll take every precaution—every precaution,” said Mr. Charles; and then he fell into a reverie, from which he roused up slowly, with a look of satisfaction in his face, rubbing his hands. “I am glad,” he said, “that I never began to dismantle my old room. I’ve thought of doing it more than once. If I could suppose,” added Mr. Charles, changing countenance, “that leaving Pitcomlie would be any heart-break to these young women; if they had had time to get attached to the place—But as one house or another is the same to them, and Mrs. Charles is not badly provided for, on the whole, with her pension and all—I hope it’s not any way hard-hearted on my part.”
“But you’re old, Charlie Heriot,” said Miss Jean, “old to be tutor to a little bairn. Granting that you may live as long as I have done, for instance, that’s about fifteen years—and nobody can calculate on more—that would leave the boy just at the worst age. You’re spare and thin, and I would not wonder if ye were one of the long-lived ones of the family; but granting even that you were spared to be as old as me—”
“You’ll live twenty years yet, Aunt Jean,” said Mr. Charles, who did not like the turn the conversation was taking.
“That may be, or may not be,” said Miss Jean. “I’m very indifferent; a year sooner or a year later matters very little. To be sure when you’re wellover your threescore and ten, there’s no saying—but it’s never to be calculated on. If this bairn is young Tom’s lawful son, as you say, and but three months old, poor bit thing, he must have young guardians. The like of Mr. Fanshawe here now; or as women are coming into fashion, Marjory—”
Mr. Charles gave an alarmed look at the audacious proposer of such a conjunction. He was fairly frightened by it. He looked up with a certain consternation, to meet the bold response of Miss Jean’s black eyes, twinkling with satisfaction at the thought of having thus bewildered him.
“Ye need not look at me in that alarmed manner, Charlie Heriot,” she said. “There’s nothing but what is strictly reasonable in what I say.”
“If I were thought worthy of such a charge,” said Fanshawe, startled too. “I should, of course, do my very best to acquit myself of the trust; but I have, at present, no connection with Fife—I have no claim to such a distinction; there must be many others much better qualified—”
“It’s not a thing we can discuss,” said Mr. Charles, hurriedly; “it is not in our hands; there are a great many preliminaries. And in the first place there is one that’s not pleasant. These young women, how are they to be told? They must be told. What would you say, Aunt Jean, would be the best thing to do? Perhaps as you are going that way, if you were to see them and break it in a quiet way? a lady is always the best to do that; there’s more delicacy, and more sympathy, andunderstanding, and so forth. Some clergymen have a gift that way; but a lady is always the best.”
“I am much obliged to you, Charlie Heriot,” said Miss Jean, “but in my opinion you’re the only bearer of the news that’s possible. Nobody can do it but you.”
“Do you really think so?” said Mr. Charles. “Now I cannot help thinking a stranger would be better—or perhaps a letter—that might be the best of all—a letter now. Unless Mr. Fanshawe here, that could bring no painful recollections to their minds, a young man quite unconnected with everything—and pleasant manners, and all that—would be so obliging as to drive out, and just prepare them a little. My niece Marjory has so much confidence in Mr. Fanshawe. It is not a long drive, and the country is looking its very best. Would it be too much to ask, as a friend of the family?” Mr. Charles said, with an insinuating look.
Miss Jean’s chuckle, and the look she gave him out of her sharp black eyes, overcame Fanshawe’s gravity more than the proposal thus anxiously made. Even Mr. Charles saw the fun, and relieved himself and his anxiety with a long low laugh, under protest as it were—for laughing was far from appropriate at this juncture of the family affairs. But the most amusing thing of all was that, though they laughed at the idea of entrusting Fanshawe with this mission, after much talk and many suggestions, and a great deal of comic remark, it was after all he who went. He consented—because it was his fate, because it was propitiating Marjory’s friends,because it was a proof to her of his readiness to serve all connected with her; but chiefly, it must be allowed, because it was his fate. This was what he was born into the world for; to do what people asked him, to serve others, to be good for much so far as other people were concerned, but good for little to himself. Miss Jean looked on with a certain grim amusement while it was all being settled. She gave her opinion on the subject with her usual frankness.
“I would not have gone had I been you,” she said. “I would have let old Charlie do his nasty errands for himself.”
Fanshawe laughed with some conscious shame, feeling indeed that he had been somewhat weak; and the old lady resumed—
“Nobody thinks the more of you for being too kind. A willing horse is aye over-ridden; but that’s not all. In this world folk take you at your own word, Mr. Fanshawe. They think little of a man that holds himself cheap. It’s no advantage—either with man or woman. The best thing ye can do is to let folk see that a favour from you is a real favour, not easy to get, not given to everybody—”
“Miss Jean, you speak like Solomon himself,” said Fanshawe, with mock reverence and real confusion, “or rather like the Queen of Sheba,—which is the next wisest, I suppose.”
“Maybe I am like the Queen of Sheba,” said Miss Jean; “but it’s men far from Solomon that I’ve come to see. You like Fife, I suppose, Mr. Fanshawe, that I find you back here?”
“I suppose so too,” he said, with a rueful comic sense that he was by no means a free agent, “since you find me here, Miss Jean—as you say—”
“You should not repeat another person’s words, it’s not civil. And yet Fife has but small attractions for a young man. You’re fond of golf, I suppose, like all the rest?”
“Probably I might be,” he said, laughing, “if I had the chance; but I have never tried yet—”
“Oh, then you’re one of those archæ-somethings, that make the old stones speak?” said Miss Jean. “Oh, but the like of me could make them speak better, if we were to tell all we mind and all we have seen.”
“I am not an archæ-anything,” said Fanshawe.
“Then it’s very strange to me—very strange,” said the old lady, looking him in the face, “what pleasure you can find in staying here?”
He laughed—this time an uneasy laugh, and felt himself redden uncomfortably. Why, indeed, should he stay here? To go on Mr. Charles’s errands, to have all sorts of disagreeable offices thrust upon him, to be sent off, perhaps, at a moment’s notice, to be made use of on all hands. This was what his past experience had been, and why should it be different in the future? The old woman’s two black eyes, set deep in their shrivelled sockets, looked knowingly, not unkindly at him, with a gleam of amusement, but also with a certain sympathy. “There does not seem much reason, does there, why I should stay?” he said, and gotup and went to the window to look out, avoiding her keen eyes.
“Young man,” said Miss Jean, “I don’t know much about you, and what I know is not the best that might be; but you’re not an ill young man as men go. On the whole, I’m inclined to be on your side. And take you my advice. Don’t make too little of yourself; don’t be at everybody’s call; stand up for yourself, if you would have other folk stand up for you. So far as I’ve seen, your fault is that you’re better than most folk. Don’t be that, that’s the worst of all mistakes.”
“You mean that I am a yielding fool, and cannot say ‘No,’”said Fanshawe; “but that, after all is scarcely the case. There are circumstances, perhaps, if I could tell them to you, that justify me—”
“No circumstances, but a man’s nature account for that kind of conduct,” said Miss Jean, briskly; “but if it’s any comfort to you, I’m inclined to be on your side.”
Whatever comfort there might be in this, Fanshawe had it to console him on his drive. He set out without seeing Marjory. When he found himself driving not too quickly over those long country roads, on the business which was not his, and realised the disagreeable mission he had undertaken, he felt more weak and foolish than even Miss Jean had represented him to himself. For what was all this? To commend himself to Marjory? or because it was his nature and his fate? He was thoroughly discontented with himself. Was he, whowas thus driven hither and thither by the will of others, who seemed to have no business of his own in the world, but always and only the business of others—was he the kind of man to step boldly out of his groove, to begin an independent life, to ask any woman to share that existence? Nobody but those who are over-persuadable, ready to be over-borne by the appeals made to them by their more indolent neighbours, and to take upon their shoulders burdens which are none of theirs, can understand how ashamed Fanshawe felt of his own amiability in the business which he had at present in hand—or how disgusted with the piece of work which Mr. Charles had basely thrust upon his shoulders. As he approached Pitcomlie, he realized more and more clearly how disagreeable it was. The sight of the house which had filled so important a chapter in his life made his heart beat. There it was that he had been roused out of the equanimity of his placid, easy-going existence; and what good had that awakening done? None but to make him a dissatisfied instead of a very contented, happy sort of fellow; to show him the evil without opening the way to any remedy; to fill him with longings after the unattainable without conferring upon him the strength necessary to struggle and attain it. Marjory! the whole place was full of her; the cliff, with its velvet coverlet of green sward, round which so often by her side he had taken his “turn;” the sundial by which he seemed to see her seated; the roofless old house, against the grey walls of which he had watched her figure so often, and whichformed so fit a background for her; everything was full of Marjory. The presence of her image there made it somehow more easy for him to do what he was going to do. He marched into the well-known drawing-room, almost regardless of the servant who rushed after, pulling on his coat, to announce him. He saw with a certain sharp sense of sarcastic pleasure somebody rise hastily from Mrs. Charles’s side, and retire into a distant corner. Somebody—that sentimental personage called Johnnie, whose presence had once made him furiously jealous. He was ready to laugh now at the sight of this young man, whom he recognised at once with that attraction of jealousy and dislike which is as strong as love. Why was he so pleased to see Johnnie Hepburn start disconcerted from Mrs. Charles’s side? It pleased him to think of telling it to Marjory; the power of discrediting her old admirer in her eyes was quite grateful to him; he was spitefully delighted—there is no other word that can describe his feelings. If Fanshawe had but thought of it, he might have felt himself quite delivered from the danger of being too amiable by this vigorous outburst of dislike and feelings quite un-evangelical. But somehow it did not occur to him to judge his own sentiments in that uncompromising way.