“No!” said Marjory, with a slight shiver. “A bad accident; read it, aunty. And, Milly, run quick and get on your things.”
Miss Jean, sobered too in a moment, took the terrible missive, which, to her ignorant eyes, looked something diabolical. It was from somebody in England she made out, and was worded with what she felt to be cruel conciseness. “Tom has had a bad accident; thrown from his horse; symptoms dangerous. He wishes you to tell his father; and to come to him at once.”
“It may be a lie,” said Miss Jean in a low voice, and trembling; “very likely it’s a lie. There’s no beginning and no ending; and the man, if it is a man, has not signed his name.”
“Oh, I know his, name; he is one of Tom’s friends. It is no lie!” said Marjory. And then she added, trembling too: “Aunt Jean, don’t you feel, like me, that you always knew this would be the end?”
“The end! Who’s speaking of the end?” cried Miss Jean impatiently; and then, all at once, she fell crying and sobbing. “Oh, poor Thomas, poor Thomas; that was so very proud of his boy! Who’s to tell him?”
“Will I run for the Minister?” said Betty, who had come back with Marjory’s hat in her hand, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and all the excitement of a great family event in her mind.
“The Minister is the right person to tell the father such ill news,” said Miss Jean; “and it’s best to have him at hand, whatever happens. Betty, you can run—”
Marjory put up her hand to stop the eager messenger. In spite of herself, even at that momentof excitement, a vision of Dr. Murray clearing his throat, and preparing his way by a little speech about the vicissitudes of life gleamed before her. She could see him hemming and taking out his handkerchief with a look as tragically important as if he were the chief actor in the scene.
“No!” she said; “not the Minister; send down to John Horsburgh’s to get out our horses, Betty. I will tell him myself.”
“You’re not equal to it, my poor bairn.”
“He will take it best from me; and it’s Tom’s wish,” said Marjory, putting on her hat. She felt the tears rising to her eyes; but this was not a moment to let them fall.
“I doubt if Thomas will take it as he ought to take it,” said Miss Jean; “he’s a good man, but he’s always had his own way. Perhaps, as you say, Marjory, it is best to keep it all in the family, for a man’s apt to say what he should not say in a sudden trouble. And I’m sorry I was so ill to you about keeping me waiting; what was ten minutes, here or there? Oh May, my bonnie lamb! the eldest son!”
And with this Miss Jean, melted by the bad news into use of the pet name which had scarcely passed her lips since Marjory was a child, gave her niece a sudden embrace, by putting her thin hands on May’s two arms, and touching her chin with her own withered cheek. Very seldom was she moved to such an outburst of affection. The wave of her blonde borders across Marjory’s face was the most passionate demonstration she was capable of; butwhen her nieces had gone, Miss Jean sat down at the window which looked to Pitcomlie, with a genuine ache in her old heart. “Eh, the bonnie laddie he was!” she said to herself; “eh, the stout and strong young man! There never was an heir cut off that I mind of in our family before. But Thomas was aye foolish, very foolish; and many a time I’ve told him what indulgence would come to. Lord help us all, both living and dying! It’s aye a special blessing of Providence, whatever happens, that Marjory’s a courageous creature; and that Charlie’s babies are both sons.”
Thus the old woman comforted herself, who was near the ending of all mortal vicissitude; and Pitcomlie lay fair and calm in the sun, greatly indifferent who might come or go—one or another, what did it matter to the old house, which had outlasted so many generations? what did it matter to the calm world, which takes all individual sorrows so easily? But to some atoms of humanity what a difference it made! How dark the heavens had grown all at once, and how clouded the sun!
Marjory said not a word all the way home, as she rode with her little sister by her side. How they had chattered as they came; and how Milly had called “May! May!” a dozen times in a minute; the prelude of every sentence. Milly kept as close to her sister now as she could, and sometimes stroked her skirt with her little hand and the whip in it, in token of silent sympathy. There was urgent need to reach home; but Marjory did not go fast. It was no easy task she had before her. Her fatherwas fond of her she knew; perhaps more fond than of either of his sons; but his heir, with all his extravagances, with all his folly and wildness, had been his delight and pride. There are some women who are saved from all the shocks and pains of life; everyone around them instinctively standing forth to protect them, and shield off the blow; but there are some, on the other hand, to whom it comes natural to receive the sharpest and first thrusts of adversity, and blunt the spear in their own bosoms before it penetrates any other. Marjory was one of this class,—a class instantly recognized and put to use by the instinct of humanity. It had seemed natural to Tom to put this duty upon her; natural to Tom’s friend to communicate it to her, without any attempt at breaking the news. And she herself accepted her office, simply, feeling it natural too.
Thehouse of Pitcomlie lay very still and quiet in the fitful sunshine, when the daughters of the family reached its open door. The door stood always open, unsuspicious, disclosing the way into its most private corners to any comers. It had nothing to conceal. At this hour in the afternoon, it was exceptionally still. The gentlemen were out, the servants all absorbed into their own part of the house, and not a stir nor sound announced the presence of a large household. The brightness of the day was clouded, but yet held its own by moments, the sun coming out now and then with double brilliancy from the edge of the clouds which were driven over its face one by one. As Marjory and her little sister rode up the avenue, one of those great masses of cloud had floated up, and threw a heavy shadow over the house, and the blue broad sea beyond; but as they alighted at the door, the sun burst forth again, blazing upon the wide open doorway.
“Is my father at home, Rob?” asked Marjory of the groom who came to take her horse.
“The laird’s out, ma’am, and so’s Mr. Charles. They’re baith away wast,” said Rob, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
Marjory stood musing on the steps before she would go in; she did not know whether to seek her father “away wast,” or to wait for him. How still the house was, so unsuspecting, so serene and peaceful! It seemed treacherous to go into it with a secret so deeply affecting its existence in her hands. Somehow it seemed to Marjory’s excited fancy that she was about to give a blow without warning, without preparation, to some one whose smiling unalarmed countenance looked trustfully up at her. It seemed a treachery even to know it, and above all to go on knowing it, keeping the secret, into the old gentle family house that feared nothing. When she went upstairs she changed her dress, and gave her maid instructions to pack a few necessaries for her.
“My brother has met with an accident,” she said, as calmly as she could.
To say it even in this form relieved her mind. She did not feel such a traitor to the kindly old house.
Mr. Heriot fortunately came back as soon as her preparations were made, and now the worst part of her duty was to come. She ran down and met him at the door.
“What made you so late, May?” he said, his face brightening involuntarily at sight of her.
“I was detained,” she said; and came out and loitered in front of the door, playing with the dogs, who always accompanied him. He was as unsuspicious as his house. If he had been anxious in the morning, he had thrown his anxieties off. He pointed out to his daughter the good points of apointer puppy, which, large-limbed and imbecile, came roving round from the stables, scenting the arrival of the others.
“He’ll make a grand dog before September,” he said, “when he’s grown and trained. Tom will be delighted with him.”
May interrupted him hastily, for she was choking with the news.
“Come round to the cliff, papa, there is a storm brewing,” she said.
Unsuspicious, he went with her. They took what Mr. Heriot called “a turn” round the soft lawn which surrounded that side of the house. It was too much exposed for flowers or even shrubs, but green and smooth as velvet. The sea dashed with a muttering suppressed roar on the beach beneath. It was of a steely blue, sometimes flashing in the gleams of sunshine, sometimes leaden under the shadow. Towards the east, on the very angle of the coast, stood the old mansion house, tall and narrow, with its tourelles—all but one tower, which adjoined the present house, was ruinous and roofless—but it was draped by branches which burst out from the broken walls, and a wild luxuriance of ivy. The existing house stood lower, and looked warm, and peaceful, and safe, like the present under the protection of the past. Marjory and her father made their turn round and round, she talking against time, not knowing how to introduce her subject. At last, as they turned to come back, she pointed out to him one of those sudden dramatic changes of the clouds.
“Look, papa, how quickly the lights change. It was in sunshine just now, and how black everything is already! It makes one feel eerie. It is like a cloud of misfortune enveloping the old house.”
She was foolishly in hopes that he would have taken up this metaphorical strain, and thus given her an opening to say what she had to say.
“Nothing more natural, my dear,” said Mr. Heriot. “The clouds are driving up from the mouth of the Firth. It’s an ill sign when they come and go so fast. I hope those foolish fellows from Comlie shore will be warned in time.”
“Oh, papa,” cried Marjory, seizing this opening. “It is dreadful to think how seldom we are warned in time! How we go on to the very edge of a precipice, and then—”
“Phoo!” said Mr. Heriot, “if a man does not keep a look-out before him, it’s nobody’s fault but his own.”
Thus the door was shut upon her again. She looked at him with a kind of despair, and put both her hands round his arm.
“Papa,” she said, “I think we have had a very tolerably happy life—nothing very much to find fault with. Everything has gone on comfortably. We have had no great troubles, no misfortunes to speak of—”
“I don’t know what you call misfortunes,” said her father. “That affair of the Western Bank was anything but pleasant.”
“It was only money, papa.”
“Only money! What would you have, I should like to know?Onlymoney! May, my dear, to be a sensible girl as you are, you sometimes speak very like a haverel. Loss of money is as great a misfortune as can befall a family. It brings a hundred other things in its train—loss of consideration, troubles of all kinds. Personal losses may hurt more for the moment, but so far as the family is concerned—”
“Oh, don’t say so,” cried Marjory. “Papa, I am afraid there are things that hurt a great deal more. I have heard—something about Tom—”
“What about Tom?” he said, turning upon her with an eagerness much unlike his former calm.
“It may not perhaps be so bad as appears. He has had—an accident,” she said, breathless and terrified.
To her surprise, the anxiety in her father’s face calmed down.
“An accident! is that all?” he said, with a long-drawn breath of relief.
“All! papa!”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Heriot, half-impatiently, “you think I’ve no feeling. You are mistaken, May. But that boy, that brother of yours, has been in worse scrapes—scrapes that no doctor could mend. However, that’s not the question. How did you hear? and when did it happen? and what is it? Arm, or leg, or collar-bone? I know how lads lame themselves. Hunting is all very well in moderation, but these young men pay dear for it. They think no more of breaking a limb than if it was the branch of a rotten tree.”
“But, papa, I am afraid it is, perhaps, more serious than you think,” faltered Marjory, half rendered hopeful by his ease, half frightened by indifference.
“Never fear,” said Mr. Heriot; “women always think worse of such things than they deserve. Tom’s not the lad to come to harm that way. It’s long or the de’il dee at a dykeside.”
Then a moment of silence followed. She felt as if her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. She was bewildered by her father’s strange levity. She strolled round the cliff slowly, as if she were in a dream, not feeling sure for one dizzy moment whether her senses might not have deceived her, whether the telegram might not be some mere delusion and her father right. He was so confident and easy in his confidence—and surely on these kind of subjects, at least, he must know better than she did. But then, to be sure, it was not on her judgment the matter rested. It was Tom’s friend who had communicated news which nobody’s opinion could change; and already the lights were lengthening and the afternoon passing away.
“Papa, you will not mind my going to him,” she said, hurriedly. “He wishes it; he has sent for me. And I wish very much to go at once.”
“He has sent for you?”
“For all of us. He says, ‘Tell my father—’ I fear, I fear, he must be very bad. Oh! my poor Tom, my poor Tom!”
“You are talking nonsense,” said her father, letting her hand drop from his arm with a certainimpatience. “Tom might have known better than to make such an appeal to you. Where is he? And if he were so very bad how could he have written? Phoo, phoo, May; this fuss and nonsense is not like you.”
“It is not my doing,” she cried. “Oh! papa, look, the afternoon is flying away, and we shall lose the train.”
He looked up at the sky as she did, and somehow this practical reference seemed to alarm him more than all she had said. In the bright, slanting sunshine which suddenly burst upon him at this moment, his face paled as suddenly as if some evil breath had passed over it.
“The train! I did not think of that. You can order the carriage if you like,” he said. “It is nonsense; but I will put some things into a bag, if I must be foolish and go with you on a fool’s errand—”
“Your things are all ready, papa; I have seen to everything. If we do not miss the train—”
“I will go round to the stables myself,” he said; and then he turned upon her with a forced smile. “Mind, I think it a fool’s errand—a fool’s errand; but to please you, May—”
Marjory stood motionless, as with a harsh little laugh he strode away from her. She could not have borne any more; but when Uncle Charles came suddenly round the corner of the old house, blown so suddenly round by the wind, which seemed to sway his long legs and slight, stooping figure, there burst from her, too, a little hysterical laugh,which somehow seemed to relieve her as tears might have done.
“What a wind!” said Mr. Charles. “You may laugh, but a slim person has hard ado to stand before it; and rising every moment, May. I should not like to be on the Firth to-night.”
“I hope we shall get across,” said May, eagerly, “before it is quite dark.”
“Get across?” said Uncle Charles, in consternation. “Who is going to Edinburgh to-night?”
“Oh! Uncle Charles, my heart is breaking! Tom has had a terrible accident. Perhaps he is dying. We must go to him at once. And papa will not believe me; he will not understand how serious it is.”
“God bless me!” said Mr. Charles. He made a few sudden steps towards the house, and then he came back. “My dear May, there’s you to think of. What is it? I’ll go myself.”
“No, no, no,” she said. “It was me he sent for. Oh, uncle, quick! bid them make haste with the carriage; we shall lose the train.”
When the carriage came round to the door ten minutes after, Mr. Charles put aside the two travelling bags which had been placed inside, and took his place opposite the father and daughter on the front seat.
“I’m coming too,” he said.
Mr. Heriot gave vent to another strange little laugh.
“We had better have Milly in, and Mrs. Simpson, and all the rest,” he cried; but he made no furtherremark or objection. His ruddy, rural countenance had paled somehow. It looked as Marjory had seen it after a period of confinement in town (town meant Edinburgh more than London to the Hay-Heriots, though sometimes they went to London too), when the sun-burnt brownness had worn off. He leant back in his corner and did not speak; he had not even asked where they were going. He seemed eager to keep up his appearance of indifference; but his heart had failed him. Mr. Charles, however, on the contrary, seemed to feel that all the amusement of the party depended upon him. He kept up a perpetual stream of talk, till the very sound of his voice made Marjory sick.
“We’ll find him drinking beer, like the man in Thackeray’s book,” said Mr. Charles; “a ruffianly sort of hero in my way of thinking; but that’s what you like, you young folk. We’ll find him drinking beer, I’m saying, May, as well as ever he was. I think I can hear the great laugh he will give when he sees the whole procession of us coming in.”
Mr. Heriot was nettled by his brother’s interference, yet not disposed to depart from his ownrôleof indifference.
“It’s a fool’s errand,” he said; “but you may diminish the procession, Charles, if you like. It will be no procession, if there is only May and me.”
Mr. Charles made no reply to this; he continued his cheerful talk.
“It’s the penalty of all violent sports,” he said; “even your cricket that such a fuss is made about. There’s no risks of that kind with golf, now, forinstance; and in my way of thinking, a far nobler game; but as for horses and hounds, they’re simple destruction—in the first place to a man’s living, and in the second to his bones.”
“You never were great across country,” said Mr. Heriot, satirically. “It was never one of the sins you were inclined to commit. That must be taken into account.”
“And the consequence is I never had a broken limb,” said Mr. Charles; “no surgeon has ever been needed for me; whereas the rest of you have spent, let us say three weeks in the year on an average, in your beds—”
With intervals, this kind of talk went on until the travellers had reached the edge of the stormy Firth, which spread like some huge boiling cauldron in black and white between them and the misty heights of Edinburgh. It was late twilight failing into night; but as there was a moon somewhere, the stormy landscape was held between light and dark in a pale visibleness which had something unearthly in it. Arthur’s Seat appeared through the mist like a giant, with huge sullen shoulders turned upon them, and head averted. The boiling Firth was black and covered with foam.
While Marjory sat wrapping her cloak close round her in the most sheltered corner, her uncle, with the fierce wind catching at his slim legs, came and leaned over her, and tried what he could, in gasps between the gusts of the storm, to keep up his consolatory remarks.
“This is nothing, Marjory, my dear; nothing towhat it used to be,” he said in snatches, blown about, now by the wind, now by the lurches of the steamer, “when we used to have to go, in a sailingboat, from Kinghorn to Leith. This is nothing, nothing; I have seen the day—”
But here being driven first into her lap, and then forced to retreat violently backwards, in obedience to the next wave, Mr. Charles for the moment succumbed.
What a strange tragi-comedy it was! The boats from Comlie shore were out in that merciless storm, and the poor fisher-wives at their windows, or marching with bare feet on the sharp rocks, were looking out upon the struggles of their “men” to reach the harbour, which that wild suppressed light permitted them the additional misery of seeing. On the other hand, far away in the peaceful inland depths of England, Tom Heriot was lying tragically gay with fever; sometimes delirious, shouting out all kinds of strange follies in the ear of his friend, who was no better than himself. While yet between the two the wind made a jest and plaything of Mr. Charles Heriot, seizing him by his legs and tossing him about as in a rough game of ball, taking the words out of his mouth, though they were words of wisdom, and dispersing his axioms to the merciless waves. Even Marjory could not but laugh as she wrapped herself closer in her cloak. She laughed, and then felt the sobs struggle upward choking into her throat.
Then came the long night journey, silent, yet loud, with the perpetual plunging and jarring of therailway, that strange, harsh, prosaic jar—which yet, to those who listen to it all through an anxious night as May did—is an awful sound. Ordinary wheels and hoofs make a very different impression on the mind; but there is something in the monotonous clang of a railway which sounds unearthly to an excited mind, thus whirled through the darkness. How fast the colourless hedgerows, the dark spectres of trees, the black stretches of country fly past, with now and then a flitting phantasmagoria of lights from some town or village; and yet how slow, how lingering, how dreary are the minutes which tick themselves out one by one with a desperate persistence and steadiness! In the faint and uncertain lamplight the face of her father dozing uneasily in the corner opposite to her, seemed to Marjory so blanched and worn, that she could scarcely keep herself from watching him in alarm, to make sure that he was living and well. Uncle Charles was at the other end of the carriage, shifting his long legs uneasily, sometimes uttering a dismal groan as he awoke, with a twinge of cramp, to which he was subject. He had filled the carriage with newspapers and railway books, by way of amusing Marjory.
“I don’t pretend that I can read myself by this unsteady light,” he said; “but you’re young, May, and they’ll keep you from thinking.”
Poor Marjory! it was her youth (she thought) which made her so capable of thinking, and kept from her eyes the broken sleep which brought momentary rest to her companions. Thus passed the lingering weary night.
Afterthis long journey, to step out into the bright daylight of a March morning—cold, but sunshiny; and into the unfamiliar clean little streets of an English country-town, gave the most curious sensation to the travellers. Marjory stepped out of the carriage like one in a dream. The long sleepless night, the fatigue of the journey, the ache of anxiety in her mind, seemed to wrap a kind of painful mist about her, through which she saw vaguely the circumstances of the arrival, the unknown figures moving about; the strange houses—some still shuttered and closed up as for the night, while the cheerful stir of early morning had begun with others. Was it possible that all these unknown people had slept softly and soundly all that long night through; and knew of nothing to pluck away their rest from them, or pull their life asunder? The simplest things startled this little weary group as they hurried along the quiet sunshiny street. A cheerful red and white maid-of-all-work opening the windows, looking out with fresh vacant face upon them as they passed, looked as if she must have something to tell them. And so did the milkman clashing with his pails; and the early errandboy stopping in the midst of his whistle to contemplate the two tall old men—Mr. Heriot, withthat strangely blanched hue struggling through his brownness—Mr. Charles long and thin, and shaky with fatigue.
“A clean little place; a clean little place!” the latter was saying encouragingly to Marjory, as if there was some faint consolation to be drawn from that fact. It was very unlike Comlie. Some of the houses were old, with peaked gables and lattice windows, but the line of flat brick buildings, such as the Scottish mind regards with disdain, with the cleanest of curtains and shutters, and tidy ugly orderliness, filled up the greater part of the street. The inn to which they were bound had a projecting sign, upon which the sun shone—a white horse, which swung, and pranced, and creaked in the morning air, over the low deep gateway by which the house was approached. The travellers were met by a little blear-eyed ostler, who peered at them anxiously from under the shelter of his hand.
“For Mr. ’Eriot?” he said, putting up his disengaged hand to his forehead, by way of salutation.
“How is he?” cried Marjory, a sudden sickness coming over her; the sickness of suspense which is never so tremendous as when it is about to be satisfied.
The little ostler shrugged his shoulders, and shook his ragged, shaggy head.
“I don’t know as he’s worse nor better,” he said. “Much the same, they tell me. He’s in the hands o’ them doctors, as is enough to kill twenty men. That’s why I’ve come to meet ye, my ladyand gentlemen. There’s a bone-setter in this place as ’ud set him right in a jiffy; you take my word. He’s a nice gentleman; he gave me ten bob jist for nothing at all. You make ’em send for Job Turner, my lady. I know him. That’s your sort for broken bones. What am I doing, master? Party for Mr. ’Eriot! nothin’ in the world but showing the lady the way.”
The ostler’s speech had been interrupted by the master of the hotel, who came to the door bowing solemnly, endeavouring to combine the usual smiling benignity with which he received new guests with the gravity befitting the occasion.
“Walk in, gentlemen,” he said. “I think I may make bold to say that the news is good, so far as it goes. We’ve spent a pretty comfortable night, sir, on the whole—a pretty comfortable night. Perhaps the lady would like to rest a bit afore breakfast. Mr. Fanshawe, Sir, as is with Mr. ’Eriot, made sure as you’d come. Your rooms are all ready, and I hope as I’ll be able to make you and the lady as comfortable—as comfortable as is to be expected under the circumstances.”
“Cheer up, May,” said Mr. Heriot. It was the first time he had spoken since their arrival. “I told you it would turn out a trifle. You see the boy’s better already. Cheer up,” said the old man, faltering, and looking at her with glassy eyes. “We’ve had a fright, but, thank God, it’s over. Cheer up, my bonny May!”
For Marjory, so far from cheering up, had sunk down on the first chair, altogether overcome by thesuspense and the information, and the sense of still more sickening suspense until she should see with her own eyes and judge how it was.
Tom Heriot had been far from passing, as the landlord said, a comfortable night; but he had slept for some hours towards the morning, and had awoke feeling, as he said, better, and in high spirits.
“After all I’ll cheat the doctors yet,” he had said to his friend. “I am half sorry now you sent for May. It will frighten them all to death at home. Odd as it may seem to you, the old boy’s fond of me in his way. And, by Jove, Fanshawe, I’ll try if I can’t make a change somehow, and be a comfort to him, and all that. Life’s a queer sort of business after all,” said the prodigal, raising his shoulders from the pillows, and supporting himself on his hands. “It isn’t the straightforward thing a fellow thinks when he’s beginning. Have your swing, that’s all very well—and God knows I’ve had mine, and done some things I can’t undo; but when one goes in for having one’s swing, one expects to have a steady time after, and settle to work and put all straight. Look here, Fanshawe—if I had died, as I thought I should last night! By Jove, to have nothing but your swing and end there, it isn’t much, is it, for a man’s life?”
“No, it isn’t much,” said his friend; “but don’t get on thinking, Tom, it’s bad for your back.”
“I don’t believe it’s my back,” said Tom; “it’s my legs or something. I’m as light as a bird, all here.” And he struck himself some playful blowsacross the chest. “When the doctor comes, you’ll see he’ll say there’s a difference. Get me some breakfast, there’s a good fellow. I wonder if they’ve come. You’ve heard me talk of May, Fanshawe? She’s not the sort of girl every fellow likes, and I’ve thought she was hard on me sometimes. Superior, you know—that sort of thing. Looking down, by Jove, upon her brother.” And here Tom laughed loudly, with an exquisite enjoyment of the joke. “But it would be pleasant to see her all the same. Who is that at the door? What! My sister! By George, May, this is being a thorough brick, and no mistake.”
“Oh, Tom, you are better!” cried Marjory, struck with a sudden weakness of delight as she saw the colour in his face and his sparkling eyes.
“Almost well,” he said, cheerfully, while she stooped over him; “well enough to be sorry I sent for you, and glad you’ve come. So you thought your poor wicked old brother worth looking after? You’re a good girl, May; you’re a dear girl. It’s a pleasure to see you. And you’re a beauty, too, by Jove, that can stand the morning light.”
“Tom!” said Marjory, gently.
She was struck to the heart by the sight she saw. His countenance had melted into soft lines like a child’s; the tears were standing in his over-bright eyes. Who does not know that human sentiment which trembles to see a sick man look too amiable, too angelical, toogood? This sudden dread came over Marjory. She stood gazing at him and at themoisture in his eyes with a feeling that blanched all the morning freshness out of her face.
“All right,” said Tom. “I won’t praise you to your face,—especially as Fanshawe’s there; though he’s as good a fellow as ever was. I’ll tell you after, all I owe to him. But who came with you, May? and how did you persuade the two old boys to let you go? and how’s my father and little Milly, and all the rest of them? Sit down here, where I can reach you. Fanshawe, she wants a cup of tea or something.”
“I want to hear about you, Tom,” said Marjory, mastering, as well as she could, the impression made upon her by her brother’s emotion, and by the dark uncheering looks of Fanshawe, his previous nurse, who had shaken hands with her, but who avoided her eye. “But first I must tell you, the two old boys, as you call them, came with me. My father is here.”
“My father—here!” said the prodigal, once more raising his head from the pillow. A crimson flush came over his face, and his eyes filled with tears. “I told you they were fond of me at home,” he said, turning faltering to his friend, “and by Jove, May—no, I won’t say that—By God, as you’re both witnesses, I’ll turn over a new leaf, and be a comfort to him from this day!”
By an impulse which she could scarcely define, Marjory turned from her brother’s flushed and excited face to Fanshawe, who had retired to the other side of the room, and whom she had seen joining his hands together with a sudden movement of pain.When he caught her eye he shook his head gently. Then she knew what was before them.
Mr. Heriot, however, suspected nothing; he came in, still with something of the paleness which had come upon him when he first realized the news; but in five minutes had recovered his colour, and composure, and was himself.
“Your sister was anxious, my boy!” he said. “It is a woman’s fault; and, for my part, I don’t blame them. Rather that than man’s indifference, Tom. May would go through fire and water for anybody belonging to her. It makes them troublesome to steady-going folks, now and then; but it’s a good fault—a good fault.”
And Mr. Heriot, after a few minutes, cheerfully invited Mr. Fanshawe—to whom he made many old-fashioned acknowledgments—to go downstairs with him to breakfast, leaving Marjory with her brother.
“We’ll send her something upstairs,” he said; “I know she’ll like best to be with Tom.”
“She should get a rest first,” said Mr. Charles, grumbling momentarily in behalf of his favourite; but finally they all left the sick-room, going down to breakfast in high spirits. Tom, by this time, somewhat pale, lay back on his pillows, and looked admiringly and gratefully at his sister. A certain calm of well-being seemed to have fallen over him, which, in spite of herself, gave Marjory hope.
“And to think,” he said softly, “that last night—only last night, I had given everything up, and never hoped to see one of you again. May, give me your hand; you’re a good girl. It’s true whatmy father said: you would go through fire and water. That’s the old Scotch way; not so much for other people as women are now-a-days; but through fire and water—through fire and water, for your own! If you had been here last night I might have told you something—”
“Tell it to me now, Tom.”
“No; I don’t want you to think worse of me than you do. Please God, I will live and mend, and take up all my tangled threads, as Aunt Jean says. How is old Aunt Jean? Cankered body! but I suppose she would have done it too—through fire and water. Do you know, May, there’s a great deal of meaning, sometimes, in what these old boys say.”
“I wish you would not call them old boys, Tom.”
“Well, well—they are not young boys, are they? There is one thing tho’ about women—or, so I’ve always heard, at least. They say you’re hard on other women. If you were called on now to help a woman that was not your flesh and blood?—for the sake of those who were your flesh and blood—”
Marjory’s face was covered with a deep blush; there was but one idea that could be connected with such a speech; she had to conquer a momentary repugnance, an impulse of indignation and shame. But she did conquer it.
“Tom!” she said anxiously; “I hope I could be faithful to my trust. Tell me what it is?”
“Not I!” said Tom, laughing. “No, no, Miss May; I am not going to give you the whiphand over me. I can trust myself best. I am getting well, thank Heaven; and I’ll pick up my tangled threads.It is not a bad phrase that, either. Lord, what a lot of tangled threads I seemed to be leaving last night!”
What could Marjory say? She held his hand between hers and patted it softly, and kissed it with her heart full. It was not like a sick man’s hand, white and wasted. It was brown and muscular, and strong, capable of crushing hers, had he wished; and yet lay somewhat passively embraced by her slender fingers, as if—like the tide ebbing slowly from the shore, the strength had begun to ebb away.
“However, it’s well to be warned,” said Tom. “And, after all, I have done less harm than you would think; nobody’s enemy but my own—as people say. There’s no sensation I ever felt so curious as that one—of thinking you’re dying. What an awful fool you’ve been, you say to yourself; and now it’s no good. Struggle as you like, you can’t mend it; you must just lie still and take what’s coming. I say, May,” he added, with a sudden start. “Say something and be cheery, or I’ll get into the dumps again.”
“Here’s the doctor, Tom,” said Fanshawe at the door.
Marjory rose and left the room quickly; she could not bear to meet the eye of that final authority, whose glance seems to convey life or death. She went and stood by her brother’s friend outside on the landing. It was an old-fashioned winding oak staircase; and looking down they could see the movements of the house; the waiters carrying in dishes to the room where the father and uncle were breakfasting; and sometimes, when the door opened, couldhear the roll of their vigorous Northern voices. Marjory stood with her hand on the oak balustrade, and looked wistfully into Fanshawe’s face.
“Do you mean,” she said, “that there is no hope?”
He made a little gesture of pain and shook his head; his eyes looked hollow, as if with tears. It was watching that had done it, but the effect was the same.
“Then he ought to know; he must know!” said Marjory.
“To what good, Miss Heriot? Do you think God takes a man unawares like that, to exact everything from him the same as if he had had long warning? I am not so good as you; but I think better of my Maker than that.”
“Mr. Fanshawe, this is no time to argue,” said Marjory, shivering; “but my poor Tom ought to know.”
“It would kill him in a moment,” said Fanshawe, “the shock would be too great; he has few enough moments to live. Go and pray for him, Miss Heriot; that’s better than telling him. You are far more likely to be paid attention to up yonder than fellows like poor Tom or me.”
And all the while fresh dishes were being carried in from the kitchen, and Mr. Heriot’s laugh, a large sound of ease and relief—the gaiety of a man just delivered from deadly anxiety—rang like a certainty of well-being all through the house. The breakfast was still going on when the doctor went downstairs; his grave face startled Tom’s father.
“You find your patient better, doctor?” he said.
“I cannot say I do,” the doctor answered, somewhat solemnly. “Though his strength has held out better than I thought.”
“But I assure you—the boy is looking as well as I ever saw him. His colour is good, and his eyes bright; and no suffering to speak of.”
“The explanation of that is but too easy,” said the doctor. “I suppose no one has told you the particulars. So long as there was pain there was a little hope. It is a hard thing to say to a father, but I must say it. Your son’s injury, Sir, is in the spine.”
“My God!”
Mr. Heriot stumbled up blindly from his chair; he put his hand out to grope his way to the door, and with the other thrust away from him the table at which he had been seated. The doctor rushed after and seized him by the arm.
“If you go into his room with that face, you will kill him on the spot!” he cried.
“And when will you—or nature, as you call it—kill him?” cried Mr. Charles, coming forward in his turn. “Thomas, my man, Thomas! you’ve still the others left.”
“He may last a few hours longer—not more,” said the doctor. “I shall come back presently;” and he rushed away, glad to escape from such a scene, and left those whom it most concerned to bear it as they could.
The two old brothers had taken each other by the hand. They stood together as they had done when they were boys; but one had his face hiddenon the wall, against which he leant and heard the words of the other vaguely through his anguish, as if they were uttered miles away.
“Thomas! think. He is not your only child! there are others well worthy of your love. We must grieve—it’s God’s will; but for God’s sake dinna despair!”
What mockery the words seemed; merest commonplaces, easy to say, but hard, impossible to give an ear to. Despair? what else was there left for the man who was about to see his son die?
Helingered the greater part of the day. Marjory took her place permanently by his bedside, where Fanshawe had been seated when she first appeared. She had allowed herself to be entreated to say nothing to him; but a certain fixed awe and pain in her look communicated themselves to Tom’s mind without a word said. He noticed this at first with an uneasy laugh.
“Ah, I see you think badly of me, May. You think I am going, though I deceive myself. Don’t deny it. If I was not so sure by my feelings that you are wrong, you would make me think so too.”
“I am anxious,” she said. “You know what papa says, Tom, it is a woman’s fault.”
“Ay, so he did,” said her brother; “he has sense enough for half-a-dozen. I wish I had minded him more. May, you needn’t be so frightened. If I am going, as you think—well, well! there would be nothing to be so dismal about. It has to be one time or another. If it were not for all those tangled threads, and things done that shouldn’t have been done, and left undone that should have been done, like the Prayer-book. I suppose it’s the common way. Good and bad would not say it every Sunday, if it were not the common way.”
“It is the very commonest way of all, Tom.”
“I thought so. Then I’ll be forgiven, too, like the rest, if that’s all. The old doctor at Comlie would be harder on a fellow than the Prayer-book is. You’re great for the Kirk, May, and I suppose, as we’re Scotch, you’re right; but if I were a religious fellow, which I’m not, I would go in for the Prayer-book, mind you; it’s kinder; it asks fewer questions. We have done what we ought not to have done; we have left undone—If I had time just now, and felt up to it, I would like to tell you something, May.”
“Tell me, Tom,” she said, eagerly. “We are quiet now; there’s nobody here.”
“Presently,” he said; and then fell into a musing state, from which she could not rouse him. Now and then he would brighten up, and call her attention to a fly on the ceiling; to the pattern of the paper on the walls; to an old picture over the mantel-piece; smiling and commenting upon them.
“The walls should not be papered in a room where a man is to lie ill,” he said. “If you knew what strange figures they turn into. There’s an old witch in that corner with a red nose and a red cap; don’t you see her? Last night she kept sailing about the room on a broomstick, or something; and, by Jove! there is that unhappy fly astride on her red nose!”
At this idea he laughed feebly, yet loudly. How that laugh echoed down into May’s heart! He would not allow anything more serious to be spoken of.
“I am too tired to be sensible,” he said. “Don’t disturb my fly, May. He’s numb, poor fellow, after the Winter. I only hope if the witch takes to riding about again, to-night, she won’t disturb him. I don’t see her broomstick to-day. Trifling talk, eh? To be sure, it’s nonsense; but if a man may not indulge in a little nonsense when he’s laid by the heels like this, and has a nice sister smiling at him—”
Here the poor fellow put out his hand to her, which Marjory took within her own, doing her best to keep up the smile which pleased him, though there were few exertions of strength which would not have been easier to her at the moment.
“I like nonsense,” she said, softly. “But, Tom, somebody will come in presently and disturb us. Tell me, dear, first what you wanted to say.”
“Presently,” said Tom. “I have not quite made up my mind about it. There’s time enough—time enough. Show Uncle Charles that print when he comes up. I think it’s a good one. I thought of him as soon as I saw it. What quiet steady-going lives now, these old fellows live! It’s strange for a man to think of settling down into that sort of thing, you know, but I suppose I shall come to it in time like the rest. Farming, like my father, or prints, and books, and coins, and so forth. May, you women have other kind of ideas; but fancy giving up youth, and stir, and movement, and all that makes life pleasant—for that.”
“I suppose when one is old it is the quietness that makes life pleasant,” said poor Marjory, achingto her very finger-points with a sense that this life was ebbing away while they thus talked.
“By Jove, I don’t think it would ever make life pleasant to me,” said Tom. And then with a curious consciousness, he looked up at her, half defiant, half inquiring. “You think, I suppose,” he said, “that I will never give myself the chance to try if I go on in this way. Never you fear, May; I know when to pull up as well as you do. Fun first, sobriety afterwards—never you fear. I may have had about my swing by this time. Mind, I make no rash promises, but if I keep in the same mind when I get better—— I suppose the old boy would give me a house somewhere, when I’m married and settled. Married and settled!” he repeated, with a somewhat wild laugh; and then stopped abruptly, and added, “that’s the worst of it—there’s the rub.”
Marjory did not follow this lead; she had grown confused with misery, feeling that she sinned against him, trying to think of something she could say to him which should lead his mind to other thoughts. She saw nothing but levity in what he said, and her own mind seemed paralysed. She could have thrown herself upon him and begged him in so many words to think that he was dying; but nothing less direct than this seemed possible. She sat by him, holding his hand between hers, gazing wistfully at him, but with her mind far from what he was saying, labouring and struggling to think of something that would warn without alarming him. He, for his part, looked at her somewhat wistfully too. Certain words seemed on his very lips, which one syllable from her, hadshe but comprehended, would have drawn forth; but, in the inscrutable isolation of humanity, the two pair of eyes met, both overbrimming with meaning, but with a meaning incommunicable. What a pitiful gaze it was on both sides!
At last Marjory, feeling the silence insupportable, burst forth into a few faltering words, from which she tried hard to keep all appearance of strong emotion.
“Tom, we used to say our prayers in the nursery together when you were ill, don’t you remember? ‘Pray God take away Tom’s fever,’ I used to say. And this is so like old times. Tom—I don’t think I said my prayers this morning—”
He put up his hand to stop her, and then his countenance changed and melted, and some moisture came into his bright eyes. He gave a strange little laugh.
“I was a better boy in those days than I am now.”
“You never made yourself out to be good,” said Marjory, with tears; “but you were always good to me. Oh, God bless you, dear Tom! if we were only to say, ‘Our Father’—after being up all night—don’t you think it would do us good?”
“Say what you like, May.”
The words were common-place, but not the tone; and Marjory, with his hand clasped tighter within hers, was kneeling down by the bed, when the door opened, and their father came in. Mr. Heriot had grown ten years older in that halfhour. He came in with a miserable smile, put on at the door as a woman might have put on a veil.
“Well, Tom, my man, and how are we getting on now?” he said, with an attempt at hearty jocularity, most pitifully unlike his natural tone.
Tom looked from his father’s ghostly pretence at ease to his sister’s face, as she knelt by the bed, with his hand pressed between hers, now and then softly kissing it, and smiling at him with an effort which became more and more painful. A change came over his own countenance. With a sudden scared look, he thrust his other hand into his father’s, and grasped him tight, like a frightened child.
“Don’t let me go!” he cried, with one momentary unspeakable pang.
Then swiftly as the mind moves at moments in which a whole life-time seems concentrated, he recovered his mental balance. How few fail at that grand crisis! He recovered himself with one of those strange rallyings of mental courage which make all sorts of men die bravely with fortitude and calm. The whole revolution of feeling—enlightenment, despair, self-command—passed so quickly that only spectators equally absorbed and concentrated could have followed them.
“Well!” he said, finally, “if it is to be so, we must bear it, father. We must bear it as well as we can.”
Meanwhile Mr. Charles, not knowing what to do with himself, had examined everything in thesitting-room downstairs, not because there was anything to interest him, but because, while he suffered as much as the others, he had not, like the others, a primary claim to be with the chief sufferer of all.
“Best leave them alone, best leave them alone,” he had said to himself a dozen times over. “They’re better alone with him—better alone.”
But his mind was full ofmalaise, anxiety, and pain. And after a while he wandered out into the yard of the inn, where still there was a great commotion, horses and dogs about, and a floating population of grooms. Mr. Charles went and looked at one or two of the slim glossy hunters which were being taken out for exercise, or which were being prepared to depart, as the hunting season approached its end. He was a man of very different tastes; yet he was country-born and country-bred, and knew the points of a horse. Poor man, this new investigation chimed in strangely with the very different thoughts in his mind. He looked at the animals with an eye that could not help seeing, but an aching heart whose attention was directed elsewhere. While he was thus standing in the middle of the yard, vaguely examining everything around him, the deformed old ostler came up to him once more.
“Beg your pardon, Sir, but do you know if they’ve sent for the bone-setter, Sir, as I spoke to you and the lady about? T’other old gentleman won’t listen to me, not on no consideration. He’s awful cut up, he is; and I ask you, Sir, as a gentleman and a scholar, is this a time to be standing on p’s and q’s, and thinking what’s most genteel and that? Job Turner ain’t genteel, but he’ll save Mr. ’Eriot’s life, soon as look at ’im. Do’ee have him, now; do’ee have ’im;” cried the old man, with tears in the strange little blear eyes which shone out of his face from among the dark puckers of his cheeks and brow like diamonds. “Them brutes would have had the breath out o’ me years and years since, if it hadn’t a-been for Job. Every bone in my body, Sir, he’s put to rights, and joined together sometime. Now, do’ee have him; do’ee now, my gentleman! he’ll mend Mr. ’Eriot like he mended me. Men is alike, just as ’osses is alike; they’ve the same bones, and flesh and blood. Nature makes no account o’ one being a gentleman and one in the stables. Oh, Lord bless you, Sir, do’ee have him, or you’ll never forgive yourself. You all know Job Turner, mates; speak up for him, for God’s sake, and let the gentleman hear what he is.”
“He’s a rare ’un for bones!” cried one of the grooms.
“He’ll work your joint back into its socket, like as it was a strayed babby!” cried another.
“Ain’t he now; don’t he now, boys!” cried the old ostler; “speak up for him, for God’s sake; it’s for young Mr. ’Eriot, as always was the pleasantest gentleman I ever see in a ’unting field, or out on’t; he gave me ten bob just for nothing at all, the last blessed morning as ever he rode out o’ this yere yard. Lord bless you, Sir, we’ll have him up andwell in a week if you won’t mind his not being genteel, and send for Job.”
“Hold your nonsense!” said another man, interfering. “Job ain’t the Lord to kill and make alive. The young gentleman’s broken his back; send you for the clergyman, or some one as’ll give him good advice, Sir. They ain’t fit to die at a moment’s notice, no more nor the likes of us. Send for the clergyman, Sir, if you’ll take my advice.”
Mr. Charles stood and looked from one to the other with a certain weary bewilderment; he felt as if the family misfortune, which had thus fallen upon the Hay-Heriots, out of all precedent, a thing that never had happened before, had made him a mark at which every kind of arrow might be shot. He shook his head as he went away, pursued by the old ostler’s entreaties.
“One thing is certain, that these bone-setting bodies learn a great deal about the human frame,” he said to himself; “not scientific information, but something that’s like inspiration sometimes. It might be too late; or it might be nonsense altogether. Perhaps he could do nothing for poor Tom, perhaps—should I go back and speak to Thomas, and try? But what’s the good of disturbing the poor fellow for nothing? It could not come to anything; you may mend legs and arms, but you cannot mend the spine. God bless us all; this is what it comes to, to give a lad his own way, and let him take his swing! And it will kill his father. Never was it known yet, in all the records, that a Hay-Heriot died like this—the heir without an heir; leaving itall to go in the second line. If I could but know whether this Job what-do-you-call-him would be of any use! It would worry Thomas to ask him; but what of that if it saved the lad? My mind’s in a terrible swither, whether to try or not. Job! Job! It’s an uncanny kind of name. Oh, my bonnie May, if I could but have five minutes speech of you to say ay or no! And there’s no time, if anything can be done. I think I’ll risk it. God help us! He knows; but we do not; it can do no harm. Hey! hi! hem! you crooked old body! That’s uncivil; he’ll pay no attention. I want the other man, a bit little withered up, crooked—Hi! my good man; come here and tell me where your Job—what do you call him—is to be found. I don’t know if he can do anything; but if you’ll show me where he lives, I’ll try.”
“Lord bless you, Sir, I knew as you were a reasonable gentleman,” said the ostler, limping up. “It’s but a poor place, but what o’ that? and master and groom we’re all much the same. Leastways, so far as bones go, as is the foundation like. This way, Sir; it ain’t above ten minutes from here—if Job’s in; which he ain’t always, at this time of the day. Gentlefolks thinks little of him; but poor folks think much; and he’s out and about over all the country, wherever there is a leg out, or a bone broken. It is a chance if we find ’im; but a man can but do his best, when all’s said; and it ain’t not more than ten, or say fifteen minutes walk.”
“Quick, man, quick!” said Mr. Charles; but theroad to Job’s house was through the back streets of the little town, which were swarming with children, and full of wandering provision merchants selling vegetables and earthenware, and a great many other descriptions of merchandize; for it was Saturday, and market-day. To the stranger, with his sick heart and his brain buzzing with pain and suspense, the twistings and turnings of the narrow lanes, the streets they had to cross, the passages they threaded through, the corners they turned seemed endless. What a fool’s errand it was, after all, he thought! and then something seemed to call him, which sounded now like Marjory’s appealing voice—now like poor Tom’s cry of pain. What was he doing here, astray, in a strange place? seeking out some unknown quack; leaving his own people perhaps to bear “the worst that could happen,” without such support as he could give? He suddenly turned round, while his guide was enlarging upon Job’s gifts, and upon the unlikelihood of finding him—an argument which was not intended to discourage Mr. Charles, but only to enhance Job’s importance—
“Go yourself and find him!” he said; “I’m going back! I’m going back! I may be wanted. Bring the man, and I’ll pay him—and you too.” And with these words Mr. Charles darted across the street, with a vain but confident endeavour to re-traverse the way he had come. He fell over the children; he was all but run down by the wheelbarrows; and as was natural, he lost his way. And words could not tell the painful confusion of hismind as he wound in and out, round and round in a circle, never seeming to approach a step nearer; growing every moment more wretched, more anxious, more confused; figuring to himself what might be passing in the sick-room; how he might be wanted; and how “the worst” might have happened, while he was about this wild goose chase. When he got back at last to the door of the hotel, the old ostler had reached it before him, and stood waiting in the yard with a villainous companion, who pulled his forelock to the confused and tremulous gentleman, and announced himself as Job Turner.
“You mayn’t think he’s much to look at, Sir,” whispered the ostler, under shelter of his hand; “but if you knowed all, as I know—the cures he’s done; the bones he’s set; the folk as he’s brought up from the grave—”
Mr. Charles waved his hand—he was too breathless to speak—and hurried upstairs. A dead calm seemed to have fallen on the house. A frightened woman-servant met him on the stairs, creeping down on tiptoe. It seemed to be years that he had been wandering about the streets, absent from his post. Then the doctor met him, and pointed silently to the closed door, shaking his head. Trembling, conscience-stricken, weary and sick with his suspense, Mr. Charles crept into the sick-room. All was quiet and silent there, except some gasps for breath. Mr. Heriot stood at one side of the bed, Marjory at the other. Fanshawe, Tom’s friend, was at the foot, leaning against the bed, and hiding his face with his hand. Mr. Charles trembled too much to be ofuse to any one; he stood behind them all, wiping his forehead, trying to see with his hot and dazzled eyes.
Nothing to be done, and nothing to be said! It had come to that. Tom was out of hearing, though they had so much to say to him. And he, too, had much to say, but had left it all unsaid. Who can tell the anguish of such a moment for those who are called upon to survive? To stand by helpless, impotent; willing to do everything, capable of nothing—nothing but to look on. Humanity has no agony so great.
At the very last, poor Tom came out of his death-struggle, as by a miracle, and looked at his watchers.
“I told you, May,” he said, faintly. “I told you!” These were his last words. He seemed to die repeating them in a whisper, which grew fainter and fainter: “I told her—told her; I told—thank God!”
Oh! for what, poor deceived soul? They looked at each other with a thrill of terror which overcame even their grief. What did he thank God for as he crossed the threshold of the other life?
TheManse of Comlie had one window, which looked upon the churchyard—only one, as Mrs. Murray congratulated herself—and that in a room which was never used but where on occasional moments now and then the old lady would go and sit by herself, not rejecting for her own part the pensive associations which she deprecated for others. On the day of poor Tom Heriot’s funeral, there were two old faces at this window. One was that of Miss Jean Heriot, in new “blacks,” as she called her mourning; whose interest in the melancholy ceremony had overcome even that strong sense of decorum with which a Scottish woman of her age would, under other circumstances, have shut herself up on the day of a funeral “in the family.”
In Scotland, in former days, the attendance of a woman at a funeral was unknown; and it was partly because it was understood that Marjory was to be present, that her old grand-aunt stole across in the early morning, before any one was about, in order to witness, with a mixture of grief, interest, and disapproval, the innovations in the simple ceremonial with which the heir of Pitcomlie was conducted to his last resting-place.
“I don’t know what we are coming to,” said Miss Jean. “You may like these new-fangled ways,Mrs. Murray; but for my part, I would just as soon take to the Prayer-book for good and a’, and be done with compromises; or even the mass-book, for that matter. When you once begin to pray over a grave, how long do you think it’ll be before you pray for the dead?”
“It will never be in the doctor’s time, that I can answer for,” said the Minister’s wife, with firmness. “For my part, if it’s an innovation, it pleases me. Oh! to hear the thud of the earth, and no’ a word said! It is bad enough—bad enough, even when it’s done like baptism, in the name of the Father, and the Son.”
“If you had not been there, you would not have heard,” interrupted Miss Jean. “I hate to see women trailing after a funeral; it’s no their place.”
“I was not there, and yet I heard,” said Mrs. Murray; “there are things you hear with your heart, though you’re far away. And why should not women go to the grave with those that belong to them? It is us that takes care of them to their last breath. Why should not May come with the rest to lay her brother in his grave? after standing by him, poor lad, till his end.”
“It would fit her best to stay at home,” said Aunt Jean; “women are always best at home, especially when they’re young. Thomas has brought up that girl his own way, not my way. I would have trained her very different. When I was Marjory’s age I never dared lift up my face to my mother. What she said should be, it was—no contradiction; no setting up to know better than your elders;whereas it’s my devout opinion that girl thinks herself wiser than the likes of you or me.”
“And so she is in some things,” said Mrs. Murray; “far wiser than me, at least, Miss Jean. I’ve seen her pose the doctor himself, which is not saying little. And here they are, coming down by the east knoll. Oh! what a black, black procession! And to think it’s Tom Heriot! waes me! waes me!—him that should have been bidding us all to his bridal instead of this cruel grave-side!”
Miss Jean said nothing for the moment. She put her aged head close to the window, and followed with an intent gaze of her bright old eyes the dark line that wound down into the churchyard from the higher ground above. What strange sense of the wonder of it may have passed through her mind, who can tell? She was old; her generation was over; not one of those who had been with her in her youth was with her now. Alone, a spectator of the works and ways that were not as her ways and works, she had been keenly looking on and criticising the younger world around for many a day. She had seen the boy born whose remains were now carried before her; she had almost seen his father born. Yet she was here, still a keen spectator, looking on while that young representative of the race was laid among their ancestors.
She said nothing; her sharp eyes glittered as she gazed; she folded her thin hands, all wrinkled and yellow, like old ivory, on the top of her cane, and nothing escaped her keen observation. She took in the new—or what she fancied new—fashion ofMarjory’s dress, as well as the enormous train of county friends, old family connections, tenants, and neighbours, who had come to do honour to the Heriots. This gave her a thrill of pleasure in the chillness of her old age, which felt no very strenuous emotion. She counted them upon her withered fingers as they passed down into the grassy churchyard, and ranged themselves against the grey old lichened wall which surrounded it on that side, set close with the grotesque monuments of the last two centuries.
“I see scarce anybody wanting,” she said, with a certain subdued exultation; “scarce anybody on this side of Fife but the Sinclairs, and they’re away. Thomas does not please me in many of his ways; but I’ll say this for him, that he has kept up the credit of the house, and all the old family friends.”
Mrs. Murray was crying quietly, with her eyes fixed upon the central group, where stood Mr. Heriot himself, with drooping head, his tall figure showing among all the other tall men who surrounded him with a certain majesty of weakness which went to the heart of this looker-on. His daughter seemed to be leaning on his arm, but by the way in which she clung to him, moving as he moved, Mrs. Murray divined that in reality it was Marjory who supported her father.
It was a bright day, perfectly serene and calm; the sun shining, a gentle little breeze caressing the waving grass, and breathing softly over the mourners. There had been rain in the morning, so that everything was dewy and moist. It was what countrypeople call “a growing day;” a day on which you could almost see the new buds opening out, and hear the new blades of the grass escape out of their sheaths; a day of life and overbrimming vitality; the kind of day in which it is hardest to think of dying or of death.
“Eh, waes me, waes me!” said the old lady, who knew what loss was, with the tears running down her soft old cheeks, as the coffin was lowered into the grave.
Then rose that strangely solemn sound—one voice rising in the open air in the daylight, amidst the hush of a crowd, a sound not to be mistaken for any other, and which chills the very soul of the chance hearer, while it so often gives a momentary consolation to the mourner. Mrs. Murray bowed down her old head, weeping at the sound of her husband’s prayer, which was too far off to be heard. But Miss Jean kept gazing, her bright little eyes shining out of her head, her cap pressed closely against the window.
“New-fangled ways—new-fangled ways!” she was saying to herself. “What the better is the poor body for all that praying? The lad’s soul is beyond the power of prayer. He’s in his Maker’s hand. He was but an ill young lad, and I’m glad for your sake that the doctor has nothing to say about things that can never be known till all’s known. I cannot abide these changes. I approved Marjory when she threw in her lot with the old Kirk, though brought up otherwise; but I do not approve of changing auld forms and ways to make them like anitherritual. No, no; that’s not a thing I can approve. But half Fife is there,” she added, with a long-drawn breath of satisfaction, “I am thankful to think that the family is not letten down, whatever happens. There’s Lord Largo himself, or I’m sore mistaken, and all the family from Magusmoor. It shows great respect—great respect. Thomas Heriot may be proud; there’s men there that would not have come so far for King or Commons. I’m thankful myself to see that real old friendship aye lasts. Marjory being there is the only eyesore to me. She should have stayed at home. Women should bide at home. It would have set her better to have learned a lesson to her young sister how life’s uncertain and death’s sure.”
“Poor bairn! she will learn that soon enough.”
Miss Jean made no reply. She leant her chin upon her cane, and kept looking out, the slight tremulous movement of her head communicating a certain vibration to all the outline of her figure and black drapery. Her mind was intent upon the different groups standing about against the grey churchyard wall, bareheaded under the sun. One by one she recognised them, with her keen eyes. She had known them and their fathers and grandfathers before them, every one. The central group of all was perhaps that which the old woman noted least. She had been grieved for “the family” chiefly because Tom was the heir, and the property must now go to the second son, a thing which was unknown in the Heriot traditions. But her grief was short and soon exhausted, as perhaps everystrong sentiment is at her age. She no longer thought of Tom, nor of his desolate father, for whom at first she had been very sorry. What she was principally concerned with, was to see that all was done as it ought to be done, and that nowhere was there any failure of “respect.” And on this point she had been fully satisfied, so that the effect upon her mind, as she sat at the Manse window, was rather one of deep and sombre gratification than of grief.