“Thomas Heriot may be proud,” she repeated to herself, and she was sincerely unconscious of any incongruity in the thought.
“There’s a man there I never saw before,” she added, after a pause, “standing closer to my nephew Thomas Heriot and that old fool, Charlie, than a stranger should be. If he was a chief mourner he could not be nearer. If any of them had any sense they would see that was my Lord Largo’s place. After the near friends comes the highest rank. I wonder what Thomas can be thinking of; and I would like to know who is yon man.”
“It is Mr. Fanshawe, poor Tom’s friend,” said Mrs. Murray, with a half-restrained sob, “that nursed him when he had the accident, and sent for them, and has been the kindest friend. It was him that brought Mr. Heriot down, heart-broken as he was. Marjory could never have done it without him, as I hear. Mrs. Simpson was over,” added the old lady, apologetically, afraid of seeming to know better than “a relation,” “to settle about some of the servants’ mourning, and it was from her I heard.”
“Marjory could never have done it!” said Miss Jean, with some scorn. “If Marjory is at the bottom of everything, she should learn better than to make difficulties. When a woman sets up for being helpless, she can aye get help; but when she sets up for being the mainspring of everything, she has to give up such pretences. Marjory could not have done without him—He’s come to help Marjory, has he? I know what that means. For once in their lives the Heriots are going to show a little judgment and marry Marjory. In that way ye can understand yon stranger being so near.”
“Oh, Miss Jean, God forgive you!” said Mrs. Murray. “Why should you judge the worst? It is nothing of the sort.”
“I’ll keep my opinion, and you’ll keep yours,” said Miss Jean, grimly. “Am I blaming them? The girls that have been born Heriots have never had anything done for them. Every thing for the lads; for the lasses they took their chance. If a good man came, good and well; if it was but an indifferent man, they did what they liked—took him or not according to their fancy; as may be well seen, for all the daughters have married badly, everyone, except those that did not marry at all. Na, na, I’m not blaming them. There’s even myself; if my father and my brother had taken an interest—if they had put themselves out of their way—I might have had bairns and grandbairns of my own, and held up my head as high as any. But I was left a motherless thing to do what I liked, to refuse good offers, and act like a fool, and throw away my prospects before I knew what they meant. If Thomas Heriot is taking more thought for his girrl, it’s no’ from me that he’ll have any blame.”
“Poor man!” said the Minister’s wife, “this is not a moment to expect him to take much thought.”
“It’s a moment when it’s very important to do all he can for Marjory,” said Miss Jean tartly. “There’s Tom gone, poor lad, that was not steady enough to marry; and if anything was to happen to Thomas, I ask you what would become of that girrl? A girrl always brought up to be mistress and mair? The property goes to young Chairles, and he’s married to a strange woman that nobody knows; and what would become of Marjory? She’ll rule the roost no more as she’s done all her life; she’ll drop into Mr. Heriot of Pitcomlie’s sister, andIknow what that means.”
“She has been Mr. Heriot of Pitcomlie’s daughter all her life, and desired no better,” said Mrs. Murray.
“Oh, ay, but that’s very different. She’ll want for nothing,” said Miss Jean, reflectively, “she’ll have plenty to live on. She’ll have her own little money and old Charlie’s money, and mine when I go; but she’ll be of no more consequence in the countryside—no more consequence than—— me,” said the old lady. “No’ so much, for you’re all feared for me. It will be a terrible downcome for Marjory. No, no, if her father thinks of marrying her to Tom’s friend, or anybody’s friend, that can give her a good house over her head and a position, it’s not from me that he’ll get any blame.”
“Oh, Miss Jean, it’s little such thoughts are in any of their heads,” said Mrs. Murray. “Mr. Heriot’s heart’s broken; he thinks neither of marrying nor giving in marriage. Eh, poor man! poor man! he’s turning away now, leaving the grave, leaving his first-born out there in the rain and the snow, and the hot sun and winter wind. I’ve done it myself. I know what it is. God help him! He’s thinking neither of marrying nor of Marjory. He’s thinking but of him that’s gone.”
“He should do his duty to the living whoever’s gone,” said Miss Jean, watching with her sharp old eyes. “And Thomas Heriot’s sore failed,” she added to herself, eagerly looking out as the melancholy procession turned to the gate close by the Manse where the carriages were waiting. “He is sore failed. I should not be surprised if he was not long for this world; and then what will that girrl do?”
Edward Fanshawe, the individual whose appearance at Tom Heriot’s funeral had excited Miss Jean’s curiosity so strongly, was, perhaps, about the last man in England to whom Mr. Heriot of Pitcomlie, or any other father, would have confided his daughter’s happiness. Almost all that could be said in his favour was negative. There was no harm in him. He had never been involved in any discreditable transaction; he had wronged nobody; he had not even bored his friends. A certain fine instinct, indeed, in this respect, possessed the man; he had no high moral qualities, no principles to speak of, no plan of life nor rule of action; but he was never a bore. He perceived, with the quickness of lightning, the moment when his friends had had enough of him. Perhaps that moment arrived simultaneously with the moment in which he felt that he had enough of them; anyhow, he chose it with the most admirable exactitude. It was the one great quality of his character; he was like the sun in Hood’s poem, which “never came an hour too soon,” and he never stayed a moment too late.
Mr. Fanshawe was always agreeable, sympathetic, ready to interest himself in what interested those about him; he was a gentleman of the best blood and connections—cousin to Lord Strangeways, once removed, and allied by the mother’s side to the Duchess of Dimsdale, whose name is a sufficient guarantee, we trust, for any man’s gentility. He had just the amount of family and of money which is best adapted to demoralize a man, and turn him away from the natural and wholesome channels of use. And at the same time he had no land, no local habitation to keep up, no duties to do. What he had was in money, which a careful father had so locked up that the poor fellow could not even ruin himself by spending everything, and thus give himself the chance of a new start. He could only forestall his income, which he did continually, with more or less painful consequences to himself, and no great harm to anybody else; for he was weak-minded enough to have a prejudice in favour of paying his debts, though he seldom did it until considerably after date. He was not a fool, any more than he was a rogue; he was the very best, gentlest, most amiable, kind, and harmless of good-for-nothings; but a good-for-nothing he was. He had no vices, not even that of active selfishness, which, in such a man, might have been the first step to virtue. He was a little over thirty, but felt as if he had never been any younger, and never would be any older. He was not appalled by the thought of all the openings in life which he had thrown aside; or of the men who had passed him on the way, or of the advantages he had let slip. The past did not upbraid him, neither did the future alarm him. He never thought of asking himself what was to become of him whenhis active manhood began to droop. “To-morrow shall be as to-day,” he said to himself; or rather he did not say it, for he never went so far as to have any talk with himself on the subject.
Fanshawe had rooms in London, where he appeared generally for a portion of the season. He had been in the habit of meeting Tom Heriot in Leicestershire for the hunting, just as he was in the habit of meeting certain other kinds of men, periodically, in other places. By means of thus dividing his year, and keeping to the regular routine of change, of which men without any duties make a kind of fantastic duty for themselves, his acquaintance was simply unlimited. He knew all kinds of people, and most of the people whom he knew, he knew intimately. This was how Tom Heriot and he had become friends—friends by accident as it were, by the mere fact of meeting year after year in the same place, doing the same thing at the same moment. They had been intimates, but no more friends than this implies, at the moment when Tom, by Fanshawe’s side, was struck by the stroke of that grim unsuspected Death which hovers about the hunting-field. It was Fanshawe who helped to lift him, to disengage him from his fallen horse, and carry him to the bed which turned out to be his death-bed. And the two nights of watching which followed made Fanshawe something like Tom Heriot’s brother, made him the benefactor of Tom Heriot’s family, the object of their warmest gratitude, and connected for ever with poor Tom’s name and memory. Nothing could be more real than this connexion, and yet nothing could be more accidental or arbitrary.
The position was quite false, for he knew in reality but little of Tom; and yet it was perfectly natural and true, for he had been to Tom in his hour of need all that a brother could have been; and to Tom’s father and sister this stranger was no more a stranger; he was a son, a brother, “Tom’s dearest friend.” And it seemed only natural to both parties that Fanshawe should accompany the mournfulcortégeto Pitcomlie—and that he who had watched Tom so tenderly should help to lay him in his grave, should support his fellow-watchers, and do what he could to console his friend’s family.
This had seemed perfectly natural to Fanshawe, who was ever sympathetic and ready to help. Besides, Scotland was not to him an unknown place. He had gone to the North often enough, to shooting boxes and castles among the moors. Scotland meant game and deer-stalking, mountains and lochs, and vigorous exercise, according to his understanding. Of course he was well enough aware that April is not the moment for such delights. He must have known too that no delights were possible in the circumstances, and that his goodnature was about to plunge him into a new kind of experience, and not a cheerful one. But yet if he ever paused to think where he was going, he was of opinion that he knew perfectly what the manner of living was. And it may be supposed that to such a man it was strange and somewhat overpowering to find himself at the end of a few days stranded as it were on the quietestcoast, in the midst of the most tranquil rural life, in a sorrowful house where there were no visitors, no amusements, nothing going on, nothing to see.
The sombre excitement of the arrival, and of the funeral, had for the first moment cast a veil over the gravest aspect of this seclusion. Half of Fife, as Miss Jean truly said, had shown their “respect” to the heir of Pitcomlie, and this fact had kept the stranger from perceiving the dead calm that awaited him. It was on the Sunday afternoon that he first discovered what it was that he had fallen into. He had gone decorously to the parish church in the morning, with that amount of information respecting its simple forms and ceremonies which the moors and the grouse have communicated to the well-meaning and inquisitive English sportsman. And though we will not say that Mr. Fanshawe’s mind was not visited by a momentary surprise that no part of the service was in Gaelic, he yet got through that part of the day well enough; and then he returned with the family to luncheon, a meal which was eaten almost in silence and at which he first fully realised the state of affairs.
The first Sunday is a painful moment for people in fresh grief. Mr. Heriot sat at the foot of his table, sombre, incapable of speech, with his head bent upon his breast, answering mechanically, but sometimes with flashes of painful irritation, when he was addressed. Marjory from time to time attempted to talk; but the tears would come into her eyes in the midst of a sentence, her lip would quiver, and the words die away. Little Milly, withher hair more golden-bright than ever over her black frock, sat with great eyes opened upon the visitor, ready to cry every time that Marjory’s voice faltered; and Uncle Charles, who sat beside the child, was checked by some irritable word from his brother whenever he began to speak. Thus Mr. Fanshawe found himself sadly out of place in the family sitting-room downstairs.
He went up into his room after lunch, and took down all the books out of the shelves, and looked at them one after another; then he made an excursion round the room, and looked at all the pictures. There were some prints of well known pictures which he knew as well as his A B C, and there were some childish portraits of the Heriots, one of poor Tom, which he could recognise, and of another boy, and of a round-faced girl with curls, who, no doubt, was Marjory. This was very mild fare; he sat down at the window afterwards, with a copy of Milton, which was the liveliest reading he could find, and read a few lines of Comus, and looked out upon the sea. Soon the monotonous chant of the waves attracted him, and he made his way through the silence and the sunshine downstairs, meeting no one, hearing no sound, feeling as if the house itself was dead or enchanted.
The weather was very fine, as warm as it often is in Scotland in June, though it was still only April. The Firth was blue as the sky above it, but of a deepened and darker tone; the rich brown cliffs stood out in strong relief with every inequality defined against that dazzling background. In thedistance the opposite coast glimmered in the hazy brightness, marking itself by the white creamy edge of surf upon the rocks; and looming to the westward through a haze of mingled smoke and sunshine, stood Arthur’s Seat, like a muffled sentinel watching over the half-apparent towers and roofs of Edinburgh. The scene was fine enough to have attracted even a less susceptible gazer; and Fanshawe, though he was a good-for-nothing, had an eye for beauty. He sat down upon the cliff beyond the old house of Pitcomlie, half-way down, where the sea-side turf was all broken with bits of projecting rock. The salt spray dashed upon the red rocks underneath—whitest white and bluest blue, and russet brown of the richest tone, put in with all nature’s indifference to crudity of colour, made up the foreground; and the distant line of the opposite coast, the vague shadow of Tantallon, the Bass rock, lying like a great pebble on the water, the great hill in the distance, with its ridges glimmering through the smoke of the unseen town, lent many a suggestion, human fulness of imagery, mystery and depth to the landscape.
Fanshawe was fully capable of appreciating the beauty of the scene; but when he had taken in all its beauty, another thought crept upon him which was very natural. The broad estuary before him was all but deserted; only a few distant ships nearer Leith broke the blue as it shaded off into the distance. The Comlie boats were all safe in harbour, the fishermen taking their Sabbath ease; one or two white sails were dropping down the western coast,disappearing round St. Abb’s Head into the grey-blue horizon; but nothing was visible nearer, except the high white cliffs of the May, the lighthouse island, which he had already watched from his window. Nothing to do! nothing that could even suggest a passing hope of amusement. After a while he looked upon the scene with dismay; it was as blank to him as a beautiful face in stone. Then he climbed to the top of the cliff, and looked out across the rich flat homely country. These well-laboured fields were a thousand times better for Mr. Heriot’s rent-roll than if they had been picturesquely intersected by green lanes and waving hedgerows; but they were blank, blank to the soul of the strange visitor who found himself stranded in this noiseless place. Not a sound seemed to exist in that quiet country, except the murmur of the sea. Mr. Fanshawe said to himself spitefully that it was Scotch Sabbatarianism which prevented the very birds from singing, which chased away all rural sights and sounds, which swept the boats from the sea, and which demanded one monotonous level of dulness—dulness dead as death. And then this horrible question occurred to him: Was he sure it would be any better to-morrow? He was not at all sure; he conjured up before him other scenes of rural life which he had known; stray visits to his relatives, which he had paid at long intervals, when he had found the decorations of the church the only amusement and a school-feast the only dissipation; and here, in grim Scotland, there were not even these simple elements of pleasure. Mr. Fanshawe’s heartdied within him as he gazed over that rich, well-ploughed country-side.
If it should occur to anyone that this mood was very inappropriate to the really sympathetic nature of one who had watched over Tom Heriot’s sick-bed, and had grieved over, and fully felt the frightful blow which his death had given to the family so near at hand, we can but say in reply that even to the most sympathetic the impression produced by death is the one that is effaced most rapidly. Already Fanshawe had felt, with that impatience which is natural to humanity, that enough had been given to Tom. He could not and would not have expressed the sentiment in words; but it was a natural sentiment. Mr. Heriot’s heart-broken despondency, which was partly veiled and partly heightened by the irritability of grief, overawed the young man; but already he had begun to feel it hard upon him that Marjory, for instance, should refuse to be comforted. He himself felt healed of his momentary wound; and why did not she begin at least to allow herself to be healed also?
It seemed to Fanshawe, as it seems to all except the chief sufferers in every such bereavement, that it is churlish and almost fictitious to “give way”—and that the natural thing is to get better of your grief as you do of a headache, or, at least, not to annoy and worry other people, by letting them see that it is continually there. He had felt it very much at the time, but he had got over it; and it seemed natural to him that others should get over it also. And when he met Mr. Charles and Millycoming very solemnly hand in hand round the corner of the old house, their gravity seemed almost a personal affront to him.
“The child is but a child,” he said to himself; “and the old fellow is only his uncle. Much my uncle would care if I were to die! Really this is making too great a fuss,” and a certain air of disapproval came into the look with which he met them. “Going to take a walk?” he said.
“We were going down to the foot of the cliff,” said Mr. Charles. “This little thing is pale, and wants the air; will you come too? It is not very high, but the cliff is bold, and I am fond of the place. No scenery, you know, no scenery,” said Mr. Charles, waving his hand towards the rocks with an air of protecting pride. “A poor thing, Sir, but mine own,” was the sentiment with which he gazed at the brown headland, the angle of the coast upon which his paternal house was placed; “but to us who were born here, it has a beauty of its own.”
“It has a great deal of beauty,” said Fanshawe; “but of a desolate kind. To look out upon a sea without even a boat—”
“There are plenty of boats sometimes,” said Mr. Charles, somewhat hastily; “you would not have the fishers out on the Sunday, unless when there’s some special necessity?—a great haul of herring, or such like—good food that should not be wasted, might excuse it; but without that there’s no reason. There are plenty of ships in Leith Harbour, and lying beyond Inchkeith as you would see when we crossed the Firth—”
As these words were said, Mr. Charles suddenly recollected how he had crossed the Firth last, a mourner bringing poor Tom to his burial; and he added hastily, “We were not thinking much of what we saw at such a sorrowful time; but still the ships were there.”
“Is Mr. Heriot fond of yachting?” said Fanshawe, taking no notice of this dolorous conclusion. “A yacht would be a resource.”
“The boys had once a boat,” said Mr. Charles. “You must pardon us for our uncheerful ways. There is not a thing about but what is connected with his memory. They had a boat when they were quite young, before Charlie went to India. I am not fond of the sea myself; it’s a very precarious pleasure; and to run the risk of your life for an hour’s sail seems a want of sense and a waste of strength.”
“Shouldn’t you like to go to the May, Milly?” said Fanshawe, pointing to the white cliffs of the island, which seemed on this clear day to be but a few fathoms off the shore. A sparkle of pleasure came into Milly’s little face; her big blue eyes lighted up; the corners of her mouth, which had seemed permanently depressed, rose like the corners of an unbent bow.
“Oh!” she began; and then paused and looked at her uncle, and became melancholy once more.
Milly was like Fanshawe, she had had enough of the family grief; but she was too dutiful to break its bond.
“The May is not so near as it seems,” said Mr.Charles. “It’s very dangerous in some tides; the landing is bad. Our fishers themselves are far from fond of the May. And, altogether, our coast is not a coast for pleasure-sailing. There are accidents enough among those who cannot help themselves, poor fellows! Many a tragedy I have known on Comlie Shore.”
“But if there is no yachting,” said Fanshawe, with momentary forgetfulness of his good-breeding, “how do you get through the time—at least in Summer—if you spend it here?”
Mr. Charles looked at him with suppressed offence. A man who found Pitcomlie dull was to the Heriots the concentration of impertinence and bad taste. Little Milly looked up, too, with her wondering eyes. Milly did not know what to make of this man, who was not quite in harmony, she felt, with the surroundings, yet who made suggestions which were very delightful, and who had the melancholy and splendid distinction of being “poor Tom’s friend.” She was afraid he was going to be scolded, and was sympathetic; yet how could Uncle Charles scold a grown up gentleman, who was Tom’s friend? Thus orderly age and dutiful childhood looked surprised at one who was beyond all the bonds familiar to them, and whose time and whose life seemed of so little importance to himself.
“My time seldom hangs heavy on my hands,” said Mr. Charles. “If you live to my age, you will learn that time is short—far too short for what a man has to do. I am sixty, and the days run through my hands like sea-sand. Many and manyis the thing I have to put aside for want of time; and most likely I’ll die with heaps of odds and ends left incomplete.”
“I don’t see any reason,” said Fanshawe, in his levity; “at sixty it appears to me you have much more certainty of life before you than at half the age. A man who lives till sixty may surely live to a hundred if he pleases. By that time all the dangers must be over.”
“And I suppose,” said Mr. Charles, not quite pleased to hear his sixty years treated so lightly, “you hope to do as much yourself.”
“I don’t know,” said the young man, laughing and shrugging his shoulders. “Seriously, do you think it’s worth the while? I am more than half way, and it has not been so delightful. No; a short life and a merry one must be the best.”
“That was poor Tom’s idea,” said Mr. Charles, with the look of a man who is improving the occasion.
His own feeling was that no sermon could have pointed a sharper moral. At the sound of Tom’s name, little Milly began to cry; not that she knew very much of Tom, but the vague pain and sorrow which filled the house had made his name the emblem of everything that was melancholy and grievous to her. Milly’s tears gave the last aggravation to Fanshawe’s impatience.
“Poor Tom!” he cried; “he had a merry life. Better thirty years of that than a long, dull blank, with nothing particular in it. He thought so, and so should I. I don’t like—forgive me for saying so—to think of poor Heriot as a warning. On thewhole, I should not object to the same sort of end. Better that than to drink the cup to the dregs—”
“As I am doing, you mean,” said Mr. Charles.
“No, indeed—far from that. As I should do, if such were to be my fate. It depends, I suppose, upon the groove one gets into,” said Fanshawe, with a short, uneasy laugh.
And then he began to talk hurriedly to Milly about the chances of a voyage to the May.
“I do not understand that young man,” said Mr. Charles, privately, to Marjory. “May, my dear, you must try your hand. There is good about him. If there had not been good about him, he would never have done what he did for Tom. But he thinks Pitcomlie dull, and he thinks a long life undesirable. I should like to understand the lad; and as we all have cause to be grateful to him, I wish you would try your hand.”
“If you wish it, uncle,” said Marjory.
This was in the silence of the evening, when she sat by the window, looking out at the flush of sunset which still dyed all the western sky, and lit up the Firth with crimson and gold. Milly stood close by her, with an arm round her neck. The child had said her hymn, and discharged all her Sunday duties. She was vaguely sad, because the others were sad—yet satisfied in that she had fulfilled all personal requirements; and over Marjory, too, a sense of quiet had stolen. The dead were in their graves and at rest; the living remained, with work, and tears, and dying all before them. She talked softly to Uncle Charles as the sunset lights faded,feeling an indescribable quiet come over her mind as the twilight came over the earth. Only Mr. Heriot sat alone in the library, with his head bent on his breast, doing nothing, reading nothing; thinking over the same thoughts for hours together. The old father felt that he had come to an end; but for the others it was not so: the pause in their lives was over, and existence had begun again.
Nextmorning life began as usual for the saddened household. Breakfast, which had once been so lively a meal, passed over in comparative silence. Mr. Charles, indeed, did what he could to talk to the stranger, making conversation about the news and the newspapers, with a vague hope of enlivening the party.
“I daresay, as an Englishman, you don’t know much about Scotch affairs, Mr. Fanshawe,” he said. “If we were an ill-conditioned people like the Irish now, we might lead Parliament a pretty dance; but as we find it more to our advantage to keep quiet and mind our own business, nobody puts themselves out of the way.”
“And then you are very well off, which Ireland is not,” said Fanshawe, who had Irish blood in his veins.
“I am not so sure about that. We have our grievances like other folk. Our affairs are thrust to the wall for every kind of nonsense. Who cares to come when it’s a Scotch night, or when Scotch affairs are to be discussed? A handful of Scotch members—”
“It is like everything else,” said Mr. Heriot, breaking in harshly; “even, if you come to that, who are our Scotch members? In the very nextcounty one of our best men was turned out the other day, to make room for some English radical or other. They hire our houses, they shoot our moors, they clear the fish out of our rivers, they treat us like a hunting-ground. Our old habits are destroyed, our old families dying out—”
“Not so bad as that, not so bad as that,” said Mr. Charles, soothingly. “You see, Mr. Fanshawe, we’re proud, and we think a retired English tradesman, though an excellent man—a most excellent man, perhaps better than half the Lairds about—is out of his proper place in our old castles. But still they bring money into the country, no doubt about that, and it’s good for trade and all the rest of it. By the way, I see there’s been a great match at St. Andrews—did you notice, Thomas?—with Tom Morris in it. We must take you to St. Andrews, Mr. Fanshawe, to see golf. You cannot say you know Scotland unless you know golf. Bless my life, what a long time it is since I have been there—not once all last season. What did you say, Thomas?—that is a most unusual thing for me.”
“I said nothing,” said Mr. Heriot. “Go to your golf, whatever happens, Charlie. Golf over your best friend’s grave, if you like. What does it matter? He would never feel it, you may be sure.”
Poor Mr. Charles and his attempts at conversation were thus cut short wheresoever he turned his steps.
“I mean no disrespect,” he said, with a certain humility, looking anxiously at his brother, who satthroned in the irritability of his sorrow, strangely pale through the brownness of his country colour, or rather grey—with a veil over his countenance such as had never been seen on it before. His heavy eyebrows were curved over the eyes, which shone out fiery and red from under them, red with sleeplessness, and nervous irritation, and unshed tears.
“It is nothing to me,” he said, in a high-pitched unsteady voice, “nothing to me! Let them amuse themselves that can. I am glad of it. Has Charlie been written to yet—that is all I want to know.”
“I wrote on Friday, papa.”
“Ah! Before the funeral,” said Mr. Heriot, “to let him know what had happened. But I mean more than that. I mean that he should be written to, to come home. I want him home. Why should he stay out there now, risking his health and his children’s lives? Write again, and say I want him home.”
“Yes, papa,” said Marjory, gently. “I said so then. I gave him all your messages. I said to come at once, as soon as Mrs. Charles could travel—”
“Confound Mrs. Charles! What do I care for Mrs. Charles?” cried the old man. And then he paused, and turned with a curious attempt at a smile to Fanshawe. “You’ll think I am a hotheaded old Turk, but you see how I am baffled by my family. I give a simple message, and it’s lost in a hundred paraphrases. Mrs. Charles may come when she pleases. I want Charlie. Do you hear,May? Write again this very day, and say I want him home.”
“Yes, papa, immediately, as soon as breakfast is over.”
“I knew there would be something to wait for,” said Mr. Heriot, rising up, impatiently. He was consumed by his grief as by a fire. The presence of any other individual, even those most dear to him, the sound of conversation, seemed to rouse into a kind of fury the smouldering heat in his soul. And when they dropped into silence he was still more impatient. “I fear I am a hindrance to conversation,” he said, pushing away his chair from the table after a painful pause. “I’lllevo l’incomodo, as the Italians say. If anyone wants me, I’m in the library. And mind that Charlie is written to without more delay.”
So saying, he went out hastily, with a heavy step, which yet sounded uncertain upon the floor, as if it might stumble over anything. He waved his hand to Fanshawe, with a forced smile, as he disappeared. He met his darling Milly at the door—she whom he had never passed without a caress, and brushed by, taking no notice of her. Then he came back, and looked into the room sternly.
“See that there’s no mistake about Charlie,” he repeated.
Marjory made an ineffectual effort to restrain the tears which fell suddenly, in great drops, upon her sleeve. She, too, turned anxious apologetic looks upon the stranger.
“He never was like this before,” she said. “Oh,don’t think he is rude or unkind, Mr. Fanshawe. There never was anyone so good or so tender; but his heart is broken. He can think of nothing but poor Tom.”
“And you’ll write to Charlie?” said Mr. Charles. “I don’t wonder at him being anxious. If you’ll think what India is, and what the life is—a life made up of accidents, and fevers, and everything that’s deadly. The lad might be bitten by some venomous creature; some ill beast might fall foul of him; or he might catch the jungle fever, which they tell me is most dangerous—”
“But all this might have happened to him for years past, I suppose,” said Fanshawe; “unless he went to India very recently. These dangers are not new.”
“He was not the heir then!” said Mr. Charles very simply; and he too rose from the table. “Would you like to come and see my room, Mr. Fanshawe? There is not much to show, but I have some prints that are not just what you will see every day, and a curiosity or two; while Marjory writes her letters.” And as he left the room he too looked back to say: “You’ll write at once, May; you’ll be very urgent? It will be good for us all to have Charlie at home.”
“Oh, May!” cried little Milly, who did not remember her second brother; “why are they so anxious for Charlie to come home?”
“Who is anxious, Milly, besides papa and Uncle Charles?”
“Oh, the whole house!” said Milly. “Mrs. Simpson asks me every time she sees me; and old Fleming. ‘Mr. Charlie must come home now!’ they say. May, will you tell me why?”
“To fill Tom’s place!” said Marjory, with an outburst of sudden tears. “Oh, my little Milly, that is what we do even when we love best. My father is breaking his heart for Tom; yet he wants Charlie to fill Tom’s place.”
“Nobody could ever fillyourplace, May,” cried Milly; “I would never let them; dinna cry. I could cry too, for papa never minds me, never looks at me; and oh, he’s so strange; the house is so strange! but May, so long as there is you—”
The little girl’s arms clinging round her neck were a comfort to Marjory. Little Milly was wounded too; she had received that first lesson of her own unimportance, which is hard even for a child; she was half indignant, half angry even with “poor Tom,” though she cried at the sound of his name—and very sore about Charlie, whom everybody wished for.
“They have May, and what do they want more?” this faithful little maiden said to herself. “When Tom was living we never saw him; and nobody ever thought of Charlie. Why do they make such a fuss now? when they have May!”
Fanshawe went with Mr. Charles to his room. After the scene of the morning he felt sadly out of place, an intruder into the family life. It seemed to him that he ought to go away; and only the day before he had felt the tediousness of the existence so much that any excuse for going away wouldhave seemed a godsend; but yet, at the same time, he felt that he did not want to go. Why, he could not have told; he seemed to have been caught in the web of this family’s life, to be waiting for somedénouementor for some new turn in the story. He had known nothing of them two weeks before; yet now he was a member of the household, a spectator of the father’s misery, of the effort of the family to right itself after this terrible blow. They seemed all to be playing their parts before him, while he was the judge chance had appointed to decide how they all fulfilled theirrôle. With this curious sensation in his mind he went over Mr. Charles’s treasures—his prints, his cabinets of coins, his little collection of old jewellery, which he had ranged in boxes under glass covers. “Here is a necklace that I sometimes lend to May,” the old man said, pointing out a delicate circlet in fine enamel, and the lightest fairy goldsmith’s work. “It was brought to her great grandmother, Leddy Pitcomlie, from Rome, in the beginning of last century, and is said to have belonged to a line of great Italian beauties, whom I need not name. They’re all written out on the case. I can recollect seeing it on the old Leddy’s withered neck.”
“Then you had a title in the family in those days?”
“No, no; no title! Leddy is the feminine of Laird, in old Scots—not Lady, mind, which has another meaning. This is a ring that belonged to Robert Hay in the end of the fifteenth century. We bear the yoke still in our arms, you see. RobertHay, of the Erroll family, married the heiress of Pitcomlie—who was Marjory, like our Marjory downstairs. It’s a romance in its way. I have put together some of the facts in the shape of a kind of family history; but whether it will ever see the light of day—”
“Then you are an author, as well as an antiquary?” said Fanshawe; “and an art collector; and all sorts of learned things besides. What an impudent wretch I was to speak of dulness here!”
Mr. Charles blushed, and waved his hand in gentle deprecation.
“No more of an author than I am of an antiquary,” he said; “a bit smattering here and there, that’s all the knowledge I possess. As for my bits of family notes, I doubt if they would interest any but the family and connections. We have never had any notabilities among us; good, honest, ordinary folk; some soldiers that have done well in their day, but never very remarkable; and some clever women—that’s been our speciality. You may see it in Marjory at the present moment. Clever women—I don’t mean authoresses, or that kind of cattle, but real capable mothers of families, that could guide their house and rule their children. We’ve been great for that. Here are some miniatures that, perhaps, will interest you; some very good, some bad enough, but all the same character, the same character running through them. There is one you would say was done for May, and it’s her great-aunt I don’t know how many times removed.”
Thus the old man chattered, leading the stranger from one corner to another of his domain. Mr. Charles’s rooms were in the habitable corner of the old house of Pitcomlie, which was connected with the new house by a long corridor, a windy passage, with the garden on one side and the cliff on the other. One wing of the old building had been preserved in sufficient repair, and Mr. Charles’s study occupied the round of the old tourelle, as well as part of the ancient front of the house. It was a large, cheerful room, with many windows, which he had fitted up according to his taste, and his taste was good. His writing-table stood in the round of the little tower commanding views up and down the Firth. All the wonderful panorama on which Fanshawe had gazed with so much interest from the cliffs, unfolded itself round the old windows which were set in the half-circle of the tower. Between these windows Mr. Charles had placed frames of crimson velvet, set with miniatures, with rare old prints, and with small but exquisite scraps of sketches. Only a trained eye, indeed, could have divined the amount of modest wealth contained upon these; delightful faces, lovely little scraps of scenery, gems which nothing could replace, though to the ignorant they seemed simple enough.
Fanshawe felt himself grow smaller and smaller as he looked. After all, this was not the dull and level blank of existence he had supposed. This homely old man, with his Scotch accent, changed under his eyes; he became something a great deal more lofty and elevated than Mr. Charles. In hiscompunction and shame, the young man went as far too high in his second estimate as he had been too low in his first. As for Mr. Charles, this change gave him a simple satisfaction which it was delightful to behold.
“You see, after all, there are some things worth looking at in Pitcomlie,” he said. “It is not such a humdrum house, after all, though it stands in a county so little interesting as comfortable Fife.”
“Nothing could have made it a humdrum house,” said the penitent. He was not thinking of Mr. Charles’s pictures: he was thinking of—something else.
Just then an unexpected summons came to the door.
“Miss Heriot’s compliments, and would the gentleman step over to the north room?” the maid said, who waited, curtseying, to show the way.
Mr. Charles’s countenance clouded over.
“That’s poor Tom’s room,” he said. “I’ll go with the gentleman myself—and yet, no; on second thoughts I’ll not go. You two may have something to consult about, that I should not meddle with; or Marjory may think there is something. Go, as she has sent for you, Mr. Fanshawe; you can come back to me another time.”
With a curious little thrill of interest, Fanshawe went, threading the turret staircase down from Mr. Charles’s rooms, and the windy passages, wondering what she could want with him. Marjory received him in a room of a very different description. It was in the back of the house, looking across thegardens to the level line of the ploughed land, and the low hills on the horizon. It was a long, narrow room, with a door opening from each end; and its decorations were of a kind as different from Mr. Charles’s study as was its form. On the walls hung two crossed swords, some old guns carefully arranged according to their antiquity, a collection of whips, fishing-rods, clubs for playing golf—worn out traces of a boyhood not yet so very long departed. In one corner was a bookcase, full of old classics, thumbed and worn, the school-books of the two boys whose progress in polite letters Pitcomlie had once been so proud of. The pictures on the walls were of the most heterogeneous character; languishing French “Etudes” in chalk, were mingled with sporting subjects, heads of dogs, portraits of sleek race-horses led by sleeker grooms, and one staring view of Pitcomlie, painted in water-colours, with very lively greens and blues, and signed “Ch. Hay-Heriot,” in bold boyish characters.
No contrast could have been greater than this mass of incongruous elements, seen after the careful collection of Mr. Charles; and yet this, too, was not without its attraction. It looked like the chaos of a boy’s mind, a hopeless yet innocent confusion; all sorts of discordant things connected together by the sweet atmosphere of youth and possibility, out of which all harmonies might come. In the midst of this schoolboy chamber sat Marjory. She had a writing-case placed before her on a table, the key of which she held in her hand. Fanshawe recognised it at once. It was one which Tom hadused constantly, which he had carried about with him everywhere. Tom’s sister looked up at him with a wistful and anxious glance.
“Mr. Fanshawe,” she said, “this has been brought to me to open. My father cannot bear to look at anything, and I—I feel as if we had no right to search into his secrets. It seems dishonourable, when he cannot defend himself—when he is in our power.”
Fanshawe went round to Marjory’s side, and took into his own the hand which, half unconsciously, she held out, appealing to him, and touched the fingers with his lips. Her eyes were full of tears, and the look she turned to him, asking for counsel and sympathy, went to his very heart. A slight colour came to her face at this answer to her appeal; but Marjory was not vain, and took it in no other light than as an impulse of sympathy.
“Must I do it?” she asked.
“Is there any reason why? is it necessary? mustyoudo it?” he asked. “Miss Heriot, your brother was but a man like others. There may be things he would not have had you see.”
Once more Marjory blushed; but this time more hotly. She drooped her head not to look at him.
“That is what I thought,” she said, very low. Then after a pause, she looked up suddenly in his face. “Mr. Fanshawe, you were his friend; you heard what he said about something to tell me. He thanked God at the last that he had told me, though he had not, you are aware. Do you know what it was?”
“No.” It was a relief unspeakable to him to be able to say this. “I know none of his secrets—if he had any. So far as I am aware, he was irreproachable. I knew nothing of him which you might not have known.”
“Thanks!” she said, with a smile, once more holding out her hand. How grateful she was to him for knowing nothing! “Do you think, if I keep it by me, to refer to in case of need—do you think that would do?”
“Or your uncle might do it,” said Fanshawe.
To his astonishment, she shrank from this suggestion.
“Uncle Charles is very good and kind; but he would be hard upon poor Tom—he was always hard upon him. I must do it, if it has to be done. Must it be done? I am so unwilling to do it, that I cannot trust my own judgment. Oh! why cannot our little treasures, our secrets, our mysteries, be buried with us in our graves?”
“He may have left a will—instructions—something that concerns others,” said Fanshawe, hesitating.
Miss Heriot was not perfect, or an angelical woman. She almost turned her back upon him as she answered coldly,
“Thanks; you seem to think it necessary. I will not trouble you further, Mr. Fanshawe. I am much obliged to you for your advice.”
“What else could I say?” poor Fanshawe asked himself, as he retired. “What the deuce have I done? She talks as if it was my fault. I did notkill Tom Heriot, nor lock up his secrets in his despatch box. I hope, though, she won’t find anything to shock her. What do the people here mean by leaving all this to her? They give her everything to do. By Jove! if it was me she would find the difference. I should be her slave. She should do just what she liked, and so would I. I wonder if she’d like it? I mean not me, but the kind of thing—to be served instead of serving, to be kept from trouble instead of being bothered by everybody. Just for the fun of the thing I should like to know.”
At this stage of his thoughts, Mr. Fanshawe being outside on the platform before the house, lighted his cigar; and then he strolled down the cliff to the rocks, where he wandered about till the hour of luncheon.
“I suppose it’s best as it is,” he said to himself, as he clambered up again at the sound of the bell. Such a sentiment is perhaps less contented, less satisfactory than it looks. “I suppose it’s best as it is!” Certainly there was a certain ruefulness in the countenance with which it was said.
Mr. Heriotdid not come to luncheon. A tray carefully piled with everything that old Fleming could think of to tempt his master’s appetite was carried to him in the library; but before the rest of the party had left the table, Fleming came back disconsolate, bearing his tray untouched.
“In case ye shouldna believe me, I’ve brought it back, Miss Marjory,” he said, with an injured air, approaching the young mistress of the house. “Look at it with your ain e’en, and maybe then ye’ll believe me. No a thing tasted, no more nor he did yesterday, and me sent away for an auld bletherin’ scoondrel. An auld bletherin’ scoondrel! Man and boy I’ve been in the house o’ Pitcomlie forty years, and it’s the first time such a name was ever applied to me.”
“Fleming, you must not mind,” said Marjory. “My father did not mean it. It was his grief that spoke, and not he.”
“Nae doubt ye ken better than me, Miss Marjory; the bairns we’ve brought up on our knees are aye wiser than us old folk; but he meansthat, I suppose?” said old Fleming, holding up his tray triumphantly. “And what kind of a meaning is that for the father of a family? No to take his good food that’s been prepared wi’ a’ the care and painsof a clean and Christian woman, that sud have been accepted wi’ a grace and eaten with thanksgiving. When I mind the luncheons the Laird used to eat, the good dinners he made, the fine nat’rel appetite!” cried Fleming, almost with tears in his eyes, holding up his tray as an eloquent witness of his case, “and now to be sent away with a flea in my lug for a bletherin’ scoondrel,—because I was fain to see him eat a morsel of wholesome meat!”
“Go away to your pantry, Sir, and say no more about it,” said Mr. Charles, authoritatively. “Miss Marjory has plenty to put up with, without your nonsense. Your father, my dear, has been in the house for days together. He has not so much as taken a walk, he that was always afoot. That’s the reason why he cannot eat; for my part, I am not surprised. He’ll be better, I hope, when Charlie comes back.”
“I would get the doctor,” said Fleming, with stout self-assertion. “Mr. Charlie may be kept back by ill winds, or many a thing beside. I would have the doctor if it was me.”
Fanshawe looked at this scene with mingled amusement and surprise; but though Mr. Charles stood up in defence of his niece, neither of them thought it strange that the old butler should have his word to say. The old man even emitted extraordinary murmurs, which were almost like groans, as he continued his attendance at table.
“I’ve seen death in the house afore. I’ve seen plenty of sore trouble; but I never saw the Laird as he is now. Waes me! waes me!” said Fleming;and the conversation, such as it was, was interrupted by this monologue.
They all went into the drawing-room together, glad to escape from it. Mr. Charles took his three-cornered seat by the fire, and his newspaper, which he had left lying upon it. Marjory seated herself at the writing-table in the bow-window. They had their natural occupations, the things they did habitually every day; but as for Fanshawe, he had no occupation to turn to. He turned over all the books on the tables, and then he went and stood at the window. The weather had changed since yesterday, which was much too bright to last. It was a true Spring day on the East coast, with a white mist closing in over land and sea, and a chill wind blowing. Was he to spend that whole long afternoon gazing at the tumbling, leaden waves, and the choking white vapour that lay heavy like a coverlet over them, and clung to the edges of the cliff like a fringe of woolly whiteness, and shut out both earth and sky?
Just then Mr. Heriot put in his head, and asked sharply,
“Have you written to Charlie?”
“Yes, papa,” said Marjory, with a little start; and a minute after, Fanshawe, at the window, saw the old man go out, with his head upon his breast, to the misty cliff that lay before the windows.
He stood still there for some moments, with his tall figure relieved against the forlorn blackness of the waves and the woolly mist, his white hair and the skirts of his coat blowing in the wind; and thenhe took the rocky path down the side of the cliff, which led to the beach. It seemed to be natural that he should choose such a day to go abroad in, a hopeless day, when the sun and the light were obscured, when the wind searched to the marrow of the bones, and the mist crept into the throat, and the sea moaned and complained among its rocks.
Fanshawe stood and watched him as long as he could see him. The very air and water seemed to sigh “Waes me!” like the old serving-man who loved the house.
“Mr. Fanshawe,” said Marjory, from the recess, “is there anything to be done for you? We are dull, and we cannot help it. None of us are good for anything. I should like to ask you to walk with us; but it is an easterly haar, and that is bad on our coast; and riding would be still worse; and it is too late, even if the weather were not so bad, to go to St. Andrews, as Uncle Charles proposed—”
“Never mind me,” said Fanshawe, with some shame. “You must think me a man of few resources, and so, I fear, I am. I am good for nothing. I have got out of the way of reading. It is a horrible confession, but it is true. The only thing that suggests itself to me on such a day is, if not to walk, yet to talk.”
“Let us talk, then,” said Marjory, closing the blotting-book in which she had been writing her letters.
She said it, he thought, with a sort of half contempt, as if this insignificant occupation of talk wasa kind of idleness, and beneath her ordinary activity; and then, as was natural after such a conclusion had been come to, a dead silence supervened. Mr. Fanshawe broke it with a laugh.
“I fear you despise talking,” he said; “and conversation is a thing which cannot be done ofmalice prepense. May we have some music instead? There is music enough there in your case to last a life-time, much less an afternoon.”
“Music!” said Marjory, somewhat startled. “To be sure,” she added, with a smile, “music is not merry-making, as our poor folk fancy. It does not need to be the voice of mirth; and now you suggest it, there are few things that would express one’s feelings so well—the forlorn, confused, oppressed—” She paused, with tears rising, which got into her throat and her eyes, and stifled her words. “But I must not, Mr. Fanshawe. It would shock everybody. My poor father would think me mad, and I cannot tell what the servants would say. It would seem to them the very height of heartlessness.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Charles, from his corner; “no, May, my dear; no music. I could not put up with that.”
Fanshawe turned away, dismayed. He felt himself the most profane, secular, troublesome intruder. Poor Tom’s shadow seemed to stop up all the ordinary currents of life, and create a fictitious existence, full of impossible laws of its own for the mourners. Little Milly sat in a corner, reading—not her favourite stories, or the fairy tales which had been her constant companions, but a good bookabout a little boy who died in the odour of sanctity. She was reading it with the corners of her mouth turned down, and every soft, wavy line about her stilled into angles and gravity.
Fanshawe went and sat down by her, and began to talk of that voyage, which he had once proposed, to the Isle of May. He led the child so far out of herself, that at the end of five minutes she laughed, a sound which frightened her to death, and which made both her uncle and her sister raise their eyes, as if something dreadful had happened. May said nothing, and her eyes, tearful though they were, smiled at the little creature; but Mr. Charles said in a voice which was harsh for him:—
“You forget that this is a house of mourning.”
Poor Milly cried a little by way of expiating that weakness of nature, and relapsed into her good book; but Fanshawe could not cry, and had no good book to retire into. He yawned visibly, as he lay back in his low chair and contemplated his companions. He was a good-for-nothing; he had no letters to write, no studies to carry on. When he was not amused or occupied, he yawned. What else was there to do?
There is nothing which more piques a woman than this frank and unblushingennui, when it makes itself visible within reach of her. Marjory felt half-insulted, half-stimulated to exertion.
“Is there nothing we can show Mr. Fanshawe?” she said, in a tone of semi-irritation. “I fear our pictures are only family-portraits, and we possess nothing that is curious. Uncle Charles has all therarities in the house, and those you have seen already. Should you like to go over the old hall—the ruinous part? There is not much to see.”
“I should like it very much,” said Fanshawe.
He did not care two straws about the old ruined Manor-house; but the thought of atête-à-têtewith May was pleasant to him, partly because of the vague attraction which a handsome young woman has for a young man, and partly because he was curious about her individually. She was a new species to him; he had not made her out, and the study was an agreeable kind of study. With a slight flush of impatience on her face, she had risen to lead the way; and he, secretly delighted, but perfectly demure and serious, was following, when all his satisfaction was suddenly turned into discomfiture. The door opened, and, with a tone of solemnity, Fleming entered and announced,
“Doctor and Mistress Murray.”
When he had solemnly pronounced the names, giving full weight to every syllable, the old servant ranged himself by the wall, to see the effect of his announcement; he watched complacently while the visitors entered after him in panoply of woe, with looks wrought up to the requisite pitch of sympathetic solemnity. It was, as Fleming said afterwards, as good as a sermon to see the Doctor. He had come to condole, and he was fully prepared to do so. Resignation and submission—that comfortable resignation which can support with so much dignity the losses of others—was in every fold of his dress, in the lines of his composed countenance,decently sad, but not gloomy, as became a man who sorrowed not without hope. To old Fleming, the Minister’s aspect was a thorough enjoyment. It was the sort of thing which was befitting to a house of mourning; not the hot grief which refused to be comforted, and abjured food and carnal consolation, like that passion of sorrow which possessed his master; but a legitimate and subdued sentiment, which fulfilled all proprieties, and was an example to all beholders.
Mrs. Murray was not so satisfactory. She came in crying softly, and took Marjory into her arms, who—thus caught on the very verge of going out, and making an effort after amusement, was confused, as if she had been doing something amiss.
“My poor Marjory! my poor bairn!” said Mrs. Murray; while May, though the tears started from her eyes, felt as if she must cry out in self-accusation, and confess that for that moment she had not been thinking of Tom.
Then they all sat down in a circle, of which Dr. Murray was the centre. Mr. Charles had shuffled hastily out of his fireside corner, and had come forward to shake hands, with a certain solemnempressement, which was the proper way in which members of the family should receive such a visit. Fanshawe stole away behind backs, and sat down again by little Milly; but Milly, with a dreadful recollection of that laugh, avoided him, and fixed her eyes upon the Minister—for what would happen if, under sore press of temptation, she was to make such a terrible mistake again?
“And how is your father, Miss Marjory?” said the Doctor; “far from well, I fear? He had a shaken look yesterday at church that grieved my heart to see. No doubt it is a great affliction, a very sore stroke from the Almighty; but we must remember that it is the Almighty, and that it is not our place to repine.”
“No doubt, no doubt; that is true,” said Mr. Charles, acquiescing solemnly.
It was a thing incumbent on him in his representative position as the only man of the house.
“I don’t think my father means to repine,” said Marjory. “His heart is just broken; he never thought of it—never expected such a thing as that he should live, and poor Tom be taken away!”
“And the heir, too,” said the Doctor. “The ways of the Lord are very inscrutable. Just those lives that seem to us most valuable are taken. When I look round upon the world,” added Dr. Murray, “and see how many people are struck just in the way that was most unexpected, most unlikely! But he has other children left, and you must do what you can to keep him from brooding. My dear Miss Marjory, a great deal is in your hands.”
“I can do so little,” said Marjory, with tears. “My poor father! his heart is broken. There does not seem anything that we can do.”
“You must tell him to be resigned,” said Dr. Murray. “I am very sorry that he is out. I should have been glad if I had been able to speak a word of comfort to my old friend and respected heritor.You must remind him how much we have all to bear. Not one of us is without his cross. Sometimes it falls heavier on one than on another. It is his turn to-day, and it may be ours to-morrow; but none of us escape. The only one thing certain is that there must have been need of it. This mysterious and terrible dispensation has not been sent without some good end.”
“No doubt, no doubt; it must be for a good purpose,” said Mr. Charles.
“I cannot say how sorry I am that Mr. Heriot is not in,” continued the Doctor. “I might have timed my visit differently. I had not thought it likely that he would be well enough to go out.”
“He has gone down to the rocks,” said Marjory, feeling that her father was put on his defence. “It is not a day to tempt any one. I think the moaning of the sea soothes him. He cannot bear conversation; we are none of us capable of much—”
“My poor child! as if anything was to be expected,” said kind Mrs. Murray, drawing her aside. “I would not even have had the Doctor come so soon. I thought I might have come myself first, to give you a kiss, my dear. Oh! May, I know what it is! Tell your father my heart just bleeds for him. I’m glad he’s out to take the air, though it’s a dreary, dreary day; but, perhaps, in grief like his, a dreary day is the best. When it’s bright, Nature seems to have no heart. The Doctor thought it was his duty to come, though it’s so soon. And, my dear, tell me, has any change been thought of? what are you going to do?”
“We have sent for Charlie; that is all. What other change is there possible? I hope perhaps my father may take some comfort when Charlie comes home.”
“Now that is just what I said,” said Mrs. Murray, growing a little more cheerful on this argument. “Doctor, I told you they would send for Charlie. He should be home now with his bairns, to bring them up in their own country; and India’s a weary place for children. You can never be happy about them. I am looking for my Mary’s two eldest, poor things! It will break their mother’s heart to part with them; but what can she do? Oh, yes, my dear; it will be a great happiness to me; but I cannot expect you to take any interest in that, and you in such trouble. Miss Jean is coming to-morrow to pay you her visit, May. I will say nothing to her about Charles; she will like best to hear that from you herself.”
“It is quite the right thing to do,” said the Doctor; “and we may be thankful that your brother Charles has always been very steady, and a married man, and all that. He will be a great comfort to you all, and a help to his father about the estate. Your father has got a great shake, Miss Marjory, and I doubt if he will ever be as strong to go about as he has been. Charles’s arrival is the very best thing that could happen. Always a steady lad, and able to take his part in the management of the property. He will be a comfort to you all.”
It was on Marjory’s lips to say that she wanted no comfort, and that the substitution of one brotherfor another gave her, on the contrary, an additional pang; but she restrained herself, and acquiesced silently, while Mr. Charles answered,
“Oh, no doubt, no doubt. Charlie will be a comfort when he comes.”
And then Marjory was once more folded in Mrs. Murray’s kind arms, and the doctor, with concentrated woe in his face, laid his hand upon her shoulder, and exhorted her to be resigned, as he took his leave. As the door opened, Fleming’s voice was heard exhorting another visitor to enter.
“Come in, sir, come this way,” said Fleming.
And Fanshawe, who stood in the recess of the bow-window, watching the whole proceedings, saw a young man enter shyly and with reluctance, whose appearance somehow entirely changed the placid feelings with which he had watched the Minister and the Minister’s wife. The new-comer came up to Marjory with eager, though hesitating, steps; he took her hand and held it, bowing over it so deeply that the spectator asked himself, in scorn, whether the fellow meant to kiss it. He had kissed that same hand himself in respect and sympathy not very long before; but the presumption of the stranger struck him as something inexcusable.
The visitor was a slim young man, with large dark eyes, and that “interesting” look which women are said to admire, and which men regard with savage scorn. Fanshawe was not handsome himself; his eyes were of no particular colour, and he was more muscular than interesting. Therefore his scorn was intensified. Instinctive dislike and enmityfilled his mind, when he saw young Hepburn’s head bent so low over Marjory’s hand.
“I thought I might come to ask,” said Hepburn, hurriedly. “I did not hope to see you. I came in only because Fleming insisted, without any wish to thrust myself—Miss Heriot, you will be good and kind, as you always are. You got my note?”
She did not sit down, but received her visitor standing, which was a kind of satisfaction to the looker-on.
“Yes. I got your note. It is very kind, very friendly of you—”
“Oh, hush! don’t say so. Kind of me! But if you will make use of me—anyhow, Miss Heriot! only that I may feel I am doing something. Let me run errands, write letters—anything. What is the use of my life but for your service?” said the young man, in his emotion and excitement.
Fanshawe, fortunately, did not hear these last words.
“Thanks,” said Marjory, with a cold yet gentle graciousness. The word sounded to the one as if it had come out of the snows of the Arctic region; but to the other, the distant spectator, it sounded warm and sweet. “We do not require any help, Mr. Hepburn. All that we wished has been done. Everybody has been very kind. How can I thank you? We have felt the kindness of our friends to the bottom of our hearts.”
“How can you speak of kindness? There are some who would give anything in the world to take a single burden from you. You will think of me,then—as the greatest favour, Miss Heriot—if there is anything—anything you think me worthy to do? That is all. I will not say another word except that my whole heart is with you in your grief. I can think of nothing else.”
“Nay,” said Marjory, drawing back a step like a queen, as she gave him her hand again. “You are too kind to say so.”
“Confound these old friends!” Fanshawe said to himself, thinking this double hand-shaking a quite undue and unnecessary familiarity, while poor young Hepburn withdrew, feeling as if she had spoken to him from the top of a mountain—from some chill and impassable distance. “My own fault for intruding so soon,” he said to himself, sadly, as he went away.
Thus the brief interview made a totally different impression upon two persons present. Hepburn had not noticed Fanshawe, had scarcely seen, indeed, that there was any one in the room but Marjory herself.
“Is that Johnnie Hepburn?” said Uncle Charles, as he went away. “What a nice-looking young fellow the boy has grown.”
“He looks like a Johnnie,” said Fanshawe, with a laugh.
It was unpardonably impertinent, he felt, the next moment; but his feelings demanded some relief.
“He is very good and very kind,” said Marjory, majestically, casting a look upon him which avenged poor Johnnie. Fanshawe grew meek as a child ina moment, and begged pardon as humbly as Milly herself could have done.
“And now we can go to the old house,” he said, going after her with intense satisfaction, as she went to the door.
“Not now; I am too tired. I cannot do more to-day,” said Marjory; and he heard the sound of a low sob as she escaped, little Milly rushing after her.
“It is all that fellow’s fault,” was Fanshawe’s comment, as he went back to his bow-window, and sat down and looked out disconsolately upon the leaden sea and the white choking mist. What was it to him whose fault it was? But Marjory Heriot was the only thing he had to interest him, and he took a great interest in all that affected her—for the moment at least.