Marjory, I am sorry to say, thought nothing at all of the interest she had excited; she was not so much as conscious of it; and she did not even think of Fanshawe, who was rather an embarrassment than a comfort to the household. She had been sinking into a certain calm, close as she still was to the great misfortune which had befallen her family; but time travels very quickly at such moments, and it already seemed ages to her since she entered poor Tom’s sick-chamber, and since she saw him die. She had been quieted by the calm of the silent Sunday after the funeral; but her visitors had driven all her quiet away. When the Minister had bidden her to be resigned, she had felt a wild impatience fill her mind; she hastened to her own room, dismissing Milly, and then threw herself upon her sofa, and wept as a child weeps. It was sorrow, but it was not such sorrow as Marjory was capable of feeling. Her brother had been dear to her; but he was not all in all to her. Impatience, a painful sense of the narrowness of human sympathy, and the imperfection of human good sense, mingled, in this little outburst, with natural grief, and that painful pity with which, wherever no deep religious sense of gain comes in,the death of a young man cut off in his prime must be regarded.
Marjory’s mind was not one of those which are apt to speculate upon the possibilities of damnation; but on the other hand, it was impossible to think of poor Tom as an evangelical conqueror, a saint-like personage in robes of white and crown of glory. He could not have reached that height, poor fellow! and therefore the ache of pity with which his sister thought of his early severance from all he had cared for, was very sore and painful. The human comparison seemed to add an edge of sharper pain to grief. His companions lived and flourished—and he was gone. They had their easy mornings, their gay evenings, their sports and amusements, and enjoyed them all with light hearts. In the papers that very day, had been an announcement of the marriage of one of them—and Tom was dead!
Marjory’s heart contracted with a pang of pain, as though some gigantic hand had crushed it. She thought it was grief, but it was something more than simple grief. Under the sway of this feeling she went to the table upon which his desk had been placed, and seated herself once more before it. The last time she had done so—that time when she had ineffectually questioned Fanshawe—she had felt herself shrink from the painful task, and had not really made any investigation into poor Tom’s secrets. Now she opened the desk with her eyes full of tears for him, with that painful contraction at her heart.
There is nothing in the world so sad as thus to open some human creature’s most cherished repositories, when the poor soul is gone, and can guard his foolishness no more. How trivial half the things are! a fourth part of them, at least, thrown there in that light-hearted inadvertence which death makes to appear like a solemn intention, puzzling the survivors with its want of meaning. Why did he keep this or that? an unimportant invitation, a letter about nothing at all, an empty envelope, a memorandum about a race, a receipt for physic for a horse. What a curious mixture of awe and astonishment was in her as she gathered them together! They were good for nothing but the waste-basket; and yet the fact that Tom had treasured them gave the worthless scraps an interest. She cleared away a mass of these remains of his life. There is a little hill near Rome which is made, they say, of fragments of crockery, and such other valueless relics of an ended existence; but ah me! when one remembers what sacred spot lies there under the cypress, in the shadow of Testaccio, how solemn and sacred does that mound of classic rubbish become to us! Something of the same effect was wrought upon Marjory by the sight of poor Tom’s rubbish, now that death had made it mysterious. She tried hard to get some meaning out of it, and failing in that, put it aside in a pile, with a certainty that it must be her perceptions which were in fault. Was there nothing to be found but these miserable débris, that had so little signification? There were bills besides, and lettersabout bills; letters which Marjory knew would be very little welcome to her father. How was she to tell him of them? Tom, poor fellow, had become as a god, as an angel to his father, since his life ended; and to plunge him back again into the old atmosphere of debt and promises to pay—how miserable it would be! She made these too up into a parcel by themselves with a sense of humiliation. Was this all that was left of Tom? His bills; and those frivolous scraps that meant nothing—that had no human value, that threw no light upon his existence. Was it worth while for a man to have been born, to have lived and died, for nothing better than that? Marjory felt that even ill-doing would have been better than no doing at all; and grew scornful almost of her own fears. She had felt as if she were about to thrust herself into Tom’s secrets—and lo! Tom had no secrets at all.
These thoughts were in her mind, filling her with a kind of angry shame, when she picked up, out of a corner, a letter, badly folded and badly written; but put away, it was evident, with some care. It had no envelope or address. The paper was very finely glazed and gilt-edged; but it was folded awry, and the handwriting was quite unformed. “No doubt a letter from his groom,” Marjory said to herself, with a painful sense of the unsatisfactory character of Tom’s correspondences; but when she had read the first few lines, her countenance changed. She paused—she looked at the signature. A momentary look of haughty displeasure and disgust crossed her face, and she letthe letter drop, as if with the intention of tossing it from her; but on second thoughts she changed her mind. She lifted it once more gingerly, as if it were something which might stain the white fingers in which she held it, and with a deep and painful blush began again to read. I do not think there was anything in the letter to call that blush to Marjory’s cheek; but she had the same prejudices as other women, and was deeply susceptible to everything that felt like shame. The writing was not absolutely coarse—it was like the writing of a child, unformed and uncertain, written upon ruled lines, which had been partially rubbed out; but the sentiments were not those of a child. This was what, with a proud sense of humiliation, keen disgust and indignation, Marjory read—all her natural prejudices starting into warmest life.
“I cannot write to you in the way you tell me—I would think shame. Oh, Sir, you must not expect much from a poor lass that never has learned anything, till I tried to do it, to please you. There is nothing I would not do to please you. Ye’ve been very kind to me, Mr. Heriot, like a good man. And, eh! I hope I’ll make a good wife, if I could but learn quicker, no to be a shame to you. Sorry, sorry I am that I did not take more advantage of the schule as I might have done—for, oh! Mr. Heriot, them that say ‘your face is your fortune,’ say little that is pleasant to hear. When I think whiles that it’s but for my face ye fancied me; and that, maybe, if any accident happened—if I lost mycolour, or my teeth, or what not, ye would think of me nae mair! Oh, Sir, dinna be like that! Ifyouwere blind and cripplit, and pock-markit, like old John in the clachan, I would but think the more of you. And you that are a gentleman, Mr. Heriot, and know everything, you should not be less than poor me; for although I am little to set store by, and no a scholar, nor instructed, I’m better than my face, which is just a bit of painted flesh, as the Minister says. If I thought you cared for me, and no justit—oh, but I would be happy! I have a great deal to say, but I cannot tell how to say it. I am feared for making you think me more ignorant than ever. My heart’s full, full; but I think shame to say all that’s in it; you know, Sir, better than I can tell you. When will you come back? oh! when will ye come back? I’m weary of wishing and wishing. My sister Agnes will not go to her place, thinking ye might not like it. John Ogilvy, my first cousin, the son of Uncle John, that is the smith, is away to the College to learn to be a Minister. I do not mind anything else you would like to hear; but that I’m wearying, wearying sore, and aye, the longer the time is, the mair wearying to see my” (here there were a great many erasures—one word written over another till it was impossible to make out what they had been—until it finished in the clearly written words) “my Mr. Heriot again.“Your ain and your very ain, oh dear, dear Sir,“Isabell.”
“I cannot write to you in the way you tell me—I would think shame. Oh, Sir, you must not expect much from a poor lass that never has learned anything, till I tried to do it, to please you. There is nothing I would not do to please you. Ye’ve been very kind to me, Mr. Heriot, like a good man. And, eh! I hope I’ll make a good wife, if I could but learn quicker, no to be a shame to you. Sorry, sorry I am that I did not take more advantage of the schule as I might have done—for, oh! Mr. Heriot, them that say ‘your face is your fortune,’ say little that is pleasant to hear. When I think whiles that it’s but for my face ye fancied me; and that, maybe, if any accident happened—if I lost mycolour, or my teeth, or what not, ye would think of me nae mair! Oh, Sir, dinna be like that! Ifyouwere blind and cripplit, and pock-markit, like old John in the clachan, I would but think the more of you. And you that are a gentleman, Mr. Heriot, and know everything, you should not be less than poor me; for although I am little to set store by, and no a scholar, nor instructed, I’m better than my face, which is just a bit of painted flesh, as the Minister says. If I thought you cared for me, and no justit—oh, but I would be happy! I have a great deal to say, but I cannot tell how to say it. I am feared for making you think me more ignorant than ever. My heart’s full, full; but I think shame to say all that’s in it; you know, Sir, better than I can tell you. When will you come back? oh! when will ye come back? I’m weary of wishing and wishing. My sister Agnes will not go to her place, thinking ye might not like it. John Ogilvy, my first cousin, the son of Uncle John, that is the smith, is away to the College to learn to be a Minister. I do not mind anything else you would like to hear; but that I’m wearying, wearying sore, and aye, the longer the time is, the mair wearying to see my” (here there were a great many erasures—one word written over another till it was impossible to make out what they had been—until it finished in the clearly written words) “my Mr. Heriot again.
“Your ain and your very ain, oh dear, dear Sir,
“Isabell.”
Marjory read this innocent and natural letter with a buzzing of excited pulses in her ears, and a blaze of hot colour in her face. The mere fact that it was a letter from a woman moved her (naturally) as no other kind of secret could have done. Indeed what other kind of secret would have been worth considering in comparison? She drew a long breath when she had read it. Her face was scarlet, as if the shame (if shame there was) had been her own. And it was hardly possible for her, at least for the first moment, to realise that there might be no shame in it. To have felt so, would have been such a triumph over prejudice and over natural feeling as Marjory was not equal to. The bad writing, the bad spelling, the peasant dialect, struck her more strongly than the sentiments did. They seemed to imply vice—vice which to a young and pure-minded woman is the same as crime—nay, is the worst kind of crime. There was then, after all, a mystery in Tom’s life, and here it was; a vulgar degrading mystery—the kind of horror which people say is so common in the lives of young men, a suggestion which Marjory loathed as every woman ought to loath it. It filled her with disgust of Tom and of all men.
She threw the paper out of her hand with a cry of indignant wrath, and then slowly, reluctantly, took it up again, unable to resist the fascination. The second time a different impression was made upon her mind. “I’ll make a good wife”—what did that mean? Marjory pondered over it with excitement, which was not calmed down by thisnew discovery. Had he really meant—was it possible he could have intended to make the writer of this letter his wife? His sister thrilled all over with an indignant movement of horror, Yes, I do not know how to excuse it—but Marjory, who had been blazing hot with shame at the idea of a disreputable connection on her brother’s part, felt a shiver of horror go over her at the thought that there might be no shame in it, that his mind might be honourable and his love pure, that he might have intended this woman, this peasant, this Isabell, to be her sister and his wife. Her eyes fixed on those words with a painful stare. “Good heavens, his wife!” and under her breath, in her throat, Marjory murmured, “Thank God!” Thank God for what? that Tom was dead? that he had not lived to carry that intention out? was this what she meant? She stopped short in absolute dismay, when her reason perceived to what length instinct and impulse had carried her.
She hid her burning face in her hands. She fell a-weeping; tears more poignant and real than any she had yet shed for Tom. Her mind turned against itself, lost in that misery of moral confusion which makes the problem of life so doubly bitter. She dared not say to herself that the least honourable explanation was the least terrible; but her thoughts went on in spite of her, against her will, shaping before her a picture of what might have been. This peasant woman in Pitcomlie, mistress of everything, the successor of all the Heriot ladies, filling her own mother’s place, Marjory’s sister,Milly’s guardian placed on the same level with them, almost superior to them—good heavens! She disowned the thoughts that thus struggled in her. She tried to drive them from her mind, to ignore them, to introduce other feelings in their place, and cried, and hid her face and could not. God had stepped in and preserved the house from this degradation; He had saved them perhaps at the last moment. And things being as they were, and poor Tom doomed anyhow, God be thanked, might not she say it? deep down where nobody could hear, in the depths of her heart.
Marjory was breathless after this battle with her thoughts; she dragged herself out of it she scarcely knew how, frightened to think what she had been thinking, scared as a man is who has travelled in the dark, when morning shows him the precipices he has passed—or like a drowning man who has been struggling with the angry waves, she crept forth upon dry land, and lay there exhausted, trying not to think, hearing the great searollers break beneath, too low to harm her. It seemed to her that she had passed through a terrible conflict, and it made her heart sick to think that this perhaps was the secret which Tom had intended to tell her. Perhaps he had meant to commend the girl to her care, to claim her affection and sympathy; and for the moment she felt fiercely glad that he had not done so, that she was bound by no sort of visible or invisible tie to this unknown Isabell. Yes, she was glad he had not lived to tell that secret, glad he had been stopped from disgracing the family. It hardly seemed to her, for the moment, that the exemption of the house from so great a shame and injury by Tom’s death, was too great a thing to have been done by Providence for the sake of the Heriots. She seemed no longer sorry, no longer a mourner, but glad and comforted to think that God had stepped in and stopped it, perhaps, at the last moment when there was no time to lose.
But it was with an agitated heart, and a countenance out of which she could not altogether banish her excitement, that she went down stairs, when old Fleming rang that inevitable bell for dinner. Dinner! with what weary disgust Marjory thought of it, and of the compulsory meeting with all the party, the solemn sitting down to table, the politenesses to Mr. Fanshawe, the efforts she would have to make to interpose herself between her father’s irritable grief and her uncle Charles’s amiable but sometimes untimely wisdom. She changed one black gown for another rapidly, and smoothed her brown hair, which (strangely she felt) kept its bright colour notwithstanding her mourning. What a farce, she thought to herself, (being bitter and sore) that mourning was? It had just as many troublesome accessories as the gayest dress, nay, almost more; for the most heart-broken of women in the deepest of affliction has got to take care of her crape, that dear and odious addition to all mourning garments. From this it is not to be supposed that Marjory was impatient of her crape. She would not have cheated poor Tom out of asingle fold, she would have enveloped herself in it from head to foot rather than fail in any prejudice of respect. But her heart was sore and her mind excited. Nothing seemed to her to be true. Tom had deceived her, leading her to suppose that some matter worthy of her ears was to be revealed to her; and lo! it was but this vulgar, poor, conventional, common sort of secret; and even she herself was a deceiver, for did she not pretend to mourn for Tom even now, when she had begun to feel that perhaps his death was expedient? All in the house gave themselves out to be mourning for poor Tom; yet Uncle Charles had recovered his interest in everything that was going on, and little Milly in the afternoon had laughed—Mr. Fanshawe, who was Tom’s friend, and ought to have been more faithful to the poor fellow’s memory, having inveigled the child into it. Thus the party would meet, she said to herself, all longing to escape from this gloom, and talk and think like others, but dared not for Falsehood’s sake; and she herself, the falsest of all, even saw good in the calamity, and gave thanks for it. What treachery, what untruthfulness was in all this! The only one who was utterly true in his grief, was the one who would have most chiefly suffered by Tom’s further life if he had carried his fancy out—the heartbroken father to whom Marjory, to-morrow, no later, would have to carry Tom’s bills, the bills about which, alas! poor Tom had not told the truth. What a confused tangle of falsehood, and pain, and unreality it was!
And Mr. Fanshawe spent a most dreary evening. Marjory had receded, he thought, from all her incipient civilities. She paid scarcely any attention to him, and evaded his skilful reference to the old house, and the visit to it which was to be made to-morrow. If to-morrow was not better than to-day, he felt that he must be driven from Pitcomlie. He could not bear it any longer; and yet there were certain fascinations which held him against his will, even in the midst of this monotony of woe.
WhenMarjory went upstairs for the night, she made a strenuous endeavour to get Tom’s papers in order for her father, and to ignore the one paper which had opened a door, as it were, in her brother’s life, and of which nobody knew but herself. She went on working till long past midnight, always with a consciousness of that letter in the corner, which was like the presence of some one in the room with her, of which she was not supposed to be aware. She tried to forget it, but she could not forget. While she collected the bills and tied them together, her mind went on with a perpetual stream of questions—Who was this girl? Where had Tom met her? Had she really hoped to be Mrs. Heriot of Pitcomlie? and a hundred other mental inquiries to which, of course, there could come no answer. In her mind, she went over all the countryside, searching into every cottage in order to find out, if possible, who “Isabell” was. It is a common name enough in Fife—a score of Isabells presented themselves to her fancy, but she could not realize any one of them as the writer of that letter. And Tom had spent but little time at home. If it had not been so Scotch even, Marjory’s curiosity would have been less excited; but it seemed certain that she must know who it was who wrote in that familiardialect. While her eye noted the dates of those very different documents which she was collecting—while she made out her list of them, and slowly added up the figures—though that was a mental process somewhat difficult, and not very rapid—her whole soul was absorbed in this other current of thought. She was even capable of feeling grieved and miserable about the effect the bills would have upon her father, while in imagination she was passing from door to door, from cottage to cottage, searching for this Isabell. Was she wondering, perhaps, what had become of her lover, poor foolish thing! perhaps after all, Marjory allowed, with difficulty, she might be truly fond of him, might love him even, after her fashion—might be suffering such tortures as she was capable of, wondering at his silence, wearying—was not that the word in the letter? wearying, wearying! for him who was to come no more. Was Tom’s sister, even for a moment, half sorry for the girl? If she was, Marjory scorned the sentiment as a weakness of nature. Then, in its musing, her mind returned to its first view of the matter. Was it certain, after all, that Tom had so far forgotten himself and his family as to woo Isabell for his wife, as the letter implied? might not this be a mere pretence. It seemed to Marjory that her brother was more likely to have sinned vulgarly by that system of false promises which women suppose men to make so lightly, than that he should have seriously intended to introduce such a mistress to the old house. Which would be worst? There could not be a purer-minded womanthan she who pondered, with an aching heart and burning cheeks, this odious question. Was it possible there could be a question on the matter? Marjory hated herself for hesitating—yet there was something to be said on both sides;—that he should have meant well and honourably would be better for Tom—but for the race, the house—
The ingenuous reader will be disgusted with Marjory, as Marjory was with herself; but notwithstanding, the fact remains which we are obliged to record. She got rid of the dilemma with an impatient sigh, disowning it, refusing to answer her own question; and plunged into her additions, which were not much less painful. Oh! to carry that woeful list to Tom’s father! to be obliged to set in order the record of poor Tom’s prevarications (what a hard wordliesis—yet sometimes the right one) and extravagances, and the unhappy meanness which must always mingle with extravagance—how it made her heart ache! She sat through half the night preparing that miserable list, and thinking of the other matter which was equally miserable in whatever light it was contemplated. It was two o’clock in the morning, when with her head and her heart alike throbbing with pain, she rose and went to her window and looked out upon the night. It was very dark; she could hear the monotonous rising and falling of the sea, sometimes like a long drawn sob, sometimes sharp like a cry, as it beat and splashed upon the rocks. “The moaning of the homeless sea.” How many people listening to it all over the world put their own weariness, andsadness, and discouragement into that great and ceaseless voice! Between the black sky and the black water, both cheerless and dismal, Marjory felt as if she stood alone, with no one to help her. The world was asleep—all human sympathy was closed up in unconsciousness. Was that other poor soul, that foolish creature, that Isabell, waking somewhere too, and wondering, wearying in her ignorance? Just then a revolving light, far off, sent a sudden steady, yet momentary, flash across the dark water. It was as well known to her as her own name—yet somehow at that moment it was unexpected, and flashed across the waves to her like a word of consolation. At the same moment, Marjory saw what she had not seen before, a figure standing out upon the cliff, turned with its back to the sea as if gazing up at the house. It seemed to her, for the moment, like a ghostly visitor, and gave her a little thrill of terror. Then she turned away with a nervous laugh. The red sparkle of the cigar, and something in the outline of the figure, revealed Fanshawe to her. She dropped her blind, and went in with a little comfort—a sense of society and security; probably had it been the old gardener, she would have felt that sensation of comfort just as warmly. But no; had it been the gardener, Marjory would have wanted, in the first place, to know what he did there; with Mr. Fanshawe, she asked no questions. It was as if some one had held out a friendly hand to her through the chilliness and dullness that wrapped the world.
It may seem to many people very strange thatMarjory should have had so disagreeable a task to do, and not her father, or uncle, or even their solicitor. I cannot explain it further than by saying that this was the custom among the Hay-Heriots. It is so in some houses; the women of some families, as I believe I have already said, are always thrust forward to receive any domestic blow, and transmit it, blunted by its first penetration into the softness of their bosoms. Marjory saw nothing remarkable in this, nor did she even complain of it. Had her mother been living, they would both have received the thrust and taken the edge off, before it reached the father; but as it was, the eldest daughter of the house, heiress of its traditions if of little else, took up her inheritance without shrinking. Had it been out-of-door business, the solicitor would have been employed no doubt; but so far as domestic troubles went the wives and daughters at Pitcomlie were the attorneys of the head of the house and bore the brunt first, preparing the burden for him that he might put it on in the easiest way.
“Have you sorted the papers?” Mr. Heriot asked in his harsh voice next morning at breakfast. He never looked at any one now till he had been irritated into attention. His voice had altogether changed. There was a line of redness and heat under his eyes, leaving the rest of his face pallid though still brown—and this redness seemed to be reflected in the eyes themselves, which were bloodshot and heavy. The droop of his head, the inward look he had, the air of absorption, the passionate inclination to find fault when he spoke atall, altered his aspect so entirely that his friends of six months ago would scarcely have known the man. He never looked even at his daughters. He spoke to Marjory with his eyes fixed upon his coffee, which he swallowed in great gulps. Mr. Charles had insisted upon talking to him of the visits they had received the day before, which perhaps had something to do with the suppressed passion which showed itself in his tone.
“Not quite,” said Marjory, faltering, “nearly, papa—perhaps to-morrow—”
“To-morrow!” he said, “who can say anything about to-morrow? are you or I so sure of seeing it that we should put off our duty? You are a silly thing like the rest. What is to hinder you to give a day to your work like the most part of your fellow-creatures? They go out to their day’s darg, be it storm or fine, with a sore heart or a light one. But the like of you must be kept from every fashious thing.”
“I submit it to you, Thomas, whether that’s quite fair upon Marjory,” said Mr. Charles, “we’re all in sore trouble—sore trouble, and you worst of all, poor man! but as the Minister says—”
“Confound the Minister!” said Mr. Heriot, “am I to be insulted in my own house by an auld fool, with his cut and dry phrases? I know my duty as well as he does. Marjory, go to your work, and see you do it, and let me have the papers, not later than to-night.”
“I shall be ready,” said Marjory softly, as her father left the table. She was ready then, to tellthe truth; it was but her reluctance to give him another blow that held her back. She was sorry for him to the bottom of her heart; had she been rich enough to satisfy those claims without carrying them to him, her path would have been easy enough. But she was poor—the eldest daughter, the trusted of everybody, was the only person in the house who had nothing. Her mother had been poor, so that Marjory had no fortune by that side; and Mr. Heriot’s sons had been expensive and cost him a great deal of money. Marjory would have something when he died, but so long as he lived she had her small allowance, and nothing more. Little Milly was in a much better position; she would have an independent fortune before she had nearly attained Marjory’s age. But Marjory in her mature womanhood, twenty-five, had nothing but fifty pounds a year for her dress; sometimes she felt it was hard, and this was one of these times. It was by way of escaping from herself that she turned to Fanshawe, who was a very close though silent observer of all that went on. She raised her eyes to him, and addressed him frankly with a look of confidence and friendliness which she had never shown to him before.
“You were very late last night,” she said, “I saw you upon the cliff.”
“Then that was your window,” he said, surprised into an admission, “I thought so—I had been walking up and down watching it. It looked like the protecting—light of the house.”
He had been on the eve of saying “angel,” but stopped in time.
“Not much of a protection,” said Marjory, still frank as she had never been before, “it was you who gave me that feeling. I had been working late and I was tired, and the very sight of you was friendly—you and the lighthouse together. You both shone out at the same time; though by the way, now I think of it, it was much too late for you to be out.”
“How did you know it was Mr. Fanshawe?” said Mr. Charles, “in the darktous les chats sont gris; and it was very dark last night.”
“I knew him by his cigar,” said Marjory with a little laugh; not that she had any inclination to laugh, but that she had turned her back with a wild resolution upon the subjects that occupied her, determined at least for the moment to get rid of them. “It was improper, and he ought not to have been there smoking at two o’clock in the morning; but the sight of some one was a comfort to me.”
“That is a strange way of convincing me of impropriety,” said Fanshawe, delighted, “of course I shall go on doing it all the days of my life. The scene was very wild, as wild as any I ever saw. How black the Firth was, and the sky, and how the surf boiled upon the rocks! It looked like Norway or Canada, rather than this sober well-to-do Fife.”
“That is all climate, nothing but climate,” said Mr. Charles, “the thermometer has varied fifteendegrees since Sunday—fifteen degrees! it ‘is just astonishing. Of course anyone could see with half an eye that Sunday was too fine to last. Are you going to work, Marjory, my dear, as your father said?”
“I am going out first for a breath of air,” she answered. She was almost gay in her eagerness to escape from herself, and to stave off the painful moment which was coming. She took Milly’s hand and ran round to the drawing-room where the windows opened upon the cliff. She went out into the morning sunshine, which fell full upon her uncovered head; the wind blew her hair about, waking in it gleams of richer colour which the sun found out. Nobody knew that it was a kind of desperation which roused Marjory. Her uncle looked at her puzzled and half disapproving, and shook his head. He thought it was a doubtful example she was setting before the servants, so soon after—and Fleming, who looked on very seriously, was of that opinion too.
As for Fanshawe he followed her with delight. “Now is the time for the old house,” he said, as he went after the two pretty figures, the young woman and the child, to the edge of the rocks. The sea was blue and the morning bright, the whole world renovated by the new day; and mourning cannot last for ever any more than night. Fanshawe felt disposed to push old Fleming over the rocks when he came brushing past with evident satisfaction to interrupt this moment of ease, with a trayful of letters. But who is there in this nineteenth centurybold enough to obstruct the passage of the post? He had to stand humbly by, and accept his own share, which Fleming handed to him, he thought with a certain triumph, and which consisted of three bills, a note from a livery-stable keeper informing him that his only horse had met with an accident, and an invitation to join a party who were setting out from Cowes on a yachting expedition that day. He got through this satisfactory and pleasant correspondence at a rapid rate, and then he sauntered to the edge of the cliff to wait till Marjory had satisfied herself with her letters. No doubt this would be a much longer process—no doubt she had a hundred dearest friends, who wrote about a thousand ridiculous nothings, and filled up her time and distracted her attention. She had seated herself on the mossy stone steps of the old sun-dial, which stood on that velvet green, undecorated lawn. She had her back turned to him, so that he could look at her at his ease. He thought what a pretty picture it would make; the grey house behind her, with trees appearing beyond that on the land side, and here nothing but the green, green turf, without any flowers, ending in the brown rock of the cliff which descended sheer down, a dangerous precipice to the sea. Milly’s golden hair, all blown about, was the central point in the picture; while Marjory with her head drooped over her letters sat on the steps of the old dial, with the wind lightly fluttering her black ribbons, and the golden lights in her brown hair shining out in the sun.
The next moment she uttered a low cry, throwing up her hands. Fanshawe rushed forward. Mr. Charles had gone away to his rooms; Milly had strayed back into the drawing-room; he and she were alone; he rushed up to her—
“Are you ill? What has happened, Miss Heriot?”
“I do not think I am ill. I do not think I can be dreaming. I am sick with fright,” cried Marjory. “Oh, Mr. Fanshawe, for God’s sake read that, and tell me what you think!”
He took the letter out of her hand. An Indian letter, on thin paper, written with faint ink. For the moment he could not make out the meaning of her terror. This is what he read:—
“Dear Marjory,“You will be surprised to learn that we are on our way home, though I am sure I am anything but able to travel, nor the poor baby neither, who is a very wee, feeble thing, and not at all well suited with an Ayah. The reason is, Charlie has had the fever again. He would not let me tell you, but I may now, as he is too ill to know what I am writing. This is the third attack, and the doctor at the station, who is a very odd sort of man, coddling up all the men, and never caring for the ladies, has taken a fright; and, what is worse, has given Charlie a fright—and applied for furlough, without even consulting me, though we cannot afford it, and your father has always so opposed his coming home. You need not think it is my fault, for I am no more fit to travel than tofly, and probably will die on the way, and never trouble you. And if both of us die, as seems more than likely, I hope you will be kind to the children, or at least to Tommy, for baby, I feel, will go with me, if I go. I am sure if the doctor would but leave poor Charlie quiet he would get better, as he has done before; but he has to be lifted into a litter, and carried all the way to Calcutta; and how I am to be expected to look after everything—him, and the luggage, and the children—is more than I know. What with baby’s nurse not agreeing with him, and Charlie’s being so ill, and not a soul to give me any assistance, I get no rest night nor day; and when I recollect that it is only six weeks since I was confined, I cannot think how anybody has the heart to ask me to do it. However, the doctor has to be obeyed, though I hate him, and we have got leave, and the agents are to lend us the money (for we never have a penny). You need not write, for we hope to catch the steamer at Calcutta, and should be in England in the end of April. But don’t be surprised if Tommy comes alone; for even if Charlie gets a little better, I do not think I can bear the journey, and baby is sure to go along with me. Good-bye; if we reach England alive, I will send you word from Southampton; but I don’t expect it, for how we are ever to get through the journey—I as weak as water, and my poor baby only six weeks old, and Charlie in a litter—is more than I can say.“Your affectionate sister,“Matilda.“P.S.—Be kind to Tommy, if he is the only one that reaches home.”
“Dear Marjory,
“You will be surprised to learn that we are on our way home, though I am sure I am anything but able to travel, nor the poor baby neither, who is a very wee, feeble thing, and not at all well suited with an Ayah. The reason is, Charlie has had the fever again. He would not let me tell you, but I may now, as he is too ill to know what I am writing. This is the third attack, and the doctor at the station, who is a very odd sort of man, coddling up all the men, and never caring for the ladies, has taken a fright; and, what is worse, has given Charlie a fright—and applied for furlough, without even consulting me, though we cannot afford it, and your father has always so opposed his coming home. You need not think it is my fault, for I am no more fit to travel than tofly, and probably will die on the way, and never trouble you. And if both of us die, as seems more than likely, I hope you will be kind to the children, or at least to Tommy, for baby, I feel, will go with me, if I go. I am sure if the doctor would but leave poor Charlie quiet he would get better, as he has done before; but he has to be lifted into a litter, and carried all the way to Calcutta; and how I am to be expected to look after everything—him, and the luggage, and the children—is more than I know. What with baby’s nurse not agreeing with him, and Charlie’s being so ill, and not a soul to give me any assistance, I get no rest night nor day; and when I recollect that it is only six weeks since I was confined, I cannot think how anybody has the heart to ask me to do it. However, the doctor has to be obeyed, though I hate him, and we have got leave, and the agents are to lend us the money (for we never have a penny). You need not write, for we hope to catch the steamer at Calcutta, and should be in England in the end of April. But don’t be surprised if Tommy comes alone; for even if Charlie gets a little better, I do not think I can bear the journey, and baby is sure to go along with me. Good-bye; if we reach England alive, I will send you word from Southampton; but I don’t expect it, for how we are ever to get through the journey—I as weak as water, and my poor baby only six weeks old, and Charlie in a litter—is more than I can say.
“Your affectionate sister,“Matilda.
“P.S.—Be kind to Tommy, if he is the only one that reaches home.”
“What do you think?” cried Marjory, raising her face to him.
She had forgotten it was Fanshawe. He was the first human creature at hand—the only one to whom she could turn in her distress.
“It is a silly letter; making the worst of everything. It is not, I am sure it cannot be, so bad as she says.”
“She does not make the worst of Charlie’s illness,” said Marjory. “Oh, my poor Charlie! She says next to nothing about him. It is notherI am thinking of. My brother—my poor brother, must be dying! Oh God! and what shall we do?”
“She does not say so,” said Fanshawe, kneeling down beside her. “Dear Miss Heriot, don’t be too easily alarmed. You are weak with the sorrow you have had already. You think everything must end badly—”
“I know it,” she said, with a moan; “I know it! We have had nothing happen to us for so long—so long. And it is all coming together now!”
Theletter of Mrs. Charles aroused a great consternation in the house of Pitcomlie; they did not venture to tell Mr. Heriot of it. Fanshawe went and called Mr. Charles out of his room in the tower, and they all gathered in the bow-window in the drawing-room, and read it sentence by sentence, and talked it over. Marjory was the only one who took no comfort by this meeting. Mr. Charles was very much cast down for the first moment, but it did not last. “She’s a very silly woman, a very silly woman,” he said over and over. “I’m not meaning to vex you, May; but nothing except a woman could be so silly and so heartless; she is thinking only of herself. However, on the other hand, if Charlie had been so bad as you think, she would have been frightened. There’s something in a book I once read about having that fever thrice; the third time is the—God bless me! I cannot remember what my book said.”
The fact was, Mr. Charles remembered only too well, and was appalled; he was struck dumb for the moment in his voluble consolations. When he spoke again, he was a great deal less assured in his tone. “Depend upon it,” he said, “she is making the worst of everything. I suppose it is her way. She’s evidently a silly woman, a very silly woman,and I would say a very selfish one. But she would not run on like that about herself and the baby, if Charlie was as ill as you think.”
“Charlie might be very ill, and she might not know it,” said Marjory, “they might not tell her—they might think it would be too much for her in her circumstances. Her baby not six weeks old, and her husband coming home to—”
“To get better, my dear,” said Uncle Charles cheerily. “You may be sure to get better. He is young, and has everything in his favour. The very sea-breezes would stir him up. I do not think I would take any notice, my love, to your father. It would only worry him. It will be time enough when you get word from Southampton; and how that will cheer him! Poor Thomas—poor man! I begin to think now that there’s some hope for your father, May.”
“But what will there be if Charlie—”
“Toots, nonsense, Charlie! Charlie will come home quite well, you’ll see,” said Mr. Charles. “But as for you, you’re looking like a ghost. I’ll go and order the horses, and we’ll take Mr. Fanshawe out and show him the country. We are all dying for a breath of air.”
“I could not go, I cannot go,” said Marjory. “Mr. Fanshawe will forgive me, that I cannot think of anything but one thing. Oh, Uncle Charles! have we done anything to bring such misery on the house?”
“My dear,” said Mr. Charles, “the rain and the sun come on the just and on the unjust, as theScriptures say. We are not justified in forming any rash judgment on ourselves.”
“And we have been happy so long!” said Marjory with tears. It seemed a kind of reason for all the misery that was coming now.
“Happy, humph! I would not say—there is many a thing that looks like happiness when you are in great trouble, that was little to brag of when it was here. But in the meantime, I’m going back to my papers,” said Mr. Charles, “Mr. Fanshawe, my man, come you with me, you’ll perhaps find something to divert you. She’s better left to herself—far better left to herself,” he added in an undertone. “Women-folk are not like us, she’ll take a cry and she’ll be better. To be sure,” said Mr. Charles, as he led the way to his tower, looking back upon his reluctant follower, “there’s ill men and good men in all the degrees; but I cannot think of a difference so great among us as between that girl, my niece, May, and the like of the selfish creature that wrote that letter. Not a word, not a thought of poor Charlie, as fine a lad as ever stepped—but all her bit miserable bantling of a baby, and her weary self.”
“I suppose, Sir, when a woman has a child she thinks of nothing else,” said Fanshawe, “or so at least people say.”
“Then the Lord preserve my niece, May, from ever having children!” said Mr. Charles, striding up the steps of his tower with his long legs, and with hot but holy indignation in his tone. Luckily the echoing of the spiral staircase drowned thelaugh with which his companion listened. Fanshawe laughed only from his lips, for to tell the truth the suggestion annoyed him. He seemed immediately to see Marjory with a child in her arms, lavishing fondness upon it, while some idiot of a husband looked complacently on. Sometimes men love to weave such associations about women, sometimes on the contrary they are revolted by the notion; and the latter was Fanshawe’s case. He had not gone so far as even to dream of the possibility of marrying Marjory, or anyone else himself—and of course she would marry, some fool, some Johnnie something or other who never could, never would satisfy that woman’s mind. She would do it out of mere kindness, to please him, or to please somebody else, some old grandmother or uncle, or ancient bore of one kind or another, and drop into a mere child-producing, baby-worshipping dowdy; she would be compelled to take to babies, the husband being a fool and unworthy of her. Fanshawe listened to Mr. Charles’s lecture on the history of the Fife families with languor after this, making now and then an impertinent observation which startled the sage.
He asked “What did it matter?” when his companion enlarged upon that doubtful point in the pedigree of the Morrisons, where it was rumoured, a captain from the whale-fishing had come and married the heiress and injured the blood. “Matter!” said Mr. Charles with true indignation, “it matters just this, Sir, that the auld house of the Morrisons deriving from Sir Adam of that name, that wasdrowned in the ship that brought over the Maid of Norway, would be turned into mere nobodies—nobodies, Sir; with a harpoon and a fishing-net for their cognizance—”
“But even a harpoon and a fishing-net, after a century—” Fanshawe began.
“Century, Sir; what’s about a century?” said Mr. Charles.
But Fanshawe did not carry on the quarrel. He was too much occupied in considering the original question with which he had started, and how confoundedly Johnnie something or other would crow over the rest of mankind if such a woman was so silly as to marry him—a question embodying, as he felt, more human interest than any difficulty that could arise in regard to the captain of the whaling-ship.
Marjory did not do as her uncle prophesied. This last piece of news had dried up all tears from her eyes. She wandered about the upper part of the house, now pausing in that room where Fanshawe had been once called to her, and which still bore the name of “the boys’ room,” and now returning to her own. She even took a napkin and dusted carefully poor Charlie’s share of the books, and his golfing-clubs, and some small statuettes belonging to him; she put some flowers in a little vase under his portrait, and then withdrew them quickly, and threw them out of her window, some chance thought of resemblance to the decking of a grave having struck her fancy. She was sick andrestless, unable to keep still, longing for news—further news—fearing to allow herself to think.
After some time, when she had made up the packet of Tom’s papers for her father, she took the letter which had so much disturbed her yesterday from the desk, and placed it in a little letter-case with the one she had received that day. Why she did this she could not have explained. She went wandering in her listlessness and suspense all over the house, finding here and there some trifle to rectify, which gave her a momentary occupation, and, what was more wonderful, finding at every turn some reminiscence of her brother Charlie, which a few hours ago she would not have noted. He had been out of the house for many years, and never till to-day had she been aware how much there was of him still in the old home, which somehow seemed to Marjory to-day like a mother preserving traces of all her children. An old fishing-rod of his hung in the hall; a bird which he had shot, and which for some boyish fancy had been stuffed and preserved, stood looking at her with its little beady eyes from the corner of the staircase. She had forgotten all about it till to-day.
At last Marjory, in the sickness of her heart, went to the old Tower, to her uncle’s room. There she could talk a little at least, which might be a relief. Mr. Fanshawe had long before left that refuge of learning and leisure, and Mr. Charles, who was compiling a family history, sat among his papers with his spectacles on his nose, collecting facts and arranging pedigrees, as calmly as thoughthere were no present anxieties to disturb his mind, or future to thrill it into terror.
“Well, May, my dear!” he said, cheerily, looking up at her over the top of his spectacles; and then relapsed into his work. It is impossible to estimate the advantage which that work was to Mr. Charles Hay-Heriot. It kept him occupied, it kept him happy, it gave him “a duty” which he was bent on performing and a “responsibility” which he was proud to feel. He would search for days together to prove the accuracy of a date—happy days, during which he felt himself as important as Herodotus. Friends all over the country would stop him when they met, and would write him letters when they were apart, to ask how “his work” was progressing. He had come now to a very important part of that work. He had collected all the materials for his fifth chapter, which began the Reformation period, and he had now begun the work of composition, putting these materials together, which was a very interesting and solemn operation. He had not said anything about thisOpusto Fanshawe the first time he had invited him to his room; but to-day, in the confidence of increasing friendship, he had told him, and the little flutter of pleasurable importance with which he had taken the stranger into his confidence hung about him still.
“Well, May, my dear,” he said, after a long pause, “you have come to see how I am getting on?”
“I am looking at you, Uncle Charles,” said Marjory, dreamily. How far off he seemed fromher in that placid, gentle old age, with the occupation that pleased him as its games please a child! Could his blood boil any more, or his heart throb any more as hers was throbbing? She sighed unconsciously as she spoke. It seemed to her that Fanshawe, who was a stranger, yet who was in full tide of life, and knew what it meant to be cast about by varying tumults of feeling, would understand her better than her calm old uncle—“though he was a stranger,” Marjory, in her unconsciousness, said to herself.
“Well, my dear, I hope it’s no uninstructive,” said Mr. Charles, with a gentle laugh. “I do not set up for genius; but so far as work goes—honest work—”
There was a pause again, but that was not an unusual circumstance. Marjory was a frequent visitor in the tower, and sometimes the two, who were fond of each other, would sit together for hours pursuing their own occupations, with a pleasant sense of companionship but without any talk. His niece’s presence did not disturb the old man; he went on quite peacefully, taking it for granted that she, too, was occupied in her way. Nor did he lay down his pen, or look up at her face until she broke the silence by the sudden question,
“Now you have had time to consider it, what do you think about Charlie, Uncle Charles?”
“Toots, my dear!” said Uncle Charles. He put down his pen, as we have said, and stretched his hand to her across the table. “You are getting silly—like other women, my bonnie May.”
“But what do youthink, Uncle Charles?”
“I can think no more than I did before, for I have no more information,” said Mr. Charles, pushing back his chair, and crossing his long legs; “and thinking will do no good—no good, my dear, if we were to think till we died of it. You just make yourself unhappy indulging anxiety. We must wait till we hear.”
“But what do you think of the letter, Uncle Charles?”
“The letter—oh, that’s something tangible. It’s a very heartless letter, a very silly letter; but you heard beforehand that she was a silly thing. So far as I can see, there is very little in it about Charlie; and as for her weakness and her baby’s, that’s not so very important. No fear of them; and as for you and me, May, whatever happened to Mrs. Charles, we could get overthat.”
“I wish her no harm,” said Marjory hastily.
“Certainly, no harm,” said Mr. Charles; “but oh, my dear, what a woman to be mistress of Pitcomlie! what a creature to come after my mother! and your mother, May—though she, poor thing, reigned but a short time in the old house. This one will be a new kind of lady among the Heriots. We’ve been fortunate in our wives, as I’ve often told you. I am just giving a description of how Leddy Pitcomlie, under the Regent Mary of Guise, held the old house against the French. She was one of the first converts of the Reformation. We were terrible Whigs in those days; she was a daughter of—”
“Yes,” said Marjory vaguely. “That is something new to think of—Matilda in Pitcomlie. Uncle, we never knew—you never heard—that Pitcomlie might have had another kind of mistress?”
Mr. Charles raised himself with eager interest. This was entirely in his way, and moved his curiosity to the utmost.
“Another kind of mistress? There was your stepmother, of course—a nice kind of creature; but she did not live. A wife that does not live is a misfortunate thing in a family; it deranges the records, and takes away the unity; but is it of her you are thinking? What other mistress, May, if it were not yourself?”
“This is what I found in Tom’s desk,” said Marjory, turning pale and then red with emotion and excitement. She had not meant to show it—and yet it was so hard to keep from showing it—to shut up the secret in her own breast. She drew out her letter-case slowly, and took from it the uneven paper, with its uncouth writing, so unlike Matilda’s smooth and ladylike letter. Some accidental sound in the room, some creaking of the furniture, or rustling of the papers which the wind from the open window rustled on the table, almost arrested her, and made her look up with startled awe-stricken eyes, as if some unseen messenger had come to stop her. At length she put it into her uncle’s hand. He had followed all her movements with surprise, and now he had to fumble for his spectacles, to put them on, to uncross his legs, anddraw his chair close to the table. All these little preliminaries had to be gone through, for to Mr. Charles a letter was a document; it was valuable material to be put away for after-use. He read a few lines, and then he gave a startled look at Marjory. “My dear,” he said, with indignation, folding it up again; “such a thing as this should never have fallen into your hands; it’s disgraceful! it’s——. My dear, your father goes too far—putting the charge of Tom’s things on you. He was not a reprobate, but he was not an example. Forget it, May, forget it; such a thing should never have been shown to you.”
“But Uncle Charles! you see what she says—‘I’ll make a good wife.’”
“Nonsense, nonsense, my dear,” said the old man, with a flush on his face; “the sort of thing that lads say to beguile these silly fools. I am not defending men, nor is it a subject to be named between you and me; but if you but knew how these silly idiots court their destruction! not another word more. My dear May, my bonny May! to think that the like of this should have been seen by you!”
“Uncle, it is not a fool’s letter; it is not a wicked letter—”
“Whisht, whisht, my bonnie woman! as if the like of you could judge; not another word. I will burn it for poor Tom’s sake. He has answered his account with his Maker, and why should we keep evidence against him for those that come after us—”
“Give it me back again,” said Marjory, feelingher property invaded; “I cannot have it burned, uncle. Perhaps this was the something he wanted to tell me; give it me back. Oh,” she said, suddenly forced by the opposition to a great effort of nature; “it is very different from this other letter; very different!Shewould not have written of my Charlie as his wife does. Give it me, Uncle; I must keep it. It is Tom’s legacy to me.”
“May, May! trouble and suspense are turning your head.”
“My head is not turned,” she said; “give me back my letter, Uncle; I thought you would help me. Whatever she was, wherever she is, she was not likethat.”
Mr. Charles allowed her to draw it out of his hand; he shook his head and reproved her gently.
“My dear, you are excited; you do not know what you are saying. Put it away, put it away, if you will have it; but do not speak of an unhappy girrl in the same breath with Charlie’s wife. That must never be; and such a thing should never, never have come into your hands.”
Marjory hurried away almost angry, with her letters in her hand. She could ask counsel from no one else; and here she had failed; she rushed back to her room with them, very sad at heart; she, to make herself the champion of the unknown girl, whose very existence had seemed to her no later than yesterday, such a sin and shame!
Itwould be vain to attempt to trace the manner in which this revulsion of feeling came about. Marjory had gone through the whole gamut of emotions in respect to the letter which she had found in Tom’s desk. First shame, indignation, and the hardest sentence with which women can damn a woman. Then a wavering of the balance, a protestation of justice against the hasty verdict which might have no foundation. Then a sense of escape and gratitude that no harm had come of it; and last of all, a tremulous feeling of pity, perhaps the first Christian sentiment of the whole, but the only one of which Marjory was ashamed. The thing, however, which all at once had made this pity into sudden sympathy was the letter of Mrs. Charles—a woman about whom there could be no controversy. Charlie’s equal—Charlie’s most lawful wife, under all the regulations and safeguards that law and religion could give. When she placed the one letter by the other, Marjory’s heart swelled with a sudden indignant vindication of the poor unknown girl who had loved her brother. All at once Isabell became a distinct individual, almost a friend. A sudden protest against all her own suspicions arose in her mind; she acquitted the girl of everything as she had accused her of everything. Theprocess of thought was easy enough—its very suddenness was natural. She went to the quietness of her room in which she had first read Isabell’s letter with such a tempest of shame and humiliation, with very different feelings, contrasting Matilda’s letter with this other one, and asking herself, with a vehemence of indignation which surprised her, which of them was the least womanly—which the more true and real. Her emotion, however, though she was not aware of it, was not all founded upon this contrast. In point of fact, it afforded a certain outlet to her excitement, and solaced her in the misery of her suspense. She locked up the letters in her jewel case, with a fantastic sense of their importance; she turned the little silver key upon them, as if she had been imprisoning two potent spirits. Some day or other, the prisoners would be liberated, and come forth, each to fight her own battle. Marjory was sane enough still to smile at her own fantastic force of imagination as this thought crossed her mind—to smile at it momentarily, as a kind of tribute to her reason; but without any real sense of ridicule. How her interest had shifted since yesterday, since this morning! Poor Tom’s papers lying there, carefully made up, seemed to her a year old at least, something done with and over. But Charlie, Charlie! was he being carried home to them over the sea, breathing in health and restoration from every breeze, coming to his natural place, the only son, the heir, the future head of the house? Or was he?—Marjory clasped her hands tightly together with a low cry of pain.Of all miseries on earth, I think suspense is the hardest to bear. To think that something may be happening that very moment, while you are far off, and for good or for evil can do nothing. To think that something may have happened—that the dread calm of certainty may have followed the excitement of a terrible event to the others who know; and to be unable to go out to meet the news you long for—to have nothing to do but to wait for it. There is no more common misery in the experience, at least, of women; and there is none more hard to bear.
Marjory passed that dreary, restless afternoon in hourly expectation of a call from her father, but Mr. Heriot did not call her. He took no notice of the subject which he had spoken of so angrily at breakfast, when they met at dinner. When that meal was almost over, old Fleming carried to her, with voluble explanations, another letter.
“Mistress Williamson has sent up to say that by some accident this was putten in to the Carslogie bag,” said Fleming. “It’s an Indian letter, and it’s come back with a man and horse, being markit ‘Immediate,’ as you’ll see, Miss Marjory. Mistress Williamson, poor body, is terrible vexed; and being an Indian letter, and markit ‘Immediate’——”
“Thank you; that will do, Fleming,” said Marjory, seizing it.
Oh, if she could but have rushed from the table to make herself mistress of this second message! Her heart sank down, down to the very depths.All hope seemed to die in her; yet she threw her handkerchief over it, and tried to control herself. There had been a pause, as there so often was now at that cheerless table; and Mr. Charles, who was not very quick of hearing, had put his hand to his ear, and asked, “What is it?” which called his brother’s attention to the occurrence. Mr. Heriot, who had been very silent, turned to his daughter with the angry tone which he now always employed when he spoke to her.
“Why don’t you read your letter? There are no strangers here but Mr. Fanshawe, and he, I suppose, does not stand on ceremony. From India, did that blockhead say?”
“Ay, Sir; that was what the blockhead said,” answered Fleming, who was behind his chair. “I’m no minding what you call me. It was a bletterin’ scoondrel yesterday, and it may be a good fellow the morn. I hope I know how to do my duty, whatever happens; if you’ll but eat some dinner,” the old man added, dropping his voice with an inflection which was almost tender.
This little interruption directed Mr. Heriot’s thoughts from Marjory’s letter. He bade Fleming begone for an old rogue, and emptied the dish he offered. Something had softened the heart-broken father in his passion of grief; or else the high-pressure, the immediate violence of his feelings, was wearing out. It was only after some minutes that, still harsh and sharp in his tone to her, though softened to others, he looked down the table to Marjory, and asked quickly,
“Was your letter from Charlie? Does he say when he’s coming? What is it about?”
“It is a letter from Matilda’s sister,” said Marjory, in a voice tremulous with suppressed feeling. “We do not know her, papa—a Miss Bassett. She tells me she was to join them at Calcutta, to come home with them, and something about hoping to make my acquaintance. That is all.”
“That is not much,” said Mr. Heriot; “but to know he is on the way is something. If I but see my boy back—Fleming, there’s that claret with the yellow seal—”
“Is Charlie—?” began Mr. Charles.
He was going to say was Charlie better. To him, as to all the others, it seemed so long since this morning, when the news of Charlie’s illness came, that the arrival of further news did not seem impossible. The same strange feeling of the long duration of these few sorrowful days dulled Mr. Heriot’s mind to the recollection that it was a very short time since Charlie had been called home, and that no reply to that call could have come so soon. He accepted Marjory’s explanation without any more questions, while Mr. Charles stopped, trembling, in his question, appalled by the look which she had given him. Mr. Heriot took no notice; a little gleam of happier feeling seemed to wake in him. He entered into a little dispute with Fleming, as to how much was left of the yellow seal. And when Marjory left the room soon after, he even stopped her, with some return of gentleness, to give her directions about Charlie’s rooms.
“If you are thinking what rooms to give them, May,” he said, hastily, “put them in the west wing. It will be warmest for the bairns.”
It was the first time he had called her by her name since the funeral. Poor Marjory hurried away, choking, afraid to trust herself to speak, assenting only with a movement of her head.
“Oh, papa’s better! don’t you think he’s better? He kissed me, May,” cried little Milly, as they went hand in hand along the passage which led to the drawing-room.
Marjory made no answer. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to think it all over. She placed herself in the corner of a sofa which commanded the great bow-window, and from which she could see so much of the pale grey blue sky and wistful half-twilight atmosphere. A nervous thrill was upon her. She had heard nothing; and yet was not this letter confirmation of her worst fears?
The lamp burnt steadily and clear upon the table; the firelight flickered from the fireplace. A comfortable interior, warm, and safe, and calm, full of homely luxury, but so strangely connected with the outside world by that uncovered window, and the pale sky that looked in. It was symbolical, Marjory thought. What might be going on beneath that chilly heaven, beneath the great pale vault which roofed the sea, where, dead or living, Charlie was? Her heart ached with the burden of that suspense. How hard it was to bear it, and say nothing—and to let her father take fallacious comfort, only to be the more deeply overthrown!
She had been only a few minutes here when some one followed hastily from the dining-room. She thought it was her uncle, and turned to him, holding out her hand. But the hand was taken with a warmth of sympathy, which Uncle Charles would scarcely have shown.
“Pardon me,” said Fanshawe; “I was so anxious. I came to ask what your news really is. You don’t think me impertinent? I wanted so much to know.”
This sudden touch of sympathy moved Marjory, as the unexpected always does. It was so much warmer, and more ready than Uncle Charles’ slow effort to follow her quicker feelings; his search for spectacles, both physical and mental; his reproofs of needless anxiety. She was overcome for the moment, and gave way to sudden tears, which relieved her. “Thanks,” she said, with a half sob; “there is nothing in it; at least I think there is nothing in it; read it and tell me what you think.”
He had to go to the lamp, which was on the centre table, where Milly, confused and wondering to find herself without any share in her sister’s thoughts, had seated herself in forlorn virtue “to read her book.” Many a look Milly threw at Marjory upon the distant sofa in the dark, looking at that window where the shutters were not shut, nor the curtains drawn, and which frightened the child with eerie suggestions of some one who might be looking in upon her. She looked up at Mr. Fanshawe, too, as he stood over her, unconscious of her existence, reading that letter. What was itabout? and why should he know about it, while Milly did not know? She read a sentence in her book between each of these glances, and was divided in her mind between the intent of this present drama, which she did not understand, and that of the story of the poor little boy, who died because he was good. The story itself made the child’s heart ache, and the other strange mystery confused her. Fanshawe read the letter anxiously, as if he had something to do with it; he thought he had for the moment. Marjory’s confidence in him, her appeal to him that morning, the subtle effect of feeling himself a member, even temporarily, of this household, and becoming penetrated with its atmosphere, all wrought in him. He had no intention of appearing more interested than he was; he was quite honest in the warmth and depth of his sympathetic feelings. And this was a letter of a very different character from the other; it was very short, and quite unemotional.