“You are altogether governed by humours.”—King Henry IV.
“You are altogether governed by humours.”—King Henry IV.
Thecrisis did come, though not as Miss Insches anticipated. Helen carefully guarded herself, as they returned home, from the society of the Reverend Robert, and managed that the opportunity he sought should not be afforded to him. She was thoughtful and grave that night, Mrs Buchanan perceived; for the shadow of a selfish pride had darkened for the time the firmament of Helen. The banker showed no sign of courtesy or kindness; the banker’s wife, on the rare occasions when she met her, never mentioned William’s name. William himself, busy in the distant city, seemed to have given up the contest; to have forgotten the romance of hisyouth; to have left Helen as he had left Fendie, because she was too humble and too quiet. She did not care—she would not care! she protested to herself, with a proud flush on her cheek, and proud tears in her eyes, that it was nothing to her; but involuntarily an evil, angry feeling had sprung up in her mind—she could avenge herself!
A week ago she had felt painfully that it was just possible that even she might be inconstant—that the Reverend Robert might some time glide into William’s place. She felt now that this was impossible; that her own rapid pace could never harmonize with that slightly ostentatious dignity of the Reverend Robert’s; that her impetuous mind must be chafed and irritated beyond measure, if it ever were yoke-fellow with his; yet the very discovery goaded her to go blindly on. In the bitterness of her pride she thought she could not reject the only man who thought her good enough to be his equal; and when she remembered how long a time it took before even he ceased to be ashamed of his incipient tenderness for the poor schoolmistress, the bitterness increased until it flooded her very heart. There was a gloom upon the world; the evil and misery over which she had spread the golden tissue of young hope began to appear darkly exaggerated to the opposite extreme. Those whom she would have remembered for ever, forgot her, and those who made her their choice, were ashamed of the power which compelled them so to do. Her deep melancholy fell upon Helen, as it had never fallen before; the coming of a new day did not dispel it. It was such a sorrow as she could not tell, and so she bore it proudly, bitterly, and in silence.
At the mid-day interval the watchful Mrs Buchanan prevailed on her daughter to go out, to do some simple errands in the town. She generally managed all these matters herself; but the good mother was a skilled physician, and knew how something, trivial enough in itself, might clear the atmosphere in a moment and bring out the sunshine. Mrs Buchanan too was anxious and uneasy: when it seemed now sure that the Reverend Robert must succeed, she thought remorsefully of William, the son of her own training, to whom her house had been so long a second home. She remembered the confidence that there had been between them, and how old ties would have been made stronger and tenderer, had it been he who was the new son; and then she began to feel that Mr Insches, with all his good qualities, wasa stranger; that he would introduce a new intruding element—that her sole child would be no more her own.
So the mother sent Helen forth with quiet sighs, and Helen went about her errand sadly, the gloom in her heart obscuring the gentle skies of May.
She walked slowly as her manner was in her times of depression, taking in the common sights and sounds around her into the mist in her own heart, where they remained to bring back in other moods remembrances of that dark hour. She had executed all her mother’s commissions, and concluded her business by a visit to Maxwell Dickson’s low dark shop, on her way home. She got such literature as he had from the librarian of Fendie, and it served now and then to enliven the long solitary evenings—the evenings which were not sufficiently solitary now.
On Maxwell Dickson’s counter lay an unbound book, very clean and very new. Helen took it up as she put the volumes which she brought with her into the librarian’s dingy hands. It was still damp from the press; no one had opened it before. The subject attracted her; it was one of the publications of the New Crusade.
The social science—how to make men better, nobler, purer: how to attack in their own camp the declared evils of our land and time—was the subject of this book; the science of that great discontent which has seized upon so many able minds, happily, now—the science of aggression against all vileness, all pollution. This was the subject of the book, and the name of it kindled a little the dim light in the eyes of Helen. She turned it over rapidly to glean what she could of its contents.
Maxwell Dickson in vain tries to make his young customer hear what he is saying to her. A sudden flush has covered her face—a sudden thrill springs up through the bounding pulses which were so languid a moment before; the slight nervous start—the head lifted so swiftly—the motion of the eager fingers which hold these pages open. From some unseen hand the electric touch is given: what is the cause? Helen is reading in the new book.
“The writer remembers well the arguments urged upon him once with the enthusiastic faith of youth, by one who desired a new order of chivalry vowed and dedicated to the service of God and the poor. ‘It is not well—surely it is not well to withdraw from the evils which are in us andaround us. I say we are bound to do battle with them—not to stand on our defence alone, but to carry the war into the camp of the enemies. I think sometimes that the state of war must be the only good state for those who have sin natural to them as we have, and that if these words, resist and struggle, were withdrawn from our language we would be no longer human; for when we let our arms fall, our hearts fall, and weariness comes upon us, and distrust and gloom; and out of the living world we come into the narrow chamber of ourselves, and the sun sets upon us—’ It is the philosophy of a young heart; of one who has not yet travelled far from the East, and whom the vision splendid still attends upon the way; but because it is youthful and has the breath of enthusiasm in it, it is no less true.”
Maxwell Dixon is impatient; he pulls Miss Buchanan’s sleeve, and with that thrill of nervous strength upon her she is compelled to withdraw those new damp pages from their office of shading her flushed cheek and moving features; but Helen is not angry; she lifts her eyes, which dazzle him with their unusual brightness, to the honest man’s stolid face. He does not know what to make of this variable visitor of his; he thinks she looked very different when she entered the shop, but he fancies it must just be one of the whims of “thae women.”
“I’m saying,” said Maxwell Dixon, “that the new books have come noo, for this month, Miss Buchanan. This is the twalt—I got Blackwood and the rest o’ them the day—and the minister’s got Blackwood; but ye may hae your pick o’ the rest.”
The rest were not very tempting; edifying serials, cheap travesties of the Copperfields and Pendennises of the time; the adventures of London “gents,” who had not any compensating good quality to make amends for the miserable life which they recorded; vile books with which, because they are cheap, the libraries of country towns infest the minds of the young, and impress the “gent” character upon the young men who patronise them. Helen did not look at the books. It was a clumsy feint of the pawkie Maxwell; he thought she would forgive him the breach of his promise to keep the one especial Blackwood for her, when she heard it was given to the minister.
But Helen had no thought of Blackwood, nor even of the minister; he had left her mind as the cloud left it. Inher happy tremor she forgot the Reverend Robert. She thought only of this in her hand, this messenger of the true heart which she had so vainly doubted.
“Ay,” said the librarian, “that’s a new thing; a gentleman brocht it in here, that’s come frae Edinburgh this morning. I dinna ken what it’s aboot mysel’, but he said it was grand, and something aboot a Fendie man that wrote it. I didna tak particular notice, but—Maggie, didna yon gentleman say that it was a Fendie man that made the new book on the counter?”
“Ay, faither,” said the more polite Maggie, Maxwell’s buxom daughter. “He said it was a Fendie young gentleman; but he wadna tell us wha.”
“And you do not know?” said Helen, with her wavering blush and smile.
“Na,” said the stolid Maxwell, “except it be, maybe, Dr Elliot’s son, that’s at the college learning to be a doctor, or Maister Nicol Shaw, the writer, or the minister, or—I’m sure I dinna ken. It’s no in the library, Miss Buchanan, and it’s no my ain either, or ye micht get a reading o’t, if ye wad promise no’ to cut up the leaves, and to keep it out o’ the gate o’ the bairns; but it’s no’ my ain. I durstna even sell’t if I had a customer.”
And Helen durst not buy it, even if it had been Maxwell’s own; but she stood and looked at it with longing eyes. She remembered her own words so well; she remembered the winter night when William in his corner by the fireside announced to her his going to Edinburgh, his entrance on the man’s work, of which so often in her eager, ambitious mind she had dreamed; and he too remembered it. The romance of the old times will never die. She had belted on his spurs and his sword in yonder quiet evening, and now the lady’s colour was on the lance of the true knight!
And Helen returned along the main street, her heart within her singing like a bird, and the heavens and the earth bright with a sunshine more radiant than the smiles of May. He was a wise man, that grave resolute William; if his blow were long of coming, it was a mighty blow when it came, and cast down all defences. The hopes of the Reverend Robert perished as incautious buds perish in a night’s frost. He was forgotten.
Mrs Buchanan in the little parlour heard the light, quick step without, and knew by its pace that the gloom wasgone; but she also was occupied within, and somewhat puzzled, was turning over the damp, uncut pages of a new book too.
“I do not know what this is, Helen,” said Mrs Buchanan, as her daughter entered the room, “but I suppose William thought it would please you. It came by the coach, my dear, and it is directed in William’s hand.”
Helen sat down by the table to look at that especial passage again. Her heart was full; she wanted to say something, but could not say it, her shyness veiling the new joy, as well as the emotions of so frank a face could be veiled; but that was not saying much. At last she rose and laid the book before her mother, and stood half behind her leaning upon her shoulder.
“Mother, William would be right if he thought this would please me almost better than anything else in the world—it is William’s own.”
Mrs Buchanan took her daughter’s hands and looked into her face. The head drooped, the eyes were cast down. Helen could not meet the scrutinizing glance; but they understood each other, and in the misty, tremulous period which followed, the heart of the good mother lightened too. She dismissed the Reverend Robert with a gentle sigh, and she received again the old friend, the son William, feeling sure now that there could be no competitor for the place he had held so long.
When her scholars were finally dismissed that day—and Mrs Buchanan heard Helen’s voice singing snatches of old songs before the last little one had made her farewell curtsey at the school-room door—Helen took her book in her hand and went away over the bridge and through the long, waving grass to the Waterside. She chose one little dell, her favourite spot, where the trees, closely circling it round, left one green, swelling bank, upon the brink of the water, on which the sunshine fell through a network of boughs and leaves. On the opposite side of the river, within sight of her resting-place, burns were running down like so many choristers into the broad stream, and in the middle of the strong brown current eddies played fantastically, and by the bank branches of long willows swept the tide, and the dark alder and the delicate ash leaned over, glassing their foliage in its waves. And there the young dreamer sat absorbed, lingering over the kindred thoughts which kept pace so truly to the musicof her own, and starting now and then as the rapid fancies poured upon her like a flood, and she shaped the future in that fairy loom—a future not such as common dreamers choose. Noble labour, keeping time to the great universal harmonies which God has planted in his world—work such as befits His followers, who for men became a man.
She seemed to hear the grand and noble chimes with which all nature accompanies the work of those who seek to speed the coming of His kingdom. The light of common day was radiant to her with the sunshine of promise; it should yet shine upon a purer world, a country ransomed by its King; and she forgot the pain, and difficulty, and miseries that intervened for joy of the certain end.
But amid the dreamings of Helen, there came the interrupting sound of a hurried, bounding footstep, and almost before she could look up to see who the intruder was, Hope Oswald plunged down upon her, out of breath. Hope had arrived in Fendie only that morning, and had been seeking Helen at home. She was overjoyed to find her here.
“I saw you reading a book,” exclaimed Hope, when the first greeting was over. “I am quite sure you were reading a book—Helen, may I not see it? Why did you put it away?”
“It is a grave book, Hope, not such as you would like,” said Helen, looking as she felt, embarrassed and conscious.
“But I like grave books—sometimes,” said Hope. “I am fifteen—I am not a girl now, Helen; but do you mind what Tibbie said, last Hallowe’en? You were to get your fortune out of a book. Oh, Helen, will you tell me? Have you ever got your fortune yet?”
Helen fairly turned her burning cheek away, with a nervous start. So it was fulfilled, the simple prophecy of Tibbie; the hour and the book had come, and this was “the fortune” of Helen. She did not make any answer. She held her precious volume under her shawl and looked over the wan water, away into the vacant air, with her changeful smile.
“I think I know,” said the sagacious Hope.
“What do you know, Hope?” said Helen.
But Hope was perverse.
“Helen, Miss Swinton is coming, but only for a day, and little Mary Wood is to stay all the vacation. Miss Swinton wants to see you, Helen, and she said she would take you to Edinburgh; but I think you should not go, Helen.”
“Why?”
Hope paused, and as she could think of no satisfactory answer, went on, on another course.
“Helen, William is perhaps coming home—only for awhile; you don’t know how much William has to do now; and, Helen, people say he is clever. Do you think he is?”
There was some pleasant moisture subduing the unusual brightness of Helen’s eyes. Her voice was lower than usual too, and the sensible Hope observed keenly.
“No, Hope,” said Helen, with some tremor. “I think he is not clever. I think—”
“I don’t care for that,” said Hope, bravely. “Are you going home, Helen? Will you let me go too? It is only other people who call him clever, you know, Helen; but he isourWilliam.”
“Werena my heart licht, I wad die.”—Grizzel Baillie.
“Werena my heart licht, I wad die.”—Grizzel Baillie.
Atthe same bright hour of noon as that on which Helen set out so sadly, commissioned with her mother’s domestic errands, Lilias Maxwell sat in the sunshine upon the mossy steps of the old sun-dial in the garden of Mossgray. She had her work in her hand as usual, and was sewing listlessly, with long intervals of idleness. It was an occupation very ill-suited for her at that time, for there was nothing in it to deliver her from the sway of her own thoughts; and so she pursued the quiet work and the long trains of musing together, looking, as she always did, very pale and very sad. To-morrow—to-morrow was the day.
The “soul of happy sound” surrounded her on every side, and she was faintly conscious of it; the drowsy stir of summer life, the hum of passing bees, the ripple of the water as it went on its way, plaintively, beyond the willows, softened by the warm medium of that sunny air through which they came, fell gently on her ear—perhaps they soothed her unawares; but we feel the solemn weight of our humanity more heavily when the heart of Nature throbs beside us in its spring joy, conscious of an inner world, whose revolutionsand vicissitudes are of greater import to ourselves than all the happy changes of the earth.
But as the old man looked out from the projecting turret-window, it pleased him to see where she was, and how she was employed—for Lilias was singing, and the sunshine stealing through the trees rested on her head. He could not catch the words, and scarcely the music of her song, but the gentle human voice mingled with the familiar cadence of the river, and the young head drooped in graceful meditation beneath the joyous skies of noon. He thought the cloud was beginning to break and disappear; he fancied that the youthful life was asserting its native elasticity, and he turned in to his books with his benign smile.
But it was not so. She was singing indeed, but her voice was so low that it scarcely ever rose above the murmuring tone of the accompanying water; and she had chosen fit words to express the caprice of a sick heart. It was the brave Grizzel Baillie’s pathetic ballad, “Werena my heart licht, I wad dee”—most sad of all the utterances of endurance. Lilias had never known before that sick and flickering lightness of the strained heart.
Her hands fell listlessly upon her lap; her head drooped forward—so pale it was and troubled—into the golden air; her mind was away, wandering painfully through all the bitter hypotheses of care and anxious sorrow, and the slow notes stole murmuring over her lip, the unconscious plaint of her weariness. Who has not felt that contradiction? who does not know the strength and life of pain, and how it buoys up the feeble almost as hope does?—“Werena my heart licht, I wad dee.”
As she sat thus, Halbert entered the grounds of Mossgray, and perceiving Lilias, advanced to her with some hesitation. He seemed to be doubtful whether he should speak to her or no, and gave a wavering glance up to the turret-window of Mossgray’s study as he passed. But Mossgray was seated in the dusk of the large apartment, with content upon his face—content for both the children of his old age, and good hope that the cloud of Lilias’ firmament was floating away. The young man went on with a slow, reluctant step to the sun-dial: she had not noticed him, and unseen he listened to the pathetic burden of her song.
“Werena my heart licht, I wad dee.” Halbert had never heard the words before, and they struck him strangely.
Lilias started as she heard his step; she had fallen into strange habits of late—customs not common to the calm and thoughtful composure of her nature. Such fancies as the poet’s Margaret had, as she sat by her solitary door, while her eyes
“Were busy in the distance, shaping thingsThat made her heart beat quick.”
“Were busy in the distance, shaping thingsThat made her heart beat quick.”
“Were busy in the distance, shaping thingsThat made her heart beat quick.”
Itstartled her very much, this sudden footstep. She turned her head with a sharp, quick flush of pain, and then it drooped again so languidly.
“Is it you, Halbert?”
“Lilias,” said Halbert, with a difficult attempt at cheerfulness, “it is very rare to hear you sing, and that strange song. Where does it come from?”
“Do you think it strange?” said Lilias. “I think it is not strange, but only very sad and true. Grizzel Baillie must have had a sick heart sometimes, and it sang to her so.”
But the stalwart, healthful Halbert had never been sick at heart.
“I do not understand it very well,” he said, frankly; “but where did you get it, Lilias?”
“My mother had a maid called Barbara,” said Lilias, with her faint smile, “and, like Desdemona’s, she carried this old, plaintive music about with her. She did not die singing it; but I think, in her homely fashion, she knew its meaning well. I had it from her. But, Halbert, you are not well—something has troubled you!”
“No, Lilias.” He was looking very pitifully at the pale, calm face now raised to his.
“What is it then? There is no evil news from the North?”
“No, Lilias,” repeated Halbert, “nothing has happened to distress me; but—I wish you would tell me why you are so pale. Have you any friend ill? are you afraid of—”
Lilias had risen from her low seat in eager haste; her fingers were clasped together; the feverish hectic of anxiety was burning on her cheek.
“What is it?—tell me.”
“I do not know,” faltered Halbert, looking at her humbly, as if he had done wrong; “perhaps it is nothing—but I got a letter for you in Fendie, Lilias.”
She could not speak; her lips were dry and would not come together; but she held out her hand with a gesture of angry, commanding impatience, such as never mortal saw before in Lilias Maxwell.
And he placed the letter in the trembling outstretched hand—the ominous, mournful letter, with its border and seal of mourning. He saw her eye fall on the strange handwriting of the address; he heard the low groan with which the heart breaks; and then she turned away.
She turned away, groping in the noon sunshine like one blind; and Halbert stood in reverent pity, watching the tottering, rapid steps which went sheer forward to the door of the house, leaving footprints among the flowers, and breaking down the snowy, drooping head of one of the cherished lilies of Mossgray. Like it, Lilias was crushed to the ground. The honest heart of Halbert melted as he sat down on the steps of the sun-dial. Man as he was, he could have wept for her; the shadow of sympathetic grief came over him, and Halbert sat still and mused while the shadows lengthened on the dial at his head, thinking as he had never thought before.
“What has become of Lilias, Halbert?” said Mossgray.
The young man started; his own face was very grave and melancholy, but the smile of good pleasure with which he had looked upon Lilias from his turret-window was still upon the lip of Adam Graeme.
“Lilias has gone in,” said Halbert, hurriedly—“Lilias is ill—I mean something has happened, Mossgray.”
“What has happened, Halbert?” Mossgray was still smiling.
“I cannot tell—she has lost some friend. I brought a letter, an Indian letter to her, from the town:—the seal was black—it seemed to carry news of a death.”
The face of Mossgray changed.
“My poor child!—my poor Lilias! Halbert, I trust, I hope you are wrong; but if you are not—”
The old man covered his face with his hand as he turned away. He remembered what it was to be made desolate.
The long, bright hours stole on, but no one in Mossgray saw the broken lily. An unexpressed understanding of some calamity fell upon the household; the blinds were drawn down in the family rooms—the voices were hushed even in the kitchen, and when any went up or down stairs, theywent in silence, as if death, and the reverence that belongs to death, were in the house. But the door of Lilias’ room was not opened, and though the old man himself lingered near it ready to catch any sound, he would permit no intrusion on her; for now there could be no hope that Halbert was wrong, and the grief of his youthful days came back to the heart of Adam Graeme, as he thought of those young hopes setting, like the sun, in the dark sea of death.
It was twilight, and he had returned to his study—soft, downy masses of clouds just touched with the lingering colours of the sunset were piled up like mountains of some dreamy fairyland on that wonderful placid sea of heaven, and long strips of coast and floating tinted islands stretched along the whole breadth of the sky. He sat, sadly, looking at them, and thinking of the holy, calm land beyond, where the sun of hope and promise sets never more, when his watchful ear caught the sound of a slow step ascending the stair. He looked towards the door with painful interest. It was Lilias. She had laid aside the light summer dress which she had worn in the morning, and the old man started as he looked upon the shadowy, drooping figure in its heavy, black garments, and the perfectly pale face on which no shade of colour remained. He rose to meet her; but Lilias seemed comparatively calm.
“I have brought it to you, Mossgray.”
She spoke very slowly as if deliberate pain were necessary to produce each single word. She had broughtit—the messenger of death.
And laying it on the table before him, Lilias sat down on Charlie’s chair, and leaning her heavy head upon her hand, lifted her eyes to the old man’s face as he read the letter.
Such a letter he had once received—but this was written by a friend of the dead, and written with tears as it had been read, though the tears were very different. The writer said his dear friend Grant, travelling for his health to some place among the mountains where health was to be found, had joined a British Company, a few officers and a small band of men, on the way; that one of the revolted Affghan tribes had encountered them, and after a desperate and unavailing struggle, the small, brave force had been utterly cut to pieces, and it was impossible even to recover the bodies of the slain. Mossgray shuddered as he came to this conclusion of the kind, well-meaning letter, and felt what torture it must haveinflicted; yet it was gently done, and in few words, as is the kindest, when such tidings are to be told.
She was looking at him; with the deep, blue, wakeful eyes which cast wan light like the moon over her colourless face, she was reading his countenance.
“My poor Lilias!” said the kind Mossgray—he could say nothing more.
And then, in her slow, painful way, she began to speak. It was so great a grief to hear every distinct convulsive word as she uttered it, that the old man could hardly gather their import while he listened. She did not look at him now; her eyes were wandering through the vacant room, opened widely, as though she dared not cast down their lids, and the slow tide of her speech—those single words which came from her lips, like so many life-drops from a heart, pained to the utmost the gentle soul of Adam Graeme. She wanted to tell him that now she was alone—that she had only one wish now, separate from Mossgray, and that was to see his mother.
“My poor child,” said the old man, as Lilias came to this point, and laboured with her convulsed utterance to articulate the words: “We will speak of this another time when wecanspeak of it; but now you must rest.”
And when he spoke of rest she laid down her head upon her hands, and her agony returned upon her.
“Lilias,” said the old man, “what if he had changed?—what if you had learned that he was not what you believed him to be? Rather thank God that bravely in honour and faith, he has been taken home; in the odour and grace of youth, before evil days or stains came upon him. Lilias, there are sorrows harder than yours—you shall find again him whom you have lost. There are those who have lost, and shall find never more, because they are parted not by this faithful and pure death, but by the dark barriers of sin and change. Lilias, my good child!”
She did not hear him; the words fell on her ear indefinite as the sound of the stream without, for words do not bring comfort to the desolate heart of grief when the blow has fallen newly.
And then she went away again slowly and painfully to her own darkened room. Halbert met her on the stair but she did not speak to him, and her wan face, and deep mourning dress, awed the light-hearted Halbert into reverential silence. He was not light-hearted then—he almost felt thathis own happiness was selfish in the presence of such grief.
And the old man paced heavily his large, low, study-room, thinking with tender compassion of his ward, the orphan, and the widowed. It brought back the days of his own pained and struggling youth, and he remembered how gentle to him would have been this hand of death instead of the more cruel stroke which laid his early dreams in the dust. He thought of Lucy Murray and of her tears—tears which fell singly in their force and bitterness like the words of Lilias; and he thanked God that rather thus the stroke had fallen upon his child. She was now doubly his child—left to him alone for care and succour—set apart from all the world.
But Lilias grew calm; there was no fever in the great stillness of this grief—no antagonist powers of hope and uncertainty to sicken her with its fretting painful life. She was fitted for her lot; and when she entered again the little world in which they lived, there was a saintly repose about her mourning, a hush of deep melancholy in her atmosphere, which subdued and mellowed all who approached her. But there was no elasticity left; the human hopes, the warm links which unite the living to the world they dwell in, had all been snapt for Lilias. Except the reverend duty of a child for the old man who mourned with her for the dead, she had no other bond to the world.
And so it happened that she came to stand, as we sometimes see the afflicted, alone upon the solitary isthmus between the earth and heaven. The changing tide of human life seemed to have left her there—above the reach of the benign and gentle hand of change—above the happy impatiences—the impulse and varying motive of the common lot; standing alone among the stars, waiting till her summons came.
She was very gentle, very mild, very calm—but it was less sympathy than reverence that attended her. The human life had ebbed away from her lonely feet, and she grew feeble as she moved in her melancholy, shadowy grace about that old house of Mossgray. They tended her in silent pity as they might have tended a hermit spirit, and she repaid them as she could with her resigned and patient mildness; but they thought of her as one about to pass away, fated to another life than this of earth.
I’m young and stout, my Marion,Nane dances like me on the green,And gin ye forsake me, Marion,I’ll e’en gae draw up wi’ Jean.—Song.
I’m young and stout, my Marion,Nane dances like me on the green,And gin ye forsake me, Marion,I’ll e’en gae draw up wi’ Jean.—Song.
I’m young and stout, my Marion,Nane dances like me on the green,And gin ye forsake me, Marion,I’ll e’en gae draw up wi’ Jean.—Song.
Itwas past midsummer. Halbert Graeme, younger of Mossgray, was already a famous man in the country-side, and had not his gentle kinsman been more gravely occupied through that long, slow summer, we are not sure that the Laird would have been quite satisfied with the considerable number of incipient flirtations which Halbert had on his hands. At Firthside, at Mount Fendie, and all neighbouring places where youthful people were, Halbert was immensely popular; and it was very true that Miss Georgina Maxwell and he had been experimenting a little upon each other; very true that Adelaide Fendie blushed her dull blush when her mischievous sister plied her with railleries touching the gallant Halbert. Adelaide was seventeen, and her large, soft, good-humoured face was not uncomely; besides she had begun to read greedily Maxwell Dickson’s select and edifying collection of novels, and seventeen is quite the heroic age for young ladies of the Minerva Press. Adelaide thought it was full time that she should begin a private romance of her own.
And Halbert’s letters to the North were by no means so frequent as they used to be. He was often very busy now, and really believed that he had not time to write; besides that, there had been a very pretty quarrel between him and the gentle Menie, provoked on her side by some saucy allusions to the Lilias whom he praised so much, and on his by some pique at a certain young Laird, who began to bulk very largely in the Aberdeenshire glen.
It was the market day in Fendie, and Halbert now attended the markets, where both buyers and sellers had learned to know the young Laird of Mossgray. These groups of rustical people—strong, tall, red-whiskered men, with their immense stooping shoulders, and primitive blue coats and universal gray plaids, worn in this brilliant June weather to keep out the heat, as in January they kept out the cold,whom you see stalking about the Main Street, with long deliberate steps, lifting their feet high, so that you fancy they must believe themselves still wading among the heather, acknowledged his acquaintance by grasping the rusty brim of the unbrushed hat as he passed them. More dignified, the lounging farmers in their short coats of gray plaiden, gathered in knots about the door of the inn where their stout ponies and comfortable gigs had been put up, held erudite conversation with young Mossgray on the markets, the weather, and the “craps.” He was perfectly at home among them; had they been Ojibbeway Indians, the result would have been quite the same. He was born to make friends anywhere, this brisk cosmopolitan Halbert.
He had just been at the post-office, and was carrying home with him the letters of the household. There was one for himself, directed in the large, stiff handwriting of his old teacher: but Halbert was not so anxious about Mr Monikie’s letter as he would once have been; he put it coolly into his pocket till his market business should be over.
At last, having discussed all the momentous subjects of the day, ascertained all the prices, and recognized all his acquaintances, Halbert felt that his duty was done, and that he might return home. But he had only opened the seal of Mr Monikie’s despatch, with its agreeable odour of black rappee, and ascertained that it contained no enclosure from Menie, when he heard the clatter of John Brown’s light cart on the road behind him. Halbert closed the letter again; it was by no means of pressing interest; at the moment he preferred a chat with John.
“Fine weather this,” said the young Laird.
“Ay, its weel eneuch,” said John Brown, examining the sky with the curious eye of a connoisseur, “but ower drouthy, Sir—ower drouthy; and ower muckle drouth is guid for neither beast or body, let alane the craps. Yon muckle park at Shortrigg will be burnt brown afore the July rain, and syne it’ll be as wat as a peat moss; ye’ll never be dune, Sir, noo ye hae ta’en up the farming trade—ye’ll never be dune battling wi’ the weather.”
Halbert laughed.
“I am not so warlike, John. I shall be content with the rain when it comes. Are they all well at the Mount—Mrs Fendie and the young ladies?”
“Middling, middling,” said John Brown; “we have ourbits of touts noo and then, but we’re no to compleen o’; and the noo, we’ve nae time to think o’ being no weel, for Mr Alick’s coming hame.”
“Indeed!” said Halbert; the news interested him. “When does Mrs Fendie expect him, John?”
“I hear about the harvest—August or September,” said the factotum of Mount Fendie; “but we’re gaun to gar the haill countryside stand about, so we’ve begoud in time. But ye’ll mind he’s no a free-spoken, pleasant lad like yourself, Mr Graeme, begging your pardon for the freedom; he’s ane o’ your fleeaway sodger officers, and there’s mair o’ the same kind coming wi’ him.”
Halbert enjoyed his popularity; but at the same time he became still more interested in Alick Fendie, who being less popular, promised to be more aristocratic than himself.
“Has he been long in India, John?” asked Halbert.
“Na, no that lang. I mind him mysel frae he was a kittlin o’ a laddie like that wee evil spirit o’ a brither o’ his. He’s been twa—three years out bye yonder,” and John jerked his ponderous thumb in the direction of the sea. “I wad just like to see him fechting—or the like o’ him—fusionless, shilpit laddies. I’m no Wallace Wight myself, but if I couldna tak twa o’ them in ilka hand!—and that minds me, Mr Graeme, that my auntie Eesabell up at Murrayshaugh bothers folk even on about your young lady. I’m no meaning the lady that is to be ye ken, but just Miss Maxwell. Our auld auntie’s ta’en a notion that she kens some o’ the auld family—the Murrays. Its a’ havers, ye ken, for Miss Lucy’s aulder, if she’s leeving, than Eesabell hersel; but the young lady hasna been at Murrayshaugh for lang, and the auld wife deaves a’body asking about her. I tell’t her it was said in the town that Miss Maxwell was no weel. She’s aye bee awfu’ delicate like; isna she no weel, Mr Graeme?”
“She has been very ill,” said Halbert; “but she is recovering now, I hope. She lost a friend lately.”
John Brown paused respectfully, rendering the instinctive homage which men pay to grief.
“I saw Robbie Caryl the day,” said John, after an interval; “Robbie was in last week wi’ some grand salmon at Dumbraes market, and he saw a man there that has a son a sodger, somegate near where Mr Alick is; and there’s word—sure word, Robbie says—that Peter Delvie—ye wadna ken Peter? was killed yonder wi’ a wheen mair, fechting wi’ thaewild Indians—Affghans—what is’t they ca’ them? Onyway Peter’s dead; and what the auld man, Saunders, will say till’t, noo, is mair than I ken.”
“He was harsh to him, I believe,” said Halbert.
“Ay, ye may say that; but I’m no sae sure he aye meant it; ye see he was proud o’ the lad, and when he gaed an ill gate, Saunders nigh broke his heart. Ye wad maist say he had na heart, yon hard auld man—but it’s ill telling. Robbie was gaun to the minister to get him to break it to Saunders.Iwadna do’t for a’ Fendie.”
The roads to Mossgray and the Mount separated at this point. Whistling gaily, John Brown set off at considerable speed, to make up for the gossiping slow pace with which he had begun; and Halbert leaped over the stile, and again opened the letter of Mr Monikie.
It was a startling letter; the young man’s face flushed with the angry colour of mortification and wounded pride, as he read it:
“I hear from Menie,” wrote the pragmatical man of Aberdeen, “that you are not so good friends as you might be; and you know how often I have warned you, Halbert, about the danger of an unstable temper; a weakness to which I have always seen you were liable. It is a bad sign of a lad like you—a great evil—to have an unsteady mind, and to meditate breaking lightly the ties you have yourself made. Even as it regarded only yourself, I would have thought it my duty to impress your infirmity upon you, but far more when it endangers the comfort of a girl like my Menie. It disappoints me, Halbert; I confess that, though I might know better, after my long experience as a teacher of youth, I had expected other things from you; but human nature, even with all advantages, and when its judgment is matured like mine, is prone to vain expectations, and you have disappointed me.
“I do not think I would be justified in trusting the happiness of a good girl like Menie in hands that want the firmness which is needful in my eyes to a manly character. I hoped you had more of it, Halbert; and Menie herself, like a dutiful child as she has always been, agrees with her father, and says she thinks you will be very glad to be free, and at liberty to form new engagements. Also Menie sends a message that she forgives you, and has givento me the half of the coin you broke with her; a very foolish, superstitious, and heathenish ceremony, which I should have certainly condemned had I known of it, or could I have fancied that my daughter and my pupil would ever think of so foolish a thing.
“Young John Keith of Blackdean is giving us much of his company, and helps to keep up our spirits, otherwise we might have felt your backsliding even more than we do. I have never seen the marks of instability in him that I used to lament in you, though he has not had the same advantages of education; indeed in every way I have reason to be pleased with him, and so has Mrs Monikie and Menie. If Menie settles near us it will be a great satisfaction, and I think it is not unlikely.
“I hope you will learn to correct these faults which I have pointed out to you, and we will always be glad to see you here, in spite of what has passed. I trust I can forgive an injury, especially when it has been made an instrument of good; and if you hear of any changes in my family, I hope you will be able to think of them without any great disappointment, seeing that I always remain, with compassion upon the errors of your youth,
“Your sincere friend,“Matthew Monikie.”
Halbert was very red, very angry; he folded up the letter bitterly, and felt indignant at treatment so unjust. His first flash of jealous resolution was to start for Aberdeenshire immediately, and carry off the faithless Menie from his supplanter the Laird of Blackdean. The merry, pretty Menie! He had been getting rather indifferent, there was no denying that; but now when he had lost her, tender recollections of his first love returned to the honest heart of Halbert. Something swelled in his breast of that sad disappointment with which youthful people see the first tie of their own forming rudely snapt asunder. One or two tears rose into his eyes; the petulant, fickle Menie was victor over him.
But Halbert was not long melancholy. He began to think of the injustice—the insult.
“It is very well for herself; she has only taken the first word of flyting; she was wise,” muttered the angry Halbert, as he turned on his heel, and with a quick, impatient step went on to Mossgray; and so he salved his wounded prideand consoled himself, not without a pleasurable consciousness, increasing as he grew familiar with the idea, that he was free.
Lucy Murray and Adam Graeme had borne the first epidemic grief of youth on that Waterside before him. This last example perfected the story of the others. The woman’s sad endurance—the man’s passionate pain—these were not types broad enough for universal humanity. Only a few here and there can feel as they did, but Halbert’s lighter emotions were of the common stock; the momentary melancholy—the sting of mortification—the buoyance of new life and freedom. Lightly the cloud passed over the head of Halbert, a thing to be laughed at by and by; for he had no ideal to be sacrificed. And so he completed the tale of youthful disappointments; he brought them into the ordinary level, the common stream of life.
In the kitchen of Mossgray Robbie Caryl the fisherman stood in grave and earnest conversation with the old housekeeper and her niece. Neither cuddie nor creels were visible to-day, and Robbie himself wore his Sabbath-day’s well-preserved suit, and his Sabbath-day’s look of gravity.
“Eh, Robbie!” exclaimed Mrs Mense, “it’s a judgment—it’s just a visible judgment and retribution on that hard auld man! As if we werena sinfu’ enough oursels to learn us mercy to our neighbours, let alane our ain bairns, bane of our bane, and flesh of our flesh.”
“The minister says we maun hae sure word afore we tell Saunders,” said Robbie; “as if the word we hae gotten wasna ower sure; but I say we’ve nae richt to keep the news frae the faither and the mother. Thea hae mair richt to ken than fremd folk. To be sure, I gied my word to the minister that I wad tell naebody. I’m saying, Jen, mind; till ance the minister maks his inquiries, ye’re no’ to say a word about it; though I kenna but what it wad be richt to tell the auld man, whether it turned out true or no, just to bring him to himsel’.”
“Eh, preserve me!” said Janet Mense, “they say he put his curse upon the lad.”
“I wadna say onything was ower hard for Saunders Delvie,” said the fisherman.
“Whisht! nane o’ ye ken,” said the old woman. “If he had been mair moderate in his liking, he wad hae been mairmoderate in his wrath. I tell ye, nane o’ ye ken. Wha’s yon, Jen? is’t no’ Saunders, his ain sel’?”
The fisherman glanced eagerly out, and then drew back.
“I pat on my Sabbath-day’s claes just for the purpose, but I canna face him now. I’ll slip awa into the milk-house, Mrs Mense; and say naething to him. It’s in the minister’s hands; we maun just leave it to the minister.”
So saying, Robbie with some trepidation hastened away to conceal himself in the dairy until the old man had passed.
The stern, harsh face of Saunders Delvie was lighted with a fire of strange and wild excitement. Defiance and yearning, tears and frowns, were strangely mingled in it. His voice shook, his gray eyelashes were wet, and under his heavy, bushy eyebrows his eyes shot out glances of fiery grief. His stern composure of manner was entirely broken. A burst of weeping, or a paroxysm of fierce rage, might, either of them, have brought to a climax the old man’s unusual agitation. With his heavy, quick, unsteady step, he came into the kitchen of Mossgray. No one spoke to him, for both of the women were afraid.
Mrs Mense was sitting in her chair by the fireside; he went up to her hurriedly.
“Auld friend,” he said abruptly, with that harsh tremor in his voice, more moving than many lamentations, “ken ye onything that concerns me or mine? tell me plain out what it is, for this I wunna bear.”
“Oh, Saunders,” exclaimed the old woman, wiping the tears from her withered cheek, “have pity upon the lad—the puir lad!”
“Is that a’? have ye nae mair to say but that?” said Saunders. Janet had followed the example of the fisherman, and the two old servants of Mossgray were alone. “Is that a’?” repeated Saunders, speaking rapidly, as if, in the contradictory impulse of his anxiety, he wished to prevent her from answering. “Ye’re sure that’s a’? Then I maun gang my ways—I maun tak counsel; if it’s righteous it maunna be ower late; but I’ll no’ speak to the Laird. He’s no’ a man like me; he taks the reprobate and the race o’ the reprobate into his bosom. Na, I winna speak to the Laird.”
And lifting his head again with something of his usual rigid pride, the old man went away, as hastily as he had entered.
The market was over in Fendie, and as the summer afternoon drowsily waned, and the weekly stir subsided, Mr Oswald sat in his little private office alone. The banker was an elder of the Church, and a man, as Saunders thought, of kindred mind and temperament to his own. It was from him that he came to seek counsel.
Mr Oswald looked up in some astonishment as the old man was ushered into hissanctum.
“It’s a case of conscience, Sir,” said Saunders, in his harsh, tremulous voice. “I was wanting to ask your counsel.”
Mr Oswald was a little startled. Cases of conscience were not quite in his way, although he had the ordination of the eldership upon him.
“Had you not better speak to the minister, Saunders?” he said; “but sit down, and tell me what troubles you.”
The banker’s heart was touched with the trembling vehemence of the old man’s manner and appearance as he stood before him.
“Na, Sir, I canna speak to the minister,” said Saunders. “The minister’s a young man, and doesna ken the afflictions of the like o’ me. He may hae comfort for his ain kind, but the griefs o’ the gray head are aboon the ken o’ lads like him. I canna speak to the minister.”
Mr Oswald had heard the rumour of Peter Delvie’s death, and pitied the stern old father; again he asked him to sit down.
Saunders took the offered seat, and pressed his bonnet convulsively between his hands.
“It’s touching the lawfulness of a vow—a vow before the Lord.”
Mr Oswald’s voice faltered a little; an indefinite thrill of conscience moved him.
“What is it, Saunders?”
“I made a resolve,” said the old man, his features twitching, and his strong, harsh voice shaking with the very force of his determination to steady it, “to put forth ane—ane that had sinned—out from my house as an alien and a reprobate. He had shamed the name that righteous puir men had laboured to keep honest for him—he had sinned in the sight of God and man; and before the Lord I pat him forth, and took a vow on me that he should cross my doorstane never mair. Maister Oswald, ye’re an elder of the Kirk,and a man of years, and ane that has had bairns born to ye, and ken—am I no’ bound before the Lord to haud to my vow?”
Mr Oswald moved upon his chair uneasily. He could not answer.
“I have had converse with Mossgray,” continued Saunders, shrill tones of excitement mingling with the usual slow, grave accents of his broken voice, “but Mossgray is anither manner of man, and kensna—kensna the like o’ me. He tells me that change is a guid gift of God, given for our using like ither providences, and that what I have said wi’ my lips may be broken, and me no mansworn—but I say, no—I ken nae law ither than the auld law of Scripture, and I maun perform to the Lord my vow. Sir, Mr Oswald, think ye not so?”
The old man’s shaggy eyelash was wet, but the fire shot forth behind. Strongly the two contending powers within him struggled for the mastery. He wanted his authority to second the dictates of the yearning nature, which, moved by whispers of some unknown calamity to his son, contended bitterly with the stern obstinacy of his temper and his sense of right; yet he had entered upon the oft-repeated arguments, with which he had been used to defend himself against the gentle attacks of Mossgray, and was becoming heated in his own defence. If the banker had pronounced his judgment against the breaking of this vow, it would have carried a bitter pang to the old man’s heart, and yet would have been a triumph. He sat, pressing his bonnet in his hard hands, and shaking like a palsied man. He had put his fate on this chance. He had resolved to make the judgment of the other pertinacious man to whom he appealed, his final rule, and anxiously he waited for the decision.
But George Oswald moving there uneasily in his elbow chair was too much perplexed and conscience-stricken to give a ready answer. The vehement father-love of Saunders Delvie, which in its agony of disappointed hope produced this vow, sublimed the old man’s sternness and lifted it out of the class of ordinary emotions. It was not anger, or wounded pride, or shame alone, but it was all these, intensified and burning with the strong, bitter love which still worshipped in its secret heart the son whom it had expelled from his home. The worldly man who had put the barrier of his disapproval in the way ofhisson’s happiness, for such paltrymotives as Saunders Delvie never knew, felt himself abashed in presence of the old, stern peasant, whose appealing eye was upon him.
“Saunders,” said Mr Oswald, with a faltering voice, “we are bound at all times to forgive.”
“It’s no that I dinna forgive him,” cried the old man in his passion. “It’s no that I dinna think upon him night and day—it’s no that—oh man! do ye no ken?”
And Saunders, forgetting all artificial respectfulness, put down his gray head into his hard toil-worn hands and sobbed aloud—such strong convulsive sobs as the awed banker had never heard before.
Hope Oswald had opened the door very quietly to look in, and the instincts of childhood were scarcely yet subdued in the young heart of the banker’s daughter. She came softly across the room to stand by Saunders’ side, and touch his hand with awe and pity.
“Saunders,” whispered Hope, “maybe it is not true—the minister says it is not true.”
The old man lifted his face; no face less stern could have been moved so greatly.
“What is’t that’s no true?”
“Poor Peter!” said Hope, with tears upon her cheek, “do you mind how good he aye was, Saunders? and his heart broke, people say, because you were angry at him; but you are not angry now; and when he comes back you will go out to meet him like the man in the Bible, and be friends? for, Saunders, you are friends with Peter now?”
He could not wait for any judgment; he could not think of any vow. A burst of weeping, such as might have hailed the prodigal’s return, followed the simple speech of Hope. The living love within him burst through its perverse and unseemly garments; and those peaceful walls, unused to great emotion, had never heard such a cry as broke through them now, from lips that trembled as the great king’s did of old, when he too wept for his Absalom. “My son! my son!”