“Not if he would think so,” replied the mother, “nothing at all—but when he sets his mind on a thing, possible or impossible, he will carry it out.Robert!” she cried, in capitals, going to the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” he shouted. His voice came not from the direction of his room but from the west passage, where he had nothing to do, a fact which awoke a vague surprise in Mrs. Dalyell’s mind. He came downstairs “likea tempest,” she said afterwards, making as much noise, and caught her in his arms, to her great astonishment. “Good-bye, my dearest, good-bye!” he cried, giving her a loving kiss (“before the bairns, and that man Foggo looking on!”). “Keep well and don’t distress yourself about me.” He was gone almost before she could ask him why she should distress herself about him, flying down the road with Fred after him, which, indeed, was his usual way of catching a train. She stood at the door looking after him, and though he was in such a hurry and not a moment to lose, what did Robert do but turn round and take off his hat and wave his hand to her! Such nonsense! as if he were going away for years. She made a sign of impatience, hurrying him on. “Do you think they will do it this time, Foggo?” she said to the butler, who was also looking after them. Foggo had been standing ready to help his master on with his coat. But Mr. Dalyell had time only to snatch it and throw it over his shoulder, partly because of that unnecessary embrace which had so confused his wife under the servant’s eyes.
“Oh, ay, ma’am,” said Foggo, “they’ll do it;the maister’s aye just on the edge—but he’s never missed her yet——”
Mr. Dalyell, when he rushed upstairs, had not gone to his dressing-room as he proposed to do. He had darted down the west passage, a long vacant corridor with a few doors of unused bedrooms on one side. He went down to the end room of all, and opened the door. An old woman in a tremendous mutch and tartan shawl came forward to meet him. “I have come to say good-bye, Janet, my woman,” he said, grasping her hand. “And you’ll remember what you’ve promised.”
“That I will, my bonnie man: if you’re sure you must do it. As long as I live—but then I, may be, have not very long to live.”
“We’ll have to trust for that,” he said, holding both her hands.
“Could you no trust for other things? I’ve preachit to ye till I’m weariet, maister Robert! Nobody trusted yet and was disappointed.”
“We’ve gone over all that,” he said. “No, no, there’s no other way. We can’t ask the Lord for money, Janet.”
“What for no? And now I can scarce sayGod’s blessing on ye—for how can I ask His blessing when it’s for a——?”
“No more, Janet, no more. Good-bye!”
“Oh, maister Robert, bide a moment. Do you mind the Psalm:
‘If in your heart ye sin regardThe Lord you will not hear?’
‘If in your heart ye sin regardThe Lord you will not hear?’
‘If in your heart ye sin regardThe Lord you will not hear?’
Think of that! How can I bid Him bless ye, when——?”
“Good-bye, my dear old woman, good-bye!”
And it was at this moment that Mrs. Dalyell’s voice calling “Robert!” came small in the distance up the echoing passage. And in another moment he was gone.
Mrs. Dalyell went to her kitchen to give her orders to the cook as soon as her husband was out of sight. She was an excellent housekeeper, and enjoyed this part of her duties far too much to depute them to any other, although indeed in the tide of prosperity which Mr. Dalyell’s business had brought to Yalton she might have had a housekeeper had she pleased, and a much larger establishment. But she had thrifty instincts and that distrust of business which old-fashioned ladiesused to have, with an inward conviction that it always collapsed at one time or another, and that the estate was the sheet-anchor: which had prevented her ever from launching out into expense. She dismissed the thoughts of Robert’s unusual embrace—for domestic endearments are sedulously kept in the background in Scotch houses of the old-fashioned type—and of any little peculiarity there might have been about him this morning more than other mornings—from her mind: which it required no effort to do, for she was not given to investigations below the surface, or reading between the lines, and a parting kiss (though absurd) was a parting kiss to Mrs. Dalyell, and it was nothing more. She took pains to order her husband a very good dinner, with due consideration of his special likings, which perhaps was as good a thing as she could have done. Then after luncheon there was Fred to send off in good time, so that he might not put out any of the Scrymgeours’ arrangements by arriving too late. He had a seven-miles drive, and never would have recollected to order the dog-cart in time if his mother had not taken that duty upon herself; and she likewise cast a glance at his other arrangementsto make sure that his white ties were in good condition and his pumps as they ought to be—precautions quite unnecessary and rather distasteful to the young man in his new conviction, acquired at Oxford, that he knew better than any one what was essential to a perfect turn-out, either for horse or man. Susie, who was liberated from lessons after luncheon, spent her time in preparing messages for Lucy Scrymgeour which were intended to disturb and plant thorns in that young person’s mind. “You can tell her I never was so surprised in my life as when it came for you and not for me: for you never were such friends with them as me. But you’re only asked as a man. They must be badly off for men; though when one thinks of all the officers in the garrison—and Davie such friends with all of them! I don’t think you have got any amatory instincts, Fred—for you’ve no friends but Oxford men; and what good would they be to us if we had a ball? But you can tell Daviefrom me——”
“Has Davie amatory instincts?” cried Fred. “The little beast—I’ll take him no messages from you.”
“What on earth is the child talking of?” saidMrs. Dalyell. “Where did she hear such a word? Amatory!”
“It means friendship,” cried Susie, with a burning blush. “I know—I know it does! I mean Davie has such lots of friends—and Fred has none; or at least none that would be of any use if we were to have a ball.”
“But we are not going to have a ball,” said the mother; “it is a great deal too much trouble. Ask the Scrymgeours what they think a week hence. The whole house will be turned upside down, and the servants put out of the way, and everybody made wretched. No, Susie, there will be no ball.”
“Then am I never to come out at all?” said Susie in a voice from which consternation had driven all the lighter tones. This was too solemn a thought to be expressed except with the gravity of fate.
“You should present her, mother,” said Fred; “that’s the right thing for a girl.”
“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Dalyell, “that’s a great trouble too! The gowns alone would cost about a hundred pounds; and your father, you know, never stays a day longer in London than he can help—and what would Susie and me do, twowomen by ourselves in that great big place? Besides, to make it worth the while we would need to know a number of people and get invitations. I’ve often heard of country people, very well thought of in their own place, that have just been humiliated to the very dust in London, with nobody to ask them out, or to call on them or anything. She’ll have to be content with something nearer home.”
“That is all because things are so conventionary and nothing natural,” said Susie; “that is what they say in all the books. But if papa would go up with us in his Deputy Lieutenant’s uniform, and knowing such quantities and quantities of people—and perhaps if you were to tell Mrs. Wauchope she might speak to the Duchess, and the Duchess would say just a little word to one of the Princesses—and then perhaps the Queen——”
“Are you out of your senses, Susie? What do you expect that the Queen would do?”
“Well! they might say we belonged to D’yell of Yalton that saved the life of James the Fourth, who is the Queen’s great, great, great (I don’t know how many greats) grandfather. And if she was passing this way, you know, mamma, my fatherwould have to come out and offer her a drink of milk upon his knees. And it is a real old rule for thousands of years, a feudacious tenor, or something of that kind——”
“Where did you find all that, Susie? Is it true, mother? Do we hold Yalton like that?” cried Fred in great delight. “I never knew we were such distinguished people before.”
“I don’t see any distinction about it,” said Mrs. Dalyell: “I never paid much attention to such old stories. Oh, if you believe all the Dalyell stories—— By the way, Susie, I wish you to pronounce the name as I do—as everybody is doing now. ’D’yell’ is so common—it is what the ploughmen say.”
“It is the right old antiquous way,” said Susie with energy, “and I like it far the best. I heard about the horseman too—what it means,” she added in a low tone. “Papa will never let me speak, but I could tell you such things, Fred, if——” And here the little girl made various telegraphic signs, meaning that enlightenment might be afforded if they were alone together, with the mother well out of the way. These designs, however, were frustrated unconsciouslyby Mrs. Dalyell, who gave her daughter something to do in the way of replying to notes, which kept Susie busy until it was time for Fred to depart.
But yet there was a little time for talk when the girls went with him round to the stables to remind the groom that he must not be late.
“Where did you hear about that feudal business, Susie?” said Fred. “Did you get it out of a book?”
“I got it out of something much funnier. I got it out of old Janet. You should just hear her; she knows more about us—oh! so much more—than we know about ourselves. She told me about——”
“Old Janet!” said Fred. He had forgotten his father’s grave talk and all that had passed on the terrace, and it was not till he had thought it over for a minute or two that it slowly came back to him what association that was which was linked with the name of old Janet. Not that he had not perfect acquaintance with her, as a matter of fact. She had been Mr. Dalyell’s nurse, and had always possessed a room of her own at Yalton, where she lived in a curious isolation and independence—respected, and, perhaps, a little feared by the household in general. Fred endeavoured to remember what it was as Susie’s voice ran on, and then it suddenly burst upon him. It was to her his father had advised him to go if he wanted help, in the supposed contingency of his own removal—old Janet, of all people in the world! The recollection made Fred indignant, yet gave him a sort of shiver of alarmed presentiment as well. Could his father have meant anything more than a mere passing fancy? Yet surely he must have meant something. And under what possible circumstances could he, Fred, a University-man, and acquainted with the world, require to take counsel with old Janet? It gave him the strangest thrill to his very finger-points. It must mean something different from what it seemed to mean. His father would never have given him such a recommendation without a reason. Fred thought with a sensation of horror of the family secrets which such an old woman might possess. She might know something that would ruin them all—there might be something hanging over them, something which she had to break to him. Fred flung this fancy out of his mind as if it had been a stone thatsome one had thrown into it, and came back to what Susie was saying. Indifferent to the fact that he was not listening, Susie was recounting the story of the family warning.
“‘And since that time there has always been a sound in the avenue as if some horseman was coming, heavy dunts on the road, and the tinkle of the bridle,’ she says. Always when there is trouble coming. I am sure it must be very fatiguing for a ghost, and monotonious—oh! just beyond description—to ride that little bit of road and never come near the house, and all just to frighten a person. I would dash into the hall and shake my bridle at them if it was me.”
“If you were a ghost, Susie?” said Alice with a shiver. “Oh, how can you think of yourself as a ghost?”
“I don’t: I’m not diaphanious,” said Susie; “but if you were to be a ghost at all it would be better to have something more to do than just dunting, dunting, over one bit of road.”
“Janet must have been telling you a lot of lies and nonsense,” said Fred indignantly; “I’ll have to speak to her if she goes on like that.”
“Or tell papa,” said Alice. “He never likes to hear about the horseman.”
“Yes, or tell papa,” said Fred. He could not tell what it meant, but he had a strange feeling as if it were he himself that must do this and shield his sisters from things that might frighten them—as if his father somehow had not much to do with it. But he was greatly shocked with himself when he became conscious of this thought. He was so much absorbed, indeed, in the uncomfortable fancies called up by Janet’s name, that Susie’s story of the King’s hunting and danger of his life, and how the goodwife of Yalton brought him a bowl of milk, and how the lands, as much as they could ride round in a day, according to the most approved romantic fashion, were bestowed upon the D’yells for that service, had little effect upon her brother. And presently the dog-cart came round to the door, and the sight of Fred seated in it with his portmanteau diverted Susie’s thoughts also and brought back her grievance. She stood watching his departure by the side of her mother, who had come out as was her wont to see the boy off.
“There he goes!” said Susie. “Oh, whatfossilized hearts boys have! He never thinks of me that has to stay at home. Tell Lucy Scrymgeour if she thinks I will ask her to our ball she is in the greatest mistake, and it will be just as much splendider than theirs, as Yalton is better than Westwood. And tell her mamma is going to take me to London to be presented and make my three obeysances to the Queen, and when I have done that I can go to every place, and all the other queens are obliged to ask me. Well, if mamma doesn’t, it’s not my fault; but you can always tell her, Fred: and just say to that ichthyosaurious Davie that I’ll have all the grand guardsmen and equerries to talk to, and I wouldn’t look at him.”
“But it’s not his fault, Susie,” said Alice; “and perhaps he’ll tell Fred he is very sorry.”
“I don’t think he will, for boys have no hearts: they have vegetable things instead, when they are not fossilized. If he says he is sorry, Fred, you can say I don’t mind very much, only I’ll never speak to them again.”
“I hope you’ll have a nice ball, Fred,” said Mrs. Dalyell. “Come back as early as you can to-morrow, for there are some people coming totea. And you may bring over Lucy and David, and any other young ones that are staying at Westwood. We can give them their tea on the terrace, it’s not too cold for that; and I am sure Mrs. Scrymgeour will be thankful to any one that will take them out of her way.”
Aboutthe time when Fred was starting from Yalton Mr. Wedderburn, the friend of the family, might have been seen in his office in a condition very unlike his usual calm. That he was very much disturbed about something was evident. His table was covered with all those carefully-arranged letters and docketed papers which are essential to the pose of a man of business; and by intervals he wrote a letter—or, rather, part of a letter—to which he added a line whenever he could fix his thoughts to it; but these intervals were scattered through the reflections and calculations of several hours, to which Mr. Wedderburn returned, from minute to minute, laying down his pen and falling back into some more absorbing subject of thought. Sometimes he got up and walked about the room, going from one window to the other, and staring out at each as if the slight variation of the view could afford him some light upon the subject over which he puckered his brows. Now and then he said tohimself audibly, “I must go out to-night.” He was not a man who indulged in the habit of speaking to himself, nor was there much in these words which could throw light upon the subject of his thoughts; but it was evidently a sort of relief to him to say this as he paced heavily about the room and looked out, staring blankly, neither seeing, nor expecting to see, anything that would clear up the trouble on his face. “I must go out to-night.” This phrase, however, meant a great deal to the sober and reserved Edinburgh lawyer.
It meant that to the house which he visited so often, receiving hospitality, kindness, and a sense of almost family well-being, for which he gave back nothing but a steady, undemonstrative friendship, the moment had now come when he must go in another character—in the character, indeed, of an anxious brother and helper, but yet as announcing an approaching catastrophe and the breaking-up of a superstructure of long-established prosperity and peace. He had not been convinced of the necessity of this till to-day. Whispers, indeed, had come to his ears of doubtful speculations and a position which was beginning to be assailed by questions which never should ariseas to the position of a man in business. But he had lent a deaf ear to all that was malicious, and brushed away all friendly fears. “Bob D’yell’s as sensible a fellow as ever stepped. It’ll take strong evidence to make me believe that he’s been playing ducks and drakes with his money.” This confident speech from a man of Pat Wedderburn’s authority (in Edinburgh, as in fashionable circles, the well-known members of the community are generally distinguished by their Christian names) had done much to support a credit which was not so robust as it had been. But this morning Mr. Wedderburn had heard very unpleasant things—things which had gone to his heart, and wounded both his affection and his pride. He had a pride in his friend’s credit as in his own. And when he thought of the cheerful household and all its innocent indulgences, Mr. Wedderburn struck the table with his fist in the trouble of his heart. To think that they might have to leave Yalton, to give up their little luxuries, their social rank, all the pleasures of their life, affected this old bachelor as probably it would not at all affect themselves. He could have shed angry tears over the “putting down” of Mrs. Dalyell’s carriage and the girls’ ponies, which,if it came to that, and they were aware that their position required such sacrifices, these ladies would give up without a murmur; and, perhaps, none of them would have much objection to come “in” to a house in Edinburgh instead of Yalton, which was a possibility which made Mr. Wedderburn swear. He was very unhappy about them, one and all, and about his life-long friend, Bob D’yell, who must no doubt have been in the wrong, and whom sometimes in his heart he blamed angrily and bitterly, thinking what the effect of his rashness would be to the others. Pat Wedderburn was grieved to the heart. He could as easily have believed in himself going wrong; “But, God bless us!” he said to himself, “it’s not going wrong. He has been taken in; he was always a sanguine fellow, and he’s been deceived.” His thoughts finally resolved themselves into the necessity, above and before all things, of having a long talk with Bob; and he repeated, as he once more stared mechanically out of the further window, “I must go out to-night.”
He could not, however, go “out” before the usual time, and in the interval he could not rest. Finally, he took his hat and left his office witha better inspiration. If he could find his friend at one of the establishments in which he had an interest, the talk might be had at once, without any need, at least for to-night, of disturbing the peaceful echoes of Yalton. Mr. Wedderburn went out for this purpose with very tender thoughts of his friend mingled with his anger. “Why couldn’t the fellow tell me in time? But the Lord grant it may still be in time! There’s things I might have done. I’m not without funds nor resources, nor ideas, either, for that matter.” And as Mr. Wedderburn went along the orderly Edinburgh street, he burst out into a kind of laugh, such as is among many elderly Scotchmen the last evidence of emotion, and said within himself: “To the half of my kingdom!” The humour of the contrast between that romantic phrase and the very prosaic, rapid calculation he had gone through as to the money he—not a romantic person at all, an Edinburgh W.S., of fifty-five, and of the most humdrum appearance—could command: and the true feeling with which he had realised his friend’s misfortune, burst forth in that anomalous sound. A woman who was passing turned round and looked at him with puzzled alarm; and a boy, one of those rudecommentators who spare nobody’s feelings, called out, “That’s a daft man; he’s laughing to himsel’.” “Laughing,” said Mr. Wedderburn with something like a groan: “there is little laughing in my head.” And so he went on to the Railway Office, and the Insurance Office, to ask for Mr. Dalyell.
At the railway he had not been seen that day, at the other office he had appeared for about half an hour only.
“He will have returned home, I suppose,” Wedderburn said indifferently.
“Well, no, sir; not at once,” said the clerk who answered his questions. “I heard him saying he was feeling fagged, and that he was going out to Portobello for a dip in the sea and a good swim.”
“It’s a little cold for that,” said Wedderburn.
“Well, it may be a little cold,” admitted the clerk cautiously, “but Mr. D’yell is a great man for the sea.”
“He will probably be going out by the usual train,” Mr. Wedderburn said to himself as he turned away. But there was no appearance of Dalyell in the train. The lawyer walked to Yalton through the cornfields, in which the harvest hadbegun, just as the sun was sinking. The ruddy autumnal light came into his eyes, half blinding him with its long, level rays. Everything was rosy with the brilliancy of the sunset; the blue sky flushed with ruddy clouds, the warm colour of the sheaves catching a still warmer tone from the sun. All was peaceful, wealthy, full of external comfort and riches, and the house of Yalton caught the sinking gleams from the west upon its high roof and pinnacles like a benediction. The trees were taking the autumn livery here and there, giving as yet only a little additional warmth to the landscape. To go from Yalton to Melville Street, or some other dread abode of stony gentility in Edinburgh, how could they ever bear it? Mr. Wedderburn had been going over all his resources as he made his little journey, and he had reckoned up what he could spare to set his friend on his legs again. Perhaps there might yet be time!
When he went into the drawing-room where Mrs. Dalyell was sitting, she raised her head from her work, with a smile on her face. And then he observed a little alteration—oh, not so much as a cloud upon her face, not even a look that could be called disappointment, but only the slightestscarcely perceptible change of expression. “Mr. Wedderburn!” she said. “I’m very glad to see you: but I thought it was Robert,” and she held out her hand to him with all the easy confidence of habitual friendship. She was not disappointed; there was no doubt in her mind that Robert was coming, if not behind his friend, at least with the next train.
“You will be surprised to see me so soon again,” he said, feeling a little embarrassed. “You will think you are never to be quit of that old fellow—but I wanted to have a long talk with Bob on some business; and as I could not find him at the office——”
“No,” said Mrs. Dalyell; “he said as soon as he could get his business over he was going down to Portobello for a dip in the sea. I never knew such a man for the sea. No doubt that has made him lose his train—for he’s generally very punctual by this train.”
“That is what I thought,” said Mr. Wedderburn. “I thought I would meet him and come out with him. But the next will bring him, no doubt.”
“In about three-quarters of an hour,” said Mrs. Dalyell, calmly: and she added, “It’s a beautifulevening, and it’s a pity to keep you in the house. We should take the good of the fine weather as long as it lasts. Never mind me: you will find the girls upon the terrace somewhere. But take a cup of tea before you go out.”
“I will take a cup of tea,” said the visitor, “thankfully. But why not come out upon the terrace yourself? It is the most lovely afternoon, and the wind, as much as there is, is from the west. It’s a sin to stay in the house when you have such a place to see the sunset from. Now if you were in Melville Street, for instance——”
“Why Melville Street?” said Mrs. Dalyell with a laugh—but she did not wait for an answer. “If I had to live in Edinburgh I would never go there. I would prefer the south side—or old George’s Square where the houses are so good. I sometimes think we will have to come in for the winter now that Susie’s of an age for parties, for there is little gaiety for a young thing here.”
“That’s true,” said Mr. Wedderburn, and he gave her a look in which there was an inquiry and a moment’s doubt. Did she perhaps know something? Had Bob D’yell confided some hint of approaching calamity or necessary retrenchmentto the wife of his bosom? What so natural, what so wise? Mrs. Dalyell’s head was a little bent over the table where she stood pouring out a cup of tea for the visitor; but she raised it, meeting that inquiring look with the perfect frankness of her usual demeanour and the calm of a woman round whom there had never been any mysteries. She was struck, however, by his look. “Is there anything the matter?” she said. “You are looking very serious.” Then, for heaven knows what womanish reason, it occurred to her that Mr. Wedderburn was himself in trouble, and wanting something of her husband. “You know,” she said with a little emphasis, “that whatever might be the matter, if there’s anything that Robert could do, Mr. Wedderburn, you are as sure of him as of a brother.” “God bless her innocence!” the lawyer said to himself.
“Not a bit,” he said. “There’s nothing the matter: but thank you all the same for saying that. Bob D’yell’s been to me as a brother, since we were boys together—and will be I hope till the end.”
Mrs. Dalyell put out her soft hand to him over the tea-table with a smile. There was water in hiseyes, though, fortunately, as he stood with his back to the light, it could not be seen—but there was none in hers. Her eyes were as serene as the evening skies; and her soft hand, which perhaps was a little too soft, with no bones in it to speak of, the hand of a woman never used to do much for herself, met his strong grasp, in which there was more than many an oath of fidelity, with a moderate and simple kindness which showed at once how natural and genuine was the friendship to which she thus pledged her husband, and how devoid of all tragical elements so far as her comprehension went. She was a little surprised by Mr. Wedderburn’s grip, which rather hurt that soft hand, but led the way to the terrace, after he had taken his tea, with all her usual serenity. She took a shawl from the stand in the hall and wrapped herself in it as she went out. In Scotland even in July it is wise to take a shawl when you go out to see the sunset; how much more in September! Indeed, after she had taken two or three turns upon the terrace, she went in again, saying that it was all very well for “you young things” (with a smile at Mr. Wedderburn), but that she knew what rheumatism was. Susie and Alice werevery good company on the terrace, and they had a thousand things to say to their old friend, so that, though he had looked occasionally at his watch, he had not taken very decided note of the passage of time, until an hour after, when Mrs. Dalyell came back again, with a shawl this time over her head. The sun had quite gone down, the shadows were lengthening, and twilight stealing on. “Do you mean to say,” Mrs. Dalyell said as she came down the steps to the terrace, “that your father’s not here? I made sure he must be here with you: the train’s been in this half-hour, and there’s not another till nine—and no telegram. I don’t know what it can mean.”
It could not be said, perhaps, that she was anxious, but she was uneasy, not knowing what to think. Mr. Wedderburn, for his part, started, as if the fault had somehow been his. “Bless me!” he said, “I had forgotten all about it. I might have gone down and met the train.”
“That would have done little good,” said Mrs. Dalyell, “for if he had come by it he would have been here before now: the thing that astonishes me is there’s no telegram. Sometimes Robert, like other people, is detained. Everybusiness man must be detained now and then: but he always sends a telegram. I never knew him to fail.”
“That is the worst,” said Mr. Wedderburn, “of being too exact in your ways. If you ever depart from them by any accident everybody thinks something must have happened.”
“I don’t think something must have happened,” said Mrs. Dalyell, “but I don’t understand it. It’s so unlike him. He would rather take any trouble than keep me anxious; and I told him particularly we should be alone to-night, with no man except servants in the house. It’s not like Robert. It must have been something quite unforeseen.”
“Such things are always happening, my dear lady. He may have had to meet some man from London; he may even have had to go to London himself.”
“Dear me!” said Mrs. Dalyell, “you don’t think that’s likely? Without so much as a clean shirt! Besides, he would have sent a telegram,” she repeated, going back to the one thing of which she was sure.
“It’s the telegram you miss more than theman,” said Mr. Wedderburn with a laugh. It was very very little of a laugh. He was more miserable than she, for her anxiety was quite unmixed by any deeper sense of a possible reason for her husband’s absence. There was no reason for it, none whatever to her consciousness.
“That is just it. I want the telegram to explain the man. Of course, he might be called away. Would I have him tied to my apron-string? But a word of warning, that’s what I look for. ‘Kept by business and will not be back till the late train,’ or ‘Dining at the Lord President’s,’ or—it does not matter what it is. I am always glad that Robert should enjoy himself, so long as I have my telegram. But as it’s evident he’s not coming,” said Mrs. Dalyell, looking at her watch, “we must just take our dinner and hope he’s getting as good a one. He will be coming by the nine train.”
Mr. Wedderburn went in with very painful fancies, which he could not shake off. The moment would have come, perhaps, when Bob D’yell had to tell his family that he was a ruined man, and he would be shrinking from that stern necessity. His friend pictured him wandering about the dark streets, or sitting in the roomsabove the Insurance Office, where there was space to receive on occasion a belated director, and counting up all he had—alas! would it not rather be all the debts he had—reckoning them, and asking himself how long it would be before the storm burst, and how he was to tellher, and what the poor children would do? That was what the poor fellow would be thinking, wherever he was. Instead of coming back—the good lawyer exclaimed within himself in a little attempt at anger, to keep his sympathy from becoming too heart-rending—to one that might have helped him! But that would be just like Bob D’yell—ready enough to come to you if you were in trouble, to give all his mind to what was to be done: but not if the trouble was his own: more likely then to hide himself, to think shame of it, as if misfortune was a man’s own fault. Mr. Wedderburn did not know what to do, whether to hurry into Edinburgh to make inquiries, or to wait on, and see whether he would arrive by the late train. Somehow he had very little faith that his friend would come home. He might go away, thinking, perhaps, that the creditors would be more gentle with his family if he were gone. And that would be calledabsconding! Heaven only could tell what in his despair the poor fellow might do.
Except suicide: there never occurred to his friend, in the endless thoughts he had on the subject, any fear of that, which to a Frenchman would be the first thing to be thought of—the natural refuge for a bankrupt. No, no!—come what might there was no need to think of that dark contingency. Besides, Mr. Wedderburn reflected, with a sense of the grim humour of the suggestion, that Dalyell, as the director of an insurance company, knew too well that such a step would take away the last resource his children might have. No, no!—not that. But he might go away. He might not be able to bear the sight of ruin as affecting them. That was what chiefly weighed upon himself—the woman and her children; the girls, who would not know what it meant; and poor Fred, who would know what it meant—who would have to abandon everything on which his heart was most set. Had Wedderburn been aware of the conversation which had taken place between Fred and his father his troubled thoughts would have been still more serious: as it was, all he could do was to keep his countenance,to look as like his ordinary as possible, not to frighten the poor things too soon.
But the dinner went over well enough. Mrs. Dalyell kept looking at the door every time it opened, though she knew it was only to admit a new dish, expecting her telegram. But it did not come. And the nine o’clock train arrived, and there was still no appearance of the master of the house. The footman was sent down to meet the train, and Wedderburn put on his coat, and said shyly that he would just take a turn and meet the truant. And the girls ran out by the terrace, and one strayed down the avenue to bring papa home. And though it was cold, Mrs. Dalyell opened one of the drawing-room windows that she might hear him coming. She was not alarmed: but she was so much surprised that it made her a little uneasy, for in all her married life such a thing had never happened to her before.
When it proved that he had not come by the nine o’clock train nobody knew what to think. By this time the telegraph-office was closed at the village, and there was no longer any hope of news that way: which, strangely enough, was a thing that rather calmed than otherwise Mrs. Dalyell’s mind.
“He must be coming by the midnight express,” she said.
“Would you like me to go in and see if there was anything the matter?” said Mr. Wedderburn.
“What could be the matter?” she said.
“Oh, he might be ill—or there might have been an accident!”
“In that case,” said Mrs. Dalyell, “Robert never would have omitted to send a telegram—or the people at the office, or wherever he was, would have done it. No, no! You would go in to Edinburgh anxious, and we could not let you know that he had got the express to stop. Just stay where you are. And we’ll hear all about it when he comes. And it’s a comfort to have you in the house.”
To this request Mr. Wedderburn at once yielded. If the poor fellow did come home, miserable and disheartened, it was better that he should see a friend’s face, and take counsel with a man who was ready to help and advise before he toldher. Besides, it was better for her, poor thing, to have somebody to stand by her. And, oddly enough, now that there was no chance of that telegram she was not so anxious. She had no doubt of Robertcoming by the express. She let Alice stay up beyond her bedtime to make up a rubber for Mr. Wedderburn, and took her share in the game quite cheerfully. She did not believe in either illness or accident. “He would have had no peace till I was by his bedside,” she said; “and anybody could have sent a telegram.” No, no, she had no fear of that: and expected now quite calmly the last train.
But Mr. Dalyell did not come by the midnight express.
Thereis something dreadful in the aspect of a room from which its habitual occupant is absent unexpectedly all night. Its good order, its cold whiteness, the unused articles in tidy array, undisturbed by any careless natural movements, strike a chill to the heart. In any case, even when the usual tenant is pleasantly absent, or gone on a visit, there is something ominous in the empty room. It seems to breathe of a time when the familiar person will be gone for ever. And how much more when the beloved occupant has gone mysteriously—absent, lost in the unknown—no one knowing where he has passed the night! Mrs. Dalyell was not a fanciful woman, she was not given to morbid imaginations, but when she glanced into her husband’s dressing-room next morning her heart sank for a moment with this chill, that would not be reasoned away. She did reason it away, however, and recovered her composure. For, after all, what was it?—nothing.A man in active life has a hundred calls upon him. He might be whipped off to London upon some railway business without any warning. The only thing that really troubled her was the absence of that telegram. It was still almost summer weather; nothing to interrupt the working of the telegraph anywhere. Already even she might have had one had he telegraphed from any station on the way up to London. This was the thing which she could not understand.
“No, there is no word,” she said. “I have made up my mind he must have been called off at a moment’s notice to London; but why he didn’t telegraph, I can’t imagine—even from Berwick he might have done it, and I should have had it by this time. I never knew Robert so careless before.”
“Here it is, mother,” cried Alice, rushing in with the famous yellow envelope, the hideous messenger of so much trouble. But when Mrs. Dalyell took it, she flung it back again almost with indignation, and turned upon the girl with a sort of fury.
“Couldn’t you see,” she cried, “that it was for Mr. Wedderburn?” The poor lady had kept hernerves quiet and her imagination suppressed till now. But this felt to her like an injury. She got up from the breakfast-table, and paced about the room, wringing her hands. It had come, but it was not for her! This seemed to put terror into the anxiety, an increase of every involuntary tremor. In the sickness of the disappointment tears came rushing to her eyes. She took Alice by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Couldn’t you see? you little careless monkey!” Poor Mrs. Dalyell was unjust in the heat of her disappointment. But after a while reason once more resumed its sway. “I am letting it get upon my nerves,” she said with a tremulous laugh, as she came back to the table. Then, with a glance at Mr. Wedderburn’s disturbed face, “It is not by any chance—about Robert?” she cried.
“No—no—I’ve no reason to suppose it is. It’s from my managing clerk. He says: ‘Something requiring your instant attention. Fear bad——’ No—no—no reason in the world to suppose that D’yell has anything to do with it. I must just hurry away. I’m called upon often, you know,” he added with a sickly explanatory smile, “on urgent—personal affairs.”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Dalyell, “we know that well; and no better or kinder counsellor. But you have had no breakfast——”
“I must not stop a moment longer—there is just time for the early train.”
The girls caught their hats from the stand in the hall and ran down with him, Alice speeding on in front like a greyhound to bid the station-master keep back the train for a minute—a kindly arrangement which often was made for the convenience of Yalton. Mr. Wedderburn gave forth a few breathless instructions to Susie as he hurried along. “If I were you I would send over for Fred. He should be at home in the circumstances: and don’t let your mother be troubled.”
“But, dear Mr. Wedderburn, what are the circumstances?” said Susie. “Is there anything wrong with papa?”
“I hope not, my dear, I hope not. I’ve no reason to think that there is anything wrong: but just—I would have Fred at home as early as possible. And if I hear anything in town, I’ll send you word directly. And you may calculate on seeing me before dinner. Then we’ll know what to think.”
“I hope papa will be home before then: and he’ll laugh at us cardiatically.”
“Susie, my dear—there’s no such word.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Wedderburn, for cardiac means from the heart; and that’s the only way it will go.”
He turned round upon her, and smiled with the strangest mixture of fatherly kindness and pity and sorrow. Susie was silenced by this strange look. Her eyes were startled with a sudden anxious question, her soft lips dropped apart with fear and wonder. “Oh, why are you so sorry for me, Mr. Wedderburn?” she cried. But they were just arriving at the railway, and the train was waiting. Susie, with her young sister clinging to her arm, both a little breathless with their run, in their light morning dresses and careless garden hats, the rose of morning health and brightness in their soft, shaded faces, the morning sun shining upon them and round them, distinguishing them upon the rustic platform by the soft little shadow they threw, was a sight the good lawyer never forgot. “The innocent things!” he said to himself.
When he was safe from their eyes, whirlingalong over the country, he took once more the telegram from his pocket: “Something requiring your immediate attention. Fear bad news. Sent for last night. Too late to communicate, please lose no time.” Well! after all, there was nothing in that to indicate Bob D’yell. It might be Mrs. Davidson’s business. It might be that scapegrace young Faulkner again. The devil fly away with all young spendthrifts! To give an honest man a fright like this for him! Mr. Wedderburn, with a momentary relief, noted, a gleam of fun coming into his eyes, two superfluous words in the telegram: “‘Please’—the blockhead! What man in his senses says ‘please’ when he has to pay a ha’penny for it?” he said with a little hoarse laugh to himself. For surely it must be young Faulkner—the born fool! There was absolutely nothing to connect it with Bob D’yell.
When he entered his office, however, he was met with a very grave face by his managing clerk. “It was a man from Musselburgh, sir, last night. He came to the office, and finding it shut, as it naturally would be at that hour, came on to me at my house. You know, sir, I live out at Morningside——”
“It would be strange if I did not know where you live—get on, man, get on!”
“I say that to account for it being so late. Well, sir, he told me—if it was Musselburgh or if it was Portobello, I can’t quite say, but it’s written down, and I sent off young Gibson by skreigh of day to make inquiries. He told me, sir, that a heap of clothes had been found on the sands belonging to somebody, it would seem, that was bathing in the sea. They lay there all the afternoon and no one took any notice, but at last one of the fisherwomen getting bait came in and said it was a gentleman’s clothes, and his watch and all lying. And the things were examined, and in the pockets were a number of letters——”
Mr. Wedderburn gave a gasp, inarticulate but impatient, with a vehement wave of his hand. The clerk handed him, with a look of deep commiseration and sympathy which filled the lawyer with sudden rage, a little packet on the table.
Ah!—had he not known it all the time?
He sank into a chair, speechless for the moment, but half with rage at Martin standing there gently shaking his head, with the look that a sympatheticacquaintance wears at a funeral—as if it were anything to him! “Robert Dalyell, Esq., Yalton,” the familiar commonplace address, that meant nothing except the merest everyday necessity—that meant a whole tragedy now.
“Found lying on the sands. But was that all—was that all? For God’s sake, man, speak out, whatever you have to say.”
Martin excused Mr. Wedderburn’s hastiness with a slight wave of his hand, and said all there was to say. It was very little: Mr. Dalyell, a man very well known, had been seen to arrive at the station, and had been met by various people on his way to the sea. He was not in the habit of using the bathing machines, as indeed few gentlemen were. There was no special danger about the spot, and it was a calm day, and he was a good swimmer. Of course the place was a little out of the way, and east of the sands, as was indispensable when gentlemen bathed without any machine; but nothing out of the ordinary—many men did the same, and Mr. Dalyell did it constantly. No cry of distress had been heard, nor any other signs of a catastrophe. This little mound of clothes, flung down with the convictionof perfect security, the watch in the pocket, a shilling or two dropped on the sands as the things were moved—this was all. “The body,” Martin said, dropping his already subdued voice, “had not been found.”
The body! Surely it was premature still to talk of that.
“He might have been carried along by the current further east and got to land there.”
“A naked man, sir—without any clothes! There would soon have been word of such a wonder as that—and somebody sent on for the things. We took all that into consideration.”
“I must go down myself at once,” said the lawyer.
“I sent Gibson, sir, the first thing.”
“What’s Gibson to me?” said Mr. Wedderburn, with a sort of roar of trouble, anger, and misery combined. “I must go myself.”
“There are a number of letters,” said Martin, “that might want answering.”
“Letters! when Bob Dalyell’s lying somewhere dead or dying.”
“Oh, sir,” said Martin, “in the midst of life we are in death. If it’s poor Mr. D’yell—and there’sno reasonable doubt on the subject—he’s dead long, long before now.”
Wedderburn made a dash through the air with his clenched fist, as if he had been knocking down a too sympathetic clerk, and took his hat, and darted away.
“Old Pat’s in one of his grandest tempers,” a young clerk permitted himself to say in Mr. Martin’s hearing, as the door closed with a violent swing behind their employer.
“Old Pat!—if it’s our respected superior, Mr. Wedderburn, that ye mean by that familiar no to say contemptuous epithet,” said Mr. Martin—“he has just heard of the loss of his dearest friend. You would do better to feel for him than to mock at a good man in trouble, my young friend.”
Mr. Wedderburn rushed to Portobello as fast as the train would take him, following in the track of his young clerk, who had already exhausted every means of information, but who fortunately met the lawyer on the way and gave him the result of his inquiries. These inquiries seemed to leave no doubt as to the catastrophe, and Wedderburn found to his horror that it was already very generally known, and that there had been a paragraphon the subject in theScotsman, fortunately not giving the name of the sufferer, but indicating the general fear that a well-known member of society had been the victim. “They never read the papers,” Mr. Wedderburn said to himself, “and she would never think it was—him” (already it seemed too familiar to say Bob). When some one came hurrying up to him, grasping his hand and asking, “Is this awful news true?—is it out of doubt that it’s poor D’yell?”—the broken-hearted man felt once more fiercely angry at the question, as if it was not a thing to be discussed in ordinary words. But this was morbid, he knew. The questioner was Mr. Scrymgeour, Fred’s host, the giver of the ball on the previous night, who explained that he had seen the paragraph in the papers, and had secured it at once and come in to Edinburgh to inquire, that the poor boy should hear nothing till he could ascertain if it were true. And even while he spoke, others came pressing upon them with grave faces: “Was it true? Could it be D’yell?” The sensation was extraordinary. “He was said to be a little shaky in business matters,” said one. “That was all rubbish,” said another. “A man with a good estateat his back and plenty of friends—no fear but he would have pulled through.” “And Chili stock is looking up again, which was supposed to be his danger.” Thus they stood and talked him over. “I suppose there is no doubt it was an accident?” said another cautiously. This remark caught the lawyer’s anxious ear, upon whose own heart a heavy cloud of dread was hanging. But there was a chorus (thank God!) of assurances. No, no!—Bob D’yell was the best fellow in the world. He was a man always confident in his own mind, a man that had every inducement to live—with a fine family, his son at Oxford, with a good estate behind him, and an excellent character and plenty of friends. Even if there might be a little temporary embarrassment—that would soon have blown over. There were men that would have stuck by him through thick and thin. “Me, for instance,” said Mr. Wedderburn, careless of grammar. “I went out especially last night to tell him, if there really was trouble, I would see him through it——” “Poor fellow! Poor Bob! Poor D’yell!” the bystanders said in their various tones. Nobody had the faintest hope that he could have escaped. Such a prodigy as a manwithout clothes would soon have been known along the coast. And of course he would have hurried back, if he had been saved, to ease the anxieties of his friends. It was only Mr. Wedderburn who insisted upon every means being taken to secure the poor remains, and that not for certainty of the fact, but for decent burial. There is no coroner’s inquest in Scotland; but an inquiry into all the circumstances was immediately set on foot, an inquiry at first in which there was no certain evidence but the piteous heap of clothes, the respectable garments in which every man of business goes to town. The papers left in the pocket, the few shillings on the sands, the notes in his pocket-book, were all so many unconscious witnesses to the accident, all proving how accidental, how unlooked-for, was this cutting short of his career. There was even a withered rose in his coat, a pale China rose from one corner of the terrace at Yalton, which Mr. Wedderburn recognised with a pang, as if it had been one of the children. The tears blinded the middle-aged lawyer’s eyes as he took this faded thing out of his friend’s coat, brushed off the sand from the withered leaves, and put it in his pocket-bookreverently. All who were present looked on at this little incident as if it had been a religious rite.
It may be added here that the naked remains of a drowned man were found a few weeks afterwards on the east sands of Portobello. Needless to say that they were quite unrecognisable; but the height and size, and the absence of clothing, made it as nearly certain as any such thing could be that this was all that remained of Robert Dalyell.
Meanwhile that fatal day passed over at Yalton, the first part very quietly, as usual, in the ordinary occupations of the household. It was a beautiful morning, full of comfort and good hope, and Mrs. Dalyell was busy in her house. It was the day for the overseeing and paying of the weekly bills, and there were various repairs necessary before the winter set in which she had to look after, and a great deal of linen—napery as she called it—had come in from the laundry, which it was essential to examine to see what wanted renewing and what it would be possible to darn and keep in use. Old Janet Macalister was famous for her darning. Old as she was, it was still, Mrs. Dalyell said, “a pleasure to see” her work. It was an ornamentto the tablecloths rather than a blemish. Old Janet was in great activity, almost agitation. She appeared in the house, as she very rarely did, and talked so much in an excited way, that the servants thought her “fey.” She went with Mrs. Dalyell to the housekeeper’s room, uninvited, to examine the linen. “Dinna put that away. I can darn that fine,” old Janet said to many articles over which her mistress shook her head. “Losh! what’s the good o’ me, eatin’ bread and burnin’ fire this mony mony a year, if I canna keep the napery in order!” she cried. Her head, which was slightly palsied, nodded more than usual, her large pale hands shook; but her voice was strong, and she ended every sentence with a harsh laugh.
“I am afraid you are not very well to-day, Janet,” said Mrs. Dalyell.
“Oh, ’deed am I, very well; but ye must give me work, mistress, ye must give me work. Without work there are o’er many thoughts in a person’s head for comfort. And that fine darning, it just takes everything out of ye: it takes up baith body and mind.”
When her survey of the linen was over, Mrs. Dalyell came back to the drawing-room, havingsent old Janet back to her room with an armful of sheets and tablecloths. And she was glad to escape from the old woman. There was a gleam in her eyes, often fixed upon her mistress with a penetrating look, as if she knew something, and her unusual flurry of speech and the harsh laugh of agitation which occurred so often, which Mrs. Dalyell did not understand, and which alarmed her—she could not tell why. Then came luncheon, to which she sat down with her girls, with a forlorn sense of the two empty seats which Foggo had placed as usual. “I thought, mem,” he said in his solemn way, “that Mr. Fred would have been home, if not the maister.”
“Why should you think Mr. Fred would have been at home?” she asked almost angrily.
“He is coming in the afternoon with some of the young people from Westwood for tea. We shall want tea on the terrace at half-past four, and there will probably be five or six people.”
“Very well, mem,” said Foggo, more solemn than ever, and with a look which, like Janet’s, meant more than his words.
Mrs. Dalyell had something like anattaque des nerfs, which was a malady unknown to her. Shecould not eat anything. In order that the servants might not suppose there was anything irregular in their master’s proceedings, she said nothing before Foggo about her anxiety. She said she was tired, looking over all that weary linen. “And old Janet, that was stranger than ever, and she always was a strange creature. I think I will lie down for a little after lunch. And I almost wish that I had not bidden Fred to bring over the Scrymgeours with him for the afternoon.” If this was said to throw dust in Foggo’s eyes, Mrs. Dalyell might have spared herself the trouble. For Foggo had read hisScotsmanthat morning, and had heard a murmur of dismay which had come to Yalton by the backstairs, by the kitchen—nobody knew how. “God help the poor woman!” Foggo said, when he retired to his own domain, with more feeling than respect. “She’s full of trouble, but she will not let on, and though she’s in horror of something, it’s not half so bad as what has come to pass.”
“If that story’s true,” said the cook, who was too much disturbed and too anxious to hear everything to take any trouble about her own work, which the kitchen-maid was accomplishing sadly while herprincipal talked and cried over the dreadful rumour which had swept hither on the wings of the wind. “Oh, it’s true enough,” said Foggo, whose disposition was dismal—“and there’s little dinner will be wanted here this night, for sooner or later they must hear. It was more than I could well bear to hear them talking of the big tea on the terrace and who was coming. I hope the Scrymgeour people will not be so mad as to let their young ones come: and nobody else will come, for it’s well known over the country by this time, though she doesn’t know.”
“Oh, my poor bonnie lady,” said the cook weeping—“and the kind maister, that had a pleasant word for everybody.”
“Not so pleasant a word for them that crossed him,” said Foggo. “Not that I would say a word against him, and him a drowned man.”
Early in the afternoon Fred came home. It was a house that stood always with open doors and windows, so that there was no need to open to any familiar comer; but Foggo was in the hall, chiefly because he too was excited and eager to have the first of any news that might arrive, when the youth with his light step came in. His eagerquestion, “Is my father at home?” made the grave butler more solemn than ever.
“No, sir, the master has not been back since he left the house yesterday morning,” said Foggo.
But though his looks were so significant, that the very dogs saw that something was the matter, Fred neither gave nor communicated any news. He rushed upstairs three steps at a time, and burst into the drawing-room, where his mother was sitting. She had tried to lie down, as she had said, but Mrs. Dalyell could not rest: her nerves would not be stilled, and her thoughts grew so many that they buzzed in her ears, and seemed to suffocate her in her throat. She was sitting at the window which commanded the gate, so that she might see who appeared, ever watching for that telegraph boy, who in a moment might set all right.
“You have come back early, Fred,” she said. “And have you come alone?”
“Mother, what’s this I hear, that my father has never come home?”
“Who has told you such a thing? Your father has many affairs in his hands; he’s often been called away in a hurry.”
“You knew then he was going somewhere? It’sall right, then, thank God!” said Fred; “and that dreadful thing in the papers has nothing to do with him.”
“What dreadful thing in the papers?” cried Mrs. Dalyell. It was not till Fred had thus committed himself in his haste and anxiety that he felt how foolish it was to refer to a report which as yet was not authenticated. He went to look for the papers, cursing his own rashness. But Foggo had more sense than might have been supposed. He had conveyed thatScotsmanout of the way.
Alas! as if it were of any use to try to stave off the knowledge of such a calamity! An hour later Mr. Wedderburn’s sober step sounded upon the gravel, coming up from the train. Mrs. Dalyell sat still in her chair, not running to meet him as the others did. “Oh, I shall hear it soon enough—I shall hear it soon enough!” she said to herself.
His very step had tragedy in it; and she knew before she saw him that something dreadful had happened, that the failure of that telegram, which Robert had never before omitted to send her, was but too well explained. Something like a sweeping gust of fatal wind seemed to flow through the house—a chill consciousness of coming trouble, callingout everybody from above and below to hear the news. And then there was a terrible cry, and then a dread stillness fell over Yalton—like the stillness before a storm.
There was one strange thing, however, which happened that fatal afternoon, and which Fred could never forget. As he went upstairs to his own room, which was in the upper storey, a pale and miserable ghost of the cheerful youth he had been yesterday, he saw old Janet standing at the end of the passage which led to her room. She put out her long arm, out of the folds of her tartan shawl. “How is she taking it, Mr. Fred?” she asked. Janet’s eyes were deep, and shone with a strange fire. Her face was full of excitement and agitation—but not of grief, although she had been devoted to the master, who was also her nursling. “How is your mother taking it?” There was a gleam of strange curiosity in her eyes.
“Taking it?” cried Fred. “Have you no heart that you ask such a question? My mother is heartbroken—as we all are,” said the lad, his voice giving way to the half-arrested sob, which he was too young to be able to restrain.
“But no me—that’s what you’re thinking:though the Lord knows he’s more to me than everything else in this world. Laddie, you’re young—young; and so is your mother. But me, I’m a very old woman. I’ve seen many a strange thing. You’ll mind that you’re to come and ask me if you’re ever very sore troubled in your mind.”
“You!” cried Fred. There was something like scorn in his tone. The first distress of youth seems always final, insurmountable, so that it is half an insult to suggest that it will be lived through and other troubles come. But then a sudden chill of horror came over the lad. “You!” he said again, with a pang which he did not himself understand. He remembered what his father had said: “Go to old Janet.” Did she know what his father had said? Had she been aware that this great trouble, this more than trouble, this misery, calamity, was coming? Fred gave the old woman an awed and terrified look—and fled: from her and his own thoughts.
Thereis no coroner’s inquest in Scotland, as has been said; nevertheless there was a careful examination into all the circumstances of Mr. Dalyell’s death. It was known that he was going to Portobello to bathe. This he had stated not only to his family, but to the clerks at the insurance office and other persons whom he had met. One gentleman appeared who had travelled that little journey with him by the train, whom he had almost persuaded to join him in his swim, and who parted with him only at the corner of the road leading down to the sands; the porter at the station had seen him arrive, had seen the two walk off together. There was no mystery or concealment about anything he had done. It was his usual place for bathing, there was nothing extraordinary about the matter, up to the moment when the clothes were found on the sands and the man was gone. Every step was traced of his ordinary career, nor could one suspicious circumstance befound. The mere fact of the heap of clothing, the money in the pockets, the watch, all the familiar careless evidences of a day which was to be as any other day, with no auguries of evil in it, was all there was to account for his disappearance. But that was pathetically distinct and unimpeachable. And when after so much delay the body was found—which, indeed, no one could tell to be Robert Dalyell’s body, but which by every law of probability might be considered so—the question dropped, and all the endless talk and speculation to which it had given rise. Of course there were doubts at first whether it might be suicide. But why, of all people in the world, should Robert Dalyell drown himself? No doubt there had been rumours of unfortunate speculations, and possible pecuniary disaster. But everybody knew now that Pat Wedderburn, a man of considerable wealth and unlimited credit, had put his means at his friend’s disposal. It is true that what Mr. Wedderburn had said was that he was about to do so; but these fine shades are too much to be preserved when a statement is sent about from mouth to mouth, and all Edinburgh was persuaded that Mr. Wedderburn’s means made Dalyell’s position secure—if,indeed, it ever was insecure, with a good estate behind him, and all his connections. But what a fatality! What a catastrophe! A man in the prime of life, with a nice wife and delightful children, a charming place, an excellent position, everything smiling upon him. That he should be carried away from all that in a moment by some confounded cramp, some momentary weakness. What a lesson it was! In the midst of life we are in death. This was what, with many regrets for Bob D’yell and sorrow for his family, and a great sensation among all who knew him, Edinburgh said. And then the event was displaced by another event, and his name was transferred from the papers and everybody’s mouth to a tablet in Yalton Church, and Robert Dalyell was as if he had never been.
It proved that his life was very heavily insured—to a much larger sum than anybody had been aware of, and in several offices. Neither Mrs. Dalyell, nor any of his advisers knew the reason for these unusual liberalities of arrangement, if not that Mr. Dalyell, being himself concerned in an insurance office, thought it right to set an example to others by the number and value of his own.Enough was obtained in this sorrowful way to clear off everything that was wrong in his affairs, and to secure Fred, when he should come of age, in unencumbered possession of Yalton, as well as to leave the portions of the girls intact. So far as this went, and though it was a dreadful thing to think, much more to say, no doubt it passed through Mr. Wedderburn’s mind, who was the sole executor, with the exception of Mrs. Dalyell, that the moment of poor Bob’s death was singularly well chosen. Mrs. Dalyell left everything in his hands, so that the conclusion was in no way forced upon her, nor would she have entertained it if it had occurred to her. Nothing would have persuaded her that her Robert had drowned himself, and she knew no reason why. She was not a woman who demanded explanations, who searched into the motives of things. She accepted the event when it happened with sorrow or with thankfulness, according as it was good or bad, but she did not demand to have the secret told her of how it came about. And she grieved deeply for her good husband; the earth was altogether overcast to her for a time. She felt no warmth in the sun, no beauty in the world—a pall hung over everything.Robert was gone—what was the good of all those secondary things, the comforts and ease of life, which were not him, nor ever could bring him back? She would have accepted joyfully a life of poverty and privation with Robert instead of this dreadful comfortable blank without him. Her emotions were as sincere as they were sober and unexaggerated. But, as was natural, this gloom of early bereavement did not last. After a few months she was capable of taking a little pleasure in the spring weather, of watching the flowers come up. And though the first notice she took of these ameliorating circumstances was to say with tears, “How pleased your father always was to see the crocuses!” yet it was the beginning of a better time. Mrs. Dalyell was still in the forties; she was in excellent health, and she was of a mild, unimpassioned temperament. It was not possible that the clouds should hang for ever about such a tranquil sky.
But there were two of the mourners who were not so simply constituted. Fred, who had been so light-hearted a boy when his father talked to him on the terrace and bade him think of the catastrophes which overturned so many young lives,was greatly changed. He could not get that conversation out of his mind, nor the strange recommendation his father had given him, nor the stranger repetition by old Janet of what Mr. Dalyell had said. How did she know? Had the father confided to her what was about to happen? Confided?—a thing which was an accident, an unforeseen calamity, or—— what else? Confided to Janet that next day he was going to die? Fred turned this over in his mind, over and over, till he was nearly mad. How did she know? How did she know? Was it second-sight, witchcraft of one kind or another? But Fred was a young man of his time—or rather he was not sufficiently a young man of his time to believe in witchcraft or any occult power. How was it?—how was it?—how was it? This question went on in his mind so constantly that it became a sort of mechanical rhyme running through everything. How did old Janet know? Had it been discovered by her somehow by mystic art? Had it been confided to her? He could not turn his mind away from this question or forget it. How did she know?—what did she know? Fred felt as if he should have informed the commissioners who had investigated the circumstancesof his father’s death of that conversation on the terrace. It might be only a coincidence; but it was a very curious coincidence. He ought to have reported it, made it known, that everybody might draw his own conclusions. Here was a man who as a matter of fact died by some mysterious accident next day, and who had talked to his son of what he might have to do were he left with the family on his hands, and advised whom he should take counsel with in difficulties: and the proposed counsellor had apparently been communicated with too. What would the little court of inquiry, he wondered, have said to that? What would the insurance people have said? Was it his duty to have told the strange and terrible detail? Was it better to have remained silent? Poor Fred could not tell what he ought to have done—what he ought to do. He was but a boy after all, when all was said. He had not been accustomed to form such momentous decisions for himself, and he was overwhelmed with grief and misery, not able to think. He remained silent, not betraying even to Mr. Wedderburn, who was now the guide of the household, looking after everything, what he felt. But the lad was very unhappy. There wasno reason why he should not return to Oxford; but he had no desire to return. He did not care to do anything. He wandered about the grounds asking himself what his father meant, if he had it all in his mind then as he walked along the terrace in the dark, listening to his boy’s chatter of college jokes and light-hearted nonsense. Was he thinking then of what was to be done next day? Had he planned it all? and left perhaps his last instructions with Janet, the unlikeliest repository of such secrets. Could it be this? or only coincidence, a series of coincidences, such as may occur and sometimes do occur, perplexing and confusing every calculation? All this made him very miserable, as he pondered, many a weary monotonous night and day. He stole out in the evenings after dinner and strolled along the terrace, as his father had been used to do, with a sort of vague hope of enlightenment, of some influence that might come to him, or even voice that he might hear. But he never heard anything more than the wind moaning in the trees, which drove him indoors with the melancholy of their unseen rustling, and the eerie sounds of the night, rising over all the invisible country, tinkle ofwater, and sweeping sound of the winds and the drop of the autumnal leaves falling, the hoot of an owl, the stirring of unseen things in the woods and fields. But when he was indoors again, still less could Fred bear the cheerful air of the drawing-room with its bright fire and lamps, and the voices of his sisters which began after a time of silence to whisper and chatter again in the irrepressible vitality of their youth. Had it all been planned before that night? Did his father already well know what was going to happen on the morrow—all the incidents of the tragedy? And did Janet know? Fred repeated these questions to himself till his brain felt as if it were giving way.