"WENT GLIDING AWAY LIKE A BEAUTIFUL GHOST."
"They bid me forget her--oh, how can it be?
In kindness or scorn she's ever wi' me;
I feel her fell frown in the lift's frosty blue,
An' I weel ken her smile in the lily's saft hue.
I try to forget her, but canna forget,
I've liket her lang, an' I aye like her yet."
THOM, _the Inverury Poet_.
Richards, the kindly old solicitor, with Jack and his sister Flora and
the general--these formed the group in the solemn, dark-panelled library
of Grantley Hall on that beautiful summer's evening. The light of the
westering sun stole in through the high stained windows, and cast
patches of light and colour on the furniture and on the floor. Mackenzie
had already told his son all the story of his troubles, and while he had
yet been talking, the curtains in the doorway were drawn back, and
Flora appeared, leaning on the arm of her good friend Richards.
The general had lifted up a deprecating hand.
"No need, no need." This from the family lawyer. "Flora already knows
all. And bravely has she borne the tidings. Ah, my good sir, Flora is a
true Mackenzie."
"But you might have told me long ago," was all she had said as she
seated herself on a low stool by her father's knee. "O father, I could
have borne it, and could have comforted you, now that poor mother has
gone!"
There was silence for a time, broken by Flora's low sobbing; broken,
too, by the sweet, mellow fluting of a blackbird in the garden
shrubbery.
General Mackenzie was the first to speak.
"Children," he said, "I have been for many a day like one living in a
dream, call it if you will a fool's paradise. But I have awakened at
last to the stern realities of life. It is better, perhaps, as it is,
for we now know the very worst. You will believe me when I say that if I
have hidden the truth from you, it was because I feared to vex you, or
render you unhappy, while yet there was hope. But now," he added, "all
is over, all is lost, or seems to be."
"Nay, nay, my good old friend," cried Richards; "you must not really
take so gloomy a view as that of the matter."
"This grand old house," continued the general as if he had heard him
not, "this estate, with all its beauty of domains, that was presented to
my ancestors by Charles the First himself, with its lands and its lakes,
its gardens and its trees, and which was prized by my father almost as
much as our ancient home in the Highlands of Scotland, has been wasted,
has been frittered away, through my intrinsic folly."
"Sir, sir," said Richards, "you are too hard on yourself now."
"Nay, my good friend, nay; that I cannot be. You have ever been faithful
to our family; but I repeat it before you, and before my only son and
daughter here: the estates are lost through my own folly, and through
the imbecility, the madness, Richards, of my pride. Now in a month's
time, if I do not pay off the mortgage, Keane, your partner, will
foreclose."
It was at this moment that Jack sprang up from his seat as though a
serpent had stung him. He took a few rapid strides up and down the
floor, then, his calmness in some degree restored, he confronted the
general.
"Did you say Keane would foreclose, father--Keane?"
"I said Keane, boy--Griffin, Keane, and Co. The old man Keane is my only
creditor. But why should the knowledge of this affect you so?"
"Because, father--and oh, forgive me, for I ought to have told you
before--because the heartless old man has been playing for your estates;
he has won, and he has in a manner ruined you. But his daughter Gerty
has been playing a crueller game than even his: she has won my heart,
and having won it, having torn it from me, she has trampled it bleeding
under foot. I can never love again."
"My boy, my poor boy, is this indeed so? How great is your sorrow and
suffering compared with mine! Bah! let the estate go. I could feel happy
now without it could I but believe that you would forget the heartless
minx who has dared to gain your love then spurn it. You _will_ forget
her?"
"Never, father, never; that is impossible. Sword in hand on the
battle-deck I shall seek surcease of sorrow, but forget little Gerty
Keane, never, never, never!"
The young man covered his face with his hands, and his form heaved with
suppressed emotion, and even the kindly-hearted Richards could but look
on in silence. Not a word of consolation could he adduce that had the
power to assuage grief so deep as this.
No one spoke for many minutes--sorrow is oftentimes too deep for
words--but higher and higher in the calm, still gloaming rose the
blackbird's notes of love, sounding half hysterical in the very fulness
of their happiness and joy.
General Mackenzie rose slowly from his chair, and approaching his son
placed a kindly hand on his shoulder.
"Dear Jack," he said slowly, "we each have something left us, a name
that has never yet been tarnished; our clansmen have ever been found in
the battle's van, or
'In death laid low,
Their backs to the field, their feet to the foe.'
We have that name, Jack boy; we have that fame. We have our unsullied
swords. Jack lad, we _shall_ forget."
"Father, we shall try."
And hand met hand as eye met eye. The two had signed a compact, and
well they knew what that compact was.
* * * * *
Jack Mackenzie sat alone in his bedroom that night long after his father
and every guest had retired. The casement window was wide open, so that
the sweet breath of the June roses could steal in, and with it the weird
tremolo of a nightingale singing its love-lay in an adjoining copse. The
moonlight was everywhere, bathing the flower-beds, spiritualizing the
trees, lying on the grass like snow, and casting deep shadows from the
quaint figures of many a statue, and a deeper shadow still from the
mossy dial-stone.
So intent was Jack in his admiration of the solemn beauty of the scene,
that he saw not his chamber door slowly opening, nor noted the figure
robed from head to feet in white that entered and glided towards him.
Was it a spirit?
If so, it was a very beautiful one. The face was very white in the
moonbeams, the eyes very sad and dark, and darker still the wealth of
waving hair that floated over the shoulders.
"Jack!"
Jack started now, and looked quickly round. Then a happy smile spread
over his face as he arose and led his sister to a seat by his side.
"So like old, old times, Flora," he said.
"So like old, old times, Jack," said she.
He wrapped her knees in a great old Grant-tartan plaid.
"I knew you were still up, and that you were not happy, so I came to
you. But, Jack--"
"Yes, dear."
"Smoke."
"May I?"
"You must."
"Still more like olden times, Flora."
Jack lit up his pipe, and then he took his sister's hand.
"I'm glad," he said, "that I never had a brother."
"And I," she said, "am happy I never had a sister."
"We are all in all to each other, are we not, Flo?"
"All in all, Jack; especially _now_."
"Ah yes; now that I have lost Gerty. Ah, siss! you nor any one else in
the wide world can ever tell how dearly I loved, and still love, that
faithless girl."
"And she, Jack, will break her heart that she cannot marry you. That is
what I came to tell you, Hush, Jack, hush! I know all you would say;
but you do not understand women, and least of all do you understand
Gerty. _I_ do, Jack; yes, I do."
"Sissy," said the young man earnestly, "the cruellest thing mortals can
be guilty of is to arouse the dying to feeling again, when the
bitterness of death is almost past. _You_ would not be so unkind. You
did not come here to raise hopes in my heart that would be as certainly
doomed to disappointment as that blooming flowers shall fade."
"No, Jack, no. I only came because I wanted to pour balm, not hope, into
your bleeding heart. I came to tell you all Gerty Keane's story, that
you may not think the very, very worst of her. Listen, Jack."
The young man sat in silence for quite a long time after his sister had
finished the story of Gerty Keane, and of her fondness for her lonesome,
friendless, and unlovable father; sat gazing out upon the moonlit
landscape, but seeing nothing; sat while the nightingale's lilt,
plaintive and low or mournfully sweet, bubbled tremulously from the
grove, but hearing nothing. And in the shadow of the old-fashioned
arm-chair snuggled Flora, her eyes resting lovingly, wistfully on her
brother's sad but handsome face.
At last he sighed and turned towards her. "Flora," he said, "I'm going
to try to forgive Gerty. I'm going to live in hope I one day may be able
to forgive. Just tell her from me I wish her that happiness with another
which fate has decreed it shall never be my joy to impart. Tell her--but
there! no more, Flora, no more."
"Spoken like my own brother; spoken like a true and brave Mackenzie.
Kiss me, Jack. I'm glad I came."
He held her hand a moment there, the moonbeams shining on both. "But,
Flora," he said, "you too have a little story."
"Ye--es, Jack."
Her head drooped like a lily.
"And, siss, it--is connected with--don't tremble so, Flora--with Tom?"
The moonbeams shone on Jack alone now; his sister had stolen into the
shadow to hide her blushes.
"Good-night again," she whispered, and so went gliding away like a
beautiful ghost.