THE DEATH OF FENTON OF STRATHDIVIE.
It was the height of summer, when the most of the inhabitants of Glasgow
and its neighbourhood, who had the opportunity, had taken refuge by the
water, which is, somehow, the natural element of every true Glaswegian,
man or woman, high or low.
The Drysdales were at Lochgoilhead, the Semples of Semple Barns at Oban.
Dr. Peter Murray had got a medical substitute to take his post for a
fortnight, and was spending the minister’s holiday to his heart’s
content with Athole, scrambling after ferns and sea-anemones in Arran.
Young Eppie was wearing her Newhaven fishwife’s costume, and looking
the loveliest and daintiest little fishwife that ever trod an Arcadian
shore. She was learning to spout ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter,’ without much
anxiety as to whether Loch Goyle could be the same ‘dark and stormy
water’ which Campbell meant. But there was no Sir Hugo to gaze on the
nymph and hang on the accents of the Clydesdale tongue. He had not yet
turned up in the course of the Long Vacation. Guy Horsburgh alleged that
his friend could not help himself--his heart was in the right
place--that is, in Glasgow and its dependencies; but his tutor and his
mother had set their hearts on his completing his college course with
some credit, and to do so he must give a few weeks to a certain
reading-party, which meant work, in Derbyshire. But Derbyshire, or any
other shire in the United Kingdom, was little more than a bow-shot off,
from which, when he had made the necessary sacrifice, Sir Hugo was
certain to present himself within the given number of hours. That might
or might not be. There are plenty of allurements for such golden lads as
Sir Hugo.
A little fickleness may be excused in them, especially when they are
hardly more than major. Some rumour of threatened danger might have
reached his friends. They might have taken the alarm, and be moving
heaven and earth successfully to keep him in their own circle. If it
were so, nobody would object, as Tam Drysdale had said; and least of all
young Eppie, who had done all but forget that such a grand young
gentleman as an English baronet had ever crossed her blithe path, caught
her unawares, caused her to think shame, and made up for it by being
good-natured in admiring her singing. Eppie was as happy as usual--as
happy as the day was long. She was still at the most joyous
age--fancy-free and untouched by care. None missed a recreant lover,
whether by compulsion or his own free will, less than she did.
For inevitably there were more defaulters than Sir Hugo. Lochgoilhead,
Arran, and Oban may not look far apart on the map, and in the summer
season steamboats churn the water of the river continually with so
little pause and stay, that the throb of the engines, the grey and white
wreaths of the smoke and steam, the foam-bells on the track, are never
absent, any more than the near and far shadows of the hills from the
landscape. To think of getting out of sight and sound of these
harbingers of universal movement, is to imagine that one can sit on
certain green lawns, and count a dozen without catching a glimpse of a
white butterfly specking the sunny blue air. Still Lochgoilhead, Arran,
and Oban are too far apart for the exchange of morning or evening calls.
The ‘runs’ of the steamboats do not always answer particular
requirements, but keep crossing each other and cutting off the dwellers
on one point of the mainland or on one island from the dwellers on
another, in the most perplexing and exasperating manner. In truth, the
service of steamboats is kept for families coming once for all and
taking up their summer quarters, with periodical returns to the city, or
for tourists and touring, not for visitors and visiting. These last
social features are reserved for settled life in town or
country-houses--not nomadic life on the coast. When, in addition to this
reservation, some men have business engagements, such as young Tam had,
only letting them out of Glasgow at the last moment, once or twice a
week, with an obligation to report themselves first to their own people;
or when officers have regimental duty, such as was binding on Eneas
Mackinnon; and when there are not frank, hospitable invitations sent
beforehand for gay bachelors to come down in the end of the week and
stay over Sunday in Arran or at Lochgoilhead, the most ardent lover may
be safely defied to dance attendance on the object of his affections.
And young Tam was not ardent in pursuing a perverse young woman who was
constantly fleeing from him and mocking him. He had his wayward moods
like hers; often he set his teeth and said he would have nothing more to
do with her, that he despised himself for going after her; not that he
meant anything by it--oh no! It was merely regard for Dr. Peter and a
determination not to be driven away by her snubs and laughter.
Eneas Mackinnon was not ardent in a hopeless chase which he felt was
madness. He made up his mind half-a-dozen times a day to withdraw even
from the passive attentions and silent love-making which were all he
could presume to offer. But on every occasion that Claribel sailed
across his path, he was drawn by the fascination of her strength and
sufficiency for what she cared for, as much as by her beauty, to break
his resolution and let himself be dashed afresh against the rocks of
fortune.
Altogether Clary and Athole, who had never confided in each other, never
consulted together, who found themselves two young women abandoned
largely to their own company, or the society of their nearest relations,
needed all Clary’s _sang froid_ and Athole’s gaiety of heart and
devotion to her father, to bear their desertion with anything like the
unaffected philosophy and cheerfulness which young Eppie displayed in
similar circumstances.
The young ladies paid for their superior rank and refinement, and had
less of good fellowship during their holiday than their sisters in the
grade beneath them. These lower middle-class girls, not coy or
capricious, managed to secure their brief spell of liberty from their
situations as nursery governesses, in shops, and milliners’
establishments, at the same time that the young clerks and shopmen, in
their train, obtained their breathing-space. All rushed down, with the
other members of their families, to Hunter’s Quay, or Sandbank, or Kirn,
and were never apart. These primitive young people spent the long summer
day till far on in the dusk of the summer night, mostly on the water, in
such jovial play--such chattering, singing, laughing, flirting,
quarrelling, and agreeing again, as made the very hills of Cowal ring,
and formed enough recreation to last through all the working-hours, till
the depths of winter, and the daft days--stretching from Hogmanay to
Handsel Monday--came again.
There were multitudes, however, who never quitted the dingy precincts of
the city. Among these were the Miss Mackinnons. Dr. Peter and Athole had
done their best, in vain, to persuade the sisters to go out and keep
house at Barley Riggs, in the absence of the owners, as a favour to
them. But no invitation to Drysdale Hall had come to the old ladies
this year. The omission had drawn forth sundry expressions of surprise
from Dr. Peter; and when Athole had hinted at an explanation, he had
stared, reddened, and said plainly it was a shabby piece of retaliation,
such as he would not easily have believed Tam Drysdale guilty of.
Then Athole pointed out that she was aware the Drysdale Hall baskets of
fruit, vegetables, and dairy produce continued to come, as they had done
for a year, to St. Mungo’s Square; but Miss Janet began to look
dubiously at them, and to ask sharply if there was no card or note among
the contents. On this second piece of information, Dr. Peter shook his
head, and remarked emphatically _that_ would not do.
The Miss Mackinnons’ excuse for not going out of Glasgow was that Miss
Mackinnon was so frail, she was better at home. It had become a
‘thought’ to take her even the short distance to Barley Riggs in a close
carriage.
But in place of remaining quiet and composed, like fixtures, in their
own house, there was an air of restlessness and expectation about the
sisters, from the youngest to the eldest. It could hardly be accounted
for by the fact which Miss Bethia had disclosed to Athole Murray. The
elder lady had said, with a wistful, frightened look in her eyes, that
ill news travelled fast, and they were not easy in their minds about a
friend who had been long ailing and was likely to leave them this
summer.
Sure enough, the Miss Mackinnons had learnt from some quarter that
Fenton of Strathdivie, after many a false alarm, was on his death-bed at
last.
The expectant heirs did not speak much to each other of what they had
been looking forward to all these years, of what was never out of their
thoughts. The Miss Mackinnons were simple women when it comes to that.
The subject was too awful--too ghastly--the feverish counting of the
failing sands of a human creature’s existence in this world, the
breathless waiting till his breath went out, by women--two of them
considerably older than the sufferer--that they might join together in
parting their portion of the dead man’s possessions, was not an
experience to be lightly alluded to.
Miss Janet would say abruptly there was ‘a het glaff [warm air] off the
plain-stanes.’ Such warm weather must be very trying--even in the
country, where there were grass and cornfields--to sick folk, who could
not be expected to stand its exhausting effects.
Miss Bethia would reply below her breath to the vague allusion--‘I
wonder how _he_ is; sair spent, puir man, I doubt not.’
And Miss Mackinnon, narrowly watching her sister’s eyes, would hastily
utter the imperious appeal, ‘Have you heard word?’
For weeks Miss Janet or Miss Bethia had anticipated the coming of the
postman on his morning rounds. One or other of the sisters had stolen
out when the ringing of the door-bells grew nearer, and been found on
the door-step as the man of letters approached, waved a polite but
indifferent negative, and passed on in his circuit of the Square,
chuckling to himself when his back was turned, and saying, ‘The auld
lasses’ day for love-letters is surely gone by.’
It was in the forenoon, however, that Miss Bethia, returning from
marketing, and not noticing any change on the outside of the house,
stumbled as she entered out of the broad sunshine with which the opened
front door had flooded the hall, into the dining-room, where all the
blinds were drawn down. She stopped on the threshold with a mingled
shiver and thrill, as she saw through the gloom Miss Janet, sitting
erect and pale, opposite Miss Mackinnon, who was crouching a little, as
if from cold, on a summer day, while on the table between them lay two
black-edged letters unopened.
‘We are waiting for you, Betheye,’ said Miss Janet solemnly.
‘Oh, gie me a minute, Janet,’ implored Miss Bethia, dropping into a
chair, and speaking as if her own execution were approaching. ‘When did
it happen? What is the upshot? I hope none of us will fent. Had we not
better have burnt feather and smelling-salts in readiness?’
‘And the doctor, and the minister--I was gaun to say the lawyer, but we
have not had a man of business for the last twal years,’ said Miss
Janet, provoked to sarcasm. ‘You were aye a frichted hen, Betheye; but
we’re not of the fentin’ kind. As to what has happened, and the upshot,
I’m gaun to see. I take it for granted that I hae baith your
permissions.’
And with that Miss Janet stretched forward a wrinkled hand, that only
shook slightly, and appropriated the letters.
The first was a mere intimation of the death.
‘Strathdivie, 15th July.
‘Mr. Archibald Fenton died here this morning at half-past three
o’clock.’
Miss Janet read the announcement without faltering, then handed the card
for Miss Mackinnon’s satisfaction.
‘Eh! sirs!’ exclaimed Miss Bethia, by way of decent lamentation. ‘Eh!
sirs!’ she repeated after a moment’s pause, not without a little guilty
consciousness of hypocrisy. ‘The news will take nobody by surprise. He
suffered a deal of sickness, poor felly, but now he’s at his rest.’ It
was a statement, not a prayer, yet the assertion, in a softened tone,
was somewhat equivalent to the Roman Catholics’ petition, ‘_Requiescat
in pace_.’
Miss Janet was already opening the second letter, and drawing herself up
when she saw it was from a lawyer’s office; but, as a matter of course,
the only fresh intelligence it conveyed, in addition to communicating
the fact of Fenton of Strathdivie’s death, in slightly different words,
amounted to no more than that the funeral was to be from Strathdivie on
the following Thursday, and that the reading of the will would take
place on the return of the mourners from the churchyard.
‘That means that we are invited to attend as interested parties,’ said
Miss Janet, in a tone of triumph, forgetting the melancholy occasion of
the invitation.
‘What will we do?’ asked Miss Bethia helplessly, fanning herself with a
corner of her pocket-handkerchief, and feeling instinctively as she did
so the impropriety of its not being broad-hemmed.
‘What will we do? We’ll gang, of course,’ said Miss Janet, both asking a
question and answering it with the utmost decision. ‘We’re no daft to
hang back and decline to claim our legacy, that was left to us in the
first place by our great-grandfather when his dochter Jean took her
tocher to Fenton of Strathdivie.’
‘But how can we gang?’ retorted Miss Bethia, in her matter-of-factness,
still full of doubts and difficulties.
‘On our feet and in the trains to be sure,’ said Miss Janet impatiently.
‘But the murnins.’
‘You cannot have forgotten, Betheye,’ Miss Janet reminded her sister
severely, ‘that every stitch we’ve bocht for the last four years has
been black, in expectation of this ca’? As for crape and weepers, we’ll
surely get credit for them till the will’s administered.’
‘Oh, Janet, you’re makin’ cock-sure,’ said Miss Bethia in a timorous
voice, oddly at variance with the masculine word she had used.
‘And what for no?’ demanded Miss Janet, with all her old audacious
spirit. ‘Are we not come of the blude of our ain great-grandfather? Did
not his dochter Jean marry Fenton of Strathdivie? and failin’ the
Fentons, was not a share of Strathdivie cleared from debt by her
portion to come back to the Mackinnons? It’s as plain as a pikestaff.’
‘And what are we to do with Meye?’ Miss Bethia started another obstacle.
‘You may ask hersel’,’ suggested Miss Janet, still with unshaken
confidence. ‘I think I ken her answer beforehand.’
‘Meye,’ Miss Janet wrote, ‘I say we should start the morn for
Strathdivie--what do you think?’
‘I’ll go,’ replied Miss Mackinnon, without a second’s hesitation.
‘Hear to her, Betheye,’ said Miss Janet, with a mixture of pride and
reproach, ‘and her weel up among her seventies, and as deaf as a
door-nail, and has not had a breath of wind blow on her this year. Are
you not ashamed of yoursel’?’
‘I would do onything,’ said Miss Bethia meekly; ‘but should we not wait
for the Lieutenant? It is his business as well as ours. He micht gang in
our stead; or if that would not serve, he micht be our convoy and
protection.’
‘We’ll wait nane,’ said Miss Janet, in her high-handed way. ‘How are we
to write and hear word back again in time from Oban? He was not to be at
the Barracks for a week. If we do not gang when we’re bidden, how do we
ken that some other claimant may not slip into our shoon? Legacies do
not go a-begging. There will be plenty of corbies and gleds [ravens and
kites] to pike for Fenton of Strathdivie’s leavin’s.’
‘That’s the very reason we should be careful,’ said Miss Bethia eagerly,
‘not to rin into terrible expense without assurance.’
‘What do you ca’ assurance, Betheye Mackinnon? You may do what you like,
but for mysel’ I ken I do not come into an inheritance ilka day. I would
go to Strathdivie though I were to walk berfit [bare-footed] every step
of the gate, though I were to beg my way from farm-toon to farm-toon.
You’ll say next that we have not waited long, and that we have no need
o’ the siller.’ She ended almost fiercely in her exasperation. Then she
began again: ‘I believe you’re feared like a bairn--you’re fingie
[coward] enough of travellin’ to a house where a coffin and a corp’ are
lyin’--a woman of your years! As if they could harm you; as if our
presence were not the last mark of respect to him that’s awa’; as if,
gin he were to hant us, he couldna as lief come here as gang
yonder--here, where we’re bund to admit his wa’ga’in’ [departure] has
been sair wearied for.’
‘Oh! Janet, haud your tongue, for mercy’s sake, and let us do what you
judge best! I never wanted to gang conter to you,’ cried Miss Bethia,
collapsing utterly before these scornful reproaches and gruesome
threats.
Accordingly the Miss Mackinnons prepared for an extraordinary exodus on
the following day. First, they set their house in order, toiling for the
next six hours, putting aside and locking up everything that could be
locked up, and packing a trunk in common. They found an old washerwoman,
and placed her in charge of the bare walls and the tables and chairs,
loading her with instructions for the careful preservation of other
people’s property. Not content with this, the old ladies charged the
policeman on the beat, the postman, and a mechanic they knew, who
crossed St. Mungo’s Square as he went to and from his day’s work, to
have an eye on Jenny in her employers’ interests.
Then, giddy with excitement, and all but spent with fatigue, the
indefatigable old women turned again to the packing of the common trunk.
Miss Bethia especially brought to it all manner of incongruous articles
of apparel that would have filled half a dozen trunks. She excused
herself for this bulky plaid, or that old gown or bonnet, which had not
been seen for years, on the plea that the travellers could not tell how
long they would stay. Strathdivie was in a moorland district, and they
might feel the change of climate in the country; and while it was
necessary to prepare for seeing company, particularly at a time like
this, ladies might also wear up such old dresses as their owners could
not appear in so long as they remained in town.
It was well that exhaustion brought some amount of sleep, though the
sleepers’ dreams could not but have been uncanny.
By dawn of day the whole party were again astir, preparing to start for
the railway station an hour before the train was due. Miss Janet, who
had all the practical ability that was now to be found among the
sisters, had borrowed a time-table and copied out the stages of the
journey.
A certain sense of awe, very different from any former experience on
leaving home, was lent to the departure, from the indefinite duration of
the stay at Strathdivie--together with what were to the women the
tremendous issues involved in the visit. The starting took place early
in the morning, before even Miss Janet’s and Miss Bethia’s time of
rising. It was as if they were fleeing, unknown to the sleepers around
them, from the long reign of poverty and privation by which they had
been well-nigh overborne, as if the news were too good to be true, and
something terrible must befall the maiden ladies on their strange
journey to the house of the dead. He had never invited them to be his
guests during his lifetime--he had, indeed, as was shrewdly suspected,
nourished a strong, not unnatural, prejudice against those Mackinnons he
had known. It was, Miss Bethia said to herself with a sob in her throat,
as if they might never come back to the house in which they had been
born, where they had dwelt from youth to age, which they had never
failed to honour. It was dear to them from many causes--from their
intimate familiarity with every flower on the wall-papers, every crack
in the ceilings--from such joys as had come to them--from the sufferings
they had bravely faced under its roof. It was their own house and their
father’s house, which they were to bequeath to Eneas.
Miss Janet’s daring expenditure had not reached the pitch of calling a
cab. The grey morning was only mildly threatening rain, as it so often
does in the humid west, and had not settled down into steady wet. St.
Mungo’s Square was not above ten minutes’ walk from the particular
railway station where there were trains which led, by several changes
and a corresponding number of halts, to within a quarter of a mile of
Strathdivie.
The ladies went on foot, Miss Janet giving her arm to Miss Mackinnon,
and a porter--by whom Miss Bethia was appointed to walk that she might
keep her eye upon him without a moment’s intermission--shouldering the
trunk.
Emile Souvestre in one of his tales has an account of two sisters who
had led a peculiarly simple and retired life, having been, from the
force of circumstances, kept not only in drudgery, but in tutelage, till
they were far advanced in middle age. Then they were suddenly set free,
and began doubtfully to look about them, and take the holidays which the
women had missed in their youth. The graceful and not unsubtle French
writer--whom it is the fashion to set aside, because of his modesty and
purity, for the hurried perusal of heedless schoolgirls--describes with
delicate touches and fine sympathy the tender pathos of the
situation--the clinging helplessness of the pair who should long ago
have been the helpers of others--the stammering timidity of the
grey-headed women who ought by rights to have faced the world half a
century before.
There was some parallel between this case and that of the Miss
Mackinnons when they set out for Strathdivie in order to come into
their kingdom. True, there was no trace of timidity where Miss Janet was
concerned, and the explanation was rather that powers which had once
existed had fallen into disuse, and former knowledge had become
forgotten, than that the Scotch ladies had never gone abroad among their
contemporaries, or mingled with the world on their own account. On the
other hand, the nature of this errand, so different from the mere
pursuit of pleasure late in the day by the French sisters, was, in
itself, tragical and overpowering.
The three ladies had a look of blinking owls, as the Miss Mackinnons
stood on the platform, keeping guard over their trunk, waiting for their
train, while they interfered with the traffic, got in the way of the
porters and other passengers, and were more than once heartily
anathematized. Even Miss Janet made mistakes, dropped tickets,
miscounted her money, and entered into hopeless altercations, trotting
backward and forward as fast as her stiffened limbs would let her, till
she was thoroughly put out and agitated.
When the group were seated in a third-class carriage--for they were not
yet in possession of the reversion of Jean Mackinnon’s tocher--- various
rough jests and not too civil remarks were made by the by-standers on
‘the party out of the ark that had ta’en the road, forgetting that they
had left Noehey behind them.’ Happily the jeering personalities fell as
flat on Miss Janet’s and Miss Bethia’s hearing ears, as on the sealed
organs of Miss Mackinnon, seated between the two, for the better
execution of any pantomime that might convey to her what was passing
beyond her range of vision. The younger sisters never dreamt that the
talk applied to themselves.
‘Wha are they speaking about, Janet?’ asked Miss Bethia calmly.
‘Dear kens,’ answered Miss Janet, with the same coolness. ‘But I dinna
heed; I’ve a great deal to think about, Betheye.’
‘Nae doubt, Janet,’ and the subject dropped.
The complete imperturbability of the objects of the ridicule not only
blunted the words, it gradually shut the mouths of the thoughtless
mockers.