While her father and uncle were thus fuming over her absence, Marjory
Hay-Heriot, with her little sister, had been making her way quietly
about the little town of Comlie, whither they had ridden down in the
morning, tempted by the sunshine, after some days of rainy weather.
Comlie was a little old clean and quaint place, an old-fashioned Fife
borough, devoted to fishing in its lower parts, but possessing such a
High Street as not one of all its sister-towns possessed. This High
Street had a wide causeway, clean and straight, and a broad footpath
into which many old-fashioned large houses stepped forward with their
white gables, in a true picturesque old Scotch way, telling of better
times and characteristics more decided than our own. A quaint little
semi-metropolitan air was about this silent street, through which the
broad sunshine fell with few shadows to obstruct it. A little town-hall
with a quaint ancient steeple stood in the middle of the street, with
one square unglazed window protected by iron rails, the window of the
town Bridewell, raised just above the heads of the passers-by, and
looking as like the little town prison of an Italian mountain village as
two similar things could look in places so unlike. At the west end was
an old inn, a little hostel which, no doubt, was doing a good trade in
the days when queens and courts were at Falkland Palace, and archbishops
reigned in St. Andrews. The houses on the south side of the street with
their projecting gables, whitewashed and many-windowed, looked out upon
the sea to the back, over the fringe of fisher cottages which lay lower,
close to the beach. At the east end of the town stood the church, an old
church cobbled into mediocrity, but still displaying to instructed eyes
the lines of its original structure, and tempting archæologists with
hopes of restoration. It was surrounded by a churchyard full of
monuments of the sixteenth century, with skulls and cross-bones and urns
and puffing cherubs. It is astonishing how many dead people belonging to
that century could afford to leave behind them those cumbrous masses of
stone. The Manse, a solid, and in its way, spacious square stone house,
stood at a little distance overlooking the sea; and outside the church
gates, where the broad street had widened into a kind of triangular
_place_, there were several “genteel” houses--one decorated with iron
gates and trees in front, but the rest old, of characteristic Fife
architecture, each with its white gable. The sea is the background to
everything in this country, and to-day it was blue, a keen and chill,
but brilliant tone of colour, throwing up the whitewashed houses and
light grey stone with a brightness almost worthy of Italy; though no
Italian wind, unless, indeed, a Tramontana fresh from the snowy hills,
ever penetrated human bones like that steady blast from the east, which
came natural to the people of Comlie.
Marjory had left her horse and little Milly her tiny pony at John
Horsburgh’s inn, and they were now going up and down the silent street
in the sunshine about their various businesses, holding up their
riding-skirts, the little girl keeping very close by her sister’s side
like a little shadow, and communicating with the outer world almost
exclusively by means of a large pair of limpid blue eyes, clear as
heaven, and wide open, which said almost all that Milly had to say, and
learned a great deal more than Milly ever betrayed. Wherever Marjory
went, this little shade went with her, sometimes holding by her dress,
always treading in her very footsteps, a creature with no independent
existence of her own, any more than if she had been part of Marjory’s
gown, or an ornament she wore. As for Marjory herself, she went along
the street of Comlie with the free yet measured step of a princess,
aware that every eye in the place (there were not many visible), was
turned to her; but so used to that homage that it gave her only a fine
backing of moral strength and support, and made her neither vain nor
proud. Vain! why should Marjory Hay-Heriot be vain? She knew her
position exactly and accepted it, and was aware of all its duties, and
considered it natural. She was like a princess in Comlie; she would have
told you so simply without more ado, as calm in the consciousness as any
young grand-duchess in her hereditary dominions. She had been going over
her kingdom that morning, and had found a great many things to do.
At this moment when, if the reader pleases, we shall join ourselves
like little Milly to her train, she was coming up from “the shore” as it
was called, the fisher-region, where she had been paying a sorrowful
visit. One of the boats had gone down in the last gale, a too frequent
accident, and a young widow with a three months old baby, a poor young
creature who not two years before had left Pitcomlie House to marry her
Jamie, was sitting rocking herself and her child in the first stupor of
grief, and replying by monosyllables to all the kindly attempts to
console her.
“Oh ay, Miss Marjory,” “I ken that,” “Yes, Mem, its a’true,” poor Jean
had said, with the weary assent which means so little. Marjory came back
to the High Street with a grave face, and her own mind full of the
dreariness of that inevitable assent. What could any woman answer more
to the kind voices that bid her bear her trial and have patience, and
remember that it is God’s will? “Its a’ true.” May was not of a
melancholy mind; but that pitiful assent to everything she had said went
to her heart. She walked on with her light step that did no more than
_effleurer_ the ground, stopping sometimes to nod and smile to some
woman at her door.
“All well to-day, Mary?”
“Oh, ay, Miss Marjory, just about our ordinary, nae mair to complain o’
than maist puir folk; if thae weary cauld winds would bide away that gie
us a’ our death.”
“This is the first east wind we’ve had for a fortnight,” said Marjory.
“I think we have very little reason to complain.”
“Ye see I’m frae the south,” said the woman; “and my man has a hoast
that drives ye wild to hear; and when we havena the east wind in Comlie
we have the rain, and the bairns canna gang to the school, and there’s
naething but dirt and wet, and misery and quarrelling. It’s a weary
world, as our grannie says. Whatever the Almighty sends, there’s aye
something folk would like better.”
“But perhaps that might be the folk’s fault, and not the Almighty’s,”
suggested Marjory.
“Maybe; I’m no saying,” answered Mary Baxter, cautiously. “I hope’s a’
weel at Pitcomlie, and good news o’ the young gentlemen. They tell me
Mr. Charles’s wife out in India yonder, has another son. Bless us! and I
mind himself so well, a curly-headed laddie! It would have been mair
like the thing if Mr. Tammas would settle down, and bring hame some
bonnie young leddy and gie Mr. Heriot childhers’ childher, as it’s in
the Bible. But there’s nae word o’ that that I can hear?”
“No, there is no word of that. I hope Nancy is doing well in her new
place,” said Miss Heriot, changing the subject with the same unconscious
artifice which had prompted her humble interlocutor to carry the war
into the enemy’s country by introducing Charles’s marriage and Tom’s
bacherlorhood. These two subjects were not pleasing to the house of
Heriot; for Tom, the heir, unfortunately, showed no inclination to marry
at all, and Charlie in India had become a husband and a father much too
soon, contrary to all traditions. Marjory passed on when she had been
satisfied on the subject of Nancy, but was stopped a few steps further
on by a bareheaded girl in a pretty pink short-gown, the costume of the
country, who ran after her with her fair locks falling loose in the
wind.
“Eh, Miss Marjory, would you come in and speak to my mither?” cried this
new applicant. This was Jenny Patterson, who lived up a stair just
behind the Tolbooth, and a little out of Miss Heriot’s way. How Jenny
admired the young lady as she gathered up her heavy cloth skirts, and
with a smile and a nod went on to the well-known door! If Jenny had ever
heard of goddesses, just so would she have impersonified a feminine
divinity; that mixture of splendid superiority and familiar kindness
being of all things the most captivating to the unsophisticated soul.
Jenny’s brother, who was a watchmaker in Dundee, and held very advanced
political opinions, considered her devotion servile, but blushed to feel
that he himself shared it whenever he was brought under the same
influence. “But it’s no the leddy, it’s the woman I think of,” Radical
Jock explained to himself--an explanation as false as most such
explanations are.
“Jenny says you want me, Mrs. Patterson,” said Marjory, sitting down on
the chair which Jenny carefully dusted and placed in front of the fire.
It was a small room, with but a little space between the bed and the
fire, and with one window veiled by an immense geranium stretched upon a
fan-like frame, which was the pride of its mistress’s heart, consumed
half the air and light in the little place, and curiously enough
condescended to grow with splendid luxuriance. Jenny’s mother was an
invalid, but a good needlewoman, who got through a great deal of
“white-seam” in her chair by the fire, and lived, she, her daughter, and
her geranium on the earnings thus acquired, supplemented by help from
her sons. Jenny stood by smiling and open-mouthed, twisting up the hair
which invariably came down when she flew out into the street on any
errand; and little Milly, familiar to the place, actually took the
independent step of going to the window, and chirruping to the canary
which hung above that geranium forest, and was the best singer in all
Comlie, not even excepting the Minister’s bullfinch, a strange and
foreign bird.
“Dinna think I’m wanting anything from you, Miss Marjory. The worst o’
puir folk is that they’re aye wanting. Na, na, it was only for a sight
o’ your face, which does a poor body good, and to read ye my Willie’s
letter. Jenny, ye taupie, bring me Willie’s letter. I can maistly say it
off by heart, but Miss Heriot will like to see it, and I might forget
something. Eh, I’m a happy woman! The captain o’ the ‘William and
Mary’s’ dead out yonder (pointing her thumb over her shoulder, which was
the way or indicating distance in Comlie), and Willie’s to bring the
boat home. It’s as good as a ship to him; for ance a captain aye a
captain, and his owners are no the men to put him back in a mate’s
place.”
“I am very glad to hear of Willie’s promotion,” said Marjory; “was the
captain a Comlie man?”
“Eh, you’ll think me awfu’ hard-hearted,” said Mrs. Patterson, struck
with compunction, and pausing with her large horn spectacles in her
hand; “but you canna suppose I would have spoke as free and been as
thankfu’ if he had been a Comlie man. Na, na, if another house in the
town had been mourning I would have held my peace. I’ve had trouble
enough myself to have mair feeling; but he’s no frae Comlie nor
nearhand. He’s a Dundee man, and I ken naething about him. His name was
Brown, like mony mair, and he’s no even married that I ever heard tell
of, and it’s to be hoped he’s in a better place.”
With this the new captain’s mother dismissed the old one, and put on her
big spectacles. “It’s dated Riga, the fourteenth February, for that’s
the port where they were bound. ‘My dear mother, I hope you and Jenny’s
in good health as this leaves me. Many and many a time I think of you
and the cosy little room, and the flower, and the canary-bird--’ Bless
the laddie,” said Mrs. Patterson, stopping abruptly, “he had aye the
kindest heart!”
The reader probably, however, will not be so much interested in this
letter as Marjory was, who listened and made her comments with thorough
sympathy, feeling quite relieved, as was Willie’s mother, by the fact
that the dead captain was not a Comlie man. Dundee was large and vague,
and far away, and was able enough to mourn her own dead. But as they
went down the stairs after their visit was over, Marjory said to her
little sister, “We shall be too late for luncheon at home; are you
hungry, dear? I think we might go and dine with Aunt Jean.”
“I am a little hungry,” Milly confessed, not without a blush.
“Then run and tell Betty we are coming, and I will go on to the Manse;
you can come after me or stay at Aunt Jean’s, as you like.”
“Walk slow, May, and I will make up to you,” cried little Milly, who ran
off instantly like a gleam of sunshine, her long fair hair fluttering in
the breeze, anxious to be absent as short a time as possible from her
sister’s side. Marjory went on slowly making her royal progress through
her dominions, casting a smile now and then through the low windows on
the ground floor, stopping to nod and say a passing word to some one on
an outside stair. The doctor, setting out in his gig on some distant
visit, jumped down and crossed the street to speak to her, to ask for
Mr. Heriot and Mr. Charles, and tell her how his patients were, of many
of whom she had a secondary charge, if not as consulting physician, yet
with a responsibility almost as great. “James Tod, poor lad, would be
the better of some books,” the doctor said, “and you’re a better
deceiver than I am, Miss Heriot; you might persuade old Mrs. Little that
your father has some rare wine in his cellar, wine she could not get to
buy.”
“You pay me a charming compliment,” said Marjory. “Could you not cheat
her yourself with all your powers?”
“She laughed in my face,” said the doctor, who was young, and not very
rich, “and asked me how I could get finer wines than other folk? She
was sure I might spend my siller better. And poor little Agnes dying
before my eyes!”
“Will she die?”
“Don’t ask me,” said the too tender-hearted doctor, springing into his
gig again. He was too sensitive to be a doctor, his wife said. As the
gig drove away, some one else came up taking off his hat with profound
respect. This was young Mr. Hepburn who lived in the house with the iron
gates, and was the only unemployed person in Comlie. He was a young man
tolerably well off, and more than tolerably good-looking, who had been
brought up in a desultory way, was more accomplished than any other
individual within twenty miles, did not in the least know what to do
with himself, and was treated by Marjory with mingled kindness and
condescension, as a clever schoolboy is sometimes treated by a young
lady. For his part, Hepburn admired Marjory as he had never admired
anyone else in his life. He was three or four years her junior, and he
thought he was in love with, nay, adored her. The sight of her he said
was as sunshine in the dreary silent place; and he had said this so
often that it had come to Marjory’s ears. It was not very original, and
she had thought it impertinent, and treated him with more lofty
condescension than ever.
“Oh, Mr. Hepburn,” she said holding out her hand to him; “I did not know
you were here. Some one told me you had gone abroad. I should have asked
you to come to us sometimes at Pitcomlie, and bring your music, had I
known. Not that we are very lively--”
“Pitcomlie is a great deal better than lively,” said the young man. “I
am not of such a frivolous mind as to be always looking for amusement.
You know, Miss Heriot, how glad I am always to be there.”
“But amusement is a very good thing,” said Marjory. “Indeed, it is bad
for young people to be without it. When Milly is a little older, I
intend to make papa give balls and be very lively. I have always thought
it a most essential part of training. I hope you go on with your music,
and practice as much as you used to do?”
“I don’t practice at all in the ordinary sense of the word,” said young
Hepburn, with an annoyance he could not conceal. Marjory had Scotch
prejudices and many old-fashioned notions, and it was her conviction
that a man with an immortal soul who “practised” three or four hours a
day was a phenomenon to be looked on with something like contempt. Girls
did it, poor things! not being able to help themselves--but a man! This
young woman, though she thought herself enlightened, was a tissue of
prejudices, and we do not in the least defend her old world ways of
thinking. She sang very sweetly herself, with a voice which was very
flexible and true, but only moderately cultivated; and she thought of
music as a pleasant thing to fill up stray corners, but not as an
inspiration or occupation of life. And when she kindly asked Mr. Hepburn
to come and _bring his music_, what she meant was undoubtedly contempt.
“I don’t mean to use any word I ought not to use,” said Marjory, with
her gracious smile, “but I hope you keep it up, that and your drawing.
It is good to have such resources when one has only a quiet life to look
forward to. Of course a gentleman has many ways of occupying himself;
but I am so sorry my education has been neglected. When I am dull, there
is scarcely anything I can do but read.”
“I should not think you were ever dull,” said Hepburn, with adoring
looks.
“Not very often, just now; but some time probably I shall be, and then I
shall envy you your resources. Will you dine with us at Pitcomlie
to-morrow, Mr. Hepburn? I fear we shall be quite alone; but if you will
take the trouble to come--and bring your--”
“I will come with the greatest pleasure,” said the young man,
precipitately, drowning that last objectionable request. He would take
no music, he vowed, for any inducement which might be offered him. His
right hand would make an effort to forget its cunning. He would give
himself up to riding and shooting, and trudge about the ploughed fields
in leather gaiters, like her father, and make a boor of himself, by way
of proving to her that he was not a schoolboy nor a dilettante. This he
vowed to himself as she went on smiling, and little Milly passed him
like a gleam of light, rushing after her sister. How unlike these two
were to anything else far or near! Marjory, with her little sister, was
like a deep-hearted rose, not full blown, yet perfect--one of those
roses which you can look down into, as into a lovely nest of colour and
fragrance--with a tiny little bud just showing the pink on the same
stem. Young Hepburn had a great deal of superficial poetry about him,
and this was the image which came into his mind. Not full blown--keeping
the form of a bud, deep, many-folded, odorous as the very soul of
Summer. That was the similitude which best expressed Marjory Heriot to
his mind.
And she, laughing softly at him, wondering to herself what God could
mean by making such men, deciding within herself that he would have made
a nice sort of girl, pleasant and rather loveable, went on to the Manse,
which indeed had been her destination all along.